Well today was kinda a shitty day. My boss got canned, which is going to create so much crap within the company. They never really understood what her job was, so management (and over departnebts) constantly did stuff that screwed her part of it up. She'd tell them, and they'd act like they wouldn't do it anymore, but they would continue to do it. It seems like they really didn't listen or take heed to what we (as a department) was saying. Inventory the reject department it seems... anyways they are brining in someone new to do her job and it is going to be a big fiasco. She's not going to know what the fuck to do, because Ellyn did a bunch of stuff that nobody else ever touches. I don't even know half of what she's does. Yet, I have to train this new person. Me, a high school student who counts wire, is training the person who is in one of the most vital positions in the whole company. Whoooo. I'm also bummed because her and I got along really well and it sucks to see her go. The new person could turn out to be cool, I don't know. One thing though, I've got "hand" now (Seinfeld viewers will understand that). How I'm going to use that, I don't know, but it's about the only good thing that came out of this. R.I.P. Ellyn :(.

I went to the Portland International Autoshow last night, and well, since I hate cars, that's all I'm going to tell you.

Tonight I went to the Portland State Vikings basketball game against Montana State. They were #1 in the Big Sky Conference, but if the Vikings beat them, they would assume control of that position. The Viks started out slow, but caught fire later on in the first half. They took a 30-25 lead into halftime but led 30-20 with about 40 seconds to go (they hit a three at the buzzer).

The game was a sellout, which will go in the books as 1500 people. Probably more like 1800 were in the gym though, lots of people standing and squeezed together. The crowd was very loud and enthusiastic, something the Viking games normally lack, so that was cool.

The second half was all Portland State, as they had numerous highlight reel type plays. On one, the point gaurd threw it off the backboard on a fastbreak and Blake Walker had a huge two handed slam off the pass. Then he took his shirt off to celebrate... and well... got a technical, but it was still cool.

Montana State 51
Portland State 68

Went to the girl's baskteball game against Forest Grove last night. We are currently ranked 4th in the state, while Forest Grove was 10th. They beat us earlier in the year, so we had to win this game in order to win the conference. Let's just say... we got revenge. The girls dominated them from the beginning and won 70-50. They were ranked #9, but will probably fall out of the standings now. Tualatin is looking good for a strong playoff run, but we'll see.

Here is a video of last night's highlights:

http://www.zolknetwork.com/misc/thomas/forgrvbbl.wmv



Mars rovers still chugging along; here is a recent picture taken by Oppurtunity that's pretty cool.

Now that the AFC and NFC Championship games are offically over, I can make my Super Bowl Prediction:

New England Patriots
vs.
Philadelphia Eagles


WINNER: New England Patriots

A couple of developments from Saturn...

"We now have the key to understanding what shapes Titan's landscape," said Dr Martin Tomasko, Principal Investigator for the Descent Imager-Spectral Radiometer (DISR), adding: "Geological evidence for precipitation, erosion, mechanical abrasion and other fluvial activity says that the physical processes shaping Titan are much the same as those shaping Earth."

They go on to conclude:

"Data provided in part by the Gas Chromatograph and Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) and Surface Science Package (SSP) support Dr Tomasko's conclusions. Huygens' data provide strong evidence for liquids flowing on Titan. However, the fluid involved is methane, a simple organic compound that can exist as a liquid or gas at Titan's sub-170°C temperatures, rather than water as on Earth."

A picture of a river on Titan:



They are also thinking it may rain soon, so the probe may be able to capture some of that. There was a press conference at 2am last night but I fell asleep before I was able to see it. *sigh*

Beavers also just played #13 Arizona very close, losing by nine but they were within two at one point late in the half before they began to foul out of desperation.

Just got back from the Tigard vs. Tualatin basketball game. For those of you who don't know, it's the big rivalry game, so the gym was packed and it was very loud. Anywho, it was close early, Tualatin leading 19-16 after the first quarter. The second quarter was much of the same, both teams repeating their first quarter score to head to the locker rooms 38-32.

At halftime the dance team did a routine with their dads and it was pretty funny. It was obvious the dad's didn't have much time to prepare and couldn't memorize the whole thing. Then our cheerleaders went out and totally fucked up their routine. What happened to our 1999 National Championship cheerleading team? *sniff* Oh well, no big loss.

The third quarter is where Tualatin took control. They out muscled the Tigers, who actually had a bigger team, to boost the lead to seventeen at 62-45 by the end of the quarter. The fourth quarter started out very badly, the second string having about three straight turnovers. The lead was cut to eight before the first team came back in. They were able to hold onto the lead to secure a 71-66 victory.

Wish I'd have brought my camera, but oh well.

Hey, they stole the "Huck the Fuskies" motto :o

Okay, blog is now offically complete. Kevin helped with that thing I talked about, so now it doesn't look like complete shit in higher resolutions. Yay! I'll never see the benefits of his work since I'm in 1024x768, but others will enjoy. Thank you Kevie.

