A Slew of Visitors (cont)

More pictures from the past few days.

First is Sam, talking to his new niece.

And Simone's summit pose (check out those guns)
Paula came down to meet her niece in between finishing up the state track meet and heading back to school. Such dedication for Simone - but she's worth it.

And Gin and Bob raced over the day they got back from their wine tour of Italy.


I even got into a few pictures. See, there's proof that I change diapers.
Note the crooked horizon - something my Dad always gives Sam a hard time about. Well, this one was taken by dad.
Here I am admiring our beautiful daughter.

A Slew of Visitors

Wow, a bunch of people came by to check out our newborn Simone.

But first, a quick note about her name. You don't pronounce it like I have been doing (Sah-mOn) but instead say (si-mOn) - that's si as in sit, and mon as in moan. You see, I've just always pronounced it the other way. Of course people on the phone think it's spelled "Samone" when I pronounce her name incorrectly. Jeesh. Of course I mispronounced my friend Megan's name for a year and a half. It is Megan as in 'egg'. But of course on the east coast they pronounce 'egg' differently than we do here. sigh...

Anyway, lots of people came by, and we took pictures. Lots of pictures.

First we have two of my dad and Simone, both turned out very nice. For some reason, all the photos of my dad came out in focus, but everyone else had some blurry pictures.

This next one is of our midwife, Lisa.


I took a bunch of photos of my mom from this angle - I'm not sure why. Simone looks good in all of them, but mom's head is a bit too close -so it appears to dwarf the rest of her body. Sorry mom.

The next three are of my darling wife and Simone. We took Simone outside for a little tan and to enjoy the nice weather.

Cuteness personified

Five days and seven hours old, getting cuter by the minute. I don't see how this can continue much longer - there just isn't enough cuteness in the world. Perhaps it's more of a logarithmic curve, and not the exponential curve it appears to be. (click on the links if you don't understand math)

A Day of Many Firsts

Like most new parents (as they/we should), it's all about the baby for the first few days/months/years. I had Simone's first puke, and I changed my first diaper ever (not counting the half-job I did on my nephew-in-law a few years back). And, of course tonight will be my first night sleeping with a baby (yes, we're co-sleeping, I think it's dumb not to).

What I didn't realize is that after the birth, you get a 24-hour "cry free" buffer where the baby is pretty much just sleeping. Simone did cry a couple of times for a minute or two, but she was generally happy as a clam to just hang out and sleep.

Mary and I are very blessed to have had a safe birth to a healthy baby (sadly, this is not the case for more people in the U.S. than in any other developed country).

At some point I'll discuss what it was like to have a home-birth, but I'm not done processing it myself yet.

Simone Rose Jackson

Born this morning, 5am. 20 inches long, 6 pounds 7 ounces, and as beautiful as can be.

Both Mary and Simone are doing very well, though they're both a bit tired after the long journey to get here.

They Let Us Win

So, I had yet another game tonight. We barely had five people, which was lucky for the other team. Why? Because we stomped them 82 to 44. I had a ton of rebounds, a number of blocked shots, and an assist or two.

My guess is that when the dude who organized the basketball schedule saw our team name, he lined up the easiest schedule possible. We would have scored more, but (again) two of our point guards have no clue how to pass to anyone other than themselves, and were pretty much black holes (you give them the ball, they're shooting). Oh, and the other tall guy on my team (well, 3 of the 4 other guys playing) wouldn't shoot the ball when they got a rebound underneath the basket. It was sad. Not as sad as my 3/14 from the field (3 consecutive shots missed in about 6 seconds).

Of course, the saddest thing of all was we were playing a girls high school team. They were maybe Juniors, though they could have been younger. If you took their three point guards and put them on the other side of a teeter-totter from me, I'd still tip the scale in my favor. Luckily, the were decent shots, and we fell for most of their pump fakes. But when only two of their players stood taller than our shortest player, you knew it was going to be trouble.

So Depressing

Today INTC closed at $17.95. Now, for those of you keeping score, that's the Intel stock ticker.

First, let me say that I like my job (though recent events really make me doubt the management of my department, but that's another blog entry), and they pay me well. So I'm not complaining about compensation.

However, one of the "perks" of a supposed high tech company is the stock, or even the stock options. Take a look at this chart comparing AMD, Intel, and the S&P 500 over the last two years. It's depressing.

Now, back to the options. When I joined Intel, stock was soaring, and everyone talked about "the golden handcuffs", and that was a part of the attraction of working at Intel. I'm saddened to say that only one set of my options are in the black, and if the stock drops to a measly $17.42, then I'll have no options worth anything. Hell, if I'd actually purchased stock for the same prices, I'd be out a third of my money.

Anyway, it's just a bit depressing to think about all that lost potential. It wasn't so bad when it was just me, but then I got married and had to think about a wife. And now, I've got a kid that's almost here...

Wasps Nests

I mowed the lawn today. Not my favorite job, but it's a heck of a lot easier than weed-whacking a lawn.

Anyway, it finished up pretty quickly because we have more flower beds than we used to, and there's still a huge pile of dirt in the south-west corner of the yard. Luckily the weeds are holding down the dirt, otherwise it might look bad.

Where was I.... oh, it went quickly, so I figured I should do some more yard work. An hour or two every evening, and we'll be caught up in no-time.

I recalled seeing a couple of wasp nests under the eaves of the house, and being the procrastinator I am, figured I'd better get to them soon, or Mary will be pissed when a swarm of them comes down and flies away with the baby. That meant tonight.

So, how does one deal with wasp nests? You can get some noxious chemical spray and spray them, but Mary is very against that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not all chemical happy, I'd rather not spray stuff everywhere if there's another alternative (that doesn't take forever). But if your partner feels strongly about something, and you don't, you're best to go with the flow. So no chemical for me. Oh, and another reason not to do use the spray: I didn't have any and am far to lazy to hop in a car and go get some.

The question was, how do I get the wasp nest I saw in the eaves 20' up in the air? See, that's why the spray was attractive - because it shot out of the can up to 20'. Problem solved.

Only no spray.

