Once a legitimate blog. Now just a collection of memes 'n menz.
The surface area of the planet Mars is almost identical to the surface area of dry land on the Earth. What this means is that even if we begin human exploration in my lifetime, it will still take hundreds—if not thousands—of years to properly explore the entire planet; a commitment in time and resources I cannot see humanity making, short of being faced with its own extinction.
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One of the tasks I was dreading upon returning to Arizona was going to the DMV. While compared to Colorado (where drivers’ licenses and vehicle registration are administered by two completely separate entities requiring separate visits to different offices) Arizona is heaven sent; it’s a one-stop-shopping experience.
It turns out that it wasn’t all that bad. I had feared that because I did not have my Title, it would turn into a major hassle to get the car registered. (I paid off the car a little over a year after we’d moved to Denver, and the finance company mailed the Title to my old Arizona address after the USPS forwarding order had expired, so I never received it.) Turns out the only issue I had was needing a smog certificate before getting a duplicate Title from Arizona. Once I had that in hand, it was a breeze. I got the Title, re-registered the car in Arizona, and even got my AZ Driver’s License in about 30 minutes.
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I weep for our species. Imagine where we’d be if we weren’t wasting our resources fighting over ideology and bronze-age fairy tales.
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The latest and greatest from New Horizons:
Four images from New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers), twice the resolution of the single-image view taken on July 13.
The best is yet to come!
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“Amazing delivery, and refreshing message! But, the core of his message is homosexuality is a sin and a shame, but we shouldn’t judge that sin because we’re all sinners. I reject the idea that homosexuality is a sin or a disorder at all. But he can’t come out and say that without admitting the Bible is wrong. And if it’s wrong about that, then the whole ball of yarn unravels.” ~ Crewman
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That’s the phrase I have to use to describe our return to Phoenix. Things are familiar—yet different. I find myself straining old, unused neural pathways to remember where things are and what the best route is to reach them.
That being said, my first impression upon being back is seeing how incredibly easy it is to get around. Compared to Denver, even having to go completely across town is a breeze.
Have I mentioned that I can breathe again? It’s funny, but it seemed like the altitude had only started affecting me within the last year or so, and it wasn’t simply because of being out of shape and having to climb two flights of stairs to get to our apartment multiple times a day.
Most—if not all—of our old haunts are still in business, although as one can imagine, subtle and not-so-subtle changes have occurred over the past four years. It’s also fun seeing how memory has played tricks on me; things that I could’ve sworn were in one location are actually somewhere totally different.
When I was in Phoenix briefly two years ago to attend to my dad’s end-of-life affairs, Phoenix felt alien; it wasn’t home any more. Driving past my old apartment felt like I was viewing it through someone else’s eyes.
That’s different now. Not only does Phoenix now feel like home, in many ways it feels like we never left. But then I’m confronted with something that has wildly changed since our exodus, and I’m reminded that Denver was not, just a bad dream.
Okay, I’m not being fair. We had some very good experiences there, and the first winter was kind of fun. Because of its location, we got to see several things (Devil’s Tower, Mt. Rushmore) that we probably wouldn’t have otherwise. But on the whole, I’m glad to be gone from the place. It was time. Cosmically speaking, I tell myself the entire reason we went there was to get Sammy.
And speaking of the lovable little furball, he’s adjusting to life here more quickly than I could’ve imagined. He loves having a yard to run in and doesn’t seem to mind the toasty temperatures. He does seem to have developed a garden hose addiction, however.
If I have any regrets about leaving Denver, it was that we didn’t get a chance to take advantage of the relatively quick drive up to Yellowstone. It’s still a bit of a hike to get there from Denver, but nothing compared to driving from Phoenix. Then again, the west coast is so much easier to get to now.
Fingers crossed on the job front. I had what I consider to be an excellent interview with a state agency yesterday (as well as meeting with a placement agency that was a complete waste of my time). They liked me, I liked them, but I am up against one other candidate. I’m not going to stress; I know in my heart of hearts that we’re supposed to be here and work will be forthcoming.
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…when you say #SandraBland deserved to be arrested for “being combative”.
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While data and pictures will be downloading for the next sixteen months, NASA’s New Horizons probe already provided humanity with some astoundingly tantalizing photos of Pluto and it’s main moon, Charon.
What strikes me the most about the color photos of Pluto is the color. They look like antique tintype prints. Even when I see the planet with the dark grey Charon immediately next to it, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this is the planet’s actual color.
What’s even more amazing to me is the fact that with the level of sunlight falling on these worlds and the speed at which New Horizons sped past that NASA was able to get any images whatsoever.
Science is cool.
And the fact that they can get closeups of the surface of this quality is nothing short of astounding—with even higher resolution images coming that will download over the coming months.
If Pluto weren’t fascinating enough on it’s own, Charton is revealing just as many surprises.
For example, how do you get a peak rising out of a circular depression? No one seems to know. What it looks like to me is that a space rock came in very, very slowly, and almost had a soft landing on an extremely plastic surface. Not traveling fast enough to form a traditional crater/ray structure, but fast enough to impact the surface and only slightly deform the surrounding terrain.
