Since Wednesday, there have been about five or six of us in the office who’d fire up NASA TV on the Internet around 10am. We’d then impatiently wait for the launch controller to proceed with the countdown for the launch of the New Horizons spacecraft.
On Wednesday, the launch was scrubbed because of an on-board warning, dashing our hopes of seeing that sumbitch blast off to Pluto. Then on Thursday, bad weather caused a power outage at one of the control facilities. Today, the launch was delayed because of cloud cover. I haven’t been teased this much since… well, maybe that’ll be another post.
Then, five minutes before 11am PST, the countdown resumed. At almost exactly 11am, the thing took off from the launch pad. It was a sight to behold. I bet there were some very happy short-sleeved men and women at NASA today.
If you missed it, the launch video can be found on the New Horizons mission web page.
At lunch today, Greg, Raj Tim, and myself were heading to Red Robin when fate interceded. I’m not exactly a big fan of RR and just as we got to the bottom of the steps to the place, we turned to look across the street. There, we saw a restaurant called “A Taste of Vietnam”. Tim and I have been craving lunchtime pho for many, many months now. We all decided to abandon our RR plans and go have some Vietnamese food.
AToV is a nice place with some bright colours in their decor. Their menu is also more than satisfactory. Tim and I had some pho tai while Greg had lemon grass chicken with rice. Their pho was pretty good, not the best I’ve had, but not many come close to the Pho Van experience. Definitely a solid choice for a work lunch. I’d come back there any day of the week for lunch. They also deliver, so we’re probably going to order from them next week… when we’re most likely going to do some overtime.