WE got a sprinkle of it.
Bummer. Wish we’d spread the bounty out a bit. It’s been a warm winter. So was the last one. I’m not missing chopping through the snow plow berm with a garden pick, but we could use some snow.
The science lads say it’s climate instability: things shift back and forth. They’re trying now to figure if there’s a trend, but our records on this continent are ice cores and rock scratches and we could seesaw along between warm and cold winters up here for decades or longer. I’m hoping for snow next year. And I know the east coast is hoping we get it.
FWIW, I don’t seem to be getting the connection resets recently.
I still do if I’m not logged in.
We forget archaeological evidence and so much of what’s happening now mimics conditions (at least in the Southwest) of what occurred in the late 1200’s with a 30 year drought to be followed by the Mini Ice Age. I can see quite a few parallels.
I got so caught up in rereading The Pride of Chanur that I forgot I was supposed to take notes for any typos, or for important characters and concepts. I’m in Chapter 4. I do know I’ve seen two typos. I’ll go back and take notes after I’ve read it for enjoyment.
I, um, was supposed to be reading the French version to test myself better. So I’ll likely be reading in multiple passes, French, English, note-taking.
Hey, it was more for enjoyment in rereading than in proofing / note-taking. — I do know that I tend to focus down low-level, when I’m proofing like that, though once I get zoned in and going good, I can still get the meaning and enjoyment out of the text. It’s just that it’s two different mental processes, and focusing low-level tends to dampen seeing what the story is about, and the enjoyment for the story’s sake
I’d only found two typos, but I have found a case or two where I ~think~ there was (hard) hyphenation in the original printed editions.
The story is just as good as ever; no matter that I’ve read the Chanur books several times over the years.
;
I’m in Chapter 4. They’re still at Urtur, running silent, and Tully has begun inputting symbols on the translator.
I’m not sure if I had noticed before, but now I see that hani use base 8, octal, and most likely have 4 digits on each hand, a thumb and three fingers.
Looking at the cover of Homecoming at hand. Four fingers. Venture: Four. Legacy: Four. Saga: Four.
Aha! Thank you, Paul.
Can’t give you exact references at the moment, but there are several places where numbers are spoken for bearings, etc. that you should watch for.
Hmm, one occurrence in the ebook edtiion of mélée without accent marks. Peculiar, since I think they were present in the printed editions.
(And of course both web pages and ebooks ~can~ have a full range of accented letters and special symbols, via Unicode. So it’s an issue with how the text was converted and marked up (tagged) for ebook format.)
This time we just got rain. Cold and 40 degrees, bleh. I want some more snow too !
Happy to pack up and ship the stuff I just shoveled your way! Hard to tell with the blowing, but I think we are approaching 1 1/2 feet or so and the storm not yet over. On the other hand, I haven’t seen the mailman, despite their promise of “neither rain, nor snow nor dark of night” keeping them from their appointed rounds, so perhaps the governmental special delivery of snow to you might not be reliable.
postman was just by here, in our blizzard, so you may have some luck after all, Raesean. I’d send some too but i am out of stamps 🙂
Yeah, here in Boston, I had been worried that we weren’t getting enough snow this winter but after this past week, I’m more than happy to send you some…
The Little Ice Age is why our tales of ancestral Europe involve cold winters, layers of clothing, ice on the washbasin, skating on the canals, and deep, deep snow. Our near-last gasp of it was Washington’s miserable winter-camp at Valley Forge, so it’s not been that long ago. We could, for what we know, be in a swing between two episodes of a lesser ice age.
Not too happy news that Iceland is thawing and rising an inch a year: the ice is capping some real troublemakers of volcanoes—but hey, Mother Earth does have her regulatory systems: we do something, we may trigger one of the systems that have kept Mama Earth from other disasters, who knows? I figure we’ll cope.
Like the one about Anne Boelyn knowing that summer had arrived in London because there was no ice on the morning wash water? I might not have wanted to survive that, and would certainly have worn wool small clothes if possible!
The Younger Dryas cold snap, pushing temperate zones southerly, may well have given rise to the “invention” of agriculture in the Near East.
Scandinavia has been experiencing “isostatic rebound” (when the land slowly rises after a great weight=glaciers has been taken off it) since the last Ice Age. Many originally shoreline archaeological sites are now high and dry. I figure it is a useful counteractive to global warming ;).
