A Curious Statistical Anomaly

You know the type of day where you either want to pull out your hair by the roots or sit down and cry or maybe laugh hysterically?  There’s no real way to handle a day like I had today.  So, you plug along doing what you can and hoping that when it arrives, tomorrow will be a better day.

Then tonight as the sun was setting, I looked out and the garden area was filled with fireflies.   Sparking on and off.  Rising up like embers from a fire.  Blinking here and there among the trees and the garden plants or in the air.

It was a magical end to a very frustrating day.  Sometimes the  world does give you a sign that life is very much filled with beauty.  You just have to open your eyes and look.  Well, I looked.  My heart is full.  Tomorrow will be a wonderful day.

What does it take to turn your bad days into confidence that tomorrow will be better?  For me — today — it was fireflies at twilight.

Remember that curse — May you live in interesting times.

Well, I think this is a very, very interesting time. I used to think that if I got organized then everything would just somehow work out. I am so naive. All week I’ve been working on the TODO list I got ready last Sunday for Monday.

Well it had 20 items on it. Monday I managed to get one item done and half of another one. Then it occurred to me that I hadn’t factored in the network going crazy on me or the PC locking up for about half a minute every ten minutes or so — doesn’t sound like much but when you’re trying to get things done and find it locked up on you and you don’t know what it kept and what it missed in the buffer.

Anyway, here it is Thursday and I finally got half the TODO done. Half. Might have gotten farther if I learned to put the steps of each task in so I can cross more things off each day.

What’s better: having a TODO list that breaks the tasks down into all the steps required so you can see that you’re making progress but the list is 5 pages for a day OR just the over-all task so the list fits on one page? What do you do?

Some days it seems that no matter what you do to get ahead, you end up behind.  We came home from Balticon and set up all the laptops and the network again and found that the printer won’t work with the network anymore.  So, it’s now hardwired to my USB port and we can only print using my laptop.  That’s great except that out of the 8 USB ports on this laptop only three of them work — the one with the mouse, the one with my external hard-drive, and now the one with the printer attached.  So, to upload photos I’m going to have to take one of those out and then put it back.  Not such a big deal in the scheme of things.

But, here’s the next thing; my laptop is not doing to well lately either.  It takes forever to boot and while most of the time I can use the etch-a-sketch method of getting rid of the line across the bottom 1/3 of my screen so that it looks fine, it is getting slower and slower and slower.

Before someone mentions running stuff here’s what I’ve done to try to speed it up.  I ran SpywareBlaster (nothing found), Spybot – Search & Destroy (found two cookies that were removed), AdAware (found nothing),  ran MS Disk Cleanup, and MS Disk Defragger (said I didn’t need to run it but did so anyway).  Not one bit of difference.  Our in-house network is password protected and we live on five acres in farming country.  I’m stumped other than to think that it’s just that the machine is old (nearly 6 years) and maybe things are failing — it does make a wicked racket while turned on — there’s the fan and a constant humming, stuttering sound.

I’ve heard that clearing everything off and re-installing the system would help but I don’t have the system disks, if I ever even got them when I bought the laptop.  I do know that Hyperion’s machine, which is newer than mine, didn’t come with the system disks unless we paid extra.

So, it’s looking like I need a new machine once I get the budget figured out and save up a bit more.  On the other hand, when you have to wait so long between asking a file to open and it opening — I manage to get some housework done.  I think tomorrow I’m going to sit here with my knitting — maybe I can intimidate the machine into behaving when it knows that I’m going to have some fun task to work on when it drags its proverbial feet.

It seems that the old saying, “the faster I go, the behinder I get” is getting a workout in my life.  The zines go live on June 1st.  But then you probably knew that.  But, I’m going to be at Balticon from May 28th to 31st — I think you begin to see the problem. Now add to the mix that I’m going to be on a couple of panels and will need to prepare for that. Then add that I’ll be helping a bit with the WSFA/Capclave table at the convention. My time is being eaten away and I still have things to do, reviews to edit, books to finish, my own reviews to finish writing. I love it when those deadlines come upon me like a tsunami of ginormous proportions — well I should learn to love them it happens so often in my life.

