I’m at Dallas Fan Days with my son today. We met John Barrowman, and I attended a Q&A with Nichelle Nichols yesterday. I’m hoping to meet Christopher Judge and Melissa McBride today. It’s a small Con held at the Irving Convention Center, which is a very nice facility, particularly if like climbing stairs a lot. Then we’ll drive home this evening and it’s back to the grind tomorrow. The weather here in Dallas and back in OKC is unseasonably warm, in the 70s in early February, but I am assured that there is no such thing as global warming or global climate change. What all have you lot going on today?
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PurpleGirl
Small cons are nice; the crowds aren’t too crazy and you can meet people and enjoy conversations and programs. Glad you had a good time at the con.
Not sure what I’m doing today. Have to prepare for the mixed precipitation tomorrow.
satby
It was sunny and warm yesterday but I had people over, a rare event since I moved out of IL. Today is also going to be mild, so I’m going to do all the household chores I didn’t do yesterday, including busting out the seed starter trays. Those Sunday morning garden threads will be starting up soon!
currants
Shoveling the next 12 inches of snow that has started….not that there’s anywhere to put it or that we could see to get out of the driveway anyway.
grishaxxx
Wow – Captain Jack! Lucky boys! [well, and Uhura, too…:-) ]
JPL
The weather has been quite nice here, so I’m getting a head start on yard work. I don’t want to write a lot about the sunshine and temps because, there are some who live in areas receiving more snow.
ThresherK
John Barrowman? ThresherK Spousal Unit would be jealous, so I’m not telling her.
Scott S.
I’ve never been a fan of conventions — I’m just not social enough to enjoy them much, plus I’m not a fan of the highway into Dallas. But I’ve got an online friend who’s actually volunteering at that con, which is enough to tempt me strongly to attend, just so I can finally meet him in person…
satby
@satby: well “warm here” means that it got up to 41, and will be 40 today before dropping into the 20s for the rest of the week. No need for anyone to feel jealous.
ThresherK
@satby: Not jealous, no sweat.
Not sure where you are, but when warm gets to where I am, it’ll be mud season, the biggest one in years and years. And in my area we usually don’t get a mud season like they do in Northern New England.
Luther Siler
I’m attending my first con next year, as a guy in a booth–a local bookstore is hosting one for their fortieth anniversary and I’m going to get a table and try and sell some books. I’m already terrified! Looking forward to it in an “Oh my god am I really planning on doing this?” sort of way. There used to be a yearly comics convention in town, but it went under a decade or so ago and hasn’t come back. Sad.
Bobby Thomson
@grishaxxx: he looks young for his age.
Elmo
Just reading the news about a devastating fire in the tiny communities of Swall Meadows and Paradise in the Eastern Sierra. 40 homes destroyed.
These are the places mountain people retire to when they can’t take the snow anymore but don’t want to leave. Many of these homes were owner-built dream homes; lots of retirees. Just as a storm was coming in, but the storm came too late.
This area shouldn’t be in fire danger in fucking February, and I am just broken up about it. There’s a gofundme page if anyone can spare a little. Round Fire Relief
Amir Khalid
The BBC ponders a burning question of the day: why are people saying “uh” less often, and “um” more often?
MomSense
It is snowing and very cold here this morning. Just took the pup for a long walk and learned that she is not afraid of vehicles at all. She wants to chase them–even the big trucks. She is a tiny creature with zero fear of large, noisy machines. I am so screwed.
Bobby B.
Say hi to Sheldon and Leonard if you see them.
raven
RIP Dean Smith.
Buddy H
@Amir Khalid: Several things I’ve noticed: People beginning sentences with the word “so.”
Also, when writing, people writing “looser” or “loosing” when they mean “loser” or “losing.” And writing “weary” when they mean “wary”
Used to be, “so” was a connector: “She wasn’t home, so I went to the store instead.” Now, I hear people being interviewed, and starting with “so” for no discernible reason: “Where did you get the idea for your new invention?” “So I was experimenting in my lab, and the solution became obvious.”
Has anyone else noticed the rise of the beginning “so”? It started with young people, but now I hear all ages adopting it.
Nicole
I’m so freaking envious you may meet Melissa McBride. Team Carol!
Buddy H
Nichelle Nichols : I was so sad for her when I learned her brother was among the Heavens Gate suicides.
