Month: February 2003

Right some stuff.

I have no idea right now who is mad with whom about what. I can’t even figure out who I am pissed off with other than myself. So there is just a little tension around the office.

Lunchtime yesterday was more chess. I won the first game, Dave took the second one easily and I took the third. I’m actually really happy with the third one, I didn’t play particularly well, but I managed to set myself up nicely to get out of a spot of bother and put some pressure on Dave. It worked really well and I’m going to see what I can do about working things like that again. It was a lot of fun. Allthough at one stage I must have spent five minutes thinking about a move. I had 5 pieces bunched uptogether on the top cornor. Whatever I did I was about to loose my queen. I had a pawn clear to his last row…and I never once thought hey thats a queen. Oops. Still it worked out, checked his king and took his queen leaving me in a much stronger position. It rocked.

Last night was Starsailor in The Astoria. I’m going to put some pages up for gigs I’ve been too over the next couple of days so more details there. It was allright, I was going to say nothing special but they did a run in from Lullaby into a cover of Where the Streets Have No Name which was pretty good. Other than that, a few new songs, a couple of really good versions of album songs and then the rest of the songs just played well. I enjoyed it, my ears are still ringing, but I wouldn’t be in a rush to go and see them again. Support acts were all noteworthy; Hope of the States, 22-20s and Nada Surf.

Michael Jackson is enjoying quite a renaissance in the office the past couple of days. Bille Jean has just been calling out to everyone and man does it rock. It is one of those songs that I just cannot stay still while its playing. Fuck, it is no way hard to see why Thriller is the biggest selling album of all time. This stuff is just amazing.

– – – –
From a NASA mailing list.

Feb. 4th, 2003: At the dawn of the space age some 40 years ago, we always
knew who was orbiting Earth or flying to the Moon. Neil Armstrong, Yuri
Gagarin, John Glenn. They were household names–everywhere.
Lately it’s different. Space flight has become more “routine.” Another
flight of the shuttle. Another visit to the space station. Who’s onboard
this time? Unless you’re a NASA employee or a serious space enthusiast,
you might not know.

Dave Brown, Rick Husband, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson,
William McCool, and Ilan Ramon

Now we know. Those are the names of the seven astronauts who were
tragically lost on Saturday, Feb. 1st, when the space shuttle Columbia
(STS-107) broke apart over Texas.

Before the accident, perhaps, they were strangers to you. But if that’s
so, why did you have a knot in your gut when you heard the news? What were
those tears all about? Why do you feel so deep-down sad for seven
strangers?

Astronauts have an unaccountable hold on us. They are explorers. Curious,
humorous, serious, daring, careful. Where they go, they go in peace. Every
kid wants to be one. Astronauts are the essence of humanity.

They are not strangers. They are us.

While still in orbit Dave Brown asked, jokingly, “do we really have to
come back?”

No. But we wish you had.

The Science@NASA team, as does all of NASA and the world, extends
heartfelt sympathies to the family, friends and colleagues of the STS-107
crew. Please see the NASA Home Page (http://www.nasa.gov) for more
information on the Columbia Investigation.

–Tony Phillips, Ron Koczor, Bryan Walls, Becky Bray, Patrick Meyer.

A short list of things currently going right/well:

That is all.

Well except for this;
In a brief passage titled “Where Are the Real Space Aliens?” Bush’s budget document released today says several important scientific discoveries in the past decade indicate that “habitable worlds” in outer space may be much more prevalent than once thought.
Where are the Real Space Aliens?

I left work wanting to go out and do something tonight. Nothing in particular, just do something. There isn’t anything I want to see in the cinema until the weekend so I left it.

I was thinking about watching the Michael Jackson interview special thingy. I just flicked to it on the tv and Bille Jean was playing. That got me hooked. Man this is so awesome already. They just raced cars around Neverland and now moonwalking lessons followed by tree climbing.

The year 4701

Welcome to the 48th century. Yesterday was the first day of the Chinese New Year, in this case the Ram. There were some things going on in town all day today so I headed in for a little while. There was a fireworks display schedule for Leicester Square at 2pm so I figured I would catch that and wander around taking some photos. I did just that.

Just before the fireworks kicked off, there was an announcement that they would be very loud and those people in Leicester square should cover their ears. Of course this was laughed off, fireworks are not that loud when they are fired off. Well, I can only imagine the smile on the face of the person who lit them off. Thousands of firecrackers went off and fuck me were they loud. Hung around, took a few photos (nothing great) grabbed some comics and headed home.

