Beautiful Snow

It is gorgeous outside. The above photo is from one of the upstairs baths, and the one below is from the dining room.. As usual with VA, it is already dripping and melting.

Happy Groundhog Day!

A few minutes ago, I realized that it was Groundhog Day; so happy Groundhog Day to everyone.

Then I became curious about the origins of this odd holiday. According to Wiki, the idea originated in German weather lore where the prognosticator is a bear or badger. I also did not know that several groundhogs and locations are used! I am not even sure which one is closest to us!

Date
Prediction
Groundhog
2009
Early Spring[24]
French Creek Freddie
2009
6 more weeks of winter[25]
Buckeye Chuck
2009
Early Spring[26]
Saskatoon Evan
2009
6 more weeks of winter
Balzac Billy
2009
Early Spring[27]
Malverne Mel
2009
6 more weeks of winter[28]
Woodstock Willie
2009
6 more weeks of winter[29]
Jimmy the Groundhog
2009
6 more weeks of winter[30]
Octoraro Orphie
2009
Early Spring[31]
Staten Island Chuck
2009
6 more weeks of winter[32]
Wiarton Willy
2009
6 more weeks of winter[33]
Shubenacadie Sam
2009
6 more weeks of winter[34]
Punxsutawney Phil
2009
Early Spring[35]
Dunkirk Dave

P.O. Stench

I am not sure if you heard about the post office that had to be closed yesterday because there was an horrendous smell in it. This is true; I do not remember where they said it was but they showed the reason on the night time news here. They held up the dead skunk in front of the cameras. It seems someone mailed the skunk to a taxidermist!

What Is Art

Following is a great YouTube video about what art is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDo_vs3Aip4

Absolutely great!

Ice Here

We do not have the ice nearly as bad as some other areas, but we do have ice. We still have electricity, too. Typical of Virginia, we are supposed to have thunder this afternoon!

Snow?

I am not sure you can call what we have in the yard snow. It is sort of pitiful.I hope this is not it for the year. We are having cinnamon rolls anyway; and a fire in the fireplace!

How to Hack WordPress

I disocovered a great website as follows: Happy hascking into WordPress blogs!

Google Blogsearch Tips (And a Little Wordpress Hack)
7 Jan
Google blogsearch offers some of the default google search operators and other less-known operators. Here they are, with some tips and a wordpress hack. Oh, as always, google is a little nervous when using advanced search strings, so sometimes it returns a 404 not found… it’s just trying to display the well-known 403 because it finds the search a bit suspicious… but the page is missing…window.google_render_ad();link:
this is a standard google operator, but in blogsearch it really works, while in standard google it displays a small percentage of the known inbound links. Finally a way to discover inbound links without using yahoo or technorati!
inpostauthor:
search for the given string in post author.Tip: This is a good reason to use your full name while posting, since google blogsearch indexes your name! If you want to gain visibility you should really avoid using a nickname! (well, I discovered this recently, so my posts can still be found searching for inpostauthor:”fra” … but this is going to change… this post should be found under inpostauthor:”francesco mapelli”)Tip #2:The default wordpress rss-comments module does not use the tag to describe the autor of the comments, so searching for inpostauthor:yourname returns just the blog posts… but if you hack wp-commensrss2.php adding

to the comments loop, for example before the tag, blogsearch will find also your comments.If you want to test it, just write a comment in this post, wait for google blogsearch to read the rss (it’s very fast, something like ten minutes should be enough) an check with blogsearch!.I think I’ll wirte a wordpress plugin for this.
update: since wordpress 2.1, the author is included by default in comments rss… there’s no need for this hack anymore :)
inblogtitle:
search for the given string in blog title: inblogtitle:mapelli
inposttitle:
search for the given string in post title: inposttitle:google search guide
blogurl:
search for blogs with the given url: blogurl:http://www.mapelli.info/or for blogs under the given domaindoughnuts blogurl:wordpress.com searches for blogs talknig about doughnuts on wordpress.com

Gray or Grey

No matter how you spell it, it has been grey here....very grey. Grey skies day after day. Everything looks grey; so we are having daily fires in the fireplace to improve the ambiance.

