...So, how about that new ep of Doctor Who?

(Open thread, meet empty mind... it must be bedtime)

Haven't got to see it yet, alas. (Katie wasn't in the mood tonight, and she's going to be busy tomorrow night...I got her to promise to watch it on Tuesday.)

Normally I wouldn't post just to say that but the sheer novelty of being in the single digits (let alone #2) on a new open thread was irresistable.

I spent a lot more on beads than I'd intended to this weekend, but I think I'm going to get a lot of good finished product out of it.

I also found out that cartridge casings make excellent cord-tips for kumihimo cords. Talk about thinking outside the box!

I've known weavers to weight warp-ends with penny-filled film canisters, but that might be a little extreme for kumihimo.

I've mixed feelings about the DW episode.

No spoilers, but don't play a drinking game where you take a sip every time the Doctor runs down a corridor.

And the Doctor Who Confidential episode has a bit too much of RTD explaining his own story. Trouble is, I think he did need to do that: there were bits where the script didn't get things over to the viewer.

Still, quite intense.

While I do have a wee touch of SAD, mine usually starts manifesting around midsummer, when (southern) Britain is depressingly dark, compared to what I am used to. See, I expect Midsummer to never really get dark, what with dusk blending into dawn. But, near London, it actually gets actively dark and it's pretty strange, to me.

Winters, however, feel neither darker nor brighter than I am used to, since I am used to spending most of the winter in artificial light anyway.

Unfortunately, I did not catch Waters of Mars yesterday, thinking I'd watch it a bit later on, on iPlayer, but it seems it'll only be on iPlayer comes Tuesday. Hrmph.

Open thread call for help...

Not SAD but sad - I lost my best friend over the weekend. He was 13 and winding down (though if he saw a squirrel, he'd become a puppy again). He'd been diagnosed with cancer that had spread to his lungs; he was ready, but I wasn't.

He was my first and only pet. I can't imagine how people can ever get another pet after losing one, and risk experiencing this pain again. I can't imagine how people can lose a *child* and survive.

I can't imagine how I ever liked coming home to an empty house, before I got him.

He's basically been my social life for many years - I have no idea what to do with myself now. Any advice on how to get on with life (or simply get a life) would be most welcome.

I don't properly have SAD... I just hate the cold so much that I stay home 90% of winter, and then get depressed naturally from spending so much time home alone breathing foul air staring at the TV screen eating junk-food.

Ignvar, on iPlayer now via BBC's Doctor Who page. My £0.02 worth - far less dreadful than the other two Season 5 eps.

Ingvar. Ingvar. And even with mandatory preview. Ekskis.

Ingvar. Ingvar. And even with mandatory preview. Ekskis.

Abi - have you read 'A short history of the 20th century, with illustrations', by Kim Stanley Robinson? It touches on SAD and does a lot to alleviate my own encounters with it.

Also, for SAD quotes: do you know where Joanna Russ talked about James Tiptree and SAD? All I know is I've read it somewhere and can't find it again.

Full spectrum light bulbs help SAD a lot. Verilux is the brand I favor. They're expensive, but worth it in increased productivity and quality of life. (They're also great for artists and people with vision problems.)

SylvieG @7 - I'm not one to advise on getting a life, but I've lost pets before and I can tell you that the pain diminishes. It never really goes away, snd sometimes, when I look at the cats I have now (all dozing within view) I feel it again because I know I'll have to let them go one day.

But mostly I don't think about that, and the sheer joy they bring into my life is beyond words.

When you're ready for another animal, the right one will show up, and you'll know. In the meantime, if you need an animal fix, maybe there's a shelter you can volunteer at?

As to getting on with life - you just do it. One day at a time. We're human and that's what we do.

SylvieG @ 7 ...
He's basically been my social life for many years - I have no idea what to do with myself now. Any advice on how to get on with life (or simply get a life) would be most welcome.

SylvieG - it hurts, and it hurts like nothing else in the world. Time will help to blunt the constant misery, but the dull ache remains. Allow yourself time to grieve, and don't let anybody tell you that it's too long, or too much; however don't make yourself sick. Go gently, and remember the good things, and think of the shape that you almost see out of the corner of your eye, or the noise you could swear that you just heard as confirmation that you aren't truly alone, and are loved, still, whatever your beliefs may be. Do simple things that are useful, and keep you from brooding too much (sorting your sock drawer really may be the right thing to do...). It's a cliche, but great joy and great sorrow are intertwined, and although it's unthinkable now, with time, the empty heart and empty house start to overwhelm the aching loss.

SylvieG... What rdi and xeger said.

Sylvie @7

My condolences.

It may be of little consolation to you, but you will remember him forever - and in time, it'll always make you smile.

Don't let him be your only pet - just as people can remind us of someone dear, our pets can also remind us of those who have gone before. As xeger said; you'll know when your next pet is before you.

In the meanwhile, I'm sorry for your loss.

SylvieG @ #7, what everybody else said, plus this: don't let anybody tell you your grief is inappropriate. Grief, like love, is what it is. Give yourself permission to feel what you feel. And get out in the sun as much as feasible.

A couple of my favorite passages about the passage of time and what it means for us living in it, both by Clive Barker:

"The seasons long for each other, like men and women, in order that they may be cured of their excesses.

"Spring, if it lingers for more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon starts to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness.

"Even winter - the hardest season, the most implacable - dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself.

"So August gave way to September, and there were few complaints."

(From "The Hellbound Heart".)

"Nothing ever begins.

"There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any story springs.

"The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making. Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic becomes laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys.

"Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and matter woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden among them is a filigree that will with time become a world."

(The gloriously audacious opening of Weaveworld.)

A different kind of Sad: BBC Obituary
I mentioned Breaker Morant trial in Anaconda thread, this time it's the film. Callan seems to have branded itself into a generation, too. Saw him only a couple of weeks ago, doing good job in a Britcrime drama: The Bill?? (? cos seldom watch it.)

SylvieG: Sympathies. After > decade, it's still a painful mix of loss & joy remembering departed companions.

SylvieG @ 7: The pain gets duller, and the immediate grief gradually changes into sad memories. I've lost many pets over the past 30 years, and plenty of patients as well. The part that gets easier is knowing that you can handle the pain.

Thirteen is a good long time for most pets, although it seems so very short to us. Some of my cats never made it to that advanced age, and some went past. Our old dog made it to 14 and 1/2, with a lot of support.

I'm always grateful for the love they share while they're with us, and the pleasure we take in each other's company. When the time comes, I know it's the last gift I can offer to our companions.

My sincere condolences on your loss. In due time, you may decide to find another companion, but you'll never forget your dog -- no matter how many years pass or other dogs enter your heart, each one will become special memories.

Well, I missed the Dandies and Quaintrelles tweed ride. Maybe next time.

"Look after the universe for me. I've put a lot of work into it."

SylvieG: my first dog died more than fifteen years ago and sometimes I still cry. And then sometimes I find an old photograph and laugh when I remember what she was doing at that moment. It's all good in its own way.

The current occupant of my heart showed up years later, out of nowhere, sitting on the stoop of the house we had just bought. A cat, which for a dog person was an odd choice, but there is was. The Universe had sent him, who was I to refuse? So, as many others have said, you'll know when it happens.

I had a very Making Light dream recently:

To celebrate an autumn holiday, certain people were shooting flaming hot dogs (in buns) from medium-size trebuchets. Somehow the flames went out as the hot dogs flew through the air, into the mouths of two waiting dogs.

Naturally this attracted a wide variety of dogs. And people.

SylvieG @7: my condolences. I'm going to be in your situation someday. Right now my feline monsters are 14 and still going strong, despite minor ailments, but I've had them all my adult life. I am thinking of volunteering at an animal shelter, in the future . . . perhaps I can use the skills I've acquired, such as giving insulin shots.

Sylvie, #7: Everyone else has offered good advice. It's hard, and will never be anything but hard, but it's one of the inevitabilities we accept when we bring a companion animal into our lives. My late beloved Mina made it to age 23, and that was really hard -- I'd had her for half of my life! But I think the pain may have been blunted for me because we had other cats, so there wasn't that shock of coming home to a now-empty house. If/when you get to the point of having another pet, you might want to consider getting two of somewhat different ages for that reason.

So often broken, scented with manure,
dark earth yields little without freight of pain;
not yellow tubers, nor yet tasty grain,
that does not speak of what we must endure.
This simple purpose is the only cure
beneath the moon, our inner voice says plain
for what ails most. But there is no great gain
nor ever hope that wisdom will come pure.
Here light may sting, and sun will leave a burn,
noon is not dark nor will we ever pine
for the lost sweetness of the rising sap;
no children dance with joy at sunreturn
nor old men feel the need for warming wine,
yet each must have the sense of a sprung trap.

SylvieG
I hope there's some consolation in having company.

Here's Kipling, the beginning of The Power of the Dog

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

"You see Mr. Simpson, a man, well, he'll walk right into Hell with both eyes open. But even the Devil can't fool a dog!"
- The Twilight Zone's episode The Hunt

SylvieG, I'm so sorry. I echo what others have said. In my experience the universe will either send you another animal companion, or tell you when it's time for you to go out and seek one. I lost two dogs in 1997, and swore I would have no more, only cats. (I love dogs and cats, both.) In 2003 I started dreaming about dogs, and knew it was time to find another dog.

As a general rule -- this comment is not directed to SylvieG -- I never have only one animal in the house. That way, when time or accident or illness intervenes and I lose one, even though I grieve, I am not without my companion. Currently I have two cats and a dog.

SylvieG@7: No advice from me - the posts before mine are excellent - just good thoughts for you and yours, from another someone who's been there.

Hey, would people be interested in a spoileriffic Dr Who thread? I'm seeing comments in various threads about it; is there critical mass for a discussion of its own?

SilvieG: I'm so sorry for your loss. I've cried over pets I'd never even met, and have lost a number I knew well.

All I can say is that time will significantly dull the pain, and you will heal. This is in no way disloyal to your beloved dog (nor would it be even for a beloved child). It's simply necessary. The sharp immediate pain is simply not sustainable, and so it fades. It would be another tragedy for even the most tragic death to destroy all who loved the first victim.

What's the best response to idiotic articles like this? Ignore the troll, expose to ridicule, or feed his address to the spammers?

A spoilerific Dr. Who thread would be great -- if you promise to stay on-topic. I can then happily skip it :-). (This probably shouldn't count as a vote, since what's needed is critical mass of people who want to participate.)

Tim@34: he already had to wait 10 minutes for a train to pass, surely he's been punished enough?

DDB @35:

I would herd the thread to keep it on-topic. Not that I've seen the thing—so I'm not part of any critical mass—but I am by character and inclination spoiler-proof.

JaNell @13:

I did a lot of research about ten years ago, when I was just coming to understand SAD, and the consensus then was that it was the quantity of light rather than its spectrum that was important.

My light box (it's an OutsideIn Sunbeam Max, which appears to be a defunct product from a defunct company now) uses very bright fluorescent bulbs, and works wonders for me. I also use a bright but ordinary desk lamp at work.

I understand that the latest research indicates that blue LEDs are the thing. I haven't tried them yet. But I'm unconvinced that full-spectrum is necessary, and it is expensive.

SylvieG, we lost Tigger a year ago after she spent nearly 16 years with us. The grief has mostly dissipated, although every so often there's a reminder that brings back the loss.

So far we've had no new critter appear, but it seems likely that's what will happen. The last four or five animals who've lived with us did just that, either on the deck in the morning, at the place where Mom worked, or when my sister decided to give my Dad a puppy for his last year of life.

Don't let anyone tell you "it was just a dog, fer cryin' out loud."

SylvieG #7: My condolences, that's never an easy loss.

SylvieG: I'm very sorry for your loss.

abi @ 35... I am by character and inclination spoiler-proof

Incorruptible?

Which reminds me of Robert Stack's old TV series The Untouchables, because its title in the French-dubbed version translated as The Incorruptibles.

SAD:

I say, try to see the sunset, i e don't be inside busy doing something and miss the last of the daylight as a result. And give yourself the gift of morning.

Being in synch with the sunlight you've got should help.

Serge @42:
Incorruptible?

Sea-green, baby. Though people are welcome to try.

SylvieG, everyone copes in a different way, but I will suggest that if you start feeling depressed, make yourself go to a museum or play in your town that you've been meaning to go to but have never gotten around to. (I had to drag my mom out the day she lost her Favorite Cat because I'm someone who copes easily but she is not. Sometimes distraction helps.)

One thing I noticed is that I can avert SAD by a regular schedule of walks. Obviously this is much harder in a colder clime, but I tried very hard last winter to make it out at least once a day. (I mostly got SAD in college; not only was I at a higher latitude but class schedules often meant the morning was dark, the evening was dark, and the rest of the day I was indoors.)

Re: the "algorithmic authority" sidelight.

I'd love to trust what he says, but he uses an argument by John Searle, and I just can't take him seriously because his Chinese Room thought experiment so clearly misses the point...

:)

Tim Hall #34: What's the best response to idiotic articles like this? Ignore the troll, expose to ridicule, or feed his address to the spammers?

B. Expose to ridicule (preferably with train-theme poetry).

Earl, #47: Better yet: first, seed the comments with a couple of train-themed poems, then post the URL to several large train-enthusiast mailing lists.

SylvieG @7: My sympathies. Ignore anyone who says you shouldn't be grieving for a dog. But don't feel guilty when you find yourself laughing at something, or forgetting your sorrow for moments, minutes or even hours - that's natural and normal. Eventually you'll probably be ready for another dog. In my experience, the joy of sharing life is worth the eventual pain, hard though it is to bear the pain.

SylvieG, I'm so sorry. It's never easy, and the older they are the harder it is. As everyone says, it gets easier, although that can be very hard to believe at first.

SylvieG @7 - I lost my beloved cat of 19 years in the spring, and the mourning continues for me. I still can't look at Yeti's pictures 8 months after his passing. So far I can't bring myself to bury his ashes either, I just can't let go of that little part of him yet. My only advice is it gets easier with time.

Lizzy L @30, I agree totally. The thing that made Yeti's passing most bearable for me was the presence of 2 other beloved cats in the house. One pet can never replace another any more than one person can replace another - they are individuals who demand their own individual love from you. But their affection and attention made the early days go by much easier.

#835 ::: Bruce Cohen (Speaker To Managers)

Lee @131/839: "Recreational surgery"??!!! Do I want to know, even in general terms?

To the best of my understanding: think outer outer fringes of the BDSM spectrum. (Not much weirder than voluntarily sitting still for a tatoo, when you think about it.)

Elliott Mason @131/841: Ah, yes. The Boulder Kinetics Race is a fine old tradition around here, with the added constraint that the vehicles have to be amphibious.

Wow. Quite a lady. This is your mum, eh? Does she have any openings for new daughters?

I also am researching cargo-bikes. I don't own a car, so I'm keeping an eye out for the bike equivalent of a truck. Mostly for schlepping large quantities of used guinea pig paper to municiple compost.

Interestingly, "bike-moving" is becoming quite the thing in Boulder.

Epacris @131/843: Wishing I could un-read one @825. Sorry 'bout that. I often get reminded that I have no couth. (Comes of hanging out with people in the medical profession, among other things.) This reminder often comes at mealtimes.

David Goldfarb @132/2 the sheer novelty of being in the single digits (let alone #2) on a new open thread was irresistable.

Like the first dip out of the peanut butter jar. (A hotly contested privilege in my house.)

SylvieG @7: I lost my best friend

Oh, so sad. Advice? As others have said, think about all the good memories. Eventually those take over the pain of loss. Don't avoid the hurt though. Think about how much you miss him. If you feel it, it shortens the painful part of mourning. Lee @26 is right. I just lost my little old man guinea pig (not quite 8 years) last week. Fortunately, he left my with a herd of offspring. Our household has lost its center. But I know we'll realign.

Epacris @20: Aw damn! I loved the Equalizer. Not least because that's where I first spotted J. Michael Straczynski's byline.

Question for the general Luminati: Has anyone else had this happen? This morning I posted the third of three comments in about an hour's span, and got an error that I had "posted too many, too fast, please wait a while." I'm assuming it's 'bot protection and am trying not to take it personally. (Yes, everything is about me. Why do you ask?)

Jacque @ 52 re: cargo hauling bikes, your Google term (per abi in OT131) is bakfiets. Go!

SylvieG -

My condolences. I'm afraid I have no advice. My childhood kitty was put to sleep a few years ago, at the age of 20. He was like a small, furry brother. It took awhile to get over him, but luckily all my friends were pet-people and gave me sympathy and permission to grieve. I have a dog of indeterminate age now, and when I remember that she will most likely precede me in death, I panic. Please know you have my sympathies.

for happier news...

The second test batch of truffles was a resounding success. The Dolci Frutta that was recommended worked very well to provide a reasonably chocolate candy shell. Unfortunately, it's not quite "dark" enough for my tastes, so I will be ordering the stuff Xopher suggested for the chocolate, and going with the Dolci Frutta for the white. That's it for test batches though - no more truffles until the week before Xmas. In a last ditch effort to avoid filthy looking hands, I will be portioning out ganache, putting in the freezer briefly, and then rolling.

SylvieG @7: My condolences. My cat is around 15 years old, and I'm dreading the time when she passes. All I can say is that as with humans, your pets live on in your heart, and so you are more for having known them.

SylvieG, I am so sorry for the loss of your beloved dog. The only comfort I know how to offer is this: You loved him and gave him a happy life. That's worth a lot.

On SAD: Light therapy is helping me somewhat, but not enough. Going to talk to the doctor next week about other options.

I also think that a large part of my inability to get up and work is that I'm avoiding my research project because I am frankly very bored with it. This scares me because well, I'm committed to it now. I have to finish my Ph.D.

I wonder if picking up a personal project or two, of things I really am interested in, would cause a spillover of motivation to the thing I really should be working on.

Has anyone experienced this kind of boredom with a long-term project that had to be finished? How did you motivate yourself to keep working on it? Or did you do something else?

Caroline, I'm so glad you asked! I finished my dissertation by dint of absolute adherence to the Mule Puke Rule. You *have* to write two new pages per day. After that, you may write more, or revise yesterday's mule puke, or go to the park and stare at the ducks. (I supplemented this with the Hot Chocolate Rule: one cup per page. Since I was living on rice and beans otherwise, I didn't gain too much weight. YHealthMV.) When you get to the revision stage, you have to revise two pages per day. You may have one day off per week. Sleep and food are sacrosanct.

And here is some cheerleading to speed you on your way: *\o/* CAROLINE CAROLINE RAH RAH RAH! And a favorite sfnal quote: "If I can do it, you can do it."

