The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
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My wife *almost* nailed a big ol' turkey TOD: low light, shadows, damn thing s t r o lled out...Well, they can fly, a little. No feathers were lost, that I saw. 😎
More than you may want to know about wild turkeys:https://www.nwtf.org/hunt/wild-turkey...
Of which we have a LOT. Central coast (SLO county), Calif
We have quite a few wild turkeys around here, but they're pretty skittish. I'll often see them in fields along the road, but even slowing down often makes them fly, proving they're smarter than deer. That has something to do with it being legal to carry guns in KY. A constable, who shall remain nameless, told me of catching a guy shooting a couple with a rifle from the road. No tickets were issued since the booty was split.
Have an overdue library book? Watch out. This is a horror story.https://www.wkyt.com/content/news/Wom...
Jim wrote: "Have an overdue library book? Watch out. This is a horror story.https://www.wkyt.com/content/news/Wom..."
Good grief.
Saving the throw up napkin was a bit much, but returning the book was cool. So is fine free overdue books.I finally got around to replacing one of my fluorescent fixtures in my shop with LED bulbs. It should be a simple enough process, but the bulbs are 8' long & 10' up on the ceiling. It's simply amazing just how often I can drop something when I'm up on a ladder, too. Sigh.
Jim:"It's simply amazing just how often I can drop something when I'm up on a ladder, too. Sigh:
I'm no longer amazed at becoming even more clumsy as I grow older. Just another indignity in the whole undignified process....
Oh well. Beats the alternative. So far.
I don't know that I've gotten more clumsy, but the trip up & down sure is longer. :)
I got the fuel filter issue fixed on my truck. Chevy put in this really stupid plastic quick connect & it broke just sitting there. My S10 is a 2003, so I guess it's to be expected. I cut it off & found 2 pieces of other gas lines around the shop to hook the filter up to the line leading to the intake manifold. I keep a supply of hose clamps & a few of them have it all secured. I guess you'd call that redneck rigged. It's just my farm truck, anyway. I managed to get it done before dark & the rain, so I'm pretty tickled. I have chores for it. One is taking a branch down to the brush pile that I knocked off the Golden Rain tree while trying to park the horse trailer in the dark last night. Sigh.
Yesterday & the days before were gorgeous. Upper 40s at night to about 60 during the day. It started snowing last night about 8pm & the temps had fallen from 60 at 3pm to 32. My car was a mess to scrape off this morning at 4:30am. Only 1/2" or a bit more of snow, but a lot of ice on it. It was 23 then, but down to 20 now & still falling. Big change!
That's about what it's doing in south-central Missouri, too. Sunday ppl were comfortable in shorts, Monday they closed campus around noon, and Tuesday it's 10 F at 7 am. Enough sleety snow to coat cars & streets and to make me glad I don't have to go out and risk skidding around! Also the trees, last week, dumped the majority of their leaves in one windy day... the walnut is totally bare.Autumn isn't a season unto itself here... which surprises me. When I lgrew up in WI I understood that transition from summer to winter and back had to be brief because winter is long and summer is warm. And in No. Nevada, in the desert, all bets are off, of course. But the heart of the Midwest should match the picture-books about the seasons, no? Guess not!
Forthenco Pacino wrote: "Thats climate change for ya, Cheryl."Um. Try, weather?
Yeah, no, I think this is weather. I agree climate change is doing weird stuff with the weather, but I think that this is not an example. I think that picture-books are unrealistic, and always have been. Actually, if you read some first-hand accounts from the pioneers, you'll read about ppl sweating under a hot sun to get the harvest in before the blizzard. I was just hoping that we'd have four full seasons in MO, as opposed to the pattern of 7/1/3/1 that seems to be the norm in WI/MN.... ;)
I grew up in Oklahoma, where the local saying was, if you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes. The Blue Northers! The black ice on the roads in winter!
Peter wrote: "I grew up in Oklahoma, where the local saying was, if you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes. ..."I think that's a common saying in most places. Works well here in KY, too.
yeah, I've heard it lots of places too... works well in most in fall and spring...I'll have to ask my sons, living in OK now, next time I see them if they hear that saying and how true they think it is there.
Okla: what you can count on:▸ Hot in the summer
▸ Cold in the winter
▸ Windy most anytime
There was a good article in the NYer not long ago on the only woman oil-well tender in the OK panhandle. She likes the work and the area. If I come across it, I'll PM you.
Where do your sons live? I grew up in Stillwater, where my dad taught @ OSU. My eldest sister lives in Tulsa.
My middle son lived in Stillwater for a few years. When he moved to OKC metro, his older brother moved in with him. I visit them every couple of months and I'd say it's generally rather mild in winter... compared to Wisconsin... ;)
Cheryl wrote: "I'd say it's generally rather mild in winter... compared to Wisconsin... ;)"
I'd say that, too 😎
I liked growing up in Stillwater, but I prefer Tulsa, were I to move back. Startlingly unlike Calif, almost all to the good!
