Another day closer to my three-day weekend
Went home last night good and tired and wound up getting a sandwich and then passing out on the couch. Mom tossed a blanket over me -- just before one of the cats moved in to take advantage of the lap space -- and let me snooze. After a few hours I perked up and pulled out the knitting I'd brought into the living room before conking out -- that being the Guernsey Wrap I cast on for last October and spent an evening working on before setting it aside A) because I was having grave doubts about the size but also B) in favor of Xmas knitting. I'd finally decided that, since I was getting the size the pattern called for, and since if it turns out to be too narrow and unwieldy for a wrap then at least it'll make a nice scarf, I'd go ahead and keep working it as it was instead of frogging and redoing on a larger needle. Last night marks the point when I was actually in the mood to work on it (rather than on my mittens or mukluks) and so I decided to take advantage. Got many rows onto it. There's a pattern chart to follow, but it's it's broken up into simple repetitive sections and I mostly just have to pay attention to when I'm about to switch to something else -- it's nice easy knitting. I vaguely remembered that from the night I started it -- it was addictive and I stayed up much later than I needed to on that "just one more row" impulse.
Links from Tumblr / Twitter / Facebook:
GRRM posted a snippet from The Winds of Winter
1,100-year-old Mayan ruins found in North Georgia -- "Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in the mountains of North Georgia believed to be at least 1,100 years old. According to Richard Thornton at Examiner.com, the ruins are reportedly what remains of a city built by Mayans fleeing wars, volcanic eruptions, droughts and famine. In 1999, University of Georgia archeologist Mark Williams led an expedition to investigate the Kenimer Mound, a large, five-sided pyramid built in approximately 900 A.D. in the foothills of Georgia’s tallest mountain, Brasstown Bald. Many local residents has assumed for years that the pyramid was just another wooded hill, but in fact it was a structure built on an existing hill in a method common to Mayans living in Central America as well as to Southeastern Native American tribes. Speculation has abounded for years as to what could have happened to the people who lived in the great Meso-American societies of the first century. Some historians believed that they simply died out in plagues and food shortages, but others have long speculated about the possibility of mass migration to other regions."
Man misses mouse and shoots roommate, revealing child rapist -- "A Utah man who was trying to kill a mouse ended up shooting one roommate and getting another arrested for child rape, while a fourth roommate slept through the whole thing. Taylorsville Police Sgt. Tracy Wyant told Deseret News that the first roommate, 27, had been trying to kill a rodent when he missed and the round went through the kitchen wall and struck a second roommate, 28. 'After the gun was fired, both the roommate and Paul heard a scream,' Wyant explained. Officers responding to the scene early Tuesday morning found a 13-year-old girl hiding in a basement closet. She told police she had been having an affair with the third roommate, 34-year-old Paul Daniel Kunzler. During an interview, the Children’s Justice Center determined that the girl had been having sex with Kunzler over a period of four months. He was arrested on suspicion of two counts of rape of a child, three counts of sodomy of a child and three counts of sexual abuse of a child."
When Sailors Used Gunpowder to Measure the Strength of Alcohol -- "It all began when people in the British Navy came up with the brilliant idea of mixing alcohol and gunpowder. When the sailors did this, they noticed that gunpowder in alcohol would ignite - but only when the alcohol was not too watered down. Always on guard against deficient rum, the sailors learned to mix in gunpowder, and try to set fire to the lot. The flame was considered the 'proof' of the alcohol content. Only a keg, cask, or bottle, with sufficient 'proof' was purchasable. From this imprecise and ancient method came our current system."
The Progressive Honor Roll of 2011 - "MOST VALUABLE JURIST: District Judge Jed Rakoff When Rakoff rejected the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed $285 million settlement with Citigroup over the sale of toxic mortgage debt, he sent a shock wave through the financial-services industry and the regulatory community. Rakoff excoriated the regulators for appearing to be uninterested in Citigroup’s wrongdoing, dismissing the settlement as 'neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest.' This wasn’t the first time Rakoff has scored the SEC for seeming to be more interested in grabbing headlines than in cracking down on corporate fraud; in 2009 he rejected a settlement that failed to address serious issues raised by Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch. Rakoff has provided overwhelming evidence of why it is essential for judges to prevent regulators and corporations from cutting deals behind closed doors to avoid public trials, transparency and accountability."
Boy drops DS in gorilla cage, inadvertently creates the best photo op ever -- "Nintendo launched the DSi XL with the purpose of attracting elderly consumers with bad vision, gamers who sought a portable reading device, and people who wanted to play with the handheld in social settings. But there's a new market segment that also seems interested - gorillas."
