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This morning at around 9am NASA lost contact with the Orbiter Columbia right as it was preparing to land. It was at an altitude of 200,700 feet traveling at about 12,500 mph when it was last heard over the northern part of Texas.

This mission was particularly sensitive as the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, was aboard this mission. Six american astronauts were aboard as well.

Here is NASA's official site for STS-107. It lists the crew, the milestones and some other facts about the mission.

A while back ago Matt posted an entry in response to my My iTunes entry. In essence, he said "Who cares? Why not tell us something real about yourself?" I responded thusly:

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Today was a gaming day. I bought Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for the PS2 and found the game frustrating and annoying. I keep crouching when I mean to run, and I find it hard as hell to hit anyone with the guns. I bought NHL2K3 for the GameCube, and man has this game gotten worse since NHL2K for the Dreamcast. What happened here guys? Ugh.

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Evolution is not a theory (though science, cautious of crowning anything a "law," may still call it one). It's a reality. We've seen it, we've observed it, it's a fact for all intents and purposes. Evolution is not a religious belief, and Creation and Evolution are not mutually exclusive. There's nothing to say that some deity couldn't have created humans, and then scripted their evolution (and that of every other species).

Anyone who denies that evolution is a reality is, in fact, a moron. So I side with the university professor who is refusing to write letters of recommendation to students who don't "believe" in human evolution. He shouldn't - they're clearly morons unable to process simple logic, reality, and history, and see that they don't conflict with their religious views at all.

Says the whiner: "I really don't see how believing in the evolution of humanity has anything to do with patient care or studying science." Moron. I sure as hell wouldn't want that kid practicing medicine on me or anyone I care about.

(Update: there's a rather long discussion here.)

I think calling them "silly" is being nice. Any woman caught with this phone (seen at right) should be shot.

The phone, a Samsung T500, has a rhinestone encrusted external display (with a little digital clock with hands), a 65,000 color internal display that can double as a mirror at the press of a button, and software for calorie counting.

There's an Indian couple that walks around my apartment complex every morning (by Indian I mean from India, not Native American Indian). At least I think they're Indian - the wife has the red dot on her forehead and they wear the appropriate clothing.

The wife walks behind the guy, sometimes five feet, sometimes fifty. I find that behavior interesting, as I've sometimes caught them side by side, talking as they walk, but only once or twice (in over a year). I find myself wondering how long they've lived in the US (perhaps their whole lives), how long they will continue this behavior (perhaps forever), and so on. I'm so intrigued by their thought process, they "why?" of it all, that I'm always tempted to stop them and ask them. Of course, there's no real way to do that politely or without frightening or off, so I don't.

Monday night, Joe Faux, err, Millionaire took Sarah Kozer on a date. The date seemingly went well, as upon their return to the chateaux, they snuck off into the woods. Fox couldn't get a camera to them, so they filled air time with night shots of a forest and dubbed over words for the sounds Joe and Sarah were making. It was the funniest part of the show to date:

Huh huh hee hee. Ahhh… Mwah… Uhhh… Mwah… Mmmmm… Ha ha ha ha …think it'll go better laying down? Ahhh… Shhhh… Ahhh… Shhh… (Slurp) Shhh… (Slurb) Umh… (Slur) Mmmmm… (Gulp) Ahhh… (Slurp) (Smack) Umh… (Smack) Umh… (Smack) Huh Huh Ha He. Scandal.

And afterwards…
Joe: "after we, y'know, had time to sit there and kiss a little bit it became a lot more comfortable.
Sarah: "Definitely more exercise than I've had in a month."

