Cav's Place

According to yesterday’s announcement, on October 25 New Horizons finished returning all data gathered from the Pluto flyby. There will be one final verification, to make sure that everything really was received and without errors, but I’m not seeing anything to indicate any reason for concern. So, while it sure was a long wait and it must have been dreadful for the scientists to have to watch all that precious data ever so slowly trickle in, probably also worrying that something may go wrong at some point before this operation will be completed and something will be lost, it can now pretty much be said that the initial mission completed successfully. And it did so in the early part of the estimated window, as the timeline lists the end of data playback as being between October and December 2016.
According to that same announcement, once the verification will be completed and it’ll be confirmed that everything was received without errors, the recorders will be erased and the spacecraft should be ready to start gathering new data, first by observing distant Kuiper Belt objects. Then, assuming everything will keep going well until then, it should reach 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019. Shouldn’t have nearly as much to do or see there and the body won’t exactly be interesting in itself, or at least not to those of us who aren’t experts in the field, but reaching a second object at all will be quite an achievement and very efficient use of the available resources.
Do find myself wondering what data rate it’ll achieve after it passes the second target and when should it finish returning the information gathered then as well, so if anyone somehow happens to read this and finds that information anywhere, could you please point me to it too? Thanks.

I’ll start this just hours after the previous personal post, when I entered some more of the codes on yogurts bought that are part of a contest and one of them won me one of the daily prizes worth 100 RON. It’s vouchers with that value, not the actual money, but while they’re presented as food vouchers, the contest’s claim being that they’re for a cake so you can add your celebration to theirs, they seem to be able to be used for a quite large number of things, or at least that’s what I gathered after receiving them today and looking up more information. Will probably end up using them for food anyway though, and if I do happen to pick up a few other things as well I’ll be prepared to pay for them separately in case the vouchers won’t cover them, but it should sure help these days.

And it’ll help even more because I’ll need to drop all plans that called for expenses for quite some time to come now, because Thursday a part of that tooth that had the most work done on it back in 2007 broke off. Then again, I’m sure it had broken off some time before and was just held there by something, because it snapped off while I was eating something that couldn’t possibly have broken anything. Either way, this means I now have to go have a lot of work done on it again, the roots apparently still being usable, but with little left even before and an entire side broken off now it means reconstruction and then a crown, and a total cost of over 1000 RON, maybe even over 1500.
Then again, that assumes everything will work out with the roots, as the dentist first said it broke off really nicely to still be salvageable but then, after spending an hour on it first Friday and then doing the same yesterday, she said she can’t get through whatever substance my previous dentist used there on the canals and the work doesn’t quite go all the way through, so she needs to fix it before moving on to the next part and can’t. As such, she now sent me somewhere else, to another dentist who used to work here as well, as the expert on such issues who came and brought his specialized equipment when they couldn’t handle something otherwise, but recently he said he’ll only come when it’s worth carrying all that equipment, as in there are several clients lined up one after the other for him, and since that’s not the case I’ll need to go halfway across the city and see if he can sort it out. Was told the price will pretty much be the same, and she didn’t charge me anything for what she did this second time, since supposedly he was going to be making the stuff that was to be put in there later anyway and the price is for the whole thing, including whatever else needs to be done to prepare the area.

Otherwise, last Monday I went to another “free shop”, which was the first one I noticed being announced since the previous one I went to, as the organizers had their headquarters in the same old factory that Colectiv club was in and didn’t return since the fire. This time the location was a bar owned by people who at least have similar ideas as the group that organized those previous ones as well, if not even some of the same people, and which is also the place where the event organized to support Polish women also ended, so I was there recently and knew just where it was. Just quickly went in and out though, only dropping off all the issues of National Geographic which had piled up since that previous time in the small area set aside for the few things that weren’t clothes, as that was even explicitly the focus now, the event text stating that any left at the end will be donated. Did see a guy have a look through the pile and seeming to consider taking at least one as I spent a few minutes reading the information about some LGBT rights activists posted on a wall, but that was about it, and there was nothing for me to even consider looking at.

