(houston) hail atlantis

king of atlantis.

(houston) surprise move

we moved justin today. happy halloween.

(houston) at the axiom this weekend

if you're not going to see death cab for cutie tonight or pauline oliveros tomorrow night, head down to the axiom to see justin, the magic bullets, and various other characters perform their cabaret numbers. i'm putting it here on my blog because justin didn't. i have heard there will be can-can dancers and funny skits.

the show is twice Friday and Saturday nights (tonight and tomorrow night) at 10pm and 12am.

(nasa) safety and total health

yesterday was safety and total health day here at nasa. this is a big deal, because safety is nasa's #1 priority. we celebrated it in our building with a safe and healthy pot luck breakfast in our conference room.

(trampoline) an existential moment

at the risk of sounding uber-earnest, i just had a delicious and rare profound moment. it was a moment of simultaneous smallness and hugeness. i was lying on my trampoline watching the eclipse. all the clouds that had been gently drizzling on me suddenly dissipated. before i moved here, i couldn't imagine this, but sometimes i love houston. it's almost november and i can lie in my backyard barefoot in short sleeves and watch the sky. i took a moment to appreciate what i have - i found a perspective that gave me an unexpected and sudden rush. and then i thought about cheezy things like how small i am on my little trampoline on this relatively insignificant planet. and the very next moment brought a feeling of heightened significance and knowledge that i exist. i do treasure these descartian (descartesque? descartesian?) moments. mostly they are moments of pure joy that is independent of all things and unaffected by circumstance. i think of them as little gifts from God. usually these moments inspire music. tonight i think i might just go back outside, watch the rest of the eclipse, get eaten by mosquitos, and then go to sleep. g'night, universe. i love you.

(friendswood) the prodikey

rock 'n' roll is simple. just buy the prodikey and follow these three easy steps. why spend all that money on pro tools? pfft. the prodikey is apparently all i need.

there's more where that came from.

(nasa) blood moon

apparently, from time to time in ancient china people beat on mirrors to get the dragon, who had obviously swallowed the moon, to release it back into the sky. it's a good thing they did, too, or we wouldn't have the moon today. crazy dragon. anyway, if you want to view the lunar eclipse with me this week, come on down to the Lunar and Planetary Science Institute from 7-10pm on Wednesday night to see it through the telescope.

(friendswood) unidentified crashing object

from my friend, the good doctor will marshall, earlier today:
"Did you see a 757 hit the Pentagon? Did you see any evidence that it
had at all? Now I think back I didn't either. It is a litte strange. Weird.

www.freedomunderground.org/memoryhole/pentagon.php#Main

Will"

what do you think?

(friendswood) easter eggs

it finally came - now my ka10 has a friend and possibly more. i'm thinking life partner. the guy who wrote the ebay ad said that the casio ka10 came with 6 cards, each of which would change the voice on the keyboard. he said one was missing, so i received 5 cards. the cards are just pieces of cardboard with holes cut in them in one or more of four slot locations. justin and i decided to see what would happen if we made up new cards with different configurations. we were rewarded with 5 bonus voices. we're not sure if other humans have ever heard these bonus voices. so in addition to the trumpet, music box, dog bark, old macdonald, and jingle bells voice/demo cards, we discovered (by cutting up cardboard packaging) the official piano voice(probably the original cared #1), a cheezy strings voice, a twinkle twinkle demo song, a lullaby demo song, and then, just when we'd thought it couldn't get any better, a RACECAR sample voice! there is really no end to the joy this instrument can bring. it just kept coming. as we were sitting and enjoying one of our new sounds, suddenly the keyboard next to justin sponaneously burst into song. we started thinking perhaps these keyboards were possessed. but, now with the benefit of a second keyboard for testing, we were able to confirm that these guys will play a song if left on for several minutes. they're pretty smart machines. the demo songs are especially delightful - if you don't touch the keyboard, it plays chords, rhythm, and melody. however, if you start playing, it replaces the melody voice with what you're playing, so you can play along to the song, or just improvise. so yeah...we jammed.



midway through this project, two roofing company guys showed up at my door and wanted to inspect the roof for hail damage. of course, they recommended a new roof. never mind that my roof is only two years old. the guy goes, "yeah, so why not just get a new roof?" i said, "uh...because it's a pain to get a whole new roof." he said, "well, i'll do all the work." he really wanted my money.