This news alone is fairly funny, but then it surfaces that Sarah, like Survivor winner Brian, has been in "illicit" movies: get the scoop at The Smoking Gun. Interesting…

I remember playing with MacPaint. Largely, I remember how difficult it was to draw with a mouse, and sites like this: imaginationatwork.com refresh that memory from time to time. The site allows you to draw with markers on a little page and email the picture, replay it, and do some other things. Why it exists I'll never know, but it's a fun way to reminisce (just a little) and to try your hand at drawing, and when you're on the phone with a client, it's a good way to keep your mind active. 🙂

Why do people continue to put two spaces after colons, periods, question marks, etc.? Ever since I started my own magazine - and even before then in high school - I have only ever used one. I think that's all that's required. There's no rule that says you should use two anymore, right? I quickly trained myself to use only one space, and I estimate that I've saved a few million keystrokes and bytes (in databases, files, etc). over the years with absolutely no decrease in readability.

Today a friend said "brb" which, of course, means "be right back." Twenty minutes later, he returned. This got me thinking about the various abbreviations we all use for "i'm going away and will return in approximately x minutes." Here's my list:

• BRB (be right back): 0-5 minutes
• BBIAF (be back in a few): 5-10 minutes
• BBIAB (be back in a bit): 10-30 minutes
• BBL (be back later) 10-180 minutes
• BBWHFO (be back when hell freezes over): never? 🙂

Why I put so much thought into stupid, useless stuff like this I'll never know. Imagine how productive I could be if I just typed "bye" and then left for an indeterminate amount of time.

The most you can lose to this Bookie is $8. Pursuant to a quick conversation some people had on this site, Bookie is a Rendezvous bookmark application.

This is my blog, and I don't feel like being all preachy here, nor do I want to sell ice cream cones to eskimos or anything, so I'll leave you to investigate it if you want. I will say one more thing: even if you only have one Mac, it's still fairly useful as a global bookmark menu that opens bookmarks from one browser in whatever your default browser is at the moment.

Oh, and if you're a PC developer and want to talk about working with us on the x-plat version, lemme know.

National Geographic has taken a leap into Sport's Illustrated market by releasing their first ever swimsuit issue. The photographs and articles cover the last one hundred years of swim wear and beach related topics.

The heavier glossier format probably will hold up better than other magazines in the related genre of scantily clad women, alas, it's a smaller format. Also unfortunate to subscribers, it's only available at the newsstand. Though, I think I'll get it just for the picture of the girl wearing the shell-bikini on the cover. That bikini rocks. 🙂

Are you going to watch the State of the Union (hell, I didn't even know it was on until Aaron mentioned it)? If so, then play along!

"War on Terror" - Eat a pretzel stick and growl.
"Recession" - Yell "Spare Change?", SHOT of liquor.
"Homeland" - Jump to attention and salute.
"Good Jobs" - Yell "Hear! Hear!", drink sip of beer.
"Freedom" - Grab Crotch.
"Billion Dollars" - Yell "BULLSHIT!", drink sip of beer.
"Osama bin Laden" - SHOT of beer.

There are more rules where those came from. This is one of the lamer games, according to Aaron, but it's still kinda funny.

I once had to write a paper about a State of the Union (one of Clinton's first). I titled the paper "Much Ado About Nothing."

According to Chuq (this is sarcasm: deal with it), twelve whole people use Opera for the Mac! Surely he must be including the developers themselves, as well as their significant others. And their pets.

The reality: Opera is threatening to leave the Mac. Y'know what? Fine. Like Chuq says, they had two years to produce a good browser. They haven't. Opera feels clunky. Which reminds me… just why are those iCab people sticking it out? Do they have some kind of ace up their sleeve? They're hardly a big player.

Then again, at least I can name people who use iCab.

Apple today released (quite silently) new Macs, huge discounts on LCDs (chopping $3499 to $1999!), and a few other things here and there. Slashdot, of course, covered the news, and the ensuing conversation can be summed up as follows:

Anonymous Coward: Macs suck
Anonymous Coward: You suck
l33tD00dz: I want one
Anonymous Coward: all your lcd price drops are belong to us
Horny Chimp: RISC is better than CISC because (long semi-technical briefing ensues)
Anonymous Coward: so what? PCs are cheaper.
Me: :: click :: (the sound of me closing the browser window)

By my count, this is the 3,235,764th time this conversation has been held on Slashdot.