The TwisterSisters is a site that you MUST bookmark if you’re into tornadoes and other extremes of midwestern storms. Peggy and Melanie (oh, and no, they’re not biological sisters, but they are sisters in spirit) spend their springs and summers chasing after storms all throughout the midwest, and they’ve been very successful in their hunts. Just check out their photo gallery! Its filled with some of the most amazing storm shots I’ve ever seen. They don’t keep all the chase excitement to themselves, either. You can join them on a chase tour, but you’ll have to hurry for this season. Their last regular tour is on August 16th. After that, short-notice tours are the only option. How did I find out about the TwisterSisters? Well, as it turns out, Peggy is a HUGE motorsports fan. I met her, and found out about her site and storm chasing at the Indy Car Garage. Which is a very cool site all to itself, but that’s a topic for another post.
What a trip! Tab and I left from the west side of Missouri on Thursday night right after Tab got off work and started to head east. We stopped in Effingham, IL for the night before continuing on to Winchester, IN to visit my sister and her family. Being back in Indiana, we had to go to lunch at Pizza King (sausage and bbq, please). YUM! Tab had never had Pizza King pizza before, and now she says its her absolute fav. That night, we met our folks in Muncie at the Cheeseburger in Paradise. Its a cheesy joint, but they do have excellent food and their sweet potato chips rock! While in Muncie, I was surprised to run into Rob, the cousin of my friend Steve, with whom I’ve gone to the Indy 500 for the past eight years. I think he was more surprised than I, “Um, don’t you live in KC?”
Saturday morning - 0530hr - we were on the road from Winchester to Mid-Ohio. It took us a bit longer than we’d though to make it to the track, but we made it in time to see some of the FIL practice and the ICS qualification. With our paddock passes, we roamed around the garages for a while and saw quite a few of the FIL and ICS drivers, but we were too nervous to actually approach any of them. It was cool to see the mechanics working on the vehicles. Every once in a while, you catch an unguarded moment such as this one of a confused mechanic starting in wonder at the Danica’s machine.
We ran into fellow Downforce member and Garager, Christy there in the paddock as well. This was her daughter’s first race, and she got to meet a LOT of drivers. Check out Christy’s photos so see who all she got to meet. While Tab and Christy were visiting there by the Goodyear Tower, I headed down to the Carousel to watch the Firestone Fast Six. The participants were really no surprise: Briscoe, Castroneves, Andretti, Kannan, Dixon, and Wilson. The Carousel section is a 270-degree right-hander just before the front straight, and is a great section for photography since the cars are going a bit slower and not changing directions rapidly as they are in the Esses and the fence is closer to the track than it is in the Keyhole.
This also proved to be a great location to watch the start of the ALMS race that afternoon. This was our first sports car race, and we loved it. It really brought back something that I’ve felt the 500 has lacked in recent years, different engine sounds! Every type of car that went by had a different engine note. Most radically different were the Audi R10 turbo diesels. Wow, what a sound! After a few first laps (and after watching the AGR #26 Acura go plowing through the turf at the entrance to the Carousel) we headed back to the infield to watch the rest of the ALMS race and the first FIL race. We found that the Esses were the best place to watch, although we did spend some time at Turn 1 as well.
Sunday, we made it to the track in time to see the SCCA Speed World Challenge Touring Car race, but sadly, the Downforce pre-race party was scheduled for the same time. As much as I wanted to see my man Jason Saini kick butt, the pre-race party won out and we got to see Darren Manning. He gave a really fantastic and technical description of racing line strategies through the first two turns of the Esses section. That was very cool to hear, but then I’m a geek. The walking on Saturday killed us, so on Sunday we decided to just park ourselves in the Esses right below the concession stands and bathrooms for the duration. Where Saturday was a beautiful summer day, Sunday was a typical mid-western summer day. Right before the beginning of the Indy Lights race, it rained. Saying “it rained” though is perhaps insufficient. It poured, and stormed! The wind was fierce, blowing the gigantic, bucket-sized rain drops sideways all accompanied by a chorus of thunder and lightning. Our 97c ponchos and tiny little umbrella gave a false sense of security because we were soaked to the bone in spite of them, but at least the backpack was able to keep the camera and phones dry. The rain did make the second FIL race quite exciting! A number of drivers had issues with Turn 5 at the end of the backstretch, but it was cool to hear the fans cheer for them as they struggled to drive out of the wet sand and back onto the race track. Check out this start!
