More like 2am, but that doesn't sound as cool.

After a few weather delays tonight the ULA finally got the Atlas V off the ground. It's carrying an INTELSAT which is a new communications satellite which will expand the ability of us humans to send our silly little videos all over the globe.

Night launches are always pretty coolas they light up the area for a few minutes.

The next on the manifest was supposed to be Space X's Falcon 9 this coming Sunday. However I've just learned that it has been delayed until February. I don't know why, but that's what I've heard tonight which if it's true it sucks. I was looking forward to seeing that thing get off of the ground. It's so far our best chance at a cheaper launch vehicle. Also, it's on the list of ideas to resupply the station after shuttle is retired so they need to get it up soon.

Due to a failure in a range safety component the Atlas launch on Saturday was scrubbed, but Atlantis was a go today. The skies were cloudy all morning, but they started to break by noon. The weather was green by launch time. I've heard that there were no mechanical issues, and when the countdown reached zero Atlantis launched right on time.



(Much clicking will enlarge the image.)

STS-129's mission is a pretty simple one. To bring up spare parts. Since the station is nearly completed we now have to prepare it for long term survival after the shuttle is retired. None of the remaining resupply spacecraft will be powerful enough, or have the room, for some of the components that may need replacing. This is going to be a goal of the many of the next shuttle launches as we try to cram the station full of supplies and equipment for it to last through the next 6-10 years of operation.

In addition to hauling cargo the crew of Atlantis are going to install some antennas, lubricate the Japanese mechanical arm, prepare for the installation of the Tranquility module, and install some experiments to the exterior of the station. So while not as headline grabbing as Atlantis' earlier Hubble repair mission it'll still be a lot of work. As always NASA describes what it's up to better than I can.

This is second to last launch for Atlantis. May of next year will be it's final, and then it will be stacked to function as the rescue ship for the last shuttle launch scheduled for September. It is the first of FY2010 and there are only five scheduled launches remaining. I can't emphasize enough if you want to watch one make your plans now. Next shuttle launch is Endeavour set for the fourth of February.

This is a little piece of history I've acquired a long time ago.



It is supposed a piece of the Berlin wall. I bought it in Germany from a street vendor sometime in 1990. I can't be absolutely sure if it is an actual part of the wall, but it's painted on one side, looks like the right kind of concrete on the other, and there was so much of the stuff floating around it could be. It doesn't really matter to me if it is, because every time I look at it I get some feeling of that time. Which is the point of a symbol.

When I was young the cold war was in full effect. I grew up with movies like Failsafe and The Day After. A different fight in Afghanistan was in the news. Star Wars, not the one with the force, was being debated. The powerplay between the West and the Communist blocs was everywhere, and was either going to go on as an eternal standoff, or end in fire.

The international drama played out in a number of places, but almost none were more dramatic than the one in central Germany. There an iron curtain had descended across the continent, and a wall was built to keep whole nations of people prisoner.

20 years ago I was living in Germany. I had arrived in January of '89, and that summer I saw that wall for the first time. Both the wall in Berlin itself, and months later it's bigger brother that ran the length of the German border. It was a very moving experience to see it first hand, to touch it. Even while it was covered with endless graffiti there was something different about it. It was a very real barrier. One day I was able to travel into East Berlin for a day through the now defunct Checkpoint Charlie. There I could see the view from the inner wall looking out, and it was not so colorfully decorated. East Berlin did seem a bleaker place compared to it's vibrant western neighbor. The wall also seemed different depending on which direction you looked at it. From the west it was a strange barrier that divided us, but from the east it was a barrier that was designed to keep you in. All of the guards, wire, and security zones were on that side, while on the west you could walk right up to it.

While there were other places in the world that were similarly divided this thing was THE symbol of the cold war.

Then one day. It opened.

There is a ton of backstory that brings us to that moment. It involves Reagan, Gorbechev, Poland's solidarity, Hungary lowering it's border, and Glastnost in general, but no one planned for this day to have happened. A miscommunication of orders led to a huge crowd of East Germans wanting to leave, and East German guards that didn't know what else to do. Once they opened the wall they could never close it again.

