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Save Hubble


How time flies. I remember before I started the U of Delaware in 1993, the Hubble Space telescope was launched. It was going to be the next big thing in space research. The hopes were high, that we would soon be able to see to the edge of the Universe.

After the launch, it was realized that the Hubble’s lenses – or eyes – were not focused right. So, the choice was to scrap the entire telescope, or send a Shuttle up with astronauts to do a series of spacewalks to repair it. The decision was to send people up to fix the Hubble in 1993.

When I got to college, I watched much of the live Hubble repair missions on NASA TV as a freshman. It was interesting. We built something, we broke it, and now we’re fixing it 300 miles up.

For over 10 years now, the Hubble has brought amazing imagedry from all corners of the Universe, steller imagines that have amazed children and made scientists cry.

Here is a gallery of Hubble pics taken over the years. Enjoy
http://www.seds.org/hst/hst.html

Due to Bush’s budget constraints for space research, he has decided that the Hubble is no longer valuable. There will be a ‘next generation’ telescope going up in a few years, but there will be a non-activity period of a few years between when the Hubble gets retired and when the new telescope goes up, which i believe is in 2011.

I don’t have a problem with the Hubble being retired, but as the article points out, it’s going to be destroyed. We’re going to spend money to build something to launch into space so it can guide the HST to a semi-graceful death, by diving into the atmosphere and burning to bits on re-entry. This is not how the Hubble should be retired.

The Hubble needs a Shuttle to go and get it, bring it back down safely to Earth, and have it tour the World, finally resting for good in the Smithsonian. Is that too much to ask? We’re going to spend millions to destroy it, why not spend a little more to save it.

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NASA budget would kill Hubble
Budget hike for 2006
Monday, February 7, 2005 Posted: 9:14 PM EST (0214 GMT)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — With the moon on its horizon, NASA sees a slight increase in the budget proposed by President Bush on Monday, but it’s not enough to save the Hubble Space Telescope.

Only $93 million in the space agency’s $16.45 billion budget would go toward Hubble’s survival: $75 million to develop a kamikaze robot that would steer the orbiting observatory into the ocean at the end of its lifetime, and $18 million to try to eke out as much scientific observing time as possible from the telescope through clever remote controlling.

No money is in the budget to send either a robotic repairman or shuttle astronauts to Hubble to extend its lifetime, a decision that is sure to anger astronomers and members of Congress.

Late last year, a National Academy of Sciences panel recommended one final visit to Hubble by astronauts.

The proposed budget for NASA — 2.4 percent higher than last year’s — sets aside $9.6 billion for science, aeronautics and exploration, and $6.7 billion for exploration capabilities.

That includes $4.5 billion for the space shuttle program, on track for resuming flights this year for the first time since the 2003 Columbia disaster, and $1.85 billion for the international space station.

Just over a year ago, Bush announced a new exploration vision for NASA geared around returning astronauts to the moon by 2020. Everything now revolves around that.

NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said even though the space agency is not getting as much money as envisioned by the president a year ago, a 2.4 percent budget increase is “rather remarkable” given the federal deficit and the spending cuts elsewhere in the government.

As for Hubble, O’Keefe said the National Academy of Sciences panel presented such a bleak assessment of a robotic mission to install new parts on the space telescope that it made little sense to presume success and, consequently, no money was put aside for such an endeavor.

“We’ll see. In a month’s time, there may be an epiphany,” O’Keefe said. “But I think it’s going to be a very difficult mountain, a steep hill, to climb.”

O’Keefe reiterated his long-held view that a shuttle flight to Hubble poses too many dangers in the wake of the Columbia catastrophe.

“It is a judgment call and this is a judgment call that is my responsibility for however period of time that I reside here,” said O’Keefe, who will leave NASA in less than two weeks to assume the chancellor’s job at Louisiana State University.

