you forgot to mention that the meetup is chaps-optional.
Gah, that's two days after I leave Texas for DC. If the Unfoggedetariat do not observe me, do I really exist?
not to worry, susan --- some of us are non-observant here, as far as I can tell.
Hey maybe we could also use this thread to talk about my proposed NYC meet-up on the 19th (to pre-empt the Texans). Meet at Chumley's at 6:30 or so (I'll be there a little earlier), carouse til late with the Clownaesthesiologist and some of his friends who are external to the Mineshaft. Drymala will be there! Also Alicuroy!
Damn, Roy is another person I'd love to meet.
Thanks for trying to post this, Labs, and thanks to Becks for actually making it happen.
Sorry about misspelling your pseud, soub, but I figured if I was going to get it wrong, I might as well go all the way.
Also, there are rumors Michael might make the long drive to Austin. Weiner has also been invited, but no word back yet.
Any lurkers out there who want to come too?
And susan (and anyone else), weather permitting, Progressively DrunkerDrinking Liberally is meeting tomorrow night at the Dog & Duck (inside, of course), from 6:30 on. We have a flag and everything, so we're easy to find.
I will probably be there, living in Austin as I do. Deciding on a dinner location might be a good idea. I have no suggestions, and no preferences.
Cool, pdf23ds. Didn't know you were local or would have invited you by name too.
The only constraints on where to eat so far is that it needs to have some vegetarian items on the menu. The Carousel is basically at about 52nd and I-35, so that might should influence location too. I think heebie-geebie mentioned the Parlor as a possibility. Right across the street from the Parlor is Ararat, which could also be a decent selection.
If dinner is involved, I'm formally requesting a spot with vegetarian options.
Oh, anyone else in houston area could probably get a ride with us.
Oh damn, M/M/ already stipulated that.
I live in Cedar Park, so I don't know any restaurants below Anderson Mill Road. As I said, not too picky am I.
Sorry, Mitch; I'd forgotten about the future posting thing not working.
Oh you guys should go to Ararat. I have such fond memories. Not that this is a compelling enough reason, but. Sniff. Is it still BYOB?
Is it still BYOB?
I think so, haven't been since last summer. The website doesn't explicitly say so, but there's no drinks listed on the menu, and the welcom page says "We invite you to bring a bottle of your favorite wine, and a table full of friends, to enjoy our extraordinary cuisine, unique entertainment, and authentic Middle Eastern atmosphere".
And, fee free to give us a heads up next time you're in town, and we'll arrange another gathering.
Also, to be clearer regarding Drinking Liberally in comment 6, by "tomorrow" I mean Tuesday. The group meets at the Dog & Duck every Tuesday night (which is Pint Night) from 6:30 on (and occasionally we have it at an alternate venue). Of course, the roads may be impassable tomorrow night, in which case everyone should stay home and drink by themselves.
In 14: "there're"; "welcome"; "feel"; maybe "heads-up"
The Texas meet-up should have lassoes and belt buckles.
Also, to be clearer regarding Drinking Liberally
Don't you mean "Also, to be clearer regarding Progressively DrunkerDrinking Liberally"?
6: Any lurkers out there who want to come too?
As a standing member of the Lukern Proletariat, I might just have to take that as a invitation. Depending on when y'all define "dinnertime".
Ararat. Oh man, and with The Parlor just across the road! Dining in Austin always should involve three meals.
We haven't set a time yet, smudog, what are your constraints.
And 'Smasher's right. Maybe we could have some mezzedes at Ararat and then walk across the street for main course pizza?
Good golly but I can't type today. Please substitute a question mark for the period/full stop at the end of the first sentence.
I am surprised that Armsmasher hasn't insisted that we eat at Polvo's, though.
Occupied until 7 pm on Saturdays. FWIW Google says I'd be ten minutes from what sounds like the consensus location.
Maybe we could have some mezzedes at Ararat and then walk across the street for main course pizza?