I can't abide winter. I'm glad to live in a place where its cold fingers seldom reach. People come here to escape winter, and then complain when it's in the 80s in November. I don't even notice. It seems normal This next cold front is coming. Low temps will drop below 60 for a couple of days. I'm glad not to have to scrape ice, but I if it stays that cool for several days I start to go into hibernation.
I don't think our temps have fallen into the 30s for years and seldom into the 40s. We all still remember the Christmas Freeze of 1989. We hit 26F, an all time low. Some people claim to have seen snow flurries, my spouse included, but I was with her and I know better.
It was 9 degrees when I got up this morning & it will probably drop a bit more in the hours before dawn. My wife had trouble yesterday morning with her school bus air brakes. This cold any bit of moisture freezes to clog up the works. Thankfully, I think this is it & it will get a bit warmer.
Forthenco Pacino wrote: "Where I live, in Delhi, the min temp I've braved is…also 9*C. But that was only at night time. The cold is not a kind thing."Not 9c here, but 9f or -13c. Marg says it hasn't dropped & her air lines took a while, but did defrost & are working, thankfully.
Daniel Tosh once said in his stand-up act: "I hate weather. That's why I live in a place that doesn't have any." That's as good of a summary of the southern California climate as any I suppose.
RJ wrote: "Daniel Tosh once said in his stand-up act: "I hate weather. That's why I live in a place that doesn't have any." That's as good of a summary of the southern California climate as any I suppose."Huh. Well, it's nice enough, but too effin' CROWDED for me! From time to time, I think of other Med-type climate places around the world. Southwestern Australia (by all reports) has about as nice weather as SoCal, is about as pretty, and blissfully underpopulated. Were I young again, I might head there.... 🏝
Poor Marg got scared half to death yesterday morning. Something big suddenly ran up behind her in the dark as she went out to start up the school bus. Turned out to be her pony, Pumpkin. She had no trouble putting him back in the field since he really hated being separated from his buddies.We got woken up about 4:15 by the dogs barking. I looked outside & saw the horses running around like wild men. I don't know what got them running. I didn't hear any coyotes, although they were quite loud last night. Since they stopped & looked over the fence at me, I just figured they were having fun or being stupid over some deer running through. I got dressed & left for work.
I guess they continued their shenanigans since I would have seen Pumpkin if he'd been out already. From the tracks, it looks like they were tearing around by the pond in the northwest corner of the property & he half jumped through an old spot. That put him out on the road & he didn't know how to get back in. The others didn't follow him, so he must have followed the fence back to the front yard & hung around there until Marg came out around 6am & he got to surprise her.
:chuckle: I hope Marg has a strong heart! I've heard of horses being playful, pulling 'shenanigans' before... some of them seem pretty darn smart for being herbivores.
We FINALLY got decent Internet. For the past decade, 512kb was the best we could get. Now we finally have 6mb with no data limit. I know that sounds small in these Gb days, but it's actually quite sufficient for 2 old folks that only have 1 TV & don't do much online. I could actually download a 20mb file, pictures of the grandkids my DIL posted, in about 20 seconds. I used to do it at work because it took 20 minutes or more.The only big issue I can see is if there's a problem. The 2 guys who run the company work full time, so they won't be able to fix issues too quickly. I guess I'll set up our computers to use our cell phones in an emergency.
I don't know if any of you are regular Jeopardy watchers, but we are. In January, they're going to have a really neat showdown between Jennings, Rutter, & Holzhauer the 3 best champs ever. They're going to duke it out until one of them has won 3 games!https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/james...
That should be really exciting.
Oh, if I had a tv I'd watch. Maybe I can figure out how to anyway.
Cheryl wrote: "Oh, if I had a tv I'd watch. Maybe I can figure out how to anyway."I guess they have to have a steaming service or YouTube or both
I'm sure you mean streaming not steaming, but I can just see watching this in a sauna or spa...
Cheryl wrote: "I'm sure you mean streaming not steaming, but I can just see watching this in a sauna or spa..."I regularly mix the two :)
Here is Jeopardy! youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnxx...
thank youThanks to getting caught up and watching the promoted episode of that, now I find out about the series Young Sheldon and have something else on my 'to-watch-somehow-someday' list. Sheesh.
Mod
He always wanted to watch to the end. But I had no interest in sitting through all the commercials near the end so I would stop before they announced the final responses. I figured I'd find out who won the next day and that was good enough for me!
We have Jeopardy scheduled to record on the DVR, so get to skip the commercials. Great show. I don't often watch, but listen to it while doing other things. Cheryl, "Young Sheldon" is another favorite of ours. Hilarious. An excellent spin-off from "The Big Bang Theory" which is now done. It had a good 7 season run & ended on a good note. I'm always glad when a show does that. Too many of them drag on forever & get worse all the time.
