Heroes

Image by laobc.

When I think of heroes, I often think of famous men, legendary characters, historical backdrops, and sweeping epochs.

This evening I'd like to mention my heroes from today.

Occasionally this is the bus driver who waited an extra minute so I could get on, or the man with the most fantastic moustache I've ever seen. (Eat your heart out, Mario and Luigi!) One of my heroes is certainly Marissa Pielstick, a patient, kind, wonderful, and intelligent woman whose boyfriend I have the pleasure of being.

Tonight it was four people in a truck...with a sofa in the back.

I have been ill for a couple of days; while the weather has been unseasonably warm, a brisk, chill, rainy wind in the face makes the 11-block walk home harder. Don't get me wrong--it's totally worth Marissa's company.

Well, tonight I had my head down and my hand up to keep my hood secure against the wind-driven sprinkles and the northerly gusts. I probably looked like quite the character. Walking past Wendy's, about half-way home, this truck rolls down its window and the driver asks if I'm doing alright and if I want a ride.

It took me a minute to process. I almost walked past.

A ride?

Heck.
Yes.

For the two minutes it took to get home, I had the pleasure of meeting Vanessa, Camille, Austin (our esteemed driver), and Levi. I had crossed their paths during a midnight Wendy's run while they were enjoying a large bag of fried delectables. I didn't learn much more than that about them, as they asked what I'd been up to and they got to hear about Marissa. (Sorry guys.)

They were willing to give me--a complete stranger, and in a crowded truck no less--a ride home.

This makes them my heroes today.

aPod Touch Thingy

Last winter I got a new dumb phone.

I broke the dumb phone.
Last summer I got a smart phone.

I am presently using the dumb phone's predecessor, the hardy (if quirky) Motorola W755. It does what I want for the price I want.

The smart phone was from a friend of mine. It was used. I called Verizon and was informed that it would take an enormously expensive (to me) dataplan in order to use the oldest Droid in existence.

Did you know these things have pretty good Wifi support? Apple does. An iPod Touch is basically all of the computing power and sensory equipment of a smart phone without the "phone" aspect.

I hereby coin the term "aPod Touch" to designate a phoneishnessless Android smartphone. It's actually kinda fun to have a pocket-sized Internet-capable computer handy even when my laptop is out of battery. Instead of Googling certain classes of things, I find apps that are specialized in that field (ElectroDroid comes to mind). It's battery lasts around 36 hours, a lifetime no laptop I know even tries to match.

So when you see that I have a smart phone, "Mr. Richy-Rich" is a misappelation. When you see that I have two phones, realize that the "inferior" one is the better one, and that I'm liking abusing the poor "superior" phone as a poor replacement for a laptop.

Parking Orbit

On the approach to the system the pilot had been nervous. Only the slightest stresses had been applied to the engine systems over the course of the voyage, and sometimes such systems developed catastrophic quirks over time...and it had been a long time.

He tapped on the glass covering each of the dials again. Each needle jiggled slightly at the disturbance, wavered, then settled back. The orbit was stable.

Perihelion would be suitably close to the star to pick up most of the small, rocky bodies orbiting the sun. Aphelion was not quite at the Oort cloud, and with time would shift inward as the perihelion shifted outward. First he wanted to let the orbit meander around the sun; solar systems are big places, and the current orbit would shift directions while staying the same shape. Later on, short, strategic burns would jettison just enough velocity that a less extreme orbit would be attained and more extensive surveys could be run on the inner planets.

Earlier radar bursts had gotten a big reflection in that area; at about six times Jupiter's mass, the gas giant was about .75 AUs out from the star and so would be a major navigational hazard. He'd have to watch that.

After staring blankly at the dials for a few more minutes, he wandered over to the Kepler Weight and Constraint Set. He liked using them to simplify the more tedious orbital calculations; just turn dials to set mass, velocity, and position of up to four masses and the strings, weights and wires would automagically give you the stable solution over the next 100 years. It didn't account for the inherent nonlinearity of the actual relativistic and gravitic equations, but it was good enough most of the time.

It was good to be back in orbit.

(Especially around a star like MP539. --Ed.)

Hieroglyphics

Upon becoming frustrated with the enigmatic glyphs on the controls of his smartphone, my dad thought of the icons on the buttons in a particular computer program:

"In Unigraphics [a jet-engine-scale CAD program], a product I used to support, we have over a thousand symbols. Years ago, mankind invented phonetic writing so we wouldn't have to remember thousands of symbols, and now we're back to systems where we have to remember a thousand symbols!"

Having just finished a class on the era of civilization in which writing developed, I was highly amused. :)

PVU

So...

I like small airports. A lot.

I got a ride from a friend at 7 this morning to the Provo municipal airport. We pulled up to the Million Air building, got me unloaded, and off I went.

Through the normal doors, turn right, wait almost no time, check bags, step through the door, put everything through their one x-ray machine showing pass and ID after the metal detector, step into the waiting area/terminal. Board by walking across the tarmac and up a ramp.

Simple, condensed. Like this verbage.

They even let me board right after first class because I have no overhead bin item.

Cold seats though. That was a shock!

Cranky

You ever look down at your gas gauge and realize that you have drastically less fuel than you thought you did?

I feel like that today.

Just Go.

 "Why, I'm going to do as much as I can until I get kicked out of BYU," she huffed. I looked into her gaze, which she was casting condescendingly down her nose.

"Is that so? Why don't you just leave?" I demanded.