Oh well... pretty much confirms what I already knew.

Take the quiz:
Devil or Angel?

Black Devil
You'd be a black devil... All evil, love to have fun... do what you like, when you like... and no one can do anything about that... You do not care and laugh at people's pain...

Quizzes by myYearbook.com -- the World's Biggest Yearbook!

I dont agree with the part about not caring though... I do care, and have been punnished for it extensively. THATS why I'm so dark!

Damn this was a hard test...

This one was the hardest yet, there was smoke coming out if my ears by the time I went back to check my answers. Only 20 questions but for the life of me I dont think anyone I know could do any better. So prove me wrong! Heres what I got:

---

MIT AI Lab You scored 75 ai-geekery!

You're sharp, probably with an intro grad level class to AI. If you're looking for a job, send me your resume -- we might just have a place for you ;-)

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 85% on ai-geekery

Link: The How much of an AI geek are you Test written by notquitezeus on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

I Am One With The MySpace Borg

OK... I have been assimilated.
I'm now on MySpace If you can possibly think of any reason to want to be, you can be my friend there.

Well, I feel better now

I was feelin kinda down so I took a little test of good and evil... I feel a little better now.

How evil are you?

OK, it's official... I'm very naughty indeed

Very Kinky You are 35% pure!

My test showed me to be in the 19th percentile: You scored higher than 19% on purity

Link: The 100 Point Sexual Purity Test written by ocicat on Ok Cupid

I'm BAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaak!

I'm going to Boron this weekend... in a couple hours even. I'm going to try to post when I get there.

where the heck have I been?!?!?!?!

OK... I'm still alive.

I was on Sabbatical basically. The old job sucked at the end, I left in March 05 with a fat wad of cash after cashing in my vacations owed me for years and didn't look back. I posted a resume in August, agreed to come to work January 06 but got begged to start early, so; in November I started working at a new place. Maybe I'll tell you about it some time.

In the mean time I developed a serious EverQuest habit quite deliberately. Stayed up all night, bit a couple of pretty women and generally enjoyed my sample of what retirement is supposed to be like. Why oh why do you have to be too old to enjoy retirement before you are allowed to take it. That’s bunk, so I took 8 months of it now.

Update

It has been SOOOOOooooooo busy. In short; the car went together fine but there are no more pictures. It took half each of Saturday and Sunday of the next weekend to get it together and it started up on the first try and drove away Monday morning.

Christmas was a living hell (can we please do away with it?) and adding to that, ever since before Xmas the stupid job-thingy has been totally F'in with me... and still is even today. :(

To top it all off I didn't even get a chance to play at Fizzle & Pop for round 17. At least the City stopped screwing with us for a while, sort of like a cat losing interest in a well chewed toy. They might come back at any time and turn the neighborhood into a giant dirt-pile again. Such is life.

Maybe I'll write soon about how my job has become an evil twisted caricature of a Dilbert cartoon. :(

Failure analysis

Well the results are in: Gasket failure.



The Gasket has two points that are problem spots, locations exactly mirrored to each other. The forward end is the only one that failed (blue arrow) but the aft end was near failure for the exact same reason (black arrow). The High pressure oil port showed no indication of failure (red arrow). That HP oil port supplies oil to the camshaft.

The Surface of the block indicated that it had no problem and although the head's surface clearly showed the fail-point, (inverted image) it showed nothing for the near-failed spot. The best evidence for the failure came from the head gasket. That's where the erosion occurred, that's where the material is most altered by the problem. Despite the grime it is fairly clear that this is an old, long term cumulative damage problem. The excessive compression and deformation of the metal sealing rings around the #1 and #4 cylinders is certainly not recent. The engine hasn't been out of normal operating temperatures since March and even then it wasn't allowed to fully overheat, it was shutdown when I noticed it was struggling. I shut it down just in time to discover a split hose with a pinhole leak. (I cooled it, patched it and was driving again in a half hour).

So what happens when the temperature goes out of bounds? The engine gets too hot, the head warps, gasket materials are compressed then when the temperature goes back down the head flattens back out but the gasket material has been permanently deformed and eventually allows fluids and gases to leave their confinements.

None of this explains why this engine has almost always consumed water either. The possibility of an internal crack in the head is still very much a possibility. One that I will not be able to verify however as this head is to be turned in as a core for $90. Even immediately after the last top end job (back when Grandma owned it) it consumed water and it was surely not the head gasket then.

As for the ruined cam, it would appear that it has failed from simple old age and perhaps manufacturing variability or even maybe a defect. The roller-rocker is functioning properly and the valve motion was smooth and without excessive force. There were no indications of excessive heat, no contamination and no oil starvation. The valvetrain was in great condition otherwise but this one lobe maybe wasn't as well hardened and just wore out. Once the surface was roughened it's own eroded particles would contribute to even more excessive wear and then end up stuck to the big magnet I have on the side of the oil filter can. It looks like this engine was on it's last legs no matter what I did yesterday; I don't think it would have lasted another month.

