Yesterday marked the second attempt at landing the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket on a floating barge in the middle of the ocean.  Not an easy task, and many were not surprised when the mission failed for a second time.

0/2 kinda sucks.

But let's put this into perspective.

Allow this baseball fan to use a baseball reference.  Having a batting average of around .250 in today's league is an acceptable feat.  That's 1/4.  Which means that you only reach the base 25% of the time.  Most players do worse than that.

Let's talk inventions.  Thomas Edison, hailed as one of history's greatest inventors, was said to have failed thousands of times in creating a mass-producible, practical lightbulb.  Let's call that 1/10000.

Suddenly 0/2 doesn't sound so bad.  And I'm confident that in a few months we'll see that ration climb to 1/3.

Failures should not be taken lightly or shrugged off, but neither should they be dwelled on, lest our obsession on the negative drives us to quit.  We learn much from our failures, and Space X's engineers will undoubtedly take a lot away from these missions.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas A. Edison

Playing with concrete is fun.  And oddly relaxing.  If I could, I would pour concrete everywhere, for days.

Over the weekend, my brother, Dad, and I continued to shore up the Lodge, to ensure that she never goes tumbling down that hill.  We finished up what's to be the retaining wall for the basement hallway, as well as finished building up a cinderblock wall on the exterior.  No more crappy plywood to cover up unsightly gaps and keep the cats out!  Hardi-backer is the way to go.

"Three buckets and a cloud of dust!"

Step 1: Build a wall.
Step 2: TEAR DOWN THE WALL!
Step 3: ???

You can't see them very well, but a feline visitor left its prints in the concrete as it set overnight.

So much work we've done so far, and thousand times more that's left to be done!

I love our space program.

Anecdotes like this one never cease to amaze me, that the entire space program could have come to a grinding halt, all for a corned beef sandwich.

What if the space program did get shut down over John Young's corned beef sandwich?  What if the Russians were the ones to land on the moon while America remained grounded?  Would we all be speaking Russian today, and have things like socialized medicine, and Putin Day?

Eat your corned beef sandwiches, America.