Well, you can knock the wasps' nest off the eaves. So find a stick. Luckily, I've got some 8' poles that we use for the deer fence around the garden.

So I get one and start looking for nests. Guess how many we have?

Go on, guess!

Lame - you could at least have played along. We had at least 2 dozen. Seriously. Now, 6-8 of them were just starts, no bigger than a wasp really. And those were almost all in one spot, so they went quickly. The next dozen were a little larger, the size of a ping-pong ball. The tiny ones were no big deal, and the lime-sized ones didn't bother me too much, but they actually made noise when falling down the side of the house. The noise was kind of like tissue paper bouncing down stairs.

Then I saw the big one, it's not as large as the one I knocked off two years ago (that was the size of a good-sized pancake with a few pints of strawberries on top). No, not that big, but it was the size of my fist. And when I attacked the pancake one, it was winter and I told myself that they were all hibernating or something. This is spring, and they're all feeding off our flower beds.

Eh? Feeding off the flower beds? Permit me a digression. When you're dealing with wasps, you quickly realize there are a bunch of different kinds. I figured that I was battling the flesh-eating death wasp from Peru, but it turns out it's likely just a black and yellow mud dauber wasp. Turns out, love eating spiders, and we have about a hundred spider egg pouches along the eaves. And every resource I found about them quickly pointed out that they are docile wasps, very rarely stinging people (or any animals). So, I wasn't dealing with nests of hoards of suicidal attack insects, but nests of single, pansy, wasps that build their hives out of mud. Back to the story.

But I didn't know that, I was sure they were going to come after me like some cartoon, only I had no lake to jump in.

So I poke at the large nest a couple of times, and it falls onto our porch - where I leave it for Mary to admire when she gets home. That and because I'm afraid that the baby wasps are waiting for me to get close, at which time they jump out and eat me. That nest had 2 layers of honeycomb, which I thought was way cool.

This only left the nests at the peak in the back yard. I wasn't tall enough. Even with my arms extended, the 8' pole, and my huge vertical leap (12" at least), I was still several feet short of getting to the nests way up high. And these were the size of small lemons.

Of course at my Portland house, I had a kick-ass ladder. I got the one that would reach any of the gutters, so it extended to 22'. Not only that, but it was rated to hold more than my weight, it was spec'ed to hold 300 pounds. I left it in Portland at my dad's place.

So I'm left with only a 6' ladder, which means that I can just barely reach the nests. The first one is low enough that I don't have to stand directly under it. I poke a couple of times, it comes down quickly. I look down and two wasps crawl out of it and sit there a little dazed. Dunno, perhaps they were interrupted in the middle of hanky-panky. That freaked me out a little, because I was going to have to get under the highest two and basically let them fall straight at me.

I knock off another "low" one and psych myself up for the last two. I poke at the smaller (ping-pong ball sized), see it fall, and not so quickly lumber down the ladder and run away. I'm pretty sure the nest hit the ground before I was even at the last rung of the ladder, but I still ran. Then the momma of them, an orange-sized nest directly above my head.

You would think I was building to a big climax or something,
but you'd be wrong.

The last one came down like the rest, but I didn't watch. I just grabbed the ladder and waddled off like the scaredy-cat I am.

Wind Power

A year and a half ago I wrote about our energy usage at home. While we don't go crazy about eliminating fossil fuels (I still drive to work, and we use natural gas), we do what we can. Anyway, I'll plug Pacific Power's Blue Sky program again - it really doesn't cost you but a few dollars more a month to get all your electricity from totally renewable resources.

But the motivation for this entry is this wonderful article at Daily Kos about wind power, read it, learn something: Daily Kos: Alternative Energies: Wind power

Polls

Really, I'd thought of this idea before he wrote about it, but Billmon uses nice big words and all: Whiskey Bar: Vox Pollsteri.

Anyway, I've found it ridiculous that the "polls show X" or "polls show Y" when talking about our rights. For a long time black folks weren't allowed to vote/go to school/marry non-blacks/drink water from fountains/etc. etc. etc. And the polls agreed with those things. Same goes for women, or any other group.

Polls do give an feel of the current population's stand on an issue, but they're often phrased in a way such that the pollster gets to support their issue - so you have to closely look at the questions. I'm fairly confident that if polled, 99% of the U.S. thinks abortions are bad - nobody wants to have one. Also, polls rely on the premise that folks are well informed, however it's pretty apparent that this administration doesn't give out any information (unless it's to further their purpose), the Congress isn't fighting to get info released, and the press is just a sack of corporate lap dogs.

What's a little wiretapping, I know they're not listening to me....

I could have had two brains....

So I was walking outside the buildings at work with some friends, and we passed the bike racks. I noticed a bright red bike and recognized it as the Specialized Epic. I'm in love with my bike, it's a lot of fun to ride, it's pretty, and it's got the geek factor (the brain).

Anyway, I spent a pretty penny on the bike, it's not real cheap. I'm not bragging, I'm setting up the next point.

The guy locked his bike up with a Kryptonite lock - the preferred lock for most cyclists. He put the lock through bike rack (a good start), and securely around the seat post.

Let me repeat - it was around the seat post.

Now, perhaps you're unfamiliar with what a bike looks like. Take a look at the Park Tool bike map and notice how the seatpost and saddle just poke out of the rest of the frame. I'm pretty sure you could have pulled the seat through the Kryptonite lock without unlocking it. But, if you didn't want to go to that effort, you just had to undo the quick release on the seat post.

Eh? This dude "locks" an expensive bike up in about the least secure way possible, I almost stole it out of principal (couldn't hurt to have a spare).

I was advised to take it out of the lock and just lean it up. I also thought of just writing a nasty letter and leaving it on the bike. Or perhaps taking my own lock and locking it up.

Just pisses me off though...

Heaven or Hell?

Somebody pointed out this humorous tribute to their cat.
I'd like to think our cats are some place like this:

Our Cat Enters Heaven - by Margaret Atwood

A Short History

I've been listening to an audio book, "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, while working in the yard today. It is truly a fascinating book. A summary of the book would be, "a history of science, in laymans terms, with all the peculiarities of those involved." The beginning starts with a wonderful description of how impossibly big the solar system is, let alone the universe. And he makes a good point that, given how large space is, it seems a little odd that intelligent life would come all this way to make crop circles.

