I think I ran mostly TurboBBS or Searchlight (before they went all crazy and modern with 'RIP' graphics.) Searchlight in particular didn't do certain things the standard way, even if they made other things a lot easier... I seem to remember having issues with the FOSSIL driver too.
The last time I did a thorough housecleaning, I ran across a floppy with Telix and a bunch of SALT scripts. Ah, memories.
Does anyone else recall struggling with the door.sys file on your BBS? One door game generally worked fine, but woe to you when you tried to configure multiple door games on your BBS, particularly with more than one user at a time!
Very sad. He's composed some of my favorite film scores over the years, but the score that I always loved was for "The Rocketeer" (Main Title). I asked my parents to buy it for me on cassette tape, but could never find it in a local store. (Oh pre-internet days!)
This article in Discover magazine about Jack Bitterly's* desire to use new flywheel technologies to power automobiles, is what got me excited about choosing engineering as a college major. It's quite sad that nothing ever came of it, other than a few highly specialized applications, such as the space station. (I read one claim that Kevin Costner's investment in the company was a total loss, but that it had a lot to do with NASA taking over the project and stiffing some of the creditors. Cum grano salis.)
I recently saw that a company called Velkess got a kickstarter project funded for 3-15kWh 48v flywheel storage systems, with expected product delivery dates in the 2016/17 range announced. We'll see if they deliver on promises and if they're in any way price competitive.
*Jack was 77 when that article was published in 1996. Every so often I've looked him up on the internet and as late as 2009, he was still alive and kicking and still working. I've also run across patent applications he has filed as late as 2013. Wow. I hope like heck I'm still that active and doing things I am passionate about in my 90s.
I fall rather squarely into the prescriptivist class of grammarians (as opposed to the extreme corpus linguists who seem to feel that language is entirely fluid and dynamic and should be bound by no rules whatsoever), but find it perfectly acceptable to use the third-person plural forms for persons of indeterminate gender or identity. While it has often been taught that using the 3rd person plurals in that way is incorrect, there are a number of pragmatic and historical reasons why it isn't so. A couple:
1.) It is readily understood by native speakers; we've been doing it that way for a very long time! Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Bernard Shaw, George Eliot, Elizabeth Bowen, C.S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde, all have used 'them' as an indeterminate singular pronoun.
2.) It fulfills a need. Using 'he' causes an assumption, as does using 'she.' Some authors choose to alternate between the two, but that is just confusing. Saying 'he or she' and 'his or her' every time is far too wordy and cumbersome. Considering that English only has a neuter third-person plural, 'they' is a perfectly good stand-in. (Heck, the Germans use 'sie,' 'sie,' and 'Sie' (her, they, You) without any issues. Aside from some fun and intentional linguistic wordplay, ambiguity is resolved through context.)
Yep. I work in patents, where a small incorrect use of grammar or terms of art can mean losing millions of dollars. The classic case in point:
Patent A: "A vehicle comprising 3 wheels and a motor."
Patent B: "A vehicle consisting of 3 wheels and a motor."
Assuming it is 1700 or something and no prior-art exists,
Patent A can go on to claim 4-wheeled motorized vehicles (since a 4-wheeled vehicle does after all have 3 wheels), 3-wheeled vehicles with shark fins, whatever. "Comprising" is open-end and interpreted as "it has at least this," or as you say, "including."
Patent B is strictly limited to 3 wheels and a motor, no more and no less. If a competitor uses 4 wheels, or adds shark fins, or two motors, then it isn't covered by the patent. "Consisting of" is a closed phrase interpreted as "having exactly."
The incorrect grammar "comprised of" would be an ambiguity, and as such, interpreted in the strictest way -- limiting as in Patent B.
It may seem worrisome that scientists and engineers of all people -- some of the absolute worst butchers of language and grammar out there! -- are the ones who become patent agents or patent attorneys, but all-in-all, the ones who do so tend to be some of the smartest folks I've met. You need to be well-rounded to do the job.
