Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

How did your day go? What are you looking forward to or not? What did your dog/cat/goat or other animal do today that was neat? In other words, just random chat.

I've been laid up for the past week from some surgery, one reason I've been so chatty on here. I'm bored out of my skull. I can't do most of the chores I should & want to be doing.

I go back to work tomorrow, which will help. I'm the computer guy for a small manufacturing company. Everything from janitor to CIO with over 100 PC's to nurse along. My office is also the server room so I'm surrounded by computers all day long. It's an interesting job & I'm quite happy to work inside much of the time. As I age, the cold days seem colder & the hot ones sap me much faster.

I try to keep some balance in my life, though. Once I leave work, I come home to our small farm with its ponds, woods, fields, & animals. I often work out in my shop making small items because it gives me a sense of accomplishment. One of the biggest downsides to working with computers is that everything looks the same no matter how much work I've done during the day.

Hi Jim!

The Autumn chores are done just in time for todays first snow. I wish I'd gotten more debris cleaned up out in the woods, but at least I got a few widowmakers threatening the walking trails down.

(a widowmaker is a dead tree that fell partway and got hung up on a live tree)

Darn, swinging that chainsaw gave me a sore back. Time to stay inside and get my mind focused on nice easy inside projects.

A busy year over, having finished my neighbors house with a pine ceiling and oak floor in her living room, built a deck and a porch, restored the garage and grown a nice crop of sunflowers. There are already many happy gray squirrels, red squirrels and chipmunks enjoying the fruits of my labors!

I love Winter on the farm... I get to rest!

Snow already? Brrr. It was 24 here this morning, but got up to 45 this afternoon. Typical for KY. Without large bodies of water near us & a confluence of weather, we bounce around a lot. 35 or 40 degree changes in a day aren't terribly unusual.

We have mostly fox squirrels here & a few grays, but we rarely see them since we have too many dogs. We go for a walk, the squirrels just retreat up their trees.

It's Friday!
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I'm being sneaky! I just ordered my husband's Christmas gift ... a book on carving miniature carousel horses!

Guess who has ALWAYS wanted a carousel horse (and there's not room enough here for a full sized one)

A new hobby shop just opened up in town and has balsa wood blocks, which hubby had been wanting to find to 'play with' ... found the balsa wood, they have carving knives and now he will have a book on 'how to' for Christmas and a gift certificate from the hobby shop!

Very cool gift. A friend of my mother's used to carve. I think she did a couple of miniature carousel horses. She was an ER doctor in her spare time.
;-)

This is so cool. The One Laptop Per Child program found out just how smart kids are. Short article, well worth reading:

We had an absolutely gorgeous day today. It started off in the mid 40's & got up to the mid 60's! I'd filled in some areas where trails were washing out yesterday with the tractor, so the dogs helped me rake them out today. Then we seeded & put some old hay on top. I mixed red & KY 31 fescues, so hopefully I'll get a good cover over those areas before it gets too cold.

I got out the tractor again & harrowed (chain dragged) the fields. They weren't bad, but it's nice to break up the manure piles a couple of times a year & scratch up the ground. I'll over seed a few of the thinner areas tomorrow, but there's only an acre or a bit more that really needs it. We've had good rain for the past couple of years except for June & July this year, so the grass is doing well.

Marg & Erin went to a horse show. Marg showed Cutter over small jumps & picked up a few ribbons. Nothing spectacular, but she had fun. Cutter was apparently feeling too good & broke his nose band again. He seems to think a martingale is just a suggestion & ignores it when it suits him.
:sigh:

Erin couldn't get the tailgate down to unhook the trailer. I had to pull the trim panel & found that one of the cheap plastic keepers had broken so the cable that goes from the latch release to the latch had come off one side. I stuck it back on & got everything unhooked. I guess I'll try to figure out a better keeper tomorrow. I have some old bandsaw blades around. Maybe I can bend up a new keeper out of a bit of that.

I worked on the trebuchet model some, but generally had a nice relaxing day. Other than this & the truck's tailgate, I plan to pull the pump out of the fish pond tomorrow, so another relaxing day. It's supposed to be pretty, too.

Jim wrote: "worked on the trebuchet model some, but generally had a nice relaxing day"

Glad the horse show was fun ... haven't had a rider so haven't been to a 'local' show for many years now and the last show I did go to was the Rolex at the Horse Park in KY ...

