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Monday, June 3, 2002
Oh, Fer Chrissakes
This article on CNN, is yet another one of those stories
in the blame game that we seem fated to play in this century.
The facts, as they appear, are these. Young man, apparently healthy and normal, starts playing an on-line game. Young man develops "issues". Parents are by turns supportive and "tough" with him, which fails to get through to him. In the end, young man gets help, gets new start, casts it aside, and kills himself - apparently because of events occurring in an on-line game. Oy. What a putz.
I know, speaking ill of the dead. But there are certain assumptions which we need to make here. We assume that, as an adult in appearance, unless you give evidence to the contrary (as in claiming a special exemption because of mental incapacity, etc), we're going to expect that you can differentiate between the "meat" world and the "virtual" world. Certainly, you can develop attachments to both. But a bullet in your head in the meat world is permanent. In the virtual world, it means "time to create a new character."
Yes, the young man was addicted. I know precious little about addiction from the inside. I must confess that I am addicted to eating, sleeping, spending time with my family, and using computers for a wide variety of tasks. Many will claim that these are not addictions, and are merely survival instincts. Well, wouldn't survival be an instinct as well?
I must confess that the addictive personality (and I've known a few) will find something to become addicted to. The trick, if you will, is to find a healthy addiction. Some people who have addictive personalities become "addicted" to exercise. Which is good. Some become addicted to attaining a certain body image - which can be good, if that image is healthy. Some people become addicted to computer games - which could be healthy, or not, depending.
But the bottom line is that addictive personalities will find something to feed the addiction. That's all there is to it. Certainly, the parents should not be blamed for this young man's death. They did what they thought was right - unfortunately, the young man was more stubborn about his game than his life. Now he knows otherwise. Unfortunately.
And the sick thing is now the parents, in their grief and rage, blame the game, instead of the kid.
At least the mother's doing something positive - she's formed a support Group.
A Regular Reminder
For those of you who work in systems administration, this article is a "Duh" when you think about it. For the
rest of you, it's a reminder.
I used to deliver the "pat" lecture whenever I trained a new employee on e-mail. I'd composed it myself (wrote the P-n-P manual, as well...).
"The company provides the computer you work on, the servers you store information on, the network that connects it all, and the connection to the internet. Your work is done on company time. Because of that, I need to tell you that you have no expectation of privacy with your e-mail. If need be, I may need to look through the logs and records on the server, and I'll look through your e-mail. I'm only going to do that if there's a problem, if there's some unusual usage, or if I'm asked to do so. I'm far too busy to read your e-mail as it goes through the server."
Of course, a few weeks later the server hiccupped, choked, and barfed. The hiccup was caused by a downstream provider changing some configurations, and no primary, secondary, or tertiary target being available for a few minutes to send mail to. The choke was caused by some individual within the company sending out a 58-meg file of artwork to a printer. The barf, unfortunately, was an e-mail from one of our employees who was sending their resume out to another company.
I went to talk to that person, and told them what had happened. I'd archived the logs, and said nothing to anyone else (procedures required that I archive the logs, note the problem and solution, and inform my supervisors that we had a plan for handling it in the future). I let her know because the entire text of the message was captured, thirty-three times, in the outbound logs, and someone might find it. Since she was in a sensitive position (as was I), I wanted to make sure she knew just in case the subject came up.
Fortunately, she got the job.
Ruminations On Abuse
Got an e-mail from Mr. Armstrong today, pointing out that the American Clergy
aren't the only ones to take advantage of their positions.
Every single story like this that comes out has a cumulative effect on me, making me sicker and sicker and sicker as I go on. But there are some important points to remember. I'll start with some information from my retail days.
"For every 100 customers you treat well, one will compliment you. For every four customers you treat poorly, three will complain. Therefore, you need to treat 300 customers well to offset the four that got to you on a bad day."
