Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Oy vey. Once in a while I hear a dripping sound in the office, but I've never been able to see any sign of any drips. Just now I finally tracked it down. Against the wall under the place where the 2nd-floor roof meets the 3rd-floor rear wall, there's a built in ... thingie with shelves at the bottom, two narrow shelf units with doors on them on either side of a large area backed with mirror-tile, and a single long top shelf above all that. Water is leaking behind the vertical end-board on the side that's against the exterior wall. Where I can't see it, but I can hear it. The visible clue is a wee bit of seepage spreading out from a gap in the moulding at the floor, and the remaining clue is from the directionality of human hearing.

I got my head wet leaning out the 3rd-floor rear window with a flashlight. It looks like the tarpaper from the 2nd-floor roof extends a short distance up the rear wall of the 3rd floor ... and the corner of it under that window (and over that bookcase-thingie) has peeled back. So rain is getting collected there. And it's too stiff for me to push back into place by leaning out the window with a stick. I'm going to have to go out on the roof and see what I can do (if anything). I think I'm going to wait for a) daylight and b) sometime when it's not raining.

At least I managed to put the buckets back into their correct locations in the back room of the 3rd floor before the floor got very wet -- they sit on a towel, which means that when Perrine gets into zoom-kitty mode, things get slid around a bit up there.

And at least the new leak is in a visible spot, so I'll have some clue where to start when I try to fix it. That's something. Hey, maybe if I tie weights to one and of a plastic tarp and throw that out onto the roof, and slam the other end in the window, I can keep rain off of that spot?

Oh yeah, it's raining. And I can't find a comfortable position in which to fall asleep. It's one of those nights.

[Added 2004-12-01 04:13] Tarp has been crudely placed. Now to see how much it helps. If this works, maybe I'll just cover my whole house in blue plastic tarps like I do my tent at Pennsic. I wonder whether the city would have a conniption fit if I did that.

A year ago I quoted theferrett, who said, "[...] given the multitudes of bored, creative people out there, no thought is truly original; they're only unpublicized." Since then, I have found this complementary quote from Abraham Lincoln which I wish I'd known at the time: "Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all."

• Anti-forgery measures embed printer serial number in colour laser printer output. "Although the technology has existed for a long time, printer companies have not been required to notify customers of the feature." (link from blackthornglade)
• Complementary item to that pillow shaped like a torso and arm ... it's the "Girlfriend Lap Pillow (link from vvalkyri
• almeda penned a few verses of a Sesame Street filk, "The People In Your Internet" (and a few more verses were added in comments). Enjoy.
• Fool's World Map Project: "This is a project visualizing the world map which many fools in the world imagine. [...] One day, a Texan asked me a question when I lived in U.S.. The question was 'How many hours does it take to go to Japan by car?'. He didn't know where Japan is, and even bofore that, he didn't know that Japan is an island. And then, I thought. 'What kind of world map is pictured in his mind?' This was a beginning to think that it might be fun to gather those mixed up recognitions of countries and visualize it as a world map imagined by the fools in the world." The map is redrawn as new bizarre thoughts about geography are reported. The most recent update includes 122. Due to a report from a Belgian saying that he heard an American saying "What? England is an island?", England and Europe has been connected by land. and 124. The bottom part of Canada became Mexico since it is clear from the past speech (President Bush referred to "border issue" of Canada and Mexico when Canadian Prime Minister visited United States in 2001. Although there are no border between those two countries actually...). A previous updated included 068. Leaning Tower of Pisa moved to France due to an opinion saying "LeaningTower of Pisa is in France.". (Link from aiglet)
• "The Flapper", instructions for folding "The paper airplane that flaps its wings when it flies. All you need is a piece of typing paper, a penny and an inch of tape." I haven't tried it yet. (Link from aiglet
• MTV Begins Casting On Super-Hero Reality Show. Yeah, you read that right. (Link from evadne_)
• What happens when TSA security screeners choose the wrong crotch to grab without asking -- that being the crotch of Penn Jillette. "[...] freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more of it." Read about the screeners' response to his cool insistence on speaking to a police officer. (Link from yetra, who pointed it out in merde's journal.)
• A cross-genre animation that I haven't been able to download all of over my 56K connection yet (but the glimpse I got has me curious about the rest: Popeye meets Anime. (Link from djwildstar)
• A place where all sorts of funny images wind up: FunPic. (Link from xpioti)
• For this last one, I'm going to have to agree with doubleplus' reaction, "Makes me grab my head like a stunned monkey...": "the perfect romantic gift," a version of Romeo and Juliet customized to substitute the names of yourself and your loved one! Especially since one of the options is a happy ending. (Though I confess that if the sample names used on the web site were "Brad and Janet" instead of "Brad and Helen", I'd have a brain full of attempts to squeeze Columbia, Magenta, Frank, Riff-Raff, and Rocky into the play. Good thing they didn't eh?) I'm afraid to click on lanother link on that page to find out what the same company is offering to do to Jeckyll and Hyde.