I’ve always been a big fan of hers, and she’s as smart and beautiful as ever.
raven
@Buddy H: I annoys me too but:
However, MWDEU also observes that “nearly everybody admits to having been taught at some past time that the practice was wrong.” So where did this idea come from? In The Story of English in 100 Words, David Crystal writes:
During the 19th century, some schoolteachers took against the practice of beginning a sentence with a word like but or and, presumably because they noticed the way young children overused them in their writing.
But instead of gently weaning the children away from overuse, they banned the usage altogether! Generations of children were taught they should ‘never’ begin a sentence with a conjunction. Some still are. (Entry for and)
If you’ve ever been angry at a teacher who kept your whole class in from recess because two or three of your classmates were misbehaving, you should have a big problem with this rationale for not beginning a sentence with a conjunction. They think you can’t handle the freedom of using conjunctions!
Buddy H
RIP Joe B. Mauldin. 74 years old.
GregB
@Amir Khalid:
Hmmmm.
Iowa Old Lady
@Luther Siler: Go you!
I have a friend who sells her mysteries at the local farmer’s market.
raven
Geeze Billy Casper too.
Gin & Tonic
I will be shoveling snow. I don’t know if it’s again or still – there’s something like 2.5 feet of old that has to come off the garage roof, and we’re supposed to get a new foot by Tuesday or so.
GregB
Waiting for another half a foot to fall on the ground so I can start snow blowing.
Planning on seeing a movie called Grow! that is being shown at the behest of a group I belong to.
Also plan on doing some reading up on Alan Turing as I saw The Imitation Game last and was fascinated by a well done film and moved and saddened by the actual story of Turing.
Amir Khalid
@Buddy H:
These mistakes seem of an ilk with “you’re”/”your” or “too”/”to”, both of which are commonly encountered here. As for starting sentences with “so”, I’ve learned that it’s not unique to English: German speakers do exactly the same thing with also (so). Like raven notes, it’s not wrong, you just shouldn’t make a habit of it.
Buddy H
@raven: As used in the quote, “so where did this idea come from” sounds okay to my ear, because it’s responding to the previous statement.
It’s when the “so” pops out of nowhere, that it sounds wrong to me. But I am not a grammar snob. Language is fluid. I’m convinced in two hundred years this post will read to future eyes (assuming it survived by some miracle) the way olde english looks to us.
I’m sure twitter will hasten the simplification of spelling and language. The word “through” will seem ancient and quaint.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
I think “so” is just the latest in a long line of verbal tics.
Bystander
The question that is plaguing me concerns Bill O’Reilly’s response in view of Brian Williams’ self-deportation. Bill practically invented resume padding. What’s he going to do now after lying about winning the Peabody Award? Oh that’s right. IOKIYAR.
Buddy H
@Baud: I read a lot of James Thurber as a lad. When he went blind, he spent much of his time in front of his radio. He wrote long essays about the various new verbal tics he was hearing. One of his essays was called “The Spreading You Know”
He was particularly irritated by the grammar used in radio advertising. He documented all the insults to his beloved language, but did it in a humorous way.
Violet
@raven: Well that’s the end of an era. RIP Dean Smith.
Baud
@Buddy H:
Glad he didn’t live to see social media.
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
I noticed my German cousins starting sentences with ZO and thought it was funny because it reminds me of movie Germanic bad guys.
I start sentences with so because I often begin in the middle of my thoughts so (or should that be ‘and’) a conjunction makes sense. I know my brain does not work like most.
Ben Cisco
@Violet: End of an era indeed.
My high school coach was an adherent of Dean’s philosophy; ran us ragged with it. RIP Coach Smith.
GregB
My big bugaboo is the invented word “prolly” which is used in the place of probably.
Drives me bonkers.
Schlemazel
@GregB:
Well, it is Febooary so prolly it’s OK to use it, ya know
mikej
@Buddy H: I first noticed the so thing a few years ago listening to scifri. Every guest starts almost every answer with it. And every question is a “great question.”
