Challenger Anniversary

While almost everyone at some point today will think back on what they were doing when STS-51-L Challenger broke up after launch from Kennedy Space Center, I took the opportunity to re-read the speech given by President Ronald Reagan on that day.  It's still one of my favorite presidential speeches.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.

STS-125 Atlantis

Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But, we've never lost an astronaut in flight; we've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy.' They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it."

There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, 'He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.' Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete.

Sunrise reflected off of the vapor
trails of STS-131 Discovery.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honoured us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'

-- President Ronald Reagan, January 28, 1986

Orlando People Should Eat Here More

Millie's Jamaican Cafe is a great little Jamaican restaurant right across the street from UCF.

The food is homemade. It's delicious, and Mama Millie obviously loves what she does. I met her today when I went to pick up an order of curry chicken for myself, and an order of the famous jerk chicken for Shannon. She's really sweet, but mentioned how difficult the business has been lately.

"You don't come here with your little girl," she said in her thick Jamaican accent, "You go to where your little girl wants to go and you get something there too."

She's right, of course. With menu items like Oxtail (yum) and curry goat, there isn't a whole lot for the little kids. Even the jerk chicken, which sounds easy enough and is VERY good, is way too spicy for a child. The menu states that the chicken is made with the Scotch bonnet pepper, one of the hottest around. Way more spice than I can handle. While I have always finished it (it really is that good), it's after several glasses of water and over enough time that the chicken has gotten cold.

"Not many people think to come here because its an uncommon food, sort of a specialty menu," she told me. I picked up a couple of menus and told her I'd bring them to work with me and put them up. There's a wall at work known as the "Lunch Wall" because I named it that just now. It contains menus from the area restaurants so people can get ideas about what to eat.

In the meantime, if you're in the area, you should go there.

By the way, some of the descriptions made me giggle a bit, like the one for "Coco Curry", which boasts the following ingredients:

Coco Curry (cabbage, onions, chick peas, carrots, green beans, "chunks")

Chunks?!

Aquarium Flashers

Right off the bat, it's not what you think. But I applaud you for thinking it, because that's just funny.

No, I was just thinking about this as I was looking through some pictures from the Boston Aquarium that I took in August. There was a guy next to me trying to get a good shot of the jellyfish tank, but every photo he took he was disappointed in, mumbling after each attempt that they just weren't coming out right. All he was able to get was this huge white spot where the flash had reflected off the glass into his lens.  I tried to be friendly, and I told him that he'd have more luck by either bumping up the ISO and canceling the flash, or by pressing the lens up against the aquarium glass so the flash could go off but not reflect back into the camera.

Note: Jellyfish do not taste as good as they
sound. And yes, I've tasted jellyfish.
(Click to enlarge the photo)

He looked at me silently for a second, and then walked away.

I was offended by that. I was just trying to help him get the picture he wanted, but he obviously didn't appreciate it.  I saw others making the same mistake over and over again, but after that first time I was too self-conscious to say anything.

So here it is for all to see. If you want to take a flash photograph of something behind glass, press the lens up against the glass so that it's touching all the way around. That way the flash won't be visible, and it'll look like the glass wasn't even there.

Also, don't give people the stinkeye for trying to help when you need it. Even if you're not interested in the help, at least they offered.

Abbey's Latest Hunt

Lately, Abbey has been obsessing more than usual about the critters in the backyard.  Normally she only really shows interest if she's outside and one of them dares to enter her territory, but the last few weeks she has been actively on patrol, staring out the window and waiting for one of them to show themselves.  It usually doesn't take long, since the neighborhood has a large population of squirrels and possums.

Target Acquired

Once she finds her target du jour, she invariably tries to convince me that she all of a sudden has to go to the bathroom really, really bad.  Of course, I'm not falling for it.  But then the high-pitched whine starts and eventually she wins out.  I try to make enough noise to scare off the critter before opening the screen door to the outside, but let's face it -- possums are stupid.

The reason I try to scare them off is not because I'm worried that Abbey is going to kill one.  Far from it, actually.  She's the worst hunter in the world, mainly because she doesn't seem to understand why she's hunting. It's as if when she sees prey, some dusty old synapse in the back of her dog brain, a vestigial remnant of instinct from her wolf ancestry starts firing randomly and she knows she needs to get that thing fast.  Of course, the instinct isn't complete enough to tell her what she should be doing with it once it's caught, so on the rare occasion that she finds herself face-to-face with her target, the rest of her brain has to fill in the details with whatever previous situations she has encountered that might seem an appropriate resolution to the matter. Thus, her brain generally fills in the end of the story with Now we're friends! Let's play!

