Switched

NO FUN AND SOME GAMES: So, there are a number of avid gamers in this household. People interested in technology and the latest gaming system, most especially if it's a Nintendo product.

Today, the Nintendo Switch was released.

It was kind of a big deal.

We didn't succesfully score a Switch during the pre-order phase, which was a huge bummer. So, I've had my finger on the pulse of the day of launch sale options. 

I worked all the angles, had all the right browser tabs open at the appointed time(s). Nine p.m. East Coast last night meant midnight to us, and 12:01 meant 3/3, the day of release.

All four of us were working the angles. Imagine the jubilation when my tap tap tapping led to scoring a unit via Walmart.com. We had a Switch, signed, sealed and supposed to be delivered by March 7!  Woo hoo!

This morning we went about our business, and about 8:30 were readying to leave for CJ's ortho appointment when I saw an email letting me know our order with Walmart had been canceled. "

Oh. MyGod. Are you KIDDING ME?!?!?

Last night I was all ready to do the midnight rodeo or early a.m. getting in line thing if I had to, but we didn't 'cause we had ours (hahahaha not really, apparently), via Walmart.com.

I said MANY MANY MANY bad words when I got their ridiculous email.

Do you want to know how you don't want to spend your Friday morning? 

You do not want to spend your Friday morning on the phone with Walmart 'customer service,' trying to get an item you ordered. It is Very Not Fun.

I won't bore you with the details. The bottom line was (of course) despite being 'escalated' to higher tiers of 'help,' there was no real help. I got a $25 Walmart gift cert and many, many 'sorry' statements. Pretty hard to play a game on that platform.

As soon as I resigned myself to the fact that was a lost cause, I weighed my options for scoring the hottest item on the planet on this given day. My last and only hope was Amazon's Treasure Truck. We're lucky to live in a city where a magical Treasure Truck roams neighborhoods passing out amazing things you want so badly. Like lobster. And Nintendo consoles.

Realizing the Treasure Truck often has the hottest, bestest stuff, I quickly texted Kennedy and Christian asking them to be on the lookout for a Treasure Truck text. Meanwhile, I (on my forever awful and unstable phone) downloaded the Amazon Shopping app. It was about 9:45 and I knew that Treasure Truck text notifications go out at 10 a.m. The download was so s-l-o-w! It finally happened and I launched the app, and looked for the Treasure Truck link.

I clicked on it and it said 'today on the truck ...'

OMG. It was the Nintendo Switch. THE. NINTENDO. SWITCH. 

Yes, please. 

I poked at my cell phone screen and tried to order one. 

And it worked. 

Wow. 

By some stroke of luck, I got the unit before the blast text even went out to all the world! 

What's even more amazing is that Kennedy got one too thanks to my frantic/hurried "OMG Igotonefromethetreasure turkc" text. He hopped on ahead of the text, too!

We went to a spot outside Google and Adobe Seattle HQ to pick the unit up.

As an added bonus, the kids each got to shoot an arrow at a gnome to win a Fremont (Theo) chocolate bar. 

After we left there, we went to Fred Meyer and scored the last two "The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild" games for the new Nintendo Switch. 

We met Kennedy in Queen Anne this afternoon, passing off one of the Zelda games in the middle of the street via opened car windows while barely moving. It might have looked a bit sketchy at the time, but he was happy the 'deal' went down.

Shortly thereafter, the kids got their system all set up, much to their delight.

Overall, today was one of those 'it was the best of times, it was the worst of times' days.

Meanwhile, in my back seat. ... 

Red, White and Green

           
SEUSSICAL: Today was a bit busy. 

It involved hauling two crockpots, a portable oven, 11 dozen eggs, 10 or so pounds of ham, two vegan quiches, posters, props, 6 gallons of chocolate milk, and more to the kids' learning center. 

That all happened by 8:30 a.m. From then on, it was scrambling in more ways than one. ;)

Specifically, 132 eggs were scrambled and dyed green, an homage to the famous Dr. Seuss book "Green Eggs and Ham." March 2 is Dr. Seuss' birthday, and it's the 20th anniversary of the National Education Association's "Read Across America" campaign, to promote literacy and reading to and with children.

The green eggs were served up along with a vegan greens, 'eggs' and 'ham' quiche, chocolate dairy milk and a soy milk alternative as a 'fun' raiser. 

