The Solar Impulse project aims to do exactly that [link].
Low speed taxi tests just took place… successfully.
Prove the ability to circumnavigate the globe in a solar powered aircraft and we’ve changed the game again.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Electricity from Slow-Moving Water
Off Make Magazine’s blog, I’m snipping most of the Make blog entry here:
Capturing the same powerful forces that destroyed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge shortly after it was built in 1940, researchers at the University of Michigan are developing a new way of generating electricity with the slow moving currents found in most of the rivers and oceans of the world.
This technology is hoped to be easier to site than traditional windmills and hydropower generators.
So, I’m posting this here for the alternative energy expert in the family – R! Enjoy!
==
This idea is particularly interesting to me, as a resident of the Pacific Northwest, where our massive and fast-flowing river system has been throttled by dams that continue to threaten the river ecosystems. I’m not going to get all ‘environmentalist’ here, but a technology that allows for widely distributed power generation from other water currents provides yet another way to relibably go locally off-grid. Don’t have reliable solar at your Alaska cabin? I bet you’ve got a nearby stream or river…
What if --- really. What if we really could breach dams like Bonneville? Dams who’s PRIMARY reason for existence is power generation? It’s too much to target Hoover Dam or Hech Hechy, because they’ve been built to create water reserves, not power. Still, the more we’re able to decentralize the creation of electricity, the more we’ll be able to move away from the dinosaur power plants of the 20th Century.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Cleanliness is next to Godliness
I just snipped this email from my personal in box… Delighted to post it here. I’d read it to you myself, but there’s something in my eye…
From: C
To: N
Date: Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 4:43 PM
Subject: News from Dr. Chxx
=============
Nojo,
Ce – le -- brate good times,come on!!!
Clean bill of health from Dr. McCoy…ok Dr. Chxx, but the same emotion reigns.
Complete pathology came back today: …no cancer…no pre-cancer…no medical jargon that I can’t understand…no need for second opinion……. unequivocally…. totally clean… and normal.
O.K. to cry now!
C
C updated
At the five day mark since C came home from her surgery. How's she doing? Pretty darned well, all things considered. She's getting around pretty well. The pain meds work well enough that she starts to think that she doesn't need them any more, so she stops taking them. Which means that suddenly she REALLY needs them and gets VERY grumpy until they catch up with her again....at which point the cycle begins again <GRIN!>
Sam the cat has quietly and expertly inserted himself into our lives. Sam has selected C as his preferred person, followed next by M. In other words, he definitely likes the girls. Which is just fine with Shadow, because she has always preferred the boys. Both cats get along with the other just fine so far. Sam hangs out on C's side of the bed. When C gets up, Sam follows her to her new location, then hangs out with her there. He's quiet, has yet to misbehave, uses his litter box inviolably, and hunts spiders. What is there NOT to like so far?
C has also shared that she's starting to notice a reduction in her joint pain, and other chronic issues that were side-effects of the Tamoxifen drug. As she migrates away from Tamoxifen, she should see a general loss of weight, and better joint health overall.
C does seem to run out of gas by about dinner time, though. It's a little bit like 'back in the day' when chemo would cause her to literally shut off without warning. She does that now, too.
We're making some progress each day on settling the house in. It dawned on me that the last time we lived here, we slowly evolved the house into a fully functional space over the span of about four years. This time? We're doing everything we did then, plus a bunch of setup stuff that we never got around to before - like cupboard pullouts to make it easier for C to reach things on the very bottom shelf. The result? I'm doing in one day now the equivalent of about six months slow evolution the first time.
Curtains have been going up in the bedrooms. M's room is really cool now that it's finished. R's room is developing a great sense of personal character as well. There are still a few scattered boxes on the landing and in the master bedroom, but they're steadily disappearing.
We planned out the curtains for the main level today. Tomorrow, the rods and drapes will go up. C is apparently planning to prepare pictures/paintings for hanging on the wall tomorrow as well. Once the drapes are done, and the paintings are on the walls, the place will be nearly complete.
Of course, there's still the office and the garage to tackle. The Office has served as our staging room. It's a pile of boxes right now. We'll get to it last, but it'll be worth the wait.
Sam the cat has quietly and expertly inserted himself into our lives. Sam has selected C as his preferred person, followed next by M. In other words, he definitely likes the girls. Which is just fine with Shadow, because she has always preferred the boys. Both cats get along with the other just fine so far. Sam hangs out on C's side of the bed. When C gets up, Sam follows her to her new location, then hangs out with her there. He's quiet, has yet to misbehave, uses his litter box inviolably, and hunts spiders. What is there NOT to like so far?
