A literal description of my state of mind
A literal description of my state of mind
The Atlanta Rhythm Section said it best:
The rats keep winning the rat race.
If Gore invented the Internet, why do so many Internet addresses start off with Dubya, Dubya, Dubya?
Fred the rabbit loves spinach and kale.
He's only 'eh' about parsley.
He doesn't like mustard greens.
Not really, just something I saw on a bulletin board:
"'alice' was a very important show to the hip-hop community, that show had mad flo"
Rocket Jones is now #1 on Google if you search "Chris Pronger Hate". Go me!
One of the other links on that page led to an article in the Edmonton Journal that gives 28 reasons to hate San Jose. I was raised in San Jose, so as a native I'll have to say that a lot of it is wrong, although some of it sounds like the crap that convinced me to move away and never go back.
Here's the best of 'em. The ones where he doesn't sound like a whiney little bitch.
1. That song. You know, the one with San Jose in the title and chorus? You know, the Dionne-frickin'-Warwick song from 1968? I hate that song.2. But no matter how much we hate that song, it pales to how deeply they despise it in San Jose. They're ashamed. Just mentioning it makes them cringe and squirm. Oiler fans should belt it out in Game 3.
3. All together now: "Yesss WEEEE Know the WAAAY to Saaaan Jose." That will mess up those Josers.
I hate to break it to him though, but people from San Jose don't hate that song. In fact, we seldom even think about it. Now, Edmonton had a song written about it too, called "I shot a bear rootin' through my trash cans (or maybe it was Chris Pronger)". Regional hit.
4. San Jose wants you to spell its name with one of those accent things over the letter E. Talk about pree-tentious.If so, I agree. I'll also state that no native son would do that, so it's probably those immigrants. You know, those rich millionaire dot-commers. Pretentious pricks, all of 'em, so it wouldn't surprise me.
5. Sharks fans like to photoshop pictures of Chris Pronger and post them on the team's website. One such photo makes it appear as if Pronger wears panties. Another puts the rugged Oiler defenceman in a pink leotard and blond wig. This is outrageous. This is hockey blasphemy.6. Sharks fans also like to call him Chrissy Pronger. No, this is war.
9. The first commercial broccoli farm was in San Jose. You hate broccoli, right? Blame San Jose. Get angry.I thought that was Bush (Sr's) fault?
11. Hockey fans in San Jose think it's the height of wit to post pictures of great white sharks in the process of eating some Oilers player or another.Oh please, it's the silicon valley. They post CGI clips of great white sharks eating Oilers players.
20. San Jose averages 300 sunny days a year and has a Mediterranean climate. Wimps.ROFLMAO
The rest of 'em get rather personal and he takes some cheap shots at America and Americans in general. Whiney little bitch with an inferiority complex.
Word is that he quietly sold his house in Edmonton before the playoffs, and then after they lost in the finals he took a vacation in Mexico. While there, he had his agent demand a trade.
What a man.
Thanks to Off Wing Opinion for the pointer.
Almost 6" of rain over the weekend. Trees are down. Basements flooded. Roads flooded. Train tracks flooded.
Scattered rain predicted for the rest of the week.
Yay.
The other night I scored a movie collection titled Hostile Hauntings, and since it rained all weekend I was able to view most of them. According to the box, these were indie movies, which wasn't quite accurate. I'm going to concentrate on two of the films, the other four ranging from complete crap to only mildly interesting.
The collection starts off strongly with The Shunned House, a 2003 straight-to-video offering from Italy. Two word review: Kicks. Ass. The story takes it's name from a tale by H.P. Lovecraft, and the actual plot is an amalgam of three Lovecraft stories: the title piece, The Music of Erich Zann (although the Erich character is a woman in the movie) and Dreams in the Witch House.
I've said it before: I adore Lovecraft. I have a fairly complete collection of his works. When I go on a Lovecraft binge, it perceptably darkens my mood. Powerful writing.
The director here concentrated on mood and atmosphere. There is quite a bit of gore, but not enough to squick me out (well, except for one horrendously memorable scene that will forever be in my all-time top 10 greatest movie scenes). Instead of telling the three stories in serial one-after-another fashion, the stories intertwine and interelate and are sometimes opaque and confusing, much like Lovecraft's work itself. Yet also like Lovecraft, the imagery is original and chilling. These are not terribly faithful story adaptations, but they remain true to the spirit of the originals.
