NASA Fails Again

I just read This Article about the future lunar vehicle. It seems that the visionaries at NASA are going to reuse the Apollo and Shuttle technologies in this "great effort".

Come on folks, think about this for a moment. NASA used to stand for cutting-edge technology, and pushing back the boundaries of the unknown. Ever since the Challenger and Columbia Disasters, NASA has lost its way. Instead of being on the vanguard of exploration, they want to play it safe.

The article states, in part

"There were great technological pushes to make those systems fly," Jeff Hanley, NASA's program manager for Project Constellation, said of NASA's past spacecraft. "We're not in that situation with the Orion. ... We're not pushing the edge of the envelope in terms of designing and building this system."

The push to the moon created innovation after innovation that we are still enjoying today. The extreme challenges and dangers faced by both the moon shot and the shuttle programs brought the human race into the future. Now, NASA wants to return to the past, to play it safe, to stay in the yard instead of venturing out into the woods.

Exploration is never safe. There is an inherent risk associated with facing the unknown, and pushing back the limits of the unknown. NASA has lost its edge and needs an overhaul.

barnyard

We took Laura to see Barnyard yesterday. It was the funnest movie I've seen in quite a while. It far surpasses Cars. Not only is it funny but has a good message as well.

Camping

Well, it's been awhile since I last blogged (you know, that sounds almost obscene.) Nothing much has happened, except I finally got around to fixing up an asp page on the church's webpage to allow non-coders to update the news and the prayer requests.

We went camping this past weekend with Elizabeth, Roger and their brood. We left on Thursday after work, and drove to Pipestem State Park. I had a family reunion there this past Saturday. Pipestem is the ancestral home-place, which makes it the logical choice.

Anyway, we got up there and I, the mountain man that I am, began to pitch camp. Now, where I work, we have a dress code that requires me not to wear shorts or jeans. So I was wearing a white dress shirt and khaki pants while I pitched the tent. I'm sorry to report that my pants did not survive the encounter. They were stained and crotch got ripped out when I was squatting down to drive in a tent peg.

But that's ok, the pants were well worn, and I wasn't too concerned. Rebecca and Elizabeth left to get food, and I started the campfire with nothing more than pine needles and wood (and a lighter of course). I felt rather proud of myself seeing that my camp was set, fire was burning and life was good.

The girls got back rather late with the food since they couldn't find a KFC in the same county as the park (why KFC I'll never know). So we ate chicken at about 10:00 PM, climbed in the tent and went to sleep.

About an hour later, we were woke by the sound of rain on our tent. We had a rather miserable night. Water had collected to a depth of about 3 inches over the night, soaking everything and everyone in the tent.

On Friday, we had to pack up all of our stuff and drive to a laundry mat to dry it out. It rained all day Friday, all night Friday night, and into Saturday. We couldn't cook because it was too wet for a fire. Our tent is a small three-person tent that is just about too small for the family to sleep in. It is way to small for us to stay in all day.

The reunion was ok. The most interesting (and morbid) thing was that we visited several cemeteries in the area that had my relatives buried in (date of death before 1900 folks!)

On Saturday, Roger noticed that two guys were setting camp across the field from us. As he watched them struggle with the tent for hours, he wondered if it was two friends, father and son, or something gross.

Gross won out. Here is a tip for anyone who goes camping. If you are going to have sex in a tent, please do so with the lantern off. The light will cast your shadow on the tent walls, and makes it a show to be endured by all those around you. Yuck!

On Saturday night, we got in a football game with some other campers, and played until it was too dark to see, and pulled cars around and shined the headlights on the field and finished the game.

Sunday was a beautiful day, and we had to leave.

Busy Busy

It is Friday, and thank the Lord for it. This week has been crazy and busy, and I'm looking for a quiet weekend studying for the upcoming finals. (yuck!)

This week, we've got two new employees, done some staff reassignments, and had to put in for some year-end procurement (expiring monies).

Doesn't sound like much, unless you understand my job. My job is a hodgepodge of various duties and responsibilities that defy easy explaination. Job number one is software development and support. I create, update, maintain and train users to use software that automates our workprocesses. I also am the leason with our IT Department, which means any trouble calls usually go through me first. I try to take care of any problems that I can before I pass them on to our techs upstairs. I also help the other programmers in providing support to the users of our BIRTH registratoin software in hospitals around the state.