I was in Hannover that day, and the mood there was absolutely euphoric. In the next few weeks East Germans were everywhere. You could always tell who they were because they just had this ecstatic look about them. It felt inevitable that the country would reunite.

Even though there was no official end to the cold war with it's most potent symbol broken it just felt like it was over. Just like that. Over. Within the next few years all of Eastern Europe, and then Soviet Republics were no longer under communist control and able to determine their own way. The Russians were no longer "the enemy". We were united, moreso than I had ever experienced, and we were all free. That was the way of the future, and regardless of what's happening it still always can be. The status-quo is not set in anyone's concrete.

So in one day this thing went from a symbol of oppression dividing a world, to a symbol of hope sitting on my bookshelf. Probably the best fate that could have happened to it.

I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting, so I decided to start with the most interesting thing that has happened lately. This is going to be a bit of old news for those of you who were paying attention in the first place.

( Lots of boring pre-launch stuff you probably already know. )



That was the best my camera could do at about four miles away. Dumb luck that I caught that nifty shock wave effect. It was louder than I expected, and seemed to be slower in the beginning and then speed up as it got going. That could be an optical illusion, but the shuttle seems to be more constant as it leaves. we could see it all the way through separation and had to go inside to see that. I'm going to paraphrase a not so insiginificant comment that the launch commander made. We just rolled out a brand new, untested rocket, and had a successful launch on the first try and our ONLY hold up was the weather. That doesn't happen to often.

I think the phrase is that everything was nominal right up until first stage separation. That's when we started learning new things. :P The separation motors engaged before the first stage separated from the second. That in effect slowed the entire rocket, and I think that started both of them tumbling. The first stage was designed to tumble, but the second should have kept flying straight. The effect had the two parts doing this little dance, and I thought they were going to hit each other for a while. Keeping up it's flawless record gravity worked as advertised, and they both fell like they should. The drogue chute popped and straightened the first stage out, but when it was time for the main parachutes to deploy only one of them fully inflated. This means the first stage hit the ocean much faster and was significantly damaged. It's bent like busted pipe.

This is going to be something that must be worked out as we intend to recover that stage every time.

Overall a very successful launch. First new launch since 1981. There is now a lot of discussion that the next launch (Ares I-Y) is scrubbed and that the next test vehicle will incorporate some of it's goals. No idea what or when that is going to be as of now.

Next up is an Atlas on the 14th with Atlantis hopefully launching on the 16th.

I'm watching the latest attempt at "V" and the giant starships come in over the cities and the Earth shakes as they settle in much the same as they did in Independence Day. No idea why a giant space craft serenely floating over a city would cause that but it's a pretty common movie trope.

Anyway, as I watch it I'm thinking that every computer that's running in any of those cities is now getting screwed up because it's hard drive is vibrating. It occurs to me that while we don't have space ships arriving every day we do have tremors and earthquakes that would affect them. Since I have a few Californians and ExCalifornians on my list I was wondering. How do computers in those states not crash constantly as the tremors hit? Especially in the older days where you had to park the hard drives.

This is one of the coolest things that I've found in a while.

http://www.justiceharvard.org/

When I have time I'm going to try to watch a lot of it. Maybe while doodling. Times like this I really wish that I could hook my computer into my TV.

Oh, and the Ares launch was great! More on that later.

Still waaay bad on posting, but I felt like I should make this one tonight because the subject is a little perishable.

Tomorrow morning, at 7:30 EDT. The United States is going to shoot the moon. We're finally paying those Mooninites back for scaring the beans outta Boston.

Well, no. I'm of course referring to the imminent LCROSS impact on the Moon's southern pole. I was hoping to be able to put my feeble telescope to work and try to see a flash, but I'll be at work. I think the moon will still be visible on the East coast, but it might be to light out to see anything even if you have a good scope. The west coasters; however, should have a good show.

The reader's digest version of this is a probe headed towards the moon is traveling with the Centaur high energy upper state that sent it into space. That upper stage is going to slam into the moon to throw the surface material into space for the probe to fly through and analyze. The hope is to find water, but that almost feels slightly anticlimactic because I believe that NASA announced that it had positive confirmation of water on the moon this summer. I guess the difference would be this polar glacier would be a high concentration of the stuff if it is there at all. Of course water means all kinds of newer possibilities for harvesting resources on a forthcoming lunar outpost.