Mike in NC
Doddering old man Bob Schieffer is worrying about ISIS and the measles, so it’s time to change the channel.
ruemara
Quite jealous. Captain Jack and Lieutenant Uhura. Job hunting. I can’t seem to gather my drive to finish applications lately; seems very moot. Hoping to drag myself back on the horse and do something. Maybe even crack open that 3d project I wanted to wrap up over the holidays, now that the modeller has finished all the characters. Plus a friend needs a press release done. I can’t get a job, but people do love me when I give them work for free. I got my tax refund already. Strangely fast. God as my witness, I don’t know if I wish to do sensible things like a car repair or if I want to sell the car and everything that isn’t a change of clothes, laptop and camera and flee this place.
MomSense
@ruemara:
I’ve been thinking lately (as I shovel snow) that I want to sell everything and live in a tent in Tortola.
Schlemazel
@Mike in NC:
I was very surprised he did not mention his co-host, John McCain. But yeah, The TV goes off when Deface the Nation comes on
EDIT: I miss the old days here when there was an open thread to discuss Sunday Morning. Would love to hear feedback of the Axlerod piece,
Pogonip
Nichelle Nichols is the only name I recognized. What did she have to say?
I did not know her brother had fallen victim to the Heaven’s Gate cult. That’s a shame. My brother was also in a cult but his wife (not the , one who just died) got him out of it. The cult wanted 30% of the victim’s–er, the member’s–pre-tax income. She refused to cough up so they kicked him out and after the divorce, the cult fell apart before he could come up with the money to pay his back cult bill. It was a British Israelite cult; these cults think indigenous Brits are the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel. (Why you need to pay someone 30% of your pre-tax income to tell you this is, I guess, a question only a cultist could answer.)
rikyrah
it’s only Sunday, dude.
But, Good Morning!
feebog
After a pleasant day of light rain showers yesterday, we are looking at another day in the low 70s in SoCal. Going whale watching this afternoon out of Oxnard.
Scamp Dog
@Schlemazel: So your a bad riter, aren’t u?
Schlemazel
@Scamp Dog:
Know, eye right good. Wat eye was pointin owt was how peeple speek.
ranchandsyrup
Taking our oldest to a bday party at a gigantic indoor play structure place. Hopefefully I won’t have to navigate the structure myself.
Librarian
@Buddy H: I’ve noticed the “lose-loose” thing around here, it drives me crazy.
Schlemazel
as long as it is an open thread here is a silly non sequitur question:
Why do I need a doctors prescription to obtain sterile water for irrigation? Don’t want to explain why but I need to introduce water where there is not an environment that deals with outside virii or bacterium. But the dr did not write an RX for sterile water. It never occurred to me to ask since its just fucking water! Anyone know why this is kept off the counter?
Eric S.
I mentioned last weekend I was having shoulder surgery and received lots of well wishes. I thought I’d drop in an update. The surgery was this past Tuesday and went well. The damage was limited to my rotator cuff (good!). However, the ligament wasn’t separating at the bone which is typical but was separating from the muscle (bad!). It is an injury normally seen in athletes with overhead motions. Decades of playing baseball and volleyball are the cause for me.
Overall things are going well. I came off the pain meds after 48 hours. I’m allowed to use the arm to type, write, eat, or anything that doesn’t involve weight and keeps the hand inside the bos formed by my shoulders and hips. I start physical therapy on Thursday. The doc thinks I’ll be in therapy for up to 6 months. Because the tear was at the muscle as opposed to the bone it is going to take longer.
Papa Cardfan has been with me the whole week. It’s frustrating as I’m very used to being on my own and taking care of my own business. However, he’s been absolutely essential. Especially in the first 3 days I just couldn’t do a lot of things I normally do.
Mandalay
@Amir Khalid: O/T, a nice Liverpool story, and a pretty amazing coincidence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0U_PUbQGA4U
Buddy H
Since this is open thread, here’s something I’ve been puzzling over:
I pay approx. 48 bucks a month for a cable hookup. We don’t have cable tv, the cable is strictly for internet. But I’m always reading comments from people who say “I cut my cable, we don’t have cable anymore”
How else can you get online without cable? I’ve seen things advertised like “netzero” a little wireless box you can use anywhere, but how secure it that?
I wish it were a utility, and satellite-based. No cables, no 48 bucks a month.
What other options do I have? I hate timewarner and I hate their future friend comcast.
Mike J
@Eric S.: Truck day is only four days away. You’re cutting it close with rotator cuff surgery this late in the off season.
