It's Monday... another one.

This one might not be so easy...

Achievements

1. In 1866, his invention was a stabilized explosive originally intended for mining and excavation work.
2. In 1875, Captain Matthew Webb was the first person to do this.
3. In 1911, Roald Amundsen's group was first to reach this remote location.
4. In 1942, Enrico Fermi was in charge of the first manmade one of these.
5. In 1961, Yuri Gagarin was the first person to do this.
6. In 1967, Christiaan Barnard performed this operation successfully on a human for the first time.
7. July 20, 1969 was when this dream was realized.
8. In 1980, a United Nations body announced that this was no longer a threat in the wild.
9. In 1982, Barney Clark was the first person to use this.
10. In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee came up with this. Most heard of it in the 1990s...

( Hey, what if... )

Perspective, experience, environment... differences.

A post or editorial used the term cowboy to mean someone who does things without thinking them through. This is actually a bit curious, as all evidence I've seen points the other way. I'll grant that I am not now nor have I ever been a cowboy and have no direct experience with such. This is hardly unusual. Maybe I haven't watched the same movies as others or something. The idea I get is that a cowboy, the real thing, is a person who does think things through and then acts as reason suggests. Are there exceptions? Of course. But one should not characterize on the basis of the exception.

Another thing is the idea of a person who does injury to people being a butcher. This also seems amiss. A butcher is not someone who enjoys cruelty. The person mistakenly labelled a butcher may well be such a nasty creature. A real butcher does kill, but isn't in it for cruelty. The less suffering involved, the better, as that makes the job that much easier.

Yankee. That got some reaction, I'm sure. The thing is, which one? To some, that word is (and is meant as) an insult. They are the folks who say and hear "damn Yankee." To others, it's not an insult at all and can be a compliment. "Yankee ingenuity" doesn't exactly carry a negative charge.

Yet another example, jmaynard and I disagree rather considerably about what cold weather is, what hot weather is, and what is comfortable. He lived in Texas until this past year and was adapted to the heat, and therefore considers comfortable and hot to be ranges I'd consider hot and unlivable. While I've spent year in Wisconsin and Minnesota and consider comfortable and cold to be things he considers cool to cold and [expletive] cold, respectively.

This is not just the weather itself, but extends into other things. Very rarely will I order hot chocolate or coffee, though Jay will when it's cold out. I have no problem with iced tea even when the outdoor temperature is sub-zero Fahrenheit. To me, ice cream is not a summer only thing. I've also noticed that I can handle (as in physically pick up) cold items and it's no big deal to me. I can pick up and hold an ice cube for a while, for example. This not something Jay does. An ice cube is out of his hands about as fast as he can manage it. I suspect this works in reverse for hot (but not burning the tissue hot) objects.

I'm not sure, but I suspect he doesn't describe a failed thing as having "went south" as I might. I was surprised the first time I heard a variant, from michaelmink who said "went west" for something. I wonder what what terms might be used in the (U.S.) southwest. Of course, direction descriptions are interesting themselves. As I've typically heard them, they are "up north" "down south" "back east" and "out west."

Computer, film, sound, Ranma... Ranma?!?

The new computer is almost ready now. The modem has been pulled and a cover plate put in. The hard drive and its cooler have been installed. Now it's just a wait for the memory to arrive. Also, I have a name the new machine. It will join my herd as belgian. Yes, like the trolley horses. I still need to put pasofino back into the machine room and make in the office space for belgian, but that's something I can do tonight.

I finished the first roll of film for the Hall Lake project but forgot to drop it off Friday, so I get to do that this afternoon. I'll pick up the prints on Thursday (if I remember) and will see how things look. I'm curious to see how well things have turned out.

One of the various ongoing projects is digitizing all the stuff I have on cassette. Mostly this is stuff from the Dr. Demento radio show. I've been reasonably impressed with Audacity for this. Generally I can take out, or at least minimize, tape hiss and with care can eliminate at least the worst clicks and pops (like from a scratch on the original record). And while I've been using Audacity on Windows, it's a cross platform open source thing, so I'll be able to use it in Linux as well.

I actually sat through a full episode of Ranma 1/2. Jay was laughing at it quite a bit Saturday night and so I was somewhat interested. So before supper we watched it. The amusement park episode. The watercolor look of parts of it didn't do anything for me, and I guess I'm a stereotypical westerner as most of the characters looked the same to me. I wasn't laughing at it. Too much seemed to be trying to get humor from people being jerks or clueless or hapless. There's enough of that in the real world I don't see a need to generate more in the name of entertainment. During supper Jay related the characters' backstory. Okkay, so it's not a cartoon, it's a freaking soap opera that happens to be animated. What's scary and depressing is that this was the episode that generated a lot of laughter Saturday night, and this was in season 6. What that tells me is that one has to slog through seasons 1-5 to get to the point where the season 6 episode seems funny. That's scary and depressing. I'm glad I didn't spend any on money it, I'd want a refund. That this (anime) is supposedly the big thing in animation is downright depressing. I wonder, yet again, how long before there'll be good cartoons made again.

And yes, overall Sunday was a slow day compared to Saturday. Not a great amount accomplished, but no burnout either. It did get hot enough that the air conditioner ran some. Not something I'm used to so early in the year. Today it seems a bit more reasonable. To me, anyway.