Early Risers.

[PupCam]

Afternoon All!

 

5 hours ago, AndrewC said:

In the past few months he has removed 3 of the 5 trees in their back garden.

 

We have had a similar situation at the rear of our neighbours property.   The nice green conifers which masked the OAP bungalows have been ripped down which leaves the less attractive view of bricks and mortar.   The real downer is that one of the properties has, what looks to be, a 5kW "Yard light" on an over-sensitive PIR.  Just the thing a Puppers wants when he's trying to observe our wonderful universe.    Why do people feel the need to flood light a postage stamp of a garden .....

 

56 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Happy Birthday Stewart!!! 🎂🎂

 

 

Birthday greeting shamelessly nicked from Bear but, as he'd done all the tricky typesetting, would have been a shame not to re-use it!

 

In Other News:

 

Missing photographs has been quite topical recently.  Over the years I have come to realise what a fantastic resource internet forums (many and various) are particularly those with copious quantities of photographs attached.    Unfortunately all the good ones seem to have been let down eventually "When the data base image needed re-building" (for whatever reason).   "Don't worry, it's all backed-up so all that wonderful information isn't lost and it will all come back but, Oh, the image links will be broken and you'll need to re-load your pictures" .    Well, I beg to differ.   All that wonderful information is lost as 95% of the useful information is probably in the pictures.      The internet is now littered with thousands of pages of totally useless, incomplete information and hundreds of hours of useful contributions completely wasted.  Once upon a time I had an extensive build thread for my Tripehound on an excellent if unreliable (done on a budget) model flying forum.  After the need to re-load images for I think the third time I gave up and sometime later the whole thing disappeared up its own exhaust pipe which was a great shame and a huge waste.  There should be a law against it .....

 

Glad to here the consultation went well today Flavio 👍

 

I too have been for a consultation today, in this case a cardio one, the upshot of which was basically:

     That's good, keep taking the medication but "Up" the dose of drug C

     HOW LONG! have you been waiting for your cardio MRI scan?

     Start taking drug E regularly.

     Get another blood test in a week or so

     Come back in 6-8 weeks

 

Hallelujah a miracle (or maybe two) has occurred!    I am not worthy .......

Whilst surfing the GP's "Patient Services " website this morning I noted that at last, after ~5 months, it appears that I will now be able to order drug D from the GP's as I do with drugs A, B, C & E  each month and not have to bother the hospital and embark on a 28 mile round trip to collect them each time.

 

AND  (I do hope you are sitting down ......)

The  "Make an Appointment" menu option is no longer greyed out ! 

When selected a whole list of doctors and their appointments is presented.  The user can then actually make an appointment for some  point in the future (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) with a doctor of their choosing (!!!!!!!!!!!!) subject to their availability and all other normal T's & C's by means of inserting a small tick mark in a square box. 

Does this mark the end of Puppers' Patented 'Pointment Procument System? 

 

No sorry, I must be delusional.   Perhaps I need a lie down.

 

TTFNQ

 

Alan

 

 

 

[AndrewC]

2 hours ago, polybear said:

Suspicious Bear's Sitrep Analysis:  The B'sterds are up to something - maybe getting rid of trees before submitting a Planning Application so they can say "No trees will be removed as a part of this planning application".  An email to the Council's Tree Person might be in order....

 

Definitely up to something. However this is the boring borough of Bexley where a developer can illegally demolish a pub and only get caught when H&S fined them. The council turned a blind eye. Checking their tree pages, unless they've removed a tree that is under a protection order, in a conservation area, or contains an active bird nest there is nothing stopping them from hacking away. 

[Tony_S]

3 hours ago, AndrewC said:

Definitely up to something. However this is the boring borough of Bexley where a developer can illegally demolish a pub and only get caught when H&S fined them. The council turned a blind eye. Checking their tree pages, unless they've removed a tree that is under a protection order, in a conservation area, or contains an active bird nest there is nothing stopping them from hacking away. 

It seems that if I want to get something done about the trees that really need trimming in a neighbour’s garden I have to apply to the council and pay a fee of £400 to start the process. I am a bit fed up of asking and being fobbed off with tales of financial woe as to why it can’t be done. The neighbour (not next door but bottom of garden) was dropping hints that someone else ( I suspect me) might pay for it. Well rather than pay each year I am more likely now to start the tree ASBO process. When I mentioned this a few years ago the neighbour started wailing about how unfair everything was. This was shortly after one of her trees had blown down and ended up squashed against my patio doors.  

