Rocket Scientist

... is that you never find a candidate that you can agree with 100%. What I really hate is when I find a candidate that I really like, but find ONE position that is a deal breaker. Which is why I just sent the following letter to the Barack Obama campaign:

I've been a life-long Democrat, and I've been very excited about Barack Obama as a presidential candidate. However, while I like to think of myself as not being a "one issue voter", his stance on one issue makes it currently impossible for me to support him.

NASA.

I've worked at Johnson Space Center for 19 years. I am an avid supporter of our nation's space program. Barack's proposition to delay the Constellation program by five years to pay for new education programs will effectively kill the Constellation program. Without a Shuttle replacement vehicle, we effectively lose the International Space Station as well and, to all intents and purposes, kill manned space flight in the United States.

NASA to me is a fundamental resource of our country. The educational benefits, the technological benefits, the scientific benefits are all huge, far more than the cost of the space program. By one estimate done in the 1990's the pure economic benefits of the public domain patents generated by NASA alone is on the order of 100 TIMES the total NASA budget. NASA actively helps and supports education in this country, especially in the sciences and engineering. This is both done both directly through outreach (my company helped develop a web-based tool to allow blind students to study mathematical equations and graphs as part of a NASA outreach program), and indirectly through inspiration to thousands of children and by aiding companies that need those engineers and scientists.

NASA is often a target for budget cuts because it is the largest federal program outside the big spenders of the military, Medicare/Medicaid, and Social Security. But it is really a very small part of the federal budget, around one half of one percent. To destroy an agency that gives back so much more to the country is to me incredibly short sighted.

Most of my work has not involved much actual slinging of code lately, so I've been working on a project on the side just to keep my skills up. For those of a gaming bent, check it out -- it's not complete yet, but it has enough functionality to be useful, and all future work will not invalidate anything you do at this time. It's written in Java 1.5, and has been tested to be both Mac and Windows friendly (other than an annoying window not coming up in the right size in Windows thing that I can't figure out.)

the executable is here, and a proto-users guide is here.

I'm in Orlando to give my math-loaded paper on distributed simulations at a conference. I wanted to work over the presentation -- I have 30 minutes to give a talk that should really take 90 minutes, so I have to have every word planned out. However, I didn't get much done on the flight because:

1. I am coming down with a cold or something, and didn't sleep well last night.


2. My name is back on the "no fly" list. Having one of the most common names in America and working for the government evidently doesn't help much there.


3. The delay from that caused me to be one of the very last people to board a Southwest flight to Orlando.


4. It being Orlando, the flight had an overabundance of screaming kids on their way to the Mecca of Amusement.


5. Nobody boarding before me wanted to sit next to all the screaming kids.

Which all added up to... well, you do the math...

I haven't written for a long while, mainly because, to be honest, I've been too busy living my life to write about it. We've been through summer vacation with the kids, a serious illness in the family, finally found and moved into a new house (which involved learning how to maintain the new pool in the backyard), fixed up and sold the old house (16 days from listing to closing, whoo-hoo!), wife quit her job, started a new one that didn't work out and moved on to job number three, I won some awards for my technical work, have written a 10 page paper full of math that I'm presenting at a conference in a couple of weeks, worked on enough hiring to double our engineering staff in the past year, and I'm working many many extra hours working on my company's proposal for our contract renewal at NASA.

Life is good, life is busy.

Well, we are officially out of the new home building business.

First there was the "oops, we've framed up the wrong foundation and you will have pay for us to fix it." fiasco. Eventually, they fixed it, at their own cost. But they vowed they would have their revenge...

Then there was the "the modification you asked for downstairs will be done, only it can't be done, yes it can, only we started doing it the other way and will have to rip stuff out and it can't be done anyway never mind I guess we can do it after all" fiasco. I guess the name covers it.

Today, there was the "we're building without the two modifications upstairs that you want, and by the way we want twice the money for those mods that we originally estimated," combined with the "we just installed the gas line to the house right across the middle of the backyard, even though we know you're going to put a pool back there" fiascoes.

Didn't even bother to ask how much it would cost to fix that. Told them we're out, and have sent our personal bounty hunter/realtor out to get our money back. The end.

Does anyone else go through this? Does anyone else have continual problems with any and all institutions that involve online statements or billing? That have multi-layered customer service lines that are obviously designed to keep costs down by not serving the customer?

Does anyone else spend hours trying to get through layers of incompetent and ignorant "support" who know far less than you do about computers, only to never have the problem resolved? Or, to supposedly have it resolved only to see it pop up over and over again.

