Thanks for front-paging this. Tomorrow's good for me, if there's a critical mass.
But if it's only a couple people UPETGI just remembered he has some biscuits to cook.
We need an incentive to get people psyched up for this. Go to this meetup, New Yorkers, or I will murder my cute dog.
If he's pausing endlessly prior to leaving there's no rush, right?
Headcount AFAIK is Unfoggetarian, Jackm, Blandings, and Barry Freed, with me as a strong maybe.
Count me as a strong maybe. (Family in town and first day of new job).
1. "Work"?
2. I think I have to go a chamber music event.
3. Don't give me any trouble.
4. Reprobates.
Upetgi -- Is next week a possibility? I've lost track of when you're leaving.
Alas, I will be in gswift/liz-spigot-land.
Alas, I will be in gswift/liz-spigot-land.
I'm going to be at Rikers rather than the office tomorrow, as it turns out, so I probably won't make it.
11: What did you do this time, Smearcase?
Next Monday or Tuesdy might be an option if it's better for people. But things are tight next week. But I'd missed when I commented that there was anyone confirmed.
Next Monday would be fine for me but Tuesday I would be a no go.
Everybody be cool! Everybody just be cool, man! I need to think, man! Shut that commenter up! Oh man I am in trouble. Just need to get my head right. One hit ought to do it....
This is making tomorrow sound better again. I'd be forceful about picking a time, but I feel bad doing that when I'm not guaranteed to show up. Someone else be forceful.
I'd be forceful but I can't for the same reasons.
6:30 is a nice and non-committal time. I should be able to make that.
6:30, tomorrow, Fresh Salt. Be prompt. Looking forward to it!
26: LB! I feel like I should pour one out for MCA.
There's a chance I'll make it for just a little while at the beginning.
(I can no longer comment on the circumcision thread.)
Honestly, if a discussion of blow jobs for infants doesn't activate your Net Nanny, I think your employer should ask for a refund.
You work too long of hours with your new promotion.
I'd feel more entitled to complain if I'd managed to stop commenting. But yes -- I end up messing around with administration all day, and then I start lawyering around five.
You should try delegating more. I've been having remarkable success at it when you consider that technically I don't supervise anybody.
too long of hours
Somewhere there must be a Language Log post on this construction, right? It sounds reasonably okay to me in speech but whenever I see it in writing I have a "wtf?" reaction.
That sounds like the sort of thing they would discuss, yeah.
I'm using "hours" not as a plural but as a way of referring to the work schedule in general. This is common, as in "I'd save for vacation if I could get better hours."
I'm using "hours" not as a plural but as a way of referring to the work schedule in general.
Right, and I think this is where the "of" construction comes from in some manner. But I'll delegate working out the details to the Language Log guys.
You can ask them, but don't use my name. I'm still angry with them about "hone in on."
Here's one related old post but it isn't very satisfying.
It kind of seems like it was just an excuse for them to type "big, long, hard".
26: You say "Hey, Mike D!" And I say "mike dese nuts!"
It kind of seems like it was just an excuse for them to type "big, long, hard".
Penis thread's the next one over.
It's not bad yet, or at least not in my neighborhood. It's supposed to be awful real soon now, though.
So, this thing is happening? It looks like I'll be able to be there.
I'll be there, +1, around 6:30.
Ima try to make it to this thing too. How do I spot the Unfogged people? Is there some sort of secret hand signal?
You shout, "Who wants to sex Mutumbo?"
51: It's surprisingly easy -- it's a small place, and if you look for the people who might plausibly be Unfogged, there's rarely going to be confusion. Assuming I'm there, you can look for me, in a somewhat unfortunately bright mint green sleeveless dress.
Ok. I'll be the guy who looks exactly like Mutumbo.
I'll be there, 6:30-ish. Looking like every other corporate drone, glasses & a red & blue check shirt.
w00t, live-blogging from the new smart phone! We have Barry Freed, bave, Mr. Smearcase, LB, Spike, Unfoggedarian, Rhymes With Maria, mike d, with Blandings expected. Your move, Bay Area and Boston.
I'm sure the bay area is just waiting for your return to the vicinity to hold a meetup, JM.
Dude. I noticed my a/c unit had this rather loud rattle to it and that it wasn't that cold in my room. So, as one does, I googled "loud air conditioner" and the first piece of advice I glean had to do with cleaning a filter that might be accessible by opening the unit's front panel. SO, I open the unit's obvious front panel, which maybe I'd never done before, and in there is a filthy filter! I use a butter knife to scrape a half inch of fluffy carcinogens into the trash... stick it back in... and am now enjoying an icy cool and somewhat quieter breeze. Science.
It's a much better experimental design if you get the filter dirty again to see if the cold air goes away.
57: Quite a group!
It is super-hot here. Getting A/C is not on my agenda until I move to my new apartment in a couple weeks. I just want to collapse in front of a fan and do nothing, but I'm getting emails from my boss like:
"can you send draft so I can read?"
and then twenty minutes later when I haven't replied
"?"
62: You're on the east coast now, right? You are getting these emails at 9 p.m.? Uh. Boundaries.
