Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Just for fun: the random, useless announcements thread!
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited August 2020
I had a Trappist beer called Rochefort, acknowledged by many as the second-best beer in the world. It is brewed in a ‘quadruple’ process, resulting in 11% ABV. So it’s closer to wine. But delicious, lovely caramel flavours.
It’s not entirely in tune with the precepts, but it was nice.
You had me salivating there! There goes another precept.
There is being the embodiment of the precepts, there is practicing while not completely being in tune with the precepts and then finally there is simply not practicing while not being in tune with the precepts. Too many folks denigrate that wide middle ground where 99% of practitioners ( both monastic & lay ) live most of the time, all because of the first ideal, that is usually only proffered upon teachers by their disciples as their devotion reasons.
1
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
Well hey at least it was brewed by monks... not buddhist monks no, but in the same ballpark.
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
Its very warm today, I just had a shower and I am already sweating again. Not a good day for doing things. We have a term here, “tropenrooster”, which means the roster for the tropics, according to which one isn’t supposed to do labour between 12 and 6 pm. Sounds like a plan!
On my walk this afternoon...I spied a bumble bee busy helping the flowers...
I also bumped into a friend on the track...In a recent discussion I had with him, he started to tell me about how dangerous G5 was...
Anyhow he noticed my mask (which I had hanging off one of my ears at the ready) and and started to tell how wearing a mask was dangerous, after which he went on to tell me Covid19 was made up,and company bosses were making millions selling masks whilst others like Bill Gates will make billions from vaccines...
I asked him to give me links to where he got his information so I could see for myself, however he just said look on the internet there's plenty of proof there...He got in a bit of a huff when I started to say I respected his 'beliefs' ( I was trying to diffuse things with a compromise of sorts) , he said it's not a belief and that he knew this to be true, I asked him how could he be so sure, he said that he did his own research and the finding were true...He abruptly ended the conversation and walked off...
I should point out he is well educated with a couple of phds under his belt...I often see him in the library on his laptop researching...
During our brief encounter he expressed his strong anti mask, anti vaccine, anti Covid19 existence stance and was not open to anything different...
However one thing we both agree on is the dangers of pesticides....he is quite knowledgeable and has been helpful in the past...
We got a quote for new shingles on our roof. A company is soliciting in the area. Worked out a bit cheaper ($5650) than I figure I had ballparked in my head. A bit of a discount as there are other people in the 'hood (including the couple next door) getting their roofs done at the same time, so the delivery and waste disposal costs and travel time are less that way.
So we gave them a deposit, the roof will be done in a few weeks. A bit of a hit with limited finances right now, but they are in really bad shape. The house is sixteen years old now, and the shingles installed on cookie-cutter houses like ours were crap back then. There has been a lot of roofing going on around here this summer.
1
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
Please please, please; make sure it's a bona fide company and not some fly-by-nights stealing your deposit and disappearing into the morning mist......
Much of a shingle replacement cost is about a company commiting to also address the underlaying roof support surface which can decay in the same way as the shingles do. Companies that lock themselves into contracts that can't also deal directly with these unknown costs either have to revise their estimates midway into the job or ignore those underlayment issues because the consequences from doing so will not show up for years longer than a particular roofing company is likely to be around.
But.. at least I hope you aren't Scottish like me, where I had put out three boxes of old shingles every week for over a year for the garbage truck to take away because I was too cheap to pay for a roofing company to do it.
Around here many view the BBB as a bit of a scam.
I lost respect for the the BBB rating system when I tried googling their ratings for Walmart to discover they had 0 records of any complaints against them (ever) in North America.. (that was 5 years ago)
Yeah, I take it all with a healthy measure of salt @how
You can do all your research and due diligence till the cows come home, but at a certain point you have to make a best guess judgement call and hope it all works out in the end. Our guts are telling us this company seems to be a well-run professional outfit.
We did discuss possible unseen damage to the structure underneath and we're aware there may need to be some additional work and costs to it.
lol at the Scottish thing. I remember a Dave Thomas sketch on SCTV back in the '70s. He was doing a introduction into Scottish and one of his example phrases was something like, 'Canni owe it to you? All I have is a fiver!' In prairie cities like Edmonton and Winnipeg, the Ukrainians are the ones with that reputation for thrift.
