Having just driven a distance of 5 miles in a bit under an hour and a half, I think that this young lady sums up the opinion of many of my fellow Virginians...
"OH GOD! WE'RE GONNA HAFTA TO EAT OUR OWN LEGS AREN'T WE?"
It's been coming down remarkably hard for several hours now. Predictions are for 6-12 inches of snow, which is quite a bit for us. There has been some flickering and intermittent outages, so power may not persist.
In other news, the plumbing situation deteriorated rapidly Saturday night with the result that both bathrooms were unusable so we sent Mom to my sister's house before finally breaking down and calling a plumber. In a few moments I will get the first shower, I've had in over two days. Yay!
Mom is still in North Carolina suffering the dreadful indignity of having to watch her three year old granddaughter play in the snow.
UPDATE: I have not as of yet had to eat my own leg...but it has been a rear run thing.
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Good luck on your weather and plumbing issues. The power flickered up here in Manassas a few hours before the snow started, but has been steady since then. Our forecast accumulation has been dropping slowly from its high of 12 inches all day, and currently sits at 3-5 inches total.
Posted by: Siergen at Mon Feb 16 20:27:13 2015 (ohSuC)
2
4-6 (unplowed, I assume) inches of snow and ice is more than enough for me to say "Nope, I'll wait for the plow" even up here in Boston, so I have sympathy. Luckily, I had previously taken the day off so I could clear the 3 feet (somehow) of snow from my deck and dig my car out in peace.
Posted by: ReallyBored at Tue Feb 17 10:28:41 2015 (ulGxe)
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Feb 17 16:36:52 2015 (ZJVQ5)
4
Albeit we had a lot of insanely blowing snow on Saturday, and I misjudged my Saturday enough to have been waiting for a bus in it. Luckily, I was able to adjourn to a heated indoor area when it was really bad, and then my brother kindly volunteered to pick me up from the mall bus stop so I didn't have to walk home from the "slightly closer to my place, but still thirty minutes walk away" bus stop.
But overall snowfall was about an inch and a half. It just blew around a lot.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Feb 17 18:14:58 2015 (ZJVQ5)
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So, yeah, here in Sydney it can get awfully hot, and sometimes everything catches fire, but at least we don't have this frozen water falling from the sky nonsense.
Except hail. Hail we got.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Feb 17 18:53:25 2015 (2yngH)
6
One of only nice things about being in a post-employment situation is that if you plan ahead, you don't have to go out in cruddy weather.
We've had a couple of good storms this winter here in Duckford, and two friggin' cold snaps, but I've been able to avoid actually leaving Pond Central during them entirely.
Still, we've been pretty much looking at the East Coast's winter weather with a combination of pride and fear. Pride in that, if it occurred, we'd be able to deal with it, and fear that we might have to.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wed Feb 18 03:58:23 2015 (jGQR+)
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While here in the PNW, it's been unseasonably warm. Not that I mind. I have some lovely Rhododendrons in the front that have the annoying habit of blooming in February, and then instantly getting killed in a frost. Right now they're in full bloom, a rarity.
I should take pictures.
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Feb 18 04:39:31 2015 (TJ7ih)
While things have not been quite as bad as the travails of the young lady depicted above, yesterday was a fitting cap to a particularly obnoxious work week.
more...
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My youngest nephew had an utter fascination at an early age for flushing inappropriate things down the toilet. Plastic dinosaurs were a particular favourite. His name's Darwin, so this might have been some convoluted evolutionary experiment. But I think it was probably just toddler logic.
In about ten years he'll find this comment on Google and have to decide how my act of betrayal balances out against all the Lego...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sat Feb 14 10:13:08 2015 (PiXy!)
" an awful lot of ammunition was shipped yesterday so I'm assuming its related....which should cause some concern"
Naw. One year I bought my wife a revolver for Valentine's day. She loved it, and got me a shotgun for our anniversary. It's only natural that you'd ship ammo too as Valentine's day gifts.
