Within 30 feet of you is a world of amazing wonder that sits hidden just out of sight. There are so many wonders hidden in plain sight that you don't think about, yet you need them to live a modern life. Let's pull back the curtain just a little.

If you have an old house, you have a gas water heater. A gas water heater is basically a steel tank full of water, insulation to make the thing hold in heat, a pipe going in and a pipe going out, and a fire on the bottom to make the water warm. The gas comes from a pipe line that stretches hundreds if not thousands of miles, which could be its own post. But let's talk about that fire at the bottom of the tank. If you look at the controller box, there is a gas in, a pilot tube, a gas out, and some weird looking copper cable/tube. That weird tube is the focus of this conversation; this device is amazing and you need to know about it. The way a gas water heater works is there is a small flame called a pilot light that stays lit 24/7. When the temperature of the water in the tank gets too low, a signal is triggered that sends a full blast of gas into the area with the pilot light, which starts the heating fire. But, what if that pilot light goes out? If there is no pilot light, and the gas triggers, your house/basement/garage will now fill with natural gas, which is BAD. Enter that copper tube. Next to the pilot light is a round chunk of metal, called a thermocouple Thermocouples are amazing in their own right and could be a post on their own. When the pilot light is lit, the thermocouple gets hot and produces a small bit of voltage. This voltage then generates a very small bit of current. This current then charges and electromagnet that opens a valve to the main gas input line. THIS! This amazing simple and wonderful bit of human brain output is what keeps you house from blowing up when the pilot light goes out!!!!! If something happens and that thermocouple stops being heated, the electromagnet can't pull the gas valve open, and no gas enters the burning chamber until you have to relight the pilot flame. Why tell you this? Thermocouples go bad after about a decade or so and will need to be replaced. Or, if you are like me, you need to call the company and have a part sent to replace the whole control apparatus due to a recall that never made it my way. a few days of cold showers, a 45 minute phone call and 25 minutes with a screwdriver and wrench and I am back in business.

In other news, I ate something that did not agree with me. I was not sick, but I had a bad intestinal weekend. Stomache went to war against the brain who told everyone to go to hell while he banged on my skull and laughed at our pain. The biological nozzle effect is a real thing and all. The result of all this was a involuntary 80 hour fast. I started to manage to drink enough water to not dehydrate myself, and fortunately the water just went right through the system and did not seem to linger. But I'm better now. This was probably the longest I went without eating anything in 20ish years, definitely the longest I've been without food and the means to procure it. The fast seems to have reset my food cravings, and I have been eating smaller portions since recovery. In all a-round-ways feel better after the disaster.

The kicker? Over the 80 or so hours, I gained eight mother fucking pounds.

And I have forty god damned pounds of books to get rolling on.

I rewarded myself with a shiny bauble: an atmospheric dispersion corrector for my planetary imaging adventure. I'm hoping to do better as the summer moves along. Mars is coming out of a major dust storm, and I hope to have better images this month.

I can do better. Assuming all goes well I am going to get a better telescope and sell the current gear.

The staff mocked me for crying.

Your state has a medical ethics board. Google that shit, report those mother fuckers. Blatantly unprofessional behavior, and against the oath they had to take to get their licenses.

Use the fight to replace depression with anger, use that anger to do something to leave a better situation in your wake. Use that movement forward as your first step out of the hole you are in. Journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step and shit.

We are in the middle of a suicide epidemic, and nobody gives a shit. Suicide is the second leading cause of death of male teenagers in the USA according to the CDC. More US military kill themselves than die in combat, by a factor of three. Some 3/4 of all firearm fatalities are suicides. More men kill themselves than are killed in car accidents and homicide, combined.

Bring any of this up and if you get a reaction at all, depending on the crowd you are with, you get silence, indifference, 'They should all have manned up' or some nonsense along those lines, or laughter.

You know who I don't see talking about this shit? average dudes.

Because any time us average dudes try to have a conversation about stuff like this we are accused of "mansplaining" or silencing marginalized voices or some garbage. One guy I knew back in the early 90's went to a mental health clinic to seek help for suicidal thoughts; the therapist felt he was a danger and reported him to the police. He did a year in jail as a 'threat to the community' and killed himself when he got out. At least in my friend groups we all know the universal truth is that nobody gives a shit if guys like us have problems. My friends have been down this road enough times with enough people we know that we all look for the signs of someone on the edge and deal with helping as best we can. Average dudes who have watched good people slip away all know nobody cares, so why bother talking?

