Bob Hunkins dot com

A mistake?

The NASA administrator has said, according to USA today that the Space Shuttle and the ISS were "mistakes".

Well, that makes me feel good to know I spent 15 years working on "mistakes". I knew we should have been going to the moon and Mars a long time ago. Nice of them to figure it out after all this time. But to call the entire manned program for the last 30 plus years a mistake? Gee. "Sorry NASA employees and contractors, your entire careers have been wasted on a mistake. Have a nice day."

Back home

We made it back safely yesterday and found almost no damage. We lost one shingle from the garage, and we had branches from the trees broken off.

We have one very old shrub/tree that we have never liked and found that it had been badly broken during the storm (yea!). We spent some time cutting the limbs down yesterday and cleaning things up. It was hot, humid and the work was dirty. I was so glad we glad power and water available. to help us cool off. It could have been much worse for us and is worse for folks to the east of us in Beaumont and Port Arthur.

Since the storm passed to the east of us, the winds blew the tides out of Galveston Bay and we had relatively low water. I think our pier might have been submerged for a short time, but it's hard to tell. The trees all look much less full now. A lot of leaves are falling and have turned brown, skipping the yellow color they normally get in the fall. That is strange, and I wonder if it was due to the high winds that perhaps have damaged the leaves.

We got lucky, and it was good practice to go through an evacuation to see how it is done and learn lessons. Still in all, it was the opposite of fun.

I'm ready for fall. No more storms, please.

Home tomorrow

We've heard things appear okay at the house, and tomorrow is the day we have to get back home. The air conditioner in my truck has broken so we're going to leave very early to get there before it gets too hot. I just had the A/C repaired, so it was very frustrating to learn it had stopped working again. At least it's under warantee.

I'm eager to get home and get things back to normal. It's kind of a pain to have things put on hold like this, and I'm hoping that we won't have a lot of hassles getting home to make it worse. I'm curious to see things for myself.

So far, so good

The tide has not risen above 4 ft at my house. I doubt that we've flooded...yet.

From what I've heard from the friends I've been able to get in touch with, and the news, it sounds like we left Houston at just the right time. Early enough to avoid the gridlock, but late enough to get things in order. We managed to miss the gridlock that so many folks were caught in.

What I find amazing is that at some place the down the road the traffic must have been moving. Why didn't it keep going?

It's no doubt a fascinating study for some kind of engineer and I'm sure someone will write dissertation on it some day. It seems that it went bad at some choke points, and there wasn't enough fuel for people to endure. It would be nice to have the Transtar maps for a lot more of the time in question.

I think we just got very lucky and were able to leave when we were able to. If we had other circumstances, or had been delayed by an hour, it might not have been possible for us to leave, like it apparently was for so many others.

It also raises the fundamental question: Is it possible to evacuate an entire city successfully? I'm not sure it is.

One lesson I've learned: Don't wait for the mandatory evacuation to leave.
Another lesson: We need more refining capacity in this country in other parts of the country. I'm sorry, but California and the west coast needs to have oil wells drilled out there off the coast, assuming there is oil there. We need more refinaries. No new ones have been built for 30 years, and we need to get rid of the huge number of different gasoline formulations. It makes the fuel too scarce.

Things would be so easy if I were king. Yeah. Right.

I think this hurricane season has brought to light some strategic weaknesses this country had with regard to our fuel supply. It needs to be fixed. I wish I had the answers.

Becasue the refining capacity has been hit so hard, I'm positive we will soon be paying over $5.00 per gallon. And that is wrong.

Finally, I think the emergency management in the Houston/Galveston area did as good a job as they could. I will be very angry if people begin to point fingers of blame at the people who had to do this job. I know I didn't suffer much, so maybe I'm not so dissatisfied, but overall, they did their best to warn us and give everyone an option to get out of town. Unfortunately, it came down to the fact that the roads were overwhelmed at evac time. That needs to be fixed. I hope I never have to go through it again, but we may well have to. I do know that next time we will have to leave even earlier to avoid the rush, because that's what everyone else will do if this happens again anytime soon, God forbid.