The book is read by some English chap with an accent that just makes you want to listen more. Though it was rather confusing to hear that accent talk about growing up in the U.S.

Math meets poetry

Heh, fun poems to be found here. It's a blend of haiku and Fibbonacci.

1/1/2/3/5/8

weeds
and
more weeds
pull them up
i gotta start now
or nothing will ever get done

Heh, it's my first Fib.

Chernobyl

It's been 20 years since the accident. Here are two very powerful tributes to Chernobyl, a series of photos by Robert Knoth, and a photo essay narrated by the photographer, Paul Fusco.

The Brick Testament

Just found this interpretation of the Bible called The Brick Testament. Some people have too much time on their hands.

How many Jelly Bellies...

So a guy at work had a contest - who could guess how many Jelly Belly beans were in a given container. Long story short, I won. I guessed there were 1619 beans in the jar, and there were 1620. Rock on!

Too bad I decided I'd go on a diet.

Sweet!

I'd heard about stevia a while back, and have wanted to try it. It's a super sweet leaf (often used as an extract, or you can use the leaves). Mary picked up a little jar of it for me last week and I've been drinking it in my tea.

You see, my new doctor (no, not Mary) told me that I'm fat (not those words, but...). While I can normally tolerate that from my friends (it's a mantra in Moab - "You know why you can't do X? Because you're fat!" - and it's true), or my family might tell me. But when a near complete stranger approaches you soberly (wearing a white lab coat or not) and tells you that you should think about changing your diet, it kinda sticks.

Anyway, I'm doing a lot more than just using stevia in my tea, and I'm down 6 pounds this week.

But that's not the point. You should check stevia out. It's pretty wild. It's 250-300 times as sweet as sucrose (regular sugar) - which means that 1/4 teaspoon is as much as 1.25 cups of sugar. It's very sweet and has a nice aftertaste. It does have a slight bitter pre-taste (as I call it) that takes a little getting used to, but that's not bad - certainly no worse than Nutrasweet or any of the other artificial sweeteners I tasted way back when.

I'm gonna go have some tea right now.

Funny, or not, you decide

MoJo has a little snippet contrasting what the media finds funny and what it doesn't.

At issue is Stephen Colbert's recent performance at the White House Correspondent's dinner.

I watched the performance, and it is funny. Unfortunately, it's funny because it is so true - which is why it is also sad.

Hypocrisy

I know other people have blogged about this, and it's probably been shown on a few TV stations. But the folks supporting the speaker of the house will still vote for him. Anyway, if you didn't know it, he drove away from an energy conservation meeting in a hybrid car, but got out of the car a few blocks away and got back into his huge SUV for the few remaining blocks going back to his office. Just pisses me off.

John Carroll writes about it much more eloquently than do I.

Religious Tolerance

Douglas Rushkoff writes an thoughtful piece on religious tolerance. I immediately connect with the article when reading the third paragraph:

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I no longer see the real value in being tolerant of other people's beliefs. Sure, when beliefs are relegated to the realm of pure entertainment, they pose no real danger. So, a kid believes U2 is really a supergroup on par with The Beatles or The Who. That's *his* problem, and it doesn't really do a lot of harm to anyone except those of us who still stop by MTV occasionally to see what might be playing.

I like the grumpy old man attitude.

The rest of the article is less grumpy old man and more pissed at the religious fanatics. He makes a number of very interesting points - one of the main ones being that people have to stop living in the past and just aren't using their brains.

He ends with:

The more we can make [the Bible's] mythology relevant to our present, the more easily we'll bring those who believe in it out of the past.

I might just have to go read his new comic.

Illegal Aliens

oooh, scary. There are "illegal aliens" in our country. Not only are they different (because they're alien), but they are breaking the law.

Everyone breaks the law. There are so many laws out there that it's probably impossible to go more than a week (if even a day) without breaking at least one law. So using the justification that "they're breaking the law" to need to go and round them up is just dumb. It turns out, illegal aliens are only 1/4 as likely to do real crime as regular Americans. So what's the big deal?

Oh, and I'm all for them protesting (I just learned that our cafeteria didn't use real plates on Monday - likely because their dish washers were out), but the idea that a day of not buying things (even if nobody did it) would have a real dent in our economy is silly. People would have just have bought more the day before or after.

What they should do is not work for a month. Now that would cause real damage.

Esophageal narrowing

That was quick. The doctor's office called today, I'm getting referred on to a gastrointerologist (sp?). I've got a narrowing of my esophagus. I could have told them that (it's what I figured).

Now that I've had time to think about all of this, I remember back in high school getting a little bit of food poisoning. I got real sick, but had a real tough time throwing up - it felt like something was squeezing shut and not letting the food out. I've not been able to throw up effectively ever since. And I remember as a kid just puking - like one of those horror movies - a nice steady stream. Everything changed in high school. I wonder what did it.

I'll never look at milkshakes the same again

Today I had the joy of drinking a barium milkshake. For some 6 or 7 years now, I've occasionally had difficulty swallowing. Food would get stuck in my esophagus just above my stomach. I'd get some vigorous hiccups, spit up the food, and generally be uncomfortable for 5-50 minutes until my esophagus relaxed to let the food pass through.

I finally went in to see a M.D. about it, which meant I got to get an xray of my stomach. Stomachs don't show up very well, thus the barium.

Mmmmm.... barium. All in all, it didn't taste too bad. But it was like drinking a palatable chalk shake. Only the shake was super heavy. But first I had to quickly chug a slug of water and special salts, which immediately turned into a bunch of gas in my belly. So, not only did I get to drink a thick shake, my belly was already full of gas - and I wasn't allowed to burp.

The only thing I know so far is that the barium pill (yup, a shake and a pill) hung out in my esophagus, not wanting to drop into the stomach - so I had to drink yet more barium to wash it down. Hopefully I'll know more in a few days.