If you may draw on the experience of meetups past, I would interject and say that it's sometimes hard enough for people to find each other if one location is involved. I'd think putting two locations into the equation would be asking for trouble.
Okay. Don't know when other people want to meet yet. Everyone, please (stand)pipe up!
27: Yes but we're smart down here in Austin, Becks.
I'm not about to tell you to eat at Polvo's if I can't be there myself to enjoy the cartuja pipien (an almond-mole sauce).
We're going to need a thread for planning the next Boston meet-up soon too.
Less ice, more gas money.
m, shame I'll miss it
My rough plan is to come in earlier in the day and poke around Austin for the afternoon (hope the weather behaves). So dinner timing is pretty flexible ... We do have to drive back that night so hopefully not *too* late.
I guess one option to get done sooner would be an early-ish dinner and then smudog could meet us at the Carousel. Do you have to be back in Houston Saturday night, soub, or could you stay if we scared y'all up some free lodging?
Hey, soubz, do you have an e-mail address? I know a Houston semi-lurker who might want to carpool. My e-mail's linked below.
36: I'd have to run it by my gf, as plan was for her to come. No immediate reason comes to mind that we have to be back that night, though.
37: Yes, this pseud at gmail will work, for you or anyone else who wants to contact me....
4: I do like Chumley's, and have been somewhat out of the loop on mineshaft happenings as of late, perhaps I'll be there.
39 -- look forward to seeing you.
36: I think 7pm meet for dinner could be fine, but wouldn't want to be too much later than that if we are driving back that night; assuming post-dinner festivities.
Woo hoo! Back on top!
(Thanks LB and/or ogged)
They aren't the only ones who are awake, you know.
Yes, thanks for the bump.
My plan at the moment is to head out from Houston with my girlfriend earlier in the day, spend (part of) the afternoon poking around Austin, and meet up with people whenever we settle on.
So I can offer a ride out and back (potentially quite late) to anyone who is happy to spend the afternoon there too. This came up in comments before, so there is one semi-lurker potential interested anyway. You can mail me at gmail, this pseudo if interested.
Ben has a few days to provided a suitable road-trip mix if he wishes!
In further news, since my pseudonym seems difficult to remember the spelling of, I'm considering a change. At the moment, I'm leaning towards `extraneous zed'
Thanks for posting this thread, Unfogged!
They aren't the only ones who are awake, you know.
I know. But the sanctity of off-blog communications prevents me from telling you how I knew it was one of them.
No, soub! I'm just now beginning to be able to remember how to spell it! Don't make all my hard work for naught!
soubzriquet
I mentally pronounce this "soup biscuit", if that's at all edifying in your search for a new handle, Soup Biscuit.
OT bleg: Anyone know if it's possible to get new eyeglass frames for old lenses, and if so, is it possible to do so when the lenses themselves are five years old?
My prescription is old, but sufficient, but the frames are going to pieces. And given that I'm blind as a bat, new lenses are expensive.
46 -- I think if you call yourself "Extraneous Zed" everybody will get confused into thinking you are a sock puppet for Cryptic Ned.
I think you're a soupbiscuit, too. Or soup-briquet, great for barbecued soup.
53 -- Shit! I try and comb my hair just right so people won't notice.
54 -- also, soup-brisket. Mmmm....
("Soupbiscuit" sounds too much like a racehorse.)
Anyone know if it's possible to get new eyeglass frames for old lenses, and if so, is it possible to do so when the lenses themselves are five years old?
It should surprise no one to learn I have remounted lenses, often in sun or reading glass frames I've bought in drugstores. The things to watch for are:
1)Circumference of the lens must be close to that of the lens the frames were made for. This can be eyeballed, if you'll pardon the expression, but if you can make a paper template of one of your lenses, it may make it easier to see, and still wear your glasses, not incidentally.