Meanwhile, the cat has been vaccinated, dewormed, chipped, and treated for ear mites. He needs to go back to the vet again next week to get his ears checked out again. I’m not sure how we’ll get him in the cat carrier this time. We had to pick him up and push him in last time getting all four paws into the opening. I understand that they had just as much of a fight getting him out at the vets. They turned the cage so the door was at the bottom and he still didn’t come out. The assistant held the carrier while Hyperion reached in to disengage paws.  After treatment though he couldn’t get in the carrier fast enough. It’s been a few days and he doesn’t take off when we both come out of the house at the same time anymore. It takes two of us to get him in the carrier so he’s very cautious of the two of us together.

I got the yarn for a sweater from the new Interweave Knits; the Jali Cardigan. I had to order the yarn from Lion Brand since none of the stores near me had it. I’m making the sweater in Hyacinth — which is a sort of light many times washed denim shade and no where near as dark as the swatch on the website. Now I just have to find my circular No. 6 needle long enough for the sweater. Heck I even did a swatch and washed and dried it. Love the feel of the yarn — soft and nicely drappy.

I’m really hoping I can finish this sweater in time for Readercon. It’s nice to have deadlines they make such a nice breeze as the pass you by. Who knows maybe I will figure out a way to knit in my sleep and I will finish it. I’ll try to post updates as I move along on this project.

I’ve been thinking of getting back into the habit of using the Wii Fit again.  We updated to the Wii Fit Plus at the beginning of the year.  I hoped that the Wii Fit Plus would have a bit less attitude — but no such luck.

To use the Wii Fit you have to have a Wii. Then the Fit part is a platform you put on the floor and use when you do the exercises. You have a choice of a male or female trainer. The trainers just tell you how to do the exercise. The Wii Fit guy is a small icon of the floor platform that talks to you when you start up the program. It gets a bit snarky. You wouldn’t think an inanimate object would have an attitude.

Maybe it’s my conscience and it’s not being snarky, but the way it says things like, “Glad you could finally find the time to exercise.” that just puts my back up.

Anyway, today I loaded the thing up and decided to do at least 10 minutes. It’s been a while since I’ve felt up to it. 67 days since I last used the thing. I know because it told me in that snarky manner it has. But then surprise, surprise, I managed to lose the first goal weight ahead of schedule without even doing the Wii (it keeps track of your goals and every time you get on it — it reminds you of the goals).

So, I set another goal and I promised myself I’d actually do the exercises — at least 10 minutes a day. I figure I can do 10 minutes a day. The Wii Fit Plus has more games and adds to the fun. Actually the Wii Fit for me is a good way to exercise. I can do it when I want. It keeps track of your progress and compares you to you, not to some mythical superhuman exercise goddess. And each exercise is short and you can pick and chose what you do for an exercise or only play the games which also get you to move and burn calories.

It may be snarky but I know the little guy is just trying to help me stay healthy.

We’ve been dealing with car transmission problems for the past two week. The first weekend in May, we lost all the gears except 1st on our way home from Virginia. Monday, we took the car in to the garage. They checked it out and an hour later determined it was indeed the transmission and they needed to order a new one for a replacement as the current one was 13 years old and not likely to last if they rebuilt it. Okay, we rented a car and left it there. We picked it up that Saturday and found that the gears were hard to move into, it popped like a new driver shifting a manual (this is an automatic). We got home and had to go to a meeting and on the way the caution light lit up. Next day we called the garage and they said not to drive it and to bring it back in but they’d order another one. So, on Monday we rented another car for a week. Tonight we picked up the car again with its second new transmission. This time it seems to work. A bit hard to shift from Park to Drive but otherwise pretty smooth. We need to take it back in 10 days for a check.

On the way back we returned the rental car and decided to get all the grocery shopping done because we were there and then tomorrow just do the recycling center. Then yard work and house cleaning. But…

After the first stop it started to rain as we got into the car and then about 3 minutes later we had this…these were all taken from a moving car with the window down.

At first it just seemed like a really heavy rain storm with lightening and thunder. It was coming down in buckets. Then it started to hail. At first I didn’t think much about it then it got bigger and heavier and I remembered my camera.

This photo is only a few feet further down the road and you can see the entrance to Denny’s is now in deep water.

The road was covered with standing water and spraying up from all the cars but the worst was the hail. This next photo is barely 3 feet along from the last one.  It’s a bit fuzzier than the others partly because now it was scary. The hail was banging on the roof and the windows and we were really afraid that the windshield would crack or break. You can see the white hail stones on the grass check against the picture above and you’ll see less hail — that’s how hard and fast it was falling.

