Salad Is Slaughter

The story about units at http://www.aoe.vt.edu/~cdhall/Space/archives/2003_09.html#000363 reminds me of a story told in the old CRRES readiness room.

Back in the 80’s, before Challenger, I was working as one of the readiness ops leads on CRRES (the Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite).  CRRES had two tape recorders and when Ball Aerospace gave us the algorithm to calculate from telemetry where on the tape we were, the resulting units were in feet to beginning of the tape (BOT).  We told them that we wanted time in seconds to the beginning of the tape, not feet.  They replied with a new algorithm that gave us meters to BOT.  Still no good for us and we asked again.  Ball said that they would give us anything we wanted, as long as the calculation was a length, not time, and they couldn’t understand why we would want number of seconds to BOT anyway.

One of our guys sat down, did some calculating, and told them that we wanted the results of the algorithm to be in fathoms.  Fathoms to BOT was close enough to a time to BOT that we could work with it.  Ball Aerospace surrendered and finally gave us time to BOT that we wanted.

And then Challenger happened, we had to move to an Atlas booster, and we got a new computer system that could have done what we wanted despite Ball.

We spent most of Saturday running errands and getting stuff done.  I finally got around to taking Janet to my favorite Thai restaurant –Thai Thai on Lawrence Expressway.  The food was fabulous as usual.

On Sunday we put the bikes on the rack and drove to Santa Cruz.  We spent about an hour and a half riding along the ocean.  We got home about two o’clock and decided that since the day was still young we would drive up to Livermore to the Concannon winery to pick up some sauces and dessert wine.  Their reds and whites are ordinary, but their dessert wines, sauces, and salad dressing are really good.  We made our purchases and finished up about 3:45.  Most wineries close about 4:00 or 4:30, so we still had time for one more.  On the trip up to Livermore I saw a winery on the map called Retzlaff Estates.  we decide, what the hell, let’s try it.  I’m glad we did.

Retzlaff Estates Winery (http://www.retzlaffwinery.com/) has some of the best red wines I’ve ever tasted.  The merlots are incredible, and the Family Reserve Cabernet is fabulous.  It’s right up there with some of the best we’ve tasted in Napa and Sonoma.  The weakest wine of the bunch was the Zinfandel, and that was very drinkable.

The “Wines” page on the web site (http://www.retzlaffwinery.com/retzfax.html) doesn’t have all of the wines available listed; specifically the Retzlaff Merlot (they have the Noah Merlot which is excellent, but in my opinion the Retzlaff Merlot is superior.  Janet gives the edge to the Noah Merlot.  Both are great.)

As we were tasting we asked about their wine club — about half way through our tasting I was ready to join — and they said that they don’t have a traditional wine club where they send you a couple of bottles every few months.  Instead they sell you wine futures.  You do some barrel tasting and decide which wines — red or white depending upon the futures you’ve bought — you want.

They took us to the back and let us sample the Merlot and the Cabernet from the barrel.  You could tell that although the wine was still young that it was going to be great.  I bought one case of red wine futures.  We’ll pick what we want in January.

In addition to the red wine futures we bought a lot of wine at Retzlaff; a couple of bottles of their various whites and quite a bit of the reds. Try to get a hold of this wine (especially the reds).  You will not be disappointed.  Remember, ask about the Retzlaff Merlot.

For years I’ve been going back and forth – who do I despise more, lawyers or the insurance industry? Whenever I read about frivolous lawsuits like the Fox News vs. Al Franken silliness I rate lawyers lower. Lately I’ve changed my mind. I now put the insurance industry at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder.

As part of the process for securing a loan for the new house, we had to get homeowner’s insurance. Shouldn’t be a problem, right? Well, that wasn’t the case. Janet made a call to AAA and was told that since she had made two claims within the past five years they didn’t want to cover the new house.

Never mind that the first claim was a water main break that she discovered almost immediately and she saved AAA many tens of thousands of dollars in repair costs. The other was a leaky water heater that ruined some floors that needed to be repaired. All in all not a bad record for a house that’s over 40 years old. But they didn’t want to insure the new, 18-year old house that statistically should have far fewer problems than the old house. I was immediately reminded of the problem Joe and Laura had when they bought their new place. Their problems were even written up in the St. Louis Business Journal. I was wondering if we would be in the same situation.

I decided to call my car insurance agent to get a homeowner’s policy through State Farm. State Farm told me that they are no longer selling homeowner’s policies in California; they had stopped selling new policies in May and they would only do a new policy for someone who is an existing customer. I pointed out that I’ve had my car insurance with State Farm since at least 1984. I estimate that I’ve paid them in excess of $30000 in that time for car insurance and never made a claim. I also told them that my townhouse was insured with State Farm through the townhouse association, so I was a current customer. State Farm replied that my townhouse insurance didn’t count and I would have to go someplace else.

I decided at that point that I was going to move my car insurance to whoever covered the new house, no matter what the cost. I was willing to pay more every year for car insurance, but those bastards at State Farm were never going to see another F’ing dime from me.