I suspect that those numbers aren't exactly accurate when it comes to things like child abuse. I also know that there are very few people willing to get out there and battle on the particulars as to the quality (or lack thereof) of their parish priest, or other clergy member. As one person said, "it's just tacky."
Here's another thought - if a clergyman does evil things, does it invalidate his good works?
Well, I dunno. Let's say that the local clergy feller helped set up a homeless family in a house. He abused several children. Does the homeless family still have that house?
Good neither outweighs nor excuses evil. Good is only a counterpoint to it. Evil people are capable of good acts. Good people are capable of evil acts. Neither can exist without the other. It's like a mirror.
A mirror with nothing before it shows only a wall. Though, in the strict philosophical sense, I would have to question that - as an unobserved mirror may show the wall. Then again, we can't know, for the very act of observing the mirror wrecks the experiment.
We can make inferences, however. As the mirror, under every observeable occasion, displays what is in front of it, we can expect that anything in front of the mirror will be displayed, with the following two caveats; One, that any object in motion is not moving to intersect the plane of the mirror, and two, that the object is visible to the naked eye and remains so during the period of observation.
If we expect a man to be good, we can expect him to do good works. If the good man occasionally does horrible things, this shouldn't invalidate the good. It doesn't excuse the evil, but there's no point in expanding the hurt.
Most Curious...
I use PopUpKiller on most of my machines that do web surfing. I hate
popups, and PUK's done a very good job of killing most of them.
Lately, however, I've noticed that PUK will disable itself - or some window will disable it for me - without notice. It's been pretty consistent, so I'll check out the browser history when I get a chance and see what causes the problem... I'll keep an eye out for the tricky little piece of code, and see if it helps to pass it on to the PUK people...
Just thought you should know...
Tuesday, June 4, 2002
Nope.
Didn't post last night. Too tired, and when Ann yelled down "Put a
movie in for the kids" I looked at Rhiannon, in her favorite position on
the end of the futon-couch, covered with a blanket, and she looked
back - "Harry?" "Sure."
Still haven't seen the DVD from end-to-end. I've seen much of the second disk, and while I'm sure there are good and valid reasons for doing so, I really wish the fine folks that assemble DVDs would allow for the possibility that people might not want to dither their way through a staggering series of menus to get through all of the special features. Maybe a secondary backup menu, like a site map is to a web site. Which reminds me, I'm behinder than I thought, because this site lacks a site map... argh.
Anyway, watched Harry and headed to bed. Dinner, in there, too. Ann's Teriyaki meatballs. Yum.
Careful, Now
Congress is looking into why the INS, State Department, CIA, FBI, and
various other agencies don't share information more openly. Well,
considering the absolute glut of it out there, that sort of sharing
isn't going to happen in meetings held in teak-lined board rooms. Far
from it. They also won't be passed in paper form.
Given the size of the group that wants access, their geographic locations, and the amount of data that they want shared, we might wish to note that this information will likely be sifted and sorted in electronic form. And that means a database. A centralized database with all sorts of facts and figures and notes about everyone the FBI's wondering about...
Are we sure we want one that has all that information? Just a thought...
Dolphin Troubles
Oh, dear. Seems Dolphins might not be as smart as we thought. Then
again, maybe this one's just fed up with the single-dolphin scene...
Of course, the bad news is that we don't yet understand all those clicks and whistles. Though this might give us some insight. Figure this fellow's young, without a group of his own, so he may well have "Hey baby, your whirlpool or mine" line right up his ... uh, flipper.
Anyway, it might be the start of the translation matrix, at any rate...
Speaking Of Screwed-up Sea Life
Our favorite ex-UDT ex-wrestler ex-intelligent Governor, yes, the
roaring Jackass, is at it again.
Some of you might remember about two months ago, when Ventura, in a fit of pique, decided to close the mansion. Yes, the reasons he gave were budgetary in nature - he lost $325,000 from the office budget, which was what it took to keep the governor's residence, a state building, open.
Now, this isn't only the home of the Governor. Other non-profit organizations were welcome to host events and the like, free of charge. They also had other events. And that all required a staff.
