Cory on Camera During the Shuttle Mission!

Here's a picture of me sitting at our console observing all of the activities of the recent Shuttle mission (STS-116). The woman next to me is Molly Meyer-Allyn, who happened to be the certified flight controller on the shift that I was scheduled to observe on. She did a great job, and the International Space Station is still flying high.



I slacked a little bit in keeping up with the mission activities in my posts, but you can get clued in on all the major stuff on Josh's blog if you are interested.

Flag Football Runners Up :-(

Ok, no we didn't win all the marbles. BUT, we should have. I'm not just saying that like most other losers out there do, we honestly should have won. To add insult to injury, it poured on us for a good 30 minutes in the second half.

The game came down to the last play of the game and we couldn't put it in the endzone from 10 yards out. This wasn't the only reason that we couldn't put another one in the "win column", there were many many bad calls by our apharently blind referees and a few screw ups by us that cost us the game just barely. We obviously had the better team and frankly out played the winning team except for a few mistakes. It looks like the next season will start in January, and I refuse to lose another game.

On a side note, if there is anything that any of you will learn about me really quickly is that I absolutely hate to lose. I'm that jack ass that no one wants to play against because I routinely get all pissy when things don't go my way. I was definately not a happy camper tonight, so do me a favor and don't remind me of our runner up status.

Flag Football Champions!!!

We may be space geeks, but the GNC community knows how to play football. On Monday we completed our undefeated co-ed Gilruth flag football season with two playoff ass-whoopins. I'll just summarize the first playoff game by saying.....67-9. The second game looked like we were going to run away with it until they got lucky and scored 2 touchdowns, too bad we had 3. We didn't score the whole second half and still won. Needless to say, we are good. Here's our roster of players for the co-ed league, so if you see these people let them know how impressed you are.

Aaron Cannon (captain)
ME
Erin Hammond
Nujoud Merancy
John Merancy
Tarik Ward
Tanner Moore
Jim Tobin
Jenny Tobin
Allison Hawthorne
Charlie Marshik

I also am participating in the Gilruth men's flag football league. This league has two nights, Tuesday and Wednesday. We played in the Tuesday league in which we only lost 1 game, and last night we had our Tuesday night playoffs. We won the first game in overtime, and we stopped the second team on the last play of the game on the goal line. Oh, and by the way, the second team is the one that we lost to in the regular season, it was sweet revenge. Not only did we beat them, but to add insult to injury on the last play I had no intention of letting this dude go into the endzone with his flags still on his hips, so I grabbed everything he had around his waste at the time and gave a good yank, leaving him lying face down on the ground with his bare ass face up. I guess you could call us Tuesday league champions but we play the Wednesday winner this Thursday night for all the marbles. From what the refs tell us, they are pretty good. Pray for us. Here's our men's league roster.

Aaron Cannon (captain)
ME
Tarik Ward
Todd Horelica
Tanner Moore
Derek Jones
Jim Tobin
Charlie Marshik
George Coppinger
John Wilke

I may have forgot some names so somebody let me know if I did. I look forward to the next flag football season because we just kick so much ass.

For a pretty good play by play on the men's league playoff games, see Todd's blog.

The Perfect Gift for Your Girl

Alright fellas, you don't know what to get your woman for the holidays? Try this suggestion from SNL. Girls love when we make them stuff, and this isn't that expensive either. Take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmVU08zVpA

Merry Christmas Ladies!!

Flight Days 4, 5, and 6

Flight Day 4: This day's major activity was an EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) that had two crew member's doing a space walk to install a large exterior structural support truss segment to the International Space Station. Early on in the day, the Shuttle was doing a water dump to space while we were doing a small maneuver with the Station and we had some complications. There was a good 30min of tension but nothing bad happened, Molly saved the day. (not really) Here's a snapshot of the Mission Control Center that I took on this day along with what our console looks like. We are the console closest to the front screens on the left hand side (ADCO console)

Flight Day 5: On this day we really had nothing planned on our shift of any consequence to the team. However, the PHALCON console (the power guy), was retracting one of our solar panels and lets just say it didn't go as planned. So, they way these things work is a command is sent by the crew onboard and the 100ft long solar panel starts folding up like an accordian. Well, you know when you try to fold up a really large map and it sometimes folds the wrong way and you get really pissed off, that's pretty much what happened and they still haven't gotten it fully retracted as of now.

