NASA: Day 8

Today I'm flying solo. It's lunchtime as of when I'm writing this, and I'm typing inside what's called the mic. It's probably the most beautiful building on the campus. It's got a really modern feel to it and best of all, it's quiet on the 2nd and 3rd floors.

3rd floor of the MIC.

I shadowed Janet today, a project manager in charge of several projects, most notably, the replacement of the domestic water system. She has a PE certification, but now that she's in project management, she doesn't use her engineering skills as often. Instead, her job revolves around emails, phone calls, and meetings. She showed me these giant sheets of paper that you couldn't fit on a desk in a college dorm room. I probably couldn't fit the paper on my desk at home. We looked up some videos and saw in more detail how pipes are installed, since she didn't exactly know herself because she manages the project rather than go out in the field. She showed me around a few construction sites, but they weren't doing too much. We went to the mic and grabbed the second best tea I've ever had in my life. Maybe it was because I put creme in my tea for the first time, but the tea was thick and rich. The meeting we went to after was boring, and she admitted that. NASA has a lot of acronyms and things that I don't understand like yellow tickets, so it's hard to follow for outsiders, especially without any college experience. That being said, I'm understanding how meetings work, the difference between efficient/inefficient meetings, and how to increase efficiency in meetings. They might be boring, but it's not a waste of my time.

I spending lunch in the mic typing this journal and finishing up the last one. Later today? I'm hanging out with Cass - and it's already time to go.

-- many hours later--
We were going to go on some lab tours today, but I ended up troubleshooting with Cass and Brian over at substation M. A piece of equipment is malfunctioning, and since it was a specially manufactured control board that was malfunctioning, we called up the manufacturer or someone there and went through some troubleshooting. We were able to bypass it and Cass will be getting a quote for them to come out and repair it.

Giant breakers and relays galore

We went back to the control center to check for any errors and alerts. There were a few, but nothing related to the work we were doing. A problem with the breaker system is that there are too many people writing warnings for the smallest problems. There are thousands of alerts that people programmed to alert operators if a voltage or current or wattage (or a hundred other things) is not where it should be. A lot of those alerts are meaningless or outdated. The problem is that the operators aren't sure which ones are important and which are not, so if an alert is repeatedly coming up, operators tend to just ignore the alert. The problem is that if it's ever something serious, it could easily be overlooked until crap hits the fan. There's a person who's been going through the alerts and investigating the importance of each alert, getting rid of as many unimportant alerts as he can to clear up the system so that the alerts section isn't buried with unimportant alerts.

There are probably 40 monitors in this office space. People here work around the clock.

After the troubleshooting and reviewing some alerts, I talked with a few other engineers who build and run the systems. It's not everyday where you get to talk to the developer of specialized software of the applications being run. There were giant server cabinets in that building as well, but we didn't have time to get too deep into it.

It somehow amazed me that someone designs some of the software that the users are using to control giant breakers and other electrical equipment right next door. The operators run the system almost like clockwork. It's probably the best example of NASA where you really see that everyone has a part, and hundreds of people have a part. Thousands if you include the contractors that came in and installed the cabinets filled with hundreds of IO wiring, and then a good 300+ cabinets of those all hooked up to relays that are now being converted over to solid state relays. The electrical system never ceases to amaze me. 

Then - a nap back at home, work, and then I get to go have fun tomorrow - where I'll hopefully find out what type of lock this is and how it works along with much more.