“Odd”: An Odd Choice of Words

My morbid regard for not being eaten alive in my own backyard reached new heights on reading this news story. According to Google Maps, if the creature in question drove along main roads at or below the speed limit, it could be at my front door in “about 7 mins”, which gives it plenty of time. It could be in my backyard right now. just a moment …

Anyway, I have a number of issues with the article and the persons and organisations portrayed within.

“‘He let out a hiss at him and that’s when I knew the mountain lion was in my backyard,’ Elliott said.” : Huh. Must have been a Girl Guide I suppose. I expect she inspected the paw prints and measured the space between the claw marks left on her dog before deciding that she wasn’t dealing with a furry snake of some kind.

“The Division of Wildlife let the cat stay at the house overnight because it was too dark to tranquilize it.” : No, a friend stays at your house overnight because they’re too drunk to drive home. For a mountain lion you just use a tranquilizer gun and a new and exotic piece of technology called a “flashlight”. Really, it’s simple. And no cup of coffee and a shower in the morning either.

“When the D.O.W returned Sunday morning, the cat was already gone.” : I’ve never had that happen with drunk friends — they’re usually still snoring at 9 am. Apparantly mountain lions are different. And come to think of it, the D.o.W. went away and came back the next morning? What kind of service is that? Why didn’t the residents wrest the weaponry away from the D.o.W. ninja operatives and manage the matter themselves, I wonder?

“…it’s odd to find a mountain lion in a neighborhood like this” : Yes, “odd”, that’s exactly the word I used when I heard about this. Not “freakishly terrifying” or “insanely horrific”. “Odd“. Guess which spokesman lives about twenty miles away, and has his own tranquilizer gun?

“The D.O.W said they’ll be keeping an eye on the neighborhood“. During working hours only I expect. Apparantly the D.o.W. has a better Union than the lions.

Well, that’s helped clear up another mystery, though. Apparantly that guy pays closer attention to the news than me.

A Quick Video

Here’s a link to a little video I took while on vacation of a fire fighting airplane scooping up water just off the beach. They make it look pretty straightforward, but I bet it’s not.

The smoke of the fire was visible a few miles inland, but it didn’t take many of these to put it out.

Index Creation Can Be Based On Indexes

I put a quick demonstration script here to show that index creation does not always have to read a table, and that the optimizer will consider reading another index if appropriate.

Post-vacation Brain Dump

Well, that’s that. Another vacation gone by, five new suntans, no food poisoning, no sunburn, a good time had by all. The photo album, predictably heavy on children and scenery, is here.
We’ve come back to some scorching weather, although the lack of humidity makes it rather non-oppressive as long as you’re in the shade, possibly with your feet in a bucket of cold water. Not that I’m trying that yet. I’m huddled in the basement to get away from it all for the moment.

I can’t recall a more disorienting dose of jetlag. The 24 hour door-to-door travel experience with three kids is not exactly a breeze but this nausea and feeling of disorientation is definitely not welcome. I felt like I ought to be outdoors letting the body adjust but the weather made that a problem in itself. I think it has taken me a week to fully adjust, and now I’ve come down with some hideous cold. I must also remember to let British Airways know that a feta-based pasta dish with spinach and eggplant is not what anyone in their right mind would describe as a child-friendly meal as well. I had two kids fighting over my salmon dish, which is not something you see everyday.
We had a pretty hot day when we visited Granada in the last week. We didn’t do the Alhambra experience, mostly through a lack of foresight and vacation laziness, but spent a pleasant half-day wandering the narrow streets around the cathedral and whatnot. I suppose it was around 35C that day but a good breeze and the shade of the buildings made it quite a pleasant contrast to the humidity of the “Costa Tropical“. (I don’t like that name though). Maybe we should move to Madrid or something.
The technology of the house was in ruins when I got back — wireless network was more of a “notwork” (cause and fix still unknown), DVD player stuttering after playing more than a few minutes of any disc (concrete floor treatment will follow), and the TiVo will not playback any of the shows it recorded in the last two weeks.

The TiVo issue is the most irritating — how hard can it be to playback stuff? It’s obviously there, as almost the entire collection of kids Scooby Doo “Do Not Delete” episodes and movies has been deleted to make room for it. The TiVo also reboots itself every hour or two. I guess I’ll try some of these operations on it. But anyway it didn’t record the episodes of the third season of “Rescue Me” that we’re currently hooked on, so I used that as a flimsy excuse for buying the first two series on DVD. It’s gripping stuff, I tell you, if you don’t mind “adult language”, graphic sexual imagery, and drama of the most emotional kind. A replacement DVD player is in place already.

Well at least the kettle still worked, and two out of three beans that the kids planted before we left have grown shoots.

The fifth birthday of Number Two Son, Robby, was celebrated yesterday with a visit to the movies to see “Monster House“. Now that was one pretty scary movie for the kids so I had Number Three Son, Federico, on my lap the whole time. No change there though. We should get a discount because he finds nothing to be more comfortable than my lap when he’s watching a film. I hope that wears off before he gets much bigger (ie. heavier). To paraphrase one review of the movie, “the same animation technique as used for Polar Express is now used for the first time for the purpose of entertainment”, which I thought was funny.

We’ve started advance preparatons for a house move by renting a 15′x10′ storage facility to move out everything that makes the house look cluttered to the prospective buyer. Alas, they do not accept children. Three bags of mostly-childrens’ clothes have gone to Goodwill and the kids have bravely sacrificed a big pile of neglected toys, to be distributed among friends and collegues with smaller kids than our own. We also have to get the weight of our household goods under 14,500lb (around 6.5 tonnes), which shouldn’t be a problem. I have no idea how to estimate such a thing, of course.

Oh well, back to work I suppose.

ps. there’s a nice example of a garden path sentence, starting this review of Monster House. My first reaction to it was “who, or what, is this ‘crisp orange’ of whom they speak?”