#52 ::: Jacque @52 replied to me: Elliott Mason @131/841: Ah, yes. The Boulder Kinetics Race is a fine old tradition around here, with the added constraint that the vehicles have to be amphibious.

The Ferndale ones are required/recommended to be amphibious, too; the course includes two water crossings.

(and later) Wow. Quite a lady. This is your mum, eh? Does she have any openings for new daughters?

She greatly enjoys taking on younger proteges. She and I, however, get along about 500% better since she moved 3000 miles away from me. I can't take her in large doses.

(even later, still Jacque) Like the first dip out of the peanut butter jar. (A hotly contested privilege in my house.)

Am I the only one who liked to carve a heart in it while taking out the first sandwich's-worth of pb?

Caroline@56: My method was twofold.
1. I had recently parted from my partner of 15 years, who was also doing a PhD. We had three small children and I was working full time and my supervisor, noticing me slowing down, used some basic reverse psychology: "You're not going to let him get the degree first, are you?". Not proud of it, but base competitiveness did help.
2. The 'arse-glue' method. When I sat down to write I made myself stay on the chair for 90 minutes at a time. After about 15 mins of staring out the window, not being able to get up and do something else, you get so bored that working on the dissertation is your best option. After 90 mins (which is a reasonable, but also bearable length of time) I could get up and hang out the washing or something. Next time I sat down, the 90-min rule kicked in again. 4 lots of 90 mins in a day can get quite a lot done, and once you are rolling, momentum takes over.
The things we have to do to trick ourselves. But boredom with your project can be productive -- it motivates you to get it out of your life as quickly as possible.

SylvieG @ #7: My condolences, and let me add my voice to those seconding xeger's wise words @#15. The next few days will hurt like hell. My experience with grief is that I get out of it quicker if I get into it while it's fresh.

Most of us who have the gift of empathizing with a pet find that the joy of having, and giving, that special companionship far more than compensates for the feeling of loss when a pet's Earthly run is finished. The day will come that the emptiness of your house will be stronger than this pain you're feeling now, and you'll know it's time, if you haven't been adopted by then.

I'm part of a multiple-dog household, and can assure you it doesn't diminish my feelings for each one, but it makes it easier to bear when one of the family passes on. My lovely Shana's 15 now, and I know she won't last forever. She's mothered Little Mac for three years, ever since I brought him home from the pound as a sick little puppy, and he'll probably miss her more than I will. But worrying about that now would just dampen the joy we all feel in each other's company. When the time comes, if I'm allowed, I'll help her cross the threshold, and the circle of life will continue.

One thing no one else has suggested, for when you're past your grief, is involvement with rescue. If you can participate in foster care for a rescue group, you'll probably be glad to see most of 'em go when they're adopted. But along may come that one that feels like a member of the family.

The "Washington Blade" -- a 40-year-old magazine for gays & lesbians here in the DC area -- closed unexpectedly today when their parent company shut down.

SylvieG, #7, I'm so sorry to hear about your puppy. I know that I usually want more cats when mine die, but some people would rather not.

Tim Hall @ 34:

I am no longer surprised to see articles along these lines after my stint at my college paper. Aside from the annual article deriding the Honors program (which one of the article writers rather hilariously tried to mine me for ammunition) and the horrendous navel-gazing of the editorial page (which had a brief moment of glory when the student from Zimbabwe took over and actually focused on thoughtful analysis of international news), we had articles such as the one where a student hated how people "dressed up" for class (as in, not wearing torn jeans or sweats) or the one where the girl complained that other students were trying to make her feel dumb. (Oh honey, you don't need anyone's help for that.)

Mind you, this was a private college with a high standard of admission.

Recently, I came across a citation where the paper, during my years of residence, received excellence awards. This frightens me.

TexAnne, aww, thanks. I like the Mule Puke Rule. I may vary the Hot Chocolate Rule to a Tea Rule -- tea is comforting and gets me through things (and herbal tea has no caffeine impact). And there is a coffeemaker in the office that can be used to make hot water quickly and easily. (The first time I did that, one of our research scientists walked by as it was dripping, then stopped, threw himself into reverse and stared at it. I said "I'm making hot water." "I thought you forgot to put in the coffee," he said. Admittedly, forgetting to put in the coffee is something I might do. In the lab I write and follow checklists to prevent this sort of thing.)

Emma, I also like that 90-minute arse-glue rule. I think I could do that.

In the crunch, I used to be able to snap myself together and just focus. My ability to do that has disappeared over the past couple of years.

Caroline @56
I didn't actually have to apply this on my dissertation, but I've used it on other things. It is close to the antithesis of the "arse glue" rule, so if one doesn't work for you, try the other. Take the project that seems overwhelming as a whole and break the next steps down into smaller and smaller pieces until the next piece is so small that you feel silly NOT doing it, or until you reach the level where you can say, "Oh, I can do that!" Then do it. And then reward yourself. Sometimes this gets you sufficiently engaged to go on. If not, at least you've taken a baby step forward.

This is from one of Martha Beck's books. I find her most recent stuff a little on the flaky side, but much of her earlier motivational writing is spot-on for me.

Just had a SAD-light discussion with a friend on Facebook. He endorses the blue-LED setup, and notes that blue LED grow lights (which you can get as a stand-alone panel, or as a spot that screws into a regular household socket) are about half the cost (@ 50 bucks)of the fancy-dancy Philips Blue LED alarm clock/lights (around 120 bucks). Google "blue LED grow lights" and you'll see a bunch o' stuff there.

@SylvieG: very sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. My Molly cat is heading downhill fast (kidneys) and each day with her is sweet but shadowed.

Caroline, 63: Ah yes, that is called burnout. My focus came back almost immediately after I turned the damn thing in. And I can heartily endorse OtterB's suggestion--the Mule Puke Rule is just an amusingly-named variant.

Jacque @ 52:

Was there something you wanted to say about my #835?

SylvieG:

My condolences. Up until now we've had single dogs, and had 3 of them through their entire lives, from 8 weeks on (and a fourth we had to place on a farm after 1½ years because she just couldn't keep from chasing cars and people). Losing the only pet you have is hard and after the last one we (well, I) waited almost 4 years before getting another. Now we have 2 dogs we got from the shelter, and we love them as much as we loved the ones we raised. I'm concerned that when we lose one of them, aside from our own pain we'll also have to help the survivor deal with theirs, but that's also part of the package.

As several people have pointed out, you don't get the love and friendship without ultimately having to deal with the loss. That's not consolation, just the hard facts. But having to deal is still preferable to not having known and loved our friends, and the pain becomes tolerable over time.

I wish you and your future friends well.

OtterB @ #64, "Take the project that seems overwhelming as a whole and break the next steps down into smaller and smaller pieces"

That's the logic behind my local public radio station's small goals for each program ("$2000 during Fresh Air"). Otherwise the overall goal of $760,000 would just discourage the pitchers and the listeners.

Elliot Mason @ 58 "Am I the only one who liked to carve a heart in it while taking out the first sandwich's-worth of pb?"

I used to play a quick game of Tic Tac Toe against myself in it. Now I buy Adam's, for which the first step is mix, mix, mix, and doesn't have the solidity lent by partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

SylvieG: My sympathies on the loss of your faithful friend.

Thank you all so much for your comforting words and advice and shared experiences. I feel, if not better, then certainly more hopeful now. It's much easier to take things one step at a time when you know you're not walking alone.

@SylvieG

Everybody else has offered sterling advice. I can only add: be kind to yourself, and don't let anybody discourage you from feeling what you feel.

I lost my previous cat in 1992, and took care of my partner at home for a year until she died of cancer, in 1997. I was not ready to take responsibility for a single other creature until 2006, when it was finally Time.

I have three cats now. They don't erase the other cats I've had and lost: they are themselves and nobody else. And I treasure them all.

OtterB, I try to do that at times (I read and liked the ideas in Getting Things Done, which recommends breaking things down into actions that will take no more than 2 minutes).

The trouble is that some things -- like writing or coding (the main activities for my dissertation) -- aren't easily broken down into actions that small. For those I have to get into the flow. And if I can't get into the flow, I have to force myself to plug away at it for some continuous amount of time long enough to write at least a couple coherent lines.

It is, however, a fantastic method for dealing with lots of other things.

TexAnne, I'm ridiculously relieved to hear that your focus came back when it was over. Ridiculously. I had been starting to wonder if I'd ever be good for anything again.

Oh yes, Caroline. Also my ability to sleep through the night and to enjoy weekends and vacations. Life post-hooding is absolutely worth it: you will have accomplished something very, very hard, and it will be yours forever. I'm not saying it'll be the hardest thing you'll ever do, but once you're done, you'll be able to say, "I did that, so I can do this."

*\o/*

(Telling grad students about your hard-won experience never gets old, either. "No shit, there I was...")

Caroline: The worst burnout I ever got was for college application essays*, because almost all of them are variants on a theme and, to put it bluntly, trying to make your life sound purposeful and interesting when you're seventeen can be quite a stretch.

To make matters worse, I was the first finalist my (tiny) high school had for National Merit for many years, and the principal offered to have the secretary type up my essay onto the form (as opposed to hand-writing it or gluing a dot-matrix printout to it.) She didn't like the first one. She didn't like the second one. I don't remember how many versions I turned in, but I finally took an entirely different track and handed it to her. She didn't like that one either, but I looked at her and said, "Use it." The kicker was how she told the story, because she thought it would never fly.

Of course, she told this story at the senior awards gathering and made me stand next to her the entire time. I look so very much like a tall girl trying desperately to sink into the floor in the photo...

*Later on, in college, I did one stint of reading the damned things. My advice to high school seniors is to have fun with the essay because it really shows through, and your average five-paragraph standard essay get really tiresome halfway through the first half of the first one of forty-six.

So one vote right here for a Doctor Who spoiler thread. That was a very strange piece of work.

TexAnne @74, you are so right, in every way. It also means, at least here in Australia, that if any very young person annoys you with a 'Is that Mrs or Miss?' type question, you get to say 'Dr, actually'. Very useful at times.

Best of luck Caroline. Once you get going, and light appears at the end of the tunnel, you'll use that to keep going with. Design your title page and table of contents. Draft your acknowledgements. Visualise that fat red-bound volume (at least mine is red -- it's on my desk right now). Gramsci was right -- (even with) pessimism of the intellect, (there can be)optimism of the will.

The new report that de-emphasizes the importance of mammograms sounds to me like a Republican plot to eliminate surplus female voters (the ones who can't afford catastrophic health care).

Leechblock got me through grad school-- granted, 'through' meant 'MS rather than PhD' and I am still working on saying that rather than 'dropped out', but it counts. Any site I spent more than a couple minutes on per day was blocked. I got a minute per hour cumulative tor.com and Nature Futures-- long enough to go and click a link, not long enough to comment or really get into things.

I still spent far too much time online.

What ended up working was realizing that I had taught myself not to work at my desk during the day. I'd leave, then come back in the evening, get a coffee, and work for a while.

Caveat: I was not a good grad student. It wasn't the right place for me, and I didn't do it right. I can share blame with some others if I want, but ultimately, my nonstellar experience is my own responsibility.

Oh, and when you're done, you will never have to format that thesis again. Never. No one can make you go back and reformat it.

The family I was married into used to mine their peanut butter jars, scraping almost to the edges so they looked full even when they were nearly empty.

At Thanksgiving and other large family gatherings, the passing of dishes at the start of the meal was chaotic. They gravitated towards the hapless visitor, who ended up with both hands full, table space blocked, and a serving dish on their plate. Everyone else's attention had shifted the other direction. Fortunately, previous victims warned me.

SylvieG at #7 writes:

> He was my first and only pet. I can't imagine how people can ever get another pet after losing one, and risk experiencing this pain again.

All my sympathy. I've lost two cats over the years and will probably lose a third (currently 18yrs) this year.

> I can't imagine how people can lose a *child* and survive.

That's harder to imagine. Loving someone (or something) is like having your nerve endings permanently exposed to the outside world. It's worth it, but...

> Any advice on how to get on with life (or simply get a life) would be most welcome.

When we lost our last cat I sat down and wrote about 3000 words on her personality, habits and quirks. That may have made it easier to start remembering her with pleasure instead of pain.

#34 Tim

Obviously the person is an untrained idiot....

Idiot doesn't like trains.
Dunno if the idiot likes planes.
I wonder just how far he'll walk
Wonder if he can walk and talk
Simultaneously--

Idiot doesn't like trains,
While one wishes he refrains
Maybe he drives an SUV,
Runs over people like you and me
What a wanker he be.

Idiot doesn't like trains,
Infrastructure without sustains
Tranportation who needs it bah!
I suppose he won't travel far
Won't see from sea to sea.

Caroline @ 56

When I'm bored with something that has to be completed, I often find putting music on helps - I actually have a note by my desk reminding me to to this. Perseverence is key, in my experience (one PhD thesis and several book-sized projects on). Having said that, sometimes yes, doing something else you really want to do can brighten you up (as opposed to not doing the thing you want to do, then sitting brooding over the fact you can't do it, rather than getting on with the *$!^ project you have to finish).

I've read several times that many people, writing up their PhD, end up with a wonderfully clean and tidy house, etc. etc. - anything to avoid actually sitting down and writing the thesis - so you're not alone in this.

I put a relevant quote at the start of each chapter of my thesis - it was fun finding them. You could allow yourself to go hunting for one quote for each chapter, after you've finished the chapter, as a reward?

And, I have a set of notes for how to avoid some potential embarrassments with typos, mising figures etc. in your thesis which I could e-mail to you or post on here if you think you might find them useful - some of them sound really obvious but they all come from my own experience and I'd rather help other people to avoid them than pretend they never happened.

Emma @ 77 'Is that Mrs or Miss?' ... 'Dr, actually'. Very useful at times."

Yes, that's a definite benefit.

abi @ #32:

That might be a doable thing, indeed (now that I've managed to get my fix).

Diatryma #79: Oh, and when you're done, you will never have to format that thesis again. Never. No one can make you go back and reformat it.

I have a doctoral candidate right now who is going to share that feeling in spades when he is done.

Earl T Cooley II@78

I'm fairly sure that Dianna Pettiti is not a Republican shill, based on her previous work (and second-hand personal knowledge).

She also isn't anti-mammogram: she was one of the co-authors of
a lovely paper demolishing an earlier review of mammography that concluded it didn't work at any age.

Mammography really isn't as effective in younger women. It's sufficiently less effective that there really are differences of honest expert opinion on whether it should be recommended.

Now, cost does enter into this -- increasing the number of unnecessary biopsies is bad under any analysis but worse if you have to pay for them -- but it's not the only issue. I don't know whether the American Cancer Society panel was right in their recommendation, but I don't see any reason to assume they were dishonest.

Caroline and others getting bored with writing papers/theses: a great paper I came across recently: "How to write consistently boring scientific literature" available at: http://www.indiana.edu/~halllab/GradRes/BoringWriting.pdf

Enjoy

It wasn't a thesis, but I spent a lot of paper on it. When I googled "Steampunk and Hollywood", links to my talk came up.

Xopher, a belated message to say I hope that developments on the job front ultimately turn out to be A Good Thing.

SylvieG, others have said what I wanted to say earlier and better, so just chiming in to add my good thoughts your way.

Caroline, a kitchen timer helped me a lot (and still helps me with household chores). I set it for 15 or 20 minutes, and just work during that time, no distractions allowed.

dcb, please post your notes here! I often struggle to get on with large projects, as seems to be the case with plenty of people, and I'd be grateful for more tips.

Earl #78, thomas #86:

I found this post on Respectful Insolence and this earlier post really nice for explaining the issues that come up here on a level I could follow, as someone with no medical background.

As I understand it, the issue here is about what happens when you get a false positive[1]. Younger women tend to get more false positives, apparently. And a false positive sends the woman who gets it back for more testing, or for a biopsy, and can eventually lead to unnecessary treatment for cancer. That means that simply getting more people tested isn't an unambiguous win--you need to know something about the false positive rate and the expected cost of a false positive, and the expected rate of disease in the group being tested, and the benefits of early detection. The risk is that you end up doing more harm (in unnecessary biopsies and surgeries and chemotherapy) than good (in saving womens' lives by detecting the cancer in time to keep it from killing them).

[1] Sometimes, you also detect something that is cancer and might progress to kill you eventually, but might also never progress or might even go away on its own. I gather that you just go ahead and surgically remove those growths to be safe--which is probably the only thing you can do, but which also means some women getting unnecessary surgeries.

Openthreadery:
I need the Latin translation of Douglas Adams' "Go stick your head in a pig". My own Latin is quite rusty, but I have come up with "Inserta caput in porco", assuming that caput has to be accusative and porcus dative.
Would "caput tuum" be better? Is the "in" necessary? Am I overlooking something basic?

Caroline, I often find a brisk 15 minute walk helps, especially if I use the time to think about exactly what I am going to tackle when I get back. "As soon as I get back, I will sit down with a cup of coffee, read these three relevant articles, mark them up, and transcribe notes into my outline in the appropriate places." Or, when I'm really stuck, I'll do things that are almost but not quite cat-vacuuming -- enter articles into EndNote and put them in labelled file folders, make sure all the books I'm using have bookplates and spine labels, weed or reorganize my study. Just *handling* the materials gets me a more inspired frame of mind for *doing* things with them, and I may run across things I forgot I was going to use.

Harlequin is going into self-publishing. This is not good but I guess someone has to be the lab rat.

Carol Kimball @80 said: At Thanksgiving and other large family gatherings, the passing of dishes at the start of the meal was chaotic. They gravitated towards the hapless visitor, who ended up with both hands full, table space blocked, and a serving dish on their plate. Everyone else's attention had shifted the other direction. Fortunately, previous victims warned me.

In my dad's-side family, which has had epic Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter dinners involving every table and chair in the house pressed into service as a huge long unit and up to 50 people, it is basically high holy tradition that at the start of the meal, you serve yourself from whatever's set nearest you, then pass that dish whichever way seems good to you (for example, if the person two to your left asks for it, send it down that way). Then each dish continues in whatever direction it was started.

Attempts have been made to announce, frex, "All left, please," just after the prayer, but some contrary Weisenheimer chucks something 'the wrong way' on purpose and eventually we're back to the previous system. Luckily, once everyone's gotten their first plateful, refills are stochasic enough that it doesn't much matter which way things go, because only a couple dishes are in motion at once.

Attempts continue to be made at having geographically-restricted instances of the common stuff (butter, potatoes, gravy) that only circulate at one end of the table, but documentation -- and therefore compliance -- are spotty and they tend to drift at the ends in pairs and threes.

Earl Cooley III (78): My reaction to that news was, "The government wants me dead." No particular risk factors, but I was diagnosed at 42 with stage 2 breast cancer that turned up in a routine mammogram--no lump that anyone could detect, including three different doctors.

