Rocket Roadsters, Relationships and Readiness Reports

The word of the week is incorrigible.

Feb 5 - Project Linda

Ah, technology: good for a bit, then the bad starts to bite.

Phones in particular seem to be of the 'Wow' followed months later by 'What the?' category, which explains why most people upgrade every 1-2 years when they're on contract. I aim for 3-4, but then I'm a sucker for punishment: It doesn't stop me from wishing for the latest smartphones...

I love comparing the specs on the latest phones every 6 months, feeding the 'I might get THIS one!' fantasy I have, though I've stepped back a bit in the last two years given how FREAKIN' expensive the things are now. The latest Samsung S9 tops $1,000 CDN, which is more than I can dream of justifying, even on contract( WHICH I WILL NEVER GO BACK ON AGAIN! )to help with the wallet-pain.

However, there are some things that are just too cool NOT to want, like:

Attach phone to dock and presto: instant midrange laptop!

I'm putting this on my 'Something to aim for in 2019' list, for when I've dug myself enough out of debt that I can consider a new cell phone with some style and utility. By then, both my Samsung S5( with its growing list of quirks )and my Samsung NP540U3C laptop( an i5: coincidence? )will be VERY long in the tooth.

I'll be dreaming of Project Linda for the rest of 2018, methinks...

Feb 6 – Falcon Heavy Launch!

Today was an AMAZING day for space exploration!

Elon Musk's SpaceX debuted the next generation of reusable rocket, the Falcon 9 Heavy Launch vehicle, which put in a SPECTACULAR performance! Utilizing three reusable boosters, the Falcon soared into space in a textbook pilot launch, which I had the luck to watch LIVE from work on my phone - how cool is that?

The boosters all returned to earth, and while the sea-landing failed, the two land-bound boosters made perfect simultaneous touchdowns, right out of a scifi movie:



Yet the BEST part wasn't the boosters, but what the rocket payload itself: Elon Musk's cherry-red Tesla Roadster, being used as ballast in a great PR move rather than boring old concrete or steel shot - hello, future space travelers, be sure to check out what's on the dash and in the glove compartment:

Feb 7 – Friendship

What does friendship mean, really?

It's a HUGE subject, and I don't intend to get into a long diatribe here, but rather state what simple applies to me and my experience... and why I bring it up today.

As others have told me, and I've noticed myself, I tend to make friends fairly easily, for which I'm grateful. In thinking about the Why and How, I believe it's a combination of being genuine, listening to what others say before speaking to find common interests, and trying to give more than I receive. There are other nuances involved as well, many of which play into proximity: where are my friends?

In the last ten years, the majority of my friends have been online: either old friends from back east, or online friends I've made over the years. I've been slow to cultivate new local friends here in the first five years in BC, I think in the main because I wasn't exactly happy, I lived outside of town, and I was just too damn busy with work which wore me down mentally, emotionally and physically.

This brief article takes a solid look at how people become friends, what a true friend is, and why they become friends in the first place. Interestingly, the subject came up in relation to Star Trek, examining the unbreakable bonds between Kirk, Spock and McCoy that provided such a solid foundation for the original series... and left such enduring characters for us to both enjoy and relate to even today.

For me, my current situation sees me with some solid local friends I see semi-regularly, a larger number of online friends that I 'keep up with' on social media, and a whole bunch of friends that I count as such, but don't really keep up with: unlike me, none of my friends have regular blogs, and as such I can only go with what I see on social media. Oddly, nobody really tries to 'keep up' any more via email, mail, or( shockingly )phone calls: we're all busy, and I think we're all keeping a weather eye out for Big / Bad News - that's the extent of things if we're not actually sitting down for a beer in person.

Yet the friendships endure, for the most part, changing intensities over time.

Feb 8 – Penguins!

This week at work: laughter!

I was feeling stressed this week about various things, so I took the opportunity at work to watch as many episodes of The Penguins Of Madagascar series on YouTube as I could: there's dozens of them at watchable quality, and I quite enjoyed each one:



Thinking about the show and why I find it so appealing, it's fairly simple: the writing's solid without feeling like it's pandering to kids( weird, I know! )and the characters are memorable, especially the core 'team' of the four penguins as well as the primary antagonists, the lemurs:

Watching as many episodes as I did this week back to back, I can't say that I grew bored with the dynamic, even though it's an episodic show without a long-term arc: there's a TON of possibilities in situating a martial team of penguins in a New York zoo, with much the same setup as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by having a major city as a backdrop for their 'undercover' adventures. None of the writing felt trite or the situations overused, as the storylines played well to the characters... and it helped that each episode was only 11 minutes long: perfect!