The rain stayed away for the remainder of the FIL race, but return with a vengeance right before the start of the IndyCar Series race. This meant a start on wet tires, with teams switching as early as they dared to slicks. As an aside, its my humble opinion that the series really needs to allow the use of intermediate tires for conditions such as what we had at the beginning of the race. The track wasn’t soaked enough by time the race started to really justify full wets, but it was too wet for slicks. An intermediate tire would have been perfect. The start of the race was clean with Wilson really charging up hard. It turned out that our selection of viewing locations was pretty good. We got to see a lot of great passing and passing attempts. We even got to see Milka put a pass on Marty Roth! You should have hear the crowd cheer! ]:) Sadly, we weren’t able to keep close tabs on the progress of the race since the track announcers were inaudible over the sounds of the cars. They did have a simulcast on FM which we listened to at first, but the announcers absolutely sucked. “Wilson is out in the lead. Oh there’s someone off in China Beach… So anyway, Wilson is out in the lead.” We tried scanning around the FM and AM dial for the IMS Radio Network broadcast, but without success. So we just sat and enjoyed watching the cars as they went by us, and sometime off onto the beach. As the race wore down, it was obvious, even to us, that Briscoe had figured out his car and the course and was absolutely checking out on the rest of the field. Nice job, that. Briscoe has made remarkable improvements to his racecraft since the beginning of the season, and I’m quite certain that Mr. Penske is happy to be cashing winners checks instead of writing checks for repair bills.
We thought about staying for the SCCA GT race that followed the IndyCar race, but since we needed to make it back to Winchester that night, we decided to start heading west. We finally made it back to my sister’s by 9ish and shared our stories (after taking showers to wash off all of the Ohio mud). The next morning was a bit more relaxing than the previous three up-by-5 mornings had been, and we finally left for home at 9am. It didn’t take us long to get distracted, though. Since we didn’t have any real reason to be home early, and since we were driving right by along I-70, we made a side trip to the Speedway. Tab had never seen the place before, so we went to the museum and took the shuttle bus around the track. Very cool, although I think I was more excited about the track tour than she was. It was a long weekend, but Mid-Ohio was a LOT of fun. Next time we go, though, we’re definitely renting a golf cart!!
Reports of the demise of Ulysses have been slightly exaggerated. The bird still lives!! It must be admitted, that its living on a day-to-day basis. It was expected that by July 1st, the hydrazine fuel would have frozen in the lines, and the spacecraft would begin to tumble. To stave this off, the flight engineers have been using small alternating bursts from the thrusters to maintain a trickle flow of fuel through the line. This is not unlike the practice of leaving your faucet to run slowly to keep your water pipes from freezing in the winter time. Same concept. Apparently, the trickle trick has been working! Here’s the latest from Nigel Angold, Ulysses Mission Ops Manager:
Dear Ulysses friends and colleagues,
As you are aware, the proposed July 1st Ulysses operations end date
has come and gone. And as a result of our fuel bleeding and other
operations strategies, we have managed to avoid freezing the
hydrazine so far!
Now we are continuing operations on a day-to-day basis until the
fuel freezes. That includes fuel bleeding every 2 hours to keep the
hydrazine moving through the pipes and Earth-pointing manoeuvres
interleaved, when required.
When we see the fuel freezing, we will switch off the S-band and
some instruments for a couple of days in an effort to thaw the
hydrazine. After that, we’ll try to switch on the X-band once again
using some more radical (and hence more risky) procedures.
