efaardvark
-
Posts
2,462 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
219
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Status Updates posted by efaardvark
-
And the hits just keep coming...
Went to get gas for the first time in about a year.
Can you say "sticker shock"? OMG! Nearly $50 for barely 8 gallons! I'm talking "regular" too. They want an arm AND a leg for the high-test stuff.
-
Something you don’t see every day*.. telemetry from spacecraft in Mars orbit lost due lunar occultation.
(*xcept maybe In old episodes of Space: 1999
)
-
Watching Relativity’s first attempt at launching their 3D-printed rocket..
-
And now I’m 56.
I’ve actually had this affliction since the 10th but I didn’t realize it until my phone reminded me about my brother’s birthday yesterday. (Then there’s my mom’s on the 23. Yes, somehow my family wound up with 3 of us in one month.)
-
Lunch was kind of a good news, bad news thing today. Went for "sushi" (sashimi), which is a good thing.. Yum! Was too hungry though and swallowed a bit wrong, which sent some wasabi UP into the back of my nose instead of down where it was supposed to go! That'll sure clear your sinuses! Thought I was going to die!
Moral of the story: treat that stuff with respect and enjoy it properly. Otherwise.. watch out!
-
Hospital called. Mom’s been in for a couple weeks of treatment for pneumonia with IV antibiotics but she’s finally ready to be discharged. However, she also has aphasia (dementia) and after neurological evaluation she’s not well enough in the head to be cleared for anything but transfer to a skilled nursing / long term care facility.
Kind of a good news, bad news thing.
-
Dementia certainly complicates things. My mother developed it as well & it got much worse after my dad passed. And likewise resulted in going into a long term care facility. I’m terrible at encouragement but just be there when you can & do what you can, but also realize there are limits to what a person can do on their own, so ask forhelp when you need it.
-
-
-
This video makes me kind of sad. When I was back in HS and college I used to live in places like Radio Shack that sold basic discrete electronic components. I would buy electronic gadgets just to take them apart for the parts. I still absolutely love rendering stuff down and building my own stuff from the pieces. I would tear through those "warranty void if removed" stickers. When the 7400 series ICs came out (logic gate arrays) I built my own computer - shifter, ALU, CPU, memory, etc. - out of them just for the heck of it. (Only 4 bit registers and 45 words of memory, but it could add, subtract, shift, load, store, and run programs.) When Atmel came out with the AVR series µcontroller I was there with my C cross compiler and an eprom burner connected to my serial port. This even before "arduino" was a thing. I am immensely attracted to places like Akihabera that cater to technophiles. (This is separate to the anime/manga, game, and cosplay culture. (Anime is fun and entertaining, but electronics/gadgetry is on a whole different level for me.) If I had seen the wireless LED display I think I would have done the same thing this guy did.. buy it and take it home to take it apart and see how it works.
Unfortunately here in the US there is no place like Akihabara with its dozens of small electronics parts shops, or more importantly the local customer base and hacker culture to support it/them. We don't even have Radio Shack anymore
-
Ah, another strange parts fan I see? The price is crazy though, 200 bucks for what in the end is not much more than a few coils.
I think a lot of the scene moved online nowadays, when it comes to purchasing as well as community building. It's crazy what potential today's electronics hold and how cheap a lot of things have become (such as small lasers which used to be really expensive, or even drones and 3D printers). I'd say the possible things you can do nowadays has skyrocketed but as you said it's quite difficult to find a community. Unless of course you work in a some kind of engineering field (which I did) but then it moves from doing it for enjoyment to doing it for work which can be a buzzkill.
-
-
Astronaut wings are "classy" (which I don't mean in a good way) but if we're going that route and giving anyone who crosses the Kármán line such a medal then we need a "with cluster" or something extra to distinguish the real ones who actually made orbit from the wannabes who just took an expensive rollercoaster ride. Add another dangly bit for reaching other (lunar, Mars) orbits, and extra enhancements for actually landing on various extraterrestrial bodies.
Silly I know, but if you're going to do it, do it right. Right?
-
Went to visit my mom last night for Saturday evening dinner. She's in a memory care / assisted living situation and when I got there they were doing a karaoke(?) activity. I'm not a great singer myself but this was ... something else.
At least everyone seemed to be having a good time.
-
Apple pie with whipped cream and raspberry syrup. If you have to ask about the calories then you probably don’t want to know but soooo good.
-
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.
-
We're setting up for the annual open house at work. This weekend! Saw a Mars Sample Return vehicle mockup already unpacked as I was leaving & by the end of the week I'm sure they'll have models of all the rovers and a number of spacecraft set up as well. All part of the (somewhat) controlled chaos that is public outreach.
Hope it isn't super hot this weekend. A few years back before the covid shutdown we had a weekend with over 40,000 visitors! Parking was a nightmare and the temperatures got up over 100F, provoking real health concerns since the JPL campus simply isn't set up to accommodate so many people. (Normal employee count is more like 6000. Even less now that a lot of them are still doing the work-from-home thing post-covid.) We had to start requiring tickets to limit the visitor count for safety reasons. Tickets are free but limited in number and tied to specific times to keep the visitor count at any one time from getting out of hand.
-
Updating to Disco Dingo for the new kernel, live patching (don't have to reboot even for a kernel update), app permission controls, general performance improvements, and Mesa gfx lib. Tracker is also apparently installed by default, which is billed as a Spotlight work-alike. I doubt it (nothing beats Spotlight and a good system of tags) but definitely worth a look. Even with the 4.18->5.0 kernel bump 19.04 sounds like a more evolutionary update than revolutionary so it shouldn't be a big deal. At any rate it has been out since April and I haven't heard of any issues, but if you don't hear from me for a while you'll know what happened.
-
SpaceX live feed for today’s Crew Dragon launch..
-
Two new-employee interviews (and associated paperwork) appeared on my schedule today. What part of “I’m taking Wednesday off” did my boss not understand?
-
All I can say is it'd better get off the pad this time!
-
Excalibur's version of LA's Medieval Times.. jousting, sword fighting, and horsemanship while eating a chicken with your hands.
-
I got 100%.