An occult researcher and his girlfriend/photographer visit an old building where mysterious happenings have been going on for over one hundred years. The researcher has an extensive collection of old writings and documents related to the place, including photographs of some of the victims. The girlfriend thinks that they're there to investigate three mysterious deaths, and they are, but she freaks out when she finds out that there have been hundreds of odd suicides and murders done over time. This story is used as the framework to tie the other two plotlines together, even though the three original stories are completely unrelated to each other.
From what I've read, this film was shot entirely on location inside the actual building, complete with attached chapel. I've seen nothing to indicate that the building is other than ordinary in real life.
If you can handle the gore (and the heavy Italian accents), I can't recommend this one highly enough. Fair warning though, you're going to absolutely love it or absolutely hate it.
The second film that I'm going to talk about is an indie titled The Somnambulists (sorry, no link available). According to the box, it's 75 minutes long, and I was rather ticked off to find that the total time includes a "making of" special and *two* "premier night" features. The film itself is rather short, yet very intense.
Dialogue is sparse, and the acting is above average (with a couple of glaring exceptions). It all comes together nicely in the end, including a semi-surprise ending.
Granddad winds up with the best lines, including one chilling little exchange where he explains that "there is no heaven, there is no hell. The dead go into our dreams, and it's the ones with a grudge that you have to watch out for."
I can't say more without giving the ending away. Worth a view.
Tripping the Rift is a riot, but you may not have seen the *original* pilot episode. Six looks a lot different, gets naked, and almost has wild sex with an evil space clown.
If you've got a high-speed connection and a twisted sense of humor, then check it out!
(the 26mb version is much better quality)
In addition to the crazybusy schedule at work lately, I've been immersed in a couple of rather involved home projects, and some rather unusual (for me) time-eaters.
I'm not much on computer games. I'd rather program 'em than play on 'em, it's just always been my style. But a couple of years ago, I overheard my daughter Mookie talking about playing Starcraft online, and when I found out we could play each other over our home network, I had to give it a try. I liked it, and played pretty steadily for several months, both with and without Rachael. Eventually the phase passed and I hadn't played for better than a year.
Until a couple of weeks ago, that is. I got a bee in my bonnet and reloaded it onto my machine and I've been going through the opening scenarios to relearn the game.
Tonight at a store, I saw the StarCraft Anniversary Set, containing the original game, the BroodWar expansion and some other goodies. For $20, I picked it up. Fun-ness. I'd been playing on a copied CD-ROM, which may have been my backup from the long-lost original. Or it may have been a bootleg, I dunno. Anyways, I now have strictly legal versions and am basking in my law-abidingilityness. That and blasting those Zerg into bloody puddles.
The other time eater is Myst. Rachael and I had it on our PC way back when and enjoyed several hours tootling around and figuring things out. We never got very far, but we never cared all that much. The version I have now is for my iPaq PDA. I bought it to treat myself, and I'm enjoying it very much.
I wonder how long it would take a pack of zerglings to level Myst Island?
I've got a couple of posts ready to go, but they contain images and for some reason Movable Type is being stubborn about actually displaying them.
Minx... Minx... Minx... Minx...
From California Yankee:
Fred Krupp, head of Environmental Defense, says the President's plan to designate the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve as a National Monument creates the world's largest marine protected area.
About the size of California, the national monument will be 38 times larger than Yellowstone, and larger even than Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It will consist of 139,000 square miles of largely uninhabited islands, atolls, coral reef colonies and seamounts, starting 160 miles west of Kauai, the remote 1,400-mile long string of islands extends to Kure atoll, west of Midway Island.
From Dustbury:
Boral Bricks' newest plant is in Union City, and when its test production run proved to be up to industry standards, Boral first thought about selling the bricks at a discount.But no, you can't buy them: instead, Boral is donating the entire run to Central Oklahoma Habitat for Humanity, enough to build 54 houses.
Since beginnings are important, I thought it would be a good idea to officially start Summer 2006 with something personally positive. Fill in the blanks:
Rocket Jones is better than _________________ because it's _______________.
For instance, you might say:
Rocket Jones is better than bondage because it's top-rack dishwasher safe.
That example was totally random. If you want to win, you should give it some thought.
That's right, I said "win"! There will be a prize awarded to the person who submits the best entry. If you've been around a while, you know that my contest prizes don't suck, although if I had a lawyer he'd tell me to reserve that right, so I do.
