The Topic of Great Randomness

[EricG1793]

While "on topic" (LOL) I'll say that we seem to be having a cycle of a few inches of snow, then it melts, then we get a few more. We're due up to 7 inches in my area in CT tonight, a cold week (down to 4*F tomorrow night), then 7 more inches on Friday. Then it'll get in the high 30s on Monday and it'll start to melt. Then we probably won't get any more. But I'd love more! I love the snow... getting out there and shoveling in the fresh, crisp air, getting the blood flowing, is a great feeling (as long as there's not too much and it's really wet and heavy).

Last week, regarding college, I had a dillemma. I wanted a bachelor's in Computer Networking or Information Systems or something along those lines. My community college offers and associate's in Networking, but the university I want to go to only has a bachelor's in Computer Science, so most of those classes I'd take at the CC wouldn't transfer. Then I found out that a private university an hour and 15 minutes away would take the CC's Associate's and let me to go on to bachelor's. But that means more money, and a long commute. So I started looking at job postings in the IT field and 90% of them require a bachelor's in Computer Science. So now I looked up every single class required at the university, checked their course equivilants at the CC, and am building a plan for which classes to sign up for this semester (which, aaaaahhh, starts... tomorrow...). So far it's looking like Precalc, Discrete Structures, Astronomy (my chosen class for the Natural Sciences part of the Tier I Liberal Arts Curriculum), and maybe something else, or get switch Discrete Structures since I'm already taking a math class.

[Kathy Li]

And now for something completely different.

Yellow car!!

BBC Radio 4 - Cabin Pressure

[Tuttle]

22" of snow and still falling.

It had been called that it was illegal to drive in the state except for specific situations yesterday to keep people off the road. When that was done there was about an inch on the ground. Last time my dad measured this morning was 22". He said he was expecting multiple more inches to come down before the storm was over. I'm curious our final total now that its done. (Took a break there to take Pippin out to play)

Pippin Loves it. It's hilarious. He's bounding in it swimming. He loves it. Some of the shoveling we did by throwing the shoveled snow at him.

So much snow.

[rick455]

snow

It is snowing here for the first time all winter. Unlike Mass. it isn't illeagal to drive here, so far I've seen 5 wrecks and it's only 11.

[Tuttle]

It doesn't usually become illegal to drive when it snows in Massachusetts. It became illegal to drive in that storm because we had 2 feet of snow fall in 12 hours. At the peak they were talking about the potential of 4 inches an hour.

When snow falls that fast people don't just crash cars, they get trapped. In the Blizzard of '78 - the one this was compared to, people were trapped in their cars for days or died in their cars. They weren't going to let that happen again.

This storm that happened in the north east here wasn't just a nor'easter. It was the second worst in recorded history for most areas it hit, and worst for around Portland. (Hurricane force winds, 2 feet of snow being normal, somewhere got 40 inches, the low pressure equivalent of a category 2 hurricane, and it formed an eye - some cold storms do that, but its not the usual thing to do).

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Remember last August when I mentioned that my wife wound up in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism? Well, they put her on coumadin. After five months, something happened, and she became severely anemic -- when we went in to the ER, turned out her BP was down to about 80 over 40. They reversed the coumadin, gave her plasma, red cells, iron, all that good stuff. After a couple of days in the ICU and one more night in a regular room, they sent her home, and now that she's off the coumadin, she's feeling much better. Let's hope this was the end of the adventures for a while...

[Kathy Li]

Gah! Glad to hear you got stuff sorted out, but man, when the stuff that's supposed to make you better makes you worse, it's frustrating. Fingers crossed, indeed, that drama has been eliminated for a while.

In the meantime. Pretty picture.



I'd forgotten how much I love using my Canon gear.

[EricG1793]

Garrett: I hope they'll be able to find a permanent solution for your wife, or letting it go works out OK. I can think of several people around me who have struggled with unknown problems and useless solutions... not fun.

Beautiful picture, Kathy! Where was that?

[mythbusterfan]

Hello again everyone!

I was reading like the last 20 or so pages of the TOGR, I found the last time I posted which was like two years ago, and the thread has moved about fifteen pages maybe since then.

I have come to a conclusion, I still miss this place and you lot.
And I tried this before through facebook/skype, But if I were to attempt to figure out something for a permanent chat area somewhere on the internet, would any of you be interested? I'm going to post to people on facebook too, but I figured I would post here, since some of you who check here still have connections to others that I don't have because I never got to finding/adding all of the people I knew from the old chat days.

but yeah, either reply here, hit me up on facebook (you can search Bo Jacisin) (and no, I don't particularly mind anyone knowing my real name)

Maybe awesome will happen, I certainly hope so.

well, Dai guys

-MBF

[EricG1793]

How's your wife been making out, Garrett?

Nice to see you back, MBF! Another chat option would be neat.

Has anyone else arrived at the conclusion that online communities are dying? Perhaps due to the rise of Facebook? Or it could just be because the places I go to don't have much to talk about. No new YW releases lately, no ruthless interrogation of DD, no breaking news in the school bus industry, politics as usual at the local community blog.... Although, extended forum outages and forum leaders not being around often have also contributed to my experiences, so perhaps it just so happens that my very limited experience in midst of the Internet is not an accurate representation of the online community as a whole.

