toros....

Jose-Antonio this afternoon, late, gave me a compliment... he said that I had "a good right hand." Various images briefly flung through my mind... he said that it was a translation of a Spanish saying derived from bullfighting. Drawing the bull across, where the bull doesn't really want to go, with adroit cape movements. He said that he'd seen me maneuver my group and pull them together and into reluctant tasks they'd rather skip. Once explained... I nodded and smiled. Rather than bulls, they've been more like the proverbial herding of cats. And I had to very intensely tell RA to either be quiet and sit down, or leave, but to just *stop* fretting and nagging. He turned white and sat down before slipping out.

Thank goodness for sarahh, who has both accomplished most of the technical progress to date as well as provide a countervailing soothing presence to RA, thus helping to keep overall morale intact. Especially considering that the highlight of the team's day was grocery shopping near the workplace.

We did not have a satellite transmission plan waiting for us this morning. So I called the guy responsible back in California at his house... at 2am, his time. Knowingly. I don't care... if I have people sitting on their hands in a different country, and critical promised data isn't there, I have no compunctions about waking him up. I'm going to postpone planned vacations if next week the demonstration isn't complete by Wednesday, too.

I spent much of the day haranguing Loral and Lyman Brothers (satellite) for the missing transmission plan. Hey, I'm currently paying multiple $K/day for a satellite that I haven't yet been able to use... and time here is growing short.

On the good side... The shipment of backup boxes of equipment is in Europe now and should be here in the morning. Pat and Dawn had a good day in Segovia.

Then this evening, Pat and I went out to dinner and walked around Acala de Henares... which was lovely and fun. Until a forbidden topic was broached on the way home, and the evening fell apart. Sigh...

progress

The weeks-old shipment, under threat of cancellation, is also in Europe now... in Luxembourg. (?) It may be here tomorrow, and then follow us to Rio Tinto. The backup shipment has already arrived at Madrid airport and is waiting for customs clearances.

We have a satellite plan, are transmitting, and will be able to establish IP service after lunch.

We have resolved the field IP-address-space issues. Sarah is busy configuring the servers. So there's progress.

At a personal level, it's easy to forget at times that I'm in Spain... it's very job-focussed now.

Initial success

Well... still no shipment. The folks who helpfully quickly shipped us backup units on Monday left out the street address on the airbill, and mislabelled the postal code as a PO Box. So no one knew where to deliver the goods, and back to the warehouse they have gone... now we will have to try to get them out of storage tomorrow, before driving south to Rio Tinto.

OTOH, we had an initial success: files transferred from the wireless network ("borehole") to the truck to the satellite uplink to the satellite downlink to CAB. To a machine that was readable from our lab in Calfornia...