Feb 9 – In A Fitter State

I'm doing well, two months into 2018 - to wit:

• By today, I'd managed to shake off the cold that had me... er, cold, all this week and my energy levels are back to almost-normal
• My massage therapist commented on how I was far more flexible overall, especially my abdomen and left foot, whose main tendon used to be like a steel cable under my skin: I'm MUCH improved, and feeling far less 'fragile' of a day.
• Eyesight-wise, I'm only getting the occasional twinge when I do something I shouldn't, like glancing at my phone without my closeup glasses... otherwise, my eyestrain seems to have gone away, and I hope the eye supplements I'm taking twice daily now will 'see' more improvements happening over the next few months, with a lessening of my light sensitivity.
• On a high note, I've walked almost 13,000 steps twice this week without mishap, which is almost twice my average daily distance and nary a twinge in my legs: GREAT progress!
• I've had a low-level headache for the last three weeks, but I've atributed it to the yo-yo weather changes( +/- 2.5 pts of pressure every other day )along with the sinus pressure from my cold... but it's been managable, not debilitating.
• The extra exercise and twice-weekly swimming seem to be making a difference with my heartrate( along with watching what I'm eating: little-to-no bacon or sugar )as it's been low and steady when it should be, without going too high even when I'm busy: again, good signs, and also notable for indicating low daily anxiety.

While my stress is still hanging around, it's not at the near-crippling levels of recent years, so I'm managing it fairly well though there's been some bad days of late. Friends and family, and especially my girlfriend, have kept me balanced, and I'm finding I'm not getting fixated on what's wrong, but rather moving on to what I can do to make things right.

That's as progressive a shift as I can think of right now.

Feb 10 – Future Me?

How long will my words be around?

I've pondered this question over the decades: what, if anything, of what I write will still be around in twenty years? Or fifty? Or five hundred?

If Google or its descendant-companies are still around, will my Blog still be as well? What will people make of it, should they stumble across it in the etherweb?

Would they be able to recreate me from my blog, just like Bart Simpson? Like so:

I find it an interesting mental exercise, one with some basis in possibility: we're already coding AI's today to behave like humans, and how better to do so than by providing them with samples of a person's writing? I have over a million words in this blog to date, and I'd wager that someone would be able to make a decent interactive copy of me with enough effort and ingenuity... which is intriguing.

A form of immortality, if you will: any author hopes to live on in their works.

Feb 11 – Altered Carbon

Over the last two weeks, I've been drawn into the new NetFlix series Altered Carbon, set in a scifi cyberpunk-esque future where humans can live forever thanks to alien technology... if you can afford it, that is. While everyone has what's called a 'stack' you only get the body you're born with; should anything happen, you only get to come back if you can buy a replacement 'sleeve'( body )to house your stack... and that's where things get tricky if your credit's bad. You can read an excellent bit about the series 10-year journey to the screen here.

The production values are top-notch: seamless CGI that doesn't get in the way of the story but instead, serves it, as things should be. The acting is excellent, with good character progression, an intriguing plot, and a well-developed world with a solid backstory that's plausible and has room for exploration. I found myself watching two episodes at a time this week, as I couldn't stay away, and I've just the final ep left to treat myself with this coming week, should I be so deserving.

I think what I like most about Altered Carbon is the world-building: there's a solidity to what humanity has grown into over the last few centuries, a natural feeling that 'sure, if we discovered how to make people live forever, this is what would happen' which is the hallmark of good scifi: making excellent guesses about the future, and then commenting on what a mess humans will make of it.

Like I said: it's addicting... both the show, and scifi both.

My girlfriend made a comment to me this weekend about my blogs almost always ending on a positive note... and I responded that it's intentional: nobody wants to read a complaint journal, a weekly long-term doldrums essay-length dump of headspace. I try to tell things like they are for me, week to week: the good, the bad and the irksome all rolled together. It's part journal-diary, part here's-how-I-see things, and part this-is-what-went-down, hopefully packaged and tweaked with my own voice in words, for folks to find as they see fit. Enjoy!