Archive for the ‘nasa’ Tag
I’m feeling particularly lazy today thanks in part to NASA and the pilot of a small boat floating off shore near Cape Canaveral. Both of them were responsible for totally screwing up my sleep schedule for last night and again this morning and unfortunately tomorrow as well.
I’m a bit of a science and space nerd and I was excited enough about the launch of Orion that I set my alarm for 4:15 am, stumbled out of bed to await the launch at 7:04 am. After two and a half hours of the prelaunch show I was ready to see that rocket fly. Too bad the dumb SOB in that boat who wandered into the hazard zone near the launch site caused the first of what ended up being four delays.
At 9:00 am I was still sitting like a zombie on the couch with my fourth cup of coffee, all wound up with no place to go. They missed the launch window and now I’ve got to do all of this again tomorrow morning. Since I’m not altogether alert yet, I thought I’d just post the third installment of "Things I Once Hated". These fifteen items will complete the first forty of my list of one hundred. Here we go.
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#26 Hospitals – I don’t ever see my feelings for hospitals changing. They creep me out just as much now as they did when I was a kid. No improvement and there never will be.
#27 Mimes – I don’t know many people who like mimes except for a few artistic types I attended school with. A major annoyance if you’re trying to sit on a bench and relax for a few minutes but no actual hatred. 100% improvement.
#28 Oprah Winfrey – What more needs to be said. She finally moved on down the road just like Phil Donahue. Goodbye, good luck, and get out! No improvement for Harpo.
#29 Finger Nail Decals – I love well cared for nails on a woman but in my humble opinion decals are tacky. I can’t say I hate people that wear them but the first impression they leave with me isn’t good. No hatred but a 100% of yuck. 100% improvement on the hate scale. I can almost feel myself evolving with all these fantastic improvements.
#30 Will Ferrell – To me he is the unfunniest comic I’ve ever seen or heard of. No improvement.
#31 Fake Finger Nails – I really don’t hate them because my better-half has occasionally had them installed. Even if I did I can’t ever say it out loud. 100% improvement.
#32 The Smell of Urine – Yours, mine, or anyone else’s. No improvement.
#33 Corpse’s – Being a former soldier and police officer I’ve seen my fair share of bodies. I always hated being put into a position to personally deal with the dead. It’s very creepy and I hated it then and still do. No improvement.
#34 Women Missing Teeth – I guess I really don’t hate them but they do give me a huge case of the willies when they smile at me. 100% improvement.
#35 Political Correctness – No explanation needed for this. My biggest all time hate. No improvement.
#36 Liberals – This refers to those true dyed-in-the-wool, Kool-Aid drinking, Obama loving, and Clinton worshiping Liberals. Many other Liberals are moderate and I don’t hate them, they just annoy me. 50% improvement.
#37 Drug Users – Just hate’em ! ! ! No improvement.
#38 Boogers – As I’ve matured I’ve come to understand that I don’t hate all boogers. I really can’t hate my own because I’ve spent years learning how to properly handle them. I do hate the boogers of others because they show up in the damnedest places. Now you not only find old gum under table edges but also the occasional moist booger. That’s really rude so please flick it elsewhere like everyone else does. 50% improvement.
#39 Clowns – I once wore a clown costume for Halloween and mistakenly looked into a mirror as I walked by. It freaked me the hell out and I’ve hated them ever since. No improvement.
#40 Corns – Nothing’s worse that being in a darkened room getting romantic with a gorgeous women and as you run your hand slowly down her smoothly shaved legs to her feet. There you run into some crusty and nasty corns. Hate is way too nice a word for those things. Not only do they make the woman limp but me as well. No improvement.
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That takes care of items 1-40. The rest will be posted before years end and then I can get started on my New Year’s resolutions.
P.S. It’s now the next day and I just finished watching another four hours of the Orion flight. Kudos to NASA and all of it’s partners. The takeoff, flight, and landing went without a hitch and they should be congratulated on such a huge accomplishment.
Now I need a nap!
I’m relaxing this morning for a number of reasons. This is the only time of the day I can really settle back and watch some NASA TV without interruptions of any kind. I always try to keep current with what they’re doing especially with the upcoming launch of this country’s next generation of space vehicle, the Orion, happening within the next three weeks. This unmanned first flight is the next step to seeing people actually visiting nearby asteroids and then on to Mars in a few years. For me it’s something that’s pretty damn exciting since I’ve been a huge space nerd for my entire life and never thought I’d live to see some of the things I’ve seen in the last few years. It also relaxes me like nothing else seems to do (do not include sex in that thought).