The Sundance has suffered a good old fashioned gasket failure apparently due to repeated, non-permanent, thermal warpage of the head. This is certainly due to overheating as the machine has been overheated numerous times both while Grandma had it as well as when Diana had it. It got hot a few times while I had it too and I ended up replacing a badly clogged radiator. It's always consumed small amounts of water though. Really if I think back to all of the times it has overheated for some reason it really is no surprise that the gasket is degraded as bad as it is, the surprise is that it didn't just stroke-out earlier. I sill don't think that the overheating and gasket failure are the root cause though, I think they are results of the long standing, mysterious water consumption issue.

Next issue: reassembly.

Astronomy and Car Trouble

Today started out ok, I won (tied) first place in the Fizzle & Pop writing contest last week and this morning I had to go off to the USS Midway Museum. The SDAA is going to be having star parties on board the ship and I have volunteered to participate. The meeting on board today went well, we had to pay $5 for 2 hours of parking downtown but we got a bit of a behind the scenes tour and we had a person to ask questions of rather than the self-guided tour with the headphones that the general public gets. All in all we actually saw less than the regular visitors, but we saw stuff they may never see and we can come back.

On the way home the car (similar to this one) behaved ok but it has been running a little rough the last few days so a tune and flush was planned for today. I flushed it out and changed the plugs and wires with some top quality replacement parts. Well, it didn't go so well after all. I always do a sort-of forensic examination of parts removed from my cars particularly if they are known to be part of a problem. It would appear that the running rough problem was caused by the number one cylinder drinking both oil and water. Only a little of each but enough oil to dirty up the plug so that it misfired at idle when cold but not enough water to steam-clean it. The engine has been known to consume small amounts of water but the quantity has been so small that it hasn't been a significant issue. The cooling system has not been overpressurizing so there weren't combustion gases going into the cooling system much either. In short, I knew there was a small leakage problem with the head on this 89 Plymouth Sundance but it has been completely reliable and only recently showed any signs of needing my attention.

Turns out I made everything worse and pushed it over the edge today with the flush. Considering the recent misfiring I think I only accelerated the failure a few days or weeks. The cooling system flush was one of the very thorough ones, so thorough that it removed the grime and weakened the seals that were obviously on the verge of failure already.

When I started the car up, it ran smoothly but by the time it got warm I noticed that the condensation water vapor coming from the tailpipe had not subsided and the misfire had already returned. I had a bad feeling right on the spot, I already knew where this was going. I took it around the block but when I put it back in the driveway, sadly as expected, it had not subsided.

I popped the hood while it was still running and started checking for what I knew I would find already. I opened the oil cap and a little steam escaped. I pulled the dipstick and little puffs of steam came out of the tube. The dipstick didn't have any milky white in the oil on it so I caught it very early but as I let it continue to idle there for 10 more minutes, traces appeared as I repeatedly checked. Now it was totally confirmed, coolant in the oil, the cylinder head gasket and quite possibly the head itself had failed. I shut it down and opened the radiator cap vent so that more coolant wouldn't go into undesirable places.

I lamented the amount of money and time I realized I have just involuntarily forfeited and started planning. Rip it apart now and get a new head this time; this one seemed flaky even after the last head gasket. I have suspected that despite the service and pressure check (which I am now dubious of) that I had done last time this head was off, this head may have a hairline crack somewhere inside. It is a very complex casting and I know that sometimes shit happens, one tiny inclusion in a stress spot and I could have a thermal intermittent failure. The odd but not critical behavior of this engine the last couple of years would certainly be explained nicely by such a situation. Whatever the root cause it appears that this head is untrustworthy so rather than have it serviced, this time I'll simply (and expensively) replace it.

About half an hour has elapsed now since I noticed the condensation steam not going away, I'm tearing it down already. No better time than the present, after all my weekend is now hosed, so is next weekend, also my Christmas budget is now nuked. I might as well get started toward getting it over with. I tear down the driven equipment and the wire and tube harnesses, not too difficult. I've had this engine apart 3 times since I've been caring for it for the last 10 years, (it used to be my grandmother's car). I got all of the little stuff off in about an hour and started in on the core of the engine. I took the valve cover off and got my last joyous surprise of the day. The #3 intake valve's cam lobe (overhead cam) is effectively destroyed. The high end of that cam lobe is pitted and galled horribly. [Picture Picture Picture] The camshaft is unserviceable, there goes another couple hundred bucks. I haven't found the root cause of the cam/rocker failure and I don't expect I will but I suspect that the roller on the rocker has seized causing excessive friction, then heat, then failure of the alloy. The rest of the valvetrain appears fine and even the failed cam lobe was not yet causing trouble, it was obviously the source of the small tick I've been hearing the last few weeks though. It sure would have been a problem in the near future.

So it's late afternoon, I've spent about 2 hours taking it apart and I have my damage assessment so while it's still daylight, off to the parts store I go. The result? I ordered a head with camshaft included and it will arrive in three days ($700+). Tomorrow I'll actually pull the head and strip it down. It will have to be stripped of every fitting, plug and bolt, except that the cam and valvetrain stay in place.