(friendswood) look out, entropy

i can tell that entropy thinks it's got the upper hand with me. it thinks it's sooooo powerful. but i think it underestimates me. this weekend i shall blast some mc hawking and finish unpacking the garage from my move in March. expect to see many items from the snook household on ebay next week.

(nasa) warped, dragged, scooped

according to a new paper in Nature, two guys with (air quotes) laaaaser beeeeams have measured a heretofore experimentally unconfirmed relativistic effect predicted by two austrian physicists early last century. of course, there are skeptics... most notably, the people involved with the recently launched gravity probe b, a project near and dear to my heart because it's woven into the fabric of my youth. ok that might be an exaggeration, but GPB has sustained many students and faculty in my department at stanford for decades. it was a part of our culture, even if we weren't directly involved with it. we invented mock quals questions about GPB controls systems. we all knew that was where the funding was. it seemed as though GPB had always been there and always would. hundreds of really smart people worked on it and hundreds of millions of dollars were spent building the complicated spacecraft. and then these two guys come along and for next to nothing (according to Nature) shoot laser range finders from the ground and measure the same thing. of course the GPB people are going to be skeptical. who wants to spend nearly a billion dollars and two decades building a spacecraft just to be scooped by laser beams? well, i say the more measurements the merrier. maybe the laser measurements aren't as accurate as they're claiming them to be. we'll see.

(friendswood) rush hour tm

apparently, you can play rush hour online. yikes. try jam 31.

(houston) heights

i saw a house in the heights today that i think might work better for me than the one i've got in friendswood. this is going to be tricky, but i think i'm going to try to get it.

happy birth of the Báb.

(phoenix) none was vs. none were

the question is this:

in the following sentence, should the third verb be singular or plural?

"i looked for logos on the engines of the little plane i took to get from phoenix to here, and there was/were none that i could see."

now, immediately after typing "were" in this sentence to justin, i corrected myself and typed "there was none." he corrected my correction, saying that "was" was definitely wrong. this quickly escalated into hot debate. my initial stance was that "none" should always have a singular verb, because this was what i learned in 8th grade. justin's initial stance was that it always depends on the implied number of things/people to which "none" is referring, so in this case the only appropriate verb is "were."

after the first round flurry of internet searches, i now think that either is appropriate, depending on the intent. if the intended meaning was something like "i looked for logos on the engines of the little plane i took to get from pheonix to here, and there was not a single one that i could see," then "was" is a slightly better choice. however, if i intended the meaning to be more like "i looked for logos....and there were not any that i could see," then "were" is the better choice. i will even concede that the latter is probably better here, but i am certain that either would be acceptable.

it would be a draw if justin would concede also that both are acceptable, but at the time of this posting, he bushingly stuck to his "was is wrong" guns. we have consulted several highly authoritative sources, but none have yet been sufficient to end the debate.

(kingman) family fun with the solar system

my dad (carl) and i did the first bit of actual work on my solar system sonification project today. we spent a few hours looking up data (from my grandma's old dictionary (the old-fashioned way)), fiddling with the numbers, and listening to results manually. then carl wrote a little java program to play the pitches, and we continued the brainstorming to determine which astrophysical parameters might best map to which parameters of sound. it was a good way to spend the afternoon. better than the other alternatives, anyway. at some point i'll write up a little summary of the project and vision so i can link to it. maybe you will have brilliant ideas to contribute.

