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 Tales from real life |
| Well, if they're not true, they oughta be! |
"What's your sign?" was a common pickup line back in the disco era. Many a hot babe would choose her dance partner based on the supposed compatibility of their signs. A really smooth operator knew what sign to claim for himself to pique her interest. Astrology is less popular today, but it's still widely followed. Newspapers still print them. And even though newspapers are going the way of disco, there are thousands (millions?) of web sites to choose from. Even the venerable and respected Washington Post has a daily horoscope section in their online edition. I rarely look at it, and I don't put much stock in the predictions, but I do know my sign. I'm a Gemini. Or am I? I don't know who wrote out the first astrological tables and defined the 'characteristics' of the signs, or by what authority they did so. There must have been a time when someone first charged a fee for providing celestial guidance. I do know that the signs are based on the constellations of the zodiac. And the zodiac is the belt-shaped backdrop that the sun moves through during a solar year (as viewed from Earth). The moon and the planets also appear to travel around the zodiac. The stars that make up each constellation may appear to be in a two-dimensional grouping when viewed from earth, but they are actually separated by vast distances in the 3-D universe. Those pictures we see in the sky are totally dependent on our personal perspective. So the shape of the constellations can change over time as our solar system makes its way through the cosmos. The astrological signs are also linked to calendar dates, but calendars were notoriously inaccurate for many thousands of years. In western culture, we use a modified version of the calendar from ancient Rome. That moon-based calendar wasn't a good match for the solar year. So, the Julian reform had to make the year 46 BC 445 days long to get their calendar back in sync with the spring equinox. Imagine how long it must have seemed to wait for New Years Eve! The Julian calendar was better, but still not perfect. In 1582, the Gregorian reform dropped ten days out of the calendar to sync things up again. October 5th was followed by October 15th. Some countries resisted the change and waited until things got even worse. Britain had to drop twelve days from their calendar in 1752. It's really weird to realize that the date in Europe depended on where you lived for almost 200 years. My point is that even ten days difference in the calendar would make me a Taurus instead of a Gemini. It's all too confusing and arbitrary for me. I'll just go with the Chinese year of the Rooster. I learned that I'm a Rooster from the paper place mat in a Chinese restaurant. Now there's a system that actually makes sense! |
I recently read an article about data backup that described the 3 - 2 - 1 system. Three copies on at least 2 different media with at least one copy off-site. It sounds like a lot of effort, but it assures that your work will survive any disaster. And with wildfires constantly in the news, it seems frighteningly possible that your computer, your backup drive, and your printed copies could go up in smoke with little or no warning. So, what to do? Multiple copies and different media are fairly easy, I alternate data backups between an external HDD and an SD card. All I back up are my data files, so a lot will fit on even a 32Gb SD card. And I print out my finished work from time to time as a third copy. My WDC portfolio qualifies both as a third copy and as off-site storage. Cloud storage would serve the same purpose. At WDC, I have a couple of hundred finished pieces and a book with numerous entries that are set to private. Those entries contain odd ideas, poem fragments, partial stories to be completed 'later', and various things that are actively in-work. My book doesn't back up everything, but it has most of the important stuff. |
Lilli ☕  raised the subject of potatoes in her forum today: Question of the Day!  I won't try to choose one recipe or even a specific type of potato to call a favorite. For me, the potato is simply a fact of life: always present, always welcome, and never disappointing. Some people have potatoes every day. I have potatoes with every meal. It's rare for me to sit down to eat without some form of potato on my plate. Hash browns, french fries, streak fries, jo-jos, tater-tots, chips, mashed, boiled, roasted, scalloped, baked, twice-baked, and of course there's my wife's excellent potato salad. I even have potato pancakes for breakfast at our local diner. You could say that potatoes are in my blood. They're certainly well-established around my middle. If we are what we eat, then just call me spuds. When I was a child, my family grew our own. We had a half-acre garden and half of that was potato patch. In the spring, I would cut last year's left-over potatoes into wedges and plant them with their 'eyes' pointing up. I'd weed them and 'hill' them up in the summer. Mom would pay me fifty cents to gather a pint jar full of potato bugs and then drown the nasty little buggers. When the vines succumbed to Autumn's frost, I'd dig potatoes for days and haul them to the root cellar. There were wooden cribs along the back wall where the potatoes would keep until next spring. And the cycle would repeat. And the cycle would repeat. |
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