I was about to launch into details, but... you've all been there. You know what it's like. It's just that lately, it seems that these things that supposedly are there to make our lives easier instead make it more difficult. Just like the insurance companies, and mortgage companies, and banks and utilities. Hell, I spent days tracking down the phone number for my own homeowners association. Because companies don't use websites and help lines to help their customers, but to save money.

We've dropped a bank and a credit union because of their incompetence, and I've shredded the cards from that company. If only we had the choice to do so with other things like the insurance companies and monopoly cable companies and utilities and such so they they would actually have a monetary motive to actually please their customers. If only...

I'm on my last day of work here in Tsukuba. One of the JAXA employees that I work with on each trip is a young woman named Eiko. She is the one who organizes all of the social events, makes sure that everyone has coffee or tea, etc. The fact that she is a skilled technical person doesn't seem that important to her bosses.

Today, she invited the people involved in the distributed simulation work -- eight of us all together -- to her house for lunch on the last day.

She lives with her father in a traditional Japanese house, with tatami mats on the floors, sliding walls, and beautifully carved wood and bamboo everywhere. Out back was a garden that provided all of the vegetables for lunch. And the neighbor, who is an extremely skilled bonsai grower, showed us his work.

Everyone was impressed that I could sit seiza properly, a left-over from years of Aikido from before my back and hip got ruined. I was impressed by the graciousness of Eiko and her father, who spoke no English, but made us feel welcome and at home. The food was all delicious, and I even ate the pickled jellyfish (which was kind of crunchy-chewy, but otherwise tasted fine).

It was the first and only time that I've felt truly at home here, in a land so far away from where I live. We'll have to have a barbecue for Eiko and her friends the next time they come to Johnson Space Center.

I'm off to Japan, for the third time.

Hopefully I'll have some time to doa bit of tourist stuff and shop, especially as I'll be gone for the second anniversary of our first date (which, in many ways, seems more important than the wedding anniversary), and home in time to be present for (but not conscious for) Mother's Day.

Hopefully I'll get some nice photos like my first trip.

Hopefully it won't be like the second trip where I had no time off, 12+ hour work days with a 90 minute commute on each end, and a whole 2-3 hours to run through a flea market on the way back to the airport for appropriate familial gifting.

Hopefully, I'll survive the monstrous fourteen hour time zone jet lag. (Why did Gojira destroy Tokyo? Because he'd just flown there from Houston...)

Hopefully, work will not pile up beyond recovery while I am gone.

Hopefully, the new house, which is as of tonight a finished slab, will be progressing nicely.

Hopefully.

P.S... and why does it bother me that LJ's spell checker doesn't recognize "Gojira"?

Listening to the news on the way home this evening:

Bush has vowed to veto the War appropriation bill because it has deadlines for troop withdrawal. Because, according to him, the terrorists will then win in Iraq.

But, as a compromise, he's says that he would be willing to set deadlines for the Iraqi government. If they don't meet the deadlines, it would trigger withdrawal.

So, if we leave just because we're leaving, that's bad because the terrorists win, but if we leave because the Iraqi government has proven that they can't defeat the terrorists, that's okay.

How can I add to that?

First of all, yes I am fine. No-one that I know was involved in the craziness. I was actually off-site at the time, and ended up going home early because of the lock-down.

Second of all, don't believe most of what you hear in the news. Building 44 may be geographically near the center of JSC, but... it's a huge place, that's over three-fourths still undeveloped natural lands and full of deer. In terms of the used work space, 44 is way off in a corner. It's a small building, and nothing critical goes on there. No, it is not "practically the only" building that doesn't have metal detectors. Most of them don't. I only know of three that do.

Third, I am dreading the inevitable "NASA is incompetent" backlash, and the increased security nightmare. The current security is as follows:

The whole site is behind a secure fence, and the access points all have multiple guards. You are not allowed on-site without first showing a photo ID badge, which requires a security background check to receive. There are metal detectors in the MCC and a couple of other buildings where mission critical operations occur, or where VIPs are likely to visit. These buildings also have special precautions to prevent things like a drive up car bomb. They also pull random car inspections on entry.

When you consider that there are over 100 buildings on-site, and over 10,000 people coming and going every day, I can't think of a whole lot more they could do. In the end, this was one crazy person, and a couple of unfortunate victims. It's not a sign of a failure of methodology, or culture, or anything else.

And, to those who call out that such problems would go away if everyone citizen were allowed to carry a gun all the time so they could defend themselve, all I have to say is that Molly Ivins was right -- guns make it much much to easy to kill someone. And we all lose our tempers from time to time. Point, pull, and problem is quickly gone, from a distance, no blood on your hands. Guns are not defensive weapons. Knives, on the other hand -- keeping it that personal might make people think a bit more about what they are doing before they do it.

