Forward-dating

No, this is not a post about anyone else. :P

This is more just a bunch of short random things I wanted to write about.

The army is but isn't paying me. Last Friday I was all excited when I checked my LES and realized that a new one was up and I was being paid. It was a complete back pay for the last month. What I failed to realize right away is they forward dated it. In the small print on the bottom it says, "Direct Deposit 20091211". In other words I'm not being paid till the eleventh. Just so you know... I did resolve the issue and I will continue to be paid while here.

I learned a new word today, holler. Say it with a southern accent and it means a slight depression in the Appellations, not big enough to be a valley. Because logically, how can you have a valley if you don't have any real mountains.

Thirdly, I had a run in with one of my classmates today because he was acting like a younger sibling, and he is twenty six. Maybe he was an only child.

Today in class we learned about the satellite systems that we use. And as of Saturday a new bird is up on the WGS(Wideband Global Satellite) constellation. WGS-3 is the third of six of these new birds that can each handle as much bandwidth and the whole last system combined(5 DCSS-III and their backups). Each of the WGS birds cost roughly $300mil. The cost of sending the shuttle up to repair and upgrade an old bird would be roughly $1.2bil. That is why we just put new ones up and let the old ones die when they run out of the fuel needed to stay in orbit. This bird was put up by a Delta IV from ULA. Here is a link to a story about it.