Horse Evolution

The Horse Evolution faq from Talk Origins discusses the evolution of horses: At this point in the early Eocene, equids were not yet very different from the other perissodactyl groups; the Hyracotherium genus includes some species closely related to (or even ancestral to) rhinos and tapirs, as well as species that are distinctly equine. [Note: the particular species that probably gave rise to the rest of the equids, H. vassacciense, may be renamed, perhaps to “Protorohippus”.]

Disabled Trackbacks and Pingbacks

I’ve disabled trackbacks and pingbacks due to receiving truly vile spam. I learned about it via PhotoMatt and immediately checked comments and trackbacks, finding some stomach turning entries which I immediately deleted. Evidently, Spam Karma has been updated to deal with trackback spam, so I installed it on both my weblog and Jack’s weblog. The trackback spam was sufficiently upsetting that I will just leave it turned off for a while, until I see if the Spam Karma fix works for other people.

Furnace Woes

Just in time for another cold snap, our furnace quit working again yesterday morning. The furnace guys worked on it an hour or so yesterday, consulting extensively on the cell phone, and when they left it was working. They are testing something for the next week or so, to see what the underlying problem might be.

I had planned on making Hot and Sour Soup last night before the furnace quit working, and it really hit the spot since the house was still warming up. I used a recipe that the NeonNurse provided in response to my request. I had always been intimidated by traditional Hot and Sour Soup recipes, but hers uses ingredients from standard American style grocery stores. Jack and I both enjoyed the results. I did skip putting in the shrimp, and will use less vinegar next time.

I am glad we didn’t put the space heaters away, though we haven’t had to resort to them again. It was two degrees Fahrenheit when I woke up this morning.

Birthdays

Hap is officially 20 years old today, since Thoroughbreds’ birthdays are considered to be January 1st of the year they were born. (He was actually foaled in May 1985.) I rode him yesterday, and he sure didn’t feel like an old horse after we jumped a little cross rail and in his enthusiasm he decided to run away on the backside. I had to use a pulley rein for the first time in a long while: not a very elegant solution, but it works. Most of the time. The rest of the session he was lovely: after twelve years together we have each other pretty well trained.

I was riding during a lesson being taught by my trainer. I was happy that I was able to keep up much better with the others than I expected, so I am gradually getting back into shape.

Considering the other horses the same way, Rags is also 20 today and Lily is eight. Smoke, born in 1977, is an increasingly creaky 28 years old.

Firefox Custom Keywords

Leaky Tap presents some lists of Custom Keywords that can be used in Firefox and Mozilla, as well as pointers to various other information about setting them up. Once set up, these shortcuts can be typed into the address bar for quick searches. For example, I have a CustomKeyword called write that takes me to the page I use to post to my weblog, as well as one called gnews that will search Google News for a topic.