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Natural disaster rankings.
From worst to "best":
- Earthquakes: Not predictable, widespread disaster area, no reasonable shelter available
- Hurricanes: Widespread disaster area, no reasonable shelter available (other than evacuation), but short-term predictable
- Volcanoes: Somewhat limited disaster area, no reasonable shelter available (other than evacuation), sometimes short-term predictable
- Blizzards: Widespread disaster area (but relatively limited property damage), reasonable shelter available, short-term predictable
- Serious flooding: Somewhat limited disaster area, no reasonable shelter available (other than evacuation), short-term predictable
- Tornadoes: Limited disaster area, reasonable shelter (unless you're in a mobile home), very-short-term predictable
Feel free to disagree.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
By a factor of ten, the most apocalyptic warning I've ever seen from the NWS.
As of 6:19 this morning, and referring to New Orleans:
THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.
HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW POSSIBLY TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. MANY WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.
AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.
POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.
THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
The Long Division Worm.
Very, very few things make me literally laugh out loud while reading them -- the medium of writing is just a bit too removed to be uproariously funny on a general basis. However, an exception to this rule is Lemony Snicket's introduction to the new book, "Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out," which I will give you the first two paragraphs of before sending you to a link that has the funny parts:
An introduction to a book of stories is like a warning printed on a bottle in a medicine cabinet, because few people bother to read such things, and by the time they learn that there's something dangerous inside they may already be dead. There are plenty of very dangerous things in this book, which is bad news for the characters in the stories but good news for the reader. Without dangerous things, a story tends to be tedious, a word which here means "something you may have to read in school," and although there are many kinds of stories in this book, some you might like and some you might not, none of them are tedious.It may be, however, that you are the sort of person who likes tedious stories. Perhaps you lead a life of danger, and like to unwind at the end of the day with a tedious story, the way some people like a glass of warm milk before bedtime, or perhaps you once fell in love with a tedious man or woman and you like to read tedious stories to remind you of your romantic past. If this is the case, you will not enjoy the stories in this book, but you might enjoy the remainder of this introduction. As a courtesy, I have printed a few excerpts from tedious stories, so that the tedious reader does not feel left out. If you enjoy tedious stories, you may read the following paragraphs for your tedious enjoyment, and if you don't, don't.
You did click, right? Good.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
The rock has been broken.
Petra is disbanding.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
HPS Contest!
Today is August 25th. Kim is due on October 7th. The person who guesses closest to Kim's actual due date without going over (or, um, later) will win a prize. Please e-mail me your guess at mdprins@yahoo.com rather than using the comments -- I'm not wanting any kind of "Price is Right"-style shenanigans in this contest.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
Dean's sister is missing.
You can read the article yourself, but here's the summary of important information to "Gilmore Girls" fans: "Teen actress Scout Taylor-Compton, known to TV viewers for her recurring roles on 'Gilmore Girls' and 'Charmed,' has gone missing from her California home. Her family and police confirmed that the 16-year-old...had not been seen at her home in Apple Valley, about an hour northeast of Los Angeles, since Aug. 12. The San Bernadino Sheriff's Department says there is no indication of foul play and the actress is likely a runaway....She...had a recurring role as Clara Forester on 'Gilmore Girls,' her last appearance coming in October."
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
Grammar virgin.
Oh, I'm sorry, I mispunctuated -- it should be "Grammar, Virgin."
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
Handbell update.
Sending off three pieces to a different publisher than normal tomorrow or Friday:
- "Fantasie on Heinlein" (known to me as "Forty Days and Forty Nights," but it goes by other titles)
- "Be Joyful, Mary" (straightforward, one-ocatve arrangement)
- a two-octave folio of "Lent Sadness," Easter Happiness," and "Ordinary Time Ordinariness," (all with boring new titles, as you can guess)
This will bring to 10 the number of pieces I have outstanding with handbell publishers -- four with GIA, three with MorningStar, one with Harrock Hall, one with Red River, and one with Jeffers. My current accepted-to-rejected ratio for handbell pieces is 1:2 (actual numbers: 3 and 6), and my gut feeling is that I'll get four acceptances out of the current lot, so that seems about in line with the current data.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
My guiltiest television pleasure.
I've mentioned before that I'm a big fan of "Cops," but despite the reality-show nature of the program, I'm not entirely convinced it's a guilty pleasure -- I think the show is a much truer reflection of our police system than any of the 75 fictional cop shows out there (even if I like some of them, like the original "Law & Order"). However, there's no doubt that I feel extremely guilty about liking this guy's informercials, but he's so effortlessly charismatic that I'd rather watch him for a half-hour than nearly any other weekend daytime programming.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
How did this happen? of the week.