For those who would like to role-play a hamster, try this hotel next time you're in France.

Mary Aileen @ 95... Glad to hear that it was found in time.

[And now that I've read the rest of the thread--]

thomas (86)/albatross (90): Unnecessary treatment is something to be avoided, of course. But I'm still very, very grateful for routine mammograms starting in my early 40s.

Serge (97): Thanks.

dcb, #83: I've read several times that many people, writing up their PhD, end up with a wonderfully clean and tidy house, etc. etc. - anything to avoid actually sitting down and writing the thesis - so you're not alone in this.

That doesn't just happen with theses, either. Nothing puts me more in the mood to do housework than knowing I really need to be making up stock for an upcoming show!

Also, another vote for "please post your tips". Not that I'm writing anything for which I might need them, but I'm always fascinated by the things people come up with to help them spot and correct errors.

nerdycellist, #96: That's cool!

Mary Aileen @ 95: I was just at a lecture by a public health scholar, one of the deans at my university; one of his emphases was "In American society, we focus so much on people who beat the odds, rather than on recognizing what those odds are and changing them."

In short, if the new report is actually correct (about which I withhold all judgment till I've had the chance to go out and read the research), you're in the place of someone who has beaten the odds. The problem with applying that narrative to a society is that we always, individually, think we will be the ones to beat the odds, but if that were the case for everyone who thought so, statistics would be remarkably different. I know, small consolation. The tough thing about any decision made on behalf of a society or a policy is that it's always wrong - for someone. The goal is to be wrong for as few people as possible.

Pendrift @89, Lee @ 100: I don't think any of this will help you sit down and finish a project, but hey, maybe someone will find some of it useful.

- Double-check the word limit, and whether the appendices count in this. If you are skirting close to the edge and a graph counts as zero words while a table counts as 250, put the graph in the thesis and the table in the appendices.

- Double-check references and TRIPLE-check that you have correctly entered the details of any references from your external supervisor - those are the ones they will check for accuracy. N.B. don't just cut-and-paste from someone else - they may have got it wrong.

- If there are any bits that might be queried (e.g. an experiment not done with as many iterations as would have been preferred), explain the reasons why (constraints) in the thesis: if you explain before you are asked, it is an explanation. If you wait until it has been queried, you are giving an excuse.

- Get someone else to proof read the whole thesis for you, including the reference list if they can bear it. It is EXTREMELY difficult to proofread your own work, since you know exactly what you intended to write… N.B. proofreading takes time - don't ask for this the day before the thesis is due in.

- Note that the smallest mistakes can be the most important. I've read a review article in which a reputable scientist got someone else's paper 100% wrong (I noticed because I'd read it just the day before) - I think the word "not" must have got missed out in the reviewer's summary of the findings... In a very good reference book, there's a table in which codes "a" and "b" were used to represent "virus isolated" and "antibody demonstrated" - but (as I know from checking the references) had been reversed.

- Before handing in the thesis to be bound (if it has to be bound before being sent off to the examiners), or before it is sent to the examiners:
a) Check that, in every copy, every page is present, once and once only, in the correct order. It is extremely easy to put a “spare” old page in as a placeholder, for example for a page which you are printing out on a colour printer, then forget to remove the placeholder when you add the page in. Similarly it is easy to have to make a change in the Table of Contents, or the List of Figures, or List of Tables, then end up with both the old and the new version (or neither!) in one copy of the thesis.
b) Check that all figures and all tables are present in each copy.
(I know this sounds boring, but it saves the embarrassment of writing to the examiners to say "please find enclosed figure 6a, to be included after page 254")

- If you have a deadline for handing in your thesis, and it needs hard binding first, don’t forget that binding may take a few days or cost extra for a rush job.

A.J. Luxton (101): The tough thing about any decision made on behalf of a society or a policy is that it's always wrong - for someone. The goal is to be wrong for as few people as possible.

Very sensible, as long as the results of being wrong are factored into the equation. In this case, we're weighing unnecessary biopsies for false positives against cancer not being caught while it can be treated. I know which way I vote, but I'm not exactly unbiased.

TexAnne@74: Life post-hooding is absolutely worth it: you will have accomplished something very, very hard, and it will be yours forever.

I heartily concur. Sometimes I think that the single most valuable thing I learned in the course of getting my doctorate was that I was, in fact, capable of taking on a long-term project and carrying it out to completion.

(The dissertation itself took me either four years or two months to write, depending upon how you look at the process.)

nerdycellist @ 96: what's more, that hotel is in Nantes, so rodent role-players could also have a go at scaring this guy while they're in town.

Mark @53: Jacque @ 52 re: cargo hauling bikes, your Google term (per abi in OT131) is bakfiets. Go!

Ah yes. My brain slid right over that the first time. Thanks for the pointer! (It's going to take conscious effort to refrain from parsing that word as "back fat.")

Caroline @56: Has anyone experienced this kind of boredom with a long-term project that had to be finished? How did you motivate yourself to keep working on it? Or did you do something else?

Whenever I run into this sort of bump, OtterB's trick of "chunking" is really useful. Sometimes the step is as simple as pulling a folder out and putting it on the desk. Often, just the act of doing that will start me off and rolling.

Another is ponder the project but turn it upside down and sideways in my brain to see if there's an angle I can get on it that I haven't thought of before. With writing, frex, sometimes if I bring the imagery closer in my mind, and set it against a backdrop of different, more intense colors, that will get me going.

Mental judo, you know.

I really like TexAnne's trick, too. Sometimes all it takes is to get the rhythm going.

Also: keep an eye on your nutrition. If you'd like a quick-and-dirty way to make sure your diet includes Real Food^TM, check out my Cream of Dinner Soup recipe. I find that this can make a startling difference in my mood and functioning.

Oh yeah, follow on to Emma (a different one) @77: get abi to do a binding for you! Hee.

Elliott Mason @58: She greatly enjoys taking on younger proteges.

If you'd care to send contact info to jacquem at panix dot com, I'd be delighted to chat with her. (Though I wonder how much "younger" she is than I. Maybe we can start a Little Old Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society.) (Hi, NSA!!)

She and I, however, get along about 500% better since she moved 3000 miles away from me. I can't take her in large doses.

Heh. I'm firmly of the opinion that same sex-parents should be classed as a Schedule II Controlled Substance, by prescription only, with careful attention to toxic side-effects. Sounds like you've found the appropriate concentration.

Regarding PB: once you've got a hole big enough for a shape, it's too late. It's that first, very first dip. That's where the rush is.

PB as sculptural substance, now that's a whole 'nother discussion. :D

Losing pets: I can't count the number of times, holding a guinea in my arms as he or she passes, I resolve Never Again. But then one of the others do something cute and...well.

I am deeply grateful to my fur kids. Some of the last seven years has been really rough, but mostly it's been joyous, and one thing I can say for sure: death of a loved one doesn't scare me anymore.

Still sucks big green ugly rocks. But Woofie's squeak of frustration when I thwart his attempt to steal the dandilons, or JJ's puzzlement over that wierd, blurry guinea that lives in the chrome table leg more than make up for it.

I really really like Steve Taylor @81's technique. That makes all kinds of sense. I would further advocate putting it in a nice binding and including any photos you have. Make it a keepsake. (I may do that for my guinea pigs.)

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) @67: Jacque @ 52: Was there something you wanted to say about my #835?

Gah!! Sorry 'bout that. I was suffering from multiple iterative brain-farts yesterday. I went back and filled that in, but then mis-posted it back on Open Thread 131/945. My apologies. I am a potato.

dcb @83: Post here! Post here! And the flipside of @87: Just saw a great review in Science News of a book about making science writing more engaging: Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style. (That issue also has a lovely article on lichens, with some rilly cool pix.)

nerdycellist @96: I've often wished for a giant hamster-wheel in my office.

Smarter cancer screening isn't a bad idea. As noted in the post (written by a breast cancer specialist) that Albatross linked, effective and efficient cancer diagnosis is not a one-size-fits-all process. Yes, early mammograms are good, and they can catch cancers before they can metastasize, but they remain imperfect. Mammography is simply the best non-surgical diagnostic tool we have at the moment; other technologies will supplant it eventually. A family member's disease was caught by galactogram; her standard mammograms were clear, but her doctor was persistent. I'm grateful for both his refusal to be complacent, and his willingness to use new tech to get the answer.

Speaking of new medical tech, I have a a new story out about that very thing. (Related to breasts, too, oddly enough, but breastfeeding, not breast cancer.)

Re: the thesis tips, I sincerely wish I had had these while I was writing mine. Damn. You guys rock. There should be a "how to finish projects" thread/page, to collate all this wisdom.

re Andy Wilton, #105:

Besides the Elephant page linked to, be sure to check out the Gallerie pages as well, showing other mechs in progress. (Giant Squid! Giant Squid!)

Alas, they don't have any really good photos of the Manta Ray; bummer. (Mantas: coolest fish, ever.)

Another factor in the mammogram recommendations is that it does involve exposure to a dose of radiation, albeit a very small one. I do not recall the exact information, but I read that for every umpteen cancers caught, there was one caused by that radiation. A friend of mine refused to get her first one until she was fifty for that reason. I have heard much debate over the years whether *yearly* m-grams are necessary. Unfortunately, a lot of medical test recommendations are absolute, which can determine whether or not insurance pays for them. They seldom bother to consider individual risk factors, even obvious ones like smoking.

I'm not very scared of cancer, since the only relative who has died from it smoked 3 packs of Camels a day from the age of 14. She died of lung cancer at 78. I'm scared of heart attacks, since I lost a cousin who was 29 or 30 from one, as well as my father and various other relatives. I would like *more* cardiovascular tests and fewer cancer tests, thank-you-very-much.

Speaking of hamsters, I once brought a water feeder for caged critters to the office and installed it in my cubicle. Some of the managers didn't appreciate the humor, but my co-workers loved it.

re Jacque, #106, the Cream of Dinner link:

This is somewhat reminiscent of M.F.K. Fisher's famous/infamous recipe for "Sludge".

Short version: (1942 prices; adjust as needed) Borrow fifty cents. Buy fifteen cents worth of ground meat; spend the rest on vegetables and grains. In a large kettle with water, boil the vegetables for a hour, add meat & grain, simmer for several more hours. Pour into a suitable container to set, keep cool or refrigerate. Can be sliced and fried like scrapple.

The full recipe/essay can be found in the "How To Stay Alive" chapter of Fisher's HOW TO COOK A WOLF. (Link to Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. The chapter starts on page 66.)

(Searching for the recipe, I came across this post from Magistra Mater which quotes several passages from Fisher's books in a centered-line format. Interestingly, this makes Fisher read like quite a good free-verse poet.)

And, in connection with various posts uptopic about getting things done or not done, I should probably note for the record that I spent the time writing this comment when I should have been doing a heaping load of important stuff.

Magenta Griffith (109): I have heard much debate over the years whether *yearly* m-grams are necessary.

For a while there they were recommending an every-other-year schedule for women in their 40s. That certainly strikes me as reasonable in the absence of other risk factors. But no mammogram at all until age 50? I'd be dead.

Mary Aileen #95: My reaction to that news was, "The government wants me dead." No particular risk factors, but I was diagnosed at 42 with stage 2 breast cancer that turned up in a routine mammogram--no lump that anyone could detect, including three different doctors.

My logic is the assumption that there will be more Democrat casualties in the under-tested 40+ age range because it's the rich Republicans who can usually afford catastrophic health care. It's the same principle that drove the sluggish Katrina response effect. To be sure, however, I'd need details of the political/stock-holding affiliations of the panel that made the recommendation, to check for conflicts of interest.

In any case, It's fortunate that your situation was detected, and I hope that you are doing well.

Jacque @ 106: See #102 (we crossed). Hope some of it is useful.

Thanks for the link to the book review - I may get the book (I'd like to learn better how to write interesting articles etc.).

on m*grams:
I'd say that if there's a real risk factor, like mother, sister, or aunts who had it before they were 50 or 60, then, yes, start getting them early.

SylvieG @7 -- adding my condolences. While I've lived with dogs a few times since losing what was supposed to be My Puppy at about age 8 (distemper -- it was a pound puppy named Sniff that didn't survive more than a month) I haven't had a dog of my own to deal with. I'm blessed with a history of marvelous cats, though, and have had to grieve for several of them. Reiterating a common thread -- it's your life, and your grief. Live and grieve your own way, and pay attention to it. That's how to learn what's right for you.

On finishing writing projects -- has anyone else here read Howard S. Becker's Writing for Social Scientists? Becker's a rare sociologist who writes compulsively readable books, and this book is all about how to write a better article than most people get trained to. Highly recommended.

Jacque @ OpenThread 131/945:

Bruce Cohen (Scanning Tunneling Microscope*) @131/835:

"it goes on forever — and — oh my God — it's full of atoms!"

My dissertation trick was the same as my writing trick generally: AICHC, AssInCoffeeHouseChair.

Works for a liberal arts diss; I don't know what you'd have to adjust for something requiring a science lab. (And as for a CS diss, that's always seemed to me to be just like Working.)

Each weekday, head over to coffeehouse around lunchtime. Grab really big latte or iced something, plus something with calories. After consuming calories and reading newspaper as warmup, take printout of previous day's production and edit it for typos and stupidities. Get out yellow pad and start writing. Keep going for a couple of pages or until the coffee runs out, whichever takes longer. If you literally have no more to write about, read a couple of articles and take notes, or read a whole book, ditto. Then do a little bit of outlining or mind-mapping, or draw a flow chart of what you've got. At that point, you can go home. (or grade exams, if it's one of those semesters.)

Next morning, it shouldn't take more than half an hour or so to transcribe what you wrote into the computer. Print it out for the next coffeehouse round.

My all-too-frequent saying to my long-suffering spouse: "it's done when it's done". And eventually it was. I began the process over two years before the diss was due, and didn't vary except during the semester I was teaching two afternoons a week.

It did mean that I had to organize my time somewhat differently, with frequent necessary swings by multiple libraries scheduled to happen in the late morning, along with any teaching-related work at the slide library.

Thanks, dcb, and shudder - that brings back memories of my MA thesis.

Open threadiness: BoingBoing's running a hundred-word fiction competition on the theme "Found in Space". Lots of neat entries.

Earl Cooley III (113): It's been several years and I seem to be fine, thanks.

P J Evans (115): Women with risk factors such as familial history are still recommended to get early screening. But that doesn't include me.

My main way for getting papers done was to wait until the deadline loomed, then do everything in a blind panic. (Spilling Dr. Pepper on the keyboard at three in the morning is not recommended, in case you were wondering.) I haven't had to do anything thesis-sized, though, so that probably won't work for you.

It's absolutely amazing how not wanting to do the work you're supposed to be doing sublimates into thinking that cleaning the cat box right now is a great idea.

DaveKuzminski @ #93 - I'm hoping Someone at Making Light takes a whack at the Harlequin / Author Solutions deal.

My main way for getting papers done was to wait until the deadline loomed, then do everything in a blind panic.

As one of my classmates used to say, "Nothing is as productive as the last minute."
It often holds true for me. I'd like to change that.

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) @117: [Falls out of chair, laughing.]

Reminds me of a story told about the debate over GMOs: One protester had finally concluded that she just wanted food without any of that nasty DNA in it.

Pendrift @123: Variant from a friend of mine: "If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done."

Josh Jasper #122: I'm hoping Someone at Making Light takes a whack at the Harlequin / Author Solutions deal.

Here's a link to the announcement, for future reference.

#120
My mother should have been high-risk; her mother died of metastasizing breast cancer. But none of the other females in that generation did, my mother didn't have it, and, IIRC, only one of the others had breast cancer - at age 90. So there's still a lot of randomness in there. I'd say it's okay to get them before 50, but it isn't necessary for everyone. (The one person I knew who died of it was in her early 50s and had been fighting it for 15 years.)

Caroline @56: Naught but symptathy; I was terribly, terribly burned out by the time I finished my thesis, and the most painful parts were right around this time of year too. Some things that worked for me below, in no particular order.

You don't have to write the final version first. I had an outline that started similar to an outline as recognized by the general public, but when starting at blank space, adding a paragraph or some references or *something* to the outline helped, and made progress through the actual writing phase okay. At first, I'd find myself easily distracted--if a particular sentence required a particular reference, I'd go look up that reference, and by the time I found it I forgot what I was saying. I realized at some point that it was more efficient to say "ADD REF HERE" and continue if I was in a writing groove, and then go have a reference-adding groove later on.

All that led to my general rule of "don't make the last paragraph too pretty." Having some minor editing to do in the previous page got me in the right mindset for the next. If I'd just written a good paragraph and was ready to finish for the day, I made sure to write an ugly sentence or two, just so I had an arrow when I sat down again.

Physical movement is necessary. I almost included Dance Dance Revolution in my acknowledgments section, because it was so helpful for me to jump around like a fool for 20 minutes before sitting down and working. It would have been much more painful without it. Do jumping jacks, walk to work, something.

When I had no-accomplishment day and beating myself up over it, I was occasionally able to take that self-hatred and turn it into getting stuff done. It's not especially healthy, except that then at least I'd done something that day, which ended up making me feel better.

Any progress is forward progress. For me, when it came together, it came together rather suddenly, in part because I had pages of all those ugly paragraphs on days where I said "quantity over quality" and just wrote nonsensical, unconnected paragraphs that I knew would fit in somewhere. None of that had felt like forward progress, but it really did help.

Having a job offer was very helpful for me, but YMMV on that one.

Bruce Arthurs @ 108: My google-fu is rather weak in French but I did find this video of the ray's mechanism in action when searching with "nantes manta raie". Be warned though, this kind of search can throw up some very NSFW stuff: 'raie' seems to be an anatomical euphemism much favoured in the adult film industry, unless I've got the wrong end of the stick...

TChem @ 127 Having a job offer was very helpful for me, but YMMV on that one.

But try to ensure you have a break between handing in your thesis and starting a job: I handed mine in on the Friday and started on the Monday - never really got a break, couldn't bear to look at the thesis for months (except for just before the viva, of course), got too busy with work and never wrote up the papers - which I regret.

Bruce Arthurs @108, Andy Wilton @128:
Here are more images. I used "Delarozière" and "raie manta" for my search string and had plently of hits.

Wish I'd known about this earlier, it would've been worth a visit!

As for raie, that'd be raie des fesses, aka the butt crack, which explains all the NSFW results.

Pendrift @ 130... You've made my day.

#117, 124:

That reminds me of the anti-drug group that declared their neighborhood to be a Substance Free Zone.

Speaking of manta rays... In 1969's Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, Nemo also dabbles in genetics, the results of which are a giant and mentally unstable manta ray. Dare I call it a demented manta?