The shark swam away after the barrage of punches, but despite his efforts Mr Rapley doesn't believe he is the hero – instead saying his wife, injured and bleeding at the time, acted more heroically by getting back onto her board and paddling an agonising 50m to shore alongside a group of locals.
"She's a conservationist and botanist and doing a PhD, so she's worried about the shark," he said.
That's what you call real commitment towards animal welfare....
On my walk along the beach after lunch, it was cold very windy and the seas were choppy..
...and the wind surfers were riding waves of contentment...I stopped awhile to take in their exhilaration ...
Good call. My gut just made a supportive approval noise
2
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
I’ve been looking at what has been happening in the world of graphics cards over the last ten years... my mind has been blown. Graphics cards for 1200 euro’s that have 6000 parallel compute processors capable of pushing 60 billion triangles a second onscreen... and then to think for a few euros an hour you can hire a cloud server with 64 x86 cores and 128 graphics cards all in parallel for your AI training needs. Wow. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.
1
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
Good call. My gut just made a supportive approval noise
You do know your gut contains the second largest concentration of neurons in the body (besides the brain, of course), and is the seat of our secret overlord.
0
federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
Good call. My gut just made a supportive approval noise
You do know your gut contains the second largest concentration of neurons in the body (besides the brain, of course), and is the seat of our secret overlord.
Yes. I have encountered mine, personally, 3 times now.
A beautiful but somewhat sad day...On my walk at lunchtime I saw a rabbit laying on its side by the side of the road, it looks like it had been hit by a car, its eyes were open...I covered its open eye with a large leaf, but the wind blow it away...anyhow I continued on to the beach..
On finishing my walk along the beach I pick up a large shell from the sand and on my way back I stopped to cover its eye, as I walked towards it, I saw a baby bunny on the other side of the road hurrying back to the safety of the wooded area as i approached, I'm under the impression the dead rabbit is its mother...RIP and stay safe baby bunnies ..Om mani padma hung
I stopped eating meat yesterday! I was vegetarian for several years when I was younger. Happy to be back eating in line with my belief that if it's possible to do less harm I should do it.
Took Motorcycle Safety Course - was distracted failed to negotiate a slow speed left turn. Bike landed on my right foot. Three months later, heeled and humbled, retook course, completed and passed end of course test without incident.
Not bad for a 72 year old curmudgeon.
Did you do this as part of getting a drivers license?
I got my drivers license for a motorcycle 51 years ago on a 650 BSA with a ridiculously long extended front end. I still remember the two inspecter rolling their eyes when they spotted the chopper that I was going to use for my drivers test. I was probably only passed for the general entertainment factor that I brought to their testing that day.
I imagine that today they now require a little more from a rider than the ability to slalom through pylons in a parking lot without falling over.
Only just @Shoshin . As luck would have it I had to go pick up dinner for the kids and i tight as the storm hit! I nearly got blown over when I got out of the car. It was nuts!
I was just finishing my walk along the beach I reached the lookout point and overheard some people talking about the dolphins in the bay,,, I did take a video but they were too far away... Anyhow somebody had drone footage of them which they shared on YouTube...There's been quite a few sightings around the island, I guess it's due to not many boats about...
Well I'll be working this afternoon, ( masks on and social distancing) the office overlooks the bay, and for obvious reasons we have a pair of binoculars in the office, they are quite ancient, but function well...I've seen dolphins in the bay a few times when at work...
It's quite mesmerizing seeing them gracefully flow like water in water...
So most of my work time will be spent looking out the window...unless that is some pesky clients come in wanting assistance..
@Shoshin
We sometimes have dolphins pace beside us when we are kayaking in the same direction as them. They often have two modes of contact with us. The first is where they look like wing men in formation arounds us where much visual eying of each other is going on. The other mode is the hunting mode when they are actively deep diving (and this is the same for whales and Orcas) where they'll surface once for an exhalation ( which smells very fishy), re dive for about 10 seconds and surface again a second time for a big inhalation before disappearing again for 2 -10 minutes. I know they can swim 2 - 4 times faster than us so I assume they are just using us as a common convenient re-grouping point.
