Trudy Myers's Blog, page 16

So Close!

I made a promise that my new website would be up and running today. So, what am I doing today? Trying to figure out how to use my domain name - which I bought via Godaddy - to work with my hosting company. They thought I had bought a hosting package from Godaddy, and when I said I didn't, that I only bought the domain name via them, and asked what did I need to do to get this domain to work for them? Crickets. Less than crickets.

Don't get me wrong, I am pleased with the support I've gotten from these people as I tried (for 3 months) to get my new website set up. I've occasionally had to ask them to dumb their explanation down, as I'm not the most computer-literate person in the world. Any one of my sons can attest to this, as I still call them up (long-distance) to ask computer questions.

It's possible that they are working on this. Or, depending where they are located, it may be past quitting time for them, in which case, I won't hear from them until Monday.

So... I suppose I should move on to other things, having done all I can do. I still need to work on my Mailchimp account. And go to the store and drug store to pick up groceries and prescriptions. Heck, there's some leatherwork I need to finish lacing, and make-up applications to practice. There's lots of stuff for me to do. (There always is.) I just need to make up my mind to move on.

I did the best I could. I guess it probably won't be live until Monday. Let's hope, okay?

Wandering Neptune?

I was perusing headlines the other day when I noticed one about Neptune. Normally, a headline about one of our planets grabs my attention and I read the article, but I was pressed for time that day, and decided to skip the article. Now I wish I'd read it.

The headline stated that all it would take to unravel our solar system was a star passing by and perturbing the orbit of Neptune. I have so-o-o many questions now about this possibly impending doom.

How big a star would it need to be? How big is the average rogue star? How close would the star have to get? How would that star appear to us here on Earth? Would we be able to feel any gravity or heat or radiation from that star? How much would it need to disrupt Neptune's orbit? What exactly would happen to the rest of the planets, once Neptune started to wander? How long would Earth have before it ultimately became uninhabitable?

So many questions, and no answers, because I didn't read the article. So I just now looked the article up, and read it.

Apparently, all it would take would be for the average distance between Neptune and the sun to be altered by 0.1%. Such a tiny change would increase the chance of the solar system descending into chaos 10 times higher. This 0.1% perturbation would be about 4.5 million kilometers (2.8 million miles). It would result in subtle changes to the orbits of the inner planets, reaching the Earth and Mars in about 20 million years. (Whew! I was afraid I might need to worry about it happening within my lifetime, or what's left of it.)

The team conducting the study ran 2,880 simulations with varying amounts of perturbations. 960 simulations had perturbations too small to be measured. In 4 of those, the resulting perturbation to Mercury's orbit resulted in it hitting Venus. In the remaining models, there were 26 that end in chaos; collisions between Mercury and Venus, Earth and Mars colliding, and some where Uranus, Neptune or Mercury were thrown out of the system.

They also estimated the chance of a star getting close enough to cause any of that, and concluded there were only about 20 chances over the next 100 billion years. So it doesn't seem very likely, given that our sun is only expected to last another 5 billion years.

 

https://www.iflscience.com/small-chan...

Death Throes

We've all heard that you can't take it with you. Well, scientists have discovered a dying star that is trying very hard to take its entire planetary system with it.

G238-44, a white dwarf located some 86 light-years away, seems determined it is not going alone. It's already made one attempt to end its system. You see, a white dwarf is what results when a star that is up to 8 times the mass of our sun reaches the end of its life. Once that star runs out of material to fuse, it puffs up to red giant size before ejecting its outer material. Then the core collapses to form a dense object that shines bright with the light of residual heat.

This process can put the inner planets right in the middle of that red giant until the outer shell is ejected and the core collapses. Scientists have discovered some planets that appear to have survived being gobbled up by a red giant phase, but not many, and they certainly don't appear to have any atmosphere or water left on them. When our sun hits that stage in a few billion years, the red giant produced could reach as far as Mars.

But we were talking about G238-44, which has reached the white dwarf stage, so it is currently much more dense than it used to be. Scientists studying it have been examining G238-44's atmosphere, and have found a plethora of 'heavy' elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, and iron. Most of these would have come from rocky worlds and inner system asteroids that probably 'survived' the red giant phase. The denser star is pulling them in and eating them.

