NikkelNet

Well, I’m gettin ping-ponged back and forth between these two places every two weeks now.  Site Visit’s coming up in two weeks, and we’ve got a ton of work ahead of us.
Since the last time I:

• Made my first landings at a tower controlled airport (Tucson International Airport no less).  The last touch and go, we came around in the pattern and turned to final almost parallel with a 737 coming in to land on the big runway.  Kinda scary!  Those suckers produce large tip vortices you wanna steer way clear of (which we did…our turn to final was more of a slant to final heh).
• Started re-reading The Hobbit.
• Went rock climbing with Gabe up 3/4 the way up Mt. Lemon.
• Got an auto-drip system installed for the potted plants on my patio (so they don’t die a terrible death while I’m constantly traveling).
• Did absolutely nothing over Memorial Day weekend.

I’m thinkin about coming up to CO the week of 6/30 - 7/6 or so.  Mr. Davis is getting hitched, and I’d like to attend, and it’d be swell to get some backpacking in.

Schweet…time for bed.

Nikkel is in New Mexico, still in New Mexico that is, writing code for the robot.  Writing lots of code for the robot.  Which reminds me…I need to write some code to tell me how much code I’ve written…

Anywho.

So…we test the robot in this little nearly abandoned smelting town near the bottom of the racket handle in New Mexico.  You have not been out in the middle of nowhere until you’ve been to this place.  45 miles to the nearest restaurant.  Much further than that to the nearest grocery store.  This place is like something out of a scene from Dawn of the Dead or some flick like that…you walk down these streets, with all these old houses, and there is nothing, interrupted by the occasional simulated SWAT or anti-terror operation.

Despite our constant moaning and whining for another 8 dozen programmers (which is only half-hearted, because everyone knows that more programmers != better software…what we’d reaaaally like is more time), and another couple million bucks, we’re still making good progress.  It’s pretty incredible what a small team of dedicated people can produce with a few coolers full of caffeine, some bags of munchies, and a little luck with the weather, even with our seemingly limited resources (although we do have more than some teams).
Helmet Cam View from the Robot:

And finally…

Quote of the week: “It’s been my experience that Robots and DHCP do not mix.” -Todd Pack

Posted some new pics today of some recent excursions and of the nearly complete pergola/patio…you can get to them here.

 And…a great link for you all: some strong arguments that gravity, not light, defines the ultimate speed of the universe, at a whopping >=2×10^10 c!!!  Now that is fast.  How fast is that fast?  That means that we “feel” the gravitational effects of the 2.5 million light year distant (~2.3935824e19 km) Andromeda Galaxy just a little over an hour later than they are propagated (assuming gravity is indeed a propagated, non-instantaneous phenomonae).    

This’ll probably be one of the most stimulating blog posts you’ve ever read I’m sure.

I’ll say this - it’s crazy to think that it’s already been 1 year since I gradudated. Half of my cousins are now graduated too. Guess I better start trying to find a wife and have kids and what-not before my jewels quit pumpin’ the good stuff.

Things that have happened recently:

• -New, very sweet computer! With Vista Ultimate-64. It’s not so bad people…
• Finished a pergola w/ grandpa in the backyard. Got a bunch of pots and plants.
• Dug sprinkler lines…gotta finish that up…
• Got an HD-DVD player for my Xbox…very sweet…especially w/ Netflix.
• Still working the DARPA Urban Challenge at work. Very hard, very fun problem. My job is lane detection/tracking. Basic jist: I and a few others are writing a bunch of software to process images captured from several donated Gigabit Ethernet Cameras to tell where lane markings are, and then send that information to the “driver”.
• Success at work on the other program.
• Mom is down here this week…we went and saw the Titan Missile Museum. Very, very interesting place. The warhead that used to sit in this silo had a predicted yield of 9.2 Megatons…blast radius of 3 miles (the Nagasaki weapon had a blast radius of 1/10 mile). It still amazes me that everyone takes for granted that the cold war is “over” even though there are still hundreds upon hundreds of nuclear tipped ICBM’s sitting ready to rock in silos like this one around the world…