Extended bed rest and microgravity have similar effects on the body, so NASA will use a centrifuge to study the effects of centrifugal forces in simulating artificial gravity this summer.

I hadn’t thought about extended bed rest being like microgravity, but when you think about it, it makes sense. The biggest thing that microgravity takes away is all the strain that your body carries in supporting its own weight while upright. Extended bed rest does the same thing, but only because the gravity vector is taken out of the plane of the body’s vertical support system.

Interesting stuff.

I neglected to mention yesterday that my homebuying timing is horrible in only one aspect: my upstairs neighbors started moving out of their apartment yesterday. I’ve not enjoyed having them and their four kids run around above us.

If they end up being my neighbors in Madison—I do know that the townhouse next to mine had its renters leave on Tuesday—I’m gonna have a very flat spot on my forehead.

Not only did I buy my house from a very, very good friend—a friend who was, at turns, my orientation counselor, upperclass mentor, candidate for SGA President, SGA President and boss as his Chief of Staff, roommate, job application reference, colleague, fellow alumnus, groom in a glorious wedding party, graduate student observer as I was the guinea pig for his research, …—but the attorney who worked our closing is the son of the man that my boss replaced. Charles saw my yellow TBE badge and said, “Yeah, you might have known my dad.” Know him? Charlie Helms is a very good man, well-liked and -respected by his colleagues.

I found it pretty doggone cool that it turned out like that.

My favorite part of the whole event was when Charles asked us if we’d gone to school together; when we said yes, he asked, “High school?” PJ got that surprised look on his face that he always gets when someone says something outrageous, and I laughed as I always do at that look. “Ah, no … PJ is four years older than I am. He was my orientation counselor when I was a freshman.”

It’s a long, long time from Compass ‘97 …

We knew this was coming.

Now, maybe some things that need to get done for the next flight can start getting done upstream of the integration level. I sure hope so. I’ve been hearing things start to shake loose … be happy if more does.

I’m plinking with Referrer Karma. Here goes nothing …

See, a couple weeks ago, when I took a couple days off and got away from the office … that was a great idea.

This afternoon has been full of unreasonable requests where people were inconveniencing me for their convenience [mostly at work], and three weeks ago, I would have probably snapped or something.

Now, I’m just like … yeah, okay, whatever.

So yeah, maybe there’s something to that blowing-off-steam thing.

I think I’ve decided to trim it down to just the one email address.

Making this transition should be … fun. [Well, not really.]

One email address, and I’m sticking with it, and everything else will filter into it. But it’ll be gfmorris AT gfmorris DOT net, if you’re curious.

As I sit here listening to Billy Joel’s “Goodnight Saigon“, I’m reminded of my wait at my local Chinese takeout place last night as I waited for dinner. After I’d paid for my order, I did as I normally do and went to sit down at the back of the eat-in area at one of the tables for two. I watched as a biker guy came in, then followed by a black couple in their 50s or so. I people-watched out of the corner of my eye, wondering what would come of this.

The men struck up a conversation, originally about motorcycles; it ended up that they were both Vietnam veterans. They talked about that for a while, and as I eavesdropped on their conversation, I had this overwhelming urge to go and thank them for their service.

It then occurred to me that this is one of the few times in my life I’ve heard Vietnam vets swap war stories; I guess Dad’s fellow officers just weren’t the type to talk about that, especially Col. Jim, who spent six years, four months, and three days in the Hanoi Hilton after getting shot down over Thud Ridge.

As I left with my shrimp lo mein, I knew that I was passing up my last chance to thank them. Then iTunes smacks me in the face again … :sigh: The Vietnam conflict was horribly run, awfully prosecuted, and terribly ended, but the guys at the sharp end of the stick are just doing what they’re told to do, even when they know that the war’s “goals” were crap.

I wish I could go back and thank those guys.

Big ups to Casey for the heads-up … Sandra McCracken is playing 3rd and Lindsley in Nashville at 7pm on Saturday. This white boy will be there.

Let’s just launch a Shuttle already. It’s getting so very sllllllllooooooooooooooooow here as we wait for RTF.

:yawn:

I’m running Bad Behavior here and on the codelog just to see what kind of results I get with it. Here goes nothin’!

Since Jared Ross turned pro, he’s done pretty well for himself: 3-5–8 in 12 games, +7, only 2 PIM, 10.3 shooting percentage. That’s pretty impressive for a skinny little guy who played his college hockey in Alabama. That +7 is third-highest amongst centers on his team; when you’re third behind Bryan Smolinski, it’s not too bad for a 22-year-old fresh out of college. [Go +/- on a per-game stat, and he trails only Smolinski, who's averaging a +1 a night.]

Huntsville’s proud of you, Jared.

Matt’s on the prowl for fun stuff these last couple of days, and he’s found a great color-fading technique with Javascript and a good start on the dissection of a basic WordPress theme.

In other news, we have yet another water main leak here at Monte Sano Terrace.

Feh.

I close on my house in six days. Six. Days. Wow.

It won’t be two months from conception of even buying a house to being a homeowner. I didn’t think it could move this fast, or that it would. If you read the old entry, you can see that we were planning on a late-summer thing. That ended up moving up in a series of interesting endeavors, mainly revolving around PJ and Gricelda meeting with a builder and realizing that the timing nor the pricing was right. Soon thereafter, however, they found a house they really liked that had been on the market since September that was now facing going into the peak homebuying season with some necessary fixes and a homeowner who’d moved to Colorado for his job. They made a low-ball bid on the house and got a steal, so we quickly went from first gear to overdrive.