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New York State at it’s Finest [sarcasm]


In exactly 14 days from now, we’ll be hours into a party we’re hosting for my grandfather’s 95th birthday. About 60 people will attend, and appropriately, I’m in charge of the alcohol. 🙂

I had been thinking about getting a nice, good keg of beer for the guests. May be Sam Adams, or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Something like that. It’s been years since I got a keg. Hell, the last time I got a keg was in my college days – 1998 or so – in Delaware. A “good” keg was $85 and there was a $50 deposit for the tap+keg themsevles.

I get to the beer distributor yesterday, and inquire about a keg. For deposit on the tap, it was $75 from the beer distributor. Ok, that’s a little steep, but whatever. Then, I was told that New York State requires a $125 additional deposit on the keg. I asked what this covered, and apparently, the distributor slaps a sticker on the side of the keg. It’s a New York State form, and it’s sort of like the I.D. for that keg. If you return the keg without that sticker, New York State just earned $125.

So, I won’t be getting a keg of anything. 🙂 What I’m going to do is take that $150 I was going to spend on a good keg of Sam Adams, and by several different cases of good beer.

Who wins? Jeff, and the party people.

Who loses? New York State.

And yes, I will be returning all bottles for my .05 cents back on each can. 😉

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The Day The Water Won


[ First and foremost, names and places have been changed to protect the innocent, namely me. 🙂 ]

Y’all know how much it rained here last night, right? I believe at JFK they got as much water in one night as they ever had. The rain is an important part of today’s story. 🙂

8:30 AM:
I’m getting out of the shower, although by 8:30, I should be sitting at my desk.

(It’s not that I’m lazy; it’s that I just don’t care. When I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.) – “Office Space”, 1999.

Anyway, back to our story.

8:32 AM:
Nancy, a coworker and future coworker in the new job, calls and states “uhh, Jeff..sorry to bother you and all, but you won’t believe what happened.” “What happened”, I asked. The building burnt to the ground? “No, we have a major flood and I want to know what I can turn off in the computer room.”

You should now see the size of the grin I have on my face.

“Well, Nancy, how much water is there? We talking damp, or standing water?”. Nancy replies, “there’s about 8 inches of standing water in the computer room.”

You should now see the size of the grin I have on my face.

“Nancy–be careful, if anything smells like it’s burning or smoking, do not go in there. If you can get in there, or you can get Jerry [Mgr] to get in there, shut off everything you can. Don’t worry if you can’t, everything in there is replaceable.”

I hang up my cell phone, and I thank God because my wish came true, sort of. I walked to the kitchen table, and said to my parents as they ate their breakfast and read the paper. “You know, I prayed for an Al Q’aeda strike. Never happened. I prayed for a fire in the middle of the night when no one got injured, didn’t happen. I will however, accept a flood.”

When I arrived at Vandelay Industries 40 minutes late, you were walking in water up to your ankles, and that was at its shallowest of parts. The only items that were not damaged by water would be anything above ground, which means only a portion of the building. Sam hadn’t arrived yet, nor did Karol. Frank was also MIA. Nancy and Jerry had paged Frank – apparently Frank was due to make a visit to MSK (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) in NYC, as they are a huge client for us. Not today. In he comes – in sandals – and survey’s what’s going on. I had to walk away from him, because he started making some scary decisions. One of these scary decisions was to get the warehouse kids together, get a bunch of brooms, and shovels, and begin to sweep the 10 inches of standing water in the warehouse out the warehouse doors. Imagine a high school gymnasium being our warehouse, and imagine it with 10″ of standing water on it. Not going to happen.

Nancy gets on the phone with people she knows, and within about 30 minutes, 2 companies are here with pumps to pump the water out. While this is going on, in walks David Bowie. Upon doing a triple take, still convinced it’s David Bowie, I find out it’s our landlord, who either hurriedly got dressed to look professional at 10AM, or who was just coming in from the night before full of coke and smelling of sex. I couldn’t quite tell from which direction he was headed to or coming from, as he too, began to push water with a broom, while attempting to figure out a small, but workable water-vacuum.

