"He says there's a storm coming."
"Tell him I know. I know," Sarah Connor replies to the gas station owner at the end of the original Terminator movie just before she drives off towards the mountains, the storm and the epic Terminator music score.
I sorta knew what Sarah Connor was thinking when I pulled into my driveway this past Saturday morning. I opened the door of Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback, and did a quick survey of our yard. Yep, the grass was due for mowing- and the local meteorologists all agreed that the Chicago area was going to be hammered by wind, heavy rain and hail on Sunday- all day. Four letter words, each and every one of them!
Time for an aside here.... Back in my college days, I used to do a fair amount of creative writing, both for class and for personal enjoyment. Stream of consciousness was often used, partly because my typewriter (my manual typewriter) was horrid, and the "t" did not work properly. It was so bad that I once wrote a short paper for a freshman English class and I was struggling so badly that I slipped into stream of consciousness (SOC) without even knowing what SOC was whilst writing this essay. The paper itself was bad, but my salvation was my viewpoint- after several typos, I started SOC and the paper ended up getting a very good grade simply because I took the topic and a bad situation, and managed to get a laugh out of my classmates and our instructor through my commentary.
That was English 102. Fast forward thirty-odd years to 2015. I present Suburbia 302: Nightstalkers. And actually, this is not really for Nightstalkers. It is about Nightstalkers, and why we do things in the manner that we do.
Let's set the stage properly. At 0700, do you want to be wakened or have your morning disturbed by a lawnmower? Of course not! I'm not certain if this is a local ordinance, but the convention seems to be no mowers or other noisy equipment are to be in operation prior to 0800. I generally arrive home sometime between 0500 and 0700. Apart from the fact its bloody early, its also generally fairly wet, as the grass is covered with dew. So, I have the following windows available for grass cutting: Tuesday through Friday 1700-1900, Saturday 1800-2000 and pretty much all day Sunday and Monday. (And Sunday is the only full day of the entire week that I do not normally have to work for my employer.)
The bottom line, though, is that the grass does get cut, although sometimes because of meteorological conditions, it sometimes gets a bit shaggier than some of our neighbors' lawns who employ lawn services. For example, in May when Jennifer was out of town, I was always behind in my grass cutting because of Mother Nature's gleeful demonstrations of deluges, downpours and general dampness. Many of our neighbors had lawn services that seemed to suddenly appear with their high-powered self-propelled mowers the moment the rain stopped. Me? I had to wait until the grass dried- often a day or more. I once cut the grass in the rain, just because it was in dire need.
Its not quite like I see our suburb anywhere near the Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday, but I try to make our home and property look nice. And yes, I am aware that the song is NOT about nice or pretty (for 60's fans, please see also Proud Mary)
On the data front, not much has been going on. As some may be aware the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) has been undergoing a remodel. Mr. T., in an honest effort to move things along, committed a tactical error which has created a setback. In my previous blog, (Around) 2.5 Years Ago, or, my personal Interwebz v2.1, I had noted that the major moves were complete, and what was left was arguably the hard part- getting everything back in the office. Mr. T. decided to expedite the process by unboxing a great deal of old software to save some room. The net result of this was the complete occupation (wasted space) of nearly two shelves of formerly unoccupied space. It has been a week since he did this, and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to re-package this software.
Lego data has not been worked on. But- some Lego elements have been organized for ease of counting.
Lastly, Jennifer came to me with an odd problem- she was trying to read a document, but it would not download properly. At first, the website was blamed, but after a bit of troubleshooting, I discovered a much simpler error: Microsoft Office was not installed on her PC. Fiften minutes later, everything was good.
Now if I could only find the interface cable for my DSLR....
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Showing posts with label rain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rain. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Training, Interrupted
One of my greatest fears when I began blogging was what might be called "churn factor," or writer's block. I've written things on and off for some time. In high school, I wanted to write a Great Space Opera- a grand, expansive science fiction tour de force. I started countless stories, first with a ballpoint pen, then typewriter and finally computer, but for any number of reasons I never managed to write more than a chapter or two. As recently as 2012 I started one (that one has a bit of a chance of getting finished).