Last month, when the Attorney General noted that only the commissioner of administration could order a state facility closed, and said closing would require some legal process, the mansion wasn't in the end closed. It was just locked up, the employees were laid off, the artwork and fine furnishings were removed, and no one used it.
Except, allegedly, the Governor's son Tyrell. You gotta admit, "Hey, baby, wanna come back to the Mansion?" has such a cheesy ring to it that it just might work.
Anyway. The legislature threw old Goofy a bone by giving him back the cut in budget so he could provide security at his home in Maple Grove AND at the governor's mansion. And yes, I'm aware of the subtle irony of a former bodyguard needing bodyguards. Especially "The Body". Argh.
So the Governor announces he'll re-open the mansion. And oh, by the way? All you folks with all that seniority and all that time working for the state and knowing how things are done, where they are, and all the rest? Get in line, we're not re-hiring you as previously stated in the media.
And all you groups that used the mansion which your taxes paid for? Sorry, free ride's over, you gotta pay to play. What a freaking joke.
You know, it's no wonder that Ventura needs bodyguards. Too bad he doesn't have more people keeping his mouth closed, and a few more working the pumps that keep what he calls a brain working.
And in about two weeks, we'll all know - Ventura's returning from a trade mission to China late next week, and is expected to announce then whether or not he'll run for re-election. Considering the lot that are vying to run against him, he'd almost be a shoe-in for re-election. The good news is that we do have term limits in this state for governor. Two and out. Thank God.
Wednesday, June 5, 2002
Yup. To the left is that killer slugger, toothless Jack Dominik. In the center is the pretty young lady who scored in the 90th percentile on her standardized test scores. And on the right, the reward - the Big Cookie.
Thank GOD she's her mother's daughter, scholarly-wise. She improved from grade-period to grade-period all year long. What a smart girl. And next year, Smart Girl and Monkey Boy. You think I'm going to have problems - especially if Ann ever hears me muttering "Deety" under my breath.
Then, I predict, there will be hell to pay, and me without Pinero's magic.
Phew
I've no idea why, but I was dreading the visit of the bigwig this week.
He arrived a day late, in order to stop at the home office... and tender
his resignation. He got a better job. Can't say as I blame him.
Oh well. Now we break in another one.
Good Grief.
No wonder rail travel's going into the toilet. Or, make that, incapable of
climbing out of it.
Did a quick search this afternoon to see what it would cost to get us out near Beland-way - just for curiosity's sake. Considering that plane tickets for two adults and two kids to go to Seattle was going to run about $1300 (from a hub city, riding on the home-town airline, mind you), I thought "well, the train's gonna be a bit cheaper."
Bite my tongue and call me Tina. The train would run $1560.
Now, let's see. Slower, somewhat more comfortable, limited departure/arrival times, and we're going to pay MORE? 'Scuse me, did I mis-step into the brain-donor lane again?
Die, Amtrak, Die.
Gopher Gooph.
You almost feel sorry for the man...
I saw this make the rounds yesterday on one of the security lists I get.
Now, caveat 1 : I work, daily, with Microsoft products. As in I can go for nine or ten hours straight without touching a non-Microsoft product (yeeeech, I know) - such is what I do.
Caveat 2 : I'd be much happier if I touched Microsoft products 2-3 times a day at most.
Caveat 3 : Gopher - yes, invented locally, and one of the internet's early stars before the WWW/HTTP bunch took over.
Yes, Gopher's been around a while and it's a little long in the tooth, but some might still use it. Yup. And apparently the fine folks in the Microsoft software testing labs didn't get enough bananas - er, red meat, sorry Bonzo - and spaced testing this protocol. Since, oh, say, 1995.
I keep hoping we'll hear a giant "POP" from out west soon which will mark the titanic sound of a giant head coming out of an even bigger ass, but it's apparent that's not to be.