(kingman) still life with splenda

so, i wasn't accurate in the title i claimed earlier. the actual title, according to formal documents, is "Director of Children's Activities." i woke up on friday morning to my grandmother taping up "the charts, so everyone knows who's who and what's what." These were four handwritten pages of useful information like the names of everyone coming, and then a chart with the job titles and assignees, and the menu. the menu is something she has been worried about for months, and she has been working hard to keep us to it. it's all very elaborate. here are the official titles, with several names next to each:

Meet Greet and Sweep the Patios
Director of Children's Activities
Entertainment Emcee
Dart Board Score Keeper
Gofer
Family History Note Getter
Table Set-up and Clear
Main Course Maker
Salad Chef (and Relisher)
Dessert Deputy
Bread and Butter Baron
Snack Server
Soft Drink Super
Coffee + Tea Captain
Milk + Juice Joker
Lead in the Chow Line

in addition to Director of Children's Activities (which i immediately delegated to my cousin todd), i am also down for "Salad Chef (and Relisher)." so today i washed some grapes and peeled some oranges. i've been a bit of a slacker here at the lowell/kendrick/roberts family reunion.

and then i narrowly escaped death

before a handsome prince on a white horse (sorry, no photo available) untied me and snapped me from the tracks.

and the rest of the time, i've spent eating punkin' pie and playing this game "rush hour,"

the point of which is to clear the traffic jam so the ice cream truck can get out before the icecream melts (no, justin, you can't just eat the ice cream), with my cousins jacob and charlie (my mother's brother's kids), who are actually younger than my nephews and neices (my sister's kids). i guess it won't be such a big deal that my kids (if i ever have any) will be so much younger than their cousins...there's always their cousin's kids to play with. i'm way behind the curve.

piñata time.
woo.
hoo.
good times.

(kingman) barstow, san bernadino

get hip.

(kingman) doublewide family

i'm sure i'm not the first to reflect on family, and how odd it is that this particular distinction "family" means that perfect strangers that have almost nothing in common have a reason to treat each other differently from other perfect strangers they might meet elsewhere. family reunions are a sort of window into what it might be like when all people will pretend they're family, and behave toward each other accordingly. (this is assuming that one treats one's family with respect and a certain degree of love and priority.) it is a central baha'i teaching (love/treat all people as if they were your closest and dearest family...but this isn't widely practiced in the world at large yet (and not even practiced very well by me)). it's easy here, though. my family is especially great and family reunions are always fun and entertaining.

but also a little bit weird. it can be disconcerting to sit back and watch the different expressions of similar genetic material. four generations of genes that you know you share. resolutions to do things either the same way or differently, and fear that you may not have any control over certain things. little dots running around a desert trailer park in a dynamic giant connect-the-dots game.

this weekend i am "chief officer in charge of grandchildren and great grandchildren." quite frankly, i'm a little nervous. i guess what it means, after you get past all the intimidating flash and prestige of the title, is that i have to come up with ways of entertaining the kids. this is funny to me, because kids never have trouble entertaining themselves. perhaps it's my grandmother's sick plot to keep *me* entertained.

oh, and speaking of family (and friends who are like family), congratulations leroy and karen (and the rest of the space family) on leroy's successful launch to ISS in the little capsule that could.

(NASA) carpe astra

"Night hath succeeded day, and day hath succeeded night, and the hours and moments of your lives have come and gone, and yet none of you hath, for one instant, consented to detach himself from that which perisheth. Bestir yourselves, that the brief moments that are still yours may not be dissipated and lost. Even as the swiftness of lightning your days shall pass, and your bodies shall be laid to rest beneath a canopy of dust. What can ye then achieve? " - Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, CLI

dissipated and lost. dissipated and lost. this quotation echoes in my head. am i doing everything i can do so my days aren't being dissipated and lost? i don't think so. i know i'm not. i like how it says "bestir yourselves." no one else is going to bestir me. bestirring has to come from the inside.

