Half a saturday, unplugged

I've always taken saturdays off, but for me, currently every day's a holiday - a holiday where I'm trapped in in house, sure, but a holiday besides. I should be relaxing, right? Naw, I'm petrified of what monday will bring. My ebay auction isn't going at all, I can't seem to get myself to face rebuilding an XP box, there's been no calls back from the classified ad in the newspaper...

Last night was one of those "Everything is too noisy" nights. You know your sound sensitivity is too high when you can hear the pitch change on your monitor as you scroll through bold and normal text and it annoys you. I turned the monitor off. I shut down my main box - sure, I lost context - but I couldn't stand the noise... Amazingly, I could still hear the cisco router in the basement - so I turned that off, too. I could hear the UPS. Off. I could hear the flourescent lights in the kitchen - OFF. I could hear the flyback transformer in the stereo - OFF. And I gradually relaxed.

I did some more work on "beating the brand" - it's about outshouting 3000 marketing messages a day - In part - it's about looking, really looking, around my kitchen. I did it on tape and on pen and paper.

Slept 5.5 hours. Had a lot of trouble getting up. I have two compulsions in my life that I must now control - I'm compelled to check my email - and I'm compelled to smoke cigarettes. Those are the really the only two things besides my cat that get me up anymore... and I need to cut back on net and eliminate cigs. I'm working on the latter, and circumstances may force the former. Good. Maybe I'll get out of the house, get some sun, fill up that empty space with something worthwhile. Or maybe I'll just lie there and somehow remember how to sleep.

The Net withdrawal symptoms started at 11AM. I did some house chores and exercised instead. I got more material for beating the brand - and I thought about how I would fix up my house - and I got this tension inducing build an XP box thing - and I wanted to login... I needed to login...

It's saturday - you CAN relax and not think about anything for a while. Just. Stay. Off. The. Net.

I read the Economist - it was a good read, a good sit, in the hours I sat there I felt calmer than I had in weeks. Well... The housing bubble's collapsing. Great. Super. Worry about that when it happens, I thought. Think positively. Maybe if we eliminate the second house deduction more people will be able own rather than rent, soon. In this administration?At least I can still bust myself up laughing.

It seems like the economist must be tuned into the blogging world - every issue seems to have something straight out of a 2-3 weeks prior slashdotting, or blogging, only it's better written... I got as far as the science section before I had to get up, reboot everything, and blog.

The great space race resumes

I get really excited - I get really enthused - when a major pub like the economist starts talking about a restart of the Space Race . China's launching men into orbit. Japan's putting resources out there. France, hell, Spain and Italy have interesting probes going out. 3 mega-millionaire industrialists are building rockets. Who will be the Delos D. Harriman that opens up space to humanity? I can't wait to find out!

Trying to get to orbit has beat a lot of investors in multiple companies up. I remember both of Gary Hudson's attempts well (Phonix and Rotary Rocket). But John Carmack, Jim Bezois, Elon Musk - these guys have serious intent. These guys have funding - these guys might just make it off this stinking rock. Or the Japanese. Or the Chinese. I'm rooting for them all -

But I sure wish I could get one of 'em interested in mining the apollo asteroids instead of going to spaceship sucking gravity wells like Mars and the Moon. I once wrote up what the nickel in just one small asteroid is worth - on earth, and in space. $22,000,000,000.00. 22 billion dollars. Multiply that by current launch costs and there were a lot more commas in that figure. For just the nickel.
  ¶ 5:03 PM