Last night I went to the Astronomy Club meeting. There was a new guy there with a telescope that I liked a lot. I’ve been thinking about getting one for years but my main desire is portability. I have heard a lot of stories about big telescopes that never get used. Also there was a pair of “image stabilizing binoculars” there. I’ve heard about them but that was the first time I actually saw a pair (outside the store). The Andromeda galaxy and the Orion Nebula looked fantastic through them. The Andromeda Galaxy is visible to the naked eye, but you have to look next to it, if you look right at it, you can’t see it, because of your blind spot because of where your optic nerve is connected to the back of your eyeball. It was very cool seeing it well with the small telescope and the binoculars. It was still just a fuzzy light spot, but extremely cool.
I have a Treo phone (with a Palm Pilot built in) I have a program called Planetarium. It is the best star chart software anywhere. It beats everything else available, even programs for desktop computers. This guy brought his Palm Pilot last night and I beamed Planetarium to him, then spent a lot of time explaining it to him. Toward the end of the meeting I noticed I was angry, for no reason I could explain. I was wondering if it was because I had to go to work today, of if I felt I “wasted” the night showing that guy the software, or what. On the way home I stopped and got gas, ($62 for 16 gallons). Also I got a tuna sandwich and realized I was starving. Maybe I wasn’t angry at all, just hungry. For me, they are just about the same thing.
This morning for the dog walk I saw the Southern Cross, Centaur (the half man, half horse), and Scorpius the scorpion is coming back up again.
Anyway I was just getting into the weekend and now it’s time to go back to work.
I don’t wanna go to work!!
Last night I had a dream I was working on an old radar, it looked kind of like the dashboard of a 50’s car and had a lawnmower engine to rotate the antenna. I was thinking “great, another piece of crap for me to fix”. And I was worried about getting zapped (electric shock) because it was falling apart.
And, as long as I’m complaining about everything, my dive watch broke last night, the light stays on all the time. I just had it repaired because the light quit working completely, now it stays on all the time. That’s bad for battery life, as well as making it hard to sleep. It’s really bright. (It’s a Suunto Stinger Titanium, in case you’re interested.)
I hope you have a great week everybody!