[dorotheia]

Re: Eric

Eric, I have no idea.

Yeah, so what about the school bus industry?... I assume you mean school matters?

I wish people were more into discussing Omnitopiaknow almost everyone you are connected to, so it seems safer. What it isn't really good for is conversations about specific topics with groups of people who are interested in the same things that you are not IQ84 and Remains of the Day, and it's very frustrating.

Thanks for having the courage to post after that vexing juvenile report about what we accidentally-on-purpose drew on Mars. I was getting really tired of checking for news and staring at that eyesore of a blue link and wishing it would go away. It's like obscene graffiti marring your school desk... Which makes me all the more irritated because it comes from an unexpected source.... Grrrrrr. Quick, let's all talk about something else and wipe the link away!

[EricG1793]

The school bus industry as in the people who make the school buses themselves, and the companies that operate them, the dealerships that sell them, etc. It's been business as usual from the Big Three (IC Bus [International], Thomas, and Blue Bird). Way back in the day (say, 1980s), there were several body manufacturers, and for each body manufacturer, you had several chassis options, and for each chassis option, several powertrain (engine/transmission) options. Now... if you want an IC Bus body, you get an International chassis, or vise versa; if you want a Thomas bus, you get a Freightliner chassis, and Blue Bird makes their chassis in-house. The manufacturers of type A (small) buses are consolidated and their products are generic, and the one good one has been bought out by Blue Bird. No significant product updates lately, either, though some. There is a new body manufacturer that is focused on making a quality bus that will not rust away due to New England winter road chemicals, so we'll see how they end up doing, but I digress, it's pretty black and white now.

The slow economy and schools/contractors needing to wring the tiny budgets dry of every penny have slown down the demand for new buses, slowing down R&D.

Those of us who like school buses and follow what happens in the industry call ourselves bus nuts. The forums talk about mechanical problems with buses and how to deal with them, tips on driving and dealing with children/other motorists/school administrators/teachers, and current events in the industry, as well as share pictures and videos of buses. Also, we look forward to the end of August -- "Bus Season."

I'm not sure why I'm a bus nut. Although, I do have an interest in machines/mechanical things in general, and the bigger and more complex, the better. The principal of the elementary school gave me a tour of the boiler rooms in 4th grade because I asked for it. I've been in just about every nook and cranny of all the buildings in the high school since I work for IT, and I've gone up into the clock tower of one of the buildings from the late 1800s that has a mechanical mechanism for the 4 faces and the bell that rings every hour, shown how things work on one occasion by the CFO/facilities manager and another occasion by the custodian who winds it.

That reminds me of something I want to post in the Movies thread! See you there.

[Tuttle]

I've not found that online communities are dying at all. Individual ones wax and wane. This one does that with book cycles. We're currently waiting for a new book release. Because we're in between books, there isn't much activity going on, because there's not a lot to discuss. Last spike was around when AWoM came out.

Some communities have a less extreme cycle of that because they're not on cycles of books, but they still have member turnover. And it is influenced as web technology changes, but web communities that are fan communities, or communities around shared topics or ideas that people are interested in, rather than going only to social media, don't seem to be going downhill. There are advantages of a web presence separate from your real life identity, which some people take advantage of - some of us on here link the two, some don't. I don't strongly link them, but do link them. Garrett strongly links them. When I was younger I kept them strongly apart.

I sent MBF a possibility for a chat for people who used to be active here . Some people moved on. Others didn't. Lets see what happens around a chat.

I also agree with this hoping that your wife is doing well Garrett.

Pretty picture Kathy

[Lazy Leopard]

Online communities do wax and wane. A lot depends on what their users put into them. It can be tricky to get the correct balance. I've seen groups killed by people who put too much in almost as often as by too few people taking part.

I'm not sure I'd call Facebook "safer" though. It's not unique in its ways of limiting who sees what. What it has done is swallow a lot of the time folk have for participating in online stuff, and when folk are on Facebook they're not elsewhere. Same goes for Twitter and the rest.

I'm not on Facebook or Tumblr. I occasionally dip into Twitter, but my watch list there is, deliberately, short. I still read LJ (and DW), and I participate in a few special-interest communities like this one, some more deeply than others. There are only so many hours in a day and I only have time to check out so much stuff. The rest I'll never get to.

And sometimes it's good to get away from the Net completely for a while, and go looking for quokkas or black cockatoos or stromatolites or... (Those are just a few of the things I've seen in the last month.)

[mythbusterfan]

Well, Tuttle sent this link to me to pass around to the people that are interested in the chatroom idea. I'll probably put the link in my sig after this post but here you go. Mibbit.com Webchat client Type in a nickname, type in #youngwizards for the channel.

So, attempt number three maybe four I think now is live. So, we'll see how that goes over.

In other news since this is the TOGR after all. In seven days I will be taking motorcycle classes from the 13th through the 16th after which I will have a motorcycle license. I'm pretty excited for this.
Another thing I am excited for is the fact that Minnesota seems have stopped trying to be a frozen wasteland, which means I can actually just go do stuff outside now.

Hope to see you folks around here more/in the chat.

-MBF