I had my first mammogram when I was 18 because my mother died the year before of cancer starting in her breasts. I've had one every year since, which does expose me to radiation, but now I've had almost as many CTs and MRIs, so if I got cancer, we probably wouldn't know why.

Mother would have been 74 today; she's been dead as long as she was alive.

P J Evans (126): I'd say it's okay to get them before 50, but it isn't necessary for everyone.

That's all well and good, but if they hadn't been recommended for everyone, I wouldn't have bothered before I was 50. As it was, I should have had one a year earlier but procrastinated.

Aaaand, I don't mean to make this all about Me, so I'll shut up now.

Mary Aileen, knowing someone personally (mod the web, you know what I mean) who would have died had the new protocol been in place at the time is powerful. It's not data, exactly, but it's deeply evocative of the downside of their new "greatest good" calculation. I for one appreciate your bringing it up.

Serge @ #133, how 'bout a demented mantra?

O-o-o-o-o-MG!

Linkmeister, how about "AllWorkAndNoPlayMakesJackADullBoy, AllWorkAndNoPlayMakesJackADullBoy, AllWorkAndNoPlayMakesJackADullBoy, AllWorkAndNoPlayMakesJackADullBoy, AllWorkAndNoPlayMakesJackADullBoy..."?

Firefox update:

I've had to switch to Chrome. I tried all the suggestions except XP's restore thing (which frankly scares the crud out of me), tried turning off Symantec, and went back to an earlier release (3.5.3). None of these had the slightest effect whatever.

Chrome, OTOH, has no problems, nor has any other program that I run. I give up.

Cancer-screening eggcorn, found in the wild: "mama grams."

Serge #133: It could have turned into a Martha Ray.

The best advice I ever got on writing a dissertation was to do it chapter by chapter, and to do each chapter section by section. That is, to see each section of each chapter as a separate project rather than seeing the dissertation as one big project. Each chapter still took me three drafts; each draft shorter than its predecessor. I was lucky, in that I had a year's pre-doc writing fellowship to get the beast killed, and I did it, with days to spare (including the last period of field research, and at the tail end of writing, while looking for work).

Linkmeister @ 137... Or a portmanteau mantra?

Fragano @ 141... Better her than a Liotta Ray.

One thing that occurs to me about the mammogram recommendations is that if someone dies of cancer that wasn't found, that's counted as a cancer death. If a false positive leads to unnecessary surgery, and possible complications, people are much less likely to turn up and say "My mother/friend/sister/aunt/neighbor was injured by mammograms." If it goes badly enough, it could be "an incompetent surgeon messed up my sister's shoulder" or even "MRSA killed my friend," but they're not likely to trace the blame back to the mammogram.

I have no idea what fraction of the hospital-caused deaths [infections of various sorts, mostly, along with drug overdoses and bad reactions] are in patients who were in the hospital in the first place because of a false positive on a screening test, but I'd be surprised if it was zero.

I have been having routine screening mammograms; if there's no consensus in a year or so, I will ask my GP if she thinks I need another before I turn 50, and we can discuss the specifics of my health and family history. But I don't think "spare women an unpleasant procedure with a hard-to-determine but nonzero risk" is a conspiracy to kill me.

TexAnne @ 140... It'd appear that I'm beginning to be a bad influence.

A mammogram saved a 36-year-old I know. No family history either.
Adding condolences for SylvieG, and thanks to all the rest for the advice that I will be using if/when the day ever comes that I can give a couple of kitties a happy home.

#138 ::: Xopher @138: Also, possibly appropriate for the NaNoWriMoOThread.

Birth of a new species observed.

How cool is that?

A lot of big tasks can be made easier by breaking them into small attainable goals. That way you don't just look at it all, go 'to hell with it, it's impossible,' and give up.

The friend I work for at RenFest taught me that years ago and it has served me well.

Am I the only one wondering what kind of lurking horror could be called up with a 3-d Mandelbrot diagram? Or have I just read too many of Charlie's Laundry stories for my own good?

P J Evans @ 151:

Read the mouseover for the "(also)" link. Those things are absolutely beautiful.

I also just read all of the Laundry stories for the first time this weekend (except for the one on Tor.com which convinced me they were something to look into), so it was definitely funny too.

Jörg@91: phrases involving motion to somewhere generally take the accusative, not the dative or ablative, so "in porcum". I don't think "tuum" is necessary.

Lee @ 149: very cool!

Fragano @ #142:

For my annual "Snooper reports" (in short, look at packets arriving at non-responsive IP addresses, correlate this with vulnerability reports, see if there are any obvious connections), I start by doing all the "bulk" (read and parse all the data into interactive data munging environment), generate some graphs (in said environment), do some trend-spotting (again, data-munging environment) and dump out what looks like places where activity peaks.

Once that's done, the boring bit starts, correlating peaking activity to vulnerabilities. My general aim is to do half a month every day.

First time, it took me roughly 6 weeks getting it all done, but I had to manufacture a lot of the tools needed. Second time, I think I was down to ~3 weeks all told.

I guess that my thesis-writing advice is "it gets easier by the third time you do it"?

Hi;

You guys are generally very good for book recommendations and it's an open thread, so...

A friend has recently started attending Quaker meetings (she's nominally Catholic)and has a birthday next week. I'd like to get her something useful/interesting on Quaker thought or history - either from within the faith or from a comparative, academic point of view. Does anything spring immediately to mind?

Unrelatedly, I loved Waters of Mars for the two main reasons:

i) The bitter-sweetness of this being the first new David Tenant Doctor in such a long while, but also marking the beginning of the end.

ii) The emphasis on the side of the Doctor - the arrogant alien who considers (sorry, *knows*) himself to be superior to the surrounding humans - that was intended right from the start. Reportedly, William Hartnell did it very well.

...also it was a pretty good Dr. Who story; plenty of running in corridors and spooky monster bits. I thought the prefiguring of the next episodes was a little anvilicious though.

Lee @149 PZ Myers (Pharyngula) attended a lecture by these two on this work & made notes. Some explication in the comments, along with usual anti- & pro- evolution rants.

How can they bear it? Even without straight anti/pro religion blood-spattered slash/hacking, finding interesting or informative among noise/chaff is getting harder. Less likely to visit – a shame.

Serge@144

Now if it was a Rachael Ray, then we'd really be cooking...

Serge@146

Beginning?

Jörg @ 91--I would also note that Latin word order is not English word order, and so the flow might be better if the verb came last--the imperative form sometimes comes first in the clause, but not always--I'd try it both ways and see which lands most agreeably on the ear. When I did Latin composition years ago, I noticed how easy it was for us, as mostly non-speakers, just readers and writers, to forget about how things sounded--and that's as big a mistake in Latin as it would be in any other language.

Michael I @ 158... Beginning?

Well, when someone who's not one of the Usual Suspects starts making puns...

Ingvar @ 155

Snooper is "interesting", thanks.

TCP/UDP Port 18019 is apparently Skype:

http://www.fas-it.fas.harvard.edu/node/1277

Best,
Cadbury

Serge #160: I concur: "Beginning?" Not the first time, you've even gotten me going on occasion!

Cadbury Moose @ #161:

Thanks. I find it a bizarre mix between "interesting" and "tedious" (mostly towards the end of each report, but I was chomping at the bit, wanting to start doing the second report once 2008 was fully collected), making these.

I guess it didn't help that there was some overlap between the first and second report, so SOME things felt eerily familiar.

So tonight's the night I make my Letterman debut, part of the chorus backing up Ray Davies, as discussed here a couple weeks ago. When I sneeze violently into my headset mic and then fall off the back of the risers, taking out a miniature skyscraper, that'll be my secret hello! to the Fluorosphere.

The other celebrity guest is Robert Pattinson of the Twilight movies. I can't decide whether I'm more frightened or intrigued by the prospect of twelve hundred screaming fangirls (and their daughters) at the stage door.

#164 -- Andrew Willett

Looking forward to the report of your foray among the Robert Pattinson mad fans!

So tonight's the night I make my Letterman debut, part of the chorus backing up Ray Davies

*Kinks-squee!*

Have an absolute blast. When's it air?

That was a darn good point made about William Hartnell.

Jacque, I have attempted your Cream Of Dinner Soup today for brunch. It looked revolting and tasted quite good. I feel nourished! (And thank you to those already commenting on the sub-thread; I must get my hands on How To Cook A Wolf now.)

Thank you all for the amazing advice and conversation. Yesterday I didn't get much done, but today I was able to use Freedom to turn off the internet for 30 minutes and write. (Leechblock never really worked for me, particularly since I have Safari on this machine. Freedom just cuts off the internet entirely, on a timer. It's hard enough to get around it that it works for me. It stops me from veering off when things get hard or dull.)

Now I'm eating lunch, and will go back and do it again once lunch is done.

And I can add another piece of advice: Look at an example of the thing you are trying to write or project you are trying to do. It helped me today to look back at another student's prelim document and try to pattern mine after his. It is helping keep my argument on track, rather than bounding off into the weeds and getting lost, which is what usually happens.

Also, writing section headings helps in keeping the thread of the argument.

Andrew @ #164, so are you part of the Crouch End Festival Chorus, or is your group just taking its role for the American tour?

Review of "The Kinks Choral Collection."

Caroline #167

Section headings good. Then outline, outline, outline.

Then resolve to get one little point written. And so on.

About structure: Sometimes you'll find that what you're writing is not one straightforward thing. My art history diss ended up being structured like a math proof, getting a lot of preliminary lemmas out of the way before going on to larger things. What's interesting is trying to put it together so that you have the minimum of backtracking and the maximum forward momentum.

Open-Thread linkiness:

Dave Freer Packs Up and Moves to Australia. They have raised some money, and are in the process of actually moving.

Caroline,

That is great news! How totally inspiring.

I feel you on bounding off into the weeds. I finished my MA on anime, cyborg theory, and fandom studies this year, and one thing that saved me was a prof telling me that since I had already published out of the thesis, I was doing well. (Granted, it was a Master's, and not a Ph.D.) But that helped me realize that I was merely contributing something to a larger conversation, not making a definitive statement. It's not your job to start a zeitgeist; your job is to present your research in a meaningful way that makes the larger picture easier to understand. Anything that does not serve that goal must be cut out; your committee might ask about it during the defense but you'll be able to discuss what you cut and why.

Oh joy. Woke up this morning to the romance publishing/fandom half of my blog list being wall-to-wall on Harlequin's decision to embrace the dark side, and set up a Harlequin-branded vanity imprint in partnership with AuthorHouse, complete with "But why not try our self-publishing arm?" in the rejection letters from the imprints that remain faithful (for now) to "money flows towards the author".

And predictably, attempts by various authors educated in the ways of Yog to explain why this is a Bad Thing are being met with the standard incomprehension by the inexperienced, and frantic "You're just jealous haters" by the victims of other vanity publishers.

Laurel wreath with full honours to author Stacia Kane in particular for having far more patience than I could muster in the face of the provocation she's getting from one of the latter.

Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @166: I have attempted your Cream Of Dinner Soup today for brunch. It looked revolting...

Ah, yes. I need to add a note to that effect. (OTOH, pea or lentil soup will often produce a similar appearance if blended.)

It can, however, get quite entertaining when you start playing with colors. Purple cabbage + beets + purple onions = purple soup! Someday, I'm going to do pousse cafe soup.

As long as we're talking dissertations and such -- reminds me of a copyright discussion I had on Facebook the other day. If you go to publish an excerpt as an article, like Madeline Ashby @171, read your journal's publication agreement Very Carefully. Make sure it is SPARC Addendum compliant and that YOU retain the copyright. Some argeements where the journal gets your copyright are so heinous that I'm not sure you could even legally use the same material in your dissertation. I know it's tough trying to get publications early in your career, but you'll only regret it later on if you sign your rights away just to get a publication.

Orac at Respectful Insolence has a post up on the current guidelines. As someone else pointed out, this guy is a surgeon and researcher who specializes in breast cancer, so his commentary is worth reading if you're interested.

Okay, that was a total gas. Please jebus, let the camera not have been looking at me during the two beats where I made the "wait, what am I singing next" face. Things I have learned: (1) the Ed Sullivan Theatre is tiny; (2) it is also so cold in there that the ventilation system produces fog; (3) RPattz is actually cuter than I gave him credit for and also he walked right past me and I breathed air that touched him and I'm never washing my lungs again eeeeeeeee.

Linkmeister (@168), we're the Dessoff Chamber Choir, and we're doing the NYC gigs only. I'm told that some kind of strike force from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir did SF. Nicole (@166), it airs tonight, and should stream over the Internet starting tomorrow at the Late Show website. Albeit possibly not for people from outside the US.

This travel kettle is causing me to bounce about in completely age inappropriate ways! It's tiny! and inductive! and has cups!!!

also: Jacque @ 173 ...
Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little @166: I have attempted your Cream Of Dinner Soup today for brunch. It looked revolting...

I once made what could only be described as 'boiled cardboard with skinned mice' by accident (ingredient substitution combining in odd ways[0]). As long as I didn't actually try to look at it, it tasted fine...

[0] I wanted stew, but not having any stewing beef, decided to substitute ground beef ... but wasn't about to flour the ground beef, so the broth was a tad thin... lacking corn starch or flour, it seemed like oatmeal wouldn't be the worst of substitutes... and I'd already added in the (whole) tomatoes...

xeger @ #177, seeing that instantly took me back to 1973, walking the Ginza-equivalent in Yokosuka. I amused myself going into seven-story department stores filled with that kind of thing.

Andrew Willett, #164, I'll tape it, because I'm not that fond of the rest of Letterman.

A batch of country-wide conservative Christian ministers assembled in front of the Justice Department on Monday to see if they could demonstrate well enough to be arrested. Well, it didn't quite turn out that way.

Remember Jim telling us how to make emergency bags? Well, last night on NCIS, Gibbs had an emergency bag.

Jacque @173 mentioned having made purple soup ...

My husband made a lovely-tasting and incredibly-disturbing-looking beet chowder* some time ago that I dubbed 'melted lipstick' and he called (on the label on the batch we put in the freezer) Pink Soup.

He has since made a squash-and-sweet-potato blended soup we have now dubbed Orange Soup.

Also, I am incredibly skilled at, as my dear, sweet, loving husband has put it, "making dinners that look like dog vomit but taste great."

* A chowder's technical definition being any cream-based soup that also contains potato. "Cream-of-potato-and-", as it were.

Purple cabbage is an acid/base indicator. Maybe you can make color changing soup.

David Goldfarb @153, fidelio @159:
Yes, i should have known that Latin "in" as in "into" takes the accusative. I don't know what fooled me.

So, "Caput in porcum inserta." it will be. It sounds much more Latin-y, too. And it would make a fine heraldic motto.

Thank you for the help.

Actually it's "go soak your head in a pig"

Erik Nelson @ 183:

I just had a listen to the appropriate episode to refresh my memory, and it's "go stick your head in a pig". Share and enjoy.

Also, in response to your earlier post: indicator candies.

Plum soup (served cold) is purple and delicious.

KeithS, #185: Cool!

Tim Walters @ 186 ...
For breakfast?

Tim Walters @ 186...

"...and it is very cold in space."

Bill Higgins talks about Girl Geniuses and Boy Mechanics here. (By the way, Bill, it turns out that, while NetFlix does list 1997's Conceiving Ada, the movie really isn't available yet. How long must I wait before I see Tilda Swinton in the role of Ada Lovelace, and Karen Black as Lady Byron? This is too cruel.)

xeger #177, and all those with vari-colored soups: The old MIT slang was "rainbow snarf". I saw a fair bit of that at the Harvard co-ops, too.

Tim @ 186: And inevitably....

This is just to say

that I have eaten
the plum soup
that was in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving for between
the appetizer
and the fish

Forgive me
it was delicious
so vivid
and so cold

P J Evans @151: Am I the only one wondering what kind of lurking horror could be called up with a 3-d Mandelbrot diagram? Or have I just read too many of Charlie's Laundry stories for my own good?

The fact that you mention the Laundry rather than this story (which, for me at least, is a much closer match to the kind of horrors you might find therein) suggests you may not have read it...?

Caroline:

I don't know how helpful they are, but these are two links that I've found helpful in thinking about how to get big jobs out the door on time, both research and paying work:

This post on "structured procrastination" summarizes something I've noticed I do a lot to get work done.

And this speech by Hamming is justly famous, and you've probably seen it before since you're in CS, but if you haven't, it's really worth reading.

xeger @177: boiled cardboard with skinned mice

Mmm, nummy! I've managed a few of those in my day. It's really depressing when it comes out tasting like that.

Passed one of the neighborhood ravens on the way in this morning. He was being very possessive with what looked like the former leg of a former squirrel.

I've also discovered that adding mixed frozen berries to my pancake batter produces some...interesting visual effects. Fortunately, they resolve into a fairly innocuous pink by the time the pancake is cooked. (I am not generally a fan of gray food, and green/blue gray is...non-optimal.)

Bizarre effects can also be produced by giving your kid a grape-juice chaser after the milk of magnesia. As my mother discovered to her panic when I was a wee tot.

Oh my. Presenting Mass: We Pray, the video game that lets you hear mass in your own home anytime you want.

It's almost certainly a hoax, but my thoughts flew back to Sister Magpie (that's Magdalena Pia to you) from my 6th grade class for a few seconds.

Because All First- and Second-Level Tech Support Knowledge is Contained in Making Light:

Has anyone else been having trouble with a customized Google Home page? All my customizations (including the reader gadgets for about 50 RSS feeds) disappeared sometime yesterday;. On my laptop I just see a generic home page; on my phone I see an "External Modules" gadget, where the customizations are supposed to be, and get a "customization data not accessible" or some such when I click on the gadget.

I have not found a way yet to communicate this problem to Google as their support communication only allows for loss of password and similar problems. And if they don't bring the data back I'm going to have to spend quite a bit of time re-subscribing to all those feeds.

Bruce Cohen (198): I don't have a customized Google homepage, but the first time I tried to log into Google docs yesterday I got an error message, something about (greatly paraphrasing) their circuits being busy. I was able to get in a few minutes later, but it sounds as if they're having technical issues.

albatross @ 194, I'm not actually in CS -- I'm in biomedical engineering (and all my coding skill has been picked up and patched together as I go). So I had not seen that. It looks fantastic. Thank you!

What is it going to take to impeach East Texas district judge(s) who rubber-stamp love and kisses for patent trolls?

Up on the chopping block? Podcasting.

Update on the Google Home page problem: I found a help forum where numerous users have posted that they have the same problem; it seems to have occurred at different times to different users. Moreover, most of us can't use the restore backup solution that Google provides, because the backup occurred after the data disappeared. Google has not issued any sort of statement about the problem, which is clearly not a single localized incident.

