efaardvark
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Status Updates posted by efaardvark
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Just found a place that has "Science Fiction and Fantasy", and "Sword and Sorcery" genres. WTF?? Why bother to have two separate categories if there's no meaningful separation? "Science Fiction" IS NOT the same thing as "Fantasy", and it is annoying as heck to have to dig through the one to find the other!
No name or link because I don't want to risk sending them any clicks.
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"Fantasy" is not-real, by definition. "Science" is real, by definition. If I'm looking for something not-real then I am definitely, logically, absolutely NOT looking for something real, and vice versa. I will certainly allow that bad SF can be considered fantasy, but that's generally the author's fault not the genre. There's also stuff like Sword Art Online that certainly looks like fantasy, even though it is actually science fiction.
That said, as a buyer I can't use a label like "science fiction and fantasy" in any meaningful way. Lumping them together is simply being lazy and/or ignorant. They might as well be just saying, "Here's a book. You figure it out."
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Well, they might have a point. After all, you might need quite a bit of fantasy to believe that something was actually meant to be science fiction
Also, with 'alternative facts' being a thing nowadays, who knows what's 'real'
Seriously though, personally I'd expect quite something different from the 'fantasy' genre than from the 'science fiction' genre. Science fiction being something that while it might seem like magic still being able to be described in some way by natural sciences (and often related to some 'tech stuff'), while fantasy being something that functions on a completely different level (and often related to some flashy 'magic stuff').
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I think I found the original...
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@LonelyPoet I don’t think so either.
Still something of an ancient document tho.. the last time I was there was on a class field trip in 5th or 6th grade.
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Ever since last week when I searched youtube for Beat Saber clips YT has been "suggesting" more, and dang if I'm not clicking on them.
Latest find..
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But it's a dry heat.
Or as Bill the Cat would say, "Ack, Thbbft!"
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Well that was close...
https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2020 QG;old=0;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=1#cad
Closest approach was 2,900km and we didn't even see it until 6 hours after it went by.
Probably 3-6m in diameter (about 1/3rd the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor) and travelling at 12.4km/second. Definitely would have made some noise and got people's attention.
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The size was a factor, and also the trajectory. It came in from the sunward side. It was both smaller and slower than Chelyabinsk so in terms of energy this was probably less than a quarter of that. Though that one was maybe up to 500kilotons so even that much would have been significant. The first atomic bombs were "only" around 10-20kiltotons.
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Checked the work schedule & this month I'm only scheduled to work 28 extra hours. I even get the holiday off. Not as bad as I was expecting.
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No, that's for the month. There's 4x40=160 hours in a work-month so 28 extra hours in a month is like 47 hrs per week. Basically working 6 days per week instead of 5.
A lot of the days are 12hr shifts tho, so I actually wind up with about the same number of days off. IOW I get to keep my "weekends". Yay. OTOH my weekends will be th and fri instead of sat and sun so I'll be a bit out of sync with the regular workweek world.
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UTC 2020-01-01 00:00:01 .. year rollover bug caused all our interfaces that connect our NOC to external users to core dump and refuse to restart. So far I'm not a fan of the new decade.
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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.
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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.
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Sooo hungry. And hot. Needed to run a bunch of errands this weekend so I ran out the door early w/out breakfast, then the place I picked for lunch was too crowded so I just skipped it. Between that and the 107F temp... finally done and home but
, 
, and need 
Think I'm just going to hide here in the air conditioning and eat 2 sandwiches.
On the plus side I did manage to take care of all my errands so tomorrow is clear. Maybe some anime? Games? Reading?
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Too much to do but still dedicating a few cycles to monitoring this morning's SpaceX hop in the background ...
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2nd try was a RUD on landing. Very Kerbal. Looks like it ran out of fuel just a few yards short of the landing pad...
Elon tweeted: "Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!" Not a successful test unless you find a problem, right?
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So chatgpt is scoring better than the average college student on college SATs. Why does this not surprise me?
Better up your game humans!
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Had to let someone go at work today.
Nothing like starting the weekend on a eft-up note...
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I've been "working" on my computer today, just cleaning up and doing some file maintenance. Found some *OLD* text files from an online game called Dragon's Gate. DGate was a text-only multiplayer game hosted by GE's "GEnie" online service back in the early 90s. Pre-internet. Pre-MMORPG. Dialup-only. It may have even predated Compuserve and AOL. One of the files shows a 2400 baud connection at the beginning.
