Gosh, where do I start?

North Korea scares the hell out of me. Yesterday, there was word that any attack by the US would result in full scale war. Today, North Korea said that the use of a pre-emptive strike was not limited to just the US, implying that they might hit us first. “Us” would probably be South Korea, or Japan, but either of those would be incensing enough to precipitate a horrible chain of events on the Korean pennisula.

And, while that drum is beating loudly, the situation with Iraq is getting steadily worse, and looking more and more like war is imminent with them. While I don’t believe the war would be as one-sided this time around, I think the larger threat is from radical zealots who could bring more terror to our shores. And not just the garden variety “plane lobbing” style of 9/11, but the more horrific, city-killing kind delivered in the form of biological or chemical warfare agents brought into, or close to, our borders.

This is a scary, scary time. When I was in high school, Reagan was elected, and I was convinced that he was so hell-bent on war that I would not live to see my high school graduation due to the nuclear wasteland I thought he would help bring to our planet.

I cannot remember the world being as dangerous as it seemed then…. until now.

Test of the new server.

I’ve heard pensioners remember where they were when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Folks of my parents’ generation mark where they were when JFK was assassinated in 1963 (just months before my birth).

I thought my “life moment” was the destruction of Challenger in 1986 — I was sitting at the military entrance station in Knoxville, just preparing to ship out to Lackland AFB for six weeks of basic training in the US Air Force.

Then, I thought it was the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 — I was in a meeting at work, when somebody entered, saying that a plane had hit one of the towers. Soon, we all knew that our country and way of life were under attack.

Now, another life moment. The dangers of space travel have been brought home once again with the destruction of the shuttle Columbia on re-entry. Mach 16 and 40 miles up. There is no escape from something like that. The debris field extends from Arizona to Louisiana.

So when some child asks me, years from now, where was I when Columbia exploded and streaked across the Southern skies, what will I tell them?

Darla and I were sitting at a greasy spoon diner that we happened upon. We’d just finished at the secret dog park, and had to visit Petco for something or the other. A couple of doors down was a little diner, and we decided that sounded good for breatkfast. Darla and I were chatting, sharing our thoughts over coffee, and I heard one of the wait-staff gabbing about how it was raining in Texas. Then, in horror, I realized what she was talking about, and that the rain wasn’t water, it was debris. Darla and I hurried to finish our breakfast, and dashed home to see every network covering live this incredible tragedy. I taped two network’s coverage, watched the many video clips played over and over and over again. After a few hours, I just couldn’t take any more. It was done, and so was I.

I feel a great sense of loss for NASA. I feel an overwhelming sense of loss for the families and friends of the lost explorers.

Mostly, though, I feel a distinct sense of loss for the future. I can’t help but believe that this tragedy, and the loss incurred — human, experiential, dollars, knowledge, science — will be too great for NASA to bear. In a climate of war on many fronts, a declining economy, and a sense that manned exploration of space isn’t paying the dividends that are being sold, I can’t help but believe that manned exploration of space will slow to crawl. I couldn’t begin to think what would happen to the ISS. Could it be mothballed? Would it be allowed to spiral earthward, suffering the same fate as Columbia, Mir and Skylab before it?

I hope our children can live with the decision we make about faring off this fragile blue marble — it’s them, after all, that will bear the brunt of those decisions.

Molly, Emma, Darla and I visited a “secret dog park” this morning.

What’s a secret dog park? Glad you asked…

A secret dog park is a normal park where a group of dog lovers gather to let their dogs run, play and socialize off-lead. The humans “encircle” the dogs to ensure nobody (or, no buddy) runs off or plays too rough. It’s kinda like throwing all the kids in the basement to let them play.

Anyway, one of Darla’s co-workers told us about this one, and we found several new canine friends there waiting for us.

Molly and Emma thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and played their hearts out. I’m still just amazed at how well Molly gets around. If you look close, you can tell her alignment isn’t quite textbook, but she doesn’t know that, and she plays and runs with all the abandon an 85 pound puppy can muster. It’s a wonderful sight to see her moving so well, realizing that had we not run the surgical gauntlet last year, she’d likely be lame by now. Truly, a miracle from God.

Among the crowd were two beautiful Leonberger dogs. Gorgeous, big lugs, quite reminiscent of the Berner in build, but bigger, and with a very friendly disposition. Wonderful dogs they were, and the first two I’d met. From what Darla tells me, there are only a couple thousand of them in the US, so they are even more rare than Berners.

The morning was crisp and brisk — just the way a winter’s day should begin — and the dogs loved running about for the better part of an hour. No regard to size or breed, they ran and played, and enjoyed just being dogs.

Why can’t we all just be dogs?

It looks like I have the site migrated over to the new server now. The old home was a crusty Celeron 433, with 640Mb RAM. The new home is a AMD Athlon XP 1600+, with 512Mb RAM.

