Category Archives: Introspection

What effect would 2 moons have on a planet?

November 30, 2009

We’ve all seen it.  10374-bigthumbnailThe beautiful fantasy landscape of some distant planet sporting several large moons.  But…is it feasible in reality?

Recently I was watching yet another Discovery channel show about what the Earth would be like without the moon.  The answer was scary and pretty desolate.  The reason is because of the tides and how they “stir up” our oceans.

So, knowing that the rotation of the moon around the planet causes a rise in tides on the moon side and on the exact opposite side, what happens when you have two or more moons?  What would happen if they had different orbital rates (ie 24 hours and 38.2 hours?).  How would the wave paths conflict?  Would life still be possible, or just wildly different than what we know?

This is a pretty important question while we are searching for life on other planets.  Anything that would have a profound effect on the life cycle of a planet has to be considered.

On an aside, these fantasy images often show the moons as very large.  Obviously some of that can be achieved via atmospheric lensing (ever see the moon low on the horizon looking as big as a basketball and red as a pumpkin?), but how close can a moon be before gravity pulls it into said planet?

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Waiting for retail therapy – at Circuit City

August 25, 2007

So I get up this morning with good intentions. I’m going to work like a fiend and get tons of stuff accomplished. It was like a sign from God….even Lydia was yanking on my hand telling me to go work (because she wanted to watch cartoons and when I’m not working I’m usually watching HGTV).

So I sat down, intentions all aglow. And then…..and then…..{spoosh}. Lydia knocked a full glass of soda over. Onto my keyboard. *sigh* All over my papers, bills, my brand new PHP5 book, and the floor. Usually I keep my soda beside my desk, not actually on it. Of course, that damn Murphy knows the minute I deviate from my SOP and took immediate steps to remedy my motivation.

Lydia goes to see her grandparents on the weekend, so shortly I will be going to buy a new keyboard. Which I’ve really needed to do for months now….my old one is so well loved that the letters were rubbing off (but who cares…I touch type). Fortunately, being the geek that I am, we had a spare keyboard lying around. But the riser thing on the bottom is broken on one side and that is NOT going to work for me.

Who knows, maybe I’ll end up getting an uber cool keyboard anyway and it will be fate in disguise trying to help me out. (Ok, that sounds like a like of self-rationalizing bullshit. But hey, sometimes rationalizing is all you have.)

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Blowing sunshine

April 29, 2007

I’m a web developer by trade.  Some days, it’s uber cool….playing with all the techie toys, the less computer-literate bowing down in homage and awe at my incredible electronic prowess.  But some days…it just sucks.  There are lots of reasons why.  Working too hard on projects that take too long and don’t pay enough.  Trying to be nice and getting kicked in the teeth for it.  Not having time to learn all the things I need to learn – because if there’s anything you learn as a computer geek is that the more you know, the more you realize what you don’t know.  For all my supposed prowess, I’ve barely scratched the surface.

But I slog along, working to get somewhere.  I’ve had multiple people tell me I’m one of the most driven and ambitious people they know.  Obviously they aren’t living in my skin…  I feel guilty spending time playing Civ4.  The people who are really successful don’t do that, do they?  They have perfect homes with nary a dustbunny hiding under the sofa.  Their dogs are too well-mannered to track grit all over the house.  They have passels of children who are always perfectly washed and don’t leave jelly goobers on their clothes and the sofa.  Our house is usually a candidate for a national disaster area.  So what is the difference between them and me?  Are they working harder, or just smarter?  Or as Tom supposes, are they high on amphetamines?

Maybe I just expect too much of myself.  Maybe I need to sit back and enjoy life…and once I stop trying too hard it will all just come to me easily.  Or maybe I just don’t have what it takes.  How do you figure it out?  There should be some kind of test online (my god, there are tests for everything else) that once taken will just say “Give up already.  It ain’t happening.”

I know I could do more.  So why don’t I?  Instead of playing Civ, I should be doing the dishes.  Instead of telling myself “I don’t have time to exercise, clean house, play with the munchkin” I should stop wasting my time and do it.  I honestly think sometimes I’m my own worst enemy.  I know what I need to do.  The little voice in my head is nattering on insistently about it.  But I find my hand clicking that button for Civ, I find my mouth saying again “I’m too busy to play, I’m working” while I read my horoscope.  Somewhere my priorities are jacked.

A common thread in my posts seems to be endless questions and doubts.  I want answers, dammit…but there just don’t seem to be any.  At least not easy ones.  Am I making things too hard?  Or am I just refusing to see what’s in front of me?

*sigh*

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Another month gone by…

March 3, 2007

Today is a day for introspection, something I almost never have time to do anymore. I read the blogs yesterday of Phresh and Daisy, and it got me thinking. Here are two people who genuinely enjoy…something. For Phresh it’s guitars and dive bars and falling in love. For Daisy it’s clean cotton sheets and the caress of a warm breath on her cheek.

For me? Lately I’m not sure anymore. I feel dis-satisfied. Disenfranchised. Dis-something. That is, when I feel much of anything at all. My goal and dream was to own my own business like my father, to be free.

My father isn’t happy. It’s sort of sad really….because the wife he adores (and who adores him) are so disconnected they rarely even speak. He works until midnight most nights while his wife rattles around the empty house like a bean in a tin can. They circle each other in an uneasy orbit, magnetically drawn and dynamically opposed.

Of course I don’t want that. Who would? At least I don’t think I do. And yet, day after day I sit here, taking more clients, struggling to meet another impossible deadline.

I got my period today. Another month of endless days and nights have gone by. Smoochie hugs and smoochie kisses. Days of “Mommy’s busy right now” instead of reading stories, days of staying up too late and getting up too early. Days of relentless keystrokes and unceasing insistent ringing of the phone. Is it worth it? I look around and see nice homes and seemingly wonderful family lives. Days of vacations and leisure, families connected and loving. Is their grass really greener ? Or is it just human nature playing tricks on me like it does on everyone else, making me believe that what I have is never enough?

I started my business so I could be home with my daughter. But does it count if all she sees is Mommy at the computer? She pretends she’s “working” and types on my keyboard. She talks to no one on the phone about “getting that job”. When we ask her to do something she doesn’t want to do, she says “I’m too busy now.” I see myself reflected in her. All my flaws are being coded right into her psyche.

Daisy’s blog is about how wonderful the simple things are. All I have are questions. What do I really enjoy anymore? And when did I get so jaded? It’s not like my life is terrible. My daughter is smart and beautiful and so unexpected it makes my heart ache. My partner is a great guy who puts up with my irritability and keeps me on track. We have accomplished so much in these last few months. Some days it just seems so pointless, always striving for some elusive goal that once reached becomes irrelevant because the next goal looms.

But today….today I’m just tired. And depressed. So maybe this is just a hormonal thing after all. But if it is only that, a scrambling of endorphins and enzymes, then why have all the days blurred together? When my period started, I was shocked. “Already?” I thought.

28 days and nights.
672 hours.
40320 minutes.

They are gone, forever. Into an eternity when a billion years from now someone on a distant planet will see a tiny pinprick in the sky and say, “1.2 billion years ago, a woman on that planet sat at her computer, thinking that life should be something more than endless marching minutes falling off into the abyss.”

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