Ok.  I bought six SSD drives, installed them in my backup computer, and configured the new disks as three RAIDS.  This replication of the data will ensure their integrity even if a meteor strikes.  I spent Saturday typing in the LAF code once again from the recent printout.  It didn’t take me that long, and I made some improvements along the way.  On Sunday I added the new logging logic discussed earlier as well as Zoe’s triggers.  I bought a real nice UPS (no birthday presents this year!) to keep the LAF running even throughout a long power outage.  My girlfriend points out that this is silly since the UPS can’t actually power the dish too, but hey – I’m not taking any chances!

Oh, and before I did any of this, I used the backup computer to read the current position of God’s Ear.  Using this position and the time I got from the log file’s latest modification time, I now have an approximate location of where it was pointing last.  Indeed, it wasn’t pointing straight up.  Looks like it was oriented with a right-ascension and declination that put it in the neighborhood of sun HDS-288, which, by the way, is only about 60 light years away!

But, the recovered location is just an approximate value, and I’ve decided that the LAF’s first task will be to scan the narrow band of sky surrounding this star.  Curiously, most of the area surrounding HDS-288 is peculiarly dark.  Hmmmm.  Anyway, I’ll kick this first task off tonight, and maybe something will turn up during the week.  Crossing my fingers!