It’s midnight now and I’m laying next to you in bed listening as your breathing slows, sleep overcoming your attempts to stay awake. I hate this time of night because it means I can’t talk to you, calling out because I saw, heard, or thought something I can’t keep to myself. I can’t be with you in your dreams, experiencing events together. I hate it because I miss you.

Goodnight my love, goodnight.

I arrived broken.

Alone, scared, evanescent, identityless.

I was a middle-aged child who had been homeless between four walls.

I was emotionless and empty, not knowing, or caring, if I was alive.

I wondered, if my car stalled on the tracks with a train hurling towards it, would I get out?

I had lived in a world of ugliness and filth, with all exits blocked.

I could look at the sky and see nothing but a cold, stark shell, unaware I existed.

Full of life, joy, love, and belonging.

I know my place, I know my role.

I know myself.

I’ve seen places that took away my breath and laughed until I couldn’t breathe.

When I look up, the sky isn’t bleak, it’s a universe of wonder, waiting to be examined.

The scars are still there, but I don’t mind.

They remind me where I came from, and show me who I am.

It’s me, I’m alive.

Here I come.

It’s been almost a year since I last wrote an update on the New Horizons Probe. Most likely most of you don’t know what it even is, let alone why I would be writing an update on it. So here’s a little background: On January 19, 2006 NASA launched the New Horizons Probe towards Pluto. This probe is, to date, the fastest vehicle mankind has ever launched, crossing the moon’s orbit in just 8 hour and 35 minutes. By contrast, in the late 60’s to early 70’s we were sending men to the moon. Their mission had them coasting through cislunar space (the open space between the earth and the moon) for nearly 3 days. New Horizon’s mission is the first ever to the ex-planet (now dwarf planet, but you would be hard pressed to find a scientist who really cares what its classification is) of Pluto.

I love to use the numbers in this mission to explain just how big space really is. Here we have mankind’s fastest vehicle (moving, at times, upwards of 51,000 mph. Yea, 51 thousand miles an hour….that’s around mach 68) yet it’s going to take 15 years to reach Pluto. My friends, that’s a long time.

Anyway, since the launch (which I was lucky to see live on NASA TV) I’ve tracked this little machine while it coasts and sleeps.

• NH is currently cruising along at 39,572 mph, that’s nearly 11 miles every second! Think about your drive to work every day. For me, I live almost exactly 14 miles from my office and it takes me, on average, 30 minutes to get there. If I could hitch a ride on NH, I could leave my house at 8:59:58 and not be late for work.
• NH is currently 11.92 AU (that’s Astronomical Units. This is the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun, or 93 million miles) from Earth. 11.92 AU is 1.1 billion miles. At that distance, it takes a signal from Earth, traveling at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) over 1.6 hours just to reach the probe. Then it takes another 1.6 hours for NH to respond. That means that every time one of the mission controllers needs to ask the probe a question, she better plan ahead, because it’s going to be over 3 hours before she gets a response (and hey, in that 3 hour window, NH has traveled an additional 118,716 miles away!)
• If NH had traveled the same distance as noted above, but in Earth Orbit (a circumference of roughly 26,000 miles) it would have circled us 42,616 times. Since each orbit takes about 90 minutes at a speed of 17,500 mph (much faster and you’re not going to be in Earth’s orbit. You’ll zip off into space instead, much like NH itself!), it would have been orbiting the Earth for 3,835,400 minutes (that breaks down into 63,924 hours, or 2,663 days, or 7.2 years). Instead it’s gone the same distance in under 3 years!
• NH is currently 20.21AU (1,878,640,000 miles) from Pluto. Even if it could accelerate to the speed of light, it would still take nearly 3 hours to get to the planet.

NH is set to do a flyby of Pluto in July of 2015. It’s not, however, going to stop…not even for a little while. Its mission is to continue out into the Kuiper Belt and beyond, pretty much forever. NH will still be coasting through space millions, if not billions of years from now (as long as it doesn’t get creamed by some wandering neutron star, ha!), how’s that for a legacy? J

I once tried to write a book. I had what, in my head, was a great idea. I knew it would be a bestseller if I could just get it on paper. So I sat down, opened the computer, loaded Word, typed “Chapter 1″, hit enter a couple times, and clicked “tab” to indent for the paragraph. Up to this point things were going great. The book was coming along exactly as planned.