I'm in Microsoft Excel. I'm trying to divide 1050 by 12 to come up with a monthly cost of a particular item. So I click on a cell, type a "=" (which, if you don't know, starts an Excel formula), follow that with a "1050/12", and hit "Enter." My result: -3.166667. How did this happen? (Hint: I figured out the answer right away, but I had help.)
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
The iBook fiasco.
I woke up at 5:00a, unintentionally an hour early. I tried to go back to sleep, since the doors weren't supposed to open at RIR (Richmond International Raceway -- where the iBook sale was taking place) until 7:00a, and all reports had implied that no lining up prior to that was going to be allowed. I couldn't go back to sleep, so I turned on the TV at about 5:30a, where I learn that hundreds of people are already lined up at RIR, some as early as 1:30a (in direct violation of the explicit "no camping out beforehand" rule Henrico had set). Traffic is slow and a bit crowded once I get within about 2 miles of the track. I get to the raceway a little before 6:00. The line is about a quarter-mile long. (I figured this out in retrospect using Yahoo! Maps -- the line went from the star along Laburnum between to Florida and Walnut.) The assumption had been that people would drive to RIR and park in their massive parking lot starting at 7:00a, but what those in line had done instead was park on the side streets in the neighborhoods surrounding RIR (many partially on people's lawns, as the streets surrounding RIR are very narrow and not at all made for street parking). I, shockingly, quickly find a parking spot about three blocks from the end of the line at a local park.
I get in line about 6:05a -- not the safest line, either, since on one side of it is a four-line road and on the other side is a ditch. "They weren't supposed to let anyone line up until seven," one woman almost cries to anyone who would listen. "I can't believe the police are letting this happen." Another couple complains that they were going to be there at 4:00, but they thought the no camping rule would prohibit that. Everyone is unhappy, especially because speculation among us is that we're at least 1000 people back in line. The line continues to form -- by 6:20, it's made it to Carolina and is starting to snake up a different side of RIR. Laburnum is bumper-to-bumper traffic as far as the eye can see heading to the raceway by the time I get in line, but by 6:30 it's virtually stopped moving altogether -- a semi on the road (probably not looking for an iBook, but I use it because it was easy to spot) makes it about 500 feet in 20 minutes. A car overheats right next to us, and a few of the guys in line help push it onto the grass median. About 6:50, a guy walks down the line and says, "Hey, forget it, someone counted 1300 people in line up to [a spot a couple hundred feet in front of us], so your chances aren't very good." No one leaves the line.
At 7:00, when the gates open...well, since I wasn't anywhere near the front, I'll give you the report from the Richmond CBS affiliate:
"Several people were injured when crowds stampeded into Richmond International Raceway at 7 a.m. Tuesday, anxious to purchase used $50 iBooks from Henrico County Schools. Although officials said camping was not allowed, some Henrico residents got to the gates just after midnight Monday. The line those people formed fell to chaos when the gates opened and people began sprinting to form lines for purchasing the iBooks."
When our part of the line -- which stayed nice and orderly, thank you -- made it inside the gates about 7:15a, we saw maybe 100 people next to one door, and way more than that next to another door, with a feeder line going into the second group. Rumor had it -- and I haven't been able to substantiate this one way or another -- that the first group had been lining up somewhere else on the complex very early in the morning, and that when the "official" line was designated later on that morning, they were forced to go to the back of the "official" line, even though they had been there before many of the people in front of them. Anyway, it's clear to me that there's more than 1000 people in front of me, so I leave my place in line and start walking up the line to count. I stopped at 1200, which was about the end of the actual line and beginning of the bigger gob of people (which using my sampling and estimating skills, was probably 400-500). I figured there was no way that 600 people in front of me had missed the Henrico-residents only notice, so I decide to leave. There's probably 400 people behind my place in line that made it into the gates of RIR, and as I walk back, I see about another 1000 outside the raceway (estimated from the fact that the line went almost all the way back to where I'd started 90 minutes earlier). The people at the end ask me if I think they have a chance. I tell them there's 1000 iBooks and 2000 people already in the gates. They walk back to their cars. Laburnum is still incredibly crowded. Aside from the 3000-person line, there's probably another 3000 people ready to buy iBooks who either left the line or never had a chance to get out of their cars. And I'm nervous that half of those 2000 people who made it into RIR are going riot after they realize that the police let in twice as many people into the speedway as they have iBooks for. Fiasco, I think, is an appropriate noun.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
Hypothetically speaking, of course.