I'll post again once I have examined the oil and water ports near the #1 cylinder, on the block, head and particularly the gasket's surfaces. I'll try to post the pix too.

Anyway, Merry F Christmas to me.

More Questions

There is evil there that does not sleep... and apparently it sure gets around.

Sidra got this as an email from Chaos and posted it to her blog and I nipped it from her blog. It's more questions. Just fun questions.

1. What time is it? Early evening

2. Name as it appears on birth certificate: Terry Thomas... You didn't say 'name on MY birth certificate', I'm sure there's a Terry Thomas out there somewhere and I bet he's an annoying pest.

3. Nicknames: 'Asshole,' 'Bastard,' 'Him,' 'You,' 'Sweetie,' 'Bad Doggy,' 'Pervert,' 'Oh Baby Yah,' often in that order, sometimes in the reverse.

4. Piercings: Tongue

5. Eye color: Green (both)

6. Place of birth: Um... birth. Well I was told by my creator that I came into being very far from here and I came to this place on a craft.

7. Favorite Food: Moist tender human flesh.

8. Ever been to Africa? No but a few bits have managed to make it to me.

9. Ever been toilet papering? No sadly, that never was very popular to do around here. The only papering here happens in the lav.

10. Love someone so much it made you cry? Twice. (And lust twice a week.)

11. Been in a car accident? Yes but some of them weren't my fault.

12. Croutons or bacon bits: Yes, and can I get that without all those funny green/red/purple plant thingies.

13. Favorite day of the week: Saturday, the day I am most likely to be away playing.

14. Favorite Restaurant: Filippi's Pizza Grotto, Not for the pizza though, (although theirs is the best), for the Fettuccine Alfredo With Chicken. MMMmmmmmmm :-)

15. Favorite flower: If you're female... Get naked. Look down. Find the pink thing. >:-P That's the ticket, wadda ya think the tongue ring is for?

16. Favorite sport to watch: Human society.

17. Favorite drink: Unleaded: Strawberry Fanta; Premium: Absolute Vodka, ice-cold but with no ice.

18. Favorite ice cream: Mint Chocolate Chip.

19. Disney or Warner Bros.: Old WB animation, Old Disney music.

20. Favorite fast food restaurant: KFC

21. What color is your bedroom carpet? I can't tell, it's always so dark in there when I'm awake... It's shaggy though (In a good way).

22. How many times did you fail your driver's license test? None. Passed mine on the first try. I'm from California, we are trained to drive before we are trained to walk.

23. Before this one, from whom did you get your last e-mail? I got a spam for a $150 repl1c@ R0|ex.

24. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Victoria's Secret, a little gift shopping goes a long way. Pretty things get chewed up so fast. ;-)

25. What you do most often when you are bored? Try to become not bored, preferably with a close friend or two.

26. Bed time: Sunrise.

27. Who will respond to this e-mail the quickest? Diana Maybe.

28. Who is the person you sent this to that is least likely to respond? Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who; according to the latest CNN updated reports is too busy continuing his ongoing campaign of being long dead.

29. Favorite TV shows: Sid said: "TV is the devil's tool and it exists only to melt our minds" but I'm not sure I believe that. I watch things on the Discovery, History and SciFi channels and combine what I have learned to devise new and devastating future-weapons that can be created from scraps of metal and ordinary household items. TV is much more evil than just melting our minds. :-)

30. Last person you went out to dinner with: Tiff, we went to Red Lobster and I ate crab, lobster and shrimp until I was ready to burst.

31. Ford or Chevy? If you need to ask, then you have some serious issues, everyone knows that Chevy Rules! (GMC is OK too)

32. What are you listening to right now? A bunch of cooling fans on a lot of computers and the guy in the next cube gibbering on the phone. When he leaves... I have 4 speakers and a subwoofer under the desk that will shake the building.

33. What is your favorite color? Black, Flat Black, Dark Black, Pitch Black and Dark-Dark-Dark-Dark Grey with Black trim.

34. Lake, ocean or river? The Ocean, fresh water is for toilets.

35. How many tattoos do you have? Not a one. Sorry, just plenty of scars.

36. Ever run out of gas? Um, accidentally or deliberately?...Well actually yes to both but I usually have a spare can of gas in my vehicles.

That's the end? Those were fun, not quite as much fun as the last batch though.