>> To avoid frame dropping, you need an external TBC (different from the TBC in the VCR) acting as a frame sync.
^This
Let me add for the person asking the question that I found an external TBC extremely useful back when I was transferring family movies from VHS. Even though I used a nice SVHS unit with an internal TBC, some of the worst older tapes still had lots of dropping out, tearing, and sync issues that magically all but disappeared when I fed the signal through the external TBC. Perhaps you don't need it in your case, but I definitely did.
Here's an in informative thread where someone asked about the need for an external TBC. Be sure to look at the images in post #7.
I'm a huge fan of classic film, and one of my favorite anecdotes is a conversation related by director Howard Hawks between William Faulkner and Clark Gable in the director's car as he invited both men along on a hunting trip.
Despite being famous in their respective fields, the two men had never met each other. Moreover, Faulkner didn't watch movies and Gable didn't read. As the conversation in the car went on, it got on to the topic of literature. After listening a while, Gable asked Faulkner the best authors to seek out if one wanted to be well read.
Faulkner responded, "Oh, Thomas Man, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and myself of course."
"Oh," ask Gable, "do you write Mr. Faulkner?"
"Why yes, Mr. Gable," replied Faulkner. "And what do you do?"
I love how the yellow line on the satellite-tracker here crosses within a few yards of my house on full zoom.
Having a satellite crash into my home would not make my day. Having a North Korean satellite crash into my home would not make the North Koreans' day, once Washington got involved. Hopefully it'll just splash down into the ocean or burn up on reentry.
Parent makes a good recommendation. I own several Parker Vectors and Lamy Safaris -- both can be had metal, which is more durable than the plastic variety -- with fine and x-fine nibs, and they are great, inexpensive* fountain pens. Ink is cheap and plentiful on eBay, or you can use a converter and a bottle of just about any make/color that pleases you. I like a lot of Noodler's Ink; I keep one pen especially for their super-intense stains-like-the-dickens Baystate Blue. Great for signing documents.
One thing I have always loved about fountain pens is that by changing the angle of the nib -- even turning it 180 -- you can change the size of your writing. Great for sub/super-scripts.
The only downside is that I always feel a bit guilty when someone asks to borrow my fountain pen and they turn out to be a southpaw. Lefties may get ink on their hands if they're not used to such things.
*you won't have a heart attack if you lose it or lend it out and don't get it back.
Similarly, when I was in my high school physics class, there were some things we did our "Physics Olympics" competition that wouldn't fly today. This was only 15 years ago, but in a small, rural, midwestern town.
Just offhand, I remember building a Rube-Goldberg machine comprising (among other things) a very sharp hatchet, a butane torch, and a large mercury thermometer.
Another project had a goal of flinging a tennis ball the farthest; my partner's father worked in a metal shop / foundry and we built a compressed air cannon involving 1/4" steel pipe and some rather impressive pressures.
While we were talking about gears, pulleys, etc, I assembled a rudimentary cranked Gatling gun - about 12 inches tall, out of Technic lego, copper tubing, spring steel, etc -- that could fling BBs a distance of around 30 feet.
However, even then we could see the changes coming. While I was in school, the new school board decided that students who took both wood and metal shop were no longer allowed to make crossbows. It was a tradition going back at least 40 years; some of the kids with good artistic skills carved beautiful stocks. Of course, there aren't even wood or metal shop classes now.
All of my teachers have since retired and there's a completely new administration now. Last year a student was suspended for having a kitchen knife - in her car - which she had brought to cut a birthday cake. The school board backed down from an outright expulsion. Sad, stupid times.
True, it's a proper name, not a common word, but I've always liked this:
In Sparkill buried lies that man of mark Who brought the Obelisk to Central Park, Redoubtable Commander H.H. Gorringe, Whose name supplies the long-sought rhyme for “orange.”
I wish I could find the reference, but an article I read not too long ago noted that a single fully-deployed modern nuclear-powered supercarrier (including logistcal support like AWACS, etc) stationed in the middle of the US eastern seaboard had an effective zone of control that stretched from Halifax to Havana. That's just impressive, and a good reason the navies would like to keep them around as a symbol of power.
