...find fields of gold?

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Slashdotters rushing to post that this is lame and/or they did it 20 years ago.

It did cross my mind when there was shepherd's pie on the menu last week...By the time I got there, though, they'd run out of shepherds.

My office building is next to the pathology department, and I can't go to lunch without seeing a hearse loading or unloading.

Yeah, I remember that one. The petrol in station was way the hell out in the middle of nowhere (for the UK, anyway), and was already on the expensive side as a result. The owner said that he wasn't profiteering, rather it was about conserving what little they had. Until they could get another delivery, he wanted to ensure that anyone who wasn't desperate didn't stop there, and anyone who was only bought enough to get them to civilisation.

Made sense to me. Didn't make sense to the Daily Mail, of course.

Seriously, I'm getting tired of the endless stream of apps.

There's a nap for that.

the annoyance of the lights turning off all the time because occupancy sensors suck

...which is why the one in my office has a paper coffee-cup duct-taped over it and I bought a small desk lamp with an old-school switch. All the offices here have these sensors. But all the toilets, where you don't want to touch anything, have wall switches - even in the individual cubicles.

I want to download all of it and figure out where I should put my Dunkin' Donuts franchise...

Looks like the RSO had his money on "no".

...because here in oulu.fi, last winter was crap. Should have been -30C, gorgeous blue skies and over a metre of snow, instead of which November lasted for three months and then some bastard hit Rewind.

The trees are absolutely laden with berries at the moment, and I'm told that;s a good sign.

You have to put distance and/or a lot more mass between the CME and whatever you want to protect than you have ready access to, unless you own a mine.

Working in the north of Finland, and down a mine is exactly where our backup tapes go. Not that I deleted some local backups and had cause to find out or anything... oops.

As for CME preparation: Charge the camera batteries, make a flask of coffee, and break out the winter gear so girlfriend doesn't get cold and want to go home.

Only five hundred, but he walked them...

I use that one all the time. If you have a problem with that, you can Suomi.