A Thought for the Day: About Appearances

"Appearances aren't everything, they just look like they are."
Heard on the radio, here in central Minnesota, by a member of the Lemming's family.

ISS Storage Room, a Video, and Hair

"Space Station Gets a Zero Gravity Storage Room"
Denise Chow, Space.com (March 1, 2011 )

"The astronaut crew of space shuttle Discovery made a special delivery at the International Space Station today (March 1) by installing a new, and much-needed, extra storage room on the orbiting lab.

"The astronauts used a robotic arm to attach the zero gravity closet, called the Permanent Multipurpose Module, to the bottom of the space station on an Earth-facing port of NASA's Unity node. The module's installation also marked another historic moment for the mission – it is the last NASA room to be attached to the multinational laboratory.

"The module was successfully attached to the station at 10:05 a.m. EST (1505 GMT).

" 'Leonardo is looking very happy to be in his or her new home,' station astronaut Cady Coleman said...."

"...The Leonardo module was one of three cargo-carrying Multipurpose Logistics Modules built for NASA by the Italian Space Agency. It's about the size of a small bus and weighs about 28,353 pounds (12,860 kilograms) when loaded with cargo.

"Leonardo was delivered to NASA in 1998 and made its first spaceflight in 2001. This mission is its eighth and last trip to space. [Infographic: A New Closet for the Space Station]

"By coincidence, flight controllers here at the station's Mission Control here at NASA's Johnson Space Center radioed the crew with a timely announcement: The space outpost was flying over Turin, Italy as the Italian-built module was bolted into place...."

The psychological and cultural implications of that phrase, "Leonardo is looking very happy to be in his or her new home," deserve a little attention. There's anthropomorphism: assigning human traits to something that's not human. Then there's the careful "his or her" phrase: the Lemming remembers when folks in America had to start being crazy-careful about personal pronouns. Looks like we're still in that sociopolitical bog.

On the other hand, this video shows how much things have changed since the '50s. Which the Lemming doesn't miss, by the way. On the other hand, homo sapiens sapiens hasn't changed all that much in the last 50 years. Or 500, or 5,000 for that matter. Which is another topic.

One of the Lemming's daughters, seeing the video, remarked on the futility of all that money spent on hair conditioners: when someone's hair gets world-class body just by living on the ISS. Which is yet another topic.

The PMM - the Lemming thinks "closet" is a pretty good term, too - is another example of the modular design. It's a smart approach, in the Lemming's opinion, since a 'modular' ISS could be used as soon as a habitat, power source, and docking points were in place. Or is it in orbit?

Which brings up the matter of how new things like the ISS, Web, and iPod are named - which is yet again another topic.


Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

Related posts:

• "Four Ships Docked at the ISS"
  (February 28, 2011)
• "International Space Station: Not Many Amenities, But What a View!"
  (January 26, 2011)
• "Looking Down on the Auroras"
  (June 21, 2010)
• "Postcards From the Frontier"
  (April 3, 2010)
• "ISS Space Station Walkthrough, Looking Ahead"
  (October 28, 2009)

Related NASA video:

• "Waking up, working, and going to sleep in Zero G"
  NASAtelevision, YouTube (January 18, 2011)
  video, 17:10
  • Expedition 26 NASA Flight Engineer Cady Coleman discusses what daily life is like aboard an orbiting space laboratory on CBS' news program "The Talk" on January 18, 2011.

More:

• "Humanity in Space: The Next Few Decades"

GMail, Google, Backup, and the Lizard People

"Google Gmail Snafu Lesson: Backup, Backup, Backup"
Ian Paul, PCWorld (March 1, 2011)

"Gmail is hard at work restoring service to about 40,000 Gmail users after a software bug deleted their e-mail messages, folders, labels and filters. So, while things are looking good for those users affected by the bug, this episode proves, once again, that while Web-based services may be robust, you still have to take responsibility for your own data.

"Google also takes responsibility. Ben Treynor, Google's VP Engineering and Site Reliability Czar, said on Google's Gmail blog that Google backs up all Gmail to tape. 'Since the tapes are offline, they're protected from such software bugs,' he blogged. 'But restoring data from them also takes longer than transferring your requests to another data center, which is why it's taken us hours to get the e-mail back instead of milliseconds.'

"Treynor said a storage software update introduced the unexpected bug, which caused 0.02% of Gmail users to temporarily lose access to their e-mail.

