C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 90
June 10, 2013
Naked woman vanishes on ‘spiritual quest’…
You know, sometimes because you read about somebody doing this sort of thing…
…it is not a cinch it is going to turn out well.
The people who did this sort of thing for religious reasons were years adapted to the area, where they’d lived next to nature all their lives, knew the wildlife, etc….and the primary practitioners I’m aware of also happened to be in warmer climes.
You cannot decide because you have a fantasy ambition to climb down the Grand Canyon, or swim the Columbia River Bar, or pet a moose because you have ‘special understanding of animals….’ that nature will understand and look out for you.
On the other hand becoming one with a grizzly is possible.
Temperatures have been sharply declining in Washington this week, and at altitude, more so: 50 degrees in one’s birthday suit is not a good thing. We have far more wind than usual, ergo wind chill is a factor, and you do not find ripe berry bushes in June…
I hope for the best, because I do, but sometimes I just shake my head in wonder…and feel for the people who have to trek out into the woods after her.
Well, so THIS is why Newberry has been having so many quakes…
In short, you pick a thermally hot area, like Newberry, Yellowstone, or Mammoth, and you pump water in, and pump water out.
Now, a factoid for those not ‘up’ on volcanoes…
There’s a reason most volcanos happen about 70 to 90 miles from a subduction zone, as in, the Pacific Ring of Fire. The subducted plate dives down at about a 45 degree angle, loaded with, of course, ocean bottom water, and at a predictable depth meets, yes, heat, which boils that water, which helps lubricate all that hot rock. A lot of heat. A lot of water. 70 miles inland is where the angle of descent meets the hot rock and the column of watery heat riseth upward—bringing hot, as in molten, rock with it.
What about landlocked volcanoes? They sit above a different kind of hot spot, a mantle plume, which is where the core’s heat has just overflowed upward: these plumes last for eons, and actually stay in one spot as the earth’s plates migrate over them, so you will see ‘strings’ of volcanoes: Hawaii is one. Yellowstone is one. There’s another in New Mexico which may or may not be a plume… These usually don’t blow up so much as produce boilouts of magma, as in the Deccan Traps, the Siberian Traps (so named because of the ‘stairstep’ mode of basalt columns that form as a result…[traps is similar to the Norwegian word for stairs.])
And then there are the big splits in the Earth, the midocean ridges, one of which goes on land in Iceland, and becomes visible to hikers who want to play tag with volcanoes buried under glaciers…
Well, Iceland uses this sort of power quite successfully. Their part of the ridge is so waterlogged already, they’re really another issue…they get steam. A lot of steam.
Injecting water to produce steam in something like Newberry, which is not that near the coast, and which is really a type B, a plume sort, as opposed to A or C, is an interesting venture. As they say, 200 small earthquakes and the requirement to secure your china collection would be a bit of a burden for an area, but cheap nearly-forever electricity would be nice…granted they understand this beast as well as they hope they do. It should NOT blow up. It should not do much but rumble and thump as cooler water fills the cracks and heats up and moves on. And it could produce a lot of power.
We shall see.
June 9, 2013
Ennui d’ web…
At times I just want to drop off all the social media…except here, which is full of good, bright, polite people. Out There are a number who have extraordinary good will, but of those, certain ones echo everything that comes their way; and then—there are the ones who have simply checked their manners at the threshold and declined to dress or bathe…
I have run into several I keep intending to unfriend, in the theory that perhaps exposure to something a little different might broaden their outlook—if they live another century.
And then there are the ones who simply don’t give a damn about any other living thing on the planet, and you would think they would go off and become recluses, but nay! they have opinions and must voice them at every opportunity, because they are so undervalued by the world they must be fresh and useful for all social occasions.
There are a few traits I deem lie at the root of problems in the world. I put selfishness at the very head of the list. Oh, I do not mind a healthy self-interest, the person who sensibly takes care of himself *so he can possibly take care of others,* but those who operate with a fierce sort of selfishness and belligerence, as if they have been personally wronged by everyone who does not do as they would do, and who does not believe as they believe, and who evidently believe that they are economically threatened if they have to spend a penny to keep a less fortunate person clothed and fed…these are not my favorite sorts. Can we hear from the thousands of nice folk on the web? Nay. These fellows push to the front of every line, comment in every thread with certain buzzwords, and persistently intimidate the quieter voices, diverting topics aside to issues of spelling or exactitudes of dates or whatever—when they feel the argument is possibly going against them. Which is tiresome for everyone, I think. Like the Lord High Executioner, I am composing a little list…and I think as my friends allotment runs out on FB, I am about to create a bit more room…
Sigh. Back from a good time and relaxation and I run head on into webbish generated by internet grumps…that’s the stuff that ought to go in rubbish, but it’s not.