We will often hear those inhalations and exhalations long before we are able to see them.
There are many healthy alternatives. It is a lot easier these days. I am not a vegetarian but moving in that direction. When circumstances are right might even be a fashionable healthy vogon vegan again ...
There are many healthy alternatives. It is a lot easier these days. I am not a vegetarian but moving in that direction. When circumstances are right might even be a fashionable healthy vogon vegan again ...
Same @lobster - I am virtually a vegetarian myself these days. Eat very little meat. Having said that, I had a hot dog in a roll with tommy sauce (ketchup?) the other day and it was really good....
Well no dolphin visits today...all quiet on the water front (well on the surface anyhow)...Mind you the office was busier than usual, due to level 3 lockdown restrictions when the office was closed, it's the first day open today on level 2 & half...We were rushed off our feet for the first couple of hours...
Yes on the island @Bunks, fortunately both jobs are on the island...
1
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
This morning I had an early appointment with a doctor, only to find that I had been directed to an office which was still under construction... there were labourers busy with plasterboard, planks being sawed, desks being constructed... but no doctors. And so there I was with my sleepy head.
@Kerome said:
This morning I had an early appointment with a doctor, only to find that I had been directed to an office which was still under construction... there were labourers busy with plasterboard, planks being sawed, desks being constructed... but no doctors. And so there I was with my sleepy head.
It reminds me of years ago when British tourists were booking holiday hotels in Spain and on arriving at their destination... the builders were still busy building the hotel ...
Comments
I had a Trappist beer called Rochefort, acknowledged by many as the second-best beer in the world. It is brewed in a ‘quadruple’ process, resulting in 11% ABV. So it’s closer to wine. But delicious, lovely caramel flavours.
It’s not entirely in tune with the precepts, but it was nice.
You had me salivating there! There goes another precept.
There is being the embodiment of the precepts, there is practicing while not completely being in tune with the precepts and then finally there is simply not practicing while not being in tune with the precepts. Too many folks denigrate that wide middle ground where 99% of practitioners ( both monastic & lay ) live most of the time, all because of the first ideal, that is usually only proffered upon teachers by their disciples as their devotion reasons.
Well hey at least it was brewed by monks... not buddhist monks no, but in the same ballpark.
I had two small glasses of scrumpy to celebrate Trappist beer.
... hey scrumpy is made from apples ... one of your five a day ...
We also ate minced cow 😥
mooooo ...
Oh... well,that's ok then... !
I drank foul water
Its very warm today, I just had a shower and I am already sweating again. Not a good day for doing things. We have a term here, “tropenrooster”, which means the roster for the tropics, according to which one isn’t supposed to do labour between 12 and 6 pm. Sounds like a plan!
Well it's a wet windy cold day..I'll try to go for a walk between the rain drops...
Auckland is still in a drought, it doesn't feel like it on the island...
Storm water flowing down to Owhanake Bay...
It was quite warm this afternoon, there was a young couple swimming ...
...but a cold snap is on it's way...
This morning I was fortunate to share meditation with my sisters Sunrise, Crescent Moon & Venus...
On my walk this afternoon...I spied a bumble bee busy helping the flowers...
I also bumped into a friend on the track...In a recent discussion I had with him, he started to tell me about how dangerous G5 was...
Anyhow he noticed my mask (which I had hanging off one of my ears at the ready) and and started to tell how wearing a mask was dangerous, after which he went on to tell me Covid19 was made up,and company bosses were making millions selling masks whilst others like Bill Gates will make billions from vaccines...
I asked him to give me links to where he got his information so I could see for myself, however he just said look on the internet there's plenty of proof there...He got in a bit of a huff when I started to say I respected his 'beliefs' ( I was trying to diffuse things with a compromise of sorts) , he said it's not a belief and that he knew this to be true, I asked him how could he be so sure, he said that he did his own research and the finding were true...He abruptly ended the conversation and walked off...