Edited May 3, 2022 by Tony_S

[monkeysarefun]

59 minutes ago, PupCam said:

After the need to re-load images for I think the third time I gave up and sometime later the whole thing disappeared up its own exhaust pipe which was a great shame and a huge waste.  There should be a law against

Did the wayback machine create a snapshot back in time  when your webpage was whole?

 

https://archive.org/web/

[Tony_S]

I think rather than just go ahead with the £400 payment I might see how interested whoever the newly elected councillor is about getting advice for me before I proceed. It could however start a border conflict as the trees are in the next Council ward (same council though.). The prospective candidates made all kinds of statements about how they care about us all unlike the other lot (who won’t win anyway). 

[polybear]

1 hour ago, PupCam said:

The real downer is that one of the properties has, what looks to be, a 5kW "Yard light" on an over-sensitive PIR.  Just the thing a Puppers wants when he's trying to observe our wonderful universe.    Why do people feel the need to flood light a postage stamp of a garden .....

 

An Air Rifle is your friend - easily available, quiet, leaves very little, if any evidence.....

 

1 hour ago, PupCam said:

Birthday greeting shamelessly nicked from Bear but, as he'd done all the tricky typesetting, would have been a shame not to re-use it!

 

 

That's a cake Pupper's owes me........

(And whenever I've tried a cut n' paste I lose the pretty colours.  Turdycurses).

 

In other news......

Rather scary - especially for those living alone:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61307744

[PupCam]

23 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Did the wayback machine create a snapshot back in time  when your webpage was whole?

 

https://archive.org/web/

 

Yes it appears to have been crawled once back  in 2014.

 

But, unless I'm doing it wrong (highly likely),  you'd never find any specific photograph of any specific subject in any specific thread.    

Finding a specific grain of sand on Holkham beach might be a more realistic aspiration? 😕

 

Alan

[PupCam]

13 minutes ago, polybear said:

That's a cake Pupper's owes me........

(And whenever I've tried a cut n' paste I lose the pretty colours.  Turdycurses).

 You will have to come round sometime for reminiscences of the Great Empire, beer and cake then!

 

Oh, hang on, you don't drink.  I'll have your beer then 😀

[polybear]

9 minutes ago, PupCam said:

 You will have to come round sometime for reminiscences of the Great Empire, beer and cake then!

 

Oh, hang on, you don't drink.  I'll have your beer then 😀

 

Sure.  I'll have your cake.....🤣

[simontaylor484]

37 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

An Air Rifle is your friend - easily available, quiet, leaves very little, if any evidence.....

 

 

That's a cake Pupper's owes me........

(And whenever I've tried a cut n' paste I lose the pretty colours.  Turdycurses).

 

In other news......

Rather scary - especially for those living alone:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61307744

A fishing catapult and a couple of ball bearings would also suffice.

 

Yes @polybear sepsis is very nasty MIL ended up in ICU with it also in a coma. The nurse when I went to visit her was laughing at me with the stuff I was telling her, he could see a reaction from her even though she was comatose.

One of the things I told her was that I needed her to survive because i wanted her to come dance on my grave but i was getting buried at sea and she couldn't swim.

All in the best possible way of course

[PupCam]

45 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Sure.  I'll have your cake.....🤣

 

You'd have to find it first - the latest Arduino project is a very clever "Cake Detector" Jammer (particularly good with doughnuts) 😜

[Coombe Barton]

.. tonight's supper - putting potatoes in a nuclear reactor - fission chips ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2022/05/03/number-disparity/

[iL Dottore]

1 hour ago, PupCam said:

 You will have to come round sometime for reminiscences of the Great Empire, beer and cake then!

 

Oh, hang on, you don't drink.  I'll have your beer then 😀

1 hour ago, polybear said:

Sure.  I'll have your cake.....🤣

Somehow I don’t think that’s gonna end up a fair exchange…

 

Unless, unless, when Puppers invites The Bear to tea, Puppers proffers two extremely large alcoholic drinks and two minuscule fairy cakes,

 

Puppers ends up with two “man-sized” drinks and The Bear ends up with a Teddy Bear sized serving of cake.

 

 I like it….

