Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
First & foremost, a very happy birthday to
Lilie as she joins the prestigous Quarter Century Club. Congratulations!!! Secondly, well...yesterday was the big 700th post...and this one is even bigger. Why? Because
I WAS OFFERED THE JOB IN LAKE TAHOE!!! Now, it's not official until the paperwork is signed (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, I ain't gonna get fooled again) and I haven't decided on a start date yet...but probably around Thanksgiving at the latest, I'll be a resident of Lake Tahoe in a new position (though eerily similar to my position in Denver). It's opening a new office for the company...and it's just going to be awesome. Obviously I aced the 2nd interview,
new Boss Lady B checked three of my references including my current manager who all had nothing but flowery things to say...and do you remember
A-Beer? From the
Nuggets game & former coworker in Denver? Well, she used to work with my new Boss Lady B...and apparently she had great things to say about me...and allegedly A-Beer's not one to freely hand out praise, so that's really cool. Anyway, long story short, after the calls to my referrals, Boss Lady B called, offered me the job, we chatted a bit about the moving process & any suggestions...and basically we look forward to working together. Awesome, right? So yeah, the next few weeks are gonna be a little hectic trying to get everything squared away. Luckily I'm kinda prepared because I've been working at this for almost four months...but it's still just a bit of a surprise how fast it happened after the lengthy wait of nothingness. Also, can't wait until tax time. Three states of residence in the last calendar year. Awesome.
So Dr Love is going to Cali...but just not Hollywood...yet. Any starlets interested need only take a vacation to Lake Tahoe and ask around. I'll be there. Anyway, here's some news...I'll talk to you when I know a little more...and I'm a little more clearheaded. I typed this stuff up first.
Robo Roadtripper - MIT researchers and designers are developing the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) -
a new in-car personal robot that aims to change the way we interact with our car. AIDA communicates with the driver through a small robot embedded in the dashboard. "AIDA builds on our long experience in building sociable robots,” explains professor Cynthia Breazeal, director of the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab. “We are developing AIDA to read the driver's mood from facial expression and other cues and respond in a socially appropriate and informative way." AIDA communicates in a very immediate way: with the seamlessness of a smile or the blink of an eye. Over time, the project envisions that a kind of symbiotic relationship develops between the driver and AIDA, whereby both parties learn from each other and establish an affective bond. To identify the set of goals the driver would like to achieve, AIDA analyses the driver’s mobility patterns, keeping track of common routes and destinations. AIDA draws on an understanding of the city beyond what can be seen through the windshield, incorporating real-time event information and knowledge of environmental conditions, as well as commercial activity, tourist attractions, and residential areas. “When it merges knowledge about the city with an understanding of the driver’s priorities and needs, AIDA can make important inferences,” explains Assaf Biderman, associate director of the SENSEable City Lab. “Within a week AIDA will have figured out your home and work location. Soon afterwards the system will be able to direct you to your preferred grocery store, suggesting a route that avoids a street fair-induced traffic jam. On the way AIDA might recommend a stop to fill up your tank, upon noticing that you are getting low on gas. AIDA can also give you feedback on your driving, helping you achieve more energy efficiency and safer behavior.” So now you have a robot that can accompany you on road trips...or be a nagging pain in the arse.
There had better be a few voice functions though. I get irritated with my GPS voice on my cell phone rather quickly...especially when she has no idea where I am. "I'm not in Sunnyvale, California. Why do you insist on giving me directions as such? I'm in Park City, b**ch!!!" Maybe it would help if it wasn't such a shrill monotonic voice. I'm thinking a sultry sexy female voice might work...especially if I'm an enterprising entrepreneur trying to sell something through directions (patent pending). "Turn left at the next light. I feel like Tex-Mex, let's go to Chili's." "What? You're a robot. You don't eat." "But aren't you hungry?" "No, not really." "Are you sure? Pleeeease, $teve. I'm soooo hoooooongry." "What are you doing to my zipper?" "Mmm, I want a beefy chimichanga." "STOP THAT! I'm trying to drive here. FINE!!! I'm pulling over into Chili's. I like their fajitas anyway. Damn you're persuasive." Maybe you could switch it up to a Johnny 5 voice...or you could be going on a road trip with Elvis. Who wouldn't want that? Anyway, great potential here for lonely individuals and people that get lost easily...but I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the early models got thrown out of moving cars. CRUNCH!!! "I TOLD YOU!!! I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING!!!" A mute button would be nice too.
