Tasmania Time
The size of a small dog, the Devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world.
Dave North is standing upside down. Or maybe he’s sitting upside down.
He and Akkana Peck left last week for a Linux conference in Hobart, Tasmania. Akkana is speaking at the conference on GIMP, an Open Source alternative to Photoshop.
So they’re both inverted, relative to us.
Most of us know only one thing about Tasmania: it’s the home of the Tasmanian Devil.
The poor critters are endangered, plagued by a communicable form of cancer that causes facial tumors.
Before they left, Mike Nadler asked Dave and Akkana to check to see if water spiraled clockwise as it drained from sinks and bathtubs in Tasmania. He also asked Dave to bring back a Tasmanian Devil.
So we have lots to look forward to. Meanwhile, though, it’s kind of lonely.
Doug Traub is skiing in the mountains, as he does every winter.
Bruce Crawford hasn’t been to Baylands for at least a month, busy with family and flying locally in Foster City.
Gary Morgan, captain of industry at Morgan Mill, has been been busy with work.
Even Mike has been scarce, getting root canalled by his dentist.
And the weather and complexities of our bathroom remodel have kept me away from Baylands more days than I like.
Lots of people still show up at Baylands, particularly on weekends and weekday lunchtime, but I miss my regular flying buddies.
I’ve got four more days of remodeling chaos.
Dave and Akkana will continue upended for another 10 days.
Mike’s done with his dentist.
So we’ll regroup soon.
Meanwhile, I’ve cheated and read a bit about water swirling down drains. According to The Straight Dope, the Coriolis effect, which causes hurricanes to rotate, has an insignificant effect on small bodies of water such as the contents of sinks and bathtubs. Water spiraling down their drains is primarily influenced by small residual currents.
Tags: Flying, Life, People.
I read up on not only the Tasmanian Devil, but the Wombat also. The Tasmanian Devil’s ears turn red when it’s angry, it smells bad, has a bad disposition, and eats “voraciously”. I think one of them was sitting at the picnic table with us yesterday.
The Wombat is a burrowing animal with a short tail and a hind end that is armored with cartilage so it can’t be “taken” from behind. Most automotive parts managers fit that description.
That’s your lesson for today, children.
Mike
Henceforth Mike will be known as cartilage butt…:)
What a visual.
I too have been missing flying regularly – I’m working myself out of an aircraft rut. My latest is an FA/18 Hornet EDF. Beautiful model but rather questionable electronics – on top of that a bad receiver. – Mike helped with that – thanks Mike.
Glad to hear the remodel hell is almost over – it’s like making a movie – by the end you would just rather go to the movies…
I for one would have been happy to labor on under the impression water swirls counterclockwise downunder.
Oh vell – it’s raining… pooh blah.
Gary
I’m not a cartilage butt! I was a Service Manager, not a Parts Manager. I was the one who had to get co-operation from the Parts Manager, to get the parts, to get the job done. All at a realistic price for the customers. I always had to find the Parts Manager first. As I said, they are “burrowing animals”. No wonder I had a heart attack!
GLAD TO BE RETIRED.
Mike
Devils probably have bad breath from not brushing often. Otherwise they seemed fairly clean. The older ones are a bit sullen, but I wouldn’t say bad tempered. The can eat a lot, and don’t have very good table manners. They’re cute and quite clumsy. The conference raised over 35K australian dollars to try to help out, so that’s all good.
Wombats are ill-tempered as adults, but pretty playful and friendly when younger. They do kill with their butts, which reminds me of a few people around baylands.
Wow, you get out of the habit of checking in when you’re disconnected for a while. Been back over a week! Almost over the jet lag.
Now that this is cold news and nobody will see it, I’ll add a little correction: Akkana’s talk was actually on hacking the mozilla code. Which really is a pretty good idea. It may be a contender for best browser, but it has some really stupid code in it.