Battleships became obsolete because they were designed only for surface-to-surface combat and bombardment, and were vulnerable from above (and below). I suspect aircraft carriers are more adaptable; among other things, nascent computer-guided railguns (large and small) will probably help against future incoming ballistic dangers.
Am I the only one whose first knee-jerk thought was, "Wow, that's great! And from now on, I use nothing but cash!"
What's wrong with a simple asymmetric encryption system keyed to a particular cellphone, to be activated at checkout?
GPS-revealing apps already weird me out -- along with peoples' obliviousness to personal safety and/or security -- but automatically promulgating your name and photo to the store you enter quite exceeds creepy. At least this service is optional...for now.
Merriam-Webster: First known use of PREDOMINATELY: 1594
Even if its used predominantly in America, it's a good bet predominately didn't originate here. "To predominate" is a verb, "predominant" is an adjective. At some point in time, someone built an adjective off of the verb.
My favorite bit of vestigial English preserved in the colonies -- especially in the midwest -- is "gotten." And it's not a colloquialism; it's used in formal American English. "What have you gotten?" (obtained) vs. "What have you got?" (possession)
(There's actually another Americanism in a sentence above. We typically say "off of" while the British say simply "off.")
I can speak for the Cleveland Free-net having free, public, dial-up internet access as of 1989. (I used it occasionally in 1991-92.) Several local BBSes also had internet gateways, which might be a dedicated ISDN line to a university computer center or even just a periodic uplink.
Are you inadvertently blending the Internet with the World Wide Web? The two terms have basically merged in common parlance, if not for the tech community. Prior to Mosaic's release at the end of '92 / beginning of '93, the hypertext web wasn't particularly popular yet, and was dwarfed by protocols like gopher and ftp. (Boy did that quickly change!)
Man that brings back memories. I remember my waiting for my favorite BBS's weekly uplink to FidoNet, when "electronic mail" was exchanged. And being jealous when my neighbor got World Wide Web access, which Prodigy started offering around 1994, iirc.
Just yesterday I actually had someone tell me to enter my "personal PIN number ID" for a university copying machine. That's enough to make one's head explode.
And I once had a wedding invitation that said "Please respond to RSVP promptly."
That's the parties, mind you. You can still have the ridiculous fringe pundits; Santorum is most certainly one of those and it scares me the type of people who openly maneuver within the republican party these days.
Personally, I find the democrats disgusting and/or out of their minds...yet end up voting for them sometimes because the republican party is lost and floundering. Where the hell has the party gone? Surely not where I'd care to follow. I'm conservative* and spiritual, but not one iota religious; separation of church and state is what I hold sacrosanct.
*I'd prefer "progressive" in the Teddy Roosevelt sense, but that's yet another term that has been corrupted and co-opted to mean "bad."
The bulbs I have are 5000K, sitting in the nice "daylight" slot in terms of color temperature, and also have a CRI of 90, which is pretty good for fluorescent. They're probably not full-spectrum, granted, but they suffice.
Halogens are nice, but as you mentioned, they tend to get really, really hot. My work space (upstairs) has seven-foot ceilings and can get pretty stuff as it is:-)
>>You only need the Visa if you plan on working there. The passport's enough for a visit.
Not quite. You do need some kind of Visa to enter a country of which you're not a citizen. There are many different types of Visas. Some countries -- most of Western Europe, for example -- have entered into a treaty with the USA that allows for a Visa waiver (up to 90 days, typically) for recreational travelers. Conversely, a non-treaty foreigner or someone wishing to stay longer would apply for a US B-1 visa for business, or a B-2 visa for recreation, valid for 6 months. When you fill out and sign that little landing card on your airplane before touch down, you've just filled out the paperwork for your Visa waiver (assuming you don't have another sort of Visa.)
