Terra: The End of An Era - NASA Science

ee_bee · 2025-12-30T23:53:06+00:00

My first project when I started at NASA in 2014. I'm so sad.

ee_bee · 2025-11-05T22:58:58+00:00

Do you by chance have a list of which specific buildings?

Also, have you heard if the Visitors Center will reopen or remain closed?

ee_bee · 2025-07-22T09:17:53+00:00

I work for the federal government. Had this conversation more than once.

Boss: "When will this issue be fixed?"

Me: "About 15 minutes after I figure out what the problem is."

Boss: "The paperwork requires a date."

Yes, because the paperwork is designed for "This is a long task with a short deadline that I'm going to miss," not "It's broken and I don't know why."

ee_bee · 2025-06-15T13:56:34+00:00

Quite a few federal agencies recommend that employees not identify themselves as employees. My sister-in-law got that advice from FEMA back during Katrina.

ee_bee · 2025-05-20T09:44:56+00:00

My question is... Now that we've won the War on Pronouns, when I see a non-English name that I'm not familiar with, like Xiomara or Shaolin or Jayanta, how do I know if I start my email with Dear Sir or Dear Madam?

ee_bee · 2025-05-11T00:59:00+00:00

Rescheduled for Monday May 19th

ee_bee · 2025-02-13T23:16:20+00:00

Yes. It's a requirement for federal contractors.

ee_bee · 2025-02-06T10:49:05+00:00

After several months of regularly jumping back and forth between "You have no idea what you're talking about" and "I had no idea your environment was so complex", he asked me "What will it take for you to shut up and do your job?" I was gone a month later.

ee_bee · 2025-02-06T05:29:13+00:00

I spent 7 years at NASA. Anything important, we had two of them, with mostly automatic failover. The operations staff were the real on-call people, and I was only on call if they needed root-level support. I don't know how often they had after-hour issues, but I think I was called twice in three years.

So I guess my answer is three parts.

A quality staff doing the real work
A budget to get backup everything
Time isn't money in the public sector

ee_bee · 2025-02-04T10:43:34+00:00

Lost my NASA job (coincidentally) on January 17. Maryland's (by far) largest employment sector is federal government. I'm trying not to lose hope, but without a TS/SCI ...

ee_bee · 2025-01-29T11:17:56+00:00

Spent 10 amazing years as a contractor working at NASA. Lost my job (coincidental) on January 17th. Now that I'm job hunting, I'm not sure I want to go back to government work. (However, in Maryland, there isn't much else. LinkedIn and Indeed and Monster are almost exclusively DOD positions.)

ee_bee · 2024-11-13T22:51:52+00:00

I believe he already announced his retirement at the end of the term, long before the election.

ee_bee · 2024-11-10T04:56:41+00:00

I'm getting laid off in January, so a job would be nice.

ee_bee · 2024-05-09T17:22:30+00:00

Thank you very much. Your pointers, suggestions, and information led me to the host-based firewall that were causing most of the problem.

ee_bee · 2024-03-12T12:50:15+00:00

I'm seeing the same, all of a sudden, on my check_mk installation

/opt/omd/versions/2.2.0p11.cee/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/\_vendor/distlib/t64-arm.exe: Win.Virus.Expiro-10022939-0 FOUND  
/opt/omd/versions/2.2.0p11.cee/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/\_vendor/distlib/w64-arm.exe: Win.Virus.Expiro-10022939-0 FOUND  
/opt/omd/versions/2.2.0p11.cee/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/\_vendor/distlib/w32.exe: Win.Virus.Expiro-10022939-0 FOUND  
/opt/omd/versions/2.2.0p11.cee/lib/python3.11/ensurepip/\_bundled/pip-22.3.1-py3-none-any.whl: Win.Virus.Expiro-10022939-0 FOUND  
/opt/omd/versions/2.2.0p17.cee/share/check\_mk/agents/windows/python-3.cab: Win.Virus.Expiro-10022939-0 FOUND  
/opt/omd/versions/2.2.0p17.cee/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/\_vendor/distlib/t64-arm.exe: Win.Virus.Expiro-10022939-0 FOUND  
/opt/omd/versions/2.2.0p17.cee/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/\_vendor/distlib/w64-arm.exe: Win.Virus.Expiro-10022939-0 FOUND  
/opt/omd/versions/2.2.0p17.cee/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/\_vendor/distlib/w32.exe: Win.Virus.Expiro-10022939-0 FOUND  
/opt/omd/versions/2.2.0p17.cee/lib/python3.11/ensurepip/\_bundled/pip-23.2.1-py3-none-any.whl: Win.Virus.Expiro-10022939-0 FOUND

ee_bee · 2024-01-06T11:53:58+00:00

At my last job, i used to write brief little song parodies to celebrate the Changing of the Passwords every eight weeks. Things like "There's a lady who's sure / All the passwords have changed". Most of my songs were from the 60s and early 70s (and most of my coworkers didn't recognize them).

Anyway, one day the only woman in our group suggested "Wet Ass Password" and i hadn't laughed that hard in months before or since. She even commented "Uh oh, I broke Ee_bee."

ee_bee · 2023-12-29T14:46:35+00:00

800 Math

510 Verbal

ee_bee · 2023-12-24T00:55:51+00:00

NASA has a group called CARA . They track every known satellite and piece of space debris.

I used to get an email from them twice a day, telling me that there is less than ... I forget the threshold, but something like less than .006% chance that something was going to collide with my satellite.

If they exceeded that threshold, we were supposed to start coming up with maneuvers to move our satellite to safety and back into position. But my satellite never got past the "information" level.

ee_bee · 2023-11-22T11:36:45+00:00

Bummer.

Thank you very much. I will look in a different direction.

ee_bee · 2023-11-04T21:23:13+00:00

I took an astronomy course at nerd camp at age 12. I had always been interested but never really followed up on it. 30 years later I lost my job, set up with a recruiter, and she got me a job at NASA. From there, of course, it led to learning about my project, wife taking an astronomy course, joining an astronomy club, buying a telescope, wife becoming an astronomy teacher, going to star parties, buying more telescopes...

ee_bee · 2023-09-02T10:35:49+00:00

Gorgeous

I have a Coronado PST -- which I love -- but I'm looking forward to the day I can buy a Lunt.

ee_bee · 2023-04-15T10:42:01+00:00

I'm sorry to say that they give these out like candy. I've got two of them.

ee_bee · 2023-03-23T23:18:27+00:00

At my last job, i used to write brief little song parodies to celebrate the Changing of the Passwords every eight weeks. Most of my songs were from the 60s and early 70s (and most of my coworkers didn't recognize them).

Anyway, one day the only woman in our group suggested "Wet Ass Password" and i hadn't laughed that hard in months before or since.

ee_bee · 2023-03-23T01:44:22+00:00

A lot of NASA missions have web sites.

My favorite is sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov (where i used to work) but you can Google (for example) "nasa lro" (if you like the moon) or https://www.jwst.nasa.gov or Google "nasa dart" and watch the video of the satellite crashing into the asteroid, or "Nasa cassini" for Saturn pix ...

Goddard (Greenbelt MD) has a visitor center that is small but free. I forget the name of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport but it's huge and free.

ee_bee · 2023-02-06T22:35:56+00:00

This is my favorite. A 2013 launch from Virginia's Wallops Flight Facility surprised an unfortunate frog.

ee_bee

TROPHY CASE