Orin

Looking at the weather map, it appears that the dome of hot air is pretty much trapped by a very large meander of the jet stream, which drives a lot of weather systems on the northern tier. I haven't read anything about it, but if that river of air behaves like rivers of water, meanders are symptomatic of slowed current. I've read that the Gulf Stream, part of the global network of ocean currents, has been slowing as well. Both of these things may well be a result of warming temperatures, and further changes may be in store.

I'm in a small town near Olympia, WA, and it got to 109 here today, a few degrees hotter than yesterday. We don't have A/C, so it's been open doors and windows, plus fans of various kinds. Even so, I've still managed to get a ~3 mi shirtless walk in early in the morning, while the temperatures were going from 70-something to 80-something. sure, I get the occasional wave, but so far nobody has tried to pick me up.

Makes perfect sense. After all, the whole idea of 'gamification' was to keep people on a site longer so they can be exposed to more ads.

There's an article in Seattle's 'Stranger' right now by Matt Baume about how Disney's villains got coded as gay. But the interesting thing is how it got this way. So, what were the unanticipated results of what Disney did?

That kind of question also opens the discussion to philosophy, and to conceptions of whether there is 'a' future containing your pre-ordained date and manner of death, or rather a panoply of possible futures, in which the details of that event vary depending on how you got there. This can be tricky territory to tread for a reader, because the reader and the querent may have different views about that. I suspect the safest way to couch it might be to say that if events continue along the pathways they are now following, your death will likely be in year 'X', because that phrasing can be interpreted either way. Some readers, including Deb and me, would preface the answer with some words about the future not yet being written: This is a glimpse of things that might be, but we each have the power to make choices, and that could alter which path you follow, leading to a different future.

Let's that that thought a bit farther, then. Since Crowley's Thoth deck responds well to questions about the forces at play in a situation, (as opposed to discrete events and people,) we sometimes engage in what we refer to as future-casting. When the querent is faced with several choices that will pull their life in clearly different directions, we do a series of readings. For each one, the question is framed in the form of 'what will be the result of making [choice X]?' The readings then provide a glimpse of the dynamics that result from each choice. It's a kind of visualization tool that helps to put the querent into different probable futures, enabling them to get a feel for what their life might be like in each case, and that helps them to make their choice. Have you ever tried that sort of thing?

I don't know how you would be storing the HTML part of this, but Filemaker lets you store an HTML page in a container field. Let's give it try.

Just how bizarre is it? Is it a jungle of HTML pages, or is it a database? If the latter, I've used Apple's Filemaker Pro database for doing all manner of obnoxious database conversions over the years. If I can read the data in, maybe I can munch it and spit out something you can use.

The most recent tarot reading I was part of was done by Deb (my wife) and I, as part of our New Year tradition of getting feel for the upcoming year. Notably, it said there would be a death in April, which turned out to be our friend Bill/Daddy/Guy. The first reading she did for me was at college in 1971. She laid out the cards, snatched them up and refused to tell me what they said to her. (And no, it wasn't a ploy to get my interest.) For some people, a reading is mechanical, using the interpretations provided with the deck. For others, that's a starting point, but they look at the imagery on the cards and develop their own interpretations over time. There are even readers who use the cards to help the client focus on their question, and get psychic impressions for each 'position' in the reading that's not necessarily anchored to the card. And each type of deck is different. Some seem to respond better to questions about specific people, places and events. Crowley's Thoth deck, in contrast, provides a reflection of the forces and influences at work in the person's situation, like the political struggle in a family or business setting. There are also different kinds of reading layout. A simple three-card reading can provide the past, present, and future of the situation being asked about. The Celtic Cross layout provides information about various aspects of the person's question, and can be used to focus in on any one of them, but that's a discussion by itself.

What did it want you to get from their server? I ask because when I needed to set up and old printer, it said there was not a suitable driver in my Windows installation, and directed me to let it find and diwnload one from their server. Once it had done so, I could print things, with no further need of their server.

