I used to be very active on Facebook, but around 2015 I decided to stop using it as much.
Now I will get on maybe once every other week (if that).
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I used to be very active on Facebook, but around 2015 I decided to stop using it as much.
Now I will get on maybe once every other week (if that).
I honestly don't know what the Australia debate is really about. I haven't been paying attention.
I pretty much never use Facebook, although I do have an account. I honestly don't get what people see in it. I can see the value in staying in touch with old friends but that's about it.
@funky lately I've found value in FB groups for things that interest me. I have a Camaro - so I'm in a Camaro group. We post pics of our cars, pick on Mustangs - really mature stuff!
I live in CT, not far from the very old Italian immigrant neighborhood of Wooster Street in New Haven. Home to world famous pizza places like Pepe's, Modern and Sally's. We have a huge group of Italian cooks that are in some way related to this area or just liking on Italian American food, we post recipes and techniques constantly.
I like taking nature pics - live on a large brook with water-company green space for a backyard. FB has a group for that - CT Nature Lovers.
Otherwise its a great place to argue politics with your relatives, lol!
Yeah, I'm on FB daily, I do a little messaging. Don't post much because I lead a boring life. lol
It use to be great, lots of post from friends and family about what was going on but most of that has faded. Probably they moved on to other things. So much political hate crap people are posting, I've had to unfollow several people. I'm amazed at the importance that people place on FB and what they do. But I'm not a big social media type. Probably because I don't use a cell phone. I carry one for when I go places for emergencies.
That's how I grew up. We had the only buildable spot in a valley that was all flood plain easement controlled by the Army Corp of Engineers. It was the overflow for a distant flood control dam. If the dam closed, it would back the reservoir up the river the dam was on, then up a tiny outlet from a lake, fill the lake, then overflow into the valley I lived in. That happened once....and I was off at grad school, so I missed it. Doggone it.Quote:
Originally Posted by szlamany
The house was about one inch away from being an island.
It was an awesome place to grow up, though. There were a few square miles of land that couldn't be developed, which had every type of habitat that can be found in New Hampshire aside from seashore and alpine.
I've always wanted to put a Davinci bridge across this brook. Moved here from NYC in 72. Was a shock to say the least!
The brook I lived on was larger. I could canoe up it for a couple miles, and down it until it merged with a larger river. Had to jump a whole lot of beaver dams in either direction, though. Well, jump them when going downstream, haul over them when going upstream. In the entire run of that brook, from where you could nearly step across it down to the mouth, there were only three places that were a little rocky. Two were short, one being possibly man-made, where an ancient...well, I think it was probably a road, at one time, crossed it. The third was longer. There was a dam in the middle of that longer stretch with an old, and still operable, water mill. I worked for the guy who owned the mill, one summer. We spent a day planing lumber using an old low-velocity wood plane driven by a flat belt off a horizontal turbine. Pretty cool.
Is that a picture of where you live ? Just speechless!Quote:
Originally Posted by szlamany
Yes - my back yard - thanks! About an hour out of NYC, if you can believe that! My father purchased this house 50 years ago, and I am keeping it in the family!Quote:
Originally Posted by Delaney
About a mile upstream is a dam for a public water supply reservoir. I own about 70 feet on the other side, and then there is a right-of-way that belongs to the water company. Buried along that right-of-way is a huge water pipe - must be 2 feet in diameter, that moves water from one reservoir to another.
I've been able to trace my genealogy back to France and it is pretty cool. From youngest (paternal grandmother) to oldest
- Rader's from Jeanerette, LA
- Hebert's from Jeanerette, LA
- Lebouef's from somewhere in Lafourche/Terrebonne parish
- Dubier's from Edgar, LA
- Dubier's from somewhere in Nova Scotia, Canada
- Chaumont's/Pire's from La Crete in Haute-Marne, France and the Chaumont's/Huz's from Les Ayvelles, France
It appears as if my Dubier grandfather great(x4) grandfather was killed during the force migration from Canada but his wife (and only son) survived but immigrated to Louisiana.
Uh-oh, we might be distantly related. That name isn't familiar, but my maternal grandmother's family is from up in that area. They were descended from Hessian mercenaries left behind by the British after the American Revolution. Considering the size of the populations up there, the family tree starts to resemble a ladder back then.Quote:
Originally Posted by dday9
Still, my ancestors were generally from Prince Edward Island, so quite possibly there is no link.
I was mistaken, it was actually Quebec.
Interesting north and eastern France, when things are back to normal you should try and go visit, France is a wonderful country great place for a holiday.Quote:
I've been able to trace my genealogy back to France and it is pretty cool. From youngest (paternal grandmother) to oldest
I have always had a bid of French pride because I knew that my family immigrated from France, either directly or indirectly, and having this bit of information just sort of solidifies it.