Temperature lows—60′s to 40′s. Temperature highs—78 to 69.
It’s one of those years…I simply cannot get the pond to balance: we keep dropping into areas where biological function slows down. The flowers are blooming more or less on schedule. We’re still in peonies and iris and the cherries and rhodies are past. But in the pond, we have yet to see anything but leaves from the lilies.
And if this go round with the biofiltration stuff doesn’t work, I’m going to do another drain-down.
We’re talking, btw, about going to Chattanooga TN next year, which will be our closest pass to the east coast in a while. I think it’s likely a done deal.
Meanwhile—the diets are stuck on a sticking point, but we’re persisting. We were very excited that Atkins has put out a new frozen dinner, but they should send this one back to the drawing board. Smelled bad while cooking and tasted worse. There are two of the dinners neither of us can stand, one of which makes me sick: the turkey one is that one, and the new one, Chicken Marsala, is really quite strangely vile. The rest are all good, and we are back on those, just patiently slogging away in a determination to hold the line: we’ve got a convention upcoming, so we can’t regulate what we’re eating as well, as we kind of had to eat the toppings off pizzas and the middles out of sandwiches this last week. We haven’t really gained, but we’re hoping to drop a pound or two before we have to go on the road again. Bad marks to restaurants who simply will not ‘hold’ a bad (and attractive) item off the plate, like French fries. I have gotten curmudgeonly, and when they serve it with, I simply ask for an additional plate, slide the offending item onto it, and ask the waiter to carry it back to the kitchen. SO there.
June 7, 2013
Back to routine life…
While painting Rocky’s underside, lying on the garage floor, I crushed and scarred my glasses. Today I had to get the left lens ordered replaced, and it took an act of Congress. The Walmart computer kept going down.
But I do have a pair I can wear that is ok. I am going to wait a few months to let the eye allergies sort out from the iritis, which I think is now fixed, and I am undecided on daily wear contacts, which could work, maybe, or a new prescription for glasses, which I have to wear anyway, but I’m getting to where my distance vision, which is normally very, very sharp, is starting to go to pot, so I think I am going to have to go monofit (one long, one close) WITH reading glasses which makes everything short, or switch glasses every effin’ time I want to look either near or far—I can’t use bifocals because the astigmatism I have sort of describes a numerical corkscrew, somewhat like Bok’s equation, and they say that they can’t grind lenses that do that. Contacts are the best answer for me, but I don’t think I ought to try the extended wears again, counted that there is a link between iritis (irritation of the iris muscle) and the thyroid problem I just had quasi fixed…don’t want to aggravate that, but I do really like seeing where I’m going.
[Bok's Equation: the equation that describes the transition to light speed. I mentioned in Tripoint that Capella wears this equation tattooed on her wrist, and the poor cover artist had gone berserk searching science texts and the Red Book for that exact equation.]
June 4, 2013
Painting carousel horses…
Yep, that’s where we’ve been the last couple of days. Our friends have, yes, some full-sized carousel horses, and we got to help paint. We took one look at the available horses, and fell in love with Sara the Triceratops… Jane doesn’t have pix yet, but there will be.
Sara is a very cheerful young triceratops..bouncing along with all four feet off the ground—we figure it’s a mid-gallop frolic…and we decided she should be blue, at least on her bottom.
I’ve decided my specialty is the underpainting, the first layer of color that sets up the color areas on the critter before the highlights and detail go on. And in the likely event of more horses, that’s the way we can work together: I tee ‘em up as the apprentice, and Jane, who, between us, is the master painter, does the sparkle in the eye and the blush and gloss that makes the skin come alive. The old masters did things much the same…the students started out doing three square feet of the Virgin Mary’s blue robe, two feet of gown, and the base color of her face and hands…plus ten feet of brown and grey rocks and several yards of blue sky interspersed with several square feet of grey cloud-base-color.
It starts out like a giant paint-by-number gone free-hand. And then the master painter gets down to the highlights and details. There is a great similarity to house painting in doing the underpainting, but a bit more fun, because you get to decide of two skin tones whether this is the side of the face or fingers, versus the surface the light will be hitting. IE, it’s like paint by number where you get to assign the numbers and make decisions. WHich means there are two levels of apprentice: the one who gets to make that call, and the one who is just starting out, who gets assigned the ten yards of blue sky—just keep the color even, please. 
We have had great fun at this…and Jane will have the pix when we get sorted out.
