What is a day in the life of a Fluther staff member like?

It begins a few hours before dawn when we pack up our tent and gear from our mountain base camp to begin the long trek up the treacherous snow-drift blanketed rock. By the time the sun crests the horizon and the photons bombard us through the gusts strong enough to stop a man in his tracks we’ve reached our secret alpine launchpad, affectionately called “the sombrero” for its round concrete skirt.

After a couple dozen checks are performed we clamber in our ridiculous space suits into the launch vehicle. Once the doors are latched, oxygen rushes to fill the cabin. Moments later the fully pressurized interior trips auto-sequence start and five computers voting 250 times a second seize control, orchestrating what I would argue is the most beautiful symphony of coordination. At T-minus 6.6 seconds the computers throttle up each of the engines one-by-one, 120 milliseconds apart. All five computers nod in agreement when it’s confirmed: engines and systems look good. Moments later launch arms are retracted as we accelerate away from the ground.

As we race up and downrange 60 seconds later we’ve reached max-Q, the point in time where the stress on the vehicle is at it’s highest during the whole launch. The engines throttle down and then back up. Minutes later we gracefully edge up to the docking collar of the orbiting Fluther HQ: our home away from Earth. The view is breathtaking. Below us are all the fluthers of jellies running about their daily business. It’s the inspiration we need to work hard all day (with a break here and there for a quick game of zero-gravity darts—which let me tell you is probably harder than trying to beat Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France).

The rest of the day is pretty boring, we just type lots of code and occasionally make bad jokes. Ben taps his foot loudly, I forget to cover the tea (which goes everywhere in zero-gravity) and Andrew doesn’t respond to his name when he’s in the middle of anything (you might as well try to wake a guy in a coma).

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So I just realized that I follow at least one topic for every letter of the alphabet.