(friendswood) bye bye jetta and other suburban vignettes

so i took it back. i decided to get a prius in seaside blue instead. against my own better judgement, i opted for leather seats, despite the incongruity of the vegetarian driving around in an all-cow interior. and against justin's advice, i also opted to get this thing fully loaded, figuring that if i'm going to splurge, i might as well get everything i think i'll use. it was actually justin's final words, "well i'm glad you're getting more or less the car you want" that made me change my mind and pay the extra (too much) money for the onboard navigation and bluetooth phone option. it is due to arrive in 4-6 months. sad that people who want to do their part for the environment have to pay so much extra money and wait for half a year to get their car, while if i wanted to buy a huge duelie or a tricked out hummer, i could get it today. sigh.

tonight is the final presidential debate. i woke up this morning thinking about how different the world will be depending on who gets elected, and once again how anachronistic our electoral system is. i wonder what it would take to completely revamp the voting system in this country. catastrophe or an act of conscious will?

on a more local front, i decided on sunday morning that my driveway needed to be cleaned up after the tornado mess. my saturday walk had aggravated my irritation with nefarious leafblowers as i walked by a neighbor happily and cluelessly blowing away (before 8am on a saturday). i was glad this guy lives on the other side of the block. determined in my anti-leafblowerness, i decided to put my muscle where my judgmental thoughts were and sweep my driveway with my pushbroom. how many times had i thought, "how hard can it be to sweep your driveway the old-fashioned way?" well, it turns out it's pretty hard. especially if you have a big pebbled-cement driveway like mine with lots of little tree-berries and pine needles. and ants. oh, the ants. if you've never been to texas, you should know about the ants. you see, houston has little to offer in the way of natural beauty, but one thing it does have is beautiful, gorgeous, thick, luscious, delicious-looking grass - fields and fields of it - that makes you think of running barefoot through it and lying on it to watch the sky (another great thing about texas). but beware. the grass is only there to taunt you. never ever walk or stand barefoot in it. neither wear sandals while doing yardwork. the ants will get you. before you realize what's happening, your foot is covered and they all start biting at once. sandals are the worst in this case because you have to spend the extra time ripping your shoe off to stop the pain. then you have days of swelling and itching. aye, lassie, avoid the grass.

(friendswood) what's good with grape nuts?

yesterday morning, as i ate my breakfast, i wondered if i am the only person ever to eat grape nuts with nutella and vanilla soy milk.

(friendswood) columbus day

since i'm a government worker, today is a "holiday," but is it not the most bogus holiday ever? everyone knows (or should know) that columbus didn't discover america - he just happened upon it accidentally while looking for treasures and riches. neither was columbus, from what i can tell, a particularly admirable individual. however, as pointed out in an open letter from a Native American group in 1994, "The issue of Coumbus and Columbus Day is not easily resolvable by dismissing Columbus, the man." i think instead of having columbus day, we should just have a second martin luther king day. or perhaps a gandhi day. or at the very least, how about a national holiday that honors native americans rather than celebrates their oppression and extermination? in protest and in anticelebration of this holiday, i will work extra hard today and will remember those whose lives, cultures, and worlds were destroyed so i could be here and have this day off.

more from the 1994 open letter:
"To dignify Columbus and his legacy with parades, holidays and other celebrations is repugnant. As the original peoples of this land, we cannot, and we will not, tolerate social and political festivities that celebrate our genocide. We are committed to the active, open, and public rejection of disrespect and racism in its various forms--including Columbus Day and Columbus Day parades.

For the past five years the American Indian Movement of Colorado and our allies have been compelled to confront and resist the continuing Columbus legacy in the streets of Denver. For every hour spent organizing non-violent opposition to the Columbus parade, we have lost an hour that we were not able to use in assisting indigenous treaty rights struggles, land recovery strategies, and the advancement of indigenous self-determination.

However, one positive benefit of our efforts was the public debate over Columbus Day that has spread into the public schools as an educational tool for students and their teachers. Overall, we view the demise of the Columbus Day Parade in Denver as a welcome opportunity to move beyond the divisive symbolism of the past.