Leave 'em in the comments.
The European aviation consortium Airbus has hit some serious turbulance over its new A380 super-jumbo. Parent company EADS staked its future on the A380, to the tune of 11 billion Euros in development costs. Now major investors are bailing, causing the value of EADS stock to drop by a third in just one day.
What's the problem?
The electrical systems are described as "a shambles" and "hundreds" of problems remain unresolved. The aircraft is so overweight that the landing gear cannot safely handle the load. To compensate, weight is being trimmed wherever possible. Embarrassingly, a wing snapped off during stress testing because of the reduced thickness of the metal.
And of course, all this redesign-on-the-fly means that paying customers have to wait longer for their aircraft.
Just nine of the $300m double-decker whales will be delivered next year instead of 20 to 25, with a backlog of delays and penalty clauses cascading through the decade.At a minimum, the blunder will cut profits by €2bn over four years, the company admitted yesterday.
But that's not the end of their troubles. Also taking a hit is their "new" mid-range A350, which is based on an older model airframe. So far they've gotten orders for less than half needed for break-even. The head of Emeriates Airlines likes the A350, but says:
"Unfortunately for Airbus, two things happened: Boeing came up with an even better plane and the price of fuel went through the roof."
Boeing's 787 Dreamliner (which I first talked about here) is higher-tech and more fuel-efficient, which has recently become a much bigger factor in purchasing decisions.
The economic impact of the super-jumbo also reaches areas you wouldn't normally consider:
The wake turbulence from the A380 may be such a threat to other aircraft on take-off and landing that the International Civil Aviation Organisation is imposing a barrier of 10 nautical miles, twice the distance for a Boeing 747.The rule, temporary at first, changes the cost calculus for airports such as Heathrow, which depend on constant traffic flow for profit margin.
Even the German author of a book on Airbus is down on the A380:
"The A380 may have a future as a cargo freight plane."
Thanks to Transterrestrial Musings for the pointer, in a post on a semi-related subject.
Yesterday morning, while driving to work, my car was... splashed... with bird poop. I used "pigeon" in the title, but from the amount of it I'd say it was more likely a pteradactyl or a flock of golden eagles. I had to run my windshield washers for quite a while to get most of it off, and when I got to work, I could see where it started halfway up the hood and continued on across the roof almost to the back window. Definitely pteradactyl.
Last night we had a thunderstorm with a nice hard, driving rain. Car looks sparkly clean again this morning.
Nancy Kenney was 2 years old when she last saw her father. He never returned from his final mission aboard the submarine USS Lagarto during WWII. The boat was lost with all hands in the Gulf of Thailand in May, 1945. The wreckage was rediscovered only last year.
Navy divers on Friday completed a six-day survey of the wreckage site. They took photos and video of the 311-foot, 9-inch submarine for further analysis by naval archeologists.The divers found twin 5-inch gun mounts on the forward and rear parts of the ship - a feature believed to be unique to the Lagarto.
They also saw the word "Manitowoc" displayed on the submarine's propeller, providing a connection to the Manitowoc, Wis., shipyard that built the Lagarto in the 1940s.
Eighty-six sailors died when the Lagarto sank in May 1945. The Japanese minelayer Hatsutaka reported dropping depth charges and sinking a U.S. sub in the area, though it was never known what ship it destroyed.
Ms. Kenney is relieved and at peace, because after 60 years she now knows where her father rests.
The Navy considers the sea to be a proper final resting place for "our people who are killed in action," according to a Navy spokesman. The wreck will not be disturbed.
That's one heck of a Father's Day present.
Yep, it's another hockey post.
Tonight is the last game of the NHL season. Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.
I'll be watching, but I could really care less who wins because I hate both teams. That's not quite accurate, for although I hate the Carolina Hurricanes in their entirety, the only Edmonton Oiler that I really hate is Chris Pronger.
I absolutely understand that my feelings toward Chris Pronger are a manifestation of BDS. No, not that one, the other one: Bonds Derangement Syndrome.
Chris Pronger is and has always been a great player, but in his youth he was a dirty player. This opinion is offered up as viewed through my visceral dislike of him, so don't be emailing me facts and opinions. They mean nothing.
