Dont know how Wally Bell missed this testing

While being drug from one store to another while my better half shopped I kept hearing noises from over at the track (yup we were in Daytona and the Volusia Mall was the destination) so I politely whispered in a special ear that I needed a quick break and would return ASAP.

As I got out of site to the car I ran and across the 8 lanes of traffic I flew. She doesnt like her car driven like that but I keep telling her its still under warranty. Well at the gate I had to produce some rather iffy credentials to get in but they worked again thank goodness.

Anyway out to the infield entrance I went so I could park close to the back gate to the pit area. Now round two with these Racers Reunion VIP credentials and media stamp on one and he didnt look twice. There set a very unusual tractor trailer with some fine writing on it that I couldnt make out from afar but whatever I wanted to see was what the commotion in the garage was all about. Well that door was closed to anyone without that special pass that I didnt have. My NASCAR license and all these Marti Gras trinkets around my neck didnt fly this time. I was told that this was a closed session and no reporters were allowed, me a reporter ? Ha.All I could do was look in the viewing windows and hope for a chance to spot someone or something that was this important.

About that time my phone rang and scared me, yup it was mama calling to see where I was.Needless to say I was caught but I called the condo and got my daughter to go satisfy mama. Needless to say that cost me too $$. Well they seemed be taking the vehicle back outside to maybe run on the track again. So off to a different viewing stand over at the Winners Circle I went. Now I thought I was up to date on the cars of tomorrow or at least next week but this one almost looked like something from down Kennedy Way. A quick look back at that 18 wheeler and then I put 2 and 2 together. The dang Government must be getting into racing or at least thats my first thought. Now this vehicle aint no full bodied car but rather on the line of a older Indy car with a little World of Outlaws mixed in for good measure. Probably you are shaking your head and saying I been into the Punch way to early but hear me out and you may just think different.

Well out this vehicle backed and sure enough it was a well designed car that could probably hang with any speedway or even an off road stadium truck . They seemed to be having troubles with the left front wheel assembly because several mechanic type people were pointing and discussing the camber on it or at least thats the way there hand signals were insinuating.

There is a wing on it that looks adjustable for downforce and they had like 6 or 8 cameras mounted on it to watch for something.

Now it seems I remember a few years ago that a formula one car was built with 6 wheels on it and it did pretty good, well this one has 6 wheels also.And it looks like they are fully adjustable for precise balance. Yeah I know you must think I am BSing you but I managed a photo of it so mind your manners.

Well it took off and I never heard another car sound like this one did and did it maneuver, if Montoya gets to drive this he will have the rest of the field in a pickle.

Only trouble I seen was the attendents were worried that they may have a bad computer board on it ,something like it had amnesia or kept losing its memory when they shut the motor off.

Well I was told I was going to have leave because it was a closed session so I obliged because I did leave my wife in the mall with the check book and enough cards to make Bank of America take notice.

As I was leaving i purposely went the long way out,around the garage area and then out and snapped the picture posted below.

Now you give the photo a good going over and tell me what your feelings are. It did look as if it had been on a dirt track somewhere recently so who knows.

Happy New Year; Johnny

PS Brian France was bouncing around the ride hollering me next,me next so this could be the "opportunity" you know there is something fishy with him..

updated by @johnny-mallonee: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has been working well into its golden years after nearly 11 years roaming the Red Planet, it has survived more than 40 times past its warranty. But now, this trusty veteran explorer is experiencing some worrisome memory loss.

The long-lived rover has been having some senior moments, according to John Callas, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover mission (as Opportunity and its defunct twin Spirit are formally known). The episodes of amnesia stem from faulty flash memory the kind of memory in your digital camera that allows your pictures to stay saved even after your device is turned off.

But flash memory doesn't last forever and the seventh, final bank in the flash memory appears to be malfunctioning.

"Flash memory has a limited lifetime," Callas said. "It only allows so many read-write cycles before it starts to wear out some of the cells. And after 11 years of operation on Mars, we now suspect we're seeing a wear-out of some of those cells."

This leads to a pair of problems. Since the rover can't use the seventh memory bank, it uses its random-access memory or RAM, the kind of memory your computer uses when it's on for temporary data storage. The problem is, as soon as the rover (or your computer) is switched off, the information stored in RAM is lost. So if the rover turns off before sending all of its at-risk data back to its handlers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, then those data are lost forever.

That's an annoying, but manageable, issue, Callas said. The second snag is that the flash memory issue also causes the rover to reboot and when it reboots, it stops the long-term activities the team had planned for the rover and simply waits for further instructions on the ground. On weekends and over the holiday season, when people are out of the office, these unexpected hang-ups can put the team days behind schedule, Callas said.

"It's like you're taking a family trip and your car stalls, and every time your car stalls you have to call triple-A but now it's stalling every 20 miles," Callas said. "You're not going to make much progress."

The researchers do have a clever little fix, Callas added. They plan on modifying the software so that the rover thinks it only has six banks' worth of flash memory which should make it skip faulty bank No. 7, since that's at the very end. (They're lucky the faulty segment wasn't right in the middle of the flash memory module, Callas added that would make a fix much more complicated.)

"You have a piece of lettuce you want to put on your sandwich and the edge of the lettuce is a little bit brown, and you just cut it off and you put the rest in your sandwich and you go," Callas said by way of analogy. "Maybe you have a little less lettuce, but it doesn't have any brown on it."

Opportunity, which along with its twin Spirit arrived at the Red Planet in early 2004, set out to find signs of past water on Earth's dry, dusty next-door neighbor. It did that and more, even finding evidence of past habitable environments in its later years that complemented the findings from its descendant, NASA's 2012 rover Curiosity.

Opportunity was never meant to last this long, and it's picked up a number of scars along the way. It's been described as arthritic, with a gimpy elbow and a somewhat disabled front wheel, but that hasn't kept the robot from logging roughly 26 miles on the Red Planet.

It's unclear how long Opportunity will last, said Callas, who compared the aging rover to an elderly parent (one in good health, who still plays tennis every day).

"With each passing day we get one day closer to that end ... but until that time, we're going to keep going, keep exploring," Callas said.even if Brian France tries to try for one joy ride.

I'd have figured for sure that those Mardi Gras trinkets would have done the trick, Johnny!

--
"Any Day is Good for Stock Car Racing"