Monday, February 03, 2003
Late Night Ramblings
It looks like I'm having a late night, like I'm trying to recapture the glory days of college when I could stay up all night and not show any ill effects the next day (don't ask, I did it far too often, and probably led me to thinking that a Night Auditor position at hotels was a rational employment opportunity). I've slept on and off again throughout the night, but I had to catch up on some possible Elance projects. It's ironic that in a full month of no nibbles it's only at the end of the billing cycle that I get some real leads and at least one project coming my way. Still, it might be too little too late, and I might not renew. Then again, I might. It can be good money (Stress the word CAN).
I also found myself waxing nostalgic over high school friends - probably because I am finally about to update the Class of 1992 site. I think I might actually have tracked two more people down from the senior class, which is actually a lot harder than they make it look on TV. For some reason, my computer doesn't go to the proper internet site right away...I probably have to get that checked out. One of the friends, Matt Midboe was actually running a blog himself and referenced our site's blog. Unfortunately, he has since decided to neglect his blog, which I can well understand, as it sometimes slips one's mind, and sometimes it is hard to think of something to say about the day. "I ate a cheese sandwich", indeed. Still, I do wish I had found it earlier. Matt has gone through some hard times in the past few years, and I wish I could have been there for him during it.
Here at home, Parker has taken to carrying around his talking stuffed animals and trying to talk into them like a telephone. Today he had his first slice of cherry pie, but was more interested in dried fruit and fried wontons. As he's still under the weather, it was hard to get him to et much of anything else today, though he did suck on a Thousand-Island drenched tomato for quite a while.
Like everyone else in America, I'm saddened by the shuttle disaster yesterday, although I am sorry to say I'm not as shocked as I was once would have been. NASA has had a bevy of maintenance and mechanical woes in the past few years, and today I read a compelling argument for the dissolution of the shuttle program in its entirety. The shuttle is out-of-date, both aeronautically and electronically, it is oversized, and costs too much to put into orbit. What's worse, NASA intends to continue using the existing shuttles until 2020, when they will be 40 years old! Airliners fall apart at that age, and the shuttle get a lot more stress and fatigue that commercial planes do. I believe it is time to look for alternatives.
What's especially chilling about the whole matter is that the disaster appears to have been caused by the damage suffered during launch. If that is so, that means the crew worked for sixteen days in space, not knowing that their fate had already been sealed.
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