efaardvark

None shall pass!   

(Another example of appropriate use of technology - in this case 3D printing and rare-earth magnets.)

Not just some words encoded on a supersonic parachute.. this is literally underfoot in my "office".  (It is in a shadowbox built into the floor of the SFOF.)

Nothing like a little earthquake in the middle of a launch countdown.    

Now this is cosplay! 

Now that's a big explosion!  Hope everybody nearby is ok!

Of course the first video played from space was a cat video.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-tech-demo-streams-first-video-from-deep-space-via-laser

Oh no!  ZZ Top's 'Fearless' Bassist Dusty Hill Dies at 72

Oh no!  After LotR I always pictured him as retired and living comfortably with Gandalf and the other Ringbearers in the Undying Lands!

Sir Ian Holm: Lord of the Rings and Alien star dies aged 88

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/

Oh sure.  It's all fun and games until someone invents the T-800.

Actually, this has a kind of Star Wars thing goin' on in my head too.

OMG, the hype for KSP2.  Have to admit I'm catching the fever too.  Hearing all the right things from Star.Theory.  I just hope they can deliver (somewhat) on time & w/out screwing it up.

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

One day... probably.. maybe..  

One of my co-workers just tested positive for C19.    Fortunately he's on night shift and I haven't even seen him in almost a month, but our workspaces do somewhat overlap.  So far I've managed to stay healthy even in LA and even having to continue going to work several days a week.  If I get sick after all this I'm going to be quite annoyed.

Not that I have any time for that with the m20 landing coming up in about a month.  I haven't even seen a data flow diagram for EDL or post-landing ops yet, never mind done any training on it.

On top of that my tax person sent me a "friendly reminder" yesterday that taxes are coming up and I should make an appointment early this year, just in case.

No pressure.

OTOH I have to admit a week or 2 in bed sounds quite attractive at this point.  Except for that you-could-die part.  That would suck.

One of the first season eps, "Doomsday Machine".  Written by Norman Spinrad iirc.... I think he and the director (whose name escapes me atm) got an award for it too. 

Over 60 webex hours in 4 days.  Isn't that a violation of OSHA rules or something?

Part of my cousin's thanksgiving decorations...

Pretty… chunky launch.  Flamey end of vehicle not stay pointed at ground.  Starship not go to space today.

Seriously, at least one chunk of the pad looked to be about truck-sized, and rose to the level of the bottom of the starship before falling back down.  I’m betting that several of those dark engines were due to debris impact.  I’m surprised there wasn’t catastrophic damage done to the booster at launch as a result of the rapid unscheduled excavation.  Stage zero clearly needs a bit more design work.

PSA:

Drive safely
Drive courteously
Drive economically

In that order.

And yes, this means even on Los Angeles freeways.  (aka "Mad Max" training zone.)

Queuing up some more reading material, just in case..

(from Cornell’s arxiv.org database)

“The Silurian Hypothesis.  If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event.”

This ought to be good reading...

https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03748

Really annoyed at Canonical and Ubuntu.  Again.  (Still?)  Among other stupid things the latest LTS version of ubuntu linux installs Firefox as a snap!  As if FF wasn't stupidly huge already.  Also, the "new" default desktop also breaks all sorts of things and introduced numerous weird "features".  For instance, if I right-click on the firefox icon (any application really) in the dock I get a popup menu that used to allow me to "open a new window" for that app, which appeared on the display containing that dock/icon.  Only now instead of opening a new window it teleports the popup menu itself to my second display.  If I then (again) select "open a new window" in the popup, it opens the window on the second display, not the one where I wanted it.  I can then drag the new window to the display where I originally wanted it but, WTF Canonical????

Also, selecting text for cut-and-paste only highlights the first word in the selection.  The rest of the selected text doesn't highlight until you release the mouse button!  This means you can't see what you're selecting until you stop selecting it!  AGAIN, WTF????

Reincarnation.  Isekai.  Separately or together, I don't care.  Just make it stop.

RIP.. killed by serial Webex.

(Not quite as bad as having someone read a 100 page PowerPoint to you but still deadly in the wrong hands.)

Roses are red

Roses are blue

Depending on their velocity

Relative to you

Saw the rocket trail from yesterdays F9/Starlink launch when I went to move my car.  They’re doing a lot more Starlink launches from Vandenberg these days.  Probably filling in the more polar orbit slots.