If we go back to the moon at all. Which will be the subject of a post I hope to make this weekend. If I'm not lazy, but I do have Saturday off so here is hoping.

So, I spent last week in Canada. Way up in northern Newfoundland.




Pretty, isn't it?

The whole island is sparsely populated, and covered with woods and lakes. I spent the entire time in the town of Gander which is filled with almost stereotypically nice rural people. Wish I could have spent more time there.

I arrived Monday and that night participated in a screech ceremony sans the cod kissing because there were important people present. That means I'm an honorary Newfie now, and I've got the certificate to prove it.

Everything through Wed was pretty uneventful, but there was great weather which I didn't take advantage of. The rain rolled in on Thursday, and it was that cold, stinging rain that just makes Floridians run inside. You can see it starting to roll in on the picture. Very no-fun weather. Thus I didn't get to go hiking on Thursday and Friday like I had planned. I thought about striking out earlier in the week on my own, but those woods are thick. The 'if you get 25 feet off of the trail you could literally disappear from the face of the Earth' kind of thick. And my cell phone doesn't work in Canada don'cha know. So I wussed out, stayed inside and watched lots of Stargate Atlantis.

Speaking of that I used to assume that Canada had most of the same channels that are broadcast in the States. What they have is an analog of the channels here, and their Space channel is a whole lot better than our Sci-Fi channel.

Of course it cleared up on Saturday so I walked a little bit along Canada's route 1 before I had to get ready to leave.

Didn't get to see any moose either, but it was a relaxing trip overall.

Alright Snake after all of your comments that I should get one I got a snake. Here.





Happy. :P

I believe it's a just past juvenile ringneck.

Ok, I didn't 'get' him. I caught him in one of my garbage cans while doing yardwork. I only kept him for a day because I don't think I could catch anything suitably small enough for him to eat. On Savant_Da_rat's pestering, I.E. he said I should do this, I'm posting more images of the critters I've been running into in my yard.

One thing I really do like about snakes as opposed to the other reptiles I've caught in the yard is that they are curious. They'll actually move around and explore their enclosure as where the other ones just try to keep leaping out. He kept peeking out from the leaf I left for him to hide under, and when I left the room or stayed very still he quickly slithered out and started prodding everything. Tongue flicking all the time.

Oh, and BTW I'm in Canada all week. Upon return to the states I will relearn how to say the letter 'o'.

What a lousy day. Nothing went easy, and most everything that should have been simple..wasn't. At least I got out of it alive.

The bright spot of my day was that I finally got my plane tickets to AC. I should be off the plane and have my bags by around 10. That should line up with the arrival times of everyone else.

If the shuttle can't go then we'll use an Atlas.

A few hours ago NASA launched it's first lunar mission in years, and it's a double header.

After delaying a day to allow another attempt to launch Endeavour, more on that in a bit, an Atlas V carried the LRO and the LCROSS into space and on their journey towards the moon. You can really tell they wanted to launch as the weather was an issue but they kept getting the approval through the countdown. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is a pretty straight forward probe. In a few days it will go into a low polar orbit and search for resources, survey safe landing sites, and basically to gather information to aid the success of future manned landing sites. All of the nifty devices that it will use to collect that data are better described here.

The LCROSS is for the Mythbusters in us that can't end things without an explosion. The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite is to confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater near a lunar polar region. How is it going to do that? After expelling all of the consumables aboard the Atlas's Centaur upper stage it will slam that expended segment into the crater, and then fly through the plume collecting data on the ejecta. It will have a short time to collect data as moments later the LCROSS itself will then impact the same area sending another plume up that should be visible from Earth. They need to expend all of the consumables as rocket fuel contains a lot of the chemicals that are being searched for in the plume. So have your 10 inch telescopes ready on Oct 8th.

