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"Data! data! data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay."
— Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" by Arthur Conan Doyle.

"I like deadlines," cartoonist Scott Adams once said. "I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

"There is nothing like that feeling of spending days and days banging your head against a wall trying to solve a programming problem then suddenly finding that one tiny obscure and seemingly unrelated piece of the puzzle that unlocks the solution. Oh yeah!"

- Chris Maunder, CodeProject Newsletter 28 Jan 2002

"Management at eSnipe, which is me, is also feeling the pain of the 2002 bear market. So rather than pout about it, I bought some stuff on eBay that I really didn’t need, but made me feel better."

- Tom Campbell, president of eSnipe

Saturday, May 14, 2005

9:29:34 PM
Opportunity Rover Begins Escape From Sand Trap
[JPL Mars Rovers sol 464, 5/14/2005] Careful Rollout: The Mars Rover Opportunity rotated its wheels on sol 463 for the first time since it dug itself into a sand dune. The wheels made about two and a half rotations. In the loose footing, the rover advanced 1.1 inch forward, 0.19 inch sideways and 0.18 inch downward. The results were a good match for what was expected from tests under simulated Mars conditions on Earth, and the rover team will decide whether to repeat the same careful movement again in two days. Two weeks ago, Opportunity had completed nearly 131 feet of a planned 295-foot drive, when it started slip on a one foot tall by 8 feet wide sand dune. Its wheels kept rotating, but the rover barely inched forward. The rover team spent more than two weeks designing and conducting tests before choosing the best way for Opportunity to drive out of the dune. [Thumbnail links to 1,436K animated GIF]