The Klose Conclave

This is video that was taken aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis as the crew releases the Hubble Telescope after a series of successful repairs and upgrades.  The video is pretty awesome.  I love hearing the 10 thrusts – I just wish I knew what they were all saying and doing, sounds all very complicated.  Enjoy!

- DK

I found a new website a couple days ago that I’m extremely excited about.  ChronoShark.com is the Woot! of watches.  For those that don’t know what Woot! is, go check it out.  It’s a website that has a deal on one item everyday.  The item can be just about anything like a car seat, computer, vacuum cleaner, or a bug zapper.  ChronoShark acts the same way in that everyday they have a watch on sale for much cheaper than other sites.  They sell watches from a variety of manufacturers though many of them are a little more expensive then your typical Casio digital watch.

As some of you may know, I want to become a watch connoisseur or rather a collector of fine time pieces.  So far in my collection I have an Invicta Pro Diver II and a Swiss Legend.  The Invicta is a fantastic watch that I’ve had for two and a half years.  I wear it almost ever day and it’s in fantastic shape.  There isn’t a scratch on the crystal and the stainless steel is still very bright.  The Swiss Legend is a very stylish watch but it’s very big.  The face is almost two inches in diameter and it weighs a ton.  I’ve only worn it out once and I have to say it wasn’t a great experience.  I was always adjusting it and moving it around on my wrist, eventually I just took it off.  It’s a great watch and I love it but it won’t be worn that often.

My next watch purchase will be an automatic watch.  These watches have a mechanical movement and use the natural motion of the person’s arm as energy to run the watch.  Inside there is an eccentric weight that rotates and through a series of gears, winds the main spring.  During a typically day there is enough energy stored in the main spring to keep the watch running for a few days.  If an automatic watch isn’t worn everyday it’s a good idea to purchase an automatic watch winder.  These spin the watch when not worn to keep the eccentric weight moving and thus keep the watch wound. (Read: Not Cheap)

Another cool part about buying watches are the really nice cases that the watches are packaged in.  Invicta watches use a bright yellow box that is padded with velvet inside for extra protection.  Kind of a dumb thing to point out but if they put that much into the watch case, they must put a lot into the timepiece.

-DK

Ahh, blog post numero uno.

It has taken me several years of internet surfing and browsing to finally understand what blogging is all about.  My first encounter with “blogging” and “bloggers” was four and half years ago during Rathergate.  I was a young student, enjoying my first year of higher education when I began hearing and reading stories about phony documents.  These documents, put forth by CBS Evening News’ Dan Rather, were challenging President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard.  Put simply, they charged that he was not performing at an acceptable level and that higher-up officials may have persuaded his commanders to give Bush higher marks than what he should have gotten.  Whether these things happened or not is a moot point (interestingly enough it appears that they did), Bush won the election and now he’s outta here.

But as the documents were looked over by researchers, writers, and bloggers, there began a flurry of discussion over the authenticity of the documents.  Claims of inaccurate time lines, wrong letter heads, signatures, even the superscript “th” on the dates came into question.  It was thought that this superscript “th” was only available on recent word processing software and not manual typewriters of the 70′s.  However bloggers found typewriters made back then that did have this feature.  More blogger research discovered that the Texas Air National Guard did in fact own a few of these typewriters but just not during the time these documents were supposedly written.

Within a day, the blogging community had everyone questioning the authenticity of these documents and soon later, Dan Rather and CBS had to issue apologies for running a story over forged documents.  The original story about Bush’s guard service was never brought up again.  I was amazed that a bunch of writers and bloggers could have that kind of effect in such a short amount of time.  It’s safe to say that my view of the internet and it’s capabilities changed during that time.

I hope in future posts, to make you laugh, make you cry, make you happy, make you mad, but more importantly make you think.  I’m not trying to change the world with my writings but instead create a flurry of discussion over the authenticity of my opinions.

-DK