"It's Not Just Google Services You Need to Worry About

"However, it's not just Gmail and other Webmail services that are the problem; we're increasingly using cloud-based tools for work and communication such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Docs, Microsoft Office Live, Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger, Posterous, Flickr, Picasa, and on and on.

"But that doesn't mean you should forego a solid back-up plan for all your online data. If the worst ever does happen, and a free Web service dumps your stuff permanently, the only response you can reasonably expect from these companies is: "oops, sorry."..."

There are quite a few lessons one could learn from the recent GMail SNAFU. Among them are:

1. Google can't be trusted
2. Microsoft is evil
3. All of the above
   
4. Space-alien, shape-shifting lizard people are behind it all
5. Trust, but do backup anyway

Answers A. B, and C have, in the Lemming's experience, some earnest and enthusiastic proponents. Still, 'if three hundred million people really believe in a stupid idea: it's still a stupid idea.' The Lemming suspects that one reason that Google and Microsoft are so roundly reviled is that both are highly successful outfits. And that's another topic.

Answer D, weird as it is, reflects a minority opinion (the Lemming trusts) that lizard people from outer space are the 'real' rulers of Earth. (Another War-on-Terror Blog, footnote 1, (January 14, 2009)) And that's not quite another topic.

Answer E reflects the Lemming's approach to email services, cloud computing, and municipal sewage plants.

Trust, in the Lemming's opinion, is necessary when dealing with other folks.

Warning! Old Coot Reminiscing

When the Lemming was getting a weekly paycheck, the Lemming trusted the boss to sign checks.

The boss trusted the Lemming to get things done.

Sometimes the boss didn't sign the check. Sometimes the Lemming didn't get things done. That's because there were weeks, now and again when cash flow in the company simply wouldn't cover paychecks; and some weeks, now and again, the Lemming simply couldn't keep up with the tasks. We both caught up, but there were a few awkward moments.

Big Companies Never Make Mistakes, Right?

The Lemming suspects that there's a tacit assumption that big companies, like Google, never make mistakes: That when something goes wrong with one of their services: THEY DID IT ON PURPOSE!!!

Frustrating as finding one's account deleted is: That's not likely.

It's not that the Lemming thinks Google, Microsoft, Big Cheese, and all the rest are run by paragons of virtue. The Lemming's assumption is that, occasional debacles like the big three automakers meltdown notwithstanding, the folks who run large companies are:

• Not particularly stupid
• Moderately selfish
• Aware of where their money comes from

The 'moderately selfish' part of that list is a whole different set of topics: probably for another blog.

The point is that, again with notable and spectacular exceptions, the Lemming has noticed that the folks in charge of outfits like Google - and GMail - act as if they know that if they fail to provide the services the rest of us depend on them for: we'll find someone else who will.

And there goes their job, their pension, their house in Hyannis Port, and all.

Golden parachutes, corporate greed, and mind-boggling stupidity are yet more topics.

Backing Up Data: Good Idea

Back to the PCWorld article. Op-ed, actually.

Ian Paul has, in the Lemming's opinion, pretty good observations and advice about how to be sensible with personal data and:

• Gmail and Friends
• Facebook
• Blogging
• Twitter

The Lemming doesn't follow all of Mr. Paul's advice: but the Lemming doesn't have the same needs and preferences.

It's like so many other things: The specific advice is pretty good; but the best part is the set of principles involved.

Principles For Backups

For the Lemming, there's a whole lot of data that can go away and not be missed. For that, backups are a waste of time. What the Lemming thinks is important, and what you do, won't be quite the same.

But the Lemming thinks that it's a good idea to decide what's important, what's not: and then set up a routine, preferably automated, for backing up the important data.

And storing it someplace that's a good distance from where the primary servers are.

Which reminds the Lemming: This nifty new computer doesn't have backup routines established yet.

Somewhat-related posts:

• "New Google OS, Cloud Storage: Spiffy"
  (December 9, 2010)
• "Cloud Computing: Still Now, Still Wow"
  (July 13, 2010)
• "Google Gmail Hack: a Followup"
  (January 19, 2010)
• "Google Gmail Accounts Vulnerable, China Hack Went Public"
  (January 18, 2010)
• "Computers, Ignorance, Paranoia, Tech Support, and Humor"
  (May 18, 2009)