Spring Break Visit to Memphis> St. Jude Long Term Study Visit

I arrived Sunday (3/6) at St. Jude and checked into my room at the Memphis Grizzlies House. That hotel is amazing. Extremely clean and well kept, those people do a great job at that hotel keeping it clean and controlling security for the patients. Monday evening to rode up to the Memphis Pizza Cafe and got in on some BBQ Chicken Pizza and a few beers before a long week of testing/research/answering questions.  Monday morning came early with my first consultations and lab work at 8am and 9am. This comes just after fasting since 12am. I spent the entire day moving between xrays, social work, and research questioning. Monday evening, I took the trolley from the Memphis Grizzlies House to the Memphis Grizzlies Game with Leslie and Brian. Our seats were great. Only about 10 or 

12 rows up from the floor. Tuesday came just as early and Monday. Tuesday was filled with more and more testing (strength, balance, physical fitness) and continued research questionnaires with random doctors. Tuesday also meant it was Fat Tuesday. That evening I went with David and Kelly to the Gastopub for a Fat Tuesday Dinner and Abita Beer tasting event. Good stuff there man. Wednesday was another early morning that included visits to ECHO/EKG and pulmonary functioning. The afternoon concluded the visit to St. Jude with an overall assessment with Oncology doctors. Man, I went through everything there is to learn about myself (physically and health wise).Wednesday evening, Kendall drove in and we took the trolley to the Memphis Griz game where they were playing the Knicks. Thursday morning came and I rolled out of Memphis. Here are some pictures from the trip. 

Outside the Fedex Forum on Monday night for the Memphis vs Oklahoma

St. Jude Statue in front of old main building

"Waves through the Earth" lecture from University of Memphis professor on St. Jude Campus on Wednesday

Waiting on the Trolley

Meet Janis. She has been at St. Jude 23 years. If you ever get the privileged to visit the campus, Janis is inside the gift shop.

View from hotel room

Chillin with Leslie and Brain

Sitting outside the cafeteria in St. Jude

Riding the trolley on Fat Tuesday

Hanging with David and Kelly

Chillin with Kendall Wednesday on the way to the game

Wednesday night post game party

a Health and Safety topic to make u do gooder..or well..whatever the fixation

Health and Safety is a waste of time? How do you figure? Because it takes away from the hours spent checking facebook, texting, or just pure wasting time. Much more can be done with the Health and Safety programs in this country. This is evident. Why would the companies with more than 10 employees ,or whatever it is, really want to invest any of their other possible cash flows into the programs that benfit your Health and Safety. Not the company's Health and Safety. I know what you are saying, "Thats not what I meant".. (by saying Health and Safety is a waste of time), well I do not mean to point this gun at anyone, but when Health and Safety experts appear to not be getting through to the employees, then there must be a solution.
Some of these solutions were weekly meetings, morning emails, and possible flyers being sent quarterly. Whenever there is a case where employees dread a Health and Safety topic, we as an industrial community miss a step. Obviously, this does not refer to office workers or trade with minimal effort and agility. This will most likely refer more to the manufacturing, industrial and development sectors of the US economy.
All I am saying is that how can we continue an attitude of "it is a waste of time" when we have injuries that change lives. Many solutions may exist to such an overburdence of apathy but it usually only takes some motivation or encouragement. People liked to be listened to and made apart of the conversation. If you can motivate your employees to do good work, then your bottom line (or critical paths) will be straight and narrow.

There are 403 billionaires in the U.S...

