Spirit Sol 123

I walk into the sequencing room and announce: "Gentlemen, behold -- Krispy Kreme!"

Ah, Aqua Teen Hungerforce ... nobody gets the allusion, but they like the doughnuts, anyway.

It's a good thing I came in early, because they moved the schedule up and didn't think to tell me. So instead of having an hour to get up to speed before the activity plan approval meeting, I arrive just before the meeting starts. But these drive sequences haven't been that complex, and this one's no exception, which helps me catch up quickly. More plowing ahead toward the hills.

As we're walking through the sequence, Chris asks me if there's an option to change some RoSE behavior he dislikes. "No, sorry," I tell him. He shrugs. "Ah, it's OK. RoSE probably has the fewest idiosyncrasies of any tool out there," he says. As if on cue, one of the other tools we're using crashes.

Our Linux Journal article was approved at long last! It's been delayed so long that some of the wording in it is now inappropriate (such as a reference to the mission as "a three-month journey of exploration" -- it's already been longer than that, and the article won't appear for some time yet), and every time I read it I see new things I'd change. But, to hell with it: it's going to see print, and that's going to be cool. Gentlemen, behold: I'm in the Linux Journal!

The other day, I thought I was being excessively concerned about the possibility of a sequence being interrupted during the end-of-drive wheel wiggle. Was all that business about calling Art at home and begging the MER-B uplink team to repackage the uplink too paranoid? Maybe not: yesterday's drive was interrupted during the wheel wiggle. Yesterday was structured differently, so the drive sequence wasn't deactivated then -- it went on to unmask the goal error, and the rover is fine. But this is exactly what I feared could happen to the sequence I was concerned about; if it had, our nightmare scenario would have played out. Score one for paranoia.