So starting next week, we’ll be canceling Time Warner Cable again. They keep inching up their rates, their DVRs are complete and utter crap and overall I’m not a fan. I always liked being with DirecTV, and we’re going back there. They have a deal right now that discounts their packages for the first two years and you don’t have to buy equipment. The disadvantages of DirecTV — including the upfront costs aren’t there right now. So why not throw our monthly entertainment budget towards DirecTV, instead of to Time Warner?

I’ve never used a DirecTV DVR (other than those that ran the TiVo software), but they can’t be worse than the clunky crap that Time Warner’s running.

Sadly, we’ll still be giving Time Warner money for our Internet connection. For now, that’s our best option at home. At least we’re diverting our TV services away from DirecTV. I’m excited for the change, and definitely won’t shed a tear at turning in our TWC equipment in a little over a week.

We’ve had a fun day with family today. Hope you all have been able to do the same.

This was the first year that Tyler understood the whole Santa Claus thing, and was into the presents, though his attention span waned.

Regardless, we really all enjoyed seeing him taking it all in. I can’t tell you how enjoyable it is to watch him experience it all. So much fun!

Happy holidays to you all!

So I put some time and effort into my costume for work this year. As Halloween creeped up, I knew that I wanted to do something with paper mache. It had been years since I did anything with it, but always had fond memories of working with it. Plus, it started further back than me just working on it — my earliest costumes my dad made for me were all paper mache (Pac-Man, Super Grover, E.T., etc.)

I also toyed with wanting to do a father/son combo costume. Originally, we were going to go with Curious George/The Man with the Yellow hat. But that didn’t work out. Then, we went with Ghostbuster/Ghost.

There were really two crucial parts to pulling off the Ghostbusters costume — a jump suit and the proton pack. The proton pack would be my chance to utilize paper mache. The jump suit would be a scour of local and Internet locales for jumpsuits or coveralls.

I did a little research online, finding another example of someone who had done a paper mache proton pack. I used some of their photos, along with this photo to build. I didn’t want to directly copy, but instead use them as inspiration and do my own interpretation and creation of the classic Ghostbusters movie prop.

Concurrently to doing research on the proton pack, I was scouring a set of useable coveralls. None of the local thrift shops had any, and I found nothing perfect online. If I had more time, it would have been nice to check out some military surplus stores, as the jumpsuits actually used in the movies were Air Force jumpsuits.

I finally settled on an Amazon Marketplace seller and got these. They barely arrived in time, and sadly were darker than what was pictured online, but they worked. I printed out a pair of Ghostbusters logos for the sleeves, and created a custom “Keefer” name badge using several examples online of the badges of “Venkman,” “Stanz” and “Spengler.” Luckily, most of the letters I needed were in those originals.

A little over a week before the costume needed to be worn, I made a trek to the local dollar store, where I got four small push lights, a styrofoam tortilla holder, a flashlights. These were all crucial parts to be integrated into the proton pack.

Just six days before needing to have the whole costume ready, I started on the proton pack. The base was a cardboard box and that dollar store tortilla holder. Then, all the little bits and pieces were scoured from around the house — several toilet paper rolls, a styrofoam cup’s lid, a pencil, an old prescription vial, and a ton of caps from various bottles, along with little boxes (including a bike tire tube) and some shaped/cut cardboard.

The neutrino wand was a a combination of a box, the plastic mast from those car flags people fly on game days, while the handle was that $1 flashlight.

All the pieces were affixed together with masking tape. It took a fair amount of time to find and assemble — the better part of a Sunday afternoon.

Then came the first layer of paper mache.

It was a standard paper mache process — strips of torn newspaper dipped in a flour and water mixture, and covered all over the pack and neutrino wand.

A few days later, the second layer was computer printer paper, which I had read would assist in the painting process — allowing for less layers of paint, and a more uniform look.

This is where I need to warn everyone to allow enough time for each layer to fully dry. It’ll take longer than you want and anticipate. After my computer paper layer, I had a big fan blowing on it overnight and the better part of the next day.

Even so, I still used a full can of Krylon’s satin black to cover the proton pack and its attached accessories. It was really messy and smelly as well.

I bought a can of satin clear coat too, but ran out of time to apply it. Instead, I had to break out the glue gun and add the wiring and polish. I had an old desktop PC that’s been in our garage for several years, and I basically gutted it all its wires, LEDs and a few circuit boards. Using the aforementioned Internet-sourced photos, I glued the wires. I also added the four touch lights as the cyclotron.

