Nuke

i think im gonna get a different kind of christmas tree and watch die hard.

i did something to my finger on tuesday, its swollen and hurts when i use it. all i did was pick up a 12 pack. also im tired of people telling me not to stuff my bird. nothing quite as good as in-bird giblet stuffing (our bird didnt come with gibs unfortunately). the same people also make mushy inedible stuffing. i always make my stuffing a little dry to draw out the juices of the bird. this would make the bird dry if not for multiple butter and chicken stock injections. an air gap helps on large birds, ours was only a 10 pounder. cooking low and slow and use the meat thermometer to verify all the usual red spots are at an acceptable tempurature. people trust the little plastic popper too much. that just the indicator to start probing. the end result is some of the best stuffing you can get. side dressing doesn't compare.

the turkey has landed... ...in the oven. and now on my plate. it was delicious.

we have kind of been down this road with skylon. it can work but the payload delivery will be a lot less than starship's. think it would be better using the engine in a suborbital space plane, and releasing the payload outside of the atmosphere so you just need a vacuum rated kick motor to circularize. sort of like air launch but release takes place above the karman line. the same ship could have orbital capability for lighter payloads (like astronauts), and maybe on return from orbital missions you can retrieve your kick stages and other space junk. it still solves a lot of launch infrastructure problems that starship has, and the ability to launch from anywhere with a sufficiently large airport will make more optimal orbits possible. i really dont think they need to be in direct competition either, there is a place for both. its just an ssto spaceplane is a harder nut to crack and will be late to the party.

its such a great book that many say is not adaptable. idk how a movie about worm worshiping amazon women would fail at the box office. even the goons who would adapt it for "modern audiences" would find very little to change about it.

im really not that happy with the state of modern oses. i dont like win11. i dont want to buy into the apple ecosystem ("product ecosystem" is just another term for lock-in). linux is getting better all the time, but still far from something i can use for everything i want to do with a computer. but even then all are bloated messes that are far more complicated than they need to be for the typical user. bring back dos. i miss running an airgapped system with anonymously obtained software.

shut up and take my money

my kitties help sometimes, but they also frustrate the living hell out of me sometimes. especially when im trying to get the turkey in the oven. food may contain cat hair.

death. someday this misery will end. thanksgiving feels weird having skipped halloween. if only we could have skipped christmas instead.

with how many times part one got postponed im not holding my breath. rumors are that they want to do dune messiah as a part 3, so they can finish paul's story.

sometimes its better to let people know what you think of them. its not friendly but it does send a message that you wont be bossed around by monkeys. of course im a bit of a sociopath so ymmv. young people in general seem to think that success is measured by how many shortcuts you can take. education, employment, relationships, responsibilities in general. in time they will be the one taking low paying jobs they hate to pay for child support and alimony not to mention taxes, or being sent to the can for failure to do these things. actually its not new slang. frank burns used it a lot on m*a*s*h, though i think its meaning has shifted slightly.

point defense certainly looks cooler in scifi than shield percentage callouts. its why space battles in bsg or the expanse are a lot more interesting than in star trek. star wars has shields but doesn't abandon point defense, which i think makes more sense and is a lot more realistic (tactically speaking). its pretty much the onion model, where you have a layered defense strategy instead of a single space magic system. realistically speaking i have my doubts that scifi force fields will be all that useful and can be penetrated by neutral particle beams and lasers and will fail catastrophically with kinetic weapons. electronic warfare might be a thing, you might have hackers on your crew that try to break into incoming warheads and either self destruct them or turn them on their own launch platforms. stealth, diversion and mimicry are all going to be other layers in that defense. and lets not forget diplomacy and subterfuge. art of war stuff.

only about 7 hours late to the party. i understand there were fireworks. noticed there was some serious thrust asymmetry during the boostback burn before the rud. is that intentional, cause i was under the impression that only the centermost engines would be used. others may have been lit to compensate. i doubt that hot staging was the cause, it looked like they overstressed trying to turn it around. they might have to land their booster further down range and take a more ballistic trajectory with passive deceleration. its time to revisit and scale up ocean recovery (something like the now retired flip, but with 3 or 4 pylons instead of one, operating like a catamaran in travel mode, brownie points if its self propelled). upper stage burned most of its fuel before being scuttled. this is a good sign. its also a good indication that we got good data about the flight.

il catch it on youtube when i wake up.

had a dusting yesterday morning but it turned to slush and is gone now.