But here I sit, more than slightly astonished that my count of entries is over one hundred, and just last week launched a second blog (about my new adventures in digital photography) at http://hochspeyer.wordpress.com/.
I started this on Monday, May the 12th. This particular title owes its inspiration to our failed attempt to hit the gym. In weightlifting circles, its pretty much a given that when one is training, one is lifting. The converse does not seem to hold true, though- just because you're lifting, it doesn't mean that you're training.
I won't belabor all of the nuances.
The reason we didn't go to the gym was really quite simple: a massive rain storm had rolled through the area. Hail, reduced visibility, high winds, and lots of rain... the rain was so heavy....
How heavy was it?
The rain was so heavy, there were bubbles coming out from under our street. Which, when one considers it, is fairly odd. After all, one does not walk out to the street and to see it bubbling and hear it gurgling.
The rains came in two or three waves. The first wave featured hail and torrents. When the first wave had mostly abated, I picked up our older son from work, and then I went to work. During lulls at the office, I watched the storms roll through on the computer, and occasionally heard thunder above the noise of the plant and saw some lightning through the window, but the worst of it seems to have been the first wave.
No real news on the data front. Well, not entirely true. I recently downloaded Omron's pedometer software (astute followers of my Adventures in the Secret Underground Lair [SUL] will recall that I had previously posted a blog describing a catastrophic HDD failure which resulted in the loss of over a year's pedometer data [One simply does not RAID the SUL]). This time I plan to beef up my data security a bit- by actually backing it up!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Please try the other flavor of hochspeyer- digital photography! http://hochspeyer.wordpress.com/
But here I sit, more than slightly astonished that my count of entries is over one hundred, and just last week launched a second blog (about my new adventures in digital photography) at http://hochspeyer.wordpress.com/.
I started this on Monday, May the 12th. This particular title owes its inspiration to our failed attempt to hit the gym. In weightlifting circles, its pretty much a given that when one is training, one is lifting. The converse does not seem to hold true, though- just because you're lifting, it doesn't mean that you're training.
I won't belabor all of the nuances.
The reason we didn't go to the gym was really quite simple: a massive rain storm had rolled through the area. Hail, reduced visibility, high winds, and lots of rain... the rain was so heavy....
How heavy was it?
The rain was so heavy, there were bubbles coming out from under our street. Which, when one considers it, is fairly odd. After all, one does not walk out to the street and to see it bubbling and hear it gurgling.
The rains came in two or three waves. The first wave featured hail and torrents. When the first wave had mostly abated, I picked up our older son from work, and then I went to work. During lulls at the office, I watched the storms roll through on the computer, and occasionally heard thunder above the noise of the plant and saw some lightning through the window, but the worst of it seems to have been the first wave.
No real news on the data front. Well, not entirely true. I recently downloaded Omron's pedometer software (astute followers of my Adventures in the Secret Underground Lair [SUL] will recall that I had previously posted a blog describing a catastrophic HDD failure which resulted in the loss of over a year's pedometer data [One simply does not RAID the SUL]). This time I plan to beef up my data security a bit- by actually backing it up!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Please try the other flavor of hochspeyer- digital photography! http://hochspeyer.wordpress.com/
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
I Want To Tell You
George Harrison really doesn't get a lot of credit as far as the Beatles go... well, apart from being the reason the Beatles were deported from Germany, at least. "I Want to Tell You" finally rose to the top for today's blog title after considering a number of rain related titles.
Yesterday was the third consecutive day that I tried to cut the grass, as well as the third consecutive day that we experienced rain, and storms, so my first choice was Eurythmics' "Here Comes the Rain Again," which was appropriate. Then, another Harrison song, "Rain" came to mind. I had almost decided to use CCR's "Who'll Stop the Rain?" when Duran Duran's "Hold Back the Rain" came to mind. Sheesh! What's a blogger to do? The thing that made the decision for me was this: I didn't start out to write about the rain, but it's pretty much what got today's post going.
I woke up unnaturally early on Tuesday morning, fifteen minutes before my 0730 alarm. I did all of the usual morning stuff, and by 0800 had my first cup of tea in hand. The weather was threatening rain, but I figured that as long as the rain was light, I would cut the grass. Rain came (but there wasn't much actual precipitation), thunder came, and then it was clear. The weather went through a few cycles like this. After my fifth cup of tea (~1300CST), I had decided I'd had enough. It was relatively dry and the grass was taunting me. I changed into my grass cutting gear and headed out.