Posted by: Rick C at Sat Feb 14 23:23:09 2015 (0a7VZ)
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Late winter/early spring sales, too. Plus you want to beat President's Day, because you might want to go shooting on your three day weekend.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Sun Feb 15 15:13:22 2015 (ZJVQ5)
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I tend to be unnerved by "solid working theories" involving plumbing lines and the gadgets attached thereto, but maybe that's just me.
Posted by: CGHill at Sun Feb 15 18:52:30 2015 (+6Y9j)
I have a fair amount of homework due this week so posting is likely to be sporadic at best, especially Tuesday. As compensation for that and the banality below the fold, here is some Kongos .
Posted by: Wonderduck at Thu Jan 1 01:29:45 2015 (jGQR+)
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Wait, is your birthday 1/1, or 12/31? Because mine is the latter, and that would be WAY too coincidental.
Posted by: Mauser at Thu Jan 1 03:28:31 2015 (TJ7ih)
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Happy Birthday! And in the words of the immortal Tom Lehrer:
It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Jan 1 07:29:15 2015 (PiXy!)
Common side effects of intravenous sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim use include sun sensitivity, itching, head pain, rash and loss of appetite. Other possible side effects of oral sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim use that are considered rare include abdominal or stomach pain, black tarry stools, blistering, peeling or loosening of skin, chest pain, chills, cough or hoarseness, dark urine, diarrhea, dizziness, fever, tiredness or weakness.Additional side effects associated with the oral form of sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim are shortness of breath, changes in skin color, vomiting of blood, joint or muscle pain, loss of appetite, nausea, rash and wheezing, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Well...my skin didn't loosen or change color and I don't THINK there was blood in my vomit* so I did not get them all. Despite coming so very close to a perfect streak on the first go, I don't think I'll be continuing this as I found playability and enjoyment to be rather low.
However, the doctor assures me that I'm unlikely to die so I'll take that as a victory and move on.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Fri Dec 12 00:51:45 2014 (2yngH)
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Oh, man. That stinks. Praying for you. Hope you feel better soon!
I'd heard that sulfa drugs historically make some people itch, but I didn't really think we were still using sulfa drugs; and I definitely didn't know about all the rest.
When you're sick as a dog, it's a good time to listen to audiobooks. If you doze off in the middle, it's no big deal. My philosophy about videos during times of sickness is similar.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Fri Dec 12 15:18:01 2014 (ZJVQ5)
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Your skin turned color??? Are you smurf blue now?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Fri Dec 12 15:49:23 2014 (jGQR+)
...I got a brief respite from Christmas Chaos at work.
On the one hand I have the day off. On the other hand the circumstances are sub-optimal.
I suddenly became sick at work...very sick. I actually left work, and went home. However, I became so ill on the way home that I took a detour that allowed for this poorly aimed homage to the age of the selfie. It looks like I got a noravirus. I did also get an antibiotic for the sinus infection that has been vexing me for weeks. I'm home now and am tentatively testing solid food. I'm also ingesting fluids in a less problematic way. /spoiler]
But enough of such things, here are some Santagirls in snow
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Thu Dec 11 03:35:59 2014 (ZeBdf)
3
Well, if you need proof for why you left work, that snapshot should help.
Posted by: Mauser at Thu Dec 11 05:14:39 2014 (TJ7ih)
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Yes, sending the snapshot to your boss could help. Just don't accidentally send the second picture with the caption "This why I didn't come to work today"...
Posted by: Siergen at Thu Dec 11 18:20:03 2014 (r3+4f)
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I didn't enjoy the norovirus last year at all. Heck, you might as well camp out in the bathroom the first few hours. But I hope you feel better soon.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Thu Dec 11 19:43:59 2014 (ZJVQ5)
Ignore the stressed out Christmas help. She's exaggerating slightly. Christmas at UPS is rough on the temps...and anyway, the thing with the scorpions happened years ago.
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Automatic Update is evil and you should disable it. (You've already learned one reason why; it can take your computer away from you at inopportune times.)
2
You normally get lots of warning that Windows is going to reboot (as in up to two days).