AKICIML: I have a large (about 5" long) half-shell that I want to make into an art-jewelry pendant. The back side, which will be hanging toward the wearer, is... as rough as natural shells tend to be; that's not terribly rough, but I'm still thinking that I'd like to put some sort of coating on it to smooth it out a bit. Can someone suggest a transparent coating substance that won't damage the shell, flake off with wear, or be toxic/irritating to the wearer if the pendant is being worn with a low-cut neckline?

Albatross, 194: "Structured procrastination" sounds so much nicer than "work avoidance."

I think I get as much as I do done at work because there is eternally filing I can slough off. I hate filing.

(I realized something about myself not that long ago: I'm a slob, sadly, but I actually love orderliness (hence the accounting major). When stuff stays in order, I'm happy; it's when stuff won't stay in order, but insists on needing to be re-ordered, that I despair and retreat to slobhood. Bookkeeping stays put, generally, so yay bookkeeping. Filing, laundry, dishwashing, haircuts, grrr.)

Chris Quinones @204: Sounds like you need to go to OHIO. Only Handle It Once.

Sort mail standing next to the recycle bin, with your checkbook (for bills) and your filecabinet (for records) within reach.

Do not set dirty dishes on the counter; put them in the sink and wash them right away.

Laundry and haircuts...can't help you there, 'cept maybe to suggest you want a ponytail?

Annnnnd ... Google has admitted the home page problem is theirs, and that they are working on it. FYI: the home page data apparently gets erased when you visit your customized (iGoogle) page from a mobile device such as a smartphone, so if it hasn't happened to you yet, you know what not to do.

Thank you for your support.

Andrew Willett, #176, I think I liked the original rock version better, but if you add in a choir, yours did well.

Silken Turnip Soup.

A Washington Times editor says he was fired because he refused to attend Moonie events.

Chris Quinones at 204, I am somewhat the same way. I resent that I have to do dishes, then do them again, then there's more. Laundry? Didn't I just do laundry?
And food. I ate! I already ate! Why do I have to keep eating?

A portion of my soul denies that entropy exists.

This is fun. It has a link to the Jon Stewart bit that shows Sean Hannity's Fox News show splicing in footage of two different rallies, to make the more recent one look bigger than it was. I hadn't heard about this, but it's just beautifully damning.

I wonder what people who believe in the trustworthiness of Fox do when they see this. It's frighteningly easy to make excuses for your own side, but this is so blatant, it seems like it would be hard to ever trust anything you saw on his show after that.

Jacque, 204: Mail doesn't bother me much, very little doesn't get tossed immediately. It's new mail each time, so it doesn't feel as Sisyphean to deal with.

I have a standing schedule to do my wash every third weekend, since the local laundromats don't stay open late on weekdays, and mostly manage to do it. Having to leave the house for the wash is a factor in its being a pain, too. I'd be a lot more sanguine about it, I think, if we had facilities in the apartment building.

Leaving the house and having to pay someone to do it annoy me about the haircuts, but I don't trust myself to do it and I like my hair short.

And Avram does the dishes!

I'm a malcontent, but I have arrangements.

Diatryma, 208: I don't deny entropy, I just wish it were slower. And more useful.

Chris Quinones @ 210 ...
I have a standing schedule to do my wash every third weekend, since the local laundromats don't stay open late on weekdays, and mostly manage to do it. Having to leave the house for the wash is a factor in its being a pain, too. I'd be a lot more sanguine about it, I think, if we had facilities in the apartment building.

The washing machine repairman declined to set foot in the house... on the grounds that he'd have to bill me if I did -- and the symptoms I was describing would make it a waste of funds. I'm now alternating between trying to nurse the machine through a few more rounds ... and trying to figure out what sort of replacement (front-load this time!) is worth getting.

Lee @ 203: When all else fails, try clear nail polish. I had a friend whose skin was irritated by metals and she found it the best solution. (You might try sanding the roughest spots first.)

Marilee, thank you for the Silken Turnip Soup recipe - I may try that tonight if I'm not too tired when I get home.

I have a lot of turnips on hand. And Jacque won't let me give her ANY! hee.

Xeger @ 211:

I'm happy with my Kenmore Elite HE3t. I bought it a couple of years ago, replacing a small, 20-year-old top loader. What a difference!

Dooce had a rather different experience with one, though she seemed to have even less luck with a Maytag. Her vivid chronicle does make me wish that I had more than a million followers on twitter.

Mail! Bane of my life. Along with all the others :)
I'm drowning under a tsunami of the stuff.
Partly because of the mummified remains of my parents and partner tied to my own failing spirit. Still dealing with mess from their estates — though without some inheritance I might not have survived so far, even with friends' help.
[Make a Will, people! Unless you hate your family and want them to suffer for years, 'cos you think they'll wave goodbye and happily forget you otherwise. Make a bloody Will! The Perfect is the Enemy of The Good: at least the basics. Neil Gaiman even has recommended forms for artists and authors.]

More than half mail is "junk", but some need keeping nevertheless — lots of Changes in Conditions; insurance, credit cards, bank accounts, superannuation, company shares, public utilities, ISPs, etc, etc. They seem to change once or twice a year these days, including mergers. Have to go into records with the bills and statements, to check when there are disputes.

Despite hoarding inherited/learnt from both parents, I've learnt to recycle (thank goodness for recycling; the guilt of throwing out perfectly good paper and envelopes would be crushing) all the rest of the "junk".

There's a bill-holder. They (swiftly) pile up in order of due-date there, and either each week or fortnight I (or friend if I'm sick) go down to PO to pay them. Then they go into pile ready for filing (getting tricky; cabinet full now). Are keeping because some bills (and earnings) are from estates. Will need these as estates are fixed up and, gulp, _(taxes) calculated. Should also prove I'm not living high on the hog with money not my own, but just staying ahead of the wolf-pack baying behind.

Then there's all the stuff dealing with the estates. Has high tides every six months, but always a trickle. Little can be binned. Desperately tried to trim this down with some legal paperwork a couple of years ago, but failed to enclose some paper (Interesting how when you particularly ask if they need X, they say "No". Then when you apply, they say "You didn't enclose X".) There's a hopefully-not-illusory hope that settled back at home I can set out my desk and get the papers together and fix up all the overhanging legalities. (Looming like The Big Wave.)

And, once in every thousand or two pieces, an actual something for me, personally. Alas, then I get panicky, trying to deal with having to reply or do something about it. So even that momentary pleasure is poisoned.

Sorry. It's a real despair and irritant here. I hear all these 'simplify', 'time-management', 'decluttering', etc, hints. So few seem workable.

#209 Albatross

"Don't confuse me with the facts."
The Fux fans behave as Believers, not skeptics. They object to questioning Faith and Belief, and resist anything which threatens to chip away at their True Faith and Belief.

Lee @203 - I concur with B. Durbin's suggestion of sanding the back to smooth it, unless you like the look of it as-is. Since this is not the side you plan to have facing out, you may be able to get acceptable smoothness. For a very fine final sanding, you may want to look for scouring rush, aka horsetail. I have used this on bone and horn with good results. If sanding does the trick, you may not want any coating.

Grrr. Washing machines. The helpful local repair dude talked with us a bit when our dryer was out. Kenmores aren't a make, they're a brand. They are rebadged whatevers that Sears sells, and the real manufacturer changes with some regularity. Also, like many other small industries (mattresses in particular. I hate mattress salesmen more than I hate car salesmen, and that's saying something), you can't find the same model in two places for price comparision. They're all slightly different to prevent that from happening.

On purple soup - I once made a curry with coconut milk base, purple cabbage, and broccoli. The broccoli became bright green, and the coconut soaked up the purpleness from the cabbage, becoming very bright as well.

On cardboard/deadmice soup - it was just drinkable haggis, wasn't it? (As a vegetarian, my normal recipe for drinkable haggis is to consume the single malt myself and leave the haggis for the carnivores, but back when I was still omnivorous I did have scrapple fairly often.)

I'm in Monterey, prepping for a radio appearance tomorrow (mostly by going out, pondering old times, eating clam chowder, strolling with CG, drinking beer [Belhaven IPA] at The Crown and Anchor [the booth with the model of HMS Leopard was taken, so I moved us from the RMS Titanic to MHS Bark Endeavour], while snarfing fried prawns, scallops, calimari and cod with chips; and wrapping it up with a toffee pudding [very well done]).

Tomorrow the radio, then breakfast and the filling of a lacuna in my time here (which is hard believe was 16 years back), and going to the Acquarium.

Saturday I have a two-hour presentation at MIIS, on the usual subjects. It will be at one, I forget the name of the auditorium.

Joerg@91, with apologies to all concerned
(my Latin also having become rusty, and google translate not supporting it, I'll have to translate into mangled Tolkien instead...)

This is just to say

that you can stick your head
into the pig
that was in
the icebox

and which
we were probably
saving to roast
with those plums
in its mouth

Forgive me
you were annoying
and the pig
was so cold

Since I started using Twitter to follow various news feeds with a lot of tweets that link to interesting-sounding stories, it has turned into something like Tvtropes for me. This is annoying. But I don't want to miss out on those news, either.

Here's a dinner that looks like a gag from Archie McPhee, but tastes great:

Take the leanest ground beef/turkey/bison you have and saute in a cast-iron pan along with some chopped celery and onion. Spoon off excess fat if any. Throw in some white rice. Pour in milk, cream sauce, mushroom soup diluted with water, or something dairy-ish. Season with celery leaves, celery seed, powdered sage, celery salt, black or white pepper, and paprika. Put into the oven, cover, and cook slowly until the rice grains burst. Taste, correct the seasoning, stir, and serve hot.

Oddly, I found this in a 1960s spiral-bound church cookbook, but the basic method goes back to the Middle Ages.

#201 Earl

I won't say here what I think patent trolls deserve....

Exactly 4 weeks from now, I'll be in the Bay Area unless a snow storm hits once we reach Flagstaff. Anybody interested in meeting, that weekend? Say, xeger, you won't happen to be flying by the Bay again, will you?

Serge @ 225 ...
I'm not currently expecting to be flying anywhere, let alone near the Bay Area, but that too may change...

xeger @ 226... that too may change...

Should your situation change in such a way that you too would be in the Bay Area that weekend, I hope that it'll be for a pleasant reason.

Open thread bragging: a musical project to which I contributed has been getting some love from New Scientist and The Wire.

In the end I went with "Bury the Chains" - not specifically about Quakers, but it seems nine of the twelve foudning members of the 19th century Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade were of that persuasion*, and book appears on Quaker reading lists.

*As, I discovered in passing, are Judi Dench and Piers Anthony.

Oops. That should, of course, read "18th Century".

Judi Dench is a Quaker? That's wonderful! Yet another reason to like her.

Russ @156/229:
I am too late, but just in case the topic comes up again: I have *very* much appreciated The Quaker Reader, ed. Jessamyn West, from Pendle Hill. It's a collection of essays, from George Fox on up, with introductions that place each in historical context. If you can lay hands on it, I think it exactly fits your original idea.

Tim Walters: Neat! I just sent the URLs to my daughter; I think she's done some composition with Supercollider.

Radio inteview went well. He had some ideas I had to defuse, and a couple of implications I had to be sure to refute. Was about ten minutes of live interview. Got good reviews from the people who heard me when I was talking (they were in the studio office).

Felt good, had some moments of (by my lights) humor.

Off to the Aquarium.

Mez @ 215: I'm so sorry. It sounds like you are dealing with much too much. I hope that you can get a friend or two to help you sort through it all.

Paperwork and mail compose the biggest challenge to my organization as it is, and I have never had to deal with sorting out someone's estate.

Also, Make a Will, people! Unless you hate your family and want them to suffer for years, 'cos you think they'll wave goodbye and happily forget you otherwise. Make a bloody Will!

This, so much this. In my grandfather's last days, I saw how the family's grief did not need to be compounded by the stress of dealing with lawyers and bankers and insurance agents. It's a great kindness to your family to make sure your affairs are set in some kind of order.

It's on my to-do list to find a good family lawyer to help my fiancé and me draw up a will. Part of the wedding planning. (And as he's in a creative profession, we will have to deal with ownership of his works.)

I thought it was just me, but someone from another tech group just described my boss's boss as someone who rejects Reality and substitutes his own.

What Xopher said at #231.

Serge@236

I'm assuming this does NOT mean that your boss works for Adam Savage...

Serge @ 236:

You sure he's not just a simulation? After all, "Reality is a special case."

Seems to me that Ozark, Arkansas needs to be added to the list of Detestable Towns that already contains Gretna, Louisiana and Georgetown, Deleware.

Michael I @ 238... Bruce Cohen @ 239...

If my boss's boss worked for Adam, he and jamie and the rest of the gang would have eventually wanted to use him instead of Buster when they tested the Ottoman Rocketman in this week's experiment. As for his being a real person... Maybe he is a holodeck figure, Conversations with him tend to go like this.

"The database is too slow. Allocate more memory to it."
"There isn't any memory left on the server."
"Allocate more memory to the database."
"There is no spare memory left."
"Allocate more memory to the database."
"There is no... Nevermind."

xeger, #211, you probably won't have the bending, lifting, and not-falling-down problems that I have with my front loader, but you'll have the mold problems. Mine seems to have been fixed (for a week so far) by running bleach through by itself, but I've heard of other models that require much more work.

And in the ongoing argument between DC's upcoming gay marriage law and the Catholic church, the WashPost suggested a compromise and the vice president for political affairs at the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance gave them a good response.

I've always wondered how Richard Nixon managed not to get kicked out of the Quakers.

The last line of Marilee's linked WaPo article: people of goodwill ought to be able to find a way to arrange the law and the contracting to satisfy fairness without offending church principles.

Fascinating how "fairness" and "church principles" are opposed there. I wonder if it was intentional.

Earl, AFAIK the Quakers don't actually throw people out. And I believe some Quakers did make some kind of statement saying that he certainly wasn't behaving as most members of the Society of Friends prefer to, or something else very SOF like that.

As I understand it, Nixon was a member of the Evangelical Friends, a programmed branch who are nearly indistinguishable these days from any other evangelical Christian denomination. During the 19th Century, much of the tradition of social activism was lost in the Quietist movement. Many branches got it back; some did not.

I've always said that once is an accident, but twice is a habit...

I just got my SECOND EVER royalties check!!! GO ME!!!

How much of a fortune am I being paid for my creativity, you might ask?

Well, says I, this 2nd showering of fortune brings me up toooooooooo....

Wait for it...

$10.60 !!!!!!!!!

Yep folks, I 've reached the big time and SHATTERED the double digit mark!

Does anyone want my autograph?

Marilee @ 242 ...
xeger, #211, you probably won't have the bending, lifting, and not-falling-down problems that I have with my front loader, but you'll have the mold problems. Mine seems to have been fixed (for a week so far) by running bleach through by itself, but I've heard of other models that require much more work.

Given my general pattern of injury, moving to a model that allows me to (worst case) sit down to remove laundry[0], rather than trying to lift heavy objects at shoulder level is likely to be a plus ;)

[0] Sure, it's not always possible to bend at the knees, but it's usually possible to sit[1].
[1] ... even if the result is that you look like a toddler learning how to deal with stairs...

Serge indicates in #241 that Mythbusters has given the story of Lagâri Hasan Çelebi their treatment. Oh, well, it couldn't remain my personal discovery forever.

Bill Higgins @ 249... The MythBusters and rocketry? Yay! By the way, HERE is the time they build a hybrid rocket using Civil-War era technology. Take that, Doctor Miguelito Quixote Lovelès!

Re: front-loading washing machines
They make risers for them. They're expensive, and even for me at 5', not tall enough. A handyman and a bunch of 2x4s made a secure stand where the bottom of the door opening is about elbow height. There's also now storage underneath.

My grandparents had an old book of woodcuts called "How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers". It had, say, a carrot, and on the facing page, a parrot. I vaguely remember doggerel couplets with each.

Christoph Niemann has done a lovely set of images that remind me of the book, only his are a lot better done.

Carol Kimball @ #252, I own that book! Your grandparents? Ouch!

Carol:
The Carrot and the Parrot one may easily confound;
They're very much alike in looks and similar in sound.
We recognize the Parrot by his clear articulation,
For Carrots are unable to engage in conversation.

I hunted down a copy a few years back because I had a rush of nostalgia for it. I think the author of this book might have been a relative of the Woods on my mother's side of the family. That's what I recall my grandmother saying, anyway. (Sorry, Linkmeister.)

So I have a question for the widely-knowledgeable people here:

Is there any strategy for trying to recover small trinkets and keepsakes lost during a burglary?

We had a highly incompetent burglar* visit us today. We had relatively good fortune**, monetarily: A creaky*** old iBook**** and some not-too-expensive jewelry is all that was taken. We also found actual physical evidence--a sock hat left behind with a lovely hair sticking out of it--so retribution may be visited by the law. But some of the jewelry was dear, particularly a little locket, probably of base metal, with a picture of the wife and her sister as little kids. That was to be a surprise gift to her mom.

So: Is there a sane, non-obsessive strategy for recovering this sort of thing?

*I mean, what sort of drug addict would go through my travel kit and not recognize meperdine? Was he used to seeing it in little plastic baggies? I think every prescription bottle in the place was disturbed, but neither that nor the hydrocodone was missing.

**And otherwise. The daughter is not too terribly freaked out over it all. Mrs. Arkansawyer had removed her wedding ring from her jewelry box, along with the charm***** bracelets I bought her and the daughter. The backup drives were still here.

***Literally. Mrs. Arkansawyer had to tear that one apart and fix it back in 2002, and the hinge never was quite right after.

****An interesting point: The investigating officer, who is also a Mac user, said he'd had fair luck recovering Macs while serving search warrants. Apparently, they're harder to fence, as they're less well-understood, and just lie around being evidence.

*****Anyone know where I might find a little charm of a burglar for Mrs. Arkansawyer's bracelet?

Attention Making Light Gnomes: The post in this thread being held for review is intended to be amusing. YMMV. HTH. ESQ. B&E.

And for some actual content: How did the proofreaders correct the fnords in Illuminatus!, anyway?

#255 ::: John A Arkansawyer
How did the proofreaders correct the fnords in Illuminatus!, anyway?

Blindly.

Aquarium, way swell. Cruel to announce the octupi will be fed soon at the same time they are telling one to leave. Is better (for photography) to go n sunny days.

I have audio file of the show, and will be posting a link as soon as my faithful lackies in Canada have edited down to just me.

My Canadian lackies, BTW, deserve all sorts of love, and more thanks than I can send them.

(smooches to Marna, great wodges of whisky to Ian)

re 207: I just tried that recipe (half-batch). I had to make do with canned broth, and it came out a bit too salty with the added salt in the recipe. It also came out a bit bland (or maybe too subtle) for my taste, a little too close to potato soup. OTOH the texture is superb.

