And I've already been a busy little beaver today. JR left me a voicemail last night requesting a report to be run this morning, so I've done that and emailed it to him, then Workers Comp guy had computer issues, so, since I'm the only schmo in IT at 7:00 am in the morning, I went and helped him.

Last night R's parents took us out to dinner at Abuelos, so that they could pay us back and thank us. I appreciate the gesture, but I would much rather they had just paid us back the money, then kept the rest of their money so they don't have to ask us for another loan in a couple of weeks! Ho hum. Whatever. The food was good, and I now have a $100 bill in my pocket (So does R.). Not sure how the hell to break that, but I'll think of something. Maybe I'll just try and find my bank lunchtime and pay it in.

As a consequence of this whole going out thing, I didn't get the interview done, so I need to do that today, and I need to get the last wand (for now) made, which means I guess stopping by Wal-mart tonight or Hobby Lobby or somewhere to get the pieces I need.

I didn't watch the State of the Union speech last night. I am not interested in anything dickforbrain has to say unless its goodbye.

Actually that's not quite true. I am glad at least that the government has finally figured out we need to go back to the moon. I think it was a little silly actually tipping our hand and saying why though.

For those who didn't read the story on CNN, the plan is to go back to the moon, mine it, and get mineral rights on all the Helium-3 up there, so that we can tell the oil producers to sit and swivel.

Helium-3 is basically Helium with one missing neutron. Apparently there is so much of it trapped in the lunar crust, you could power the entire earth's energy needs for 10,000 years.

The process is pretty simple. You take Deuterium (Hydrogen with one extra neutron) and Helium-3 (Helium with one missing neutron) and combine them at high temperatures. As the molecular bonds break down, Deuterium releases its extranneous neutron (Becoming hydrogen) and Helium-3 jumps on it like its the last chopper out of 'Nam, and becomes Helium. This exchange releases energy. And its pretty efficient: 1 kg of helium-3 burned with 0.67 kg of deuterium gives us about 19 megawatt-years of energy output.

Now the chinese want this badly, which is why they started their space program in the late nineties. The US appears to have realized that if it don't get on the stick, they're gonna be screwed without dinner.

So by around 2020, we are going to see massive mining colonies on the moon - an old fashioned gold rush. Some of these will be private enterprise, some of them will be government funded. But basically any nation that doesn't start its space program fast is going to find its self in severe poop in the next few decades, as the natural earth resources get depleted, and the US and China control and compete for the Helium-3 reserves.

We live in interesting times...