I neglected to mention that yesterday I did in fact walk to the comic shop. It was a little amusing. I had decided to get the bus cause I was feeling lazy. But it just went past me as I came out of my place. So I figured what the fuck, I would walk. About a mile up the road as I’m just about to get to the comic shop the same bus has to stop to let me cross at the zebra crossing. And even better as I wasn’t feeling 100% and it was uphill I had not been walking at my normal pace. It amused and pleased me. Got some good stuff, notably the third Queen and Country volume, Captain Marvel # 5, some of Peter David at his best and the excellent X-Force Hardcover.

I rented a couple of movies aswell, Not Another Teen Movie was vaguely amusing and did provide a nice hour and a half distraction. So this afternoon I walked up to Blockbuster to return it. Then I headed into Starbucks and spent a couple of hours in there listening to the Spree and reading. It was nice and relaxed and quiet. It was good 🙂 It has left me in a surprisingly good mood.

I was talking (phone) to a friend last night and we didn’t really talk about much, we just caught up on some stuff and took the piss out of each other. It was fun. The night before I was talking (AIM) to her and we talked about stuff too. I hold her partially responsible for some of the thoughts about changing some stuff that I am thinking.

Related to that; red may have just become my new favourite colour. I have an idea. It might take a while to sort out, scratch that. It will take a while to sort out but why not?

There is an ad showing these days for Vodafone’s picture messaging / camera phone service. Its a really simple ad. A guy and a girl go out, he walks her home. Once she is through her door, he goes to the bus stop to go home. It obviously went well as you see the girl looking happy and making cup of coffee. She takes out her phone and uses it to take a photo of the mug of coffee, then sends him the photo. He get it while standing at the bus stop and goes back to her place for coffee. It is just a really sweet ad and a really good way of showing the advantages of photo messaging, etc.

I’m going to four gigs in the next two weeks. That is gonna be about £80 on t-shirts. I have this thing now where I get a t-shirt at every gig I go to, and a programme if they are available. Just something to remember it by I guess and I like it. I am really looking forward to the next couple of weeks, a lot of cool stuff going on in my personal life.

On a whole other note; I sent an email to my LCS last night requesting some orders. Some stuff I had been lax in order and wasn’t pre-ordering till the third issue or so. That is bad and I’m usually good at telling them what I want. It is easier for them to order and it makes sure I get what I want. I did find out and note with interest that if they don’t know anything about a comic (and we were talking in terms of Marvel) they order 10 for the shelf and see how it goes. It must be really tough with Marvel not providing any info in Previews. I’m usually good about knowing what I want and not picking stuff from Previews or off the shelf. Although I had been bad and missed CSI which I picked off the shelf yesterday. (It was hit and miss, dialogue seemed very off but the Ashley Wood forensic artwork was really excellent). Anyway I got an email back from them today, letting me know they had managed to order it all and not to worry about stuff like that as I am one of their best customers. It made me smile.

Right something that has been on my mind since yesterday. George W. Bush’s speech about the loss of Columbia. I don’t know if he wrote it himself, if he did he gained a little bit of respect. I would like to have seen it in full because I have seen it called moving and emotional in many places but he looked almost bored and certainly uncaring in the clips I saw of the first moments. I have read the full text of it (here) and it started really well. It is a moving speech and indeed a rallying cause the language used is sad and mournful but at the same time determined and hopeful. I do intend to stream the entire thing in work tomorrow, as I really do hope that he did a good job of it. They deserved no less.

However towards the end of the speech it went all religious and it was for one thing quite a big change from the tone of the speech so far. Actually I think I’m going to stop there and even apologise. Reading the MeFi thread at the moment leads me to believe I should in fact watch the speech and then perhaps I shall revisit this.

I know I’ve said a lot about the subject and I suspect there will be more but I beg your indulgence for a couple of more lines.

“They believed in what they were doing.”
Bill Readdy. NASA

Buzz Aldrin captured it this morning. He tried to read a poem about astronauts on television. He read these words: “As they passed from us to glory, riding fire in the sky.” And tough old Buzz, steely-eyed rocket man and veteran of the moon, began to weep.
Peggy Noonan.
Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
Saturday, February 1, 2003 3:38 p.m. EST

Almost enough to make you cry.

I woke up this morning and turned on the tv. As I flicked to channel 5, the news was on. They had a video showing the remains of one of the astronauts helmets found in a field in Texas. It was a really shit way to start the day.