Carol @251

Storage underneath sounds good, but take into account the complications of a leak.

PNH, all the restaurant particle needs now is the Downfall video.

#260 Dave Bell:

Rubbermaid tubs, tight-fitting lids, and contents that wouldn't be water-damaged.

#253 ::: Linkmeister
#254 ::: Clifton Royston

Re: "How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers"

Obviously a memorable little book. Thanks for posting the excerpt, Clifton! The publication date was 1917, so [Linkmeister] I'm assuming you didn't stand in line for a signing. I'd remembered the graphics as crude line drawings, to find that they were woodcuts made a lot of sense.

Let me call your attention to my held-back post #255. I would welcome advice on this subject, if you have any.

John A, #255: "Burglar" doesn't seem to be available as a charm from any of my regular sources. "Pirate", however, is; would that be an acceptable substitute? If so, drop me a line (fgneqernzre@zvaqfcevat.pbz) and we can negotiate.

Caroline (#235) Thank you very much for your sympathy and further remarks. It's not just the problems in the immediate sequence either, but the ongoing problems that pop up, sometimes years later, reviving some of the fresh grief and mourning.

I like to think I'd have coped a bit better without the last 10 years of life-threatening diseases. It seemed there was a death matched with each illness or vice versa: father/sarcoidosis; partner/cancer1; mother/cancer2.

The other thing that took nearly all my time and energy while I did have some good health between the two cancers was being sole carer for my frail, demented, and increasingly-deaf mother. Hearing my side of her occasional phone calls to work could quite distress colleagues. It was often frustrating and angering, but also deeply sad; very exhausting physically and emotionally.

Like the diseases, I couldn't have managed these nearly as well as I did without a lot of help from different levels of government services, and my friends. Even the internet has helped both practically and emotionally.

Another reason to try and arrange things like some photo books or other stuff (one officially-published reference book with my name on the title page as supervising editor) that are reminders of the time before all this. I don't want these last troublous years to define all of me.

Sorry if this is too much rave. Not entirely normal. Hot here in Sydney: very hot in the western, inland side (low 40Cs; ~108F), some sea breeze here more coastally (high 30Cs; ~100F), but that raises humidity. Managing nights (25–30C; 77–86F) with analgesics, mopping down with cold water every time I wake and — bless it! — a fan. It's still officially Spring until December. Bleah.

John @ 255

The best my Googling has found looks like it's too big a charm for a traditional charm bracelet, but here it is: http://www.jailery.com/cat-burglar-charm.html

John A Arkansawyer @ 255:

Sorry to hear about your burglary woes. Thankfully, yours was as incompetent as the one who broke into my car a few years back. (Seriously, take the cigarette lighter but leave the radio? And their sunglasses?)

xeger, #248, I have to fall to reach the floor and I don't do stairs because I tend to fall down them. The washer & dryer have the pedestals, but it's just not high enough to work very well for me.

Carol Kimball, #252, Mine are stacked because I have a tiny utility room. Even with both having pedestals and being stacked, dealing with the washer's door & loading/unloading has been difficult. There isn't room for a chair in there, either.

Carol Kimball @ #252 &c.:
How to Tell the Birds from the Flowers is available at Project Gutenberg.

Hey, Patrick, I heard last night that, when you came to New Mexico a couple of years ago, one of the first things you did upon seeing Melinda Snodgrass's house was to call Neil Gaiman to tell him that she has an even cooler house.

The Foglio Family's First Experiment tortures their Second Experiment right here. Why am I not surprised at the clip's grand finale?

Patrick's "Restaurant to Avoid" is that, certainly, and it also reads like a textbook case of a hostile work environment (in the legal as well as the obvious vernacular sense).

John A. Arkansawyer @255 -- you may not be able to find a burglar charm, but you can probably find a hobbit -- I understand they can fall into that category.

Open-Threaded Question:

I got a CSA share for the first time this year, and in general, have enjoyed it. However, I have now exceeded my storage capacity for carrots and onions. I don't have any freezer space, and I'm not an accomplished cook.

Any theories on what I can do with these lovely root veggies?

#270 ::: Tim May

Tim, I wish you could have seen the expression on my face when I read your post that this is available through Project Gutenberg.

And the even bigger grin upon opening and looking at the page images.

Thank you!

Juli Thompson:
Soup. There's hardly any hearty winter soup that doesn't rely on (or do better with) plenty of carrot and onion. Split pea soup, lentil soup, just plain vegetable soup, beef and barley, chicken soup with rice, you name it.

Juli Thompson @ 275: Roasted carrots are the easiest thing in the world - cut up and coat thinly in oil, lightly salt, spread on a baking tray and pop in the oven. They come out with a lovely sweet flavor that my daughter has always enjoyed.

If you have a bit of patience, there are lots of lovely things you can do with caramelized onions once you have them sitting around. A great huge mound of onions cooks down quite a bit when sauteed slowly in butter until soft, clear and tinted the lovely brown of French onion soup. Once you have a compact container of them, they keep very well in the fridge to be scooped out whenever a recipe calls for them.

Re: Small Beer Horizons Particle: Ooh, that's good nasty fun. Favorite lines:

Q: I have a lot of money and I want to write.

A: Hmm. Oddly enough those two things have nothing to do with one another. Also, as to the latter: bum on the seat.

Xopher @ 240: Let me note that was a Franklin County Sheriff's Department employee who did that, not a member of the Ozark city police department.

Ozark is a nice little town. What I could tell you about sheriffs of the past, though...

Jenny @223: This sounds yummy. But -- cooked or raw rice?

Juli @275: I have been told that keeping the raw root vegetables in a "root cellar" - not quite fridge temp, but close, and preferably underground - means they'll keep all winter. I haven't gotten the knack of this myself, though: 3rd floor apartment. I am thinking of moving my "keeper share" veggies to the closet under the stairs (which is a titch underground on the front side of the building) and hoping that the building management people don't notice.

I agree with Clifton Royston @ 277.

Also -- I wonder if local food banks would take onion and carrot donations. Occasionally they'll take fresh-veg donations, I hear, but it depends on the food bank. (I thought of this yesterday when a guy called in to the Splendid Table show on NPR, complaining of too much butternut squash.)

Juli @275 -- do you have more room for storing canned food than frozen? If you look for recipes that call for a boiling water bath, rather than pressure cooking, a deep stock pot or spaghetti pot is all the special equipment you need. Look for _Putting Food By_, any edition, for recipes and instructions. I used to make a spicy carrot marmalade that also made a good relish with meat, and I've seen onion marmalade recipes too. Or you could try pickling them. Home-canned goods make great Christmas presents, too...

John J Arkansawyer @ 280... Ozark is a nice little town

...but watch out for low-flying mules?

I know there are several pro authors, maybe more than a few, who prefer using a text editor rather than a word processor. If there are any reading here, pro or novice or amateur, or if you know details about other authors' work processes, I'm curious about what markup language(s) or processes you use for turning a text file in a format that's easy to work with for writing, revising, etc. into a printed manuscript in standard format or a file in one of the standard formats that online zines accept submissions in. troff? LaTeX? Some form of SGML or XML? Something else?

I've been writing for about twenty years, but the last time I finished anything I thought good enough to submit to a magazine was before I switched from an ancient DOS-based word processor to editing plain text files in Emacs.

An update on something from last thread:

David Goldfarb OT131-#893:

Here's an amusing little link I just randomly came across: http://www.sonokids.org/wikifun/. It's inspired by a Japanese performance art café; you type in a search term, and it returns the Wikipedia article...that the previous person searched for. The next person gets the result of your search.

Mystery Google does the same thing.

Any time I want to transfer from a text editor to a word publisher I just do a select all, copy, and paste. Anything other than that is beyond me.

I work in a text editor because Microsoft Word annoys the crap out of me. To give you an example, I copy-edited a friend's text about a year ago and when fixing markup errors (tab instead of paragraph indent, too many spaces) the stupid program would, more often than not, screw up the formatting for multiple paragraphs rather than just fix the original error. In my notes to the author, I mentioned the value of typing in a text editor.

It was also obvious she'd learned to type and type well in the days of typewriters. Not only were there two spaces after every period (not graphically attractive in these days of variable-width font faces), but there were a number of other issues that came from muscle memory.

Oh. That Particle is not called "Horizontal Germans love David Hasselhoff."

My stupid little trick for clearing pretty much all formatting on stuff in Word is to select all, copy, paste into Notepad, select all, copy, and paste back into a new window in Word. Now I have something clean to work with, and Word doesn't try to be "smart" and mess things up.

I do this even when the end product is going to use extensive Word formatting.

Juli:
I agree with what Mark said too. I've recently taken to roasting a number of vegetables I would not have previously thought to (cauliflower florets pick up a really nice subtle taste) and carrots sound like a nice addition to that list.

Caramelized onions are wonderful in all kinds of things, and of course are also the basis for French onion soup. Because they cook down so much, you really need a lot of onions to make a good-sized batch of caramelized onions, so if you've got the patience that's perfect for your situation.

John Houghton @289: Inside Word, it's Select all > Cut > Edit > Paste special > Text without formatting (not sure what this last one is in English, as my interface is in French.) Saves a couple of steps.

re 207/259: I have now made the soup with rutabagas instead of turnips and consider this to be a superior version.

Clifton 290: Because they cook down so much

I measured one time when I was making a BUTTLOAD of carmelized onions. Came out to about six to one (that is, I started with six times the volume of raw onions that I ended up with carmelized).

Pendrift 291: It's "Unformatted Text" on the Word I have open right now (which calls itself Word 2003 (11.8106.8107) SP 2).

By the by, Xopher, I should let you know that I'm going to be making "Black Hole Brownies of Death" to take to my cousin-in-law's place in Austin this Thursday. They've been very popular every time I've made them.

Juli Thompson @275 asked: I got a CSA share for the first time this year, and in general, have enjoyed it. However, I have now exceeded my storage capacity for carrots and onions. I don't have any freezer space, and I'm not an accomplished cook. Any theories on what I can do with these lovely root veggies?

My Hearty Vegan Split Pea soup recipe takes 2 potatoes and 2 carrots per batch (a batch makes about 6 bowl-sized servings). It freezes like a dream, too -- cook it, puree it, pour into gallon ziplocs. Thaw by bagfuls in warm-water baths, or cut the bag off and dump the soup-chunk into a pot for stove-warming or a bowl for microwaving.

I know it freezes well because I had to make something on the order of 30 batches of it (4 batches at a time in my huge stockpot) for an SCA feast ...

However, given your particular situation, I'd adapt something heavier on the carrots and potatoes. Either roasted, cut-up, in a baking dish, or in a chowder, perhaps?

Or you could wash and chop them and freeze them, raw, in bags; they won't last as long in the freezer as store-bought froz veg (which are flash-frozen), but should be fine for several months at least.

While we're talking about soups, does anyone have any recipes for something soupy that lacks chunks and large amounts of (hot) spices and is both tasty and nourishing? I just had a molar extracted and really don't feel up to chewing anything but figure I'll feel the need to eat some time after the taste of blood goes away.

For anyone unsettled by the thought of what I just wrote, here's a kitten being fed with chopsticks.

Paul: I have recently become fond of congee, an Asian rice pudding. I use jasmine rice, simmered with a big knob of ginger in my crockpot. My favorite toppings, depending on my humour, are a fried egg, a spoonful of jam, or sea salt and black pepper. (Which is why I don't season it as it's cooking.)

When I had my wisdom teeth out, hot, easy food was wonderful. Cream of chicken soup felt amazingly good, like hot tea on a talked-out throat. I'm no kind of cook, but I'd recommend that and the squooshier-inclusioned Campbell's soups (chicken noodle et al).

The heat seemed to be the important thing. After hours napping with frozen corn pressed to my face, it was amazing.

David: YAY! Thanks for telling me that.

I'm making that recipe as a two-layer cake with orange ganache frosting for Thanksgiving.

Paul Duncanson @ 296, I recommend split pea soup. All you really need to make it is water or broth and split peas. I like to add a bay leaf and a bit of salt and pepper. Combine all ingredients and cook until the peas fall apart when you stir. If they don't fall apart enough, puree (I've successfully pureed with a regular old hand mixer in the pot, but you can use a blender, food processor or immersion blender).

If you want to get fancy and a little more nourishing, saute some chopped onions and carrots in olive oil in the pot first, before adding the dry peas and broth/water. And simmer some potato chunks or rice in there. Then puree the lot when it's all soft.

Split pea soup is pretty much my comfort food in fall and winter. Savory, smooth and easy to eat.

I enjoyed the kitten even though I was not unsettled.

Paul, I recommend this Cauliflower and White Cheddar Soup with Dill. I substituted a peeled and cubed sweet potato and added an apple in addition to the other ingredients, then blended it right in the stock pot with a hand mixer. It was lovely.

Potato-leek soup

Slice up one medium leek and cook in butter. (If you bring the butter to room temperature before melting it and cook over low heat, you won't burn it.) Once you've softened the leek, cube a buncha potatoes and throw them in the pot. Add some salt and cover with enough chicken or vegetable stock to cover + an inch. Simmer for about 45 minutes, partially covered, until the potatoes start to fall apart. Blend with milk, salt & white pepper to taste (you can use black pepper but white's prettier.) Be careful blending as you'll have to do it in stages and if it's too thick you can break your blender. (That's what immersion blenders are for, silly girl.)

Evil Rob likes to add Tabasco.

It keeps for a couple of days but you have to be careful microwaving as the heat tends to concentrate on the outside.

Potato-leek soup can also be made satisfactorily with standard yellow onion instead of leek, and water in place of any sort of stock. And if you cube the potatoes pretty small, they're soft enough to puree in half an hour, at least in the quantity I usually make it (one 5-quart Dutch oven full).

Butternut squash bisque is another nice pureed soup. Dice carrots-celery-onions, enough to cover the bottom of your pot, wilt them in butter, add peeled seeded chunks of squash and some salt, add stock or water to cover, simmer until squash is soft, puree with cream. Ginger and the assorted pumpkin pie spices are nice in it, but so are bay and thyme.

Cream of carrot soup works about the same. The recipe I have calls for a couple of jalapenos added to the pot, but if you don't want heat, you could leave it out. It's pretty mild even with the jalapeno, though.

Xopher, #300: Holy chocolate, Batman! What would it take to get you down here for Chocolate Decadence this coming year?

Elliott @ #295, "soup-chunk" is my favorite neologism of the day.

Re the "filthy pictures" particle: it reminds me of the story around my office time one of my colleagues put horse droppings in another guy's computer case. As the computer would heat up, it would apparently produce quite a smell. Took them weeks to find the source.

I gather he was advised not to pull that kind of trick again. And he hasn't; he's much more devious than that now.

Thanks for the soup suggestions. When I posted my question I was still all numb from anaesthetics and thinking 'This isn't too bad... i can deal with this.' Since then it seems that I must have left the energy to cook at the surgery. There's a kitchen with ingredients but too much blah to make stuff. The bag of frozen edamame is a good cold pack for the swelling, though.

Lying on the couch catching up with Dexter is about the best I can manage today.

I did drag myself to the supermarket to pick up a few Warhols to see me through the next couple of days but I will keep that cauliflower cheddar link for next winter or encounter with this level of dentistry (hopefully never again unless future budgets allow for an implanted replacement for what I lost today).

I had my wisdom teeth out many years ago but they were seen to be a problem from an x-ray before they caused any trouble. I have had post-operative dental pain before but never had a toothache before this last week. Sometimes no amount of brushing and flossing is enough. I did all the right things but something managed to sneak below gum level (possibly even pushed by floss) and the decay got to the roots directly.

Caroline: I doubted anyone would really be unsettled by the idea of oral surgery* but I wanted an excuse to post the link to a cute kitty video... not that we ever really need an excuse to post them, it just seemed better than "Oh, by the way... kitty!"

* Though the image of a young and rather cute Japanese-Australian woman leaning over me with bloody extraction forceps will be burned into my mind for a while.

abi @ 307:

That sounds pretty nasty. Much better would be to find baked goods inside one's computer instead.

Paul Duncanson @ 308:

I know I'm a bit late, but my first post-wisdom-teeth extraction meal was noodle soup, with jello for dessert. Other than that, the soups recommended here all look good.

abi @ 307: "I gather he was advised not to pull that kind of trick again. And he hasn't; he's much more devious than that now."

That's not quite Black Hat Guy territory, but it's getting there. I suppose Black Hat Guy is like a mathematical limit--you can approach it, but you never quite get there in real life.

Juli@275, I've occasionally made winter-veggie pies with potatoes, carrots, onions, and whatever else needs cooking. It's been a while - I think I probably boiled the veggies part way before putting them in a pie crust and then baking. (If you haven't made pie crust before, it's fun and useful, almost any generic recipe will do, though I usually use the one from Joy of Cooking because my mom did, except I use all butter instead of half butter and half Crisco.) Haven't tried freezing them.

My sister made a carrot-ginger soup the other night with her CSA carrots (the sort of winter produce you expect here in Hawaii??) Sauteed an onion, added carrots and water, cooked a while and blenderized, then added a bunch of fresh ginger and some other spices that seemed to work.

Dear People Who Care about Typography:

I have just found that the PBS series Independent Lens is re-running the documentary Helvetica.

As they say, check your local listings.

I somehow missed this when it ran early this year; I have instructed Mr. Tivo to watch it for me this time around.

I have never seen a film about a typeface before, and am looking forward to the experience.

Paul Duncanson @ 308... Lying on the couch catching up with Dexter (...) I did drag myself to the supermarket to pick up a few Warhols to see me through the next couple of days but I will keep that cauliflower cheddar

Wow. This is filled to the brim with modern goofiness.

I did get up off the couch to go to the supermarket, if that helps the images in your head look a bit more sane. The soup is Campbell's though.

abi @ 307... Speaking of which... I wonder if my group's management realizes how deep in droppings they'd be if something happened to me.

Re the footpaths in Brasilia particle;

The book A Pattern Language asserts that traffic circles emerge spontaneously if everybody keeps right of the monument.

It is almost within my skill set to create a program that tests that theory.

Open Thread linkiness:

Photos of Los Angeles - with no people

(via)

Oh wow, man, lookit the pretty colors...

Rutabagas also evil.

314
I figured that one out (art history/appreciation ... it had to be good for something).

I have sympathy, and all the advice on soups is good. (Braces required removal of four premolars, as two pairs, and later two wisdom teeh. Fortunately they were simple extractions, done under local anesthetic.)

Paul Duncanson @296: While we're talking about soups, does anyone have any recipes for something soupy that lacks chunks and large amounts of (hot) spices and is both tasty and nourishing?