I am also deal with any telephone issues, which has been a lot busier since we started getting the Lucent i2021. We've had problems with every one we've gotten.

I also deal with administrative details of my office like determining procurement specificications for IT (and other office equpment) purchases, hasing out work-process changes, do the paperwork for creating new user accounts and so on.

Staff reassignments means moving the employee from one cubicle to another. That means coordinating with the IT unit to swap the phone, move the computer, scheduling with outside venders to move their equipment, making sure that the cubicles are set up to the requirements of the employees, and coordinating with the facilities to get any pieces that they need.

New staff means training on the software I created, and answering question after question. I like training new staff. I believe that the best way to learn is learn the "why's" not the "what's", but most people want to teach only the "what".

The procurement process involves a lot of research and investigation to try to find the "right" product to buy at the best price. It is funny how difficult that can be. There are so many different venders offering many different products that have slightly different features, all of which have pros and cons. Next is trying to write justifications for any "non-standard" equpment, and then submiting the request for approval for puchase.

All of this, plus I was made the supervisor of the Imaging Unit. So.... lots to do.

Great News!

It has been awhile since my last post. Life is still running at 100 miles an hour, but God is good.

Yesterday at church, a dear friend of ours went to the alter and rededicate her life. I think that she's been out of the will since she was a teenager, and now God is re-established control. PRAISE GOD. I have seen the hand of God moving in her life, and was praying...

Then, in the evening service, a friend of ours from church got saved! He had been fighting God every since his wife started going to church, and last night, it was too much. Rebecca and I praised the Lord all day Sunday and all day today. The Lord is good, and merciful!

Speaking of the Lord, isn't it funny how the world portrays the things of God? Case in point is the new "Ten commandants" movie. I caught a few scenes tonight. The production value is execellent, but the writers missed several, rather important points of the story. First, they show Moses telling the children of Isreal to "get ready to leave, eat a dinner with bread and the bitter herbs we season our food with, and put the blood from the meal on your door. That's important."

Important? You think? Forgetting the omission of the requirement of a spotless lamb, and forgetting the requirement for the family to abrasive the lamb for a certain number of days, to ensure its purity, down-playing the blood on the doorposts is like telling of the capture of Osama Bin whatever in the "in other news" section of the evening news broadcast.

Folks, the blood was the focal point of the entire episode. That last plague was different than all the ones prior to it, in that the Jews were not automacially excluded from it. There was only one criteria to be safe from death, and that was to apply the blood of a spotless lamb to your door. Anyone inside that door was safe (regaurdless of race), anyone outside that blood was subject to death (regarless of race) Any Egyptian who believed in the God of the Jews could have moved inside the house of their slaves, and would have been spared.

The blood in the story was a strong picture of the blood of Christ, that is applied to the doorposts of the heart of every Christian. Anyone who has the blood applied is safe, all those who don't aren't

Meeting Tests Unprepaired

I had a test tonight in my discrete math course. For those of you who have never had the joy of discrete math, it is everything you never wanted to know about counting, logic, predicate calculus, discrete probability, and graphing. Stuff like, how to translate logical statements into algebraic symbols, and then manipulate them. There's the fun of combinations and permutations, like how many different ways can can you pick 3 out of four numbers right in lotter.

This class is rough. I feel like I am failing, but compared to about 99% of the class, I'm doing better than ok. I dreaded the test tonight. I knew I wasn't as prepared as I should have been. All in all, I think I did well.

I talked a problem over with some folks from my class after the test, and now I have a burning issue to settle. One of the questions sounded VERY much like a pigeon-hole principal question. That is the math of common sense that says something like "Since there is only 12 months in a year, if you put 13 people in a room, you are guaranteed that at least 2 have the same birth month"

This same principle is used to determine that two people in New York City have the same number of hairs on their head. Anyway, the question dealt with unmated socks in a drawer. There was a dozen socks of each of these three colors brown, black, and blue. Since it is dark in the room, how many socks must a set of twins pull out to ensure two matching pairs of socks? I think that I messed up

Redeem the Time

Have you ever felt as though you were being torn in pieces by the pressures of life? I remember hearing about a means of execution that involved tying ones legs and arms to four different horses (one per limb), and then they would swat the horses, and you'd be ripped apart.