My spouse claims (based presumably on solid reading but I have it only verbally) that the 60’s through mid 70’s when we grew up in New England were an abnormally cold and snowy period but have conditioned the two of us, at least, to presume a proper winter means continuous snow cover and lots of cold air. On that note, it still is coming down heavily “proper” outside, despite the town of Malden’s hopeful phone call of a moment ago announcing that the town snow emergency (when people without off street parking can park in certain municipal/school lots) will be ending at 6:00 tomorrow morning.
When my Dad first went to LA ’round about the early 30’s it apparently was warmer than when I grew up there (born on the eve of Operation Overlord as it was planned — the weather wasn’t so good, Ike could wait, Mom couldn’t). He said the green grocers were open-fronted “fruit-stands” with chicken-wired frames for the nights.
Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a trilogy aobut how we might cope with these issues. I thought they were great books. Fifty Degrees and Rising, and so on.
I dont think we are going to be able to sit back and hope Mother Nature will fix this. I think we need to take some responsibility.
And that requires accepting that it is possible for humans to affect the environment. Whicth seems impossible for our current Congress here in the US to agree to.
I loved that trilogy. I wonder if salting the Arctic Ocean like they did in “60 Days and Counting” would restore the ocean current circulation if the Gulf Stream did quit flowing? And yeah, our government will not do anything until something catastrophic happens and then it will be too late! (End of rant)
Snow: We had snow down to around 500′–down to the suburbs, within 15 miles of the coast–on New Year’s Eve. Santiago Peak looked diamond cut from the snow. First time since I’m-not-sure-when. (Santiago often gets snow, but it’s 5000’+.)
Warming makes the water cycle (see Wikipedia) more energetic, so anything can happen. We can’t depend on personal observation with the vast majority of the Earth still uninhabited. Remember the oceans.
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Warming: I have become more optimistic recently. I don’t think human nature and greed are going to change anything, but several developing technologies should displace fossil fuels and stop pumping out excess CO2.
Photovoltaic solar should be the cheapest form of energy by 2020, thanks to Moore’s law, more or less; and northern latitudes get more sunlight than you might think (see Wikipedia, Insolation). For example, Spokane only needs about twice the area of solar cells as sunny Southern California. When solar shingles are cheaper than normal shingles, as they may become, the game changes.
The US Navy is developing technology for nuclear carriers to generate jet fuel by extracting CO2 from the ocean then adding carbon to get to jet fuel, the latter being a standard refinery trick at some point. I don’t think the process is cost effective for land use, but it may be later when solar gets still cheaper.
While we all know of biofuels, like fermenting sugar into ethanol, algae is being developed that will excrete fuel directly. However, this may be overshadowed by…
Chips are under development that do photosynthesis and generate fuel, only hydrogen so far, I think, but the goal is hydrocarbon fuel. Already these chips are many times more efficient than natural photosynthesis. Imagine your garage roof generating fuel for your car.
The political effects of these technologies are significant. Almost any country will be able to generate all the oil they want. Bye-bye OPEC.
To clarify something, since a friend fell into this error, oil itself isn’t a problem. The problem is that we have taken oil and coal deposited over hundreds of millions of years (at least) and dumped it into the atmosphere in only a couple hundred years. The technologies I’ve mentioned fix CO2 from the atmosphere or ocean to generate fuel, so they are carbon neutral. These carbon-fixing fuels may become so cheap we can remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere by dumping the fuel down a convenient fault line…lubricating the fault–okay: bad example.
😉
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Mêlée^
Off-Topic: Walt, some time back, you had named a good orange -spice-cinnamon tea brand. What was it, please? I don’t see it in my purchase history and don’t seem to have written it down.
Off-Topic 2: my computer (iMac) appears to have hung twice in a row, after a few minutes each. It dates from about 2012. I have a Win7 laptop, now painfully slow, from 2010. I may be forced to get a computer, and to send this one off for repairs. Really can’t afford that, but I’ve got to have a working computer to continue towards income. Hoping I can get it to boot and not hang. At least my data is on an external HD, so it should be OK, not lost. Sigh. I had had two or three hangs on booting in the past month and a half, so…I may have run out of luck.
On-Topic: continuing mild for the season here. It was supposed to get down to 39 last night, 41 tonight, and 50% to 60% chance of rain the next two to three days. Our winter has been , I think, warmer than normal here. But I saw record lows here down to 12 or so in the mid-1980’s, including low 20’s during the day, so although I feel there’s something to global warming, I guess we’ll see what happens.
