CurlyShavings

Remember, you heard it first here! A giant spider is menacing Cleveland. No, it isn't red and blue, only out of focus.

So, what is it? The Cleveland Water Crib Web Cam has a spider whose web has been in front of it for some months now. Every once in a while he/she/it gets into a position and menaces our fair city's skyline.

I just thought I'd share.

So check the live images every once in a while (this image was from around 8pm today) and see what the spider is doing! Here's the spider in September.

Now for the real news. Why is there a web cam on one of Cleveland's water intake cribs? I'm not sure, but it is part of Green Energy Ohio's feasibility study of wind power generation off Ohio's north shore. Looking at the streaming data from the anemometers, etc. placed at various levels, we ought to be able to work something out.

Like Sarah Taylor (disclosure, she's my neighbor), I feel strongly that we ought to have wind power generation on the Cleveland waterfront. Check out her website, Windustrious.com, see the opening Flash presentation and get a feel for why this makes sense. Please approach it with an open mind; she has answers for all your objections, from bird body counts to lake-bed vibrations.

What's a three-snake day? One: a really cool-looking big water snake (probably a Northern Water Snake) in the Miles River (brackish) while we were visiting the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Two: a somewhat familiar (and smaller) water snake not too far from the first. Three: a little garter snake gorging herself (?) on crickets in our hosts' basement.

Yes, it was that good of a day. Boats, boat-building, snakes -- it sometimes doesn't get much better than that! (Oh, and they had a reasonably-priced Aubrey/Maturin that I was looking for!)

Here's a pointless clip of us at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum on one of their boats, the Katie G.

I was able to pick up O'Brian's The Thirteen Gun Salute while at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. While I hope to finish soon and provide more on this book, here's a quote that really needs to be reproduced here.

It had always appeared to [Jack], that one of the purest joys in the world was sailing a small, well-conceived, weatherly boat: the purest form of sailing too, with the sheet alive in one's hand, the tiller quivering under the crook of one's knee and the boat's instant response to the movement of either, and to the roll and the breeze. A more stirring, obvious joy, of course, in a moderate gale and a lively sea, but there was also a subtle delight in gliding over smooth water, coaxing every ounce of thrust from what light air there was: an infinitely varied joy.

(This Scribbling dates back to November 4th, 2005.)

It happened again. Crossing Euclid Avenue from my favorite Starbucks™, I felt a familiar sensation as drips from my Grande Komodo Dragon scalded my fingers.

I've noticed it for years: the "SOLO Traveler© Lid" (No. TL 316 LID) just doesn't form a perfect seal around the top of the No. 316TA 1182 I-05 cup 16oz (473ml) Special Design Hot Cup that usually accompanies me back from my twice-weekly trip to Starbucks™. The cup's seam gets in the way.

Now, there are really two problems here.

The seam leaks when the cup's liquid sloshes onto that seam/lid intersection. That's largely a nuisance (i.e., dribbling down my fingers as I navigate the concrete and asphalt patchwork currently making up Euclid Avenue). Whose fault is that? It may be the City of Cleveland's for the now-incessant excavate-repair-rest-repeat they've been practicing this year and are poised to continue for another few. [Update: Current Euclid construction completion estimate at our corner is 2nd quarter 2008.] Perhaps it's SOLO's for not engineering a tight enough seal between the lid and the cup.

But it's probably my own fault for not allowing any "room for cream". (At 10.6 cents per fluid ounce, [Update: Now 11.1875] I want every drop I can get into my cup.)

The other problem is what I call the Lid/Seam Alignment Problem.

When the seam is within 30 degrees of the lid's opening, the leak ceases being a nuisance problem and now becomes a laundry problem. And because I drink my Java in the AM, it's not
an end-of-the-day laundry problem but a first-thing-in-the-morning laundry problem.

Here's what happens: When the seam is within 30 degrees of the lid's opening and you position the cup to deliver its payload to your waiting mouth ("Caution: Contents Hot"), a tiny gap between the lid and the cup's imperfect rim allows a drop of coffee to escape to the outside of the cup. If you collect a couple of these drops under the lid's edge, watch out because it will soon let go and deposit itself on your tie, your shirt, your blouse—whatever is in its path.

You get to wear that stain the rest of the day.

My frustration here is that this whole issue is avoidable. If my Barista would just ensure that the cup's seam is opposite the lid's opening (twelve-o'clock rather than four–to–eight-o'clock), this could all be avoided.

Or perhaps I should stop at the counter, inspect the Lid/Seam Alignment and perform a Number 316 un-alignment whenever I see that such an alignment exists.

I approached Bobby who seems to run this Starbucks™ (name has not been changed to protect his innocence mostly because he's such a great guy). He confirmed the problem and went on to disclose that it isn't in any of the training manuals and doesn't appear to be widespread knowledge in the Barista community.

Why? Why is it that everyone but Starbucks™ knows not to put the lid's opening in line with the cup's seam? Ask any serious consumer of their dihydrotrimethylpurinedione and they can tell you some variation of the "drip on my shirt" story.

Until it is added to their corporate training materials and becomes widespread Barista knowledge, it looks like it is up to me to save my shirt and always check for Lid/Seam Alignment before that first sip.

Now if they could just acknowledge and address the Insufficient Air Intake Port Problem…

I read John le Carré's classic, The spy who came in from the cold while staying at a relative's house in Annapolis (10/5-11/2007). Much of le Carré's newer stuff is post-Cold War and simply doesn't resonate with me, even things that take place in Central America, my old stomping grounds. Having only been in former East Germany twice, this inversion strikes me as strange but perhaps that simply means that le Carré should stick with what he knows and does well (Cold War) and that he should leave the present alone.

This book takes place in le Carré's native element and is a classic. His choice of colors is appropriately dimmed, the reader is marvelously left in the dark and the twists and turns of the story's landscape are expertly driven.