Spirit Stays Silent

The last few weeks have been insanely busy, and therefore finding time and energy to sit down and write has been rather difficult. Between pressing proposals, the kickoff of a major project (with another on the way), all the while working feverishly at home to finish my bonus room before carpet shows up tomorrow, I'm just plain wiped out. I have competing dreams at night; I'm either lost in a maze of proposal paperwork and project requirements, or I'm painting painting painting. In real life, I'm down to the second coat on a couple of doors, and polyurethane on one handrail. The only thing about finishing a room yourself, when you have a personality like mine, is that you know exactly where all the mistakes are, and where all the flaws that others might miss lurk silently, taunting. Others might not see them, but because I made them, I know there are there and that they are out to get me. It makes it tough to enjoy the fruit of a job pretty well done.

So what's happened lately? Well, the Bulls blew it. As good as they may have been in the regular season, when the game is on the line in the playoffs, they clearly lack a "closer," someone who knows how to withstand the rallies, keep the team focused, and deny the opposition the comeback. LeBron is that type of player, despite his lack of previous playoff success. The Bulls need that one component that never gets the deer-in-the-headlights look.

I guess the other thing that caught my interest was the announcement that NASA is giving up on the Mars Rover known as Spirit. I wrote about Spirit here. Designed for a 3-month mission, Spirit lasted more than 6 years before going silent for the past year. With such a record of overachievement, it's easy to humanize the rovers, especially when they serve as a window to a frontier we cannot yet see with our own eyes or touch with our own feet. It's a sad ending:

Shortly after midnight, NASA sent one last plea to the silent rover Spirit, mired in a sand trap on the surface of Mars.

Please phone home.

With that, the space agency ended its efforts Wednesday to contact the workhorse robot geologist, which has been unresponsive for more than a year. Rather than spend time and money hanging onto faint hope, mission managers decided to turn their focus on Spirit's healthy twin Opportunity and prepare for the upcoming launch of the next Mars mega-rover.

The pursuit of knowledge will go forward, and Opportunity continues to roll. Well done, Spirit, and thanks.