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efaardvark

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Status Updates posted by efaardvark

  1. 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

  2. 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/

    1. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Been watching the satellite feed (via https://firemap.sdsc.edu/ )  Looks pretty scary south and west of me.  Hopefully the winds will stay down overnight. A bit of moisture would be nice too, but probably not going to happen.  At least we're not in the middle of a summer heat wave.

      785098831_Screenshotfrom2018-11-0920-59-59.thumb.png.7f2b991266b9cd2936eafaa89c925154.png

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

     

     

  4. Molten salt nuclear fission is one of my favorite technologies that actually exist.  If there's such a thing as steampunk nuclear, this is it.  The guys at ORNL actually built one way back in the 50s.  (1954 to be precise.)  No high-tech here, at least by modern standards.  Too bad Verne didn't know about it.  Forget coal and sodium.. make the Nautilus nuke-powered! 

    https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/technology/2019/nuclear-goes-retro-much-greener-outlook

  5. My new air conditioner came!  Now maybe I'll be able to sleep at night.

  6. Not exactly full-spec Nerve Gear, though that's probably for the best all things considered.

    BTW, I think the techs should have removed the log out option, just for giggles.  :D

     

     

     

  7. 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.  :)  )

  8. Playing single-player "deadly" mode with large biomes & haven't found sheep. Forgot about the phantoms....

    2018-07-19_23_38_43.thumb.png.6364cab640304d2e1376a6ad35a30d7b.png

  9. Popcorn time..  Though I'll likely never personally work on the guts of my car  I do think it is fun and educational to see someone else tear into it.

  10. Pretty windy here today.  Beware low-flying trees, and parts thereof...

    IMG_3828.thumb.JPG.f6e39ea0d80a5cbe48fff1f7f02ca63c.JPGIMG_3822.thumb.JPG.a0bd412ed6c14fd79bf2983aaa01234d.JPG

    1. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      11yo car + frame damage = totaled.  Guess I'm going car shopping this weekend.    😿

  11. Probably the closest thing irl to McCaffrey's fire lizards... draco volans.

    spacer.png

  12. Remember the robotic hounds in Fahrenheit 451?  If not, go read the book.  Preferably before the Firemen come.

  13. RIP the NASA Kepler probe.  Kepler found 2,681 planets beyond our solar system.  Thanks to Kepler we now know that there are more planets than stars, at least in our part of the universe.

    https://www.apnews.com/63450c292ae849fc8ad0fe49c4da8c5c

    1. Beocat

      Beocat

      I just heard the same news. Losing Hubble and lost Kepler =/ we need to fund our space programs!

    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Probably going to lose DAWN here pretty soon too.  They're almost out of attitude-control fuel.

      But TESS is already up.  TESS was originally planned as a follow-on to Kepler, but since Kepler lasted so long TESS has already launched and started sending us data.  (LOTS of data!  Its highest data rate is 125Mbits/sec, the highest data rate NASA has used to date for any of its probes.  The first downlink the spacecraft dumped over 50GB on us here in the DSN in just over an hour!)

      After TESS there's already the James Webb Space Telescope being worked on.  They haven't launched yet though.  There will also be a lot of competition for viewing time on JWST since it isn't only a planet-finder.

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

     

  15. Sliced my thumb on one hand AND stabbed a finger on the other in two separate incidents while cutting up a cardboard box.  Normally not this clumsy but today... just put the knife down and walk away.

    1. Beocat

      Beocat

      No box cutter for you!!!!

       

      😾

  16. So back in October a tree fell on my old car, a 2007-vintage Prius hybrid, necessitating the purchase of a new car.  I liked the old one a lot, but I always wished it'd had the option of charging the battery to function more like an electric vehicle.  I'm not sold on EV's due to the so-called range anxiety, and EVs are still pretty expensive anyway, so I didn't want a full EV just yet.  (I'm not actually worried about the range so much as the recharging times.  I'm always thinking of those people on the east cost when hurricane Sandy hit and everyone was told to evacuate at least 500 miles inland to avoid flooding and high winds.  People with gas cars could manage it, but even the best EVs can only go a few hundred miles before needing several hours to fully recharge.  Doh!)

    So anyway my new car is a also a hybrid, but this one is pluggable, with an electric range range that is plenty to cover the commute before the gas engine kicks in and it starts behaving more like my old car.  If I plug it in overnight at least every other day I pretty much never need gas, and I've been pretty good about plugging it in.  I'm approaching the 1,000-mile mark on the odometer and just recently dropped below the halfway point on the tank of gas I got from the dealership when I bought the car.

