Sunday, February 24, 2008

Hey, Another Post

Well, I am finally putting up a second post!!

Life has been interesting I guess. Spring Break is coming
in a jiffy (two weeks) and I am quite excited. Unfortunately, between now and then a lot has to happen. Several tests and another Lego Project (;-P). Speaking of Lego projects, My team just finished one last week called the Scruncher. It is basically a robot who moves by expanding and contracting an accordion-like body. It is pretty sweet, I uploaded a video of it to my facebook, I'll have to see if I can't get a copy uploaded here to.

Well, this time of year is taxes time to. Man, those tax forms are such a pain to fill out! But, it sure is nice to still be at that income stage of getting a refund check for all that has been withheld(except for social security and Medicare!). :-)


I thought this last week has been interesting in terms of news though. On Sunday, Kosovo declared official independence from Serbia, which has really angered the Serbians. I don't know what they are going to do since many of the world powers
have recognized them, including the US, Britain, France, Australia, and others. But, Russia, and China still haven't, they say this sets a bad precedent for other separatist groups around the world. More or less, they basically jsut don't like to much freedom, and Kosovo used to be part of the U.S.S.R. anyways.

Also, on Wednesday/Thursday the U.S. shot down the dead spy satellite with an anti-missile missile. And it successfully worked! It was officially done so that
the poisonous Hydrazine fuel didn't fall on a populated area after it partially burned up in the atmosphere. It definitely had an added side-benefit of getting to test and anti-satellite missile system without to much of a world-wide uproar. I doubt if that was an original attention, but hey, they might as well take this opportunity. I for one, am glad to see that it worked since it is also part of the anti ballistic missile program I think. Over all though, it is pretty sweet the technology that has to go into being able to hit something moving thousands of mph with something else moving thousands of mph. It is truly fascinating.

The last bit of news I shall mention is in the technology realm. On Monday(I think) Toshiba officialy declared the end of HD-DVD. Also on that day was the cutoff for Verizon and AT&T to shutoff their analog cell service. Though very few people are affected by it, it is still interesting. It now also frees up more wireless frequencies for other use. kind of like when analog TV goes silent one year from two days before the analog cell service died.
Just some interesting tech news there.

Well, I must go now to finish printing some stuff in the lab here, and go on over to a Chili-Cook off which will hopefully be my subsistence for the evening. Have a good week.

Hopps
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