May 31, 2013
May 30, 2013
Zombie files and keyboard switches: slowly switching over to the new computer
It’s a Good Thing not to have to do this in a crisis mode. The ‘old’ computer is working fine, and will continue to be my backup, but the new one is getting its programs. I opted to skip the ‘bargains’ like Word Office, etc…so it’s a pretty uneducated computer.
I’m an old DOS user—I believe in ‘seeing’ all my files and the whole file name AND path. I like to know the True Name of things, because I don’t guarantee I won’t invoke it. Naturally I have the confidence I won’t blitz a needed file.
What I didn’t expect was duplicate (locked) My Documents, My Music, My Pictures files that simply resisted being unlocked or dealt with. Jane found the answer: Win 7 (Pro) has a set of zombie data files intended to handle ‘legacy’ application that expect those files to be configured a certain way. Unfortunately they will continue to clutter up the landscape, since there is not a ‘user hide-files’ command that I can figure.
And as a note, you can stop a Word Perfect Install and leave it suspended while you install Mozilla Thunderbird…didn’t know if that would work, since MT squealed about it, but it did just fine. WP wants a ‘mail program’ at a certain point in its install and will force you to abort the install if you can’t give it one. Lazy me. I just gave it to it, and it’s happy.
I can’t find my Family Tree Maker 2012 copy. It’s gone walkabout.
I’m going to have to make a list of all my freeware installs. They don’t take MUCH time to install compared to, say, WP, which is a 3-cuppa-coffee install…but…they add up.
It’ll be a while before I’m willing to attempt the Carbonite data move, in which I tell Carbonite cloud storage to dump to the new guy.
The lighted keyboard is real nice, but tricksy. It comes on when you type on it, once you set it up—though you can tell it how long to stay lit, and currently it’s not letting me at those blanks. Great device for someone like me, who uses the keyboard in a dark room while watching Korean movies.
I got OnePass cloned: that’s the program that creates and remembers all the passwords. And I’d forgotten I’d created an application password that had a mistake in it, so the clue didn’t work. That was hairy to reconstitute—you just hope the process works: being what they are, they don’t go shipping passwords to you… If you use that program, which I heartily recommend, you really need to be sure what you did!
I got Photoshop installed. Not that I can use the thing.
The ‘music’ folder is a bit of a waste: I don’t do music. Though I might, if I get my playing up to speed. Might offer some downloads of stuff I’ve written. Or, since it also has a camera, just some little quasi-podcasts if I feel like it. That would require looking good—the reason I decided the Visiphones forecast in the 50′s were just not going to fly…
Anyway, it’s evening activity.
It has a better screen, easier to read; but it’s also a big screen, which means the keyboard has a dedicated number pad, which means the typing keys are slightly offcentered, and on my not-so-good vision side, to boot. But I’ll learn this keyboard; it’s just awkward getting used to it. I have my beloved trackpoint mouse, so I can cope with anything else.
May 29, 2013
The diet, BTW, held through the convention…eating in the con suite…
Which says a good deal positive about the protein level of the Miscon con suite.
We had, during the course of the weekend, breakfast (comes with the room) of hotel scrambled eggs, which we think had carbohydrate filler. But it was better than a sweet roll or cereal (they use sugar to stiffen the flakes)—then the hot dog (no bun) and pulled pork sandwich (hold the bun) items from the con suite for lunch and again for supper. One meal out, a chicken Caesar across the street at an actual restaurant. And the convention barbecue: 2 hot dogs no bun (me) and a couple of hamburgers no bun (Jane) and that was it for food for the weekend. We never felt hungry. And the carb in the eggs probably worked out to be enough. No alcohol. Zippo. Tempted, but no. Didn’t.
On the 3 hour drive home, being tired, I had fantasies of pulling into a gas station for a monster Toll House Cookie/Ice Cream sandwich, which is horrifically sweetened, which probably would have hit my carb-short system like a ton of bricks…
Fortunately I had more sense: Jane and I each got a packet of cashews at the 10,000 Silver Dollars stop at Haugen, the halfway point, and more coffee, more diet soda for her, and I was good.
WHen we got home, I’d gained back 3 pounds and she hadn’t. But… back on our regular diet, it went away, so that was just water-retention from something I was allergic to, probably something in the last hot dogs…such is life with allergies to the lily family (onion.)
At any rate, back to normal…and where I was when the weekend started.
We’re going to have a few more such tests of dietary ingenuity upcoming, a visit with Patty and Mike, and SoonerCon…but if we just stick to hotdogs and sandwiches, no bun, we can keep from undoing everything we’ve done. Fitting into those size 14 slim Levis this last weekend was a Good Thing.
