12-V-2009.
Also a bunch of shots of roses in the patio. This rose on the right has no fragrance at all, while the one on the left smells beautifully. She claims that it's the other way around. So, we are already selectively blind in the noses...
We bought this plastic owl and hung it on the plum tree to, allegedly, scare the squirrels away. Someone seemed to scare the owl, in a dozen days it was gone. And the plum didn't grow either.
The tomatoes from the ready saplings grows somewhat weird - what leaves it had have yellowed recently, but new leaves it sprouted meanwhile are green. Underneath that soil there's our compost, so guess it took some while until it spread roots deeper. We also inserted some earthworms - someone in the neighborhood was poisoning his lawn so they ran out from the soil. She salvaged a few and put them into this flowerbox, and I've also added what I found while paving the patio.
A long dispute yesterday.
George: A question about de-personalization. The files LastNames.txt, FemaleFirstNames.txt, etc are all uppercase. These are the generic names that get randomly substituted. Does Feds itself collect names in all-uppercase? All-uppercase looks like crap in browser interfaces. So for demos, I wonder, is this just arbitrary or is this how-it-is?
Norman: Case-enforcement is selectable on a field-by-field basis (right-click 'Properties'). Some clinics prefer to just keep the surname in uppercase, for distinction.
George: Thanks. I think I'm going to go mixed-case on the depersonalization and demos. I think it looks better when the page's or tags, which typically show the name associated with the record, are mixed-case.
I: Beware of the known exceptions - names like diXxxxx or deXxxxxx
Norman: That reminds me... Feds needs a better implementation of the "Capitalise the first character of every word" option. Users have complained that if they enter 'McDonald', it will change it to 'Mcdonald'...
Jan: wasn't there some UDF in the UT download section?
I: download #9808 [link]
Jan: Peter on lookuptables: [link]
George: His just-prior post, titled "Working with Vertical Tables", is excellent also. [link to foxite]
Jan: I've read that too... did not dive into that on a detail level though..
I: There was another loooooong thread where Maša went into more detail anyone would ever want... a year or two ago.
Jan: I stopped reading anything from Nadya a long time ago ..
I: :) She's a case. I didn't even know it but for a while I was on the short list of people to call if she threatens suicide again... had to maneuver myself out of there slowly. when I heard, that is.
Jan: ehh. I did miss that one.. did she thought of suicide. You mean that issue between her and the Branovs?
I: after that. she's got her periods. I wonder how many old foxes have left UA because they can't stand the annoyance... the "and what about the stars", the "if you find this offfensive" etc etc. at the same time intrusive and apologetic... annoying. I've even given up my favorite sport, answering her messages on a Friday late evening. Knowing she won't read them for 24 hours
Another rant on the blogue in the evening:
Spaniards must be schizo...
For spectators with cheaper tickets [quote from Alan Ford, of course], the relevant quote:
Writer-director Achero Manas's poignant film won more than 30 international awards, including four Spanish Goyas.
So... we have a movie from the famous "Foreign" genre. And we have four specifically and extremely Spanish Goyas - to be distinguished from all of those chinese, somali, paraguayan and estonian Goyas.
Actually, this movie is a paradox above them all. It has won 40 international awards, i.e. awards given by multiple countries in concert. Yet out of these 40 international awards, four are spanish - therefore, national. These Goyas are truly a miracle - international and national at the same time. Between nations and within a single nation simultaneously.
The only way I can reconcile this paradox is that majority of people in Spain have multiple personalities, and in more than a half of the citizens the alter ego (and others) are foreigners, thus making each citizen of Spain a Spaniard and an international at the same time. Which is a heroic feat.
Now how many US Oscars did that other movie win?
Few year's later this will be a thing of the past. It would be called „Spain's Goya“, and I'd ask other countries where are theirs.
Next day it got a bit crazy on UA... amidst a dispute whether the prisoners at Gitmo aka Guantanamo were tortured or not, this:
If you say so ;-) What were the stakes again? ;-)
Whatever happened with that other bet? IIRC, Jack wearing a T-shirt with "Nick is smarter than me" or something like that... in which message were the photos posted?
On a more serious note,
It's the "solidarity bad, charity good" mantra that's been carved and welded into the minds here over the last thirty years. Of course it was - solidarity makes people independent, self-reliant (on their peers, neighbors, generally on each other). Charity, OTOH, assumes that we're divided into haves and havenots first, then the latter have to wait for the day when the former want to feel good about themselves... Also, solidarity is something among equals, which the current mindset despises. Nobody should be equal, not even reflexively, or else we have socialism, and that's what we must not allow, at any cost... cost? maybe 300% more than over there, but then we'll all (me first! and there may be some for you too) make a nice profit on it.
What do you mean it's not ethical to rip off the sick and the dying? It's just charging for services - besides, their heirs would get all of that for nothing, unless they decide to get a few lawyers' kids through college first.
At work... issues with Sugar, nth time. Das: „Today Geoff sends an email and it appears in my email client but not in Sugar. This has previously happened for his email, not sure why the bias, but the account he sends to is support@Firriver.com but yet Martin (Bostock) emails to the same address end up in Sugar“. Hana: „Is this that long-standing Sugar bug? Our Sugar email isn't configured to filter anything. Perhaps Sugar has an issue with Outlook.jpg attachments?“... Ah, because all emails are the same, but whatever came from something m$ must be special...
Another thing, dates misinterpreted when exported from Feds into Word mailmerges or Excel sheets... because the date format inside Feds is different from the format set on the workstation, and the m$ apps respect the latter. The ongoing saga.
What lawn we have on the street still has to be mowed. The lawn did get smaller when she turned so much of it into a garden, but then it expanded, some from my fertilization plan, some by her flowerbed around the trunk which stops the kids from trampling the soil, so we have grass all the way to the house. The little whipper more than suffices for that, I finish it in some twenty minutes. And then I noticed that I picked a couple of ticks. Okay, took a pincer and extracted them, not much of a problem. And then I consider how come that this is my first time. How many times had I, as a kid, run around, and then after eightysix went to help dad around the vineyard, and never had one. And dad would at least once per season find at least ten of them over his body, they already knew him in the hospital, they'd just tell him to sit and would start with the pincer over him.
Then I wondered how did ticks appear here at all. I understand there in the vineyard, there were errant dogs, and beyond their fields there was a grazing field, flocks of sheep would often be there. On the other side, there are dogs here as well, leashed but the ticks aren't picky. And Juliška has a pooch too, her daughters regularly let it dump on our lown before returning home. That'll be it.
When I spooled the cable after mowing, I saw doves lined up on the magnolia. I can resist anything except temptation... so fivesix shots, with flash of course, it is late afternoon, in the tree crown.
Lena has exams these days on subjects which will be valid for college - I drove her yesterday early in the morning for maths, then there's another tomorrow (american history) and another one on saturday (physics or chemics, I wouldn't know).
Go sent a package this week - she asked for the exact address - and we sent her the dried vegetables (vacuumed - we finally tried the vacuuming gadget, works like a dragon), and homemade soap and cosmetics.
Mentions: Alan Ford, blogue, Feds, Firriver Fertility (Firriver), Geoff Gearney, George Whiteley, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Hana Burberry, homemade, Jack Baran, Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Juliška, Majkrosoft (m$), Maša Bezuhovski, Mohandas Raj (Das), Nick Greene, Norman Shen, Peter Branow, UbiquAgora (UA), in serbian
17-III-2024 - 5-VII-2026