Cream of Dinner soup was invented with precisely this purpose in mind. Its inspiration derives from when I had my wisdom teeth out. After two days without eating much, I randomly burst into tears over nothing at all.

Howard looked at Jon and said, "Blood sugar crash." Jon nodded, went into the kitchen and heaved a can of Campbell's Beef and Bean soup into the blender. One of the best meals I ever had. (They don't seem to make Beef and Bean anymore, sadly.)

And @308: If you're feeling really tired and/or lazy, I find most any good soup works when blended. I try to keep some random stuff on hand for such occasions. (Though, as Nicole has pointed out, they can lack visual appeal.)

Anyone who has ever had to deal with convention dealer rooms, crafts-show booths, or anything similar needs to read today's Two Lumps. Scroll down slowly for full effect. My partner howled so loudly from the back of the house that I had to go ask what the hell was going on!

Paul & Jacque (317-318): Wow. Both of those links are mind-bogglingly cool!

Lee 305: Holy chocolate, Batman! What would it take to get you down here for Chocolate Decadence this coming year?

Um...is that a cake, or an event like Southern Decadence? Either way it sounds pretty good!

I think I'm just too lazy to chew. When my brother had his jaw fixed-- six weeks no chewing, but not wired shut and turkey-baster-fed-- our usual dinners didn't change much. Lots of roni, macaroni and cheese, things like that. He doesn't eat chocolate pudding any more, but he didn't get sick of chewing-unnecessary food.

All the recipe talk here makes me wish I liked food better. I like reading about it, I like the playing-pretend feeling of cooking or following a recipe from here... but I'm not a food person. My advice for anything like this is usually for boxed and canned meals that work.

Minor Amusements: I just found a letter in my mail-pile whose return address read "Durbin, South Africa". For a moment, I thought it was from our B. Durbin, occasioning some wonderment. In fact, it was a birthday card from my peripatetic stepmother, who was visiting the city of that name.

David Harmon @ 325... Not Deanna Durbin, aka "Winnipeg's Sweetheart"?

Xopher, #323: It's our annual party, which is themed around chocolate. We haven't picked a date yet, as it has to fit around our con-going schedule, but it generally occurs in late March or early April. We have some limited crash space, and there's a Courtyard by Marriott a block from our house.

David Harmon: I'm a horrible correspondent. :D

Jacque @ 318:

And you can control the kaleidoscope by moving your mouse over it. Really neat!

We interrupt the rumbling of my stomach as I read all the food-related comments for a science news bulletin: yesterday the Large Hadron Collider achieved collision of two counter-rotating proton beams for the first time. Collision energy was 450 giga electron volts, well below the full design energy, but high enough to generate debris detectable by all four of the detector systems.

Note that these collisions did not result in the Earth being eaten by a black hole.

Bruce Cohen @ 330... these collisions did not result in the Earth being eaten by a black hole

...in spite of its being a sucky movie.

Bruce Cohen (Mr.Microscope) @329: Note that I failed to provide a pointer to the root page, wherein you can pick different patterns to play with.

Wow.

I'm just back from a trial aikido lesson, and man was it great. It's in my son's karate dojo, which we already knew was a warm and welcoming place. They made allowances for my poor Dutch, and I got to work with some really neat guys. I don't know if it was more fun to be the one doing the moves, or feeling the way that my own force could turn me like a great wheel and wind me up on the mat.

More seriously, I can see that what aikido has to teach me as a person (at least as much as the physical) is what I need to learn right at this point in my life. And it suits my character.

And did I mention the bit about the fun?

Abi@333 - yeah, isn't it cool? I took a theater course back in college, and the teacher's boyfriend gave us an aikido lesson one day. He had me throw a punch at him, and probably put an ounce or two of pressure into redirecting me; I'd have ended up flat on the floor if he hadn't then caught me. (By the way, it only takes one aikido master to change a light bulb, but the bulb has to attack first...)

Many years later, Nancy Lebovitz suggested I try qi gong, which is sort of the exercise version of tai chi. After the book she recommended, I took several local workshops and classes in the area, and the teacher I went to most often also did some tai chi classes. There's a lot of the same circular motion and awareness of what direction you're going. I enjoyed it as a self-awareness discipline; if I'm actually caught in a street fight or something I'll be able to breathe deeply and maybe even move slowly.

abi @ 333:

*big grin*

Just moving and working your body in a disciplined way is great fun, and the process of learning is very rewarding. And then the way it can engage your mind as well. It doesn't hurt that you get a bit of a workout in the process, too.

I really liked aikido. I miss doing it, but I think I stopped right before it would have turned bad for me. How I wish I'd managed rolls, though.

AKICIML: What's a good place to send my ponytail? I just had it cut off. No dye, but some gray hair (I found one place online that said "no more than 5% gray", and I'm pretty sure I have more than that).

I'd like to recommend that old threads be protected from thread necromancy, automatically sending new messages into moderation.

David G @ #337, Locks of Love says it will accept gray hair and resell it. See item #9.

David Goldfarb @ 337:

A couple years ago I sent mine in to Locks of Love. I'll likely be doing it again this January.

Re #330: For 31 years, I have worked at a lab which operated the most energetic particle accelerator in the world.

Fermilab's Tevatron retains that title, and will until the Large Hadron Collider exceeds 980 GeV per beam.*

Records held by Fermilab.

* Billion electron volts. 980 GeV is about 1.57 ergs, 157 nanojoules, 38 nanocalories, or 149 pico-British Thermal Units.

VERY effective commercial.

Damn, that gave me the creeps! Which is exactly what it's supposed to do.

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions. I made pot roast the other day, and have a container of the juices left, so French Onion Soup seems like a good idea. (The CSA just delivered a bunch of cheeses, so there will be something to melt on top.) Also the carrot ginger soup, and roasted carrots.

By the way, when I said I have no freezer space, i wasn't kidding. I have a side by side (inherited from a previous owner) and it's full of potato soup, butternut squash soup, cabbage and ground beef something or other, and other earlier rounds of the CSA.

I want to get a stand alone to stick in the garage, but the circuits randomly trip* as it is, and I'm afraid to add to the load. (I've had the electrician out, and he just shrugs. Is there someone more electrically competent than an electrician?)

*They also trip if I do some known things, like run the microwave when the basement lights are on. But there are still days that I come home from work to find that the house is dark and the garage door opener won't work, and have to feel my way through the dark to the fuse box.

Juli, you have a garage? Get a couple of Rubbermaid bins, punch a few air holes, and keep the carrots and onions in bins in the garage. It's not precisely a root cellar, but it's likely to be a decent ambient temperature for keeping root vegetables in common storage.

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions. I made pot roast the other day, and have a container of the juices left, so French Onion Soup seems like a good idea. (The CSA just delivered a bunch of cheeses, so there will be something to melt on top.) Also the carrot ginger soup, and roasted carrots.

By the way, when I said I have no freezer space, i wasn't kidding. I have a side by side (inherited from a previous owner) and it's full of potato soup, butternut squash soup, cabbage and ground beef something or other, and other earlier rounds of the CSA.

I want to get a stand alone to stick in the garage, but the circuits randomly trip* as it is, and I'm afraid to add to the load. (I've had the electrician out, and he just shrugs. Is there someone more electrically competent than an electrician?)

*They also trip if I do some known things, like run the microwave when the basement lights are on. But there are still days that I come home from work to find that the house is dark and the garage door opener won't work, and have to feel my way through the dark to the fuse box.

David Goldfarb, #337, I sent mine to Locks of Love. I know two people with alopecia. It's nice to give wigs to people with cancer, but their hair usually grows back (like mine did after the renal failures), but people with alopecia will lack hair their entire lives.

I've seen some people say online that they've heard bad things about Locks of Love...I haven't actually heard the stories myself, I've only heard of them. Looking at their site, they do seem to make it pretty convenient.

Bill Higgins @ 341... Tevatron vs Hadron sounds like a Saturday-morning cartoon of the 1980s, or like one of Godzilla's wrestling matches.

Zelda @232

Thanks for the recommendation - not too late: Christmas is, after all, just around the corner.

The Quaker Reader is a little hard to get hold of here (in the UK), but it looks like I can get a good used copy shipped from the US fairly cheaply. I'll bear it in mind!

Sorry for the double post.

Rikibeth, that's a helpful idea! I'll do that.

Notice To Whom It May Concern

I'm going outside. I may be some time.

On musical cruise Sydney - Hobart, then in Tassie high plateau. Should take a couple of weeks. Many places I'll be aren't online. It's possible if things fall out as I fear, and I'm sent back to hospital on return, offline time will extend. (Bloody 'palliative'. So much more to do, but strength runs out like sand.)

Mez: have fun!

Mez @ 351... Best wishes.

As far as I know, Jay Lake will be undergoing surgery to deal with his cancer within the hour. My best wishes to you.

#345 Juli

Have you considered getting a food dehydrator and dehydrating carrots and potatos and such?

Follow-up to something that was discussed here a few months ago: the census worker who was found hanged in KY with the word "FED" scrawled on his body has been ruled a suicide, who staged his death scene to look like a homicide so that his survivors would get insurance benefits.

On the one hand, I'd rather believe this, because it's less frightening than the alternative. On the other hand... cover-ups have happened before.

#355 @345 -- I didn't think about that! I've never done potatoes, but carrots dehydrate well and tightly sealed bags or boxes of dehydrated carrots should keep nicely in your slightly-cooler garage and are always handy to throw into soups and stews. Also leeks, if you get any.

Mez @351:

Enjoy the cruise! Keep us posted on the rest, please?

Lee #356:

Cui bono? The government would love to be able to prosecute a murder, let alone make a point of "don't mess with government workers", so they have little incentive for a "cover-up". The guy himself, however, had an obvious (insurance) benefit for his family, and a probably-terminal disease to boot.

#196/207-ish We got some amazing pink/fuchsia egg and lemon soup using dark purple heritage carrots. Tasty, too.

Open threadiness for Thanksgiving: cooking a 25-lb. turkey in 30 seconds. With thermite.

Lila, is any of the turkey edible afterward?

David, #359: I'm not seriously arguing that there must be a cover-up; my concern is that it's a small town, where the people doing the investigating might not be so anxious to prosecute as all that, depending on who looked as if they might have done it. However, with a strong motive for suicide, I'm not as concerned as I might have been otherwise.

<narrator voice=serling>
Submitted for your approval:

Seen today at the Boulder recycling drop-off: two pallets, each stacked about three or four deep with sealed roughly breadbox sized shipping boxes.

The contents of the boxes? Dianetics.
</narrator voice=serling>

Jacque @364:

obPoem.

abi @333: I love Aikido, although for some reason, I've never been able to persist at it for more than a month. :-(

I think it's what ballroom dancing would be if it was reincarnated as a martial art.

I got just a little bit of training and rolling during my time in Tae Kwan Do. Can't tell you how many times that's saved my bacon. My favorite is the time I was roughhousing with somebody at in Jon Singer's living room. They jumped up, ran out the front door, I ran out after them. My feet hit the snow on the front lawn and went right out from under me. Entirely without thinking about it, I rolled, and came up running. Whee!

Bill Stewart @334: Title of the book recommended by Nancy Lebovitz, please?

Lee @342: Youtube insists on sending me to their sign-up page from that link.

Jacque @ 366 -- It looks like the video that Lee linked to has been removed.

Jacque, Joel -- there's a version that still works here.

As of 12:26 EST the link is working for me. It might matter that I'm configured to do HD...

Jacque, and thus the Scientologists keep their sales numbers high.

Jacque @366:
I think it's what ballroom dancing would be if it was reincarnated as a martial art.

I certainly found that my body posture met with the sensei's approval if I thought "dancer" rather than "martial artist" as I moved. And, apart from the other rank beginner I sparred with, my classmates felt like dance partners. Our maneuvers were a shared thing; that was part of the feeling of welcome.

The other thing it felt like, of course, was a foreign culture. (Of course, because it's rooted in a foreign culture.) But that's actually the easy part for me, since it made the Dutchness before and after class that much more normal.

And the only element that really did not feel foreign was the degree to which our actions were rooted in, and surrounded by, stillness and silence. I've been too long away from that.

P J @ #362, one of the guys in the video samples it and pronounces it "not bad". YMMV, I'm sure.

abi @ 371...

The other rank beginner?
Don't people take showers anymore?

Serge @373:

Well, to be fair, only one of the two other beginners in the class might want to reconsider his laundry schedule. There were also a couple of more advanced users who were a bit sharp-smelling. It highlighted to me that I need to incorporate gi-washing into my routine so it's always sure to get done.

I didn't end up sparring with the non-smelly beginner.

Serge #373: What have you got against good, old-fashioned, tub-baths?

Fragana @ #375, c'mon. There's a drought in New Mexico, doncha know?

Hmm. Chile-scented bubble bath, Serge?

Fragano @ 375... Linkmeister @ 376... I haven't taken a bath in years. Showers are much more efficient. Besides, the bathtub is where I put the cat litter box, to keep the 'goodies' out of the reach of my weirdo dogs.

abi @ 374... I didn't end up sparring with the non-smelly beginner

...which means you ended up sparring with the rank and flies beginner?

Serge #377: Why not take Linkmeister's advice?

In odd synchronicity with the early parts of this thread -- Please wish me luck that tomorrow's vet visit confirms that the cat who appeared[0] in my garden a week ago[1] is, as it appears[2], not an owned cat.

[0] The neighbourhood has a fairly large number of felines, feral, semi-feral and owned, and is thus broken into territories so clearly defined (and defended) that even humans notice the owning and unexpected felines.
[1] ... has now reappeared[3], and been inveigled into reclining on the end of my bed
[2] ... and subsequently found to have been fed by the down-the-street neighbours, on occasion[4], and believed to have been living under their porch ...
[3] Between rain and travel, I'm not particularly surprised at the absence... especially given [1]
[4] Said occasion clearly not being entirely regular ...

Jacque@366, the book Nancy recommended was "The Way of Energy" by Lam Kam Chuen. I've seen a newer version of that book in the stores, which was a lot more Newagey, but which also re-ordered some of the exercises in ways that probably make it a bit easier to learn. His style is called Zhan Zhang, which basically means "Standing" - the main focus is a lot more static than most of the other styles I've run into. Another book on the topic, The Way of Qigong, by Kenneth S. Cohen, talks a lot about the origins and different types of Qigong. (And next to it on my shelf was Awareness Through Movement, by Moshe Feldenkrais, which I really need to spend some time with again.)

abi @365: obPoem. I scared the guinea pigs laughing.

Lee @368: Um, yeah. "Look, dear, SHINY!"

Bill Stewart @381: Thank you. I'll put it on my list and not go to Amazon-do-not-pass-go. (I have about five books in my "recently bought, must read next" queue.) (It's really unfair that books are so much easier to acquire than they are to actually read.)

(And now I predict the traditional "How many books I have in my 'to read' pile." :-)

... and, indeed, it seems that she wasn't an owned cat (something which is now resolved ;) )

AKICIML: In an NPR interview, Daniyal Mueenuddin likens Palestine's madrassas to The Lord of the Rings, in which (he says)

there's a wonderful scene in that in which the evil lord, whose name I forget, is sort of building an army out of clay and dust and underground, these vats, making these evil warriors.

Jacque @ 382... And now I predict the traditional "How many books I have in my 'to read' pile."

Mine can be seen here. Not as bad as some, I guess. It is properly defended by Atomic Robo at the bottom, and at the top by the Bunny who decimated the ranks of the Knights of the Round Table. Oh, and in case you're wondering, the computer is displaying the ML page with your comment.

Dan Hoey at 384, I suggest he's not remembering the book at all: he's referring to the movies, and in particular the scene in which Saruman's orcs are extracting the Uruk-hai from the earth.

xeger @ 383:

Congratulations on your new-found feline friend.

Dan Hoey @ 384:

I agree with Lizzy L; I think he's remembering that scene in the film where Saruman is growing Uruk-hai in icky pods.

Serge @ 385:

The pictures on your wall caught my eye. What are they and who are they by?

Open-thready linky goodness:

If you want to see a huge collection of old maps, try the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. You don't even have to be a cartography buff to be impressed by this.

KeithS @ 387... They are by Dawn Wilson. I had come across her art at cons in the early 1980s. She later did some book covers, if I remember correctly.

Re: Teresa's Cab Particle, I have a fair number of those types of stone cabs, but I don't bezel them with wire, I bezel them with beads.

Marilee, #389: Anyone who's interested in pretty cabs should check out this guy. He was at the HBS show this year, and his stuff was fabulous. And he sells on eBay.

Thanks, Lizzy L (386) and KeithS (387) for pointing to the Uruk-hai in the movie.

Back from Thanksgiving at Katie's cousin's place. The brownies were a big hit; there was a 6-year-old boy there in particular who kept saying "The best brownies in the whole world!"

Serge @ 388:

Looks like this column is about her, which would make this her blog. Seems she's doing different stuff these days.

KeitS @ 393... Thanks for the links. It's been almost 25 years since we last met, but I recognize her. And that definitely is her style.

Blah-news dept: nephew Josh isn't into superheroes or dinosaurs anymore. I guess it was bound to happen that he'd become a fan of TV sports like all the other males of the family. Hopeful-news dept: Josh still likes drawing a lot.

Definitely-good-news dept: Jay Lake is out of cancer surgery and posting about it.

AKICIML: As part of the (hopefully) final phase of dealing with the "it's been in storage for a decade" mountain, I am sorting the fabric stash, and could do with finding a Ravelry-like site for fabric. Any suggestions?

Teresa:
There might be something wrong with your Linotte annuity URL. It keeps telling me there's an error and then sending me to my Gmail account.

I found something which might be it here: http://www.chicagofed.org/publications/workingpapers/wp2009_12.pdf
A copy also appears here: http://www.heraldica.org/personal/linotte.pdf but this PDF seemed to be a bit messed up, showing about half blank pages.

David 392: The brownies were a big hit; there was a 6-year-old boy there in particular who kept saying "The best brownies in the whole world!"

*dances happily* You're not just saying that to make me the happiest little (ha, I wish) baker in that selfsame whole world, are you? Because I'm sitting here with a big stupid smile on my face!!! Thank you.

Xopher, I promise you that I would never say such a thing unless it were true.

Tonight, on the Skiffy Channel, Beyond Sherwood Florist... Not really, and, yes, I stole that one from Mike Grell. Tonight's movie is called Beyond Sherwood Forest, and stars Robin Dunne as Robin You-know-who vs a dragon. I doubt it'll be as much fun as George and the Dragon, but who knows?

Lee, #390, very nice! But I think I have more cabs than I can use in my life, so I'm not buying a lot now.

D'oh, I just figured out that "pretty cabs" doesn't mean taxi art cars. heh.