We therefore suggest the replacement of Columbus Day with a celebration that is more inclusive and that more accurately reflects the cultural and racial richness of the Americas. We also suggest that the community support a more honest portrayal of social evolution in this hemisphere and a greater respect for all people on the margins of the dominating society. There is no more appropriate place for this transformation to occur than in Colorado, the birthplace of the Columbus Day holiday."

(friendswood) wrong war, wrong time, wrong place

i'm fighting the wrong battles at the wrong time in the wrong place. i am pretty sure this was the right place with at least some of the right battles when i moved here. but i'm increasingly convinced that it's time to move on. not in a small way, but in a big scary way. i want to be in a totally different world. and not just the world i can pretend i'm in when i go into the studio. i've never been antsier or more ready. i'm looking for the path that will take me to my real future. right now i'm living future of my past, the path to which i created when i was 16. it's not all that. i've arrived completely, and it's not the right future. notwithstanding that this is the path leading to "astronaut," it all leaves me thinking, "so what?"

here are the things i'm going to do about it (new year's resolutions to be done with discipline before new year 2005):
0) stay. stay put in friendswood - finish all current projects (in the studio and at nasa)
1) play. spend as much time as possible in my desired world of art and music
2) play. practice and surround myself with creative people
3) pay. get out of debt and refinance my house so i can rent it out if necessary
4) weigh. lose 40 pounds and work on my health, fitness, and fashion
5) pray. align myself with that mysterious Thing which, when i'm aligned with it, feels right
6) yay. weigh all my options carefully and take action

sorry to those of you (justin) who thought this post might be about kerry and bush. i could comment on all that, but other people do a much better job.

my foot is itching again.

(friendswood) goose down, zero down, watership down

we went over to claire and john paul's house last night to watch the second presidential debate. not only is claire a brilliant hostess with yummy spinach and artichoke dip and other snacks, but there were various things available to hurl at the TV when something unsavory was being said. turns out that was a lot. we shot dart guns and rubber bands. justin was pretty handy with the gun. it was great fun. the thing that keeps standing out in my mind each time i watch one of the debates is how acceptable it is (for both candidates) to talk about killing people. well, killing terrorists. it's the first presidential race that i can remember so much talk about killing. us killing them, that is. of course, i wasn't really conscious during some of history's more intense wartimes. is this a new thing, or am i just suddenly hyper aware of it? it's disturbing. sure, terrorists are bad, and terrorism needs to be addressed...but why is the number one approach simply snuffing them out and killing them. it seems so hollywood and simplistic.

before the debate, i bought a car. it's frighteningly easy to buy a car these days. i intended just to stop by carmax to see what they had and i left with this:



now i have to decide if i'm going to keep it. i have 5 days to return it and get all my money back. which is no money at all. eventually there will be money involved...but so far no money.

on my walk this morning i took some pictures of death to share with you:


tornado damage


cute snake

(nasa) blue haired girl

last night, while justin and i watched the vice-presidential debate on video, i dyed my hair black. only it sorta turned out blue. so now i have blue hair. which is fine with me. blue is even better than black, i reckon. and i've never had blue hair before. i tried to capture it with my camera here at my desk, but it just looks black. i'll have to post the picture later today.

(friendswood) marriage

"O ye two believers in God! The Lord, peerless is He, hath made woman and man to abide with each other in the closest companionship, and to be even as a single soul. They are two helpmates, two intimate friends, who should be concerned about the welfare of each other.

If they live thus, they will pass through this world with perfect contentment, bliss, and peace of heart, and become the object of divine grace and favour... But if they do other than this, they will live out their lives in great bitterness, longing at every moment for death, and will be shamefaced in the heavenly realm. Strive, then, to abide, heart and soul, with each other as two doves in the nest, for this is to be blessed in both worlds."

