The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
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Apparently I wasn't supposed to mow the lawn today. I got halfway done with a section along the road & the mower quit moving. I had to get my son-in-law, Josh, to tow me back to the shop. A belt had come off, so I needed to pick the mower up. I have a winch set up for that, but I couldn't use it. A wren has built a nest in it with 4 eggs, so I used a come-along & we got the belt on. I drove back down & started mowing again, but had to quit so I could get on my computer to fix a problem at work. I did that, drove back down to finish up & the mower deck wouldn't come on. I have no idea why. I just parked the damn thing & will take up the challenge again tomorrow. Hitting it with a hammer probably wouldn't fix the problem.
;)
Jim wrote: "Apparently I wasn't supposed to mow the lawn today. I got halfway done with a section along the road & the mower quit moving. I had to get my son-in-law, Josh, to tow me back to the shop. A belt ha..."Never mind what Momma said-- Daddy said there would be days like these. Grass warfare is not for the timid or diffident--it's for the strong and focused. Stay in the struggle; don't let those weeds win...
I got the lawnmower fixed, but it was a PITA. We had to pull a bracket that seemed to only hold the drive belt on the rear pulley, but Josh had missed a notch in the side of the electronic PTO clutch so the unit spun when I engaged it. That tore the wires loose & tossed the plug off into the grass. I found the wiring schematic online, but I really needed the plug to confirm how the wires connected. There are 2 pins & 3 wires. Seems obvious that the 2 BW wires would go on one & the white on the other. That is the case, but I didn't know which pin they went on. Also, one of the BW wires is a splice coming off the white wire. That doesn't make a lick of sense to me, but I managed to find the original plug & splice it back on, so all is working again. It just took forever since the wires were all tucked into a cramped space.
The wren was quite unhappy with me. To add injury to insult, I also took the time to find & plug a leak in a tire. The rubber of the tires seems to be made out of artificial baby skin. In this case, a horseshoe nail was the cause, but about every month I seem to plug one made by black locust, plum, or multifloral rose.
Dan wrote: "Jim wrote: "Apparently I wasn't supposed to mow the lawn today. I got halfway done with a section along the road & the mower quit moving. I had to get my son-in-law, Josh, to tow me back to the sho..."You country fellas do not understand the first thing about real weeds. You have polite weeds. Us city folk understand about real weeds. You cannot kills those things no matter what we try. Flames, hot tar, nuclear bombs, mother-in-laws, and they still keep growing....8^)
I dislike mowing so over the years if something volunteers and replaces the grass, I encourage it. Our front yard is now mostly Boston fern and much of our backyard is philodendron. My old push mower needs a squirt of starter fluid before I pull the cord. In our dry season the grass doesn't grow much so I mow it in October, January, and April. So far this year I've skipped April but I probably will mow it sometime soon. Hope the mower starts.
When I hafta replace it, I'm leaning towards getting a cordless electric push mower.
My spouse got me a lawn mower for my 21st birthday and I have resented lawn mowing ever since.
Not much happening around here except a lot of short rain storms which is making the grass pop, but making mowing difficult & the digging easy for Rio, our new Australian Shepard. We have some moles invading the backyard & while he has no interest in them, digging is fun. Sigh.A pop up storm yesterday evening took out our new canopy. We put a cheap, 10x10 one on the back deck each year in the late spring to block the worst of the western sun from coming in the back sliding door. It's a redneck look, but they usually only last the summer before sun & wind tear them up. This one didn't make it a month, though.
Marg's wanted one of those good Sundowner canopies, but I won't do it simply because of storms like yesterday's. I'm sure that if the wind hit one of those it would tear it off the side of the house & we'd have a real mess. These cheap canopies cost about $80 & standalone, so it's not a big deal when they die.
Yesterday, I tried publishing my Inkle Loom book as a paperback through Amazon's CreateSpace. It's gotten a LOT easier & much cheaper, but it's still pretty tough. It takes a lot of tweaking & time as the online previewer grinds away. Still, they now have a cover designer & other tools which make it possible even for a tyro like me.
