An Unimportant Truth
I usually try to be better about posting to this thing as that seems to be the way 90% of my friends verify that I am still alive. I probably should get a Twitter account just so I can send out a weekly message of "Still alive!" At some other point in my life I might have worried about the fact that most of my friends have been reduced to a scattered mass of usernames glowing on a LCD screen, but lately this seems to be increasingly more normal and I am labeling myself a trendsetter. I was ahead of the curve way before being anti-social and lacking interpersonal skills with meatspace users was hip. As soon as the tanless, slovenly, overweight look becomes trendy as the new "gamer physique" I will be classed as a visionary. Until then I am just waiting for the world to catch up with me.
In point of fact, though, as it turns out I really am not so much lazy so much as I have been uninspired to post anything. I have been busy, mind you. Since I disappeared off everyone's collective RADAR I have done yet another Day Out With Thomas seventh layer of my own personal Hell day again, I have also driven to a friend's house way out in the middle of nowhere to create my first attempt at a Sparkler Bomb, and I have been to Six Flags a few times, and have had yet another costly repair. The reorgonization at work is still in progress and my job is, as always, up in the air. Combine that with the fact that I am, by far, the most computer literate person in my office and I have been given a side project that is consuming a lot of my time at work. It's only an Excel spreadsheet and, in theory, it should not be as difficult as it has turned out to be but I keep running into the same delimna that most people in software run into at some point or another. The users keep changing their minds and I have to go back and redesign everything I just did. Right now I am the only one in the office with an inkling of an understanding of what the equations I have entered do but that doesn't stop people from suggesting ways I should improve it.
So, with all that, you might think that has been what has kept me from posting and you would be half right. The truth is that the main reason I have not been posting is that I have been sick and the effort was just too much.
Well over a month ago I started experiencing breathing difficulties. If no one else reading this has never has asthma problems then let me tell you that you have no idea how much you take the idea of breathing for granted. A combination of allergies and heat set off an asthma attack and, well, it just didn't go away. I have what is considered a mild case of asthma. It can go untreated most of the time and I have never had to go to the ER for it. Most people with asthma consider me lucky. Most of the time if I decide to do something I have the energy to do it. For a lot of asthmatics, your plans may have to be flexible based upon pollen count or ozone action days.
Asthma is strange. Sitting down you may feel fine or at least no worse than most people do on a Monday morning before that first cup of coffee. Just a subtle dragging, tired feeling. Walking across the room takes effort and at times thinking takes effort. On most days I deliberately park my car five minutes away from the office just because I don't walk around much and I like the walk. I typically don't even notice this exertion. For the past few months I have parked as close as possible and it was still an effort.
I finally got to see a doctor and I made a bit of headway with this, but the symptoms persisted and even got worse. I started experiencing headaches and I was choking during the night. Not too long ago you could go to a doctor with a runny nose and they'd hand out perscrptions for antibiotics like Halloween candy. But those days are almost gone. Now before you can be diagnosed with a sinus infection you have to suffer for a few weeks.
Basically, I was miserable. Misery like being bound and gagged and left to rot in the middle of a John Tesh concert. Misery like finding bread mold on your sandwich after you have taken a bite. Misery like going on a blind date with a Scientologist. Just bad, okay?
After going to work and slugging it out there alternating between working on my spreadsheet project and doing my own job with up to two other people's jobs tossed in for good measure depending on who is out that day and then dragging myself home . . . frankly, I didn't really feel like giving an update to anyone. I didn't even come back like I promised and update people that, yes, the guy did hit my house with a tree. Fortunately, he just dinged the gutters.
For the past few weeks I have been sitting around reading books or watching movies and not much else. I decided to be a good little geek and find out what I had missed by not watching Firefly when it originally aired. Don't get me wrong, it was a pretty good sci-fi show but I am not sure I agree with the sentiment out there that it is the best sci-fi show ever. For all the gritty realism that it was credited for, I can't quite silence my inner critic.
