A story in NewsForge writes about Linux in action: A public library’s success story
in Howard Country, Maryland. I enjoyed this article not least because my grandmother was at one time a Howard County librarian. I still remember helping her by shelving books, which seemed to me a great opportunity to find new authors.
Hummingbird
I’ve been hearing, and occasionally seeing, hummingbirds for almost a week, but Jack just put a feeder up this morning. We had to buy a new one, since we couldn’t find all the components for the ones we used last year.
More Fractals
I’ve used “gThumb”:http://gthumb.sourceforge.net/ to load my fractals into a “small gallery.”:http://www.stardel.com/fractals/
Pikes Peak
Pikes Peak has more snow on it right now than it has all winter. Taken from “a back porch in North Colorado Springs.”:http://www.stardel.com/topaz/
Black and white
This morning, I was gathering up the feed buckets in the barn and saw a bit of movement out of the corner of my eye. A skunk had crawled out from under the pallet of stacked hay, about six feet away. Needless to say, I left the barn quickly. I usually worry about sickness when wildlife is so bold, but in my brief glimpse it looked sleek and healthy.
I hope it doesn’t feel threatened by any of the horses. It is bad enough deskunking a 110 pound dog.
Eye of the Galaxy
I’ve been cleaning house, doing a complete install of Fedora Core 2, Release 3, and playing with “gnofract4d.”:http://gnofract4d.sourceforge.net/ Of the three, playing with gnofrract4d, which produced this graphic, was the most fun, though installing Fedora wasn’t too bad either.
Dungeons and Dragons
BBC asks Whatever happened to Dungeons and Dragons? Jack and I started playing together not long after we started dating. July 4th, 1976, we spent the day with friends playing in Jack’s parents’ family room. During our brief fling with the phenomenon, a Washtington Post reporter wrote up a game for which Jack was gamesmaster. Somewhere in the files is the dungeon that I developed. I also found setting up the scenarios to be more fun than playing them. We started losing interest, since it took so much time, about the time high school kids started discovering it.
Mudlicious
More snow this morning. It had melted by noon. All this precipitation has turned the area around the barn into a bog. I have to step carefully so that my boots don’t get sucked off my feet. Smoke and Rags don’t seem to care, but Hap goes through it with a sort of weary disdain.
These are the wettest conditions I can recall for three or four years: not enough to bring the water table up, but should help push back extreme fire hazard for a month or two.
Spring Storm
Although it snowed for over a day, there wasn’t much accumulation because it melted due to the warm ground almost as quickly as it fell. The horses were inclined to be grumpy, but they will appreciate the grass later on. I did break down and put a blanket on Smoke: the icicles in the mane get me every time.
Hap’s Eye
The first few years I had Hap, this large soft eye made me think many times: Funny, he doesn’t look like maniac.
One year, I took him to State Fair and put a sign on his stall door with large letters: Do not pet this horse. He bites!
I still found parents holding their children up to pet him. (Mind you: Hap’s biting was the affectionate nibble he would do to another horse, but I don’t think it matters when dealing with an 1100 pound critter.) The fact that so many people thought they were in a petting zoo is one reason I never took Hap back.