efaardvark

And that's how zombie pigmen are created...

If you ever feel in need of a smile then all you need to do is google quokka, and click on “images”.  Just look at that face!   

You're welcome.

SWOT in Earth orbit and KPLO in Lunar orbit.  And home in time for lunch!  "Nominal" is a good word.

This looks like it'll be fun...
 

Gotta say, 4 people on a single rocket is going to make this exciting all by itself.

Thunderstorms and hot, dry weather.. yep, fire season has definitely come to SoCal once again.  All we need now are our high winds.  (Usually they peak around September/October so it’s a little early yet.)

https://ktla.com/news/california/crews-battle-wildfires-amid-brutal-heat-wave-in-california/

Moving furniture around today.  Ouch.

Somehow wound up on a tiger-team to troubleshoot/fix James Webb telemetry latency issues they've had since launch.

You know that old gag where everyone lines up and then someone asks for volunteers and everyone but one slow guy takes one step back.  I *think* that's what happened.  Either that or I was volunteered in a secret meeting that I wasn't invited to.   Either way... just shoot me now. 

So now we here in the southwest US are having to choose between water or electricity.  Over in Utah they said they're going to be stopping the water flow out of Lake Powell because if they don't then they'll have to shut down the Glen Canyon hydro plant there as well.  Lake Powell water levels are currently at 3527ft and they have to shut down Glen Canyon at 3,490ft.  Here in S. California we get a lot of power from Lake Mead's "Hoover" dam - which is downstream from Powell on (what used to be) the Colorado river - but Mead is itself already at the 1050ft the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation says is needed to keep the generators going there and we're already past the January peak in rainfall.  (And every foot drop in water level has already meant 6MW less electricity for the grid even before we get to full stop on the turbines.)  The Hyatt power plant in northern Calif. was shut down from August to January last/this year due to low levels in Lake Oroville but at least then we still had flow on the Colorado river keeping Glen Canyon and Hoover going.  With Powell shutting its outflow gates so early this year it is only a matter of time before water and power both become hard to find around here.  It looks like they're prioritizing electricity for now but either way it seems this summer is going to be "Bad" around here.  Word of advice for anyone looking to move to S. California - or anywhere in the US southwest really... don't.  At this rate we're going to wind up like Venezuela. 

End of my first week working from home!   

I think I'm actually more tired and discombobulated now than I was at the end of last week however.   At least I'm down to only doing the job of two people. 

Time to retire one of my many caps…

NASA retires InSight mars lander mission

Oh no!  Another casualty of 2022!
Somehow I missed the announcement of Greg Bear’s passing.  (Probably sick and/or sleep deprived.)  Bear was one of my favorite authors.  If you haven’t read “Blood Music” then do so.   Even Better than Clarke’s “Childhood’s End”.  Bear was right up there with Niven in my estimation.

https://www.geekwire.com/2022/greg-bear-1951-2022-science-fiction-writer/

OMG.. I'm agreeing with something a Congresscritter is saying about nuclear power . What is the world coming to? Beware low-flying porcines.

First inflation wrecks my savings, then the stock market tanks my 401k, now this.  2022 has not been a good year for my retirement plans. 

No association of Viagra and Cialis with reduced Alzheimer’s disease risk.

And now my air compressor breaks.  Got a tire pressure light in my car on the way home.  When I got there and went to put/check air in my tires, the tank split as I was putting pressure in the tank to do the deed.  The compressor bit is probably ok, but the whole thing is a cobbled-together mashup... an old motorcycle engine, an electric motor, a couple pulleys & a belt, some bits of copper tubing, a pressure sensor and an old pressure tank.  Probably way past time for a whole new rig but .. it had to fail THIS week?  Really?

Gotta be Karma from last year when I went around bragging that I had all my xmas shopping done by the end of November. 

(Note wet cement.. from a pinhole leak right at the base of the tank.  Looks like there was some moisture in the tank and it rusted enough inside to fail when pressurized.)

From the same people who brought us New Horizons' mission to Pluto and Ultima Thule comes the Dragonfly mission to Titan...
 

Going through old stuff to make space for new stuff.  Exhibit 1.. a well-used “Aeronautical Vest-Pocket Handbook” 1959 complements of Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Co .. trig tables, elemental properties, conversion tables, tables of physical constants, graphs showing relationships between various aeronautic/engineering variables.  Clearly a pre-Google, pre Wikipedia  artifact.   

Crap.  Where did my weekend go?

Scott Manley gives a good summary of the latest Falcon Heavy launch/landing.  As usual...

Get some sun!  Or at least take vitamin D supplements....

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/5/1359/htm

I get this a lot.  That's exactly my kind of weird!   

Upgrading from Bionic Beaver to Cosmic Cuttlefish.  Should be a simple update but if things go horribly awry and you don't hear from me for a while you'll know what happened.