Job Discussion Forums

[Aristotle]

I want to attach one of those pics to my handle. How do I do it?

[dduck]

Hi Aristotle,

Find the site that contains your chosen image, and copy the location of the image. If you're using IE you'll need to examine the images properties to get the link. It's a simple right-click using Netscape.

Once you have to link, open your profile, go to the end where you'll find the avatar business and copy the link into the box. That should do it! I'm not sure what size the avatar can be on this board you should try experimenting to see what fits.

Iain

[Anda]

I'll try and make it easy. You see my fly at the side? Good now right click onto it! Ah good now down the bottom of the list that appeared when you clicked onto on nice house fly you will see properties. Left click this and you will see the URL address. Copy this onto a piece of paper and then go to your profile and then down to the bottom of the page and you will see a place to type in the URL address. So type in the URL address and hit submit. Good that's it!!!!!!!!
My fly size is about as big a picture as you can use. Go to any site on the Net and pick something you like and follow the above instruction!!!!!!!!!!

[dduck]

"This place is big, really big. I can hear my voice echo off the walls"

Iain

[Anda]

Dear DDuck your instruction aren't that clear for a beginer with computers. I happen to be one of them.

[dduck]

Well, there seems to be only me and you in here, and you seem to be doing fine Can't be all that bad!

Iain

[Anda]

Dear D,Duck my other poor fly died and I had some trouble catching another one. Why , you might ask! Well I fogot to post the image fist to my picture's file before I went to properties and got the URL address to post here.

[dduck]

What I want to know is: why the fly?

Iain

[TokyoLiz]

Can't figure out the image size limit - anybody know the max dimensions?

The forum ate my ninja...

[Anda]

The size um, well you will notice that my fly has downsized. Oh and I did like my big fly a lot. Lemmon from the Korean board downsized him to the maxium size that Dave wants posted on the board.
Now D,Duck's question: Um I'm a nut you see Duck! I think that soon there's going to be food shortages even in western countries. The other shortage with it will be clean drinkable water. Now to produce a Kg of chicken or beef you need a lot of drinkable water. On the other hand if you want a better protein source that hardly consumes any water and can reproduce itself about a thousand fold within a month and have it's own children reproducing 7 to 8 days after birth then meet my friend.
Yep I've been studying my little friend now for 3 years. Under controlled conditions they can be grown on a clean vegetable food source and presto the new food of the furture. Oh I just remembered that Ducks are big fly catchers and love them. But it's the babies that interest me after they are about 3 days old!
I bet you are now sorry you asked about my fly now.

[dduck]

[Anda]

Dear D,Duck, I haven't started eating them yet but it will be no trouble for me. Anyway here is an interesting artical for you. This fly is called a shore fly and it has a diet of algae and used to be eaten big time by the Indians. This fly now is in many countries and breeds in greenhouses for instance. But other flie types are better for controlled breeding.
Would you believe that my nickname used to be Nerd?

Mono Lake
California
FLIES OF FANCY


By David Carle, Park Ranger
Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve


He avoids contact with people whenever possible. Disdaining scuba tanks, he is often seen moving around underwater, breathing from air bubbles trapped among his body hairs. He can even walk on water.

Sounds like a particularly talented, but surly, member of the Search and Rescue Dive Team, you say? Wrong!

A few more hints: his life immediately prior to adulthood was spent just lying around, appearing lethargic enough to make one wonder whether he would ever amount to anything. But, hey, wasn't that the case for a lot of us, too? Many of his ancestors never made it past that stage of their lives, instead becoming food for the natives who lived in the area. They tasted good.

But this one matured; became an adult. His full name is Ephydra hydropyrus hians. The middle name means "water fire." Many folks call him a "brine fly," but "alkali fly" is most accurate, according to the scientists.

Yep, a fly. A member of that pesky order of insects that we all love to hate. Why did God make flies anyway? Why do they have to bite us, hover around us, make that awful whining buzz, and feed on yucky, putrifying gunk before arriving to trample over our picnic food with their germy feet? All flies are worthless, crummy pests. Right?