Hopefully, it will be worth it. I've had quite a few requests, but the paper edition costs 3 times as much as the ebook & I'm still only making $3 per copy. It's still averaging sales of over a dozen copies a month as an ebook after almost 4 years. Pretty good for something I thought might sell a dozen copies total. Definitely not a hobby that will let me quit my day job, although it does keep me in coffee if I buy it from the grocery store. Certainly not Starbucks.
It was 49 degrees this morning at dawn. Last week we were dying of the heat, very humid upper 80s - typical June weather. I think Mother Nature is off her meds.
We need a good hand mixer. It should plug in & be simple like the KitchenAide one we had for the first 35 years of our marriage. (We don't use it too often.) 3 speeds are plenty. I'm tired of them falling apart, but don't want to pay $100 for one. We don't need or want fancy, just sturdy. Recommendations?I found this one from Cuisinart
https://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-HM-5...
Are they still a good brand?
Mod
https://www.penguin.co.uk/series/peng...
I'm most happy about the two reprints of Tiptree story collections that are hard to find otherwise.
Anything by Samuel R. Delany is worth the time. Love seeing a classic Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Harry Harrison.
Papaphilly wrote: "Anything by Samuel R. Delany is worth the time....."Did you ever try Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders? That was so gross I barely made it through a few pages.
Jim wrote: "Did you ever try Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders? That was so gross I barely made it..."Still you managed to make a decent review Jim :-))
Mod
I agree with Jim. Most or all of the porn stuff is best avoided. Especially "Hogg". I refuse to even link to it.
But the short-story collection that Penguin republished is very good, to the best of my memory. I'm also glad they're publishing Black No More and Dimension of Miracles and two collections of Tiptree. I had never heard of Trafalgar.
Ed wrote: "Penguin UK has come out with a series of reprints of "classic" SF. ."I'm curious why they selected that novel by Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky... it is definitely less known than some of their other works
I saw that GR changed some rules.... Maybe I don't quite understand them, but for some reason the conversation thread about books in the 2000 - to present range, I can't comment there anymore...?
Deborah wrote: "I saw that GR changed some rules.... Maybe I don't quite understand them, but for some reason the conversation thread about books in the 2000 - to present range, I can't comment there anymore...?"Not GR, but me. The old topic was "What current SF are you reading, 2000 - 2020?" It's now 2021, so I made a new topic "What current SF are you reading, 2021 & Up?". It's here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
It's still located in the 2000 & Up folder, but I figured that eventually we might want to split 2000-2020 into a separate period & make 2021 & Up a new period. I closed the old one temporarily to get everyone's attention.
Jim wrote: "Papaphilly wrote: "Anything by Samuel R. Delany is worth the time....."Did you ever try Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders? That was so gross I barely made it..."
I have not. His work can be challenging.
I have a tough time with Delany but I’ve gotten through a few. Dreading Dhalgren though.The selections in that release are interesting. While some of them may not be considered true classics to most people, I’m always up to see lists of books that are outside of the normal “best of”. I’ve collected a number of these lists in a spreadsheet, where I can reference them in a never-ending TBR list.
Jim wrote: "Deborah wrote: "I saw that GR changed some rules.... Maybe I don't quite understand them, but for some reason the conversation thread about books in the 2000 - to present range, I can't comment the..."Aha! I will move the party to the new venue
My whole family + 1 is visiting. Yesterday we went to the beach. When we got there my granddaughter lost her key fob, the thing that starts the car. The car started and she drove it a little distance away to see if it signaled. It didn't, so we knew that the fob was in the car. After a 45 minute search we found it in the tailgate latch, in two pieces. It fit back together and seemed to be okay. Today we went to the beach again in two cars. They stopped at a store to buy ice, sunblock, etc. They called us to say their car wouldn't start so we turned back. It was dead. New batteries for the fob didn't fix the problem, so we got another car, transferred all the beach stuff - chairs, coolers, etc.
