Suguay Productions

So Winter has come to Florida. Actually, it’s been here about a week now. I don’t mean Winter only in name and general time of year for the northern hemisphere. I mean Winter in the sense that it’s COLD!!

For you Northerners or others from cold climes, I understand that for you what I am about to describe and whimper about is a heat wave by your standards. Please refer to the title and note that I’m writing this from Florida, mid-way down at that. It’s COLD!

You probably think I’m complaining about a paltry 50 or 60 degrees. Which I do consider cold. Mind you most of us feel the 50’s are starting to reach arctic temperatures. However, we have had a few days that we never got up to that lovely temperature. Yes, we have had a true cold spell. It was 31 where I live this morning. Yesterday it was 29.

I confess, I don’t like the cold much. I have, however, been trying to be less cranky about it and accept it and just deal with it. I was doing fine up until yesterday morning. That 29 degrees came with wind-chills and when it managed to work its way through 2 shirts, a denim jacket and a leather coat, well, I ceased to be well humored about it. And on top of that when I got to work it was cold in my office. I could not get warm. I had to leave on 2 coats just to function. It was well after noon before my nose thawed.

At this point I was done with Winter. We’ve had a week of it. And it’s been a week of wicked cold weather for us. So to really put the nail in the coffin on my sense of humor regarding the cold?? I go to the gym and work out which was fine. I go to take a shower and there is no hot water. Wait for it… So I think I will get in the nice hot sauna to warm up really quick. It’s off, and has been for some time because the sauna isn’t hot.

Now yes, it is supposed to get warmer tomorrow. I think we will have highs in the 50’s. We are also going to get rain, then it’s going to get colder and sometime between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning there are parts of Northern Central Florida that will be seeing…SNOW FLURRIES and SLEET. I’m not joking. And Saturday is going to be cold and wet.

You can call me a wimp all you want. I know we are not facing the same cold and snow that other places are. We are not supposed to, this is a sub-tropical climate. We are not supposed to need gloves and scarves and parkas. It’s just wrong.

Aside from my complaints about these temps, there are real reasons other than comfort to not be very happy with them. It has to do with the crops that grow this time of year here. Think about it the next time you’re sipping Orange Juice with your breakfast. The Citrus crops are really in danger from so many nights of such cold temps and the fact that it hasn’t been getting warm enough in the day just makes it that much worse. They do need a bit of a freeze to help them along, just not like this. Then there is all the foliage. Things like the ferns that go in those Valentines flowers. And house plants and strawberries.

And while I complain and whine about the cold and how I don’t like it and what happens to the crops and all, there is one benefit for sure…a hard freeze is supposed to help keep the mosquito population down in the summer. This is a huge bonus. It’s also possible that it has reached far enough south and east that this cold will help cool the waters of the reef off the east coast and maybe, just maybe help the coral rebound a little. That’s something to hope for.

And that’s the Winter Weatherland that is Florida this year.

And oh yeah, Happy New Year. Welcome to 2010.

Cheers.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

Last year I picked up the book ‘Prelude to Foundation’ by Isaac Asimov. I read it through, though at one point I nearly gave up as I found it a bit long in it’s telling. I’m glad I didn’t give up. It was very good background for the rest of the Foundation series. It’s one of those books that I’m not sure if it was written first or if it was written afterwards and meant to explain some things. And I have a sneaking suspicion
that I maybe should have read the Robot Novels first. But I digress.

This year I decided it was time to work my way through the book I have that is the core of the Foundation Series. It happens to be a complitation of ‘Foundation’, ‘Foundation and Empire’ and ‘Second Foundation’. It’s an old copy in hardbound. I approached it with the idea that I would read in entirety Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series.

I found reading it very interesting. Particularly the whole idea that this plan could not fail. There is such faith in it. It’s much like I suspect some religious zealots experience. They have such faith and belief that their way is right and true and destined to be the ‘One’ whatever.

While reading it I would at times find myself speculating as to the potential inevitablity of some of my actions over the years. Not to say that I think some one thing was always going to happen. Much like in the stories, there is always a set of possibilities or probablilities.

In the stories, many people believe in the inevitability of certain changes and certain advancements. However, that they truly will come is only a probability. Some states have a high probablility and some states have lower probability. It ties nicely with Quantum Physics and the predicament of Schroedinger’s Cat. Or the state of a Quantum partical at any given point.

