Completely Random Thoughts

[F-Zero]

I hate subtitles! I think it's just because I didn't grow up having to read them, but I find it very distracting to have to read the words at the bottom of the screen and I might miss what is going on in the rest of the screen. Am I the only one who has difficulty with this?

I love subtitles because I can follow quiet dialogue without getting ambushed by super loud audio.  You know how they do that. 

Over the years I've noticed there's dialogue in the script that's otherwise inaudible.  And how often does your mind wander at crucial dialogue?  Subtitles it's harder to miss. 

[dbsommer]

I can one up it. Just because you're immortal doesn't mean you have unlimited memory capacity, especially when combined with the fact you're still going to be doing things between 7000 years ago and now. Odds are after several millennia you're going to forget that One Ring thing because of the 20 other One Rings that came before and after it. Ozymandias baby. And it would probably be for the best. You're never going to have more than a 'true love' in front of you, while it would be counterbalanced by the 30 dead others that were before them you'd have to remember. Forgetting might be harsh, but at the same time it allows you to move on rather than be anchored to it forever. The price of immortality is having to keep moving forward.

Getting all philosphical there. Well, I did write a story with the concept from an old D+D type series using it with the two central elves thousands of years later, so the question has come up before.

[Cupcake]

In Fallout 4, Nick Valentine and DiMA have limited memory capacity. Nick loses chunks of memory as his gets replaced with more fresh ones, and DiMA gets around it by wiring himself to a ton of terminals and memory storage units.

That said...

DON'T YOU TRY TO LOGIC MY MAGICAL IMMORTAL ELVES FROM LOTR YOU BASTARD

[RVR II]

Time to set the clocks back 1 hour tonight. .
I thought we were going to do away with daylight savings time

[RVR II]

Time to set the clocks back 1 hour tonight. .
I thought we were going to do away with daylight savings time

Saturday’s sunset was at 6:27pm. The sun will not set that late again until March 7th, 2020. Sunset Sunday will be at 5:26pm and we are headed for the shortest day of the year, December 21st. On December 21st the sun rises at 7:32am and sets at 5:16pm for 9 hours 44 minuets and 11 seconds of daylight.
Interesting fact: The earliest sunset is at 5:13pm from November 28th - December 13th. On December 14th we start adding minutes but the sun rises later. The sun rises later until December 30th when it rises at 7:36am. On January 4th the sun rises start getting earlier.

Remember kids.. The more you know ...

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Interesting fact: The earliest sunset is at 5:13pm from November 28th - December 13th. On December 14th we start adding minutes but the sun rises later. The sun rises later until December 30th when it rises at 7:36am. On January 4th the sun rises start getting earlier.

Most people never learn that the sunrise and sunset do not change time together.  The Earth is closer to the sun in the winter, so it's moving faster, since it moves farther around the sun each day in winter it makes the change from morning to evening more pronounced than in the summer when the Earth is farther from the sun and moving slower. 

The big swings in temperature are all about the angle of the sun and hours of daylight, the classic experiment to show this is to get a sheet of black paper and shine a heat lamp on it (or take it out in sunlight), hold the paper at an angle and it barely gets warm, hold it perpendicular to the source at the same distance and it heats up fast.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

 Of course there's also the acceleration changes and the wobble in the Earth's rotation, but I think I've gone far enough down this rabbit hole...

[goflyblind]

 

[RVR II]

South Carolina will end "fall back" time change with OK from Congress

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Fall back no more: Daylight saving time all the time in SC?

South Carolina may soon join the states that are calling for Congress to authorize daylight saving time all the time.

The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill Tuesday saying the General Assembly plans to adopt year-round daylight saving time if the move is authorized by Congress in a federal law .

Around two dozen other states are considering or have passed similar legislation. President Donald Trump tweeted the day after the time changed in March that "Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!"

The bill goes to the House floor. It has already passed the South Carolina Senate.

Some lawmakers had concerns about children going to school in the dark in the winter or South Carolina being out of sync with its neighbors if they don't pass similar laws.

