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
February 23, 2021 · 23:34

Fall Arrives

It’s late February and we’ve had more and more windy days than I can remember. Time is all screwed up, in so many ways – even the trees are confused. At least our tree is.

The big tree in our back yard has just this last week decided to drop all of its leaves for fall. I guess it just didn’t feel like doing it in November or December.

I know that the season may arrive a bit late in these temperate, warm, semi-desert conditions, but this is ridiculous!

The winds have taken the leaves and the tree is pretty much stripped now. Just in time! Next week it will be March and we’ll need to start seeing those spring buds come out. I hope that sap didn’t get too comfortable down in the roots.

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Filed under Castle Willett

February 22, 2021 · 22:24

Mars Delivers

In case you somehow missed it, here’s what it looks like to land on Mars:

And as if that wasn’t enough, for the first time ever we could hear what the wind sounded like on another planet:

And while that’s the icing on the cake for the clever critters who sent Perseverance, she’s also getting to work, raising her mastcam and antennae, sending panoramas back home so that the scientists can start to see what they want to look at and the drivers can figure out how to safely get there:

It was indeed a day of wonders. Welcome to Mars. Again.

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Filed under Astronomy, Space

February 21, 2021 · 23:39

Incoming From Mars

This afternoon JPL started uploading raw images from Perseverance onto their website here. (There are similar links with literally tens of thousands of raw images on related JPL website pages for Curiosity, Spirit, Opportunity, Insight, Pathfinder…)

There’s also news from a few folks on the inside at JPL that tomorrow’s news conference will be something else indeed:

The image shown there was one of four of the very first images released last Friday. Word on the street (well, tweets from folks who would know) is that tomorrow’s images are going to be legendary. You’ll see them sooner or later even if you don’t watch the press conference live, but why not be there to see it live if you can?

11:00 PT, 14:00 ET, on NASA-TV, YouTube, and probably a number of other places.

Time for the world to change again, this time for the better.

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Filed under Astronomy, Space

February 20, 2021 · 21:25

C-47 Dakota

Not something we see every day, at least, not with the engines running!

The American Aeronautical Foundation has a couple of planes out at Camarillo and rents space in our hangar and on our ramp. (Their B-25, “Executive Sweet,” is excellent!) This is their C-47 Dakota, which hasn’t flown in a while.

But they’ve been putting a ton of work into it recently and today was the first day that I’ve seen where the engines have been running and it was moving around the airport under her own power.

Here you see it alongside our C-46 Commando, “China Doll.” The C-47 didn’t fly today, at least not that I saw, just taxied around the airport and ran up the engines. But they’ve got to be getting close!

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Filed under CAF, Flying, Photography

February 19, 2021 · 23:49

Art – February 19th

Given what I started with and what I ended up with, I’m reminded of Bare Naked Ladies’ “Tonight Is The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel.”

I like the effect – maybe one of these times I should keep track of which filters and effects and settings I used so that I can more or less replicate it at some point in the future instead of just stumbling blind from scratch every time.

Maybe.

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Filed under Art

February 18, 2021 · 23:49

New Wheels On Mars

It was a good day to land an SUV-sized, two-ton, nuclear-powered robot on Mars. I was properly dressed for the occasion.

These are “EDL socks,” displaying Entry-Descent-Landing, otherwise known as the “Seven Minutes of Terror.”

They’re available from sciencesocks.co – they’re also very comfy.

There’s also an image of the launch from Earth on the back, but I forgot to take a picture of that.

The hat I got from JPL years ago. I actually had to miss the landing live due to a long Zoom call that came up at the last minute (okay, I had it on one monitor with the sound off) and during the call I was referred to as “the guy wearing the baseball cap.” It’s so much more than a baseball cap…

Perseverance is down safe and has started sending back pictures and data. The truly annoying hints from a number of folks at JPL tonight (via Twitter) indicate that they have some truly SPECTACULAR images to share coming up. Keep your eyes open for a press conference in the next day or two.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space

February 17, 2021 · 23:37

Detritus Art

I got to spend way too much time today in a dentist’s chair (root canal – I’ll live, I might be cranky) and then got to stop by the hospital to pick up a couple of prescriptions.

