16 September 2012
Caution: Owls!
16/09/12 05:22
As those of you that have worked with me know, in addition to actual problems with systems and software, I help users with, shall we say, less critical issues. This week I got a call from one guy who plays Hearts on his computer during lunch. He is unfortunately, unable to find Hearts on the computer without a shortcut on his desktop, (It’s found at Start>Programs>Games> Hearts. It's really not that difficult.) Every couple of months his shortcut disappears and he calls. So I stopped by and in oh, 30 seconds had restored his lost shortcut. As I got up to leave he thanked me and added "I gotta have hearts." To which I replied "Miles, and miles, and miles of Hearts." "Uh, yeah." was all he said.
He didn't get it. At all. In any way.
So I left, wondering where he'd been hiding all his life that he hadn’t run into the musical Damn Yankees. The I remembered, half his fifty some years was in rural Scotland, and the rest in rural Wisconsin and Tennessee. That explains a lot.
This week was of course, a momentous date. September 11 is, as I’m sure you all remember, Momiji’s birthday. Now we don’t actually know her exact birthday, but she was approximately two when we got her. We adopted her on September 11, so because our adopting her was the best present she could have gotten, we decided that the 11th was her birthday. She doesn’t seem to mind, as long as her dish is full, the litter box is clean, and she gets her chin rubbed when she wants. I keep telling her that she’s the luckiest cat in the world. I don’t think she quite gets it, but she’s happy, healthy, and about five years old. She likes to sleep in the sun, and play with Geiger. Really she is the luckiest cat in the world.
Public Service Announcement: If you go out today in Coquitlum BC you need to exercise caution. You see, the owls are out to get you. In particular they are attacking women jogging along the paths and trails. Wildlife experts think they are, as odd as it may seem, mistaking full grown women for squirrels. Now, it’s not that we have an abundance of unobservant owls. Rather, it’s the ponytails. From directly above they don’t see the person. All they see is brown or black hair with a tail swinging behind. To them any mass of brown or black hair with a tail swinging behind says squirrel.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=938c952b-5885-4726-af23-112bda5a8448&k=84475
You’ve been warned.
This did however, remind me of something I saw in a store a couple of weeks ago. It was a denim baseball cap, normal in most respects except that just above the bill was a hole. I spent some minutes trying to figure out why you would want an inch and a half hole in the front of your baseball cap. Then I realized this was for those that wear their cap backwards. It’s to let your ponytail out. I guess then the purpose of the bill is to protect your neck from the owls.
And finally, on another subject, the Curiosity rover on Mars has a set of calibration targets for the cameras and other instruments. In addition to the normal colour and b/w test patterns and a calibrated sample of basalt from New Mexico, they included a penny. You see, when geologists take a picture it's standard practice to put something in the frame for scale. A boot or rock hammer for something large, and a coin for small samples. Curiosity has a Lincoln Penny glued to the frame for scale and as a sharpness calibration.
I was struck by an amazing aspect of this. We've sent a lot of robots to Mars but the first human face on Mars is, of all people, Abraham Lincoln. What a weird turn of history that the first face on Mars is not Carl Sagan, not some astronaut, and certainly not some badly lit image artifact from a crude early orbiting camera. Of all people the first human face looking out on Mars is the 16th president of the US that's been dead nearly 150 years on a coin that's over 100 years old.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4649
That's wild, man.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: Momiji Birthday Pose. Tree Pruning Problem, Picturesque Tree by the Ocean, Flaming Sunrise
He didn't get it. At all. In any way.
So I left, wondering where he'd been hiding all his life that he hadn’t run into the musical Damn Yankees. The I remembered, half his fifty some years was in rural Scotland, and the rest in rural Wisconsin and Tennessee. That explains a lot.
This week was of course, a momentous date. September 11 is, as I’m sure you all remember, Momiji’s birthday. Now we don’t actually know her exact birthday, but she was approximately two when we got her. We adopted her on September 11, so because our adopting her was the best present she could have gotten, we decided that the 11th was her birthday. She doesn’t seem to mind, as long as her dish is full, the litter box is clean, and she gets her chin rubbed when she wants. I keep telling her that she’s the luckiest cat in the world. I don’t think she quite gets it, but she’s happy, healthy, and about five years old. She likes to sleep in the sun, and play with Geiger. Really she is the luckiest cat in the world.
Public Service Announcement: If you go out today in Coquitlum BC you need to exercise caution. You see, the owls are out to get you. In particular they are attacking women jogging along the paths and trails. Wildlife experts think they are, as odd as it may seem, mistaking full grown women for squirrels. Now, it’s not that we have an abundance of unobservant owls. Rather, it’s the ponytails. From directly above they don’t see the person. All they see is brown or black hair with a tail swinging behind. To them any mass of brown or black hair with a tail swinging behind says squirrel.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=938c952b-5885-4726-af23-112bda5a8448&k=84475
You’ve been warned.
This did however, remind me of something I saw in a store a couple of weeks ago. It was a denim baseball cap, normal in most respects except that just above the bill was a hole. I spent some minutes trying to figure out why you would want an inch and a half hole in the front of your baseball cap. Then I realized this was for those that wear their cap backwards. It’s to let your ponytail out. I guess then the purpose of the bill is to protect your neck from the owls.
And finally, on another subject, the Curiosity rover on Mars has a set of calibration targets for the cameras and other instruments. In addition to the normal colour and b/w test patterns and a calibrated sample of basalt from New Mexico, they included a penny. You see, when geologists take a picture it's standard practice to put something in the frame for scale. A boot or rock hammer for something large, and a coin for small samples. Curiosity has a Lincoln Penny glued to the frame for scale and as a sharpness calibration.
I was struck by an amazing aspect of this. We've sent a lot of robots to Mars but the first human face on Mars is, of all people, Abraham Lincoln. What a weird turn of history that the first face on Mars is not Carl Sagan, not some astronaut, and certainly not some badly lit image artifact from a crude early orbiting camera. Of all people the first human face looking out on Mars is the 16th president of the US that's been dead nearly 150 years on a coin that's over 100 years old.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4649
That's wild, man.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: Momiji Birthday Pose. Tree Pruning Problem, Picturesque Tree by the Ocean, Flaming Sunrise