I think I'd be ok with this change as well

[Cupcake]

South Carolina will end "fall back" time change with OK from Congress

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Fall back no more: Daylight saving time all the time in SC?

South Carolina may soon join the states that are calling for Congress to authorize daylight saving time all the time.

The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill Tuesday saying the General Assembly plans to adopt year-round daylight saving time if the move is authorized by Congress in a federal law .

Around two dozen other states are considering or have passed similar legislation. President Donald Trump tweeted the day after the time changed in March that "Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!"

The bill goes to the House floor. It has already passed the South Carolina Senate.

Some lawmakers had concerns about children going to school in the dark in the winter or South Carolina being out of sync with its neighbors if they don't pass similar laws.

I think I'd be ok with this change as well

DLS is so stupid anymore, it's about damn time they end it.

Also holy fuck I don't disagree with something said by the rotting jack'o lantern.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

They tried this one year in CT when I was a kid, everyone hated it, it was pitch black when I had to walk to the bus stop.  If they are going to pick an option it should be the other way, get rid of saving time and go with standard time all year.  Plenty of studies have shown DST does not save any energy, what you save in the evening simply gets used in the morning.

[LucasM]

Some people may have noticed that I haven't been on here much of late.

My dad died in May of this year (just shy of 92 years old, with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma).  Starting late September and through most of October I was in Illinois going through the contents of the house (the 3rd floor storage area I'd mostly be working in was way too hot to go sooner).  Part of that trip was to get all of my stuff that I still had stored there from my childhood and teen years (including things like a Lost in Space robot in box, and a GI Joe Mercury nosecone in box, as well as a near-complete set of Beatles trading cards, but also much more).  But the trip was also to also look for things of my folks that I would want as remembrances.  And it was also to take one last look at both the house and the town (as well as taking multiple photos of each), as the house is in such a deteriorated state it will be torn down after someone buys it, and there will be no reason for me to ever return to the area again (even if my condition made it so I could manage it), as all my friends from that town have also moved away from it.

Things worked out well: my brother has been managing the financial stuff (he was named Trustee) when my TBIs made any such sustained focus (and repeated meetings) impossible for me.  But he didn't want anything to do with the 'stuff' in the house (beyond getting estate sale people to look over what is left, largely antique furniture).  So, between the two of us, we covered all the bases.

I am now safely home, but it has taken me two weeks to write this, as my concentration is - um - 'limited' at present from the extensive mental exertion (my back is also still not recovered from the lifting and moving of so many boxes packed into the 3rd floor storage area).  It is hard to maintain focus, and incredibly difficult to even get out of bed because - while I am not sleepy tired - I am currently too mentally used up to actually DO anything.  So my state at present is intensely frustrating, capping off the exhaustion.

[Russoguru]

So sorry Lucas. Remember, I'm here if you ever need to talk.

[Variety of Cells]

Rest up. Get better Lucas. It was good to hear from you though.

[LucasM]

Thank you, Russoguru and Variety of Cells.

Something I don't think I mentioned is that I was, actually, in Illinois in that house for 3.5 weeks.  Because of how deteriorated much of the house was, I turned the kitchen and the small room next to it into Heidi's and my 'apartment' for the duration (figuring I could clean at least that much for us to live with, making it so that Heidi would not be in danger of ingesting toxic things lying on the floor everywhere in the house [the likely lead paint chips on the carpet from the starting-to-fall-down living room ceiling (bathtub overflow on two occasions), but even things like star-shaped glitter on some floors, which would have been dangerous for Heidi to ingest cleaning off her paws after having walked on it]).  I then took treks to the rest of the house on 'work days'.  I would do one day of focused work in the house, then take one or two days off depending how draining it had been, or how much it increased my back pain.

I'd deliberately grossly overestimated how much time I would need to go through the whole house - and ended up basically using all but potentially a couple days of the time I'd allotted, i.e. I could have left 2-3 days later if I was close but absolutely had to finish something up.

To quote the Gumbys from Monty Python: "MY BRAIN HURTS ! ! ! !"  So, back to as language-free as I can get for a while.