Recently in General Category

I was just over 5 years old in December of 1972 when my dad sat me down with him in front of the TV. He told me it was going to be the first time a rocket carrying astronauts took off at night. I'd been crazy for spaceships ever since I could remember. I had Apollo print pajamas and a sleeping bag sporting sputnik's. I remember it was special because I could watch this one with my dad. It's funny, I even remember where the TV was sitting, but for some reason I don't remember it being in the winter. It's funny the things you remember as a kid.

Today the Shuttle Discovery took off on its last mission. Peripherally I was aware it was coming up, but when I saw a news article saying it was today, my productivity at work shot out the window because I discovered NASA streams the launches online. I called up the NASA website a couple hours before launch time and saw them strapping in the last of the astronauts. I was pleased to find that most of the commentary wasn't the inane dribble of tv talking heads, but mostly live radio chatter with some explanation by a Kennedy Space Center official.

I tried to just listen to the audio while going about my other work, but I kept getting sucked back in by all the little details. The crew that was buckling in the astronauts wore their mission patches on the tops of their hats so the cameras could see the patches as they are standing while the cockpit is aimed heavenward, so the camera is pointed down. The harnesses that the white-room crew wear to clip in their safety lines has the primary tether access on the shoulder, rather than the back, so they can wear their oxygen tanks and not have them in the way. And my favorite, they said one of the astronauts "...worked at KFC for 5 years before she became an astronaut." I had a mental double-take at that before I realized that KFC probably stood for Kennedy Flight Center, and not the chicken place.

Time ticked away and, as interesting as it was, I was getting a little impatient for the launch, and I vividly remembered asking my dad why they couldn't just "light it off". A small piece of the ceramic heat-resistant tiles came off when removing the protective tape around the door. A glass slurry was used to patch the hole and we heard discussion of how that patch cleared the rules for repairs within specs. The radio chatter with flight control started ticking off more completed items off the checklist above the 400 mark about then. The detail of our downtime checklists have stirred a bit of pride in me at work in their detail, but these were pretty complex and infinitely more thorough.

I had shared this time-killer with my team in an email, and every so often Sam would come to my cube, or I would run to his with some exclamation at the developments. Before the planned hold at nine minutes one of the downrange communiques reported in a rather stressed voice that there was a problem with downrange monitoring and they were a no-go. Flight control stepped in calmly and asked them to work on fixing it.

I was awestruck contemplating the bulk of the procedures involved that I hadn't considered before. I'm fairly anti-bureaucratic and have done my share of scoffing with news reports of the boondoggle that goes on in any government agency, but in this case I found myself struck with wonder at the balance that has been achieved in safeguarding not only the lives of the astronauts and crew but the huge monetary investment of the mission. A valve was discovered to be .9 degrees outside the allowable differentiation in temperature. The area was checked and showed that one side of the valve was sitting in sun and the other side in the shade. A little discussion showed that fit in with an allowance that could be made regarding natural elements causing temperature differentiation.

The countdown resumed at nine minutes with the downrange still broken. An agreement had been made that the countdown would continue as planned until five minutes to launch and a window could be held a further five minutes to resolve downrange problems before scrubbing the attempt. In a dramatic climax you would expect from the movies the clock ticked down to fifteen seconds left in the window before the hurried commands were given that cleared the error and allowed the count to resume. The cone over the nose of the main fuel tank retracted slowly and the control surfaces and engines gave their final computer-aided tests, swiveling back and forth in a pre-programmed dance almost as if eager to leap from the pad. Flight Control gave the word that the launch area was being bathed in water in some sort of acoustic dampening procedure to withstand the launch stresses. The count hit zero and the sparking ignition sequence lit. For two seconds Discovery hung trembling and with my heart tight in my chest Launch Control said the word "Go" and like it had been unleashed Discovery began to climb.