Janet contacted an insurance broker and got a call from Allstate. They’d insure us but it would cost a bit of money and the policy had a high deductible. We then got a call from Janet’s AAA agent, Ben Grande. He went back to the insurance board and basically told them to pull their heads out of their collective asses and insure us. He got us a policy that was slightly cheaper than Allstate. The deductible was still pretty high, but it was half of Allstate’s deductible.

The next day I called Ben about getting my car insured through AAA. He got all of my information and came back with a quote – $981. I told him that I had my bill for State Farm in front of me (it’s due on September 22) and, with my various discounts my next payment was for only $719. Ben was not happy to hear that. I was going to switch anyway because State Farm had really pissed me off.

Then Ben asked a simple question: “Is that $719 for six months, or a year?” “It was for six months,” I replied. It turns out that the AAA quote is for one year. So lets see; do I want to pay AAA $981 per year, or State Farm – who told me to go get screwed and that customer loyalty meant nothing to them – $1438 per year? Guess what I picked.

Dear State Farm Insurance,
You should at least buy me an expensive dinner, try to get me drunk, sweet-talk me, and give me a little kiss before you screw me. That would be the gentlemanly thing to do.

I apologize to all blood sucking leaches everywhere for the title of this entry. You have some redeeming value in medical treatments and are useful to society. State Farm Insurance on the other hand, are a bunch of bastards who will never see another penny from me.

I’m beginning to think that realtors as a profession are the most self-centered inconsiderate people on the planet.  We frequently get phone calls telling us that they will come at a certain time and then never show up.

And it’s not just calling in the morning and telling us that they will show up in the evening.  Last night we went out to find the dam that, if it breaks, will flood the new house and to get some dinner to bring back home.  We were gone maybe an hour.  We got back home with our food and there was a message on the machine from a realtor.  He recorded a standard message between 5 and 6 PM telling us that he was going to be coming by between 7 and 8 PM, and to call him if that’s a problem.  We finished our dinner, cleaned up the mess, put the lock box at the front door, and left.  We got back about 8:15 PM.  The lockbox hadn’t been moved – the realtor never showed up.  We checked the phone messages;  nothing.

If you’re not going to be able to make your appointment, at least have the common courtesy to call and cancel the appointment.  My back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that realtors no-showing happens at least 50 percent of the time.  Assholes.

I’m starting to wonder if NASA can be fixed at all and if Sean O’Keefe is the right person to lead NASA. Martian Soil reports that O’Keefe dismissed outright as “wrong headed thinking” suggestions from Mars Society president Robert Zubrin that the Shuttle program as a human transportation system be scrapped in favor of a space capsule for people, and cargo versions of the Shuttle known as Shuttle-C and Shuttle-Z.

Zubrin believes as I do that people don’t need to ride with cargo. The capsule Zubrin proposes could be developed quickly and cheaply, and it would be safer than the current Space Shuttle. Shuttle-C and Shuttle-Z could be developed fairly quickly using existing technology and would lift far more payload into orbit than the current Space Shuttle system – Shuttle-C could boost an estimated 70 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Shuttle-Z could put up to 120 tons into LEO. That’s far better than the current Space Shuttle’s 20 tons to LEO and doesn’t risk astronaut’s lives delivering cargo. The Shuttle-C concept has been around for decades.

So what is O’Keefe really saying when he states that Zubrin’s position is “wrong headed thinking?” For starters, it looks like he’s saying that if a person isn’t employed by NASA they have no business pointing out where NASA might be making a mistake in planning and execution. He’s saying that no one outside of NASA could possibly have any ideas worth listening to. It’s the same “not invented here” attitude that NASA has found so attractive in the past.

Another thing O’Keefe is implying is that a simple capsule for human transport isn’t “sexy.” They’re perceived to be ancient technology and don’t have the “cool” factor of space planes and Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) systems. My interpretation of O’Keefe’s statement is that NASA prefers bleeding-edge, high development-risk projects to using technology that can get the job done now. Of the proposals on the board now for a replacement to the shuttle, one of them is capsule-shaped. My bet is that NASA will go for a space plane design that ends up with feature creep that will eventually bloat the shuttle replacement into a new Space Shuttle system that will continue to put lives at risk just to put cargo into the sky.

NASA needs a strong leader who understands what needs to be done and is not afraid to take inputs from people outside of the NASA empire. I know that space systems can be developed quickly using off-the-shelf hardware because I was involved in such a program.

Delta Star was an SDIO program that was built from off-the-shelf hardware in less than one year. It was designed for a 3-month lifetime and operated for over 9 months. It proved that strong leaders with a vision – in this case Col. Michael Rendine and Michael Griffin – could bring diverse groups together to work toward a common goal. They succeeded and Delta Star returned valuable data three times longer than its design life. Mike Rendine was such a good leader on this project that I still remember his name after all these years and I would gladly work on any project with him in the future.

NASA needs a leader who has a clear vision of where this country is going in terms of space exploration. The NASA culture needs to change to allow outside input and realize that just because a person has never been to Hanger AE, they might still have valuable input.