Nature is balance. Just like when Florence Nightengale was alive the Brooklyn Dodgers were created. Her goodness shone so brightly that an entire *team* of evil had to exist as a counterbalance. Wayne Gretzky is another example. Multiple winner of the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, awarded to the player "who displays the best sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct in addition to playing ability", Gretzky was so good that nature created the Philadelphia Flyers. Even that crew of goons wasn't enough, and players like Tie Domi, Eric Lindros and Todd Bertuzzi were caused to exist.
And yes, Chris Pronger.
Chris Pronger played for years for the St. Louis Blues, which until recently meant automatic playoffs and then a quiet exit in one of the early rounds. It's a good thing that he's gone deeper into the playoffs in his first year with Edmonton than he ever got with the Blues. He's matured, he's not the big-mouth hothead that he was in his youth, he's a team leader in Edmonton. And yes, I can admit that he's still a very very talented player. But he's still Chris Pronger, and I hate him.
So tonight I'll be watching game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, but no matter who wins, it's going to be bittersweet for me. I actually am rooting for Edmonton, because Chris Pronger deserves to carry that Cup around the ice. Whoa, did I just say that? Must be the guilt talking.
To the elderly gentleman seen on my drive home,
Sir, you are a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma (to paraphrase Churchill).
Your hair is white. Not gray. Not silver, but that dingy white that makes one think of yellowed old bone.
Despite the color, you have that odd youthful haircut that no one can miss. Maybe you think it reminds people of the Beatles. It made me think of Moe Howard of the Three Stooges.
You drove for most of ten miles with your right blinker on.
Yet you drove like a young bobsledder, seemingly immortal as you were weaving in and out of traffic, going so far as to straddle two lanes for long stretches as you decided which side would give you an advantage measured in seconds. Bonus points for using your turn signal, even though it was only correct half the time.
Finally, a word about your car. The Scion isn't cool. It looks like the box a Mini-Cooper came in.
This is the premier episode of the Rocket Jones Podcast for the Hearing Impaired.
(hum your favorite song as the lead-in)
Yes, I know this is kind of a niche market that I'm aiming towards, but I figure that by being first, I can at least be known as a pioneer.
I'm still working on the format, so bear with me. I'm looking to find some way to stand out from all the other podcasts out there.
(hum a snappy tune for the following)
By the way, your ad can be read heard here! Contact Rocket Jones for rates.
How 'bout that war, eh?
This podcasting stuff is harder than it looks. I think I need to do more prep ahead of time, it takes practice to sound off-the-cuff.
(hum closing music, whatever floats your boat)
Catch you next time on the Rocket Jones Podcast for the Hearing Impaired!
Peanut butter and jelly on a sesame-seed roll.
Odd combination of flavors.
I have a new favorite cracker. Triscuit has a "rosemary and olive oil" flavor out that is amazingly yummy, and WalMart has one of their house-brands with the same taste in a regular type cracker.
To die for.
I already knew it, but it's still nice to have confirmation.
Thanks to Lemur Girl, who's due congrats for completing her college degree! Yay!!!
She's got the low-down on the link above too.
Y'gads, another long forgotten regular feature exhumed from its shallow grave...
Zoe Brain tells about an open secret, namely that the two Mars Rovers are each carrying a piece of the World Trade Center aboard.
The company who built the drills on the robots' hydraulic arms are based just a few blocks from Ground Zero.Staff at Honeybee Robotics fled clouds of dust and smoke when the Twin Towers collapsed.
And they decided to pay a "quiet tribute" to the 3000 victims of September 11 by putting debris from the attacks into their design.
Engineers at Honeybee turned two pieces of aluminium from the site into shields to protect the wiring on the drills. Each curved piece is the size of a credit card, and marked with the American flag.
More technology news from Random Nuclear Strikes, where we find out that a recent breakthrough might make hydrogen as cheap to produce as gasoline! Yay! Maybe, but there's a bit more to the technology than just making cheap fuel. Read and become informed.
In related (somewhat) energy technology news, Buckethead of The Ministry of Minor Perfidy links up to a new idea that's making waves, mainly by adapting an old idea to new technology. This looks promising.
Did you know that Mercedes makes a *Luxury* car?!?!?!?! Head on over to the Parkway Rest Stop and check out his sighting of a Maybach Motors creation.
Ah, employee handbooks. Source of endless amusement and/or teeth-gnashing, depending on your mood. Check out some detailed analysis of one such over at Nothing to see here, move along.
Finally, I've got good news and I've got bad news from the world of toons. Bad news first...
