I have no idea, except this purse sometimes dumps the phone compartment — zipper’s a bit too wide. So I think it’s toast. Fell out somewhere. Dead. The good news is—it’s a 30.00 phone. The bad news is…well, I had to deal with the robotic help at TracFone. “Enter your phone serial number.” and “Thank you. We’ll send a signal to your phone. Please call back if you haven’t received it in 10 minutes.” No matter what help path you choose—same answer, same routine, no living person. I finally got a guy on chat who got the credit card removed.
I am now a customer of T-Mobile, and the number is ported. And I’m paying a bit more for the phone and for the privilege. I also now have the cheaper version of those phones you touch the screen to manage. Which would be fine, but entering names in the phone book is 3 erasures for every letter or numeral successfully touched. I think I like the phone (Alcatel), but man, is it cranky about entry. And having had (since childhood) a shaky right hand, I now see why people type with their thumbs on phones: you need the brace of the other fingers.
I have entirely resisted the idea of taking a selfie for the accompanying portrait. It’s just too…too.
I had an audio rehearsal earlier this week for a future episode’s voice acting role. The rehearsal went well, it was a lot of fun, and I think they liked my part. It’s not (afaik) a recurring part, but the role’s big enough that I might get future guest / small roles, which would be really neat.
I still have to review the lines I recorded and make sure they’re good before turning them in. The episode will take a few months in audio production before it’s released. I’ll let folks know when it’s out.
I have auditions for two other audio drama podcasts upcoming. One, I might get; the other, I have no idea.
Two are Star Trek fan-based productions. The other is an original production.
We just had an earthquake propagate through the area… USGS says a 5.2 just hit Lordsburg, NM. Since this is not a seismically active part of the country normally, this seems like a big deal. Maybe the Rio Grande is changing its course or the continent is starting to split along the stress area of the continental divide. I just don’t have a clue.
Think of icebergs! Yes, icebergs. As they float on the water, some is above, but much below. Likewise, the solidified crystaline rock of mountain chains floats on the thick, viscous magma, and to keep what’s above sticking up, there is a great mass below. Mountain chains are always very much the thickest parts of a continental plate! One can see that in the San Andreas Fault running down the east side of the Coast Range until it wants to go through the “transverse range” of the San Gabriel Mountains between LA and the San Joaquin Valley. It is diverted to the east, going around. 😉
That said, once upon a time there was a rift zone that attempted to start not far from the Ozarks, causing the New Madrid Fault. And indeed, when the Mid-Atlantic Ridge split Gondwanaland, it split mountain ranges that correspond in Africa and South America.
No, the area where the crust is thinning is in the “Basin and Range” of Nevada and Utah. SLC is actually in a very dangerous area from the Wasatch Fault. It is far more like associated with that–provided they’re not fracking in the area! 😉
Ys, I just spotted it on the earthquake ap I use on my IPad — Quakefeed. It said it was a 5.2 magnitude earthquake at 5 km deep in Lordsburg, New Mexico. It’s been followed by a 3.5 and two 3.2 magnitude after shocks, all at the same depth.
Earthquake update: Actually occurred in Arizona about 90-95 miles from here. Appears to be in the Pinaleno Mountains along side the San Simon Valley of the Gila River. Three aftershocks of 3.4 to 3.6 range have been recorded, all at about 5.0 km depth.
I’m on a portion of the New Madrid fault, the Fort Wayne something-or-other (I can’t find my copy of the Roadside Geology of Ohio). Anyway, Shelby County, OH, is the most seismically active county in the state. The original contour of the land was rock from the Silurian Age, but was a valley that has been covered with sediment, etc., and is not as stable as the rock. If the New Madrid (or any of its subfaults in our area) let go, that sediment will vibrate quite a bit, causing more damage than if we were on the original bedrock. Once in a while we feel it…..I felt more earthquakes on Guam than anywhere, though.