Still asking, "Please let us win"

This week was my third basketball game for the team with the bad guards. We're 2 and 3 now I think. This past game could have gone really wrong (the score was 22 to 6 at one point), but a new guy (who showed up for game #2) was there mid-way through the first half. It's amazing how much it helps to have a person who can actually pass and can see more than one person to pass to.

In the first 5 minutes, our two bad guards had 4 or 5 passes picked off and the guy from Russia had 3 shots blocked before they even left his hand. It was embarrassing.

I shot horribly (2 or 3 out of 8 from the field). But I did have a couple of great blocks. We snuck by with a loss of less than 15 points, which I felt good about.

With the new guard, the team is bearable. Though the guys still need to learn how to play a zone.

Wow, diaper facts

I finally got to reading the article I told y'all to read. These facts really stood out:

Some of the facts: 18 billion disposable diapers are thrown in landfills each year, taking as many as 500 years to decompose. Disposable diapers make up the third largest source of solid waste in landfills, after newspapers and food and beverage containers--a significant fact, considering they are a single product, used by a limited portion of the population.1 It takes upwards of 82,000 tons of plastic and 1.3 million tons of wood pulp, or a quarter-million trees, to manufacture the disposable diapers that cover the bottoms of 90 percent of the babies born in the US.

( (2.) Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Corporation.)

Wow. Really, check out the article.

Diapers

Yup, you'd better get used to it. We're gonna have a kid, and I'm sure that my posts will have a lot more content revolving around the rug-rat-to-be than I've posted about the cats.

Today's post is about diapers. We've decided to use cloth. Mary dove in first with the research, and I started reading after she wowed me with some stats. Cloth really shouldn't be a big deal, and it's good for the environment and could even save us money.

Here were two good articles giving some rationale for choosing cloth. First, from Mothering magazine, and the second set from Punkin Butt on the environmental issues and cost. Punkin Butt has a bunch of interesting articles to begin your education.

Don't be surprised if I call you up all excited about baby's first poo!

Another Year, Another Moab

I think this was my 8th trip to Moab. The big surprise of the trip was that, finally, my freehub finally made me money. Sam and Ron both bet me that I'd break my freehub on the trip. But it held true. Glory be to Kris King.

We did some climbing in Moab and just north of Moab. Sam has pictures of the climbs and biking. I took a few pics with my camera phone, but none really turned out. The light was beautiful that night - if only some of the lazy butts had come riding with me, we could have had some awesome pictures.

In the end I rode the slickrock trail on 3 different days. The ride truly is spectacular. Along the way I made some quick friends - two women who talked trash, a couple of dudes who really appreciated the tip to ride Amasa Back, and a 5 year old girl who seemed content to just take in the view after being pushed up the hill by her dad.

It's True

Mary and I are having a baby. Yup, you heard it here ... much later than you heard it in person.

For whatever reason, I've not blogged about having a baby yet. At first it was just a part of the cautious approach, then I probably didn't blog about it so as not to jinx anything, and then it became habit.

Well, I'm breaking the cycle and announcing to the world, Mary and I are having a baby in the beginning of June. We don't yet know the sex, we're planning on having it at home, and we haven't yet decided on names (it's likely to not be named MacDonald Hall Jackson IV, but that hasn't been ruled out).

But, since you already knew all that stuff, I had intended on writing about a cool book I found.

Baby-Gami - a book on how to wrap/swaddle your baby and how to use slings. It's cute and uses lots of puns, but there are a couple of useful methods of wrapping the baby - one I hadn't thought of was using a brown paper bag (as the book says, when the baby has a blowout and you're out of clothes, you've gotta do something).

I'm sure we'll try a couple of different methods of carrying the baby. Mary has something she got from a friend/family member, my mom and dad have a carrier they used for Sam and me that is from Japan, and I'm sure we'll try a sling or two from the book.

Hmmmm.. I could try swaddling the cats for practice.

Please Let Us Win

That's the name of my new basketball team. Kinda sad, and I should have taken it as a sign.

Tonight we played our first game of the season. It's going to be a long season.

The guys are nice, though I'm probably old enough to be their father. Their youth does lead to a couple of benefits: quickness, energy, and fitness. However, the lack of experience playing will make it tough to win a game.

The first half started off horribly. Luckily, the other team we played was just as bad. Really, this was probably one of the worst organized games of basketball I've ever had the fortune of playing. Our two point guards (one was the guy who invited me on the team) only had eyes for each other - often choosing to make a long, risky, bad pass to the other one instead of a simple pass to the person open right next to them. Oh, and instead of crisp passes, they preferred high lobs (one of the few passes to me was a good 15 feet in the air). They also felt that a pass to them was an indication to shoot. And shoot they did.

(Un)fortunately, their defensive skills balanced out their offensive play. The guys they were guarding regularly drove past them for open shots. Or, their men just appeared in the open with the defensive player nowhere in sight. The only saving grace was that the other team was as one dimensional as we were. For instance, the guy I had the fortune of guarding never shot and rarely got the ball (even though I barely guarded him).

Oh, and in the first half we played zone. Only one guy had no idea what a zone was and repeatedly followed a random offensive player around. I kept telling him, "you stay in this area and guard whoever is there," but he just didn't get it. The other guys similarly played more of a man-like defense, leaving the key wide open. That left a lot of the defense to me - and I had 3 or 4 'stuff-it-in-your-face" blocks that half.

In the second half I didn't get very winded as I realized I didn't need to run back on offense because by the time I got to half court, the guard I passed it to would have already shot. I may be old, out of shape, and slow, but I'm not that slow. As a result, I wasn't in position for rebounds. My stats were 7 boards, 8 points (1 missed free throw), 3 blocks, and 1 assist.

Hopefully the schedule will be kind to us and we'll play some other bad teams. But I have a feeling that it's going to be a long season.

Happy Birthday to me

So, for my birthday, Mary got me hammered dulcimer lessons. A new song comes each month on it's own CD, it's a full lesson with sheet music and a track with the guitar/fiddle playing backup. And you get to choose which song you want, there 33 to chose from. Pretty cool.

Ooh, and she also got me a pair of hammers with leather on the business end. This causes the music to be a lot softer - somewhat piano-like (its hammers are also padded).

