Aaron Price's blog
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
I was hired by the AAVSO in May, 1998 as their "IT person". At the time, HQ was running an exclusively Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 environment. Spider webs of copper co-ax cable still hung from the ceilings as they had just switched to ethernet a few months prior. There was a single CD-ROM in the entire building, which required reservations to use. All data programs ran on MS-DOS and the sole file server was Windows NT. The AID was kept as column-deliminated ASCII text files.
Sir Patrick Moore, AAVSO Member & Observer
A serendipitous discovery of perhaps the most famous member in AAVSO history... Continue Reading
Dateline: Guam, 1941
A special membership application is uncovered in the AAVSO archives. (Updated at bottom) Continue Reading
Other Centennials
The AAVSO is not the only citizen science organization that celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. The American Meteor Society (AMS) also celebrated it's centennial. But the connection with the AAVSO goes beyond that. Continue Reading
The Association of Science and Technology Centers
I spent October 13-19 in Baltimore at the annual conference of the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC). A few years ago a colleague suggested that I attend this conference and present a talk on our Citizen Sky planetarium show. That never happened due to timing and cost issues. But this year we had both the time and funding to attend. Continue Reading
SN 2011fe from Saskatchewan
As part of our centennial celebration star party talks I was able to attend the Saskatchewan Summer Star Party at the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada. SN 2011fe was discovered during the star party and made for some exciting evenings. Continue Reading
Banner Raising
Last June, Arne, Michael Saladyga and myself hung the following banner on the front of AAVSO HQ:
A Plan for Securing Observations of the Variable Stars
I've spent some time recently preparing a presentation about the AAVSO Centennial for a number of amateur meetings. This angle on the centennial covers how changes in professional astronomy over the last 100 years have been reflected in the amateur community - using the history of VSO in the AAVSO as the narrative. Continue Reading
Back It Up
This story keeps me up at night. The Baylor University College of Medicine lost 25 years of research data to Hurricane Allison. Continue Reading
A Very Bad Mistake
In 1998 I was hired as the AAVSO's "IT person". At the time the AAVSO had a 56K frame relay connection to the Internet (your current smartphone probably has faster access) and as much copper coax cable as ethernet. We were a MSDOS/Windows95/Windows NT network with one CDROM in the entire building that staff had to share. I was a former webmaster with extensive Windows NT experience and almost no UNIX experience. The AAVSO had a Linux box that ran the web, FTP, DNS and e-mail servers. Managing it was contracted out. I was 23-years old with a grand total of 2 years of sysadmin experience under my belt. Continue Reading