Wrong again, I'm afraid. You see, the flies that inhabit Mono Lake are different from most of their obnoxious cousins. Visit the shore of Mono Lake during warm weather and you may encounter a three-foot-wide, black, buzzing band of brine flies blocking your way to the beach. But, never fear, all you need do is approach and they will hurriedly fly away from you. If one happens to bump into your leg, you can be assured it was a mistake. They don't like us. I think they consider people awful and bothersome (perhaps even yucky).

Their nice behavior may have something to do with an alkali fly's choice of food. They are primarily vegetarians, feasting on algae found along the shore and on the submerged rocks of Mono Lake. So they have no appetite for human meat.

But they do have lots of enemies that are interested in making a meal out of them. Birds love them. It's interesting to watch a gull wading along through the crowded mass of flies by the shore, swiping and pecking at the flies. As the bird walks the flies clear out, but they seem to know just how far to go to be out of reach. The result is that the gull looks like it has a force field surrounding it that repels all flies within six inches of its beak.

Of course, now and then, the beak is quicker than the fly.

If there were olympic games to celebrate the ultimate achievements in alkali fly talents, one of the events would be speed skating. Not on ice, but over the surface of the liquid water. There would have to be other events even less familiar to us. Like underwater rock climbing. The adult flies don't dive and swim when they go underwater to eat and lay eggs. Instead, they walk down, using hooked claws to cling to the tufa rocks. I imagine scoring criteria for this event would include both speed and style: "Incredible! For the first time in history a successful one-claw transfer between tufas has been completed. But he's about out of air now..."

A whole series of events might be built around their ability to breathe underwater by encasing themselves in bubbles of air. Of course, the temptation for alkali fly athletes to boost their bristly body hair density, in order to trap bigger and bigger bubbles of air as they enter the lake, could lead to deplorable abuses of banned substances (whatever the fly equivalent of anabolic steroids might be).

The adolescent larvae athletes could compete in algae scraping contests, crawling over tufa rocks to see who could first fill his belly. Or lime gland weight-lifting, for those who have best refined their ability to handle the carbonates in the alkaline water by mixing it with calcium and storing the resultant tufa-like stuff in an increasingly heavy, glandular pocket.

Even the pupae that appear so outwardly quiet in their brown, coccoon-like cases, could show off their amazing abilities at time-warping. Just how far can the limits be pushed? In one arena flies are vying for the 3-day pupation record; it's hot in there, folks. While over here, two flies are chilled dangerously close to the point of death, attempting to extend their pupa stages to 10 weeks. What is this thing we call time, anyway? Both sets of flies will complete identical portions of their allotted lives, but in vastly different spans, solely dependent on temperature.

Amazing facts, certainly. But who really cares, you ask? They are still only a bunch of flies, after all.

Well, besides the thousands of birds that feast on them, the Kuzedika Paiute Indians cared. They relied on fly pupae as on of the staples of their diets. Our culture's dietary staples are corn and wheat. For the Kuzedika residents of the Mono Basin it was pinyon pinenuts and fly pupae. They called the pupae, "kutsavi," and used it as a supplement to other food or just as a popcorn-style handfood.

Kutsavi was good food. Good in terms of nutrition, but also flavor. In fact, it was a highly valued trade item. Indians from far away coveted Mono Lake's fly pupae.

Which brings us to the word "mono." Did you know the lake is in "Fly Pupae County?" "Mono" is a Yokuts word. The Yokuts Indians lived west of Yosemite, and would hike up into the mountains during the summer to trade with the Yosemite Miwoks and with the Paiutes, who had traveled over the Sierras from the east side. The Yokuts loved "mono," yummy, nicely-seasoned fly pupae from the salty sea across the mountains.

Why don't we call this "Kutsavi Lake" and "Kutsavi County?" Why use a name from people that lived so far away?

Because of the way California was settled, the Anglo culture made contact with the Indians on the west side of the mountains first. One story is that when the lake was officially discovered by a U.S. Cavalry troop chasing Indians eastward from Yosemite, their guides were Yokuts. The guides taught them the name "mono" for this area. And that name is what we still use today: Mono Lake, Mono County, the Mono Cone...

It all goes back to a little fly that has the unique ability to survive in the harsh alkaline waters of Mono Lake.