April 27, 2022 @ 9 PM PDT

Dear Space Show Listeners:

I want to give you a report on my planned down time due to my move to the Summerlin, NV area.  Last night's Tuesday evening show was the last Space Show broadcast from my California studios.  When I started the show almost 21 years ago, I never dreamed of leaving CA.  Unfortunately as is often said, sometimes life gets in the way of our dreams and the economics for me remaining in CA are not good for me or for The Space Show.  Also, I have worked really hard all my life and I truly want to leave the fruits of my benefits to my kids and their families plus my favorite charities which besides The Space Show, include the many CF organizations I help fund plus a group of other nonprofits, both in the medical research and prescription drug assistance programs for RX meds for people that need them to organizations that support the arts.  Because of the high cost of being in CA, including the tax burden here, my personal goals for what I want to accomplish with what I have managed to earn and save are being constrained and I don't like that so Summerlin here I come.

For the most part, I will be moved out of Petaluma on Thursday, April 28.  I am flying back to LV to meet the movers on the 30th and our broadcast engineer who is in Las Vegas for the huge NAB conference will then start reconnecting the equipment for the show. I have asked him to add in a Zoom audio and video capability and I hope he can do that with our existing computers and equipment.

Since the start of The Space Show, we have used ATT true analog lines.  ATT does not server southern Nevada and the only telephone service regardless of from who is digital.  Our internet switches from Comcast which I have used in CA to Cox Cable.  Cox will be providing three digital lines and my fingers are crossed that they will be just fine.  For the last 2 plus years I have been working with a Comcast VoIP line and it has been excellent, sometimes doing better than the ATT hard analog lines I have and pay through the roof to have since ATT is phasing them out.  I don't know if we will hear audio differences but we will soon find out.

After returning to Petaluma, I have about four or five days to close things out plus I have a post dental surgery apt. on May 6 I need to keep regarding the recent dental surgery I had.  My plan is to get Pepper from the kennel and make the drive over two days back to her new home.  Bakersfield, CA is the halfway point so I will be stopping there to get Pepper out of the car, walk her and let her chill out, plus I don't want to drive 11 hours or so with her in the car.  We arrive at Pepper's new home and the new studio for TSS early in the afternoon on May 11 unless I can arrange an earlier departure from Petaluma.  The first broadcast from the Summerlin studio will be Friday, May 13 with Sir Martin Rees and his co-author of his new book.  This show is already on the upcoming show schedule.

As I said on the program last night with Aggie and Rod, if I can get back on the air earlier, even with a short Open Lines program or even a recording uploaded to the archives and the podcasts with a status update, I will do so.  I will post all updates to the Upcoming Show blog.

One more thing. Spencer and I are working to convert the website from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 as Drupal is ending support for 7.  Unfortunately, this is just about a new build out as 7 does not have a conversion to 9 as does say Windows 7 to Windows 10 or 10 to 11.  Right now we are focused on fixing the file sizes of the large shows.  Drupal 7 took our fix but only kept the large size active so our data base is twice as large as it should be.  All programs before Jan 2016 were treated this way because when we started with the new website, we started recording with a smaller file size.  I believe Spencer has finally come up with a program to eradicate from the data base in bulk the large file size programs in favor of the smaller size that was also in the data base but not usable.  Up to now fixing this was a show by show effort and with several thousand programs in the mix, it was really challenging to fix them.  Plus a one by one fix left both files in the data base which we did not want.  I will keep you posted on the Drupal 9 build out.  One more thing, if you want to recommend other changes that we should incorporate into the new build out, send me your ideas by email, drspace@thespaceshow.com.  Do not post them on the blog.

Before signing off, let me give you a brief update on The Space Show book.  First, all my plans to have it finished and published within the 20th year have gone out the window.  It has been very time consuming, challenging, working the changes in with the editor or resisting changes and still maintaining the rest of my life. Shortly before I went off line for the move, I think I saw the light at the end of the tunnel to use an old phrase that often misled everyone who heard it.  That said, I don't think I am misleading when I say I really do see a day in the not too distant future when rather than adding new material, I'll be making final and near final edits in the material submitted to date.  Due to my move I have not been working on the book.  I certainly hope to resume intense work later in May when I am settled in and things are getting back to normal, whatever normal may be for the show, Pepper and me in the summer in Las Vegas.  I've not made steady reports to you about the progress with the book but as I move to the latter stages of it mentioned in this paragraph, I will provide timely updates when applicable.

Thanks for your patience during this move and Drupal 9 build out.  I appreciate it.

Dr. Space

David Livingston