Hey guys and gals.

Thankfully I’ve finally got some attention from the spammers.

For those of you who haven’t been watching my site lately, I’ve gotten hit with a DOS - Denial of Service Attack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

Thank goodness I don’t have any business operations on my site, so it doesn’t really matter. The network engineers at my host, I really want to thank them for the extra effort on shutting these jerks down!

There was a report released recently on Information Weekly

I just got this summary from an old friend in Minnesota:

Ben Huset president of the MNSFS - Minnesota Space Frontier Society

This is a sumary of a great man who passed away this week: Konrad Dannenberg

Written by Greg Allison of the Huntsville HAL-5 chapter of NSS - National Space Society

Space Pioneer Konrad K. Dannenberg passed away on the 16th of February 2009 at the age of 96. He was not only one of the last of the Von Braun’s original rocket team, but one of the most active publicly. In the 1920’s Dannenberg began his rocketry career developing mail rockets after a lecture by Max Valier inspired his interest in space. Mr. Dannenberg designed the injectors of the A4 “V-2″ rocket. Dannenberg went to Ft. Bliss Texas as part of Operation Paper Clip to advance US Army missile development. Later he transfered with the rest of the German Rocket Team to Redstone Arsenal next to Hunstville Alabama where he became a manager on the US Army’s Jupiter and Redstone missiles. He joined NASA when the Marshall Space Flight Center was formed and became a key member of America’s first program to land people on the moon. Mr. Dannenberg rose to the position of depty director of the Saturn V Program, developing the largest rocket ever flown.

This earned him NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal. After retiring from NASA in 1973 Dannenberg worked extensively with young people to foster their interest in space. He was an instructor at the US Space Camp, and led the way for student flight experiments on space shuttle Get-Away-Special (GAS) canisters. As a man of vision, Dannenberg was active in the World Future Society. He was a charter member and served on the Board of Directors of the L5 Society, parent society to the National Space Society. Mr. Dannenberg played a critical role in starting Huntsville’s chapter the Huntsville Alabama L5 Society (HAL5). He called HAL5’s first meeting. Dannenberg was a major advocate for Newspace. He was an advisor to the Canadian X-Prize Team that sought to build an uprated manned V-2. He was there in the Mojave when Burt Rutan’s team won the X-Prize and later presented NSS’s Von Braun award to Rutan. Dannenberg’s career spawnned the entire space age. He inspired many young people to seek careers in space, science and engineering. Many engineers were inspired to excellence by the example Dannenberg established both in his areas of technology development and public service. Konrad Dannenberg set the bar that we should all strive to meet. Those of us that were honored to know Konrad will dearly miss him.

I’ve reached a major milestone in my athletic life. I’ve finally gotten my fitness level to where I can run 10km every single morning of the work week!

I usually start my day at 4:30am when I get up, out the door by 5:35am, and ride my bicycle to the gym. I usually get there about 5:55am or 6:00am. I’m usually changed and stretched out by 6:15am and hit the tredmil at that time. I run a steady 6.5 miles per hour or about a 9min 23 second mile. By 7:15am I’ve run 6.5 miles which works out to slightly over 10km!

People are telling me that is a lot, and it is for me considering where I’ve come at my athletic performance. After college I gained a lot of weight, and all those periods of unemployment and trying to save money staying home and working to build my online portfolio, etc… my weight was up to about 290-310 lbs. Now I’m down to about 190lbs!

I just know you want to ask, So how did I loose it? Well it all started to come off when I had the opportunity to choose where I wanted to live after relocating for my new job here in Huntsville Alabama. I did some research and found a place I would be able to get safely to work from my appartment to my office on bicycle. After I moved in I got a bicycle and started to use that for my daily commute. Also I walked to the Huntsville Airshow about 5 miles walk then 5 miles walk back. A nice guy gave me a ride most of the way back cause my feet had some pretty nasty blisters by that time. I could barely walk for several days after that! Then my body responded and after I recovered I found my walking ability was much stronger! Between walking and riding my bicycle the pounds started to come off. Not just my belly, but my arms, legs, fingers, cheeks, neck, shoulders, butt,

A few years ago I was trying to remember an old TV series that I used to love watching when I was a kid. I loved watching it so much that I taped it so I could watch it over and over again. It was a TV series about Astronomers and Space. All I could remember was that it has astounding graphics and was about searching for black holes.