My funniest experience was landing in central Mexico to study for the summer, back in college. Before I could say anything, the immigration official endorsed my passport for 30 days. I told him, Oh no!, I was going to be here for 75 days. So he scratched his head, shrugged, and wrote another zero down, giving me 300 days. Not sure that would work, but hey...
Cataracts are one possible effect; clouding of the lens due to exposure to bands of UV light. Certain medication can also contribute to the effects of light on the eye, but the common one that many people use without knowing the potential effect is St. John's Wort.
I'm profoundly affected by the shortened (and usually sunless) days beginning in the fall, through the awful winter, and into the spring. (I'm self-diagnosing, but I'd say it qualifies as SAD.) I've used St. John's Wort in the winter months with a reasonable degree of success, but I think adding bright light to my work area helped a lot more. As in, four 300W fluorescent bulbs.
Cataracts are (generally) easily treated, thankfully, but that might not be the extent of the possible effect. And I don't particularly want cataracts before I hit 40.
At the shopping mall nearest my home town, there is a department store that has had one of those ultrasonic bug & pest repellers installed above the doors since the mid 80s. As a kid, I couldn't stand being within 50 feet of those doors for any length of time; it wasn't just annoying, it bloody well hurt! While my father and I waited thereabouts for my mother to meet us, I thought I'd crawl out of my skin, and neither of them ever believed me about it.
Now in my early 30s, I recently went back, having forgotten about the damn thing. I walked through those doors and instantly felt uneasy, along with a pressure in my head and sudden ringing in my ears. It went away quickly, but came back as I later approached the doors to leave; then I remembered the device which, sure enough, was still above the door. It isn't the piercing sound that stabbed my ears as a child -- I assume my hearing has declined somewhat already as I've aged -- but man, it still makes my head throb. And nobody else seems to notice it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I ran mostly TurboBBS or Searchlight (before they went all crazy and modern with 'RIP' graphics.) Searchlight in particular didn't do certain things the standard way, even if they made other things a lot easier... I seem to remember having issues with the FOSSIL driver too.
The last time I did a thorough housecleaning, I ran across a floppy with Telix and a bunch of SALT scripts. Ah, memories.
Does anyone else recall struggling with the door.sys file on your BBS? One door game generally worked fine, but woe to you when you tried to configure multiple door games on your BBS, particularly with more than one user at a time!
Very sad. He's composed some of my favorite film scores over the years, but the score that I always loved was for "The Rocketeer" (Main Title). I asked my parents to buy it for me on cassette tape, but could never find it in a local store. (Oh pre-internet days!)
RIP Mr. Horner.
This article in Discover magazine about Jack Bitterly's* desire to use new flywheel technologies to power automobiles, is what got me excited about choosing engineering as a college major. It's quite sad that nothing ever came of it, other than a few highly specialized applications, such as the space station. (I read one claim that Kevin Costner's investment in the company was a total loss, but that it had a lot to do with NASA taking over the project and stiffing some of the creditors. Cum grano salis.)
I recently saw that a company called Velkess got a kickstarter project funded for 3-15kWh 48v flywheel storage systems, with expected product delivery dates in the 2016/17 range announced. We'll see if they deliver on promises and if they're in any way price competitive.
*Jack was 77 when that article was published in 1996. Every so often I've looked him up on the internet and as late as 2009, he was still alive and kicking and still working. I've also run across patent applications he has filed as late as 2013. Wow. I hope like heck I'm still that active and doing things I am passionate about in my 90s.
I fall rather squarely into the prescriptivist class of grammarians (as opposed to the extreme corpus linguists who seem to feel that language is entirely fluid and dynamic and should be bound by no rules whatsoever), but find it perfectly acceptable to use the third-person plural forms for persons of indeterminate gender or identity. While it has often been taught that using the 3rd person plurals in that way is incorrect, there are a number of pragmatic and historical reasons why it isn't so. A couple:
1.) It is readily understood by native speakers; we've been doing it that way for a very long time! Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Bernard Shaw, George Eliot, Elizabeth Bowen, C.S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde, all have used 'them' as an indeterminate singular pronoun.