As we had been rained out the previous day, I knew the gas tank was full. I proceeded to pull on the starter handle; I was rewarded with the handle coming off the string! I made a bigger knot which actually survived a few pulls before coming off again. Jennifer must have been watching, because she came out of the house. In the most measured and polite voice that I could muster under the circumstances, I handed the green plastic handle to her and said, "Fix it. Please." I then went to the fence and pulled down some of the ubiquitous wild morning glories.
After a few minutes she had reattached the handle and given the motor a few unsuccessful cranks. Undaunted, she went into the garage and got out Ye Olde Sparkplug Socket and removed Ye Olde Sparkplug. It was somewhat fouled, so I got a paper towel, dipped it in some gasoline, and gave it a good cleaning. She replaced Ye Olde Sparkplug, reattached the wire, and it started on the second crank. Then, I proceeded to cut the grass. The grass was higher than we usually allow it to grow, so it took around forty-five minutes to cut. It was also incredibly humid: by the time I was done, there was sweat on top of my perspiration.
I put the mower away, went inside and cleaned up. I made myself a delicious concoction of spicy seafood ramen, Progresso Tomato Basil soup and cheddar cheese and started this blog entry. I infrequently go to work in the "front half" (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) of the week, but I text or email every day to see if I'm needed. I was pleasantly surprised when the asked me to come in.
And then it rained some more. Now, about twenty-four hours later, we have flooding, flood warnings, flash flood warnings and more rain is forecast.
Whew! After all of that, what I Want To Tell You is this: I found a couple of pieces in cyberspace that I wanted to share. The first one claims that "80% is the new 100%" and other one through a finely detailed chain of events example effectively refutes the first. I think the author of the first piece might have been speaking from his own experience about growing into a more effective manager, but in the world I live in, 80% almost NEVER cuts it. In my world, when I am proofreading something which has an expiration of July 17, 2013 11:59, that isn't good enough- because sometimes my world is based in internet time, 24/7, and 11:59 not only needs to be followed by A.M. or P.M., but the time zone also needs to be specified. I could go on and on and on, but I think you get the idea.
Lastly, Jennifer and I were at the library today, pretty much intending just to drop a few things off. However, I thought we'd go up to the fourth floor to see if we could see any of the flooding. This time, there was no water. We went to the New Books shelf, and a title caught my eye. With great excitement, I grabbed R For Dummies before anyone else could! I had actually been looking for something like this for the past several months! I showed it to Jennifer, and she naturally said, "What's R?" I took a breath, gathered my thoughts and gave her the best answer I could think of: "R is the freeware version of S." I got the deer-in-the-headlights look. I eventually was able to explain that R is a language used to graphically represent statistics. It's easy enough to understand, but it's not always that easy to explain. At this point reality came crashing through the R-induced fog, and Jennifer remembered that Mr. T needed a new book to read. I had a thought that he might enjoy a nice biography of Nikolai Tesla, so I went off in search of that while she browsed the electronic catalog. Surprisingly, every one of the Tesla books missing from the shelves, so I went to check the electronic catalog to confirm this. They were indeed all checked out, the catalog confirmed, but I found a few other interesting titles. I went into the stacks and grabbed The Physics Book. It is a softcover book approximately 500 pages in length, and the pages are equally divided between text and pictures or illustrations. It covers milestones, persons and generally presents the history of physics in a very readable format. Another book that caught my eye but I did not check out was Physics for Entertainment. It was written in 1913 and apparently was a best-seller in the 1930's at one time. Curious, curious title.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Timehack 062713 0532
Yesterday was the third consecutive day that I tried to cut the grass, as well as the third consecutive day that we experienced rain, and storms, so my first choice was Eurythmics' "Here Comes the Rain Again," which was appropriate. Then, another Harrison song, "Rain" came to mind. I had almost decided to use CCR's "Who'll Stop the Rain?" when Duran Duran's "Hold Back the Rain" came to mind. Sheesh! What's a blogger to do? The thing that made the decision for me was this: I didn't start out to write about the rain, but it's pretty much what got today's post going.