And yes, I think the US and other major governments are not going to do anything significant until some natural disaster proves to them that they cannot ignore responsible corrective measures. There used to be these things called compromise, working together to solve problems for the common good, and some things called diplomacy, statsemanship, and public service. It seems they have become quaint and forgotten in favor of demonizing and divisive rhetoric to the point of standstill, rather than to keep trying solutions together until something works. I dearly wish things would improve!
FWIW, my checks toward county current and back taxes still have not cleared after 11 physical days. Sigh.
@BCS Off-Topic 2: my computer (iMac) appears to have hung twice in a row, after a few minutes each. It dates from about 2012. I have a Win7 laptop, now painfully slow, from 2010. I may be forced to get a computer, and to send this one off for repairs. Really can’t afford that, but I’ve got to have a working computer to continue towards income.
If’n it’s busted, can’t say much about that, not with Apple’s proprietary designs. But you gotta know what I’d recommend to speed up a “painfully slow Win7 computer”. I have a solution well known for resurrecting old hardware to youth and vitality that’s more secure and doesn’t need annual tithes to Norton, et al. 😉
BCS: http://www.gourmet-coffee.com/cinnamon-orange-1lb.-loose-leaf-tea.html
A 2010 laptop shouldn’t be painfully slow. Slow booting and shutdown, yes, for which Windows is notorious. Try changing the power button to make the laptop Hibernate (not Stand By). In Hibernation, an image of memory is written to disk, and the computer shuts off completely; when you restart, the image is restored and you continue where you left off with all open programs still open and not needing to be restarted. (Stand By leaves the image in RAM which must be continuously refreshed, so the system is not actually completely off and can run off the end of its battery, losing the restore image.) I have found Hibernation very reliable for XP, 7 and 8.0; I usually only reboot when a software update requires it.
Walt — Thanks! But their site hiccupped when I attempted to register, and failed to load this morning. I’ll check in again later. The Captcha seemed fine, no error showed, but it didn’t click to submit the form, despite clicking so. I’ll bookmark it and write down the brand and flavor name.
Paul and Walt — I’m not entirely convinced yet it’s a severe problem with my iMac, but it’s worrisome that it’s hung during boot like that, and is increasing. Unfortunately, the iMac design is an all-in-one case and there’s nothing user serviceable. I’ve seen poor reviews on the Mac Mini for their latest design, and OK reviews on new iMacs, and very good reviews (besides sticker shock) on the Mac Pro. I think I have enough time to recheck my old Win7 laptop and look into current models before making a decision. Heh, I still have an account with Dell, unused in a few years, though. Hmm, too bad use of iTunes doesn’t go towards credit for buying a new computer, or I’d have it likced.
Seems okay to me. Could your computer problem be an issue?
BTW, Rogers’ cinnamon tea is great, but they insist on tweaking standard recipes, so if you want, say, a usual Earl Grey, they sell something significantly different.
@BCS I have no problems getting to Walt’s recommended page either.
Got it this time. Had to argue with it on a couple of data fields and error messages to register, but got there and submitted an order.
Wow, sure glad I didn’t want it shipped next day air! LOL, would have to buy a lot of tea and coffee to justify that shipping. … I used the el cheapo method.
Been a while since I used my tea strainer for loose leaf tea. — My tea kettle gets a regular workout, but not an old-fashioned teapot.
I like most herbal teas, except Earl Grey (I don’t like the oil of bergamot), and chamomile tastes too “grassy” for me. I like most others I’ve tasted, especially orange-spice blends, my favorite.
I’ll confess I have never used or had a samovar. I’m curious about those, but have never looked into them. Then there’s the Asian method, and then there’s the more English / European method, the one I’m used to.
Hi, smartcat! Constant Comment is the usual brand I use. I really like it. So thanks! (Yes, it’s by Bigelow.) I sometimes go for Celestial Seasonings’ Mandarin Orange; though I think they got politically correct recently and renamed it, as though it were not complimentary, huh. I don’t think I’ve tried Twinings’ orange-spice recently.
I am still figuring out my local grocery store’s bizarre new reorganization. (You put that here, and this there? What? And I can’t find this other thing at all. Where?) That, and I am still sorely tempted to go in there with a miner’s / hiker’s hat, they’ve lowered the lighting so much.