I'd like two dozen gas cans, please

I went to fill the tank this morning and all the fuel except for super grade was sold out. As I filled my tank, I saw a truck at the pump in front of me with about one to two dozen gas gans in the bed.
I don't know if these people were hoarding gasoline or not; I don't know their situation, but it seems kind of suspicious. I wonder if we will be able to return to Houston any time soon after the storm. I am beginning to doubt it. But then again, all the information I have is from the media. They could very easily incite panic. How accurate are they? I find myself doubting them. In a situation like this, it would be comforting to be able to trust in some information.

Traffic getting better

The news is still claiming that traffic is gridlocked in Houston this morning.
It seems the media doesn't view good news as news. Otherwise they would report it. Where's the grid lock?

Weather getting worse

The tide is rising at the Eagle point station. At 3 ft above MLLW, The pier is probably just under water, but no flooding at the house yet.

Grid lock - nearly over

You won't hear it on the news, but most of the roads in Houston are now empty.
The speed map at 7 pm today:

The traffic cameras are available here.
This picture is I-45 at Beltway 8 at 7pm today.

According to the news media, things are very bad in Houston. I don't see it. I know things were bad earlier, but no one bothers to tell you things are getting better. They are, and there's plenty of time before the hurricane makes landfall.

Prediction moves east

The prediction continues to move east, making things perhaps slightly better for us and worse for Louisiana.

Watching the news today, They are showing lots of gridlock in Houston and elsewhere. I know for a fact that the lanes of the major highways were supposed to be "contraflowed", that is, all lanes set to run out of town. But in all of the aerial photos I saw, there was absolutely no traffic on the inbound lanes.
I don't get it. Are the news channels purposely using old video footage? Or is this the truth?
I was watching some of the footage and I was wondering: If the gridlock is so bad and the inbound lanes are open, why not get some police and a large truck with a crane set up, remove the concrete barriers, and start flowing the traffic on to the empty lanes? Do it every two to five miles or so. Have enough police there to maintain order. Probably a lot harder than it sounds, but why not?

Water levels at San Leon

There's a NOAA weather and tide station less than a miles from my house. They say it's at Eagle Point, but it's really on the eastern coast of San Leon Peninsula halfway between Eagle point and April Fool Point.

I'm going to post images as the storm approaches to get an idea of if and when the house goes under. So far, nothing too spectacular. The tide's a little high but nothing abnormal for this time of year. The winds are out of the north which I suppose must be due to the ridge of high pressure to the northeast that is rubbing against the hurricane and will be one of the main drivers in where Rita goes.

Watching from a distance

Like rocket launches, nuclear explosions and Osmond family concerts, hurricanes are best watched from a long distance.

The center is now predicted to track north of my house, but that means squat. I'm almost certain the place will be destroyed. I say this mostly so that if it really is lost I can get used to the idea, if not, I'll be glad for any small blessing. So now the hardest thing to do will be to try to do home work, study etc, without being totally obsessed with this thing.

From what I've seen on TV so far, It looks like people are leaving the area. I'm glad we left when we did and not later in the day as we had originally planned.

"The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore" is standing on highway 146 which is my main drag to and from school. Last night the place was a parking lot on TV.

Today it's a an empty lot. It was surreal to see my home depot and my Target on TV. It will be more surreal afterwards.

I heard rumors people are pushing their cars down the roads to save gas, things are moving so slowly. I haven't seen it so I'm not sure I believe it, but if things move that slowly and the land is flat, why not?

