Category Archives: Geek Out!

Starshine, Moonshine, Planetshine, Earthshine Monday

Posted on by
3

Every once in a while, something will appear in the night sky that will attract the attention of even those who normally don’t bother looking up. It’s likely to be that way on Monday evening, Dec. 1.

A slender crescent moon, just 15 percent illuminated, will appear in very close proximity to the two brightest planets in our sky, Venus and Jupiter.

Via Venus, Jupiter will ‘shine’ Monday night – Space.com- msnbc.com

I noticed two bright “stars” on my way home the other night near the Moon; this must be Jupiter and Venus, setting up for Monday’s big show. I hope the skies are clear that night because it’s going to be a really beautiful sight.

Farther down in the article, there’s another interesting fact – it may be possible to see a phenomenon called “the old moon in the new moon’s arms.”

Also on Monday evening, you may be able to see the full globe of the moon, its darkened portion glowing with a bluish-gray hue interposed between the sunlit crescent and not much darker sky. This vision is sometimes called “the old moon in the young moon’s arms.” Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was the first to recognize it as what we now call “earthshine.”

At the End of the Day

Posted on by
1

My life doesn’t really run to a narrative. There’s the basic “get up, go to work, come home, eat something, do something, go to bed” framework, but there’s no grand sweeping Story of my Life. It’s just a collection of random moments.

That being said, some days are a little out of the ordinary in minor ways. Today started out normal, got different, then got normal.

It was very slow at work – as in, frighteningly, “when are they going to start training us on other accounts” slow. Not terrifyingly “when are they going to start to pull in the last-hired people into a conference room” slow, though. I had left a number of messages for a bunch of different hotels in Atlanta, trying to find some block space for a group, but didn’t expect to hear back from all of them until after the Thanksgiving holiday. This event isn’t for about 5 months so it’s not a huge rush, but it’s during the time of a major convention and a large meeting-planning organization had sucked up all the available properties behind a kind of “paywall” arrangement. The person asking me to arrange the block wasn’t willing to give up a credit card number for a guarantee just to find out IF her first through sixth choices were available, at some unknown price. So I was trying to find someplace that wasn’t contractually obligated through the convention’s housing bureau. I’ve worked with the particular meeting-planning outfit running the housing desk before and frankly, wasn’t looking forward to it as they were hard to work with and this is the largest size group I handle.

At least I’m no longer covering for my co-worker, the air groups person. In addition to taking normal travel arranger-type calls, we both specialize slightly in aspects of group travel, and backing her up is not difficult, but occasionally there’s a huge spike in workload. It was mostly a caretaker job this time, though, while she was out for 3 weeks. Handled it all and got it done.

So, all that time I couldn’t avail myself of downtime when it was offered, because I didn’t feel it was right to take it when something might come up and no one else was really up lined up to back groups up.

I was just thinking “Man, TOO SLOW. Lunch in 5 minutes, seems like 5 hours.” And then a team leader came up and offered immediate downtime on the spot. Normally, it’s much more formal – there’s a sign up list, they don’t decide until after lunch, and it’s not a snap decision like that. No, today the call volume was low enough in the morning that they needed to get some people off as soon as possible.

Nobody on my team looked all that interested, amazingly enough. Perhaps no one wanted that much unpaid time. I raised my hand and said, “Well, I could go; I’m waiting for callbacks that probably won’t come in today, I don’t have anything pending, and this project is really low priority. “I can authorize you to go right now, if you like. Log out and change your schedule and it’ll be approved,” said the team leader.

Okay then, I’m out of there at noon. What to do? With the T-day holiday looming, I decided to go to Meijer’s and stock up on staples, since we’re low on a few things, and also get some of the baking supplies I’ll need for making dilly bread. And off I went, and started loading up on mostly normal staples, plus a few seasonal things texted to me by David or remembered, more or less, by me.

I had the most interesting conversation in the tea-coffee-cocoa aisle. I had a taste for hot chocolate the other night, so I was comparing ingredients on various “instant cocoa” products. I was trying to find one that didn’t have a lot of milk product in it, in case David wanted some, but then decided “what the heck, he doesn’t even LIKE chocolate, it’s all about ME and what I like here!” A woman standing there doing the same thing laughed and said “What is it about women and chocolate?” and proceeded to tell me a story about how she went to downtown Chicago and was in a very upscale chocolate place – like maybe Godiva or some other boutique chocolatier – and seeing an extremely well-dressed, posh woman with 4 or 5 little girls there.