Speaking of trebuchets ... if you like action/adventure books you may enjoy one of my long time favorites. A group of 'strangers' are stranded on a mountain in Peru with an army after them and the only defenses they have are those cobbled together from discarded items at an abandoned mine by a history professor. Fascinating reading ...

We often watch the Rolex on the TV, but never gone in person. Was it fun?

That looks like an interesting book. I'll keep it mind. My TBR pile is looming, though.

For a MT country gal, it was incredible! I'd watched clips on TV but until I actually walked the course and stood at some of those jumps, looking up well over my head at the top and seeing how huge they were, I had no clue.

The ride downhill in the Snowy River movie is absolutely not nearly as scary as looking at those Rolex jumps. I've made a few "Snowy River" rides myself and never turned a hair ... looking at those Rolex jumps made me cringe.

Nope ... not me ... it looked like fun when I was watching on TV but I changed my mind really quick. I do have to say that once you realize what those jumps really look like up close and personal, your attitude even as a spectator changes ... a whole lot more respectful!

I grew up fox hunting (chasing) & all my kids did eventing, so the Rolex jumps have always been impressive, but part of life. I haven't had the horse to do much over 3' very often, but have gone over similar jumps. There were plenty around who did, though. To do 40 of them at such a pace is awesome, but it is a familiar sort of awe. If you ever get a chance, watch some of the Maryland timber races. The Maryland Hunt Cup is especially awesome. Some of those fences are almost 5 feet - 2 dozen of them over a 4 mile course.

OTOH, running down hills is scarier for me. Thoroughbreds aren't known for their grace in such situations. I'd take Chip, my App, down a hill like that, but only if I had to. He has the conformation for it, but I've seen the results of a misstep & tumble too often.

It's not pretty when a horse goes down. James, my oldest boy, spent 6 days on life support due to it one time. Why I feel like there is a better chance galloping down a hill as compared to some of those jumps isn't really logical. It must just be familiarity.

Jim wrote: "Why I feel like there is a better chance galloping down a hill as compared to some of those jumps isn't really logical. It must just be familiarity.
"

Probably. OTOH I grew up with my grandfather's stories of roping antelope off his horse when he was a young man working as a cowboy.

I've also been bucked off a lot of ranch horses and had a lot of horses fall with me, but the first accident that put me in the hospital was from being kicked and I was in my 60s at the time. Figured my luck had held pretty well over the years.

Making it 60 years before hitting the hospital while being around horses is impressive. None of us made it 2 decades. Part of the reason might be the type of horse. Thoroughbreds aren't known for having an even temperament or much sense & that's the breed we've had around the most.

Jim wrote: "Very cool gift. A friend of my mother's used to carve. I think she did a couple of miniature carousel horses. She was an ER doctor in her spare time.
;-)"

I've always loved carousel horses. I rode merry go rounds until I was in my teens ... then rode when my kids were little, until they got so big they wouldn't ride them anymore and I had to quit.

The one thing I absolutely drooled over when we were in an art gallery in San Francisco one time was a small bronze of a carousel horse ... I'd have given anything for that ...

Foxtower mentioned going back to work today & I realized that I don't know what he or any of you do for a living. I mentioned earlier in this thread that I'm a computer guy. I get to work by 5:30am & leave at 2:30pm, so I have plenty of time to play in the afternoons & evenings. It's raining today, so no outside chores to do except check the dirt I put down over the weekend & make sure the grass seed isn't getting washed away.

I've been married forever (in a good way) & all my kids are grown. My youngest is out of college & the oldest is 30. No grandkids yet, but lots of dogs & horses.

I'm retired, in fact took early retirement and used my inheritance to buy horses and I'm still breeding horses, well ponies, actually, now.

I started out with the idea of a degree in literature, got married (two kids, four grandkids) and ended up being first a legal secretary, then a police dispatcher and finally nursing assistant in a VA psych hospital. Can't say it wasn't interesting.

Mind if I intrude?

I was "forced" into retirement way earlier than planned... a workaholic that can't work!

But I work six days a week here on the farm, growing organic veggies (and all that entails from the compost to the harvest) and trying to repair the old buildings on the farm. One left to go, the old falling down farmhouse. Of course that's except in the Winter when I get to play for four months.