Though I’ll close on Friday, I won’t actually move in until June. The Benfields are going to rent the place out from me for May so that they can work on the new place a little before moving in. Also, it works out with my timeline, because my apartment lease runs through the end of June. Also, there’s the small matter of my brother getting married in late May.

This late spring, early summer time of year always seems to be busy for PJ and me, a time that brings us closer together as friends as we face new obstacles together. An SGA campaign … graduation … marriage … graduation … marriage, graduation, and home ownership all at once. It’s a wild and crazy time, but it’s also pretty exhilarating.

Yeah, life is pretty good right now…

If you feel the need to post your dinner options on a message board and have your fellow posters help you make a decision, you need more help than they can provide you.

[Lest anyone think I'm writing about a specific person, I've always thought this. I mean, come on ... it's dinner. Ask me what you should have if we're going to dinner together, but otherwise, figure it out on your own. Yeeeeeesh.]

Dr. John H. Marburger III, upon being asked how NASA will deal with a four-year gap between the end-of-life for the Space Shuttle [2010] and the planned debut of the Crew Exploration Vehicle [CEV, 2014]: “Mike Griffin.”

Color me confused. For one, I’m not a fan of gaps [although, as Marburger notes, we have had a gap since 1 Feb 2003]. I think a gap makes it easy for Congress and the public to say, “Why are we spending billions on this stuff again?”

For another, I don’t believe Shuttle end-of-life in 2010 for a second, unless we’re going to renege on our commitments to ISS [which seems likelier by the day, but I digress]. The best estimates I’ve seen on STS EOL are early 2012, and that assumes that everything in the STS-ISS world goes nominal from here to Assembly Complete. Pardon me while I laugh my ass off.

For a third, since when have we designed, developed, and deployed a major aerospace vehicle on time in this country? The next time will be the first time.

I think the answer, of course, is increased funding to bring the CEV online while letting STS be the stopgap. If we’re serious about Permanent Manned Capability—and dammit, we oughta be—I think we have to have a viable U.S. solution for doing it. Depending on the Russian Space Agency doesn’t exactly let me sleep at night.

But then again, what do I know? I’m just a dumb engineer.

Clothes valet integrated into a chair.

That’s a pretty spiffy concept. I’ve been thinking lately that I want a nice valet once I move into the townhouse; keep it in either the master bedroom or bath [probably the former, given the funky angles of the bathroom] and set my clothes out on it the night before to streamline the selection-and-dressing process in the morning.

Any of you ever used a clothes valet? Dad had one back when we lived in Ohio, and I always thought it was cool.

I think I just FAXed over the last little bit of paper needed before the closing on my new townhouse.

Thankfully, being a military brat and an aerospace contractor has desensitized me to large piles of paper. And it’s not just these experiences; I remember Dad remarking at all the papers that I and they had to sign when I entered MSMS by saying, “Man! I became a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force with less paperwork than this!”

It’s great that the Internet lets us treat symptoms when they’re not out of control; my TMJ is a lot better, although I still can’t open my mouth very wide.

[Insert joke about how I can't put my foot in my mouth right now here.]

Of course, now my allergies are acting up again. I can’t win for losing. [Yes, Mom, I'm taking my Claritin.]

Return to Flight launch date slips a week. Suck. I mean, I knew this intuitively, but … yeah.

Thanks to the asinine “must launch during daylight” rule, we lose our launch window on 3 June.

We really need to get back to launching birds, no matter the future of Shuttle and ISS.

So, it’s 0306. I’d turned out the light at 0002. I’m awake. Why? It’s really, really quiet.

A minute passes. beep-beep-beep Power’s out. I lay in bed, thinking it’s a standard Huntsville Utilities-on-the-mountain outage. A half-hour or so passes, and I begin to tire of the every-minute beep-beep-beep of my uninterruptible power supplies. [I have three: one in my office, and one for each TiVo. Laugh if you want.] I decide to get out of bed and find my phone. Thankfully, I don’t kill myself maneuvering through the apartment in the pitch dark.

As I get to my phone—visible from the blinking green status light—I realize that other lights are on in my complex. No wonder this thing hasn’t been fixed yet—it’s not a substation outage. I log on to the Web to find Huntsville Utilities’ number [Treo 1, utilities 0], call them, and the guy has me walk outside to make sure that the outage is building-wide and not apartment wide. It is, so they send a truck. I put on more clothes and await the truck.

Around 0410, the truck pulls in, and soon, they have their diagnosis—dead transformer. They wait for another truck to bring them a replacement, and I walk back inside and climb back in bed. Predictably, I can’t sleep, since it’s stuffy and absolutely quiet in my bedroom. [I sleep with a fan and an AM radio on at night. It's the only way I sleep well.] Finally, at 0608, the power returns. Having slept only three hours, I then go back to sleep.

I am really ready to move. [Nine days until I close, and a month after that, I move in.]

On Sunday, I posted about Mark’s thoughts on how computer-mediated communication reveals our true selves.

Today, Travis Prinzi added a comment pointing to Jason Upside Down’s Ten Suggestions for Christian communication online. It was quite excellent, so I thought I’d link to it as well.

Violations of such suggestions—on others’ part, and on mine—are why I don’t discuss such things in online fora very often. I often am left with a quite bitter taste in my mouth.

My plate now truly is lighter; the church emailed me back today to say that they understood.

:sigh:

Benedict XVI is new Pope.

I’m not Catholic, and while I have my [sometimes angry] disagreements with Rome, I have much respect for episcopal institutions. God bless Cardinal Ratzinger as he makes this change.