Geek Habitat

This sums up the typical ‘merican mindset when it comes to global warming and other environmental issues:

Source: AdBusters.org: “Bump”

Note: None of the links here reference anything gruesome, gory or adult in any way.

I have this weird fascination with seeing photos of totalled new vehicles, like this totalled Ford Escape Hybrid, and the remnants of Joaquin Phoenix’s FEH.

Call it an appreciation for the laws of physics and the engineering that goes into modern vehicles to create a “survival capsule” where the human occupants reside. Call it armchair rubbernecking, if you like. It’s just one of those, “Wow. Just … wow!” things.

Ignore the Jolie-Pitt jokes and tabloid journalism for a moment and listen up; the following sentence relates to Angelina Jolie:

How often do you hear that from a Hollywood A-list star?

Kudos to my former corporate cohort, Regan, and her Honda Civic Hybrid — she got 83.2 MPG over 1.5 miles!

Hey, we may not be hypermilers (I certainly am not), but {WOOT!} it’s still awesome!

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Pssst… the Honda hybrids dash is much cooler than my Ford Escape Hybrid’s — like being in a glass cockpit (Garmin G1000-equipped) aircraft. Ah well, I’ll keep playing with my little cartoon screen in the Escape Hybrid. Afterall, I get my geekage from the Garmin Streetpilot 2720 I have suction-mounted to my windshield. [Yeah, trying the suction mount again even though when it gave way last time it put a 1/2 inch long gash in my dashboard. One hard stop thanks to following an unmarked student driver is enough to make me experiment with sturdy GPS placement.]

My latest addiction is audiobooks. I know, they’ve been around for decades, but it’s taken this long for the technology to advance such that the sound quality is good, the purchase price is (relatively) reasonable, and the quality of the actors doing the narration/voice acting is top notch.

I recently finished listening to Star Trek Voyager: Mosaic based on the book of the same name. Kate Mulgrew did the narration and voice acting, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I’m now listening to Tea at Five, the audiobook version of the one woman stage play of the same name, starring Kate Mulgrew as Katharine Hepburn:

The Space Shuttle Discovery is ascending to space one again, sometime in July 2006, for mission STS-121 (Part II of NASA’s Return to Flight.)

The first “Return to Flight” mission, STS-114, garnered significant media coverage (and GeekHabitat coverage) due to being the first Shuttle to fly in two years’ time. The mission attracted further interest when astronauts aboard the International Space Station, Space Shuttle Discovery and via extravehicular maneuvers (spacewalk), undertook an unprecedented in-flight repair of the Shuttle’s Thermal Protection System (TPS) tiles beneath the orbiter. STS-114 launched on June 26, 2005. One day later, NASA voluntarily grounded the Shuttle fleet when STS-114 launch videos cleared showed debris once again shed from the External Tank and fell toward the Space Shuttle’s relatively fragile thermal protection tiles.