At a meeting this morning, one of our senior engineers told everyone that I had almost lost my "Supreme Geek" title.

See, the two of us interviewed an engineer yesterday, and part of the conversation went like this:

Him: "My wife works for InvoCon."

Me: "InfoCom?! Zork!"

Him: "No, InVoCon. You have been eaten by a grue."

Me: "In twisty tiny passages that all look the same?"

We were tied. I then launched into a reminiscence about the old InfoCom Hitchhikers Guide game, but he knew all about how to get the Babelfish.

Points were pretty close at that point. But then I pulled out all the stops, and went into the Sam & Max game, and the original comic, and the follow-on cartoon, and the possibility of a new game. It was a blow-out.

Almost lost my title, my ass.

I could go into laborious detail, but the short of it is:

Look at every number on every contract.

Read every word.

And go by the lot every damn day.

We've avoiding being double-charged for some items, being over-charged for some items. And having the wrong floorplan built.

So far, so good, but sheesh!

So, I ran my every 6-9 months game, and had one of those wonderful moments where an intersection of different strains of geekdom brings total joy.

Which came when the adventurers, searching for some enslaved dwarves, realized that the dwarves were being mind controlled by these startfish thingies stuck on their faces. Because, they all realized at the same instant that yes indeedy, Starro is a Great Old One. The panic and despair was beautiful to behold. Heh-heh.

I was in a meeting today, and the subject of cross country skiing came up. I used to do quite a bit of that when I was younger, and it reminded me of the funniest thing that I've ever seen in my life...

I was maybe 14, and going on an overnight country ski trip near Three-Fingered Jack with three friends. There was an exceptional amount of snow fall, with drifts over ten feet in places. The trees were mostly blue spruces, and they had thick branches that shed the snow in such a way that there was a ring of deep snow around each tree, with a deep well around each trunk where there was little snow.

As we were hiking along, one of my friends, Alan, decided that he needed to pee, and that peeing down one of these wells onto the trunk was The Thing To Do. So, he worked his way to the edge of the trail, unzipped and let fly. Unfortunately for him, the act of urination evidently shifted his balance so he started to slide forward into the well. He suddenly realized that he was moving, and started flailing wildly. He managed, through one of the most incredible acts of accidental human acrobatics ever witnessed, to perform a complete 180 flip, lodge his skis firmly into the lowest branches.

Which left him hanging upside down in the well. With his pants around his knees. Yelling. And peeing on his own face.

Unfortunately for him, he had to remain there for quite some time, since we couldn't stand up for laughing for a very very long time.

Conversation on the way back from lunch:

"Hey look! That's the same truck up there we saw when we parked for lunch."

"It's just like it's followng us, ahead of us!"

"Obviously from the future."

"Yep, definitely a time traveller."

"So, that leaves only two possibilities..."

"?"

"Either one of us is his grandfather, and he's come back to kill us..."

"Or?"

"Or we're not his grandfather and he's come back to not kill us!"

"Brilliant!"

"Brilliant!"

Every once in a while, a word or phrase pops into my head, and I think "Ooh, that would be fun in a game."

Today's word: Cthulhu-bot

Enjoy.

A bunch of super-genius obsessive compulsive egotistical jocks...


... and you're surprised that there's some soap opera?

Less than forty-eight hours after the signing the contract, the first problem (with a cost of several thousands) has come up. Note, they won't be breaking ground for another month.

On a brighter note, I laughed after I mistyped when checking out some blogs. Unfortunately, it wasn't a real site. Because, you know, I would so love to have a blog on JiveJournal.com.

Tags: home and garden, rants

About ten years ago I signed my first mortgage on a house. With a few (okay, a few hundred) signatures, I acquired over a hundred grand of debt.

Tomorrow, we are hopefully going to sign a contract to have a new house built. It's a whole new level of commitment. Picking over all of the various modifications and upgrades that we are willing to pay for has been a damn-near full time job. We'll have a big lot, and a really nice kitchen. It'll be awhile before I have my granite countertops, though. But we'll have enough room for the kids, and the computers, and my piano. And all of our stuff in storage; the money we save on storage rental will make up for the bigger mortgage payments.

And will be our place, not mine or hers. And that's the best part of all.

I haven't posted much lately... mostly a combination of being to busy with life to spend time writing about it and not feeling that inspired to write here anyway.

But, I have finished the new annual update to the family cookbook. Feel free to download and enjoy.