All the girls were also extremely well turned out, and this woman was “introducing” them to fine chocolate, very deliberately. According to the lady in the cocoa aisle, they were all sitting around dressed in their finery, with freshly lacquered nails, and they had wee cups of fine cocoa and were being schooled in the niceties of properly sipping one’s drinking chocolate. She said there was something disturbing about how these kids couldn’t simply be handed an ordinary candy bar, they had to make it into some kind of special event (it was probably a birthday party). But we both pondered how one of a certain income bracket might have one’s children and one’s friends’ children properly introduced to chocolate.

“Imagine that… they couldn’t just hand the girls a Hershey bar, or even a good quality chocolate bar, and add the usual warnings about not eating too much at one time,” I said. “In an economic crisis, it’s kind of offensive to me that someone would want to ‘introduce’ young kids to such… elitist consumerism. There are people who’ll have trouble feeding their own kids and staying employed and housed.” I added something about it not being a good idea to bring up kids that take such stuff for granted. The grocery lady agreed and we chatted on for a few more minutes in that vein.

In the end, though, she and I both picked the “organic” chocolate, although it was the house brand. The “name brand” stuff was more expensive, and it was full of crap like xanthan gum. How terrible for the poor Xanthans! How do they manage to eat?

Anyway, after loading up on more stuff, yet having the nagging suspicion that I was forgetting something critical for either tonight’s dinner or Thursday’s breads, I proceeded to the checkout area. I was kind of wishing I hadn’t gone to Meier and gotten so much stuff, because I thought there would be a long line for the “live” checkout lanes, and it would take forever to scan all that stuff myself and have to stuff bags in the “loading” area one at a time. But lo! they’d installed some high-volume self-check lanes! So you can scan something, send it down a conveyor to a holding area, and immediately scan something else rather than to have to stop and bag each item. Whee!

I fancy myself as a pretty good scanner now. I bet if I had to, I could get a part time job in a grocery store. Yep. That’d last about two days until my back, knees, and wrists gave out.

So then it was Off Toward Home. But first, there was a nasty accident to pass along the way. Which begs the question… how the heck do you overturn a large SUV on a major suburban arterial, where the speed never gets above about 40-45 mph? There must have been some involvement with the central median to get some tipping action, but there it was, on its side, with a bunch of cops and fire trucks all around. And then I saw a fireman hustling himself through the opened/broken sunroof, and I realized “Holy God, there’s still someone in there.” And crossed myself as I passed by, marveling at the large number of cop cars. I mean, there were at least 5 or 6, plus two or three fire trucks. Most of the cop cars were behind the SUV in the opposite lanes… had there been a chase? Don’t know, hasn’t made the local news outlets.

Once home, what to do? Cleaned out the refrigerator a little and wiped it down. Put the food away. Had hot chocolate, played with the cat, surfed the Internets tubes.

For about an hour or so, I had an extremely bad day as I screwed up the transfer of music from my iPhone to this computer after downloading and installing iTunes on it. Thus, my pretty good day went horribly borked as I basically had to restore the phone to factory defaults… that is, wipe it clean and start over. Thank GOD, I had recently synched it to my normal iTunes install on the laptop. So, geeky angsty yadda yadda, it remembered everything and who I am and all my music and all my apps and games and I didn’t have to re-enter all my contacts from scratch or remember how to do it via Outlook. Whew.

Once David got home, it became a more “normal” day. Watched Chuck. Eventually made dinner out of the beef I originally bought to make stroganoff, because I forgot to get egg noodles. We ended up finding a kind of “easy casserole” recipe that we adapted that turned out to be… really very good. Served it over cracked Yukon Gold potatoes – next time, either smaller potatoes, or cut in smaller cubes. I’d stilll cook them separately in the same skillet I browned the beef in before we put it in the casserole, though. Beef had a really good flavor, and so did the potatoes. We’ll try that again, maybe with big sliced portobello mushrooms in the “easy casserole” mixture.

Pretty much a normal/not normal/normal day, though. Oh, and Chuck was teh awsum.

Oh, and sometime between now and Thursday morning, I need to pick up some yeast cakes. Because, yes, forgot them too. And the cottage cheese. And need to see if we already have all the other spices and herbs, too, because usually I just buy another little jar or bottle of ginger or dill weed and then get home to find that I have 2 or 3 jars or bottles already.