(Selections from the Writings of `Abdu'l-Bahá", sec. 92, p. 122)

"Bahá'í marriage is the commitment of the two parties one to the other, and their mutual attachment of mind and heart. Each must, however, exercise the utmost care to become thoroughly acquainted with the character of the other, that the binding covenant between them may be a tie that will endure forever. Their purpose must be this: to become loving companions and comrades for time and eternity ....

The true marriage of Bahá'ís is this, united both physically and spiritually, that they may ever improve the spiritual life of each other, and may enjoy everlasting unity throughout all the worlds of God. This is Bahá'í marriage."

(Selections from the Writings of `Abdu'l-Bahá", sec. 86, p. 118)

"When such difference of opinion and belief occurs between husband and wife it is very unfortunate for undoubtedly it detracts from that spiritual bond which is the stronghold of the family bond, especially in times of difficulty. The way, however, that it could be remedied is not by acting in such wise as to alienate the other party. One of the objects of the Cause is actually to bring about a closer bond in the homes. In all such cases, therefore, the Master used to advise obedience to the wishes of the other party and prayer. Pray ... and at the same time so act as to draw him nearer rather than prejudice him. Once that harmony is secured then you will be able to serve unhampered." - Shoghi Effendi

(friendswood) something new

my favorite time of day is the half hour before the half hour before sunrise. the time when the sky is still dark but you can feel that the dawn is coming. i like it whether i've been up all night and haven't gone to bed yet or if i'm getting up early for some reason. being awake at that time of day feels like you're in on a really great secret.

it always amazes me what a little bit of sleep can do to my outlook on life. two nights of nearly 8 hours of sleep, and i feel like i'm back on track. maybe finally giving myself the space yesterday to take a time out is exactly what has allowed me to feel like i don't need it anymore. so, even though my pool is still green and filled with leaves (which i view as a metaphor for my life), and my pool filter is ...well... lemme post a picture:



and even though my house is a mess and i still haven't unpacked from my australia trip last month and i still have weeks of work to finish for the australians and my cat still has fleas and i don't have anything to wear because i have gained too much weight and my laundry is undone and my car transmission seems to be going out and my house stinks and my papers are unorganized and my hair refuses to leave the 80s and my studio website is still undone and the 5 CDs i'm working on are still undone and i live in friendswood texas and i haven't published a single scientific paper on my phd work and about 15 different groups of people are waiting for things from me and my garage is still filled with boxes and i haven't started work on my solar system sonification project and i still haven't finished the technical report for the nasa oceanographic analog missions project that i did last year and a bunch of other stuff that i can't really talk about...

yeah so even though all of that...
i feel today (finally) like i can cope with it all and stop being all paralyzed and overwhelmed. all from just a couple days of adequate sleep.

i'm not a superstitious person at all, but another interesting thing happened this morning at dawn when i woke up. right in the middle of my right heel is a wart that has been there for as long as i can remember. i think i first noticed it when i was 7 and i stepped on a nail on the way to swim team practice. i probably got the wart at the pool, where i spent half my childhood. anyway, over the years i've tried getting rid of it. a couple extended campaigns of attack, including even participating in a wart study at stanford (in the non-placebo group). it has never gone away. not even close. someone once told me that he believed that it would go away when i really wanted it to go away. sometime in graduate school i started to believe that the wart was a physical manifestation of my biggest character flaws that needed attention, and that when i made sufficient progress on these character flaws, it would go away. i guess that's sort of a variation of my friends theory. for a few years i focused more on my character and less on direct attack of the wart. there seemed to be no change. then sometime in the last two years i noticed that the wart was spreading. there were two new ones up on the ball of my foot! so i decided to take a multipronged approach. i redoubled my efforts to improve my character. but i also went to see a laser surgeon. i've been going in for regular zaps every month or so now for the last year. this has cost me a lot of money, and since i've started, two new warts have appeared and grown bigger (!), while two have gone away. the original one seems as vibrant as ever, appearing to thrive on the attention. i have interpreted this to mean that my character flaws are deep-rooted, tough, and pertinacious. also that when i conquer one, more pop up. nevertheless, i am determined and hopefully more persistent than they are, and i have started hacking away at these warts myself in addition to the laser treatment.

