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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

Don Edwards

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Everything posted by Don Edwards

  1. The Weather.

    Several years ago we had a lightning strike so close to use that we heard the hiss of the leader forming the path of the strike. Wouldn't mind if that doesn't happen again.
  2. Comic for Saturday, May 3, 2025

    Vegetable is both a culinary term and a botanical term. Same for berry. And fruit. In each case, the meanings overlap, but are not identical, between the two contexts. (There's also the horticultural context. The meanings there tend to resemble those in the culinary context, but are not necessarily identical.) A jalapeño is a berry and a fruit, but don't put any in the fruit salad. A blackberry and a pineapple are both fruits but *not* berries. They are drupes. Each of the little balls that a blackberry is made of, and each scale of the pineapple (with what's behind it), is a berry. Go ahead and put some in the fruit salad (after appropriate preparation, particularly for the pineapple). An apple and a pumpkin are fruits and berries. They go in the fruit salad, but not in the mixed-berry compote.
  3. Extra Omnes

    If your language genders nouns, be careful to use the correct gender. Spanish: Video el Papa = I saw the Pope. Video la Papa = I saw the potato. (Some years a go a T-shirt company in Central America made that mistake and sold some amusing novelty shirts.)
  4. Things That Are Just Annoying

    And /me earns a seal of approval for that one.
  5. If you haven't talked to your doctor and your pharmacist about using loperamide in combo with all the other stuff you're on, please do so. Some of its drug interactions are, let's say, unfriendly. (It's also one of a few OTC drugs that I normally use half - or less - of the recommended dose, and still get quite acceptable effectiveness.)
  6. Things That Are Just Annoying

    And why haven't they invented a thermostat with two settings, one for heat and one for AC? (For that matter, why can't I find a portable space heater that, with a single setting, reliably WILL turn on the heat when the temperature in the room is in the low 60s and also reliably WON'T turn on the heat when it's in the upper 70s?)
  7. The stupid, it hurts

    Is this another one? Or a rehash of old news? Because it sounds really similar to something from a year or three ago... but then, a new instance probably would sound rather similar.
  8. NP Comic for Thursday, Apr 24, 2025

    I think we'll have multiple definitions of "alive" depending on context. Just as we do for "fruit." Tomatoes, jalapeño peppers, gourds, olives, cucumbers are all fruits - according to botanists - but aren't normally included in fruit salads. So an AI in a mechanical body could be considered "alive" for a lot of purposes, but not in the context of being a patient at your local hospital's emergency room. (Possibly as part of the staff...)
  9. Comic for Monday, Apr 14, 2025

    Medical care is never free. Cannot be free. Who pays for it, though, varies - with varying results. The sort of system that has produced great results in MANY fields is to have the costs, the benefits, and a large chunk of decision-making authority all land on the same person. Naturally, hardly any government in the world permits that sort of system to be the norm in regard to medical care. The resulting horror stories vary, in part based on the form and extent of government meddling, but every country has them. At least in the US we don't get "this condition will kill you in six months unless we do some surgery... oh, we can schedule that surgery for eight months from now." Which sort of thing, I've heard, is not that unusual in Britain. Instead we get insurance companies denying coverage for treatment that would alter a condition from debilitating to a nuisance. (And a few years ago I was on a medicine that my insurance covered, with a $15 copay for a month's supply... and was also available without prescription, for $6 for a month's supply.)
  10. Comic for Wednesday, Apr 16, 2025

    Rudyard Kipling and Leslie Fish offer a possible explanation...
  11. Comic for Monday, Apr 14, 2025

    The assassin has a deadline?
  12. I'd say it's virtually certain that the $0 insurance payment is for one of two reasons: 1) The hospital hasn't actually sent the claim to insurance (yet - verify that they got your insurance info?). It's been no more, and probably less, than a week. 2) The insurer hasn't finished processing it. They've had even less time, and may not even begin until the 1st of the month.
  13. What Are You Ingesting?

    A complete meal, I believe, is supposed to be 3-6 servings of various things.
  14. Comic for Wednesday, Apr 9, 2025

    "You can play against me. No prizes. The practice will make you better prepared to play against others, where you might win prizes."
  15. Political Discussion Thread (READ FIRST POST)

    Martha Stewart went to prison for failing to figure out that her stockbroker was illegally using insider information on her behalf, without her knowledge or consent. The broker turned state's evidence and got his wrist slapped.
  16. New Music Release Thread

    If I recall correctly, 3 short pieces of an alto clarinet are what go into a clarinet case. Along with some spare reeds and a little container of cork grease. And a small rag attached to one end of a stick which is a bit longer than the longest piece of the clarinet.
  17. Comic for Monday, Mar 31, 2025

    Everyone is weird. Details vary.
  18. New Laptop Thread

    There's the option of an external fan... for testing, any cheap household fan and a place to set it & the drive so the fan is blowing on the drive. Then if that works but is overly inconvenient, you can explore other possible arrangements. I've had to do that a couple times, with an SSD dangling off the edge of the table by its cord (which helpfully means there's air on all sides of it) and the fan on a chair. SSDs slow down when overheated, writing to them heats them, and when you're writing multiple gigabytes...
  19. What Are You Ingesting?

    I've found an odd thing about my favorite cookies. Two of them, is enough. Three of them, is not enough.
  20. Things That Are Just Annoying

    "Rain shower" normally implies one or more short periods of rain, each one probably only over a small area. The alternative is when it rains continuously for hours over a large area. (Or, in the US's Pacific Northwest in winter and spring, continuously for a few days and totaling half an inch.)
  21. Things That Are Just Annoying

    Heh. I did this in '22 on another forum... ♩♩♫♩♬♪♫ Don’t take your warmth away from me Don’t you leave my arms all shivery ‘Cause I wish the night’s not through And waking up is hard to do. Remember when you held me tight Warm blankets wrapped all through the night So sound asleep the whole night through And waking up is hard to do. They say that waking up is hard to do Now I know, I know that it’s true Don’t say that this is the end Instead of waking up I wish that I could fall asleep again I beg of you, don’t make me glower Can’t we stretch the night just one more hour? Come on bed, I’ll stay with you ‘Cause waking up is hard to do. (original gets repetitive after that)
  22. Political Discussion Thread (READ FIRST POST)

    Well, when someone discovers a hole in safety rules, they draft a new rule and expect everyone else - not just the dummy who found the hole - to comply with it. Not hard to expect that the same would apply to security rules. And the people drafting the rules are not paragons of virtue and wisdom. They're people, just like the dummy who demonstrated the hole.
  23. Comic for Friday, Mar 21, 2025

    My speculation is that the spellbook entry for a spell that a Wizard learns by observation is... nonexistent. And Jay is observing spells she hadn't seen before, at a far higher rate than we've seen any of the marked folks acquire spells. So presumably a substantial majority of her spells are learned rather than acquired.
  24. Cats, Dogs, Other pets.

    "I said, "Mr. Purple People Eater, what's your line?" He said, "It's eatin' purple people and it sure is fine" Hard to interpret that as NOT saying that the Purple People Eater eats purple people. Given that, there's nothing in the song that definitively says the creature is, or isn't, purple.