It’s also the time of day where I usually write my blog postings without phone calls and constant conversational interruptions. Most of my recent weeks have been a steady diet of all things computer. I posted a few weeks ago about the disaster that was my attempt to upgrade my home wireless network. After a great deal of time and effort I finally accomplished what I set out to do. Unfortunately all of those efforts were just the first and most important step in my much larger project of creating and installing my own personal Cloud system. It required a great deal of research to find the proper equipment and software as well as the training I needed to do it myself. As of this morning I’m just hours away from the completion of that project and I’m feeling damn good about it.
One of the things that made the project so easy (a relative term) was a device called the My Cloud. It’s a Western Digital product that attaches to a home network and provides a storage area for any and all devices included in that network. It sounds like a simple matter but it is anything but. Not only does it connect all of my computers, laptops, IPads, Android tablets, smart phones and printers together, it permits me to access the network with any of my wireless devices from anywhere I can find a Wi-Fi connection. We can upload photographs and videos from our cell phone and IPad cameras from just about anywhere. Everything is heavily encrypted and virus protected with layers of passwords and firewalls making access possible only by previously approved people. Unlike most commercial Cloud ventures from major computer entities, my cloud cannot be accessed by the government without my consent.
This all started a few years ago when our home was burglarized. Part of that "smash and grab" crime involved the theft of my better-half’s laptop. We lost more than two years of her photographs of family and friends which could never be replaced. Also every time I have a computer problem I seem to lose data when forced to restore or recover the device. It’s not that we don’t do proper backups, it’s that we sometimes forget to do them. With this new system some of our backups will now be done automatically into the Cloud which has been installed in an area not easily discovered by marauding criminals. Between the two of us we have more than thirty thousand photographs and five thousand songs in storage that are now safe from loss. It’s easy to replace a device but some other things are just irreplaceable and require extra protection. It’ll take a day of two to copy everything completely to the new four terabyte Cloud but I’ll certainly sleep better knowing it’s finally done.
So hooray for me and it’s back to NASA and another steaming cup of hot and delicious "Midnight Velvet" coffee. That’ll get my heart started for sure.
I feel so blessed today. In less than two weeks I survived the Storm of the Century and then almost immediately I survived that asteroid that just missed us. I’m a bit of a science nerd and will read anything remotely related to NASA or space travel. I was certainly intrigued when the announcement was made a few weeks ago that an object of this size would do the closest fly-by of the earth ever recorded.
I know just enough about our government and it’s propaganda arm to be a little concerned and skeptical when they say there was no chance of a collision. In my opinion if they were aware that a collision was imminent they wouldn’t tell us anyway. Anarchy and panic would certainly occur if that kind of an announcement were ever made.
So I sat patiently before my TV watching the asteroid live and in black and white as it zoomed on by almost directly over Indonesia. The NASA channel in it’s continuously boring fashion with absolutely no sound and with unrecognizable pictures did nothing to put my mind at ease. After the meteor strikes over Russia the previous day I wasn’t completely convinced we had nothing to worry about.
I suppose the day will arrive eventually when a huge one will hit us and I pray it’s thousands of years from now when technology will hopefully make it a non-problem. I’m not sure about many things but I’m reasonably confident that it will occur someday. I sure hope I’m not around to see it.
Enough about the damn asteroid. How about hearing some completely boring and useless information about my returning again to my remodeling project. I finally reframed the new opening that will eventually lead into my bedroom and I left the drywall intact to keep the dirt and dust from filling the rest of the house. One more bit of framing on the closet and I’ll be ready to begin hanging dry wall. I’ve been taking my time with this damn project but I’m still ahead of the schedule I set for myself. I just wish working with drywall wasn’t so messy. I spend more time cleaning up than actually constructing anything.
I also spent a couple of hours going through a few hundred photographs taken during the last snow storm. Some of them are very cool especially those showing my better-half on her maiden voyage with that big red snow thrower. I caught that look of sheer panic on her face as she began and later the big smile on her face as she conquered her fears and really started enjoying herself. Pretty damn cool if I do say so myself. I used the first photo as my new screensaver because it makes me smile every time I see it.
We’re having visitors tonight with one of them being the new grand child. Eat dinner, a few games of Hearts, and some quality time with the little guy. Not too bad at all.
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