On the one hand, I wonder how many of these security patches/fixes are coming from Microsoft's renewed emphasis on security, and how much of it's coming from the "well, DUH?" end of things.
But I don't know how much longer the rest of the world's going to continue with this endless "oh, and by the way, we screwed the pooch over here, too."
Thank goodness I never bought Microshaft - er, ...soft.
Here Comes The Sun...
Since Sunday we've had something like eight or nine inches of rain in
the southern part of the state. We got about three here in our neck of
the woods - convenient, as the grass was starting to go to seed and
yellow out.
My mother-in-law, meanwhile, has flooding the likes of which they haven't seen something like 25 years.
Today the sun's back, and by Friday, they're talking near eighty. Cool. Or not. Then again, thunderstorms this weekend. Here we go again.
Doesn't Get Much Worse
I heard this
story on the news last night. I spun in my chair and
stared at the television. I was sick to my stomach. Seems a daycare
van with four children and a driver had car problems. They pulled over.
The driver got out, saw flames. Got one of the four children out. Was
badly burned trying to get the four year old, the three year old, and
the eighteen month old out of the van. They didn't get out, despite the
efforts of two men passing by on the road, the emergency workers who
were there within 90 seconds of the first call, and everyone else.
Our (soon-to-be-old) daycare doesn't allow children out of the center in vehicles until they are four. Which is a huge bummer for Jack - last summer was his first to experience the joys of field trips (they'd take one every two weeks or so somewhere - prior to that, the "field trip" consisted of holding hands and walking across the street a few blocks to a fast-food place for ice cream.
The new place doesn't do quite as much of that. Then again, at about 20% cheaper, you get what you pay for.
But I can't imagine the horror of the parents, and the people at that center. The van was a Chevy Astro, which (as they so pleasantly noted on the news last night) had two fuel-line related recalls in the last couple of years - either one of which might have caused the problem. Thing is, we won't know what caused it for a while, as the van was almost totally destroyed.
I'm still sick whenever I think about it. Far as I know, no one we know (and we've got a few friends with children about that age in the are in that end of town) was hurt. It's still painful. Every parent with a child in daycare has nightmares about calls like that.
What I fear the most, though, is all the finger-pointing that's bound to follow. There's the chance someone didn't follow through on their job. There's the chance that someone screwed up. There's the chance that this was just a freak accident. But no one wants to hear "freak accident" when there are three empty beds with toys around them and three sets of parents who are grieving.
And In The End
The Dominik-Kiss-Of-Death Email curse continues...
Lets see. When I started this site, I was using Hotmail. I switched over to USA.NET mail until they went appendage-of-your-choice-up on their free mail product (the company is apparently still around, and now trumpeting their successes, such as they are). For a while, I used Yahoo, until their overwhelming use of ActiveX and javascript irritated me away. So I switched to Altavista for free e-mail and they lasted slightly longer until they shut the switch off there.
Tonight, I get a notice from the "fine" folks at Hotmail. The pop-mail access I depend on is going away from their "free" product, which likely means that I won't be using hotmail much any more.
The popmail integration was nice, but not worth $40 a year (both Ann and I have accounts).
Off we go searching for another free e-mail provider. If you know of one that does pop integration, let me know - thanks!
Thursday, June 6, 2002
Big Day Yesterday
Yes, indeed. Rhiannon came home with her third-trimester report card.
In every single category, every single area, every single item, she
improved throughout the year.
There are many times throughout the year I look at our budget and wonder if we're insane to be spending the money we are (last year $200, next year $375 a month) to put her, and next year her brother, through a private school.
Then I look around. Most of the school districts near me are doing OK, not well. The district we're in is fundamentally hosed, moving our school start time by almost two hours (and boy will they be pissed next year), the schools are older, teachers are being laid off, parents are having to come up with more money for fewer activities.
I'm not putting down public school. The problem, as the local NPR station has been pointing out this week, is one of costs. Which, as they point out, are going up at a rate that's higher than inflation. Well, how can that be, you ask?
