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Sometimes I feel like my job is a soap opera. LOL. The Indian liason was canned this week, oh darn. Apparently I was not the only person having problems with him. His last day is Friday, today he came and asked me three separate times when the assignments would be made. My reply? When it's ready, I'll email you. Nope, couple of hours later, here he comes again wanting to know when the assignment will be made and the code in the area. Me: "Um, we have problems. First build and we have run into problems. When it is ready, I will send out the normal email." Two hours later he comes back and wants to know if he can install the build, etc. So I spend 20 minutes or so putting together what I have with temp files and zip it up for him to install on his local system (like he told me he was going to do.) Turns out he is putting together stuff for the offshore people to test this evening. And at that point, it wasn't really ready yet.

Rolling my eyes at this point. I wanted to shake him and say "What part of NO, IT'S NOT READY do you not understand???" His replacement (who I really like, I trained him too in Feb) came by an hour or so later and helped me with some Test Director questions, then I finally had what I needed, so we did the assignment.

I think this other guy will work out just fine. I can understand his English, but more importantly, he can communicate. The first guy's English was horrible, and I was guessing at the gist of what he was saying. And as it turns out, he wasn't doing his job.

I hate confrontation, but I am so glad I went to management about it. It needed to be done, I wasn't the only one, and we get a better employee. Wins all round.

Now I just need a full-time job...

Thanks J!!!! Well, I didn't have access to any way to record it. And I have 3 VCR's (2 of them duals), and a TV tuner/virtual VCR on my computer. It's just another historical event that will probably live in my memory. There might be some commemorative video available though.

However, the science that will be coming back from there for the next 4 years, will be an ongoing reminder.

I have bunches of original calculations, computer runs and memos in my cube that I pulled and looked at yesterday. They are all for the fuel tank and its internals. The worst environment for the tank was, believe it or not, PROOF pressure testing on the ground and then during its ride launch aboard a Titan IV in 1997. After that, it was all cake for the tank.

There is a SUPER benefit from the mission success, and that is that all the strength analysis I did on the tank can be used as known correct procedures to the point that the predictions of it's flight worthiness were proven out.