Here’s the official list of 142 organizations that support SOPA -- "I was reading a thread earlier on Reddit where some users had a great idea. Why not boycott the supporters of SOPA? Right now, whether SOPA gets passed or not is out of our hands and in the hands of lawmakers in Congress."
Why do women menstruate? -- "The answer that Emera suggests is entirely evolutionary, and involves maternal-fetal conflict. The mother and fetus have an adversarial relationship: mom’s best interest is to survive pregnancy to bear children again, and so her body tries to conserve resources for the long haul. The fetus, on the other hand, benefits from wresting as much from mom as it can, sometimes to the mother’s detriment. The fetus, for instance, manipulates the mother’s hormones to weaken the insulin response, so less sugar is taken up by mom’s cells, making more available for the fetus. Within the mammals, there is variation in how deeply the fetus sinks its placental teeth into the uterus. Some species are epithelochorial; the connection is entirely superficial. Others are endotheliochorial, in which the placenta pierces the uterine epithelium. And others, the most invasive, are hemochorial, and actually breach maternal blood vessels. Humans are hemochorial. All of the mammalian species that menstruate are also hemochorial. That’s a hint. Menstruation is a consequence of self-defense. Females build up that thickened uterine lining to protect and insulate themselves from the greedy embryo and its selfish placenta. In species with especially invasive embryos, it’s too late to wait for the moment of implantation - instead, they build up the wall pre-emptively, before and in case of fertilization. Then, if fertilization doesn’t occur, the universal process of responding to declining progesterone levels by sloughing off the lining occurs."
Yvonne the Cow to Become Hollywood Star -- "Yvonne made international headlines this year by escaping slaughter and eluding her pursuers for three months. Now the adventures of this unusually temperamental cow, who outwitted expert trackers equipped with a helicopter and heat-seeking equipment, are to be turned into an animated film, the Gut Aiderbichl animal sanctuary, where she is currently living in the lap of bovine luxury, told SPIEGEL ONLINE."
So, right. My supervisor just left and stopped to tell me not to stay too late, and then said he's got about three policies he's going to try to get ready as early as possible tomorrow so maybe I and my counterpart can get them into the system before leaving for the day, since what runs tomorrow night won't be just the month-end but the year-end, and we need to input absolutely as much as possible. (This is why I'm making a point of at least finishing this policy before I go, if not taking another ten minutes to deal with the excess liability policy and thereby finish inputting the whole account. Well, that and the fic I'm reading in another browser tab that I'd like time to finish.) The unfortunate thing being that A) tomorrow being the last working day before a holiday weekend, we're being turned loose at 3pm, and B) our boss has a tendency to send us off at 2pm instead of 3pm on these days, sometimes. (Apparently he did last Friday.) So we need to be prepared to get as much done as possible in a really short working day.
On the plus side, I'm fairly close to being caught up with Tumblr from last week.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth with
comments made.
Links from Tumblr / Twitter / Facebook:
GRRM posted a snippet from The Winds of Winter
1,100-year-old Mayan ruins found in North Georgia -- "Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in the mountains of North Georgia believed to be at least 1,100 years old. According to Richard Thornton at Examiner.com, the ruins are reportedly what remains of a city built by Mayans fleeing wars, volcanic eruptions, droughts and famine. In 1999, University of Georgia archeologist Mark Williams led an expedition to investigate the Kenimer Mound, a large, five-sided pyramid built in approximately 900 A.D. in the foothills of Georgia’s tallest mountain, Brasstown Bald. Many local residents has assumed for years that the pyramid was just another wooded hill, but in fact it was a structure built on an existing hill in a method common to Mayans living in Central America as well as to Southeastern Native American tribes. Speculation has abounded for years as to what could have happened to the people who lived in the great Meso-American societies of the first century. Some historians believed that they simply died out in plagues and food shortages, but others have long speculated about the possibility of mass migration to other regions."
Man misses mouse and shoots roommate, revealing child rapist -- "A Utah man who was trying to kill a mouse ended up shooting one roommate and getting another arrested for child rape, while a fourth roommate slept through the whole thing. Taylorsville Police Sgt. Tracy Wyant told Deseret News that the first roommate, 27, had been trying to kill a rodent when he missed and the round went through the kitchen wall and struck a second roommate, 28. 'After the gun was fired, both the roommate and Paul heard a scream,' Wyant explained. Officers responding to the scene early Tuesday morning found a 13-year-old girl hiding in a basement closet. She told police she had been having an affair with the third roommate, 34-year-old Paul Daniel Kunzler. During an interview, the Children’s Justice Center determined that the girl had been having sex with Kunzler over a period of four months. He was arrested on suspicion of two counts of rape of a child, three counts of sodomy of a child and three counts of sexual abuse of a child."
