Monica

First sentence of each month from 2012:

A few years ago Dani bought a copy of American Megafauna, which I have written about before.

Today's daf talks about precision in language.

We have been discussing the substitution of animals for offerings.

Shefa Gold, a prominent rabbi in the Renewal movement, was in Pittsburgh this weekend.

Maybe today we have Internet access for more than 15 minutes at a time?

More from that parlor game (7 things) (yeah, I still owe some of those, oops)

Rabbi Donniel Hartman gave a fascinating talk called "Faith and Reason".

Today is the last day of the seven-and-a-half-year cycle of studying a page of talmud a day.

Air Canada sold me a ticket that couldn't possibly work, treated me badly, and cost me two days, and then they refused to compensate me (there's way more there that I haven't published, ending with them telling me to get lost).

R. Abin ha-Levi said: when a man takes leave of his fellow he should not say to him "go in peace" but rather "go to peace".

The torah tells us that it is forbidden to kindle fire on Shabbat, and the rabbis understand this to apply to extinguishing a flame as well.

It appears that, sometime in the past, someone either taught Giovanni to be a shoulder-and-neck-sitter or declined to discourage the behavior.

In 2013 I'll see if I can increase the variety of entries here. But no promises. :-)

More from that parlor game: Comment to this post and say you want a set, and I will pick seven things I would like you to talk about. They might make sense or be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

jducoeur gave me: Faith. Family. Communication. Study. Music. Language. Service.

( Read more... )

More from that parlor game: Comment to this post and I will pick seven things I would like you to talk about. They might make sense or be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

unique_name_123 gave me: computer, spirituality, laurel, rules, games, travel, artichoke.

( Read more... )

Via tangerinpenguin: List thirteen things that are going well for you this Friday the 13th:

1. The customer who sounded like he wanted Big Complicated Things (In A Hurry) thought my first draft was about 80% while I was assuming 25%.

2. Two significant projects (and some lesser ones) at work want me and my manager will support whatever I want to do. Cool!

3. I read a letter on the eye chart this week that I don't usually get.

4. Some more e-books that I want to read are available as free downloads.

5. Good conversation with my rabbi last night.

6. Bought gas for $3.09/gallon (loyalty card) and it should hold me for a month.

7. Cirque du Soleil is coming to Pittsburgh and this time their web site allowed us to buy tickets. (Totem -- not interested in the Michael Jackson thingy.)

8. Waking up to a cat on my feet every morning still, even though the weather has gotten warm.

9. Baldur is eating better.

10. Mesura et Arte del Danzare -- lovely recording!

11. Neighbors taking care of things along the property line that they might have been able to get away with not doing.

12. The rain seems to have ended before I have to leave for Shabbat.

13. Dani makes me happy. (Why yes, that is redacted. :-) )

I've been seeing this a lot in the last couple days, so what the heck:
( where was I when...? )

Writing prompt: "Based on the books on your bookshelf, what conclusions would people draw about you?"

They will see several major categories of books, which are a combination of my books and Dani's books. In the front hall are two full-height bookcases. One holds Jewish books (reference materials, prayer books, Hebrew dictionaries and grammar books, bibles, several titles in Hebrew) -- and tucked in at the end of one shelf you'll also find the two volumes by Real Live Preacher, who is decidedly not Jewish. The other holds assorted history books, as do many shelves in the living room. In the living room they will also find quite a few shelves of music books, and a set of shelves containing renaissance art, comics collections, and graphic novels. In the dining room they will find many cookbooks, ranging from The "I Never Cooked Before" Cookbook to reproductions of renaissance manuscripts. Here they will also find an eclectic blend of philosophy, literature, mythology, humor, etiquette, and miscellanea. On the way into the house they may have noticed the two bookcases waiting to be assembled and added to the dining room.

Taking all of this into account I would expect people to conclude that we are multi-faceted geeks, a "geek" being one prone to deep dives into the target areas of interest.

Should they conclude that we read no fiction I would take them upstairs to the library with its dozen bookcases of SF&F paperbacks (double-stacked) and its several bookcases of hardbacks, children's books, and more miscellanea. If they conclude that we read no technical books I would take them to each of our offices. In my office they will find programming books (including an autographed LISP manual) and, probably, on the computer desk assorted volumes from the Jewish-books shelves downstairs.

Taking all of this into account I would expect them to conclude that we are multi-faceted geeks with too much time on our hands who have never parted with any books we have ever owned. They'd be wrong on that last point; I distinctly remember giving a book away once. :-)

Scattered throughout the house they will find eclectic stacks of books on available horizontal surfaces, from which they will likely conclude that we are parallel-processing multi-faceted geeks with too much time on our hands who have never parted with any books we have ever owned.

There's a parlor game going around that calls for the poster to list three things he has done that he doesn't think any of his readers have done. I think I must be too boring; I can't think of three (that would also be interesting enough to post).

