Random Thought of the Day

Quote: Nareed

I got a raise yesterday.

About time.

I got one last Friday!

My boss called me early in the day and asked if I was free for a "quick chat."

Panic overtook me immediately.

Then it turns out I was getting a raise.

It was a good day.

Quote: ams288

Panic overtook me immediately.

LOL

My sister just recently fired someone and yeah, it's not always a given that you know what is coming. Layoff, raise...

Quote: rxwine

Home computers programs should be capable of managing irregular power generation. You couldn't really optimize multiple sources of irregular small energy without such a system in place.

Those programs already exist. People who live aboard boats use wind and solar power but set it up to be automatically managed so that the variable wind-output goes into a battery rather than directly operating some load. Home systems usually track the sun's movement.

Yesterday the boss sent someone to a bakery/restaurant called "Garabatos," (roughly translated as "Scribbles" or perhaps "Doodles"). I took the chance to ask for a dozen of their signature cookies, known as "garabatos." How much more "signature" can you get, if the business is named after the cookie? the idea being to share them with the cow-orkers at the office.

Well, the dozen cost about $9 US. That's outrageously expensive.

But they're really good cookies.

Partly it was that. partly nostalgia. Years ago when my mom owned a clothing store, at a house nearby some people started selling these cookies out of their garage. They're a pair of yellow vanilla-flavored dry as dust cookies sandwiching a rich, creamy chocolate filling, topped with a chocolate swirl of no particular shape (like a quick scribble, or, in Spanish, "un garabato," hence the name).

From that garage they've prospered into a chain of bakeries, most with a restaurant attached. They have what passes for really good cheesecake, too (though for real cheesecake you have to go to America).

Well, the cookies proved very popular, particularly among those who hadn't tried them before. But I'm never paying for another dozen as long as I live.

I wouldn't mind having the recipe for the filling, though...

I just noticed Nareed's ban put me in the box for "top contributor".

Wow. Power going to my head.

(what power? Yeah I know.)

Human's are geared like that. It's like the gold star, silver, blue, or green stars teachers sometimes use. Nearly worthless piece of sticky paper shaped like a star.

well, Nareed's out of the Phantom Zone soon, then it's back to being a regular person again for me.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Thanks for posting that, Paco! I liked the lady's version very much; I assume that's her in the judging chair with the first group...

Nana Mouskouri was born in Greece in 1934, and got her start singing in Jazz night clubs in Athens in the 1950's. She left studying classical music at a conservatory because they dissapproved of her singing popular music. She sold over 350 million records in her career. So the group was honoring her rendition of the song (so that is her in the chair).
Nana was deeply conservative, and she married (at age 25) the first man she ever kissed. They separated 14 years later, and she met her true love shortly afterwards, but did not marry him until she was almost age 70 because she did not believe in divorce.

Nature can be brutal and it seems some people can't deal with it
Internet cams trained on bird nests are very popular
People get emotionally involved
When things don't go right, people actually freak

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/05/19/when-nest-cams-get-gruesome-some-viewers-cant-take-it/

"When the osprey mother began neglecting and attacking her chicks in 2014, anxiety exploded among some viewers"
“It is absolutely disgusting that you will not take those chicks away from that demented witch of a parent!!!!!” one viewer emailed to Jeffrey Brodeur, the communications specialist who ran the camera. Another wrote: “I realize this is nature, but once you put up a cam to view into their worlds it is no longer nature. You have a responsibility to help n save when in need.”

There was also the case of some tourists that found a young bison purposely excluded from the herd
Its nature, that's what happens when the young ones are weak or sick, they become food for other animals.
Its nature. That's the way it is. Its the way its supposed to be.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/17/baby-bison-euthanized-after-yellowstone-tourists-put-it-in-their-suv.html

Last year, I was riding my bike home and came across a pedestrian on a sidewalk that just found an injured bird
He was beside himself.
I shrugged and told him that injured bird is now food. There is some animal out there struggling to survive and hungry and needs to eat that bird to survive.

Quote: terapined

Nature can be brutal and it seems some people can't deal with it

if you were brought up in the city or most suburbia, it helps bring this condition on

The whitetail population explosions can bring on some funny stuff. Black bear now too. We seem to hear less of the crazy solutions now, like getting the deer to take birth control medications - once the price of that is explained to the community, well, i doubt it ever got past the drawing board anywhere. More communities are accepting quiet measures, like allowing specially licensed archery hunts.

Quote: terapined

Nature can be brutal and it seems some people can't deal with it

Last year, I was riding my bike home and came across a pedestrian on a sidewalk that just found an injured bird. He was beside himself.
I shrugged and told him that injured bird is now food. There is some animal out there struggling to survive and hungry and needs to eat that bird to survive.

A marvelous attitude. Our civilized life seems to involve a great many abstractions that remove us from the 'brutal nature' of the real world.

Consider a chicken dinner: Some recipes start off with 'go to your chicken coop' and some with 'Wait until nightfall and then go to your neighbor's chicken coop'.
Some people pluck chicken feathers, others beat their wife until she plucks chicken feathers.
I get my chicken either at a restaurant or at a grocery store where it comes in a saran-wrapped package with a layer of sponge-like absorbent material to take care of what a McDonald's employee is required to refer to as 'juices', never blood or fat or grease...just juices.

With shrimp we refer to it as a 'vein' rather than a digestive tract.

Everything is euphemisms in a sterilized package. We learn that Bambi is good and hunters are people who shoot Bambi. We are not taught that deer carry ticks which carry parasites that cause injury to humans and so overly multiplying herds of deer are a threat to us.

The trouble is that the real world throws together the Coop Owner and the Poacher, the abatoir is physically remote but still vital, those who have been taught to value one creature as good have to deal with nature which values all life the same. The fisherman in the gulf of mexico who encounters an exhausted horse swimming the wrong direction and rescues it is considered a hero but he has indeed deprived the crabs of a meal. The well meaning tourists taught a calf that will grow to 1200 pounds to go up to people and to go up to cars. Nature's rules are harsh. The park rule is do not interfere.

Quote: terapined

Nature can be brutal and it seems some people can't deal with it

I've read estimates that domestic cats, and presumably stray ones as well, kill billions of city birds each year. I'm sure dogs do their bit, too.

And hopefully both do in some rats along the way as well.