Get off the fucking computer, get off fucking twitter, go to a bar, have a drink and talk to people. Find a local bar with a trivia night and go have some wings and play. There are literally limitless hobbies that do not involve sitting in front of a screen. Join a maker space. Go to a Geek Dinner. Go to a comic book store and say hello to the people behind the counter. Get off the god damned couch, get off the TV/Netflix/Hulu what the fuck ever, and have direct human to human interactions.

Hell, you may find some people sort of, kinda like you that make going out worth the effort.

As long as you are off my fucking lawn, go DO something.

The Interstate Highway System is a miracle of modern technology and the power of a functional government. The amount of technology in our roads is astounding. Asphalt itself is a wonder material. And we recycle 98% of it. (fuck you solar freaking roadways)

Odd number highways go north-south. Odd Highways ending in "5" are considered major arteries. Even numbered highways go east-west, and those ending in "0" are considered major highways. A three digit highway is a spur (First digit is odd) that only connects once to a highway and it is a loop if the first digit is even. The 405 is a loop that touches I-5 twice. I-880 is a shit ass portal to hell loop that touches I-80 twice, while I-105, for example goes from I-5 to LAX.

All made possible by Eisenhower who was ashamed of the sorry state of the US surface transportation network and awestruck by the German Autobahns. The best thing about the Highway act of 1956 is that it standardized all roads signs, widths and construction so that a car going from California to Boston, for example, could expect the same quality of road and understand the signs all the way across the country.

$500 billion total cost, 48,000 miles and who knows how much benefit to the US economy over the years. That and the vaccination programs started under Eisenhower are the best parts of his legacy.

http://archives.forusa.org/blogs/ivan-boothe/5-reasons-targeting-violence-media-wont-help-heal-our-society/12004

Want to make people REALLY and I mean REEEEEEAAAAALY uncomfortable? Ask how many of these kids are from divorced families. Ask how many are from single mother homes. Ask how many of these kids are from homes where the parents lost their jobs due to globalization. How many of these kids have been drug through the family court grinder.

As movies and media has become more violent, crime went down. But blaming movies and games? you can do something about that. Broken homes and divorces? Good luck fixing that and ever winning an election again.

I took a day off work, and got my first images of Mars and Saturn for the year.

"They're just asking for the moon, and not expecting to pay very much for it," Cappelli says. "And as a result they [can't] find those people. Now that [doesn't] mean there was nobody to do the job; it just [means] that there was nobody at the price they were willing to pay."

There is your problem right there.

Oh, and hiring people, keeping them happy, investing in bringing them up to skill with training and education, then working to retain those same people is cheaper in the long run. It is almost like we forgot how to employ people in the US.

Well that was shit news to wake up to this morning. Not a bad life for a man who was supposed to die at 30 though.

1. Two months ago I forced myself to finally stop drinking diet soda. Not touched a drop since and only hated myself for the first two weeks. I've not had any candy, chocolate, baked goods, sweets or other high-glycemic index foods since the day of the eclipse.

2. I went to a funeral for a good, dear friend's dad who died peacefully in his sleep. The dad was a good guy, gruff, hard, surly, but under all the abrasive exterior was a guy worth knowing. I'm glad I got to meet him.

3. I missed attending a funeral for someone, the only purpose for attending would be to piss in his open grave. Turns out his life did not end up happy and wonderful and drugs and poverty and being an asshole catch up to you in the end. Fuck you high school bullies, I do not feel sorrow or pity for you. If not for the item below I'd have not though of you in three decades. Revenge is living well.

4. Random message on Facebook found me, wondering why I never went to the 30th year high school reunion a few years back. I did not reply. Fuck everyone and everything about high school. If I had a better school experience... not sure what I would be. I got to hang out with NASA people, several of whom asked where I went to college, and when the inevitable answer of "none" comes up, the look on their faces was almost one of sorrow. Nothing like finding people you admire commenting that you have the smarts to work with them, and that they are happy about the work you do "out in the Heartland where you need to be." Then that anger wells up that your life could have gone in a different, better direction where you can work your dream jobs. Which leads into...