This is the first time that I can remember that a manned launch was almost bumped by an unmaned launch. The timing is apparently very important, and both craft were bumping up against schedule barriers. Endeavour had a short time to get to the station because it's orbit is soon going to be at such an angle that it won't be able to properly regulate it's heat with the orbiter docked. That continuous leaky hydrogen line has really been a problem that has come out of nowhere, and there is a lot of troubleshooting to determine the cause. They have until July 11th to make a fix. Right now if there is a successful launch in July everything is still on track for the admittedly aggressive schedule that we already have. If this launch slips past July it's going to start crunching the other launches at the far end of the schedule against the 1 Oct 2010 deadline for the end of the program. If that happens someone is going to have to start making some serious calls about processing hardware.

I haven't been terribly social with you guys, and kind of avoided LJ altogether. I've been in a weird kind of funk. It's like I want to be more social, but I'm not finding the occasional posting back and forth all that fulfilling so I end up not doing it. Here and FA are the only two places I interact on a large scale. Here more explicitly, and there to a larger audience. I always feel weird responding to posts. I never know what to say, and when I think I'm clever and respond I reread what I posted it just sounds all dumb. I'Ms are ok, and so is the voice chat applications, but it would be nice to talk to someone in real time face to face. Especially if it involved activities like costuming, propmaking, gaming, or drawing. Lately I've been reading these posts about people who are in the fandom, or other groups, for years. Back before it was all cool. I guess I'm just feeling a little on the outside of those groups lately.

I'm a little worried that it might make the slight post con depression a lot bigger this year.

I guess that's my alotted emo moment for the year. Anyway I'm not sure if that's it, but something has been eating at me a little.

Probably sometime later this week I'll come back on LJ and catch up on everyone.

In other news I went to a tiny little sci-fi con last weekend. Not a big event, but it did rekindle my love of the old time Star Trek. I got some pretty well done fan films set during TOS time. The adventures of the USS Farragut. I also viewed another Star Trek indie film that was directed by Tim Russ, along with meeting him in an elevator. There are some great stories about how that was made. I got to hang out with the man who played General Martok from DS9, who is pretty darn fun in person.

In other-other news I've got some reading glasses now. For a long time I thought I had really, really good vision. Now what I'm beginning to think is that I had ok vision with really good focusing muscles, and now my eyes are either degrading past the point they can adjust or they're getting tired. For the past five years or so things have begun to fuzz at the edges; especially up close. Sometimes when I draw or inspect something it becomes hard to look at it. It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that seeing is difficult but it is. Sometimes when I'm drawing I realize that I'm seeing it more in my mind than I am on paper like I can't focus on the paper anymore so my brain fills in lots of blanks. It's like watching a camera try to focus and it can't quite get there. It's becoming fatiguing. During my last physical the eyedoc said I could wear glasses. I still have 20/20 vision, but I'm using a fair amount of effort to maintain that. I looked through the temp lenses he gave me and I had to admit they were a little relaxing, so I gave it a go. I just got them today and I'm having mixed result looking through them. They have a fair more magnification than I though they would have. It feels strange having them on. The world looks weird. Like the 3D is all wrong. Maybe I got used to fuzzy vision for a while that clear vision is now strange. I haven't tried to see if it will help me with the drawing yet.

I went to the dentist today, and the Novocaine is finally wearing off. Now I can eat dinner without mangling my tongue.

I went for way to many years without seeing one. Good teeth I suppose. However, last year I decided that I really need to start getting stuff checked. The checkup last year was overall pretty good, but two of my fillings were starting to show a lot of wear and small some cracks. They needed to be replaced before a full on failure. Something I'm always a fan of.

The dentist I went to as a kid never used Novocaine. I always assumed that he was, and that the stuff just wasn't all that great. Dentists were supposed to be painful, and boy was he ever. Every filling I had was drilled without the stuff, and there were plenty of them. Apparently I was a bad brusher as a kid. I didn't even know what the stuff felt like until one of my first checkups as an adult where I needed a little work on one tender area. Doc jabbed a needle in my mouth, and I'm thinking that 'that's new'. As he pulls the drill out I get my death grip on the chair and prepare myself to endure. He starts chipping away and.....there is no pain. I fell in love with the stuff right then and there.

I seem to have good tolerance to it since he had to give me a booster injection before starting on the second tooth, and the hygienist was impressed that I could still talk without drooling. He must have done me up good because it's only now wearing off.