But the nitrogen—and there seemed to be a lot of it—probably came from frozen worlds and asteroids such as exist in our Kuiper Belt. Apparently, the shift in gravity has perturbed their orbits, and the star is pulling them in and eating them also.

I wonder what the system will look like when all the planets and asteroids have been eaten, and the star cools into a massive hunk of... what? A huge rocky planet? A frozen gas giant with a big rocky core? What do you think it will be?

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techno... 

Hungry, Hungry Jupiter

Back when I was growing up, there was some debate whether Jupiter consisted only of gases, or if it had something more or less solid in the middle of it. At the time, scientists just didn't know. They had no way of seeing past the swirling vortexes of clouds that Jupiter presented to the universe.

Flash through the last few decades, and they finally came up with a way to 'see' past those clouds. NASA's Juno space probe gathered gravitational data about the planet in a variety of locations, and that data, combined with data by Galileo probe, indicates that yes, there is some solidity down in those depths.

The theory of Jupiter's creation is that it gathered vast amounts of gas and dust from what was left after the sun's creation, mainly hydrogen and helium. The more it gathered, the bigger it got, the more gravity it had, and thus the more it gathered.

This new data indicates there is a rich array of heavy elements in the rocky core of the system's biggest planet. Which suggests that Jupiter also gobbled up plenty of planetesimals (or baby planets) while it was gathering materials.

Planetesimals are space rocks spanning several miles, so larger than most of the asteroids. If they had been left alone, they might have grown up into planets. But alas, their fate was to be eaten and become just another piece of a huge planet. Just a bit like bits of gravel eaten by birds to help their digestion.

I hope those 'stones' at least gave Jupiter indigestion for a while.

But at least we now know that Jupiter has a rocky core.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techno... 

What Size Is It?

Astronomers have been finding more and more planets outside our home system lately. I find that extremely exciting. But when I'm reading about these discoveries, I'm sometimes left wondering, just how big is this newly-discovered planet?

First, let's understand that because of the distances involved, and the methods currently in place for discovering planets, it takes a big planet to be noticed. I don't find that disappointing, because within our own system, we have 4 big planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus), an equal number of smaller planets, and a scattering of dwarf planets. So just because they haven't found lots of Mars- or Venus-sized planets circling other stars, doesn't mean they aren't there.

So, they are finding big planets, but they've developed a short of short-hand lingo to indicate a few tidbits of information just in what they call a new discovery. I recently read an article in Astronomy magazine that briefly explained what this lingo meant.

A Super-Earth sounds exciting, doesn't it? A planet like Earth! Well, up to a point. They are rocky planets like Earth, but remember that they are mostly finding big planets. A Super-Earth can range in size up to 10 times the Earth's mass. That means a lot of gravity, and I don't think we'd be colonizing that size a planet. But they are a rocky planet! Our system is not the only place where rocky planets exist. In fact, these may be the most common type of planet in our galaxy.

Then there are Mini-Neptunes. These ice giants range in size from 14.5 to 17 times the mass of Earth. (Neptune weighs in at 17 times Earth's mass.) These are also pretty common around other stars.

Which brings us to the 'Jupiter' class of planet, which come in 2 types.

A Hot Jupiter is a gas giant that orbits their star in under 10 days. (I can't name them, but I've heard of some that circle their star in a matter of hours.) A Hot Jupiter usually orbits at around 1/10 the distance between the Earth and the sun, or less. These are not common around stars like ours, occurring in only about 1% of systems having a star similar to ours.

A Cold Jupiter is a gas giant that—like our own Jupiter—lies beyond the ice line, where it's too cold for water to remain a liquid. There was no comment given about how common these might be. I assume Saturn is also a Cold Jupiter.

And then there are Brown Dwarfs, which is a type of star, not a planet. But they don't last long as a star, and then they cool off and they're just a big mass. It's not clear where the dividing line is between massive planets and dead brown dwarfs, but it seems to be somewhere around 10 times the mass of Jupiter.

Got that? Good. The next time you read about a newly-discovered planet, you can figure out a little something about it just by what they call it.

Getting Things Right

Have you ever had a project that you had to try several times to get it to come out correctly? It could be something you've done before, but in any case, you know the steps that have to be done, and you've done them, so why won't it come out right this time?

