Sunday, April 20, 2008

Kokua Festival, Astronauts and Wikipedia

So there is just something about living in Hawaii that just never gets old... although, I must admit, I've almost reached the 7 month mark here, so the idea of things 'getting old' is probably a bit preconceived on my part.  I've been told that Haole (pronounced how-lee), as they call us white-folks here in the Islands, tend to get so called 'Island Fever' after about 6 months of living here... well, that hasn't happened to me yet... and I don't forsee it happening to me anytime soon, but you never know... anyway, back to my original thought.  What hasn't gotten old to me yet after living here is the never ending good weather and sunshine... but that's really boring, and writing about it probably doesn't help with my readership... but anyway- last night, some friends and I went to the 'Kokua Festival' an open air festival featuring two of my all-time favorite artists at the 'Waikiki Shell,' an outdoor venue that is used quite frequently for concerts and the like- while I will admit that we didn't actually have tickets, we were able to sit out on the grass, and listen to the Dave Matthews Band and Jack Johnson who were here to play... anyway- I walked there and walked back from my house- it was a concert celebrating, ahem, earth day, probably not one of the most compelling celebrations in my book, but at least I lowered my carbon footprint for a day by walking the 1.5 miles to the concert and back... it seems I cover a lot of ground on the adidas express living here in Waikiki though- but it literally is easier to just walk everywhere than it is to drive... not to mention parking is at a premium, gas is well, $3.67 a gallon and heck- you can cover a lot of ground on foot if you just take the time to do it... of course, I do pay a premium for living in this fantastically convenient location, but hey, as they say, you do have to pay to play... what does that mean?  Anyway- I'm sort of rambling, but I guess I'm just happy to be here, and figured I'd write about it... today my buddy Tony and I took the Murphster to the beach over by Sandy Beach on the South-East side of Oahu... I did manage to get my truck stuck for about 10 minutes in some soft sand... which made me wonder for those 10 minutes why in the heck I bought an SUV without four wheel drive, but with a push from Tony and another helpful soul and some rocks under the rear wheels I managed to get out of the predicament I was in... carbon footprint be damned... anyway- the beach is great... whatever... nothing too earth-shattering in this post so far, but I've neglected my blog this week and felt like I needed to put something up... which is probably not the best reason to post, but whatever... so what I was going to say originally, living in Hawaii has yet to get old to me.  Tony and I kicked around the idea of going in halves on a Hobie Cat... I love sailing and having a Hobie Cat would be a great reason to get out on the water on a regular basis... not to mention the wind here in Hawaii is legendary... there is really no such thing as a bad wind day...  OK... my next topic- astronauts-

So for some reason, I was reading about Shuttle Missions this afternoon- oh yeah- when I got home from the beach today, there was a special on Discovery HD (which by the way, for those of you that don't watch TV in HD... you have no idea what you are missing) anyway- the special on Discovery HD was about STS-114, the first Shuttle Mission after the Columbia disaster, the Shuttle Discovery slipping the surly bonds of earth... well, in reading about it, I came upon something I found quite interesting... apparently NASA has had a tradition since maybe the days of the Gemini missions of waking astronauts up each morning with a pre-chosen song of one astronauts choosing... for those of you that don't know, I was an astronaut wannabe when I was a kid... unfortunately I didn't cut the mustard when it came to advanced math, so I just settled for a run-of-the-mill Naval Flight Officer (but I did go to Space Camp :) so I've always kind of had an affinity for all things space... even if it is just as an enthusiastic observer... but you've also probably figured out that I'm also a music fan... so when I found out that they play songs for the astronauts each morning to wake them, and then I found some of the actual recordings of the dialogue that follows each waking from some of the recent missions, I figured I'd feature them here... so here they are, compliments of Wikipedia... which by the way, have you ever thought about the amount of work that all those selfless Wikipedians put into their body of work?  I mean seriously- you can find information about almost anything on Wikipedia- but who wants to spend all their time writing that stuff?  I'm a big fan, admittedly, but seriously... I was reading it today, thinking, someone puts a lot of selfless work into this.  I admit, I have edited a post or two, but more to assist in the accuracy of something which I know a lot about... not really to generate data, more to just correct it.  I guess those folks who have that strength of... you know what... my next post is going to be about Strengths, and the Gallup Organizations' take on them... stay tuned.  

Anyway- check out some of the 'wake-up' songs from STS-123, the most recent Shuttle Mission, excerpted from, you guessed it, Wikipedia:  (by the way, if you do listen to one or two of the songs, listen to the whole thing, because they don't play the entire song, but Mission Control will start talking and you can hear the conversation between them and the particular astronaut who chose the song for the day... kind of cool)

(note: I also just found this little write up on the history of music being used as wake-up calls in Space...)

Wake-up calls

A tradition for NASA human spaceflights since the days of Gemini, is that mission crews are played a special musical track at the start of each day in space. Each track is specially chosen, often by their family, and usually has a special meaning to an individual member of the crew, or is applicable to their daily activities.[33][34]

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1 comment:

Ve said...

How cool! I love your tangents.

April 22, 2008 at 10:50 AM

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