Author Archives: momdude

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About momdude

Space cadet | Family dude | Photographer | Music lover | Traveler | Science fiction fan | Hugo Award nominee | Writer | 5x NASA Social participant | KC Chiefs fan | LA Kings fan | Senior Director of Finance & Administration for ALS Network | Member & former staff Finance Officer at the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing | Hard core left-wing liberal | Looking for whatever other shenanigans I can get into
May 11, 2021 · 23:32

Random Old Photos – May 11th

If I’ve learned one thing as an adult that I wish I had known as a small child, it’s that naps are SERIOUSLY underrated by children. We should be allowed to have many, many more.

It’s odd that my “random” search through the archives pretty quickly came to these – it really makes me wonder how much heavy lifting the subconscious is doing and how truly random it is.

These are from June, 2001, almost twenty years ago, the day I brought home the new van. Coincidentally, or not (ask my subconscious), I’m tying up loose ends to find a place for it to go off to be stripped for parts or sold to anyone who will give me a couple hundred bucks for it.

It’s carried on for over 203,000 miles, and could go for another 100,000+ or could go belly up in the next mile. But now it’s the spare 3rd car and while it gets used occasionally to haul stuff around, it’s driven so rarely that it would be cheaper to get a U-Haul if/when it’s needed.

An inanimate object that has been ridden hard and put away wet – but it still feels weird.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Photography

May 10, 2021 · 23:09

Flowers – Evening Primrose

A week or so ago I talked about a new patch of flowers that I had found around the corner of the house, partially hidden from normal view, a surprise after three years of living here.

The little daisy-like flowers on the right-hand side were featured in that earlier post.

Over on the left were more of these – a LOT more.

There are a couple of them down by the mailbox, but I didn’t know what they were. And there are literally just five or six flowers down there. Here there are dozens of them.

I’m not as good with flowers as I am with birds, so I finally dug around today and found a nice online site for ID’s my photography subjects.

These apparently are “evening primrose.”

I suspect if I put a time lapse camera they would be pointing the opposite direction about 10:00 when the sun pops over that fence to their east, and over the course of the day they would move to track the sun.

At the interface between the little, tiny daisies and the evening primrose.

Tucked way in the back are two baby palm trees. I’m pretty certain they weren’t planted here deliberately – more likely to be the spawn of some of those huge palms across the street that you see in every astrophotography picture of the western horizon. Give it twenty or thirty years and they’ll be fifty feet tall, just like their parents. (And destroying that fence behind them.)

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Filed under Flowers, Photography

May 9, 2021 · 23:50

No Context For You – May 09th

I hope all of those of you who are mothers of any kind had a wonderful Mother’s Day today. I hope all of those for you for whom the holiday has difficulties of any sort were able to find a measure of peace today.

For me, the long and extremely busy weekend finishes with prep for the upcoming week. This little beauty is one of the most useful and regularly utilized gifts I’ve ever gotten – highly recommended.

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Filed under Family, Photography

May 8, 2021 · 22:27

Fond Childhood Memories vs Brutal Adult Reality

I was digging way back in the cavernous depths of the back porch freezer today when I stumbled upon an ancient popsicle.

It was grape.

In one moment I was overwhelmed with the memories of the simple childhood joy of a grape popsicle on a hot day.

In the next I was being pummeled by the reality of being covered with sticky, purple goo – the carpet, my jeans, my shirt, my hands…

I almost got more of it ON me than I got IN me.

Which I now realize was also one of those fond childhood memories. If only I had a way to get hosed down by an adult before being allowed back into the house. 😔

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Filed under Paul

May 7, 2021 · 22:48

Nerd Dad Masterpiece

I’m a nerd.

I’m a dad.

I’m of a certain age.

Is it not a thing of beauty? Perfectly packed and arranged. 99.9999% full.

I don’t know if younger people, nerds or not, dad or not, take perfect loading of the dishwasher as a quest akin to that for The Holy Grail. For that matter, it might just be me, period.

Either way, I’m pretty good at the dishwasher packing zen, but this was clearly a standout effort last night. In fact, I just might have posted something like this before. (Eight+ years is a long time to keep track.)

Old. Dad. Certain age…

Oh, and did I mention that I was “easily amused?”

It explains so much.

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Filed under Paul

May 6, 2021 · 23:59

Jumbos

I’ve mentioned just how much I enjoy hearing the big 747 jumbo jets (usually cargo runs to Asia) coming out of LAX and flying right over our house several times a day. The other interesting thing to me is just how attuned I am to hearing that really deep, bass rumble as they go overhead.

(Image: Flightradar24 app)

On this day, the one I heard was shown in red, with its flight path indicated. But when I saw that, I saw another one following it (circled, over Santa Monica Bay). So I grabbed the camera. (DUH!)

I spotted it coming up from the south, probably just off of the Malibu coast, about fourteen miles away.