And again I was five years old and trying to hold back tears at the roar and the light propelling a handful of people outside the safety of the Earth. I was struck with the accomplishment of putting together in working order such a broad spectrum of knowledge that we can move men to an extremely hostile environment and support them there and bring them back again.

In the end I was a little sad at the thought that there are only two space shuttle missions left. Maybe NASA will undertake great projects again, but the step back to single use rockets for supplying the ISS as well as the push for commercial companies to step in to that role also seems to be the ending of an era. Looking back to that December night when, with my dad, I watched a black and white tv and dreamed of being an astronaut, we didn't have any idea that the Apollo 17 mission would be the last time that man would go so far into space for more than 40 years. Maybe the hope is with commercial space ventures and a reboot of competition to push back the boundaries once again, but I was always a NASA kid.

I want something.

I don't know what it is.

It has caused a bit of trouble, including almost getting kicked out of a car in the middle of the Mojave...

In 2006, I decided I could, with a little help from my friends, build a largish garage to replace the one that was falling down and end up with a studio of my own. I really wanted that studio.

The studio is not done yet. If I really wanted the studio, wouldn't it have been finished by now, despite the tumultuous few years I've had? It is close, if I only had some money I could get the insulation and drywall done...

If I really wanted it done, wouldn't I have the money to do it?

I have a digital video camera on my desk.

I thought I needed to have it because I had so many ideas for little movies and this new youtube thing sounded like it might catch on.

I don't think it got 5 hours usage and it's quite dusty.

The video editing software I bought with it won't install on any current version of windows.

I could probably repeat this scenario a hundred times, and not just with material things. My education butted my wants up against reality several times. Even after I found myself in a respectable career I decided I could finish a degree that wasn't pressing me to use it daily, but could just be an enjoyable aesthetic enhancement. I'm reasonably close to a couple degrees.

It turned out I really didn't want that, either.

Or, at least that's my assumption.

It could be that I just don't want anything, but it seems like there is some sort of pressure there.

Not knowing what I want really causes problems when people are trying to decide where to eat. Some of my friends and my wife have mostly learned to deal with it. It's not often that I'm craving anything specific, I just get hungry. And I don't often run up against a place I don't want to go to. When Debbie found out after ordering pizza that it would be my 5th pizza meal in a row a while back she got a little angry. "Why didn't you tell me you've only had pizza since lunch yesterday?!" Well... For one, I like pizza, and two I didn't have to decide what to eat. Left to my own devices I often had dinners of microwave popcorn and soda. Or more frequently several trips to the fridge to find the same nothing inside and then off to bed.

But I digress.

Some questions can bring me to a screeching halt. "What do you want for your birthday?" is quite a show stopper. "Do you want to go to a movie?" is an easy one, the answer is always yes. However, "What movie do you want to see?" is fairly problematic. That question is closely related to "What do you want to eat?" But for some reason, with a movie I often care.

Right now I don't know if I want to finish this entry.

That's not unusual, I often have 3-5 unpublished entries floating in limbo that eventually meet a bad end in the lightcycle arena, or something.

And it wouldn't be the first time that I thought I wanted to write about this topic and ended up being wrong.

Maybe it will be the last.

So I don't make resolutions. I find it kind of silly to hinge change on a single day, and on a day when everybody else is doing it as well. Maybe it's just that latent rebel in me that also wouldn't let me read Harry Potter or listen to Green Day. Maybe this year is different, though, or maybe it's just that it's an 11. I like 11's.

So here's how it's going down. I resolve this year to make resolutions. New Years is as good of a time as any, and I think I'm adult enough to know I'm in a constant process of evolution, but there may be something to setting a few clear goals at the beginning of the year and follow up on them at the end.

To begin with here were my handful of goals from last year that definitely weren't resolutions.

I can't help but think I've used this title before. I feel like I've been in a holding pattern spinning and waiting for my clearance to land, only with no other traffic ahead of me. I've got so many things I want to do, combined with all my responsibilities I really can't seem to get started for deciding what comes first. I get my mind set to do something and before I can start I second-guess the best plan of attack and put it back on hold while I try to decide all over again.