On the back of the pack, I used an old backpack’s straps. Using a liberal amount of hot glue, these affixed well.

Then, some warning labels/stickers added the finishing touches. The wires and decals really added the polish to make it look good.

Overall, I ended up with a really unique and cool looking costume. I’m really happy and satisfied with the whole thing. Sure, there are things I’d change or improve on if I were to do it again, but overall I’m really pleased.

Oh, and at the last minute, with time running out, Tyler went as Scooby Doo. It was a combination of just running out of time, and Tyler seeing the Scooby Doo costume at the store. He was gong to be cute no matter what. I’m just going to have to wait to do a father/son duo costume.

We had a whirlwind day. My morning had the contest, the contest voting (no, sadly, I didn’t make the top three).

The afternoon had us at Tyler’s daycare for a party, then trick-or-treating at Amanda’s office, and finishing at our office — a nice way to end a week that included a night getting home at 12:30a from work, and another around 10:30p. Bleh!

Below are my individual shots and the group shots from Centerline’s costume contest, along with a cool shot of my proton pack sitting at my desk, just waiting to bust some ghosts.

Happy birthday today to my beautiful wife and a great Mommy to our little monkey, Tyler!

Here’s to many more as a family, friends and lovers.

Tyler and I love you very much!

This is how Tyler started his Sunday morning:

So Tyler got his first taste of Go-Karting at the local Frankie’s fun park this past weekend. He loved every minute of riding shotgun several times with daddy, mommy and uncle. He was grinning ear-to-ear. Check out the video below.

This is the third and final of three posts about my NASA Tweetup experience surrounding the GRAIL Delta II Heavy launch. It’s been just over a month since I got to see the launch, but wanted to close out my trilogy of posts on the GRAIL Tweetup experience.

If you haven’t read part one or part two already, you may want to. If you’re tired of all my GRAIL-related posts, tweets and pictures, sorry. It was just a cool and unique experience.

As cool as the first day on the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station were, the second day was the climax — getting to see the Delta II Heavy rocket carrying the near identical twin GRAIL spacecraft lift off.

It was an early morning, as we had to be in the parking lot by 6am to catch our tour bus headed for the causeway — our vantage point for the launch. I headed out a little before 5am in the darkness of the Florida morning from my in-laws’ home in Winter Park (outside of Orlando). I pulled in prior to 6am in the NASA-owned parking lot just adjacent to the Astronaut Hall of Fame building, and a few miles west of the Kennedy Space Center. It was still pitch black, and it was obvious everyone was up a little too early.

Our final guest speaker from the day prior, Neil deGrasse Tyson was present and soon had a bunch of the tweeps surrounding him. With the daylight still a good half hour to hour away, Neil deGrasse Tyson gave an impromptu astronomy lesson, pointing his surprisingly effective green laser skyward. He’s an interesting, intelligent, verbose and dynamic guy. Check out a sample interview.

Soon we were boarding the busses, and headed East in a set of busses to our causeway vantage point, somewhere right along here. We had two launch windows — each of a whopping second: 8:37:06 am and 9:16:12 am. If anything went awry with the first, the second launch attempt roughly 39 minutes later could be used. The Delta II rockets obviously didn’t have the complex navigation systems of the space shuttle, making the launch windows each extremely short.

The time before launches and obviously our time on the NASA causeway was all about waiting. While the GRAIL launch facility the day before was sweltering, the early morning on the causeway was nice, with a pleasant breeze. Those pleasant breezes though translated into even stronger winds higher up. Along the causeway, speakers were setup on poles that piped in commentary of what was going on. Sadly, we soon learned from this voice that high altitude winds had scrubbed the first attempt.

Then it was time for more waiting for the second launch opportunity. As the second second-long launch window approached, we again found out that the weather balloons were reporting too high winds for launch. Early morning dejections meant I was back in Orlando by lunch. Patience is definitely a must for launches of spacebound vehicles. We had another set of opportunities the next morning, just slightly earlier.

When I awoke the next morning at again a way-too-early time, I checked email on my iPhone and found the day’s pair of launch opportunities were scrubbed, as the GRAIL launch team had found a possible problem while draining the fuel from the rocket. Back to bed.

Throughout the day, we got email updates, and while we were only promised two days of launch opportunities, we ended up having a pair for Saturday morning as well. Sadly, a lot of the tweetup members had missed their window, and were headed back to their parts of the world. But those of us who could make it, did.

