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Lancaster Weather

Saturday 9 November 2002

Saturday - up to see my Dad. Not too bad a drive, despite the rain. No accidents that I could see, though I passed a couple of cars without tail lights - really just accidents waiting to happen in those conditions. My cars' cruise control went out in Bakersfield, so I had to do without for the rest of the trip. It's gone out before, but always has come back within minutes. Hmmm, time for a new car?

Dad and I went by to check on the bridge construction up here - not a lot of progress visible to my uninformed eye. We tried to stop for lunch in Crockett, but they apparently don't have anything but a pizza parlour...

Friday 8 November 2002

Friday - working on the parallel processing. That's hard enough, but when the compiler can't understand the environment settings, well, it gets even more fustrating. Oh well, eventually I figured that part out, and went on to new and equally frustrating PVM problems dealing with starting the slave processes.

It rained quite a bit during the night, and my car defroster doesn't seem to work correctly - rather than clear the windshield it fogs the glass even more. I had to turn on the air conditioner eventually - on a cold and rainy day not necessarily the preferred method of defrost!

Thursday 7 November 2002

Thursday - dinner at Applebee's. I had a nice steak - which someone kindly ordered for me because I arrived late. Over dinner we discussed the possibility of rain - not trusting the weather people I offered up a five dollar bet that we would not get an 1/8" of rainfall or more in the next seventy two hours. Fortunately no one took me up on it - rain was falling within minutes of finishing dinner!

For those interested, the X-Prize is a $10 Million dollar prize to the first private, non-govermental, entity, to acheive manned, safe, re-usable suborbital flight. XCOR is one of the contestants, heavily favored I believe.

On an associated note, NASA has announced a revision of their Space Launch Iniative. It seems that now that they want to build a spaceplane again, after cancelling several projects in the last year. Space advocates don't know whether to cheer or scream. Yes it needs doing, but if NASA isn't going to stay the course, all it does is dilute the impact of things like the X-Prize and make it hard if not impossible to get private funding.

Wednesday 6 November 2002

Wednesday - I'm pretty tired today, so instead of a lot of talk, here is a shot from the night before the Edwards AFB Air Show 2002 - this is the XCOR rocket plane. As far as I know it is the only working rocket plane in the world, though other X-prize contestants may have something...

xcor rocket plane

XCOR rocket plane on display, Edwards AFB, October 2002

Tuesday 5 November 2002

Tuesday - election day. Lots of wins for the "mommy state" propositions apparently. It also look's like the DP's " pep rally funeral" has backfired in Minnesota.

Last night, as I went out to my car, there was a coyote waiting. Probably because I carried a plastic bag the rustled a bit he circled me, once, twice, before loping off into the twilight. It's the closest I've ever been to a wild coyote, and it was apparently as interested in me as I was in it.

My friends daughter called to say that she got an "A" on her algebra test! Hurrah!! I helped with a little tutoring, but have to give most of the credit to smart young brains...

The boss called, someone else found the bug, and I'm officially assigned to parallelizing the code. Wow. Be careful what you wish for - if you really annoy the gods they may grant your wish!

Monday 4 November 2002

Monday - worked late. Debugging.

Sunday 3 November 2002 Sunday - A nice relaxing day. The game between the Oakland Raiders and San Francisco 49er's was won by the 49ers'. But the overall impression was of two teams playing at about 85% of their abilities. Kind of a yawner.

A friend while yard saleing saw a house with a lot of computers. I went by to check it out and bought a bunch of books at really good prices ( $1 for an O'reilly!) and a couple of monitors. The monitors were both bad and had to be returned. It's really disheartening when that happens - oh well.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Halloween. Spirits rise and flit through the night...

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