5. I feel like shit. Physically beat and exhausted. I'm having issues sleeping and Irma brought in a fuckton of shitty Florida air with her. The thing about medicine is that there is a numbers game involved, and that the numbers tell a story. Little more than a year or so ago, my numbers were " HOLY SHIT HOW ARE YOU NOT AMBULATORY!" Then they wee "High Normal." Now they are "showing signs of repairing damage" as the paper says. The meds that made theses numbers move also made me gain weight; but the reality is that I blame the meds and the work, and the hobby, for not making time to get this shit fixed. No diabetes, no hypertension, no signs of stroke risks other than being fat and sedentary and unfit. Numbers are good, but still feel like shit. Now to get off my fat ass and fix the fat ass problem.

6. I've not had a chance to play D&D in a year, not had a chance to go play with the new telescopes in our observatory, not had a chance to go and do nothing but vegetate with friends since March.

7. Still working with lawyer on the car accident now two years ago. The law moves slowly.

8. Mentally, I'm in a "meh" place. I sat down and sorted out a bunch of shit in my head a bit after the eclipse when I had a bit of downtime. Lots of balls in the air to juggle, and 5-6 more major doctor visits left in the year, but I could be so much worse. Mom and dad are alive and healthy and have enough money to live comfortably a very long time. Friends local are all in good health and employed. Unemployment out here in Banjostan is shrinking; you can always tell in a place like this when the economy is doing well as all the 24 hour big box stores start closing overnight because they cannot find enough people to staff the place a full day. 4-5 big stores are all ending 24Hr operations, and some of the fast food places are no longer open when I come home from astronomy shit at 1AM. So if I decide to change jobs, not that I am looking or need to, the IT unemployment rate is somewhere in the range of .1% for non-entry level work here. And Google Fiber is deploying to some parts of town, but I'm fucked as I live outside the city and won't get any of the benefits unless I move in closer.

Also there is something about Amazon wanting to move an HQ and Kentucky is being mentioned as a potential bidder. If they move in, I'm going to be shocked. But.. wow would that change Kentucky from a Red state to a Blue State in an election cycle.

Maybe it is me being cranky from a headache and lack of sleep, but these pictures piss me off. They should fill me with hope, but they don't. Where the FUCK were all these people 6 months ago when Bernie was being shafted? Where were all these people in October when Hillary was starting to waver? Where were all these people in November when voter turnout was at a 20 year low? we got a fuckwit here in Kentucky because voter turn out was 25% when he got elected. Low voter turnout gives you shitheels like Trump. So, where were all these people?

Mark my words. Over the next six months the Trump people and the Republican Congress are going to do some regressive vile shit. And people are going to throw their hands up and say "hey man I marched back in January!" And then sit on facebook and twitter and bitch, but not make calls, not go to the local ACA rally etc.

I'm having a deep crisis of self over this shit. The ACLU announced it is going to focus its efforts on reproductive health issues over the next four years. This is what they have done for the last 30 and we have all but lost the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth not to mention that the Seventh and Eighth Amendments might as well not exist because most people don't know or care what they are. The First Amendment is still hanging in there, but it is starting to look like Swiss cheese. Reproductive rights are important, and they should be fought for (why are we still fighting this shit again?) but if you don't have a right to privacy or speech what good with that do you? I give the ACLU a decent amount of money every month. Been doing that since I could afford to. After the last donor call where they called and asked me what I wanted them to focus on, I said "end the war on drugs." I was told that was not in the mission statement. the kid on the other end of the phone call was polite, but I felt like I was being taken advantage of for a paycheck and they did not really give a fat flying fuck about what I want out of the organization.

I'm going to sit on this and let it noodle in my head, but realistically my payment in February is probably going to be my last. That money is going to go to the EFF instead.

Sorry for the rant, did not mean to hijack your thread.

Bullshit. You see, now I am angry.

America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.

We Americans elected Woodrow Wilson, a racist xenophobic terrible human being. Yet, despite that, we survived. For crying out loud, America elected Jackson, a guy who ran an honest to goodness genocide, and yet here we are. George W Bush ran the place for 8 years and we are still here. Nixon and all his baggage. The entire Whig Party. Coolidge did nothing, not a damn thing, as the entire global economy tanked and nearly ruined us... not to mention fucking up the 1927 flooding recovery. We as a county have had 10, maybe 12 good presidents tops; most have been mediocre men of various party and temperament. And we have had 10 or so that have been appallingly bad. Want to get started on the shit shows we elect in this country? Here you go.