Closing fast and climbing.

From the first picture to the last, less than two minutes passed.

As with the Vogon Destructor Fleet, jumbo jets float there the same way that bricks don’t. (In this case it has a lot to do with thrust and lift…)

Right overhead.

Almost into the Sun. I can see the headlines now…

“Local man goes blind looking at Sun through telescopic lens while taking pictures of ordinary cargo jet out of LAX – stupidity expected to be involved.”

Off it goes to the north.

Finally vanishing from view off to north, again, probably fifteen to twenty miles to the north, right about…

(Image: Flightradar 24 app)

…here! Off to Inchon in South Korea. Hopefully a boring thirteen hours!

 

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Filed under Flying, Photography

May 6, 2021 · 23:31

Cackling Raven

I’m sure there are actual official names for the sounds that this raven is making, but I don’t know them, so I’m going to go with “cackling.”

He was probably 40-50 feet overhead and just sounding off in all of his glory. Of course, so were the wind, the lawnmowers (tomorrow is trash day, so most of the gardeners are out in front of it), the motorcycles, the planes overhead…

I think you can still hear him, sounds a lot like some exotic percussion instrument from South America, clacking and clicking his staccato clattering. (Although the compression that YouTube uses might have wiped out some of the finer audio details.) In particular, at about the 16-20 second marks it comes through, and again just before the end at about 0:26.

I hope you can hear him!

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Filed under Critters, Photography, Video

May 5, 2021 · 23:59

Sixty Years Ago And Six Hours Ago

Sixty years ago today I remember my father dragging me out of bed well before dawn and having me watch the black & white TV coverage of Alan Shepard’s 15-minute suborbital flight.

(All images: NASA)

After hours and hours of delay (including the infamous incident with no provisions for certain bodily functions in long, long unexpected delays), Shepard became the first American in space.

America wouldn’t put an astronaut in orbit until February 20, 1962, seven and a half months after Shepard’s flight.

It was a first step for the United States and NASA, desperately looking to catch up with the Russians in the Cold War symbolism of the Space Race.

Six hours ago, SpaceX finally was able to successfully fly and land one of their Starship spacecraft.

SN15 (Serial Number 15) succeeded after the previous four test vehicles (SN8 through SN11) either landed hard and exploded, landed upright and then caught fire and exploded, or never even made it to the landing pad in anything less than a gazillion pieces (after exploding).

But today was the day they did it. Space is hard.

In a couple weeks they’ll test SN16. It might explode, it might not.

In a couple months they’ll be testing SN-thirty-something. It will have a ton of improvements and probably by that point be starting to carry a full crew interior and life support systems.

By the end of the year they’ll be testing the “Super Heavy” boosters which will be designed to boost the Starships into orbit before landing themselves much like the current Falcon 9 boosters do. (In the next week or so, possibly as early as Friday or Saturday, they’ll fly a Falcon 9 for the tenth time.)

Within a year or so they’ll be flying Starship SN-fifty-or-sixty-something into orbit, and then landing and re-using and re-launching ALL OF IT.

Within two or three years (okay, maybe four or five) they’ll be flying Starship vehicles to the moon, with crews of dozens at a time.

Within ten years (I know, they say four to five…) they’ll be sending cargo Starship vehicles to Mars. Crewed vehicles will follow to Mars soon after.

Where will they be in sixty years?

 

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Filed under Space

May 4, 2021 · 23:03

Flowers – May 04th

Coming up on three years next week that we’ve been renting this house and there are still surprises.

Around the corner of the front yard where I rarely go unless a circuit breaker has tripped or I’m putting up Christmas lights, I’ve found this huge patch of flowers.

I’ve never seen the flowers blooming like this, or even at all over in this somewhat hidden corner. There’s a  big patch of bare dirt over here, and I always thought this area was just some sort of ground cover.

I don’t know what sort of flowers these are, although I might guess that the white and yellow ones are some sort of daisy? I don’t know about the smaller reddish and yellow ones.

These are partially hidden from the sidewalk as well, especially for a short dude such as myself. The house and yard are up on an embankment from the sidewalk and I might or might not see them from the street. The flowers might be in bloom for a very short period. Or I might simply be going full Charlie Gordon in my old age.

But they were pretty this weekend!

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Filed under Flowers, Photography

May 3, 2021 · 23:32

Random Old Photos – May 03rd

July, 2007, a flight from Burbank to Oakland. (Pro tip – if you can avoid LAX and go out of Burbank or Long Beach or Ontario, DO SO! It might cost $20 more, but the lack of additional wear and tear on your nerves makes it worth every penny.)

On final approach to Oakland, off to your left there is San Francisco Bay and the massive salt ponds, side by side with housing tracts packing folks in like sardines.

Which got me to thinking about how long it’s been since I went anywhere or was in a plane. June, 2019, coming up quick on two years. Soon, again…

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Filed under Photography, Travel