2)rotational alignment of the lenses. If you can still use or fit the lenses in the existing frame, do that and draw a line with a soft point pen and straight edge across both lenses at approximate eye level. When you put them in the new frames, make sure they line up straight.
3)Distance between lenses, or DBL, as opticians call it, must match. Something to look for when buying the frames. Measure across the bar connecting the lenses, at the narrowest point.
This is easiest with wire rims, which are held together with screws. Plastic frames may be made soft and pliable, and stretch a very little bit, if blown with a hair dryer for a few minutes.
Or you could go to an optician and ask, I guess.
It's now snowing in Austin. May not be able to make meetup due to intervening apocalypse.
Speaking of glasses...
I'm moderately myopic, and I spend most of my time looking at computer screens. Is there some way I can get a weaker lens that lets me see about 2-3 feet with completely unfocused eyes? (I can see about 1 foot without correction, which means I have to lean over uncomfortable to use a computer without glasses.) I think this would both reduce eyestrain during the day and make my eyes deteriorate less quickly, or even reverse. I've tried reading glasses, and they correct the wrong way. I don't have any old glasses. I'd need like negative strength reading glasses or something. Is there anything like this out there non-prescription?
Thanks for posting this! I look forward to meeting more of you cool unfogged people. I assure you that I am an ethical werewolf who does not eat unfogged people, since that rarely maximizes utility.
As if ethics has anything to do with maximizing utility!
lens that lets me see about 2-3 feet with completely unfocused eyes
This sounds like bad news, pdf23ds. I'm not one of those people who believes that you can "retrain your eye muscles to 20/20!" or anything, but too much tinkering around with corrected focal depth does suggest possible unintentional negative consequences.
Or you could go to an optician and ask, I guess.
I probably will, but before going and asking I wanted a sense of whether what I was asking was completely insane or impossible. Last time I had new glasses was 2001, and the lenses themselves were $225.
pdf: do you normally wear any sort of corrective lenses? (I'm guessing yes from the description, but I have a focal distance of about four inches.) My dad uses these little plastic stick-on lenses that fit onto his usual glasses for when he's reading, and it occurs to me that they might make something like that for distance closework.
Another (but prescription) option would be bi-focals that are reversed, where the littler, weaker lens is placed on the top of the glass (where you'd look through for computer work.)
64: When I was a little kid, my eyesight started deteroriating rapidly, and the doctor who halted that did so by putting me in bifocals, basically 'forcing' my eyes to work by looking through a lower-power bit for close work. It wouldn't be something I'd recommend without a doctor's assistance, but in my case, I think it probably slowed a very serious decline. So something like that might work for pdf.
Computer glasses are made and sold, but as they need to have the correct astigmatism correction and rotation, and need to match left and right—left and right usually need different correction to focus relaxed on given point—they are just as elaborate and expensive as your regular pair, with less utility.
It was at one time common for nearsighted young people to have less corrective reading glasses if they did a lot of reading. Guy Pringle, principal character in Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy—high, ac— is wearing his during an exchange, where he fails to recognise the person he's talking to from accros the terrace.
Some drugstores sell soft plastic bifocal inserts, which adhere to the inside of your regular lenses. You might try those cheaply. When I first got biofocals about ten years ago, I made myself a back-up pair using those, because I was otherwise unable to read.
But they didn't work for computer, because I use the blending area, the part where the distance correction is transitioning to the bifocal, to see the computer screen. This is what makes most modern bifocals "line-less." To make the inserts work as computer glasses, you'd be well advised to use a very weak correction, +.25 or +.50 at the most.
67: I don't have an any astigmatism, and my eyes are very close to the same. That's why I was hoping something off-the-shelf might be good enough. (Rotation only matters for astigmatism, right?)
65: Yes, I need glasses for pretty much every activity except for reading (and even then I usually use them for reading).
68: Can those be applied and removed whenever? Because I don't have a spare pair of glasses I can do that with.