Also last week, noticed an area on the right side of my monitor where the colors are lighter than they should be, though it also seems to depend on exactly what colors are there, at least to some extent. Now I’m not actually sure that’s something new, and I’m even less sure about the few dead pixels I spotted in the area being new, as they’re so close to the edge of the screen, but it’s giving me the impression that something’s peeling off. Unsurprisingly, since this monitor will be ten years old in February, but I sure was hoping it’ll last for quite some time yet, since I want to skip this entire 1920×1080 “era” and get right to 2560×1440 or 2560×1600 at 27″ or so, and those are outrageously expensive at the moment. So for now I’ll deal with it, and after panicking for one night I started looking through stores that sell refurbished or second hand monitors and found some apparently decent replacement options, as in the same size and resolution, not black, similar or lower power use and low enough prices, so there’s that possibility if it will actually fail, though any expenses will be quite a problem for quite some time to come, as I stated above.

As for running, last week’s run was Thursday and the time was 34:56, with sector times of 4:29, 5:20, 6:09, 4:36, 5:26, 6:01 and 2:55, making for lap times of 15:58 and 16:03. So another time under 35 minutes and the third fastest final sector ever on this route, as I gave it absolutely everything towards the end, starting with the second lap’s third sector. Not quite sure how I finished, in fact, since it was rather chilly and windy and my nostrils got stuck together on that final straight, so I stuck a finger up one to pull it open, then had to breathe in through my mouth once when I briefly took the finger out to try to do the same for the other one and ended up with both closed up right away, and then sort of fell forward more than downward for those last few steps, as I had to somehow get that hand on my stopwatch as well. But I somehow made it, and that’s good enough.
And then this week’s run was yesterday, just before the dentist appointment; just changed and went right there. That wasn’t the plan, but yesterday seemed to be the most reasonable day to run this week and the appointment was originally for today, but they called dad Monday evening to ask if I could come Tuesday afternoon instead and he said yes and then only remembered to also tell me about it after midnight. So I didn’t change my plan, but decided to take it just a little easier, not try to stay under 35 minutes, and the end result was 35:16, with sector times of 4:32, 5:23, 6:10, 4:39, 5:20, 6:10 and 3:02, making for lap times of 16:05 and 16:09.

Wasn’t sure whether to mention this on here these days or not, and if so exactly how to approach the matter, but the blog post by ESA Director General Jan Woerner was infuriating enough to make me make up my mind. I mean, seriously now? TGO needs to use aerobraking to settle into its long-term orbit and then has several years of planned mission ahead, while Schiaparelli was supposed to perform a semi-soft landing and then operate for a number of days on the surface, yet after just achieving orbit insertion with TGO and, according to them, receiving 80% of Schiaparelli’s descent data, the claim is that the TGO part of the mission is 100% successful and the Schiaparelli part 80% successful, making for a total success rate of 96%, since TGO is seen as having 80% of the importance.
That’s the sort of dreadful attempt at painting a failure in positive colors that makes it worse than simply keeping quiet and letting everyone think you’re to embarrassed to comment. Did he by any chance forget how many things can go wrong over all those years to prevent the orbiter mission from being 100% successful? Or that Schiaparelli was also supposed to send some information from the surface for a while? Or, you know, that the landing procedure was supposed to be a test for the one to be used for the future rover, yet it resulted in the lander likely smashing into the surface at over 300 km/h and possibly also exploding on impact? Does that sound, or look, since it would appear we have pictures as well, 80% successful to you?

Unless you count those few seconds of data returned by the Mars 3 lander, NASA remains the only space agency to have managed to operate spacecraft on the surface of Mars. And even if you do count them, it definitely remains the only one to have had successful surface missions on the red planet. Which, especially once you also remember that NASA was supposed to take part in this mission but had to pull out due to budget constraints, merely serves to once again make me ask why do we still have separate and at times still competing space agencies instead of pooling the resources and the expertise available everywhere and making this a true project of humankind, at the global scale, gathering personnel, discoveries, experience and technology from everywhere, sharing it all and funding this properly as a single program aimed at exploring and inspiring, looking up at the sky instead of staring at our feet as we stumble in the dirt, seeking to learn for the sake of knowledge itself and to reach ever more distant and more intriguing places merely because they exist.

