Tuesday,
January 15, 2008

Wow, I actually accomplished something

Only got a spotty six hours of sleep, but I got up around 7:00 AM anyway (well, it was either that or toss and turn with the possibility of waking Lyndon up). So I slugged down some caffeine and yogurt, cleaned the kitchen in preparation for an apartment repairman to come take a look at the non-functional microwave (yeah, yeah, I know it's dumb, but I'm excessively sensitive about strangers coming into the place when it looks like a disaster place), ran some laundry through the machines, reconciled my checkbook and paid the bills and quarterly tax statement.

At that point it was 9:30 AM or so, and the Bodacious Brit's phone went off -- he was needed in at work ASAP. Unfortuately he'd only had three hours of sleep, so he asked me to drive him into work, figuring quite rightly that he could handle the drive in, but coming home he would be well and truly burnt.

Which turned out to have an unexpected benefit, as I found out on the way that my favorite Mediterranean buffet, which I thought was closed, just moved to a bigger building on Central near Campbell. Yay! I loooooooved this place when I was working for that client last summer because I could load up on gyros and chicken meat, salad and veggies, so the new locale was filed away for future lunches.

By the time I got home the repairman had come and gone. The verdict on the work order left in our door was that the microwave was well and truly toast, and a new one needed to be ordered. This sort of sucks for us because we use the damn thing every day, to cook oatmeal for breakfast if nothing else, but hell if I run out and buy one just for a week or two until the new one gets installed. Looks like we're going back to stovetop cooking for the meantime -- bleah.

Mercury's MESSENGER

In much cooler news, MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry , and Ranging) made its first closeby approach to Mercury yesterday afternoon, in the first of three orbits that will result in MESSENGER inserting itself into a permanent orbit around Mercury in 2011.

The nifty thing about this first pass is that MESSENGER's cameras have captured pretty much double the amount of Mercury's surface that Mariner 10 was able to photograph in the 1970's. The photo at left (credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington) shows the Vivaldi crater, first seen by Mariner 10, in the upper right corner; MESSENGER’s modern camera, however, captured details such as the broad ancient depression overlapped by the lower-left part of the Vivaldi crater. Plus MESSENGER was able to get shots of the side of Mercury never seen before by humans (still being processed by NASA, otherwise I'd post one).

And all this in one pass. Imagine what we'll be able to see on Flyby 2 this October, and when MESSENGER enters Mercury orbit in 2011. And yeah, I know -- why all this interest in Mercury? Allow me to quote from http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/why_mercury/index.html:

Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are terrestrial (rocky) planets. Among these, Mercury is an extreme: the smallest, the densest (after correcting for self-compression), the one with the oldest surface, the one with the largest daily variations in surface temperature, and the least explored. Understanding this "end member" among the terrestrial planets is crucial to developing a better understanding of how the planets in our solar system formed and evolved. To develop this understanding, the MESSENGER mission, spacecraft, and science instruments are focused on answering six key outstanding questions that will allow us to understand Mercury as a planet.

Understanding Mercury will help us to understand the evolutionary development of Earth, as well. And understanding that could not only help us mediate the damage we've already done to this planet, it could also lead to the future terraforming of Mars (and possibly Venus, if we can figure out how to cool it off and convert an atmosphere consisting almost entirely of carbon dioxide into something more breathable by humans).

So, go MESSENGER!

Speaking of space matters

North Texas town abuzz over UFO sightings

STEPHENVILLE — In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.

Several dozen people - including a pilot, county constable and business owners - insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.

"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."

I swear to God, I have nothing to do with this. My people don't go for the big flashy craft -- the small sporty models are much better for fast landings and takeoffs.

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