There's plenty of material still left for Sheldon, though. He's a young, atheist genius in a small Texas town with a very religious mother & a football coach father. His grandmother might be the best character, though. She's a liberated woman with a wonderful mouth on her.
Yes, I love the BBT videos from the library, and that's why I'm so interested in Young Sheldon. aka Moon Pie...
Has anyone noticed that GR is listing a bunch of alleged "duplicates" (on your list of books) that really aren't? I've noticed more than one -- I usually try to prune my list regularly, but lately.... 😒
Mod
I've never seen that. There are some real duplicates because sometimes I accidentally set a blank second read date on a different edition.
Thank you for alerting us, Peter. I have several of those. I also have at least two books listed as duplicates that I actually don't have on my shelves at all. I was also able to clean up some 'real' ones that were errors as Ed describes. But it's definitely messed up right now.I'm going to export my shelves as soon as I'm done posting here. I do at least once a month, try to remember every week or after a big batch of activity.
Speaking of GR glitches, those of us who read individual short stories, say from "Uncanny" online magazine, now will find our reviews under the listing for the entire issue of the magazine. I've been editing my reviews, as I encounter them, to say something like "only read the story Ten Things..." but I'm afraid that there are probably a lot of them, and I don't know how to easily find them.Suggestions welcome.
Cheryl wrote: "Speaking of GR glitches, those of us who read individual short stories, say from "Uncanny" online magazine, now will find our reviews under the listing for the entire issue of the magazine. I've be..."What I do is Google for "Story name Magazine name Cheryl" & go from there. The more info you can recall, the faster you can zero in -- but Google has always found the lost sheep for me.... 😎
Cheryl wrote: "Thank you for alerting us, Peter. I have several of those. I also have at least two books listed as duplicates that I actually don't have on my shelves at all. I was also able to clean up some 'rea..."Export? that sounds interesting. Does it meant you can save your shelves and reviews in some way?
Peter wrote: "Has anyone noticed that GR is listing a bunch of alleged "duplicates" (on your list of books) that really aren't? I've noticed more than one -- I usually try to prune my list regularly, but lately...."I hadn't noticed until you mentioned it & I keep a very close eye on my bookshelf. I found several that were incorrect, none that I thought were right & it listed over 200 for me. Most 'duplicates' are actually different editions, read on different dates with different reviews.
That sucks because it affects the export file. I've been after GR support to fix it since they broke it a few years ago. It used to export ALL books, but the last couple/few years it has only exported the latest read of what it considers a duplicate book.
I did not realize that, Jim. I imagine that might have something to do with the addition of the reread feature. I'll have to consider combining my intentional duplicates as rereads.Yes, Deborah, go to your "my books" and look at the left rail. Under all the names of your shelves, find the import/export. Click through. On the next page, near the upper left, you'll see a 'export' button. Click, wait, and save on your computer. (I have no idea how it works on mobile.)
Peter, if I knew the magazine or story name I sure could find the mix ups. The thing is that I have no idea what stories I read. It doesn't really matter to me, it's just that I don't like misleading my followers into thinking I read the whole magazine. But then, they're probably alert enough and smart enough to figure it out.
Cheryl wrote: "Peter, if I knew the magazine or story name I sure could find the mix ups. The thing is that I have no idea what stories I read. It doesn't really matter to me, it's just that I don't like misleading my followers into thinking I read the whole magazine. But then, they're probably alert enough and smart enough to figure it out Yes, this is [imo] the single most annoying "feature" GR has foisted on us. I'm pretty sure, from some research that carol. & Tadiana did AWB, that this is one "Super Librarian" with a hair up her ass. Apparently she refuses (2nd hand report) to discuss her short-story diktat! Bah.
Well, I just did a simple search of My Books with the word 'magazine' and see what looks like might be the complete list. I'll go through and edit my reviews soon....I guess we should be glad magazines are allowed at all. They didn't used to be.
But the pseudo-duplicates issue is still horrid, and I actually can't seem to be able to fix them. Do you know whether this has been reported to Help?
Cheryl wrote: "But the pseudo-duplicates issue is still horrid, and I actually can't seem to be able to fix them. Do you know whether this has been reported to Help?"Not by me. I'm travelling until next week, and was hoping to see it resolved without my doing anything. Not gonna happen, I guess? 😉
The Evolution of Science Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
A History of the English Speaking Peoples, 4 Vols (other topics)Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer (other topics)
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? (other topics)
Bleak House (other topics)
A Night in the Lonesome October (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Winston Churchill (other topics)Roger Zelazny (other topics)
Felix Salten (other topics)
Sam Kean (other topics)
Chuck Tingle (other topics)
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Hee hee 😇