I finally got around to all those things I always wanted to do but never had the time, like reading 400 paperbacks I'd collected over the years to discover 200 weren't worth reading again. Time to buy 200 more!

Not an intrusion. It would be nice to meet everyone quickly like that, Foxtower. What did you do before you were retired? I've never known a farm that didn't require a workaholic.
;-)

Foxtower wrote: "I was "forced" into retirement way earlier than planned... a workaholic that can't work!"

Growing up on a ranch, I didn't realize what 'workaholics' were ... I thought everyone was like that!

I actually miss winters now that I'm in KY instead of MT. That was more or less when we got to 'relax' a little once the cattle were fed as long as the tractor or pickup didn't break down. There's not a lot you can do outside when the daytime temperatures hover around zero ... not counting windchill.

A friend of mine in SLC said there was 2' of snow there the other day. A nationwide weather map showed Wyoming was at 1 degree & Montana at a balmy 7. This was Saturday, I think. We were in the mid 60's. I'd rather work in the warmer weather!
;-)

The first year I was back in 'that country' after 9 years in Nevada and 3 years in Spain, I was driving home after dinner with friends on New Year's Eve and drove by the bank in Sheridan, WY ...

... and the bank time/temperature sign blithely announced -40 degrees!

Oops!

No thank you! It was about 40 degrees above 0 when I got home yesterday & damp - it had rained most of the day. It was plain cold & raw. I don't even want to think about 80 degrees less. Brrr.

I have to admit that I was really happy with the development of the extremely efficient snow machine outerwear. The insulated boots and gloves available the last 25 years or so were a tremendous improvement. There were times I wondered if I ever fell into a snow drift, if I could get up again, with all the padding ... but I wasn't cold!

I've been puttering along entering my reference books in the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ database. Compared to entering non-fiction, adding reference books is quite a chore. The "section" is a mess, with different editions entered with slightly different titles, or co-authors each given a different entry, and seldom are there cover photos or anywhere near complete details.

Between correcting details, adding covers and combining editions it can take twenty minutes to add one book. Of course this is complicated by the fact that so many of my books are older than ISBN numbering, so I almost always need to add the first edition too, especially with popular reference books that have had three of four newer editions since first publication.

I would encourage members to add reviews of your reference books, as so many reference entries are lacking reviews. If you're a librarian and find your book isn't in goodreads we'd all be richer if you added it!

OK, I'm done....

I have to admit to picking different editions or skipping a book entirely because it's not in the DB. I spent a fair amount of time cleaning up when Amazon changed the rules. It's a pain. I'm just not a very good librarian. Never wanted to be one. I mentioned a problem about a series to staff years ago & they made me one, the buggers.
;-)

Aha! The revenge of the librarians! When I hit one real difficult problem, a four volume set with many editions and all kinds of mistakes The Carpenters and Builders Library, Volume 2 I asked for suggestions so I could fix it. Next thing you know other librarians had done most of it!

See, if you want to help they'll help you instead. If you want them to solve the problem they look at their pay checks ($0.00.

I am a librarian because after half a dozen attempts to catalog my collection I have found good reads not only solves the problem (for books anyway- maps, brochures, photos not so much) but also provides a pretty good idea of what books I might enjoy before I buy them.

As I said before, I like to contribute. Making sure all the books in my library are represented accurately with cover photos helps me and helps good reads.

It could take a while... I'm almost through shelf two of the reference section after over a week of partial evenings... only eleven more shelves to go!

I was fired up for a while, but that was before we got the change comments. I spent hours fixing an author only to have someone else come along & undo all my hard work. Several of us worked on fixing it back up only to have it get messed up again. I didn't edit a book for months. Since they've put in the change comments, that problem died down quite a bit, thankfully.

I'm almost finished with Diary of an Early American Boy by Eric Sloane & I just started it yesterday. Fascinating book. If you ever want a good look at farm life in 1805, this is perfect.

Here's my review:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I had my regular 4 month cleaning at the dentist's yesterday. I hate that, but at least I didn't have any cavities or other issues. They really want to clean my teeth every 3 months & the cleaning gal wants me to get a sonic toothbrush. Anyone ever use one of those? They look like an expensive new fad to me. Close to $200 & they need pads or something. Worse than a water pick. I wonder if those are still around...