Again meeting in the same parking lot just west of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, it was another early early start. It turned out our launch vantage point was different for Saturday’s launch. Instead of the causeway, we were bussed to the KARS park, which is a recreational area setup for the Cape’s employees, and I believe a slightly closer and less obstructed vantage point for the launch.

After arriving, we all set up along the edge of the water, a damp wooden fence our new perch. Now it was time for waiting again. The wind was calmer — at least at sea level, so we were all hopeful.

At KARS, some of our entertainment came in the form of some Mantees surfacing near us throughout the waiting time. As the first launch window approached, we again got dejected by those damn upper level winds. Boo! One more chance to see the launch window, and we were out of opportunities.

Everyone was hopeful though. As that second launch window of the Saturday morning approached, mixed reports came in — was it scrubbed? Was it a green light?

In the end, it all worked out. Our last chance to see the GRAIL launch up close and personal, and it was a go. NASA helicopters that had earlier flown around, patrolling, now hovered in place as the Delta II rocket’s launch was imminent.

As the clock reached zero, a ton of smoke engulfed the rocket. Unlike my TV and NASA TV online views of shuttle launches, the smoke didn’t billow out in all directions. Instead, for a few seemingly long seconds, smoke and flame clouded the view of the white and blue rocket. I wasn’t sure at the time if it was normal or not, but then quickly, the rocket accelerated up and away from Earth in silence from our vantage point.

Eventually, the sound of the launch reached us, with the rocket already high in the sky, a beautiful smoke trail etching across the sky and cutting through the clouds.

I’m so thankful that I was able to finally see a launch from such a close and relatively unique vantage point. If you have the opportunity to see a launch via NASA’s various Tweetup events, do it. They treat you well and fill you up with information.

You can find more information on the official NASA Tweetup site. They’ve since expanded the tweetups to other NASA locations besides Florida, making it more convenient and a possibility for more people. Thanks again to everyone involved. See my launch video below I took with my Flip camera. While there are plenty of better ones, this is the one I was able to record.

This is the second of three posts about my NASA Tweetup experience surrounding the GRAIL Delta II Heavy launch. If you haven’t read part one already, you may want to.

After our bus tour of the morning that took us all over both the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, we broke for a late lunch. A few fellow Tweeps and myself hit the visitor center’s main cafeteria-style lunch.

After lunch, we spent the remainder of the afternoon in the Kennedy Space Center conference center next to the vistor center’s rocket garden. While prior to my trip to the Florida coast, I had done some research on the GRAIL mission and technology, the guest speakers lined up for our afternoon filled in any gaps in knowledge, and then some.

Sadly, we had a couple of technical snafus. There were 150 GRAIL Tweetup participants, all with a least one Internet connected device, as we’re all tweeting away throughout the events. Well, word was that the conference center IT staff didn’t foresee the demand for IP addresses, and only around 50 people were able to get connections. Luckily, I had good enough 3G access on my iPhone to still tweet with the app on there. I kind of made it a dumb move to bring my laptop for the afternoon session.

So before I give you all a rundown of all the speakers and information we got, I need to explain a little about what the GRAIL mission is all about. I can’t really do it much better than NASA’s web site does, so here’s their quick description (from science.nasa.gov/missions/grail/):

The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission was competitively selected through the Discovery Program. GRAIL will launch on a Delta II launch vehicle and use high-quality gravity field mapping of the moon to determine the moon’s interior structure.

GRAIL’s primary science objectives will be to determine the structure of the lunar interior, from crust to core and to advance understanding of the thermal evolution of the Moon. As a secondary objective, GRAIL will extend knowledge gained from the Moon to the other terrestrial planets.

Science investigations will include:
• Map the structure of the crust and lithosphere
• Understand the Moon’s asymmetric thermal evolution
• Determine the subsurface structure of impact basins and the origin of mascons
• Ascertain the temporal evolution of crustal brecciation and magmatism
• Constrain deep interior structure from tides
• Place limits on the size of a possible solid inner core

So basically, the GRAIL is a pair of nearly identical craft destined for the moon’s orbit that are going to garner more info about what lies beneath its surface. The two craft know with great precision the location of the other craft, with the discrepancies and variations allowing the two to calculate gravity variations.

When we all sat down in the conference room (the same room we had started at in the morning doing introductions), we had all had folded programs with a big cartoon-like Twitter birdie beneath a bubbled-helmet. Inside, it had all of our Twitter usernames on the lefthand page, with a list of the speakers and overall agenda on the righthand page.