I should point out he is well educated with a couple of phds under his belt...I often see him in the library on his laptop researching...
During our brief encounter he expressed his strong anti mask, anti vaccine, anti Covid19 existence stance and was not open to anything different...
However one thing we both agree on is the dangers of pesticides....he is quite knowledgeable and has been helpful in the past...
We got a quote for new shingles on our roof. A company is soliciting in the area. Worked out a bit cheaper ($5650) than I figure I had ballparked in my head. A bit of a discount as there are other people in the 'hood (including the couple next door) getting their roofs done at the same time, so the delivery and waste disposal costs and travel time are less that way.
So we gave them a deposit, the roof will be done in a few weeks. A bit of a hit with limited finances right now, but they are in really bad shape. The house is sixteen years old now, and the shingles installed on cookie-cutter houses like ours were crap back then. There has been a lot of roofing going on around here this summer.
Please please, please; make sure it's a bona fide company and not some fly-by-nights stealing your deposit and disappearing into the morning mist......
No, they had pretty good reviews online.
A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.
Much of a shingle replacement cost is about a company commiting to also address the underlaying roof support surface which can decay in the same way as the shingles do. Companies that lock themselves into contracts that can't also deal directly with these unknown costs either have to revise their estimates midway into the job or ignore those underlayment issues because the consequences from doing so will not show up for years longer than a particular roofing company is likely to be around.
But.. at least I hope you aren't Scottish like me, where I had put out three boxes of old shingles every week for over a year for the garbage truck to take away because I was too cheap to pay for a roofing company to do it.
Around here many view the BBB as a bit of a scam.
I lost respect for the the BBB rating system when I tried googling their ratings for Walmart to discover they had 0 records of any complaints against them (ever) in North America.. (that was 5 years ago)
Yeah, I take it all with a healthy measure of salt @how
You can do all your research and due diligence till the cows come home, but at a certain point you have to make a best guess judgement call and hope it all works out in the end. Our guts are telling us this company seems to be a well-run professional outfit.
We did discuss possible unseen damage to the structure underneath and we're aware there may need to be some additional work and costs to it.
lol at the Scottish thing. I remember a Dave Thomas sketch on SCTV back in the '70s. He was doing a introduction into Scottish and one of his example phrases was something like, 'Canni owe it to you? All I have is a fiver!' In prairie cities like Edmonton and Winnipeg, the Ukrainians are the ones with that reputation for thrift.
Husband Punches Shark
That's what you call real commitment towards animal welfare....
This morning's meditation ...the skies were on fire over the island...
On my walk along the beach after lunch, it was cold very windy and the seas were choppy..
...and the wind surfers were riding waves of contentment...I stopped awhile to take in their exhilaration ...
Good call. My gut just made a supportive approval noise
I’ve been looking at what has been happening in the world of graphics cards over the last ten years... my mind has been blown. Graphics cards for 1200 euro’s that have 6000 parallel compute processors capable of pushing 60 billion triangles a second onscreen... and then to think for a few euros an hour you can hire a cloud server with 64 x86 cores and 128 graphics cards all in parallel for your AI training needs. Wow. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.
You do know your gut contains the second largest concentration of neurons in the body (besides the brain, of course), and is the seat of our secret overlord.
Yes. I have encountered mine, personally, 3 times now.
A beautiful but somewhat sad day...On my walk at lunchtime I saw a rabbit laying on its side by the side of the road, it looks like it had been hit by a car, its eyes were open...I covered its open eye with a large leaf, but the wind blow it away...anyhow I continued on to the beach..
On finishing my walk along the beach I pick up a large shell from the sand and on my way back I stopped to cover its eye, as I walked towards it, I saw a baby bunny on the other side of the road hurrying back to the safety of the wooded area as i approached, I'm under the impression the dead rabbit is its mother...RIP and stay safe baby bunnies ..Om mani padma hung
Been going for 4k virtual walks using our new TV. Also train journeys. No commentary. Car drives through the alps ... all sorts.
Fun? Yep.
