February 17^th 1999

I started the day off with going around town and picking people up. First I went over to Jamie's place and picked her up, then went over to Alan's place and picked him up. I usually don't eat breakfast so I decided to wait until lunch today. Today was filled with many things to do. The ASRO people were unpacking their stuff and setting things up and making sure everything would be ready for the testing process. The Rover was busy as usual going through its seemingly normal exercises. There were s ome new people here too with an arm and more cameras. They were going to do a test that would have the arm dig a hole and then analyze the ground that it had uncovered. We set up the encoder. Jamie took some more video footage and I took a lot of pictu res. The teams from JSC were very friendly. They seem like an interesting group of people. There is always the smell of cigar smoke when I go around them. It is a nice smell though I think. I don't mind cigars at all. And you can tell that they are from Texas.

They all seem to have that southern accent. There are about six or seven of them. They have a lot of cool equipment. They brought a little rover that they tow the equipment around in. It has about six wheels and I think it would be cool i to drive it. The other teams of about three guys are from the University of Arizona. They work with cameras that go on space missions. They seem like an interesting bunch too, but they were very busy so I didn't get to talk with them too much. Before we left the Rover went over to where the RAC (Rover Arm Camera) was. It took a while but at least it got there on its own instead of being picked up and moved there. It had some problems getting there in the last couple feet, so they picked it up and move d it that way.

Alan Federman and his son went for a hike and I am sure they had fun. Alan also had a telecon and used my phone to listen in. He also showed the people that were in the telecon that they could see him if they went to the web site and clicked on the live video feed. At first it didn't work but I went in there and fixed the problem and they were able to see him. I went in to the picture too just to try to get seen by someone that might know me. Jamie and I had to leave early so she could pack up and go back to the Bay Area. I had to drive her to the big city so she could catch her plane. We got there early so we went to a souvenir shop and we got things for people that were back home. After that I went and looked for a place that sold connectors and electrical supplies but to my surprise most places were closed by the time I got out there. So tomorrow night I will be going to another city to get supplies. I went back home and went to sleep. That was all that happened today but it was pretty eventful. I expect the next week to be somewhat intense.

This is Seth Signing off.