Pictures from today - Robots, fire, symmetrical homes, bay life.

clicks embiggen. Fire is a video. Of Fire. in a ring. where we made s'mores.

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Here is my labor day in reverse

off to bed early

opted not to labor too hard on lj entry

made smores in the fire ring

Mexico for dinner

Played some portal - finished bonus levels.

napped and lazed

2 mile walk, including the bay and a robot backyard

woke up early

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According to identity management firm Cyber-Ark's annual 'Trust, Security & Passwords' survey, a whopping 88% of IT administrators would steal CEO passwords, customer database, research and development plans, financial reports, M&A plans and the company's list of privileged passwords if they were suddenly laid off. The survey also found that one third of IT staff admitted to snooping around the network, looking at highly confidential information, such as salary details and people's personal emails.

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1 year ago - went to rennfest (bullet points and pics), pictures of pye and newt kitty

2 years ago - the tick / pajama police, Zoom, car projections

3 years ago - Got fresh paid links, July 2002 Lumbee Entry (Active just 2 days ago!), Palm doodles, head photos and newt, foamy, Mind controlling death parasites, help Katrina critter

4 years ago - dream cartoon linker, The Forgotten, sample email from a stranger,Mountain Dew: Pitch Black, First Grade, Reiger resigning as chief of DCF, Stream of thought alphabet

5 years ago - Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang, Red Haired Barbarians, Aunt Jemima, $100K fart, esteem meme, dynamite magazine, Newt pic, flex points, cookie puss, annoying or not, bro stuff, blogshares, earthquakes, toontown, Frankie bugs me

6 years ago - heroclix, art fair, jellybath, skyscrapers (here's Maryland), Ambient Findability, web hits, bike in the meter room

7 years ago - adultery, lj, rollercoaster

8 years ago - playing with html, long day at work, September b'days, Sacrifice to the Horned Goat, pesky work poop, coffee, bearded sadness, road trip, headache

Restless night sleeping, accidentally booted Newt off the bed once, but he stuck with me throughout the night. BHK was restless too, but I didn't leg-sweep her out. Pye visited briefly, but high-tailed it after the barest commotion. I dreamt that BHK and I were hunting animals, tagging them for reference, and re-releasing 'em into the wild. A side effect of geocaching, perhaps?

Bugah & Neil went fishing - to no avail, as the water was too choppy.

Half day tomorrow! North Beach Fireworks are going to be something else!

via jwz - Search for Lonesome George mate is long shot

While scientists search for a mate for "Lonesome George" -- the last known survivor of a species of Galapagos tortoise -- some say the effort to fend off extinction may be in vain. Even if a mate is found, George has not been interested in reproducing in the past and may not know how, former keepers and others who have worked with him said.

"He has problems ... he probably never saw a female and male of his own species reproducing," said Swiss biologist Sveva Grigioni, who worked with George 13 years ago.

Grigioni, now back in Switzerland, said she could normally get tortoises to ejaculate within minutes, but spent months manually stimulating George and never extracted semen from him.

Age is not George's problem. He is estimated at between 60 and 90 years old, and could live to be 200 and still reproduce, scientists say.

The visual differences in tortoises from different islands were among the features of the Galapagos that helped 19th Century British naturalist Charles Darwin formulate his theory of evolution. Since then, the tortoises have been hunted by pirates for their meat and their habitat eaten away by goats introduced onto the islands. George, who weighs 198 pounds, was found on Pinta in 1971.

Reviewing Openads for the company's ad server for the web. it seems pretty reputable and reliable, thus far.

Fire drill this morning was a welcome break in the day - cool outside, everyone seemed laid back and calm - helped move the rest of the time that much more rapidly. the 2pm meeting went well... lots of good information for me to ruminate over the next few projects. I really dig that I'm in an environment that will allow me to use the skills I have! (Last gig wasn't bad, but a lot of repetition. This time, there's a lot of room for creative thought along with brute force.

Day closed with S'mores over a fire pit, some preview fireworks, and then Bugah and I played a bit of "Destroy All Humans". Not a bad thing.

Brush Fire Near Homes & Monkey Cages (video at the link)



(CBS4 News) SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE Firefighters are working to douse the flames of yet another South Florida brush fire.

This time, the flames are burning in Southwest Miami-Dade, near 163rd Avenue and SW 184th Street.

The fire is burning dangerously close to homes, vehicles and what appears to be some sort of facility with cages of monkeys.

The smoke is blowing over the monkey’s cages as crews rush to put out the fire before it spreads even larger.

Most of the fire appears to be smoldering and there are plenty of hot spots.

-via

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Mathematical analyses of humpback whale songs reveal complex grammatical rules!

Although the researchers say these songs don’t meet the linguistic rigor necessary for a true language, this is the first evidence that animals other than humans use a hierarchical structure of communication. Whales have also been found to sing in dialects.

During mating season, which lasts six months, all humpback males sing the same song to woo the ladies. Over time, the group’s song becomes progressively more complex, although researchers don’t know quite why.

Presumably, as one whale finds mating success by tinkering with the song style, the rest of the guys imitate it to better their chances, said study co-author Ryuji Suzuki, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellow.

VIA