Chicken Shit Liberals (16 of 104)

I recently read Doug Fine's "Farewell My Subaru." It was lent to me by a neighbor because he found the stuff about goats amusing and we have goats so ...

It was a good read and I'm fully on board with the ideas of buying locally made products, reducing dependence on oil and generally thinking about what we do and what it does to the environment. BUT. I hold these values as a human on the planet and it has nothing to do with politics. Therefore, I consider myself to NOT be the kind of guy to spout political lines and advertise my own righteous path (despite the fact that's exactly what I just did).

In the book, Fine uses lots of modern-day liberal speak such as "carbon-neutral." One thing he does in the book is convert a diesel truck to run on restaurant grease. Now I think that is an excellent idea! I would do the same if I had his free time and un-named source of large amounts of cash.

But what bugged me was that he repeatedly refers to his truck as being carbon-neutral. This is a large load of goat manure. Diesel emissions, while lower in CO2 and other harmful gases, are HUGE polutants of particle soot emissions. These emissions have the same harmful effects as volcanoes, wood smoke and desert dust where they can influence cloud formation and also contribute to dimming sunlight.

So I went to Mr. Fine's sight and, among a heaping of humorous and congratulating comments, pointed out the above. This morning I looked at his sight and found my comment was deleted. No explanation no email sent to me. Nothing. Just deleted. Now I take that as, "You had a disagreement and we're not going to put up with that."

Wow. I would expect that from some conservative dittohead but aren't the liberals supposed to be the smart ones? I mean I at least expected a "I respectfully disagree blah blah blah." But no. Now I just have another data point that confirms that liberals can be just as knee-jerk and unwilling to compromise as any conservative.

Is it worth it? (15 of 104)

I'm home for an entire 5 week block of time now! Wahoo.

I don't know if this "Saving the Planet" line of work is healthful for me. Okay, I am not personally saving the planet but hopefully I'm building and maintaining the instrumentation used to collect that one extra data point to add to a collective knowledge about our planet and how all that crap in the sky ends up fucking up the weather.

So the work is good for my soul. I really can't imagine any other line of work that only ended in a profit margin or screwing someone over. And I won't pretend that the travel is a complete negative. I've been all kinds of cool places and even got to take Kris and Jasper to Hawaii this year. Pretty cool.

But there are times when I just want to be teleported into a 9 to 5 job that's a bit more on the boring and less on the challenging. The picture up above shows a typical moment from this year where I am tearing the instrument apart. In this case I'm sitting at a kitchen table in a condominium. Do you think I would choose to do this with two scientists anxiously looking over my shoulder trying not ask (again) if it was ready to go? I'll answer that for you. No. No I wouldn't choose that kind of stress. The main problem is that I am the only technical person in the group and there are three (and growing) scientists. The job would be alot easier if there were more technical help. That would also mean a Hell of alot less time in the field, too.

But I guess it's like many other things. You love your car until it breaks down. You love your wife until you get in a silly argument. You love your kid until they have a tantrum in the middle of the library. Actually you love them right through those pains but in the back of your head is the thought of how much easier it would be if...

That IF is a dangerous one. You can't judge the entire relationship with your car, wife, kid, or job on that one moment of IF. Chances are the entire love is more than worth that one silly moment when your brain goes into IF mode.

So that's figured out. Now, how do you balance all that love? If you figure that one out let me know!

Six Word Memoire? (14 of 104)

Margara is making me do this. (Okay she's not making me but how else am I going to find enough to make up all the blogging I haven't been doin?)

Alternatively...

"I was born. I'm still alive."

Or

"Don't get a stupid tattoo. Dude."


Or

"Mental Toughness: No Pain No Gain" <== I lived by that through my bike racing years which is a flippin' joke since I had no mental game!

O'Tay. I played. Sort of.

It ain't Canada, eh (13 of 104)

Fifteen days in Alaska and you'd think I'd think of something to write about! Well there has been plenty but I've been damn busy so not alot of time for this kind of blog foo. Especially since no one reads it.

First there's this, a really inaccurate local newspaper article about what we're doing here.

http://www.newsminer.com/news/2008/apr/15/scientists-using-fairbanks-base-arctic-research/

For the most part, I'm really just quite sick of being here. It's damn cold, below or WAY below freezing all the time. It's also quite monochromatic. If it's not covered with snow and white, it's probably gray. I'm pretty sick of living to work too. Don't get me wrong. I actually like my job and it's pretty dang cool but I'm not obsessed by it! I need more in my life than work. I really miss Kris and I really miss Jasper.