We frequently get small earthquakes as the magma shifts in and out of the chambers under our volcanoes, mostly the Big Island. I keep tabs on the USGS website if anything gives us a kick:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
The last big thump we got (7.0 about 8 years ago) knocked our power station offline, so the site was not so useful; all Internet and cable as well as the local radio was down. We weren’t sure if that chunk of the Big Island had finally let go, so we stuffed everything into the car and were ready to tearass up Haleakala within 10 minutes. Fortunately, it was not a good day to swim.
Oh, really! Guess it didn’t do much good got anybody who sought safety from an earthquake up on the peak of the Molokai volcano. 😉
Depends which side of it you were on 😀
Don’t wanna even be anywhere on the North American Pacific Coast when something like that goes. Not a tsunami, an ininami (“purification wave”)! Note the size of the landslide debris.
I heard there’s a new Star Trek fan film that’s premiering at SoonerCon, Star Trek Valiant: Legacy, by Michael L. King. It’s short but supposed to be character-driven. It’s supposed to be released on YouTube, Vimeo, etc. on July 1st.
The Shejidan grape vine says CJ-aiji revealed the title, cover, and read a scene from the next Foreigner book.
Huzzah!
Also, I’ve submitted lines for one audio drama, my biggest role yet, and auditioned for another. I’m about to do auditions for another. … These are fan productions, so it’s unpaid. But it’s experience and it’s great fun.
BCS, you trying out for helmsman????
Funny you should say that. 😀 I was reviewing 2010 to check on Russian accents from real Russian actors. That’s an upcoming voice audition. Not a role I would’ve expected to try out for! But there are also characters from other settings.
My voice audio work is at: http://www.shinyfiction.com/audio/ There are links to work I’ve done for each series there too. I’m thinking of reorganizing that so it’s (hopefully) easier to scan.
Past and recently recorded roles include: Klingon Guard, Cardassian Glinn Guanar, Lt. Rubio (a redshirt), Turgas (an alien), ad-libbed crowd or crew member lines.
I was just thinking of how well everyone knew Mr. Hikaru Sulu, and now are getting to know George Takei as someone more than just an actor who played a helmsman on a starship 48 years ago….
You could be famous!
Who’s been seeping in my bed?
http://www.space.com/25530-earthsize-exoplanet-kepler-186f-habitable-discovery.html
Don’t worry about the planet. Worry about the star!
There is one huge problem to habitable zones around red dwarfs. Many red dwarfs are “flare stars“. That includes several (AU stars) nearby. One wouldn’t want to live that close during the superflares these things produce.
At other times, some red dwarfs, called flare stars, can emit gigantic flares, doubling their brightness in minutes. This variability may also make it difficult for life to develop and persist near a red dwarf.
So what about Kepler-186? “It is a BY Draconis variable changing brightness slightly, probably from starspots, with a period of 33.695 days.” And although they aren’t classic flare stars, “Some of these stars may exhibit flares, resulting in additional variations of the UV Ceti type. Likewise, the spectra of BY Dra variables (particularly in their H and K lines) are similar to RS CVn stars, which are another class of variable stars that have active chromospheres.“
And no proof is not proof of nothing. Astronomers (and others) sometimes don’t account for that enough.
Kepler finds only those planets that fly exactly between their star and it.
Before the confirmation of the first exoplanet, we had detailed knowledge of five high-mass orbital systems: the Sun’s, Jupiter’s, Saturn’s, Neptune’s, and Uranus’s. All five have a large number of satellites. The major bodies of all the planetary systems are protected by the central planet’s magnetosphere, except Titan is about 10% outside of Saturn’s.
So, when you hear about a super-jupiter in the habitable zone, consider that it may be the home of multiple protected inhabitable moons, who are invisible in the “shadow” of their planet. Consider the evolution of a space-faring civilization in such a system! Even outside the habitable zone, consider hot little Io, tidally heated to a slow boil. Plants grow in shade, so they don’t need all the sunlight the Sun provides. What is needed is energy to keep water liquid, and tidal energy will work just fine: there’s a tidal Goldilocks zone around every gas giant.