Musings

All day the light came and went, and the rain came and went. Here’s a brighter moment, although there really was some rain when I took this shot.

In the afternoon, we had a mall run to get a new laptop for us so we can hand-me-down the one we arrived here with. Yeah, it’s not new, but nephew #2 is thrilled to have his OWN LAPTOP! He also got a lesson in bezier curves and lathe rendering (if I remember the terminology correctly) from The Guru.

As we drove around the parking lot, thick with vehicles, trying to get to the parking garage, we saw this brilliant rainbow. Then, in the Apple store, we discovered it was (informally) take-your-dog-to-the-Apple-store day. I think I saw six dogs in the store. I daresay none were service doggies. Does it make a difference that this is a mall, but not an enclosed mall, instead one that has shop doors opening to the out-of-doors?

Posted at 11:07 PM | 1 Comment »

Wow, I get to see through the specially fortified door(way) to the pilot area!*

And at my seat, foot elevated of course, I discover that texting (really IMing) is free, courtesy of Delta. Yay!

* And the protocol on a pilot exiting the cockpit while inflight begins with a call to the head flight attendant. Then, the flight attendants in the front block the entrance from the cabin with a drink cart and turn their attention to cabin activity, highly scrutinized. Then, they call the pilot to exit, and s/he closes the door after exiting the cockpit. Does biz, then calls the remaining pilot from the flight-attendant phone to coordinate reentry, then opens the door to return. You get the idea…many well-executed safety steps….

Posted at 11:22 PM | Comments Off on New, all aboard

Is it mostly inertia that we do this seasonal time change stuff? Could we agree on changing a half hour permanently? Oh, my, wouldn’t that mess things up on a grand scale!

Posted at 7:25 PM | 1 Comment »

Turns out that balancing on the Boot and two crutches on a slope and bending over makes it rather difficult to focus my iPhone camera app.

Posted at 6:45 PM | Comments Off on Ginger, gingerly

Several months after we got the Prius Prime, I noticed these green leaves, which look like teardrops from a distance, on the dash-map in an irregular pattern.

John…, I hollered.

Turns out the car’s algorithms noticed that we stop repeatedly at certain locations. The leaf indicates that it will switch into a heightened form of regenerative breaking at those spots, if we brake there again. This means it gets a tad more juice into the battery at those momentum-breaking interludes.

If I have it right.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Teardrops are leaves

NASA is projecting that Hurricane Harvey will be parked over this stretch of the Texas coast for a couple of days, raining, raining, and raining. This is flat land, at low elevations, especially vulnerable to that much rain…. In a few places, they predict Harvey may drop 35 inches of rain…. Whew!

With elevation maps and rainfall predictions, along with storm surge/tides, NASA can merge the spatial data and map flooding potentials…. [Website visitors can zoom in far more than this….]

I suspect the calculations behind this are as complex as the eclipse models I looked at earlier this week. They’re just exclusively on this planet.

And none of this discussion is about wind effects. ☔️

UPDATE: And, just a few minutes after I posted this, I read that Harvey is now a Category 4 storm. 💨

Posted at 7:18 PM | Comments Off on No-hurry Harvey

I’ve been checking GooStreetView and other mapping details (e.g., bus routes from Ranelagh to Stoneybatter—two Dublin suburbs) to satisfy wonder-where-that-is questions that arise in my mind as I read the Tana French detective stories…I’m on the last one published…in 2016….

Long story short, I found this alternate reality brick wall and window detail that I THINK is a result of Goo’s photo-mosaic-melding algorithms.

Talented brick work, no?

Posted at 9:20 PM | Comments Off on Foreign craftsmanship

AmazingPrime delivered the Steed today. Steed is one of a class of non-motorized vehicles called a knee scooter or knee walker. I put the knee of my bad leg on the pad, release the brake, and walk with my good leg to zoom around!

The basket is really crucial to improving my quality of life. I can hang my water cup handle over the edge of the basket, which means I can refill my water ANYTIME. By MySELF.

It’s a new world (of healing)!

Now I’m working on my stamina…you lose a lot just sitting around.

Rock on!

Posted at 9:42 PM | Comments Off on New device

During our boat tour focused on the architecture along the Chicago River a month ago, we passed several bascule bridges. This one carried two sets of rails, but is now…offline. Bascule bridges have a big counterweight, and on this one it sits/hangs above the tracks when the bridge is down.

The first bridge across the Chicago River was a pedestrian bridge in approximately this location.

Posted at 7:47 PM | Comments Off on Not London, not falling

Today’s two excitements are not on the same plane. First, the gardenias have reached full scent. And that is some glorious plant-perfume.

The other excitement is the brand-new iPad, the brand-new model that shipped today. It is fast and commodious (inside, at least that’s what I hear), and has a wider gamut than any of our other screens. At least, I have that on good authority.

The delivery of the new device had its own drama. Brown promised it by 7pm—and it was no-show on that schedule. I was hungry, and debated a bit, then dropped the pasta in the boiling water, figuring that, in the way of these things, would get it to show up. Yup. Right at 7:15.

Dinner and an iPad.

Posted at 8:37 PM | 2 Comments »