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Travels and Images
WEEK 12 2005
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Saturday 26 March
2005
Saturday
- the tax thing went OK. It looks as though I need more deductions
though. Cats do not count - I asked. They said a lot of people ask and
the answer is always "no".
The weather has improved - more sun and warmth, less wind. Still too sick to mow the lawn, but much better than I was.
Friday 25 March
2005
Friday - off to the tax man tomorrow - I am trying to get my stuff together, despite the fever.
I watched the season finale - possibly the series finale - of Stargate SG-1, which was fun. In a different timeline the characters are less heroic - goofs and geeks actually, and can be killed off. Heh. Stargate Atlantis also had a cliffhanger ending - I suppose it's the end of the season there as well, and Battlestar Galactica
has finally found Cobol, lost planet of the Gods. Cobol - that's funny.
Even funnier if they called it FORTRAN, but that might have been too
over the top.
I understand that the shipwrecked Irwin Johnson has been rescued from the shore, and towed to safety.
Phoebe as a kitten, July 2001.
Thursday 24 March 2005
Thursday
- still under the weather.
I stayed with some friends down in Oxnard on Sunday night. We decided
to have lunch on Monday there, then I had to head back to Lancaster.
Our choices came down to two - a nice sandwich shop on the beach in
Oxnard, or a burger place in Ventura. Since I'd already been to the
sandwich shop we decided to go to Ventura. Too bad - we missed all the
excitement! It seems that a ship, the Irving Johnson ( Magic Johnson's
real name, by the way ) ran aground at lunchtime
at Oxnard. No-one seems quite sure how it happened, but California has
been hit by a number of storms recently and it's possible that the
channel silted up. Fortunately no-one was seriously injured during
rescues of the crew and passengers.
It's a shame - it's a beautiful new square rigged ship, wooden hulled,
built in 2003 - there is a description of a spring break cruise on the
Johnson here, and some more pictures here.
Wednesday 23 March 2005
Wednesday - I've come down with some sort
of flu - headache, congestion, the whole shebang. I dodged this stuff
all winter, but it has finally caught up to me. But it's at a bad time;
I've things to do, places to go, people to meet....
It looks like Congress is looking into the budget cuts on the aeronautics side of NASA: Congress Quizzes NASA On Cuts in Aeronautics Spending.
A review of the Flight of the Phoenix remake, by Mark Steyn. It apparently stinks. I suspected that it would. I'm not intending to see it at the theater, perhaps when it comes out on DVD.
It is pouring out. Yesterday
we had massive rain and windstorms which continued throughout the
night, today the wind is less and the deluges, though strong, of much
less duration.
Tuesday 22
March 2005
Tuesday - sad news. Dale Reed, a co-worker
of mine when I was a contractor out at NASA Dryden has passed away.
Dale was a great guy - his office was near mine and we'd talk - and each time
I'd learn a lot. A remarkable fellow, friendly, kindly and outgoing,
a superb engineer, everyone I've spoken to has been saddened by this loss. There is a
brief biography and memoriam of Dale at this web page.
Dale and I spent some time fooling about with my digital
camera, back in 2000. This was taken out at Dryden,
when we were both working for AS&M.
Monday 21 March 2005
Monday - back from Oxnard. I had a visit
from a friend in the early evening, and ended up tutoring someone in
Calculus when I got back - fun stuff. Integration by Parts
was what they were working on and I was pleasantly surprised to see how
much had stuck in my own brain. As the Wolfram page linked noted:
The procedure does not always succeed, since some choices of u may lead to more complicated integrals than
the original.
Integrals can be tricky. That comment at Wolfram Research immediately
reminded me of a Richard Feymann story. He writes in hs book "What do you care what other people think?" of succumbing to hubris at Princeton:
One time I boasted, "I can do by other methods any integral anybody else needs contour integration to do"
So Paul puts
up this tremendous dam integral he had obtained by starting out with a
complex function that he knew the answer to, taking out the real part
of it and leaving only the complex part. He had unwrapped it so that it
was only possible by contour integration! He was always deflating me like that. He was a very smart fellow.
Sunday 20 March
2005
Sunday - This was my three-year blogging
anniversary. I've updated the header so that it's easier to get to the
posts of three year's past. I had intended updating other things a bit, changing
the style, colors, etc, but just haven't gotten around to it.
