See that guy in the picture? That’s me. I’m about thirty feet underground in the middle of Washington DC about to crawl into a tunnel. What am I doing there? My job. On this particular day, I was installing a sensor system that will measure waste water levels as it make its way to the treatment plant as part of the DC Clean Rivers project. It was a dirty, smelly, dangerous, and non-glamorous job. In other words, just a typical day (Hey Mike Rowe, let’s talk!).

I don’t talk much about what I do during the day because frankly, I thought of it as uninteresting. It’s important to be sure, but it’s not unlike many blue collar jobs in the world. But the thing is, when you really think about the work, it IS interesting. I travel across many states working on systems that help keep people and the environment safe. I work on equipment that few have ever heard of in places fewer still will ever see. I have stood atop large water tanks high in the air and walked along tunnels deep underground. I have calibrated equipment that checks water quality and stood in knee-deep waters at a treatment plant running cables. Yes, the ‘ick’ factor is very high.

At the end of the day, the work helps people. It helps keep our water clean and safe to drink. It keeps the environment sound and helps protect wildlife. It is a way to give back to the world and actively try to make it a better place.

Thanks for reading. We now return to our regularly scheduled program of science, space, and most of all rockets!

During the day job, I watched this train engine pull some incredible maneuvers. The engineer and his mate ran through a process of uncoupling and coupling of train cars, removing an empty one from storage and dropping off a full load of supplies. The amazing things people do every day to make the world run right is a joy to see.

Congrats to SpaceX on their mostly successful flight of the Falcon Heavy. The loss of the center core is a bummer but the rest of the flight was flawless.

We are entering a new era of space flight. The era of reusability. We will look back on this moment and wonder why we didn’t do this earlier.

Why do we have new year celebrations? The clock doesn’t care what time it is. The universe really doesn’t care at all. Time for us, is a human construct – a way to mark the days and measure productivity, vacation, or use it to bake a cake correctly. In the grand scheme of things, marking the end of one year and the start of a new one seems rather pointless.

But is it?

Humans, need closure. We go out of our way to find it too. Why do we continue to search for lost people when the amount of time passed means there is really no hope for survival? Why do we dig deeper into long forgotten history? We have an ache, a desire to close the past.

Marking the end of the year is the same. We can close the book on things that did not go well or reflect on the progress we have made. We need to put things in their proper place and move forward with our lives. It is just what humans do.

As 2018 starts, take time to reflect, put things in order and close the chapter of your life called 2017. Then, with renewed energy and strength, open the next one – the one marked 2018 – and start again.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of working on an industrial paper making machine. Well, working under would be more to the point. This monster consumes a lot of water and those water lines need to be calibrated. The machine is over three stories tall. It makes the base paper that will be turned into facial tissue, toilet paper, napkins and the like, all to customer specifications.

For the most part, the studio is now complete. Parts are starting to come of the printers and designs are becoming reality. The hard part is that I am having trouble finding things. Until it is all organized, sorted, tagged, and cataloged I will be spending a lot of time just ‘looking’ for things.