BCS: Glad you got it straightened out. If you like Constant Comment, which I’m so-so on, you might try the analogous tea from Tattle Tea, http://tattletea.coffeebeandirect.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=orange aka Coffee Bean Direct. I think Orange Spice would be it. I have some Orange Spice now and again, but when I don’t want Earl Grey, or one of the Aussie teas friends give me, I’m drinking Rogers’ Cinnamon Orange (which we’ve been discussing), which has the virtue that artificial sweetner is all I need with it, so it’s essentially zero calories.
I might add that my last Tattle Tea shipment went astray–FedEx couldn’t figure where they delivered to–after I had queried FedEx, they not just replaced the tea, no questions asked, they sent me a nice Tattle Tea/Coffee Bean Direct tote bag. At least it seems nice: light–well, black, actually–big, sturdy, and time will tell about its durability, but it seems good.
Them giving me a bag seems right to me. I got into a discussion with a friend once which he summarized, “So you think a company who wants you to wear their logo should pay for it?” Well, yes, just like any other advertising. I’ve heard some complaints from the Eastern US about heating costs this winter, and I’m morally certain they’re sitting in the cold with logo T-shirts on–only–never mind that you can get logo hoodies. Gotta have their geek cred.
I’m astonished anymore when a company gives great service, either on the first go-round or to correct something. Good service tends to surprise me too.
I had better copy down the second tea reference for later.
Thanks, Walt!
Ben, have you tried Constant Comment I think Bigelow makes it.
Oops, that comment just above was meant to go here, below smartcat’s comment, of course.
@CJ, the connection resets are definitely gone.
We think we found the problem, or rather Lynn did. Apparently we have had, due to the age of the site, an inconsistency as to whether it should be called with a www or not. There was a change in the server for security reasons that got fussier, and therefore things weren’t working right. Lynn fixed that.
As to my computer problems, we are definitely down to a ‘soft’ problem, ie, the bios. Dell has some issues that require a couple of bios adjustments that prevent the power management from shutting down the usb’s. There are a couple of fine distinctions of responsibility (ie is it a Dell problem or is it a Windows problem?) but the result is certainly a user problem. If you use your computer with the latest gizmos, these little usb stubs that empower a wireless headphone, wireless mouse, etc, they are going to drive an older computer a bit buggy and cause USB problems. I have a feeling my computer must have been built before the stubs became ‘the’ hot new way to do things…and I’m not the only one. I ran into numerous people online having this issue, and I don’t know if they’re all Dell users or if they have laptops or desktops and if they are of a certain vintage. But my Dell laptop has been cured of one of its two issues (the other we think resides in an aging network device) and Comcast has apparently (without our asking) destined us for a new one. We are waiting to see how well that plays with the Linksys, which we insist on using.
In the meanwhile, at least Dell has stuck with us. This computer has had 3 motherboards, 3 daughterboards, 3 keyboards, 3 palmrests, and everything wrong turns out to be bios settings—but at least Dell went on doggedly seeking a fix. We have at least come out of it with a nicer keyboard than we started with, and it is for all intents and purposes a new computer, with never a repair bill, just some inconvenience.
Our computer problems are far easier to solve than Lynn’s own. Apparently the major city thoroughfare on which she lives has decayed to the point where they have to rip up the pavement and replace most everything down there—electrical, water, sewer—and the earthmovers are playing hob with the cable. Dish is not feasible where she is for several reasons. And this means that periodically—and sometimes more than once a day to my observation— she loses phone, telly, AND internet, and has to rely on cell to advise the cable they’re down again.
We empathize, having had our own street construction—I’m not sure we can sympathize, having not had the utilities go down more than a couple of times. We’re on deep basalt, and whenever the graders and hammers were at work our whole house foundation would resonate—our basement was like a sounding board. And of course we had the problem of having our driveway on the street they were replacing, but they took care of us. Lynn’s situation is a nightmare of torn up road and never knowing when the utilities are going to drop out, day or night. And the projected finish date is April. We hope that after that the whole system will work better.
Meanwhile, Jane got additional memory for her computer—it got caught in winter storm Juno, and was non-moving for about a week. It finally came. And the chip was bad. So it’s on reorder.
I swear, coping with computers requires patience we are running out of!
Perhaps we need some sort of Tatiseigi circle. A support group for those who think one should be able to buy quality and then rely on the technology forever. Seems reasonable to me.
Au contraire, mon cher. Your bill is paid on the installment plan so to say.
“We have at least come out of it with a nicer keyboard than we started with, and it is for all intents and purposes a new computer, with never a repair bill, just some inconvenience.”
Well, monster inconvenience. But it’s a much better keyboard. 😉