[iL Dottore]

6 hours ago, The White Rabbit said:

One surprise so far today, on the subject of unexpected search results... a perfectly legitimate search for second-hand book prices (as you can see...) thinking, do I try and sell this or put it on the charity shop pile - and suddenly - the cover of a 'gentleman's magazine'. Facepalm... 

 

They’re strapping lasses in Yorkshire if that photo’s anything to go by…

[Pacific231G]

30 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

.. tonight's supper - putting potatoes in a nuclear reactor - fission chips ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2022/05/03/number-disparity/

The Covid disparity is interesting but unsurprising. It seems to be based on the theory that if we can't see the virus (by not testing) then it will believe that it can't see us and will go away. Unfortunately  SARS-CoV-2 is NOT The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. Unfortunately some of our current rulers seem to bear an uncomfortably closer similarity to Zaphod Beeblebrox "If there's anything bigger than my ego in here I want it taken out and shot" 

Edited May 3, 2022 by Pacific231G

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Not exactly been warm today, no more than 13C. Perhaps thats why the foxes are conspicuous by their absence. Either that or their parents have chased them away to find a territory of their own. Just been notified by PayPal that an item that runs on two parallel strips of metal ordered  three and a half years ago has been paid for. For some reason I had set it up to be paid from a credit card instead of my debit card, just as well really as my bank balance has taken a bit of a hit with the repairs to the car.

[polybear]

18 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Somehow I don’t think that’s gonna end up a fair exchange…

 

Unless, unless, when Puppers invites The Bear to tea, Puppers proffers two extremely large alcoholic drinks and two minuscule fairy cakes,

 

Puppers ends up with two “man-sized” drinks and The Bear ends up with a Teddy Bear sized serving of cake.

 

 I like it….

 

Bear doesn't.......😡

[Ozexpatriate]

10 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

Is it just me, or is it a bit odd that they should apparently spend so much time and effort looking after an aircraft that [is] ... basically military litter, and I struggle to understand how it can be regarded as a particularly "historic place".

There aren't very many WWII-era* aircraft wrecks in the US. I bet there are more in the UK. (Plenty of them in the jungles of the south Pacific.)

 

* Yes this was 1948.

 

Most of them get cleaned up. Sinking into the lake made it more difficult. I imagine that these days with the level of recovery equipment available, it would be recovered immediately.

 

There's a lot worse military "litter" in the US. Hanford nuclear reservation is one, not really that far away from me.

[iL Dottore]

1 hour ago, simontaylor484 said:

Yes @polybear sepsis is very nasty MIL ended up in ICU with it also in a coma….

Other rapid onset, potentially fatal, conditions include IRR (Infusion Related Reaction), CRS (Cytokine Release Syndrome) and TLS (Tumour Lysis Syndrome).

 

TLS is particularly unfair, it’s akin to a drowning man being thrown a lifeline - only to find that the lifeline is actually a long, poisonous, snake. TLS happens when a large number of cancer cells are killed by an anti-cancer therapy rapidly and in a short time, the dying cancer cells proceed to dump a veritable primordial soup of toxic chemicals into the bloodstream - with disastrous and often fatal consequences. 
 

TLS is one of many reasons why cancer treatment should be started sooner rather than later. Tumour Burden (volume) can sometimes be so large it prevents the patient from being treated (generally a total tumour volume of >500 cm³ will prevent a patient from being treated in a clinical trial). In such instances, clinicians will try and reduce the tumour burden by surgically debulking the tumour or using radiotherapy to shrink the tumour.

Cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, arthritis are some examples of what happens to the body when the normal checks and balances of a well functioning human metabolism go pear-shaped.. Add to that the myriad horrible and disastrous ways a fertilised ovum or a foetus can develop defectively and it’s a wonder there are any humans on the planet at all, let alone 7,9 billion of them…

 

[Ozexpatriate]

5 hours ago, polybear said:

I find it interesting that the USA may be about to declare a certain ruling made fifty-odd years ago invalid, yet defend the right to keep guns - with all the consequences that brings.  A very confused Bear.

5 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

Without straying in to political territory the US supreme court does seem to be a very strange situation.

Very political, gentlemen. I could offer a history lesson in the weaponizing of religion as a political tool over the last 40 years and how this influences the supreme court nomination process, but that would be very much against our "no politics" guideline.

 

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, PupCam said:

Finding a specific grain of sand on Holkham beach might be a more realistic aspiration? 😕

Hmmmm it is a well known fact in Australia that every schoolkid is taught  that all beaches in England have gravel instead of sand and the surf is 6 inches high. Have we been lied to?