Love it! I have been following the monks on tours around Thailand today. In the background while working.
Good fun!
Its reviews like this, a real deep-dive from someone who is into measuring fitness, that tempt me to spend some more cash and buy an Apple Watch.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/11/apple-watch-series-5-sports-fitness-in-depth-review.html
I stopped eating meat yesterday!
I was vegetarian for several years when I was younger. Happy to be back eating in line with my belief that if it's possible to do less harm I should do it.
Took Motorcycle Safety Course - was distracted failed to negotiate a slow speed left turn. Bike landed on my right foot. Three months later, heeled and humbled, retook course, completed and passed end of course test without incident.
Not bad for a 72 year old curmudgeon.
Peace to all
Did you do this as part of getting a drivers license?
I got my drivers license for a motorcycle 51 years ago on a 650 BSA with a ridiculously long extended front end. I still remember the two inspecter rolling their eyes when they spotted the chopper that I was going to use for my drivers test. I was probably only passed for the general entertainment factor that I brought to their testing that day.
I imagine that today they now require a little more from a rider than the ability to slalom through pylons in a parking lot without falling over.
Did you weather the storm @Bunks ?
Only just @Shoshin . As luck would have it I had to go pick up dinner for the kids and i tight as the storm hit! I nearly got blown over when I got out of the car. It was nuts!
Yes I heard that it was quite a storm....
A beautiful pre-Spring day...
Roll on Summer....
Today I came out of covid shielding to buy pansies from Lidl. I believe that risking life for flowers is the least I can do ...
I am so brave 🦁
We are having summer but you wouldn’t know it... two weeks of 18 degree temperatures, rain, hail and thunder.
I was just finishing my walk along the beach I reached the lookout point and overheard some people talking about the dolphins in the bay,,, I did take a video but they were too far away... Anyhow somebody had drone footage of them which they shared on YouTube...There's been quite a few sightings around the island, I guess it's due to not many boats about...
Well I'll be working this afternoon, ( masks on and social distancing) the office overlooks the bay, and for obvious reasons we have a pair of binoculars in the office, they are quite ancient, but function well...I've seen dolphins in the bay a few times when at work...
It's quite mesmerizing seeing them gracefully flow like water in water...
So most of my work time will be spent looking out the window...unless that is some pesky clients come in wanting assistance..
@Shoshin
We sometimes have dolphins pace beside us when we are kayaking in the same direction as them. They often have two modes of contact with us. The first is where they look like wing men in formation arounds us where much visual eying of each other is going on. The other mode is the hunting mode when they are actively deep diving (and this is the same for whales and Orcas) where they'll surface once for an exhalation ( which smells very fishy), re dive for about 10 seconds and surface again a second time for a big inhalation before disappearing again for 2 -10 minutes. I know they can swim 2 - 4 times faster than us so I assume they are just using us as a common convenient re-grouping point.
We will often hear those inhalations and exhalations long before we are able to see them.
Same @lobster - I am virtually a vegetarian myself these days. Eat very little meat. Having said that, I had a hot dog in a roll with tommy sauce (ketchup?) the other day and it was really good....
Well no dolphin visits today...all quiet on the water front (well on the surface anyhow)...Mind you the office was busier than usual, due to level 3 lockdown restrictions when the office was closed, it's the first day open today on level 2 & half...We were rushed off our feet for the first couple of hours...
Your office is on the island right @Shoshin ? Not in Auckland?
Yes on the island @Bunks, fortunately both jobs are on the island...
This morning I had an early appointment with a doctor, only to find that I had been directed to an office which was still under construction... there were labourers busy with plasterboard, planks being sawed, desks being constructed... but no doctors. And so there I was with my sleepy head.
I guess you were early for your appointment. I like to show up early for my appointments. Not that early though.
It reminds me of years ago when British tourists were booking holiday hotels in Spain and on arriving at their destination... the builders were still busy building the hotel ...
Had a similar experience in the USA many years ago.
We were trying to get out of Birmingham, Alabama but the GPS kept directing us on to a freeway that hadn't been built yet!
Warm day today on the island....But in the South island it's snowing....