This shit of liberals whining need to fucking stop. NOW. We got 11 months to build or we are fucked. FUCKED. If the Democrats lose a single state house in 2017, the Republicans will have the 75% of state houses needed to pass Constitutional Amendments. SIT THE FUCK DOWN PEOPLE AND REALLY THINK ABOUT THAT ONE

Hillary was a bad candidate that ran a poor campaign. She did not pump up the Senate races, she did not excite the base and she was unable to close the election against a reality TV clown. So, now, we fight or we die.

Stop the fucking moping, make calls. Find the liberals in your state Democratic party if you want to fight back, get involved, get off the damn internet and FIGHT.

The astronomy club is still raking in cash from all the eclipse work we have done. We now have 3 years outflows in the bank, and at least 5K more incoming at the beginning of the year and the city wants to give us money but is sitting on a big grant as they don't know what to do with us. I've done enough outreach this year to earn a national recognition, doing the paperwork on that now. I personally have shared astronomy and telescopes and a love of the night sky with over 10,000 people since January 2017.

Curious if anyone would bite on a discussion of whether or not giving a lifelong friend a few more years to live in exchange for the money you've earned

Not a question for me. There are 4-5 people in this world that if they asked, I'd mortgage the house for them. The concept of "What is mine is also yours" is the best way to describe my thoughts on the matter.

A long time ago, a few people were nice to me; that kindness took me from lost and homeless to having a career and a house and a hobby that is adding value to the world. I'd do the same for my friends in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

As my dad says "These people walk across 100 miles of desert to scrub toilets so that their kids can go to school and buy houses. Fuck it let 'em in."

Because they will be the ones living with the thing. Fun fact? US/Mexico trade is about 650 billion a year. 1/3 of that goes through Texas. Politics will always take second place in a sane mind to cash.

The Hippie Tree Huggers in the US army are saying 20 million homeless and another 200 million impacted by the loss of food, land and economy due to rising sea levels. The Army is even writing papers on the looming crisis Some are starting to plan the US military response needed. The Liberal Crunchy Granola Peace Loving Free Lovers in the US Insurance Industry is writing papers PDF WARNING on how global warming is ALREADY impacting profits and warning their shareholders about the changes incoming.

But don't worry everyone. I went home on vacation and the nice people on Fox News told us all that Climate Change is bullshit, and Trump does not believe in it. So keep consuming and don't worry about the lack of snow, changing seasonal progressions, melting ice caps and rising oceans. After all God promised Noah he won't destroy the earth

(The man in that video is the chairman of the US House Environment and Energy Committee that writes US energy and environmental law)

Two weeks of being in the Fox News Bubble makes me wish it all burns to the ground and the birds and reptiles can have their shot.

GOOD. In my mind if you wave the flag of people who slaughtered millions and waged war on the USA, you should have bad things happen to you. Free speech and all, sure. But Free Speech is not free from consequence. Waving a NAZI flag, a Confederate battle flag, a Soviet flag, an anarchist flag should have real world consequences.

And I say that as a guy who wants my racists loud and proud and out in the open. firstly, it reminds some of my weaker willed liberal friends that these people exist and there are still battles to fight. Secondly so that I know who these idiots are so I can not interact with them other than to mock them.

This time next week, after 13K spent and who the fuck knows how many hours, I may know what is wrong with me health wise. Then, 2016 can go eat a bag of corpses for all I care.

The internet is bad. Sure we get cat videos and we can have conversations on Hubski, but there is a terrible downside to the internet. Some call it the Instagram Effect Some call it the Social Media Bias where we see the good times and don't post the bad so we get a skewed outlook onto other people's lives. They are writing papers on these impacts. The internet and the companies that run the ad networks are pushing, HARD, to keep you in a Filter Bubble so that you get validation for your beliefs and keep coming back. The internet is Balkanizing the technological west, and that concerns me. Once you get in that bubble, say, "I'm a Liberal," or "I'm a Conservative" to use a recent example, your bubble makes it easier as time goes on to "other" the opposition. Look at the protests and violence after the Trump win. I'll make a blanket statement that the people rioting live in an internet-fueled filter bubble and never go to pro-trump media and see the world from the other side.

