I'm a Renaissance Man. Farpoint's First Class. Flight Director Training. News. The Imaginarium

 Farpoint's First Class Session, Almost Without a Hitch

Our first of four web design classes was held today at Renaissance Academy in Lehi.  I arrived at 9:30 for the 10:00 A.M. class,  wanting to be absolutely sure Fortuna hadn't jinxed things up during the night (refer to yesterday's Troubadour post).  Danny Shields was waiting, along with Shelley Ellington from the Space EdVentures Foundation Board.  We approached the front door together.  I had the school's key the director had given me the night before.

"Brent and I were here last night to make sure everything would go smoothly," I told them as I inserted the key into the front door.  The key slipped smoothly into the lock, but turn - it would not.  "Fortuna!" I mumbled with contempt. Right then and there I realized I had made a mistake when I included her in my Friday night Troubadour post.  Our mischievous Olympian almost always strikes with a vengeance when I post something about her in this blog.   

I had Shelley try the lock.  It still wouldn't turn.  I jiggled the key.  It still wouldn't turn.  Shelley stopped me from kicking the door (the next thing I was planning on doing as I worked down my checklist on getting a key to open a locked door).  "Let's call Mark [Renaissance's Director]," she suggested. 

"I don't have his number," I replied as I prepared to kick the door, thinking the sudden jolt would free up a stuck tumbler or something.

"Let me check."  Shelley checked her phone.  She didn't have his number.

I knew Kyle had Mark's number.  Kyle has everyone's number.  I went back to the Battlestar and retrieved my antique rotary dial flip phone and called Kyle Herring.  I was right - he had the Director's number.  We waited for Kyle to call us back with Mark's solution.  It was 9:45 A.M.  The class was suppose to start at 10:00 A.M.  I wasn't panicking because I still hadn't tried kicking the door.   My phone rang.

Kyle's seemed amused.  "Does the keyring Mark gave you have a red plastic thing on it?"

"Yes," I replied. 

"That red thing is a computer chip?  You hold it in front of the reader near the front door and it will let you in."

"You mean that thing that looks like a doorbell?"

"That must be it."

"I thought that was a doorbell.  I pushed it a few times because there's another car here in the parking lot, so someone else must be in the building." 

I held the small disc up to the "door bell", a green light flashed and the door unlocked. 

NOW, how cool is that?  Imagine working at a school with a keyless entry.  Right then and there I knew I'd made the right decision to become a Renaissance man.

I wondered what other types of entertainment Fortuna had planned for us that morning.   Brent and Danny quickly found out.  The program they needed for the class only loaded on one computer.  The other 11 students had to do a "work around" (I'm thinking that's tech talk for a quick and dirty fix).  One of the students showed Brent a faster way to do the 'work around'.  Brent said the teen was definitely in the wrong class (yes Troops, Brent got schooled by a youngster).

Brent and Danny were impressed with our first 11 student programmers.  If the 11 stick with it, our Farpoint Station Programming Department will be off to a great start.  

The class will be taught again in the Fall for those who couldn't attend.

Mr. W

Discovery Space Center Holds Flight Director Training

Flight Directors, did you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand on end around 10:45 this morning?  If so, then know that we were talking about you during Discovery Space Center's Flight Director Training.  I couldn't use the flight directors present at the training as examples of what not to do as a simulator flight director, so I had to use the one's who DIDN'T come to the training as examples.  Let that be a lesson to you - attend the trainings when they are offered, because if you don't.........

Fearless Leader 

Fearless Leader Casey Voeks, General Secretary of the Utah County Republican Party, Director of Discovery Space Center, Former Substitute Teacher and Movie Ticket Taker arrived late so we had to stop talking about him.  Lucky for him - I had just gotten started  :)

Mr. W. 

Space and Science News

Emergency Spacewalk Repairs for International Space Station
 

 

 

Astronauts Marshburn and Cassidy  worked outside the ISS this morning.

Now see, when NASA needs to get something done, they just do it. This morning at 6:44 am MDT astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy opened the hatch to space and went for a little repair EVA on the outside of the station. During the 5 1/2 hour EVA, they removed a damaged coolant pump and replaced it with a spare that had been previously brought up to the station and temporarily placed nearby, ready for eventual use.  Read More

  

Read More on each topic below

▶ Reversing Heart Aging: http://is.gd/iL0bQM
▶ Injectable Oxygen: http://is.gd/YT3P73
▶ Bone Substitutes: http://is.gd/23efGs
▶ Brain Implant: http://is.gd/tEa3Lq
▶ Mars Colonists: http://is.gd/s3i1HM
▶ Clouded Leopards: http://is.gd/ocIa1A

Links and graphic by Hashem AL-ghaili

The Imaginarium

Will you stop making excuses for accepting ordinary, when only extraordinary will do?

Old School Spy Devices from the Cold War Era 

A creative solution to an emergency bathroom problem

 

The Future of Food?

 

Something tells me this isn't going to go well.

 

Life is like this sometimes.

 

So this is where it is