Usually, Virginia is sunny all winter long. In fact, when I moved from Chicago to the Richmond area more than twenty years ago, I noticed that even when it snows here, the sun appears right away! Gorgeous -- all sparkly world magic stuff. Hmmmm....wish it would snow instead of greyness.

Fans

Everyone in this house is a HUGE Star Trek fan. So for all of the fans, here is a cool photo of the Space Shuttle "Enterprise".

Great Photos

Take a look at this wensite: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/01/earth_observed.html It has gorgeous and fascinating photos, a few of which are here.

Brrrr.

It is COLD here. So we are having cinnamon rolls with bacon for breakfast; and a fire in the fireplace!

We had a gorgeous sunset two nights ago!!!

Missing Ocracoke

I think all three of us are missing Ocracoke although it is also good to be home. Here are some final photos we took from the roof of the house and the ferry docks.

UVA Third Year

Gravity was doing the FAFSA for this year and had to call UVA about what grade Esh was in. The answer was a surprise. Esh will be automatically classified as a third year (aka "Junior") next year. This will allow him to go through the ring ceremony, etc. that Third Years usually experience. After this semester he will have 51 credits at UVA with a total of 112 total college credits. this means that he it would be possible for him to graduate next year (and apply to graduate school if he wants to. Wow. It is all going by so quickly!

UVA Declared Best Value

Yes, UVA has been ranked number 1 as far as best value in colleges!!!!!! We agree!!!!

Beautiful Sunrise

We have begun to pack to return home. This has been a great stay. we are all going in the pool tonight for one last dip and to stare at the stars. They seem so much closer here!

Here are some more photos of the beautiful rise the other morning. we were all up at 6:00 in order to see it.

Springer's Point Nature Trail

Some years ago, one of the residents left a large tract of land by the ocean to the city of Ocracoke along with an endowment fund to be used to establish and maintain a nature trail. Ocracoke also has National Park Service land which includes a nature trail but the Ocracoke trail is much more natural. It has fences made of twisted wood strapped together by multi-c0lored twine, a small grave yard, and numerous bird houses.

Heated Pool

The heated pool is a terrific place to get exercise. The air temperatures have ranged from below freezing to 60+. It is located behind the house, in the middle of a small marsh. Very private and very relaxing for all of us.

Ocracoke Views

The views from the house of the harbor are beautiful. The first night there was a rainbow sunset. Another day it was rainy and a family (or maybe two familis) of ducks went by. The house has two top decks -- one facing the harbor and one facing the ocean.

Ocracoke Island 2

The kitchen is wonderful which is importsnt this time of year as there are only two restaurants open this time of year. [I don't think I mentioned that Ocraoke is accessible only by ferry-- a true get away.]

Here Gravity and Esh are playing Halo on the XBox 360 in the upstairs living room and playing Wii Golf donwstairs.

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Ocracoke Island

Here we are once again for R&R. The house we stayed in before is under renovation so we are trying a new house (not just new to us but newly built). It is beautiful and we all three like it better than the one last year. It is more private and it has a heated pool which is absolutely great! below are some photos from here.

This is the house from the parking area. Following are the three bedrooms, each with its own TV.

Esh has his own living area on the bottom floor with bedroom, his own bath, a half-bath, living room with couch and 42 inch plasma TV and kitchen.

Celestial Time Travel

Last night while going to bed, my thoughts went back to a previous thought about time travel that is related to my post October Thoughts about Closeness.

When you look through a telescope at celestial objects, you are in a sense, time traveling. the image you see has a time delay due to the speed of light. In other words, when you look at the the moon, you are seeing a moon that existed 2.6 seconds ago. Looking at Alpha Centauri, is a time delay of 4.2 years. So as a person goes from one object in the sky to another one, they are essentially time traveling through thousands of years. So the question is, in what time is the space between the objects? How far away is the space? In the absence of mass, does time exist?