I took today off work and actually did accomplish a little around here, and that's a start. I moved a lot of the scrap wood cluttering the basement to the garage and I got the old kitchen cabinets that the Hallman's replaced when they did their kitchen in too. They'll probably work good for garage storage if I ever get the insulation and the drywall (and their respective inspections) done. I'm too afraid of getting stuff in there and then having to juggle things around while I do the finish work, but I don't really have the money right now to attack more than one problem, and I have too many that need attention; which brings me back to needing to move stuff so I can get started on one project or another.

I made the temporary post and got it installed under the centerline beam in the basement to help support the sagging kitchen floor, and moved the jack to the front of the house to get the last of the adjustments made so I can hopefully start on the living room floor before too long. I was telling Jack the other day that I've been in my house for 10 years and it still feels like that first apartment when you moved out of your parents house and had the thrift-shop furniture and cinderblock-and-pine shelves. Before I got married I had my kayak in the living room for 2 years because I didn't have anywhere big enough to put it. Sure, it made a conversation piece, but it's not like I got enough company to justify it.

Somehow, I also got a week out of sync. I thought I had one more week until the Clay Arts Utah Potters Workshop with Brian Jensen, and that it was going to work out great because it would be on spring break Saturday when the studio would be closed and I couldn't work. Now I have a bunch of stuff languishing in the studio that I won't be able to finish unless I take a day off next week too. I may have to take one, though, I don't think most of it will last more than a week without drying out.

And speaking of Clay Arts Utah, I don't think I've posted anything about my new position. I was nominated (and ran uncontested, I guess) for the Secretary position for the next year. We had our first officer meeting a couple weeks ago, and I think it's going to be a good thing for me to have to have responsibilities associated with my membership so I actually get out and see what's going on in the community. I really need some sort of gallery representation, or at least get my online presence going because I'm kind of stuck artistically too. I keep making the same stuff over and over, and while I get a lot of wows from people that see my stuff I think I need something more concrete that will force me to grow a little, or maybe even give me some incentive.

It's windy, and I can't sleep. Looking out the back door, the flag at the church a block away is blowing west hard enough that it looks like a school child's drawing of a flag. My maternal grandmother hated the East wind. She told me as a child that a strong East wind blew a brick off of the chimney and it hit her. I thought at the time that was a funny reason to not like a particular subset of air movement, but whenever I notice that a strong East wind is blowing I think of that story now. There has always been something unsettling to me about wind out of the East, even before I was told that story. I don't know what it is, maybe there's a part of my subconscious that expects the general weather to move from the West and gets riled up if it encounters something contrary to its expectations.

It sounds like the random junk in the driveway is clattering around, which is funny because I've moved it all inside the garage. On Friday I even gathered up all the spare lumber from the build and moved it into a semi-organized pile near the back of the garage in expectation for this weeks storms, and I even managed to get a couple lengths of rain gutter hung up. It's almost strange to look out the back and not see the big silver tarp looming over the back corner where the sheeting lay for almost a year. I really wanted to get more done before a lasting snowfall, but it looks like this may be it.

To be honest, though, this has never been a good time of the year for me. Not anything to do with the holidays in and of themselves, but from when the days start getting noticeably shorter the dark depression hangs over me. I often wonder if it's as silly as being afraid of the East wind. Does it hit because I expect it to come with a sun that doesn't rise very far above the horizon?

This year has even had an added bonus. The first cold and stormy day I found a pair of gloves in a hat and bundled up to go to work. Something in the combination of the extra outerwear and the snow took me back to the January before last when I was going for my chemotherapy every weekday, and for a few minutes I had a reaction just like I was back on the Interferon. They had told me that I needed to dress extra warm and take precautions so I didn't get sick, because the chemo would have me weakened anyway, and if I got sick then my immune system would have to fight two battles, or something like that. Normally I don't wear anything other than a coat, and in High School I even toughed it out a couple years in an unlined Levi jacket. Maybe it's my way of saying that if it's not winter, then I won't get depressed.