That's been me, this past month and more, trying to get 5 books correctly formatted as ebooks. Okay, yes, there were parts of that time when I couldn't work on them; the time we were on a cruise, the 2 weeks we were fighting covid, and a weekend spent in Kansas City. But when I could work on them, it felt like I was repeatedly slamming my head against a brick wall.

I studied the instructions each time before I started the process. I would work at the procedure for 2 hours and then take a break, because it was mind-numbing, repetitive work. 5 times I formatted these books and fed them through the converting software, only to open up the converted epub file and find mistakes.

Different mistakes each time. Where were they coming from? How could I be flubbing up that badly each time, in a different way from the time before? There was the time when most of the paragraphs were indented from the left margin by an inch. How could I have made such a stupid mistake and not notice it at the time? Another time, some paragraphs were in 12-pt font, but others were in 10-pt. And then there was the time when all the paragraphs were justified except one, and it was centered. And always, always, the 2 pictures that I had added to these books would float away during conversion and wind up as much as 3 pages from where they were supposed to be, making it impossible to read 2 or 3 paragraphs of the story!

Last week, I carefully went through each epub file and noted the problems. I actually wrote them down so I could remind myself what they were. I looked for answers in the instructions. I wrote the Help people with a couple questions. I considered hiring a professional to get it done right. But there were 5 books, and that would have involved a bit of money.

Last Saturday, I swept all my chores aside and devoted the day to formatting. I had stumbled across a way to 'anchor' the pictures to a particular location, and I was going to give it One Last Try, myself. I drank lots of caffeine that day, and when I took a break, I made sure I got some exercise as well as a change of scenery. I only got 4 of them done on Saturday, but I got the 5th one done on Sunday. Then I took the rest of Sunday off and forgot the whole project for a few hours.

Since then, I have fed them through the conversion software. I've checked the pdf files, and they look great. I'll be checking the epub files later today and tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Of Mice and Bananas

I just read an interesting article about mice. And bananas.

And no, it wasn't that bananas is a favorite food of mice.

It turns out that bananas stress mice out, particularly male mice. Stressed out as in they are ready to fight or run away.

Bananas can't even move on their own, or why would they be seen as a threat by male mice?

It all comes down to pheromones. Pregnant and lactating female mice produce a pheromone that tells stranger males to go away. It is their first line of defense to keep their pups safe, since stranger males are likely to try to kill pups. By producing this pheromone, the females are warning the males away, introducing the idea that a fight is imminent if they don't leave.

The pheromone in question is n-pentyl acetate, which occurs in the urine of late-term and lactating female mice.

So, where does the banana come in? Well, n-pentyle acetate is very similar to a compound found in many kinds of fruit, but that very similar compound is also used to produce banana extract. And sure enough, when the scientists brought in some banana extract bought from the local grocery store, and put some in the cage with male mice, they got some very stressed-out mice.

I'm glad n-pentyle acetate doesn't work that way on humans.

Taking Some Time Off

 This past weekend, Hubby and I took some time off.

On Friday, we got up at 3 AM to head for the airport. We parked at our chosen parking lot, caught the shuttle to the airport. We didn't have any bags to check in, and we already had our boarding passes printed out, so we headed straight for the security checkpoint. We were there 2 hours before our plane was scheduled to leave, so we thought we'd have time to catch some food for breakfast, once we were through security.

Unfortunately, the TSA line was full, and people were being sent all the way down the shopping mall branch hallway to line up. My back was aching by the time we reached the end of the line, and they claimed it would only take 1/2 hour to get through the security checkpoint.

Right.

We were careful not to lose any stuff at security, and hurried toward the shuttle to get to our gate. Hubby put his shoes back on while riding the shuttle. When we got to the gate, they were already boarding, so no chance to get any food. Hubby got his belt back on after he got our carry-on luggage in the overhead bins.

Once in the air, they announced they had drinks and snacks for sale, but they would not be serving any complimentary refreshments. Possibly because the flight was less than 3 hours, I don't know; they didn't give a reason.

Things like that don't usually bother me too much, but Hubby gets irritable when he doesn't get any breakfast. So once we landed in KC and our son picked us up, he took us to get some breakfast. We didn't expect him to BUY breakfast for us, but he did. Possibly he remembers how growly Dad gets when he's hungry.