I would love to visit France one day.
It looks like on one side I have a 5th great-grandfather who immigrated straight from St Malo, Nievre, Bourgogne, France to Abbeville, LA.
So I have some family that took a route from Canada and others who came straight from France.
My inner pedant is screaming at me to point out that they emigrated from France and immigrated to Canada. I'm really ashamed of my inner pedant because pointing that out adds no value to an otherwise interesting story.Quote:
my family immigrated from France
I'm starting to understand the phrase "back in the day" much better!
Saint Malo is a port in brittany but in the Nièvre dpt, there is Saint-Malo-en-Donziois (127 inhabitants...) : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Malo-en-DonzioisQuote:
Originally Posted by dday9
I always thought St. Malo was more of a marsh, but I only had a squishy, sugary feeling about it.
it is a fortified city :
Saint-malo
I'm sure centuries of war with England had something to do with that?
-stares at FunkyDexter-
-shifts stare to Delaney-
fight. fight. Fight. FIGHT, FIGHT FIGHT!
Well, at least the marsh of Malo is still squishy.
ok I just understood the pun you have done before about Malo. that's a good one :thumb: Please forgive the poor English language speaker I am, I need time to understand the puns you make.
Shaggy after an all night bender!
Actually, it's more like me after a year of COVID.
I've lost weight since COVID started. I was at 198, which was too much. Now I'm at 170, which is "normal" on the BMI chart.
My ideal weight is 160, so I don't have too far to go, but I seemed to have plateaued at 170 for the past 2 months.
I gained a bit, then lost it, so I'm at the same weight I was at before the pandemic. On the other hand, I've been staying away from the gym, which can mean that staying the same weight isn't necessarily meaningful. Other times when I have been out of the gym for a length of time, as soon as I go back, I jump five pounds, or more, in the first couple days.
True dat!
I am working on an estimate for a client right now and that comic hits pretty hard.
That's the way it ALWAYS works, for me. I accept the blame, too. It just keeps things going smoothly.
I may be getting a job building a maintenance ticketing system for an offshore company.
The job is fairly straightforward, but this will be the first offshore company I do solo work for. So it is pretty exciting.
He's French and I'm British. We'll need 100 years for that.Quote:
-stares at FunkyDexter-
-shifts stare to Delaney-
fight. fight. Fight. FIGHT, FIGHT FIGHT!
yes with pauses for breakfast, lunch and diner (because food is important) + tea time for my english friend + a maxi pause in august and unlimited pause during the french strikes :D:p
Lent is here, but because of our unusually long and cold winter the crawfish aren't all that big.
I guess it'll be beans for me.
Ooh, I recently discovered Red Beans and Rice. You Weezy Annas really know what to do with a bean.
This is probably heresy but it goes great with Jumbalaya... you're welcome.
I put just about everything in a jambalaya. I cooked one yesterday and it had chicken gizzards, ground meat, and sausage. Then I mixed in my green beans in my own bowl (my wife doesn't like it when I do it to the whole pot).Quote:
Originally Posted by FunkyDexter
You'd need MORE than 100 years, you'd just say it was 100.Quote:
Originally Posted by FunkyDexter
See, that's one of the things about the south: Your crawfish only live for one year (or two, they can manage that). Up here, a one year old is less than an inch long, and I'm not entirely sure that those are just one. They may be two. They can live for perhaps eight, or so, and STILL don't get as big as the ones you get.Quote:
Originally Posted by dday9
Less than that if DD gets his hands on 'em.Quote:
Your crawfish only live for one year
I'm not sure I was right, anyways. They might have a two year life cycle in the south.
There's a very strange restaurant up here that seems to be open for a couple days out of the year to serve one specific meal: Crayfish. The thing is, I think I know where they get those crayfish, which would be a reach of the Snake River which is downstream of a whole lot of agricultural areas. I'm not sure I'd be willing to eat crayfish (or anything else) taken from that stretch of that river, and I'm not sure that any other river in this state can grow large crayfish.
I moved to a little town in Lafourche Parish where most of our crawfish are from the spillways, but where I used to live we had pond crawfish.
There is this beautiful cycle where south-central Louisiana grows rice four 3/4 out of the year, but that one quarter they raise crawfish. It is beneficial because somehow the crawfish replenish the nutrients that help the rice grow but at the same time the crawfish get huge.
So if you drive along I-10, starting around Lacassine up until around Pont Breaux you'll see where the rice is grown and the crawfish are raised. This stretches as far north as Eunice and as far south as Abbeville.
I secured that contract job for the offshore company.
I should make a good chunk of money and hopefully establish myself as a go-to guy for programming work on the bayou.
good news ! :thumb:
Are those burrowing crayfish? You have some vigorous excavators down there, which should be able to turn over the sediments pretty thoroughly. That should bring soils from deeper down up to the surface, while burying some organics, which will eventually replenish the whole soil column.
