Last night I wrote a blurb about being worried that NASA’s Mars rover, Curiosity, was going to be a victim of statistics which show that about 60% of humanity’s attempts to send an object to Mars end in failure.

Not this time, buddy!

Curiosity’s landing seems to have gone off without a hitch (although a great deal of testing needs to be done to prove that nothing broke on the way there), and even the potential communication issues were avoided as mission control started getting low-res pictures within minutes of the scheduled landing time.

Check it out!

This was posted on twitter shortly after landing.  It doesn’t seem like much, but it is freakin’ huge!

The accompanying tweet said this:

You asked for pics from my trip. Here you go! My 1st look (of many to come) of my new home… MARS!

You can follow Curiosity on twitter here.

Here’s another picture:

Every once in a while, we as a species can pull off some unbelievable stuff.  This is one of those times.

Hey, is that Bobby Valentine in that trailer?

Get it?
You can see a horse’s backside?
aka a horse’s ass?
Get it?

I could have said Josh Beckett or John Lackey or just about anyone in the front office too, but Schmucko the Clown seemed the funniest choice.

They can’t beat the damn Twins, how the hell are the Red Sox supposed to make the playoffs?  They are a game under .500 on August 6th.  Come on, Boston media.  Stop acting stupid.  This season has been over since mid April.

We are about six and a half hours away from the NASA Mars rover, Curiosity’s scheduled touch down on Mars.  The landing plan is very complicated.  This is the largest thing we’ve ever landed on Mars.  The atmosphere isn’t thick enough to use parachutes like on Earth and the gravity is too strong to use reverse thrust like we did on the Moon, so NASA has to get creative to drop some thing on the red planet.  In fact, something like 60% of our attempts to land something there have failed.  Now we are dropping a robotic mobile science lab that’s the size of a Mini Cooper, and the plans involve reverse thrusters, parachutes, and an actual elevator cable all working together.  It’s a gamble.  They’ve never tried this before.  It will mean about 2.5 billion dollars down the tubes (in an election year, no less) if it fails.

Please don’t fail!  Land that sucker in one piece!

What’s worse is, they will lose radio contact as the space craft hits the Martian atmosphere, and shortly after landing they will lose it again when Earth sets at the landing site and we lose the line of sight.  It might be a whole day before Curiosity can contact us!

The expected touch down is something like 1:31am Eastern time.  I plan to be asleep long before then so here’s my official Break a Leg to NASA.

I just want to wish you all good luck.  We’re all counting on you.

Cheers first aired in 1982. Hulu+ has it. We are on episode 2. It’s still funny. I forgot how good Coach was.

Is it just because I’m from Boston?

Could be. Who cares. It’s 30 years old and it’s still funny.

I joined reddit.com on Friday.  Jen joined hulu+ today.

Here’s a picture to celebrate our interwebbie nerdiness.

Yippee!!

I thought it might be fun to take the family to a minor league baseball game next weekend. I just spent some quality time with Google and…

The Lowell Spinners, New Hampshire Fisher Cats, and Portland Sea Dogs are all on the road next weekend.

Bite me!

What’s the independent team in Worcester? What about the Brockton Rocks, are they still active? Is Pawtucket suddenly not too far away?

Grrrrrr.