We thought the fob had given up the ghost. Dealership closed on the 4th of July. We left the dead car with a note on the windshield that said "Broke down. Please do not tow" and went to the beach. It occurred to me that maybe the car battery was dead, so I figured that night or the next morning I'd go back with jumper cables and see if I could start it. My daughter says, "I've got jumper cables." So on our way home from the beach, we stopped and tried to start it. Yep. It started. The fob was exonerated. Now we just need to figure out if something got left on that drained the battery, or does the battery need to be replaced, or is there a problem with the car that caused the batter to die.
Last week we rented a boat for Tuesday. Here comes Elsa, due to hit here about Tuesday. Blue skies all day today but we've got tropical storm warnings.
Things aren't going according to plan but we're still having a great time being together after not seeing one another for a year and a half during the Covid mess.
It sounds like an episode from a sit-com, Buck, but I'm sure it must be wonderful to be with your family.
Buck wrote: "My whole family + 1 is visiting. Yesterday we went to the beach. When we got there my granddaughter lost her key fob, the thing that starts the car. The car started and she drove it a little distan..."So... America? I guess you don't have roadside assistance like we have RACQ or NRMA?
Deborah wrote: "So... America? I guess you don't have roadside assistance like we have RACQ or NRMA?"Some states have limited roadside assistance on the highways, but anything through the government can be horribly expensive. The subcontractors for them usually use it as a license to charge crazy prices such as hundreds of dollars to store a car overnight.
Many of us have some sort through our insurance, but it's often expensive, minimal, & a hassle unless we pay for better services. There are several companies that provide that. AAA is the best known, but they'll only tow certain distances without extra charges, can be slow to respond, & the owner has to be with the car. It's usually easier to take care of small problems on our own, especially with the distances involved.
We pay $250/year for US Rider, a specialized service for those of us with horse trailers. They're very good & we've had to use them a few times. Once the rear went out of my wife's truck & they had to send 2 trucks to tow ours & the horse trailer with the horses on it 40 miles back to the farm. Then they towed the truck to the dealership the next day, another 20 mile hike, for no extra charge.
Of course, you have to be able to call them & that's not always possible around here. The last time my wife got a flat, she was in a big dead zone with a load of hay. A couple returning from the vet's with a bull calf they'd just had cut stopped & got her tire off, but the spare was stuck so they gave her a ride to the local tire shop with the flat. The shop fixed the tire, gave her a ride back & got her going again for very little extra charge.
We manage, but it's a piecemeal mess that can cost a lot. It's not unusual to see trucks or tractors pulling cars with a chain around here as folks do it themselves cheaper. I had to get my tractor out & tow the neighbor's pickup to his house a while back after he broke a tie rod, so the front wheels were pointing in different directions. I had to chain it tight & pick up the front with the rear hydraulics, but we got it back in a couple of hours.
Hospitals are supposed to post their prices online now due to a new law. I like the idea, but the results seem pretty poor. My local hospitals don't have them posted & apparently there are plenty of other gotchas according to this article.https://www.npr.org/sections/health-s...
Jim wrote: "Hospitals are supposed to post their prices online now due to a new law. Very interesting, thanks!
Jim wrote: "Deborah wrote: "So... America? I guess you don't have roadside assistance like we have RACQ or NRMA?"Some states have limited roadside assistance on the highways, but anything through the governm..."
Wow. We have roadside insurance, I think it is about $150 a year, (though I get comprehensive so it is more $$). That covers roadside assistance, and towing and a few other things.
I guess if you are in a rural area that is different here too. If you are far out in the bush, insurance would not be able to reach you. I would not dream of not having it in an urban area though.
We're back up in the 80s with high humidity. It's saturated with popup thunder storms that don't measure a lot of rain, but will soak you in an instant. Big drops coming down so hard they sound like hail. The grass loves it, but it's tough to mow. Even by noon in full sun the thick grass is often pretty wet with dew, enough that I slip on some of the hills, so keeping up with the mowing is tough. The horses are locked just in a cut down barn field & are still too fat.I've always thought a trailer for the lawnmower was ridiculous. That's what a wheelbarrow is for, right? Well, I have one, but just bought a little trailer today. I think it will be handy in many ways now that I'm not up to using the wheelbarrow much.
