Virgin Galactic / Scaled Composites Anomaly

Sad to learn that SpaceShipTwo was lost in today's test flight. Hoping for the best, for the pilots.

Here's a CNN story, and a SpaceFlightNow story on the subject.

Update 11/1: One pilot was killed, the other parachuted out, seriously injured.

Update 11/3: It sounds like it's looking possible that the braking "tail feathers" (stabilizers) were deployed prematurely, about 9 seconds into the boost phase. Ugh. It's not good, to have all that stuff hanging out in the breeze, when the breeze is going thousands of miles per hour.

GPS Launched!

We just completed today's successful GPS launch, with some really great rocketcam views!

Here's a SpaceFlightNow story with imagery.

Orbital Sciences / Antares Anomaly

Sorry to hear that Antares had a launch failure today. A not-so-subtle reminder that this is a risky business.

I was amazed to see them (Range Safety?) let the rocket fall back, almost all the way back down to the Wallops Island launch pad, before they destroyed it. I would think they incurred an unnecessary risk to the pad by waiting so long. Once forward motion is gone, you'd think they'd destroy it immediately at that altitude, so save as much of the pad as possible.

Here's a link to early SpaceFlightNow coverage of the story, and a later story.

Update 10/31: It looks like maybe the launch pad survived with minimal damage.

The initial investigation appears to be focusing on the first stage propulsion section, specifically the AJ26 Russian-made engines, although they're not talking about any specific cause yet.

Pressure sores

The Life Care at Home nurse is telling us that Medicare will no longer pay for daily wound nurse visits. So the nurse taught me how to dress K's pressure sores (yes, there are two, now) on Saturday, and I did my first solo wound dressing today. Went OK. It was nice to have Amy here, helping to find the necessary supplies. It's really frustrating, that we can't convince K to keep the pressure off these sores, until they heal. Even more frustrating to learn that Medicare won't cover everyday nurse visits, even though everyday bandage changes are necessary.

Nauseas Friday

K lost most of Friday to nausea and worse. She barely made it to this morning's dialysis, as every motion caused another wave of nausea. Then DaVita almost sent her to the ER, because her blood pressure was so low after dialysis. But it finally came up, she came home, and has been actually doing moderately well since then.

Pressure sore

Kristan's had a pressure sore for some time, and it isn't getting any better. It's getting closer to becoming a stage 4 wound. It doesn't help, that it's right where she sits, and she has nothing to do but sit, considering she's not allowed to use her prosthetics yet. The only good news, is that she's learning to lay on her side in bed, despite the discomfort from her broken neck, and that relieves one source of irritation on the sore.

Smacked her head

K fell and hit her head, when transferring from her caregiver's car to her wheelchair, on the way to a medical appointment. The doctor she was going to see looked her over, and decided she didn't need to go to the ER. We're supposed to be watching for concussion symptoms.

IOS 8 app fails

I updated my iPhone 5 to iOS 8.0 and have been pretty happy so far with the new features. However, it feels like I dodged a bullet, after hearing my friends complain about their difficulties with the 8.0.1 and 8.0.2 updates. I also am noticing more and more problems with apps that are being updated for iOS 8. One of my heavily used apps, Quip, no longer supports the paste function -- it's a really bad Fail, to have cut without paste. And now Facebook pops the keyboard up over the text that I'm typing.

Way too early

One of the problems with early-morning dialysis, is when a caregiver gets sick, like today, I need to get up at 4 AM (win!), get K out of the house by 5 AM (fail!), and get her to dialysis by 5:15 AM (also fail), so she can go on dialysis by 5:30 AM (fail but not by much). And I had an opportunity to get to work really early (win), without being lasered by police (fail), and getting a speeding ticket (win), and even stop for one of those expensive cups of coffee (win) along the way. Uh, oh, here comes that vehicle with the red and blue flashing lights on it, following someone who was actually speeding… whew, glad my natural inclination is to do the speed limit these days.