Pain

The last few weeks has been somewhat of a living hell at the o'l homestead. It all started when the city decided that it was time for our block to receive its sidewalks. I thought it would be a no brainer because my place and the one neighbor already have our sidewalks. The city even replaced that neighbors sidewalk a couple months back, at city expense because it was damaged. This clearly indicated that we were essentially already done, so; no problem right? ...Wrong. The new city plan calls for a different arrangement of the sidewalks; 5 feet of grass then 5 feet of sidewalk. We had just 5 feet of sidewalk by the road, really nice actually. So, the destruction workers came anyway, to make the whole block uniform. They ripped it all up, crushed the concrete enclosure for my water meter and the cover for my sewer access taps. They replaced the water meter enclosure (they re-did everyone's so they'd be the same) but then they just buried the sewer access so that no one would be able to find it. They chopped up my tree so bad that I had a guy just finish it off, Cha-Ching! To top it all off, the equipment they were using broke down twice right in my yard. Each time it dumped gallons of hydraulic fluid right in the middle of my lawn although one of the occasions they moved off of the grass and dumped a couple gallons on my driveway. (Fuckin' Thanks!) They then proceeded to track it back and fourth across the driveway and the new sidewalk. Sweet, my place is now an EPA Super-Fund site too.

A oil in the grass and tracks on the sidewalk (after the rain washed a lot away):


Rant=on
Hey, what the FUCK is with this making everything the same crap, I'm fucking sick of it! If I had wanted my place to look identical to everything else I would have bought a new cracker-box, cookie-cutter, identical tract house. I didn't, now why should the damned city come along and try to retroactively make everything identical in a nice old neighborhood with small town character, sidewalks or not. I'm ready to move out of town so that I can shoot the first person who comes on my land and tells me what to do or will be done to what's "mine". [teeth barred] GRRRrrrrrrr!!!
/Rant

Where was I... The tree guy left some big-ass roots in the crater when he was done (not to mention a chewed-up, now-polluted, lawn) and now because of the new sidewalk's proximity to the house I can no longer park 2 cars in tandem in my driveway either. Effectively I have only 2 spaces instead of 3 now. That's tough since I have 5 cars, normally 3 in the driveways and two on the street. (That way I'm not parking in front of anyone else's house.) The neighbor on the other side had it worse than me though, he had 6 cars and a wall with wrought iron work out in front of his place, 6 feet from the road, just like the city ordinance said. I'm still not sure how the 6 foot setback turned into a 10 foot setback when the sidewalks came in. A couple others on the block have 80 year old, 100 Ft tall palm trees out in front that will also have to go. Fences, hedges, walls, gates, mailboxes; all fall before the eminent domain of our city here in the land of the ...uh, ...um, free? yah, that's it, land of the free, right? The new sidewalk does look nice, I have to admit. However it's a real big pain because of all of the disruption and destruction, not to mention the loss of several hundred square feet of my yard and driveways.

So that's the living hell part? Where's the pain? Well, digging up the roots of my former tree is no small piece of work since all I have is hand tools. The big root is 12" in diameter at the widest and with hours of back-breaking work I raised it and dug some access so I can cut it into sections. All alone. :-( The reduction of the roots (but not removal yet) enabled me to begin working on my parking problem as well as think about another problem with the new sidewalk. The new sidewalk is lower than my yard, lower than a lot of the yards on the block. I haven't figured out what to do about that yet.

Crater and root:


Today I finished-up putting in a temporary widening of my driveway, a strip 3 feet wide, of 12" square pavers. It gives the freshly disturbed ground a chance to settle but without cracking any concrete. I'll have to pull these things up in a few weeks and fill in more dirt to counter the settling, but after a few months of parking on it, I'll be able to pour concrete there without it settling more and cracking my driveway addition. I'll do the same thing on the other side and then I'll be able to park cars three-abreast, all on concrete just like the other city ordinance says. My neighbor across the street is in the exact same situation but he happened to have $5000 handy (and no tree in the way) so he had a contractor re-do his whole driveway triple wide the same weekend as the sidewalks. Nice for him, he's retired with a fat nest-egg, I'm still workin' for Citibank, ...and Chase, and Discover... You get the point.

Crater and pavers (covered with dirt) by the short driveway and ramp:


So what's next? More of the same, lots more. I have to dig out an additional foot and put down another row of pavers on the same side I already did, but only after I get that giant root out, it's now my boundary. Then I have to scrape 4 feet out of the other side and do the same paver thing with that land. The head of the second driveway (by the former tree) will have to be extended, some bushes removed between the driveways and a wooden ramp to my porch removed & replaced while being blended into that driveway extension. Basically, shitloads of work essentially all by myself (no one in my doin' stuff crew is capable of heavy work but me). Oh and then there's the disposal of about 4 cubic meters of dirt! Where the FUCK am I going to put 4 cubic meters of dirt?! ...And SHIT! that's a lot of dirt to be doing ANYTHING with having only shovels and a shiny new wheelbarrow. This is going to take well into next year, no doubt.

Oh Crap, Oh Crap, Oh Crap, Oh Crap, Oh Crap, Oh Crap, Oh Crap, Crap, Crap, Crap on a Crap cracker! My back is now killing me! It feels like my lower back has been run over by a truck and I only moved maybe half a cubic meter (although I laid all those heavy pavers and dug roots too). More pain is on the way.

Some pictures of it all to be added as soon as I find them and shoot some more.