Evacuated

We made it to Kerrville, TX where we are staying with my wife's parents. All through the trip, which took us 10 hours, we kept hearing stories from the radio about how congested the traffic was getting, and how much stronger Rita is getting. If it continues on, I don't expect we will have much left of our place to return to. We took the essentials - each other, the cats, some clothes, what food we could rescue from the freezer (put it in a big cooler), some tools, a few things that were important to us, some trophies, the boxes for our PC's, and Surprise with all her gear.

I hope Rita will spare our house, but if it doesn't, we'll manage. I promise not to appear on the TV crying about it.

Bugging Out

Mandatory evacuations are in progress for Galveston county today. We're packing up and leaving for the hill country today. I hope there's something to come back to on Sunday.

Rita update

Rita is projected to move a little further south of my location when it makes landfall. We're going to be on the wet side. Still planning to evacuate on Thursday if things keep going the way they are predicted.

Rita's a'comin.

Tropical Storm Hurricane Rita is still coming to Galveston and people here are taking notice.

I went to fill my tank at the Wal-Mart, which has not yet raised prices (surprisingly). I would have thought at the first sign of a chance to gouge they would have jacked the price up to above $3.00. But it was still at $2.63.
The lines were three cars deep, and although things moved smoothly, I knew people were doing it because of this threat.

I went to the local "Home Despot", and the plywood was flying out of there like spooked seagulls. Luckily, we already have our plywood. At the Wal-Mart, all the D-cell batteries were gone.

It's obvious people are scared about this Hurricane. We saw what happened in New Orleans and don't want to be a part of anything like that. No riots, no looting. Just get out.

Unfortunately, Rita is going to hit some where on the Gulf Coast, and she will probably be a very strong hurricane when she does. The worst place she could hit would be New Orleans, and Mississippi just like Katrina did, but I don't think she will. My hunch is that Galveston Bay will be where she makes landfall. From my point of view that is the next worse place, but only because I live here.

Currently our plan is to vacate on Thursday morning, unless things begin to look less ominous. I'll try to take my Day Sailer and if possible a second one. We will take the CPUs from our computers and some clothes. The cats will come along of course, although they hate being transported in their cages.

I hate to sound panicked, and maybe I'm being influenced by the MSM, but at this point in time, better safe than sorry.

Back to the moon by 2018

I saw this article about returning to the moon by 2018. First, if they are really able to do it , I want to be a part. But only if they really want to do it, No more of this pussyfooting around in LEO. That's one reason why I left last year.

Second, will we get the right amount of funding? It seems we get too many restrictions on how to spend in the space business. We are forced to buy low when it makes no sense and spend money competing contracts for paperclips. Then, when when it's all said and done the costs would be lower going to the Office Depot for the stupid things. Surprisingly, technology scares the people at NASA, becasue we don't get such common place things as USB drives to store data because it make s too much sense. Never mind that they won't upgrade the server drives because they say its too expensive. Never mind the costs of hard drives keep dropping, and using individual storage media has a logic to it.

The idea of exploring the solar system was why I joined the business in 1989. I really hope we do this, even if I'm not part of it.

I didn't mean it.

If I were a superstitious type I'd think my last post had something to do with soon to be hurricane Rita coming right toward Houston.
Here's the image I took from the NHC.

My house if just to the right of the last dot.... Go figure. I know that there's a lot of uncertainty in these things, but someone in the area is is going to get pasted by this thing.
I expect we will start getting ready to leave on Thursday morning if the worst case scenario comes true. Rita is supposed to become a major hurricane after it crosses Florida. There's even the possiblity it may be a category 2 when it leaves Florida. We will see.

The Weather channel - Chicken Little

I admit it. I watch The Weather Channel, but it's mostly a testament to how bad the rest of the programming is out there.

But, they've been showing their media bias. One thing that's bothered me recently is they are claiming that global warming is causing more hurricanes.

