10:32 – Today, we’re assembling chemical bags for another three dozen chemistry kits. I was down in the basement binning bottles for the chemical bags and Barbara was taking her shower. Suddenly, I heard scrabbling on the hardwood floor upstairs. Ruh-roh. Colin was on a tear. He runs flat out until he runs into something at top speed–a wall, the sofa, whatever, at which point he reverses course and tears away at top speed again, with his ears back flat and his eyes bugged out. As it happened, the upstairs door to the stairs was open, as was the door from the finished area to the garage area. Colin decided to add downstairs to his route. I heard him thunder down the stairs, run into the wall at the bottom of the stairs, bounce off, hang a left, and come roaring into the basement area. He circled both our vehicles twice at top speed and then headed back toward the stairs, he couldn’t quite make the turn onto the stairs, so he skidded on the concrete floor in the garage, rolled into the carpeted finished area, came back up without a pause, reversed course, and thundered up the stairs, where he continued his tear. A moment later, I heard him thundering down the stairs again, where he repeated his earlier circuit and then headed back up the stairs. As I tried to stay out of his way, I was reminded of those old Western films where the cattle stampede and trample everything in their way.
Sunday, 23 February 2014
14 Comments and discussion on "Sunday, 23 February 2014"
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FRAP, or Frenetic Random Activity Period, are best when they aren’t inside. You need to take your dog out more!
LOL. Young cats do that routine here. I kick them out ASAP.
44 here now with snow-pack shrinking; it all freezes up nicely at night, though. This week we’ll be back to 20s during the days and zero for the nights.
Mrs. OFD is at a former artist’s house just north of Austin, TX, Georgetown, coincidentally the name of the district in Mordor where she was born. She hopes to finish early this week and take an earlier flight back here and then she’s off for two weeks.
I have a two-hour interview Thursday for the CentOS/RHEL gig south of here; the site is one of them new-fangled, very trendy workplaces, specially designed spaces, an organic cafe, a gym with showers, and they are big on the Agile Framework stuff as a process or something. I would hope to keep my head down and work the tech stuff but we shall see.
OFD, drop me a line if you want help in becoming buzzword-compliant on “Agile Methodologies”. (Tip 1: Don’t point out the philistinanity of an interviewer who phrases it that way, not realizing that “method” and “methodology” are not the same thing.) I’ve led and served time on* teams using** various agile styles. Used well, it’s more effective at delivering what the users actually want than the waterfall method. Used poorly, it leads to a big mess, but at least it’s no worse than a waterfall mess.
* Similarity to “serving time” not coincidental. Too many “leaders” view “agile methodologies” as an excuse to not do their part of managing a project and to tell the people who actually do things to just deal with it “beacuse we’re agile”.
** “Allegedly using”, more like. See above.
Arrrgh!! The DVD/CD drive in my main computer is failing. It is the Samsung I bought in Berlin when the one delivered in the Asus laptop bought in 2006 failed after about a year of service. Paid about 3 times the US price of that Samsung drive (about €120), but at least it has lasted almost 7 years.
And why does this happen right in the middle of jobs with tight deadlines? I was having slight trouble with the drive occasionally not being able to detect gaps in ripping CD’s with EAC, but now it will not read the VOB files I need to edit for the video job. Fortunately, I have the cheap and slow $19.95 external drive that came with the Asus notebook, and it reads those files just fine.
Hopefully, burning still works on the old drive, as burning a finished DVD with the cheap, slow external drive could be tedious.
Well, they got through massaging the numbers and Jan 2014 was the “hottest” since Jan of 2007 and 4th hottest since 1880:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/ncdc-releases-january-2014-global-climate-report
“According to NOAA scientists, the globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for January 2014 was the highest since 2007 and the fourth highest for January since reliable record keeping began in 1880. It also marked the 38th consecutive January and 347th consecutive month (almost 29 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last below-average January global temperature was January 1976 and the last below-average global temperature for any month was February 1985.”
Who do they think that they are kidding?
I am spending a few days here in Norman, OK at the USPS nced hotel at a natural gas conditioning conference. Huge facility, almost 1,000 rooms. USPS does a lot of their training here and also rents it out to third parties like us.
Had a good drive up through the flyover country from the Land of Sugar. About a 400 mile drive taking 8 hours. Dallas was nasty as usual.
We may get some freezing precip on Tuesday so am looking forward to that.
Does Colin have a dog door? My cocker goes outside several times a day. The cat goes out 3 times an hour for his self assigned patrol.
Well, it must have been hottuh than the hinges of Hell somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere to reach those “globally averaged” temperatures. Here in the Northern Hemisphere it was demonstrably colder and snowier than the past few years from what I could see and read about. I recall greg down in Oz mentioning the heat and drought there and the fires.
42 here right now but we’re heading back into the regular ol’ wintuh tomorrow.
-2.78C here (27F) and snow is falling. About an inch and a half of new since this AM. And the poor crocuses and daffodils were starting to show just a week ago…
OFD – Afraid a good part of California is keeping the average temperature up a bit too. Here in Stockton we’ve set several high temperature records during the past couple of months, along with a record dry spell, something like 59 days w/o precipitation. My office is in a trailer and I have turned on the heat perhaps 3 times briefly in the past month and thought about the air conditioning a couple of times.
Mrs. OFD was in Kalifornia several weeks ago for about ten days and noted the drought conditions statewide; she’s in Texas this week, just north of Austin, where they push bumper stickers that say “KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD.” I was stationed in Marin Country for about eighteen months back in 1973 and remember the moderate temps year-round and glorious mountain air on Mount Tamalpais.
And we’ve got more wottuh here than we know what to do with; wish we could send a bunch of it your way.
Nah, it’s probably Europe’s fault – we’ve had very warm winter with few freezes – way above average temperatures.
You been feeding Colin the canine equivalent of catnip?
Lynn wrote:
“Who do they think that they are kidding?”
Lots of people. Jerry Coyne is a true believer, for example.