I love how everyone here is telling you to just pencil and paper. For the past 7 years (through both college and high school), I have taken all of my math notes in Mathematica. Every symbol, even the most esoteric ones, is at most four or five keystrokes. For example, an integral like integral x=0 to inf (x^2)/xbar is quick to enter:

integral template -- ESC i n t t ESC
bound -- x = 0 TAB ESC inf ESC
value -- x C-6 2 RIGHT C-/ x C-5 UNDERSCORE

it's really quick to type, and you'll quickly learn the keystrokes from the character palette. I haven't taken a single note on paper in any of my math classes since about sophomore year of high school.

--Quentin

Disclaimer - I work for NASA.

I don't think the cost per kg of cargo is a driving factor on this decision. The US government has a vested interest in supporting both SpaceX and Orbital on the COTS contract. If successful the vehicle SpaceX is developing will provide a domestically produced launch vehicle that has shows some promise in having a lot of launch flexibility and much cheaper rides to orbit.

Additionally, if SpaceX is successful it will provide some negotiation power in getting upmass to ISS (the rides get more expensive when Progress is the only game in town) and will also provide some competition on government contracts to the United Launch Alliance consortium of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

I will be whole. I hope he will be too.

Thank you, I think that keeps everything in perspective.

Heh, I'd say my life is spent at least in part surrounded by unrecognized monkeywrenches. I think I perhaps dodged some that I shouldn't have. But - I'm not of the temperament for regret. I am generally happy in most circumstances, and even my worst days, or biggest despair rarely survive overnight.

So, I suppose I'm either blissfully ignorant or criminally stupid. One or the other.

gawd you're right about twitter. It's crack for information junkies. I hope the funding comes through, is the possible state change because of the economy?

We would normally be snowmobiling, but my husband has really bad tendonitis in his arm, so we've been benched. I can't believe how much I miss it. I like so many things about snowmobiling, that just doesn't work for other things, like ATVs for example. I console myself with the fact that it hasn't been a stellar snow year :)

OK is tough - hard not to feel guilty if you aren't satisfied, but hard not to wish for more. If you could pick any monkeywrench to throw in, what would it be?

Is there a mouse in your future?

Much simpler:

openssl rand -base64 32 | head -c 10

Where "10" is the number of characters you want.

--Quentin

We actually had an interesting situation where I work (spacecraft operations). We had a senior aerospace engineer depart after 15 years to become an airline pilot, of all things (decided to turn a hobby into a job).

About a year later, he came back part time because the routes he flew left him with large blocks of free time at irregular periods during the month, and he was getting bored (because before his "hobby" was flying....and he stopped doing that on his days off!).

It was a win-win situation. He'd give us 40-60 hours a month of hourly work when it was convenient for him. We kept his hopper full of things like documentation, training, and other stuff that most senior guys consider dreg work. Even though he now has enough seniority to avoid pilot furloughs, he'll volunteer to drop his flight hours if the airline needs him to. He just increases his hours with us (and he's so good, we'll take whatever he gives us up to full time).

Since he's not interested in advancing up the ladder, he really does a great job on this low-visibility stuff that really helps an organization run well if it's done right.

Woohoo! Now if only we had a wheelbarrow, that would be something! :)

I've been doing very well - but 2008 was not my favorite year. Not a horrible year. Just not my favorite :) I blew my knee out and perhaps have ended my sports career forever. And I ended up in a couple of contracts that just sucked the life out of me. It took time to recover.

So, 2009 will be the year I try having more time than money :) If it doesn't work out, at least I'll go back to having other people set my agenda and be a little more grateful.

How about you? How did 2008 turn out?