And The Sinues have Clogged

I'd not gone more than three days feeling healthy before I work this morning with awful sinus pressure.  Ugh.  If I still have energy later I'll try to make a real blog post.

The Cold is Gone!

I am finally feeling healthy again!  The cold seemed to linger on for a week after I felt almost-better, a miserable week of tiredness and random periods of runny nose.  Starting Tuesday I finally started feeling fully better, so I hope to actually have a real post Soon.  Maybe tomorrow.  I hope whatever readers I may have are having a healthier new year than I.

Under the Weather

I'm too under the weather to write up a decent review of anything, or write anything creative.  Hope the new year is treating others better.

Brrrrrr!

It is too darn cold!  I'll probably have a book review tomorrow, either of Pam Uphoff's Shadow Zone or the eARC of David Drake's Though Hell Should Bar the Way, both of which were quite good.  But for now, I'm going to hop into bed and kiss this day good bye.

Happy New Year!

2018 is here.  Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope the holidays have treated everybody well.  I had a great Christmastime with family.

Not So Much Blogging, Afterall

Sigh.  There hasn't been much blogging here the past few weeks, unfortunately.  There's just too much I'm trying to get done before Christmas, for both Day Job and Real Life.  Too much distraction.  I'm coming home simultaneously too keyed up and too drained.  Maybe after the holidays. 

Speaking of which, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Do You See the Light?

Over at According To Hoyt the other day, a commenter linked to a NASA composite image of the Western Hemisphere at night.

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using Suomi NPP VIIRS data from Miguel Román, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

I find it interesting how distinct and obvious some of the metropolitan areas are. The Salt Lake City and Denver-Colorado Springs areas are little vertical splashes of light among a sea of dark, while Saint Louis and Kansas City stand out as larger bright spots among a bunch of smaller bright spots. Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth are large splotches. The Northeast Corridor cities, on the other hand, kind of run together - but the near-straight horizontal splash that is Long Island makes it possible to pick NYC out of the mess. 

Map above blown up with captions added by me

You can also see how quickly the light falls off as you get a bit west of about 96 degrees west.  Between about 96 and 103 degrees west (it varies a bit), the population density drops off.  With the decline in population density comes a similar decline in density of the road network and the lights.  This is where the land transitions from the wetter, more fertile lands that support many types of crops, to the drier lands more suitable for ranching and grains.  This is the area once known generations earlier as the Great American Desert, though it is not really.

And I think that's all I shall touch on tonight.  Good night, world!