    Yep.. driving daily since October and I haven't had to visit a gas station even once!  :D  

    IMG_4188.thumb.JPG.4e4037a7db4ebdbe64c1eada10d6ad34.JPG

     

  17. So now we have a new chiweenie "dog" - aka Mexican hotdog, aka German taco - in our household.  (Chihuahua/Dachshund mix.)  Cute as heck, and good lap dog for my 80yo mom, but I'd have liked a real dog.  Preferably a pit (like our last), or at least a beagle or boxer.  Something I could take hiking anyway.  This would just be bait for the coyotes and mountain lions, even the hawks.  4 billion years to create wolves, and then humans came along and did this.   smh  :D 

    1. Show previous comments  1 more
    2. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Our last dog never really got the hang of swimming either.  She liked getting wet, and she would do a sort of log-ride splash thing where she'd run full-tilt into the water and splash everything/everyone nearby, but she didn't like paddling around at all.  If her feet couldn't touch the bottom she'd freak and try to get out of the water.

       

      This is what a chiweenie looks like:

      IMG_3770.thumb.JPG.a6d81725db41cffaad7f6d3a23abc6db.JPGIMG_3774.thumb.JPG.456bdb46f017b7d3a8282882b47d0d03.JPG

      8 weeks old so still a bit of growing to do, but not going to get too much bigger.

    3. Beocat

      Beocat

      Oh my....that is cute! 

    4. Wodahs

      Wodahs

      yep im in to bigger dogs too , generally shepherd X's and the latest one (getting real old) thinks she's a lap dog the size of yours too , spends more time in side than me when im home

       

  18. Still no free time, but at least taxes are finally done.  Hopefully I'll have an hour or two this weekend for some games or anime.  Been so busy I haven't even had time to stop at the library* & replenish my reading stack either.

     

    (*yes, libraries still exist!)

     

  19. TFW you realize that you have browser tabs open for both the Mycroft project page and the GLaDOS wikipedia entry.  😱

  20. TGIF, on a Wednesday.

    1. Seshi

      Seshi

      For me it’s Thursday 🤣

  21. TGIF.

    That is all. :)

    1. Wodahs

      Wodahs

      its actually Saturday arvo here and TF I'm not working today

  22. The glamorous world of "realtime" space flight operations: manually copying a bunch of (year) 2004 data from a bunch of DVDs back onto the system for the SPITZER project (aka SIRTF).

    375023799_FullSizeRender11.thumb.jpg.ab56c6a673cb079027e61f5e282a5a65.jpg

     

    (For those wondering.. yes, that's linux.. Gnome, CentOS 7, kernel 3.10, on generic Dell/x86_64.  Not exactly cutting edge, but it gets the job done.)

    1. LonelyPoet

      LonelyPoet

      Is that your desktop? 

    2. Seshi

      Seshi

      Damn, that’s some government tech for ya

    3. efaardvark

      efaardvark

      Quote

      Is that your desktop? 

      @LonelyPoet  My boss would say yes.  However, the cable monster that lives behind the monitors would probably disagree.  :D

  23. The physics nerd in me loled..

    66198767_1260440734137653_5601041652140474368_n.jpg.7990f85fee628969b9abccedaf811c77.jpg

  24. The plan for today was fixing the toilet and putting up shelves.  Fortunately both objectives were completed successfully.

    1. rlly_riah

      rlly_riah

      I hate building shelves. When I moved into my place here I had no furniture forever because I didn't feeeeeel like building itttt. Lol!! I procrastinated so hard. I now have shelves for all my books and such though...

    2. Beocat

      Beocat

      Erm...I still need to fix the toilet at home. Was too depressed this weekend to do it. My car's engine, which I went out of my way to properly maintain with all the recommended maintenance (even the optional crap) has somehow rusted out from the inside (essentially, someone didn't tighten up on the oil filter last time and a bunch of salt slush from the road got sucked up into it lubricating my engine, pretty sure my car insurance is going to laugh in my face with this one and the mechanics aren't admitting responsibility either). Guess I'll do it Saturday night.  At least my husband doesn't actually use that bathroom anymore. 

  25. The rover project folks brought us operations people an end-of-mission cake..

    IMG_4229.thumb.JPG.249181c4961a6773eb905bf5cc87f913.JPG

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