The graphics in that TV series was AMAZING!!!! And I loved it so much that I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up.

I’ve just accepted a position on the Advisory Board for the organization known as “Americans in Orbit 50 Years”. My title will be Senior Technologist.

I must say this is really exciting for me! This is moving in exactly the direction I’ve always dreamed my life would go! Only I never thought it would be possible!!!! Yet here I am living MY dream! The full energy and excitement of this appointment hasn’t completely hit me yet. I suppose that’s partly because I’m such a work-a-holic and so friggin busy these days that everything just seems to go in a blur.

In any event I need to mention some of the things that this organization brings to the table. First I will start with the names and affiliations of the other board members:

T.J. O’Mally, Former Launch Director for Friendship 7

Charles Arthur “Chuck” Biggs, Sr., Former VP, Manned Spaceflight Education Foundation Inc.

Larry R. Capps, CEO, U.S. Space and Rocket Center

William Coleman, Chief of Project Blue Book (UFO Investigations)

Al Reisz, CEO of Reisz Engineers

Konrad K. Dannenberg, Deupty Manager of the Saturn Rocket Program

Lorraine Ruiz, Operations Manager of NASA’s Ames Exploration Encounter Program

Bill Larson, Director of Media Relations

These are giant people in the world of space flight and I’m proud and honored to be counted among them in representing the Orbiter Space Flight Simulator and other technology and engineering developments.

I should also note that we hare having a special event at the Davidson Center for Space Exploration

So the latest question everyone seems to be raving out about is if the US government should bail out the automotive industry?

Well first of all I’d like to get your comments on this.

Now I’ll state my thoughts. I think it’s the worst idea ever conceived by human beings! Why would you pay the largest industry in the world to continue producing the worlds largest and most inefficient fleet of vehicles? What ever happened to free market?!

If the government is going to put money into the auto industry it should fund better technology. We are still using automotive technology from the late 18th century! The original Model-T from the early 1900’s

Seems someone on my site just claimed that I am “Scamming” my readers on Hydrogen technology….

Not everyone is aware of the recent accident in Huntsville Alabama but they should be! A bicyclist pedestrian was hit by a driver of an SUV who was distracted. This situation should never have happened indeed it is unacceptable. To think that a person could hop on their bicycle and go for a ride thus ending up dead thanks to some person playing <insert distracting device/event here> while driving is reflective on the deplorable situation here in Huntsville, not to mention the complete lack of planning and leadership from the city of Huntsville. (Speaking of the total safety feeling one gets while riding a bicycle down roads such as

More to come on HHO gas later,

A few days ago I posted about how to start your job search campaign, and I mentioned how I don’t have any experience with Mercury at all, how I’ve never heard of Mercury and I didn’t know what it was, other then the Mercury Capsule that was launched by NASA putting the first American into space in the 60’s, or the element on the periodic table that is often used for barometric pressure and tempature measurements. I talked about how putting my experience developing a Mercury control panel for a space flight simulator:

www.Orbitersim.com

Lead to many recruiters calling me or contacting me for my exerience developing with Mercury. I should mention that I did try to apply for some of those jobs, but I never got an interview as a result. I suspect because I didn’t have any experience with Mercury. However, I just found out today that a 2-day training program my company signed me up for is about QTP - Quick Test Professional, which is, essentially, Mercury. I didn’t even know that! In a single day I learned how to setup QTP, how to use QTP to build and integrate ATP’s - Automated Test Procedures for our company products, as well how to program QTP, and use QTP to validate data in our company products.

I don’t think I’ve given away any propriatary information there, I hope not. <g>