DeDoc posted about the passing of Alex Toth. Who, you may ask? Mr. Toth was the artist who did the original Johnny Quest, among other works. Doc has the links.
And in Toon good news...
Hearst's King Features Syndicate and Warner Home Video have finally come to terms, and 231 classic Popeye cartoons originally distributed to theaters by Paramount will be available on DVD.The package also includes some made-for-TV cartoons, but what you care about here are the originals, produced from 1933 to 1942 by the Fleischer Studios and from then until 1957 (using some of the same animators) by Paramount's own Famous Studios.
I'll end it here on that happy note. You are happy, right? Original Popeye on DVD? I'm smiling.
Rachael did. We received official notice today that I can stop by the high school and pick up her diploma.
Congrats also to my nephew Michael, who also graduated this year.
Way back in the early days of Rocket Jones, I was a blog-linkin' fool. There were many and varied ways I used to spread the love, as it were. One original idea was the Great Random Google Junket - aptly and beautifully named by Susie - where folks would leave various words in the comment section and I would combine them into Google searches and post the results.
As I mentioned, Dogette's comment gave me the impetus to revive the idea, much like lightning striking the mad-scientisty doodads erected atop Dr. Frankenstein's tower.
This may become a semi-regular feature again. In any event, and in order to invade Dogette's privacy, I dedicate this first one to her, and ask you all to put on your best Jan Brady voice and welcome the Rocket Jones Great Random Google Google Google Junket!
Interestingly, when I googled "poop" and "shrub" (two frequent topics at TND), amongst the expected horticultural sites were a surprising number of hits from anti-presidential mouth breathers. Easily distinguished from intelligent life by a complete refusal to offer anything resembling intelligent debate, they don't bother to degenerate to name-calling. They just start there and it quickly goes downhill. They are also strikingly alike in that they offer no alternatives or suggested ideas beyond "it shouldn't be like that".
Moving on, sort of, if we add the terms "privacy" and "orange" to "poop" and "shrub", we get a link to, ta-daaaaaahhhhh:
Harley's Poop Patrol. According to their website, they're number 1 in the business of number 2, and they service all of Orange county. I wonder if they've ever done a cameo on that television show. Their rates seem reasonable and they offer customer testimonials! How cool is that. Way to go Harley!
See what kind of shit (*ahem*) we get into during a Random Google Google Google Junket?
Triticale jumped right in and offered up "snorkel". Since I'm shining the giant bright spotlight of attention at Dogette, I combined "snorkel" with "dog" and came up with Snorkel Dog boxer shorts.
"I heart pesticides". So goeth the wisdom that is Dogette, now available thanks to this site.
And finally, in one of those odd good/bad situations, we find that Howard Johnson Enterprises (home of the bright orange roof) also produce "all season triamine weed and feed". I'd probably skip the salad bar next time you're at HoJo's, eh? Actually, I have no idea if it's the same Howard Johnson. I'm too lazy to dig deeper.
But not too lazy to find this (.pdf format) data sheet on Triamine2, which is described as "A three-way post-emergent selective broadleaf herbicide" with lots of other scary words listed after that.
Ok folks, so that's how the Great Random Google Google Google Junket works. Leave a word in the comments, and try not to get too out there with your vocabulary, since medical terms tend to bring up boring medical sites, etc. Get creative but keep it on the common end of the spectrum.
Do it for Jan.
Oh so predictable:
Of course I'm glad we got Zarqawi, but...
Or maybe there is.
...but at least no more students will be dragged off busses and executed on his orders.
...but at least no more innocent women and children will be blown into bloody rags while shopping at the market on his orders.
...but at least no more Iraqi policemen will be murdered on his orders.
...but at least no more aid workers, journalists, or diplomats will be beheaded on video on his orders.
...but maybe people will quit trying to find the dark cloud in this silver lining. Killing this animal is a good thing.
No buts about it.
Over at Random Nuclear Strikes, AnalogKid defines several common units of measurement, and helpfully provides their metric counterparts.
A sample:
Yesterday, I used the term “Shitload”1-Load = The amount of work you can reasonably get done in 8 hours
1-Buttload = 1 Load plus your lunch break
I read these last night with wife Liz and daughter Robyn over my shoulder, and we were all laughing out loud. Don't miss those metric equivalents!
Zarq-man is dead.
Maybe he can start a trend, you know, dead blogging.