Space Hotel - Where would be better to travel to with your robot navigator buddy than outer space? Please forget that it's like combining two of Kubrick's creepiest movies, "The Shining" & "2001:Space Odyssey" into one...but a company behind plans to
open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012 despite critics questioning the investment and time frame for the multi-billion dollar project. The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say
it will cost 3 million euro ($4.4 million) for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island (Haiti?). During their stay, guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and travel around the world every 80 minutes (sounds awesome to me). They would wear Velcro suits so they can crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman (mmm, I'm thinking of an oddly stimulating honeymoon in space). Galactic Suite Ltd's CEO Xavier Claramunt, a former aerospace engineer, said the project will put his company
Galactic Suite at the forefront of an infant industry with a huge future ahead of it, and forecast space travel will become common in the future. "It's very normal to think that your children, possibly within 15 years, could spend a weekend in space," he told Reuters Television. A nascent space tourism industry is beginning to take shape with construction underway in New Mexico of Spaceport America, the world's first facility built specifically for space-bound commercial customers and fee-paying passengers. British tycoon Richard Branson's space tours firm, Virgin Galactic, will use the facility to propel tourists into suborbital space at a cost of $200,000 a ride. Galactic Suite Ltd, set up in 2007, hopes to start its project with a single pod in orbit 450 km (280 miles) above the earth, traveling at 30,000 km per hour, with the capacity to hold four guests and two astronaut-pilots. It will take a day and a half to reach the pod - which Claramunt compared to a mountain retreat, with no staff to greet the traveler. "When the passengers arrive in the rocket, they will join it for 3 days, rocket and capsule. With this we create in the tourist a confidence that he hasn't been abandoned. After 3 days the passenger returns to the transport rocket and returns to earth." What could possibly go wrong? More than 200 people have expressed an interest in traveling to the space hotel and at least 43 people have already reserved. The numbers are similar for Virgin Galactic with 300 people already paid or signed up for the trip but unlike Branson, Galactic Suite say they will use Russian rockets to transport their guests into space from a spaceport to be built on an island in the Caribbean. But critics have questioned the project, saying the time frame is unreasonable and also where the money is coming from to finance the project. Claramunt said an anonymous billionaire space enthusiast (Darth Vader?) has granted $3 billion to finance the project. That sounds awesome. Not a million dollars a day awesome (hmm, maybe with the eight weeks on an island) but still, pretty damn cool. Just something to keep an eye on in the future. Also, are you afraid of flights into outer space? Well, there may be a more traditional alternative to get to your space hotel room in the near future as well.
Space Elevator - A laser-powered robot failed to complete its climb up a long cable dangling from a helicopter Wednesday in a $2 million competition to test the potential reality of the science fiction concept of space elevators. The highly technical contest brought teams from Missouri, Alaska and Seattle to Rogers Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert, most familiar to the public as a space shuttle landing site. The contest requires their machines to climb 2,953 feet (nearly 1 kilometer) up a cable slung beneath a helicopter hovering nearly a mile high. The Kansas City, Mo., Space Pirates team was first off the ground after hours of testing the cable system, refueling the helicopter and waiting to fire up the laser so it doesn't interfere with satellites. Its climber, a flat machine several feet square, initially failed to respond to laser power and was lowered, examined and sent back up. On the second try it began moving and then stopped. On the third try it began moving steadily, but then trouble developed as the laser could not stay locked on the machine. It failed to climb all the way up before the laser had to be shut off to protect satellites, said Ted Semons of the sponsoring Spaceward Foundation. The team was expected to try again Friday. Funded by a NASA program to explore bold technology, the contest is intended to encourage development of a theory that originated in the 1960s and was popularized by Arthur C. Clarke's 1979 novel "The Fountains of Paradise." Space elevators are envisioned as a way to reach space without the risk and expense of rockets. Instead, electrically powered vehicles would run up and down a cable anchored to a ground structure and extending thousands of miles up to a mass in geosynchronous orbit — the kind of orbit communications satellites are placed in to stay over a fixed spot on the Earth. Electricity would be supplied through a concept known as "power beaming," ground-based lasers pointing up to photo voltaic cells on the bottom of the climbing vehicle — something like an upside-down solar power system. The space elevator competition has not produced a winner in its previous three years, but has become increasingly difficult. Semons said the competing machines all use wheels to grip the cable. Two use modified inline-skate wheels and one uses steel wheels. The vehicles must climb at an average speed of 16.4 feet (5 meters) per second, or about 11 miles (18 kilometers) per hour, to qualify for the top prize. A lesser prize is available for vehicles that climb at 2 meters per second. The rules allow one team to collect all $2 million or for sums to be shared among all three teams depending on their achievements. Pretty cool huh? I know you like it when I talk nerdy to you.
Anyway, that'll do it for today. I'm super stoked about my new adventure...but I'll post with more information when more is known. Right now, I'm just trying to keep everything in perspective with my excitement. Thanks again to all of you for reading...and supporting me over the years. You guys rock!!! If you ever need a place to stay in Lake Tahoe, just let me know. Have a great day everybody!!!