I need to clear some of the hedge row along the road & can stay off of it, even go between it & the fence with the mower & little trailer. I can't do that with my little pickup or tractor. They're too big & people fly along that stretch of road so I'm afraid of getting hit. Usually if I have to work there with the bigger equipment, I do so on Sunday morning early when traffic is very light.
Meanwhile in Queensland, Australia is having a record breaking cold winter. I was at work the other night by the ocean front, the temperature was listed as 5.2C but, with wind chill, 'feels like' 3.8C.In context, the Gold Coast has it's lowest recorded temperature as 2.5 C (overnight, I think it was 2018).
Deborah wrote: "Meanwhile in Queensland, Australia is having a record breaking cold winter.."Yes, climate change is not only global warming but much greater variability of temperatures
Oleksandr wrote: "Deborah wrote: "Meanwhile in Queensland, Australia is having a record breaking cold winter.."Yes, climate change is not only global warming but much greater variability of temperatures"
Yup. We sure are. Poor old Europe is copping the worst of it at the moment, but we still have not recovered from the fires we had and I am sure something new will crop up.
The hummingbird season is reaching its height now. Yesterday I had to make up 8 cups of sugar water. I have 4 feeders out. The 3 in back are all in line so we can see them out the back door while the one in front is in full view on the front porch. It's great watching them form clouds around the feeders & surprising. I was feeding 10 cups per day last year & usually that would mean a lot less birds this year. We've never had 2 years in a row with so many.The front feeder doesn't get much traffic during the day, but something is emptying the feeder each night. It's not a squirrel or raccoon since the feeder isn't missing parts. It has little flowers that poke into the feeding holes & come out fairly easily, so I can tell when something big gets to the feeder. Whatever it is sucks the feeder completely dry, too. There isn't anything left in the bottom. That's typical of a woodpecker draining it, but they don't fly at night. We do see them on it occasionally, but I'm up before dawn & I check the level before going to bed after dark.
I've got no idea what could be sucking at least half a cup of sugar water down in a night. Any ideas? I'm tempted to get a trail cam or something to find out & might, but my S10 pickup is getting some major work done so I'd rather not spend money I don't have to. I have a feeling that bill is going to be rather hefty. Still, another $100 or two won't break the bank. The biggest problem is my ignorance of trail/remote cameras.
There is a huge choice & I'm not sure what sort to get. Does anyone have any experience with them? There are some fantastic still & video cameras available for reasonable prices, too many for me to choose from easily. Some shoot both IR & regular light which would be best. I could leave the front porch light on if IR pics weren't good enough. Any thoughts?
Mod
I read that as "my $10 pickup" and thought "Dude, just get a new one. It's only $10."
LOL! No, an S10 around here goes for considerably more especially one like mine. It's a 4WD, 4.3 liter 6 cylinder engine, with an extended cab so it's a fantastic farm truck. It gets into small places in most any terrain & is packed with tools & supplies for repairs yet it's also big enough to carry a good load of hay between the barns or brush from the yard. It's been frustrating me to no end not to be able to use it.
Jim wrote: "The hummingbird season is reaching its height now. Yesterday I had to make up 8 cups of sugar water. I have 4 feeders out. The 3 in back are all in line so we can see them out the back door while t..."Trail cameras are not expensive and you can certainly try a TOGUARD 1080P Trail Camera, they are cheap ($40) and people seem to like them.
Papaphilly wrote: "Trail cameras are not expensive and you can certainly try a TOGUARD 1080P Trail Camera, they are cheap ($40) and people seem to like them."Thanks! That's a great place to start looking. Seems like a good company. I looked at the one you recommended & the Toguard H200 4K Native WiFi Trail Camera which is about $100 more. i think your suggestion makes more sense. I'll mull it around for a couple of days.
