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Energizer bunny, meet the Mars rovers

Heading into their third year on Mars, Spirit and Opportunity are still motoring along taking cool pictures, finding neat stuff and checking out more terrain.

Not bad for a couple of robots that were only supposed to last 3 months. Sounds like they’re beginning to suffer from aging though.

While showing signs of wear, Spirit and Opportunity are still being used to their maximum remaining capabilities. On Spirit, the teeth of the rover’s rock abrasion tool are too worn to grind the surface off any more rocks, but its wire-bristle brush can still remove loose coatings. The tool was designed to uncover three rocks, but it exposed interiors of 15 rocks.

On Opportunity, the steering motor for the front right wheel stopped working eight months ago. A motor at the shoulder joint of the rover’s robotic arm shows symptoms of a broken wire in the motor winding. Opportunity can still maneuver with its three other steerable wheels. Its shoulder motor still works when given extra current, and the arm is still useable without that motor.

Cool.

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My first conference presentation

Good: Today I got asked by one of our rad techs to speak at the SCSRT meeting coming up in about 6 weeks.
Inconvenient: I need to come up with a topic and outline by tomorrow so the organizers can send all the info in to get the meeting approved for CE credits.
Good: I can speak on whatever topic I want.
Bad: I don’t know what I want to talk about. Current ideas are digital detector technology and identifying image artifacts.
Bad: Whatever I end up talking about will mean lots of work preparing and researching.
Good: I can get Cat 1 CE credits for doing this.
Bad: It goes on the list with all the other things that need to get done in a very short time period.
Good: Something else to add to my CV.
Good: I can probably use this as a MOC SDEP
With my luck I’ll be the last speaker on the last day of the meeting.

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Things in Threes

My friend Mike sent me another one of these meme things, so here goes:

Three names you go by.

  1. Eug
  2. Spandex Ninja
  3. Lurch

Three parts of your heritage.

  1. Canadian
  2. Chinese
  3. Chinese

Three things that scare you.

  1. Clowns. They’re just plain creepy
  2. The Burger King king
  3. Things with large pointy teeth

Continue reading “Things in Threes”

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You call that service?

I’ve never been a big fan of McDonald’s, both from a food and service stand point, but the wife gets these cravings for McDonald’s every now and then, so we end up there on occasion. Yesterday was one of those occasions, and what probably should only have been a few minutes waiting in the drive-thru lane turned into about 30 at the McDonald on the peninsula. This particular McDonald’s has always had pretty crappy service to begin with, but we were there and the wife wanted a cheeseburger. I suppose when I restarted the car to move up to the ordering sign, we should have taken that as an indication of things to come.

So there we are, third in line wondering what’s taking the person so long to order. Finally he drives off, the lady in front of us starts up the car and drives up to the speaker. After waiting a few more minutes, she gives multiple orders, asking for the price after each one. This takes about 10 minutes.

Finally we make it up to the speaker, and end up waiting for another 5 minutes before a staticy voice says she’ll be with us in a minute. 5 more minutes pass by with cars behind us deciding to bail out and leave. We probably should have joined them.

15 minutes after we reach the speaker, the staticy voice comes back and asks for our order, which we have to give twice because apparently weweretalkingtoofast the first time. S..o….w..e….s..p..o..k..e….s..l..o..w..e..r. Finally, we got our order in. Drive up to the window, pay…and wait some more.

We get the drink we ordered, but then someone says the McNuggets were dropped, and ask us to pull forward to…you guessed it, wait some more. At this point I was about ready to go inside and tell them to forget the order and get a refund. Finally after waiting another 5 minutes, we got our stuff (minus straw, napkins and sauce for the McNuggets) and left.

Needless to say, I think that’ll be the last time we go to this particular McD’s (or any other one if I had my druthers)

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Interesting SC laws relating to dogs

The lab retriever club we’re part of had one of their meetings this evening where one of the members (who happens to be an attorney) talked about some of the legal issues involved in owning a dog. Found out about a couple of interesting SC laws relating to dogs. For example:

  • Stealing an identifiable dog (identifiable via tag or tatoo) is a misdemeanor. Stealing a cat isn’t.
  • Abandoning a dog is illegal in SC. Abandoning a hunting dog isn’t.
  • If your dog bites someone, you’re liable, even if:
    • the person that got bit jumped the fence into your yard to mess with your dog.
    • someone let the dog out either by accident or on purpose

There were other things mentioned, but those were the ones that stuck in my head the most.