Vandenberg AFB Open House/Air Show

Well this weekend I got out to play again. I grabbed three of the crew and we went to Vandenberg. We left right from my J-O-B and I drove the whole way. Just shy of 300 miles in 5 hours, no sweat. We pulled in at midnight to Motel 6 in Lompoc. I scored 2 rooms and we put them to immediate use.

The rooms were neat and clean but the toilet had a leak and refilled loudly every 10 minutes. I shut off the water and watched TV very quietly until 2:00 while my room mate crashed-out. At 5:00 am the upstairs guests decided it was up-time. :-/ They fired up the TV, took showers, cleaned up and tramped back and forth quite literally hundreds of times on a floor that with every step, creaked and popped like an old farmhouse. I can only believe that their suitcase was at one end of the room and their stuff on the other, so they proceeded to pack one molecule at a time. Amazingly they finished up by 7:45, Ahhhh, finally. ...Then my alarm went off at 8:00, time to go. :-(

Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time I hit the ground running on pathetic little sleep. We grabbed some food and coffee for the crew (I cannot put anything in my stomach that early, it would just make me sick). Off to Vandenberg. The security was the most intense yet for an air show. All parking was well away from anything and attendees were bussed (old yellow school busses) to the show area 100% but only after an airport-class screening. Well maybe not quite as strict but real close, bags searched, pockets emptied and metal detectors for everyone. Nobody had to take their shoes off or strip at least. :-)

Finally some airplanes and stuff! First and foremost this was NOT a photo expedition, I didn't bring any of my big cameras, only my lowly high-compression, 1-megapixel Floppy disk Mavica, not much on resolution but exceptionally convenient, the posted pix from it are completely unmodified.

Greeting us first up was an old Atlas first and second stage as well as some mobile transport/launch trucks and trailers for Minuteman missiles. We went into a hanger and scored some fairly good swag from the floor which was filled only with APPROPRIATE booths and displays. Hooray! (Many shows I have been to lately have had spa vendors, mortgage companies, credit card companies and the like - 90% of displays that have nothing to do with an air show and don't belong there.) This show has the USAF, Boeing Space, LMCO Space, Air Force Research, a crew from Edwards AFB and lots more of exactly what should have been there, real air show stuff.

The first plane was Orbital's L1011, Stargazer, which is used to air-launch their Pegasus vehicle from 39,000. It was here because it was supposed to launch the DART spacecraft but it got delayed and sent back to the vehicle assembly building, (wherever that is). Stargazer is usually parked out at Mojave Airport, We saw it there when SpaceShipOne won the X-Prize.


There was of course the obligatory F117, now commonly at all air shows around SoCal.


I wandered over next to the AWACS plane for a quick walkthrough. Not. It was fascinating to get inside one but it took like 40 minutes from line to exit. This plane is a complete air traffic control station and can fly anywhere in the world at which point it flies in circles. It has a 24 hour hang-time but usually not deployed for longer than 20 hrs at a time. The limiting factor isn't the crew, they can rest on-board, it's not fuel, it can be mid-air refueled... The limiting factor is oil. Yes oil, in the engines, it breaks down after 24 hours of run. Aircraft don't have a big oil reservoir, it would be too heavy, they depend upon frequent oil changes and you can't do that mid-air. Here's a couple of pix of the plane.



While I was in there I missed the flight (mock dogfight) of the Bearcat and the Zero, Yes a real flying Japanese, Mitsubishi Zero! This one is one of only 2 left flight worthy. I snapped a couple pix after they got back on the ground.



A quick turn to the left and I was face to face with the B-25 Heavenly Body.


A turn to the right and I was faced with 2 P51 Mustangs that flew a little later.


The show continued with some flight demonstrations, an F-16 here.


It was then joined by The two P51 Mustangs and an A10 for a heritage flight.


The others landed and the A10 played around for a while.


There were a few helos out and about too and they even did a water drop (that I botched the pic of) but here's one just before it winched a guy up on a rope.


Last but not least at all was the B17 Sentimental Journey.


The biggest treat of the day was climbing inside the B17. Boy was it cramped in there. Amazing that 10 men fought in that thin hull. The tiny walkway between the bomb racks had aluminum walls on either side. I had to separate my camera and jacket from myself and press myself between the panels to pass aft. The only roomy places were the radio man's area and the waist gunners' space. Everything forward and everything aft were just tiny little spaces. ...But what an amazing and beautiful machine.


There was a lot more stuff but I didn't always have the camera handy and I lost at least one disk full of A-10 Warthog pictures. Besides, a lot of the pictures I shot just suck so I wont post them. :-) OK, time for bed, it's now Sunday and 5:00 am, I've been up 24 hours, got 3 hours sleep before that and driven a total of about 700 miles since Friday at 7:30 pm.

Blogthings - You are "Yakuza" (Japanese mafia)

Last one for now. Sleepy time, gotta drive to Vandenberg tomorrow after a full day of work.

You are "Yakuza" (Japanese mafia)

What Japanese Smiley Are You?

I Should Be a Mental Patient for Halloween!

Hey, these are fun!

You Should Be a Mental Patient for Halloween!

What should you be for Halloween?