“OK,” I thought to myself, “what’s the opening scene? How do I hook my audience from sentence number one?” This, of course, turned out to be the first major roadblock on my way to the publishing house, but I muscled through and finally typed out the first sentence of my Hugo Award winning novel. Feeling quite accomplished I sat back and read what I written. This brought me to the book’s first major editing spree. In fact, I had to rewrite the entire chapter at this point. Again, I muscled through, nose to the grindstone (among other cliche’s that we accomplished author’s tend to avoid) and after a few more drastic edits, I had the scene set. I was on a roll, the words practically typing themselves:

“It was another hot day of work in the desert, with temperatures soaring near 120 degrees. A stiff breeze out of the west did nothing to alleviate the heat; instead it filled the air with fine grains of sand which stuck to the sweat covered bodies of the archaeologists and their crew. Declan stood up, removing the bandanna from his wind-burned face and using it to wipe his brow.”

“Well, now!” I said, that’s one fine piece of writing! I was dazzled by thoughts of being the world’s newest Arthur C. Clark. I was already going over the movie rights with my agent. For the next few weeks I worked. I was a mad typist (and delete-ist), page after page (of the same page) flew from my mind onto the screen (and back off).  Finally, exhausted and satiated, I viewed my masterpiece in its entirety. I had written 358 words, including the words “chapter” and “1″. Well that’s not entirely true. I had written 16,789 words. But only 358 stuck.

To end what I’m sure is a burning curiosity here are the other 287 words I haven’t already revealed:

Man is it ever a scorcher today,” he exclaimed to his still-kneeling colleague, “What do you suppose it is, 118? 119?”

“All you do is complain about the heat, Declan. It makes me wonder why you chose a profession whose sole purpose is to dig holes in the middle of a desert!’ Branson replied, laughing. “Besides it’s not that bad. We have water, we have shade. And the new fans your company sent for use in the tents work pretty well, all things considered.”

“Yea, well it’s still hot,” he said, smiling. Standing atop a small outcrop of rock, Declan shielded his eyes from the glaring sun and peered out over the dust covered landscape trying to imagine what it must have looked like in ancient times when the whole area was lush, green, and covered with vegetation. A cry from one of the crew brought his attention back to the present.

“We better go see what that’s all about,” he told Branson, jogging off towards the source of the excitement.

The crew’s forman met him halfway there.

“What is it, what did you guys find?”

“I’m not really sure, boss. I haven’t seen anything like it before.”

“Well that’s promising,” Declan said hopefully. “What’s it looke like?”

“It’s only a small shard, but the surface is, well it’s hard to describe. It’s silvery, but extrememly smooth, not like any kind of jewelry we’ve seen. It’s almost mirror-like. It’s got a curved edge and looks like it’s just a piece, broken off of a larger, I dunno, like a disc or something.”

“Is it a colored lens?  We’ve found plenty of sunglasses before.”

“No, sir. It’s perfectly flat.”

“Hmm. that does sound strange. Let’s take a look.”

 

It was around the time that I placed that last quotation mark that I began to realize that I had no interest in where the story was going, how I was going to get there, or what would become of the characters. Intrigued with this newest development I clicked “save” and put the file in a safe place while I contemplated my future as a rich novelist. “Bah!” I said, “Writing isn’t for me. It’s too structured and rule-ridden. I need something that will let me express myself freely, without being bound by society’s chains, chains I say!”

Chapter 2

I once tried to write a song…

I got an email from a friend of mine today asking if I had seen this email being passed around the internet, supposedly written by an angry housewife in NJ. While I didn’t check it against snopes for authenticity, I know it doesn’t matter who the actual author was. The fact is, this letter has been around for a while and it does refelect the way some people feel.