62: damn; I should have invited you out for air-conditioned drinks with the guy in my lab who reeeaaally wants to talk to you about physics. Probably the only night of the year it would seem like a better option.
Or you could go to ursyne's house and do physics there, I guess.
62: Just reply:
? ?
?? ? OO
? ? ? O O
? ? OO
63: She's about to go on vacation and has decided that this paper that has been lingering on the to-do list for months must be finished before she leaves, because she won't be able to work while on vacation. The part where I'm the one doing every bit of the work seems to be missing from this logic.
67: Good luck, then. I'd do a careful calculus about whether she can wait until tomorrow. and if so, send a polite reply along the lines of: "Sorry for the delay. The A/C is on the fritz here and I was out buying another fan. I'll forward a draft in the a.m."
Not that you need advice about how to reply, but I don't like you being mistreated like this! It's too hot for that crap.
Eh, I want to get this paper out so I can stop thinking about it. It was a nice idea that turned out to work less well than we had hoped, so we kind of left it in a 90%-completed state for a long time. But it's publishable, so we might as well push it out. (I feel like I should have higher standards, but.)
Since it's getting so hot, is everyone on the east coast about to "take off all their clothes" as per Nelly's sage advice? Because that would make for a better meetup.
God, I think this is the worst paper I've ever written. With any other collaborator I would have abandoned it a long time ago. I should figure out how to get out of these things.
End it with, "I'd write more on this interesting topic, but suddenly I am run over by a truck."
It's funny how long it took me to realize that "sorry for dumping all the work on you, but I was just so busy with my birthday party and now I'm going to go for a nice vacation in the Mediterranean" wasn't really an appropriate apology.
I feel slightly bad about my passive-aggressive snippiness in this thread. 100-degree heat makes me bitchy, I guess. In other news, damn is it hard to sleep in an apartment this hot.
No problem, I didn't notice any passisivity.
100-degree heat makes everyone bitchy. Or despairing. Which is to say, despairing-bitchy. Me, I discover the ability to say No. Transplant that tomato plant outside in the garden? No. Run out to get some stuff notarized, then photocopy that, then head over the post office to send it out? No, not today. Make a pot of chili? You cannot be serious. On the stove??!!!
I went for a run this morning.
I still haven't decided if it was a good idea, but on the other hand, I didn't die, so it can't have been that bad an idea.
Not really that bad here, but I was pleased to endure the heat while transporting the groundhog I trapped in the garden to a place about 6.5 miles from my house. Because I like to disrupt eco-systems.
81: They're mean fat fuckers! (There's one that sits on the back steps with his gut hanging over his legs and I keep expecting him to yell at me to bring him a beer.)
81: You better not be dumping them in Frick or Schenley.
83: Not as far as you know...
(went the other direction)
82: This one appeared to be on the young side--probably a first-year but decently-sized (thanks to the Stormcrow's former garden). He had started a burrow under our raspberries.
Because I like to disrupt eco-systems.
Mm, groundhogs are one case in which I'm not against disrupting the ecosystem.
Our raspberries magically matured and ripened in one day -- on Tuesday -- which I'm totally guessing is a function of the rain for the few days previous, followed by driving sun on the nascent berries. On the one hand, yay; on the other, they're about two weeks early.
My raspberries got eaten by birds before I could harvest them.
Further on the topic of groundhogs, which are prevalent and problematic around here: they did a job on the yellow squash in the garden last year, to the extent that we decided not to grow yellow squash this year. So: I guess we try to work with them, by thinking, this year: right, yellow squash is a groundhog magnet. Think carefully about whether you want to grow it, then? You ready to grapple with the groundhogs? Nah.
86: Do you have deer? I have no idea of your environment -- the raspberries in the way back of the yard we consign to the deer, which is obviously fair. Not so much with the birds, though.
I recommend plastic explosives, molded into the shape of lady groundhogs.
88: I blamed the birds by default. It just seemed that the berries were too high for anything else to get. There are deer around me, but I've never seen one nearer to my house than a mile or so. I live in a densely built area, though there is some steep ground behind me with no structures. I'm sure a deer could wander through, but it wouldn't be easy and I think the deer would leave a noticeable set of signs. I suppose a raccoon could have done it and I know those have been back there.
Anyway, I bought two raspberry bushes and a blueberry bush because they were really cheap at the hardware store. Only the one raspberry bush survived and it is really unsuited to the amount of space which I have. I was sort of expecting a standard shurb-like thing and didn't know that they grew by using suckers or that they had sharp branches.
the raspberries in the way back of the yard we consign to the deer
I think Louis CK has the right take on deer.
90: Well, I don't know. I've seen birds eventually go for the raspberries, but not in a huge way. Maybe I haven't been paying attention. I have definitely seen deer families noshing on the bushes in the way back. Suffice it to say that many beings love them some raspberries.
89: Back before our local CSA crashed and burned, my housemate was party to planting killing bomb/smoking things in the groundhog burrows at the CSA farm. It was done in the wee hours just before dawn, in the early spring when the groundhog babies would be in the burrows. Everyone regretted it, but there's not much of a way to avoid it if you're actually going to manage to grow some food.