Jim wrote: "I had my regular 4 month cleaning at the dentist's yesterday. I hate that, but at least I didn't have any cavities or other issues. They really want to clean my teeth every 3 months & the cleaning..."

I use an OralB Vitality ($30). They're now doing a $10 mail-in rebate, I was hoping to buy another, but fear the battery going bad before the first one goes bad and I have to scrap it. I've had new AAA rechargeable batteries go bad when I didn't charge them for a couple years.
I remember jumping right on a new anti-plaque mouth rinse in the 80s, next thing I knew I had an abscess from the stuff coming thru my poor old hair-cracked teeth (don't chew ice cubes when you drink bourbon). And those abscesses are HARD to pinpoint! I would view those sonic tooth brushes with suspicion for the same reason. I get mine cleaned once a year (no insurance). Timing seems about right, since he charges me near $200 with xray.

Jim wrote: "I had my regular 4 month cleaning at the dentist's yesterday. I hate that, but at least I didn't have any cavities or other issues. They really want to clean my teeth every 3 months & the cleaning..."

I really need to see a dentist. I think I have a cavity because sometimes my right side of my mouth hurts really bad. Unfortunately, I'm not covered under my student insurance which means it'll just end up being an expense I can't really afford.

Hi Rachel!

Puleease don't get old like me and end up looking like a chipmunk (missing teeth) because you put off dental visits. Putting off things only make them worse.

And hey, the Dentist doesn't ask for payment until AFTER the work is done! He can wait, you can't! How you gonna study if you're in pain?

And don't forget many places have dental clinics. OK, I won't go to the dental clinic here... the Dentists are clumsy yet they do repairs OK, but the hygenists are poor. Cleaning is so important I'll gladly pay $95 and know I'm getting a good cleaning rather than $20 at the clinic where two weeks after my so called cleaning the clinic dentist told me I really better get a cleaning soon!

Another option of course is to borrow money from Jim....

I hope you get the problem solved soon!

Excuse me! What? I just finished putting a daughter through 4 years of college & still haven't gotten her out of the house. I have horses! What makes you think I have MONEY?!!!

Sheesh!

grumble, mutter...

Jim wrote: "Excuse me! What? I just finished putting a daughter through 4 years of college & still haven't gotten her out of the house. I have horses! What makes you think I have MONEY?!!!

Sheesh!

grumble..."

Haha, yeah I talked to my mom yesterday and I'm gonna make the appointment.

Taking a break from entering reference books. My "art" section has many oversize books that require two scans to capture the covers (which are never there!) and then I hit a duplicate ISBN number...

An hour for two books and trying to find the correct isbn number for a book I don't even own... I finally sent that problem to the other librarians!

Next, a 1939 book that at least won't have a duplicate isbn number becuase it has none!

Wow! That's a lot of work. Do you have a home book database? A friend of mine on here told me about one & it was pretty cool. Can't recall the name, though. Wouldn't help you with these old ones, but uses an online database & even allows barcode scanning for the ISBN. I think it was Collectorz.

Foxtower wrote: "Taking a break from entering reference books. My "art" section has many oversize books that require two scans to capture the covers (which are never there!) and then I hit a duplicate ISBN number....."

Is this your own collection you're scanning? My boyfriend was laughing at/getting frustrated with me last night because we finally unpacked our last box of books (we moved at the end of September) last night. I had put up all the other books, separated hardcovers from paperbacks, and nonfiction from fiction. I also had put all of our graphic novels and the Dark Tower books together. Last night, I had to shift several shelves to put up the remaining paperbacks. I think what illicited the frustration and laughter was my insistence that the MMP of the Dark Tower series could not go up with the other paperbacks because the rest of the series is hardcover and wouldn't fit on the same shelf. We also found out we need another bookshelf.

Hey Rachel and Jim! Yes, it's my own collection, started about 1975. I just had to slap together another eight feet of shelf space as the paperbacks were overflowing.

I like the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ catalog system... plus everything I do could help others. (The nice librarian Amanda fixed the problem yesterday and I made it halfway through the first Art shelf as most of the books newer than 1940 were mostly there except for covers)

I agree Rachel, sized shelving just makes sense... while my entertainment paperbacks are all in 8" shelfs in order by author, I keep a seperate 10" shelf for entertainment hardcovers, especially since sometimes you can get a better deal on a hardcover. I also have "sections" so I can find the book I need quickly, ie' science, art, math, nature, farming etc. etc....