Mike J
@Buddy H: Satellite internet sucks. The latency is over half a second. If all you ever need to do is move big files I suppose it would be ok, but for normal things like web browsing it feels awful.
Eric S.
@Mike J: Sadly, I will not have a 2015 season. I was in enough pain that I didn’t have much of a end of 2014 either. I was lobbing the ball around the field or playing 1B when I could. Every once in a while, when I needed to, I would unleash a hard throw but I paid for it for a couple of days.
We tried about 5 weeks of P.T. to see if that would help but the tear was just too severe.
Watch out 2016 though! I’ve got a full year to get back in playing shape.
Buddy H
@Mike J: I’ve never experienced it. I just hate the cable bill.
Trentrunner
@Buddy H: I’m pretty sure when most people say “I cut my cable,” they’re talking in the context of television, not Internet access. I know this because then they talk about how they’re now getting all their TV programming via Netflix, Roku, Amazon, iTunes, et al.
Having said that, there is satellite Internet connection that some of my rural friends have. It’s definitely slower than cable Internet.
Baud
@Buddy H:
They probably mean they don’t get cable TV when they say they cut the cable.
You can get satellite Internet, but it won’t be better or cheaper than cable Internet.
Your only other option is whatever your phone company is offering or Internet through your cell provider. Providers like netzero resell someone else’s service, but they might have better pricing plans for how you use your Internet.
Southern Beale
If you want a laugh, check out the hilarious troll campaign in the comments section of Amazon targeting the anti-vaxxer children’s book, “Melanie’s Marvelous Measles.”
jeffreyw
@Iowa Old Lady:
Kids these days, with their euphemisms. Must be quite the liberal bunch of farmers!
Just seared a beef roast, was thinking basic pot roast but Italian beef sounded better when Mrs J mentioned it.
MomSense
@ranchandsyrup:
Ah the habitrail for kids. I have crawled through many a tube in my day.
Mike E
@Amir Khalid: Um, what?
I’ll be “seeing” Melissa McBride this evening at my neighborhood cinema when TWD resumes their season…I’ll go early to ensure getting a seat in the 250 capacity theater.
Jerzy Russian
@Buddy H: My internets come via AT&T Uverse. I have their digital phone and internet (no TV). I think I am at 18 Mbits/sec, and it does the job. There is a fiber optic hooked up to where the old phone line used to be.
Is there another type of industry where the best anyone can say is that their provider does not suck as much as other potential providers?
Southern Beale
@Jerzy Russian:
We had a horrific install for ATT Uverse but once all of that ordeal was behind us — and AT&T reimbursed us the $900+ plus we had spent fix what numerous of their technicians had broken — we’ve been happy.
That said, anyone looking at AT&T needs to know that their installers are idiots and don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.
dmsilev
Excuse of the day: One of the grad students I oversee was planning on doing something in the lab yesterday, but didn’t. This morning, I get a message saying that he couldn’t come in as planned because all of his pants were in the laundry.
Was tempted to write back to ask why he didn’t just streak from his car to the front door of the building, but resisted the temptation.
Mike E
@Buddy H: We’re anticipating teh Google fiber making it’s way here, one option is $300 outlay for “basic” internet @ 5mps for at least 7 years with no monthly fee…1 gig is $70 a month, which I’d gladly pay if my two part-time jobs morph into at least one fulltime position. 5mps is the lower limit for streaming, faster is better tho.
MobiusKlein
@Schlemazel: make your own? Get distilled water, boil it, etc. I suspect the reason it requires Rx is so insurance covers it.
ThresherK
@Buddy H: In CT AT&T’s service was bought by Frontier. Gawd, are they awful at getting their crap together. We switched to Comcast because it was better and cheaper.
(Please note there are an extraordinary set of circumstances which allow me to type the above statement. One of them is that we moved, but are in the same town. Another is that my wife’s last name is still hers, so we got the “new customer” bundle special. A third is that I can do all the little doodads myself, and we’ve bought a few recommended boxes which save us from renting their stuff for what is now $10 a box a month.)
First full-time broadband residence. Not sure about your original question re cutting cable, and I’m curious if the sweet spot for this solution is for people who are heavily into online RPGs and are assuming the cost of broadband is going to be on their list anyway.
