Odds & Ends

Looks like Isar got their batch of firsts today.

Their announced 4:00 PM liftoff got delayed a couple of times and it lifted off at 4:12, but this time they wrote their name in the record books. Not just Isar's first successful orbital launch, but the first rocket to reach orbit after being launched from Europe.

"This is right now making history — making history for Spectrum, making history for Isar, making history for Europe,” Nikolaos Perakis, Spectrum chief engineer at Isar, said during today's launch webcast, which the company produced in collaboration with NASASpaceflight. "I'm incredibly proud of this massive achievement."

I started looking for the expected coverage at 3:30 and quickly found it was being hosted by NASASpaceflight - and they provided a nice video summary later in the afternoon. The video isn't minute by minute coverage of the launch, but a summary or even like a highlight video. 

About that refrigerator repair post

Yeah, the one from this past Wednesday. There were a couple of comments essentially saying to be careful about the drain tube, such as: "Check the drain line from the drip area in the back of the freezer to the tray under the fridge." I wrote that post pretty badly because I didn't plainly say that I didn't have much confidence that the refrigerator was really fixed and the problem was gone for good, I just figured it would be a few days of "keep an eye on it" before the next failure was evident. Thursday morning the thing seemed fine, but Friday morning there was fresh ice on the bottom of the freezer section, which was the first big symptom of things being all wrong. There was a small additional amount of ice this morning. 

The refrigerator is an LG dated 2008, and I got the owner's manual as a pdf from LG this week. It has nothing on even where the water from the defrost and just general use drains to. It has a pan in the base that water supposedly evaporates from but nothing on exactly where it is or how to get to it. I did a search on YouTube with the model number and a couple of descriptions of the problem and there's a large collection of such videos. I looked at a couple, one at 15 minutes long and a short one at around 3 minutes. It looks like it's going to have to be done sitting on the floor and reaching forward to the back wall of the freezer. As Ren and Stimpy used to say, "joy!" 

My mobility and flexibility is probably above average for a 72 year old dude, and I do work on keeping them, but it looks uncomfortable at best and complicated by not having any spare parts around. Which is mostly due to not knowing what I'm most likely to need. We do have an appliance guy we've relied on before, so it's just largely a question of saving cost by doing it versus the convenience of getting it resolved once and for all. Most likely. It's not like pros don't make mistakes that require coming out again.

Awkward confession time about AI 

I really have paid just about zero attention to the various models that are out there and available for use, so while I don't know for sure this is available, I'm looking for a model to help me do a search and I hear they're good at that. In particular, I went to see my primary care doctor last week and was handed a letter saying he was leaving his practice and not going to see patients by the end of the year. The practice closes on December 1. 

A primary care MD or DO (as this one is) shouldn't be that hard to find, but this guy is going to be harder to replace than his predecessor. I want to get a few names together and see if I can interview them, at least spend a few minutes and ask a few questions. It would be handy if a really good search engine could find a few for me to interview and choose from. Even better would be if the search finds the questions I want to ask have been answered already.

Anybody familiar enough with them to say which of the AI engines would be good for this?