If the fuel has not frozen by the end of July, we’ll try some benign
X-band switching in early August and plan for radical switching in
late August.
What will happen in the unlikely event that we re-establish our
X-band downlink? Well, obviously we’ll leave it on!!! And at the end
of August we should have enough fuel remaining to continue for a
number of months (assuming that we stop the fuel bleeding). The
short portion of pipe that is currently close to freezing will warm
up but other areas of pipework will cool down and they will get
close to freezing during the last quarter of 2008. As for funding
for operations beyond August, that’s another question.
This coming weekend, we will be testing the redundant on-board
receiver which is connected to the front low gain antenna (LGA-F).
This is to validate our ability to command the spacecraft when the
HGA is not pointing towards Earth e.g. if no manoeuvres have been
performed for several days due to frozen fuel.
I know some of the instrument teams have held wakes to celebrate the
fantastic journey that we have been on all these years. However, I
make no apology for the fact that Ulysses is not dead yet. I hope
that in the coming weeks we get to see the transition from fast to
slow solar wind.
I finally made it back to a casino after a LONG hiatus. I think the last time I was in a casino was in May of 2007 when I went with my friend Phil to the Horseshoe casino in Council Bluffs. Well, Phil was back in town this past week, so we went to the North Kansas City Harrahs.
Ordinarily, we’d have gone to the Ameristar, but I was listening to my F1Weekly podcast, and flew right by it. :S Well, as it turns out, it was a happy accident. I didn’t risk a lot as the cost of propane right now is killing me! Ten bucks in a video poker machine to warm up yielded a twenty buck cash out. Yay! Already up by ten. Anytime that I end up with about double my starting buy-in, I’m cashing out. Far too many times, I’ve thought “Hey, I’m doing really well! Let’s see if I can win more!” only to piss away not only my winnings, but my original investment as well. Lesson learned. Phil got off to a rough start, but also ended up with a net gain from his investment. With our new-found confidence, we set off to the craps tables. When we got to the craps tables, they were all full! Mind you, we were there in the early afternoon on a Tuesday. Business was good, I guess. We finally got our spots at the table after waiting for a while, and as luck would have it, the dice were to me as we bought in. I threw really well. I hit three points and a couple of winners on the come out roll. Net gain of $65. YAY! I didn’t get crazy this time, I only played the pass line with 2x odds. Ordinarily, I’d also place the 6 and 8 or make a come bet, but with only an $80 buy-in, I didn’t want to hit a bad stretch and go broke within a couple of rolls. Phil did rather well, too, and was up near $100 when we left the table. Walking out $75 up was a good feeling. It will help pay for the gas as Tab and I head out to Mid-Ohio next week!
Its was like watching someone turn off the life-support machines of an old friend. June 30th, 2008, was the last day of mission operations for the Ulysses spacecraft, after nearly 18 years of service. It also brings to an end the exploration of a region of our solar system that’s not likely to be visited again in our lifetimes.
The Ulysses Mission was originally conceived as the International Solar Polar Mission, a tandem mission with one spacecraft being built by NASA and the other by ESA. Budget cuts reduced the mission to a single spacecraft jointly engineered by the two agencies. Ulysses was originally to be launched in 1983, but was delayed to the Spring of 1986 and set to deploy from the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Challenger. As a result of the Challenger accident, its launch was delayed even more. These delays would come back to haunt the mission as the radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) used to power the mission have a fixed lifetime and were constructed and tested in the early 80s. Ulysses was finally launched and deployed from the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Discovery on October 6th, 1990 and began is trek out to Jupiter and to the Sun’s polar regions.
The primary 6-year mission called for a single solar orbit giving coverage of both the Sun’s southern and northern polar regions at solar minimum and covering radial distances from its perihelion of 1.3 AU to its aphelion of 5.4 AU. Ulysses performed so well that its mission would be extended multiple times allowing it to complete three full orbits. The additional orbits allowed Ulysses to investigate the polar regions during solar maximum, and during our current rise to maximum.
