Later today NASA plans to launch the space shuttle Discovery, the first shuttle launch in almost two and a half years. It seems that significant changes have been made not only to the shuttle itself but also the way the entire process is conducted so that an event like the Columbia disaster will not happen again. If you’ve never read the bio section, I did see the first space shuttle launch ever in person, although I was just over a year old. My dad worked for NASA years ago, and is an aerospace engineer although he has since moved on to software engineering. There have been 112 launches since the one I saw, and today will likely look just like most of the others. However it will be different, I’ve read quotes that this is the safest launch that NASA has ever done. In the past, I followed NASA and space exploration in general much more than I do currently, but I guess there hasn’t been much to follow for awhile now. Today, however, I am just as interested in this launch as I was years ago and hopefully I will be able to watch it all unfold via NASA TV. Be sure to either point your eyes toward a TV screen or the link provided around 3:51 Eastern Time (that’s 2:51 for me).

Damn, it looks like I posted 20 minutes too soon. NASA has scrubbed today’s launch because of a faulty engine cut-off sensor, which is responsible for making sure the engines shut down at the proper point during the ascent. If the engines were to continue running at high speed without fuel, it could lead to a catastrophe. No new date has been given for the next attempt.

Last week it was a segway, this week I found out that a guy is attempting to walk across the US. This morning I was watching our usual morning program, the Today Show, and eating my standard breakfast of eggo waffles when I became distracted by this story. A 400+ pound man became tired of his overweight lifestyle and decided to start walking. He left Oceanside, CA on April 10th and started off walking around 10 miles a day. His pace was very quickly slowed because of various medical issues, but those seem to be taken care of. According to what they said in an interview this morning, he has lost over 50 pounds and is about half way across Arizona. He said that he thinks he can complete this journey to NYC around November or December of this year. If my numbers are correct, he would have to walk close to 15 miles a day to finish by the end of the year. Follow his story here (site is currently slow).

I finally got a nap in after work on Friday. After that we picked up Christie and Ashley and headed to Doni and Phil’s for dinner and some cornhole games. This time Doni and Phil actually played a game or two. Not much else happened, I think most of us were still recovering from the night before.

Saturday we headed over to the pool at Woodside. Todd and Susan met up with us and we spend a few hours lounging and swimming. From there we headed over to Geoff and Casey’s apartment to meet up with them and Mike for some more rounds of cornhole. We suddenly became the life of their apartment complex. We must have had a dozen or so people out playing, and some were actually good even though they claimed they had never played before. After the sun went down we decided to meet up with Christie and Ashley at Tomfooleries. Not sure that was the best idea since we had all been drinking most of the day, but we escaped with no incidents. On the walk back home Mike decided it would be a good idea to take a dip in the JC Nichols Fountain. We all joined in and were having fun until we realized how dirty the fountain probably is. We continued on our way, but when we got to our apartment I realized that I didn’t have the keys to get in. Kim was convinced I dropped them in the fountain, so she went back down to search for them. We later realized that we left them in the car which was parked outside of Geoff’s place on the other side of the plaza. Therefore we opted to borrow dry clothes from Mike and just crash at his house for the night.

We woke up on Sunday and decided to take a walk to Chipotle and then over to Geoff’s to pick up our cars. Before we knew it, it was time to head out to the Tom Petty and Black Crowes show. We got their early to do a little tailgating and ended up missing part of the Black Crowes because of the large line to get in. What I did hear of their set was really good. Tom Petty also rocked the place and toward the end of the night said that the crowd was the largest ever at Sandstone. I guess it was a sold out crowd, and one that was probably oversold. There wasn’t a bare spot on the lawn, which was pretty annoying at times, but we all had a good time I think.

Pictures from the 4th are finally up on the site. I had to manually lighten a bunch of them since I forgot to switch back the fast shutter speed I was using at Wakarusa. Check ’em out!

I’m not sure what got into us but we went all out last night and I’m paying for it today. My headache has gone away, but I am extremely tired. I think I’ll take a nap under my desk after writing this.

Our night started off at The Fairmont for their Caribbean night. This hotel is the place to stay in KC. If anyone famous comes to town, chances are they are staying at this place. We (myself, Kim, Ashley and Christie) finally decided to check out this party after much encouragement from Todd. Basically it’s a way overpriced pool party. I believe that beers were $6 and cocktails were $8. Maybe if they lowered the prices a tad they would have more than 10 people there. At least we can finally say that we went and encourage others to not go.

From there we attempted to show Ashley and Christie the bars of the plaza. We started off at O’Dowd’s and after a couple drinks headed over to Tomfooleries for a few more. Our favorite cover band, Gov’t Cheez, was playing just like any other Thursday night. It was a good night out but as I said I’m regretting it now. Less than 7 more hours here…

In good news, we may have been matched up with a couple of kids through the BBBS program. Greg has found a brother and sister who are 13 and 9 who need to be matched up. We have their bios and I guess the next step would be to go and meet them in their house. Maybe we�ll do this next week�

The Pig-Fest evite was sent out last week sometime. I’m sure most of you already knew, but just incase you didn’t, there it is. I now have confirmation that American Cherry will be back once again to provide some evening entertainment! I may also be working out a deal with a band called Greenstreet from up around Detroit. It appears as if they really want to come down and play the fest, and I think they would match up fairly well with American Cherry. We’ll see how that all works out, but perhaps we’ll have the first inaugural edpaffjr.com Music Showcase at Pig-Fest!

