OT: It's Simmer Time in Arizona

I always thought that motorcycles should be legally equipped with rocket launchers.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Try some Clobex, steroid cream. Fixed me.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Thanks for the tip! ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| STV, Queen Creek, AZ 85142    Skype: skypeanalog |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 

     Thinking outside the box... producing elegant solutions. 

"It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that 
is the secret of happiness."  -James Barrie

I don't pay much attention to the "official" figures here because I think the sensors are at the airport which is 30 km outside of town, 2000 ft lower and temps are much more extreme there. Besides, the town is so hilly that temperatures vary significantly from spot to spot.

I happened to look at the thermometer this afternoon and it read

it's been drizzling for several days. Lots of sunshine last week and the temp was 28-30 C which is about as hot as it normally gets, although it does occasionally go as high as 32 a few days a year.

The last winter was rather mild, usually in the high teens to low

times in the early hours of the morning.

It may surprise some, but the Sonoran Desert (southern Arizona) can

Keeps the citrus growers up late at night with their giant fans and fog generators ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| STV, Queen Creek, AZ 85142    Skype: skypeanalog |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 

     Thinking outside the box... producing elegant solutions. 

"It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that 
is the secret of happiness."  -James Barrie

I know a pinball you would be interested in:

or perhaps:

John ;-#)#

That's probably clobetasol propionate (I'm not familiar with the trade names you have there). It's pretty strong stuff and could have undesirable side effects like reduced immunity, diabetes, etc especially when applied over a large area.

Why don't you try a milder steroid first and see if it does the job? Like fluocinolone acetonide or hydrocortisone valerate. I've used those myself.

We just wilt here in North Florida. Not to bad at the moment 87* and

65% humidity. :-) I spent a little time in Pasadena, the weather was oh so comfortable. Mikek

Ah. Sonora, Phoenix, Arizona........ are place names that people like me know only from western novels - Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, Oliver Strange, J.T.Edson....... Those stories were probably romanticized and must have often strayed quite a bit from what it was really like in the Old West, but I used to like reading them. But I hate the newer crop of politically-correct cowboy films - like black (African-American) gunmen with low-slung Peacemakers and Winchesters roaming around the West. Unless they're comedies, that is.

Colder than that, here. We had a week of 15F nights (with 50F daytime highs). Cost us a lemon, lime and blood orange. Below ~28F things get touchy. Opted for smaller trees to replace them so we can cover them more easily. E.g., the blood orange required 6 king size sheets sewn together to cover it. (and, we'd end up giving away several "grocery bags" of limes each year -- how many limes can you consume in 12 months??)

[I use lights and fans (rescued from those inflatable XMAS lawn atrocities) for those nights where it spends any significant time in this temperature range. Smaller trees get covered (e.g., the new lemon is a dwarf at about 6 ft tall and 6 ft wide -- a big ball!) with bed sheets. In the coldest cases, coat the trees with a fine mist to act as a thermal insulator (ice). Of course, the harvest is toast when that happens! We'll be finishing the last of our Navel oranges in another two-three weeks; but, the "fresh OJ" should carry us well into XMAS and the start of the next crop (which will be *huge* this year!)]

Local geography has a huge effect (washes, cold air rolling off the mountains, etc.). Weather Underground lets us peek at conditions in various parts of town. Significant differences! We've learned how to interpret the city forecast to relate to our local microclimate.

Actually, the Saguaro Cactus that is so characteristic of the desert southwest ONLY grows in the Sonoran Desert. Movies shot in Tucson (Sonoran Desert) will have the cacti present. Some movies purported to be set elsewhere can reveal this little error ("Hey, there are no saguaro in El Paso!"). Some products seem to suffer from this same creative imagining:

ObTrivia: the Saguaro, at 5 years, is the size of an olive. Double that at 10 years! It takes ~75 years for a Saguaro to grow an arm. Its not uncommon for a Saguaro to be 150 years old. As the plant is *largely* made of water, it is very dense and heavy (approaching 4000 pounds). Its root structure only goes down about 6 inches but extends laterally in all directions by about the height of the cactus (it grabs rainfall *greedily*). So, it relies on *balance* to keep it upright (a saguaro that is toppled is virtually impossible to salvage -- esp without special equipment to support it as it is righted) And, as it has so much stored reserves, the cactus can take a very long time to die!

Ick ick ick! And Ick!!

Until you've spent time in *dry* heat, you'd be hard pressed to imagine how different the sensation!

I moved 20 tons of stone into the back yard on a 117 degree day. I never felt "hot" because I never had the sticky perspiration "cue".

In that sort of whether, you drink a pint of water every 20 minutes to remain hydrated (i.e., almost half a gallon every hour). Yet, you don't *pee*! (it is a really disturbing sensation to be CONTINUOUSLY drinking and wondering "where's it all GOING?" as you are UNAWARE that you are perspiring at that tremendous rate).

The killer is direct sunlight. If you stand in a shaded area (e.g., back porch) and extend a bare limb out so that part of it remains shaded and some extends into the sunlight, you would easily be able to draw a line on that limb (eyes closed) that corresponded with the edge of the shadow!

Nighttime low, tomorrow, will be 78F. It will feel "cool".

90F at midnight is *very* comfortable. Monday, it will hit 100F at 9AM and drop below that at 10PM. The comfort level in the late evening will be much preferable to that of the morning (despite the same temperatures -- no sun!)

OTOH, in a couple of weeks, Monsoon starts and our RH will start to increase (dewpoints approaching 60F). We'll tolerate the stickiness in return for the intense rainstorms.

[Another desert southwest oddity: people dropping what they are doing to watch it rain!]

You'll need a prescription, but it's magical stuff. An idiot dermatologist told me that my excezma was genetic and incurable; a bit of Clobex now and then whacks it dead.

That, and Ivory soap, which is real old-fashioned soap.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

The clobex works best for me. In very small amounts. A small dab once or twice fixes things that it touches and things fairly nearby.

A milder steroid might be good to try. Fluocinonide is pretty good.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Yeah, that would do.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

That's amateur league sweat. In New Orleans we had temp and humidity in the high 90's simultaneously. And the mosquitoes were as big as chickens.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

I have a doctor's appointment Monday. I'll ask before I plunge. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| STV, Queen Creek, AZ 85142    Skype: skypeanalog |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 

     Thinking outside the box... producing elegant solutions. 

"It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that 
is the secret of happiness."  -James Barrie

I often feel it is a little to cool in our home at 78*, but only if the air condition has been running enough to bring the humidity down to 42% or less. Mikek

The Outlaw Josey Wales was one of the last great westerns. It was already a sort of gentle parody of Clint's spaghetti westerns. The fearsome gunslinger winds up with wagons, women, retired Indian chiefs, dogs, Indian tribe pals, and a farm. My wife semetimes compares me to Josey Wales.

I can't imagine that being a cowboy in the Old West was actually much fun. The stand-up fast-draw shootout was largely fictional. Most people got shot from behind, or died from some miserable disease.

"There's a woman behind every tree, and the nearest tree is 400 miles away."

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics