"Oh. That's not your baby ... that's the Stevie Ray Vaughan boxed set."

I'm sitting in Jason Hunter's Web Services Tutorial at the Northern Virginia Software Symposium. It's not the usual web services talk ... Jason gives a lot of interesting examples, and essentially ignores the low-level mechanics of SOAP in favor of showing you how to do it, and do it easily. Most of his examples deal with the most useful web services out there right now: the Google and Amazon web services APIs. It's a great talk full of extremely practical information.

But I do notice a disturbing trend in the example services. So far we've seen:

• Does Google know how to spell my name?
• How often does Google crawl my website?
• Darn! Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, is a more popular Hunter than I am.
• How's my book selling compared to the latest Tom Clancy?

This is getting more meaningful all the time. :-)

James is taking his TiBook along on visits to his therapist now:

Today, NASA is thinking it probably wasn't a problem with the insulating tiles on Columbia -- or at least, not one that was caused by the main tank debris that hit the shuttle on liftoff.

Nevertheless, the most disturbing thing to me about the whole affair is learning that, even if they knew there was a serious problem with the tiles, there would be nothing they could do. In such a case, I suppose there's always the chance of a rescue mission by one of the other shuttles or by a Russian craft. But you can also think of dozens of reasons why such a thing wouldn't be able to happen in time. So NASA says they didn't even do an EVA to check the tiles, presumably on the assumption that it would be better not to know. It's hard to argue with that, assuming that they really couldn't do anything about it.

I don't guess I'm really surprised by this. Working in vacuum and microgravity is difficult, and putting those tiles on is notoriously tricky under the best circumstances. I know they use a special adhesive, and who knows whether that would adhere or dry properly in vacuum, or in the cold? And maybe they have to be applied under high pressure. But even though I'm not surprised, it's very troubling to think about that situation: there's something badly wrong, and it seems trivial (missing tiles!), but the crew will die, and there's nothing they or anyone else can do.

It points to the next big challenges of spaceflight. Somehow we have to have a cheaper, simpler way out of the gravity well, so that we can have ships that are simple enough to be repaired in space. And we need to work on technologies that make it easier to work in microgravity and vacuum: lighter, less constricting and more flexible spacesuits, as well as thrusters or other tools that make it easier to get around, and ways to gain leverage in the absence of weight and friction.

(Oh, and I'll second what Rael said.)

Jason's too-hip AIM icon and iChat combined to give me a good laugh yesterday:

I'm here at the Rocky Mountain Software Symposium in Denver. Both mornings, I've ended up showering in ankle-deep water because the drain in the bathtub was closed when I got in the shower, and I didn't notice right away. How annoying.

So now I'm downstairs waiting for lunch with Mike, and we're talking about weblogs. I just showed him NetNewsWire, and used James' blog as an example. And to my great amusement, James added a blog entry today: Why Do Hotels Close the Drains?

Today we took the boys to Blue's Clues Live. I continue to be impressed with that show. It's not perfect, of course, and some of the marketing and paraphernalia is too much. But they find creative ways to teach interesting stuff, they teach morals and ethics without being preachy, and the kids love it.

I've always thought that, in particular, the music on Blue's Clues stands out. They incorporate music from every genre you can imagine, mostly cleverly adapted versions of the various themes from the show. And nearly all of it is much better than the usual music from children's TV. Today, believe it or not, the stage show included a distinctly Koyaanisqatsiish minimalist Philip Glass-style piece. But to the kids, it was all just music, which is the way it should be.

An alarming proportion of drivers are complete idiots. I know this isn't news to anybody, but it's still occasionally amazing.

Today on the way to work I was approaching a toll plaza. This plaza comes fairly soon after a major entrance ramp, so people who enter the turnpike at that entrance have to cross multiple lanes quickly if they want to make it over to the high-speed tolltag lanes. This morning some goon cut across about four lanes, just in front of the toll plaza. *sigh*.

Cutting across multiple lanes isn't ever a really bright idea. But this was worse for several reasons:

• Traffic was heavy
• The lanes were moving at different speeds ... most of them were full of people slowing down to drop coins in the toll baskets or to get change from a real live human, but the lanes she was aiming for were heading full-speed through the tolltag lanes
• There was no room for error. We were all traveling pretty fast, with only about 25 feet left before the concrete pylons that divide the lanes of the toll plaza.

All that to save probably 20 seconds or less.