You are all most welcome. Doing this was our way to honor our friend (and 'water-brother' for any Heinlein fans out there) Bill. Deb is currently in upstate NY, caring for her mother, and will return in another month or two. When we are back together, we'd be honored to have a fine dinner out, and to raise a glass to Bill and the community here.

Are you looking for the Literature Forum, which is now its own thing in the Media & Entertainment group of forums?

I'm using a MacBook Pro as well. Those icons were hidden until I widened my window to the whole screen. For some reason, it's hiding rather than wrapping them if there is not enough room across.

Deb, who has Fibromyalgia, has taken it for pain for years, and is miserable if she misses her dose. I was prescribed some for nerve pain after my Saab got wrecked, and I could not straighten out or put any weight on one leg due to sciatica. There were some left after I recovered, and when I took one out of curiosity, I found it had perceptual effects. My brain stopped processing the images into 3D and I had two flat images that overlapped on what I focussed on. I also slept really well.

There are times when I just have to be blatantly self-promotional. If you like to read short stories, and you're not that particular about whether they were formally published, there are several websites where you can read lots of them. One of those is my Wordpress blog, which has about 120 of my own stories. The preponderance of them are political, in one way or another, and I have a tendency towards stories in which a group of people accomplishes something, as opposed to some singular hero. So, click over if you're interested, or not.

I seem to recall seeing him at the Paradise, before that unfortunate incident with Swann and the 'phantom'.

Well, it looks like we don't have a lead on that, so I'm going to un-sticky this thread.

It's not too late, but we need to contact him so he can coordinate with Deb. They're leaving town tomorrow. Can anyone here do that? I'll be checking my messages periodically.

Deb and Kat are in Las Vegas for another day, and would like to see that Bill's drag supplies don't go to waste. Deb said that he has several nice dresses. A couple of wigs. Makeup. Stockings. Undergarments. If anyone here can tell me where Deb can take these things in the next few hours, I'll pass the advice along to her. She has other tasks to take care of as well, so please limit your replies to what can be done right now, and be as specific as possible. She won't be able to make numerous stops with one item or another, so focus on places that can deal with a variety of things. Thanks for your help.

Most of the alternatives listed are for sending things either to Bill's WinkWink PO box, or via a funds transfer mechanism to his wink wink email, which is associated with a bank account that we don't have access to. Is there an alternative that people can use in the short term?

Do you want to get a sense about how much support there is for bringing it back up from the people here before buying that domain?

He was indeed on Medicaid, so they would have a claim on assets he had that are worth anything, which he didn't. A cursory glance ought to tell them there's not much blood to be squeezed from that stone. Rather than spending more than there is to be gotten, they might just move on to bigger fish. If they come looking, he ran a couple of unprofitable websites that didn't even run ads. If they were to sell them, I suppose someone (!) could offer them a pittance for the domain names, based on the free internet appraisal values of like $100 for one and $250 for the other and quietly make off with them.

Here's another way of saying that. It's on the 'Man in the Moon' Peter Max poster that commemorated the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969: "It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow." -- Robert Goddard BTW, Deb is en route to Las Vegas to see about gaining control of the DNS info about the original domain name for this place, so @RadioRob can make it point to wherever this site lives, and the redirect from the old server will no longer be needed. None of this changes the ownership of the site, or affects whether it is listed by whoever the court assigns to be Executor or Administrator as part of the estate.

Can anyone here speak to the type and amount of editorial work that Bill performed on the reviews site? That would indicate what and how much could be automated.

After the hospitals' social worker was unable to find next-of-kin to make medical decisions for Bill, she sought his long-time friends, and Deb knew him the longest, by a hair. (I'm second, by a technicality.) When he had died, and his body was handed off to the mortuary, the people there put her down as next-of-kin, and asked about the burial arrangements. Because we paid for the cremation, under Nevada law, we are qualified to receive a Death Certificate. (They are restricted to qualified people and agencies in NV.) The Death Certificate has been issued by the NV Health Department. We have already requested copies, but have not yet received them.