Perseverance

Last week NASA & JPL landed the Perseverance rover on Mars. I don't know why, but it seemed like there was a lot more attention paid to it than previous landings. Of course, like all the others, it's going to find evidence of life on Mars.

The landing went off without a hitch. While it was supposed to be live webcast, all they showed was computer generated graphics, and frankly, I've seen better on video games!!! Several minutes after the landing (which was, of course, several minutes behind already, because of the signal lag) Perseverance sent back it's first picture from the surface. In black & white. What is this, the 70's??? Cool that they pulled it off, and it's supposed to do some neat tricks while it's there, but the whole event was rather underwhelming.

Anyway, we all know Mars is the red planet, so I took it on myself to colorize the first picture!!! Fixed it for ya, NASA!!! Your welcome!!!

Are You Experienced?

So, what do you do to follow up your Space Needle visit??? Right next door is the Experience Music Project!!!

It's got a cool design to the building, reminds me more than a little of the Disney Concert Hall back home.

There's a crazy sculpture primarily made of guitars, but also with keyboards, banjos, and all manner of other instruments.

I think it has six of them that have motor driven spring pluckers on 'em, making their own music. It was pretty cool. Probably the most photogenic thing there!!!

I don't think it was a permanent thing, but they had an AC-Dc exhibit. There was a photo op in front of their logo, with guitar and Angus Young jacket props.

They've got Hendrix and Nirvana exhibits. I stayed at the former considerably longer than the latter. There was much very cool audio history, as well as displays of several of the remains of his sacrificed guitars.

There's a hands-on music lab thingy that'll teach you to play, and sound mixing and vocal effects labs.

I really like the way the last picture came out!!! It was tricky, as they prohibit flash photography!!!

In the same building there was also a Science Fiction museum. Next post!!!

Seattle Part One: The Space Needle

As I go through my pictures & experiences, I've decided the best way to go about it is to have 3 or more posts about our time in Seattle. Here comes the first, we'll see if I manage much more!!!

Seattle. The weather was nothing like you may have been led to believe. In fact, most days I took a light jacket and never even wore it!!!

Our hotel (actually, suite... said so right in the name) was in the middle of downtown, right near the convetion center. First shot is the view from our top floor room. Our last night before departure, we finally got a chance to check out the joint between the two, Cyber Dogs. Vegetarian hot dogs and interwebs access. I really liked the food, one of those where if you didn't know you probably wouldn't even know it was vegetarian. I didn't tell my oldest until the next day. No, I can't say enough about the place!!! The decor was awesome, and the music fit right in with it. That may be one of the following posts in itself.

Of course, we had to visit the Space Needle. Don't know how that'd be on a weekday, but on the weekend it took around an hour to get on the elevator. A pretty cool thing, it was. Shot 2 and 3 are, of course, the space needle, and the boys, looking up at it. Right across the street there's a McDonald's, and it has their logo painted on the top. Easy, effective advertising!!! I think the rest of the shots are all taken from the top of it. 50 year anniversary of the Space Needle!!!

I rented a car for the stay there. I don't think I'd do that again. Every place you go, you've got to pay to park. There's a bit of street parking avalible, but I was never able to get in on any. We even made a stop in at a Target. You'd think they'd do a little something with you there, but NO!!! $10 if you can keep it under an hour!!! Nice, my $14 purchase there ends up costing near twice that!!! I haven't figured it out exactly, but I think I spent about twice as much on parking as I did on the actual rental and gas. In fact, the rental was at the airport, and the departing dock for our cruise were pretty much on opposite ends of town, so we needed to take a cab to and from the dock, and THAT cost less than parking!!! I have learned.

In the same area there's the Experience Music Project. It's got a cool design to the building, reminds me more than a little of the Disney Concert Hall back home. In the same building there was also a Science fiction museum. Those could both be a post to themselves.

The next day we visited Pike Street marketplace and went on the crazy underground tour. There's another post!!!

I liked the World's Fair Space Needle hat. Would have totally gotten one of those!!! Haven't even gotten to all of Alaska!!!

Finally...

Here it is, the first post of share from our vacation this year!!!

This year we took a Disney cruise to Alaska!!! Made for a great vacation.

One downside was that, as always, if I want vacation days all in a string, I've got to get them at the end of the previous year. If anything comes up in between, there's not much you can do about it. The week I got was the one at the end of August and beginning of September. Unfortunately, my wife's job ended up starting in the middle of August, and of course they wouldn't give her the time off. Ended up being a bachelor vacation.

They did have the Friday before that week open, so I took it, too, and we had a few days over the weekend in Seattle, which is where the cruise departed from.

I took SO many pictures, and a good deal of them came out excellent. I was going through to find ones to print out to show co-workers, and I was over 50 before I knew it. No one has time to go through that many, so I had to pare it back.

Every place we pulled into on the cruise, they would announce over the P.A. on the ship that it was the best weather they'd seen all season. Of course, I had no basis for comparison, but it was nice enough to me. While we were in Juneau I saw a dad walking with his kid, just past toddler age, who was wearing nothing but shorts.

I've got a lot more to go on about, but I'll save it for later posts.