Yeah. That’s how I roll!

So goodnight. Maybe I’ll go shopping tomorrow.

Popcorn! Getcher Popcorn Heah!

Posted on by
1

I don’t usually go for interblog communications or linkery, much, but every now and then I notice something interesting shaping up via my Google Reader feed. First I noticed that the official blog of the Discovery Institute (ironically named “Evolution News & Views”) had an item where they seemed to be following evolutionary biologist PZ Myers’ movements very closely and accusing him of secretly espousing eugenics. And then Myers responded thusly with Pharyngula: Egnor loses it, again.

I’m reading both blogs because at Holy Moly, we’ll be discussing evolution and creationism and the “Intelligent Design” in the adult forum for the next few months. There may be some back-and-forth, or there may not. I read the Discovery Institute’s self-aggrandizing double-speak because I have to; I read PZ Myer’s Pharyngula (even the posts about cracker worship) because I really enjoy his writing and find the topics he covers interesting. I have only a bit of college background in evolution – I took a year-long evolution class at Oregon that was designed for non-science majors that I absolutely loved, but to me, the theory is all but proven. There’s no way to really prove it without going back in time and collecting specimens from all the places and eras where the fossil record is lacking – you can’t have ideal conditions for fossilization everywhere and everywhen but there’s a convincing preponderance of evidence for any rationalist.

Unfortunately, a complete fossil record of every type of creature, with samples from about every 1,000,000 years or so, will never be found and categorized unless science manages to figure out how the Tardis works. Also unfortunately, nothing less will convince a Biblical literalist of the truth of evolution, plus they’ll need a note from God saying “Sorry, your monkey really was an uncle, and fossils are real, and the seven days were really eons, but that bit got left out of a later edition of the Bible.”

I want to note here, very firmly, that I’m a liberal Episcopalian, not an unthinking Biblical literalist, and I accept evolution as the most likely explanation for how humans came to be. I may believe in a God that atheists scoff at and agnostics question, but my God is both loving and logical. In my view, the Big Bang happened pretty much as physicists theorize, but the Deity was and is and ever shall be, from the nano-moment that the Light was first kindled in the Universe. And it appears that other Episcopalians, and also physicists, have a similar point of view.

I happen to think that God is very interested in what’s going on with His Creation, but He doesn’t meddle, much, because that would mess with His results. Never screw with your data, you know.

Anyway, for the first part of the discussion in Adult Ed., we’re watching the movie “Inherit the Wind” in the house Holy Moly now has re-purposed as a parish meeting place. I watched about the first third of the movie Sunday morning between the services, after my big numbah (sang a trio from Elijah with Katy and Mary). Had to scoot back to be sure I was there if Mary decided to rehearse the choir for second service (since I had to be there anyway for the reprise performance). So I missed out on the actual discussion, although they may be saving that up for later, once all the installments of the movie have screened. Steve G., the guy leading the Adult Ed. sessions, is a big fan of the movie, but knows exactly where it differs from the real story. He actually owns a copy of the trial transcript, which is published in book form by a college named after William Jennings Bryan. So he’ll probably be able to point out the various liberties the film took with reality. He’s not an Episcopalian, Steve G.: he’s Jewish and is married to one of the parishioners, but he likes running our discussion sessions. Interesting guy.

I’ve never actually seen the film, just know of it from its reputation. I was surprised to find that at the time it came out in 1960, it was understood to be a commentary on intellectual freedom as it pertained to living and teaching in the McCarthy era… the evolutionists-versus-fundamentalists angle was just a convenient hook to hang the story on. But a remake now would be, ironically, more literalist in scope. It was based on a play, and there are significant differences between both, and neither are completely accurate depictions of the events that took place during the “Scopes Monkey Trial.”

The play includes a note reminding the reader that “Inherit the Wind is not history.” The characters have different names from the historical figures on whom they are based, and the play “does not pretend to be journalism.” The authors go on to argue that “the issues of [Bryan and Darrow’s] conflict have acquired new dimension and meaning” in the 30 years since the actual courtroom clash. They do not set the play in 1925 but instead say that “It might have been yesterday. It could be tomorrow.” This timelessness of the setting can be seen as a warning about repeating the wrongs of the past, which can recur unless we are vigilant. During the play’s original Broadway run, it was widely understood as a critique of McCarthyism, but subsequent interpretations have been more literal, given the resurgence of the creation-evolution controversy after the play and film appeared, and the events of the film are sometimes incorrectly taken as a near recreation of the trial.