These days, of course, when you want to get into a hospital you have to pass through a checkpoint, get your temp taken, and get screened (at least verbally, not with an actual lab test) for COVID. With a big hospital with a big organization, they need a way to make sure that everyone has been screened, so at Kaiser Permanente they give you a little colored sticker to put on your shirt. Every day it’s a different color, about all that I noticed when I’ve been there before in the last year.

When you leave, you can take off the sticker. Previously on the main exit from the facility there was a board where everyone stuck them. Simple. Easy. Elegant.

The board is gone.

Out in the parking lot, folks have spontaneously started putting their stickers onto whatever surface will hold them, primarily these bollards that are out at the edges of the parking lots.

Is it found art? It’s colorful! It’s an unexpected little bit of random whimsy and joy in sort of a grim and serious place!

Or is it just litter, junk, detritus, a pain in the ass problem that someone is going to have to clean up? One of those little things that no one quite thought through when the focus was on making sure that everyone could easily be ID’d as having passed the COVID checkpoint? An unintended consequence?

Or maybe it’s both?

I do notice now that it appears that every single day seems to have not just a different color, but also a different message. Heart health! Colon cancer, get tested early and save your life! (Yeah, that one, we can relate on a very personal basis!) Practice social distancing! (Some folks need to practice a lot more, they’re not doing it correctly still.) Mammograms! Prescription refills by mail! Exhibit gratitude to make someone’s day! Phone and video exams!

Keep your eyes open for unexpected beauty and whimsy, even if it is just an unintended consequence.

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Filed under CoronaVirus, Health, Photography

February 16, 2021 · 21:03

Chicken vs Egg – Madison Avenue Version

I’ve been spending a LOT of hours in my home office, usually well into the evening (i.e., past midnight) and “after hours” (after 17:00 when I’m technically “off the clock”) I’ll usually have some sports broadcast or the other on. It’s as much background noise as anything else, but when everyone screams I can look over at the replay and see the great play.

In the process of doing this I am, of course, exposed to ads. Ads are a somewhat necessary evil, but what I notice is that when you’re watching particular events you’ll see the same ads over and over and over. The EXACT same ads. Over. And Over. And Over.

And some of these ads are truly horrible, or so it seems. But then I started to wonder.

Are these ads intrinsically horrible? Or are they just so-so ads that are made to seem horrible because of the repetition?

In other words, the really lame Spectrum ad with the guy with the horrible toupee and his neighbor who doesn’t read books? Yes, they’re morons and the day I buy phone service from Spectrum because they convinced me to will be sometime after the heat death of the universe. But would I absolutely despise that ad if I saw it nightly instead of at every break in the action? Or would it be one stupid, lame ad among hundreds of others, destined to be simply ignored instead of hated?

On the other hand, those nacho cheese fries ads that look like a cheesy horror film? Those are pretty well done and interesting. But are they really that much better, or do I just see them once or twice a night instead of every ten minutes? (BTW, as ads they’re useless to me, because the idea of eating nacho cheese fries is positively revolting, but that’s irrelevant to the argument. As is everything else…)

See, this is what happens to your brain (okay, well, my brain) when it’s not properly cared for!

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Farce

February 15, 2021 · 23:59

No Context For You – February 15th

Brain got hijacked, too many deadlines. Three day weekend – didn’t necessarily get to do what I wanted, but did what I needed.

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Filed under Paul, Photography

February 14, 2021 · 23:46

Valentine Day Sunset

It’s been a while since I did a sunset picture – some of that has been the low quality of the sunsets with either clear and a million conditions or being totally clouded over. Most of that has been due to the fact that I’ve been working a gazillion hours and usually busy and on deadline around sunset.

But today we had a nice one.

See that tiny little crescent moon up there above the palm trees? Like a gem…

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Filed under Photography, Sunsets