 

And you wear a knotted handkerchief on your head when you go there apparently.

 

Just Australian propaganda?

Edited May 3, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[PupCam]

6 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Hmmmm it is a well known fact in Australia that every schoolkid is taught  that all beaches in England have gravel instead of sand and the surf is 6 inches high. Have we been lied to?

 

Maybe just a bit.   Mind you, you need to go west not east if it's the surf you are after I think.   

 

Not that I know much about surfing, though the thought of Puppers on a surf board is amusing although not as potentially disturbing as the images of 50 Shades of Bear mentioned a few days ago.

 

Edited May 3, 2022 by PupCam

[iL Dottore]

4 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Hmmmm it is a well known fact in Australia that every schoolkids is taught  that all beaches in England have gravel instead of sand and the surf is 6 inches high. Have we been lied to?

Not to mention “England can’t play cricket….”

[Gwiwer]

15 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Hmmmm it is a well known fact in Australia that every schoolkid is taught  that all beaches in England have gravel instead of sand and the surf is 6 inches high. Have we been lied to?

 

And you wear a knotted handkerchief on your head when you go there apparently.

 

Just Australian propaganda?

Australian proper gander making a proper goose out of you all.  

 

Knotted hankies?  Optional perhaps 100  50 years ago.  Never seen since.  Gravel?  We do have gravel beaches as does Australia; we have shingle beaches too and rocky foreshores as does Australia.  And we have some pretty magnificent sandy beaches some of which are several miles in length though nowhere near the 80-Mile and 90-Mile Beaches of Australia.  Those really are the lengths their names suggest and are sandy with pretty decent surf too.  The UK also has surf; we host the Boardmasters and other international competitions at which Aussies compete with the world's elite and the locals alike.  The locals sometimes win.  It's true that the UK doesn't get the kind of swell an east coast low will bring to the Surf Coast / Gold Coast / Sydney beaches nor the raw power of the Southern Ocean crashing into Gunnamatta, Jan Juc or Bell's Beach.  But we can get 6 or 8-foot swells which test the best and unceremoniously dump the losers.  And we can get a decent pipe at Fistral, Polzeath and a few other spots.  

 

Maybe not lied to.  Just Fake News.  

[Ozexpatriate]

18 hours ago, pH said:

I remember, some years ago, a woman in Southern California who kept her garden irrigation on 24/7. The walls and paths were covered in moss and algae, and water was running out onto the sidewalk. The water authority said that, as long as she kept paying the bills (which she was) there was nothing they could do about it.

I lived in SoCal from 1986 - 1991. What happens with water there in the LA Basin is insane.

 

The car park at work (now a multistorey condominium complex) had many concrete-edged planters containing small trees embedded in the car park surface. Each planter was equipped with pop-up spray irrigation (like you would use for grassy areas). When the irrigation was on, a vast amount of water irrigated the asphalt surface. Imagine this repeated thousands of times.

 

18 hours ago, pH said:

From the L.A. Times article:

 

“Areas that receive water from the Colorado River and other sources will be spared, at least for now.”

 

So it’s mainly concerned with water coming from Northern California via the State Water Project, which surprises me.

Sadly I'm not surprised. The politics of water in California is fraught. Lake Havasu (the source of the aqueduct to Southern California from the Colorado) is kept full, at the expense of Lakes Mead and Powell to give California their 1922 and Mexico their 1944 Colorado water allocations. 

 

There's a north/south divide and an agri-business/urban divide over water in state politics. Everything is under stress; from salt-water groundwater incursion in the Salinas Valley (ongoing for 40 years), aquifer depletion in the San Joaquin Valley (overdrawn by 2.5 million acre-feet annually* resulting in land subsidence of 8.5m in places), releasing water for endangered fish species, (including, but not limited to, the irrigation v. indigenous treaty rights battle in the Klamath Valley), the temporary cessation of hydro-power generation at Lake Oroville last year, the bun fight over removing the O'Shaughnessy Dam to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley**, the "wisdom" of rice cultivation in the Sacramento delta etc etc. I imagine all the interested parties have lobbyists in Sacramento.

 

* So we can have almond milk etc.

** Which some argue was more beautiful than Yosemite

 

Edited May 3, 2022 by Ozexpatriate