Still making progress.. two thirds of the way across the first art shelf already! I gotta wonder though: Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ has 12 million books.... how is it that so many of mine have to be manually added!?!? Just how obscure is my library???

I can understand when it's a little regional book printed in Vermont about covered bridges, yet Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ has hundreds of books with "Vincent Van Gogh" in the title, and a dozen with the same title... but not the 1961 version by the author that wrote mine...

I plod along.... soon goodreads will have 12 million and change....

When you figure that an average of 500,000 books have been published every year for the past decade or more, an average of 250,000 per year for a decade or two before that just in English between the US & England (or so I read in one place) it's not surprising that a mere 12,000,000 doesn't cover them all.

I figured out how to print out a useful catalog so when I go to a bookstore next week I won't buy duplicates! (Happens way too often... if the cover inpressed me once, it will impresse me again and if it's been a while I forget I already read it!)

Trying to print out the "table" view was ridiculous... a whole lot of space and billions of pages. In "Cover" view I figured out I could put 30 covers on a page (at 85%) and created a little binder I can take with me with both the books I've read and the books I hope to find.

Plus it seems to be a good way to use up the ink in my old printer! (frequent jams and I must feed one page at a time or it chokes!)


Oh boy.. I haven't been to a book store in a couple years.. always fun!

GR allows you to export your books to .csv format, which you can then open up in Excel or Open Office Calc. Shelves are one column, so if you have a 'to-buy' shelf, you can sort on that, copy to another tab & print out the pieces you want.

To export your books, go to 'My Books' & look down the left side for Import/Export link. You'll see the export option on the top right.

I haven't been doing nearly as much reading the last couple of weeks and won't for awhile. Have a lot of artwork in my 'to do' stack ...

Finished a dog portrait that was my first totally 'on line' deal ... email contact, emailed photos and emailed approval ... seems to have been successful. That makes me a lot more comfortable about doing a little more active marketing through on line sources since all of my prior commissioned portraits had been done from photos I'd taken myself.

Now working on my Christmas gift to my best friend (30 plus years). She raises and shows Manchester Terriers and collects unicorns and my gift to her is usually a painting of one or the other ... this year it's unicorns which are lots of fun for me.

That's great, Sharon. You're 'retired' right? So now you have a new way of being retired.
;-)

My grandfather always said everyone should retire at 65 -- for 2 weeks. He did, then wound up on several boards, wrote Op-Ed columns for the newspaper he published & edited for decades & other such things. He stayed busy, but it was a relaxed sort of busy & let him travel a fair amount.

Jim wrote: "GR allows you to export your books to .csv format, which you can then open up in Excel or Open Office Calc. Shelves are one column, so if you have a 'to-buy' shelf, you can sort on that, copy to a..."

Gee Jim... what the heck language are you speaking! I found a solution that works for me... don't confuse me!!!

Sharon wrote: "I haven't been doing nearly as much reading the last couple of weeks and won't for awhile. Have a lot of artwork in my 'to do' stack ...

Finished a dog portrait that was my first totally 'on line'..."

Dogs... kittys... horseys... hey a bucks a buck! The most difficult pet portrait job I ever had was a person who wanted all three dogs at once. I tried to get the three dogs, ranging from a tiny mexican to a large lumbering black monster to pose for a photo... didn't happen! I had to combine different photos of each... but the customer was happy!

Congrats on earning another happy customer!

But but but... how do you get a unicorn to pose?

Foxtower wrote: "But but but... how do you get a unicorn to pose? "

I will admit that unicorns are quite difficult to photograph. While it is not entirely true that they will show themselves only to virgins I have found modern technology to be of significant help.

The remote game cameras that have motion sensor activation have probably been the biggest advance in this field, but of course as with all wild animals, location is everything.

And you will, of course, understand why I do not reveal the locations ... and specific game trails ... I have found the most utilized by unicorns.

Sorry, Foxtower, I thought I was making things easier for you. You don't fiddle much on the computer, I guess. I do a lot.

Today was sheer hell, too. I did some updates & our email server quit working. It was 3:30 before I got it working again. No lunch, either. Blech. Damn things. They'll never catch on. No sense of humor & too unreliable...