We were lucky enough to get to watch the launch on Friday from the causeway, and I’ve already been asked by one loyal reader if there was any launch video. Sadly, I don’t have any from this launch. However, I do have the following video provided by the sister-in-law. Enjoy.
Category: Doing (Page 26 of 28)
I went over to Orlando yesterday morning with one of my buddies to watch another friend compete in the Florida 70.3 triathlon put on by IronMan at Disney. It was absolutely amazing. I’ve done triathlons myself, but I’ve never gone to see one as a spectator. When you are competing, you’re pretty focused on yourself and what you need to do, so it’s hard to take in the whole event. Even if you aren’t personally into endurance competitions, it’s something I’d recommend going to see once in your life.
It was completely inspiring.
It’s hard to say what the best part of the race was. It may have been watching competitors complete the 1.2 mile swim just before the cutoff time–one lady exited the water with a huge smile and obvious sense of accomplishment on her face, and stopped and broke into tears as soon as she crossed the timing mat.
It was also great to see so many people of different ages and body types doing the race. There were very few elite athletes in the 2,000 person field. They were mostly regular people who have decided to sacrifice a lot of time and effort to take on a race this size knowing they’ll have to make it work around the rest of their lives. As my buddy who went to watch with me noted, “I bet there are so many great stories here.”
After seeing another competitor with only one arm exiting the swim, and yet another getting ready to run with two prosthetic legs and 1.5 arms, you realize that anybody can do a this. All that matters is whether or not you think you can.
Facebook has gone from a very private way to communicate with only the people you want to communicate with, to a firehose of information about you and everyone you kinda-sorta know.
@jfloyd pointed out this article earlier today, and it pretty much sums up why I have been changing my relationship with Facebook for a while.
Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it’s slowly but surely helped itself — and its advertising and business partners — to more and more of its users’ information, while limiting the users’ options to control their own information.
Sorry Facebook. It’s not me, it’s you.
You can expect to continue getting the occasional booty call from me–I’ll let you know when I need something (every time I post), but don’t expect much more. I look forward to your minions Liking my content. In fact, I encourage them to do so. And you can do with that information what you like.
But I really need our relationship to be one sided. As a great man…errrrr golfer…errr playa once said, “You gotta do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye.”
**UPDATE**
One of the developers of the World Wide Web, Robert Cailliau, explains in a TechCrunch interview why he isn’t on Facebook: “I can get in, but I can’t get out.”
My paint job is messed up. His in intact.
The big fat line painted on the parking lot you were exiting and the big octagonal red “STOP” sign were directed at you. Luckily (mostly for you), I’m a much better cyclist than you are a driver. If that weren’t the case you’d be dealing with some actual legal problems. I realize you were in too big of a hurry to get somewhere to at least roll down your window and ask if I was ok. Hope it was important. Please tell the Brevard County Sheriff’s deputy I said thanks again when he stops by your house.
Also, a big thanks to Jesse, who works for Brighthouse and called in your plates. Poor guy thought you actually hit me. I guess your car was in the way when he saw me go Supermanning over the handle bars, so he couldn’t see me bounce off the pavement instead of your vehicle.
Again, I’m ok–very little damage done, other than me being very angry. On second thought, maybe it is best that you just drove away.
Now that Google has purchased Picnik, presumably to try to better contest Flickr in the online photo sharing market, I’m hoping they take a huge step to offer something Flickr can’t come close to. They already offer amazing photo organization at home (Flickr doesn’t), but it’s not quite where it needs to be yet…
I absolutely love Picasa for the desktop. If you haven’t checked out its ability to do things like facial recognition, geotagging, nametags, etc you are in for a pleasant surprise. The one hangup for me is that there still isn’t a Picasa server I can run at home. We keep all of our photos on a NAS drive, which means that we have to install Picasa on every computer in the house in order to catalog them on each machine. And if I run facial recognition on one machine, those results don’t show up on another. What I’d really like to do is serve up the Picasa database (not just the photos themselves) to any client machine on my network. With all the work Google is doing to empower the cloud, I’m hoping the next step for them is to help empower my local cloud (fog?).
