Whatever one thinks about her tenure at HP, I like the way she goes after Hillary. As Lincoln said about Grant, she fights.
The First Pr0n Shoot In Space?
Congress Continues To Fiddle With Monster Rockets, While Human Spaceflight Burns
It’s been an exciting week on the International Space Station. On Monday, it had to dodge an old upper stage that was in danger of colliding with it. Then, yesterday, a reaction-control thruster unexpectedly fired for half a minute, causing a sudden unplanned shift in the facility’s attitude. Fortunately, the system reacted well overall, and things were restored to normal within a couple hours.
The misfiring thruster was on the Russian Soyuz capsule currently attached to the ISS. This is the vehicle in which it is planned to bring three crew members back to earth later tomorrow morning.
This is just the latest problem with Russian space hardware. The reason that the crew are coming home this month, instead of the originally planned return in May, is that there was a failure of a (Russian) Progress cargo ship at the end of April. As I wrote at PJMedia this past weekend: Continue reading Congress Continues To Fiddle With Monster Rockets, While Human Spaceflight Burns
Child Abusive Services
This story is insane. I can’t imagine this kind of thing happening when I was a kid. This is the most infuriating part:
The authorities claim he had no access to water or shelter. We have an open shed in the back yard and 2 working sinks and 2 hoses. They said he had no food. He ate his snacks already. He had no bathroom, but the responding officer found our yard good enough to relieve himself in while our son sat in a police car alone. In his own yard, in a state, Florida, that has no minimum age for children to be alone.
Emphasis mine.
Hillary
Why she may lose:
What if Hillary is really running her campaign to the left and out of the Obama tactical playbook out of conviction? Many believe she is doing it out of pure expediency and that once in office she will return to the center. But perhaps she still is at heart the young leftist of her past, and now her long pent-up inner leftist is finally being liberated.
She is running in a country that is still center-right, and not far-left. With a strong and principled Republican candidate, she may be setting herself up for a big loss.
Unfortunately, strong and principled Republican candidates have been hard to come by since 1984. I agree, though that she’s finally letting her leftist freak-flag fly.
[Update a few minutes later]
The New York Times just made Rubio the hero of the struggling middle class. They just can’t help themselves.
[Update a few more minutes later]
The jiu jitsu of the Rubio campaign:
They decided not to directly refute charges that the freshman senator is a reckless spender, has drowned in debt, and has engaged in questionable financial practices. Rubio spokesman Alex Conant suggested that they’re not even a liability but rather an asset, because the senator’s financial struggles, which he’s spoken about often on the campaign trail, make him a more relatable candidate. The attacks, they say, even make Rubio look like a victim of snot-nosed elites.
There’s a good reason it looks like that.
[Update a while later]
Heh.
Another All-Beef Diet
Of course, despite the results, she gets “warned” by “nutritionists.”
A New Book From Mark Steyn
Noted without comment.
Reason
The Justice Department assault on it:
Sadly, the Department of Justice can probably annoy everyone a great deal before it either loses or gives up trying. “The government doesn’t need reasonable suspicion or probable case to use grand jury subpoenas to seek information,” White confirms. “Regrettably, the government can probably abuse the Grand Jury subpoena power this way.” What it almost certainly cannot do, though, is win in court. Indeed, it is especially bizarre that the DOJ would pick this fight given that just last week the Supreme Court made it clear that, in order for a person to be found guilty of issuing “true threats,” prosecutors must demonstrate not only that a reasonable person would construe the words at hand as a “threat” but convince a jury that he knew what he was doing. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts concluded that “federal criminal liability generally does not turn solely on the results of an act without considering the defendant’s mental state.” Under this standard, jokes, hyperbole, and rank stupidity in the comments section of a website are, frankly, not going to cut it. Good old mens rea would make sure of that.
Mens rea doesn’t seem to mean much any more. Few people are aware of the multiple federal felonies per day that they are probably committing.
CPU Fan
The noise is driving me nuts. It rattles and ticks, and sounds like it’s about to fail. It’s just a few months old. I pulled the cooler assembly off, and removed the fan, and replaced it with an older one. I kept the heat sink, because the older one was about half the size and cooling capacity. But the old fan makes similar noises. I’ll go buy a new one at Fry’s, but I wonder if something else is going on.
[Update a while later]
OK, it’s not the fan. I stopped it momentarily, and there was no change. The question is: What is it? I can’t figure out exactly where it’s coming from. I only have one physical hard drive hooked up, and it’s not in the case.
[Update a while later]
OK, I changed power supplies. It’s better, though the noise is still there, and it’s not coming from the power supply. Still can’t quite isolate it. It’s now more of a steady ticking. It was doing it at 2 Hz or so, and now sounds like maybe 10, and not as loud.
[Update a while later]
This makes me wish I had a stethoscope.
[Sunday-afternoon update]
OK, got a stethoscope. The sound is not coming from anywhere or anything on the motherboard. I only hear it when I touch the case itself, and it seems to be being transferred through the metal. Still no clear where it’s coming from.
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
I picked the case up off the desk, and the sound changed slightly. I set it back down, and it’s changed a little again. But whatever was rattling is still rattling. I feel like I may have to pull the board and reinstall. Part of the problem is that the front edge of the board doesn’t have much support, due to configuration.
[Monday-morning update]
OK, when I push the case away from the motherboard, it gets a little quieter.
[Early afternoon update]
OK, starting to think it is supernatural. I tried recording it, so people could hear what I’m talking about, but nothing came out. It was like that old tape in The Sixth Sense. But I upped the mike gain, and aimed it better (it’s my headset, which is pretty directional), and now you can hear it, if you crank up speakers. It’s about a 3Hz resonance.
[Wednesday-afternoon update]
I FOUND IT!
There is a huge case fan in the front that I had previously been unaware existed. It turned out to be impossible to R&R, due to being trapped behind a riveted drive cage. So I just unplugged it. The bad news is that I now know how loud my PSU and CPU fans are. But it’s still a huge improvement. White noise instead of rattling.
[Bumped]
The ASAP
…is finally coming around on Commercial Crew:
VADM Dyer also appeared to be against the notion of downselecting to one partner ahead of time, as has been intimated as a cost-saving option by some lawmakers.
“The thinking there is: If you need a house, why would you want to build two houses? Why not select one?” added the minutes. “VADM Dyer opined that it is a ‘very complicated house.’ The ASAP believes that competition brings the best of both providers to the fore.
“It also allows NASA to watch these two approaches and companies mature before making a downselect. The Panel stands foursquare in support of competition, as does NASA.”
It was also notable that NASA managers responded by stressing the ongoing discrepancy between the requested budgets for the Program and what has been appropriated.
With the two companies under fixed-price contracts, it was noted that it is important for all to recognize that if NASA does not receive the appropriations that it is counting on, it will have a very significant impact on schedule, and we will end up relying on the Russians beyond the 2017 target.
You don’t say.