You Know You Are A Bad Typist When...

after typing in a word that is so mis-spelled, spell check's suggestion is "no suggestion".
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you right click on the mis-spelled word and it does not even show you a spell check menu.
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Spring Is Coming

Spring is coming ... at least spring semester at UVA! It looks like Esh will be returning this spring. After he took a significant break from classes this fall, he was still able to get a 2.4 GPA. This could certainly be better but considering that more than a third of the classes were skipped and each class had several grades of zero, this shows that he really pulled at the end of the semester. His graduate math (Math 521) even came in with an okay overall grade with a B on the final exam.

Recipes

I just discovered that our grocery store has recipes on its web site! Yum.

http://www.ukrops.com/email_2008/meal_ideas.asp

Wonderful Friends

We have wonderful friends. One of them decide a few months ago to begin running for various charities. She is around our age, so her kids are all grown (in fact, she has several grandkids). About a year ago she began to do marathons and at the same time, raise money for charities. We donated to her most recent run for St. Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis. She and her daughter finished the entire 13.1 miles (we got a beautiful postcard)! Bravo, A!!!!!!! Can't wait to see where the next postcard is from!

Today's Meal

We pretty much share equally the making and cleaning up for all of our meals in this house, with whomever is in attendance at any meal. So what are we having today? Yummy pot roast.

Here the pot roast is prior to going in the crock-pot. Beef, onions, carrots, peas, and canned tomatoes.







And here it is in the crock-pot where it will sit for several hours on low heat. We will eat it with crusty bread in big bowls. So easy!

Writing Poetry

Gnomie is getting ready to write a poem in our downstairs half-bath!

Dark Knight

Last night we watched The Dark Knight. Very powerful and well done movie. During it, the fact that one of Gotham's wealthiest men is being a vigilante made me think. Gotham City is definitely an analogy to any American city. Wealthiest men being vigilantes.....hmmm.

What they must REALLY be saying is Bill Gates is a masked vigilante! See the comparison below:

Even the names are similar; Bruce Wayne (ten letters) and Bill Gates (9 letters) - both first names begin with "Bs"! Too close to be a coincident! They both have technology companies and they part their hair on the same side of their head! So now that we have figured out Bill Gates secret identity will our lives be at risk??? Oh no! And where does Bill Gates keep the Batmobile?

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Gravity Well adds: I don't know about Bat Mobile but there is Windows Mobile

Gnomie is on the move again!! This time he is by Einstein's equation for General Relativity painted on our front hall wall. Gnomie warps space-time!

Never Dies

Right now on the Today Show it was mentioned that anything placed on cyberspace never dies. This is true. Once something is out in cyberspace it is always there. Many people do not fully embrace this and realize this is true just like nothing is ever actually private out on cyberspace. Another thing is that people do not realize that if you use a blog engine like blogger or inkspot or any of them, they own your entries and they keep records for forever. This does not bother everyone but people need to make the choices that are right for them. They will not be able to change the cyber-world so they need to make wise choices.

Final Exams

Final exams are underway at UVA and the dorms have quiet hours in order to facilitate studying by all. Bud has 5 exams, one of which is a take-home. We both wish him the best of luck! And grades with results high enough to return to UVA in the spring!

Angels and Demons

All three of us have enjoyed Dan Brown's books. Are they award winning pieces of literature? heck no; but they are fun and entertaining and very light on the brain. Da Vinci Code was all of our least favorite book although it got so much media attention. High on all of our favorites list (of Dan Brown's books only) is Angels and Demons; and we are happy to hear there will be another Tom Hanks movies released this spring!

Better Than Last Year!

Gung-Ho

I went gung-ho today. I got an XBox 360 Elite and a whole crap load of games (this description fits!). The new Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider- Underworld (fashioned after me as I look exactly like Lara Croft - hahahaha), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Star Wars The Force Unleashed, and ........... about 6 more that I can not even remember but were recommended by the store personnel (yes, I fell prey to their tactics). It should keep us busy in this house over winter break that's for sure! I will be sure to write reviews and keep everyone posted on our experiences.

Sheets and Towels

Hallelujah! Bud's sheets and towels will come home and get washed over winter break. Yes, that's correct. They have not been washed since August! The question now is will we have enough water and soap to do the job?