Also running SuSE 8.1, instead of Red Hat. Why? Having the distro all on one DVD is verra cool!

…And hopefully it will be. This year was one of the toughest I’ve ever gone through.

Dad’s death is still prominent in my thoughts, and it is still causing deep, deep emotions to surface on an almost-daily basis. I guess that’s just part of the grieving process.

Last night, Darla and I spent the evening watching the last two Back to the Future films she gave me for Christmas. It was a nice, quiet celebration of the New Year’s arrival.

However, the tranquility of the beginning of the new year is about to be broken with a major snowstorm bearing down on the Gateway City. Before it’s all finished late tomorrow night, five to nine inches of the white stuff are expected to be on the ground. I can’t wait. I love the snow.

The times, they are a’changing….

Gas prices have gone up about 30 cents a gallon since we got back from Jamaica ($1.169 just after Thanksgiving to $1.449 today at lunch — almost 20 cents of that just last night). That’s not quite a 25% increase over about three weeks. What’s up? Do the gas companies know something we don’t?

I can remember living in Omaha during the Gulf War, and seeing the gas prices nickel and dime upwards as the sabre rattling went on. The gas prices skyrocketed (although not as much as 9/11 made them skyrocket here — $1.30 gas went to $4.95/gallon!), and then gradually inched down as the outcome of the ware looked more sure.

This pattern of increase is looking very scary to me.

Add to that Bush’s announcement that Star Wars (kids meal sized) will be deployed by 2004, the continuing saga of captures and arrests based on evidence of impending disaster to be wrought by those incarcerated…. well, it’s all a little frightening to me.

Why?

Well, watching the network news reminds me of seeing the news in the film 1984 (the later version) — much disinformation, a great deal of the feel of “we’re doing great things on your behalf — pay no attention to the spycams”. I just get the sense that much of the terrorist news is “feel good”, designed to help justify broader powers of search, investigation, seizure and arrest.

OK, so now that I’ve ranted about all that, it behooves me to say that I do not want another 9/11. I want the bad guys caught. I want the world to be a nicer place. I want my daughter to grow up in an environment where I don’t have to worry if she will be abducted by a stranger, poisoned for an ignoble cause, murdered from afar, or tempted by illegal substances. I want her to have a good education. I want her to be able to accomplish whatever her skills, talents and hard work will allow.

I want the bad guys taken down. I want them taken down badly. I simply don’t want to watch our country turn into a police state in the name of anti-terrorism. Ill-defined “wars against terrorism” with no real endgame, the apparent merging of many of the police powers at the federal level, and an overzealous Attorney General all frighten me.

So, do I like what’s going on in America right now? No. Is there anything I can do about it? Not really.

I’ll do the same things I’ve always done: watch over my shoulder, try to be prepared for the worst, and ensure that my family is taken care of.

My world has changed. I suppose every adult’s world changes as they grow up. Why, oh why, did mine have to have such a dark, dark underbelly to it.

Sorry for the downtime between last night and today. I bought some new wireless gear, including a new router. It took some SIGNIFICANT backflips to get it all going, but it appears to be functional now. There might be intermittent downtimes here and there as I play with the settings, but I doubt there will be any further prolonged outages.

Things are well here. Last night, we surprised Darla with a full-blown formal Italian dinner at Mary and John’s. Such fun, and a joy to spring a surprise on her — she’s usually on to me early on with that kind of thing!

I also surprised her today by moving her PC upstairs to her office, and put a new 15″ LCD display on it (along with a wireless connection — essential for moving it upstairs!). She frequently gets up in the middle of the night, and now she can surf, e-mail or just goof off when that happens. Again, a surprise she wasn’t expecting!

Tonight, it’s dinner with her mom, dad and brother, along with us and Sio — should be a fun time!

Yes, we’re back in the Gateway City — exhausted, but home.

Aside from some gastrointestinal leftovers from the trip, all is well. I’ll be adding entries for days during the trip, so you’ll have to look back to see what happened on each day. These should be up over the next fgew days or so.

Photos from the trip are up, thumbnailed, and ready to view. Just click My Photos, and enjoy the tour. I’m thinking of changing the way the photos are presented (to better account for different screen resolutions), as well as how the thumbnails are shown.

Yesterday was filled with clouds, and it looked like the skies would not be clear for the Leonids last night. A brisk breeze and few sprinkles of rain, and the skies did clear… mostly.

However, looking out at 10pm, 11pm, 4am, and 5.30am yielded not the first meteor trail. I realize we’re in the glow of the city (somewhat), but I expected to see more — well, I expected to see something!

Today I’m off work to prepare for the trip, clean the house, run errands, and take Molly to her appointment with the physical therapist. A big day!

We finally got our itenerary yesterday, so now we know when to be where for leaving for Jamaica on Thursday. 48 hours from now, I’ll be cruising the skyways, headed south.