I’ll say from the start that I’ll disagree with myself later over this rating, as it should most probably be three stars. Can’t bring myself to take away that fourth one at the moment though, mainly due to the concept of subspace energy entities pulled into real space and the way it was handled, and even more so the way the bond and the relationship between Seth and Khoe were handled. Some mental gymnastics may be required to grasp what that actually is and how it’d actually work, but makes perfect sense once you do. And bonus points for making it so that having one such entity tangle with a person with the right skills and contacts can reasonably be accepted as a plausible outcome of random chance.
The action and the setting may otherwise be considered rather typical for the genre, though the universe does hint at a reasonably promising complexity, which I hope is better explored in the other books that share it, as it’d be a pity if all would follow this one‘s pattern and focus almost exclusively on what’s relevant to the matter at hand. Not that there’s that much to really complain about when it comes to the action, but in itself, if you ignore these beings and the bond between Seth and Khoe, it definitely follows expected patterns and is also too rushed for my liking.

Rating: 4/5

Was looking through the other personal posts I wrote on my birthday over the years last night, recalling the events that led to the somewhat happy and hopeful one from 2007 and how that ended in early 2008 and there was nothing else since, those dreams and the character described in the one from 2008 and how that stopped happening after that period and I don’t recall her clearly showing up again since, and the people I kept in touch with for a longer time and felt at least somewhat close to listed in the one from 2009 and how badly things ended with those I was still in contact with at the time and also one that I briefly got back in touch with later and how I expect the same to happen with the couple of people I’ve been talking to for a longer time now. Then, after nothing in 2010, in 2011 there was that list of 27 things about me that I’ll probably always link to in profiles. After that, as the 2012 post states, it was all downhill, as you can see in those from 2014 and 2015. Not that it wasn’t always downhill at least after the start of 2008, or more exactly ever since she left with the exception of that period.
As for today, there was only a note from dad in the kitchen when I woke up saying he knows I don’t like the typical “la multi ani”, which translates literally to “many years to come”, so he’ll wish me good health, and then just now a “happy birthday” from Ada, to which I replied as you’d expect, since there’s no such thing. Unless I’ll see some others later, I guess it’s good enough, with just that one annoying typical wish. And I got cakes, though I didn’t even look in one package and the other two contained two “Penguins” each, which I hope parents will also eat from because I won’t be eating more than one per day and, even if I won’t touch the third package, four days is a bit much to keep them. Not so sure they will though, as this was obviously the result of me telling dad, when I asked if he could get me some after the blood tests, that the first time I bought a cake myself I jumped on those, from the only place I saw that had them, since I remembered I liked them when I was little. So now he sure overdid it, as is quite typical of him.

Otherwise, attended a protest this evening. As I wrote in the description of the album with the photos I took, it had to do with the bear cub shot in Sibiu, and since people were asked to do so I did bring a small teddy bear as well, noticing there that I could hook it on something and found a way to do so in order to have it on my chest, visible despite the small size and leaving my hands free. Didn’t leave it there to be donated to orphan children though, as those who wished could do, since I had picked it up from the pile of stuffed toys in my mother’s bedroom, even if I guess at least most of those were mine from when I was little.
One last thing I’ll mention about that is that somebody seemed to take some interest in me, apparently starting from noticing how I had tied the bear, and then asked for my e-mail to keep in touch. Since I typed it on her phone, using the touchscreen, I sure hope I typed it right, because while I looked a couple more times I still don’t feel quite sure, probably because the few times I tried to use touchscreens before I couldn’t even dial a phone number without needing to cancel several times and now I just had to delete a wrong character once. But then again, maybe it’ll be better if I did type it wrong, since I keep remembering how quickly and how badly things ended with the person I ended up talking to at one of the first protests I attended. I mean, she quickly told me I should be lynched for my ideas despite agreeing that the problem is real and the biggest one the world is facing and that the solutions she’d find acceptable could never be enough to solve it, so I’m expecting something similar now, since it’s highly unlikely that I’ll find actual friends, especially “real life” ones. The way things turned out with Ada is just further proof of that, even if we’re still talking for the time being.