Flotsam

[drscott]

The latest Martian news implies seas were present at some point. This is pretty exciting. Back when I was still in the field, we were reduced to guessing the chemical compositions of the planets from limited data - spectrographs, guesses based on likely fractionation of the cloud of gases and dust that formed the planets, etc. Really looking at rocks closeup is pretty fantastic.

I added some drip irrigation points out front today, mostly for the new junipers in the solar death zone. This involves unreeling thin black rubber hose, cutting to length, then attaching to one of 8 nipples on each of the partly-buried heads. Then the hose is buried in a shallow trench leading to the plant being irrigated, surfacing a few inches away. The sprinklers go off once every few days, controlled by a timer box which sends an electrical signal to the 4 valves which allow water into the system. In our climate, no irrigation is needed in the winter, but the summer weather of the past two weeks has dried everything out, so I turned the system on a few days ago.

I'm working on some longer posts, but nothing's ready to write yet. I don't think I've quite found the right audience here, but I'll keep posting hoping more people are reading than let on. If I only talked about food more....

Okay, food: I gave up the second slice of bread I used to eat every day to top off my sandwich, and I cut my cereal serving in half. I already notice better definition after two days.

Oh, you mean it has to be tasty food. Oh well.

Comments

[excessor.livejournal.com]

The Martian news is so exciting. But then, I was the guy who couldn't tear himself away from CNN when we landed on Mars on 7/4/97, despite the fact that we were in Moorea (in Tahiti) on a gorgeous day, on a lagoon, in a grass hut.

I have ignored learning how my sprinklers work until now. I suppose this weekend I get to learn. I'm sure I'll discover that the entire neighborhood is connected to my system. Perhaps a nice cement yard really would be ok. I could paint it green and then everyone would be fooled.

um, you're kidding about the second slide of bread thing, right? [slumps] This is not going to be pretty one bit. I'm so hungry right now—two hours after dinner—that I could eat my way through a bakery and not even stop to catch my breath. Same planet, different worlds.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Nope, not kidding about the bread. My diet is pretty well tuned, so a slight daily addition of carbs adds fat, a deletion starts more leaning. I could lose about two pounds of fat, so I am. Once you get down to this point, effects of changes are very obvious.

If you're hungry, have a protein snack -- meat or drink mix or nuts. I usually have a protein drink at 10 and again at midnight; I'm never really hungry.

And the green-painted-cement thing would conflict with your desire to be the perfect host with perfect tastes. Just find your control box and set it to "manual," then rotate the wheel the timer wheel turns (the one that actually controls the valves), then go see what's happening. It's all pretty simple.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'll go mix a protein drink. I haven't tried that yet.

I don't have a desire to be a perfect host with perfect tastes. I want to be a host who tastes good. Note to self: stop typing when the Charlie the Tuna jokes start up. (Is pathetisad a word?) It's probably best that I live alone.

With the amount of trouble that the sprinkler systems presented to you-know-who, I assumed one needed a degree in non-Euclidean geometry to work the controls. Perhaps I was mistook. Thanks for the pointers.