Fuel costs up significantly in the last 3 years. Heating costs up. Liability insurance in some cases doubling for some districts. Salaries & Benefits up, as well.
Well, I can hear you saying, why don't the teachers take less?
Why not? Why not go into a profession that everyone tells you from childhood on is critically important - you get to spend more time with some of these kids than their parents do; you help to form their opinions, their futures, their careers, and their view of the world. And you can work your entire life in the field and not break $50,000.
Sure, you get summers off, where you have to go pay out of pocket for training to remain current in your field. You've also got to figure out what to do with the family during the winter when you've got conferences, etc., to go to.
I know an awful lot of "former" teachers. People trained for it, certified to do it, not doing it any more. And oddly enough, only those that make it into administration make any real money - and even there, these people aren't making a whole lot.
Oh well. I'm just glad I've got smart kids and they're going to a good school.
My Kinda Place...
Check out this one
or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one or this
one... Oh, all right. I'll stop.
I could go on and on and on. And apparently I did. American Science and Surplus is one of those places I'm so very glad isn't in the neighborhood, or even nearby. At all. I'd be even broker than I am now if I could wander down to that place and pick through the stacks.
On the positive side, however, is the catalog itself. The guy writing this thing is hilarious. Those items noted above made me laugh out loud when I read the descriptions.
Apparently I'm a "Surpie". Yikes.
From: "Matt Beland" matt@rearviewmirror.org To: "john dominik" john_dominik@hotmail.com Cc: keri@hiddenstar.net>; "ann Flip dominik" theflipgoddess@hotmail.com> Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2002 2:08 PM Subject: Wow. That's pretty impressive. John, does this power work with other things, or only with railroads? Amtrack to Shut Down Without Aid http://www.msnbc.com/news/762782.asp -- Matt Beland matt@rearviewmirror.org http://www.rearviewmirror.org
Also, Bubba, of Dr. Keyboard Fame, writes to credit me with similar skills. For my next trick, I'll create a weekend - starting late tomorrow afternoon.
The sick thing is that my wife will, sooner or later, find a way to blame all of this on Kangaroo farts, or something. Oh well. Bow before me, foolish mortals (he said shortly before the cast-iron skillet "pranged" off the back of his now useless and misshapen skull).
Ah, marriage. It do keep one humble, if, of course, one is male. If one is female, this one prefers not to suspect what it does, but this one is sure said diagnosis would involve something starting in "mega" and ending in "ania" or "osis". But then again, I'm not at all qualified to judge such things.
Especially not with a frying pan sticking out of my noggin. That's likely to leave a permanent mark of some sort.
D-Day
As a kid, I learned one of my favorite uncles, Butch, had a somewhat
exotic past. He had something to do with Boise Cascade, which meant
every once in a while my father would get these fantastic chunks of
paneling (2'x3') that I could play with and build stuff out of.
But there were the stories. Like the time he played volleyball in a dress, on stilts, smoking a cigar. Or the time he ate the jellybeans on his first visit to Japan, and as he was leaving, asked what they were. "Fish Eyes" came the reply.
The plane was delayed while Uncle Butch left the fish eyes, and much of the rest of what he'd consumed, on the tarmac. Airlines aren't so accomodating these days.
His two sons, both older than I, were also lunatics. They were the type to get a slip-and-slide, set it up on the hill by the cottage, and attempt to slide straight down the hill into the water. One problem. At the bottom of the hill there was a five-foot drop, and a nice little 3' wide beach that gently sloped into the Sauk River. One does not tend to maintain one's facial features in a model-like state when one insists on running, then sliding some 30 feet on one's belly, then dropping five feet down and splashing into perhaps a foot of water. Headfirst.
So, yeah, sanity wasn't exactly a highly-valued commodity around the place - which is odd, since their mother, my father's sister, was one of these women whom you get the feeling would have looked just about any problem or danger in the eye and said "yeah? So? Get lost."