Meanwhile, families were enjoying a Seussical selfie photo booth, and taking turns in the special reading chair, sharing favorite Seuss books aloud. 

There was also a craft table, where people could make  a fun door hanger, and an Oh The Places You'll Go-themed sheet dreaming about the future or a cute little Lorax out of a clementine.

All in all, a bit of work, but we had lots of great help and there were many appreciative people. 

MIND BLOWN: Tonight, we went down to Living Computers; Museum + Labs for their monthly movie night. 

We're all still reeling, a bit. ;)

This evening's feature was an hour long documentary called "The Simulation Hypothesis." In a nutshell, a simulation hypothesis, per Wikipedia, "proposes that reality is in fact a simulation (most likely a computer simulation). Some versions rely on the development of a simulated reality, a proposed technology that would seem realistic enough to convince its inhabitants. The hypothesis has been a central plot device of many science fiction stories and films." The movie "The Matrix" is perhaps the most notable example. 

It's a conversation starter, for sure. Here's the description for the movie, where it's posted on YouTube. ... 

Are we living in a virtual reality? Is the universe emerging from an information processing system? And if so, could we ever tell? Is it possible to 'hack' the system and change reality? Take a look at the evidence and decide for yourself! 

Contributions to THE SIMULATION HYPOTHESIS are made by leading researchers from physics, cosmology, mathematics and information sciences. Appearances by MaxTegmark, Neil degrasse Tyson, Paul Davies, James Gates and many more. Science has never been so much fun!

“What an incredible film! Fascinating, mind-bending stuff.” - Timothy Rhys, Publisher: MovieMaker Magazine

"Supremely interesting, compelling, fantastic!" - David Hoffman, Producer: Cannes Film Festival Critics Prize Winner

"By far the best video I have watched on this topic, bar none." - Prof. Brian Whitworth, Systems Analysis: Massey University

https://youtu.be/VqULEE7eY8M


I'll have the kids write up a review tomorrow. The video was certainly thought provoking, to say the least. ... 

Short Report

A DAY: It has been what one might call "a day."

Funny, when I got up this morning, I thought my hours-long nightmares about terrorist attacks on the Washington State Ferries was going to be the worst part of my day. 

It kind of went downhill from there, with ugly realities taking the place of bad nightmare.

Anywho, enough about the unpleasant.

One bright spot this morning was when we tuned in at the last second and saw a pretty lift off of a United Launch Alliance rocket.  It was a fun launch to watch because it was a rare West Coast event. (The vast majority of U.S. launches happen down on the Space Coast in Florida.)

On board the ULA Atlas 5 rocket was the newest National Reconnaissance Office satellite. http://spacenews.com/ula-launch-successfully-carries-nro-payload-into-orbit/#sthash.kj1hlTaX.dpuf

THERE IS ANOTHER:  Looks like we've got another blogger in the family. CJ has started regularly posting. Here's a link to his (politics-centric) blog: http://cjmoki.blogspot.com/

I'm happy to see him take initiative, do research, and get more writing practice in. 

Fun Sunday

TACOMA FUN: Sunday morning we headed down south to Tacoma to go to a radio station's birthday party. Yes, seriously.

CJ has become, um, what's a friendlier word for 'obsessed' with 102.9, an alternative rock radio station out of Tacoma?

I guess it's not a bad thing. In fact, I rather love all the music. It's '90s grunge galore, and the music I grew up with along with CJ's older brother's, Rick and Ken.So, I love that music and we were happy to indulge CJ's wishes.

The party was at 7 Seas Brewing in Tacoma. They have a cool, expansive space. 7 Seas has an interesting history. Their circuitous path led them to brewing in the old Heidelberg brewing space, iconic if you're a Pac NWer of a certain age. 

Since CJ was the impetus for attending, we'll let him tell you all about it. ...

