Rambling Status Update

February 13, 2010 6:56 pm

I've been sick all week, so I've been playing video games and not much else. I even had to ditch church last Sunday. I'm doing better now, though, which meant that I was able to go on our photography class field trip. At 7 am this morning. I was very disappointed to not have a valid excuse to miss it. Especially since I've had several nights of poor sleep this week. Let's just say that 5:30 was very early this morning.

Really, though, the field trip was good. We drove out to Veterans Park, which is only about 15 minutes away, and there was a bunch of stuff to take pictures of. Which, I guess, is an advantage to living in California. Not everywhere can you walk around and take pictures of vegetation in mid-February. Of course, I'd love to take pictures of the snow my family has in Dallas. Holy cow. I'm so jealous! (Interruption: Kyle just broke the handle on the patio door blinds. He's such a drag.) I'm still going through pictures and cleaning up the ones I like, but I hope some are good. Right now, I'm still pretty tired.

Oh, also, I've managed to injure my ankle. Running. Inside. Wii Fitting, actually. Done laughing yet? One of the exercises is running (in place, obviously), and you unlock different length courses. I actually don't run, as a general rule, on account of all my lower joints being ruined in my teen years as a dancer. But the short courses only hurt my ankle a little bit while I was actually running, so I figured I wasn't really doing any damage if the pain stopped when I stopped running. But then I ran the super long course (it took me about 20 minutes), and that apparently did me in. My ankle has hurt ever since, and it's been well over a week. The last few days, it seems to be getting worse, which can't be good. Mostly, it's like it gets worn out by evening time, but the pain's really pretty bad and I hobble around like a cripple and I don't wanna go to the doctor so why can't it just get better? I wore a brace today at the park, but it's still really bad (getting the mail this afternoon proved that I couldn't, in fact, accompany Kyle to the grocery store). So there's that, too.

I think that's pretty much my current status.

I don't think it was really the weather's fault...

February 10, 2010 4:00 pm

Following a headline from CNN's website I read this article: Winter weather causes 50 car pile-up. The article was scant on details, but for some reason I'm skeptical that it's really the fault of the weather that this massive pile up occurred. Seems to me the headline should read something like "Crappy driving results in 50-car pile-up during slippery road conditions".

My favorite part of the article, however, is at the bottom:

The crash happened right in front of WAVY News 10's Lori Crouch and photojournalist Matt Mrozinski. They watched as accident victims went to check on others.

"Our employees sat around and did nothing while other people made sure no one was seriously injured. More at eleven."

Nostalgia for the Future

February 8, 2010 11:07 am

This morning the Endeavour orbiter launched from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center carrying people and equipment into space. Only four more shuttle launches will occur and the fleet of orbiters will be retired in mid-September. When that happens, America will lose the ability to put a man in space.

Many will argue that putting people in space or on the moon is/was pointless and a waste of money. Those with this attitude will kindly turn their attention to the list of NASA spin-off technologies. This list includes (among many others) LEDs, in-ear thermometers, and improved water purification systems. There are also countless other improvements in technologies driven by NASA's need for more efficient and more reliable equipment.

President Obama's budget plan for 2011 removes all funding for the Constellation Program, which would have led to the development of a new vehicle for transporting humans in to space. If the cancellation of funds occurs (which is pretty close to a sure thing) then the United States will not be able to put people in space for the foreseeable future. This saddens me. We've given up on exploring space in any serious manner. We haven't been to the moon since 1972. All the astronauts still living that walked on the moon are in their 70s. Another ~20 years and there will be no person alive who walked on the moon. Isn't that kind of sad?

I wasn't alive when any of the astronauts walked on the moon; but I am still filled with wonder at the idea of stepping foot on a different celestial body. While Star Trek is fiction, I think its tag-line embodies the sense of awe several generations have held about being able to put people into space: "...to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before". It expresses the desire to seek out knowledge for the sake of learning.

The mission wasn't "to find and commercialize new civilizations and technologies, to open new markets for our products, to boldy make a buck where no man has made a buck before." Unfortunately, that seems to be mantra of our society. NASA operates on a shoestring budget, the National Labs have (essentially) been privatized to focus on making money (goodbye long-term original research projects to discover more about the universe), public education is about rubber stamping every kid's high-school diploma, and being educated is nerdy and undesirable.

I miss the future we were promised as kids. A world where space exploration was common. A world where man's search for knowledge and understanding overcame petty differences of culture and societal status.

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I've always wanted to watch a shuttle launch and time is running out. Jess and I are hoping to take a trip to see the final flight of the Atlantis orbiter in May.

On September 24, 2010, when the Discovery lands, marking the end of U.S. manned spaceflight, I hope everyone can pause for a moment to reflect on what we've lost.

Photo Class

February 5, 2010 1:42 pm

I had a migraine all yesterday, so I considered not going to photography class last night. I started feeling a bit better after dinner, though, so I decided to try and tough it out. I'm glad I did, too, because it was a great class. It was on composition, which was one I'd really been looking forward to. I lucked out, too, in that the guest speaker left some of the lights on during his PowerPoint presentation, which helped a lot. I think I'm starting to see how some of these rules actually make your pictures more pleasing and aren't just arbitrary things that somebody made up once upon a time. Maybe. Anyway, here are the pics I took for critiquing last night. They're both of a tree outside our apartment.

IMGP0412b IMGP0442b

Eternal life? Not on my watch!

February 4, 2010 1:56 pm

Last night was our ward temple night, but Kyle and I decided to do sealings instead of a session. That was a nice change, plus we didn't actually remember much from our own sealing, so it was good to kind of get a refresher on what all happened. 🙂 Anyway, the fountain is normally turned off by the time we get out of our session, but since we were done earlier, it was still on, which led to us wandering around the grounds a bit.

391838097_0995eab37bYou can actually walk up some stairs and get up on a level next to that relief of Jesus and the apostles, where you can walk clear around the temple. There are flowers and some trees and such up there, and I bet it's really pretty when they're in bloom.

So we're walking along and we come around the side and there's this gorgeous view out over the lights of the city and you can see the bay and some bridges and it's really pretty. I kept walking along, and I heard this really drawn-out crrrrrunch. I had gone another couple of steps before I realized it wasn't just a leaf or something. Looking back, I saw this huge...something...that I had now tracked along with me, and it was wet. I made Kyle go back and assess the situation (I really didn't want a close-up view), and he confirmed that I'd just murdered a ginormous snail. Like, massive. It must've been a great-great-grandaddy, and I'd just done my impression of the Witch from Into the Woods on it. Cruuuuuuush. At least I didn't eat it?

I apologized profusely, explaining that I'd just done a lot of good work, but I don't think it helped. 🙁 I felt so bad. Poor thing was probably told that if it went to the temple, it'd live forever, and along comes me. Jess the Snail-Smasher. I'm such a jerk.

snail