And best of all, she helped me learn how to play "Happy Birthday" on the dulcimer. I'm tone deaf enough that I couldn't figure out why things sounded so off when I was playing the wrong notes. Hopefully that'll get better with age.... more age.

NOVA | The Great Robot Race

Last night I watched NOVA | The Great Robot Race | PBS on TV. I'd heard about the challenge two years ago when none of the robots did very well.

You see, DARPA decided to host a challenge to anyone who could build a robot that could complete a 130 mile trek through the Mojave desert. And last year, the "best" team made it 7 miles.

The show (the entire hour is available on-line - PBS rocks) follows a number of the teams, discussing their different approaches, and then covers the race itself.

CMU has two robots, and Stanford has one - they were the main focus of the show. While I like CMU a lot, I think the Standford team's accomplishment was much more impressive. Of course, they won the competition, but it's not that they won, it's how they did it.

Stanford's robot, Stanley, is pretty much just a VW fitted with robotic controls and some off the shelf electronic components. On the other end of the spectrum, the CMU vehicles are Humvees with a lot of custom-made electronics. Stanford's robot was the only one to complete the qualification round without touching any of the obstacles (pretty impressive). And, when given the race course (a set of GPS coordinates), the Stanford team just uploaded those and let the robot go. The CMU team on the other hand, had a team of 30-50 people break the course down into detailed positions and contours, basically programming the path and speed for the robot for every inch of the race. So Stanford's approach seems more general and thus more powerful.

The Mother Lode

Yesterday I posted a link to a really cool optical illusion.
Well, this web page is the mother lode of optical illusions (or visual illusions, as the author points out):

Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena

Amazing illusion

This illusion just boggles the mind: http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

Houston, we have power

Wow, way back in September we blew what I thought was a fuse while using the concrete saw to cut pavers. The circuit included the two outside outlets, and both of the bathroom outlets. None of the outlets had the little 'reset' switch, and none of the breakers in the electrical panel had been tripped.

I searched high and low, but found no outlet with one of those little reset buttons. I tried replacing each and every one of the breakers in the panel in case I'd actually fried one of them w/out causing it to trip. No luck.

Months pass. We didn't have our outdoor Christmas lights on this year (no power), and couldn't use the pretty outdoor lights Mary had hung up on our back porch. Mary couldn't use her hair dryer, and I couldn't recharge my electric toothbrush. Not a life changing issue, but a definite annoyance that we reminded ourselves of almost daily.

Well, today we were cleaning out the garage. Mary noticed an electrical outlet in the garage that I'd obviously missed. She pressed "reset" and we were back in business.

I swear I never saw it. It must have been covered by our skis leaning on the wall, or tools, or something. I'm sure she would have found it in 2 minutes if she'd looked after I did way back in September.

The stupidest thing is, the outlet can't be more than 3 feet from the electric panel.

Even more unbelievable

This column details how President Bush has officially stated 82 times that Congress has now power over him.

The science thing makes me pity Bush and worry for our children. This, on the other hand, simply stuns me. This above all else make me want him to be impeached. I can't believe that people who supposedly want to uphold the Constitution actually stand behind this bozo.

Unbelievable

This whole country is going anti-science. We're pretty much dooming ourselves to being a has-been in the world if we don't have the knowledge required to stay on top of scientific research (among other things).

We're supposed to leave the world a better place for our children. Instead, we're wrecking it, and we're keeping them ignorant so they won't know it.

This is an interesting story about what kids are (not) being taught in Arkansas.

I'm a wanted man

I just got a call from one of the guys I played basketball with last season at Timberhill. He's forming a team and he wanted me to join. woo-hoo. If I placed the voice correctly, he was the nice point guard who seemed to be overshadowed by the other point guard on the team. Whatever happens, I'll know at least one person on the team.

Also, it's going to be a B-4 league team, which means I'll be playing at the same level. When I signed up as an individual, I opted for B3-B4, so I'll have to wait at least a season to find out what the better league play is like.

Tuning helps

So, I've been a little out of practice with my hammered dulcimer. Part of the issue was that it was starting to get out of tune - to the point where even I could tell.

I was waiting for a local shop to get the electronic tuner I ordered. I wanted to go through a local shop b/c I like to support the local guys. This shop was very friendly, eager even, to put in the order. Well, I got tired of waiting. I called them, and even stopped by in person. The response was always, "it'll be in next week."

After a month and a half, I figured they'd had their chance. So I found one of the cheaper online shops (with a good reputation), and ordered it from there. Even after shipping it was about 20% less than what I would have gotten it for from the shop.

I fiddled with it, and spent about an hour tuning the dulcimer. No one note was off by very much (well, maybe one was), but pretty much every string needed to be tuned - they were all a little flat.

Wow, what a difference that made. Even with my limited skill, I could totally hear the difference in how the instrument sounded. The songs were brighter and more musical.

Now I just need to learn some more songs.

Organic versus Local

Slate has an interesting article highlighting how the store "Whole Foods" has been misleading its customers by emphasizing the "local" aspect of food, when in fact, most of its food comes from far away (but is organic).

A couple of things come to mind. While Whole Foods may be misleading people about the locality of the origins of their produce, organic is better than non-organic (all else being equal). It's entirely unreasonable to expect a nation-wide chain (they're even in the U.K.) with 181 stores to buy food locally. People want to buy tomatos year-round, and it's just not possible to grow them "locally" year-round, especially for such a large company.

So, if you really care about this, go to a smaller, local, shop that actually can provide you with organic and/or locally grown food. Our co-op provides us with that information for all produce. Find a co-op near you.

New Bed

Mary and I bought a bed frame over the weekend. We'd purchased a new queen-sized mattress a few years ago, but hadn't ever found a bedframe we could both agree on.

Well, we found one at The Joinery in SE Portland. Mary likes to read in bed - and prefers to sit upright while doing so (I probably prefer reading lying down), so we'd looked at their Lorelei bed on-line because the headboard has a curve that makes sitting against it comfortable. But, the picture on the web page is pretty boring - it has a minimal footboard - so we'd discounted it from our search.