Eventually, the old RTGs became a terminal factor for the spacecraft. With power from the RTGs dwindling, power sharing techniques had to be employed. Various power sharing schemes were developed, but the one that was used allowed all of the science missions to remain active, however it required that the high-bandwidth X-band transmitter be shut down during data collection. Data was to be stored on board for later download. To retrieve data, the science instruments would be shut down and the transmitter restarted. However, the X-band transmitter never came back to life. This was not a stopper for the recovery of science data. The S-band transmitter used for command and telemetry could be used to stream the science data if at a slower rate, but the heat generated by the X-band transmitter was used to help keep the hydrazine fuel lines from freezing. With its power ebbing, its heaters off, and the X-band transmitter broken, Ulysses was destined to freeze and begin to tumble. Once it tumbles and loses lock on the Earth, recovery is impossible. It was determined that July 1st, 2008 would be the day that Ulysses was put to rest.
Since 1999, I’ve been working with the energetic particle data from the MF Spectrum Analyzer (MFSA) of the Heliosphere Instrument for Spectra, Composition and Anisotropies at Low Energy (HISCALE). Here the term “low energy” is relative. The HISCALE instrument measured protons and ions with energies from around 50 keV/nuc to upwards of 20 MeV/nuc and electrons from about 40 to 400 keV. The MFSA worked within the energy range of 50 to 5000 keV/nuc for protons, but provided a higher degree of energy resolution than anything else out there. Even though the spacecraft is now silent and adrift, we still have one and a half solar cycles worth of high-quality data that can yield a LOT of science.
Our immediate project at Fundamental Technologies is to organize and describe the data we have in such a way that it can be easily shared through the Virtual Heliospheric Observatory. If you’d like to use the HISCALE data or are just curious as to what we do at FunTech, browse over to http://ulysses.ftecs.com/ where I keep a blog on the current state of a few of our projects.
H.R. 5767 is designed to block the implementation of the poorly worded, poorly crafted, and ill-conceived UIGEA law that passed under the cover of darkness in September 2006 as an amendment of the SAFE Ports Act. The banking industry is very much against this bill, as of course we poker players are, because the lion’s share of enforcement work is being dumped on them. This is an unfunded mandate from their perspective. Mr. Frank and Mr. Paul both realize that the bill not only is poorly constructed, but ill-intended as well. Be sure to call or write the committee to let them know our thoughts as poker players. The Poker Players’ Alliance has some great online tools that we can use to contact our representatives, and the Financial Services Committee specifically.
The Poker Players Alliance has a new website and man does it look great. Its a Wordpress-based page and its given me some ideas on how to update some of my other sites. (I expect this one will remain as it is for now.) If you’re already a member of the PPA, you’ll still need to register on the new site since they’re using a completely different format. No worries, though, they’ve saved all of the membership data and there’s a utility through which you can retrieve your membership number if you’ve forgotten it. If you’re not a current member of the PPA, I strongly encourage you to join. Registering on the website is free, and $20/year gets you a wealth of benefits in addition to helping out the strongest lobby organization representing us poker players.
My brother and I left at 0600hr Saturday morning and started driving our way down to Texas. Its kinda funny that we ended up driving about 1200 miles and spent about 17 hours in the car to watch a 342 mile race that took about two hours to complete.
We thought it would be neat to have a photo record of our journey which started in Missouri, and headed out to Kansas. Of course what are we greeted with when we get into Kansas?
Ok, so we pay our $5.25. What did we get for it? Well, we did get to see the Flint Hills. BTW, most people have the misconception that Kansas is flat, but that would be incorrect. It is hilly, there just aren’t any trees!