397
I think the one from the Chicago Fed is correct. It's more interesting that first appears, but talk about long-term!

Earl Cooley III @ 402 ...
D'oh, I just figured out that "pretty cabs" doesn't mean taxi art cars. heh.

I'll trade you wondering why Marilee's hoard of cabs means that she can always get cabs, while the rest of us stand there wondering what's not obvious about windmilling arms, pointing at vehicles for hire...

I bought The Adventures of Robin Hood, claiming to be the complete first season of 39 episodes, in Target for five dollars plus sales tax on Saturday. If the series hadn't been mentioned here some weeks ago, I don't know if I would have noticed it....

Paula Lieberman @ 405... Is that the one ith Michael Praed? Probably not, because that series didn't have that many episodes, not even including the ones with Jason Connery, if I remember correctly. Maybe it's the series where Robin fights off invading Mongol Hordes. Or the one from a couple of years ago. As for the Skiffy Channel's "Robin Hood" movie last night, I gave up before the half-way point. It wasn't bad. It was too pedestrian, in spite of its having a young woman who turned into a dragon. And Julian Sand didn't even get to chew up much of the scenery.

Open thready goodness: 12 and a half minutes of video highlights from the latest shuttle launch. This isn't just the usual footage - much of it comes from cameras attached to the outside of the shuttle. After the opening credits (over a shot of the external tank separation from the point of view of a camera on the ET) it runs from the rollout from the assembly building through launch to orbit, much of it from angles I have never seen before

Paul Duncanson @ 407... Wow.

Paul Duncanson @ 407: the schmaltzy music is really annoying. The one time I've watched an ascent, I really liked hearing the mission controllers; why couldn't they piece together some of that for a soundtrack?

Elliott Mason @ 409...

I dunno. Then again I like shmaltz.
("Tell us something we don't already know, Serge.")
Humph.

For my fellow shmaltzers, here is the grand finale of The Right Stuff.

#486 Serge

It's the Robin Hood series from half a century ago. No, it's not the one with the Replacement Robin Hood mid-series (the BBC one that has Michael Praed as one of the Robin Hoods).

Paula Lieberman @ 411... Oh, you mean, the Richard Greene one. I followed it religiously. My wife had never heard about it until she knew me. As a result, she has no childhood-inspired fondness for it and hates it when I start singing "Robin Hood, Robin Hood and his band of men..."

Political OT-ness: Ok, I can understand that the Dem leadership sometimes does things more to the right than their base wants to because they don't want to lose elections. But what on Earth do they think what the electoral consequences- not to mention human consequences- of this will be?

Conservatives spend half a year telling old people that the Democrats want to ration their medical care and "pull their plugs", as a result, millions of old people get extremely angry at the Democrats and loudly ask to "keep the government of my Medicare!", and then some of the leading Dem politicians get together to come up with a new way to slash Social Security and Medicare budgets? What kind of head injury makes people come up with this kind of stuff?

Raphael @ #413, it's called fiscal scoldism, and it's a disease transmitted by wealthy people like Pete Peterson, meant explicitly to impose discipline and implicitly poverty on Americans of fewer means.

xeger, #404, actually, there's a fleet of cabs in my city that will usually get here about five minutes after I call, so that's not so bad. I've had really massive pain since Friday week ago (that has lessened a lot today) and I was wondering if I could get into the van to see the doctor or would have to get a cab. If things get better, I won't have to see the doctor at all.

413, 414
Also known as I've got mine, too bad for the rest of you.
(Like they actually can live without the rest of us, who maintain the entire structure that supports them and their lifestyle. Grumble, grr.)

Bleargh, on re-reading my #414: lesser means, not fewer.

Elliott @ 409: There's a part of me that agrees with you, another that doesn't. Communication between shuttle and control would be interesting and educational... but on the other hand, the images don't need anything accompanying them (for me - less devoted spaceflight fans might enjoy it more if they knew what they were seeing). This is some of the best space porn I have seen. Isn't porn supposed to have a cheesy soundtrack?

I just noticed an odd browser behavior on ML -- in the currently-closed "Boycott <Voldemart>"¹ thread, when I scroll down to the bottom, the whole page pulses up and down slightly -- it might be two or three pixels. The motion is up-down, then a pause, and the total cycle is not quite once per second. I'm using Firefox 3.5.5 on Ubuntu 9.10. Can someone point me to another closed thread (with comments -- that is, not ancient archives) so that I can check if it happens there?

¹ Thanks, Renatus!

Whoops, never mind -- I just reopened the thread, and the pulsing is gone. (I'd closed it, but then thought to see what disabling scripting would do.) Interestingly, a simple refresh had not affected it. I'm guessing it was some odd leftover from the thread closing (removing the comment box et al.) while I had the page open.

David, #419: Volde*Mart T-shirt.

Not our most popular design, but it has its adherents.

Serge #412: Oh, you mean, the Richard Greene one.

A little blurred vision makes that Richard Gere's Robin Hood; I figure the high concept for it would be a timeslipped prequel to Nights in Rodanthe (with Diane Lane as Marian, Christopher Meloni as the Sheriff of Nottingham and a startling, yet satisfying cameo performance by Scott Glenn as King Richard).

Earl Cooley III @ 422... That would be an improvement over Kevin Costner's version.

Dan Hoey at 384

Perhaps he's thinking of the Cauldron-Born from Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series.

(although I did know one D&D player who conflated Gollum with the Golem.)

Golem Gollum
Golem Gollum
Fish, fish, fish,
Fish, fish, fish

How we wants our Pwecious
How we wants out Pwecious,

Swish swish swish
Swish swish swish!

Serge, there is one reason to watch Kevin Coster's version, and his name is Alan Rickman.

Sometimes people ask for the definition of "chewing scenery." I point at him and say, "And he's the only one allowed to do it."

(P.S. You have a Vorpal Bunny! Yay!)

B Durbin @ 426... Rickman often can be the best thing in a movie. He can chew on the scenery, but he can also be very quiet, as he showed in Truly Madly Deeply. By the way, a couple of years ago, there was an exhibit of costumes from historical movies in Santa Fé, so my wife and I went. One of the costumes was Rickman's from Sense and Sensibility, and I was quite pleased to realize that I could wear that costume without any tailoring. Mind you, the similarities stop there.

As for my library's guardian...

"I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little bunny, isn't it?"

B. Durbin #426: there is one reason to watch Kevin Coster's version, and his name is Alan Rickman

What did you think of Morgan Freeman's performance as Azeem? I've liked his work since the days of The Electric Company.

Earl @ 428:
I've liked his work since the days of The Electric Company.

Me too. A really talented guy: engineer, dancer, actor. I just saw "Feast of Love", in which he plays a professor here at Portland State University, with Jane Alexander as his wife. And who else gets to talk crap to Batman?

Earl @ 428:
I've liked his work since the days of The Electric Company.

Me too. A really talented guy: engineer, dancer, actor. I just saw "Feast of Love", in which he plays a professor here at Portland State University, with Jane Alexander as his wife. And who else gets to talk crap to Batman?

Argh! Sorry for the double post. Stupid Safari in iPhone hung posting the first one and kept showing the preview page, so I hit post again, silly me.

"Wait a minute. Robin Hood steals money from my pocket, forcing me to hurt the public, and they love him for it? That's it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas."
- Alan Rickman in Prince of Thieves

"No man controls my destiny... especially not one who attacks downwind and stinks of garlic."
- Morgan Freeman in Prince of Thieves

I couldn't get the Google Docs sidebar item about the Linotte annuity to show me anything, but for those who are curious and care to save about three seconds in Google:

The Case of the Undying Debt

An Example of a LONG-Lived Debt

Oops, didn't scroll back QUITE far enough to see if someone had already posted something. Sorry about that. The first link of my two is really good though!

Julia Jones #396: You can try selling your fabric on etsy.com . The supplies section has a fabric subsection.

Julia Jones #396: You can try selling your fabric on etsy.com . The supplies section has a fabric subsection.

Actually, my best memory of "Yo, Merry Dudes" (the Kevin Costner Robin Hood) was one shared by a friend.

A large group of our local SCA gathered and went to the old (now gone) Plaza Theater to see it together. Afterwards everyone went to the restrooms before leaving to go swarm some place to eat.

This theater was lavishly decorated in the 1920s art deco style. Everything, I mean everything was decorated.

The restrooms had open arched doorways. One of the ladies caught a glimpse into the entry to the men's room and sqee'd, "Would you look at that! Oh. My!!!!" A flock of increasingly excited women gathered, scaring the crap out of every man in that restroom.

They were looking at a medallion on the wall, a Calontir cross...

Paula Helm Murray @ 437... Robin Hood, Prince of Sieves?

Paula Helm Murray @ 437 ...
They were looking at a medallion on the wall, a Calontir cross...

Leaving the men cross, in Calontir? ;)

Okay, Morgan Freeman is pretty good. In fact, I like the whole movie despite its many flaws; I'm a Robin Hood junkie and I'll take anachronistic versions if they're having fun. (Quite honestly, an historically accurate version would probably be pretty depressing.)

I went to see the Errol Flynn version in a re-release with my mother, and there's one point at which Robin Hood walks into the castle with a poached deer over his shoulders and proceeds to tell the bad guys off. At this point, I leaned over to my mother and whispered, "Actually, I am an escaped lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world." She had a hard time suppressing her giggles.

B Durbon @ 440... Did you see the one where Patrick Bergin is Robin, and Uma Therman is Marian? I seem to remember it was quite decent.

#438 Serge

Robin of Sherwood had the clap, and was dripping? (Sieve what you tarted?)

Paula Lieberman @ 442... He blamed Trickle John for that. And let's not mention Will Scarlett Fever.

Serge— I won't. Much.

Then there's the fryer's tuck....

#412 Serge
You -could- buy the first season DVD for $5 at Target I suspect... besides, she's a romance writer, and that show I strongly suspect is something that influenced a lot of major romance writers....

Then there's the fryer's tuck....

#412 Serge
You -could- buy the first season DVD for $5 at Target I suspect... besides, she's a romance writer, and that show I strongly suspect is something that influenced a lot of major romance writers....

As mentioned on Boing Boing, this might be the best 17 seconds ever.

Surprised kitty

Wrt to the first link on the "Suggestion for Something Awful," I can only quote the adherents of Dead Elf Fandom and say "It is to fwow up."

This is just to say that Surprised Kitty really brightened my day. Thank you for posting that.

Rickman was splendid in The Barchester Chronicles (1982 -- indeed the entire cast was superb.

Still, I don't think anyone chews scenery like Sean Connery.

Love, C.

Constance @ 450... For Robin-related chewing of scenery, my vote is for Nicholas Grace.

Serge@451 -- Hear, hear. And the scenery-chewing contest between Nicholas Grace and Lewis Collins in the third season is something to behold.

Xopher #448: I thought: "Where are the trailers?"

Serge @441: Did you see the one where Patrick Bergin is Robin, and Uma Therman is Marian?

For some reason, I initially read the last word as "Martian". Merry Robin and his band in Barsoom Green?

Serge @ 451: Nickolas Grace? Wow, you just reminded me that he spoke at my college in the early 80s, when he was still primarily known as a Shakespearian actor (and for Brideshead Revisited). It was a memorable appearance.

Did you see the one where Patrick Bergin is Robin, and Uma Therman is Marian? I seem to remember it was quite decent.

My favorite Robin Hood, by quite a stretch. If only for the not-very-stealth pagan imagery through the whole thing. :)

Julie L @ 454... Either that, or Uma Therman is a Martian who crashes in the middle of Sherwood Forest. How long before that plot shows up on the Skiffy Channel?

Ginger @ 455... From what Judi Trott once said in an interview, Nicholas Grace was fun to work with. He had a bit part in The Ideal Husband, by the way. He looked very short, next to Jeremy Northam. Of course, Grace may have been standing in a trench, and Northam on a box.

Carrie S @ 456... Still, it was more stealthy than in Robin of Sherwood, what with the latter having John Abineri's headdress being an antlered deer. I should look up Bergin's version on NetFlix.

They're predicting a possibility of snow this Friday. Here in Houston. Snow. *boggle*

Steve C @ #460, "Here in Houston. Snow. *boggle*"

See? Global warming is a hoax, a hoax, I tell you!

Serge @458: No, he's short. Er, perhaps I should say, he's condensed. Under-tall?

Steve C., same forecast here in Athens GA, where we do occasionally get snow, but rarely this early.

Ginger @ 462... IMDB says that Grace is 5'8, which is an average height for men, and only 2 inches shorter than Daniel Craig, who is 2 inches shorter than me, who am (?) 2 inches shorter than Northam.

Serge @ 464

Ginger @ 462... IMDB says that Grace is 5'8, which is an average height for men, and only 2 inches shorter than Daniel Craig, who is 2 inches shorter than me, who am (?) 2 inches shorter than Northam.

No one said there was going to be math! And word problems, too!

A question for the combined wisdom and experience of Making Light:

A friend of mine is in need of an affordable wheelchair accessible apartment in Newark, Delaware, near the University of Delaware.

We've Googled, contacted the Delaware social services, and other of the usual means of searching for things, but I was hoping that the combined experience of ML would be able to help her find a few more options.

XKCD: The Movie

I don't think I'm skinny enough to play any of the XKCD characters.

The TransAtlantic Fan Fund has some great auctions up for people who like books. There's two rare books, but also opportunities to bid for your name as a character in a book. Cory is up to $227, Charlie to $233, and plenty more that are more affordable!

Web creator apologizes for the double-slash.

I always suspected that was arbitrary! (via Neddie Jingo, who's now back online.)

Jacque @382:

Pile, _singular_? Are there such people?

(I have my piles in alphabetical order. A few don't have any books in them. R and S, for example, take up several piles each...)

--Dave

Open threadiness, and signs of the times: My daughter will be reading Antigone this year in school, and while comparing online merchants, I was amused and bemused by their offers to notify me by email when the author publishes something new.

Bah, they took the snow out of our forecast. Just wind and rain now. Whee.

#472 Debbie

Perhaps some of the lost works will get found...

Remember not long ago when people were toying with the idea of a Making Light relaxacon? TexAnne set up LiveJournal's Fluoro-con for that purpose, but it occurred to me that we could use it for whenever someone from out-of-town would like to meet fellow ML folks in the real world.

That having been said...

Anybody interested in a Gathering of Light in the Bay Area, on Decemeber 20, or on December 19? Oakland's Pacific Coast Brewing Company can be a bit noisy, but it's within a few blocks of BART's 12th Street Station. Mind you, if you know of another place that would be ok with others, do let me know. A good time is usually had, in spite of what this photo from our last such gathering might lead you to think.

Debbie @472: Maybe someone is writing Sophocles fan fiction.

472: well, be honest here. If it does happen, you'd really want to know, wouldn't you?

(Probably, you'd get notified when new editions/translations of the existing plays were published...)

464 - given Serge's accent, this comment irrestistibly reminds me of Ian Holm as a morose Napoleon in "Time Bandits".
"Alexander the Great - five feet exactly. Incredible. One inch shorter than me..."

ajay @ 477...

"I am a man who can be killed, but not insulted!"
- Ian Holm as Napoléon in The Emperor's New Clothes

The idea of undiscovered works by long-dead authors is intriguing. Or at least good for a giggle.

Oedipus II - Mama Told Me There'd Be Days Like This

I once wrote a short piece that claimed it was an excerpt from a lost Shakespeare play based on Dante's Purgatorio, about a going-away party for someone in Purgatory who was about to be released. (The party was actually for a coworker who'd found a job outside the hellhole company I worked for at the time.)

I called it A Purgatory Revel, or Party Til You Puke.

wrt the Sidelight on Edie the subway-riding hamster: after a little clickthrough adventure I found that the photographer is a breathtaking jello artiste. Seriously, y'all need to check that out. She keeps a jello blog and everything.

(This is a safe space for me to confess that while writing this I had to think about whether jello needed a hyphen and capital letters, but ultimately I decided in this case it didn't. All of her Jell-O is jello, but not all her jello is Jell-O.)

Andrew @481:

Skimming through the individual photos from the Flickr link for the jello artiste, I note they're all labeled Jello Molds (Set).

OK, I thought it was funny. But then, I'm pretty ill right now.

abi @ 482... Ill? Annoyingly ill, or worse? Either way, I hope you get better soon.

Abi @482: Right. When she tried to photograph the jello molds (unset) they just ran out all over the table and the dog tracked it all over the apartment. Lesson learned.

Hope you feel better soonest.

Feel better soon, abi!

Just the lurgy, nothing interesting like flu. I'm vexed that it's made me miss aikido, and hoping it goes away tonight, because I have to be single parent for a couple of days now.

Thanks for the good wishes.

Abi, it's going around here too, A friend with a minivan was supposed to come help haul some stuff to a thrift store. Then one of her charges (she's a nanny) came down with something and can't go to school today. Then her husband came home feeling the same way so she's nursing two sick boys!'

I hope all get well soon!

Bluenoses gloat over New York gay marriage defeat.

On the other hand, the DC Council has voted for same-sex marriage in DC. They have to vote again in three weeks (and it can be adjusted in that time period), and then Congress gets a chance to veto it, but even the opposition thinks the bill will pass.

Seems to me that the citizens of DC have a pretty raw deal with fewer rights than a state would have. I was shocked to read a moment ago that they couldn't even vote for President until 1961. That's just messed up.

Earl @ #490, see Wikipedia for an issue that's been whittled down to bumper sticker size as "Home Rule for DC." It may appear on license plate frames, too.

Congressional meddling in DC's affairs is a crock.

I'd like to request the prayers, positive energies, good thoughts, etc. for my former boss Tim (a great Lovecraftian). A few months ago he had back surgery, apparently botched, and a second back surgery, not entirely successful. Last month he was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis. Then last week he was whisked from the doctor's office to intensive care, spent several days intubated, and now can breathe on his own but can't swallow. Also keep his wife Lisa in your thoughts. Thanks.

If Tim had gone to Michigan State instead of Michigan, he would have hung out with Xopher and me.

RE: The Salvation Army link in the particles. I had retweeted that earlier, and had at least two SA folks start tweet-stalking me saying they don't discriminate. (I tried pointing out that saying you don't INTEND to discriminate doesn't mean that you are actually refraining from doing so.)

PixelFish @ 493 ...
IIRC, the particle refers to the Salvation Army in Houston, in specific -- I don't know if it's the Salvation Army, full stop.

Tracie @ 492:

I'm sending good thoughts out for Tim. That's a lot to cope with; I hope that things get better soon.

abi:

Get will soon.

[in passing]

We have here the steampunk version of conflicts over network neutrality: when Jay Gould and the AP took over the telegraph network.

Croak!

Andrew Willett @ #481:

I am somewhat disturbed by the one that appears to be glowing.