However, the quest for a chair for Mary lead us to The Joinery to check out their rocking chairs, and we looked at the beds as well. In one of the rooms they had a "special order" bedframe that a customer must have decided against after ordering it. It was a Lorelei frame - with the "Deluxe" footboard, and it was made with Madrone wood. It also had some modifications from the standard Lorelei - with some non-uniform spacings between the vertical rails and panels.

Needless to say, Mary and I both thought this was a very unique and interesting bed. So we hemmed and hawed, and decided that we're just going to continue our collection of interesting furniture, and this piece must be in it.

Here are some pictures taken with my new phone. Note the exquisite photo quality.


The first is the bed, fully assembled, in our bedroom - including Jupiter.

These next two images are what we saw in the shop. You can get a good feel for the look of the headboard and footboard that you can't in the fully assembled bed. That's part of what threw us off in the first place - on the web the picture had so many pillows in front of the headboard that you were unable to get a sense of the look.

We also did really like the look of the Madrona's colors and grain. The side rails are also reddish and very unique.

This shows a nice (blurry) close-up of the grain.

The Joinery makes beautiful furniture. All of their pieces are sanded so smooth that you just walk around the shop touching everything you pass. They make all the furniture in the shop itself - you can even watch. And, their wood comes from The Collins Companies, a company which practices sustainable foresting techniques that have left their forests containing as much wood as when they first started logging.

Funny Guy

A couple of different sources have pointed me to Ze's page. He's got a bunch of amusing videos, and has been doing a blog for some amount of time (so I don't know how long he'll keep updating), but he appears to be doing daily videos rounding up the news. I found today's pretty funny.

Enjoy

Great visualization of our tax dollars

This page has a great graphic visualization of where our federal tax dollars go. I wish I could dial this up for each state as well.

Quote of the day

From Bill Maher's New Rules. It might take you a second read to get it...

New Rule: Stop saying "Brokeback Mountain" lost Best Picture because of a homosexual backlash. The only homosexual backlash in Hollywood involves an actual homosexual literally hitting you on the back with a lash. Besides, if "Brokeback Mountain" taught us anything, it's that there's nothing wrong with coming in number-two.

What's up with Iraq?

So many things about the current administration piss me off. But the war in Iraq has just gotten to the point of stupidity.

Bush and Rumsfeld are both saying that they're not near a civil war - but the US ambassador to Iraq and many other people directly involved with Iraq say it's either started or very close. The death rate to our troops has only risen since we started the war. And we just launched the largest air strike in the war!!!

When we took over the friggin country we didn't need as much air-power as we do right now.

That's not even talking about all the money that's gone missing that was targeted to help fix things in Iraq. The death squads and mass graves are just disgusting. People are still without power and clean water.

Let's just hope Bush doesn't decide to invade Iran as well.

March Madness

It has begun. I don't always get to watch many of the games, but I caught some of them today (the first day of it all). As usual, the games were generally close - providing some good, close games. Mary even got into the games a little bit.

Luckily Gonzaga made it through the first round. For whatever reason, I seem to resonate with them. I pull for the Pac-10 teams, but Gonzaga is just a nice underdog (not that they're underdogs any longer). Oh, and I like Duke because of coach K.

Anyway, I'm hoping to catch more of the games this year than last, because it's about the only sports they show on normal TV that I enjoy watching.

Work Update

This year at work started off like the past few. Lots of last-minute issues and a release expected by the customers to solve all their problems. And, true to nature, we delivered the release late, and missing a critical feature that just sent the customers through the roof.

But things began to change. The department decided to reorganize for a variety of reasons. My manager swapped places with another guy, and one of my colleagues moved up to co-manage the group. The change promised to lead to good things. The whole team got all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, those of us who could look forward to new and better things (some were still tied to fixing the horror that was our late release).

And things are a little better (though I think our new managers are getting hammered by the customers (hi boss!)), but the department just has a crazy build/release process that really doesn't match the customers' needs (nor ours). So we're thrashing with things that we don't need to be dealing with.

Luckily, I've got some newer things to work on which actually gives me a chance to do something that is interesting for the first time in as long as I can remember. The tough part is actually remembering what it is to do real work.

One bonus of the new managers was that I was able to go to a conference for the first time. It was a two day class of sorts, talking about the history and future of the C++ language. What was nice was the reflection on why the language is the way it is. I've often griped about the language - the hoops you have to jump through to get basic "features" that have been in languages since computer languages were first designed (in the 60's). But Stroustrup spoke well and said something that made the lightbulb in my head turn on. I'll still bitch about the language, but I understand now. One thing that did hit a cord was the phrase, "there are languages that are idealistic, and there are language people actually use."

The other speaker was much more dynamic - kind of a cross between a motivational speaker, a professor, and Carrot Top. His big revelation was that we're all going to be writing software for multi-processor platforms. It's the first time since computers were invented that pretty much everyone will not be using Von Neumann machines. And the main problem is that nobody has languages that really help with that (that is, languages that are actually used by people).

Not that I needed more ideas to work on at work, but I got all excited about writing error safe C++.

Anyway, work is looking up, it's no longer like it was before.

First Season

Well, my first season of basketball at Timberhill just finished up. We went 5 and 3, and then won our first two games in the playoffs. We lost in the semi-final game because we couldn't shut down the other teams two stars (who scored 25 and 27 points respectively). So we were 3rd/4th best in the league of 12 teams. Not too bad considering we were just the left-overs who didn't have teams of our own.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how the first season went, considering that I haven't played a real game of basketball in at least three or four years. Officially I averaged 9.6 points per game, and had a total of 63 rebounds. The 63 rebounds was enough to give me the third most in the league - and that's with one of the games not recording rebounds. So I came close to averaging a double-double.

I'll sign up for the next season and see if I can better that.

Stupid Press

It's been well documented that there was no (none, nada, zilch) evidence of terrorist support by Saddam since the very early 1990's (see the 9/11 commission report or Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies, or the very detailed Wikipedia article debunking the "connection".

Yet, you still see stories, such as this one from Reuters continuing to allow the reader to think there is some truth to the lie.

No wonder our country is so screwed up, the press just doesn't respect the American public and leads us wherever they want to go.