Now off to dinner to test the new fillings out, then in three months I get resin put on my teeth. That seems to be the new thing, and I hear that kids today don't even get cavities now.

Atlas is still on the pad. Some problem with the vehicle that will delay the launch for an indefinite period. I don't know it will slip all the way to the weekend or not.

From the latest and greatest dept: Yesterday I mentioned that the Space Shuttle program is scheduled to go away by October 2010. There has been a lot of effort to quickly get the next rocket into production. Up until last year a lot of it was still in the planning stages, but lately a lot of real changes have begun to appear. Here is a little photo collection of some of the latest progress. Click before the pictures are pulled. The first test launch of the Ares1X is still scheduled for a May launch. While that may slip it's still expected to be sometime this year. Here's hoping.

Ok, Back with a safer computer.

Per Savant_da_rat's advice I've pulled my other comp off of the net until I can get it fixed. That means I have to resurrect the computer I'm on now for the third time. This thing hasn't been on much since I bought my laptop about January.

It has to be my oldest and longest running machines. Bought I think in 1999, but maybe as early as 1998. I gave it a big upgrade somewhere around 02-03. Changed win98 to XP, upgraded the memory, and added a newer hard drive. After I got my VIAO I used it less and less until the VIAO died sometime around 06. So with dead laptop I unpacked this one again, did a little sprucing up and it worked ok. However, it was already getting slow, and frustrating to use. In late 07 I was finally fed up and started looking for a laptop to replace it until I could build a newer desktop. I was in a rush because I didn't want a Vista machine. I found a laptop on NewEgg that did a fair amount of what I needed and was one of the last few XPs on that website. Now I'm back again on it. It's become my computer life boat.

I've got a few other questions, mainly for Savant if he's got the time to answer.

The laptop is offline until cleaned. I have the hard drive from my VIAO that still has a function version of XP on it. Can I just literally swap them out and have the VIAO drive run the new laptop without any changes, or do I have to do a fresh install.

If I have to do a clean install I'm going to have to purchase a full version of XP. The only ones I have are the builds that came with the machines and they don't send original disks anymore. I think the VIAO's version is only licensed for use on the one machine.

I don't suppose I could just delete and copy the few files (explorer.exe, IEXPLORER.EXE) that it's using to get rid of it.

Second, all of the cleaners I have say that it's gone, so how would I know that it's gone if they already say that it is?

I hope I can run my cleaner on my flash drive based MP3 player.

can you recommend a better virus program as symantic doesn't seem to be to impressive.

(Last minute edit.) Interesting. Apparently the computer clock has to be up to date for LJ to make posts. Didn't think that would be relevant to anything other than myself.

Since there has been some interest by about 25% of my active friends list.

I saw Spamalot today at our local theater, which it turns out is a pretty big theater on the east coast. Spamalot is basically a theatrical version of Monty Python's "The Holey Grail". It has most of the classic bits like the swallow banter, the political views of the serfs, the French taunting, the battle with the Black Knight, and the Knights who say Ni, but there are also some noticeable deviations. The Lady of the Lake is a real character that is actually there instead of a passing reference, and apparently Sir Lancelot is gay. It also has an ending that actually ends, unlike the movie that just seems to stop. A friend and I were going to go horseback riding today, but the weather turned cold and rainy so we opted for inside activities.

My other great activity today was fighting a computer virus. Earlier today this dumb thing popped up on my screen telling me that I had loads of viruses and spyware and wanted me to download it's product. You know it's got to be some kind of scam when the warnings popping up in the status tray are along the lines of "Your computer is under and internet virus attack. Would you like to stop the attack? Yes/No." If you get adds for 'Spyware Protect 2009' you'll have to run your antivirus/antispyware programs as soon as you can. I already had Symantic but that one didn't even see it, so I started downloading spybot and a few other adware scanners. I finally got it removed, but I discovered an even sneakier one called Opachki that was quietly installed and only Spynomore caught. Both viruses were developed in the Russian Federation so thank you mother Russia.