2.) It fulfills a need. Using 'he' causes an assumption, as does using 'she.' Some authors choose to alternate between the two, but that is just confusing. Saying 'he or she' and 'his or her' every time is far too wordy and cumbersome. Considering that English only has a neuter third-person plural, 'they' is a perfectly good stand-in. (Heck, the Germans use 'sie,' 'sie,' and 'Sie' (her, they, You) without any issues. Aside from some fun and intentional linguistic wordplay, ambiguity is resolved through context.)
Yep. I work in patents, where a small incorrect use of grammar or terms of art can mean losing millions of dollars. The classic case in point:
Patent A:
"A vehicle comprising 3 wheels and a motor."
Patent B:
"A vehicle consisting of 3 wheels and a motor."
Assuming it is 1700 or something and no prior-art exists,
Patent A can go on to claim 4-wheeled motorized vehicles (since a 4-wheeled vehicle does after all have 3 wheels), 3-wheeled vehicles with shark fins, whatever. "Comprising" is open-end and interpreted as "it has at least this," or as you say, "including."
Patent B is strictly limited to 3 wheels and a motor, no more and no less. If a competitor uses 4 wheels, or adds shark fins, or two motors, then it isn't covered by the patent. "Consisting of" is a closed phrase interpreted as "having exactly."
The incorrect grammar "comprised of" would be an ambiguity, and as such, interpreted in the strictest way -- limiting as in Patent B.
It may seem worrisome that scientists and engineers of all people -- some of the absolute worst butchers of language and grammar out there! -- are the ones who become patent agents or patent attorneys, but all-in-all, the ones who do so tend to be some of the smartest folks I've met. You need to be well-rounded to do the job.
>> To avoid frame dropping, you need an external TBC (different from the TBC in the VCR) acting as a frame sync.
^This
Let me add for the person asking the question that I found an external TBC extremely useful back when I was transferring family movies from VHS. Even though I used a nice SVHS unit with an internal TBC, some of the worst older tapes still had lots of dropping out, tearing, and sync issues that magically all but disappeared when I fed the signal through the external TBC. Perhaps you don't need it in your case, but I definitely did.
Here's an in informative thread where someone asked about the need for an external TBC. Be sure to look at the images in post #7.
If I have a VCR with TBC, why is a separate unit needed anyway?
I'm a huge fan of classic film, and one of my favorite anecdotes is a conversation related by director Howard Hawks between William Faulkner and Clark Gable in the director's car as he invited both men along on a hunting trip.
Despite being famous in their respective fields, the two men had never met each other. Moreover, Faulkner didn't watch movies and Gable didn't read. As the conversation in the car went on, it got on to the topic of literature. After listening a while, Gable asked Faulkner the best authors to seek out if one wanted to be well read.
Faulkner responded, "Oh, Thomas Man, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and myself of course."
"Oh," ask Gable, "do you write Mr. Faulkner?"
"Why yes, Mr. Gable," replied Faulkner. "And what do you do?"
I love how the yellow line on the satellite-tracker here crosses within a few yards of my house on full zoom.
Having a satellite crash into my home would not make my day. Having a North Korean satellite crash into my home would not make the North Koreans' day, once Washington got involved. Hopefully it'll just splash down into the ocean or burn up on reentry.
Parent makes a good recommendation. I own several Parker Vectors and Lamy Safaris -- both can be had metal, which is more durable than the plastic variety -- with fine and x-fine nibs, and they are great, inexpensive* fountain pens. Ink is cheap and plentiful on eBay, or you can use a converter and a bottle of just about any make/color that pleases you. I like a lot of Noodler's Ink; I keep one pen especially for their super-intense stains-like-the-dickens Baystate Blue. Great for signing documents.
One thing I have always loved about fountain pens is that by changing the angle of the nib -- even turning it 180 -- you can change the size of your writing. Great for sub/super-scripts.
The only downside is that I always feel a bit guilty when someone asks to borrow my fountain pen and they turn out to be a southpaw. Lefties may get ink on their hands if they're not used to such things.