We rolled through Oklahoma City around noon, so I called up a good friend of mine who works in Norman and we were able to hook up for lunch. That worked out quite nicely, really, and it was good to see Michelle and Dave again. Finally that afternoon, we rolled into Texas! Woohoo!! …or should I say YeeHaw? Its not the best picture, I know, but we’d been in the car for about 8 hrs already, cut me some slack!
We stopped off in Denton and checked in to our high-class room at the Motel 6. Yes, they left the light on for us. Denton turned out to be a great place to stay. Its just north of the track, right on I-35, and the Motel 6 was clean, the people were nice, and it was cheap. There was a language issue, though.
Me: “Pardon me, could we get a couple of bath towels? There aren’t any in our room.”
Housekeeper: “¿Qué?”
We finally made it to the track around 4pm and wandered around the midway for a while. I went to the Downforce trailers (not tents) and got my 1500 fan points for attending the race (points toward my next free tickets! :D), and picked up our seats for the race. After wandering around for a while and not seeing any great swag, we went up to our seats. Boy were we surprised at the quality of the seats! These tickets were fantastic!! If you’re a fan of IndyCar racing at all, you should definitely consider signing up for the Downforce fan club! Our seats, although providing us a great vantage point for the race, didn’t give us a great view of Robbie Knievel’s jump, but the track had good jumbotron that were easily viewed from our location.
The start of the race was really cool. With the sun going down, the sparks from the bottom of the race cars and the picture flashes from the stands were magnificent! Check out the videos of the start of the race, and a restart after a round of yellow-flag pitstops. The look of the track at night was so cool. I’m officially a fan of night races now!
The racing action was really good, and there were multiple racing lines on the track which made for some great side-by-side racing. Not surprisingly, Scott Dixon crossed the finish line on the 228th and final lap ahead of everyone else. …again. Unfortunately, the race ended under caution because Marco Andretti. …again. This incident was remarkably similar to the incident at Milwaukee.
With the race over, we made our way out of the speedway and back up to Denton. The egress was remarkably easy. TMS really has their traffic situation handled very well. Anyway, we got back to our room, turned on the TV and watched the end of the race. …again. Apparently the race was tape-delayed so that ESPN could show the rest of the NASCAR Nationwide Series race. ARG! That meant that I didn’t get the ending recorded on TiVo! So the next morning we headed back and finally made it back home 36 hrs after we left on Saturday morning.
What a great race, and a fun road trip. Texas will definitely be on my short list of races to attend in 2009!
As usual, Saturday before the race, my bro-in-law Ryan and I went to Muncie and met up with my friend Steve. We enjoyed our traditional Greek’s breadsticks, and weird beer downtown at Herot. Herot is a pub devoted to all manner of beer from all over the world, and like its literary namesake, its dimly lit, and decorated with various standards, weapons, and dead animals. Its the only place I’ve ever been where I can say that I’ve never had the same beer twice, and I’ve been there many many times!
Well, Carb Day was a bummer because of the moisture, but Race Day was perfect weatherwise. The temps were perfect, the skies were slightly overcast but not gloomy or threatening, and the breeze was gentle. I think it was by far the best race day weather I’ve ever experienced! Everything just seemed right this year with the Race. The balloons looked beautiful, Jim Nabors was back, and the American open-wheel community was reunited with Andretties, Rahals, and Foyts all running together once again.
If you’ve never seen the start of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race live and in person, then you can’t understand how magical the moment really is. This year, we were in a different section. Typically we sit in Section J at the exit of Turn 4, but this year we were in the Northwest Vista near the apex of Turn 4. We got a better view of the North Chute, but we couldn’t see the pits or the front straight. Although I still prefer Section J, the NW Vista did provide a great view of the start of the race!
The race itself was a bit disjointed. Lots of yellows disrupting the flow of the race. As the race winner, Scott Dixon, said, “There was no rhythm to the race.” There were many things that happened that were expected, some that were surprising, and a couple that were downright tragic. In the expected category was Milka’s car on the hook after spinning resulting from contact with Buddy Lazier.
