A Crummy Commercial

Spacex had a successful launch of a Starship orbital mission, caught the booster, deployed Starlink satellites in orbit but then splashed down and had an explosion of Starship.  Pretty successful day although it is the 14th launch. source:  https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/starships-first-orbital-launch-gives-lift-to-spacexs-next-gen-starlinks/ On a related note: now that Spacex is having the Starship success, they will be ramping down their original Falcon rocket and also the Crew Dragon capsule.  So Boeing will be the only way to launch from the US to the ISS with their Starliner: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/boeing-incredibly-excited-to-serve-as-nations-only-astronaut-transportation/ I guess since the ISS will eventually be thrown away, there won't be any need for the astronaut and supply missions.  But I would think that there still is a need for a rocket with the Falcon's capability, for smaller satellites ?   I suspect that eventually St...

The Brewers finished the 2026 season on Sunday, beating the Cardinals 6-4 and ending with 103 wins and 59 losses - an amazing record for them.   They finished the season with 5 straight wins, strangely their longest win streak of the season.  They also had a 6 game losing streak near the start of the season but otherwise a lot more green than red: source:  https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIL/2026-schedule-scores.shtml      Remember last year George Webb gave away free burgers: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/08/eleven-in-row-again.html So instead of being streaky this year the Brewers seem to have evened things out.  AND the finish by sweeping the Cards was the cherry on top.  I'll still remember the 1982 World Serious when the Cards beat the Brewers in seven games.  The irritation that made it memorable for me was seeing Ozzie Smith do all those flips :( Robin Yount is also a shortstop in Cooperstown but he didn't do back flips sou...

You know how it is.  If you start looking at old TV shows, for example: Salvage 1 starring Andy Griffith: source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyZA_PQE6AE Then you see an actress like Ellen Bry, who used to be on St. Elsewhere : source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ALRQgNRQA8 Finally you see an actor like William Daniels from St. Elsewhere - which reminded me of the show: Captain Nice , Daniels was the Captain :) https://archive.org/details/capn-nice-tv-show/101_-_The_Man_Who_Flies_Like_A_Pigeon.avi It has that goofy energy from creator Buck Henry - Captain Nice   makes fun of superheroes.  In his other show of the 1960s that I remember, Get Smart !   he and Mel Brooks made fun of spy movies. BTW the moral of the first episode of Captain Nice :  don't wear a belt buckle with your initials on it.   There was another show, Mr. Terrific , with a similar concept.  I have NO memory of Mr. Terrific at all. https://archive.or...

Coop   not Co-op.  A book being read on Chapter-a-Day: chapter 1 of 15:   https://www.wpr.org/shows/chapter-a-day/coop-1-of-15-new-digs Michael Perry is a good author - he makes writing seem like something that anyone can do - which isn't really true.  And he is from Wisconsin (New Auburn): Washington Island is on the right, northeast of Green Bay And extending the current prevalent theme of the USA, why listen to books that aren't produced in Wisconsin ?  :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

One thing I used to buy was distilled water.  Maybe 4 gallons a week ?  But aside from the expense another reason why I stopped buying distilled water is that if there is any slight defect or ding at the bottom of the plastic jug it will leak eventually.  Same is true of milk containers.  And water appearing on a pantry shelf or basement floor is UNWELCOME, ask me why I kept the distilled water jugs inside Roughneck plastic containers.  So I bought the air still and distill a gallon of water several times a week.  It's probably cheaper and certainly easier than buying distilled water.  So I usually only keep a couple of gallons of water so I am aware if a leak happens. But what can be done with old leaky plastic water jugs ?  2026 has been a good year for apples so I decided to make picking and storage buckets for apples out of old plastic jugs.  The leaks don't really matter with apples.  Making the bucket is done with a scissors to enl...

I saw this comic page from Pinterest: It reminded me of a song that my Dad once told me about called Gloomy Sunday : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloomy_Sunday Here is the version by Billie Holiday: source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ2AuLaClmk According to my Dad the song was so depressing that people would commit suicide due to hearing it - and (wait for it) IT WAS BANNED !  (not really). That in turn reminded me of a song I heard during high school called DOA : source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOMIYEfN7fU The group was called Bloodrock ?  I didn't remember that. But what a dumb song, yuck.  It came out when I was in high school, luckily before I took drivers ed.  I always assumed that the song was about a car crash but no, it was a plane crash per the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.O.A._(song) So I've heard and read this gloomy material and yet I've survived three score and ten  :) This material raises the age old ...

An interesting Veritasium video:   source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsBZOcqZerk The most interesting thing to me was the explanation of how the "cribs" were used to help manually break the code.  This starts at about 26:30 into the video.  A "crib" would be some boilerplate text sent in a message each time like:     WeatherReportBiscay      (but of course in German).  I'd read other books about Bletchley Park but none of them ever explained in detail how this clever technique was employed.  Of course it was kind of hit and miss before the clock ran out on the messages. Since the Enigma machine never outputs the same letter that was input, the crib could be slid across the message until those same letter impossible alignments were eliminated. One thing I wondered was whether there was a lamp test ?  Old school bulbs don't last forever !  I guess you'd know something was wrong if no bulb lit up but you wouldn't...