Pantheogenesis

I was looking up taupe earlier today, since I couldn't recall exactly what sort of shade it was, and was amused to find that pedantically, it's the color of a French mole. Not too far off from puce, which is pedantically the color of an over-fed flea.

This got me off on a side-track when I started to think about how to phrase this. I mean, English has a slew of words for someone who is in need of food (EG: starving, hungry, famished), but very few words are coming to mind for the over-fed side of the spectrum that aren't compound words, nor can they be easily applied to something else.

Sure, starving, hungry, and famished can also be applied to knowledge instead of food, but I'm rather sure it's comparing it to the food-origin. Mirriam Webster lists these antonyms for "hungry":

Antonyms: full, satisfied
Near Antonyms: engorged, glutted, gorged, overfed, overfull, replete, sated, satiated, stuffed, surfeited

Now, most of those seem to work, but can be applied to other things. Sated/Satiated? Can't that also just mean appeased? Stuffed could be in the taxidermy sense. Full could mean "not partial". Engorged could mean swollen. Replete can just mean well-stocked (I think?) Overfed and Overfull are just compound words and not, eh.. whatever something that isn't a compound word (like how hungry, famished, and starving aren't compound words).

Glutted seems about the only one that's a stand-alone word for "well-fed".

...is... that not much is happening.

It snowed last night.

Everything is white.

If it doesn't melt, I'm not running errands.

Still debating on soup or baked chicken/turkey goodness.

Cast your votes, and also clicky on Nogbert.

We'z has snow.

Running around to do, and no energy to do it. Bah.

He agrees on the bah, even if the eggnog insists on cheer.

Sense? Wassat?

Outside of Carolina's, I noticed this little placard.




Yes, there's the basic, "Automated Teller Machine...Machine?" thing going on, but it also got me to wondering why we even toss the Machine part on the end (even when it's just ATM); I mean, it's automated. That's covered at the start. So why mention that it's an automated machine?

.... we bought a 10 pound turkey breast yesterday. Roasting it today. Will be dinner tonight, with some garlic mashers and some stuffing... it'll also be part of the stuffing-tomato-turkey-chicken dinner on Thursday, and part of the soup on Sunday.

And anything else not eaten will still be in the freezer. Muhaha.

I like the idea of having frozen cooked meats - make other dishes more interesting.

HOpefully this will turn out well.

Now, if only it was already done... huuuungry. And 4 more hours to go, there abouts.

... this describes the winter so far.

http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/epic-fail-snow-sculpture-fail.jpg

Even he agrees:

I was a wuss. I slept through the changing of the guard.

I probably should have resolutions, but I don't. This might explain last year ;)

ATTN: RPG Folks!

Does anyone out there have a slew of UniSystem stuff, and feels like looking up what their various systems have to cover for "cold stuff"? As in, magically/psychically making cold (how cold, how fast) as well as cold damage (both for the aforementioned magic/psi-cold and for cold weather)?

It came up just tonight on Windy City MU* and I realized I'd yet to work up a 'temperature extreme damage system' thingie.

In poking around for established systems to steal from (UniSystem and NightLife are generally handy ones to convert to, eh.. WindyCitySystem), many of them go with the hippy-dippy hand-wave of "Check with your DM/GM/Storyteller" or "Check Fortitude/Stamina/Constitution hourly for cold weather, check sooner for really cold stuff". That, or they only cover direct zappy combat angles (EG: D&D20's Cone of Cold? They'll list range and damage, but not how cold it's making things)

Good ol' GURPS started to get close to what I wanted, when they listed cold magic as dropping things 20 degrees Fahrenheit every minute, and cold psi-stuff as dropping "50 degrees per ten cubic inches per second". Alas, their damage system for this cold is the above 'Sturdy-check every so often' one. As the kids say, that's just weak-sauce.

Note that this is for a MU*, so the method of 'Use your best judgement' can't really be used. I do actually get folks telling me what their character is wearing, what the temperature is, asking how much damage they'll take from the cold, and will call me out if I give a different answer a week/month/year later. So, something solid would be nice. And since it's a MU*, I can easily write code to do complex math for folks (EG: My favorite "2, to the power of (1/10th of the Stat)" doesn't involve breaking out a calculator since the game's medium is a computer, so I can write up a +command that'll do the math for you).

So I'm reading Carl Sagan's 1994 Pale Blue Dot, and it got me to start researching the missions Carl said were upcoming, but that I never heard about.

The fate of the Mars Climate Orbiter is rather amusing.

The metric/imperial mix-up that destroyed the craft was caused by a software error back on Earth. The thrusters on the spacecraft, which were intended to control its rate of rotation, were controlled by a computer that underestimated the effect of the thrusters by a factor of 4.45. This is the ratio between a pound force - the standard unit of force in the imperial system - and a newton, the standard unit in the metric system. The software was working in pounds force, while the spacecraft expected figures in newtons; 1 pound force equals approximately 4.45 newtons.

The software had been adapted from use on the earlier Mars Climate Orbiter, and was not adequately tested before launch. The navigation data provided by this software was also not cross-checked while in flight. The Mars Climate Orbiter thus drifted off course during its voyage and entered a much lower orbit than planned, and was destroyed by atmospheric friction.

Now this method has promise:





Strobe light, along with a long/slow shutter-speed, I'm betting?

Oh! And the other night (Wednesday?) at work, it was rather amusing. There were some folks outside talking about the song that was playing inside, and one of them was quite sure it was Counting Crows. The person she was talking with was trying to give her an example of what Counting Crows sounded like, but he wasn't able to come up with anything (I'm quite sure both of them were quite drunk), so I leaned around the corner and half-sang a chunk of "Mr. Jones & Me" for an example. Turns out the song in question was Hard to Handle (as in, "Hey little mama let me light your candle"?), to which I said that no, that wasn't Counting Crows whatsoever. Matter of fact, I was pretty sure it was an old early 1970s song.

After a bit of poking around a minute or two later, it turns out it was The Black Crowes' cover of it that she was thinking of, and that the original was by Otis Redding, from 1968-69. Ok, so I was one or two years off, but I think that's close enough to fall under 'early 1970s song'.

As usual, it's all Katfur's fault.

Really, and truly. ;)

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