Oh well. Only a few more days. And I'm sure ten years from now I'm going to look back at this trip to Alaska and think, "why didn't I get out and explore more." And, of course, I'll forget that the answer is, "Cuz you were working your ass off and didn't get a chance."

Weirdest event of the trip so far: The first boss I ever had at NASA is here. I'm finding it strange to be older, wiser, more confident and less intimidated around someone who, quite frankly, used to scare the living shit out of me.

Sports Fans (12 f 104)

Last night I met up with a couple of coworkers in the Hotel Lobby to watch UCLA beat Stanford in the PAC 10 tournament final. It was fun since one guy is a Stanford alum and the other is a UCLA alum and both are rabid NCAA basketball fans.

As I watched the game I suddenly had the realization that the only reason I knew what was going on was because my Dad watched so much sports when I was a kid and would sometimes get conversational about it and explain to me what was going on. Then I realized that A)we watch absolutely no sports in my house since we have no TV coming in and B)my son isn't going to be introduced to sports the way I was and so many other kids are.

That means I have to make up the gap.

We already throw a nerf football and he loves to kick the little soccer ball around so I'm not too worried about it. And maybe I shouldn't be such a prototypical American male and worry about sports at all. But sports have been a casual fun part of my life. Anyone who's ever played some basketball with me knows it's 90% passion for me and 10% talent (which leads to mostly really poor playing with too much emotion and having a lifetime 1-on-1 win average somewhere around .010) but it's still fun. And don't lets forget what a HUGE part of my life bike-racing was for so many years.

I thought I had a wonderful tie-in to wrap this all up but it's not there! Sometimes we write well, and sometimes we don't...

Travelling by Commercial Air Sucks (11 of 109)

I'm back in Wallops Island Virginia already and traveling by commercial air carriers yesterday reminded me of all the things I don't like about it...

1- Waiting.
2- Standing in line waiting.
3- Standing in line waiting with people behind you who don't understand that pushing you won't make the entire line go faster.
4- Sitting in a small area with way too many other people sharing the same air.
5- People who carry a carry on briefcase or laptop bag plus a backpack and then for some reason think it's okay to carry one of those suitcases that barely fit in the overhead.
6- Waiting behind the people from number 5 to get the hell out of the way.
7- People who "dress up" to travel and end up looking quite silly since they don't seem to realize that the people in the real world don't look like the pretend people on TV and in magazines.
8- Generally all the other people who are also traveling with exception to old people and children who get a break since they are too old or too young to know better.
9- Waiting in line and looking over to see the "premier" or first class or "rewards" assholes breezing through while I stand feeling like a peasant with his pitchfork at the castle gate. "Please milord! Won't you please cast down your scrap so that I might have a decent meal this week?"
10- The fact that at least 50% of the time your destination is taking you farther from home.

Bonus- Any small luggage with wheels. Stop being such pussies everyone. The exercise of carrying 20 pounds on your shoulder will do you good.

Floatin' (10 of 104)

We rented a two seat kayak with a "child seat" in it today as a test drive. I want to buy a canoe but Kris wants to buy a kayak so we're going to rent both and test them. The two seat kayak did not do well to make its case today. It was simply too cramped. Our first configuration had Jasper in the middle getting clubbed by me from behind on the occasions when I wasn't full-on drenching him with my paddle. And I felt only slightly more affective than a T-Rex with his little arms all curled up since Jasper was crowding me so much. Configuration Two was with Kris' seat moved back and Jasper sitting in the front. This was wonderful for me to stretch out and paddle but with so much weight in the front we were all messed up and the trim was bad and it was a little bit miserable with the kayak at the whim of the wind and lake current more than my fruitless churning.

So we'll rent a canoe next and see how it goes. If the kayak thing is the way to go we'll have to buy two of them: one for one adult and Jasper and the second for the other adult and gear and a dog (or two).

Speaking of dogs we've been pretty sad around here that our little dog, Simon, has disappeared. He simply vanished about five days after we got back from Hawaii. He was really Kris' dog and I mostly just yelled at him to "SHUT THE HELL UP" since he was a little bit of a barky terrier. Despite that, he is missed since he was another member of the family.So adios Simon. Sorry I yelled at you so much.