Flight Day 6: Today alot of the Space Station was powered down so that the new solar panels that were launced up to us on the last mission can be wired to power some of our equipment. The crew is doing another spacewalk as I am typing this, unplugging wires and plugging them in somewhere else. There was another water dump today on the Space Shuttle but not quite as exciting as Flight Day 4.

More mission photos and info to come

I Got Published: Revised

So there was a request to post my unedited response, and I went back and looked at what specifically they left out. It turns out, it wasn't all that much, just about 4 sentences. So, instead of posting the whole article again, I'm just going to summarize what they left out.

1. I had mentioned to leave the astronauts out of this conversation about NASA because they would not have wanted their loss to be a detriment to what we do.

2. In reference to spending too much money I also wrote: "Maybe you should stop writing about wasting money on exploration and start writing about wasting money on killing people. Which is more worth it to you? I'd rather go to the moon." (I guess I can see why they left that one out)

3. I also mentioned that I was a flight controller for the ISS (not completely true YET) who graduated from PSU with an aerospace engineering degree to give myself some credibility, and am not real sure why they left that out. At least they would know it's not just some shmuck writing in.

4. My closing paragraph went something like this (which they kind of butchered): "I hope this gets published, I see too many articles written about NASA from authors without all of the facts. You see large monitary values and dead astronauts, and don't put into perpective what we've accomplished and what we have yet to accomplish. So think about what you would rather we spend our % of a % of the budget on if we don't explore space anymore. We do amazing amazing things with what we've got, it's time people start realizing that. For anyone else who may read this, I implore you to learn more about the space industry. We have spoiled ourselves by going to the moon in the 60's and now America has lost interest, but the things that our brave astronauts do on a daily basis is nothing short of astounding and deserves more recognition."

I Got Published!!

Last week I was emailed this article written in the Penn State newspaper "The Daily Collegian": http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2006/12/12-07-06tdc/12-07-06dops-column-01.asp. This guy procedes to question the initiative to furthur explore space and travel to the Moon, citing the $104 billion to do so and the lost astronauts of previous shuttle mission failures. I can't stand when people write about things which they do not know, so I wrote a quick rant back to the editor and he published my response. Keep in mind that about 1/3 of my article was edited out so your pretty much only getting the meat of my response here. Here it is: http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2006/12/12-13-06tdc/12-13-06dops-letter-04.asp.

I have already recieved an email from a former astronaut that read the article and has commended me for getting my response published.

Flight Day 3

Today's activities marked the beginning of the International Space Station's involvment in the current shuttle mission. The all-important flight day 3 includes the docking of the Shuttle Discovery to the Station which is one of the most crucial responsibilities of my group. I must say that the ADCO on console today with me (Molly Meyer-Allyn) did a fabulous job managing the days activities. As soon as I get some pictures or video of this mission I will post them, but for now I will continue to make daily updates of the missions progress.

Launch of STS 116

Last night we had the least painful shuttle launch since I've been working here. There was only 1 scrubbed launch last Thursday for some low cloud cover that was ok for launching but did not pass our limits for visibility in the contingency case when the crew would have to return to the launch site for a main engine failure early in the launch. The 48 hour scrub solved the weather problem, and we launched last night in the dark for the first time in 4 years. Here are a couple of really cool pics that were emailed to me today of the launch.






This mission will last 12 days and involves the most crucial power reconfigurations of the Internation Space Station to date. I will be in the Mission Control Center every day until the Shuttle undocks from the Station absorbing every piece of knowledge I can, so that I'll be prepared when I'm in the hot seat flying the station in the not so distant future.

Catch Up Blog

Every once in awhile I'll have to make a post that gets my readers caught up with what we have been up to in the last year since I just created this new blog site. Below are some pictures of our new house which we bought in January and my new truck that I bought in May.