All I know is that after seeing these few images, it’s obvious that humanity will have to return at some point for an even better look. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, but it still fires the imagination—especially when you consider that we didn’t get any sharp photos of Pluto’s much more interesting face:
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The day has finally come. The truck is being loaded. In a few short hours we’ll be on the road to Phoenix.
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Several weeks ago a couple birds decided to take up residence on our balcony. They built a pretty impressive little home on the sprinkler head. It’s been quiet up there, but today while cleaning off the balcony I noticed several broken eggshells below the nest and happened to look up.
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From NASA:
Science Operations to Resume for On Time Encounter
The recovery from a July 4 anomaly that sent the New Horizons spacecraft into safe mode is proceeding according to plan, with the mission team preparing to return to normal science operations on time July 7.
Mission managers reported during a July 6 media teleconference that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft resumed operations on its main computer overnight. The sequence of commands for the Pluto flyby have now been uplinked to the spacecraft, and full, as planned science observations of Pluto, its moons and the solar winds will resume at 12:34 p.m. EDT July 7.
The quick response to the weekend computer glitch assures that the mission remains on track to conduct the entire close flyby sequence as planned, including the July 14 flyby observations of Pluto.
“We’re delighted with the New Horizons response to the anomaly,” said Jim Green, NASA’s director of planetary science. “Now we’re eager to get back to the science and prepare for the payoff that’s yet to come.”
The investigation into the anomaly that caused New Horizons to enter safe mode on July 4 has confirmed that the main computer was overloaded due to a timing conflict in the spacecraft command sequence. The computer was tasked with receiving a large command load at the same time it was engaged in compressing previous science data. The main computer responded precisely as it was programmed to do, by entering safe mode and switching to the backup computer.
Thirty observations were lost during the three-day recovery period, representing less than one percent of the total science that the New Horizons team hoped to collect between July 4 and July 16. None of the mission’s most critical observations were affected. There’s no risk that this kind of anomaly could happen again before flyby, as no similar operations are planned for the remainder of the Pluto encounter.
“This is a speed bump in terms of the total return we expect to receive from this historic mission,” said Dr. Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator with the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. “When we get a clear look at the surface of Pluto for the very first time, I promise, it will knock your socks off.”
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Especially with the New Horizons project going on for nearly a decade and now being so close to Pluto…
From NASA:
The New Horizons spacecraft experienced an anomaly the afternoon of July 4 that led to a loss of communication with Earth. Communication has since been reestablished and the spacecraft is healthy.
The mission operations center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, lost contact with the unmanned spacecraft — now 10 days from arrival at Pluto — at 1:54 p.m. EDT, and regained communications with New Horizons at 3:15 p.m. EDT, through NASA’s Deep Space Network.
During that time the autonomous autopilot on board the spacecraft recognized a problem and – as it’s programmed to do in such a situation – switched from the main to the backup computer. The autopilot placed the spacecraft in “safe mode,” and commanded the backup computer to reinitiate communication with Earth. New Horizons then began to transmit telemetry to help engineers diagnose the problem.
A New Horizons Anomaly Review Board (ARB) was convened at 4 p.m. EDT to gather information on the problem and initiate a recovery plan. The team is now working to return New Horizons to its original flight plan. Due to the 9-hour, round trip communication delay that results from operating a spacecraft almost 3 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) from Earth, full recovery is expected to take from one to several days; New Horizons will be temporarily unable to collect science data during that time.
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It’s not just the wall-to-wall clutter. It’s also the anxiety. Once again I find myself stepping off that cliff, trusting in the Universe that employment will be quickly forthcoming once we’re back in Phoenix. I’m somewhat reassured that I’ve been getting lots of emails from recruiters after simply updating my profiles on the various job boards, but there isn’t really much I can do about any of it until I’m actually there—other than acknowledge their receipt and ask their patience. (So far, everyone’s fine with my timeline and have told me to get in touch once I’m there.)
I’ve also reached out to previous coworkers, who have forwarded my resume to their respective managers. Hopefully networking the good relationships I built over the seven years I spent at Abrazo will come in handy before I have to do any cold interviews.
In any case, we’re down to less than a week, and I just want all this—at the very least, the physical moving part—to be over.
Next Saturday at this time we’ll be packed and on the road, beginning the next chapter of our lives with Denver and it’s bipolar weather and heinous drivers rapidly fading into memory.
Four years ago we wanted an adventure. We got one. It’s now time to go home.
The dogs are anxious; they know something’s up. Normally well trained, they’re both peeing everywhere now. Sammy is barking at every sound outside, and even the heretofore quiescent Bobo has developed a voice.
My stress is manifesting in the return of an old friend I haven’t seen in nearly seven years, plantar fasciitis. Thankfully I still remember how to deal with it, so it’s more an annoyance than anything else, but I wanna say, “Really dude? Now?”
Monday is my last day at DISH. My exit interview is scheduled for 4 pm (I normally leave at 4:30), and anyone there I care about saying goodbye to leaves at 4, so I’ll have time to do so before the meeting with HR and being shown the door. They’re going to get an earful, even though I know nothing I say will make any difference whatsoever.
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