*you won't have a heart attack if you lose it or lend it out and don't get it back.
Similarly, when I was in my high school physics class, there were some things we did our "Physics Olympics" competition that wouldn't fly today. This was only 15 years ago, but in a small, rural, midwestern town.
Just offhand, I remember building a Rube-Goldberg machine comprising (among other things) a very sharp hatchet, a butane torch, and a large mercury thermometer.
Another project had a goal of flinging a tennis ball the farthest; my partner's father worked in a metal shop / foundry and we built a compressed air cannon involving 1/4" steel pipe and some rather impressive pressures.
While we were talking about gears, pulleys, etc, I assembled a rudimentary cranked Gatling gun - about 12 inches tall, out of Technic lego, copper tubing, spring steel, etc -- that could fling BBs a distance of around 30 feet.
However, even then we could see the changes coming. While I was in school, the new school board decided that students who took both wood and metal shop were no longer allowed to make crossbows. It was a tradition going back at least 40 years; some of the kids with good artistic skills carved beautiful stocks. Of course, there aren't even wood or metal shop classes now.
All of my teachers have since retired and there's a completely new administration now. Last year a student was suspended for having a kitchen knife - in her car - which she had brought to cut a birthday cake. The school board backed down from an outright expulsion. Sad, stupid times.
True, it's a proper name, not a common word, but I've always liked this:
In Sparkill buried lies that man of mark
Who brought the Obelisk to Central Park,
Redoubtable Commander H.H. Gorringe,
Whose name supplies the long-sought rhyme for “orange.”
-- Arthur Guiterman
I wish I could find the reference, but an article I read not too long ago noted that a single fully-deployed modern nuclear-powered supercarrier (including logistcal support like AWACS, etc) stationed in the middle of the US eastern seaboard had an effective zone of control that stretched from Halifax to Havana. That's just impressive, and a good reason the navies would like to keep them around as a symbol of power.
Battleships became obsolete because they were designed only for surface-to-surface combat and bombardment, and were vulnerable from above (and below). I suspect aircraft carriers are more adaptable; among other things, nascent computer-guided railguns (large and small) will probably help against future incoming ballistic dangers.
Am I the only one whose first knee-jerk thought was, "Wow, that's great! And from now on, I use nothing but cash!"
What's wrong with a simple asymmetric encryption system keyed to a particular cellphone, to be activated at checkout?
GPS-revealing apps already weird me out -- along with peoples' obliviousness to personal safety and/or security -- but automatically promulgating your name and photo to the store you enter quite exceeds creepy. At least this service is optional...for now.
Merriam-Webster:
First known use of PREDOMINATELY: 1594
Even if its used predominantly in America, it's a good bet predominately didn't originate here.
"To predominate" is a verb, "predominant" is an adjective. At some point in time, someone built an adjective off of the verb.
My favorite bit of vestigial English preserved in the colonies -- especially in the midwest -- is "gotten."
And it's not a colloquialism; it's used in formal American English.
"What have you gotten?" (obtained) vs. "What have you got?" (possession)
(There's actually another Americanism in a sentence above. We typically say "off of" while the British say simply "off.")
Heck, "On the Beach" was required reading for my junior English class back in high school.
>>Dial-up internet? 20 years ago? 1992?
I can speak for the Cleveland Free-net having free, public, dial-up internet access as of 1989. (I used it occasionally in 1991-92.) Several local BBSes also had internet gateways, which might be a dedicated ISDN line to a university computer center or even just a periodic uplink.
Are you inadvertently blending the Internet with the World Wide Web? The two terms have basically merged in common parlance, if not for the tech community. Prior to Mosaic's release at the end of '92 / beginning of '93, the hypertext web wasn't particularly popular yet, and was dwarfed by protocols like gopher and ftp. (Boy did that quickly change!)
Man that brings back memories. I remember my waiting for my favorite BBS's weekly uplink to FidoNet, when "electronic mail" was exchanged. And being jealous when my neighbor got World Wide Web access, which Prodigy started offering around 1994, iirc.