Thanks to a comment by Dogette and the reinforcement by Buckethead, I'm seriously considering the revival of a regular feature of the early days of Rocket Jones. Renamed slightly, of course.
The Rocket Jones Great Random Google, Google, Google Junket.
What say you?
That's when you take something and squeeze it until it ain't fun anymore. That's as good a description as any for a majority of the memes floatin' around out there.
But it has been awhile since I've played the meme game, so all I can say is, Susie can tap me anytime.
Here we go.
5 things in my fridge:
* yogurt
* reduced-cholesterol eggs
* regular eggs (for baking)
* reduced-cholesterol margarine
* butter (for baking)
5 things in my closet:
* large box full of unbuilt rocket kits
* assorted prom dresses from the girls
* "junk shelf" containing, among other things, spare AA batteries for my cordless mouse and keyboard
* Rachael's video camera (our old one)
* clothes of all kinds (I don't have a dresser)
5 things in my briefcase:
* foldable bluetooth keyboard for my PDA
* chapstick
* computer textbook that I'm working my way through
* mini-mag light
* Leatherman
5 things in my car:
* sunglasses
* bag o' bungee cords
* tarp
* umbrella
* ice scraper/window squeegee
5 people I want to torture with this meme:
* Link back here or leave a comment if you run with it
I heard one of the most blatant outright lies today on a radio ad about the proposed repeal of the estate tax.
You think it's fair that the mega-rich get a mega-tax break? That money is coming out of somebody's pockets, and it's not the heirs and heiresses.
Furthermore, *not* taxing the deceased isn't taking money out of anybody's pocket, it's *not* your freaking money to begin with. It's theirs! They stop breathing and immediately these assholes lay claim to the bucks, because, you know, they're just evil rich and all.
I don't trust the government. I don't trust a socialist. I don't trust a Democrat. I don't trust a religious zealot.
All of you, stay the hell out of my life. Stay the hell out of my death too.
Update: Duncan left a reasonable comment about this, directing me towards this WaPo article in an effort to clarify their position. In return, I'd ask that you consider this rebuttal to the same article. While you're there at QandO, check out the comments too, as there is lively and (mostly) rational debate of the issue.
I kept hearing about this and was wondering what the heck the fuss was about. I thought they'd moved election day up from November or something. The rhetoric was strikingly similar.
Blow a three goal lead? Yep.
Lose your goalie to a season-ending knee injury? Check.
Backup goalie badly flubs a play that allows the winning goal to score? Uh huh.
Edmonton, buh-bye.
Mapgirl is hosting this week's Carnival of Personal Finance. Go, visit and usk djc nm87##2i----------
I mean, I wouldn't have his babies or anything, but Pixy Misa, benevolent host and master of Mu.Nu, has done it again. Our MovableType search functions was sloooooooooooooow because of the sheer number of blogs and posts hosted. So Pixy decided to rewrite the seach function to go zooooooooooom instead.
They do indeed, indeed they do. Give it a try, you'll be amazed.
Hockey finals start tonight. The Carolina Hurricanes take on the Edmonton Oilers.
The grid up top will be updated sometime today.
Today was supposed to be a nice day, darn it! It was ok, nothing more than that, but the worst thing was that it was windy all day long. We launch rockets in the rain, we'll launch in the snow and cold, but wind stops us every time. The safety rules say that 20mph is the cutoff point. That's reasonable, because 20mph is a heckuva blow.
Today there were gusts to 17mph (that I heard of), and there were few lulls.
I had several things going on today at the rocket launch. First up, I'd volunteered to help with a CanSat competition. Eight college teams from around the country were making flights with identical high-power rockets, and at apogee their experimental payloads were ejected under parachute. These payloads were GPS units that sent telemetry back to the ground, where it was picked up by a YAGI antenna (I think that's what it's called) and fed into a laptop for recording and analysis.
Eight successful flights, but big... no, huge... HUGE, drift because of the wind. One team recovered their cansat almost three miles downwind.
I helped to prep a couple of the rockets, and later did a shift at the high-power pads doing launch control duties.
I finished that up just in time to grab a quick bite (PBJ, food of the gods) before a coworker of mine arrived with her nieces and nephews. Sammy and William each prepped a rocket with me, while Miranda decided she'd rather not. She claimed not to like loud, noisy things, which is understandable with two brothers, eh?
