<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div><span>Tim, </span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; background-color: transparent;"><span> Thanks for sharing your journey with all of us...you grew with, and helped grow, the information age. Fascinating! We have a family member, Peter (Pete) Klonowski, who lives in Florida and has also been a shuttle navigation flight controller at Cape Canaveral/Kennedy with NASA; you or Lynn may know him. Wishing you well in your new life phase...rather than "retirement," Lewie calls it "refirement."</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; background-color: transparent;"><span>Joyce
Bonafield-Pierce</span></div><div><br></div> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <font size="2" face="Arial"> <div style="margin: 5px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); height: 0px; line-height: 0; font-size: 0px;" class="hr" contentEditable="false" readonly="true"></div> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> John Cock <jpc2025@triad.rr.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> 'Colleague Dialogue' <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Saturday, September 29, 2012 12:07 PM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Dialogue] NASA software developer moves on ...<br> </font> </div> <br>Tim, congratulations on a career in profound living. <br><br>And we will continue
to thank you for keeping us colleagues "wired" together<br>globally.<br><br>Journey on,<br><br>John<br><br>-----Original Message-----<br>From: <a href="mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net" ymailto="mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net">dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net</a><br>[mailto:<a href="mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net" ymailto="mailto:dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net">dialogue-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>] On Behalf Of Tim Wegner<br>Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2012 12:21 PM<br>To: <a href="mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net" ymailto="mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net">dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net</a><br>Subject: [Dialogue] NASA software developer moves on ...<br><br>Yesterday I turned in my badges at the United Space Alliance.<br><br>My NASA career started when Susan and I were re-assigned from Egypt to<br>Houston. The only thing I knew about the Space Shuttle was what I had read<br>in Time
magazines bought on the streets in Cairo. <br><br>When we arrived at the Houston House, Susan stayed "in house" and I was<br>assigned to work. Larry Henschen helped me arrange an interview with<br>McDonnell Douglas, a NASA contractor. I had never programmed a computer and<br>had no qualification other than a Master's degree in mathematics and an<br>"all-but-thesis" not-quite-a-PhD. In retrospect, those were great<br>credentials, since the state of computer programming when I was in college<br>was using punch cards. When I was working programming NASA's first Unix<br>computers, I remember thinking "I wish I had studied Unix in college" - then<br>realizing that Unix didn't exist when I was in college! But the principles<br>and laws of mathematics and physics I learned in the late 60's have stood up<br>very well. My career has been spent in the abstract world of mathematical<br>models of gravity, drag, solar pressure, and accelerations - space,
the<br>final frontier. Hard to beat that.<br><br>I missed the first four shuttle flights but arrived in time for STS-5. My<br>first project was an analysis of the shuttle drag model. My supervisors<br>weren't watching closely, so I learned FORTRAN on a UNISYS mainframe and<br>implemented my results in a program called HOPE. <br>(There was another program called LOVE, but not one called FAITH.) Shortly<br>thereafter I was re-assigned as a programmer, and remained a software<br>developer (and software project manager) for my whole career, which extended<br>more then a year past the last Shuttle flight in July 2011. I ended up<br>working for various NASA contractors for a bit over 30 years.<br><br>Shortly after I started at NASA, Larry Henschen and I were instrumental in<br>helping Lynn Oden, another Houston House order member, in also getting a<br>job. For a few years Lynn and I commutred together. Lynn retired a few years<br>ago, having had a fine
career as a Shuttle Navigation Flight Controller.<br><br>Susan and I never "left" the Houston House; it melted away around us as the<br>Order transitioned away from corporate living. Conna Wilkinson was the last<br>one to leave when she moved back to Oklahoma. So Susan and I turned out the<br>lights of the Houston House and got an apartment, and later bought a house.<br>I am grateful today for all the experiences we had assigned to San<br>Franscisco, San Jose, Melbourne, Adelaide, Bayad, and finally Houston. Susan<br>and I arrived in Houston with no assets but no debts in our mid-thirties,<br>and are now both retired. We still have no debts, but now we have a few<br>assets. I amazed that that was possible!<br><br>I am still working with a small group of your colleagues keeping the<br>wedgeblade.net glue connecting our far flung community alive.<br><br>Retirement is, of course, just another "assignment" to new challenges.<br><br>Tim Wegner<br><br><br>
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