Pretty happy with the blog now, got the colors and everything working, added a fading effect so the background image transitions better... only thing left to do is make it so the image doesn't title horizontially so on larger resolultions it looks bad. I tried for an hour or two today but I couldn't do anything. My idea was to make a table, 1024 pixels wide, the contained the whole blog (no border or anyting obviously). I could set the background image of the table to the mars picture and then the body of the document to a darker orange that blends with the picture well. That way, on bigger resolutions, it wouldn't start to tile. Anyways, hopefully Kevin can help me try and implement that... after that... I think that's all.

Well, yesterday was pretty interesting because the Huygens probe deployed from the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn. The Cassini/Huygens mission, for those of you who don't know, was a joint project by the European Space Agency and NASA and launched just over seven years ago. It flew by Jupiter on the way, taking the first high-resolution photos of that planet since Voyager 2 visited in the 1980's.

Anywho it reached Saturn and took some really cool photos, and just yesterday deployed the probe onto Titan, a moon. Why would they pick a moon at Saturn? Well, its the only place in the solar system (other than Earth) to have liquid flowing on it. Scientists have long wondered what lay in the haze of Titan, after Voyager 2 discovered some shocking things about it. They predicted, from this information, that it had flowing seas of methane and varied terrian much like our home planet.

So far, it appears they were spot on. During the descent the probe captured pictures of the surface, revealing a hilly and very Earth-like terrian as well as dark seas with many veins and triubtaries running into them. As of right now they don't know too much, the information is just starting to come in. They did release one color picture the probe took yesterday.

First Color Photo of Titan's Service

It looks a lot like Mars and appears to have landed in a valley. It was ready to land in liquid as well. Apparently they didn't have great digital cameras back in 1997, but maybe they'll have some high resulution photos. The probe now will conduct various experiments so we can know exactly what's on the planet.

Also, it was equipped with a microphone (would have loved to see this on the Mars Rovers) so the ESA has released audio of the surface descent. Hopefully they'll release an audio clip of the probe on the surface as well, might be kind of interesting, especially if there's wind or something.

Audio of Huygens Descent

Anywho, I'm a space dork. :)

I've updated my blog style. I took a pretty basic template and added a bunch of stuff, including the background image. Took a while to figure out how to do some stuff, but overall I thought it went over pretty well. I'm still not completely satisfied with it, so you might see minor changes in the coming weeks.

" The impactor will vaporize instantly when it hits, along with its small payload, a compact disc containing more than 500,000 names of people who wanted to tag along vicariously. "

Including me. Ohhhh yeah... B)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6817717/

http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=Science&cat=Stem_Cell_Research

Good, at least one major political figures realizes the benefits. *cough*

Had a fun time in Vegas. I'll go day by day and try to be brief because I'm really tired.

We left Wednesday morning and arrived in Vegas late afternoon. After getting to our hotel room and settling down we ate at a nearby restuarant called Bahama Breeze. It was okay, I got a kindy pukey seafood pasta dish.

After that we went back to the hotel (it was about five blocks off the strip... rooms on the strip during New Years are $300 minimum) and drove along the strip. After taking it in and my dad getting frustrated with traffic we parked at Treasure Island and looked around. My first time in a Casino, and well... it wasn't anything special. They all looked alike, but I guess maybe if I could actually gamble I'd be more interested (heh, I'm so cheap I probably wouldn't anyways). We picked up our tickets for the show we were going to the next night, Mystère, a Cirque du Soleil production.

Mystère Website

The next day we woke up and headed towards Hoover Dam. Little did we know, thanks to 9/11, it took more than three hours to even get to the damn dam because they search every car that tries to go nearby it. Anyways, we didn't go down the dam road because the dam line was too long. We decided to cancel the dam sightseeing and ate at a nearby town. We wandered around the town before heading back.

We then went to the show, it was really neat and we all enjoyed it. Afterwards we walked the strip a bit, looked at a few more casinos, then called it a night.

The next day was New Years! I slept into one and we didn't head out until about four from the hotel room. Actually my parents went and did crap while I laid in bed and watched TV. Muhahahaha. We then took a shuttle to the strip and had to kill EIGHT HOURS. It was bad... we were sick of casinos and had NOTHING TO DO. Reminded me of the Civil War, we left a little too early for that one as well.

Anywho, we ended up having two meals during that time and finally it was time for the celebration. We headed towards the street and joined the 300,000 on the street to countdown the New Year. The crowd roared as the fireworks went off to signal 2005. It was fun to be part of, second largest celebration short of New York itself.

After that we waded through the throng of drunk people to get back to our hotel. Everyone was pushing and shoving, it was pretty intense. Too many people, too little space. At one point a fight broke out right next to us, police with riot gear came in, pretty soon police on horses, and everyone panicked. Was pretty scary getting shoved around in the commotion, little kids were getting crushed and people spilling their cocktails all over everyone. We all lived and walked back to the hotel room and slept.

The next day, today actually; we woke up, went to the airport, and came home. The Las Vegas airport has slot machines in the terminals (see picture) which is pretty sad. Anyways, great to be in the Nortwest again and see actual trees.

Rant about the Insight bowl tomorrow probably.

Pictures:

http://www.zolknetwork.com/misc/thomas/Vegas