i think it’s something about the enormity of the challenge, and the grace at which the astronauts accept it. the rewards of success, are to leave a legacy of advancing every aspect of human endeavor. the risks, you might think, would be death alone. but the risk of failure for early NASA missions went far beyond that.

there were no people, in any profession, in any place, who were not touched, inspired, motivated, lifted, by the trials and triumphs of our journey into space.

Michael Collins is interviewed in one segment, about the world-wide tour that the crew of Apollo 11 took after the moon landing:

Instead of saying ‘You Americans did it’, everywhere they said ‘We did it - we, humankind.’ I’d never heard people in different countries use this word ‘we, we, we’ as emphatically… I thought that was a wonderful thing. Ephemeral, but wonderful.

Michael Collins, Apollo 11 [1]

the episode i watched today was about the earlier missions, Project Mercury. a quote from President John F. Kennedy really struck me. this was in reference to John Glenn’s first orbital flight in 1962:

We have a long way to go in this space race. But this is the new ocean, and I believe the United States must sail on it and be in a position second to none.

John F. Kennedy [2]

this is the new ocean. where the explorers who sailed from shores in europe to seek new lands, gazed out at the ocean as the last, vast, limitless unknown challenge for humanity—we came to know it, chart it, analyze it, conquer it. modern forms of travel make the ocean almost trivial.

will we someday ‘conquer’ space? i don’t think so. at least i hope not. whereas the oceans can be quantified in a scale that humans can (at our greatest abstraction) comprehend; space is vast in a way that we may never truly understand.

and i like it that way. when there is always something beyond our reach, when there is forever a goal that is scarcely not attainable, is when we are at our most clever, our most inspired, our most alive. we need to relish what we are doing in this pursuit, as this is where we play out our lives and write our own stories; the future may retell these as the beginning of something wondrous.

• [1] The Telegraph review of When We Left Earth documentary
• [2] This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury - available online in its entirety

the problem

first of all, carrie and i were navigating from traveling west on rt 101 to Suncook (Pembroke), NH. our Dash Express GPS usually routes us up Daniel Webster Highway, which has terrible traffic and red lights. so we asked the GPS for an alternate route. it found one. yay!

what’s in a name?

i am a stickler for consistent nomenclature. i pretty much make it my occupation. the GPS routed us down “Chester Turnpike.” now, in the parlance of road naming conventions, a “road,” “street,” or “avenue” is a thoroughfare which has an outlet. a “lane,” “place,” “terrace,” “park,” or “circle” have no outlets. and a “highway” “freeway” or “turnpike” are primary thoroughfares.

chester turnpike

this is a google map of the part of chester turnpike it routed us down. notice google shows the road ending at “N Candia Rd.” the GPS however believe that road continues for several more miles. in fact, there is a gate blocking whatever it is. the more accurate story also says, that right before it heads down into that valley that Clay Pond drains out through, at the top of a hill, the pavement … ends.

story in pictures

view approaching crest of hill

where the pavement ends - just over the hill

where we landed - hit the gravel pretty hard, the anti-lock came on and stayed on for at least 5 seconds

where they put the sign - a small sign designating that they didn’t maintain the road

road not maintained by town

no dumping - i guess dumping trash is more important than informing motorists that pavement ends over a blind hill

i plan to write to the town and ask them to please post a sign at some point farther in advance of reaching the end of pavement, that informs you of the upcoming end of pavement. maybe a nice diamond-shaped yellow sign that says “Pavement Ends.”

tomorrow i’ll inspect the suspension of the car, but i think i came through it okay. i built the car for this, really. i just didn’t expect to do it … today.

my desk was cheap (and carrie has an identical one) - $99/each at a used office furniture store. they have cranks that adjust the height of the work surface. my chair was another $99 at a different used office furniture store, and it’s 6-way adjustable.

here’s an overview:

and my desk (it’s never this neat, unless i’m taking a picture of it):

my plywood laptop/LCD stand that i built, it hides most of my cord mess inside:

and i covered the laptop side with stick-on rubber feet to allow air to circulate:

this is where i do all my SQUAREDESIGN web design and development. i keep overhead low, and pass the savings onto my back account.

it may return in the future, but breath holding is not recommended.

• the site name is larger, and the byline is moved to the right of it
• the main page width scales with your browser window width, but will have a minimum and maximum width if your window gets too small or too large (except Internet Explorer 6 users - you get a fixed width page. please upgrade)
• there is a very subtle, dotted separator line delineating the flickr images on the left, from the content column in the center, from the utility column on the right
• not only do the columns scale with browser width, but the whitespace between them scales, and keeps the separator line centered between the columns
• the header and columns now are more rigidly aligned in a grid
• the utility column on the right scales up to be wider than it used to be, yet scales down smaller than it used to
• the content column, and parts of the utility column, are now text-justified so they fill squarely to the right margin
• i’ve added some simple logic to the flickr image display so it retrieves fewer images on article pages than it does on the homepage (the content of some articles is a lot shorter, and the images were pushing out the page height past the content length)

this revisit was inspired by attending An Event Apart Boston recently (writing a summary of AEA on my SQUAREDESIGN site). if you have any opinions, let me know.

people are excited not only for the Celtics players, the coaches, and the staff; but they’re happy for the city and the fans. even documented boston haters have offered their accolades. what’s different?

i believe people, by their nature, are averse to hubris. they generally want to see the good guy triumph, the bad guy get his come uppance. what defines whether others think you are good or bad? identifying with you, your intentions, and your goals. judging whether you deserve to attain that goal or not. and herein lies the big difference.

the 2007-08 New England Patriots were quite possibly the most arrogant collective of individuals in professional sport in recent history. i didn’t quite understand this at the time; i kept wondering “why do they hate us?” and i only really began to understand, when i started watching the Celtics-Lakers series.

i won’t say that it’s an out and out david vs. goliath story. the Celtics team is more than capable and full of talented and accomplished people. but the media, most professional sports fans, commentators, and the courtside celebrities (athleteratti?) had pretty much assumed the Lakers would win. how could they not? Kobe Bryant is the best player in basketball, how is it possible that they could lose?

the satisfaction in victory, for a new fan of the Celtics, was phenomenal. i’m surprised how much i wanted the Celtics to win almost equally to how much i wanted the Lakers to lose. after seeing the chest-thumping of the Lakers players, the smirking Jack Nicholsons. everyone (except Matt Damon) thinking there was no way these “Boston” guys could take the trophy from it’s destined recipients.

then they did, beating the Lakers 131-92 and proving beyond any doubt that they deserved it. piling on points? maybe. outplaying the Lakers in every dimension of the game? more likely.