Blogthings - You Are Creepy

Aw, shucks, I failed another one. I frighten serial killers. :-)

You Are Creepy

Serial killers would run away from you in a flash.

How scary are you?

Questions, Questions

I saw these questions and some answers on Tricia's blog and I decided it would be fun to answer them too so I stole them. Thanks Tricia!

Here goes nothing:

1. IF YOU COULD BUILD A SECOND HOUSE ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD IT BE?
It would be on the far side of the moon or perhaps farther away. I just need those wide open spaces; really wide, really space, nobody's law but my own and no HOA to snivel about where I park my cars.

2. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING?
My big black trench or panties with (my) teeth marks, depending upon my mood.

3. THE LAST CD YOU BOUGHT?
Philip Glass, Soundtrack from Candyman, I just ordered it last night. ...It's SOOoooo DARK!

4. WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING?
Morning? Um, well; when I have my choice, I DON'T wake up in the morning, that's when I go to bed! When I am forced to get up and go to work I usually manage to drag myself up before 11:00 am.

5. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE KITCHEN APPLIANCE?
[CENSORED] or I suppose my refrigerator is pretty cool too... Crushed ice from the door baby!

6. IF YOU COULD PLAY AN INSTRUMENT, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
If I could play really any instrument I wanted in the world it would be one of those cathedral-sized monster pipe organs with hundreds of pipes and other instruments slaved to it. If I have to be realistic, I'd have to pick the bass sax.

7. FAVORITE COLOR?
Stealth flat-black for everything I own! [CENSORED]-pink is nice for some things too. ;-p

8. WHICH DO YOU PREFER, SPORTS CAR OR SUV?
Tough call, I really prefer one of those late 50s through 60s giant cars; a 67 imperial or a 59 Caddy or even a 65 Thunderbird. Of course I wouldn't turn down a 67 GTO either. It's gotta be big enough to let me do stuff other than just transport myself; stuff like [CENSORED]. If I have only sports car or SUV to choose from then I guess I'd have to pick an SUV. Really though, isn't a 72 Cadillac hearse both a sports car and an SUV for someone with the right mindset?

9. DO YOU BELIEVE IN AFTERLIFE?
I think I'm already living it. The way I'm going now though I'm going to be an ant or an emperor next time around, it probably just depends upon which god gets my case.

10. FAVORITE CHILDREN'S BOOK?
Curious George, he was such a smart monkey... just like all the people I work with. Now where the heck is my yellow hat?

11. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON?
Summer of course, that's all we really have here in San Diego except for 1 or 2 cold nights and 2 or 3 small rain storms per year. I think we had some Fall the other day for a few hours but I'm not sure. :-)

12. IF YOU COULD HAVE ONE SUPER POWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
To be able to teleport myself, other people and any stuff wherever and whenever I wanted. Eat your heart out Fed-Ex (F%*&!#& $45 to ship a little box!?! NOT anymore!!!). ...And teleporting has so much potential for [CENSORED] .

13. IF YOU HAVE A TATTOO, WHAT IS IT?
I don't have one yet, I can never think of anything I really want indelibly printed into my flesh. If I keep going the way I am going I figure in a few more years I may be able to see nifty patterns in my scars instead. Either that or I'll look like a map of railroad tracks. I got a nice tongue ring though. ;-p

14. CAN YOU JUGGLE?
I can juggle bills and workload but not a single solid (or less than solid) object.

15. THE ONE PERSON/PEOPLE FROM YOUR PAST YOU WISH YOU COULD GO BACK AND TALK TO?
My grandfather, the way he was back in the 70s with so many stories and so much ambition. He was a really great guy! I sure miss him.

16. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE DAY?
Saturday, that's the day I sleep latest and often the day I get to do the coolest stuff (if I get up in time).

17. WHAT'S IN THE TRUNK OF YOUR CAR?
A Telescope, eyepieces, tripod, tools, cables, a huge marine battery and a supply of assorted booze for use with the stars, planets, galaxies, good friends and the gear from my trunk. There's some other things in there too but if I told you what they were I'd have to [CENSORED].

18. WHICH DO YOU PREFER, SUSHI OR HAMBURGER?
[CENSORED]

19. FROM THE PEOPLE YOU WILL EMAIL THIS TO, WHO'S MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND FIRST?
Probably Tricia, I nipped these questions off her blog after all. ;-)

20. WHO'S LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
Space aliens and Generalisimo Francisco Franco who is apparently still dead.

21. WHO DID YOU RECEIVE THIS FROM?
Tricia; like I said at question 19, I nipped it off her blog. Either that or I just think I got it from her blog... I did have my tinfoil hat off for a few minutes today and you never know what can happen.

22. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FLOWER?
[CENSORED]

23. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MEAL?
[CENSORED]

what HTML tag are you?

Oh my... I think I failed this test, LOL, here's my result:





You are <blink>
There's no two ways about it - you're pure evil.  Sure, there may be a few people who say you've got a good soul deep down, but really, you're irredeemable.  Right?
Which HTML tag am I? at workingwith.me.uk



I found the link to the little test on Tricia's blog and just had to try it out for myself. 