C has also shared that she's starting to notice a reduction in her joint pain, and other chronic issues that were side-effects of the Tamoxifen drug. As she migrates away from Tamoxifen, she should see a general loss of weight, and better joint health overall.
C does seem to run out of gas by about dinner time, though. It's a little bit like 'back in the day' when chemo would cause her to literally shut off without warning. She does that now, too.
We're making some progress each day on settling the house in. It dawned on me that the last time we lived here, we slowly evolved the house into a fully functional space over the span of about four years. This time? We're doing everything we did then, plus a bunch of setup stuff that we never got around to before - like cupboard pullouts to make it easier for C to reach things on the very bottom shelf. The result? I'm doing in one day now the equivalent of about six months slow evolution the first time.
Curtains have been going up in the bedrooms. M's room is really cool now that it's finished. R's room is developing a great sense of personal character as well. There are still a few scattered boxes on the landing and in the master bedroom, but they're steadily disappearing.
We planned out the curtains for the main level today. Tomorrow, the rods and drapes will go up. C is apparently planning to prepare pictures/paintings for hanging on the wall tomorrow as well. Once the drapes are done, and the paintings are on the walls, the place will be nearly complete.
Of course, there's still the office and the garage to tackle. The Office has served as our staging room. It's a pile of boxes right now. We'll get to it last, but it'll be worth the wait.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
C is Home
Those who see my facebook posts are more up-to-date than blog readers. Because the blog’s mission is to only share good news, I held off on posting to on C’s surgery. My caution, in hindsight, was unwarranted.
C’s surgery went amazingly well. The surgeons started early; they needed less time than planned. So she ended up in recovery a full two hours earlier than expected.
C’s time in recovery was minimal and smooth. C has had previous experiences with difficult recoveries coming out of anesthesia; all I can say at this time is that the docs have C completely dialed in. They put her under smoothly, they bring her out with comfort and grace.
The surgeon reported to me that the tissues they removed looked to be healthy and cancer-free. Now, normally you don’t want to hear that the surgeon took out healthy tissue – you want to hear that they’ve LEFT the healthy tissue and taken out obviously diseased, problematic tissue. Point taken. This is a little different.
C’s procedure about six weeks ago removed a polyp that turned out to be pre-cancerous. The doc’s recommendation was to remove the now-unnecessary organ where the polyp was located* as soon as possible, so as to 1) ensure there wasn’t more cancer in there, and 2) to generally simplify C’s post-cancer life.
Given the whole picture, the removal of generally healthy stuff is good news.
C moved from recovery to a room at about 6pm; so an overnight stay was the expectation. C stayed over, and came home about 5pm the following day – yesterday.
She’s getting around effectively, though gingerly. She’s not tackling stairs. And, if she gets a little behind on her pain meds, she definitely gets told by her body why she’s supposed to take the pain meds. She’s loopier than normal; it’s a little frustrating but also incredibly endearing…
Beyond that, everything’s fine. Like I said, she’s not taking the stairs, so she slept on the couch last night. I’m thinking she’ll be making her way upstairs by tomorrow night.
* see how I dance to avoid naming body parts? Astute readers can connect the dots adequately.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
M is an Angel
As in, an Angel in the OBT Nutcracker.
We just found out on the casting update. Here are her performance dates:
| Day | Date | Curtain |
| Saturday | Dec 12 | 2pm |
| Saturday | Dec 12 | 7:30pm |
| Thursday | Dec 17 | 7:30pm |
| Friday | Dec 18 | 7:30pm |
| Sunday | Dec 20 | 1pm |
| Sunday | Dec 20 | 6:30pm |
| Tuesday | Dec 22 | 2pm |
| Tuesday | Dec 22 | 7:30pm |
| Wednesday | Dec 23 | 7:30pm |
| Saturday | Dec 26 | 2pm |
| Saturday | Dec 26 | 7:30pm |
If your tickets to the OBT Nutcracker just happen to line up with one of these dates, then you can feel free to silently cheer her on as she floats that angel dress like nobody’s business!
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Tucker & Crawford
What a great article on the International Space Station and performing IT support!
A quote from the article:
“It's the most expensive single thing ever built (£92bn and counting), the quickest manned vehicle in existence (17,300mph) and the staging point for future Moon and Mars missions. But when computers on board the International Space Station go down, the astronauts living there do the same as any office drone in Slough -- they call IT. We were lucky enough to meet Tyson Tucker and Joey Crawford, the NASA flight controllers responsible for maintaining uptime in mankind's first permanent space colony.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