The good with the bad

The word from Kristan's wound appointment yesterday, is that her leg wounds are healed. Yay. They don't want her to use her prosthetics yet. 

However, she still has a stage 3 pressure sore that they are working on. Boo. 

New dialysis schedule

Big changes at the K&S household. Kristan changed her dialysis schedule to early-morning (5am!) on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Started last weekend. We're still struggling to adapt. There are definitely pros and cons to this. Every night could be "Date Night!", but then, every Tue-Thu-Sat morning is becoming a bleary-eyed, up-too-soon affair.

Interesting development

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos wants to develop new American made rocket engines. This could be a hugely good thing for ULA. NY Times article here

Short but fun walk with K

Kristan came on our walk tonight! She's using her Jazzy J6 Power Chair, while her smaller more maneuverable scooter is being repaired. Runkeeper says we went a whopping 0.5 mi. ;-) walk. We had fun, though.

Numb arm

When I woke up this morning, my right arm was numb, all the way down to the ends of my fingers. Not fun. :-( I'm pretty sure I just slept on it wrong. But it went on for so long (I was so tired it didn't wake me up), it's recovering very slowly...

Sunday update: Finally, all better! When I woke up in the middle of last night, the other arm was numb, but as soon as I moved, it went away in a few minutes. Much better! I could probably avoid this phenomena, if only I could sleep flat on my back without snoring.

Bad start to the week

We're sure starting off the week the wrong way, albeit with a good twist or two. K missed dialysis tonight, feeling beyond rotten and couldn't get going. Naturally, with today being Labor Day, there were no makeup slots available tomorrow. But, when I called back an hour later to confirm we weren't coming, an 8:30am slot had opened up, yay, a bright spot in the darkness. And her caregiver agreed to come two hours early, to help get her there on time, yay, another bright spot.

Going home!

We're finally getting her out of here! Discharge papers completed at 2pm. Packing up to go. K wants to stop at the gift shop on the way down to the car. So I'm running a load of most of her stuff to the car first.

Update 3pm: The Swedish Hospital gift shop just closed. Forgot it closes earlier on Saturday. K is really disappointed. I'm secretly ecstatic, but trying to commiserate.

Update 4pm: Finally leaving the room.

Update 4:30pm: Stopping at Jamba Juice for a little something to keep her BG up. They completely misunderstood her order, and served her something she couldn't stomach. So I went back for a plain OJ for her. With a separate large cup of ice. And a fistful of napkins. And a fistful of long spoons.

Update 5:30pm: Stopping at SuperCuts, so she can get a buzz cut. Closing them down.

Update 6pm: Stopping at Tokyo Joe's, so she will have something to eat for dinner, and we won't spend a lot of time at home before going to bed.

Update 7pm: Stopping at PetCo, to get snacks for Mandy, pet cleaning supplies.

Update 9pm: Finally got home!

Update midnight: I'm finally going to bed! She's still going strong.

Too Many Dumb Drivers

As I was driving to work this morning, and absent-mindedly becoming irritated at nearby drivers who appeared to have no sense of the driving laws or common courtesy, I was reminded of "Too Many Dumb Pilots", one of my favorite stories, from my favorite collection of Richard Bach short stories. The differences, of course, between pilots and drivers are numerous, including a huge amount of training and certification that goes into making someone a pilot. But the commonality of the "we have met the dumb guy, and he is us" holds true across both of these skills, and probably everything else in life, too.

Dog day

Mandy's having a "bring your dog to work" day, since K is at the Hospital and her caregivers have the day off, and there would be nobody at home to watch after her. So she's sleeping happily in my car, in the nice cool covered garage. I'm taking her out every few hours, for the occasional walk around the local area near work.