 Yesterday, my family headed down south to Tacoma, to go to 7 Seas Brewing. We went to attend the 1st birthday celebration of Alt 102.9, a radio station from Tacoma (though licensed to Centralia) specializing in the last millennium's alternative rock. The 7 Seas Brewing building was a very nice and clean venue, and there was a "spinning table", where you could try to spin a wheel to win a prize. While my family spun it 4 times (to no success), we did get some promotional stickers. emblazoned with Alt 102.9's logo. Lastly, there was pizza from "The Rock", a series of restaurants with very good wood-fired pizza.
http://alt1029.iheart.com/calendar/february-26-2017/alt-1029-birthday-bash-545945/http://www.therockwfk.com/

WE ARE DORKS: Since we were down in Tacoma, we knew we had to go to our #1 draw in that town: Dorky's Arcade.

I'll let Annabelle tell you a bit more about that visit.

Dorky’s is an arcade in downtown Tacoma and one of our favorite spots to stop when we’re in town. The arcade is a bit small, but it has classics like Burgertime and Frogger, favorites like Dance Dance Revolution, and some games I’ve never seen before! One of those games was Killer Queen, which is somewhat like Joust, but with teams of 5. Each team has one “Queen” and you can win 3 ways: Either kill the other team’s queen 3 times, bring enough berries home to your hive, or ride the slow snail to your side of the screen. It was really fun, but it seems like it would be more fun with more players. They also had a giant version of Pac-man, which was neat because it was also competitive. There were 2 players on screen at once, but other than that it was essentially normal Pac-man on a huge screen made of individual lights. It was super fun at Dorky’s and I love visiting when we can!

CJ had the high score (so far) of the day on Sunday on the table version of Donkey Kong.

The arcade also has a few pinball machines. This one was my favorite.

And we loved this old school slot action hockey game.

Dragon Docked

         Photo: SpaceX

CAPTURED: First thing this morning, we checked out the status of the SpaceX cargo re-supply mission. We were happy to learn that after a one-day delay due to trouble with its navigation system, Dragon did, indeed, link up with the International Space Station this morning. 

We wound up watching an hour or so of NASA TV programming today, including a half hour show about the total solar eclipse coming up this August. The area just south of Portland and Boise is in the path of totality, so we are already making plans to check it out. 
https://youtu.be/vKAk_-zFWVI


Another show we watched was all about nutrition on the ISS, and part of it was about what they send up on cargo resupply missions like the one Dragon completed today. The woman packing the food noted that only three whole apples were going up for a crew of six, so some rationing would take place up there. Fresh apples aren't great for spaceflight, as they have a lot of mass and weight, compared to the nutrition they provide. 

HOW IT'S MADE: We also watched about 20 minutes of "How It's Made" today. The kids love that show, where they can find out how various processed food products are made.

Today, the episode included a segment on Funyuns, which are faux onion rings. 

Frito Lay has shared the process on their YouTube site.
https://youtu.be/YF5i6QXgR8c

NASA News

Photo: Ben Cooper www.LaunchPhotography.com

WAYWARD DRAGON: Sunday morning, we watched coverage of SpaceX's historic launch. For the first time, using the iconic former Mercury and Apollo launch pad 39A, SpaceX sent a Dragon capsule to space, destination International Space Station, for a cargo re-supply mission. 

The launch went like clockwork - as did the landing! Once again, SpaceX managed to land the first stage of their rocket back on Earth. It's just so remarkable to watch!

https://youtu.be/VnM2uGeZEFs

One of the first things we checked this morning was how the docking of SpaceX's resupply mission to the ISS went.

Turns out, it didn't. :/

I expected the ISS crew to be snacking on fresh fruit for breakfast our time, but Dragon was having some trouble navigating, unfortunately. And if there's one thing you don't want, it's a big spaceship traveling toward the ISS not 100 percent in control.

It turns out an incorrect data point that had been entered in the capsule's computer caused the problem, per NASA. SpaceX will try again Thursday morning. Hopefully the fresh produce will be just as tasty tomorrow. ;)

WHAT'S NEW: This morning, the kids and I tuned in for what was billed as a Really Big Deal press conference from NASA, about new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun (also known as exoplanets).

We knew that the news had to be about Goldilocks worlds - planets that were places our science deems to be 'habitable zones.'  The news was exciting, indeed.

It turns out that NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these seven planets are located within the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water.  That's a pretty darn big deal in the 'are we alone/is there other life out there' area of stargazing. 

This illustration shows the possible surface of TRAPPIST-1f, one of the newly discovered planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes have discovered that there are seven Earth-size planets in the system.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The artists' renditions of the Trappist system are compelling. 