Son had some errands to run, so he dropped us off at his apartment while he did them with his friend from Massachusetts. Did I mention son was getting married this weekend? Massachusetts was going to be his best man.

Anyway, one of son's cats decided Hubby was okay, and chose his lap to sit on a couple of times. Hubby has a long-present allergy to cats, but didn't react as badly as he usually does. Still, he wasn't quite sure what to do with a cat on his lap.

With the errands run, we all got in the car (no, not the cats) and headed for the small town of Carollton MO, which was where the ceremony was going to be. There is a 4-story old mansion in Carollton that is used for weddings, big parties, and other events. The bride and members of her side would spend the night in that old mansion. There was a 3-bedroom house across the street where Son, Massachusetts, Hubby and I would get to sleep. Hubby and I spent an hour or so watching the news in that house across the street while son and Massachusetts helped get things ready at the mansion. They wanted the ceremony outside, but there was some concern it might rain, so back-up plans needed to be made.

We did wander over to socialize after a while, and got introduced to all sorts of parents, step-parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and what-not of the bride. We went outside and watched them discuss the ceremony, what would happen when, and how long it would take. It sounded terribly complicated.

We went back inside and socialized some more, talking mostly to grandpa of the bride. He was a little hard of hearing, but otherwise had his wits about him, and was willing to let everybody else deal with the details of What Needed To Be Done, so it was pleasant to engage with him.

After getting up so early, we retired to the house across the street shortly after the rehearsal dinner, which had been created by the bride's side of the family. I started out by taking a little bit of everything, but as I ran out of room on my plate, I had to limit my selection of salads. The food was all good, but I was favorably impressed by the Buffalo Chicken. I'm not a big fan of chicken, but this was good, nicely spiced so it had some flavor. The dates stuffed with walnuts were also very good.

But as I said, about 8:30, we went across the street and went to bed. It had been a long day.

Saturday morning, we got up and got dressed for the wedding, then sat around waiting for an appropriate time to go over. Son had gotten a text from his Brother that he couldn't come because his fiancée had had foot surgery and couldn't get around very well yet. Good thing Massachusetts was there to be best man. We asked Son if he shouldn't be helping to get things ready, and he said no, Bride was getting photos taken of her in her dress, so he had to stay away.

Eventually, we did go over, and somebody was pinning corsages to the bridal party's lapels, which included Hubby as Father-of-the-Groom. Somebody handed me small bouquet as Mother-of-the-Groom. Son introduced us to his boss, the only person from his job who had been able to make the ceremony. After a short while, people started moving outside to the chairs, since it wasn't raining. I was just stepping outside when I saw my Eldest Son, half-brother to Son. And right behind him... our Younger Son, who had felt so badly about missing his brother's wedding, that he had left his fiancée in her mother's care and driven the 4 hours to be there!

After the ceremony, we went back inside and had pastries and caffeine while more photos were taken. We counted the number of people on the Groom's side and there were 8 of us, counting the groom. Most of us found a table and had a nice conversation. We got along great. Even as shy as I am, I managed to contribute to the conversation. Brunch was served by the caterer, and while it was good, it wasn't as good as the rehearsal dinner. We kept talking until they cleaned our table of its centerpiece, as they had done with all the other tables. We knew they had a deadline for when they had to leave, so we helped carry a few items to the kitchen for them, and then we found the bride and groom and said our good-byes.

Younger Son drove Hubby and me to our motel in KC. It was nice to get that extra 1.5 hrs with him. But we knew he wanted to get home, so we didn't keep him waiting once we got there. We checked in and found our room. Hubby found himself a cup of coffee, and we watched The Bourne Legacy, then went to bed. Who knew having fun conversation could be so tiring?

Sunday. No need to get up early, as long as we got breakfast. They did serve a hot breakfast, but it was sausage, sausage, not-that-done scrambled eggs, pancakes and waffles. I settled for a cold biscuit (No butter or gravy available; I had it with honey), a banana and orange juice. Then I had a packet of instant oatmeal. Not the most inspired motel breakfast I've ever had. We checked out just before 11 AM and sat in the lobby for an hour. I printed out our boarding passes. At about noon, the shuttle took us to the airport. The way KC's security is set up, we were through it, at our gate and settled for a long wait by 1 PM. Our plane was supposed to take off at 6:10 PM.

