Hey, it was Friday when I started writing this post.

Sluggo had a very odd glitch earlier tonight. I was on line, composing a reply to a post, when suddenly my monitor screen went dark, except for the notice which pops up when it has been sitting unused while on: "Power save enabled. Monitor will shut down in few seconds." Then it went to sleep. It's never done that while I was using it before. I tried turning it off and on a few times, but it stayed asleep. Finally, without any screen, I had to shut Sluggo down the bad way. Most annoying. (And how difficult would it be for Windows to include an application that would allow one to shut down properly through a few keystrokes, when the monitor failed for some reason?) Anyway, when I rebooted, the monitor was fine. I usually blame this sort of thing on Sluggo, but I know that his hardware, cheap though much of it is, isn't going to do something like this. No, the software lied to the monitor, telling it that it wasn't being used! I just don't know which software. Might have been a driver, might have been Windows. I have no idea how to track it down. I'm just hoping it doesn't happen again.

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Today was another nice, partly cloudy day, but with a bit more sun than yesterday. This really is my favorite kind of weather, although it has arrived a bit early this year. We are fortunate that more rain is expected, and the next storm will probably bring snow to the areas above 5000 feet. Rather high for the snow line, but every bit helps. The local lakes being low, the town has begun adding more chlorine to the water, and it stinks. A few abundant storms would obviate the need for that precaution. Even though we buy bottles of drinking water, I'd rather the tap water didn't have so much chlorine in it. I can actually smell it on myself for half an hour after taking a shower. Want more rain!

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I'm posting another picture, and not putting it behind a cut this time. (It's only 600 pixels wide-- I hope that isn't a problem for anyone with a small monitor.) I want to try out the code posted by edbook which reserves a space of the proper size on the page, even before the picture has begun to load. This is another of the pictures I took down in the south end of town a few weeks ago.



I remember seeing windmills such as this actually functioning to drive water pumps on the vanished farms of Southern California. The apparatus at the top of this one is probably real, but the derrick it sits on is much too short, and I didn't notice any pipes in it. This seems to be another example of what I've long thought of as detritus chic-- although it's only chic to people who wouldn't be caught dead using French words to describe their landscape decorations. Entirely decorative windmills are less common than the classic expression of the genre, the wagon wheel stuck in a fence, but I have seen them before, too. And this particular instance of the form did look rather picturesque, silhouetted against the bright afternoon sky. The owners of the property would probably enjoy this picture for its nostalgic sentiment, but I myself can't look at it without feeling a bit silly for having taken it. Now I can feel even sillier for having posted it in public.

I hope everybody had a nice VD.

What's Eating the Internet?

I don't know if it's Sluggo or the Internet which is hosed, but I can't even raise Google. I can always raise Google! Now it's just "Cannot find server" and "Page cannot be displayed." Everywhere! Also, big chunks are missing from LJ's BML pages, and most of the pictures aren't loading. I'm going to shut down for a couple of minutes and reboot, and see if it improves. Most annoying.

Update:

I guess it was Sluggo. I let him cool down for twenty minutes, and everything is back to normal. Maybe another defrag is in order.

Last time I went outdoors, while Sluggo was resting, it had begun to sprinkle, and I heard the frogs croaking happily, and the hooves of deer down at the corner by the orchard. Rather than hang about in front of this screen, I'm going to go back out and enjoy the rest of the night.

WTF

Shakespeare's Sonnet LXXIII, as interpreted by the AOLer translator, which turns whatever you feed it into 12-year-old-h4x0r pr0z3. Link stolen from scottfreeman.

TAHT TIEM OF YEAR THOU MAYST IN ME BHOLD
WHEN Y3LOW LEAEVS OR NON3 OR F3W DO HANG
UPON THOS3 BOUGHS WHICH SHAEK AGANEST TEH COLD R RUIN’D CHOIRS WHARE LAET TEH SWET BIRDS SANG1!!1! OMG WTF
IN ME THOU SE’ST TEH TWILIGHT OF SUCH DAY
AS AFTAR SUNS3T FAEDTH IN DA WEST
WHICH BY AND BY BLAK NIGHT DOTH TAEK AWAY
D3ATH’S SECOND SELF TAHT S3ALS UP AL IN RAST!!!!!11!
IN ME THOU SE’ST TEH GLOWNG OF SUCH FIER
TAHT ON DA ASHES OF HIS U DOTH LEI
AS DA DEATH-BD WHAREON IT MUST EXPIER
CONSUM’D WIT TAHT WHICH IT WAS NOURISH’D BY!1111 WTF
THIS THOU PARCEIV’ST WHICH MAEKS THY LOVE MOR3 STRONG
2 LOV3 TAHT W3L WHICH THOU MUST L3AEV ER3 LONG1!!1!1!! WTF

More Music of the Night

Rain is tapping the roof and the downspout rill trickles bright music tonight. I have hot tea and a warm cat, and a CD of Chopin's etudes. Life is good. Last night, before the current storm arrived, I went out and heard the wind blowing through other parts of the forest, while I stood amid the hush of still trees. The hum of pines is surprisingly loud, even from a distance. Each small needle doesn't make much sound on its own, but the collective voice of their millions is like the roar of breakers on a beach, sustained. As I stood listening to this sound shifting about, first from one quarter, now from another, I had to marvel at the force and energy which could draw the air through the night to coax such a volume of sound from those thin, quivering needles. I knew from hearing it other nights that, should the wind draw near, the sound would grow to a roar such as might thunder from a cathedral organ which can vibrate the stone walls, as the wind vibrates the trunks of trees and adds their deep notes to the smaller voices of the needles and boughs. But the wind remained distant. Tonight, it is less intense, and provides only a faint chorus to accompany the pianissimo notes of the raindrops. The potential for that grand outpouring of storm song is here, though, and might yet come to displace Chopin's gentle notes. If it does, I will go out and huddle on the driest corner of the porch, and listen a while to the storm's full and furious elemental splendor.