Well, March has been leonine throughout this year. The only aspect that was reasonably lamb-like was the fluffy white snow we got a bunch of over the weekend. It was strange dealing with such wet snow. I'm thoroughly used to the sounds-like-Styrofoam-when-you-walk-on-it, dry, dense variety one finds on the Antarctic Plateau. Anyhow, the melting process has been facilitated by the big winds that started back up last night. Three cheers for convective heat transfer! Delta-q! Delta-q! Delta-q!

I still have nothing decisive to report about my search for "what's next". In the last week there have been some doors that have closed, but others remain open. I think I have done right by myself, given the breadth and scope of inquiry I have made over the last 9 months I have been looking. In the meantime, I have started sorting through the boxes of my junk stored out in the barn, just so I can get rid of superfluous stuff I do not particularly need to hold on to. As Mr. Durden said, "The things you own end up owning you. " Whether I end up moving or keeping it in storage, it is always nice to downsize that anchor of stuff I drag around.

I recently finished reading a Robert Heinlein book titled "Tunnel in the Sky". It has to do with people adapting to a new environment into which nuclear-powered space-time portals thrust them. The themes of the end of the book were really similar to what a lot of folks felt when South Pole opened back up for summer. I won't spoil the denouement, but you should check out that little read sometime if you are at all interested in the psychological experience of living in isolation like we do/did at the bottom of the world.

“No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert, the brand which marks the nomad; and he will have within him the yearning to return, weak or insistent according to his nature. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match."
~Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands

Voices from a past life

So, you may recall that in one of my past incarnations I was a happy little resident of the South Pole that also happened to play in a few bands during the winter of 2008. Well, a kind soul that also participated in said musical groups has posted the studio recordings a couple of the bands did on his website, so you can go HERE to listen to them. He recommends you save the files instead of trying to listen to them from the website directly, so go ahead and do Ye Olde Right-Click Dance and enjoy.

I hope to get my car back from the body shop after that walloping it received by the hail storm the night before I set out for Florida. My little car and I have been through a lot in the last half of my life, and I'm happy to still have such a trusty steed upon which I may rely.

Yes, I am still looking for a job/trying to figure out what next to do with my life. I'd like to thank all my friends and family for their support and patience as I go through this process. It's not easy dealing with situations where there is no singular "right" answer. As is my wont, I will let other-more eloquent-folks distill my thoughts and sentiments for me:

Always set high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.
~Samuel Johnson

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.
~William Hazlitt

Long days and pleasant nights.

STS-119 pics part 2

Sorry for the belated post of the last of these photos. I made the mistake of sitting down on the couch and was out like a light.

These three photos zoom in on the Shuttle as its Solid Rocket Boosters finish their burn and separate from the Shuttle orbiter and External Tank. It was amazing to me that this was even visible to the naked eye as it happened. The SRBs parachute back into the Atlantic and are retrieved by vessels pre-positioned to tow them back to land for refurbishing.




Pulling back, it was possible to see the path the Shuttle had taken in its early stage in flight. The higher altitude portions were still in sunshine, while the lower bit was already in the Earth's shadow of twilight. You can also see how the winds vary with altitude. Some altitudes are quite still and some are more windy, where the path remained intact versus where it had already begun to contort. If you look closely you can see a little light in the left portion of photo that is Shuttle's main engines as it continues its way to orbit.


Even long after the launch, the upper clouds of exhaust were illuminated by the sun. The colors were just bizarre.



So, yeah, that was my first-person Shuttle launch experience, minus the couple of hours it took sitting in traffic driving back to my friend's house. Waiting the couple hours after we arrived, I did a lot of reading in "Treasure Island" to pass the time. I went back and read in the very beginning of the book where Robert Louis Stevenson had put in a note that I found to be somewhat appropriate to the experience I was having. Agree or disagree, this is how my mind works:

To the Hesitating Purchaser

If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons
And Buccaneers and buried Gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of today:

-So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave;
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie.

If something like this can't stir your blood then what could?

STS-119 pics part 1

As promised, here are some photos from before and just after the Shuttle lifted off Sunday evening.

The crowd where we sat in the lawn of an assisted care high-rise building right by the water:

The view toward the launch pads before anything bright and shiny started to happen:

Now things started happening quickly. By the time the Shuttle clears the tower it is moving at ~100 miles per hour, and continues to rapidly accelerate as it climbs. The focus is off a bit on some of them, sorry:






We couldn't hear any sound of the launch until the vehicle had climbed pretty high in the sky. I think we were about 10 miles or so away from the launch pad, so it makes sense to me that the acoustic energy at launch is so great that it is deadly out to a pretty far distance. The exhaust was bright enough to be a little hard to look directly at, like a little sun had quickly risen and started a bizarre path across the sky.

I will put some more up later this evening, but have a few job hunt-related things to attend to right now, as well as take a nap. I'm fading after the short hours of sleep in a cold car last night.

I'm back

Safe and sound, but with no little trauma to my posterior, I made it home from Orlando. I'll get to the pics and posts about the launch and drive once I take care of housesitting duties.

It's the final countdown!

Well, all is currently going well to facilitate the Shuttle launch this evening. We're probably going to watch from a park, since tickets for this particular launch (to see it from on-base at KSC) went on sale while I was still in SE Asia. If we get to see the launch then I'll probably get to bed fairly early and start the drive back to Kansas at a really early hour Monday morning. It has been a nice trip, but not much of a vacation. I've been working on my job hunt a lot, as some things just need to keep happening no matter where I might find myself. I should put this employment search down as full-time (albeit uncompensated) employment on my resume for as much work as it has required.

Anyhow, I'll keep updates coming this evening and from the road as I head home.

Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Ah, to be the superman...

Photographic evidence

OK, here are some photos from the last few days. First off is back home just after the hail storm that did its number to my car.

The Kennedy Space Center has a good number of vintage launch vehicles on display outdoors. I figure they must really take a pounding when hurricanes roll through.

That big ol' building in the distance is the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). That's where they originally put together the launch stack for the Saturn rockets in the Apollo days. For the last several decades it has been used for working with the Shuttle-External Tank-Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) combo. It's one of the largest buildings, by volume, in the world. I've read that clouds can form in its upper reaches when the right atmospheric conditions are present.

That stuff in the distant background is the launch pad that is being adapted to support the Constellation program's Ares rockets in the future. Yeah, that will be my future office or at least where I start my commute to work.

And, finally, that's yours truly with a Shuttle on the launch pad (obscured by the gantry) in the background. It definitely was thrilling to see the place so many folks have set off to do that which would make me so contented in life. Hopefully it will manage to get safely on its way this Sunday. I can't believe it took me this long, in life, to make it down here.

I am going to stay for the Sunday launch, provided the review scheduled for Saturday goes well. I'm not exactly sure what I'll do until then, but I may head out to the national seashore tomorrow. I spent a lot of time doing job hunting work online today. Call it a "working vacation".

"In my own view, the important achievement of Apollo was a demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited."
~Neil Armstrong, press conference, 1999