Some years after that, I learned that "Butch" was a nickname. His real name was Adolph. Or maybe Adolf. I don't think he used it much. It took until just a few years ago, though, for me to learn just what Uncle Butch had donoe. I learned that Uncle Butch had actually enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbor, and after doing all sorts of odd jobs, ended up as executive officer of a landing craft. Said landing craft was dispatched to England, and was used in D-Day.
But Uncle Butch was very, very fortunate. Instead of being among one of those first boats on-shore, his was held back. What he, and his captain, knew, and the rest of the crew didn't, was that they wouldn't be carrying just anyone ashore.
When their passengers boarded, Uncle Butch, as XO, was assigned the job of making sure they got what they needed, and the rest of the crew stayed out of their way. At one point in the transit through the Channel, Uncle Butch asked one of the passengers if he would be able to sign a couple of autographs for some of the enlisted men.
Ever gracious, but unable to find a seat, General Eisenhower sat down in the head and signed what Uncle Butch brought him.
I never heard that story from Uncle Butch. Or his kids. I heard it from my father, who typed up the manuscript which Uncle Butch and Aunt Marion had assembled from his notes. Dad gave him the disks and other information back, and a few days later, the briefcase was stolen from Uncle Butch's car.
Uncle Butch is suffering pretty badly from Parkinsons disease now. My father lost one of his favorite cousins flying B-17s over Germany. Millions of other families lost members in those dark days of the early 1940s as the world was made safer from a diseased maniac.
And here we are again. D-Day was one of the most complex tasks ever accomplished by men. And now we're faced with another. We've large, unweildy, complex, disfunctional institutions who are attempting to destroy small, well-funded, secretive groups of men who are looking to destroy our way of life.
If Terrorism is ever wiped off the face of the earth (which I doubt will happen), we'll be able to look back with the same pride the Allies must have felt at the end of World War II.
Now, though, I guess I'm still in awe of those kids who hit those beaches and fought their way up those hills into the teeth of those machine gun nests and artillery positions. Thousands died so millions more could live. There's a lesson in that. Not only for us, but for the terrorists.
Friday, June 7, 2002
Start Your Day Right
Mine didn't. Though it could have gone
worse.
Awoke at 5 am. Laid in bed for a while. Got up around 5:45 am. Somehow, managed not to get to work until later. I dunno how.
So, Ann and the kids are now wandering the zoo, after hitting garage sales this morning and buying us another tent (seems we know own four, with one more on an extended loan). I'll see what this one looks like tonight when I get home. Might try to set it and my old dome tent up this weekend. Of course, don't know what the waterproofing condition either tent is in, so that would be a problem - we're supposed to experience thunderstorms off and on all weekend.
Nuffin' Much
Apparently in keeping with the Berkeley tradition, the UC Berkeley
campus will begin offering a course in "blogging" this fall through it's
Journalism department. Heard this on NPR this morning.
I liked the line from the journalism prof - "I hesitate to say this brings legitimacy to blogs, as they were already legitimate."
Yeah. Leave it to journalism to get the story "right". There are days when I have my doubts.
Struggling
For about the last month, I've been struggling with a piece of research.
It's for a friend of mine. The start of the project had me all
excited - his firm was looking to put in place technology X. X had a
couple of major choices, which we'll call X1, X2, X3, and Xn (for the 1,
2, 3, and all the other peons). Technology X requires item Y, which
comes in Ya, Yb, and Yc.
Problem is that originally, when the issue was proposed, the limited information I had led me to believe that X1 and Yb would be the best choices. Since then, a number of real-world factors have led me to rule out Yb, and many of those factors, plus others I've encountered, have led me to realize that X1 is a very, very bad choice as well.
Stupidly, I struggled with the issue for almost a month now - Or it feels like it.
The bottom line is that my friend doesn't need X1. Not when X1 is a gold-plated toilet seat next to X2, and when the e-people who work with X1 treat you like you belong below the gold-plated seat previously mentioned, well, no. You don't need the aggravation.
