February 20^th 1999

My job today was to get the encoder to encode at a good resolution and lower frame rate, as Hans put it. I didn't eat breakfast today as usual and went straight to the site to see what I could do. This week the JSC people and the Ames people will be watching my braodcast live over the internet so they could have an idea of what is going on during the time that the astronaut suit is interacting with the Rover. So I still had the wireless ethernet connection in my car as well as the rest of the equipment. I tested it in front of the RV and it worked quite well. Jamie Silva was working back at Ames so I called her and asked her how it looked. I changed the configurations a couple of times and finally we came to a setting that would work well for what was goin got happen next week. I then went out to the site where all of this would be taking place and it didn't work. I was too far away. The wireless Ethernet wasn't working very well for the Rover either. I went a little closer in the direction of the RV and about 75 yards later I was able to keep up a stable connection. After modifications on the Rover's ethernet system, they finaly got it to work properly but the thing was no one could walk in between the Rover and the RV. It was very sensitive. I mounted my antenna on my car so it was high enough that you didn't have to worry about people walking in front of it. I ended up connecting everything up and putting my generator in the car and as I pinged the RV I drove around looking for dead spots in the dried up lake bed. So I know what the limits are for the wireless ethernet. After that I was so hungry that I almost fainted form lack of energy or soemthing. I went into twon and ate some food and then went back to the motel. The JSC people were out in the parking lot talking over good ole times I guess. I am going to have to see what they are talking about one of these days. I hooked up my computer to the dial up account that I have and proceeded to finish up the days work. I am not sure what tomorrows schedule is but we usually have it off. I will report more news tomorrow. This is Seth signing off.