this morning when i woke up my whole heel itched like something big was going on down there. what i'm thinking is that something new is afoot. i'm ready to conquer the big one, i think. i'm not certain which of my flaws is "the big one," but i'm pretty sure it's discipline. if not, i have a feeling i'm going to figure it out soon.

so i'm going to go back to work today. right after the pool guy leaves.

(houston) time out

i'm taking a time out. i've called in sick for the rest of the week and i'm just going to focus on getting myself out of this funk. i need to find my spunk. i think it might be in the garage somewhere.

(NASA) happy birthday, mr. havel

happy birthday to one of my favorite world leaders of all time.


"If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President."

"Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not. "

"Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy. "

"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less."

"None of us knows all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events."

"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good. "

"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. "

"A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerally of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action."

Václav Havel (1936 - )

(friendswood) tornado?

a tornado is reported to have hit near my house yesterday as i was driving home. when i got there, a couple of my french doors were standing open and the plastic covers over the flourescent lights in the kitchen had been blown out. there were also three leaves and a couple small puddles of water on the kitchen floor. this was the only damage, and it seemed pretty strange. it looked like there had been a sudden pressure change, not a gust of wind. the power was out until about 1:30am. not very dramatic. however, the marble-sized hail and rain while driving home was.

(NASA) Go little spaceship, go!

Burt Rutan has been one of my heros since college. In a few minutes he and his team may win the X-Prize. My friends are assembled in the desert to watch. I'll be watching on TV from Houston. Wish I could be there. Go little spaceship, go!

(San Antonio) Remember

(houston) attention casio ka-10 users

this is my hot purchase of the day. i bought it across the runway at a neighbor's garage sale. can you believe they parted with this gem for under three dollars? i brought it home and fired it up. played mary had a little lamb and happy birthday to justin. what a sound! amazing 2-note polyphony! and nearly two octaves of piano sampley joy. now i've just got to find other casio ka-10 users to jam with. with two people we could make a triad. or maybe even a 7 chord. i'd better cool off...this could get out of hand.

(houston) good news - we've captured the sun

little pieces of the sun (OK, atoms) are coming soon to my building at JSC.

(from the JPL website)

September 30, 2004

The Genesis team is preparing to ship its samples of the Sun from the mission's temporary cleanroom at the U.S. Army Proving Ground, Dugway, Utah, to NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston.

"We have essentially completed the recovery and documentation process and now are in the business of preparing everything for transport," said Eileen Stansbery, Johnson Space Center assistant director of astromaterials research and exploration science. "We still have a way to go before we can quantify our recovery of the solar sample. I can tell you we have come a long way from September 8, and things are looking very, very good."

A major milestone in the process was the recovery of the Genesis mission's four separate segments of the concentrator target. Designed to measure the isotopic ratios of oxygen and nitrogen, the segments contain within their structure the samples that are the mission's most important science goal.

"Retrieving the concentrator target was our number one priority," Stansbery said. "When I first saw three of the four target segments were intact, and the fourth was mostly intact, my heart leapt. Inside those segments are three years of the solar samples, which to the scientific community, means eons worth of history of the birth of our solar system. I saw those, and I knew we had just overcome a major hurdle."

Other milestones in the recovery process included the discovery that the gold foil collector was undamaged and in excellent condition. The gold foil, which is expected to contain almost a million billion atoms of solar wind, was considered the number two priority for science recovery. The polished aluminum collector was misshapen by the impact. However, it is intact and expected to also yield secrets about the Sun. Another occurred when the cleanroom team disassembled the collector arrays. They revealed, among large amounts of useable array material, some almost whole sapphire and coated sapphire collectors and a metallic glass collector.