I've written eight or nine e-mails in draft form, trying to break the news to him that while he may really want X1, from a business technology perspective, it makes no sense. But I keep feeling like I'm letting him down.
Of course, conveniently, today, I finally got through to the vendor for X1. My friend would do better to sell his soul to Satan himself rather than deal with these assholes.
'Nuff said.
Oh, Joy...
Warning - Graphic Content ahead.
Apparently my wife has decided that four years is too long to wait.
I refer, of course, to my quadriennial visits to White Castle.
For those of you fortunate enough not to know what this particular plague is, they're referred to as hamburgers. Though I wonder how something lacking the thickness of a standard cardboard box side can be classified without a whole lab full of genetic testing, but I digress.
As I understand it, the burger "meat" (which has five holes in it - I've no idea why, though I suspect it's something to do with the cooking) is "steamcooked" on a bed of onions. Said burger is then deposited on a square bun about 1/4 the size of a McDonalds Quarter-pound burger, slipped into an open-sided cardboard box, and delivered unto the waiting masses.
Now White Castle restaurants might look a little tacky, but as I recall from my time in the industry, they were, by far, the cleanest restaurants in the field. I don't know where the oddball nicknames came from, but hang onto your hats.
White Castle "cheeseburgers" otherwise and famously known as sliders or more commonly in my household as "Rats with hats" (RWH) are an affliction I submit to only grudgingly. They are delicious, which isn't the problem at all.
Lets just say the rats make a very short stopover. I'll spare you the gory details.
Saturday, June 8, 2002
Ah, yes, thanks, folks, and a big hand for Dr. Windchill, now leaving the premesis for an extended (we hope) stay down under. And a typically warm welcome for Professer Dewpoint, newly arrived from points much moister than here.
Seems like not all that long ago we were grouching about how dog-gone cold it was. Yesterday evening, I noted with some distress that we had fog around 10 pm.
For those of you new to the area, and or dewpoints, allow me to explain. Minnesota is one of those wonderful areas where we get a little of the tropics as well as the arctic annually. Our tourist slogan is "Land of 10,000 Lakes" which is a bit of a misnomer - we've actually got something over 15,000 over-two-acre lakes. We're not counting ponds farmers dig on their land, or granite pits, or the like. Just 15,000 lakes.
So, anyway, occasionally some of that water will evaporate up into the air. This is humidity - moisture in the air. The dewpoint is the temperature where the moisture in the air becomes dew on the grass. Low dewpoints means the temperature's got to get quite cold before the water appears on the grass. High dewpoints mean that the temperature doesn't need to drop all that far for the water to land on the grass.
So there you go. We had dewpoints in the upper sixties and low seventies today. Which translates to "near-tropical rainforest". Ugh.
Other than that, the usual - Tee Ball, shopping, some yard work, and not much more than that. It's just toooooo damned hot. Ugh.
Though we did stop by the liquor store for our annual wander through to look at the fancy bottles. Wow.
Oh well. G'nite.
Sunday, June 9, 2002
Oops. Funny thing happens when you forget to upload to the server. Nobody sees your work.
Such as it is.
So, anyway, hot and boring weekend, part II.
Awoke this morning (fell asleep last night to the soothing scenes of U-571. Dunno why I had strange dreams) to no one in the house. And a snoring cat.
Got moving, everyone else returned, and we did a little housework. Then I foolishly decided to set up some tents. And then we had company.
So that was Sunday.
This is what a five-year-old does with a sprinkler.
And when Dad cranks the faucet wide open, well, it stings just a bit.
And just past his well-formed physique is the thermometer, just short of ninety.
And this is how he got that physique. Hanging from people's ankles.
Don't worry. No one was seriously damaged.
Yup. Two of the four tents. The picture's a bit misleading.
The closer tent is a six-man dome, which is about eight feet high at the
center. The back tent is about an eight-man cabin.
This would be a good use of a hose.
Unfortunately it was, at best, a temporary situation.
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