I learned how to do some registry deleting to get rid of the first one, but this one was a lot more complicated. I wasn't absolutely sure if I could delete items or if they needed to be changed. Registry mistakes could be death for me. I'm not fully prepared for a full computer crash. After a couple of hours of research I ended up buying the full version of Spynomore so I could get rid of the thing. Now I've got two spy programs running simultaneously, with my older virus program, and a few extra system scanners. I hope that's enough. I was really worried that one other set of files were a kind of keylogger that was still left over, but more research into them revealed that they're part of the crazy operating system XP is. I still think that something is off as my CPU is running a lot more than I think it should, but I believe that I'm clean. Fixing that will have to wait until I get a better at optimizing and tweaking it's settings. Only been saying that for five years now.

[Edit. I should be more accurate with my terminology. Both problems were actually Trojans.]

I stumbled upon demos for the upcoming Starcraft II game, and oooh, did I get bit by the gaming bug again. The newer version looks really cool. I think that they've tailored the races to make the function even more differently from each other. It does look like they've made mass rushes a lot more costly than they were in the first game.

That along with my desire to see if my tablet would make the interface any better made me dig around my computer boxes until I found my copy and loaded it on this computer. I've already almost finished the human campaign since Sunday night. I haven't gamed in a long time, but this will definitely break my hiatus. I hope they make it usable on an XP machine, but it might just be worth getting Vista to play it.

Either way I've got yet another thing to try to integrate into my schedule now. :P

I own a Panasonic DVR/DVD burner combo. It's a nice machine that I love because it has a hard drive installed which makes it functionally act like a VCR but can also play DVDs on and burn anything on the HD to a DVD. It is like the best of every thing that I wanted in a DVD burner.

Yesterday it died.

I know electronics isn't magic, but when a computer breaks, the internet is down, or a piece of electronics stops working it's like the magic has stopped. I weep if it's something I think is permanently dead. Especially if it's a bit of tech that I like, and know that the powers that be don't make another one like it. I cringe for the day that my trusty palm pilot passes away.

While playing a DVD the thing suddenly stopped, rebooted, and then just displayed "Please Wait" on the front panel. Alright, "That's new" I think to myself and patiently wait. After about five minutes I get that sinking feeling that this is going to take more then unplugging and replugging it. The problem was that it wouldn't get out of the initial booting phase, and the only way to turn it off was to unplug it. Nothing in the troubleshooting manual, and so I call the help desk. Kudos to Panasonic for having it open late on a Saturday, and with a tech person that didn't sound clueless. However she said it needed to come in for maintenance. $150. Ugh.

So I start poking around online to see what new ones cost. That's the deal with electronics nowadays right? Fixing is far to expensive compared to just buying a new product with better features. It makes sense, but always fells so wasteful. Especially since I can't find anything that worked quite like mine did.

On a whim I decide to see if anyone else has had this problem, and a few ASK searches later I find this great site. http://www.fixya.com A thread there had my problem verbatim. It seems to be a relatively common problem, and it happened to electrical engineer types. They made a fix and published it on the site!

The problem was that two capacitors on the power card went bad. Full bulging. One of the posters there created a detailed set of instructions WITH PICTURES of what to do, along with a recommended parts list. The only snag, it required soldering.

I never soldered before, but darnit I'm not paying $150 for what looks like a simple remove and replace job. It can't get any more broke right? Also I had a friend coming over that night anyway who knew how to solder. One trip to the local RadioShack and I've got everything I need. I take the thing apart, and under her watch remove the obvious bulging capacitors and replace them with newer, larger ones that can handle the voltage better. Fingers crossed. Plug goes in, and it works. OMG I made the magic work again! Whoo hoo!

So to celebrate we watched a movie she had bought me for Christmas. I told her sometime last year that I was a fur so she bought me Fritz the Cat. I promised that she could watch it with me the first time I viewed it. I didn't think that I had seen this movie before, but as I'm watching it there are a lot of scenes that are very familiar. At some point in the last third of the movie I realized that I indeed have seen this before, but it must have been when I was very young. Probably when we first got cable with HBO, Showtime, and Prism. That would have been sometime when I was 11 or 12. I can't think of any other opportunity I would have have been able to see it while not remembering anything of it. I certainly remember all of the other furry movies I saw as a kid.