I should mention this was during rush hour traffic on this route. Cars were pretty much bumper to bumper. We’re all being pounded by these fairly big hail stone — when it stopped at the shopping center, we check and they seemed to vary from 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Solid ice hitting cars. We got a couple of small dents in the roof but the windows are fine.

Cars were trying to get off the road and find a place to get under cover. There’s no place to do that. What trees there are were in the meridians and this is an area of strip malls with big open parking lots.

Later we heard people on their cells to family talking and remembering the big LaPlata tornado a couple of years back and the damage it did. People remember. I’ve been through hail storms before but nothing like this one — all the others were the ones were the hail was about the size of a pea or smaller.

I guess it’s not nice to take Mother Nature for granted — ever.

[Hyperion here:]  I also took a few short bursts of video with my cell phone, but the format isn’t compatible with any viewers except the one on my phone.  I’ll see if I can’t find some conversion software and add them to the post in a day or two.

It’s that time of month, and this time things are really, really, tight. Hyperion and I will be covering Malice Domestic, a wonderful mystery convention held in Arlington, VA this weekend. We’ll also be at Maryland Sheep and Wool on Sunday — the biggest sheep and wool event on the east coast.

And, we’ll also be trying to get SFRevu and Gumshoe Review up and live with the May issues on the 1st.

Stay tuned to see if we actually managed to do all that and remain moderately sane at the same time. [Hyperion: I predict a 7.23% probability]

Meanwhile, the cat (Emnot) finally went to the vet this past week. We’d thought Emnot was a she but the vet, after careful and intense looking, found that she was really a he. He’d also already been neutered so that was a relief. But, he had round worms and ear mites — as well as fleas (good thing he’s an outdoor cat). So, now it’s medication and ear drops for him and he’s not a happy cat just now. However, we came back from a doctor’s appointment this afternoon and found a dead lizard and the remains of a mouse. Wonder if he’s trying to warn us off about the medications….

For the past several years, we’ve taken part in Earth Hour but this year somehow — probably lack of promotion on the net — we totally missed it. Not such a bad thing because we do as much as we can every day of the year. We recycle and for us that means we have to drive to the recycle center once a week, although only as part of our normal shopping cycle. We tend to put water in a water bottle rather than buy bottled water. We keep our heat down in the winter and our air conditioning higher in the summer (forget saying turn it off completely we live in an area that gets days over 100 degrees). We use the car to go to and from work (no public transport closer than work). We plan our weekly shopping trips to be as efficient as possible using gas. We’re saving to make take some more measures — replacing the single pane windows in the house, purchasing a hybrid car, swapping out the 20 year old appliances for EnergyStar ones.

We live on 5 wooded acres and have little direct sun during the day. Solar is out for us but we’re looking into other options. But that’s a long term project.

Earth day is a time to think about our commitment to the Earth and strive to live lightly upon it. Here’s a video about Earth day and what it’s trying to get people to think about. Granted it’s by a vested interested party but that doesn’t take away from the core message:

It seems that here in the US there are many people who prefer to put their heads in the sand and pretend that the Earth has infinite resources and all this “green” talk is not worthy paying attention to. Our planet is where we live, work, and play. But it’s resources are indeed finite. There was a recent report that the world will reach peak oil (that point where it cost more to extract the oil and you could possible get from using/selling it and which is the beginning of the end of that resource) within the next 10 years. Others say we’ll reach that point in 5 years or 2 or we’ve already reached it. Note that none are saying it’s not going to happen.

There’s a definition of insanity that I find very cogent. Insanity is doing the same activity over and over and expecting a different result. We can’t go on using petroleum/gas/oil and expect that it won’t someday run out. If we start now putting money into alternative energy sources, we not only help our planet, we help ourselves.

Closing our eyes to the problems of global warming, peak oil, deforestation, water contamination, and species loss will not make it go away. We need to look these problems in the face and come up with plans that deal with what is not what we wish it was.

Take some time on Earth Day to decide how you and your family will do their bit to help save the Earth and its resources. Even something as simple as turning lights off when you leave the room or filling your own bottle with water will help. Every little bit does help and certainly it helps more than doing nothing. Take action to help our planet.