That should be Hi, ac—assuming she even lurks here anymore.
32 -- this thread, whose topic has apparently morphed into a discussion of eyewear and vision problems, looks hijackeable.
Anyone in Boston (or Providence) reading this? Anyone (else) feel like another Boston-area meetup is about due? What would people say about early February?
We can make a special sign for Brock, this time.
Before it gets hijacked, I'll summarize with what I think is the consensus:
Saturday the 20th, 7:00, at Ararat. I'll wear a yellow ribbon so's you know it's me.
No one take the ribbon off or heebie-geebie's head will fall off, ok?
It makes such a mess when that happens.
SNOW IS ACCUMULATING! I'm so excited I can't stand it.
Also, you can just make the secret Unfogged hand signal to anyone you think might be an Unfoggedomite.
The secret Unfogged hand signal being: Get into a really detailed argument about an esoteric point.
The Ararat has been getting some bad reviews lately. Apparently it's gone downhill. I wouldn't know if it's gone back uphill since a year ago.
Oh, wait. Those are recent reviews. Not a-year-ago reviews.
70: They're sort of like window decals or colorforms. They're easy to peel off, and they don't have an adhesive, but placing them in the correct place can be challenging. Not the sort of thing I think I'd want to do every day.
80, that doesn't sound encouraging..... alternatives?
Agreed about placement, and because you'd want them higher in the lens than bifocals are normally placed, you wouldn't want them in when you weren't using them. Anytime you have to move your head to see the screen you'll find you get a crick in your neck. When I first started working on a computer in the eighties I'd be in pain by the end of the day.
SNOW IS ACCUMULATING!
You people suck. I want snow.
85: Rest easy, Apo. I have a half-inch outside my window. I don't think that truly counts as snow.
Real snow is four inches in July. It happened to me in Colorado Springs once.
Well, people did look at me strange walking outside with ice cream today. No snow here though. It's still a balmy few degrees C; I can't believe it's January!
Wow, those are some consistently bad reviews. That sucks, it used to be a great place.
Anyone (besides pdf23ds) have any suggestions? The Parlor? Kirbey Lane? Someplace Mexican?
If it were OK to meet up north, I'd suggest Mesa Rosa. Looks like the nearest one is off 183 in Jollyville. I haven't been to that one, but the one in Roundrock is excellent.
I'm already coming from Southwest Austin (near Stassney & Westgate), so I'd prefer somewhere not quite so far north as Jollyville (despite the appropriateness of the name).
Curra's on Burnet? Sarovar? El Chile on Manor? I'm trying to think nearish to The Carousel Lounge.
Location within Austin really isn't an issue for me, so whatever you locals come up with is good, so long as there are a few veggie options. If the plan is still to meet at the Carousel afterward, probably we don't want to venture too far from there. Unless there is a wave of interest in carpooling from Houston, I'll probably have a few seats open and wandering around Austin anyway --- so perfectly happy to offer lifts.
I definitely like Curra's, have heard good things about El Chile, but don't know anything about Sarovar (but I like Indian food, as does Sir Kraab). So, all three of those sound fine. I too can give a ride to anyone south of the Carousel who might need one.
My eyes are about as bad as Cala's, but here I'm sure you can buy glasses with small numbers, positive or negative, off the shelf all over the place. Alternatively, get some of these goggles. My dad just got some and thinks they're great - and made an old lady look away and walk faster when he went out into the street wearing them. I'd get some if I didn't just wear my contacts under normal goggles.
95: It may be, but all the reading glasses at my corner drugstore were positive, and I need negative.
95, 96: Agreed, I've never seen negative, that is concave, correcting for nearsightedness, for sale off the shelf anywhere. And as much of a DIY'er as I was in this respect, exceeding anyone else I've ever heard of, I would have noticed. That availability may be a European thing.
