Bird drops bread on Large Hadron Collider, causing overheating

We are never going to get our planet-eating black hole at this rate.

A conversation in our house last night, as J was opening the anniversary card my parents sent us:

dendrophilous: My first thought when I saw the card was, "Oh, my parents are a week early." And then I remembered that it's actually tomorrow.

J: Last night, I suddenly realized I had forgotten our anniversary, and then I realized that it was ok because you'd forgotten too. And then this morning I looked at the calendar.

Happy Anniversary, J! Clearly, we're well suited.

It took me 3 years and 8 months, but I finally got my first bee (indicating I've done 50 reviews) on the OWW. That's 1.13 crits per month!

...Yeah, I'm not one of the more active members.

PALM TUNGSTEN E2

1. Connect cable and press button. Calendar, contacts, to dos, memos, and Docs to Go (word files) all sync automatically.

IPOD TOUCH

1. Connect cable. iTunes opens and syncs calendar and contacts automatically (I heard a rumor it also does music).
2. Open Things on the Touch; it syncs (to dos).
3. Open Evernote on the Touch; it syncs (memo-like objects).
4. Open Docs to Go on the Touch and the computer; press sync button.

Why can't iTunes automagically sync all the installed apps?

(But hey, now my calendars have different colors again. And Things is so. much. better. than the Palm to do application that I basically never used.)

This guy has been hanging out there every time I've gone out to water those plants for the past couple weeks. He's made a nice little divot in the grass.

And I'm glad he doesn't seem to like tomatoes or peppers.

Between the shade, the hard rains that smushed the lettuce into the dirt to rot, the bugs carving holes in the rutabaga and cabbage leaves, the squirrels digging up seeds, and something (rabbits?) taking chunks out of almost everything), I don’t think we’re going to have much to eat.

Next year, I’m digging a vegetable bed in the front lawn, since the tomatoes and peppers out there seem to be happy (there’s a lot more sun).

I’m going to build better rabbit fences too - I haven’t seen any rabbits in the garden, just the yard, but something’s eating my veggies.

(My compost pile is doing great.)

Belated garden recordkeeping:

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from Scriniary.

I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers group ages ago. I’m not a huge superhero fan, but I enjoyed the book. The lack (more or less) of secret identities plus the way the aces worked with various government organizations made it seem more realistic to me.

It’s a mosaic novel, with nine authors writing chapters from the point of view of various characters. Several of the reviewers on LibraryThing said they found it hard to follow (it’s also the 19th book in the Wild Cards series); I had no trouble keeping all the characters straight even though I haven’t ready any of the previous books.

The good and the bad thing about such a structure is that you don’t stay with any given author/character for long. That’s good because I got bogged down in the second “chapter,” which is the first of three by Caroline Spector, but once I got through it the book didn’t go back to that character for quite a while. It’s bad because I could have read a whole novel centered on the character Melinda Snodgrass was writing (Noel). (I’m sure, like in Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, other readers have completely opposite preferences from me.) Other intriguing storylines belong to Walton Simons and Ian Tregillis (Niobe and Drake) and Victor Milan (Tom and Dolores).

The only major problem was towards the end, when there were some too-abrupt character transformations and plot resolutions. It felt a bit like the authors had been writing happily along and suddenly realized they had almost reached their maximum wordcount.

Mirrored from Scriniary.

In today's paper, there's an article about Mark N. pleading innocent to stealing some signs (the background to this is a really long story).

In yesterday's paper, Mark N. wrote a letter to the editor in which he said "I admit my culpability and would like to apologize for my behavior." Am I missing something here? I can't help thinking that his public apology isn't going to help his case much.

Some productivity gurus suggest keeping your email inbox at zero. I've found an even better goal:

My favorite season has arrived. It's been 90 lately; I've hardly had to wear my cardigan at work or my other cardigan/slippers/flannel pjs at home. Warmth! Sunlight!

Sadly, the very fact that it's summer means the days are getting shorter, but I won't notice for a couple months.

In other news, the prairie is gorgeous and my vegetable garden is pitiful. We keep getting hard rainstorms, and the poor plants get smushed flat to the ground, and then they rot. Also, squirrels dug up my beans (and the one that survived and sprouted has now vanished), the peas are finally blooming but most of them are dead, and even the chard, kale, and broccoli that survived previous rains are struggling after the torrential rain this past weekend. Finally, something is eating my cabbages and rutabagas (which are finally big enough that I think I can tell them apart), but I never see them to pick them off.

We might get some parsley and basil, and the eggplant looks ok so far. If the ground ever dries a bit I'm going to plant more beans. Maybe more zucchini, too, because it probably should have germinated by now.