Not quite a disaster, but that's how the week started ...

Before what happened (or I knew about it) what I posted in the last two posts there was something that affected my weekend rather adversely. Saturday late morning I emailed the telescope system specialist at JCMT that one of the data disks was rather full. As I know very little about what can be deleted from these disks when that's all I could do at the time. The email I used to get from a cron job (automatic procedure) didn't happen either. A bit after midnight I reopened an old fault entitled "No space left on device" - after responding to a new fault that had been filed that night. A long email exchange followed, partly that night, partly the following days. Disk space got sorted out and for all I remember no telescope time was lost due to this. A bunch of people (me included) spent a bunch of time, partly due to confusion of what had happened - and it disrupted the weekend for all of us. It wasn't a real disaster but if we hadn't paid attention, for telescope productivity it could have been.

In more recent news, we just got an update from the UKIRT Board who issued a statement in response to the STFC - the UKIRT Board met in Edinburgh at the ATC at the same time this all happened. You can find the statement on the JAC homepage http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/ - or directly here:http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/UKIRT/news/Statement_from_the_UKIRT_Board.pdf

Note: The tags to this and previous posts aren't in the order I put them. They apparently get sorted alphabetically and I have no control over that.

Another treasury from the Lampwork Etc. Etsy Team follows:

'Handmade on A Sunday' by rosebud101

In all honesty, I don't know if these beautiful items were all made on a Sunday, but I do know that each one was handmade by the artist. Isn't that a nice thing to know?

Upcycled Sweater Co... gailjoseph $125.00	Abstract Hammered R... silverriverjew... $47.00
Naos Glass - Lily P... Na0sGlass $15.00	Blue Boro Bubble Im... MagpieGlasswor... $10.00
Shattered Rainbow D... LeslieDanaDesi... $24.00	Lampwork Glass Bead... MitosisGlass $23.00
Bead Hog - SRA Gell... Gelly $50.00	Loribeads - Freedom... loribeads $12.00
Pink Floral Snail L... nlcbeads $25.00	Hand Painted Card, ... KayTStudio $1.50
White, red and gree... hilobeads $20.00	Copper Hammered Hea... lhughesdesigns... $35.00
Handmade murrini CO... ErikaNooteboom $5.50	Watermelons - lampw... DesignsbyKUrat... $24.00
Handmade Lampwork G... rosebud101 $30.00	Purple Floral Handm... SolarFlareCrea... $40.00

Treasury tool supported by the dog house

- reformatted by the blog author.

RIP Richard Crowe

Professor Richard Crowe of the UHH Physics and Astronomy Department was fatally injured in Arizona this past weekend. You may have read about it in the paper if you are local to here or to the accident. Richard wasn't a close friend but he was a friend alright. Our daughter and the older of his two have been friends since preschool. Not always close, but as our daughter put it to me today "if I don't see her ever again so be it, but I want her to always be happy" (names intentionally omitted). This is how I feel too, about all of the Crowe family. Richard was fatally injured in a horrible accident in Arizona in tour of the Canyon de Chelly. Another person/couple who were on this same tour is/are writing a blog and is/are doing a very good job of it. There are a few pictures - no blood - and a very good description of what happened. You can find the first of the articles about this horrible accident here: https://otrwjam.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/the-accident-at-canyon-de-chelly/ My condolences to the family.

In memory of Walter Steiger - rest in peace

This one took me a day to even think about posting. Walter was so much more than most people realize. I know that without him a lot of us, me included (astronomers and support staff on Mauna Kea) wouldn't even be here.

Walter was my boss at some point, when I was working at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, and he sure was a good one. That was after he retired for the second time. Walter(who was almost a year older than my Dad is) was a very honest and humble person. He would never have given himself the credit I do. He wrote a History of Astronomy in Hawaii which you can find here.

My husband Norman knew Walter way longer than I did, he was a graduate student at UH Manoa when Walter was the chairman of the department and one of his stories still makes me chuckle. It describes both of them very well. They were basically making sure of the integrity of the other (actually, Walter was making sure of Norman's (after all, Walter was the boss) but the way that worked out it assured both of the integrity of the other).

Walter retired from UH Manoa, then headed the Bishop Museum Planetarium (and then some, as I read in the Trib), retired from there to become the site manager of the CSO (where he was one of my bosses, and a good one), retired from there to lecture at UHH, became interim director of the Imiloa and when he retired from there returned to the CSO (Caltech Submm Observatory) to do at least some of their PR/outreach work until he got killed in this traffic accident last Sunday.

Walter's eyesight wasn't very good anymore so he went around on a motor scooter. He went to the CSO office on it several days a week, he did the grocery shopping that way (I know his wife Betty gave up driving years earlier, he told me, and I saw him in the stores on occasion).

Now here are some of my own assumptions: The accident happened on Superbowl Sunday.
The Trib says Walter had picked up medications for his wife's (Betty's) arthritis. The only pharmacy open on Sundays in downtown Hilo is Longs. If he crossed Komohana Street he must have come up Kukuau Street. Just before that intersection Kukuau is rather steep. While Walter's moped may have gone on the order of 45 mph going down the Mohouli Extension (I saw him there on my way to work on occasion) it most certainly couldn't have gone up Kukuau at that speed (except for the last about 60 or so feet, but if would have had to speed up considerably), more likely about 15 mph.

Last night after work I was on my way to the downtown KTA and drove through that intersection (made me cry again) and saw the police markings. If Walter was in the middle of the intersection going about 15 mph, the SUV that hit him (I very much doubt he hit the SUV) either sped over the blind hill or could have avoided him if they had been paying attention.

What the Hawaii Tribune Herald (earlier attributed as Trib) published can be found here and here.

I will miss Walter. A lot.

And I hope they will name the new UHH science building after him.

There is a blog with contributions from many people here:
http://wsteiger.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/walter-steiger/