The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

I'm on a "public" terminal at the NCAR Foothills library in Boulder (down in the city, not up in the Mesa Lab overlooking the valley). I just met with my grandadvisor, and within minutes I was extremely tickled by a particular situation.

Background: Waaaaay back in high school advanced chemistry, my friend M and I had the class first period, and during lectures, one or both of us would often stand at a nearby lab bench and make hot cocoa using a clean beaker, clean glass stirring rod, and a bunsen burner.

Upon meeting my grandadvisor and following him back to his office this morning, he stopped by the Cloud Microphysics Lab, wherein he was making his morning tea in the same manner. :-)

After a great approx. 90 minute meeting, he's left me here in the library and I'm supposed to go get him for lunch at the NCAR cafeteria.

...as I get drawn in.

I tried to avoid it for as long as possible.

This whole past school year, I was good about avoiding adding one more serial TV show to follow, despite all of Toni's positive reviews. But since taking the time to breathe a little, and SciFi having done a marathon of the whole first season, all but one episode of which is currently on our DVR, I finally succumbed and have started watching Heroes.

I've seen bits of episodes here and there as I would wander in and out of the living room while Toni was watching, and ever since it started I avoided asking Toni questions and avoided sitting and watching it for too long since I knew I wouldn't have a clue what was going on in the middle of the season. In the last couple of days I managed to watch, with Toni, a couple of the later episodes from the recent marathon and last night I started from the beginning.

Resistance is futile. :-)

Reading a book on lidar for my term paper, I came across this little nugget (technical details edited to spare you):

...blah blah technical mumbo-jumbo, and the group of lines is called the Q branch.

The Q branch? Okay, then. :-)

They're doing the Diet Coke and Mentos thing on tonight's episode!!

...apparently, I need this t-shirt. :-)

I wanna build this!! :-)

Based on a poll in twc_aficionados, the mod decided to have members post a definition each week. Gee, looking at my own LJ username, I wonder what I should do for my first one? ;-)

I was in the shower.

It was the middle of my sophomore year at IUPUI (first time there). I was still living with the 'rents, working part time at Sears in the small electronics (cameras, phones, typewriters) department. I didn't have class that day, but I had to work from 5 to 9pm.

While drying off after my shower, the phone rang. I was the only one home, so I answered it. It was my sister. Not the one also (and still) living with my parents, but the one closest to my age, who at the time was working at a bank HQ in downtown Indy.

"Do you have the TV on?" she asked.

"No."

"Turn it on. Now. Something happened with the space shuttle."

"Okay." I said and quickly ended the call.

I turned my TV on to CNN and watched, dumbfounded, while I got ready. After a short while, I decided to go on into work early. At around 1pm, I came in and watched the big wall of TVs in the electronics department (right next to my department) until I actually had to clock in at 5pm. The TV wall had a crowd in front of it until we closed that evening. I remember just sort of listlessly going through the motions at work. Fortunately, it wasn't very busy.

I remember that I hadn't been following every mission anymore, but I had a lot of interest in this one, not just because of the "Teacher in Space" thing with Christa McAuliffe, but also the TDRS-2 and SPARTAN/Halley projects. And, I'll admit it, I thought Judy Resnick was a babe. :-)

I followed the accident investigation very closely. Already fascinated by physicist Richard Feynman from stories and reading recommendations from my high school physics teacher, I thought it was so cool that a) he was not only on the Rogers commission, but he also had the chutzpah to differ with the majority in his opinion of the cause of the accident. A few years ago I read The Challenger Launch Decision which confirmed with an explanation point, the cultural and organizational aspects of the cause.

To the memories of Frank Scobee, Michael Smith, Judy Resnick, Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair, Greg Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe, and everyone else who has been affected by their and others' losses, let us hope this doesn't happen again for the same cultural/organizational reasons.


For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
-- Richard Feynman

Since we'd been out of town and busy and such since Giftmas, but Toni's brother's family gave me a binary clock. I finally set it up on the desk today. I like it, but wow, it's bright!