Another Opinion Among Many

Seems that the warm, heavy snow – that’s perfect for snowmans – is too heavy for our power lines. You don’t know how good it is until its gone, huh. Now, since my alarm clock is run from the electricity in the wall socket…

highway being plowed

So, this is the after…doesn’t look so bad, does it? I didn’t include any pics of me up on the roof, clearing the snow and tree branches away from the power pole entrance and the sattelite dish.  This is the first time that we lost TV because of an obstruction on our dish, and I must say that it took quite a lot.  Kudos to Bell.  From my experience with Cable TV out here, this is nothing in comparison, despite the FUD that the local cable monopoly is trying to dish out.

I was reviewing a few of the spam comments that Akismet caught but insisted that I read before discarding.  Here are three:

“David”, from IP address sixty-six dot seventy-nine dot one sixty-three dot one eighty-seven wrote -

 I like your stuff, even though i came here by accident!

“Eric”, from IP address seventy-two dot two fourty-nine dot thirt-two dot one eighty-four wrote -

 To all the uninitiated out there – read this and take heed. This is good stuff. Thanks….

“Jessica” from IP address sixty-six dot seventy-nine dot one sixty-three dot one seventy-nine (David’s next door neighbor?) wrote -

 I came here by accident, but like it

Its so nice to know that you’re appreciated! Thanks, random robots! I feel much better knowing that my writing is feeding your souls.  Its been fun, but scram, now.

I have to agree with Eric, though.

Its snowing outside right now.  The flakes are quite large and fluffy and its coming down reasonably heavily.  The snowfall is heavy enough that its altering the “color” of the air to a mist-like whiteness.  Its blanketing everything in its path in its generic whiteness.  It dampens sounds and one feels like they are being separated from the rest of the world by the snow’s insulative isolation.

I’ve noticed that even on busy week days, snow like this will still create this feeling.  The isolation does not induce loneliness, though.  Its  more of a protective coating that sheilds one from the normal hustle and bustle of the human world.  On a weekend like this day, though, most activity slows down and only those who really have to get out of their homes venture to do so.

So, why is it that the potential real isolation of a heavy snowfall brings comfort instead of fear? Is it because we equate fluffy snowflakes with fuzzy soft toys or pets? Is it because it forces us to slow down? Is it because snowfall deadens the sharp sounds, dulling reality? Or, is it something more metaphysical in that its covering up of the dirty ground causes a latent triggering of some primitive inner cathartic  mechanism that we don’t normally have access to? Why does a blanket of snow feel like a fresh start?

The albatross drinks sea water. It has a special desalinization apparatus that strains out and excretes all excess salt.In Clarendon, Texas, there is reportedly a law on the books that lawyers must accept eggs, chickens, or other produce, as well as money, as payment of legal fees.

Cats purr at 26 cycles per second, the same as an idling diesel engine.

A dragonfly flaps its wings 20 to 40 times a second, bees and houseflies 200 times, some mosquitoes 600 times, and a tiny gnat 1,000 times.

Marilyn Monroe had six toes.

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum.

A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why.

The combination “ough” can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into

a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.”

Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning “containing arsenic.”

The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.

Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.

All porcupines float in water.

Non-dairy creamer is flammable.

When opossums are playing “possum,” they are not “playing.” They actually pass out from sheer terror.

Here in Canada, its Thanksgiving. We’re having a baked ham with boiled potoatoes and carrots, along with baked squash and yams. There will be no dessert this year, as I’m the one cooking the meal and I didn’t want to go to the effort. Am I the only one that thinks that the only good apple pie is either your own or your mom’s? Store bought pies are usually cruddy.

So, what are you eating today (or had yesterday)?

I was going over my site stats today and noticed that in the top 10 search terms, there was the term

nucomm blog

Methinks that someone is trying to find out if their company is being badmouthed. Why else would such a search term come into someone’s mind? I know that there are a lot of people out there who may be loose-lipped about their company’s information, but I think that you’re gonna find that the info about NuComm on this site is pretty sparse. As a matter of fact, if you want to save yourself some searching, go to the company’s home page and use the search engine there. Its an amazing site, and why not? Real Bergevin is a genius after all! Whoever you are, please feel free to continue reading my insightful musings and click on all the ads you see (if I decide to cheapen myself and look for that type of revenue). Cheers, and welcome to my site

WARNING: Geek Rant Ahead!!!…you’re on your own from here…

/rant on
I don’t know how many people read my musings, but for those who do, I bet you’ve realized that I’m a bit of a Linux fan. Right now I run Gentoo, not because its a geek distro, but because its easy to maintain and relatively crashless (I say relatively because someday it may crash, really, it may). There’s only one problem that I am finding right now. I’m sure that its the same for any of the testing or bleeding edge branches of any distro (like Mandrake Cooker or Debian Sid). I run testing so I get all the new stuff. Its not that Gentoo’s got a problem. Its that X.org has a problem. For some reason, after the 6.8.0 release, they stopped supporting hardware accelleration, in favor of composite, which, although neat, is resource-intensive and only good for pretty screenshots, IMHO. Since I run testing, I get the newest software that’s proclaimed stable enough for human consumption, which means it tries to update X.org every time I emerge --sync It overwrites my /package.mask file every time. I guess that I’ve gotta read the forum and how-tos to find out how to mask a package on update instead of editing a file.
/rant off