A Thread for Random Musings

[Narratio]

My hair only grows outward but my eyes are both green and grey.

Discuss

[death tribble]

The X-Files debuted on TV 30 years ago.

[Cancer]

Just as a reminder for those living in the Americas ... a week from tomorrow morning (on Saturday Oct 14) an annular eclipse of the Sun may be visible, depending on weather.  Link

[Cancer]

Hm.  A little 4.5 magnitude earthquake about 20-25 minutes back not far from here (near the road between Seattle and Port Townsend.  4.5 is enough to feel, not enough to do much.

[Pariah]

Every recipe should begin with "Wash the dishes that are already in the sink, because you'll need some of those." 

[Narratio]

Unless you've got a dog or cat. Then the first line should be about removing the devils spawn from the food prep area.

[Bazza]

A poem. 
 

I am a lighthouse
I provide sanctuary to ships at sea
Every winter the storms come
And knock me to my knees
 
Every spring I'm left bare
I get rebuilt with ease
Rebalance my foundations
My name is Peace. 

[Cancer]

On 10/6/2023 at 7:42 AM, Cancer said:

Just as a reminder for those living in the Americas ... a week from tomorrow morning (on Saturday Oct 14) an annular eclipse of the Sun may be visible, depending on weather.  Link

 

As the day approaches, the west end of the eclipse track seems likely to be rainy.  I haven't checked any forecasts further than Oregon, though.

[Pariah]

Growing up with Mr. Rogers did not adequately prepare me for the people in my  neighborhood.

[Ragitsu]

Deckard being a Replicant takes away from the movie. Far better, I think, for Deckard to be a human burned out from humanity that learns to be human again from a non-human being.

[Pariah]

My almost-ten-year-old now has 300 subscribers on his YouTube channel.

[death tribble]

It's Friday the 13th !

 

On with the Hockey Masks !

 

Out with the machetes !

 

And teenagers beware !

[Cancer]

First contact of the Moon's shadow on Earth of today's eclipse happened as I typed this.  Sucky weather here on the West Coast, though.

 

EDIT:

40 minutes later, thanks to a sucker hole in the clouds and driving down to the high school parking lot to avoid trees, and my formidable array of eclipse glasses, saw it at about 20% eclipsed.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Cancer

[Cancer]

Annularity made landfall about 15 minutes back.  And, we got another sucker hole with a sightline from kitty-corner across the street, with roughly 2/3 coverage.  It only gets up to about 80% here.

[Pariah]

We saw about 90% coverage here in the valley. There are thin clouds across the sky, but with the glasses you could actually see the eclipse through them. The sun is only about half covered now.

 

And it's really amazing to me that even at 90% coverage, it's still brighter than an average overcast day. The Sun is no joke.

[Pariah]

I'm looking forward to last week's meeting of the Time Travelers Club. 

[Bazza]

Time is circular, and also, an act of patience. 

[death tribble]

The Divine Gillian us doing adverts for Dream mattresses. Can be viewed on Youtube.

[Pariah]

Apples! Who knew?

[Bazza]

Eve, Eve knew. And Steve Jobs. 

[Duke Bushido]

So I am at my desk, doing my job.  This oarticular part of my job is tracking down specific one-off items a customer wants to include in his particular build.  In this case, that item is a 12k BTU through-the-wall (note: not a split unit) HVAC all-in-one with at least 2k watts of heating.  He has specified that the heat must work when the ambient temp is below zero (which tells me,he has tried this before with a heat pump instead an HVAC.  When there is no heat to pump.....  Well, they don't work so well....).

 

I put in a few calls to some regular and semi-regular suppliers, amd start to crawl some online sources  (ie, overseas distributors).

 

One site in particular has just floored me.  For one thing, these guys distribute _everything_.  Crawling their catalogue is very much like crawling Alibaba.  But this--

 

Okay, here was the bottom of the page:

 

"Your recent search history", followed by a long string of urinals and flush valves.

