In the Desert stuck in a hotel
My day on field test in California6:00 up and Qt
6:50 fill up coolers with ice/switch walkie talkies to car chargers
7:00 meet for free breakfast compliments of the Brawley Inn. (they were serving french toast)
8:30 Loading Rover in car and off to desert
9:15 arrive at spot we left off yesterday and unload rover after a very uncomfortable ride due to the fact I had to go to the bathroom and the road was very bumpy, the agony was exacerbated by the sloshing water in the back of the car that I had to listen to.
9:20 sit and wait for rover to respond......not moving..... no beeps.
11:00 pack up rover and head back to town
11:45 arrive at radio shack to buy 17" lcd screen, keyboard, and mouse for debugging purposes
11:55 unload rover and listen to the computer scientists argue about which programming language is better.
12:00 go fill up car with gas
12:15 go to lunch (I had a burger with the big fat fries)
1:15 go back to rover room sit around write dissertation while computer scientists argue
6:00 drained ice and water out of coolers.
7:00 go to dinner (I had italian food)
8:00 go back to the rover room sit around listen to computer scientists, called wife.
10:00 went outside talked to Matt
11:10 sit in rover room listening to scientists and write my blog
The rover has a problem with it's software, namely the drivers that allow all the serial devices to talk to the main computer. We are now trying to use several usb to serial converters instead of the one with the offending drivers. They may fix it, in which case we would go back to the desert tomorrow, if not then we are on the plane home, probably Thursday flight. I have mixed feelings, I want to go home but I don't like goign home in shame. I myself am not a computer scientist so I pretty much sit around and pass out drinks to those who are. My dilemma right now is, should I go to bed and look like I am a lightweight and not part of the team? or just sit here watching you tube videos and looking up 80's rock stars.? it is a toss up, both have their advantages. Matt is stuck here dozing on his bed, The rover is in his room.
These Computer scientists will stair at their screen for hours while muttering curses and exultations and never tell you what they are talking about. they don't even like to tell each other what they are doing.
posted by Flippo @ 11:02 PM
1 Comments:
That was pretty interesting. I can picture the computer guys sitting and muttering at their screens. That's what we do here all day long though occasionally we curse at our screens. Hmm, I wonder if writing code for a robot would be more fulfilling than writing code for a financial application. We never get to go to the desert. In fact, we hardly ever leave our cubbies.
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