Travels and Images
Last Week
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Picture of the Week
Sunday 23 June 2002
Sunday. Well, got up late, fed the
cats (they insisted), went back to bed. Despite my best efforts was
up and about at eight. Oh well. I was pretty useless after that, however.
Decided that installing a network card in the laptop was way too much
work. Not enough energy for reading up on Linus Torvalds - I do need to
get
"Just for the Fun of It"
back to my brother though.
Went to the movies with some friends, saw
Lilo & Stitch
. A nice fun heartwarming Sunday movie. Lots of the aliens
were apparently take-off's of classic disney characters... Put an ATI Rage
128 video card into an eight year old's computer - me, I still limp along
with a 2Mb Matrox Millennium II. Of course he works his PC, with all the
games, a lot harder than I do...
Monday 24 June 2002
Monday - it's good to be at work refreshed. Spent
a bit of time looking at some response oddities. No Langley data yet.
Things are moving along here though.
A new torture from Gary's Little Shop of Horrors today - dragging
my finger through putty. It's more painful than it sounds. I also get
to carry it around and torture myself during the day...
A couple of weeks ago Tim and I were plotting the historical record
of the
S&P 500
versus it's current decline. The two curves intersect about the 3rd/4th
quarter of 2003. Tim mentions hearing a talking head on television stating
that he thought the market about 25% overvalued, which would fit in. The
guy was also predicting another real estate crash in Southern California
- not sure if I buy into that. There are just too many people chasing too
few houses right now. ( One of my fellow inmates at the Avenue J Hand
Therapy Center For Idiots With Power Tools is a worker for a developer
in Canyon Country (who stood a little too close to a circular saw) - and
he says things are booming in the half million dollar house market! )
A couple of weeks ago there was a fascinating article in
Science News
, about archeological finds around retreating glaciers. Apparently
they have receded to the point where stuff from 8,000 years ago is being
revealed. There was a picture of a spear, tipped with a stone point fastened
with sinew, that (to me) was essentially indistinguishable from something
made by Amerindians of two hundred years ago! Amazing - it looked a bit
like "whipping' that I might use for fastening myself. Every one in a while
you see something that briefly brings home the reality of the past.
But this stuff only lasts a few days unprotected in the air, and there are
a lot of glaciers, so it's a race for the scientists. Wolves are
perfectly willing to eat ten thousand year old meat, as well.
Some pesky commie from Red China is trying to hack into my PC tonight
it seems (I traced a couple of attempts). Hah! I have a Great (Fire)Wall
of my own!!
Tuesday 25 June 2002
Tuesday - a busy day. Helping a friend with a
paper, and looking at the CFD results. early days yet. I need to
get going on the parallel processing, this is slow.
Wednesday 26 June 2002
When you are keeping a weblog, and
get busy, you start to feel guilty if you miss a day or two.
I'm not sure why - after all, it's not that it's a job, or that lives depend
on it, and certainly no-one has complained (thanks...I guess). Still...
Silly season, someone called it. The idea of the pledge of allegiance
being unconstitutional. I think that we have do have a state religion in
this country and it is the courts. When they say "jump" people usually
say "how high?". It started well, activist
courts with the best of intentions, and good has been done, but once the
taste of power was in the judges' mouths... Any document, be it the Constitution,
the King James Bible, the Torah, the Koran, can be interpreted in such a
way as to control even the smallest aspect of life - if the courts
are willing to slice and dice the thing with enough interpretation
.
It's a bit like Galadriel and the Ring of Power - only she was smart
enough to refuse it.
Thursday 27 June 2002
The dinner was at the local Red Lobster.
I had the Pacific Snapper and a Fosters, and it was pretty good. After
dinner a couple of friends and I went to see
"The Sum of All Fears"
at the local cineplex.
Not bad, but the lead actor Ben Affleck was not really up to the job
- he exuded neither the ex-Marine toughness, or the CIA acumen &
intelligence that John Ryan has in the books. Alec Baldwin in
The Hunt for Red October
is my favorite screen "John Ryan", with Harrision Ford in
"Patriot Games
" and
"Clear and Present Danger"
being a close runner up. On the other hand, the "John Clark" in this
movie was close to what I imagined Tom Clancy's character being like.
My friends stayed to watch another movie, Spiderman, but I went home.
It was late, and I'd seen it before...
Friday 28 June 2002
Friday - a busy day. Still looking
at, interpreting and trying to improve the CFD results. Met with my management
about these, and other issues. Met a bunch of undergraduate students here
for the summer - they look like a bright bunch, though only 2 of 8 were aerospace
engineering students. The NASA engineer talking to them mentioned that because
of the graying of NASA that roughly 30% of it's technical personnel would
leave in the next five years. Because of the lean lean 70's and 80's there
aren't a lot of personnel in the pipeline to take up the slack.
More hand therapy - the finger just doesn't bend. Bah.
The space shuttle Endeavor left Edward's for Florida this morning,
piggy backed on top of a 747. Because the heat shield tiles are very fragile
they cannot fly through rain or any form of precipitation and have to wait
for a clear path. Usually there is another transport flying an hour or so
ahead of them to check the path. When the combined vehicle rolls by you
it's an amazing sight! Huge!! This is of the Discovery from a year or so
ago:
Saturday 29 June 2002
Saturday - feeling a little
under the weather, alas. Got up, did a little editing on a friend's thesis,
talked to some other friends, and then basically lazed the day away. I feel
guilty...
Picture of the Week
Photo Notes:
This is the one of the many racoon's that hang around my
fathers house - this shot was actually taken late Christmas Day 2001.
This being week 25 of the year, it seemed appropriate somehow. My fathers
dog doesn't really care for raccoon's using the roof as a pathway, and
lets her displeasure be known by loud and outraged barking...
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