Despite the authors’ warnings and the fact that the play and the film are about defending truth from ignorance, both play and film contain major inaccuracies. Inherit the Wind portrays the Cates/Scopes character as unfairly persecuted when, in reality, the ACLU was looking for a test case with a teacher as defendant, and a group of Dayton [Blogula’s note: the real town where the trial took place] businessmen persuaded Scopes to be a defendant, hoping that the publicity surrounding the trial would help put the town back on the map and revive its ailing economy. Scopes was never in the slightest danger of being jailed.[citation needed]

Inherit the Wind has been criticized for stereotyping Christians as hostile, hate-filled bigots. For example, the character of Reverend Jeremiah Brown whips his congregation into a frenzy and calls down hellfire on his own daughter for being in love with Bertram Cates. In fact, no such event took place — Scopes had no girlfriend and the character of Rev. Brown is fictitious.[citation needed] The 1960 film depicts a prayer meeting during which some express hostility about Drummond and Cates, but Brady intervenes to calm the situation, urging a gentler and more forgiving strain of Christianity than the minister’s.

In reality, the people of Dayton were generally very kind and cordial to Darrow, who attested to this fact during the trial as follows:

“I don’t know as I was ever in a community in my life where my religious ideas differed as widely from the great mass as I have found them since I have been in Tennessee. Yet I came here a perfect stranger and I can say what I have said before that I have not found upon any body’s part — any citizen here in this town or outside the slightest discourtesy. I have been treated better, kindlier and more hospitably than I fancied would have been the case in the north.” (trial transcript, pp. 225–226)

The film does justice to this fact in the scene where Drummond first meets the Hillsboro [Blogula’s note: the fictional location] town mayor, and also in Drummond’s interactions with Cates’ students.– Wikipedia, Inherit the Wind

As a result of watching the movie in weeks to come, I’ll probably become more interested in reading up on H.L. Mencken, although he was a bit of a Fascist in his latter years.

We’ll be watching the film for the next 2 or 3 weeks. Sadly, no popcorn shall be popped; Steve G. told us yesterday morning that he can’t stand the smell of popping popcorn, and in the mornings it would tend to turn his stomach. I’ll be watching the various evolution (rational) and creation (irrational) blogs in my feed in the meantime, because later on we’ll focus on evolutionary theory itself and then look at what the ID people put forward as arguments against it, and I’ll probably pull some handouts together for discussion some week.

Work Borked

Posted on by
1

Lovely. Work is totally borked.

Can’t work because the main system is run as a secure webpage, and somehow everyone’s logins and passwords have been lost. Some webpages work that are either within the firewall or company pages, but nothing “outside.”

In about an hour they’ll start going around re-enabling the native version that everyone still has, mark my words.

AjaxLife: Second Life for iPhone Good Enough For Me

Posted on by
2

I recently took another look for a Second Life IM client. There’s supposed to be something called SLim that’s official, but I bypassed it for something called AjaxLife, which I’d previously tried back when it was a light Web interface that just barely ran on my iPhone.  It runs well on a normal computer, though.

Now there’s a much better iPhone interface, which allows the user to log in, IM friends, and chat locally at whatever your default login location is.

You can’t move your AV, so you should be sure you’re somewhere safe and not in the way. But you could theoretically attend a meeting if you planned ahead (and maybe added a courtesy title to explain your immobility).

About the only thing you can’t do that would be useful is send or receive group IMs. Also, you can’t read IMs that were sent to you while you were logged out. They’re still waiting for you when you log in normally, though.

It’s a curiousity; it might come in handy if you’re a landowner and need to contact someone to fix something. Also it’d be stellar for breaking up with a partner as long as they know you can’t be bothered to drop the bomb in (virtual) person. Could come in handy for establishing a cop-drama alibi, too. It works fine for what I might need – satisfying the occasional curiousity about which of my friends are logged in, or checking in with them when traveling without my laptop.

I logged in while on break today, for example; surprising how many non-Europeans were logged in in the middle of a workday.

Screenshots below. Because of course I had to post via iPhone, too.

UPDATE: Added a few links, since the iPhone doesn’t do that well, and fixed the annoying WP missing-brackets bug before publication. So at least now I know Flickr isn’t the culprit. The new version of WP definitely strips brackets if another application is actually sending the post to the server.