I woke up unnaturally early on Tuesday morning, fifteen minutes before my 0730 alarm. I did all of the usual morning stuff, and by 0800 had my first cup of tea in hand. The weather was threatening rain, but I figured that as long as the rain was light, I would cut the grass. Rain came (but there wasn't much actual precipitation), thunder came, and then it was clear. The weather went through a few cycles like this. After my fifth cup of tea (~1300CST), I had decided I'd had enough. It was relatively dry and the grass was taunting me. I changed into my grass cutting gear and headed out.
As we had been rained out the previous day, I knew the gas tank was full. I proceeded to pull on the starter handle; I was rewarded with the handle coming off the string! I made a bigger knot which actually survived a few pulls before coming off again. Jennifer must have been watching, because she came out of the house. In the most measured and polite voice that I could muster under the circumstances, I handed the green plastic handle to her and said, "Fix it. Please." I then went to the fence and pulled down some of the ubiquitous wild morning glories.
After a few minutes she had reattached the handle and given the motor a few unsuccessful cranks. Undaunted, she went into the garage and got out Ye Olde Sparkplug Socket and removed Ye Olde Sparkplug. It was somewhat fouled, so I got a paper towel, dipped it in some gasoline, and gave it a good cleaning. She replaced Ye Olde Sparkplug, reattached the wire, and it started on the second crank. Then, I proceeded to cut the grass. The grass was higher than we usually allow it to grow, so it took around forty-five minutes to cut. It was also incredibly humid: by the time I was done, there was sweat on top of my perspiration.
I put the mower away, went inside and cleaned up. I made myself a delicious concoction of spicy seafood ramen, Progresso Tomato Basil soup and cheddar cheese and started this blog entry. I infrequently go to work in the "front half" (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) of the week, but I text or email every day to see if I'm needed. I was pleasantly surprised when the asked me to come in.
And then it rained some more. Now, about twenty-four hours later, we have flooding, flood warnings, flash flood warnings and more rain is forecast.
Whew! After all of that, what I Want To Tell You is this: I found a couple of pieces in cyberspace that I wanted to share. The first one claims that "80% is the new 100%" and other one through a finely detailed chain of events example effectively refutes the first. I think the author of the first piece might have been speaking from his own experience about growing into a more effective manager, but in the world I live in, 80% almost NEVER cuts it. In my world, when I am proofreading something which has an expiration of July 17, 2013 11:59, that isn't good enough- because sometimes my world is based in internet time, 24/7, and 11:59 not only needs to be followed by A.M. or P.M., but the time zone also needs to be specified. I could go on and on and on, but I think you get the idea.
Lastly, Jennifer and I were at the library today, pretty much intending just to drop a few things off. However, I thought we'd go up to the fourth floor to see if we could see any of the flooding. This time, there was no water. We went to the New Books shelf, and a title caught my eye. With great excitement, I grabbed R For Dummies before anyone else could! I had actually been looking for something like this for the past several months! I showed it to Jennifer, and she naturally said, "What's R?" I took a breath, gathered my thoughts and gave her the best answer I could think of: "R is the freeware version of S." I got the deer-in-the-headlights look. I eventually was able to explain that R is a language used to graphically represent statistics. It's easy enough to understand, but it's not always that easy to explain. At this point reality came crashing through the R-induced fog, and Jennifer remembered that Mr. T needed a new book to read. I had a thought that he might enjoy a nice biography of Nikolai Tesla, so I went off in search of that while she browsed the electronic catalog. Surprisingly, every one of the Tesla books missing from the shelves, so I went to check the electronic catalog to confirm this. They were indeed all checked out, the catalog confirmed, but I found a few other interesting titles. I went into the stacks and grabbed The Physics Book. It is a softcover book approximately 500 pages in length, and the pages are equally divided between text and pictures or illustrations. It covers milestones, persons and generally presents the history of physics in a very readable format. Another book that caught my eye but I did not check out was Physics for Entertainment. It was written in 1913 and apparently was a best-seller in the 1930's at one time. Curious, curious title.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Timehack 062713 0532
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