Let's say you know this wonderful couple, Mik and Tam Snirp. Mik and Tam are sort of, maybe, perhaps considering purchasing a new vehicle and therefore getting rid of one of their current ones, a 2001 Accord. Mik and Tam took the Accord over to a dealer that will buy your car even if you don't buy theirs, XamRac, and they got an offer right at Blue Book trade-in price. They expect a similar offer from whatever dealer they decide to purchase their new vehicle from (assuming they decide to buy a new car, that is). (In the state Mik and Tam live in, they have to pay sales tax on the price of the new car -- in some states, it's new car minus trade-in -- so there's no really good reason to choose one over the other.)
However. There is a another option for the Snirps. Kelly Blue Book also says that, in a private sale, they could expect to get $1700 more than XamRac is offering them. Tam is thinking, "Hmm, we sold our last house by ourselves -- and quickly -- by pricing it smartly (about half way between its true price and its true price minus a 6% percent dealer commission), so perhaps we should try to sell it ourselves for $500 or so below Blue Book, accept any offer that's about $800 or so below, and voila! We're up about $1000!" (Needless to say, if the dealer they would buy their new vehicle from would offer them something close to that, they'd take it without worrying about having to sell it.)
So. Assuming they buy a new vehicle and thus sell their old one -- not a foregone conclusion -- should they try to sell it themselves for the extra $1000?
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
My brain needs a tune-up.
I have a few mental and physical problems -- allergies, the inability to pronounce words correctly, etc. -- but without a doubt the freakiest, at least to me, is a event that happens to me every few months: Awareness during sleep paralysis (which is usually, but somewhat inaccurately, called sleep paralysis for short). In normal sleep paralysis, which everyone has, when you go into REM, your body goes into a mode where it's unable to move -- a good thing, mind, so that you dream that you're Gus, the field-goal-kicking mule, you don't give a swift boot to your partner's butt.
But there's normal people, and then there's me. Awareness during sleep paralysis is exactly what it sounds like: After waking up at about 5:30 this morning, I had an episode where I was half-awake, yet unable to move any part of my body. I tried to move my arm, my fingers, my anything, but I was frozen still. Fifteen seconds or so later (although it felt closer to a minute), I was back to normal awakeness. Phew, I thought, still only half-awake, and I tried to get back to sleep. A couple minutes later, it happened again. A couple minutes after that, it happened again. Too sleepy to actually try to get out of bed (and thus waking up enough to ditch the paralysis), I had probably two-dozen episodes of 15-second paralysis in the space of about an hour, which might have been the most I've ever had at one sitting. (Usually after three or four, I'll go take a walk to shake it off, but for some reason, my mind kept on saying, "Hey, you're sleepy and don't want to get out of bed, and I'm sure this will be the last episode of sleep paralysis you'll have tonight, so just go back to sleep.")
Anyway, despite it not being a concern, medically -- it's considered abnormal bodily behavior, but not dangerous -- I still don't like it. It's really freaky.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
Another one of those things that doesn't bode well for me and my future iBook.
From today's Richmond Times-Dispatch: "Despite exhaustive media coverage of Henrico County's Apple iBook sale and its many transformations, some people still managed to get the date and place wrong. More than 100 people turned out to the Richmond International Raceway yesterday morning, apparently unaware of the date change to this coming Tuesday. Some even showed up at the school's warehouse even though that sale location was scrapped two weeks ago. Potential buyers came from as far as Florida and Michigan, but most people took the news well, said Mychael Dickerson, school spokesman."
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
You can't win if you don't play. Or if you don't know how to play.
I'm running an errand for work, and since the radio was turned to the CBS TV simulcast (I was listening to the shuttle this morning), I decide to leave it at that station for awhile. "The Price is Right" is on, and they're bidding on...something. Everyone overbids twice. Third round of bidding goes like this, in order: $800. $600. $799.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
Oy with the handbells already.
I should talk about something exciting like the wonderful baby shower Kim and I had (where we got to see HPS commenter Lisa for the first time since our wedding -- hi, Lisa), and we'll get to that in the next day or two, but for now, let's talk about my most recent lunchtime activity, which has been trying to figure out what handbell music publishers are doing the best job at selling music. (Because I would like to be a financial success as well as an artistic success as a handbell music composer, I thought it prudent to try to figure out this answer.)
How I did this: Jeffers Handbell Supply, for those not in the know, is by far the largest retailer of handbell music and, well, supplies -- they are the Wal-Mart of the Handbell World, except probably comparatively bigger. Every week, they post an alphabetized list of the top 40 sellers in their massive catalog from the past seven days. I took their past 51 list (they didn't have one for Christmas week), came up with a time-saving way to pull the companies out from these lists, and put all this data into a -- what else? -- Excel spreadsheet.
