Random Thread ~Usagi-Chan ☮ Tūsurī~

[TotallyUncool]

The fire situation in your area is much worse than it is down here - and it seems like places like Sonoma and Lake County get hit every year now. In Southern California it's mostly grass and underbrush, which can burn rapidly, but doesn't provide as much to burn, so they're able to get the fires under control in a relatively short time.
The Tick Fire started on Thursday of last week (I could see the smoke from the office window), the 14 Freeway was closed on Friday, when I drove up to the Antelope Valley on Saturday it was open, and when I drove back on Monday, the main road through the burn area was open. That's pretty quick.
And while that fire was going through most if its life cycle, the Kincade Fire was burning up a huge chunk of Sonoma County, and it's still going on. So in some ways, we've got it relatively easy down here.

[Celedam]

Today I learned there is a significant difference between .tiff files and .tif files. The former is 24-bit encoding (8 bits per color), the latter is 48-bit encoding (16 bits per color), and you are supposed to use the file extension to indicate which it is. The latter is not simply a shorter version of the former, on the idea that all file extensions should be only three characters long (e.g., .jpeg versus .jpg, .html versus .htm).

This is what it's like to be a technical writer. We have to worry about seemingly trivial crap like this, because it actually matters to someone, somewhere.

[Celedam]

For the third year in a row, it's snowing on Halloween…

It snowed again early this morning, and this time it stuck (to grass and roofs, at least, if not to pavement). Looks like about an inch here, and more farther north.

This is very early in the season for snow that sticks. Even in Michigan. So we're looking at a five-month winter, probably.

[Moh]

We're supposed to get a shot of "cold" air come through tomorrow or Saturday. It'll only be in the mid-70s, but compared to the 90s we had recently, I'll take it.

The real good stuff is the reinforcing shot we get next week; the high for Wednesday will be in the mid to upper-60s.

[esm]

We’ve been getting nice fall temperatures here (like 40-60 degrees F) but not so much of pretty fall colors unlike back in the Midwest.

[TotallyUncool]

The L. A. area has no seasons now (although when we did, they weren't much at all). It was 90 F yesterday, and it's supposed to hit 91 today.

I think I miss Fall and Spring the most - the colors and the scents in the air. Northern California has real seasons (or at least it used to - maybe it just has Fire and Not As Much Fire now ), and the Central Coast at least has halfway seasons, but it's been so long that I barely remember what they were like.

[erilaz]

It's quite nice up here in the East Bay right now; temperatures are in the 50–65℉ range this weekend.

I had a busy (and multicultural!) Saturday, hanging out with my German neighbor. We found some good stuff at the local Friends of the Library book sale, then had pizza with an Indian spin at a local place run by Sikh who speaks German. Then we went to the Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive to see a Ukrainian silent comedy from 1929, followed by a visit to Half Price Books, where I used my 40% off coupon on a French coffee table book about Brigitte Bardot, and finally dinner at a Salvadoran restaurant.

[rikkikow]

Happy Veterans Day America!

[esm]

^^ There’s a TON of Salvadoran restaurants in my area (including the ones disguised as Mexican restaurants) because apparently that’s the largest group of Hispanics in DC, and I’m in a super Hispanic area.

[TotallyUncool]

Where I am is pretty much Mexican and Central American (mostly Salvadorean), with some Filipino and South Asian. There's a good mix of hole-in-the-wall restaurants (a lot of them Salvadorean), and the local warehouse supermarket has a tortilleria on premise, along with hot carnitas, frozen pupusas, and lots of other good stuff aimed at local tastes and traditions.