Anyway, the creator’s AjaxLife Blog: iPhones post explains that if you log in to http://blog.ajaxlife.net/ via iPhone you are automagically re-directed to a “secure login proxy.” It currently does not work with other cellphone Web browsers.

It amused the hell out of my virtual landlord last night when I IMed him to ask if he could see my message and told him I was logged on via an iPhone. I noted that based on the attachment messages in my local chat screen, it was likely that my AV was physically present in my little priory cell. The local chat screenshot shows something called “ZHAO” and something called “CG Facelight” loaded, some attachments I was wearing at logout.

UPDATE:AJAXLife was de-activated asas reported on Katherine Berry’s blog yesterday. It’s a sad thing, because it was a brilliant idea that was well executed. Frankly, I’ve been using the Metaverse app on the iPhone exclusively, but I’ll never forget the feeling of awe and wonder when I managed to log in to Second Life from my then-new first iPhone at a Panera.

Botox: Freedom FROM Expressions!

Posted on by
1
Flickr

The story on this image: David and I were doing something we rarely do – watching TV more or less “live”, and even more unusually, we were watching a network show and not bothering to zip through the commercials. This one came on for a product called Botox Cosmetic — with the tagline “it’s all about freedom of expression!” We had to pause the TiVo just to laugh. Apparently, the makers are quite proud of their product and address the troubling question of “Will I be able to make facial expressions after using Botox-Cosmetic?”

Yeah, right. Aaaaanyway.

My husband David said “there is something so wrong about a product ad that says “toxin.” I said “I thought botox gave you freedom FROM expressions.” As we looked at each other, we both made the same facial expression… the “I’m so blogging this” expression.
We both dove for a blogging appliance.

Mine got posted first but got mangled in the process. David’s was more polished but lacked the visual impact. You decide.

UPDATE:GRRR! Something about the WordPress 2.6.2 is causing WP to strip all the angle brackets, at least from posts that come in via the “Blog This Photo/Moblog” template from Flickr. And of course, my beloved drop shadows depend on the wrapped divs to make my lame photos all shiny. This behavior is similar to something WP used to do a long time ago – it would transform the angle brackets into character entities.

David thinks there should be a bugfix for this out there somewhere. In the meantime, in order to “moblog” I’ll have to do it direct from the iPhone. And as those posts tend to have unique CSS identifiers on the images, it should be possible to add a little border/white frame styling so the images are not all nekkid. I’d been meaning to get around to that anyway. For now, I have to “fix it in post.”

Ginny

I can has iPhone?
Via: Flickr Title: Botox: Freedom FROM Expressions!/> By:
Originally uploaded: 13 Sep ’08, 8.45pm CDT PST
i

How Geeks Have Fun When It Rains

Posted on by
Reply

Incidents :: Chicago :: Traffic.com

  • Flooding
    I-190 O’Hare Access Exwy – Outbound

    At US-12/US-45/Mannheim Rd (#2) – flooding – Troopers planning to shut down I-190 to OHare Airport.

  • Flood
    CHICAGOLAND TOLLWAYS

    Flood – The Illinois Tollway Authority and Illinois State Police are reporting numerous flooded roadways and underpasses on the area tollways. The flooding is due to overnight rain. Be cautious when driving, and be aware of standing water.

Yeah. Last night I wasn’t sleeping well, and about 330pm woke up to the sound of heavy rain. It went on all the rest of the night, and it’s still raining with no letup in the cards until at least Monday. Tomorrow we’ll catch the remnants of Ike. We got a bit of Gustav last week.

David’s down in the basement playing around with the sump pump – we had an Aquanaut installed a couple of months ago when we had the foundation crack sealed, and so David’s testing the emergency switch by cutting the power to the normal sump pump. He and our friend Steve were chatting away on the speakerphone, being geeks about sumps. Steve has two sumps (he has a very deep basement at the end where his fancy-schmancy media theater is) and so he was entertaining us by letting us hear the sound of his pump alarms going off.

Also entertaining: hearing his conversation with his dog Polly Wolly Labra-doodle Dog as she did some bidness outdoors before they headed inside to check on the sumps. We’ll see Steve tomorrow when we head over to watch Stargate: Continuum in his thea-tah with a few other people. Who cares if the weather sucks?