Can you feel it?

I was ready to write today about spring beginning tomorrow.  I went to look up the time of the equinox and was surprised to read that it was just an hour or so away. Spring began today at 9:46 CDT.  You may be on some other time that US central daylight but here it is spring.  Feels that way, too.  Despite deep snow outside, it is reported to be 53°. 

Poetry

From an ad, I was reminded of the poetry and word gymnastics of Ogden Nash.  I spent quite a bit of time enjoying his silly poems like "The Strange Case of Mr. Donnybrooks's Boredom".  One of his poems I liked so much, I memorized it:

If called by a panther,

Don't anther!

Now, aren't you glad you read that?  Just a moment of reading and it may have saved you a serious injury or worse.

It is Daisy Goodwin whose books "101 Poems that Could Save Your Life" and "Poems to Get You Through the Day (and the Night)" got me into poetry memories.

Interface interference

Somebody designs a handy web page with handy buttons here and there which can be clicked on to produce handy results.  I learn to use it and I am delighted.  What a fine product that company produces!

Then Smarty in the back office does a study.  Is the color of the page improveable?  Do fewer errors occur when the diddling-do switch button is moved to the other side?  Can we fit more helpful buttons up in that corner if we make all the buttons half size?  Results of the study come in and they imply that a few changes to the design of the page will result in faster production of the product and 20% more adoptions.

Result: Smarty gets a bonus but I get frustrations and more errors.  I had enough errors before but now I get more.

Note to Smarty,

Hands off the interface!

St Urho's day

I had trouble setting up Lynn's photos showing our snowfall yesterday and never found a good way to insert her name and credit to her photography skills.  Thanks, Lynn!

Today is St. Patrick's Day.  That means yesterday was St. Urho's day.  You may not have heard that some immigrants from Finland felt they wanted a little attention, as the Irish managed to get for their patron saint. So they invented the legend of St. Urho, whose day came one day before St.Patrick's.  The blessed Urho was credited with driving all the grasshoppers out of Finland.  

We had our DNA analyzed several times and I found that my wife has a more complicated set of ancestral genetic lines than I have.  They include Finland and Cuba and Spain.  See my blog Fear, Fun and Filoz entry for March 18, 2020.

Fwd: We have snow

our mailbox

Out the garage door (note the bottom of the doorway)

Door to the deck.

Snowed in 

15th of March

I am feeling normal today, I am very happy to report.

Today is the famous Ides of March, the day that Julius Caesar was stabbed by close associates who feared for the future of their country if he retained political power.  As I have written, my Latin class read Caesar's "Gallic Wars".  What I remember from that is that the writings could be honestly titled "Macho Misbehavior with Other Nations".  Have an experienced troop of soldiers show up at a leader's house and announce that the leader's children would accompany the soldiers back to Rome where they would be cared for and returned IF the people of that group had delivered the specified "tribute" of this many bushels of wheat and maybe a few other things at the specified times.

Nausea

I have an upset stomach.  I don't like it.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

Paraskevidekatriaphobia:

Firefox browser led me to this word as a name for being afraid of bad luck and woeful events that might happen on a Friday that falls of the 13th of a month.

From AI and Chrome:

• Calendar Mechanics: Any month that begins on a Sunday will have a Friday the 13th.

• Frequency: In 2026, there are three occurrences (February, March, and November). Generally, there is at least one, and up to three, in a calendar year.

• Mathematical Cycle: The Gregorian calendar repeats its day-of-the-week pattern exactly every 400 years (146,097 days, which is exactly 20,871 weeks).

• Origins of Superstition:

• Biblical/Religious: Associated with the Last Supper, where Judas Iscariot—the 13th guest—betrayed Jesus, leading to his crucifixion on a Friday.

• Norse Mythology: The mischievous god Loki was the 13th guest at a banquet in Valhalla, breaking a 12-god, peaceful, and "complete" set, according to Britannica and Youtube.

• Historical: The arrest of the Knights Templar on Friday, October 13, 1307, is often cited as a source of the, according to Cleveland.com and EBSCO.

• Cultural Impact: The combination of "unlucky" Friday and the "unlucky" number 13 creates a "double whammy" of superstition that has been reinforced by pop culture, such as the Friday the 13th film series, note Wicked Local and Cleveland.com. 

They could ask me anything!

A friend of mine said that the day of her doctoral oral exam, she thought "They could ask me anything!".   That might be correct.  Some clown or provocateur might ask for some outlandish knowledge.  What was Mozart's mother's maiden name?  Other members of the orals committee or the candidate herself might counter with Why do you ask that?  Or What is the relevance of that question?

As I age and think, I find more and more subjects that I don't know about.  New subjects are invented, including those that I have never heard of. Items I did know include many that I have forgotten.  Most of several courses I used to teach and some science and social studies units even for 5th graders I could not teach now without a serious review of lessons and facts.

By the way, if a candidate for a doctor's degree, like a PhD, gets asked something he can't answer, he will just calmly say "I don't know".  Doing so is much more acceptable than guessing or bluffing.

Mrs. Banner

A couple of years ago, I noticed that when I read CNN Five Things, I found information about the news but without too many ads, without other documents than what I was reading appearing in the middle of the page.  I found language that was more simply informative and less provocative, slanted or emotional.  I looked to see who had written such reports and the answer was Mrs. Banner.  

When my wife first introduced me to creating web pages, the World Wide Web seemed a politer, more civil place.  Later, the first time an ad for less expensive vacuum cleaners appeared over the text of a news item, I couldn't believe anyone with consideration for a reader would interrupt that way.  Does another human being really believe that such an interruption will be accepted quietly?