I dearly love & appreciate my front end loader. Yesterday I had to trim up a pear tree which was drooping over the lane. (Marg will be bringing her school bus home soon.) I didn't need to get out a ladder, just put the bucket in the right spot & used the chainsaw while standing in it. I didn't bother to cut up the limbs, just hooked a chain to them & dragged them in front of a brush pile, unhooked, & shoved them into the pile with the bucket. I have another tree that needs trimming in the backyard. It will have to be cut up into fairly small pieces & taken out in my little pickup whenever it gets back from the shop since there's not enough room to drag it out without tearing stuff up. Well, it is what it is, but it sure makes me appreciate the easy ones.
My 2003 Chevy S10 is finally fixed. My son-in-law told me he'd fix it up as my Xmas present. He didn't really get to work on it until July & didn't manage to fix it, so I finally just took it to a local garage & they took 2 weeks to get around to it. In the meantime, I've had to use other vehicles to work around the farm. Nothing is nearly as good. It's small, 4 WD, & has the tools & materials in it to do most farm chores. I'm so happy to have it back in action.
My son-in-law & I trimmed up the paulownia tree in my backyard; 3 loads of branches in my S10. I was really impressed by his pole chainsaw. It's an attachment that fits on to his battery powered weedeater base. Different lengths are achieved with 2' & 3' sections for the pole. He has brush cutter & hedge trimmer attachments too. The battery power & life is astounding.My kids (30s) have no idea how fantastic the current batteries are. In the 60s, we used kerosene lanterns most of the time because batteries sucked. The bulbs were usually dim & the power didn't last long, if they worked at all. A few months on the shelf could drain them, so we usually kept them in the fridge.
In the 70s, we got alkaline batteries & they were a lot better. In the 80s, we got our first battery powered drill. A Ryobi with NiCad battery that had a memory, so we had rubber bands on the handle to run it down all the way. It couldn't handle drilling more than a 3/8" hole & then only a couple per charge - worthless. My current Ryobi drilled over 50 holes with a 2" auger for planting bulbs with each charge. We've come a long way, baby.
For the first time in 9 months, I turned a couple of bowls from the paulownia tree I cut up this weekend. I just did one 8" bowl, skipped a day due to other chores, & then did another one yesterday since it was raining so I had the time & energy. Both came out good; a little surprising since it's been so long & I've never turned this species green before.The lathe is one of the very few power tools where the angle of the blade to the work is all up to me. If I use the right tool at the proper angle & speed to that particular shape & grain, the results can be smooth as silk. A slight miscalculation during one of the hundreds of cuts can make an unrecoverable mess, though. I have a couple of decades of experience making such errors, but I didn't make any these two times so I'm tickled.
(Sigh)Well, I opened a pack of Slim Jims without needing scissors today. So my coordination and dexterity is improving. Not quite ready for the lathe and power tools, though.
I'm glad you're improving Dan. What are you recovering from?I turned another bowl today, the same size as the others but less than half the weight. IOW, quite thin. Paulownia isn't strong or smooth enough to let me turn it as thin as maple or one of the fruit woods, but I did get the 8" bowl down to about 1/16" most of the way. I left the rim a little thicker, maybe 3/32" & the bottom at least 1/8" thick. I really hate it when I have a bowl almost done & I get the base too thin & poke a hole in it.
Anyway, I guess I've still got the skills since this is all done by eye & fairly quickly since the wood is drying & going out of round. It tends to flex when it's that thin, too. Makes it interesting. If I catch an edge accidentally, the bowl usually flies into pieces. That's happened to me more than a few times.
Our weather is incredibly hot & steamy for this time of year. Temps are around 90 & so is the humidity so it feels 10 degrees hotter. It's tough to even breathe outside in the direct sun.I really feel sorry for my wife & other school bus drivers. They don't have any A/C & while the open windows provide some relief to their passengers, they just have one side window about shoulder height while the huge windshield lets in all the sun to bake them. I helped close the windows after her bus run last night & getting on the bus was like stepping into oven. As hot as it was outside, stepping off the bus was a relief.