Thoughts on Valentine's day

First off, I got Mary some organic cotton flannel sheets for V-day. I rock. They're super soft, really comfortable, and just what the doctor would have ordered had she a choice in the matter.

Second, what's the big deal with Cheney shooting his lawyer friend? Not that it's a good thing it happened, but why's the media all up in arms about the delay in releasing the information? The media seems happy to sit on the sidelines and not pester the White House about the important things like: growing deficit, lack of funding for poor people in all capacities, cuts to social programs, tax breaks for the rich, science in our schools, education in general, the Plame leak case, corruption in the White House, no changes before or since Katrina, croneyism, growing terrorism, global warming, electronic voting, armor for troops, where'd the money go in Iraq, etc. etc. etc. Not that I've had much respect for the U.S. media in general, but to get their panties in a bunch over the shooting accident? Now that's reporting.

The company godaddy.com got a lot of flack about their Superbowl commercial last year (didn't see it), and had trouble getting their commercial approved this year (check out the link). I took a look at some of the commercials. Sure, they're very suggestive. But if you're talking about standards, two other commercials come to mind to be more risque - but were aired on TV. The first is Paris Hilton's Jack in the Box commercial where she washes a Bentley in a thong bikini. It ran a long time before the SuperBowl, but it was aired. And Jessica Simpson's "these bots were made for popping" Pizza Hut commercial had her pretty much seducing a 15-year-old boy. That seems way more inappropriate than a busty woman standing in front of an old-man judge. Whether or not you like the commercials or think they're appropriate, it appears as though the bar is set at different heights for different companies.

Vacuous coverage of the Olympics. I've been happier with the coverage than I expected. But more often than not, you get stupid comments. The announcers often just repeat the same information over and over. For instance, in the downhill, they talked a lot about the choice of skis by the U.S. downhillers - and how they were making last second decisions about switching skis. Good - but then they got into a loop, "i can't believe they're switching. they're switching skis. this is unprecendented. they're switching skis. i'd never do that. they're switching skis." How useless is that info? Try telling us what would be different about the skis, why would one be better than the other? What's the normal process these guys use? etc.

Another example was Apolo's fall in the short-track skating. It was plainly obvious on replay that Apolo's hand hit the skate of the guy in front of him. Yet, the day after, I heard an announcer say that Apolo was bumped. Huh? They showed the replay a dozen times from 3 different angles, he was not bumped.

And just for a Corvallis weather update. It was snowing two hours ago, and now we have sunny blue skies. Very odd.

Winter Olympics (day 2)

So we're watching the Olympics tonight - it's a stellar night: men's downhill, short-track skating, ski jump, luge, half-pipe, and no figure skating (well, other than Michelle Kwan's decision to not continue).

I'm pretty excited about the coverage now. There haven't been that many commercials, and they've kept from running too many "human interest" stories - it's been pretty much nothing but non-stop action.

I really like the short-track skating. The news of the evening (for the U.S.) was that Apolo Ohno didn't make it to the finals for the 1500m. The racers are traveling so fast, and lead changes happen so quickly, it is very exciting. Plus, they're just leaning over so far in the corners, and skating so close to each other. It's just mind-boggling what they're doing.

The downhill was awesome. The course's first two turns were on such steep terrain - one of them was perpendicular to the fall line. Then they're launched over a jump with a super-steep landing - just incredible. Three of the guys who came over that jump looked completely out of control - I imagine what I look like when I go over the little 2 foot jumps (completely out of control). Luckily, all the guys made it - no wrecks (which was amazing). The guy who won finished over .7 seconds ahead of the next guy, and over a second ahead of everyone else. Just phenomenal skiing.

The half-pipe is fun. The flying tomato is just kicking butt - and it's amazing that he's a two-sport athlete (skate board too). The couple of crashes were pretty impressive - one guy pretty much landed a 20 foot jump by landing on his hip on the top of the pipe - ouch. Oh, and some of the guys are sagging while they are competing.

Ski jump is ok - what I don't understand is why they have a style portion to the score. I figure you should be judged soley on distance, with a disqualification when you don't land it and come to a stop under control. Next to the downhill, I figure standing at the top of a ski jump has to take the biggest cojones.

And who wouldn't want to do the luge. It's just like the sledding you always pretended you were doing as you slid down a hill when you were 8 years old.

High Score

Woo-hoo.

We lost the game tonight - by one point. That was pretty frustrating. We just stopped taking care of the ball, making bad passes. We also stopped passing around and only played a perimeter game (which was not our strong suit tonight).

But, the 'woo-hoo' isn't for losing the game, it's for me being the high scorer on our team. I've never been a leading scorer in an organized game. Go me - 7 of 14 for 14 points, and 10 rebounds.

Slap Your Grandma?

I was at the gym today, working out in front of the standard 3 TVs.

Fox News and ESPN were both showing commercials, and the middle TV grabbed my attention. It was CMT (country music television), but the only way I could tell was that a hill-billy looking guy wearing a cowboy hat was on it - everything else was straight out of a rap/hip-hop video. There were all sorts of impossibly shaped women wearing pants/skirts/flaps of cloth shorter than Jessica Simpson's "Daisy Dukes", shaking their rump, dancing around. The cowboy even had some bling-bling, two large "rings" on each hand - one said "Honky" and the other said "Tonk".

It was a "country" music video, for a song named "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" - I kid you not.

Sure, the eye-candy was nice, but the lyrics were absolutely ridiculous. "Got it goin' on like Donkey Kong" and "Shut my mouth, slap your grandma". Slap your grandma?

Is Trace Adkins really that dumb? Or is he pure genius?

Cell Phone Shopping

We're changing cellular plans from Verizon to Cingular - mainly because Cingular offers reception inside the buildings at work, whereas Verizon phones get none. One of the bonuses is that we get a nice discount on both the phones and calling plans.

What really annoys me is the lack of good information about the phones. You go to the various web pages for cellphones, and they don't tell you anything useful. There is the standard "talk hours, standby hours, camera or no" and that's about it. Heck, I knew that about my phone when I got the low end phone over two years ago - I'd hoped they'd come up with more info.

