The Last Question

I just read a short story by Asimov that was really fantastic. It's called The Last Question and spans the bredth of all human history, with a great ending. Really neat!

My Oracle Model Rocket Launch!

My rocket launch video from last weekend.

Vandenburg AFB

From Boy Scouts Va...

Joey and I went with the scouts to Vandenburg AFB this weekend and had a really great time.

We arrived at our camp site at about 9pm and got our tents up just before the rain started. It rained most of the night. I stayed dry, but unfortunately Joe was stuck with the puddle side of his tent and got wet.

We woke up early, ate a quick breakfast, and started launching rockets in the adjacent softball field. Our scoutmaster Bill had built a slick multi launch contraption that would allow us to set up 6 rockets at once, and then let the boys launch them sequentially. The boys would go up to this big black box, turn a key and wait for the ready light to come on, then press a big hand held thumb button to launch the rocket. They loved it.

The day started off will little wind and no rain, but by the time we stopped with was quite windy, and the rain had started coming down hard. I was tormented with weather I should launch my fancy camera rocket for fear of losing it. I finally gave in a launched it (scroll up a bit for the video). It was windy, and since the smaller rockets were getting blown around a lot during ascent, I had my launcher angled. But my larger, heavier rocket wasn't affected by wind nearly as much, and so I had over compensated. It flew a long way at a relatively low angle. Then, when the parachute deployed, the band that connected the nose cone and parachute to the rocket body snapped and the body fell to earth. Some of the boys found it in the middle of a small wooded thicket. I found the nose cone and parachute up in a tree.

Joey got two launches with his rocket. I gave away the three extra I had brought to 2 webelos who had none, and one scout who forgot his. My smallest one I launched with the largest motor that would fit. It flew horribly (due to it's design, and not my construction). It was last seen flying horizontally towards a wooded area. I didn't bother chasing it.

After lunch, we went on a 5 hour driving tour of the air force base, and saw a couple of the historical locations (WWII training area, place where 7 destroyers ran aground), and a bunch of the Space Launch Center (SLC's). Most interesting was SLC-6 (pictured above) that was built to accommodate Space Shuttle launches, though none ever too place.

We were scheduled to go bowling on base after the tour, but it ran long and we missed our opportunity. So, we had a nice dinner and camp fire and went to bed just before it started raining... again. It poured for a good portion of the night.

We all stayed mostly dry and woke up early and drove home.

We were joined on this trip by my friend Brent and just older kid Robby. It was really great to have them with us.

Slow Week

Nothing much happened this weekend. We worked around the house (yardwork, worked on garage a bit, got the roomba schedular working, etc).

On monday morning Jackson was visited by the pink-eye fairy, which apparently had sprinkled his little backpack with pink-eye seeds last week, and was just visiting to make sure they bloomed. And they did. Poor kid was a trooper, and behaved very well at the doctor's office. Though getting the eyedrops into his eyes was a different story.

So I stayed home from work on Monday to take care of him, and then Tuesday I had my own doctors appointment. I only had it very mildly, but was given drops just in case.

Great fun.

This weekend should be a blast, though! We're going with the Boy Scouts to Vandenburg AFB for camping, a base tour, and model rocket launching. I bought a big fancy rocket with a video camera in the nose that records the launch and retrieval. I'm pretty excited about sending that one up, and I'll post videos is the thing works. I've also built 4 other smaller rockets for any of the boys who don't have one, or who have problems. I guess our scoutmaster has built a big launch platform thingy that'll launch up to 6 rockets at once. It should all be very cool! And cold. It's supposed to be down to 38 degrees at night.

In previous years we've had nothing but the greatest level of cooperation with military bases. They've always been very happy to give us tours and let us use their services, but this year we had great difficultly getting them to commit to any kind of tour. They said they're stretched very thin by the war in Iraq, but it could just be they don't want to work on the weekend. Who knows...

Winter AND Snow?!?

One of Joey's teachers came over on Wednesday night, and he lives just down the street from us. His wife was at home on Tuesday, and said that it had snows in our neighborhood for about 10 minutes!

Crazy weather lately!

Winter?

From Frozen Back Yard

Well, I guess winter has finally hit us in California. It was colder this weekend than it's been all season, and in fact, as long as I can remember.

The sprinklers went off early yesterday morning, and the yard was covered in ice when we got up. It was so cold that the pooled water from the sprinklers had crusted over and the wet concrete has frozen leaving dangerous patches of slipperiness.

As I was taking pictures, I decided to test the laws of friction and gravitation. The former is still limited on an icy surface and the latter still works great! I have a sore neck and a couple of bruises thanks to science!

This morning I saw big pools of slushy ice in the gutter on the streets. It's been COLD!

Wii TV?

Last night Jenn and I watched a full hour episode of Doctor Who in the web browser on the Nintendo Wii streaming live from Google Video. It was a little choppy and pixely, and the browser nav bar covered the lower 1/3 of the screen, but it was still VERY cool.

Los Angeles Zoo

From LA Zoo 2007

We took Jack and Joe to the Los Angeles Zoo today. The weather was beautiful and the crowds were thin. There were so few people there that several times times we were left alone with just us and the animals.

Jackson particularly liked the reptile house (Nana would have hated it) and Joey really liked the Dots.

You can see all the pictures from our trip by clicking here.

Jackson Shaving Like Daddy

From New Years 200...

New Year Eve

New years eve was at Nana's house again this year. Her newly redone living room was spacious and welcoming to the 18 close friends and family that attended. We ate like kings and played Nintendo Wii until just a few minutes before midnight.

I love our Nintendo Wii. Zelda:TP is a fantastic game, and probably worth buying the system for just that, but Wii Sports is what makes the Nintendo Wii simply amazing. I've play Tennis and Bowling with 4 friends at once, and we had a blast. We're all gamers, so it was no real surprise that we got so into it. I was very pleased that Jenn likes it a lot, as she is very much a non-gamer. But what blew me away was during the new years party, the more ...erm... senior (AS IN CITIZEN) attendees couldn't put it down. They played Boxing, Tennis an Bowling and had a wonderful time. Seeing Franzie box frantically with his whole body like a real athlete, and be beat repeatedly by little Carolyn was hilarious. And seeing just how into Bowling Mrs. Bastow got was a real kick.

And now my mom wants to get one. =)

Nintendo really hit it out of the park with the Nintendo. I could go on and on about the cool Mii's and how you can pop the SD card from you digital camera right into it to view pictures, or the awesome web browser and wifi connectivity. Heck, I could be posting this message from my Wii right now! But, I'll save more ranting about the Wii for later...

On The Intertubes!

Well, since I'm on the internet all day, every day, I thought I'd put up a family blog so we can share some of our happening with out extended family. I'll try to update periodically, and look for picture from family events and anything exciting that we may be up too.