Getting the sense that I was in the twilight zone, I began to survey the damage to the desktop computers, which unlike their definition, reside, like most companies, on the floor. I walked over to my machine first, naturally. Some standing water, but mostly puddles near my area, but very wet none the less. Gingerly, hoping not to get electrocuted, I began to unhook every wire from the back of the PC. I grabbed the PC, pulled it out from under the desk, and tipped it over to see if it had gotten damaged, or whether it had successfully weathered the storm.

Out poured about half a gallon of water.

I checked my team’s computers and voice jacks. Out of 4 voice and 4 data jacks, 3 voice and 3 data jacks were busted in addition to the 3 PCs that belong to those 3 data jacks.

I walk into the warehouse to explain to Frank that no matter how fast he can get the water out of here, will still have a huge computer problem. He then hands me a snow shovel, and asks me to start pushing some of the water out.

I calmly put the shovel down, and begin walk out of the building. On my way out, I see Jen, reprogramming a Baxter handheld pump for a patient. Upon waiting for her to finish the calibration, I notice the floor as slightly brownish. I look to my left, and there is scary Bob. A Vietnam Vet, roughly in his 50’s. Very nice guy, but a little weird. He says “you know why the water is brown?” Sheepishly, I say “No, why…”. “Shit. Fucking shit, that’s why.” Laughing a little, because this guy never gets angry, I say “How do you figure?”. He leans back a bit and says “Well, where do you think this came from? Sure, we had a lot of rain, but you’re talking about an entire building with 6″ to 10″ of standing water in it. A sewer overflowed, and seeped in, and that’s the reason it’s brown. Plus, you have to remember, with the exception of right over there (pointing toward the reception desk) and upstairs, the rest of us are either slightly or very below ground level. I told these guys 7 months ago when we had a minor flood in the back, that it will happen again, and they better do something. But, they didn’t want to listen to me, so this is what the get. Fuck them.” I look down right now, and I’m standing up to my lower ankles, in what I have learned, very recently I might add, to be shitpiss water. It is now when I bid Bob adieu, and proceed to the next part in the timeline chain of events.

10AM:
I’m on my way back home. I watched a little TV, finished some emails, called a few clients, and took a crap. Threw on a t-shirt and some shorts, I make it back to work by 11:30 where it looks like roughly the same amount of water we started with is still here. Apparently, the guys pumped a whole room and then the water returned, via the floor. Not good.

12:30PM:
Me and Billie go for Chinese food, talking about how fucked up Vandelay Industries is. Back by 2pm.

2:15PM:
Dave and Buster both arrive, shake my hand, and we all start laughing. These guys can’t believe it, but they never can believe it, because after all, it’s Vandelay Industries, and one should know, that anything, no matter how fucked up it is, will occur here. We started taking each computer, diagnosing it, and making a “toasted” pile (i.e. busted) and a “works” pile, meaning you fucking lucked out, as your computer didn’t get hit with water.

3PM:
Carpets, some of which are new, are now all pulled up with the help of the warehouse guys, myself, and some others. What’s left is a bare, yellowish-white concrete floor. As it turns out, Nancy spoke with the San Diego branch and they had a flood a few weeks ago. Simply drying the carpet and putting down disinfectant won’t really work, as within a few weeks, mold grows, everyone gets sick.

4:30PM:
Of the 36 desktop PCs that happened to be in the way of the water, 28 of them got fried. And, then, the unthinkable happened. Corporate called CDW.com (our computer distributor and many other company’s computer distributor) and are FedEx’ing 28 new PCs to arrive on Thursday by 10:30. I’m still floored by this, as it normally takes Vandelay Industries 2-4 weeks to manage to get someone a computer. By this time, the wiring company is here, replacing all of the data and voice jacks, while the vacuums suck away like there is no tomorrow.