The mathematics of the Plan in the Foundation Series is interesting. It’s interesting in that it is based on mob mentality essentially. Not mob mentality in the sense of an unruly mob that causes trouble and some people just get caught up in it. More the idea that based on historical behaviours the chances of societal changes happening and sustaining, can be predicted. The larger the mob the greater the accuracy for the higher probablility to occur.

And so as I’ve been reading these stories, when I’m doing something that doesn’t require much extra brain power, I find myself contemplating the existence of this sort of science. Let’s face it, we practice it to a degree already. A great example is the Actuarial Sciences. The people that work in this field are responsible for taking segments of data and making models of that data in a manner to determine the profitability of something. The insurance industry makes considerable use of this science. Economist also practice similar wizardry. They look at historical data and current data and try to predict the likelihood of a recession, or the end of a recession or a variety of other economic quandries.

And so, what and interesting read the Foundation Series has been.

Cheers.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

I have stuff. Sometimes, like when I moved, I feel like I have too much stuff. And by some people’s standards, I may have too much stuff. I know I have a lot of stuff. I discover it most when I have something new that I have obtained, for one reason or another, and I attempt to find a place to put it.

So yes, there is a solution to the problem of stuff.
Get rid of it. That’s all well and good. I don’t think there are a lot of us that can just walk into a room of their stuff and just say ‘Get rid of it all.’ This is evidenced by watching people on the tv show ‘Clean House’. There are some people that just can’t let go. We may think that they are just being childish or whatever. We think they should just let it go. We don’t usually think that if that were our item that we had had for so long that maybe we would have trouble giving it up too. Even when getting rid of an obviously delapidated chair and being promised a new one there is hesitation.

I understand why sometimes. In the case of the chair. Maybe the person took a long time looking to find a chair that fit just right, was the right size and height, (I have this problem. I’m short and many chairs are just a little too tall for my complete comfort.). Perhaps they have had the home for a very long time and for half that time they had no furniture in the living room. Finally they found furniture that they could use. It may not be good stuff, it may be dirty or any number of other issues. But they finally have furniture.

There are reasons it’s hard to get rid of stuff. Unfortunately, it doesn’t just apply to big items like furniture. It applies to little things. Things like comic books for that collection you had as a kid or that, now that you are older, you think you are going to start and you haven’t touched them in 10 or 15 years nor have you added to the collection. Things like electronics that you think you are going to tinker with and yet you never have the time or when you do have the time, you do other things. Things like the books you were going to read and have started and they just were dog boring or you’ve lost interest in the subject. Hobby supplies for the hobby that you never got started. Hobby supplies for the hobby that you actually do and think you are going to expand into another area of it.

Yes, these things can often also be hard to let go of. We think how we might go ahead and work on that collection. Spend more time on that hobby. Or, oh wait, that book does sound good. Sometimes I think we’re afraid of regret and moving on. We don’t want to, one day, regret we got rid of something (like those Sonny and Cher records that probably rocketed in price after Sonny died). And we’re afraid that if we give up on that comic collection and move on that it means we’ve grown up and can never have fun again.

Now I can’t speak for the whole world. Maybe other cultures put less significance into stuff. Maybe for them it isn’t tied so much to their self worth. Here, with the advertisers and culture, it seems that our self worth is very much tied to how much stuff you have and how up to date that stuff is. As a result there is the booming business of self storage facilities. Used to, where they existed, there weren’t a lot of them. Now, in one area of town, when I lived there, within just a few miles of each other there were at least 3 new self storage businesses open within a year.

So, I have a lot of stuff, in my oppinion, and for the size of my home. Oh, it’s not over flowing, I try to keep it under control. However, I have started thinking that it might be time to start letting go of more things that are unusable, I’m never really going to do anything with, and I don’t really need.

And now we come to the other reason we don’t get rid of stuff. It’s going to take some time and it may be tedious. As examples: I have some paints that I can probably get rid of as they are probably all hard and unusable, that means I have to go through them all. Then there’s that old computer that I have that has files on it I may need or want. I have to set it up, attach something to it to backup those file and then I have to go through them to see what  it is I want and what I no long need. Both of these things are time consuming and unexciting.

Guess I had better get started on this. It may take a while. Wish me luck.

Cheers.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.