Missing Link??

http://tinyurl.com/pknw22

"Missing link found? Scientists unveil fossil of 47 million-year-old primate

Feast your eyes on what a group of scientists call the Holy Grail of human evolution.
[...] it had opposable thumbs like humans and fingernails instead of claws.
Scientists say the cat-sized animal's hind legs offer evidence of evolutionary changes that led to primates standing upright - a breakthrough that could finally confirm Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
"This specimen is like finding the Lost Ark for archeologists," lead scientist Jorn Hurum said at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History.
"It is the scientific equivalent of the Holy Grail. This fossil will probably be the one that will be pictured in all textbooks for the next 100 years."

The find seems quite interesting. I am shocked at all the hyperbole. This is something that was found outside of Frankfurt, a Laurasian species. Gorilla, Chimps, and Humans are Gondwanan species. This right away should be ringing alarm bells. At first I thought it was just the reporter who was exaggerating about what this fossil means. It certainly doesn't 'finally confirm' Darwin's Theory of Evolution; no theories are ever confirmed, they can be refuted, or as-yet-un-refuted', not confirmed or proven. And this fossil in particular isn't adding anything especially special. I don't want to say that the fossil is unimportant or un-special, especially since, obviously, I don't have the expertise to examine it, but I'd think c.f. archaeopteryx is a better 'transitional' form, I mean, if a feathered reptile doesn't convince someone that evolution is on to something, then this lemur certainly won't.

The good kind of computer freeze

Previously, after having issues with my computer being buggy, slow, or even outright hijacked and infected, I've had to run numerous programs to try to de-infect it, like anti-virus, anti-spybots, anti-hijack, anti-fishing, etc programs. And when you're running AVG, Search and Destroy, Windows Defender, Trojan Hunter and a bunch of other junk, that in itself must be responsible for some of the system slow down. Plus, I could never tell if they were really working. For the most part, they found nothing. And I'd also run HijackThis, which creates logs of system information that you have to interpret, sort through, prepare, and then if you're still stuck upload to a forum, where other people would tell you what to do to clean up the computer before they'd even look at your log, and then after that you'd get advice on what to 'fix' (which is at least a simple final thing to do) from the log.
So after getting sick of that, after spending a decent chunk of my time on the computer 'protecting' it, I switched to the Firefox browser, figuring that most of the problems where from web codes and the like. And then when Google Chrome came out, I figure, well, this is so new and represents such a small percentage of the browser population, its probably not much of a target and might be safer too. But still, after a long while, I think that bugs and malware and the like have just accumulated, and thats why I reinstalled my Operating System recently.
Our college campus loans out laptops to faculty for the semester. In order to protect the laptops, they flash out their memory each time they are shut down, so that when you turn it on, anything you did to it is gone, any files you saved, and preferences you changed, are all gone, its in its original state. This is done by 'freezing' the computer. I thought at first that that was just ridiculous, having to save everything to a thumb drive and not being able to set any preferences. But recently I realized, maybe that is what I need. If my computer just snaps back to its original state each time I shut it off, then I don't have to worry so much about viruses, malware, etc. So thats what I've done, I've frozen my computer, set it so that anything I need to keep is saved somewhere else, and thats it. I still have antivirus, firewall, etc. I am just trying to see if this is a workable solution, I think that it will be.