‘Are we fighting a war on terror or aren’t we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001?

Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan , across the Potomac from our nation’s capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania ? !

Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn’t they?

And I’m supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was ‘desecrated’ when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet?…Well, I don’t. I don’t care at all. 

I’ll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11. 

I’ll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia 

I’ll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for chopping off Nick Berg’s head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed throat. 

I’ll care when the cowardly so-called ‘insurgents’ in Iraq come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques. 

I’ll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide . 

I’ll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights. 

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don’t care. 

When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been humiliated in what amounts to a college-hazing incident, rest assured: I don’t care. 

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank: I don’t care… 

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed ’special’ food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being ‘mishandled,’ you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts: I don’t care. 

And oh, by the way, I’ve noticed that sometimes it’s spelled ‘Koran’ and other times ‘Quran.’ Well, Jimmy Crack Corn and-you guessed it-I don’t care !! 

If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your E-mail friends. Sooner or later, it’ll get to the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior! 

If you don’t agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should you choose the latter, then please don’t complain when more atrocities committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great Country! And may I add: 

‘Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don’t have that problem’ — Ronald Reagan 

I have another quote that I would like to add AND…….I hope you forward all this. 

‘If we ever forget that we’re One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.’ Also by.. Ronald Reagan 

One last thought for the day: 

In case we find our selves starting to believe all the Anti-American sentiment and negativity, we should remember England ’s Prime Minister Tony Blair’s words during a recent interview. When asked by one of his Parliament members why he believes so much in America , he said: ‘A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in.. And how many want out.’

Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you:

1. Jesus Christ

2. The American G. I. 

One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON,

AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET BOTH OF THEM.

 

AMEN! ( I’m passing this on Lady. God Bless You and God Bless

 

When you refuse to respect others and their traditions, you make them mad. When you purposefully and remoreselessly humiliate an entire race of people, you make them mad. Yes, 9/11 was a terrorist act that killed thousands of innocent people. Yes, America was right to respond with force. Yes, we have every right to defend ourselves and do everything in our power to ensure our own future safety.

But how do we get to stand here and claim that we are standing on the moral high-ground while we do everything we can to insult and humiliate those that didn’t even attack us? How do we respond when somebody disrespects the bible, or our holy ceremonies? Why, then, do we think it’s ok to do the same to them, and then act surprised when they yell at us? We are the greatest and most powerful nation on the Earth, why do we need to make prisoners of war make a naked human pyramid? We should be treating these enemy combatants at least as well as we treat our own criminals. It’s nothing short of what we want for our own soldiers held captive.

Also, the whole “if you don’t agree with me you support terrorists and hate America” part of the letter is insulting to those of us that believe in human rights and this country. The pro war, anti-non-Christian-brown-people sentiments expressed in this letter are the exact reasons we will be attacked again. When you make yourself the worlds largest target, don’t be surprised when everybody starts taking shots at you.

Ok this is one of the coolest images you’ll ever see, even if you don’t fully realize it.

What you are looking at is this device:

hanging from a parachute like so:

while it is entering Mars’ atmosphere.

Now I know, you might be saying “Yea? So?” but let me put this into perspective for you. The top image is a “live action” picture of a probe entering the atmosphere after a 10 month flight, during a landing procedure that lasted less than 7 minutes, with the lander moving at thousands of miles per hour,  landing onto the surface of a planet that is 170 million miles away, and taken by a satellite that has been in Martian orbit for 2 years, and was 640 miles away from the lander at the time. This image is absolutely mind boggling!

