Ah, the Joys of Shipwreck Camp

Hi, guys. Today's post has been brought to you by the incredibly ancient computer at my mom's work. It's so old that it uses Windows 2000; therefore, there's only Internet Explorer on the darn thing. I'm already missing Firefox and its nice, if annoying, spellcheck. Oh, and the computer totally butchers font, so that everything looks weird and pixelly. Blah. >.<
AND the keyboard is covered in this crusty, dusty, sligtly yellow-white old gunk that is absolutely disgusting. THe mouse has some of the stuff on it too, but it's slightly better. Except that the bits of gunk on the mouse are sticky as well. Which is also disgusting.
See what I'm putting up with just to post this? Gosh, I must love you guys.
[Actually, I'm posting 'cause I'm bored with nothing else to do. Heh.]
So, for the next eight days (as in, until Friday of this week and then from Monday to Friday of next week), I shall be attending this thing called Shipwreck Camp. It's a local, non-sleepaway affair, so don't worry--I will still be around. Basically, the premise is something like, "if you found a hypothetical shipwreck, how would you hypothetically go about salvaging it?" and stuff. For the past two days, we've been learning about the basics of marine archaeology and shipwreck survival and boatbuilding (with plastic soda bottles).
Speaking of plastic soda bottles, today there was an activity where we split into groups and built a not-more-than-twelve-feet-square boat using plastic bottles (not just soda ones, actually; there were some square juice bottles and some gallon milk jugs in the mix), plastic bags, one roll of duct tape, and some bamboo sticks.
My group's was, I'm pleased to say, was the best and most seaworthy. Ours actually had a working sail; however, there was barely any wind and so it couldn't really go anywhere. It was sort of a catamaran-like structure, with one giant more-or-less-square sail made out of a white trash bag. It was pretty cool.
For lack of a better name, we decided to call it the "Gilligan." However, the person in my group who made the sign spelled "Gilligan" wrong, so it ended up being the "Gillian." *sigh*
Tomorrow, the camp's going to canoe in a marsh. Lovely.

Now, a different topic.
Yesterday, while coming home, I heard on the radio that NASA is going to hibernate (aka totally shut down) Spirit [the Mars rover, doncha know] for the Martian winter. There's so much dust on Spirit's solar panels that it doesn't have enough energy to heat itself electrically (which is what it's done in the past few winters). Also, even after the winter's over, Spirit's probably never going to move again--its wheels are all really messed up and stuff. But NASA's still going to use it as a weather station or something. Poor Spirit. THe other rover, Opportunity, is apparently having better luck; sometimes, a few stray breezes blow off some of the dust coating its solar panels.
This xkcd comic sums up my feelings quite well: http://xkcd.com/695. (Poor Spirit. It's okay, little rover. I think you did a really good job.)
It's been six years since NASA sent Spirit and Opportunity up to Mars, y'know. Six years. Wow. I remember when they were launched (gods, that makes me feel so old). . . It's passed pretty quickly, really. Huh. Six years.
*mumbles incoherently for quite a while*

Less than a month to go until my birthday!! ^.^

I guess I'll just leave it at that.

[I agree with Virgil that the whole "asking questions" thing is getting old. Can we do anything else? Another theme week, maybe, now that everybody's regained use of a computer? DISCUSS IN COMMENTS.]