The most tragic event of the race was when Sarah Fisher collided with a spinning Tony Kannan in the North Chute between Turns 3 and 4.
Its a bummer anytime any racer tears up a racecar, but in Sarah’s case it was especially unfortunate. This year Sarah has put together her own team and is competing as a driver/owner of Sarah Fisher Racing. She and her team had worked very hard at putting together a sponsorship program with two main sponsors, ResQ Energy Drink and Gravity Entertainment, both of whom failed to live up to their contractual obligations and never sent a dime to the fledgling team. The most heartwarming story of the month was the outpouring of goodwill and hard cash donations from Sarah’s fans. Perhaps SFR should solicit Turbine for a sponsorship since they could share the same slogan, “Powered by our fans!” The collision with Kannan set SFR way back financially, and its questionable whether they’ll make the Kentucky race as they’d hoped. In a great gesture of sportsmanship, Andretti Green Racing has supplied Sarah Fisher Racing with some replacement part to help rebuild their racecar. I really hope they can recover from this setback.
This will be my last year of attending the Race with Steve and his family. I’d like to take the opportunity to express my overwhelming gratitude for him and his family inviting and welcoming me to be part of their 50-year tradition of attending the 500. I’ve had a great time with them these past eight years. This doesn’t mean that I’ll not be attending the 500 next year! Now that Tab is also interested in IndyCar racing and the 500, we’re going to try to start our own family tradition of attending the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. With luck, we’ll be able to get seats close to Steve and his family in Section J. I’ve got my fingers crossed!
Rain, rain, and more rain. That was the theme for the day and it sucked. We did get to see about 15-minutes of practice before they threw the yellow for moisture in T4, so the day wasn’t completely without action on the track. The Freedom 100 was postponed, though, which sucks. I was really hoping to catch that race. The Indy Lights cars really put on a good show. We ended up sitting in the Paddock Penthouse Boxes just up track of the Bricks, which put us right across from Bruno Junqueira’s pit box.
Since the rain limited the on-track action, we took in much of the infield and got to roam the Indy Lights garage area. If I’d been more prepared, I’d have tried to scout out Andy Prendeville or Ana Beatriz. I found Ana’s garage, but I didn’t really have a good remembrance of what she looked like.
With no bronze badge, we couldn’t get into the pits or garage area for the big cars, but we did catch a glimpse through the fence of Foyt and Kannan at the pumps. …hope they remember to secure the fuel cover this time!
It was definitely the day for going to the Museum, and wow was it packed! They had a neat display of a variety of vintage and modern bikes, including the Indian similar to what Nicky Hayden rode around the track with recently.
Of course, they also had The Prize on display. Very cool. I like that there is no podium for the Indy 500. As the saying goes, “There can be only one!”
Dad was stoked to see Rick Mears’ 1988 winning car on display. He had the coolest experience ever at the track that year. He ended up schmoozing his way into the Mears garage after the race and was chatting and drinking champagne with Rick’s dad. That’s a story for another post, though.
Well, with the rain washing out all of the ontrack activities, we decided to head downtown to our fav Irish Pub, the Claddagh. Fish and chips and good beer was had by all. Now its time to get ready for Race Day! I’ll have more pics and movies for you on Monday.
Greetings, I'm Doug Patterson: a gamer, poker player, scientist, and overall geek. :p Welcome to my blog where I write and comment on all things interesting to me. Please feel free to comment! We might not always agree, but what fun would it be if we did?
They don’t keep all the chase excitement to themselves, either. You can join them on a chase tour, but you’ll have to hurry for this season. Their last regular tour is on August 16th. After that, short-notice tours are the only option. How did I find out about the TwisterSisters? Well, as it turns out, Peggy is a HUGE motorsports fan. I met her, and found out about her site and storm chasing at the Indy Car Garage. Which is a very cool site all to itself, but that’s a topic for another post.
What a trip! 
That night, we met our folks in Muncie at the 
If only there were a way to TiVo webcasts. 