So you have an average life. You got a car, a job, a house. Mike and Becky post on Facebook all their travel, the fancy stuff they buy and now you feel worse off than you are. Mike and Becky don't post the fights over money, the mounting debt, the work stress, the other stuff every single person deals with as a part of living in a modern technological society. You live through that, but you see other people "living" better than you are. I've watched friends go through this, hell I go through it when people in the area buy kick ass astronomy gear that I cannot afford. Your friends buy a new car, and all the sudden your five year old car that is perfectly fine looks like shit in your mind. In the old days where you met Mike after work in the pub, or a bar to watch the game, you could talk about the bad things, get stuff off your chest and realize we are all fighting the same battle, even if we put up a cheerful public face. There are people that I know in real life who are completely different people online. I bet everyone here can say the exact same thing.

The most concerning thing about these effects are that poor people and rich people go to different web sites, they interact in different forums, they are pulling apart into different spheres of living. Wealth is retreating to the coasts and big cities leaving the rest of the place falling apart and feeling left out. Then you get President Trump; hopefully that will be the worst disaster this pulling apart will have in my lifetime.

There is no longer a singular "American Culture" to put my thoughts into words. We don't watch the same TV, we don't listen to the same music, we don't read the same news sources. Maybe we never did, but the internet is accelerating that pulling apart. And while a diversity of thought is vital to the function of a free and liberal republic, there is a stirring of concern in my head that things like the tech idiots in California pushing for a "Calexit" while just noise and emotion now, may grow in the future. Why should California send so much money to Washington for it to only support so-called Red states like Kansas, Utah etc? (Hint: California sells a ton of goods and services to those places) But, say in fifty years, when Kansas and California are so radically different culturally, will a Calexit or a Quebecois-style movement take hold?

Due to my working in IT for going on three decades, I am a part of the people who helped make this mess, even if only because I profit off the incoming doom. And I'm starting to have that crisis of conscience that maybe I don't want to be a part of IT, the internet etc any more. My hope is to drop all frivolous spending, save and invest like my life depends on it, get healthier, and retire in 5-6 years. Then I have the thought that this plan is no different than the sore loser whiny bitches who cry "I'm moving to Canada!" when the election does not go their way. The good thing about living in BFE is that all the bad shit coming down the pike, race riots, housing collapses etc, if they happen, won't really happen here. As Hunter S Thompson said: "When the world ends I want to be in Kentucky. Everything happens 20 years later there."

Fast Casual was shutting down and dying in 2006, back when I had to design the AV systems for Hooters and Maggiano's and the fact that they lasted this long says more about the dead tastebuds of baby boomers than the fickle tastes of millennials.

My parents have pure shit taste in restaurants. Bob Evan's out here is a Denny's without the charm of a Cracker Barrel and a lower food quality than a Shoney's. Mom and dad love the place though and I ate at a Bob Evan's in four states when they came out here last year.

Want to know what food is good and making money hand over fist out here? Fried Chicken places. There are small independent places all over, a few local chains that always have lines of people and then you have KFC (always empty) and Lee's (for when you hate your food to have flavor and nutrition). The one chicken place I go to is in the edge of the bad part of town and I am often the only while guy in the place. I've been there enough times that they people there recognize me.

I do not give a flying fuck about the 'experience' of dining. The shit on the walls does not add to the food, and ambiance does not really do anything for me. I've eaten some damn good meals in places that maybe should have had a health inspector take a closer look. A few weekends ago I had a damn good meal in a bar that served 20 different beers on tap but had a food service attached. I want a hamburger cooked medium, and not burnt into a hockey puck. I want to be able to order a steak and have a few good sides. I want to be able to order a main dish that tastes good. Coincidentally, one of the absolutely worst pieces of meat I have every had was at a Ruth's Criss. How can a steak house fuck up a steak?

Chain restaurants have a Fox News level problem. The demographic is dying and the people who partake have driven off the GenX and Millenials to the point where no amount of re-branding is going to work. The kids that came in right after me were shooed out of the malls and now they don't bother; malls are dying. Who's fault is that? Definitely not the people that kicked the kids out, nope, not them. Applebee's etc are going to be gone in 10 years when the Boomers finally get around to dying in large numbers. Can't come soon enough.

If they take down Applebees, that abomination on all that is good and wholesome in life, they should all get participation trophies.

Everything 2017 exists to deal with Monday August 21, 2017. Everything else is the shit I need to do to make that event a success. We've already sold out a resort in the eclipse path. We've set up solar viewing training for multiple groups. Looks like we are going to get a government grant, maybe two.

The hope is that I can use this eclipse to double the size of the club, build more people doing outreach and work harder on making my little corner of the universe suck less.

If I make it to the eclipse, get clear skies, and live to talk about it, 2017 will be a success.