 

"Recommendations based on your browsing history:"

 

Followed by eleven pages of lingerie.....

 

What do they think we do here?  Host anime conventions?!

 

 

[Cancer]

Made two loaves of family gingerbread this afternoon (they're in the oven as I type).  We had milk go sour, and baking takes the chill off the house, and we're coming up on the season.

[death tribble]

We have 5,500 plus separate entries in the Create Hero Team and Create Villain Team. And guess who is trying to sort them out ?

[Cancer]

We have spoiled crows.

 

We've lived in our current house for more than 20 years now.  For most of that time, we've been feeding the crows. 

 

Our neighborhood is studded with large evergreen trees (mostly Douglas firs), and most of the houses date to the 1940s.  This area used to be a peripheral suburb back then, so some of those "houses" are more like "summer cottages" in their origin.  It's sort of ideal crow environment: not really dense forest, but thick enough to break up flight lines and sight lines so precision flying is much more important than raw speed.  And there's lots of humans dropping edible trash around.  So, we've got lots of crows.  (Other birds also, but those don't enter into this anecdote.)

 

Here, crow territories (one pair per territory) seem to be sort of ten-ish houses & yards in size.  The territory boundaries shift a little from year to year, but not much.  We can't identify the individual crows with any certainty, but the occupants of any given territory also seem pretty stable over several-year intervals.  They clearly identify and remember individual humans and pets (dogs and cats); I remember at one point we had two black cats, one lithe young one who seems to have attacked a crow at one point, and one old fat one who pretty much ignored the crows entirely.  The crows screamed at and harassed the attacker, and largely ignored the fat guy.  Similarly, if I pop out while they're on the table they'll go up into the cherry tree directly over them without saying anything.  Delivery guys or the occasional visitors will get yelled at.

 

We have a dilapidated old wooden yard furniture table that's starting to fall apart.  We call it the "offering table".  When we have leftovers that we know we're not going to eat but we think the crows would, off they go out onto the offering table.  Ditto for some cat food that the cats have turned their noses up on for a couple of days.  When I put food out there, I announce the fact by making a fricative blast with my lips and hand (I played trombone as a kid) that sounds like two quick blasts on a duck call; that's as close as I can get to a crow vocalization.  Many times, if the weather is good and it's light out, they'll come when I call, sitting on the utility wires or in the big old Japanese cherry tree on the north side of the property.  The pair will wait until I'm gone (got in the car and driven away, or gone back into the house) and then come down and help themselves.  While they are sitting on eggs or they've got new hatchlings, only one at a time comes; in summer after the year's hatchlings have fledged but before they've flown off on their own all three or four will come over.  Most of the time, the feeding process usually means carrying off what they can and eating it elsewhere, but small stuff like loose cat food gets eaten rather than carried. 

 

Saturday evening my wife and I had tuna sandwiches and soup for dinner.  My wife didn't finish her sandwich.  The next morning, I put the sandwich remnant on the offering table, called, and then went off to my computer cave to bash on my Nanowrimo junk.  When I came back a couple of hours later, I peeked through the cut glass portion of the north door.  I was mildly surprised: they had not carried off the whole sandwich remnant.  Instead, they had opened the sandwich up, eaten the tuna out of it, and left the bread on the table.

 

Clearly we have spoiled our crows; they eat what they like and leave stuff behind.

 

(A few hours later the bread was gone also, but that three hours later.  I guess they got peckish )

[Asperion]

I got thinking that there is no way to make politics more transparent,  especially in our current situation.  However,  I don't think we should attempt to legislate morality,  especially since it has proven that it doesn't work.  Let's take an alternate route.  Do what we did with the police.  Require the politicians to wear body cameras ALL THE TIME.  This will be when they are in Capital Hill,  meeting some other parties,  or any thing else. They will not be able to remove those cameras for any reason other than resigning and leaving office completely. As long as they are in office,  they will be required to wear those cameras AT ALL TIMES,  NO EXCEPTION.