First on the afternoon’s agenda was Charlie Bolden, the current Administrator of NASA, a retired United States Marine Corps major general, and former NASA astronaut. He was very personable, interesting, and took a bunch of questions from all the Tweeps, answering some good ones regarding the future of NASA.

Bolden then handed the stage over to Jim Adams (@nasaJim), deputy director, planetary science, another dynamic and interesting guy, whom I started following on Twitter after his stage time.

The third speaker wasn’t on the program, and instead was a nice surprise — Nichelle Nichols of the original Star Trek fame (Lt. Uhura). The now fairly elderly woman spoke candidly on her long relationship with NASA, and her unique position to recruit and motivate women and minorities to get involved with space program. Very interesting stuff.

The next two speakers swapped order and were both fountains of information specific to the GRAIL program, which made total sense.

Maria Zuber, #GRAIL principal investigator. She was introduced with a nice and fitting description — “If GRAIL had a CEO, she’d be it.” While all of the speakers of the afternoon were obvious giants in the intelligence deparment, Zuber from MIT was in a league all of her own. Her intelligence and enthusiasm for GRAIL and its mission were obvious and infectious. Her explanation of everything GRAIL was involved and very technical, yet very enjoyable and interesting.

Some of the stuff that was most interesting are things people asked and Zuber expanded on regarding the cost savings that were rolled into the mission — things like the actual trip to the moon. While the Apollo astronauts made it to the moon in a short period of time, the GRAIL spacecraft won’t make it into Moon until the first days of 2012. Zuber explained it as a simple fuel saving method. It takes a lot of fuel to move fast, and then more to slow it down when it gets there. Instead, GRAIL is taking a slow and steady course that is more efficient getting there, and then less fuel is used to brake the GRAIL pair of craft.

Proceeding Zuber was a man that worked under her, Sami Asmar, GRAIL deputy project scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). He originally was supposed to be before Zuber, introducing the technology and concepts behind GRAIL. His presentation was obviously geared with that in mind, and while most ended up being already setup by Zuber, Asmar really helped fill in the holes and explain the technology and concepts of the GRAIL mission. Unfortunately, with the lighting being utilized to broadcast the sessions on NASA TV, we couldn’t see a lot of the slides he had up on the screen.

After Asmar’s conclusion, we then got two cool demonstrations of NASA-related web sites:
Eyes on the Solar System – a 3-D realtime datastream visualization of all active craft in space. I’ll be interested to revisit it in Janurary as GRAIL starts orbiting the moon.

GRAIL MoonKAM – A secondary and educational mission of GRAIL is the MoonKAM, allowing middle school classes to request and receive pictures from the moon from the twin spacecraft’s onboard cameras. Pretty cool.T

The next two speakers focused on the pair of spacecraft. Vern Thorpe, manager, NASA Programs, of United Launch Alliance and Stu Spath, chief spacecraft engineer from Lockheed Margin did a great job explaining the twin GRAIL craft, their relative size, power, etc. For example, they’re both the size of washing machines and their onboard batteries give them less juice than your car’s battery.

While we were running a bit behind, we had one last speaker — the amusing and dynamic Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, Frederick P. Rose director at the Hayden Planetarium and has been on TV a bunch of times, including on The Daily Show, NOVA and Jeopardy. It’s hard to summarize his amusing talk, but if it’s available on NASA TV, it’s definitely worth perusing. One of my favorite comments he made was about kids. You spend the first two years of a kid’s life teaching them how to walk and talk, and the next 18 telling them to sit down and shut up.

We concluded the long but interesting, informational and exciting day with a group shot (below) in the conference center’s lobby by NASA’s official photographer. We then parted ways in pouring rain, hopeful the rain would clear up and we’d be seeing the GRAIL launch bright and early the next day.

Back when we bought a point and shoot digital camera, it came with a coupon for a 8×8 20 page hardcover book from Shutterfly. I just used that to create a little book of photos from the recent GRAIL Delta II launch I attended down in Florida. They had the option to embed a Flash copy in your web site. So thought I’d share:

Click here to view this photo book larger

As of the time of posting this, I haven’t had time to write my second or third blog posts yet about my whole GRAIL NASA/ULA Launch yet.

If you haven’t read the first of the trilogy of posts, read it here.

Afterwards, in the meantime, I wanted to post a summary and listing of all my tweets during the events for my own records as much as anything else — not that Twitter is going away anytime soon, but I felt better making it a part of Keefer Madness as well.