You ready to grapple with the groundhogs?
YOU READY TO TANGLE WITH THE TERMITES? DEAL WITH THE DEER? SQUARE OFF AGAINST THE SQUIRRELS? SLUG IT OUT WITH THE SLUGS?
YOU'RE NOT READY FOR ADULTHOOD, BROTHER! WHATCHA GONNA DOOOOOO?
What you want is to blast them out of there with fuel-air explosives.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/16/exploding_marmots/
Maybe you guys should just eat the groundhogs.
Jesus, ajay. On a cooperative farm, people like to be a little lower key.
The author of that article is quite the wordsmith. I can't tell what the hell kind of animal he's talking about. A ground squirrel might be something much smaller than your common marmot or groundhog.
If teo is cooking, ground squirrel might be the main ingredient in an unusual burger.
On a cooperative farm, people like to be a little lower key.
ON SOVIET COOPERATIVE FARM, GROUNDHOG BOMBS YOU!
Squirrel is apparently not kosher. I'm going to assume groundhog is even less kosher because it is more or less the same kind of animal and it has 'hog' in its name.
I don't think I've ever seen a marmot or groundhog, but the ground squirrels I've seen are quite small. They look like chipmunks but with long tails.
87: The green beans are what my groundhog did the most thorough job on. If I want to visit my green beans looking very good, I do it on Google maps which still has a mid-summer shot from 2 years ago on which I can make out the bean rows. (I am enough of an old fogey that this really tickles me--enough bean plant reflected photons making their way to a sensor on a freaking satellite to be distinguishable on an image I can access on some device just about anywhere I am likely to be. And it is not a big bean patch.)
Hey losers, it's 64 degrees and cloudy but dry here, going up to the mid 70s. It's so great how in every season [possible exception: September] we have you beat.
102: They get pretty damn big around here. But sometimes useful!
Groundhog burrows have been known to reveal at least one archaeological site, the Ufferman Site in the U.S. state of Ohio. Although archaeologists have never excavated the Ufferman Site, numerous artifacts have been found because of the activities of local groundhogs. They favor the loose soil of the esker upon which the site lies, and their many diggings for their burrows have brought to the surface significant numbers of human and animal bones, pottery, and bits of stone
55 and partly sunny here. Forecast high is 67.
104: Commence Operation Ignore.
We don't have groundhogs, though. I don't think so, anyway. Just street dogs.
105: Cool. Kind of problematic from the perspective of site preservation and stratigraphic integrity (where this sort of issue is common and is called "bioturbation"), but still cool.
I wonder how I can break through operation ignore and get to Stormcrow. How about this article, that claims that women's soccer in the US is totally the domain of white rich people, except of course in LA which is awesome.
109: They are stealing our bones and you worry about strata. Clearly we need to kill them all.
Gorgeous day (sunny, 63 headed for 78) in Missoula. From which the nearby mountains can be seen nearly every day, unlike some other places.
I'm not surprised to learn they are predatory, but who knew the groundhogs have pottery?
103: on which I can make out the bean rows.
Huh, I'm really surprised that they went for the green beans. If you say "bean rows" I gather you had bush beans? Maybe try climbing/trellis beans. Pole beans. (Kentucky Blues.) The groundhogs didn't touch them last year.
In our case, once the groundhogs found the yellow squash -- and trampled completely through them, repeatedly -- they started nibbling on the tomatoes they could reach.
They are stealing our bones and you worry about strata. Clearly we need to kill them all.
Hey, I was suggesting eating them earlier.
Anyway. The deal with working cooperatively with critters is that you can't have *your garden* be the most attractive and interesting game in town. Go ahead and relinquish certain things to the critters, but segregate those things.
110: Thanks. I just forwarded it to the soccer-playing/entusiast summer intern (paid, at least) She is from eastern PA with parents from India so I have no idea where she fits in (I have not yet read the article).
102 I don't think I've ever seen a marmot or groundhog
But our National Parks are chock full o' marmot! Shouldn't this be part of your ranger training?
Are they? I suppose some of them probably are.
Given where I was living for the past few years, I shouldn't complain about the so-called "June gloom" but I want to see clear skies all the time.
I've seen lots of marmots in the Sierras, but mostly on forest service land. Coincidentally, I've done most of my long-term backpacking/camping on forest service land.
Marmots appear to be ground squirrels, which would explain the Register guy's use of the term "marmot" to refer to the ground squirrels in Spokane, which are almost certainly not marmots.
I've done most of my long-term backpacking/camping on forest service land.
Well, there is rather a lot of it.
This appears to be the species of ground squirrel we had at Chaco.
The Anasazi had squirrels, but not in a way we can understand anymore.
We say the Early Puebloans now, and all we know is that the animal fit into the sipapu.
It was totally a squirrelocracy, though.
Since this is an NYC thread, here's a pretty neat bit of earth dynamics up the river a bit (an enormous slab of rock along the Palisades fell).
123: A map of the US showing just the various federal lands.