Too bad it's 36 light years away. We really need to get on that 'folding space' concept, a la "Dune."

We love this NASA travel poster. 

I just love the fact that this is the #1 trending video on YouTube tonight. 
https://youtu.be/bnKFaAS30X8


For more information on exoplanets, check out this NASA site: http://exoplanets.nasa.gov
NASA NEEDS YOU: A new citizen science project has been announced by our friends at NASA. The agency is inviting the public to help search for possible undiscovered worlds in the outer reaches of our solar system and in neighboring interstellar space.

To get involved, go to their new website, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. It lets everyone participate in the search by viewing brief movies made from images captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.

The website uses the data to search for unknown objects in and beyond our own solar system. "AIn 2016, astronomers at Caltech in Pasadena, California, showed that several distant solar system objects possessed orbital features indicating they were affected by the gravity of an as-yet-undetected planet, which the researchers nicknamed "Planet Nine." If Planet Nine — also known as Planet X — exists and is as bright as some predictions, it could show up in WISE data," NASA explained in a press release.

https://youtu.be/P8pRUP3jNIY

WISE scanned the entire sky between 2010 and 2011, producing the most comprehensive survey at mid-infrared wavelengths currently available. Interestingly, after it completed its primary mission, WISE was shut down in 2011. However, it was reactivated in 2013 and given a new mission assisting NASA's efforts to identify potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs), such as asteroids and comets on orbits that bring them into the vicinity of Earth’s orbit. The mission was renamed the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE).

 So why the need for human eyes when computers can scan images? It turns out "machines are often overwhelmed by image artifacts, especially in crowded parts of the sky," explans NASA. This includes brightness spikes associated with star images and blurry blobs caused by light scattered inside WISE's instruments. And unlike more distant objects, those in or closer to the solar system appear to move across the sky at different rates. Therefore, the best way to discover them is through a systematic search of moving objects in WISE images, and humans can do a good job of that "because we easily recognize the important moving objects while ignoring the artifacts," per NASA. That same skill is what allowed astronomer Clyde Tombaugh to find Pluto in 1930, a discovery made 87 years ago this week.
Here's what  lead researcher Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has to say in a NASA press release about the citizen scientist project. "There are just over four light-years between Neptune and Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, and much of this vast territory is unexplored. Because there's so little sunlight, even large objects in that region barely shine in visible light. But by looking in the infrared, WISE may have imaged objects we otherwise would have missed."

It's hoped the search also may discover more distant objects like brown dwarfs, sometimes called failed stars, in nearby interstellar space.

So check it out! On the website, you can work your way through millions of "flipbooks," which are brief animations showing how small patches of the sky changed over several years. Participants can flag moving objects. Those objects will be prioritized by the science team for follow-up observations by professional astronomers. Participants will share credit for their discoveries in any scientific publications that result from the project. Pretty cool!

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a collaboration between NASA, UC Berkeley, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Arizona State University, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and Zooniverse, a collaboration of scientists, software developers and educators who collectively develop and manage citizen science projects on the internet.

For more information about Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, visit: http://backyardworlds.org
For more information about NASA's WISE mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/wise

Building and Remembering

ENGINEERED: Sunday morning we headed to Pacific Science Center to check out their weekend event: Engineer It!

I'll let Annabelle tell you a bit more about it. ...

Engineer It! Was an event at Pacific Science Center featuring engineering students from the University of Washington, setting up multiple booths for education about all kinds of engineering. There was a spot where you could work with others to build a free-standing arch out of foam blocks. A free-standing arch is one without adhesives or anything but physics holding it together. Another booth was much larger, and there were Lego robotics fighting a la the TV show “BattleBots”. The robots had sensors to look for the other bot, and a sensor on the bottom to determine when they hit the edge of the arena.

We also visited a station where some Bioengineering students had an ultrasound machine to look at your muscles, and a second table where they explained microparticles in medicine. The microparticles can slowly release medcine, and then they just fade away and the medicine is dispersed throughout your bloodstream. Engineer It! Was super cool, but I wonder if they’re going to make it an annual event.

End of Annabelle's summary. ;)  

To clarify, not all of the booths or stations were manned, and of the ones that were, they weren't all UW students or profs. Many seemed to be staffed by young PacSci volunteers. But many were DIY, including the one below about television signals.  

