In trying to avoid cluttering the Main Page with all one subject, even one so close to my heart as movies and shows, I post a lot of my movie reviews in it's own category and not on the Main Page.  Some of the more recent movies posted are:

Muppet Treasure Island -- April 14
Ransom -- April 14
Executive Decision -- April 13
Father's Day -- April 7

So when a airliner gets a big hole blasted in it's side, where does all of the paper flying around the cabin come from?  I mean the only paper in airplanes are the little travel magazines, but the paper flying around is unbound.  Newspapers and such.  Maybe the magazine staples all get pulled and sucked out the hole.  Never did figure that out.

Mythbusters did an experiment in Episode 10 to see if a bullet would blow out the side of a plane.  OK, so the bullet didn't, but let's just say they found something that did.

On TWA Flight 840 back in 1986, a bomb blew a hole in the plane and 4 people, one of them with the seat, were blown out the hole.  But no mention of a cabin full of papers.  During the Aloha Flight 243, the roof tore off and pretty much the movie version of things occurred, except that the stuff flying around was debris and insulation, not paper.

I just watched Executive Decision and sure enough.  Big hole blasted in the side at 30,000 feet, a row of seats went out the hole, and all these thousands of papers flew around the plane and out the hole.

But where does the paper come from?

Talk about being over budget.

The Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, were blasted off and landed on Mars over 14 months ago.  They were supposed to work for 90 days, only 3 months.  14 months later they are still chugging along.

Even the Spirit, which had a bum wheel and was coated in dust has gotten a new lease on life.  It's back up to nearly full power, and even the gimp wheel has shaken itself back into place and is working fine.  For a while there Spirit even had to drive backwards to limit the trouble the wheel would cause.

Opportunity is showing a little age now for the first time, but both rovers are doing great.  So now NASA has to pay to keep the information coming in.  NASA has extended funding for the Rover Project for the next 18 months.  No one is sure how long the little buggies are going to last.  But we are hopeful that we can still get a huge amount of information out of them.

Given the fact that there are no oil changes, recharge stations, tow trucks or maintenance checks, when these things break it's probably going to happen suddenly.  A wheel will lock up, although the thing can continue with a couple of bad wheels, the batteries will croak, or something will physically break.  Eventually they will stop.

But until they do, the Rovers and the scientists are fully funded.  For the next 18 months anyway.  If they last longer than that, then NASA's really going to be scratching their heads about what do with them.

Already the scientists grab coffee and donuts and go try to figure out what they can have them do...  They've done everything they were designed for.  90 days of info and finding conclusive proof of a history of water on Mars.  Done.  Did that.  What next?  Now the Rovers are creating maps of the surface and stopping for the occasional photo-op or soil sample.  Which is all important.  We still need tons more information if we are ever going to build a McDonald's there.

In the search for Intelligent Life in the Universe, or at least for the occasional bright idea from one of our managers, we've started using a Personality Test from The Keil Centre Chartered Psychologists.  At the end of the test, you'll be given the opportunity to either contact me or your very closest psychologist.

QUESTION #1:

How do you put a giraffe into the refrigerator?

I was poking around on Chris Pirillo's blog tonight, it's an interesting read, but I liked the old format when you could actually read the article instead of just a 3-4 word except.  And when I read other blogs, I like to look at their blogroll -- their list of favorite blogs they read.  I figure that if I enjoy reading their blog, I might also enjoy reading the blogs they read.  OK, well, it doesn't often happen, but you can run across a gem every now and then.

He linked over to Ramblings of a Southernbelle in his favs.  She's discussing one of the banes of blogging, trackback spam.  I won't go into it in this article, but yeah. it's a huge pain and something that we (Blogware resellers and all other blogging companies) are working towards eradicating.

She has this article on her blog talking about this great waste of time she read about on Sarah Lane's blog.  Following the bouncing ball, I find myself on Sarah's site reading some of the great articles she has there.

So following links following links following links, I've read some great articles, had some fun, and found a great website.  So now I waste time with the best of them.  I've also sent the site to all of my friends (and enemies) so they don't get any more work done than I am and make me look bad.

Oh?  The site?   CuteLittleKittens.com.  There.  It'll be the weekend before you know it.