I'm not sure how the strengths in drugstore eyeglasses correspond to those in prescription glasses, but Rite Aid I think carries glasses from -3.0 to +3.0.
Really? I'll have to look for that. I've always had lenses my problem has always been how to mount them. If pdf knows his prescription he might get satisfaction from a correction about a diopter less negative than his distant correction.
I could always just stack a +.5 on top of my normal glasses. That would be a bit uncomfortable, though.
What's your normal diopter correction? (If that's what the drugstore numbers are.)
-1.1 or -1.2. I don't exactly recall.
103: OMG, you're not going to start another football thread, are you?
Wait, what? No, I won't hijack anymore threads with football if that annoys you (or anyone else -- am I tone-deaf enough that I missed that?)
The "omg" was just, um, I thought it was funny, that's all. I was checking the thread to see if 72 had gotten a response. And I found it had (instead) turned into something on diopter correction. Which seemed really funny, at the time... but actually, my eyesight's worse than pdf's (apparently), so I'm not pooh-poohing anyone.
(Sorry!)
No worries, arthegall. I certainly don't mind the football threads.
I just wanted to keep this thread completely pure, with only the Texas Meet-Up, optical matters, and a possible Boston meet-up discussed.
Maybe just a ban on football analogies: cheering for Tom Brady is like cheering for ...
Arthegall, I'm sorry that at the UnfoggeDCon I kept freaking out that you were my friend from high school. I've been feeling bad about that.
Don't feel bad! You kept thinking I was freaked out, but I really wasn't. If I looked a little strange, I'm sure it was that I had just smoked a half a pack of cigarettes (and I'm normally not a smoker). So I was probably a bit buzzed. UnfoggeDCon was great -- I'm so glad I made the trip.
mmf.
"kept thinking I was freaked out" s/b "kept freaking out"
"really wasn't" s/b "really wasn't worrying about it."
No, you didn't look strange; you looked like my friend from HS. I'll take that graceful acceptance of my apology with both hands, however, and pretend that I didn't behave like a skittish dork.
I kept freaking out that you were my friend from high school.
Normally, I would take this to mean that arthegall was JM's friend from high school. But I am uncertain if that's the case here. Clarification?
Clarification has arrived unbidden!
Or so the mullahs would have you believe.
I didn't behave like a skittish dork.
Now who's going to believe that?
Texas meet-up-wise: I have a preference for Sarovar because it's generally not too noisy, and if I'm meeting people for the first time it's going to drive me crazy if I can't hear what's being said.
I think Sarovar is delicious, but I also think Goobers is an excellent alternative to PB&J, so feel free to get a second opinion.
I second the vote for Sarovar, for the noise reasons h-g mentions, because Indian food is delicious and it has a big menu likely to please everyone, and because apparently there's a nice bar attached in case we feel like staying put after eating (which is not to downplay the greatness of the Carousel Lounge):
Unless there are any objections, let's make it Sarovar at 7.
It's at 8400 Burnet Rd.
Here's a map.
The guestlist so far: Me, Sir Kraab, heebie-geebie, soubzriquet + 1, smudog, pdf23ds, Neal the Ethical Dance Machine, Ben Anderson.
That's 9, and I'll take responsibility for making a reservation (if they take them) unless anyone objects to my bald grab for power. I'll put it under the name "Mitch".
Did I miss anyone? If so, e-mail me at "mitchmills at hotmail dot com".
Also, I don't have a cell phone, but Sir Kraab does: five-one-two, four-eight-four, seven-zero-three-seven. Call if you can't find us.
Thanks, Mitch! See y'all Saturday.
That is absurdly convenient for me. I shall delurk in person!.
Okay. Delucked. T'was good - sorry I departed so early.
After Action Report: It was fun, despite the apalling lack of flashing nipples, dancing werewolves, fontanic lapdances, and ouzo.
Did anyone punch someone else, thinking that person was spackerman?
129: What happens in Austin stays in Austin, Stanley.