Anyway, probably no one cares but me, but I went to all the work to pull these numbers for my own purposes, so I’ll share them. Here are the number of times the following companies made it onto Jeffers' top 40 list in an average week (over the past year):
Hope Publishing: 15.3
Choristers Guild: 7.6
Lorenz: 5.6
AGEHR: 3.4
Alfred Publishing: 2.8
Beckenhorst Press: 1.6
Jeffers Handbell Supply: 1.0 (they also have a publishing wing)
(Boring commentary to non-handbell folks now follows.) Orderwise approximately what I would have expected, excepting the absolutely phenomenal performance of Hope; I would have guessed closer to a 5th place finish for them, and they simply demolished everyone. In fact, in general the top seven companies were much further spaced apart than I would have hypothesized -- I would have put Choristers Guild a few places above Beckenhorst, and they are, but I never would have guessed they would have had nearly five times the top 40 placements as the lower company.
Only seven other companies made any top-40 list, and all of them made at least a few: Fred Bock Music, GIA Publications (i.e. my publisher), Ring Out Press, Red River, Ringing Word, SoundForth Publications, and Shawnee Press. Red River was the only one I would have guessed a higher finish for, but that was probably skewed by me playing largely difficult music and them focusing largely on difficult music.
---
Local newscast weird clip of the night.
So it was sports on one of the local stations, and the sportscaster mentioned that Wayne Gretzky was going to become an NHL coach, and they cut to this clip of Wayne Gretzky scoring a goal. An open-net goal. I mean really, is there any more exciting clip they could have shown from Gretzky’s career than him scoring an goal with a pulled goalie?
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
A slight change in focus.
So a month ago or so, I asked for opinions on whether I should focus more on handbell music or on entering contests. The consensus was that there was no consensus, and so I followed that non-advice by both working on a Taize-esque handbell piece and a couple of hymn contests. Part of my concern of going "too handbell" was that I didn't have the remotest notion of how much money I was going to be making from the three works I now have (non-self-) published.
I still don't know for sure how much I'll make -- that depends on the sales, of course -- but I have a bit of a better idea now. The much, much bigger of the two companies, the one that's doing "Balm" and "Cumulo" (I'm leaving off the actual company name because I'm not sure how proprietary this information is), does initial printings of either 1000 or 1500 of every handbell piece, depending on how well they expect it to sell. Assuming, probably correctly, that both of mine have a 1000-copy run, if both of them sell out their "first edition" (and of course the publisher expects them to, or else they wouldn't have printed them), I will make $400 from "Balm" and $500 from "Cumulo." I must admit that I like these odds better than, say, the chance of winning a $1000 contest that 170 people enter, so I think for the short-to-medium term, I'll be focusing on handbell music.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
We might know nothin' about birthin' no babies, but we sure know how to prepare a nursery for them
Although we really hope Baby doesn't show up for at least 7 more weeks, our house is so ready for this little arrival. Matthew has been busy over the past months putting together furniture and babyproofing electrical outlets and I've been sewing up a storm. And finally the baby's room is ready for its blog unveiling.
We actually bought the crib four months ago on our first wave of getting ready for Baby. It looked so lonely in there for months, but now it looks so at home, with linens on the bed and more furniture throughout the room.
On the opposite wall we have the other essential -- the changing table. Finding a suitable one of those proved more challenging than I had expected. Almost all of the changing tables on the market today are changing table/dresser combos. The problem? They don't have rails on the top to ensure baby and the changing pad don't fly off the top of the table. Sure, there's a strap on the changing pad, but the pad's not attached to the table so all the strap does is ensure that if the baby falls off the table, the pad comes with. We finally found an attractive and safe model, which was an early shower gift from my parents on their last visit.
Late last week I finished up my big contribution to Baby's room -- a baby quilt. While the image of the expectant mom is to be knitting booties and little blankies around the clock, I have no idea how to knit and don't really enjoy crocheting all that much. So, I went with my strength and made a crib quilt. I had been wanting to make a quilt with this fish pattern for a while so this seemed like a perfect opportunity. And we stuck with bright primary colors for a gender neutral theme. I still need to finish the matching curtains, but I felt like the quilt was the most important piece since it's more like an heirloom. Ironically, however, with the current SIDS guidelines, infants aren't supposed to sleep with blankets until they're almost 2 years old. Even with that, I feel quite a bit of satisfaction in completing this personalized touch to welcome Baby into our family, and with plenty of time to spare.
oh so lovingly written by
Kimberly
The strangest lineup decision since Magic Johnson played center in the NBA finals.
From the New Hampshire Union-Leader (emphasis mine): "[John] Olerud, who was batting in Ramirez's customary cleanup slot..." And what does Olerud do when placed in this wack position, as he's a singles and doubles hitter? Go 2-for-3 with, you guessed it, a home run.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew
