The Ballunar Fest starts tomorrow, marking the anniversary of my first Hot Air Balloon ride. I'm really glad I'm going at least get to see the morning festivities (which means seeing the craziness of 100 hot air balloons landing in all the parking lots at work). (You can read about my experience last year here). Of course, I won't see the rest of the festival because I'm going to PERU!

Yeah Peru!

Ok, I got that out of my system for one more day. I am so not even packed yet.

Anometers

Sailing last night was oodles of fun (despite us losing, not terribly, but it wasn't that close either). The fun can be attributed to wind gusts over 20 kts. Gust wind is fun, and makes you work, and gives you a huge bruise on your left leg (or at least me).

Work babble

Some observers are coming to our group meeting this afternoon. I wonder who they are. Yesterday was an entertaining day at work. I didn't get much accomplished in the morning (stupid Matlab).

But in the afternoon, I quizzed Matt for his Landing Analyst certification grilling today. It was tons of fun, as it turns out, I really did absorb a lot of entry guidance knowledge while working on my Approach and Land stuff for the two months before I entered my current career limbo. Not to mention, I learned a bunch more while quizzing him. I really think we should invent a game of Flight Design jeopardy and do this every month or so until we all have memorized a bunch more stuff to make us sound really cool. Anyway, between driving Matt nutty with really specific Approach and Land questions, and not as specific everything else, I read through some of the flight rules to answer a few questions I had about the sim on Monday. My questions aren't really answered, but I have a whole bunch of new ones now. Is that bad?

Dashed Star Trek fantasies

Christina has dashed all my Star Trek fantasies about the invention of "transparent aluminum" (see this entry for background). She sent me this e-mail:

Alumina is not the same as aluminum. They are two vast differently compounds! seriously, for a scientist, i know you know that! Though it is cool that they made transparent alumina, it is a ceramic, not a metal. metal will never be transparent becuase of their band structure which is what makes them metals. ceramics can be transparent (ie glass) becuase of their band structure which makes them ceramics. sorry. i just couldn't live a minute longer without saying something...

Well, I guess this is why I got a "B" in the one materials science class I took, and Christina is going to get a PhD in it (someone tell her advisor to just give it to her already). Yeah for Christina, Boo for the implausibility of transparent aluminum, Hope for the creation of Warp Drive and Transporter beams.

Hats off?

There is so much wrong with this article on non-traditional jobs for women, I don't even know where to begin. I will start with the statement "Hats off to Barbie and her creators who more than 40 years ago planted the seed for the growing number of women who today work in nontraditional careers." Never mind that stewardess barbie and astronaut barbie and pilot barbie all wear the same slutty pink micro mini that hopefully no self-respecting astronaut or pilot would ever be caught dead in. Never mind that Barbie has distorted most young girls' perceptions of the ideal body so much that even the most beautiful women remain self-conscious and doubtful about their figure because they've got a ridiculous unrealistic notion of what they should look like thanks to Barbie -- taking from them confidence essential to succeed. OOOH. It just fries me to give Barbie any sort of credit for the inroads women are making in traditionally male dominated careers. I wonder how many members of Mattel also are inolved with CNN.

Stupid redistricting

As the whole country is probably aware, Mr. Evil, Congressman Tom Delay, took it upon himself to redraw all of the Congressional districts in Texas to give a distinct advantages to the Republicans. My district (which in the past had included NASA) was served faithfully by a moderate Democrat Nick Lampson, who's been in Congress for several terms and served as a ranking member of the House Science Committee as an advocate of the space program. Well, anyway, now his district has been moved way out of NASA zone to the northeast side of town, and his seat is hotly contested (he was one of the Democrats specifically targeted by the redistricting efforts). Mr. Delay drew himself a nice little meandering line all over town, taking the big industries, including the NASA area. I thought, fortunately for me, for some reason he cut out League City and gave it to someone else. Well, that someone, as it turns out, is none other than Ron Paul. I'll leave it to you to read about him and just try to imagine why I am not happy that I can't even vote against him (his seat is uncontested). I would sign up and run myself, but, unfortunately, 'tis illegal thanks to the Hatch Act. At least he's a little on the libertarian end, which are at least Republican arguments that I understand and even occasionally empathize with. But still. Ug.

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