efaardvark

Flat Earthers are going to have a field day with this one.   

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20190208

For all you people thinking they'd like a Nerve Gear headset, this is current, state of the art reality.  It does appear that we're headed in that general direction.  OTOH, we're about as far from SAO as 10x6 pixels is from 4k UHD..

Wasted a bunch of time today going through the MAL catalog and updating my list.  Final count: 536.    There were also a bunch more that I didn't remember well enough to rate and/or that I dropped mid-watch.  I didn't bother to add those so that's just the "completed" count.  There's another couple dozen in my crunchy queue that I could put in the "plan to watch" category too.  (And another handful that could be "on hold" due to them disappearing from crunchy in the recent crunchy/funi breakup.)

Now ask me how many books I've read.    Actually, don't.  I wouldn't even know where to start.  I've got over 200 just on the bookshelves in my immediate vicinity as I type this, and even those are just the ones I felt were worthy enough and that I have the shelf space to keep.

Well, they didn't get the bill passed.  Again.  Bosses are saying the furloughs start "next month", which is now only a few days away.  At this point it isn't D vs R, Congress vs Prez, or any of that.  The Ds have said they're willing to pass one of the old R bills that they wouldn't pass before, but the Rs won't go for it now simply because the Ds suggest it.  Spiteful b'tards.  The Senate won't even allow a re-vote on one of their own bills!  As for the Prez, he could simply not veto one of the R's old $200B spending bills if he wanted to end this.  Even if he keeps vetoing, the Congress could override his veto if they wanted.  Lots of ways to end this if anyone at the top was really interested in making it happen.  This is just a bunch of entitled asshats - I refuse to call them "leaders" - playing games with the little peoples' lives and running the country into the ground in the process.

MAGA?  Drain the swamp?  HA!  This is worse than it's ever been.  Even Hillary would have been better.  New meaning for an old acronym: MAGA => my lawyer got arrested.

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.

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

Any 賭ケグルイ fans in the audience?   So is Elon Musk apparently...

Today a co-worker pointed out a 2-second pan-shot in the Cassini episode of the Netflix show "7 days out" that contained him, me, and another guy in the control room where we work.  Now I need to track down my brother so I can borrow his netflix account & see if I can snag a screen shot or something.   

"New Horizons performed as planned today, conducting the farthest exploration of any world in history — 4 billion miles from the Sun," said Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "The data we have look fantastic and we're already learning about Ultima from up close. From here out the data will just get better and better!"

It is going to take a while to play all the data collected during the flyby down to Earth however.  Ultima Thule is as far from Pluto as Saturn is from Earth, and the data rates possible from that far away are in the low kilobits per second.  The many gigabits of data that were recorded on the spacecraft during it's flyby are going to take 20 months - nearly 2 years! - to all be pulled down.  The first low-res pictures are already coming down, with more (and higher-res) scheduled to finish downloading on January 2nd and over the next few weeks and months.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20190101

Just getting home from a swing shift.  Worked a mid shift Friday->Saturday.  I don't know if I want coffee or bed.  Guess I'll watch some anime while I decide. 

Looks like another busy space year coming up!  Not all NASA-related either, which is cool because it means even Trump's Repugs can't screw it all up.

https://www.businessinsider.com/rocket-launches-meteor-showers-2019-space-calendar-2018-11

OMG.. osiris-rex @ bennu, tree on car, thanksgiving, insight (and marco) @ mars, and はやぶさ2 @リュウグウ all in a row.  Then new horizons' fly-by coming up in a couple weeks.  Happy New Year from Ultima Thule!  Love that name btw.  And of course the Christ mass-shopping experience that I (still!) have to work in sometime between now and xmas!  (Making sure I get the gifts that go to my brother's family in Wisconsin out in time.  Gift cards to all!  jk?  I hope.)  I haven't had a chance to watch any anime for weeks!  Next week or two doesn't look promising either.  AAAAAAAaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggthpt!  What would Itami do?  If I'm still sane when next year gets here I'm going to count that a win.  (Might already be too late.    )

What a week.  Went by like it was a couple hours.  Never enough time and always too much to do.  Looking back, it is hard to believe only a week has gone by.

1st picture of a new place on Mars..

Mission briefing on Monday's InSight Mars landing...

Finally getting around to updating my (Synology DS713+) NAS.  Got a lot of catching up to do, including the NAS s/w itself, perl, mariadb server, plex server, and email server, among others.  Updating always makes me nervous.

Discord says that one of my friend is "Playing CKAN". 

Looks like Southern California is on fire again.  Not quite in my area this time, fortunately.  The closest blaze to me personally is the "Hill" fire in Thousand Oaks, which is about 35-40 miles away from me as the crow flies.  However, I have a cousin and aunt in the Camarillo/Oxnard area maybe 5 miles from the flames that have already been evacuated.  (Safely, fortunately.)  Always pretty dicey when our high winds start pushing the fire around.  Weather people said to expects gusts up to 40-50MPH in the valleys today, and up to 70 in the hills.  There's even been sightings of fire tornados reported.. kind of flaming dust-devils created when winds in and around the fire pick up flaming debris and carry it along, lighting new fires as they go.

Very not-fun.  And yes, the "Hill" fire is only a couple miles away from the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks where the shooting took place yesterday.  Tell me again why people keep moving to California?

https://www.wired.com/story/the-terrifying-science-behind-californias-massive-camp-fire/

Got official word today, DAWN is history as far as NASA's deep space network is concerned.  Another one bites the dust...

Quote

ACTION: CDSCC / GDSCC-Documentation / MDSCC-Documentation / DSN-OPS-CHIEFS /

SUBJECT: NAD-DAWN-080 Dawn Decommissioned

NOP:871-070-203

PURPOSE:
 To inform the Network of the decommissioning of the Dawn Spacecraft

INFORMATION:

 Dawn launched 11 years ago, a highly successful mission to explore
 the two largest bodies in the main asteroid belt namely Vesta and Ceres,
 the Dawn spacecraft exhausted all the hydrazine on onboard, reached
 end of mission and will remain in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres for
 decades. Dawn was decommissioned on DOY 305 YR 2018 (Nov 1, 2018).

 The DSN is officially released from supporting Dawn spacecraft.

 The NOPE/NOA team thank the Network for the excellent support. If you have
 any questions and/or concerns, please contact the Dawn NOA/NOPE Team at:
 []

 

( also https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/11/1/18053366/nasa-dawn-spacecraft-dead )

Got my EDL shirt!  24 days to go!

Got a new Mars 2020 baseball cap from the company store.  My Mars Science Laboratory cap is so old it is coming apart.  I've been wearing my MSL cap pretty much daily since launch in 2011 and I really needed a new one.  Not sure I'm a fan of the 2020 patch tho.  Too abstract.  If I didn't already know what it was I probably would never figure it out.  It isn't bad-looking however, and it does have "MARS 2020" embroidered on the side.  Feels secure on my egghead too, which is a big plus all by itself.    I've got a DAWN and an InSight cap that I don't wear much because they're always blowing off in the wind.