I did find this solution, which looks like a pretty decent workaround, but I want the real thing. Maybe even add some accounts that let different users on my network comment and rate photos? Some accounts can edit, some can only view? Basically, I want to be able to do anything I can do on the web on a local server. Still, not complaining about this amazing (and free) software.
Inspired by this post via Instapundit, I thought I’d build a little Google Spreadsheets chart based on nothing but some semi-random words. People love charts, right?
Below are the number of Google results I got today from doing a search on “Obama is a _______”. I did this for my own amusement, and I wouldn’t put too much stock in these results. Everyone knows that popular opinion and popular vote count only matter on Wikipedia and if the guy you wanted to win the Presidency didn’t.
Feel free to suggest your own phrases in the comments, and I’ll update the chart.
We saw a couple of these Portugese Man O’ Wars washed up on Satellite Beach yesterday as the tide was coming in. We were cheering for them to make it back out to open water, but not enough to get close enough to catch them. Tenacles up to 50 meters long and possible interference with heart and lung functionality? No thanks…
Cash in. Did I ever tell you about the time I was playing craps with Carson Daly and Dave Navarro?
No? Then you may safely infer my losses were heavy.
We were very lucky Discovery launched this morning, considering there were a couple of no-go periods leading up to liftoff due to some communications issues. In order to make the 6:21 am launch we had to wake up at 2:45 so we could make it through the gates at KSC by 4:30. It would not have been fun to have rolled 8 adults and 2 kids under three out of bed that early for the launch to have been scrubbed. The weather was absolutely perfect–clear skies and just a slight breeze. It also made the waiting a little easier to see the Space Station fly over at 6:04.
The video isn’t as good as NASA will post later, but enjoy!
Special thanks to the SIL for securing an employee’s car pass and to the Brevard Rugby Club for lending us a 15 passenger van so that my parents and the in-laws could all get in to see the launch!
Update — Hi-res photo of Discovery clearing the tower.
Update II — Video that’s only slightly better than our home video at Space Gizmo. 🙂
I went through security at ATL this afternoon. Believe it or not, the story gets even worse…
As I was collecting all my carry on items after they were checked, one of the TSA sheriffs calls out to another over his shoulder, “Hey George! She says she knows you! But just for one night!”
I looked over and noticed the lady behind me was pregnant. She didn’t look very amused at all, but she didn’t raise a stink about it. That’ may be the most unfortunate part of the incident.
As for the TSA agent who made the comment, I guess it would have been too unprofessional for him to say, “Hey George! Check out this tramp you knocked up one night a few months ago and never spoke to again.”
What kind of culture exists within an agency that would make anyone think they had a license to say something like that? What would happen in your business if you spoke about a customer that way, especially right in front of them? Get ready for HealthCare.gov. I expect jackasses like this guy will be among the first to put in for a position admitting soon to be moms into the hospital. He probably is working on a bunch of fat jokes as we speak.
Tesla – Gettin’ Better.
The only thing that could make this better was if you replaced every cigarette in the video with a Coors Light tall boy. That’s a program I could get with.
Some things will never change…Backwater by The Meat Puppets
Via Instapundit: NHTSA Has No Software Engineers To Analyze Toyota
Not only are they missing software engineers in general, they may be in need of engineers with some very special knowledge. There are potentially two different software components involved in auto electronics. First, obviously, there’s the actual firmware that runs the electronic controllers.
But another possible point of failure exists in the software that tests the electronics. To make things simple, imagine a specialized computer that interfaces with an electronic controller and simulates the inputs coming to the controller from the vehicle. This computer also measures the responses of the electronics based on these different states. These tests are developed based on a very comprehensive, rigorous, and strict set of requirements and specifications. If the setup for the tests and measurements are documented incorrectly, or if these tests were performed incorrectly or (eek) not at all, there could be a problem.
Now, let’s just say this…
In a former life, I was employed by a company that may or may not have been involved in manufacturing automotive electronics. And I may or may not have worked as one of the software engineers who programmed the testing computers. These test programs may or may not have been written in a programming language that was developed internally by the supplier and not used in any other company or industry. So it would take either specific knowledge to do an audit of this software, or at least a bit of time invested in learning how that language works.
Oh yeah…this company may or may not have been a major electronics supplier to Toyota.
I’m glad there haven’t been any issues with the model years I may or may not have been involved in testing.