I got back to work on Tuesday this week. It was difficult returning to "life as usual" after a long vacation! Luckily, this is a short work week.

Excitement is abound now that GLAST has launched. Activating, testing, and getting to know GBM is everyone's top priority. I've begun sitting in on the daily morning GBM switch-over meetings with the GBM team in Germany. During day hours in Huntsville, the team here run the instrument, and when it gets late here and morning arrives in Germany, the team there takes over. I don't understand most of what they discuss, but I will learn just be bing immersed.

The newest versions of HEAsoft and Swift XRT CALDB calibration files were released while I was gone, so I gathered up my courage and upgraded. I find Linux very user-unfriendly, and installations are never as straightforward as they should be. Surprisingly, I only ran into two problems this time.

I only upgraded CALDB at first because I didn't realize a new HEAsoft version had been released as well. I tried to run an XRT processing script called xrtfilter, but it decided it didn't like a column name in a calibration file. Version 4 of that file didn't contain that name, so version 4 worked just fine, but it did not like version 5. I emailed the help desk and was told to upgrade to the latest HEAsoft to solve the problem.

I followed the HEAsoft installation step-by-step, line-by-line. It installed without error, and it did fix the xrtfilter issue. However, a second problem came when I tried to plot an image in xselect using DS9. I double-checked my path and permissions, upgraded to the latest DS9 release, ran test scripts, and asked for advice from others with no success. Finally, I realized that when I typed the full path to the DS9 program within xselect, it worked. Outside xselect, I have an alias set in my bashrc file which allows me to simply type "ds9" in any directory and the computer will know where the program is. However, something must have changed within the new release of HEAsoft such that aliases aren't recognized. I modified the xselect program to include the full path to DS9, and it finally worked.

Next week's plan is to program and to begin working on my poster presentation for the MSFC GSRP at the end of the month.