short takes

[cellio]

fiannaharpar and lrstrobel had the baby today. (Well, she had the baby and he watched. :-) ) I'm an honorary guy when it comes to stuff like this, so you'll have to go elsewhere for all the stats and stuff.

This weekend the local SCA group is having a Viking-themed event, so I got out my old Viking clothes and discovered a problem with the caftan I want to wear. But lefkowitzga had announced that she was having people over for sewing tonight, so I went over and she not only showed me how to fix it, but did most of the work. Gail is a real sweetie!

It began to snow while we were there. On the way home I was trying to figure out if the roads were much worse than they looked or if my car had developed a sudden malady. Based on some of the other traffic, I'm guessing the former (though it wasn't bad to walk on). This morning it was 45 degrees or so and now there's an inch of snow on the ground and more coming down. Wacky.

Several days ago I cancelled the digital cable, dropping back down to the $13/month ultra-basic service that doesn't use a converter box. I expected the signal from the box to go dead, but so far it hasn't. In fact, I'm still getting all the high-end channels, but the on-screen TV guide and the ability to punch a channel into the remote and go directly there are gone. (So I can get whatever's on, e.g., channel 237 if I want to go there stepwise.) So they've obviously made some change to the service, but not the change I expected. The signal is also better coming through the box than through the raw line (and a little worse on the raw line than it was with the digital cable service), so I'll leave the box hooked up until they come to get it on Sunday (or it goes dead). I wonder if this means that there is hardware that I can add to the line to simply enhance the signal, without violating the customer agreement. UPN seems to be especially bad without the box, for some odd reason.

The cable company has a nice little scam of sorts. When I called to change the service they wouldn't talk to me unless I supplied an account number, which I didn't have with me. They didn't need such confirmation to add services to the account, but they do to remove them -- and, of course, you pay for them until you successfully remove them. So they got an extra day out of me; oh well.

Comments

[asim.livejournal.com]

This weekend the local SCA group is having a Viking-themed event

Coincidence time...so is ours (http://acorn.atlantia.sca.org/0302/ymir.htm). Must be the season for it...

[cellio]

And yours is a camping event too, I see. Tents or cabins? (Ours is tents. The local Vikings have been wanting to camp in the snow for years.)

[asim.livejournal.com]

I actually don't know, which usually means lots of cabins and a few tenters for S. Atlantia.
But that's OK; One of my goals is be a "tenter" at events by next year. And your little missive on yurts is going to help. :)

[cellio]

And your little missive on yurts is going to help. :)

Enjoy. Yurts are fun to camp in. Not so much fun to put up, but it gets better over time.

Note that since writing that article I've learned that there are probably-better ways to make the roof ring, but I don't know details. I've heard of yurts that use round poles for rafters with large metal pins on the end that slot into the ring, and this has been described as easier to put up and more stable, but it's probably harder to make. The yurt described in my article is basic, functional, not very pretty, and doable by someone with minimal skill (like me).