That's my life. Right now, I've got pressures on top of pressures. I am a student at the local university, I am a full-time employee with the State of WV, I'm a husband, a dad, a Sunday School teacher, a children's church teacher, I manage my church's web page , I do the audio ministry at church (recording the sermons, making duplicates, etc), sometimes run the sound-board, and sometimes play bass at church.

Each one of these activities, alone, is ok. Even a few of them at the same time is alright. But right now, I feel as though I'm drowning and I can't get my breath. Much of the pressure is of my own creation. I picture myself as an A student, a good teacher, and a good husband and father. To fulfill these rolls, I have to dedicate time.

At church Last Night (editing this on 3/30/2006), the pastor talked about redeeming the time, a reference to Ephesians 5:16. He said that we should make the most of every moment, taking into account that we are not super-human and we need rest.

That is exactly what I feel. I feel like I have time for everything (and more), but waste so much time goofing off that I get nothing done. This blog, however, doesn't count. I do it to keep sane. I doubt anyone reads it anyway.

Oh, did you hear about the Catholic church pushing the amnesty program for illegal aliens (folks who do not legally enter the country do not deserve to be call immigrants. That defames the term earned by those who play by the rules and do it right. By the way, it's not being a bigot to say that if a person want to immigrate to this country, then do it according to our laws.) I heard a radio talk show host say that this was an attempt to "interject a religion's doctrine into the state". He went on to say that it was forbidden in the Constitution and that it was an attempt at an theocracy.

Bull snot. It is a means by which the American Roman Catholic church can bolster its numbers, increase its influence, and increase its revenue. It may not pass the stink-test of morally purity...but that is another matter. Strongly held beliefs affect the way a man (or woman, but English doesn't offer a gender-neutral pronoun. I am not going to be politically correct or grammatically incorrect, so I'll use the masculine, thank you very much) sees the world. It affects how he works, how he plays, how he votes, and how he lives. To say that religion doesn't belong in politics is like saying thinking doesn't belong in politics (well, maybe if your a Democrat...Just kidding)

Our Constitution guarantees freedom of Religion, not the freedom from Religion. In order to make sure everyone can worship as he sees fit, Government may not establish a state religion (like the Brits had...Church of England...Henry the Eighth). It is a protection of the freedom to worship by preventing the dominance of one viewpoint over all others.

Freedom means just that. I do not check my faith at the door of the poling place before I vote. Neither should the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Hindu, or the Baal Worshipers, nor anyone else.

Medical IT, or the lack thereof

I took my daughter to the doctor on Monday. After we were done, we had to be checked out by one of the office people. As I stood there, in line, I noticed the hundreds of patient records stuffed in every conceivable corner. They even had a little cart in this small office to ferry around the razors.

The medical field seems high tech, but it really isn't. They still uses paper-based everything (execot for billing and scheduling. IT makes them money in these areas. Greed wins) I think about how busy this office was, and how many people it took to administer the office, and I understood why the cost of health care is increasing.

Take the pateint's chart. If I went to my family doctor for a condition, and then went to Urgent Care for additional emergency treatment, and then went to another doctor for the same condition, none of these entities would have a clue what tests have already been done, what steps in the diagnosis have been completed, and what should come next. Each provider is an island to himself. This is how a lot of drug abuser get their drugs. They "shop" at several doctor's offices.

The doctor doesn't have the information they need, especially as busy as they now are. All they have are pieces of paper that the doctor has to flip back through to pick up where they left off. God help them if they wanted to do a simple query like "What is the total number of patients we treated this week with step throat by zip-code" This is a trivial question to ask a database (the command would be something like "select zipcode, count(*) from Patients where diagnosis="strep Throat" group by zipcode") This would take weeks to prepare by hand on paper.