When Sailors Used Gunpowder to Measure the Strength of Alcohol -- "It all began when people in the British Navy came up with the brilliant idea of mixing alcohol and gunpowder. When the sailors did this, they noticed that gunpowder in alcohol would ignite - but only when the alcohol was not too watered down. Always on guard against deficient rum, the sailors learned to mix in gunpowder, and try to set fire to the lot. The flame was considered the 'proof' of the alcohol content. Only a keg, cask, or bottle, with sufficient 'proof' was purchasable. From this imprecise and ancient method came our current system."
The Progressive Honor Roll of 2011 - "MOST VALUABLE JURIST: District Judge Jed Rakoff When Rakoff rejected the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed $285 million settlement with Citigroup over the sale of toxic mortgage debt, he sent a shock wave through the financial-services industry and the regulatory community. Rakoff excoriated the regulators for appearing to be uninterested in Citigroup’s wrongdoing, dismissing the settlement as 'neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest.' This wasn’t the first time Rakoff has scored the SEC for seeming to be more interested in grabbing headlines than in cracking down on corporate fraud; in 2009 he rejected a settlement that failed to address serious issues raised by Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch. Rakoff has provided overwhelming evidence of why it is essential for judges to prevent regulators and corporations from cutting deals behind closed doors to avoid public trials, transparency and accountability."
Boy drops DS in gorilla cage, inadvertently creates the best photo op ever -- "Nintendo launched the DSi XL with the purpose of attracting elderly consumers with bad vision, gamers who sought a portable reading device, and people who wanted to play with the handheld in social settings. But there's a new market segment that also seems interested - gorillas."
Here’s the official list of 142 organizations that support SOPA -- "I was reading a thread earlier on Reddit where some users had a great idea. Why not boycott the supporters of SOPA? Right now, whether SOPA gets passed or not is out of our hands and in the hands of lawmakers in Congress."
Why do women menstruate? -- "The answer that Emera suggests is entirely evolutionary, and involves maternal-fetal conflict. The mother and fetus have an adversarial relationship: mom’s best interest is to survive pregnancy to bear children again, and so her body tries to conserve resources for the long haul. The fetus, on the other hand, benefits from wresting as much from mom as it can, sometimes to the mother’s detriment. The fetus, for instance, manipulates the mother’s hormones to weaken the insulin response, so less sugar is taken up by mom’s cells, making more available for the fetus. Within the mammals, there is variation in how deeply the fetus sinks its placental teeth into the uterus. Some species are epithelochorial; the connection is entirely superficial. Others are endotheliochorial, in which the placenta pierces the uterine epithelium. And others, the most invasive, are hemochorial, and actually breach maternal blood vessels. Humans are hemochorial. All of the mammalian species that menstruate are also hemochorial. That’s a hint. Menstruation is a consequence of self-defense. Females build up that thickened uterine lining to protect and insulate themselves from the greedy embryo and its selfish placenta. In species with especially invasive embryos, it’s too late to wait for the moment of implantation - instead, they build up the wall pre-emptively, before and in case of fertilization. Then, if fertilization doesn’t occur, the universal process of responding to declining progesterone levels by sloughing off the lining occurs."
Yvonne the Cow to Become Hollywood Star -- "Yvonne made international headlines this year by escaping slaughter and eluding her pursuers for three months. Now the adventures of this unusually temperamental cow, who outwitted expert trackers equipped with a helicopter and heat-seeking equipment, are to be turned into an animated film, the Gut Aiderbichl animal sanctuary, where she is currently living in the lap of bovine luxury, told SPIEGEL ONLINE."
So, right. My supervisor just left and stopped to tell me not to stay too late, and then said he's got about three policies he's going to try to get ready as early as possible tomorrow so maybe I and my counterpart can get them into the system before leaving for the day, since what runs tomorrow night won't be just the month-end but the year-end, and we need to input absolutely as much as possible. (This is why I'm making a point of at least finishing this policy before I go, if not taking another ten minutes to deal with the excess liability policy and thereby finish inputting the whole account. Well, that and the fic I'm reading in another browser tab that I'd like time to finish.) The unfortunate thing being that A) tomorrow being the last working day before a holiday weekend, we're being turned loose at 3pm, and B) our boss has a tendency to send us off at 2pm instead of 3pm on these days, sometimes. (Apparently he did last Friday.) So we need to be prepared to get as much done as possible in a really short working day.
On the plus side, I'm fairly close to being caught up with Tumblr from last week.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth with
comments made.