Anyway, when I would go for the infusion I wore a nice coat that Jack gave me when he ungrew out of it. I'd also put on gloves, a hat and scarf. Something about the ritual of it every morning was comforting and unusual. Combined with the pain of the treatment and the cheerfulness and compassion of the Huntsmen Cancer Center staff it made a complex impression on me that I think is embedded in my already turbulent winter gestalt. There's something really confusing about a feeling that makes your joints ache, your stomach fall and puts a happy smile on your face at the same time. But I hadn't expected the feeling to hang on this long, and for some reason I don't remember it happening last year.

And maybe that's why sleep just won't come right now. The East wind is blowing and I fear that somewhere out there lurks a brick with my name on it...

So I'm coming back from taking Debbie her lunch and I'm passing some angled parking and someone backs out, so I let them de-park and start to move forward when someone else starts to back out ahead of us. The car I just let out speeds up so the new backer cant get out, and swerves way around them exaggerating the danger and whips off down the lane. I let the second person back out and we proceed down the line when the exact same situation happens a second time and the new person ahead of me swerves around and pulls off into the sunset leaving me to wait a third time for someone to back out.

Just another example of why I dislike going out in public. And it's not even Christmas yet.

Now it's not unusual to hear one of our cats growling, but it is weird when it persists for very long. I was sitting here playing my little game and Norman, the Siamese child was growling and being angry. I ignored it for a few minutes, but when it didn't go away I went into the kitchen to see who was pestering who. I should have known something was up because there were two puffy cat-children looking out the back window and not at each other. But I was thinking about how close I was to getting Elath to 39 and just thinking they REALLY wanted out. As I reached for the handle I saw a gray shape outside the window and thinking it was Stan I almost let it in. Lucky for me I got a second glance before opening the door, because the nose was a little long and pointy for Stan, and I don't remember him having a black mask, or him being a big raccoon. I swear for an instant the bandit smiled at me, and then him and his friend slunk off around the side of the house.

I was a bit worried about Stan being out there, because he thinks he's a mighty hunter. I don't think he could have taken these guys, though. But he eventually made it in and is happy on my lap, trying to keep me from telling this story so I'll scratch his head some more.

So we got a refrigerator last year and one of our requirements for replacing it was we wanted to make sure it had a filtered water dispenser. I replaced the filter last time by going in to the dealership where we bought it and the salesman just grabbed one for me. This time I decided it would be different. I googled the model of the fridge wanting to find the type of filter I needed and see if I could find it somewhere cheaper. After pouring through whirlpool's site I couldn't find anything describing the make of filter I needed. I did find where you could order one by saying, "That's my fridge, send me a filter", but it was even more expensive. So I gave in and figured if I went to the dealership one more time I'd save the box and go from there in another six months. So, again, I wrote down the model number and went in to the dealership, but this time the salesman wasn't sure what type of filter it took. He asked me if it was a "push in" or a "turn" and I really couldn't remember. A couple times I offered him the card with the number on it, but he said that wouldn't help. Finally he gave up on my memory and googled the model number I had with me, but to my surprise he didn't look at any of the fridge info, he opened the picture of the fridge and squinted at the bottom of the photo where the filter goes. He then dragged me to a floor model and asked if the "...cover plate lookes like this", pointing at the corner of the fridge. I said that I thought so, and he grabbed me a filter, which of course, worked. But wouldn't it be simpler to just say, this fridge needs a type 'X' filter, right on the fridge?

So I was kind of looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend, and I thought I'd do a couple things around the house. I don't much like to go out in public (or wilderness) on the big weekends, there's too many bozos out and you can't throw a rock without hitting one of them. My todo list wasn't big, or at least I didn't perceive it as anything tremendous. I even thought that by hitting the hardware store on Friday night I'd be ahead of the game.