I’ve been messing with Red Hat Linux on the computer Phil donated to me. I’m up to the point where apache is running and I have an active internet connection to it. Lately I’ve been messing with Samba, which should allow me to network Windows and Linux together. I’ve just about got that working now. From here I just need to get a ftp server running and then setup the programs I need to drive my site. Hopefully before too long the site will be off of my PC and on this “dedicated server.” I’ve also been working on a redesign of the site for this new and improved version.

Do you have your own blog? If you answered yes then go fill out a quick survey from MIT. Just follow the link below…

Something caught my eye while skimming through FHM this morning. I guess this happens more than I think, but this time I actually remembered the site address when I got to work and then remembered to check it out:

Two guys quit steady corporate jobs, scrounged up all the savings they could, collected credit cards, and stepped – or better yet – scooted forward to follow their biggest dream: to become filmmakers. Josh Caldwell rode a Segway from Seattle to Boston, while his buddy Hunter Weeks directed a film they both shot about the experience and about the moments leading up to this crazy twist on the American road trip.

Wow, I am impressed. I wish I had the nerve to do something like this and just hope that it would all work out. Everything seems to be working out for these two though. Their film is done and they have already shown it to some small audiences. Now they are hoping to get it played at some of the upcoming film festivals. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to see this sometime soon…

After work on Friday we quickly packed up the car and were on our way to “the lake.” Doni and Phil were already there when we arrived and before too long we were firing up the grills and making a fire in the pit. The first night we had grilled chicken and fish along with potatoes and asparagus. Afterward we drank a few beers around the fire and even roasted some marshmallows.

Saturday we all woke up pretty early to get a head start on the day. Doni’s mom and dad stopped by for a bit to check out our setup. Todd came down just as they were leaving. Soon after it was time to pick up our pontoon boat. I wasn’t feeling all that well so I stayed behind with Phil and Gabe (the doggie). I think I was suffering from a combination of the returned humidity, my allergies and maybe a slight cold. I wasn’t going to let that stop me from having fun though. And besides we had to sneak the dog onto the pontoon after the girls picked it up. The Martins met up with us in their boat and we headed off to a couple of different coves in the lake. It’s almost like Lake Cumberland on a smaller scale. My family used to go to Lake Cumberland yearly, but we haven’t been back for a couple of years now. We floated around in the water for a few hours, relaxing with a few beers. It was really nice! For dinner we headed back to camp and while I took a little nap some fajitas were cooked up on the fire pit. The Martins and The Schmidts (co-owners of the boat) also joined in for the fireside activity.

Sunday was another early morning. It started off with some crappy weather, but that eventually gave way to another great day. Besides Todd, the same group as before all piled onto the SS Schmartin (Phil’s name for the boat). We headed back to “party cove” which was not as crowded as the day before. We soon realized it was because we were just a little too early, and before we knew it there were boats all around. We pretty much followed the same itinerary as the day before, float in the lake with a beer in hand. That was until I was attacked by one of the local fish. At first I thought it was someone in the water messing with me, but the second time the fish bit me I saw it. Guess where I was bitten? No, not my toes. Right on the nipple! The little sucker got me good enough to draw a couple drops of blood. From that point on, the water was avoided or at least we would wear protection when using the facilities if you know what I mean. As another storm began rolling in, we decided it best to call it a day. We spent the rest of the night inside the RV as the storms got worse and worse.

The weather never really got any better, so Kim and I left the lake area fairly early on Monday. It did seem like the weather cleared up later in the afternoon, but by that point we were clean and mostly unpacked. We spent the rest of the day at the driving range then at the grocery store. Finally we ended up on the roof over at Mike’s place with Amanda and Christie (one of the new trainees at Kim’s office) to watch any fireworks in the area. If only we were a few stories higher we could have seen it all but still not a bad place to watch from, especially without driving anywhere. Speaking of trainees, Christie and Ashley both started work today. It was just brought to my attention that Ashley knows some of the hockey guys a few grades below me, including my brother. It’s a small world. I’m just happy that we will have even more people to play cornhole and euchre with!

As I mentioned earlier, my boss is on vacation for the rest of this week and Raji is gone. They are already throwing some stuff my way to get done asap, so I better get busy on that…

The holiday weekend is finally upon us. We had lots of options for celebrating this 4th of July, but with a summer full of trips just about every weekend we decided to hang around the KC area. So what do people in KC do? They go to “the lake.” Which lake you ask? Any of them within a few hours drive. I’ve noticed that people here pick one of the lakes as their lake of choice, and that lake then becomes known as “the lake” to those individuals. Which lake do our friends call home? Smithville Lake (this is the best site I can find). We will be spending most of the weekend in, on and around this lake. Doni’s parents have graciously allowed us use of their motor home. I guess it is already parked in one of the campgrounds, waiting for our arrival. We also have a tent to use, since it looks like the weather will be really nice for camping. The Martins also have a boat up on the lake and there is talk of us renting a pontoon boat for half of tomorrow. It sounds like it should be one heck of an extended weekend!