Think about how much effort is wasted in this system. The clerk at the doctor types your name onto the chart. Someone else types your name into their scheduling/billing software. Someone else types your name on a HICFA form to bill your insurance. The insurance company has to then reeks your information into their computers. You get a prescription. They give you a piece of paper with squiggly lines of doctor-writhing. You take this R'S to the pharmacy, and the clerk at the pharacy types in the drug and patient info into her computer.

The medical field is reluctant to change, because they don't see the benefit to them. Let's hope the federal government forces the providers to do something soon.

Sick Day

Ah, the joys of parenthood. My daughter has been feeling ill all weekend, and we decided to take her to the Doctor today. After the doctor told me that she suspected a viral infection (hence, no antibiotics), they did a strep test, and the test came back positive.

At work, we've been having some problems with the IT department's policies as it pertains to our imaging system. The discovered that our permissions were not severely restricted, as they are wont to do. This is on a server bought with our sections money, used only by our section's staff, hosting only our sections data, administered (as much as other IT policies allow) by our staff.

The heart of the problem is that we (our section) is using a file-based document management system. Its performance is more than adequate, and its support requirements are laughably small. The file-based system requires a greater flexibility in setting windows-based file-share permissions than our IT folks wish to dole out. They want to set permissions now lower than off of the root of a share (shraename-folder<== the first folder under a share)

What I am thinking about doing is setting up a client-server app where the "server" side is running on an account that has the necessary permissions. A request comes in for a certain image, and the server serves the image over TCP/IP. I'll have to play with that one for awhile to get it to work. It also can be broken by a simple policy update changing firewall settings....

You know, you can love Bush or hate him, but you have to give the guy credit. He is no shrinking daisy. He tackles sensitive political issues without the usual meaningless platitudes and empty catch-phrases trying to pander to each side. He just states what he believes in. Like this weeks issue of immigration reform.

I have no problem with folks coming to America to live. I do have problems with people who come here by breaking our laws. It puts everyone in a bad position. The illegal is in a position rife for oppression. If they are not paid minimum wage, what recourse do they have? If they are worked over 40 hours a week without overtime, who can they call? If they are stiffed their pay, to which governmental agency can they confide in?

This is in add cost of providing these folks with governmental services that they consume.

It is not the best solution. We need to control our borders. The problem will not be fixed by building a wall (which isn't a bad idea, but just understand that it makes it a little harder to come in), it will not be fixed by deporting all illegals you find (once again, not a bad idea.) The problem is that, as long as there is a demand for cheap, illegal (slave?) labor, there will be a supplier no matter how hard we make it for them to get in.

The solution is simple. Require EVERY employer to receive POSITIVE proof of residence or citizenship. This will require some form of Federal-level identification for every citizen and resident alien in the US. Some folks will gripe, but so what. Then, if a business employed illegals, the business is fined a huge, hefty, ugly, nasty fine ($100,000 a head for illegals). The fine would have to be big enough for business to say "the cheap labor isn't worth it". All of a sudden, the illegal labor market dries up, and the flood slows to a trickle.

A guest worker program could then be fashioned to provide these folks with a way to work here legally, once they are all registered and documented. This will also allow us to weed out the undesirable elements (read criminals) from migrating here.

It's doable, its simple, and it will never happen.

Start Blogging

I decided to start posting a blog. Why? Well, there are times that I feel the need to rant, and my lovely bride just rolls her eyes, and tunes me out.

Rant number 1...
I am stunned at passes as acceptable now. I'm not even talking about almost every sit-com that is drenched in sexual banter. No, I'm amazed at the commercials that are shown. It should be illegal to advertise certain products on television. We wised-up, and banned tobacco commercials (although, I am still confused as to why it is ok to advertise vodka, beer, or wiskey but not cigarettes. I am not aware of any man who, under the influence of a Camel, robbed a store, or beat his wife.)

There are just some things that I don't want to have to explain to my six-year-old daughter. That is the litmus test we must use. Condom commercials go first. There is no way to explain their functions without a long, drawn out talk that incudes birds and bees. Douche commercials are next. I do not want to hear "Daddy, what does she mean about a not-so-fresh feeling?"

Finally, all female hygene products should be banned. While it leads to questions about the difference between boys and girls, the main reason is that it is gross. As a man, I find it to be disgusting.

Ok, enough for now. I wonder if anyone will read this. If so, drop me a note.