@ryankeefer Sep-21-2011 09:19:44 PM Lego Space Center, reminiscent of my recent #GRAIL experience. http://t.co/ClX11vD0

@ryankeefer Sep-21-2011 02:29:01 PM RT @ktraphagen: My post on @sciam Guest Blog about #GRAIL #NASATweetup http://t.co/5b1cYE2x

@ryankeefer Sep-21-2011 09:58:49 AM @cwcgsd Thanks, need to get some NASA stickers for it though, and paint the payload area the right color for a Delta II. #GRAIL

@ryankeefer Sep-16-2011 07:52:03 PM Behind The Scenes of My NASA GRAIL Experience – Day One (AM) http://t.co/vxMVIS2I

@ryankeefer Sep-11-2011 05:50:29 PM My NASA GRAIL Launch Video http://t.co/Z4rAqrP

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 09:34:49 AM Final #GRAIL launch window today & was last time we would have gotten 2 see it so close.Such a unique opportunity.Look 4 my blog posts soon

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 09:18:41 AM Smoke trail from the #GRAIL launch. Thanks @NASATweetup http://t.co/0SH2X2q

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 08:24:23 AM First window no go. Upper level winds again. 9:08 now. Lame. #GRAIL #NASAtweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 08:16:29 AM 15 mins to first launch window. Everything’s looking good! #GRAIL #NASAtweetup #GoGRAIL

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 08:03:45 AM NASA helicopter fly over as #NASATweetup peeps wait for #GRAIL launch. http://t.co/FIEQMYN

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 07:43:20 AM #GRAIL patch. Very nice. #NASATweetup http://t.co/sO6IEwZ

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 07:23:45 AM #GRAIL app fail: http://t.co/RTeOpdO

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 07:20:49 AM Slightly closer shot of #GRAIL via NASATV http://t.co/3otTNWL

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 07:14:08 AM Slightly closer vantage point for today’s #GRAIL launch attempt. #NASAtweetup http://t.co/VYjNaFd

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 06:14:46 AM Turns out KARS park is a little closer to see #GRAIL go up… Everything aligned for a great launch this morning. #NASAtweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 06:12:06 AM Another early morning sitting on the bus. Destination: KARS park to watch #GRAIL launch. #NASATweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-10-2011 04:43:12 AM Heading back down to KSC for my last two #GRAIL launch windows I’ll be able to see in person from the coast. #NASAtweetup #GoGRAIL

@ryankeefer Sep-09-2011 10:41:37 AM #GRAIL launch scrubbed today, but luckily we get 1 more chance to see it from causeway Sat am! Doing a little work this am. #NASATweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-08-2011 07:27:11 PM @NASA_LSP , it was good talking to you at the launch attempt this morning. Thanks for letting us pick your brain. #GoGRAIL

@ryankeefer Sep-08-2011 09:10:12 AM #GRAIL scrubbed for today. Bummer. #NASAtweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-08-2011 08:31:35 AM Winds too high for the first #GRAIL launch window. 9:16:12 now targeted for launch. #NASAtweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-08-2011 07:56:05 AM Hanging out in the cool breeze with @GregReuter w 44 mins to the first launch window.

@ryankeefer Sep-08-2011 07:39:10 AM We get to hear the voice of NASA even here on the causeway. Nice breeze. Cautiously optimistic about the #GRAIL launch. #NASAtweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-08-2011 07:27:45 AM Sunrise on the NASA causeway #grail #nasatweetup http://t.co/Znbe6iA

@ryankeefer Sep-08-2011 06:40:38 AM The view of #GRAIL from the launch pad via NASA TV. #nasatweetup http://t.co/1SweffW

@ryankeefer Sep-08-2011 06:25:35 AM On the bus waiting to go to our launch observation point delta for #GRAIL Delta II Heavy’s launch. Fitting. #NASAtweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-08-2011 04:47:11 AM Mobile Service Tower Open For #GRAIL Launch This Morning #NASAtweetup http://t.co/u8BwAcu

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 06:00:27 PM 2 #GRAIL craft will be the distance from KSC to St. Augustine as they orbit the moon. Lockheed’s workin with small, efficient craft here.

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 05:53:21 PM Stu Spath, chief spacecraft engineer, @LockheedMartin on stage now… Cyloning on the mic. #NASAtweetup #GRAIL

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 05:45:35 PM 8:37a #GRAIL launch window of 1s. 9 solid rocket boosters & core engine. man, hope weather cooperates for this cool launch. #NASAtweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 05:42:32 PM Vern Thorpe, mgr, NASA Programs, @ULAlaunch on stage now #NASATweeetup #GRAIL http://t.co/nyPvqP8

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 05:39:19 PM Just got two #GRAIL related web site demos: http://t.co/lGL1hwJ & http://t.co/cB9BrH7 Cool stuff! #grailmoonkam #NASATweeetup

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 05:36:13 PM Tweet fatigue from me today? Sorry. This a unique 2 day tweet anomaly. Enjoying it thoroughly. Hope you’re enjoying at least some of it.