SpaceShipOne Wins The X-Prize

Well I am now recovered and caught up enough here at work to write up my latest trip. I stayed in Boron California once again, at our usual place. We came out this time for one thing and one thing only: To see SpaceShipOne - the Paul G. Allen sponsored, Scaled Composites built and Burt Rutan designed - civilian spaceship make its third flight into space and win the Ansari X-Prize.

The night before, the Discovery Channel ran their show Black Sky but they ran it from 9:00 to 11:00 pm. That was a little late for them and all of us attending the launch in the morning but a lot of us, me included watched it anyway. (Word from Burt Rutan and the team is that they were very impressed with the way the 2 hour show came out.) We got up and hit the road at 2:00 am to go west from Boron to Mojave. We got in line and were parked within 1/2 hour. I off-loaded passengers chairs and 4 cameras and we then had only 4 hours to wait. We fortunately didn't have the 60 MPH wind and dust-storm that we had on the first space flight back in June. That was good because my telescope wouldn't have liked that at all.

One of my cameras this time was attached to a Meade ETX 90 astronomical telescope from OPT that I removed from it's mount to use as an overgrown telephoto lens. It had a heavy tripod on it as a stabilizer but I was hand holding it to shoot. I had some adapters on it as well as a field flattener and so I got about 1000mm focal length from it. My other gear was more conventional: my replaced Olympus camera body on a 100-500mm Phoenix zoom lens, a 50mm flat field Nikkor for pictures when the vehicles were really close and a Sony camcorder with 80X mechanical zoom (no digital!). Everything was tripod mounted for stability except the Nikkor. Lots of gear but the film cameras would be used one at a time depending upon how far away the action was. Unfortunately this time the video got hosed so except for a few stills to be nipped from it it's pretty much a loss as was one roll shot pre-flight with the Nikkor that got 'spooled'. Hey at least I didn't smash another camera this time.

So at about 7:00 am they rolled chase planes, White Knight with SS1 and then without much delay at all went right into the air. They circled around for about an hour then went way-east turned and came back toward us. The release took place directly over Boron (as before) and I may actually have a good shot or two of ignition and rocket burn. (Believe it or not I haven't gotten the film processed yet!) The flight was quick and true and we were kept well informed of progress through a PA system. The glide and landing was textbook perfect and then they all disappeared into the VIP area for speeches and presentations for about 40 minutes. After that Brian Binnie and SS1 were towed past us for a photo op with a flag in his hands given to him by Burt. He of course received cheers and applause for winning the X-Prize as well as just winning his astronaut wings.

After that final photo op it was back to my home away from home in Boron, just in time to grab a quick bite at K&L Ranch and check out. It's not like I was tired or anything after all I got 2.5 hours of sleep the night before then stayed up all night. Really I didn't have any trouble. The snack plus plentiful amounts of apple juice to jet my blood sugar and I was as good as new. ...But I crashed for 3 hours once I got back to San Diego. If it had been Vandenberg (6 hrs) instead of Boron (3 hrs) I would have had to stay another day to put my sleep schedule back on track and rest up before drive.

A really great trip and I consider myself very lucky to have been able to attend this historic event.

conspiracy theory by request

All right, now I’m never one to be much of a conspiracy theorist but I have several friends who are, (you know who you are though ...and so do "They"). I have heard an awful lot of crackpot conspiracy theories too, most of which are really lame, easily explained away and appear to be not much more than a desperate cry for attention. However I am quite capable of spinning a conspiracy up if I have a reason to, I don’t have a very good reason but here goes anyway, by request. I hope you like it, I’ll try to keep it coherent and cohesive.

[
The end of freedoms as we know them is on the horizon, the future is going to be more oppressive than North Korea circa 2004. Why? …Technology will empower the oppressors to an extent that we will have no choice but to obey or die.

Can’t we just elect away a bad leadership? How will technology do that on it’s own? Well, as to electing away our problems, no we can’t. We are already having a great problem in America electing leaders because the type of person it takes to get elected is usually not the type of person you want leading. An irrational disconnection surely, but rarely is a leader chosen for leadership skills; they are chosen on campaign skills and the skills of the campaign staff wherein lies the fundamental flaw. As to how technology will be our undoing, that’s actually sensible and easy if you put all of the pieces on the table at once. I divide the tech problem into two parts, intelligence and force.

Intelligence is being accelerated almost exponentially by technology and I am not referring to brainpower, I am referring to collecting information. Already intelligence gathering has reached a point where personal privacy can be completely eliminated by technical means. Local and remote listening devices can hear every sound made practically anywhere. Infra-red, visible light, gamma-ray and other scanning devices can see nearly anything you do whether the device is looking at you from a hidden clear view or scanning you right through the walls; you can be seen. Currently, when you aren’t in your home you are legally surveilled repeatedly, in most every store, at the bank, in the parking lot on the road and those are just the common places. Covert surveillance by numerous means legal and otherwise is already pervasive in American and other societies. So what’s the real problem with that? Well right now except for the annoyance of the loss of privacy, not too much really; far less than the potential. This infrastructure is not yet being really used to ‘enslave’ society as it currently lacks cohesiveness, coordination and particularly interconnectivity as most surveillance is private, unshared and inaccessible to all but the installation owners. This is our saving grace here.

