Altivo

9000 would be the entire population, including infants and homebound, of the city.

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rustitobuck.livejournal.com

Ooooooooo....moooooon.

Someday I'm gonna have to show up at your library and just walk in and out and in and out...

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Heh. Save your legs. Just stand next to the sensor and wave your hand back and forth in front of it.

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cabcat.livejournal.com

Must you ruin our fun :D

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calydor.livejournal.com

Strange, normally people have "Home" or similar in their address book - that's the usual way lost cell phones find their way back to their owners.

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I imagine this might have such information. Being nearly cell phone illiterate, as in I've only ever used my own, I didn't know where to look. Mine is set up to show my name on the display when powered up. It's also a fairly simplistic device. This one is apparently a combination PDA, camera, video device, phone, and god only knows what else. I didn't want to muck with it too much. In fact, once turned on we couldn't find a way to turn it off. I'm assuming it will go into a sleep mode eventually and only wake up for incoming calls.

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vakkotaur.livejournal.com

There might also be an 'ICE' entry ('In Case of Emergency') that would mean being able to contact someone who can reach the owner.

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If I could have figured out how to find it, yes, it might be there. My guess is that the thing needs a user manual the size of a telephone book, because it's far from intuitive.

Anyway, the owner did call this morning and will pick it up when the library is open I guess.

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gabrielhorse.livejournal.com

Bonehead. Evidentally it doesn't come with a device to help him remember he left his Swiss Army Go-go Gadget Phone behind. I've found three cellphones more or less the same way ;) They make great calendars & stopwatches for yours truly :P My brother's more into that stuff than I am, and I give 'em to him whenever I get the chance; programming a VCR or fixing a jammed DVD player is my thing, phones have become a status symbol- and I'm definitly an anti-status person.

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zenicurean.livejournal.com

From the sound of it, I'm pretty impressed they could still fit an actual phone in. I think it might just grow a pair of legs and walk out first thing tomorrow, chanting "KILL ALL HUMANS".

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That's why I didn't mess with it much when it wasn't obvious who the owner was. It had so many functions I was afraid I might trigger the self-destruct or activate the phasers.

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We are getting towards critical wood-shortage level for our fire. I put some coal on last night, and then felt guilty about the ecological impact. I need to go scavenging.

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Yeah, given a more urban environment, wood fires are a luxury. Out here they are still the norm, and there are delivery services vying for our business. We also have the space to store a couple of cords at a time, so it's just a matter of placing the order when needed.

Our house in Chicago was built for coal heat originally, and you could see the archeological evidence of it in the ground floor layout and the huge cast iron fireboxes (two) that had been converted to natural gas sometime in the late 1930s judging by the "for trouble or assistance, call..." cards attached to them. Getting a coal delivery in Chicago these days would probably be nigh impossible.

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The urban setting of my home does not help, but I suspect the REAL problem is the fact that the UK is not a very heavily wooded island. Most of our old great forests were cleared in the Roman era and beyond, to make room for farming and infrastructure. Of course, living in North America, you're used to wood being plentiful. I think it's the same reason why houses in North America are timber built. You simple have so much of the stuff. Over here houses are brick built (no trees, but we have LOADS of clay.)

This supply shortage is reflected in the price of wood for burning at the retail level. For example:

http://www.logsuppliers.co.uk/?gclid=CMuCxYawnZkCFYQ-3god0V2_DQ

The situation is not helped by rising demand as well. Proliferation of multi fuel stoves here is at an all time high (the people who installed my parent's unit said they have never been busier EVER), mostly due to the cost of the household gas reaching levels which mainland Europe has been paying for YEARS, but is something of a shock to Brits used to low price North Sea gas. Those damned Russians, and their price fixing! :D

Edited Date: 2009-03-12 12:23 pm (UTC)

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Holy crap but that is some expensive firewood! It makes sense though based on some of the details you mention in your post.

I love the smell of a wood fire in the house but I can't seem to convince the mate to let me use ours. He is convinced that it will create more dust in the house and leave the house with a smell that can never be gotten rid of. *smirks* I guess I should expect that after he had to clean a lake house that had been fueled by a wood fire for years.

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I use a stove, so much of the smell, and most of the dust is confined to the chimney. Even when cleaning it out, the lined chimney has such a good draw that the dust goes up the chimney and out.

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Yeah, see we have a true fireplace so there is nothing seperating the fire from the room. :P

Now if I was actually going to try to use it to heat the house or at least the den then I would have an insert installed w/blowers. Of course then you loose the look of an open fireplace which I think is lovely but very inefficient for heat.