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 04:30:05 PM Sami Asmar, #GRAIL deputy project scientist, JPL now presenting #NASATweeetup

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 04:04:13 PM Maria Zuber, #GRAIL principal investigator. “If GRAIL had a CEO, she’d be it.” #NASATweeetup

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 03:45:29 PM http://t.co/SEBP7fX

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 03:41:19 PM @nasaJim on stage now, deputy director, planetary science. http://t.co/GoJ9KsK

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 03:12:55 PM Charlie Bolden, NASA administrator welcoming everyone. #GRAIL #NASAtweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 02:49:07 PM Afternoon Tweetup session about to begin. #nasatweetup #grail http://t.co/E8fesKk

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 12:53:20 PM H-O-T at #GRAIL launch complex 17, but not as hot as it’ll be tomorrow when that RP-1 and Oxygen are being burned tomorrow am! #NASAtweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 12:44:41 PM And there sits #GRAIL on LP 17A #nasatweetup http://t.co/SDHoN0H

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 12:14:47 PM As close as I got to LC41, check out what we got even closer to: Endeavor in the VAB! #GRAIL #NASAtweetup http://t.co/vYhqFW5

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 11:41:19 AM Closer than most visitors get to the Launch Complex 41 #nasatweetup #grail http://t.co/MKlLFKl

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 11:32:36 AM The famous astronaut beach house. #grail #nasatweetup http://t.co/t5ZQZzs

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 11:14:42 AM Thanks to @ulalaunch for the quick tour & info at LP41. #NASAtweetup #GRAIL

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 11:11:36 AM His other truck… #nasatweetup #grail http://t.co/0TpshoJ

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 11:02:47 AM Road to Launch Pad 41 http://t.co/O8eVfTK

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 10:54:46 AM We’re riding a bus between the railroad tracks that go out to the launch pad used for Juno. #GRAIL #NASAtweetup

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 10:22:09 AM Just met @raam243 on the #NASAtweetup #GRAIL fellow NCite and hell of a cycling resume. #uberImpressed

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 10:12:39 AM On @nasaman‘s bus for the inside tour. Bus # 4 representin’ #NASAtweetup #GRAIL

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 09:54:16 AM Weather looks like it’s cleared up for the moment… Just in time for our #GRAIL #NASAtweetup tour. Let’s hope for tomorrow am’s launch too.

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 09:36:58 AM Another Durham resident at #NASAtweetup. Bull City tepresentin’! #GRAIL

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 09:34:33 AM We’re about halfway through 150+ #NASAtweetup #GRAIL intros. Lots of interesting and smart people.

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 07:26:07 AM I’m official. #GRAIL #NASATWEETUP http://t.co/i8bpCZq

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 07:21:15 AM Rocket Garden View http://t.co/ih9lut6

@ryankeefer Sep-07-2011 06:08:14 AM Heading down to Kennedy Space Center.

@ryankeefer Sep-06-2011 10:46:03 PM Pardon the Tweets, Blog Posts, Etc.: NASA Launch Imminent http://t.co/8Lb5921

@ryankeefer Sep-05-2011 04:53:08 PM Getting ready and getting really psyched to head to @NASA #GRAIL @NASATweetup later this week!

@ryankeefer Sep-02-2011 12:51:25 PM Got the #GRAIL agenda for next week’s NASA launch. Getting psyched! Two unique and fun-filled days next Wed and Thurs!

@ryankeefer Sep-02-2011 12:51:25 PM Got the #GRAIL agenda for next week’s NASA launch. Getting psyched! Two unique and fun-filled days next Wed and Thurs!

@ryankeefer Aug-29-2011 10:42:39 AM RT @MJK60631: 2 close 2 launch 4 ths. RT @jschoeneberg Uh-oh…Who’s ready 4 TD12/TS/Hurricane Katia? http://t.co/3USxCig #NASATweetup

@ryankeefer Aug-24-2011 11:37:02 AM Can’t wait! RT @Catahouligan: In exactly 2wks I’ll be staring @ a Delta2 rkt touring NASA, in the presence of Sally Ride, mtg some of you…