Abbey's Playtime, Possum View.
You can see how they might get the wrong idea.

This happened once before, when I hadn't realized that she saw something in the darkness beyond. When I opened the door, she bolted out so fast that she left a road runner-style puff of cloud behind her. Apparently, the possum was caught just as off guard as I was, and it immediately found itself facing Abbey's 80-pound frame with nowhere to run.

I was scared at that instant. Abbey was going to attack it, and the possum would bite and scratch and there would be blood and probably diseases and we'd have to go to the vet and what if it scratches an eye out or something equally horrible and I'd feel so bad and....

Before I could even call her, she was at the possum. She stopped a foot away and amidst the scared, angry warning growls emanating from the possum's throat, she entered a playful posture and started wagging her tail, knowing in her heart that they were now officially best friends and playtime was about to get freaking awesome.

Of course, it didn't.  I called to Abbey and she turned her head to look at me. The possum took the opportunity to bail, and playtime was over.

So anyway, that's a really long lead into what I wanted to say, which was that it happened again last night. Right before going to bed, I let Abbey out into the backyard one last time to do her business. Before I knew what was happening, I heard a rustle in the bushes and Abbey was gone.

Abbey's "Attack Pounce". A fearful beast, indeed.

Around the corner through the patio screen I saw her pounce, but due to the vegetation between us I couldn't see anything below her shoulders. That was it, the chase stopped. Abbey straightened up and looked at me through the patio screen with a concerned expression on her face, as if something had gone horribly wrong with her buddy-making plan and she needed me to fix it.

I went up to the far end of the patio, just a couple of feet from Abbey but still separated by the screen. At her feet was a lifeless possum in the dirt, just inches from the opening under the fence that it was obviously attempting to retreat to. Abbey gingerly leaned forward to smell it, looked at me with another helpless expression, and slowly took one step back.

I nervously ordered her away from it. I had no idea what had just happened.  Abbey had never killed anything, even by accident! Abbey's concern for her new best friend soon gave way to other stimulus, and she wandered off around the corner of the house to pee.  Just as she finished and turned around, the possum (who thankfully had been playing dead to avoid capture) bolted up the fence and across the yard. Abbey gave chase immediately, excited that her friend was back and ready to play.

That's it, that's the story.  See what I meant with my first blog post?  Who could possibly care about this, other than maybe three or four people. And even they were all, "Get to the point already, ass."

But I wrote it anyway, because I can.  Ha!

Hey Look At Me!

That's it.  I've decided to do my part.

Sure, every day the tubes of the internet are being clogged with more worthless information than our feeble minds are ever able to comprehend. Millions of Facebook and Twitter posts every single day are detailing the desire of millions of people to a) have a sandwich, b) not go to work, or c) curl up in front of the TV and watch American Idol.  Thousands of YouTube videos are uploaded every single day, consisting mainly of poorly-lit nerds in front of webcams, looking slightly below the lens and talking about what they think of the latest developments in <insert MMORPG title here>.  Every day, gigabytes of worthless cameraphone photos are uploaded to photo sharing sites, ensuring that every last person with a computer or internet-enabled phone are able to see some guy's cat making a cat face.

I had to ask myself, "Am I doing my part to stuff the internet with crap?"  The answer was a resounding "no".  Don't get me wrong, I try.  I update my Facebook status when I can, and I try to make my updates as worthless as possible.  I upload cameraphone photos with no purpose. See?

I call this one "Gummy Bears on Deodorant For Some Reason"

But when it came down to it, I needed something more. I wasn't clogging fast enough.  I had, in days long past, toyed with the idea of a blog -- but I quickly scrapped the idea when I realized that I actually had nothing of importance to say. I didn't realize at the time that this fact already put me in the top 20% of all blog writers worldwide in terms of content quality.

"Nothing" is what the internet wants, so Nothing is what the internet gets!  Yay!

So you can think of this blog as just one more molecule of nothing in a Vast Sea of Nothing, and yourself as a traveler who's obviously lost because you're here.

That's all. Go somewhere else now. Like maybe to Captive Audience, which is my mom's blog. It's far less "nothing" than this, and contains a veritable cornucopia of things that most people don't need to know about their moms.

Oh wait!  I thought you should know that I chose this backdrop because it reminds me of what it looks like when you stab a guy that's holding a gallon of orange juice.

And that's really going to be a weird statement to everyone that comes here after I've changed the background to something else.  Which will be, like, tomorrow.

Edit:  Too late, I changed it!