I keep a log for Erik, recording anything unusual and all medication starts/stops. I started doing this because I thought there might be correlations between meds and appetite changes; none have emerged so far, but it's turned out to be useful in other ways. ("Any vomiting?" "June 2, in the morning". "You know that stuff?") So anyway... Erik's appetite had been low last week, so at my vet's direction I gave him fluids for a few days (also logged). Things got better so I stopped, but Monday he was back to not eating so I hit him again, this time with a bit more because I could (150ml). Tuesday's log entry: "oink". :-) Good to see that work sometimes... (The healthy appetite has continued today.)

I have a minor workplace mystery. Yesterday someone left me a post-it note containing a charge code and nothing else, and used my Sharpie to do so without recapping it (so it was dried out and useless). I asked the usual suspects, but no one recognized the code. Shrug. Today I came in to find my entire post-it pad and several pens missing. WTF? I have the back desk in a two-person enclosed space; it's unlikely that a passerby needed a pen or some paper and my desk was the most convenient source. I wonder what surprise will greet me tomorrow.

Language peeves: "council" is a body; "counsel" is what advisors give. "Populous" means there are lots of people; "populace" is the people. The "populous" should not be giving "council" to anyone, ok? (Both of these errors are common on SCA mailing lists.)

Language Log reproduces some careless spam from Barnes and Noble. I like the poster's method of thanking them.

Funny cat video via thnidu.

Something in our house is chirping intermittently. It sounds like a smoke detector, but we've changed all the relevant batteries and it hasn't stopped. It does not happen predictably (and when it does it chirps only once), so it's very hard to localize. Whee.

(Not dead, just busy. :-) )

Term heard at work: heinosity, as in "the heinosity of this bug is higher than the heinosity of the bad interface fixing it would introduce". I know that "heinousness" is already a word (at least in some dictionaries), but this version is more striking, perhaps by analogy with "bogosity".

(Speaking of vocabulary, I used the "word" "gogetitude" in describing a job candidate recently. People laughed and knew exactly what I meant. :-) )

I got the Golden Compass daemon generator to work a few days ago. I don't know what the different critters mean, but so far mine has morphed from a tiger to a spider to, err, some sort of feline (I'm not sure what that is). There's still time for you guys to go adjust it if you like.

I got a letter today reminding me that my biblical-Hebrew class starts tomorrow. That was polite of them (I signed up weeks ago), but the time in the letter is different from the time in the original catalogue. I wonder which is correct. Fortunately, the letter includes a phone number.

The gas stations I use most often have two rows of (double-sided) pumps, so there are four "lanes" to pull into. These can be approached from either side. Depending on which side of your car holds the access point, you will want either left sides or right sides. You would think it would be possible to develop some sort of convention, so that two lanes go in each direction, one lefty and one righty, but it never seems to work itself out on its own. ("Use the pumps to your right" doesn't seem hard to me...) Tonight while getting gas I waited almost as long for shuffling as for actual fill-ups by people ahead of me. Whee. (Now there's an argument for fuel-efficient cars: reduce trips to the gas station! :-) )

For those wondering what happened with that online talmud-study effort I mentioned a few days ago: the originator started a mailing list and said we'll be starting with introductory stuff (not daf yomi any time soon), and I've heard nothing more from the URJ person. Actual study has not yet commenced. They've announced a book, which sounds so basic that I won't spend money on it but I'll borrow it from a library if I can.

From bunches of people:

One. Word.
You.
Can.
Only.
Type.
One.
Word.
No.
Explaining.

( Read more... )

I finally got around to doing this one. It's a nifty idea, though of course there will always be interests it doesn't know what to do with. Still, some nice stuff here:

( My Interests Collage! )

Interesting. I tried out "TrustFlow", which assesses your "friends" list and their lists and so on and nominates people who are popular among your friends but not directly your friends. Their model is that friend = trusted party (not a safe bet with LJ, but what can you do?), and each person distributes "trust points" evenly among his friends, and after you run this a few levels out you start to get a picture. (Algorithm description.) (I found out about this from dragontdc.)

I recognize many of the names on my list, which isn't surprising. What is surprising is that I don't recognize the top scorer and we have only one friend in common. I'm curious about that.

Here are the results (with their canned text): ( Read more... )

Created by ciphergoth; hosted by LShift.

TrustFlow II: Who is closest to your friends list?

This looks like an interesting exercise that everyone seems to be doing (with predictable site-availability results sometimes). If you like, go to this site, choose half a dozen traits you think I have, and then see how that compares to everyone else's assessments. http://kevan.org/johari?name=cellio

There's a meme going around (not for the first time) along the lines of "if you read this, post a comment about $SUBJECT here" (implied: so I know you're reading my journal). I usually don't do those, and you shouldn't draw conclusions about my reading habits from my silence. (I never do ones that say I "must" do something, though the current one doesn't make that demand.) If I wasn't planning to read you, I wouldn't have subscribed to your journal in the first place.