So force is the other half of the equation, what I mean by that is actually a little complicated and goes all the way back to the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Founding Fathers of the USA placed in those documents a great deal of safeguards to keep The Government balanced and try to prevent it from becoming repressive or oppressive. They did some of this with the intent that they placed in the documents (I'm only referring to a few parts here) about keeping and bearing arms, maintaining a militia and a statement about it being the duty of the citizenry to remove a defective government (the typical NRA argument in favor of guns). This check has worked very effectively and currently still does, but may not for much longer.

Now I’ll ask a question and then answer it for you: What is the reason that in the US, the very powerful military doesn’t just try to take over the government as we have seen in so many other countries? The answer is that it’s the people. The US military is made up of people that could not be coerced into oppressing the general population because they are the general population. It would be nearly impossible to persuade the US military’s hundreds of thousands of people to either overthrow their own government or to work with it to oppress the people; despite the fact that the US military now possesses the required power to do just that. Even with a heavily armed population there is now enough of a strength-difference that the military could put-down an uprising or enforce an oppression now if it were for some reason to happen. It’s not going to happen with this situation, I’m only pointing out that the required force is there but the will is not. But this too is changing.

What if you could oppress a population with a full-strength military without needing to persuade 500,000 troops to do your dirty work? Well, its an ability coming soon to a US military on the cutting edge of technology. The possibility will soon exist of having only a tiny ruling-class that could run the country, and back it up with an effective force. We've seen the potential for omniscience, enter the last piece of technology to make it all possible, Omnipotence without conscience.

Autonomous vehicles. There are already autonomous aircraft that can go out and perform a military mission and return to base with no human intervention. So far this is limited to surveillance aircraft (Autonomous UAVs) like Global Hawk but it is expanding to include armed aircraft (UCAV) like X-45. I've seen both of these machines myself very close up, very impressive stuff. Soon UCAVs will be automated as well. They will be soulless armed flying soldiers carrying out whatever orders they are given without question. They will continue to multiply and be designed into many forms from automated giant bomber down to 3-6” flying assassin version of a MAV an automated micro-UCAV (that seeks it’s prey with a poison dart). I won’t even mention what is on the horizon with MEMS and nanotechnology; that stuff can really get under your skin. Currently DARPA is sponsoring the Autonomous Robotic Ground Vehicle Challenge wherein the best and brightest from the US are competing to build a self navigating, self driving vehicle capable of going on or off road to reach it’s destination. Adding weapons to this would be easy by comparison. As it turns out driving is a lot harder than flying for an automated machine, all of the machines failed the challenge the 2004 competition but it's likely at least a couple will succeed in the next competition.

These automated machines aren’t just coming soon to a conspiracy theory near you, many of them are already here and not just prototypes, they’re in service. As these vehicles continue to grow in number and the number of people in the military continues to shrink, power is concentrated. A power that gets too concentrated can potentially reach beyond the checks and balances placed upon it. It has the potential to become a tool that allows a very few people to command a great deal of unchecked strength. That’s always dangerous.

Lastly; I’ll pour my last bit of fuel onto the fire for my conspiracy theory friends, I’ll tie this all together. (This can is just about empty, but don’t worry I have another, the nanotech one, for another day.) We have a government that is becoming increasingly repressive in its behavior, has an ever increasing availability of intelligence with ever increasing organization and soon will have an unquestioning loyal enforcer of anything it decrees. Couple those capabilities to a truly corrupt government and it spells slavery or death for all. To me this seems an extraordinarily dangerous path to be on unless led by the enlightened and altruistically benevolent. So, who you gonna vote for next election?
]

Now this whole diatribe was by request and reflects probably the worst-case of each of the discussed subjects but I personally see the things in here as quite cautionary. All of the capabilities and statements I made are based on real verifiable facts, hit the links and see for yourself. I really hope that we can learn to coexist peacefully and free with our own growing capabilities but I do see darker days ahead before we strike a reasonable balance between power/control/intelligence vs. freedom/justice and I do believe that new checks and balances will be required to stave off the above potential but I am also confident that these checks and balances will come. The sad thing being that they will come only after ‘violations’, and each time those occur, freedoms will be eroded, sometimes permanently. Where we end up I cannot say but I do think that technology for it’s own sake will have to fully embrace philosophy in order to keep from destroying us all. A little less “can we” and a little more “should we” is in order. I believe this fully and yet I also love and crave technology and put great importance on pure unrestricted research for it's own sake. A balance must be struck or maybe the doomsayers will be right.

Let us hope that we can get good control of the situation before we end up chasing a monster to the old windmill with torches and pitchforks.