And here are a few pictures of our house.

Cosmo Gets a Bath

We're having some friends over tomorrow night to enjoy some wine and good conversation and I thought that Cosmo should look her best. Take a guess on how much she likes getting a bath.

Here's her first escape attempt from the tub.

....and her punishment

Maybe she thinks she can lick the water off of her.

And this is just before a nice Cory drenching shake off!

The BCS SUCKS!

Lloyd Carr, I feel your pain. The BCS screwed the Big Ten, and Michigan. The other controversy that no one is talking about is 11-1 Wisconsin sitting at #9 and watching Notre Dame weasel their way into another undeserving BCS bowl. Why is this do you ask? Well there is a BCS rule that says no conference can send more than 2 teams to the BCS bowl games, and since Michigan and Ohio State are already in, Wisconsin is out no matter how good they are. Lets screw a deserving team so another conference can make some money, or in this case Notre Dame, which we all know doesn't need any money.

Does anyone think that the system that is in place now actually is the way it should be done? I mean, every other sport has a playoff system and no one complains about who deserves the #1 spot in those sports so why hasn't the NCAA woken up and smelled the roses. Oh wait, I know....MONEY!!!

There are two things that I am looking forward to after the new year. First I'm going to watch LSU kick the living crap out of those pansy independant Fighting Irish, just like Ohio State did last year. Maybe one of these years someone will realize that their name isn't enough to get an automatic BCS bid every year. Good job #11 Notre Dame, you should be proud of yourselves. We'll see you next year in Happy Valley when you'll be wishing you could bring touchdown Jesus with you to Pennsylvania, you'll need him.

The second thing I'm looking forward to is Ohio State wiping the floor with overrated Florida. Just maybe, some of the pollsters will look back on their votes for Florida and realize that the second best team in the country was the Wolverines who we all know came within 3pts of OSU.

In conclusion, my hope is that the BCS will go jump off of a cliff, shoot itself in the head on the way down, hit some jagged rocks, wash out to sea, and get nibbled on for the rest of eaternity by sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads. Please comment on whether you think the BCS is a good system, I'd like to see the results.

New LOW Score!

I am officially posting my record score of 21 in the Mini Putt game from the Parris Perceptions Blog. I played it a few times when Josh posted the game and got really lucky and shot a 27 when everyone else was in the mid 30's so I stopped and thought that was good enough. Well, to my dismay, Josh goes ahead and posts a 22! Being the sore loser that I am, I played until I saw what you see below.

Scratch that! I just got a 20 while eating my lunch! On the first try of the day I have set a mark that I don't believe will ever be beaten. 28 under par isn't too shabby.

My First ADCO Simulation

Today was my first sim sitting in the hot seat as a flight controller. Not much happened in the sim that impacted us but to be honest, I was pretty nervous the entire time. I'd like to thank Mike Allyn for offering me the opportunity to sit in the front room while he played my back room support position and helped me through the day. When it was all over I couldn't help but feel a minor sense of accomplishment for not completely embarrassing myself the first time out there. It probably won't be until February that i get to do this again, but I feel like I'll be a little more prepared and not quite as petrified when that time comes.

Santa's Little Helper

As everyone will soon find out, our favorite subject of photos is our mutt of a dog Cosmo. Somehow we thought it would be a good idea to get her some Christmas attire, needless to say she hates the damn thing. Luckily we got some snapshots of her in her elf hat before she could bat it off with her paw. It's amazing what you can accomplish when throwing treats at dogs, take note of the tongue licking her chops for some hot dog bribes.

Erin also got a funny upclose and personal shot of Cosmo. I don't know but this one just makes us laugh.

Getting in the Spirit

The weekend after Thanksgiving, like many other people, we decided to get out our limited supply of Christmas stuff. With this being only our first year in our house, we don't have much more than a tree and decorations that Erin brought from PA. We'll be waiting until after Christams to purchase exterior lighting for next year and more tree decorations while they'll be ridiculously on sale. Although not as magnificant as I would like, it is our Christmas tree and we're proud of it. Seasons greetings to all from Cory, Erin, and Cosmo!!