this past week was, shall we say, not the easiest week i’ve ever had.  i’m not going to complain about it.  i just wanted to note it.  sometimes everything just pours down at the same time.  work was tough.  finances are tough.  life just doesn’t always play nice.

but what this eventually leads to is epiphany, closure, elation, or discovery.  in this particular case, i had a little of each.  as the week came to an end, i felt as though i had explored some new part of my life that i had thus far failed to recognize, and i’ve come to realize that although it may not be exactly what i imagined it was, i always have the ability to change it.

for fear of being even more vague and introspective, i’m going to change the subject (as i said, i only wanted to mention the tribulations of this past week as a means of record).  you see, after a long week at the office, when everybody is ready to just call it quits, it sometimes helps to lighten the mood a little.  here’s a sample:

that, my friends, is how you have a little fun at the office.

the good news is that after a week of busting my ass, i actually have something to show for it.  the northrop grumman lunar lander challenge is officially ON.  it’ll be held october 24-25 in las cruces, new mexico, and i’ll be there to supervise the webcast and any technology issues we have.  it should be a blast, and if nothing else i’ll get to see some rockets fly.  and there is very little cooler than flying rockets.

here’s a preview:

and just because i feel like it, here’s a little song i’ve been enjoying recently.  hope you like it too.

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ok, it’s not what you’re thinking.

while visiting las cruces international airport in las cruces, nm, the us border patrol helicopter pilots decided to have some fun with us.

Someday I’ll actually get to fly on a rocket, but for the time being it’s pretty exciting just to see one launch.  I had the opportunity to watch a test flight of TrueZer0’s entry in the lunar lander challenge.  This is not a launch vehicle (i.e. something that’ll fly you into space), but rather a next generation landing module, designed to softly land and traverse on a foreign planet.

I snapped a whole lot of awesome pictures, available on my Flickr stream.  Here’s a sample:

i guess it’s kind of pathetic that i never actually created a profile on technorati until now: Technorati Profile

it’s not that i don’t use it – i use it all the time to monitor various things for work and personal.  but for some reason i never considered logging in.

strange that this is in stark contrast to google.  the idea of logging into a search engine is a little bit scary, regardless of what it is.  but i suppose having a google login (or two or three) is useful in so many other ways that technorati logins are not.

perhaps a longer post coming later on the proliferation of site logins for sites that don’t really need it.

for those who don’t follow this stuff religiously the way that i do, the incredible awesomeness that was muxtape – the most beautifully, simply designed music application ever to hit the intarwebs – has been shut down for several months now.  in a lengthy and fascinating post to the muxtape website, the creator justin outlines exactly what happened, and where muxtape is going:

In May I had my first meeting with a major label, Universal Music Group. I went alone and prepared myself for the worst, having spent the last decade toeing the indie party line that the big labels were hopelessly obstinate luddites with no idea what was good for them. I’m here to tell you now that the labels understand their business a lot better than most people suspect, although they each have their own surprisingly distinct personality when it comes to how they approach the future.

it’s no secret that the big guys understand the inner workings of the new music economy.  it’s just that none of them seems to want to embrace it and make it work for them.  as with all good things, muxtape’s end comes as just another great piece of technology shut down by a system that fails to recognize its value.

fortunately for us music lovers, muxtape is to be reborn as a system for emerging artists to share their music with the world.  no real details have emerged, but it sounds like a similar concept to topspin, where embeddable widgets allow for mass dissemination of content and easy purchase.  it also seems they’ve got a system set up for bands to create their own site, a la myspace or bandzoogle or any of the myriad other sites that allow for quick and dirty modular band site building.