February 2, 2003

Groundhog Day

\ Did groundhog see his shadow today? Kind of hope so, we are still waiting for winter to arrive. Temps have been in the 50s and apparently the snowpack is melting. Not good.

Well that month just flew by and now this one starts on a big downer. I still remember when Challenger blew up, I was getting ready for the day when I heard on the radio that there were freezing temperatures at the launch pad and I said to myself, looks like another delay. If only they had listened to me. I did not actually find out what had happened till noon (PST) when a friend of mine told asked me if heard what had happened to the shuttle. I flippantly responded "what, did it blow up?" He quite seriously responded yes. Shock and disbelief for me to say the least.

Now yesterday my wife informs the shuttle blew up. Again shock and disbelief, I turn on the news and there it is, video of the shuttle breaking apart high up in the sky. I only hope that NASA can come back from this and create a space vehicle that does not require such complexity. It seems as though getting to space should not require thousands of people and billions in hardware and funding. One thought put forward can found here at Jerry Pournelle's page. He has many good ideas about space travel IMHO. Look around there, lot's for the curious to find.

I picked up KDE 3.1 this past week and got it compiled up and installed. Quite nice, no problems with it and it looks good too. There appears to be a lot more under the hood to look into also. If only I had time to do more, guess I will have to win the lotto or something (yeah right!). If I just keep up with this I'll be happy.