patrickrhett

My wiener dog army grows. Meet Sadie:

Her owner got sick and surrendered her. She’s 9 months old, and we’ve had her for 2 days.

So far, Gretchen is not pleased.

From NASA:

Want to know when a spacecraft will be flying over your city?

Why, yes, of course I do.

Depending on your location on the Earth’s surface, the spacecraft’s position in orbit and the time of day, you may be able to see either the space shuttle or the International Space Station, or both, as they orbit about 386 kilometers (240 miles) above the planet.

Sold. Sign me up.

Select your country to find out: Link

And if, like me, you don’t really want to take the time to figure out the output, with all its talk of degrees and such, use the applet and it’ll make a little map for you. Like this:

Not sure where to find those constellations? Stellarium is…

…a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

It’s also awesome. Set your location and see the sky in realtime, or adjust the time to see where things were or will be – or just make things go fast to see ’em move. Click on any object in the sky, and it will tell you what it is and give you its location and distance. Zoom in on something like Jupiter and it’ll show you where its moons are, or zoom in on something like the “Wild Duck Cluster” to see if you can figure out why it’s called that. (I couldn’t, but it was still awesome.)

So now you’ve been looking up at the sky for awhile, and maybe you’d like to visit? Celestia lets you…

…travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy … across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across.

Still interested in the Space Station, I typed in ISS and flew to it. You can follow your selected object, zoom in and out, move around it, speed up time – you name it. I flew with the Space Station over Japan as the sun came up on Earth with the Milky Way in the background. I’ve used the word too much in this post already, but it was AWESOME.

Ten years ago I was downloading astronomy pictures from text links on the web, ten years before that I was looking through a card catalog to find books that had astronomy pictures in them, and ten years before that I was drawing pictures of the Death Star. (That last one, though, was probably more a function of being 7 years old than the result of limited technology.) Here’s to the next ten years.

I really haven’t been paying attention for quite a while, but, according to the widget on my computer, today makes 500 days of not smoking. With an average of 20 cigs a day at $5.50/pack, that’s a stunning $2750 that I haven’t spent on 10,000 cigarettes that I haven’t smoked. To commemorate the day, and really much more because of the new gallery integration, I give you the past.

4637 Katie & TLW, encased in a cloud of happy. 4631 I must have run out of my own at this point in the evening, because that looks suspiciously like a Marlboro Light. Which also tells me I must be drunk, because Marlboros are nasty. 320 Married and smoking. Two great reasons to be happy. 1236 A night out in Brooklyn.

Ok, I think this is it for now – if for no other reason than I’m tired of messing with it. Click on things, look around, tell me if anything doesn’t work…

*pic removed*

Test image above.

I’ve finally gotten around to updating my WordPress and Gallery installations. Things will be changing quite a bit as I work out how everything will fit together, which means if everything looks like crap, give it a day or two…

I’ve had strep for a few days now, and I’ve taken the DVR from 75% down to under 40%. The doctor gave me this weird lidocaine gel that I can gargle and numb my throat. It’s awesome. I’m tired now, and I think I have one more episode of Dexter saved. Bye.

I just got a Joost invite and watched a bunch of music videos and then most of 3 episodes of Punk’d. Also availalble: Reuters, National Geographic, documentaries, film shorts, etc, etc, etc… but I went with Punk’d. I’m not proud, but, so far, I’m moderately entertained. I don’t know if there’s enough content there to keep me engaged in the long term, but they’re just getting started, so I’ll wait and see. If you’re interested in trying out the (possible) future of internet television (maybe), and if I know you, leave a comment with a valid email address in the email field and I’ll send you an invite.

[edit] Update: Almost everyone I know has a Mac. If you have a Mac, it has to be an Intel Mac. if it’s not… sorry. [/edit]

A look at what $456 Billion will buy, besides our current war. I was struck most by #9, which states,

According to World Bank estimates, $54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015, while $30 billion would provide a year of primary education for every child on earth.

Imagine if, after 9/11, we decided to spend $500 Billion dollars on a campaign to end hunger and educate every kid on earth. Now take that initiative and multiply it by the amount of goodwill we had around the world at that time. Think we could have come up with another $500 Billion dollars from the rest of the First World? Of course. Since we’ve got a little extra now, let’s throw in eliminating a few diseases. There would still be people who wanted to blow us up, but I bet there’d be less of ’em if the First World was spending a trillion dollars on health and education, instead of spending that money to shoot people. If nothing else I could have been proud of my country for taking the moral high ground and trying.

Julie hasn’t posted anything in almost a year, and tonight I just happen to take a look, expecting to see the same old post that I always see right before I hit the back button, and… it’s not there. There’s other stuff there. New stuff posted today. For a moment, I was sure that I had clicked on the wrong link. Her last post was announcing her engagement, and she says she felt pressure to make the next one as momentous and blah, blah, blah. I don’t believe any of it. I have it on pretty good authority that she has been isolated in a secret NASA training program as part of her long-term plan to become the first female astronaut President.

Anyway, in order to get back into things she decided to write a frivolous post and link to a map of every state she’s ever been in. So I will, too.

She’s been in more states than me, but that’s ok. She’s very competitive.