July 31, 2004

• Once in a blue moon….

  I know I’m not the only Xangan who enjoys tracking down the origins and
  “true” meanings of words.  It was wixer who guided me to the
  Online Etymology Dictionary, and I usually get pleased comments from
  others when I write about words.

  Most English speakers understand that “blue moon” refers to something
  rare, an event that occurs only very seldom.  According to the Hindustan Times,
  it comes from, “poems from Shakespeare’s time. Playing on the notion
  that the moon was made of green cheese, poets joked that a never-seen
  “blue” moon was made of well-aged blue cheese.”  Some may even
  know
  that there actually has been a blue moon, that the moon appeared blue, due
  to smoke and debris in the air for a couple of years following the
  eruption of Krakatoa in 1883.  It can happen with transient
  conditions in local areas due to forest fires, as well, and even
  snowstorms, according to NASA.

  I suppose that many of you also know that the phrase has currently come to
  denote the second full moon in a month, something which occurs when the
  moon is full around the beginning of one of the longer months, so that
  its entire cycle is completed within that same month, and it grows full
  again before the month ends.

  But did you know that this meaning of the phrase originated in 1946, due to a misunderstanding at Sky and Telescope Magazine?

  And, did you know that for some people on this planet there is no blue
  moon in July of 2004, that it doesn’t come until August?  

  Y’see “realtime” for all of us is the same, theoretically.  That
  is, unless you live in the past or come unstuck in time like Billy
  Pilgrim, we all share the same moment… theoretically, in one popular
  paradigmatic view of the spacetime continuum.  In that same
  reality, though, there is this crazy idea called a “time zone,” in
  which the clocks are set according to either the sun’s relative
  longitudinal position at the moment or some
  politico-economically-shifted
  approximation of that (such as my local time zone, which has been
  shifted two hours out of sync with the sun so that local business and
  government can communicate more readily with the West Coast of the
  Lower 48 states).

  I wouldn’t go so far as to predict that at some more rational future
  moment the planet will rely more widely on Zulu Time, or GMT, but one
  can hope, can’t one?  It’s sorta like the metric system: 
  rational beings agree that it makes sense, but….

  Anyway, as I was saying, because of that “time zone” business, the
  current full moon, the exact 180°  opposition of Sun and Moon,
  occurs in some areas during the end of July, and in other areas not
  until the beginning of August.  So while this full moon is “blue”
  for some of us (according to Sky and Telescope’s skewed view of
  reality), others on this planet must wait a month for their “blue” full
  moon.

  Get all that?  Got it?  Good, ’cause I don’t get it at all.

  And, to get to the important stuff, under the heading, “By the way…”

  1)  Apparently everyone who was kind enough to respond to my
  recent plea for an explanation of the quirky way that Mozilla displays
  Xanga comment boxes, is also incurious enough to accept the “black box”
  explanation.  It “just is,” according to the crop of comments I
  got.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, on days when I’m feeling
  especially energetic and capable, ten feet tall and bulletproof) I’m
  not so incurious.  So, if any of my readers knows or can point me
  to a source that will explain, I still want to know how browsers
  include or exclude items such as that line.  I’m far from being a
  hacker.  I’m not even a code kiddie, but I’m still a bit beyond
  the “black box” mentality.  If I don’t understand the explanation
  I’m willing and able to gain enough vocabulary so that I can understand.

  2)  At any time now, you regular readers may begin to notice my
  absence.  It could be brief, or it could be lengthy.  We are
  having serious computer problems here.  My last few entries had to
  be composed first in Notepad to avoid being lost in the frequent
  freezeups and crashes.  After all the text is written, I then
  transfer it into the xTools box, post privately, then usually restart
  the computer several times while editing, reposting as often as
  possible to save each edit, to add pics and text emphasis and color and
  such.

  
  Our display is a mess:  blurry, wavy, with odd visual artifacts
  that vary from one startup to the next.  Doug took some screen
  shots of one episode.  They seem to have begun when we got the
  machine back after having the hard drive replaced last.  Doug
  thought at first that the tech had unseated the video card when he
  replaced the hard drive, but that apparently wasn’t it since the
  problem persisted after Doug reseated the card.  Maybe it was
  damaged, or maybe the problem is unrelated (except by temporal
  correlation) to that repair job.  We had been coping with it for a
  while but it is worsening.  We’ve had to reinstall the drivers
  for that video card several times.  It didn’t come with the computer
  but is the best-available upgrade for our model, installed by Doug and
  trouble-free until after that latest trip to the computer doctor.

  This morning, I had to power-cycle this machine about twenty times to
  do the searches I needed to find the links I have included here and to
  get the blog composed and posted.  A couple of times, the drive
  groaned and ground like a tiny car stripping gears.  On the latest
  startup, for a
  few moments it went to a black screen with two rows of white
  “text”.  The white bits were short rows, one above left, the other
  below and right.  The strip at upper left was just a row of little
  smiley faces in oval cartouche-shapes.  The lower strip was more
  of the same and the letters, “MM”.  That’s a first, in my
  experience.  I picked up the camera for a screen shot, but it went
  to the next screen before the camera powered up.

  Doug insists that our problems are not, could not be,
  the result of a virus.  He says we are virus-free and our virus
  definitions are up to date.  I ask if it might be a stealth virus
  for which we don’t have definitions, and he looks at me as if I’m an
  idiot.  Maybe I am.

  We’ve hesitated to call the computer doc because we’re pretty sure
  he’ll just say bring it in.  Even if the warranty covers the parts
  he installed (as it did that hard drive last time) we pay for his time
  and we schlepp the CPU back and forth.  The family is now engaged
  in discussing our options.  None of them is particularly
  attractive.  One of them, the one that falls into the category of
  living within our means, is to limp along as we are until it gets impossible and then do without the computer until we can
  afford a new one.  The least expensive option, going back to the
  computer doc, could very well fall into the “throwing good money after
  bad” category.  So, we hesitate.  And so, you may not see me
  around here much.  It’s a lot of work blogging this way, and I’ve
  no idea if or when this problem will worsen to the point that it
  becomes impossible.

  Greyfox will be able to update from the public library, so if I don’t show up for a while you can check with him.
  

  • 4:50 pm
  • 9 Comments