Samantha & Hamburger –
I’d caught a cold as the seasons changed. With each change, new opportunities to learn present themselves. This is where I learned about mice.
My neighbor noticed I’d left in several days and came round to check on me. I answered the door with a smile and half a hairdo, grateful to see another. I explained that I’d caught ill and was just managing to work a bit and sleep. The air outside was crisp.
I didn’t tell her that with it finally beginning to warm up, that mice had made themselves known. Tons of them. Scurrying about. Brazenly hopping to and fro. Seeing me and then continuing on with their affairs. My traps worked once, capturing but one lone scout while the rest of the brood would forever steer clear. Poison achieved the same result, but I had the constant fear William might find the peanut butter flavor toxic treats as easily as the mice. I quickly removed it all after a few days. So how…this is beginning to be a real problem.
The door knocked.
My neighbor extends her hand, “Here’s some nice bread. You’ll feel better if you eat it. And you call me. You call me if you’re down ill. I’ll bring you some food.” and walked back to her truck. “Hope you get to feeling better!” and drove out of sight.
It made me feel good. She’s an older lady.. real nice and knows all the things around Hunting Camp Rd. That’s how she knew I hadn’t left in a few days. One way in and one way out. She’s lived there since she was a girl…maybe 70 some years I’ll say.
House as kind dark in the late afternoon and I put the bread on the counter. Pleased with the thought of a sandwich when I conjured the energy. And I went to sleep.
I woke up around dawn. I felt ok. Maybe starting to feel better for the first day in many. Did my normal routine and standing in a daze as the coffee pot began to brew, noticed the sheer destruction of my good bread. A complete pillaging of my leavened loaf.
How dare they!?
I got right in the car and drove straight to the animal shelter. I’ll have those two female cats. One was tortoise shell and thin and curious and incredibly athletic – Samantha. One was black and fat and sullen and judgy – Hamburger.
Home they went. Samantha was clawing her way out of the cardboard car carrier before we got out of the parking lot. Hamburger just screamed.
I wondered what William might think of our new house guests.
Once in the house, the cats scattered. They hid for 3 days. William didn’t care. I wondered if I was further losing my mind.
Then I could hear the occasional sprint, jump, silence. Then it turned out that Samantha and Hamburger were murderous savages. Then everyone was really on edge. Then there weren’t any more mice. Then everything calmed down and the cats began exploring everything in and around the house and they try to say Hi to William and he still doesn’t care. And now everyone lives in harmony.
Samantha runs like a maniac constantly and sleeps in a location yet to be determined.
Hamburger sits in and around the same chair all day and judges and generally hates everything.
Then there were 4.
Shockwave –
https://i.imgur.com/Mafrn2s.jpg
Rhumb Line –
A friend and I were plotting an exciting but treacherous voyage where the topic of a rhumb line came up. tl;dr a rhumb line is not the path the blockade runners used to smuggle rum into miami.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhumb_line
A rhumb line can be contrasted with a great circle, which is the path of shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere. On a great circle, the bearing to the destination point does not remain constant. If one were to drive a car along a great circle one would hold the steering wheel fixed, but to follow a rhumb line one would have to turn the wheel, turning it more sharply as the poles are approached. In other words, a great circle is locally “straight” with zero geodesic curvature, whereas a rhumb line has non-zero geodesic curvature.
Meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude provide special cases of the rhumb line, where their angles of intersection are respectively 0° and 90°. On a north–south passage the rhumb line course coincides with a great circle, as it does on an east–west passage along the equator.
On a Mercator projection map, any rhumb line is a straight line; a rhumb line can be drawn on such a map between any two points on Earth without going off the edge of the map. But theoretically a loxodrome can extend beyond the right edge of the map, where it then continues at the left edge with the same slope (assuming that the map covers exactly 360 degrees of longitude).
What I’m listening to –
Ray LaMontagne – Trouble
What I’m Reading –
Ask HN: What are the biggest challenges preventing startups from hiring remote?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17021655
Book: Remote – Office Not Required
https://basecamp.com/books/remote
Basecamp founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson explore the “work from home” phenomenon and show precisely how a remote work setup can be accomplished in Remote.
The Industrial Revolution’s “under one roof” model of conducting work is steadily declining as technology creates virtual workspaces that allow employees to provide their vital contribution without physically clustering together. Today, the new paradigm is “move work to the workers, rather than workers to the workplace.”
Remote work increases the talent pool, reduces turnover, lessens the real estate footprint, and improves the ability to conduct business across multiple time zones, to name just a few advantages. As Fried and Hansson explain the challenges and unexpected benefits of this phenomenon, they show why–with a few controversial exceptions such as Yahoo–more businesses will want to promote this model of getting things done.
Exploration – Control Your Data. Collect Your Money.
My primary job is as the CEO of Exploration. We help media companies compile the data needed to get paid.