I think this may have been the first multiplayer online game I ever played.
Not for long though. Long distance phone calls cost around $0.25/minute so playing for an hour was like $15. This back when gas was like $1/gallon so that'd be around $50/hr at today's prices. I knew a trick to call through a chain of "local" BBSs to pay about 1/4th that, but it was still expensive. Especially for a lowly student whose only regular income was a monthly allowance!
Blast from the past...
Welcome to... ...........|\...................../|............. ........./ \..|\__..__/|......./ \........... ........./ / \.\ _ \/ _ /....../ \............. _ .........../ / / \.(I)\/(I)....../ / \ \........... (_) ..........| | | / \\/(oo)\/...../ // |\ \ ............. ..........| | | | \|V,,V|\... / / | || \|........... ............| | | | / |A^^A| \../ / || || ||........... ......../ / / | | TTTT__ \/ /| || || ||/\ /\ /\..../ / / / / |______/ /| \ \ || || \/ \ /\ /\ /\ /\/ \../ / / / / /\_____/ |/ /__\ \ \ \ \ / \ / \ /\ / \ \/\ / / \.| | | / / /\______/ \ \__| \ \ \ \/ \/ \/ \ \/ \| | | | | |\______ __ \_ \__|_| \ / \ / \/ | | ____ /\______ ____ \_ \ | / / \ | |/ /\_____ / \ \__ \ | \ |/ | |\______ | | \___ \| D R A G O N ' S | |\______ | | \_ _ ___/| |\______ | | /\ \ ___ G A T E / \_/ \ \________\_ _\____/ / \__\_| \ ___/ __ __/ / __/ /__ \__/ __ \__ _/ / \ / ___/ / ___/ \ / \ |__ | / |/|/ |/|/ \__ \ \ | Usage charges started -
“Is this a Tolkien character or the name of an antidepressant”? Harder than it sounds!
https://antidepressantsortolkien.now.sh/
(with apologies to Tolkien fans everywhere of course)
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I hereby nominate "necrobotics" as the word for the day..
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/inflating-spider-corpse-creates-robotic-claw-game-of-nightmares/ -
Taking a break from anime this week. I miss Carl Sagan.
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The plan for today was fixing the toilet and putting up shelves. Fortunately both objectives were completed successfully.
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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.
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Seems the other shoe has dropped at work. Employees have been instructed that the Lab will be physically closed and everyone should plan to attend a virtual meeting with management where they'll discuss the (lack of a) federal budget and what that means for NASA centers like JPL. Afterwards around 600 employees will be let go. (That's ~10% of the Lab's total workforce.) This all according to an email from Lab management earlier today.
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I hope you're not affected by this sad news. It always amazes me the lengths employers will go to to avoid using the "R" word, they use terms like "let go" which makes one wonder if they've been holding on to people. Then there's the wonderful phrase one of my former employers used "we're offering you the opportunity to take early retirement".
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@Animedragon Thanks. We got an informal pep-talk from our "group soop" (group supervisor) after the official email from upper management came out. The soop said he said that he doesn't think that the DSN (deep space network) that I'm affiliated with will be hit too hard. We've taken cuts in previous years and we're already at our limits. Any more and we'd be cutting bone. We also have a lot of customers and commitments, including with high-profile ones like JAXA and ESA.
The counter argument to that is that a Mars sample return has been at or near the top of the planetary scientists' wish list in NASA's decadal survey for literally decades yet that has been one of the programs hit the hardest. This is all driven by DC politics too, so logic need not necessarily apply.
Well, I'll know later Wednesday afternoon. One way or another.
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Roses are red
Roses are blue
Depending on their velocity
Relative to you
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Those Japanese and their wacky anthropomorphisms...
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The question was posed by one of the younger crew at work today, "Why do they call it 'spam' anyway?".
To which I of course replied, "well, you know that Monty Python sketch? That's where it comes from."
To which he replied, "what's Monty Python?".
Oi.. don't they teach kids anything in school these days?!
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So "USB4" is different than "USB 4". Really now. Has murketing really come to this?
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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.
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