Rumor has it that a norovirus outbreak has afflicted Duke Hospital in Durham. The neighboring VA Hospital first reported a problem last week. At the time Duke claimed to be norovirus-free.
Hmm. Maybe I’ll postpone that doctor’s visit I’ve been contemplating.
Cory Doctorow, science-fiction author, technology activist, and creator of BoingBoing, will be speaking at UNC Thursday at 2PM. His presentation is entitled “Pwned: How Copyright Turns Us Into IP Serfs.”
I’ve read BoingBoing since its inception. I’ve been quite impressed with Cory’s fight against DRM, overly-restrictive copyright laws, and other attempts to eat our brains and turn us all into Consumer Zombies. I’d like to have a job like Cory’s, to be honest. Few geeks on the planet are any cooler than Cory.
Ironically, Cory is a huge fan of Disney, one of the most copyright-addicted companies on the planet. Disney was instrumental in the passing of the dreaded Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, passed right about the time a certain Mouse was to enter public domain. Can you like a company’s products without liking the company?
Anyway, Cory’s speech should be insightful and not to be missed.
Oh, and whatshisname will be in town Thursday, too. Yawn.
I spent yesterday afternoon adding a shelf to our utility closet. It was a wire Closetmaid shelf, the kind I used to sell as a hardware salesman after high school.
You’d think it would be a snap to install a wire shelf, but you’d be wrong. Because these shelves are designed to be mounted without using wall studs, they require multiple screws in the drywall. I had to carefully remove 10 or so drywall fasteners to get the old shelf out, then add another twenty to put the new shelf and the old shelf in their new locations. I did this all the while Travis was sleeping in his room ten feet away.
By the time he awoke from his nap I was done hanging shelves. Now to paste over the old holes and everything will be finished. The new shelf doubles our storage space in the utility closet.
During winter its a challenge to keep indoor air from getting too dry, yet when heaters defrost their coils they regularly expend a large amount of water vapor in a cloud of steam. I wonder if that steam could be safely captured and somehow used to add moisture to the indoor air? Probably not, I suppose, since it might not be clean enough, but it does make me wonder.
When a “blast of polar air” descends from the Arctic Circle, what takes its place? Balmy, humid Carribean air? Is Santa Claus so lazy that the warm weather has to go to him and not the other way around?
Where does our warm weather go for winter vacation?
Wikipedia, the Internet’s free encyclopedia, is a wonderful resource. Its strength is its ability to be updated.