 And the 'gear factory' was a spot on the floor for self-directed fun.

 Annabelle worked with a young stranger to build this arch. Their teamwork worked!

The self-serve hand battery was cool.

There were UW biomed students demonstrating an ultra sound. The kids each got to see some tendons in their wrists and found their carotid arteries.

NEVER FORGET: While we were at Engineer It! a reminder popped up on my phone letting me know that A Day of Remembrance event was starting at 2 p.m., at Fisher Pavilion. That's just footsteps away from PacSci.

We had planned to go grocery shopping after Engineer It! but when I saw that reminder and knew the event was so close, we quickly switched gears. Obviously, learning about the internment camps during WWII was more important than getting some groceries. 

"Never Forget" was the message this afternoon at Fisher Pavilion where a Day of Remembrance was held marking the 75th anniversary of the President of the United States authorizing our government to incarcerate Americans simply because they looked like the enemy.

We walked into Fisher Pavilion at about 1:50 and every seat in the big hall was already filled. Fine by me/us - I was happy there was such a great turnout! More than 1,300 people turned out for the standing-room-only event.

One of the first stops we made was at a banner. It will be carried at future civil rights marches. We were happy to have a chance to sign it.

The event started promptly at 2. Michele Storms, deputy director of the ACLU of Washington, was the afternoon's emcee. 

The first speaker was poet Troy Asaki. He shared a compelling story about his family and his heritage. It starts at about the 12 minute mark in the video I've shared below. 

While the event's speakers included Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray. However, the most poignant speech came from Tom Ikeda. His grandparents, and their six children, were incarcerated in Idaho.

One of his uncles volunteered for military service. He was killed in action. Ikeda said one of the hardest moments of the horrible ordeal was his grandparents having to hold their soldier son's funeral in the indignity of the internment camp. 

During World War II, more than 120,000 American citizens and immigrants of Japanese ancestry were rounded up, forced to give up their homes, businesses, and ways of life. They were herded into inhospitable internment camps, forced to endure years of incarceration.

Mayor Murray and Congresswoman Jayapal noted how here and now have eerie parallels to conditions that led to the awful internment camps. 

Following is CJ's report on the event:

On February 19, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then-President of the United States, signed Executive Order 9066 into law, which forced approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans into concentration camps located across the country.

Seventy five years later, some of the racist sentiments present in WWII-era America are echoed in Donald Trump's Executive Order 13769, which was an attempt to bar travelers from 7 different (predominantly Muslim) countries from entering the United States.

Yesterday, my family visited Seattle Center's Fisher Pavilion for the "Never Again: Japanese American WWII History and American Muslim Rights Today" event. According to the ACLU of Washington's website, Never Again was a presentation and conversation examining Japanese American incarceration during World War II and how it relates to racism today.

To my knowledge, three different organizations sponsored Never Again. The first of them, Densho, is a group seeking to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. The second of them, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), seeks to to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding. The third group, the ACLU of Washington, is dedicated to protecting and advocating civil rights in the State of Washington.

There were multiple speakers at Never Again. One of them was Pramila Jayapal, who represents Washington's 7th District in the federal House of Representatives. Prior to entering politics, in 2001, Jayapal founded Hate Free Zone (now OneAmerica), which builds power within immigrant communities in collaboration with key allies. At Never Again, Jayapal referred to Seattle as the "moral conscience of America", presumably referring to the stance several Seattlites (myself included) and the Seattle City Government has taken in response to Donald Trump's racism. Additionally, Jayapal said that her offices had received over 14,000 pieces of mail/email so far, likely urging her to take action against Donald Trump. This caught my attention because I had actually sent her a letter encouraging her to take action against Donald Trump, and I think I know why I haven't heard anything back yet.

Sources:

https://www.aclu-wa.org/events/never-againhttp://www.densho.org/never-again-livestream/https://www.cair.com/index.phphttp://weareoneamerica.org/

If you are so inclined, you can watch the entire program we saw, you can check it out via YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73MsuVZqilA

ON AIR: After the Day of Remembrance event, we walked across the Seattle Center campus to where independent radio station KEXP's cool new digs are. The station's lobby is a busy coffee shop.

You can watch the DJs broadcast live, there's a record store on site, and some cool art.