OS reinstall on my PC

I had to reinstall my OS (Windows XP) over the past few days. I have a new wired external hard drive, but I couldn't get it to connect through my router (Linksys WRT150N), it couldn't even be found. So I tried resetting my router with its reset button. Unfortunately I couldn't then get Windows to find it. Linksys makes a program called "LELA", but it couldn't find it (and thus couldn't set it up) either. I tried setting it up through its webpage, but couldn't really remember how I did it the first time. So I wasn't sure if there was just a lot of garbage on my computer screwing it up or what. I tried doing a Windows system restore. Now I know that the last time I had a similar problem, after fixing everything I made a Restore "Save Point". That was probably in 2006. But when I go to do the restore, all I can choose from is the past week or so. I couldn't go back to earlier points. So thats useless. I did the restore anyway, in case the problem was younger than that. But now Google Chrome wasn't working. I'd clicks its icon, it'd flash on for a split second and then disappear. Plus, when I tried running the command, 'ipconfig' from the windows "run" program, it'd do the same thing, whereas before I had been able to get that information (to configure the router). Plus my computer had been taking forever to start up for a while, yada yada yada, so I decided to reinstall windows. I did that with a CD I got when I first purchased the computer. When I bought the computer, the standard, default option was to not receive an OS cd. Which is nuts. I'm really glad that I noticed this and specifically requested the OS on cd; it wasn't even extra, but it has ended up being worth quite a bit of money. After doing this and still having problems getting the router to work, with both LELA and Windows network setup wizard failing to find the router, I finally got it to work. I remembered something pretty basic, I had to 'clone' my MAC address. Apparently my ISP, Cablevision, is one of many that does something with their system where your computer MAC address is their reference point, or their modem MAC address is the reference in their system, or some such setup where you've got to clone your networking card's MAC address, or "Physical Address" in order to get the router working. I had to get that information through the ipconfig/all command. Which, it turns out, isn't run directly from the 'run' window. First you have to open up a Command line, by typing 'cmd' into the 'run' program, which I had completely forgotten.
Eventually I was able to get things working, but only after being lucky enough to unplug and then replug the router once right in the middle of everything, which appparently did the magic trick.
Actually, after all that, I changed the router password, but must've screwed up typing it it because then I couldn't log into the router anymore, and I had to reset it again! Fortunately everything worked out quickly that time.
So now I have my computer hooked up to the wireless router. An external hard drive wired separately to the router, and an older external hard drive that is connected to my computer. It turns out too that I could actually (and I did this and it worked from my end at least) plug in my older external hard drive to the new external hard drive's usb port, and thus have two shared hard drives that I can access online from any computer. Whether I actually need any or will use any of this crap remains to be seen.

Hairy Vetch

A while ago I bought 10lbs of Hairy Vetch seed, which is a type of legume, a bean plant. 10 lbs would be a little more than needed for my yard. The vetch, being a bean, can take nitrogen out of the soil, and turn it into a usable chemical form, thus over time adding nitrogen as a nutrient into the soil. That is why I purchased the vetch, I am hoping that it will grow over the yard, both on the lawn and in the gardening plots, and the bare batches, and supply nitrogen to the yard for the other plants to feed off of. This way I won't have to buy fertilizer every season. I don't want to buy fertilizer each season for three reasons. First, it is a cost (of course, if I end up re-seeding the vetch then thats a cost also). Second, a lot of the fertilizer added to lawns and gardens just gets washed away into the groundwater, and can screw with the nutrient balance of the island. Thirdly, I think that by adding fertilizer all the time, what you end up doing is promoting top grown of the lawn and plants, but not root growth; perhaps to the detriment of root growth. The yard around my house isn't as well drained as it should be, and I think that by doing this I will have deeper roots and better drainage. Finally fourthly, there's something attractive about managing the yard this way.
All of that sounds well enough, but, there is some chance, I think, that the vetch will grow out of control. Vetch is an annual, meaning it grows, flowers, and dies each year. So if it gets to be out of control, I will have to mow the lawn pretty close to the ground as the first flowers are appearing, to prevent seeds from forming and fertilizing.
Mowing will be important anyway. If I don't want to destroy the vetch, I'll have to mow before the flowers appear, and hold off when they are present, and then mow once the seeds have dropped, I believe. I'm planning to mow the vetch and grass into mulch and leave it in place. If there is a lot of it, too much to leave in place, then I will bag it and probably compost it. There is a large section of the yard that doesn't have good soil at all, its really just old exposed tree roots, gravel, and dandelions. So even if the vetch does start getting out of control, I think that I can make some good dirt for that area. It would be too much to buy dirt for it, and we might just extend out our deck to cover it all anyway.


Useful online Hairy Vetch Referances:
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/AFCM/vetch.html
http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/cgi-bin/CCrop.exe/show_crop_21
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20090206/nf1

I've also been finding the Cornell Cooperative Extension very informative for yard duties.
http://www.cce.cornell.edu/
http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/hort/faculty/bjorkman/covercrops/pdfs/hairyvetch.pdf