When I got back from Home Depot I scurried up onto the roof and replaced the cooler pads as it was getting dark and I wanted some time to just sit and watch the world go by Monday. I've been kind of excited, in a nerdly-homeowner sort of way in that I finally got the swamp cooler thermostat hooked up that Debbie bought me last year. I retired just after midnight with the plans to get the water going up to the cooler before it got hot.

I actually slept a solid night, and that doesn't happen often. I awoke just after eight and was about to roll over and doze a bit more when I realized I needed to get on the roof before the sun got to blazing. That woke me right up, and kind of disappointed me, but I figured I'd get all my stuff done by lunch and laze around this afternoon. The cooler went pretty slick, and I don't often have any projects that go off without a hitch, but the only thing this one threw at me was I had to move the hose from the front yard to the back. It seems my back yard is cursed for hoses. A couple summers ago mine got eaten, but I replaced it with one from Debbie's house. When I went to pick this one up it was split in several places and the casing was falling apart. I guess I should know to get them in, but the last couple winters have snuck up on me so fast that I didn't get a lot of the winter-prep done.

I came into work today (with my surgery I wasn't supposed to be up and around til tomorrow) because we were having our mandatory HIPAA training again and I didn't want to have to go to a special session, even though I find it fairly unlikely that I'll even touch anything HIPAA related before the next mandatory training session rolls around. I tried to make it a good time, though, as I do with all meetings.

It started off with a bang when the presenter asked us to all fill out an amusing form for which we would each receive a prize, the fastest three receiving a better prize than the rest of us. It was full of silly things along the lines of certain internet quizzes which obviously required putting down personal information. I guess it wasn't really obvious because at first I was trying to figure out what they meant by 'your nascar name' and figured since I didn't know anything about nascar I was failing some sort of quiz. To my relief, it seems as though Brian thought so too as he started asking the questions I was thinking. Once I got it I figured out it was an example of social engineering, so I lied on all the pieces of information that aren't readily available. I did salt it with truth in that I drive an S-10 Pickup and my middle name. Unfortunately my thought experiment in deciding how much of a lie would be believable kept me from finishing in the money. When it came time for the presenter to divulge that we'd all been socially engineered it resulted in this conversation:

Presenter: "So for a little toy you gave me all this personal information."
Me: "But I lied on all of it."
Presenter (smiling): "But you gave me information."
Me: "Yes, but It was incorrect information."
Presenter (still smiling): "But it was still information, correct?"
Me: "Incorrect information"

It might have gone on, but Guy pointed out I'm one of the tinfoil hat guys that deals with security. The presenter* said that we should go so far as to make the entries in our cell phones anonymous. We shouldn't have a HOME phone number detailed with that moniker because someone who finds our lost phone would know that bit of information easily. I spoke up and said that I thought that was going a bit far, because my home address and phone number are easily obtained through google or the phone book, so saving some malicious person a hand full of seconds on finding my home number really buys them nothing.**

As the meeting was wrapping up the presenter noted that none of us were wearing our badges. Upper campus is pretty strict about badge wearing and display, where down among us working people it's generally not required. The presenter seemed a bit concerned that an interloper could just walk among us unchallenged because they didn't have the proper piece of plastic affixed to a lapel.*** I piped up with one last little thing:

"Well, I can see that badge you're wearing there, and you've just given me a bit of information."

One of my finer meetings. Lucky for me it's recorded, and probably on our wiki. I'd give you the URL, but...

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*I'll diverge here and say that I've habitually removed personalization even in the gender of the presenter for some compulsive reason, so maybe the training was preaching to the choir on this one

**And it makes it harder for an honest person to do the right thing.

*** Which is silly, really.****

**** comment redacted... stupid anicdotal information availability protection getting in the way of entertainment.