And for a little more perspective, here’s the full size image, showing the size of what this satellite was trying to capture:

Last night my girlfriend and I decided to stop at Coldstone Creamery and get a little ice cream. We, naturally, got the “new girl” as a server. Now I have no problem with getting the trainee, we’ve all been there and done that, but when we tried to pay I had no choice but to be amazed some people manage to remember their way home every night. Our total bill came to $2.62 so, having a pocketful of gold dollar coins, I handed the girl three. She looked down at them, looked at me, and then looked over to her trainer who was helping another customer. After a second or two of inactivity, she looked back at me and said it would be a minute because she had to ask what she was supposed to do with those coins. I just stood there incredulously while my girlfriend politely pointed out that they were simply dollar coins. In the mean time the trainer had made her way to the cash register and confirmed our story saying “Yea, they’re dollars, just hit 3 enter.”  It made me wonder, did she think I had given her some tokens, or pirates gold? What exactly did she think those coins, engraved with George Washington, the Statue of Liberty, and a big $1, were?

I accept that many people might not have gotten their hands on some of these coins yet (they are the only coin stocked in our change machine at work, put in $5 and get 5 shiny new gold dollars) but somebody should certainly be able to ascertain whether a coin is legal tender or not. If it’s the first time you’ve been handed one I could understand marveling at them for a minute, as I did the first time I got a stack of 20 from the change machine. But having their presence bring you to a complete stop until you could get direction on how to proceed? That’s bordering on the ridiculous. And I won’t even go into the details of her attempt to make change other than to say the $.38 she tried to give me did not involve quarters. I feel bad for the trainer; hopefully they have plenty of patience.

Last year I worked my ass off. As a result, I was awarded a trip to Cancun, Mexico, to the Moon Palace Resort for my company’s Service Conference. What can I say, it was paradise. (my Flickr photo set – Opens in new window)

Here is a compilation I made.

Have you ever had the feeling that somebody is looking at you? You look around and see nobody, but you just knowyou’re being watched? That’s how scopophobia feels every minute of every day.

For most of my life I’ve felt like I was always being watched. It isn’t a malicious feeling, I don’t feel like “whoever” is watching me is trying to harm me, or spy on me, or that they even care about me. I don’t think they are judging my actions, or my body, or my house, or my hair, or the fact that I’m not wearing shoes. It’s just that they are looking at me. Right now, from somewhere.

For a long time I didn’t recognize this disorder as anything but “normal”, but a couple years ago, when I moved into a new house that had a lot of windows (and very few window coverings), I began to realize that there was no room in my house in which I felt like I could relax. Even though I lived alone, I didn’t feel comfortable even changing my clothes unless I was in the bathroom or bedroom, with the blinds drawn. When I cooked dinner I felt like there was somebody right outside the window, or in the house next door looking out his window into my kitchen, watching me cook. Again, I never felt scared, they were just watching.

Most days, the feeling is mild and barely noticeable. When I’m at my desk at work, it’s the people outside my window, or in the apartments across the street, that are watching me, even though my building has mirrored glass that you can’t see into from outside. It might also be the hidden security cameras, even though there aren’t any. When I’m in my car, it’s everybody. People may be watching the road when I glance at them, but as soon as I turn away they are looking at me. Even the person in the car in front of me is watching me in his rear-view mirror. On most days this “attention” is normal and I barely notice it.

Sometimes, though, the feeling is worse. Not the intent of the “watchers”, they are still harmless and peaceful, but the number of watchers and the amount of attention they are giving me sometimes gets intense. On these days I have a strong desire to retreat into a nice, windowless room, undetectable by anybody. I think of the movies I’ve seen where some filthy rich person has a hidden panic room. From the outside you can’t even tell there is a room, but inside, the owner sits and watches the world go by on video screens while in perfect seclusion. Even then, I couldn’t be sure the contractors that built the panic room didn’t install a hidden camera that was currently watching me hide. So burying myself under, oh, a pile of rags or towels while inside the panic room, that might do it.

As you might imagine, this feeling can get frustrating. I get tired of being on display at all times, in all scenarios, without even being able to imagine a time when I would be 100% sure nobody was watching me. However, for me, it’s not debilitating. Even though it’s annoying, it doesn’t reallyprevent me from doing anything I want to do. OK maybe I can’t skinny dip in my hot tub when it’s anything but pitch dark night, but I would probably refrain even without my disorder. My neighbors to the rear have a two story house after all. For the most part, though, I’m fully functional. Hopefully I always will be.