FMC 3.0

It’s been a good one:

“God save us from that kind of help.” <- Rep. Barney Frank of New York, on whether John McCain’s return to Capitol Hill has helped the bailout talks.

Speaking of the bailout, what a load of crap. Sure, the best way to save the American economy is to give 700 billion dollars to the same people that played fast and loose with theirs in the beginning, and lost it all. This seems like a further extension of the trickle down idiocy that was the Reagan era.

I say give the 700 billion to the actual people that need it - the American public. Not to a few banks, not to give executives that have driven very large companies into the ground a few million dollars for their efforts. Let the foreign investors they sold out to hand them a golden parachute. I say with 700 billion dollars, you could probably just about pay off every mortgage in the country, or at least a very large number of them. Do that. Let those that are having problems surviving have one less thing to worry about. Families get to keep their homes and concentrate on more important things, and the banks get their money back to help them stave off not having enough money to cover their deposits. This seems like a win-win to me.

Of course, with the talks on the Hill falling apart, it may all go right down the crapper anyway, and everyone loses. We the people elect such great leaders.

(Actually, it may qualify for the week, but Dave Letterman’s “Hey John, need a ride to the airport?” is way way up there too. )

Today’s gem: “It’s just that you never had a chance. I only go for guys who are unavailable.”

Now, I won’t attribute that to save the person who said it from embarrassment. Also, I’m not posting this to call her out in any way. It’s just this week’s example of the story of my life, and further proof that humanity is doomed.

So I’ve been looking forward to October for a long, long while. I’ll be back in Florida, and the group I’m with will have an all exclusive tour of the NASA facility at Cape Canaveral. Sure, there’s pictures of the tour I took two years ago in the gallery, but that was the public tour. This is the tour that the general public doesn’t get access to - it’s the most behind the scenes tour they do.

Now, if that wasn’t exciting enough, there’s a launch scheduled for October. About 7 or so hours after our tour. That means that while the launch pads are off limits for the tour, pictures of a shuttle on the pad, and the potential for seeing another launch.

Today, NASA caused a full on geekgasm. You see, after the Columbia disaster, there was a new rule put in the regs. Any shuttle mission not going to the International Space Station had to have a rescue shuttle in the wings ready to go in case a rescue mission was needed. However, every mission since Columbia has gone to the ISS, where a crew could dock and hang out until a rescue could occur. Not the Atlantis mission in October (it’s called STS-125, by the way, and is the 124th launch of a shuttle) - its headed to the Hubble telescope, where it’ll make a few repairs and upgrades that will keep it flying and workable another 5 or 6 years. It’s also the last non-ISS mission on the books before the end of the shuttle program (the 3 remaining shuttles are slated for retirement in 2010.)

I’ve been wondering for a long while now where a shuttle in the wings would reside - on the other launch pad, or in the VAB waiting to roll out. The launch process puts out a very, very large amount of energy, specifically sound waves. You can hear the launch for a long way off, and nothing is allowed within a 3 mile perimeter of the pad during a launch. The water sprayed on the pad isn’t for heat, it’s to dampen the sound - the reverb off of the pad without it would shake a shuttle to pieces. The energy is so great that the vibrations is causes instantly vaporizes liquids inside a mile and a half (or so) - and I mean all liquids - like the blood in your veins. It’d be a heck of a way to go, but you’d get a good look before you went.

Oh, by now, you’re starting to wonder where the geekgasm comes in. So a few hours ago NASA sends out a press release (yes, I subscribe to them) that answers one of my questions. The Shuttle Endeavour (the one I saw launch back in… 2003, I think) is rolling out to the other launch pad next week, and will be sitting there while Atlantis takes off. Apparently the scene from Armageddon I’ve said for years wasn’t possible just might be. That’s right - my 8 GB memory card for my camera is gonna be full of two shuttles ready to go at once. To my knowledge it’s the only time in history that it’s happened. Then, to watch one of them launch again? I’m gonna be in geek heaven. Now, if only the launch was during the day… oh well, small price to pay for witnessing history, I guess.

So stay tuned for pictures and the post-Florida recap.

Jon Stewart is still my hero:

I amazed the last visitor didn’t turn out the lights when they went. I haven’t really decided what to do with this space - obviously there’s just so much going on in life to report. The pending political post (which may surprise even those that think they know me) and post Florida recap of the next NASA tour aside, I don’t see much in the way of fascinating content coming down the pike. That is, if it was fascinating to anyone but me in the first place. And apparently it isn’t, since the vast majority of my traffic for months has just been the GoogleBot. Though, I suppose I should check the stats for when I was actually posting regularly.

Speaking of GoogleBot, or at least search engines in general, I was reminded by my sister tonight what interesting bits you can find in stats in the search phrases that somehow end up on your site. For instance, she seemed mildly annoyed that the phrase “yay boobs” hit her site (it’s currently the number 5 item on google when you search that phrase). Of course, they do have a post called that, so its really no big surprise.

I decided to pull up my own stats for the last few months, to see what gems I found in it’s pages. I’ve got a couple of awards to give out in this particular vein.

First, the “WTF?” award goes to: “wheres waldo chuck noris” (and no, I didn’t misspell that, the searcher did.) I think I know what they were going for, but I’ve no clue how they got to me.

Next, the “And those things go together how?” award goes to: “acrophobia zion national park”. I know I did a post about Zion, but not sure on the spiders thing.

For the “Maybe I should think about adding this…” award, we have: “blue panties”. But there’s plenty of other places to find that.

The “I didn’t know the Amish surfed the Internet” award: “bare leg exposed”. Seems like the fastest way to find that is to just go… anywhere… on a warm day.

And Last the “Ok, I’ll admit to being weird, but this is just plain creepy” award goes to: “half life gordon and alyx nc-17″. No clue how that got me and not some fan fiction site. Oh well, at least it wasn’t Furry porn or something.

There’s a few other gems if I go further back, but that’s just the last few months. Maybe I’ll make the crazy searches a regular feature. Beyond that, look for this space to be a spot of periodic long posts about stuff, like it has been for months, with a good mix of quick hit miniposts to showcase the oddities I find around the ‘Net. I tried to keep track of those in the past to so a long post of that kind of stuff, but I think I’ll switchover to instant gratification. It will be more posts with not much more substance, but then, that’s not why you’re here in the first place, is it? It may mean a weird flux of posts, but at least it’ll be something.