So we three got rockets ready to fly, pictures were taken, and we went to the launch area. Once the rockets were on the pads, one by one they were launched, after the Launch Control Officer read the important information over the PA system, including the fact that this was Sammy's first launch with NOVAAR and William's first rocket ever.
The flights went well, and afterwards the kids and I went out to the field to recover them (darn wind!). I gave Sammy and William their rockets to keep, which might seem like a nice thing to do, but it's really very selfish of me. See, by giving away two rockets, I'll have to build two more in order to keep my display rack full.
Hopefully they'll be back at another launch soon.
Other than that, not much happened all day. I broke one rocket (my Odin's Spear) when the wind blew it off the table and I didn't see it. Stepped backwards right onto it. I also had a stabilizer snap off of an Edmonds rocket glider, but that's already on the workbench, glue drying from the repair.
Mandatory stats stuff for my records:
1. BolAeroZ - B6-4 - this Shrox plan features an asymetrical fin planform and today there was just too much wind for it. It was only marginally stable, but was high enough not to be dangerous. I suggested that if Sammy and his dad cut the forwardmost fins off, then the rocket would fly much better.
2. Air Guitar - B6-4 - William liked this rocket for the paint job (so did the the LCO), which was patterned after Eddie Van Halen's guitar, hence the name. A very nice flight, recovered safely on a streamer.
3. Groove Tube - B6-4 - This flight was mine, and it was it's usual beautiful boost. Tube fins tend to not be as affected by the wind, at least on the way up. She drifted quite a bit farther than the other two rockets because she went much higher.
And that was it for me for the day. One actual flight made. Darn wind. I still had big fun, because rockets and kids go together like PBJ.
Daughter Mookie, my wife and I went to the eye doctor last night for exams.
Rachael and I both got dilated and checked out, but Liz got there late after work so she didn't want the dilation. I mean, she *really* didn't want the dilation. I helpfully volunteered to bring her in one evening after work so that she could get dilated and I could drive her home safely. Ooooo, she wasn't happy with me.
I owed her, and payback is a bitch. See, Liz went to the doctor last week for her regular visit, and while she was there she set up an appointment for my annual physical (of which the last one was two years ago and 15 years before that). For some reason - Liz claims that it's love and concern for my health, I call bullshit - she pointed out to the doctor that I'm overdue for a colonoscopy. In fact, I've never had one. It's freakin' duly noted in my records now.
Dilation vs. colonoscopy. I still think she's getting the better of the deal. Being the lemon/lemonaid kinda guy that I am, I was looking for the silver lining here and I think that, just maybe, if you ask nicely I might live-blog the colonoscopy. Won't that be fun?
The title is one of those eternal questions, asked in a purely spiritual sense.
I've been very naughty because I haven't written about this sooner, but it should be alright because "salvation is negotiable". At least, so says Father Nookie of the Church of Chaos.
No, my meds are fine, thanks.
See, it's like this... a while back I got this package in the mail. It was small, but packed full of concentrated coolness. As I pulled item after item out of the box, I was amazed at the generousity of Blue. What this guy did was to send me a care package full of music and poker goodies.
If you've been to Blue's place, you know that besides his day gig as a 'puter drone, that he's a blogger and podcaster. He's also a musician with a studio in his basement, and several self-produced CD's in his catalog. And that's what was in that little box.
Not long ago he finished up the soundtrack to a television documentary, and he included a copy of that. It's perfect for the Friday afternoon commute, when I need to stay calm. As an added bonus, being mostly instrumental, I can make up my own lyrics to serenade the idiot-du-jour in traffic.
This morning (and what reminded me to finally write something about this), I listened again to Church of Chaos: Snow White and the Seven Deadly Sins. Blue describes this as "industrial dance", and it's chock full of memorable wordplay set to catchy, hook-filled music. Great stuff, if you like the style. I do, it's excellent cranked up during my early morning drive to work.
Like I said, there were several CD's in the box, and I'll talk about the others real soon now. In the meantime, I really do recommend Blue's music, because everything I've heard has been good times.
This week Blue is in the studio, working on his latest Booze Monkey offering. Sometime this summer (I think), he'll be playing a live gig in Winchester, Virginia. I'm planning on going, and I think that it would make an excellent blogmeet as well. Stay tuned and I'll keep y'all up to date on future plans.
According to Miss Sin, the average length, erect, is 5 1/4 inches. So there's a physical answer to that metaphysical question.