Posted by: RickC at Wed Nov 12 15:56:30 2014 (ECH2/)
3
This is coming perilously close to blaming the victim. They were probably using school computers where the previous students ignored the warnings.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Nov 12 17:04:19 2014 (RqRa5)
4
Or his school's administrators are like the ones where I work, and don't think there is any reason to schedule updates for the convenience of the users. They were actually shocked that rebooting the conference room computers during a presentation to the admiral caused any complaints...
Posted by: Siergen at Wed Nov 12 19:19:17 2014 (r3+4f)
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I was using my netbook. I'd actually checked for updates on it (and had it restart) before class. However, it found another 'helpful' update. Moreover, the BLACKBOARD system used by ODU seems to conceal the Windows update box...otherwise, when it asked if I wanted to restart or delay, I'd have taken the "Do not fail" option. I generally access Blackboard via my Mac and so I did not know this before...so I learned something...which is what college is for....and....yet.....
I've made more than my share of PEBKAC errors, but this was not one of them.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Nov 12 19:30:34 2014 (DnAJl)
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Pete, that was not my intent, which was why I said "normally." Also, he did say "my machine" originally.
I used to not use auto update, but I got tired of doing it manually all the time, so now I mostly just let Windows do it--the chance a forced reboot will bother me is almost infinitesimal, but I do every once in a while expand the logoff/shutdown menu to see if it's wanting a reboot, just in case.
Posted by: RickC at Wed Nov 12 20:57:35 2014 (0a7VZ)
1
Pie 5--yum!
(also: wow, they're spreading fast. IIRC only a couple of years ago there were only about 5 stores, and I think they were all roughly speaking in the Dallas area.)
Posted by: RickC at Sun Nov 2 16:34:20 2014 (0a7VZ)
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Alas, I did not take the pic, but nicked it from another blog a while back to use as a reaction shot in case I ever came across a story like this one. I don't remember now where I got it, but I'm guessing they were Texan.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Nov 2 16:58:29 2014 (DnAJl)
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I've often heard friends comment that delivery pizza "tastes like cardboard". Your post has got me wondering if maybe they missed the instructions...
Posted by: Siergen at Sun Nov 2 22:20:39 2014 (r3+4f)
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Mon Nov 3 08:47:15 2014 (DnAJl)
6
Those are take-home boxes. Pie 5 doesn't do delivery. It's like Subway or Chipotle--you stand in line and tell them what crust, what sauce, what toppings and so on.
Posted by: RickC at Mon Nov 3 17:51:04 2014 (ECH2/)
Posted by: RickC at Sat Sep 27 23:17:48 2014 (0a7VZ)
2...I broke when I bit a bullet in some alligator...
Someone's been holding out on a story, I see.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Sun Sep 28 01:25:31 2014 (BCjxQ)
3
That image is so delightfully colorful, I think it has depleted the color receptors in my eyes and the rest of the world looks black and white.
Posted by: Mauser at Sun Sep 28 02:06:45 2014 (TJ7ih)
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I think he merely was eating an alligator and bit upon a bullet stuck in the steak. A month ago I killed a dove and shared it with a friend, who immediately bit upon a pellet (my half was clean...).
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Sep 29 11:01:16 2014 (x0uix)
5
Yeah, that's all it was.
Of course they have to kill the alligator somehow.
Interestingly, it was the dinner where my partners and I decided to go ahead with Radcon. Upon reflection, this event could have been taken as a bad omen, but, unfortunately, I am insufficiently superstitious.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Sep 30 04:03:46 2014 (DnAJl)
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I like your Radcon story better than the one of the founder of OLS (nee Ottawa Linux Showcase), who met some initial success but could not deal with its decline and slide into irrelevance.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue Sep 30 16:22:59 2014 (x0uix)
Street is river.Water rising rapidly. Garbage cans floating by. Car blocked by floating debris.
UPDATE: rain falling incredibly hard. Water still rising. Storm drains are spewing water.This could be bad. I may swim away from 800 dollars worth of textbooks.
UPDATE 2: Now that I'm inside and not pecking away at a Blackberry....
This was taken only a block from my parent's home....it took me 2 additional hours to get there.