5:25PM:
Sam overhead pages me from his office. Twice, the second time sounding more aggressive. “Hey what’s the problem, you ok?” I ask. “Yeah I’ve been calling you.” I literally take the phone off my head and away from my ear, and look at it for 2 seconds. “Yeah, we had a flood here today. My computer is fucked, and my voice jack is busted. I have no phone. I have no means, but how I can help you?” (Thinking I probably shouldn’t have said all that, but who cares.) And here comes the best part. “Uhh, Jeff, well I was wondering tomorrow if you had time, ya know, well if you could help with the computers, we might need your help tomorrow with some setup, logistically, if you don’t mind, if u …” “Yeah, whatever I’ll take care of it”, cutting him off mid sentence. “Thanks Jeff, I appreciate it.”

Some things never change.

5:30PM:
Home doing laundry.

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Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld


I came across this website the other day (http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/), when remembering about some guy that created a website that mirrored a “page can not be found error” when searching for “weapons of mass destruction” in a Google search. Go ahead, try it. And then click on the first link, which is the above webpage.

Then, I remembered a funny quote from Rumsfeld at one of the press briefings. Below are some of the collected works of Donald Rumsfeld.

The Unknown

As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don’t know We don’t know.

Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Glass Box You know, it’s the old glass box at the—At the gas station, Where you’re using those little things Trying to pick up the prize, And you can’t find it. It’s—And it’s all these arms are going down in there, And so you keep dropping it And picking it up again and moving it, But—Some of you are probably too young to remember those—Those glass boxes, But—But they used to have them At all the gas stations When I was a kid.

Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing- A Confession –

Once in a while,I’m standing here, doing something.And I think,”What in the world am I doing here?” It’s a big surprise.

May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times- Happenings

You’re going to be told lots of things. You get told things every day that don’t happen. It doesn’t seem to bother people, they don’t—It’s printed in the press. The world thinks all these things happen. They never happened. Everyone’s so eager to get the story Before in fact the story’s there That the world is constantly being fed Things that haven’t happened. All I can tell you is, It hasn’t happened. It’s going to happen.

Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing – The Digital Revolution

Oh my goodness gracious, What you can buy off the Internet In terms of overhead photography!A trained ape can know an awful lot Of what is going on in this world, Just by punching on his mouse For a relatively modest cost!

June 9, 2001, following European trip – The Situation –

Things will not be necessarily continuous. The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous Ought not to be characterized as a pause. There will be some things that people will see. There will be some things that people won’t see. And life goes on.

Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing – Clarity

I think what you’ll find, I think what you’ll find is, Whatever it is we do substantively, There will be near-perfect clarity As to what it is. And it will be known, And it will be known to the Congress, And it will be known to you, Probably before we decide it, But it will be known.

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So Nice to Be Young


So nice to be young…:)I was in Dunkin Donuts here in town yesterday, about 8:30am like I always am. It’s a busy time of the day there, as the D+D is located right next to the train station. The coffee is good, and it’s become a ritual for me, even though I probably shouldn’t drink it. Anyway, like I said, it was crowded. Many people are in a rush to make a train, but I don’t care because, as it’s already 8:30, I should be at work, but I’m never on time….This little boy, about 3 or so, was pretending the D+D was his own little world as he wobbeled right in front of me. He wasn’t rushing anywhere, he didn’t care where he was, and he had a big smile on his face. I go to the left, he goes left. I go to the right, and he goes right. Laughing, I watched him bumble around a bit, with a big cookie in his hand. Out of no where comes his father, quickly apologizing, politely and apologetically stating that his child “…doesn’t know where he’s going”. I told him no need to apologize. I could tell they weren’t from around here by their accents, and this D+D would even drive the most hectic person crazy. I just told him that I wished I could be that young again. (As it turns out, they were from Iowa doing a little cross-country thing, and obviously took a wrong turn as they appeared to be sightseeing in my shithole town.) 🙂