My problem is that if the show is trying to present itself as believable, it makes it harder for me to swallow the parts that just aren't possible. Doctor Who I allow a lot of leeway, for example, because it never bothers to try to present itself as realistic. Farscape, on the other hand, I was a lot more critical over for making some of the same errors because that show was trying to be more serious. So, yes, I appreciate the fact that when they were in space they usually shot the scene in silence (note: The movie "Serenity" though they didn't seem to be able to resist adding sound effects in space, though). However, whomever came up with the idea of them staging a daring raid on a spacestation by guiding themselves in on inertia from 6,000 miles out to hit an airlock and storm inside is clearly not thinking. The space station was in orbit around a planet which means it is moving. Moving fast and not in a straight line. These are orbital dynamics. As much as people like to believe the Buck Rogers notion of pointing the rocket and firing, it doesn't work that way. If you go faster than the object you are aiming for (and you have to if you want to catch up) you will swing into a higher orbit and miss it. IF you are going slower, you will go into a lower orbit and swing under it. Space Shuttles actually move in a sine wave trying to dock up with objects in space.
In order to pull this off, he would actually have to start at a lower orbit and calculate exactly where the airlock would be when his orbits parobola intersected the other orbit. As he is going in on inertia alone, I might also point out that means his relative velocity to the space station has to be less than the impact that the ship can sustain in a head on collision. I have seen cars totaled hitting objects going less than 30 miles per hour. From 6,000 miles out that would take approximately 200 hours or just over 8 days. So he has to calculate exactly where something will be 8 days from now as he can't hit the brakes or he'll be in a different orbit. Mathematics like this are possible, but hardly probable and not really a good idea for a daring raid sort of situation. Even then, I can't see them really getting away with it without doing some steering. Plus the whole idea of how many planets and moons were suitable for terraformation is a stretch.
Is it worth watching? Sure. I think it is a shame it wasn't given a fair shake. But it is hardly worth obsessing over in my opinion.
The good news is that my sinus infection finally came to an end. Bad news was this was just in time for me to do my whirlwind driving encounter this last weekend. I filled up my gas tank three times in four days. I had to drive my son to his grandmother's house on friday evening (2 hour drive to and from there) and then I drove up to help a friend who lives four hours away clean out a mold infestation in his house on saturday. Sunday I had to retrieve my son.
How did the mold clean up go, you might ask? Mixed. Personally I think it is a sad sign of the times we live in when I can have a five foot tall flame leaping up from a blazing bonfire right next to the firestation and they don't even notice. Yes, we torched the molded items. After that things were okay, if tedious and stenuous, up until we found out the heating oil tankers that someone had installed in 1947 (I found the original inspection certificate) was leaking heating oil. Heating oil and diesel oil are the same thing, just one has road taxes applied to it. Imagine somewhere between 10 and 30 gallons of diesel oil spilling in a basement and the cleanup effort that might require and you can guess how my day was going.
Here it is Thursday and I am just now getting the energy up to talk about these things.
In point of fact, though, as it turns out I really am not so much lazy so much as I have been uninspired to post anything. I have been busy, mind you. Since I disappeared off everyone's collective RADAR I have done yet another Day Out With Thomas seventh layer of my own personal Hell day again, I have also driven to a friend's house way out in the middle of nowhere to create my first attempt at a Sparkler Bomb, and I have been to Six Flags a few times, and have had yet another costly repair. The reorgonization at work is still in progress and my job is, as always, up in the air. Combine that with the fact that I am, by far, the most computer literate person in my office and I have been given a side project that is consuming a lot of my time at work. It's only an Excel spreadsheet and, in theory, it should not be as difficult as it has turned out to be but I keep running into the same delimna that most people in software run into at some point or another. The users keep changing their minds and I have to go back and redesign everything I just did. Right now I am the only one in the office with an inkling of an understanding of what the equations I have entered do but that doesn't stop people from suggesting ways I should improve it.
So, with all that, you might think that has been what has kept me from posting and you would be half right. The truth is that the main reason I have not been posting is that I have been sick and the effort was just too much.
Well over a month ago I started experiencing breathing difficulties. If no one else reading this has never has asthma problems then let me tell you that you have no idea how much you take the idea of breathing for granted. A combination of allergies and heat set off an asthma attack and, well, it just didn't go away. I have what is considered a mild case of asthma. It can go untreated most of the time and I have never had to go to the ER for it. Most people with asthma consider me lucky. Most of the time if I decide to do something I have the energy to do it. For a lot of asthmatics, your plans may have to be flexible based upon pollen count or ozone action days.
Asthma is strange. Sitting down you may feel fine or at least no worse than most people do on a Monday morning before that first cup of coffee. Just a subtle dragging, tired feeling. Walking across the room takes effort and at times thinking takes effort. On most days I deliberately park my car five minutes away from the office just because I don't walk around much and I like the walk. I typically don't even notice this exertion. For the past few months I have parked as close as possible and it was still an effort.