Sadly, I did not get some of the more spectacular visuals as they coincided with excitement in driving. It should be noted that, while in the great scheme of things this was a minor flash flood, it was the first time in the 29 years my folks have lived at their current address that the water rose all the way to their house. Even hurricanes did not get water this high. We got something like 9 inches in 6 hours. It actually flooded the garage, which is currently a bit of a mess.
1
Hopefully you can put them up in the attic or something and the water won't go quite that high.
Failing that, seal 'em into a trash bag, and then put that inside another trash bag. You probably can skip putting them in a sewage cistern.
Posted by: RickC at Mon Sep 8 17:58:06 2014 (0a7VZ)
This year I ordered most of my books online online as soon as the syllabi were posted. This saved me over 300 dollars and ensured that I'd have the books when classes began...well MOST of them. One book that contains my Kanji homework was to be shipped from Delaware. Alas they were out so they had their supplier send it directly to me.
It passed through Japanese customs on the 21st of August, 16 days ago. It arrived today, with the result that I have 2 weeks of homework ahead of me this weekend. This is in addition to an English paper due Monday and sundry other homework.
I may be scarce for another day or two so to tide you over, here is something that my friend BOB! sent me that you probably should not try at home....
Tonari no Seiki-Kun! The Master of Killing Time is an odd concept for a series. Rumi Yokoi, the exasperated silver fox on the left is bothered to utter distraction by the fact that Toshinari Seki has developed elaborate methods for wasting time in class.
That's pretty much it.
Amazingly however, at 7 minutes an episode, it almost always works. I'm 7 episodes in and 6 have been quite solid. Tonari no Seki-Kun does not lend itself to extended marathons, being a one joke show, but it is cute, clever and quite enjoyable in its intended format.
Ants have eaten my car. The spoiler tags on the previous post are all wonky. I did my GPA no favors with this most recent class. I've used up all my personal holidays at work for the year and it looks like I'll have to move very soon, Finally, I spent 10 minutes trying to find the ampersand on my Blackberry.
Some of that may warrant elaboration, but for those already worn down by that fusillade of first world problems, here is Hanako playing billiards.
Yesterday, I got up and zipped off towards the west with the intention of going to the mountains. However, there was a monstrous traffic jam in Newport News and I decided it was prudent to exit the interstate, make my way to Yorktown, drive up the Colonial Parkway and get on the interstate up near Williamsburg, some thirty miles on. When I noted that the on ramp was backed up because I-64 was STILL a parking lot that far west I decided to take drastic measures and headed all the way to Jamestown, where I took the CF Pocahontas across the James River to Scotland.
I keep hearing about how Scotland is trying to break away and form their own country, but I don't think they're going to be able to make a go of it. Built on a steep embankment they only have a dozen or so houses, a ferry pier , some fishing boats and no place at all to pull over and take pictures. But hey, if Sealand can make a go of it, who am I to judge?
I continued down State Route 31 with the intention of taking it to Route 460 and via that highway, heading west. Where routes 31 and 10 meet there is a stoplight. This is the center of Surry, the capital of Surry county.
I stopped at a small grocery and purchased an iced coffee from a pleasant south asian gentleman and zipped off down the road.
After some time I encountered a small cluster of churches around a large Fire station and out the corner of my eye spied the word MUSEUM.
The word museum was attached to the word Dendron which is usually attached to a neuron, so I determined that it was advisable to examine the place more closely and do some disambiguation.
It turns out that the town of Dendron, is, like the postsynaptic branch of a neuron, named after the Greek word for tree. Also, the aforementioned nerve thingy is actually called a dendrite so my confusion was quite inexcusable and no disambiguation was, in fact, needed.
The little museum contained an eclectic collection of artifacts including a list of the 12 men from this tiny town that died in the war that began 100 years ago this month.