Jerzy Russian
@Southern Beale: The install part at the house went OK. However, they had some kind of problem with the line upstream, and they spent hours working on that.
ThresherK
@Jerzy Russian: The line upstream?
Here, our last straw for Frontier (nee AT&T, Frontier’s corp structure and communications, AT&T’s equipment, and mainly local contractors) was when our phone service went out after having been working about two of the four weeks after the move.
I called them on a Sunday and they replied they had minimal staffing levels, like it was 1988 or something. At long last, they dispatched a useful, friendly tech.
It was determined that a junction box in our neighborhood had failed. This box split up the big cable into (up to) 24, 48 or 96 separate lines. That many customers had been without service for almost one day, and somehow I was the only one to call them about it. Or complain loudly and angrily enough.
Iowa Old Lady
@dmsilev: That’s at least a new excuse. I trust his washing machine is in his apartment, not the basement.
Tenar Darell
@currants: Me too. I feel like snow, snow, snow, snow, never ending snow. Pulled a muscle in my upper back Tuesday throwing too high; it was better. /sigh.
Schlemazel
@MobiusKlein:
I thought of boiling but am not sure if that is good enough. The stuff wholesales for $4-10 a bottle (depending on size) hardly seems worth the paperwork headache for insurance.
That thing in Louisiana with people dieing from using city water in their netti pots makes me a bit concerned about putting any ol water in there.
opiejeanne
@Elmo: I didn’t know there was another town in CA called Paradise, but probably an old name for a place and not an incorporated town. The one I knew about until now is just East of Chico and west of the Sierras.
opiejeanne
@Buddy H: And lead instead of led, when they mean the past tense. I’m seeing it a lot the past few months.
I thought the loose/lose thing was just about dead, but then I saw that again yesterday.
trollhattan
The other day some of us were waxing nostalgic for “Flight of the Conchords” and so today’s discovery of “What We Do in the Shadows” comes as a welcome surprise.
This will be the first vampire flick I’m paying to watch.
buddy h
@opiejeanne: I guess I’m being fussy, but the thing that kills me is when people say “I could care less!” instead of “I couldn’t care less!” Makes me want to ask “you could care less? How much less could you care?”
And this makes me an old fart, but I noticed that “underwhelmed” is now officially a word. I remember when it first appeared it was a humorous play on words. But now it is a real, serious word. “How did you like the restaurant?” “I was underwhelmed.”
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
Same here. I’ve even cycled through the “other” Paradise a few times. It too has had its share of wildfires.
trollhattan
@buddy h:
Best uttered whilst “laughing all the way to the bank.”
Cain
@ThresherK:
I met Stephen Amnell at Comicon here in Portland. Both are excellent actors. John though has a slight edge because he can look so diabolical. But if you see some of the shots on twitter, you can see he’s a major joker/clown. Love the guy.
Southern Beale
@Jerzy Russian:
It’s ALWAYS a problem with the line upstream. See, that’s what happened to us: we had our house wired for internet/fiber optics during a remodel 3 years ago. So ATT should have been able to come in with no problem. But they send us this idiot who couldn’t get Uverse to work in our house and instead of looking to see if the problem was off-site, he just fucking dismantled our low-wattage work we’d spend a few grand installing. Then it turns out that there’s a problem upstream at the box as well as a problem in the line from the street to the house. Meanwhile, the armies of ATT people who trooped in and under our house trying to figure out how they’d fucked up would amaze you.
I went weeks without internet, telephone and TV. It was the biggest disaster EVER.
Elmo
@opiejeanne: right, not an incorporated town at all. Just a name for a little community between Bishop and Mammoth. Total population maybe 150 -200 people in the whole area of Paradise and Swall.
It’s devastating.
Amir Khalid
@buddy h:
“Underwhelm” is a useful word to have, so I’m okay with it. On the other hand, English is still in need of a personal pronoun of unspecified gender. Old-fashioned types insist on the awkward “he or she”, along with “him or her” in the object case and “his or her” in the possessive. It’s high time they learned to accept “they”, “them” and “”their”.
Tree With Water
@opiejeanne: I’d be willing to bet many hundreds of 49ers nicknamed their camps Paradise up and down the state at one time or another, and took a certain ironic comfort in doing so.