I don't know how she & the other bus drivers cope. Her 2 hour run last night, the first of the year, stretched to 3 hours because of kids being on the wrong bus. She left the school twice only to return to pickup or swap kids. On top of that, they added 2 kids which lengthened her route at the last minute. Both are just 100 yards past where she'd turn for her original route, but one requires an extra mile which crosses a 1 lane bridge & skirts a cliff that often sheds big rocks into the road before she can turn around. The other adds about 6 miles since there isn't any place to turn around so she has to make a big loop. Most of the time she is driving on roads that are barely big enough for the bus, too.
It's no wonder they can't find enough bus drivers. They couldn't pay me enough to do it. The kids are a pain, but the parents, administration, & all the rules are even worse. A GPS constantly tracks her while cameras monitor her every movement. At least they don't have eye trackers yet which my son has to deal with driving the county trucks in Maryland. Those automatically send an alert if his eyes are off the road too often or for more than a few seconds. Even Orwell never dreamed of such monitoring.
I got my new trail camera yesterday, a Toguard for $105 delivered. I set it up to take pics of the hummingbirds on one feeder & they came out pretty good. You can see them here:https://photos.app.goo.gl/v6oqJw2795Z...
I turned it to look into the backyard last night, but didn't get any decent photos. Some of that was due to fog & rain, but I guess the yard was empty all night & the horses are little too far away to trip the camera. I have it on its most sensitive setting since the hummingbirds wouldn't set it off otherwise.
There's an app to control the camera via my cell phone. It's a PITA. I couldn't find it on Google Play using their instructions, but did find it on their site which required more typing on my phone than I appreciated. To use it, the app turns on the bluetooth on the camera, then turns on the wifi. Supposedly I don't need to do that, but it doesn't let me access anything until I do. Once the wifi is on, it's a bit of wait until the controls come up, but then it's pretty easy to use.
Unfortunately, there's no way to test the settings while connected. It won't take pictures unless I tell it to. I have to disconnect & let it work for a while before reconnecting to see if it's working as planned. I guess once I figure it out, it will be easier, but I'm burning a lot of time doing that.
On the plus side, the pics are very good. All the ones you'll see if you click on the link are cut out of much larger ones. There's a little pixelation, but not too bad at all.
Jim wrote: "I got my new trail camera yesterday, a Toguard for $105 delivered. I set it up to take pics of the hummingbirds on one feeder & they came out pretty good. You can see them here:https://photos.app...."
Those are great shots. Keep working with it and you will get better.
Jim: I was a high school principal and agree with you 100% on the often-overlooked value of bus drivers. Regarding cameras and such, though, I can't tell you how often bus video shut parents down when they claimed "the bus driver picks on my child" and "my child doesn't do wrong." Nothing as satisfying as telling the raving parent to look at the computer monitor. "Is that your son with his torso out the bus window yelling profanity at traffic?"
Mod
It will backfire over time. Just watch when the cameras shows the opposite of what everyone thinks.
My son, who drives equipment for a county government, says he only knows of one case where the monitoring equipment helped him or one of his coworkers - a case where a driver claimed the county truck hit her car. More often the administration uses it to badger drivers & fire them when they want to.My wife loves the camera because it usually shuts parents down, although she liked her old one which didn't record sound better. She muttered a curse which it picked up once & the parents tried to make it all about that, not the fact that the kid was jumping seats & throwing stuff.
On the topic of surveillance, I work with the waste industry and analyse lots of GPS trails from the refuse collection trucks, as well as planning/optimising waste collection routes. From what I hear, the unions don't much like the GPS tracking but more data does make for more achievable planned rounds. There's a trade-off with intrusiveness, and I agree it is quite creepy.It does provide interesting insights into operations on the ground. We're designing routes for a project in a rural area and were trying to figure out why the planned routes took a lot longer than their existing ones. We had a look at the GPS data: turns out many of the out-of-the-way tasks are only visited every month or two so they don't have to do the 30-40 minute deviation from the route to collect the bin. Of course, the client would like us to plan the routes so that they visit those tasks and are *still* under time ;)
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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Weren't we all told at one time or another we would break our necks???