I finally got to see a doctor and I made a bit of headway with this, but the symptoms persisted and even got worse. I started experiencing headaches and I was choking during the night. Not too long ago you could go to a doctor with a runny nose and they'd hand out perscrptions for antibiotics like Halloween candy. But those days are almost gone. Now before you can be diagnosed with a sinus infection you have to suffer for a few weeks.
Basically, I was miserable. Misery like being bound and gagged and left to rot in the middle of a John Tesh concert. Misery like finding bread mold on your sandwich after you have taken a bite. Misery like going on a blind date with a Scientologist. Just bad, okay?
After going to work and slugging it out there alternating between working on my spreadsheet project and doing my own job with up to two other people's jobs tossed in for good measure depending on who is out that day and then dragging myself home . . . frankly, I didn't really feel like giving an update to anyone. I didn't even come back like I promised and update people that, yes, the guy did hit my house with a tree. Fortunately, he just dinged the gutters.
For the past few weeks I have been sitting around reading books or watching movies and not much else. I decided to be a good little geek and find out what I had missed by not watching Firefly when it originally aired. Don't get me wrong, it was a pretty good sci-fi show but I am not sure I agree with the sentiment out there that it is the best sci-fi show ever. For all the gritty realism that it was credited for, I can't quite silence my inner critic.
My problem is that if the show is trying to present itself as believable, it makes it harder for me to swallow the parts that just aren't possible. Doctor Who I allow a lot of leeway, for example, because it never bothers to try to present itself as realistic. Farscape, on the other hand, I was a lot more critical over for making some of the same errors because that show was trying to be more serious. So, yes, I appreciate the fact that when they were in space they usually shot the scene in silence (note: The movie "Serenity" though they didn't seem to be able to resist adding sound effects in space, though). However, whomever came up with the idea of them staging a daring raid on a spacestation by guiding themselves in on inertia from 6,000 miles out to hit an airlock and storm inside is clearly not thinking. The space station was in orbit around a planet which means it is moving. Moving fast and not in a straight line. These are orbital dynamics. As much as people like to believe the Buck Rogers notion of pointing the rocket and firing, it doesn't work that way. If you go faster than the object you are aiming for (and you have to if you want to catch up) you will swing into a higher orbit and miss it. IF you are going slower, you will go into a lower orbit and swing under it. Space Shuttles actually move in a sine wave trying to dock up with objects in space.
In order to pull this off, he would actually have to start at a lower orbit and calculate exactly where the airlock would be when his orbits parobola intersected the other orbit. As he is going in on inertia alone, I might also point out that means his relative velocity to the space station has to be less than the impact that the ship can sustain in a head on collision. I have seen cars totaled hitting objects going less than 30 miles per hour. From 6,000 miles out that would take approximately 200 hours or just over 8 days. So he has to calculate exactly where something will be 8 days from now as he can't hit the brakes or he'll be in a different orbit. Mathematics like this are possible, but hardly probable and not really a good idea for a daring raid sort of situation. Even then, I can't see them really getting away with it without doing some steering. Plus the whole idea of how many planets and moons were suitable for terraformation is a stretch.
Is it worth watching? Sure. I think it is a shame it wasn't given a fair shake. But it is hardly worth obsessing over in my opinion.
The good news is that my sinus infection finally came to an end. Bad news was this was just in time for me to do my whirlwind driving encounter this last weekend. I filled up my gas tank three times in four days. I had to drive my son to his grandmother's house on friday evening (2 hour drive to and from there) and then I drove up to help a friend who lives four hours away clean out a mold infestation in his house on saturday. Sunday I had to retrieve my son.
How did the mold clean up go, you might ask? Mixed. Personally I think it is a sad sign of the times we live in when I can have a five foot tall flame leaping up from a blazing bonfire right next to the firestation and they don't even notice. Yes, we torched the molded items. After that things were okay, if tedious and stenuous, up until we found out the heating oil tankers that someone had installed in 1947 (I found the original inspection certificate) was leaking heating oil. Heating oil and diesel oil are the same thing, just one has road taxes applied to it. Imagine somewhere between 10 and 30 gallons of diesel oil spilling in a basement and the cleanup effort that might require and you can guess how my day was going.
Here it is Thursday and I am just now getting the energy up to talk about these things.