Really? Is this what our country is moving towards? The rich get richer and the poor get well...poorer. How does this still exist in our vocabulary? Not only does this not make sense to someone that is just fine in life (ME) but does it make sense to any percentage of the billionaires in this country? You know it makes sense to the lower income peoples. All the peoples of our country have nothing better to do, but to wake up every morning and follow a set of guidelines demonstrated by our media and local communities. I will not go to far into the subject about how the NFL, NBA, ect professional players get paid their salaries and the teachers, firefighters, and law sheriffs of our communities continue to get poorer. Does it seem like our country is celebrating the idiosyncrasies in our culture of materialism, politics, diversions from truths on racial and religious seperations, and continued tortures delivered from regulation? Our country(and our closer to home societies) will continue to dwindle down to pathetic retardation of intelligence if the "know as" leaders and managers of our wonderful country do not wake up to the facts..(1) our regulations are out of control (2) our situation with political perspectives have managed to become a ride or die occurence (3) and three, the last and more important...our country has almost zero developments recently in religious/spiritual consciousness and educational reform.

This track is an American track. To switch tracks this late in the game will only provide the evidence the American people and government have absolutely no idea what they are doing. This must be a scary notion to most. But our community infrastructures and  societal norms are developing out country into ignorance and apathetic, two gods that most continue to serve. And the solution is clear, change your mind. We the people dont mind. Ofcourse there will immediate unease in the media on global scales. We the people are only 300 years old, not thousands. We need to honor our mistakes by producing greater recoveries. Our mistakes will continue and our country will become a 3rd world, poor country where the haves and have-nots rule everything we can see and touch and the notion to become our own country of leaders, savants, political radicals, extremists, future developers and innovators....will continue to burn out like a candle.

Last "Discovery" Shuttle Mission, February 24, 2011

(02/24/2011) --- CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Rising on twin columns of fire and creating rolling clouds of smoke and steam, space shuttle Discovery lifts off Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a picturesque, warm, late February afternoon. Launch of the STS-133 mission was at 4:53 p.m. EST on Feb. 24. Discovery and its six-member crew are on a mission to deliver the Permanent Multipurpose Module, packed with supplies and critical spare parts, as well as Robonaut 2, the dexterous humanoid astronaut helper, to the International Space Station

A camera-toting balloon captured dramatic photos of NASA's shuttle Discovery streaking into orbit on its final flight yesterday (Feb. 24), snapping the images from the edge of space as part of a non-profit student project.

In one of the photos, Discovery arcs off planet Earth, leaving a trail of exhaust in its wake. Another shows the shuttle's exhaust plume torn to shreds in the high-altitude river of air called the jetstream.The balloon snapped photos from an altitude of more than 70,000 feet (21,200 meters), project organizers said.

Dicovery launched into orbit at 4:53 p.m. EST (2153 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on its 39th and final mission, ahead of the shuttle program's retirement later this year.

The balloon – nicknamed Robonaut-1 in honor of the Robonaut-2 robot riding on Discovery – took to the skies about an hour earlier from a relatively nearby staging ground.

The student balloon mission is a joint effort of two non-profit educational organizations, the Challenger Center for Space Science Education and Quest for Stars. The California-based Quest for Stars lets middle-school and high-school students help place balloon-borne experiments at the edge of space using relatively cheap, off-the-shelf hardware.

Robonaut-1 rose toward the edge of space, getting in position to observe the historic launch. When Discovery came into view, the balloon was ready — it snapped multiple pictures, capturing the shuttle and the wafting vapor trail it left behind.

More amazing views are expected to follow, project organizers said.

"We are processing the images now and we not only got it in stills, we got it flying on video," Quest for Stars founder and CEO Bobby Russell said in a Twitter message today (Feb. 25). "We are looking for the best ones now."

An educational mission

Quest for Stars travels to middle schools and high schools to brief students on missions like these, and then brings the resulting images and souvenirs back to the kids.The group doesn't charge the schools or students anything, Russell said — it's funded by donations.

The main goal of such missions is to get students excited about science by letting them participate in the process. The group hopes to help inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers, Russell said.

Robonaut-1's flight was the second mission Quest for Stars has run for and with schools. It's planning another balloon launch next month, Russell said, and hopes to expand from there.

The Robonaut-1 flight was the first joint mission operated by Quest for Stars and the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, an organization set up in 1986 by families of the astronauts lost in the space shuttle Challenger accident that year.

