When I stay up for long periods of time, I start to hear things that aren’t really happening. So, now I’m screwed, because this Red Letters movie I’ve been watching had this scene with Pauly Shore making a cameo and all these snakes. Now, my morbid fear of snakes is getting to me, and I’m hearing things, and …
Damn, this sucks!
I’ll be okay in a few minutes when I can will myself out of this, but right now … ugh. Creepy.
I’m starting to wind down a bit right now, but … I’ll make it.
Right now, I’m relying on the external timestamps with Flickr to ensure that, indeed, I’m still doing this.
Maybe I could do this all Emotion Eric style. That would be fun, in a way.
This emotion is, “I have how much longer left to go?” 
There’s a little over four hours left. This is the 95th entry. On average, I’ve been posting more than four times an hour. I had this crazy idea that I might exceed that posting rate when I started, but I never really believed it. Now, in some ways, some if this is no more than a “Hey, I’m still here!” kind of thing, but unlike many of my Blogathon compatriots, I could never make a themed attempt work. Why? I can’t do a themed … anything. I just blather about whatever’s on my mind.
Right now … I’m honestly surprised that I’m still stuck on this movie. I think I’ve been here over half an hour. My friends would crack up at this concept, because they know how badly I fidget during movies. I’m fidgeting, sure, but … it’s just the way I am.
What do I do now? Oh yeah … Publish
Okay, at this point, I’m totally just going after targets of opportunity.
Right now, I’ve jumped in about halfway through Red Letters. It’s a weird movie so far … but it’s oddly fascinating.
Unfortunately for you, my capability to explain any of it to you is exhausted. But … Jeremy Piven is hilarious in it.
Noah and I have been talking about next year’s Blogathon.
Yeah, I actually want to do next year’s. I’ve enjoyed all this. It’s been pretty crazy, and with some knowledge from this year, I’ll be more enjoyable next year. [More presearch, to be sure!]
I think Noah will do it, too, if I can make sure he’s got enough notice.
Next year, I think I’ll be blogging for the Dalit Freedom Network.
Earlier tonight, I decided to grab a bunch of comedy stuff to watch here in the dead of night when nobody but me and Noah Grey are awake. One thing I found? The Volume 1 Mixtape episode of Chappelle’s Show.
And of couse, when you think about Dave Chappelle, you think of the Rick James Sketch.
And you know… it kills me that Wikipedia has an entry solely dedicated to the Rick James Sketch.
… and Flickr is back online!
WOOHOO! More photos of my crazy mug as I roll in to the home stretch.
I wonder at what point I have to quit the caffeine so I can sleep after 0800 in the morning. I’m still shocked that this is only my third Sun Drop of the entire Blogathon. I thought I’d be through a six-pack of it by now.
All in all, this has been pretty fun. A definite do next year if my schedule permits!
The San Francisco Chronicle has an article in the Sunday paper about the NASA’s next generation launch vehicles. It’s like what you’ve read here before, but they address single-stage-to-orbit when talking about the “space plane” concept.
Let me tell you why SSTO fails miserably. With multi-stage rockets, especially liquid-fueled rockets, your structure is also your tanking. You make very thin-walled rockets, stuff barely able to stand up on its own without being under pressure. In fact, if you launched these things unpressurized, these things would just rip completely apart. Why do you do this? Structure is “dumb mass”—it just doesn’t do anything.
When you have a multi-stage rocket, you shed dumb mass as you go through stages. When you’re done with a stage, you jettison it, and the next stage doesn’t have to carry that mass on through the next phase.
When you do SSTO, you’re stuck with the structure for the entire flight. You need structure, of course—millions of pounds of thrust has to be resisted. Newton’s Third Law doesn’t just apply to the overall system, but also to internal components. [In fact, N3L is the basis of finite element analysis of structures.] If you’re carrying structure for the whole flight, that’s less usable mass.
We ran the numbers once in undergrad propulsion … the best an SSTO vehicle can do is to expect to carry 3% mass fraction of usable mass. But that’s everything … crew, the food, water, and air they breathe … everything.
Now, that doesn’t seem bad, does it? Well, when you run the numbers for what that 3% needs to be to do a good mission, that vehicle ends up being prohibitively expensive.
And mind you, 3% is a very liberal figure. The real answer is probably lower.
SSTO was a great concept, but it was a pipe dream. Sticking with multi-stage and going back to capsules and modules is the way to go, and that’s where NASA is headed.
Congrats to our British cousins for pulling the Russkies’ balls out of the fire … again.
Dear Russia: don’t send out subs that you can’t bring back without Western help, unless you want to stop giving us crap about the whole ISS cargo thing you have going on.
…
I knew that, at some point, I would get so cheap as to troll Google News for things to post about. I have hit that point, folks. 
I’d been saving the Fountains of Wayne until now for a good reason. This is great, singable stuff, and lot of it is at a pretty lively beat.
“Ever since you hung up on me / I’m hung up on you” … oh yeah. That’s sooooooooooooooo true.
Heh … Lara asked me how I knew Tiff and Darce, and so I started giving her the thumbnail of the Aaron Lowe story, but … man, I just don’t want to dig all that up here again.
Aaron, wherever you are, brother … I hope you’re straightened up, flying right, and good with God. Your track record doesn’t lead me to believe that you are, but when I think of you … I pray for that.
Mike IMs in to point me to some speculation that ABC News’s Peter Jennings may be near death.
I’ve been trying to follow his cancer fight in the media, but they’ve done a good job covering his privacy. I’d hate to lose Jennings: he’s as fair as they come in network news these days.
God bless, Peter.
An hour or so ago, I told Mike there’d be no way I’d make it to 100 entries in Blogathon 2005. Then I had this whole spasm of entries. Maybe it was the third Sun Drop. Maybe it was my groupies. I dunno. But suddenly, with this being my 85th entry of the last almost-eighteen hours, I’m near-guaranteed to hit 100. How?
Well, if I can still do math at this point … two entries an hour is 12 for the remaining six hours. That takes me to 97. If I can squeak out an extra entry every other hour … I’m golden.
It’s like some crazy telethon … except I haven’t seen any donations in a while.
If it wouldn’t be a logistical nightmare, I would throw on The Big Lebowski and start using entries to post random quotes from the entire movie.
“You’re Mr. Lebowski. I’m … The Dude!”
Unfortunately, my DVD player is downstairs, and my office is upstairs. Right now, I don’t trust myself to do much more than write here and brush my teeth. No way in HECK am I going to try to hook up my PS2 up here.
I knew I should have done that last night … it would have really tied the room together.
Brad wrote in to comment that he and Amy came nowhere close to meeting up, unfortunately. Amy apparently would have crapped her pants if Brad had somehow been standing at her gate when she de-planed. Y’know, I think I would probably have done the same thing one of these days.
And the scary thing is, I posted that entry mid-afternoon, ten hours ago … and it’s now on page three. That feels like it was a couple days ago now…
This is one whole whackload of entries I’m posting, man.
It's all just a stream of consciousness for me, folks.