K at Swedish Hospital

K was just admitted to Swedish Hospital for the night, a room on the ninth floor. She was at wound care, and couldn't stop vomiting. So they sent her to the ER. Probably the Gastroparesis. The ER doc decided to admit her for at least overnight, so she can get the dialysis she is missing right now, and maybe they can do something constructive about these lousy symptoms that have been wrecking her life for many months.

Update Monday night: RN says she may be here a couple days. Will get dialysis late tonight, which is important, since she missed Friday, and was scheduled for this evening. The Anti nausea med they're giving her seems to be helping a lot.Nice to see her BG has been very nominal so far.

Update Tuesday morning: She sounds much better this morning. She got dialysis between 1am-5am, thankfully slept through most of it. It still sounds like they will keep her at least another day.

K at Rose ER

Early this morning K said she had fallen off her scooter in the kitchen, sometime earlier. She had scrapes on her arms and a fist sized hard painful dark black and blue stomach bruise / hematoma on the left side. The caregiver has been trying all day to get her moving, so they can go to Rose ER and have it evaluated. It's looking like the caregiver will have to leave about the time I get home from work, and I will be taking her.

8:30pm update: We arrived at Rose ER a half hour ago. Q&A is done. The usual IV is in, and they've ordered some tests.

11:45pm update: The Dr says the CT shows the hematoma is superficial. Sending her home!

This was our 2nd visit to Rose Hospital ER. Some of the people did recognize us from last time. We think our experiences at Rose have been consistently better than other places. That's 2 for 2.

Empty house

The movers just took the last of Ken and Freddie's possessions, and are backing their monster oversized moving truck up the hill. Mandy's pretty sure she doesn't like this revoltin' development.

Robin Williams

Rest in peace, Robin Williams. I hope your next life finds you relaxing on the beach, with someone else putting in all the effort to entertain you, for a change. You deserve a rest. What a surprisingly big part of my persona, are my memories of all the delightfully funny moments you brought me, over the many years, beginning with Mork from Orc. Thank you a million times.

Birthday free coupon

Playing catch up. Used my 5th birthday freebie, and got to have a special dinner together with Kristan too! No more whining, dang it. — at Red Robin Gourmet Burgers.

Launched AFSPC-4!

Finally! Liftoff of DV-368 carrying the AFSPC-4 payload (and two others), from Cape Canaveral SLC-37. Loooooong mission, will run into the wee hours... Happy Birthday to me.

Quip - love it

I don't remember how I found out about the Quip "collaboration" app and website, but we have been trying it out, and so far, it feels like a wondertool. It came into our lives none too soon. So helpful for coordinating between me, K, and three others who have smartphones.

New catheter not working

K missed dialysis last night, so I dragged her out of bed, and dropped her off at DaVita Dialysis Center, early this morning for a makeup session, on my way to work. I just found out her leg catheter isn't working, so they can't put her on. She'll need to go to the Renal Access Center, as soon as they have an opening, but her caregiver doesn't arrive until 10am. Yet another heavy sigh...

The good news, is that Lorene came early, and she got into the Renal Access Center. They replaced her catheter. We'll see how it works, on Friday evening in Dialysis.

Gravity. Wow.

Whew. We just finished watching the movie "Gravity", with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. I've heard it had some technical gaps, so I promised myself I'd suspend my disbelief, and unfortunately that worked all too well. I got so caught up in it, that when we paused it, halfway in, to deal with some real world interruptions, I had some difficulty pushing the Play button later, because of all the knots in my stomach. But I'm glad I did.

Wave, Freddie and Amelia!

I just figured out how to follow two flights at the same time on FlightAware... Very fun! Hey Freddie and Ken on Southwest 1472, in the B-737, wave at Amelia in N58NG, the PC-12! She's passing you, going the other way, 10,000 feet below you, and (way, way) off your left wing!

Amelia heading home

Amelia Rose Earhart is starting the last leg of her adventure, a positioning flight to get themselves and the Pilatus back to Denver.

Earthrounders

Amelia Rose Earhart said: "We did it! We are earthrounders, Shane Jordan!"