About 3:15, we went to the only restaurant we could get to and had a sandwich and drink each. Came to almost $50 for the 2 of us. Talk about gouging.

Expecting, no refreshments during the ride, I went to the shop and got a bottle of pop, but they didn't have any chips, trail mix, nuts or gum, so I got a roll of live savers. I used the life savers during the flight to try to help my ears pop, but I never touched my bottle of pop. I fell asleep.

The shuttle to the parking lot would only pick us up in one particular spot, so we went there, and I spent 15 minutes trying to call them to let them know we were ready to be picked up. When they got there, they were packed to the gills for the ride back to the parking lot. Getting to the pick-up spot, waiting for them, and then getting to the parking lot took us about an hour.

And then another hour to drive home, so we got home just a few minutes before midnight. Needless to say, we went to bed. And then we found ourselves 'recuperating' on Monday.

Now to get back to work.

What I Did This Week

What a relief to be Not Sick any more! I have been running errands as needed, calling people as needed, surfing the internet when needed... I even managed to get out and do some yardwork this week! Not nearly as much as I'll need to get done next week, but hey, I got started on it.

I started writing a new book. Always a favorite activity!

And, of course, I had projects to do for my big new publicity push I'm trying to get done.

I did find myself taking naps during the day, an hour here, another hour there. I sleep well at night, so I shouldn't need naps. Then I noticed that those naps always seemed to happen on days when I was concentrating on those projects. I mean, more than 2 hours at a time, because after 2 hours, I was ready for a nap.

I love writing. I truly don't mind editing. But formatting a manuscript is a mind-numbing, tedious, hellish activity to do for any length of time. After 2 hours, I am yawning continuously and can't keep my eyes open. So I stumble off and take a nap. Only to get up again and put in another 2 hours of formatting.

But it has to be done. I had started by adding new back matter to all of John's books. And in doing so, I realized that some of them had not been justified when I originally formatted them and published them. So, now that's what I'm doing, going through and justifying all the text.

It doesn't help when you start finding little mistakes that snuck through all the editing I'd done. A hyphen that doesn't belong there. An en dash that should be an em dash. A major character's name that changes its spelling (by one letter) halfway through the book and then starts switching back and forth during the last quarter of the book.

Ugh! How did I miss those things?

Well, because I'm only human.

And I'm still human, even when I'm Not Sick. 

Back to the Old Grind

 Well, I'm back to not having enough time in the day to get things done, so I must be well on my way to recovery.

Back when I was sick with covid, I didn't care what or how much wasn't getting done. With both of us sick, no one was up to doing any cooking, and we pretty much survived on bananas and soda pop for 2-3 days. We slept when we wanted to, which was a lot. Took tylenol when we had a fever and tried to drink lots of water. Which is what you're supposed to do when you have a cold. But of course, this wasn't a cold, even though it felt like a nastycold. If we hadn't been retired, we wouldn't have been allowed to go to work.

So, for the first time since I was a child, I allowed myself to be sick. Can't get my blogs posted? Okay, the world won't end. Can't work on getting books ready to be re-published? Well, with your brain fog, you'd probably make more mistakes than you'd fix, so just set it aside until you feel better.

As soon as Hubby started to feel better, he decided it was time to clean house. And I don't mean just run the vacuum and call it done. After 2 days of sorting and cleaning, we had 7 or 8 sacks of stuff to donate, including 5 pairs of jeans I'd forgotten about and which were now too big for me. Of course, we couldn't donate until we were out of quarantine, but it felt good to get them packaged up and ready to go.

About mid-way through quarantine, I started spending an hour in the evening—which is usually when I write—working on the first of those books I was updating. It was slow going, but I got a little faster with each evening that I worked on it. I dreamed of finishing it up last night, but... I hit a problem when I was inserting bookmarks to produce a Table of Contents. So I set it aside and went to bed, intending to tackle that problem today.

Now, here it is, half-way through the afternoon, and I haven't tackled that problem yet. Too many other things intruded in my day, needing my attention. Little things, big things, some things I haven't looked at in 3 weeks, so they've started howling pretty loudly to get my attention.

Time to get back to work.