Snow in Franconia Notch

It is coming down as I write this.  It's beginning to stick on the grass.   The ground has not frozen yet (we haven't had but one or two nights with frost to do the freezing) so the snow is melting on the road. No where near enough for skiing yet, but it is a good sign.

Names have been changed to protect the guilty

That Wallops Island rocket crash last week.  The one they are blaming on Russian built engines.  The company called itself "Orbital Sciences"  and the failed rocket they called "Antares".
   Funny, up until the disaster at Wallops Island, the company was known as "United Launch Association" or "ULA" and the vehicle was called "Atlas".   ULA was formed some years ago when Boeing and Lockheed decided to stop competing for NASA business, and spun off their space divisions.  The two spun off divisions promptly merged, creating ULA.  Their vehicle,Atlas, despite the Russian engines, has a pretty good record launching commercial comm sats, and military payloads (recon sats probably).
   Up until last week, Aviation Week worried about the Russian engines, and the possibility of the Russians cutting off the supply of engines in a tit for tat over Ukraine sanctions.  And they said, several times, that the cost of developing a US built engine would be prohibitive.  Well, last release to the popular (low information) press blamed the disaster on the Russian engines and announced that they would be replaced, with a yet to be named, US engine.  Nothing like an explosion filmed in full color to expedite the decision making process. 

Update:    Nov 7 20014.  Aviation Week came in this morning.  Apparently I am wrong, there ARE two US rocket operations, both using Russian built engines.  Aviation Week discusses both.  ULA and Atlas use a big Russian engine still in production, Orbital Science and Antares are using an old Russian engine, going back to the 1960's.  Sorry about the misinformation. 

Carpetbagger

That's what they called Scott Brown the day he joined the campaign.  I heard it said, over and over again.  I think that is the thing that tipped the election against him.  Jean Shaheen didn't campaign much, she hasn't done much except vote in Obamacare.  But she pulled it out in the end.  Too bad.  She is pretty much a do-nothing senator.  I'm afraid I live in a no-think blue state.   With yellow dog democrat voters that vote a straight party ticket no matter what, and no matter who is on the ticket. 

Blue Hampshire

NH re elected three big spender, do-little democrats at the top of the ticket, despite a Republican year, good GOP candidates, and plenty of money.  Looks like the takers are out voting the makers in NH.  The rest of the country was smarter, although just barely.  After six years of really awful democratic rule, the democrats still nearly won everywhere.   Although the the national Republicans took control of the Senate, it's a thin majority, just two seats last time I looked, with Virginia still too close to call on the morning after.  And few of the Republican victories were more than a couple of percent.  I don't see a permanent and lasting change in the political complexion of the country here, the democrats could make a comeback just about anytime. 
  Especially if the Republican Congress fails to do anything about jobs, about the economy, ISIS, Keystone XL, Ebola, the VA, the IRS, the budget, taxes,the Ukraine, the deficit, and a lot of other stuff that has the voters hot and bothered.  We have to survive a lame duck session of Congress where the Democratic Senate will likely try to pass a lot of stuff that will be dead when the new Congress convenes next year.  Fortunately the House will be able to block a lot of this stuff if it keeps it's cool.
   Congress ought to start in January on the Federal budget.  They ought to pass appropriation bills for each executive department (Defense, State, Agriculture, Commerce, and so on).  The democratic practice of letting appropriations slide until it's too late, and then passing one humungous continuing resolution, results in a stack of paperwork so thick that no one understands what's in it.  The few savvy inside staffers who do understand what is going down have all the opportunity in the world to slip in pet pork spending that no one will every see, 'cause it's buried so deep. 
   The bennie of separate appropriation bills is the voters can tell how much money is getting spent on what.  With the one humungous continuing resolution nobody knows how much money is going where.
  Then Congress ought to pass a bill that says "Build Keystone XL pipeline now."   Obama will hate it, but will he have the stones to veto it? 
  Then they ought to do something about ISIS, not sure just what, but we ought to figure out just what we are trying to do over there.  Right now we are just putting on fireworks displays, which does nothing for our relations with anyone in the world.  Makes us look stupid. 
  

Election Day.

We won't know much until the polls close and some results trickle in.  It was cold, 42F, at 8 AM when the polls opened.  I wore long woolen underwear, Smart Wool socks, a ski sweater and parka, and it was still cold.  I stood at the polls with signs for the Republican candidates till afternoon.  It had warmed up a little, 52F, by 12:30.
   Turnout was surprisingly heavy.  As heavy as any presidential year, maybe higher.  Constant stream of voters all day. 
  We won't know anything until much later tonight. 

Does Money in Politics Really Matter?

Closing out an election year with unbelievable amounts of outside money up here in NH.  Never have I seen such a blizzard of TV ads.  Now they go Democrat, Republican, Democrat, back to back.  Mail box stuffed full of political ads, email box overflowing.  Even state reps can afford four color 5 by 7 mailers this election.  A whole lot of it is from out of state organizations, so stated right on the ad.  Besides, even if you took the entire state of NH, held it upside down, and shook it like a piggy bank, you wouldn't get a tenth of the money that has been blown on this election. 
   Question.   Does all that money really matter?  Or are NH voters more influenced by face to face encounters with the candidates?  Which are cheaper than TV ads.  And we have had plenty of face to face contact, at least with Republican candidates.  They have been turning up at small scale rural clambakes and cookouts and VFW halls and town and county party events.  Democrats not so much, and the Democrats tend to screen the attendees at their affairs to keep hecklers away.
   So, why all the hubbub about campaign finance laws?  It's a free country, or at least it used to be, and free means a man ought to be able to spend his money anyway he pleases.   Groups ought to be able to make political movies and show them.  The really rich donors tend to even out, Warren Buffet vs the Koch brothers comes out roughly even. 
I'm thinking the people in favor of "campaign finance reform" are more interested in making sure that the other side gets less money.  And they also like bossing people around, and setting up a Federal Election Commission to do the bossing suits them just fine.  These are the people who are up in arms about the Supremes and the Heller decision, which overturned a lot of restrictions on political giving.
   I now believe the whole campaign finance reform thing ought to go away.  Let everyone put as much money into getting their guys elected as they please.  
 

Who wants Windows on a phone?

Win 8 is clearly an attempt to make Windows work on a phone or tablet.  The Microsofties put a lot of work into the concept.  Trouble is, after they built it, nobody came.  Who in their right mind would want Windows to come within 10,000 feet of their phone.  We all know Windows, we know it's slow, flaky, fat, and insecure.  Who wants that in their phone?  And in fact, sales of Windows phones has been dismal. 
   To become phone worthy, M$ has placed their core market, traditional desktops and laptops in some jeopardy.  They blew away the start menu, confusing the bejesus out of users, bestowed the "start" name upon the new touchie feelie  screen to the confusion of documentation, and  spent a lot of time renaming things and hiding them. 
  It's so bad, that I, old windows user going back to version 3.1, am thinking about Linux.  The only reason I stick with Windows is to run Word and Excel.  I'm told I can get OpenOffice to work with all the M$ Office documents, and I suppose I ought to. 
  Essentially, M$ felt that getting onto phones and tablets was worth loosing their traditional business.  Had it been me, I would have produced a phone and tablet product, and a separate desktop laptop product and not tried a one size fits all product.  I guess all M$ is software guys, who will do anything to reduce maintenance by reducing the number of products.  This is why back in the late '90s M$ scrapped the popular Windows 9X line and moved everyone over to fatter slower Windows NT.  All the programmers working on 9X support could be put on other work.