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The open fireplace is still not going to distribute dust and soot inside the house as long as the chimney is kept clear. Using a good screen is mandatory for fire prevention anyway, and it tends to capture stray soot particles electrostatically too. You have to take it outdoors (carefully) to clean it.

As for any "smell" from the fireplace, again, if the chimney works properly there's almost none. I love the scent of apple or cherry wood burning, but only get a hint of it while starting the fire. After that it all goes up the chimney.

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Heh, I will let you come to Dallas and try to convince my mate of that one.

He has it set in his head just what will happen if we burn wood and I pretty much gave up trying to convince him otherwise. I would probably try to do a little more persuading if we actually lived somewhere where we had access to cutting timber for firewood. Back in Tennessee we were able to go out on the farm to cut up wood for fire...down here we would likely be reduced to buying it which I am not hugely fond of.

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Do you have natural gas in the house for cooking or heating? I'd be tempted to put one of those gas fired inserts in then. My brother has one in his place in Maryland, and it looks and feels very much like the real thing. We also have one in the library, and it's a fairly effective heat source. Feels funny to turn the fire on and off with a remote control, but hey, it still looks nice.

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Yes, we use natural gas for everything that it can fuel with the exception of a gas dryer. Our plan is to convert the fireplace to gas eventually it just hasn't happened yet. It already has a gas starter installed so the conversion to gas logs should not be too hard.

Heh, the wonders of technology. I'm replying via my phone. ^.^

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Jumping Jehosaphat! And I thought it was silly that convenience stores here offer little bundles of four or five split logs for $5. For the equivalent price to that website, we get a face cord of split hardwood here.

I understand the reasons for wood scarcity in the British Isles, of course, and agree that burning coal in a normal stove is not very friendly to the environment, your house, or anyone's lungs. It will come to the same here before much longer, between climate change and the insistence on the breeding population of doubling and tripling their numbers every generation.

The only reason we still have reasonably affordable firewood here in this region is the rate of development. Fallow farmlands and woodlots being cleared to build housing tracts yield a lot of timber. Most of it is oak here, and not suitable for use in construction or furniture because it is gnarly and cracked or otherwise filled with defects. It burns efficiently though once it has been properly cured. I expect the price of firewood to rise because the "recession" has slowed new development to a standstill. Given a choice between the two, I'd rather have less development even if firewood costs more.

Stoves that burn pelleted fuel made of construction and woodworking waste were selling here in great numbers a year or two ago. Now the source of that waste has dried up due to the economic downturn, and the pellets are in short supply, making people who bought the stoves pretty unhappy. Three or four years ago corn (maize) prices were so low that farmers were buying stoves designed to burn the dried corn as fuel. They said it was more cost effective than selling it at the market price. Of course then came the ethanol bubble, in which they all thought there'd be a huge demand for corn to make ethanol as an oil replacement. That burst last summer as oil prices plummeted, and now corn is going cheap again. Maybe someone should design a steam car that burns corn as a fuel...

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the insistence on the breeding population of doubling and tripling their numbers every generation.

I have personally never understood that. It's part of the "growth at any cost" mentality I suppose. In order to justify business and economic growth, we need more consumers. And so ad infenitum, or at least until the planet can no longer feed us. Then the wars start and more people die as a result. Hooray for human suffering. :/

Three or four years ago corn (maize) prices were so low that farmers were buying stoves designed to burn the dried corn as fuel

Turning one's stove into a giant popcorn kettle. :D

With all these bubbles and supply chasing demand, maybe it's time we just admitted that in future it's going to cost more to heat your home. The Russian gas barons here keep threatening to cut supply off unless we pay more. It seems that people are just not prepared to pay, and run from one cost cutting measure to the other (as I am indeed guilty of doing.)

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Jumping Jehosaphat!

If you think THAT'S bad, you should see what we pay for construction grade timber planks. ;)

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Oh those are costly here as well, unless you want to settle for twisty, warped and knotty scrap. Wood salvaged from barns and houses that are being demolished is much better quality and sells for good prices. The issue of course is proper raw material, but also the drying time. Most construction lumber here is "kiln dried" and I think no one knows how to do that properly nor are they willing to take the time. Natural drying takes much longer and that's why old barn wood is so superior in most cases.

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Sources differ on the name of the moon this month, some call it the Storm Moon and others refer to it as the Worm Moon.

Don't you think your door count is higher due to the poor economy? There was a recent story on the news here about how the libraries are seeing more people that they normally do. From what I remember though, many of the users were coming in to use the computers to look for work.

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