Not everyone is having a Merry Christmas today. The European Space Agency‘s mission to Mars is lost in space, as it were.
Mars eats spacecraft like they were Christmas candycanes. Why is it traveling the millions of miles to orbit is easy and the 200 miles from orbit to the ground is hard?
Guess it’s like the old joke: “It’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the sudden stop at the end.”
Well, Santa was good to the Turner household. Highlights include a nice bracelet for Kelly, a basketball goal for Hallie, and a weather station for yours truly. It is a WM918 from Oregon Scientific.
There’s a funny story about how the weather station arrived. Kelly ordered it for me from an online retailer and it was delivered via FedEx in time for Christmas and all was well. Not long after that, the doorbell rang again. A confused UPS man stood on the porch, delivering a FedEx package out of his Ryder truck. Kelly then opened it to find – you guessed it – another weather station! Boy, Kelly really outdid herself this year.
I’m checking into some Linux-based weather software, like WX200, WX200d, or the Star Trek-looking Wx/Net, to help archive the weather data. Before long, I’ll be boring everyone I know with arcane weather statistics! W00t!