So, I found the data on the National Hurricane Center web site and decided to plot it.
As you can see, there were a lot of hurricanes, 24 in fact, that struck the US in the 1940's. 10 were major hurricanes, as designated on the Saffir-Simpson scale. There were also quite a few in late 1800's. If you look at the period after WWII, the number of hurricanes tapered off, and has been lower since that decade.
I don't know where they draw their conclusion that we are getting more and worse hurricanes. Perhaps we are, since the 1970's, but in the 1990's we've had less hit us than in previous years. You would think that if global warming were doing this (beginning in the 1960's) we would see a definite up trend. On the contrary, it appears we are in a dip, and perhaps we are at the end of a period of lower than normal hurricane activity, but there's no indication it has anything to do with "Global Warming".

An old favorite

I don't know if it's going back to school (and the subsequent stress) or other things that have happened recently, but I've been feeling nostalgic.

I've pulled out some old CD's No, I'm not old enough to have a large collection of vinyl LP's, although it was the recording medium of choice for a long time while I was aware of music. In particular, I've been listening to Rush, often referred to as the " Canadian power trio" or "the Progressive Rock band from Canada". The detractors love to make fun of lead singer Geddy Lee's voice, (references to helium and Mickey Mouse are most common) but I see it for what it is: Thinking man's Rock and Roll.

Where else in Rock music do you find references to Shakespeare, Ayn Rand, Classic Mythology, Samuel Taylor Colleridge and Jungian Psychology to name but a few subjects or inspirations for the songs Rush has written?

Too often in rock music and today's pop culture, we hear about the execrable behavior of musicians and performers. Often is it presented just this side of being laudable, but Rush is none of this. Everyone knows of the Beatles' separation and the stories of the hostility and ego turf wars between McCartney and Lennon. Rock bands are thought of as being centers of antisocial behavior. How many times have you heard of rock bands destroying hotel rooms? It's become almost cliché! In fact, it has been parodied in the hilarious mockumentary "This is Spinal Tap"
Rush is the antithesis of this. While not being "monks" as guitarist Alex Lifeson said once in an interview, they are far more professional and from this person's point of view they have never done something to disgrace themselves in the public eye.

For a far more eloquent assessment of the band, may I recommend this article.

Rush has been described as a band that is either loved or hated. Truer words were never stated, and the best evidence of this, as stated in the above article, is they will probably never be indicted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, because the Hall of Fame "isn't cool enough for Rush" After seeing some of the so-called musicians that have been inducted, it makes me more happy to have found Rush's music and to be able to call myself a long time fan.

The only other thing that I find myself asking after I have listened to all their albums, from the self-titled 'Rush' to their latest CD 'Vapor Trails' is "When's the next album coming out?"

Let the gouging begin

I've always been puzzled by how gas stations set their prices. On one hand it seems to me they ought to have written policies and procedures on how this is done and on the other hand it seems they just set it at what they want.

The morning of the day after Katrina hit New Orleans, news stories began coming out that gas prices were going up because oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico (and other oil infrastructure) were damaged. That morning the gas price at the Wal-mart was $2.49.
That afternoon the the price rose to $2.62, and yesterday the price was $2.82.
How can they justify raising the price of the gasoline that they already have in their storage tanks by over 10% in the course of three days? I have the strong suspicion that they are gouging us, but no proof.

I know this has struck other people's nerves, because I've received three copies of the infamous "Stick it to the oil companies" E-mail stating that no one should buy gasoline on September 1st.

I get really annoyed when I receive these notes because the messages are forwarded from people who I know are smarter than to fall for this hooey.

Simply not buying gasoline on one day isn't going to make a scrap of difference. It just means that people buy gas on the day before or the day after. Big deal.
The only way to deal with this is to conserve gasoline in the long term, and that means driving less, driving a more fuel efficient vehicle, carpooling or what ever it takes to spend less on fuel, if you can't or don't want to pay the prices.

That's what is going tobe necessary until this country can increase our supply of gasoline or come up with another fuel system for vehicles.

Simply not buying gasoline on one day won't "stick it to anyone."

For an excellent article on this stupid E-mail, check out snopes.com