Those are kind of weird animals. Up here, our crayfish all seem to be migratory. They will excavate just a little. Just enough to get under a rock or log, but during the summer, they tend not to stay in the same place for more than a day or so, before moving to a new hidey hole.
They're also maddeningly hard to track up here. I did a mark and recapture study on them many years back, and found virtually none of my marked animals a week after marking them. Normally, that would suggest that the population is enormous, but when it comes to crayfish, it turns out that it doesn't mean a thing. A few years after I tried that, another group put tiny radio transmitters on some crayfish and tracked them. As it turns out, if you disturb these migratory species, they flee the area. For about a week after handling, they travel great distances each day, but then they settle down and stop moving around as much. So, when I marked the animals, they immediately fled the study area, which is why I found so very few of my marked animals a week later. Of course, that makes most behavioral studies on crayfish impossible, since their response to disturbance is to flee for a week. The investigator alters the study animals, so seeing normal behavior is exceedingly difficult.
"Holy Heisenberg" Batman!
Now we got Schrodinger's Crayfish!
That's for certain! Or not?
They sure act that way. It's just like a crayfish to be clawing there way back into things, though.
By the way, you should have some fascinating crayfish around you. With that brook in your back yard, have you ever found a crayfish out wandering your lawn on a rainy day? I've heard of cross-land migration in your part of the country, and you have the place for it.
I've encountered crayfish out and about on two hikes. One was the AT in Virginia. That time, I was on the crest of a ridge in hurricane Hugo, so I couldn't see very far in the blowing clouds and rain. I knew I was on a ridge, but that was all. I have no idea where that crayfish came from, or why, but it was in the middle of the trail waving its claws at me. The second one was on a trail in the Ozarks of Arkansas. I was a good hundred meters from the river, but parallel to it, and there was a crayfish crossing the trail and heading up the hillside away from the river. Very strange.
Where's my Quantum Crayfish T-shirt?
We get crawfish in our backyard all the time. They build up the crawfish mounds that is basically little bits of mud rolled up into little hills:
Attachment 180377
Edit - I hate attaching images after "fixes" to the forums. Here is a direct link to the image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5e/5c...d3da8a7b99.jpg
When I was a kid we used to take fishing lines with a hook and wind them down the mound. I remember one time my Nonc James pulled one up.
@shaggy - one post-hurricane huge flood event, the good lord decided I needed someones old metal boat. It took a good beating getting as far as it did - I think the most likely spot it came from has to be over 1500 feet upstream! At any rate, back in those days, with my then younger twin boys we would float out over the water in that boat and much to our surprise we saw many little white "early stage" crayfish - maybe inch long if I'm recalling.
Does that even make sense?
I've noticed the mallard ducks wade around in the shallowest parts turning their heads sideways at eyeball something that they must really be enjoying.
The US has the vast majority of species of crayfish in the world, about 360 out of 500. Of those, the west has a few (Idaho has something like 2 native species), while the east has the rest. Therefore, I wouldn't begin to generalize about crayfish. The castle builders that DDay is talking about are both cool....and a total nuisance if you have dikes that you don't want holes in. I've seen white crayfish, red crayfish, blue crayfish...and I'm now thinking of a Dr. Seuss rhyme, but really, I couldn't say what is or is not possible.
One thing, though, is that out here, crayfish about an inch long are pretty young. They start out as pretty nearly transparent flecks that are hard to see in the best of circumstances. They're perhaps an eighth of an inch long, or less, so really small. I rarely see them until they get up near that one inch size, which I suspect means that they spend time before that largely hiding. For that reason, I've never been certain whether the inch long crayfish I see out here are one year old, or two.
They're food for darn near everything, not just DDay, and the eat almost as much. When we'd go swimming in the brook, if you spent too long standing in one place, they'd pinch a toe. We'd also fish for them with worms. You could put a worm on a hook and let it land beside a likely looking rock. Quite often, a crayfish would grab the worm and wouldn't let go even after you had pulled them out of the water.
When I was growing up, I had some crayfish in a tank. They'd get out by climbing, claw over claw, up the air hose, so whenever I went into my room, I'd look to see if the crayfish were there. If they were not, I'd listen carefully, and could generally hear them wandering around on the wood floor. My mother also found one coming through the downstairs bathroom with both cats following at a respectful distance. They were curious, but were not at all sure what they were following.
I have 9,999 posts. I don't want to post anything to mess it up.
I got over that pretty quickly.
If only chit-chat posts counted I'd have at least 4,638 more just from the post race :eek:
4,639
4,640...
And with all that, nobody has yet knocked off the king.
It just goes to show how incredibly prolific some of the early Post Racers were.
I'm not sure I'm proud to be in the top 20 - I'll never get that time back again, lol!