The museum also solved a mystery of my youth. In my childhood days I lived in a little town called Zuni, some 40 or 50 miles to the southeast of this place. Wandering through the swamps there I had encountered a set of odd very narrow gauge railroad tracks that disappeared into the Blackwater river. It turns out that there had once been a lumber mill in Dendron that had micro gauge rail lines for hauling trees from tree farms as far as 100miles away. The Lumber mIll had closed up shop in 1929 and taken with it the fire station they had provided, to the town. In 1931 the town burned down, leaving the churches the post office and one small grocery. Now there is also a hardware store and a few other buildings including a very large 4 bay corrugated steel fire house.
Among the churches was this one, the oldest in the town having been built before 1890.
Now a Methodist church, it was originally non-denominational and was unusual for many years in that it was a nonsegregated church. The other churches were all built much later.
Thus edified I proceeded on my way finally reaching a town called Wakefield. Wakefield located on RT 460 (between Disputanta and Ivor if you were wondering)describes itself as "The Peanut Capital of the World" this may or may not be true, but the town is home to the Virginia Diner, which has the best peanut soup and ham biscuits in the entire solar system.
They had just run out of peanut soup but I got a plate of their exquisite, heavenly, ham biscuits and partook of the buffet where, it seems, the beets and the meatballs, both being red spheres, somehow got confused. For a brief moment EVERYONE in the restaurant was made very aware of this most vexatious calamity at the moment it befell a hapless but quite vocal young diner. One horrified shriek notwithstanding, the dining experience was superb. As I left, I observed this theological conundrum across the street.
"The Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague" Wait. WHAT!?
I then proceeded to my car and noted that my muffler had broken off and was hanging by a single clasp.
Thus ended my journey to the west. I turned east down 460 and headed back towards home via Suffolk. Along the way I stopped in my old home town of Zuni and discovered that most of it had been washed away during Hurricane Floyd, but the grain elevator (the explosion of which had blown windows out 11 miles away in my youth) still had the lift machinery dangling precariously after 33 years.
Shortly thereafter the passenger side of my car began filling up with water. I soon realized that the AC drain was somehow diverting water into the passenger compartment. I arrived home last night an\d have spent the day flitting between car repair shops.
Neither I, nor my few readers are your target audience. We're just not.
Your business plan is, therefore, flawed.
I hope this helps.
In other news, I've been a tad under the weather lately and it came to a head today as I left work, when I was afforded the rare oppertunity to examine everything I'd eaten (but not fully digested) over the last two days.
After spending the day in bed, this evening I staggered up and went to the gas station...where I had my card declined...subsequent investigation revealed that someone had purchased all manner of stuff including an Amazon Prime membership with my card number until they emptied my account.
What, pray-tell, is someone going to DO with an Amazon Prime membership bought from a stolen card number? Seriously...
Anyway... since you just sat through all that...Here is a catgirl.
The spammers don't care about your readers. They only care about the googlebot. This is one form of SEO.
Ironically, it doesn't work. Google got wise to it a long time ago, and now it actually reduces their page-rank. But the SEO-service companies don't tell their customers that, for obvious reasons.
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Precisely, Spammers don't advertise their OWN product, the spam IS their product. They get people to pay them for "Internet Marketing" and this is what they get.
I once contacted a company that I was getting e-Mail spam from, and they were horrified and promptly apologized and said they were firing that marketing company.
Posted by: Mauser at Tue Jul 15 04:11:07 2014 (TJ7ih)
3
Seriously though, turn on the registered users only option, at least until the spambots drop you from their list as not working. And I notice that they concentrate on certain old posts (probably because they have a list of links as input), I wouldn't hurt to lock those particular posts.
Posted by: Mauser at Tue Jul 15 04:17:47 2014 (TJ7ih)
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I did not even bother with enabling mandatory registration. Locking alone works great. I can't see why Ken is so obstinent about permitting comments on very old posts. Perhaps there were valuable comments.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Thu Jul 17 00:11:50 2014 (RqRa5)
5
He's probably just busy and hasn't gotten around to it yet.
I have a couple of weeks off work starting Monday to catch up on stuff, and I'll be putting an autolock option in place first thing.
It looks like I got a noravirus. I did also get an antibiotic for the sinus infection that has been vexing me for weeks. I'm home now and am tentatively testing solid food. I'm also ingesting fluids in a less problematic way. /spoiler]