I think Terry Pratchett noted that shifting a single letter changes this sentence, but does not terribly change the meaning:
Straight as an arrow
Straight as a narrow
Fun.
Just yesterday I actually had someone tell me to enter my "personal PIN number ID" for a university copying machine. That's enough to make one's head explode.
And I once had a wedding invitation that said "Please respond to RSVP promptly."
Who's more pro-science - republicans or democrats?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Q8UvJ1wvk
That's the parties, mind you. You can still have the ridiculous fringe pundits; Santorum is most certainly one of those and it scares me the type of people who openly maneuver within the republican party these days.
Personally, I find the democrats disgusting and/or out of their minds...yet end up voting for them sometimes because the republican party is lost and floundering. Where the hell has the party gone? Surely not where I'd care to follow. I'm conservative* and spiritual, but not one iota religious; separation of church and state is what I hold sacrosanct.
*I'd prefer "progressive" in the Teddy Roosevelt sense, but that's yet another term that has been corrupted and co-opted to mean "bad."
The bulbs I have are 5000K, sitting in the nice "daylight" slot in terms of color temperature, and also have a CRI of 90, which is pretty good for fluorescent. They're probably not full-spectrum, granted, but they suffice.
Halogens are nice, but as you mentioned, they tend to get really, really hot. My work space (upstairs) has seven-foot ceilings and can get pretty stuff as it is :-)
>>You only need the Visa if you plan on working there. The passport's enough for a visit.
Not quite. You do need some kind of Visa to enter a country of which you're not a citizen. There are many different types of Visas. Some countries -- most of Western Europe, for example -- have entered into a treaty with the USA that allows for a Visa waiver (up to 90 days, typically) for recreational travelers. Conversely, a non-treaty foreigner or someone wishing to stay longer would apply for a US B-1 visa for business, or a B-2 visa for recreation, valid for 6 months. When you fill out and sign that little landing card on your airplane before touch down, you've just filled out the paperwork for your Visa waiver (assuming you don't have another sort of Visa.)
My funniest experience was landing in central Mexico to study for the summer, back in college. Before I could say anything, the immigration official endorsed my passport for 30 days. I told him, Oh no!, I was going to be here for 75 days. So he scratched his head, shrugged, and wrote another zero down, giving me 300 days. Not sure that would work, but hey...
Cataracts are one possible effect; clouding of the lens due to exposure to bands of UV light. Certain medication can also contribute to the effects of light on the eye, but the common one that many people use without knowing the potential effect is St. John's Wort.
I'm profoundly affected by the shortened (and usually sunless) days beginning in the fall, through the awful winter, and into the spring. (I'm self-diagnosing, but I'd say it qualifies as SAD.) I've used St. John's Wort in the winter months with a reasonable degree of success, but I think adding bright light to my work area helped a lot more. As in, four 300W fluorescent bulbs.
Much to my chagrin, however, I learned that St. John's Wort and Bright Light don't Mix.
Cataracts are (generally) easily treated, thankfully, but that might not be the extent of the possible effect. And I don't particularly want cataracts before I hit 40.
At the shopping mall nearest my home town, there is a department store that has had one of those ultrasonic bug & pest repellers installed above the doors since the mid 80s. As a kid, I couldn't stand being within 50 feet of those doors for any length of time; it wasn't just annoying, it bloody well hurt! While my father and I waited thereabouts for my mother to meet us, I thought I'd crawl out of my skin, and neither of them ever believed me about it.
Now in my early 30s, I recently went back, having forgotten about the damn thing. I walked through those doors and instantly felt uneasy, along with a pressure in my head and sudden ringing in my ears. It went away quickly, but came back as I later approached the doors to leave; then I remembered the device which, sure enough, was still above the door. It isn't the piercing sound that stabbed my ears as a child -- I assume my hearing has declined somewhat already as I've aged -- but man, it still makes my head throb. And nobody else seems to notice it.