Discovery's STS-133 mission is the shuttle's final mission after nearly 27 years of spaceflight. NASA is retiring all three of its reusable space planes this year, marking the end of the 30-year space shuttle program.

During an 11-day mission, Discovery's six-astroanut crew will deliver the humanoid robot Robonaut 2 and a storage room to the International Space Station. Two spacewalks are planned to upgrade and maintain the orbiting lab.

 

(02/24/2011) --- CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Rising on twin columns of fire and creating rolling clouds of smoke and steam, space shuttle Discovery lifts off Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a picturesque, warm, late February afternoon. 

 Shuttle Discovery Closing in On Space Station for Saturday Arrival

HOUSTON – The space shuttle Discovery is closing in on the International Space Station to make one last delivery to the orbiting laboratory today (Feb. 26).

Shuttle commander Steve Lindsey is scheduled to dock Discovery at the orbiting laboratory at 2:16 p.m. EST (1916 GMT). The shuttle launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday (Feb. 24) on its final voyage into space.

Discovery and its six-astronaut crew are flying an 11-day mission to deliver supplies, spare parts, an extra storage module and a humanoid robot assistant to the International Space Station. Two spacewalks are also planned during the shuttle's week-long stay at the orbiting lab.

"Look who is coming to dinner! STS 133 is headed our way!" space station astronaut Cady Coleman, of NASA, wrote on Twitter after Discovery's Thursday launch. [Photos: Shuttle Discovery Launches on Final Voyage]

Discovery's astronaut crew will begin today's space rendezvous shortly after 8:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT). This will be the 13th and last time Discovery docks at the space station, since the shuttle's STS-133 mission is its final flight before being retired from service.

One last engine burn conducted shortly after 11:30 a.m. EST (1630 GMT) will help the shuttle reach the station.

But before Discovery can park at the orbiting laboratory, Lindsey will fly the spacecraft through a slow back flip beneath the space station. This will allow astronauts inside the space station to snap high-resolution photographs of Discovery so that teams on the ground can check the health of Discovery's tile-covered belly, and whether any tiles need repair.

This flip operation has been a part of every NASA shuttle flight since the loss of shuttle Columbia in 2003. Columbia and its seven-astronaut crew perished during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere because of heat shield damage on one of the orbiter's wings.

"For rendezvous, I do the manual phase where I take over the vehicle at about 2,000 feet away from space station, fly up to position underneath the space station, do something called an RPM, Rotational Pitch Maneuver, or R-bar Pitch Maneuver, which is basically is just a 360 [degree] back flip so that the space station crew can take pictures of our tiles and make sure they’re okay from a thermal protection systems standpoint," Lindsey said in a NASA interview before launch. "Then I’ll fly around the front of the vehicle and manually fly in to do the docking."

The space shuttle's pre-docking flip is one of three separate heat shield inspections built into every shuttle mission.

Yesterday, Discovery astronauts used an inspection boom and their shuttle's robotic arm to survey the heat shield panels along their spacecraft's wings and nose cap. A similar scan will be performed shortly after the shuttle undocks from the space station later in the mission.

NASA officials have said that, based on their initial look, Discovery's heat shield appears to be in good shape after its Thursday launch.

 Beacuse of the timing of all recent launches of International spacecraft that is

currently docked at the space station......NASA wants to put a crew into one of
the 2 Russian Soyuz Craft and perform a flyaround of the station to get pictures
of the station with all of these spacecraft docked to the international space station
.....which will probably never happen again....

Here's the list of the spacecraft currently docked at ISS:
U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery
Russian Soyuz 25 (TMA-20)
Russian Soyuz 24 (TMA-01M)
Russian Progress 41 (Resupply Craft)
European ATV 2 Johannes Kepler (Resupply Craft)
Japanese HTV 2 Kounotori2 (Resupply Craft)