GLAST successfully launched on Wednesday, June 11, at 11:05 AM CDT. Thanks to NASA's online broadcast, I was able to view the launch even though I couldn't be there in person. I'm very thankful that the rocket launched safely and the payload deployed without problem. Congratulations to the teams!

It will be about two months until GLAST is fully operational and sending us observational data. By the end of the summer session, I want to be ready to start analyzing the first GRBs.

I leave for a long vacation tomorrow. Before I go, I bring you, story time:

Chryssa and I were browsing the day's Astro-ph new submissions last Friday when we came across a paper describing a newly identified GRB from April 1998. Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory's (CGRO) Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE), run out of Huntsville by my team, observed the gamma-ray sky from 1991 to 2000. Hmm, Chryssa wondered, I wonder what BATSE saw on that date in April 1998.

Files and files of BATSE data in paper format used to be stored in my workplace in a room called the Bat Cave. We started our search in the Bat Cave, browsing through large cabinets labeled DDS, the daily records of BATSE's detections. We quickly realized that DDS files for the dates of early 1994 to mid 1998 were not there. My task, should I accept, was to find the DDS files for April 29, 1998.

When the GBM Instrument Operations Center opened, many of the file cabinets were moved there. I scanned the cabinets in the back of the room, and to my delight, I found the right time frame. When I had finally grabbed the correct folder, I was not discouraged by the discovery that the papers were out-of-order. I flipped through them until I found the golden date. Success! I brought the papers to Chryssa 5 minutes before her scheduled teleconference.

But I was mistaken. I had found the files containing the daily calibration data for the instruments, but not the DDS papers. I rushed back to the GIOC to return the incorrect paperwork and continue my search. There were cabinets labeled for calibrations, bursts, pulsars, and “other,” but the only DDS files to be seen were from the early 1990s, long before my date of interest.

Frustrated, I returned to the Bat Cave. I scanned the cabinets once. Defeated, I recruited Rob to help in the hunt. We poured through every cabinet in the Bat Cave and GIOC. Rob soon began to worry that all the SGR files and all the later bursts (after 1997) were missing. He didn't know where they would be, but he did have an idea about the missing DDS files: deemed useless, they were tossed. We confirmed this with Jerry, and finally found the empty files in an unlabeled cabinet. The data from April 1998 is gone. All I got was a massive papercut. Oh well.