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Monthly Archives: April 2005

Opportunity Stuck on a Dune

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Mars Rover Opportunity seems to have roved into a rather deep patch of sand from which it is now having trouble extricating itself. Check out this hazcam photo to see just how far into the Martian sand the wheels have sunk. The rover team at JPL is carefully working on solutions for Opportunity to wiggle [...]

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Arnold, the Adventists, and the Sabbath

Friday, April 29, 2005

Legalism 101: in which Arnold, a Christian ex-Seventh Day Adventist, meets up with his old Adventist friends.
(Update: Life Outside Adventism, a followup epistle from Arnold.)
I remember reading some Adventist literature in a Wordstar document a long time ago, and it was, at the start, good and solid Christian doctrine on sin, grace, salvation, and the [...]

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When Paulo Got DSL

Friday, April 29, 2005

Well, I’m now on DSL; I ordered the service last week, got the self-install kit with modem/wireless router two days ago, and the activation notice came today. Installation was seamless: hooking everything up and installing and configuring the software took just 30 minutes. Cancelling my old — and faithful — dialup account at Allvantage took [...]

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Exploding Toads and a Movie Review

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Toads in Germany are mysteriously exploding, and scientists aren’t sure what’s causing it. I’ll bet it involves the introduction of nanomeds into their environment followed by large doses of gamma radiation.
(Yeah, yeah, I just rented Hulk. Not all that great; the movie was really trying for a “comic book” effect, and what it achieved instead [...]

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Pandora1.jpg

Thursday, April 28, 2005

First photo with my new Nokia 6600. Of course it’s of my cat.

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Sky as Subject

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

I walked home from work today, passing by the White House to check on the Treasury Duck (update on that here), but she wasn’t nesting when I dropped by, so I moved on. Lots of lovely sky scenery:

Traffic light at North Capitol St and E St near Union Station, with altocumulus translucidus clouds overhead.

A fading [...]

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Recent Reading: In The Presence of My Enemies

Sunday, April 24, 2005

In the Presence of My Enemies, by Gracia Burnham. Remember the Burnhams? Missionaries on furlough, they were kidnapped from their beach resort by Abu Sayyaf thugs in 2001, and were held hostage for more than a year before a tragic rescue attempt, in which Martin was killed and Gracia wounded by “friendly” fire.
Gracia’s account of [...]

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Let Sleeping Ducks Lie

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Sleeping well past the quack of dawn outside Union Station.

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The End of Cherry Blossom Season

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Fallen, withered cherry blossom stems litter the walk around the Tidal Basin. The cherry trees are simple green-leafed trees like any other now, and will be so till next Spring.

High tide and pre-storm river surge have swollen the Potomac so that the Tidal Basin has flooded its lower-lying banks near Jefferson Memorial. The poles sticking [...]

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Oregon Scientific DS6628

Saturday, April 23, 2005

I just impulse-bought a new camera at the Discovery Store: a blue Oregon Scientific Thincam DS6628. It’s about the length and width of a credit card, but a few millimeters thicker. Image quality is just barely okay — a bit fragmented and faded, which I expected — but it’s comparable to my old Pencam SD, [...]

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