California dreamin'

You know you're from California if...

1. Your coworker has 8 body piercing's and none are visible.

2. You make over $300,000 and still can't afford a house.

3. You take a bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a conversation in English.

4. Your child's 3rd-grade teacher has purple hair, a nose ring, and is named Flower.

5. You can't remember . . . . is pot illegal?

6. You've been to a baby shower that has two mothers and a sperm donor.

7. You have a very strong opinion about where your coffee beans are grown, and you can taste the difference between Sumatran and Ethiopian.

8. You can't remember . . is pot illegal?

9. A really great parking space can totally move you to tears.

10. Gas costs $1.00 per gallon more than anywhere else in the U.S.

11. Unlike back home, the guy at 8:30 am at Starbucks wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses who looks like George Clooney really IS George Clooney.

12. Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.

13. You can't remember . . .is pot illegal?

14. It's barely sprinkling rain and there's a report on every news station: "STORM WATCH."

15. You pass an elementary school playground and the children are all busy with their cells or pagers.

16. It's barely sprinkling rain outside, so you leave for work an hour early to avoid all the weather-related accidents.

17. HEY!!!! Is pot illegal????

18. Both you AND your dog have therapists.

19. The Terminator is your governor.

20. If you drive illegally, they take your driver's license. If you're here illegally, they want to give you one.

Dogs

The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.
— unknown

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
— Ann Landers

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.
— Will Rogers

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.
— Josh Billings

A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
— Robert Benchley

We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare, and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the best deal man has ever made.
— M. Acklam

Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.
— Sigmund Freud

Their is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
— Ben Williams

The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
— Andy Rooney

I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
— Rita Rudner

Dogs need to sniff the ground; it's how they keep abreast of current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are especially urgent, are often continued in the next yard.
— Dave Barry

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
— James Thurber

Anybody who doesn't know what soap tastes like never washed a dog.
— Franklin P. Jones

If your dog is fat, you aren't getting enough exercise.
— unknown

My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to $3 a can. That's almost $21 in dog money.
— Joe Weinstein

Ever consider what our dogs must think of us? I mean, here we come back from the grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!
— Anne Tyler

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
— Roger Caras

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
— Mark Twain

If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them.
— Phil Pastoret

You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'Wow, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'
— Dave Barry

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
— Robert A. Heinlein

My goal in life is to be a person as good as my dog already thinks I am.
— unknown

Without comment

As it appears that none is needed!

Click on the picture for a larger, clearer view...

Mars Odyssey - photo!

Currently there are several active robotic satellites in orbit around Mars. One of these is the Mars Odyssey, another is Mars Orbiter Camera. Recently the Mars Orbiter Camera took photos of Mars Odyssey — an amazing technical achievement. In the words of Malin Space Science Systems:

The Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) images shown here are the first pictures of a spacecraft orbiting Mars taken by another spacecraft orbiting Mars. In April 2005, the MOC aboard Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was used to take pictures of the other two spacecraft currently operating in orbit around Mars: NASA's Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express.

The MGS MOC is able to resolve features on the surface of Mars as small as a few meters across from its nominal 350 to 405 kilometers (217 to 252 miles) altitude. From a distance of 100 kilometers (62 miles), MOC would be able to resolve features substantially smaller than 1 meter across. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL; Pasadena, California), Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company (LMSSC, Denver, Colorado), and Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS; San Diego, California) worked very closely together to acquire images of Mars Express and Mars Odyssey.


Mars Odyssey

Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey are both in nearly circular, near-polar orbits. Odyssey is in an orbit slightly higher than that of MGS, in order to preclude the possibility that the two orbiters would collide. However, the two spacecraft occasionally come as close to one another as 15 kilometers (9 miles).

The figure at right shows an extreme enlargement of the best MOC view of Odyssey; the fourth figure is a computer-generated drawing scaled to the same size. The MOC image clearly shows the Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS) and its 6 meters-long boom, the high gain antenna used to transmit not only the science data from Odyssey's own instruments, but also to relay data from the two Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), and its solar array panel.

Mars Odyssey was launched on 7 April 2001, and reached Mars on 24 October 2001. Mars Global Surveyor left Earth on 7 November 1996, and arrived in Mars orbit on 12 September 1997. Both spacecraft are in an extended mission phase, both have relayed data from the Mars Exploration Rovers, and both are continuing to return exciting new results from Mars.

You can read more about this photo, and see more photos, at the Malin site. Click on the photo at right for a larger view.