Welcome to StuffNearAmes.

(To jump straight to the content, try the  Index or the "Search wiki" box at upper right.)

What is this, anyway?

This wiki exists to help you find things to do in and around NASA Ames Research Center.  The target audience is new hires, students, interns, and other visitors to Ames.  Items relating to NASA, space in general, public outreach, and volunteerism are particularly welcome, but feel free to include interesting non-spacey things to see and do, good restaurants, tourist spots, handy places to buy groceries, etc.  To see a list of the individual items, go to the Index.

This wiki is meant to cover a stretch of northern California ranging roughly from San Francisco in the north to San Jose in the south.  If you have something cool to add, though, it's OK to be a little outside that area.  This is a wiki, not a MIL-STD.  That said, if you're writing about tourist attractions in North Dakota, you should probably put them in a different wiki.

News

In December this wiki was converted from pbwiki 1.0 to pbwiki 2.0.  There's a slightly different look, but most of the visible changes are to the editing interface.  You may need to create a pbwiki account in order to edit some parts of the wiki.  Also, the formatting will be uneven between pages until they all get updated, since despite advertising, the conversion process is not seamless.

As of spring 2009, we finally have a rocketry club included.  (Thanks, Jessica!)  For some reason it doesn't show up on the page listing or turn up in searches, yet.

Olds

(Seems like an appropriate opposite for news.)  Keep in mind that some of the activities and locations described on this wiki are seasonal.  You can go to Mount Tamalpais all year round, for instance, but the stargazing parties only happen in the summer.  During the off-season (which is usually, but not always, winter) double-check to make sure things are open before you drive 90 minutes out of your way.

Do-it-yourself

When you edit, try to maintain the same "look" as the existing pages.  Please check the Style section before you edit and/or add things.

Public transportation

Many people, especially summer students, don't have their own wheels.  Even if you do, taking trains and buses is also both eco-friendly and, what with gas prices lately, cheap.  If you know how to get there and back again (wherever "there" happens to be) using public transportation, please let the rest of us know.

Email lists

In order to make it a bit easier to actually plan to do any of this stuff near Ames, you need some organization tools.  Luckily, we have a couple of mailing lists to help out:  one for official announcements and info, and one for social organization.  Please check out the guidelines and subscription info.

Ooh, and a calendar too?

For the moment, pbwiki has no calendar feature.  There's a Google calendar with some useful events on the Calendar page, or you can go directly to happening around Ames.  Google calendar doesn't have an open edit feature (yet), but I will try to copy events to that calendar to make it a little easier to keep track of dates and such.

Internal NASA web links

NASA ARC has a fair amount of handy information on an internal network.  Unfortunately, if you're not at NASA yet, or don't have an account or an authorized computer, you won't be able to see those pages.  Since many potential readers of/contributors to this wiki can't access the internal network, links to it aren't included here.  If you're editing, please don't add links to internal NASA pages; they won't work, and it's probably prohibited.

Surgeon General's warnings

Number one, this is my first wiki, and in the immortal words of Indiana Jones, "I'm making this up as I go."  Number two, this is not a NASA site.  NOTHING IN THIS WIKI IS ENDORSED BY NASA OR ARC.  Use at your own risk.  Your mileage may vary.  Void your warranty.  Violate a user agreement.  Fry a circuit.  Blow a fuse.  Poke an eye out.

Invite Key:  river

(You'll need the key to edit the wiki.  Be nice.  Read the Style page.  And yes, "river" is a science fiction reference.  No, it's not from Firefly/Serenity.  Feel free to speculate.)