For instance, my old phone has a calendar. There's no real way to synchronize it with any other calendar, but I could have hunted and pecked the events in if I'd wanted. Two years pass, and I expect perhaps a little advance in the capability. I know for a fact that a friend of mine at work has a phone that can sync up with Outlook - he has a simple phone that's two years old.

So I look on the web, and it's nearly impossible to find any information about cell phones and calendars. What the heck?

So I go to 2 different Cingular shops and ask. The sales guy at the first shop had one of those blue-tooth dongles in his ear the entire time I was talking to him. I didn't like him much to begin with, but the fact he kept that dongle in his ear the entire time he talked to me came off as very rude. I told him about the 2 year old phone that a friend had, and he just didn't really get the fact that I wanted to have a simple calendar on my phone that actually worked. He showed me all the various phones - but provided no information to distinguish any of them other than bluetooth, whether I could use it all around the world (yeah, that's what I'm needing, being the international traveler), and the different colors of phones.

The next store had a young woman that immediately looked very confused when I asked about a calendar. She pawned me off on the main guy at the store who had very little additional information. He didn't know about the capabilities of any of the basic phones any better than the dork with dongle in his ear. So he showed me the "smart" phones and Treo/Blackberry devices. There were a couple of different smart-like phones (some had MS Windows and some didn't), but, again, he had no information that would help someone choose between the phones.

Nowhere could I find any sources of information about the software that came with various phones, nor any realistic comparisons between them (calendaring or regular use). The couple of reviews I found that had something that seemed like information came from people who seemed to jump between 2 or 3 phones constantly, upgrading to a new set of phones every 4 or 6 months. Do they like throwing away money that much?

In the end, I'm getting a Nokia 6102 because my friend's phone that syncs with Outlook is a Nokia - and the 6102 looks like it might fit the bill. If that doesn't work, I'll be upgrading to the Cingular smart phone because it's pretty and is guaranteed to connect with MS products.

Anyway, it's been very frustrating to work so hard for so little relevant information. Our cell phone numbers will remain the same, but we'll have new phones in less than a week.

The next step is to switch the home phone to Vonage - which should be interesting considering the fact they don't offer phone numbers local to Corvallis (or any location south of Woodburn or west of Bend).

Scooter Libby

So Scooter is under investigation relating to the case where Plame's name was leaked to the press. I've no idea if he actually perjured himself or not (though this administration seems to have a very selective approach to applying morals).

I do, however, find Scooter's legal defense to be very suspicious. They're going to subpoena a bunch of the White House documents to "show" how overworked he was and how the perjury might be attributed Scooter being overloaded with too much stuff (and stuff more important than Valorie Plame). Well, the judge who is overseeing the case threw out another case when the defense wasn't allowed to get access to the documents deemed secret because of national security.

What do you think the odds are that the White House will withhold the documents he requests? The judge will have to throw out the case. Bush won't let his man hang out to dry, not while he was working to further the President's agenda.

Third time's a charm

Our team played again last night (get used to it, every Monday night). This time we actually had five and a half players. Mr. sprained ankle didn't get it checked out, and he was hobbling around - but he's good enough that his hobble works (heck, he scored 5 pts and got a couple rebounds w/out ever jumping).

I finally played a reasonable game. I was 4/9 from the field and had 11 rebounds. It felt good to not be a liability.

We totally crushed the other team - there was another big guy on our side, so we completely dominated the boards. At one point the score was 40-12. Then they finally started playing some aggressive defense - stealing some of our lazy passes. We still won by 15.

Even Better Than Fast Tying Shoelaces

Wow, this was fun. A new way to fold your shirt. It's even cooler than when I found out a fast way to tie my shoe laces.

Second Game

This past Monday my basketball team had its second game of the season. Only four people showed up (well, five did, but the fifth guy had just sprained his ankle that morning and couldn't play) - which is just enough to not forfeit the game.

The other team was better than the first guys we played, but they certainly didn't play very smartly. With an extra guy on the floor the entire time, they should have run circles (well, passed circles) around us. They finally started doing that at the end of the game, but didn't really pull away even then. We ended up losing by 10 or 12, which is pretty good considering they outmanned us.

The real stat that is sticking with me was my amazing performance. I went 2 for 14 from the field, and 0 for two from the line. I don't think I've shot that bad since I shot an air-ball in my first game in fifth grade. I've got to go to the gym to find out my other stats for the game (rebounds and assists), but I'm sure they're about as stellar. I guess that's to be expected after three years of not playing, but it's still a bit disheartening.

Slick Mouse

This mouse will be available in March. Looks real slick, and it does address all the issues I have with carrying a mouse and a laptop.

Bluetooth stuff costs too much (this is $70, which is close to the realm of possibility). It stores inside your laptop (cool), recharges while stored (nice, no batteries to replace), and just seems cool.

The only downside I can see so far is a lack of a scroll-wheel. None of the reviews I've seen have mentioned that capability, but I'd definitely miss that if it's not available.

A Stitch in Time...

Saves having to rip up your new hardwood floors.

So, we had hard wood floors installed almost two years ago. They extend into the half-bath in the master bedroom. Long story short, the wax ring didn't quite seal all the way (evidentially, about 1" didn't seal along the front). Now we have several wooden boards that have begun to rot out, and I even had shelf-like fungus under the porcelain base.

I'll be sure to make sure we have plenty of wax next time.

Dukes

So, I sat down and watched the Dukes of Hazard. It's about what I expected (garnering a 16% approval rating on rotten tomatos).

THe special on the DVD with the special effects (about jumping cars) was pretty good. THey basically just catapulted the cars hundreds of feet - all sorts of cars. That'd be a kick ass job for sure.

Oh, and the bonus of the movie was that Wonder Woman was in it.

Random Shooters

I joined a basketball team at the club. They threw together a team of guys who didn't have their own team, and we're called the Random Shooters.

Anyway, last week was the first game. I showed up, bought my black and white jersey, and walked into the gym. My team was on court #1. I walked in and saw a bunch of newborns throwing a basketball at the hoop. Some guys who'd actually gone through puberty were playing on court #2, so I double checked the blackboard - yup, court #1. I bet that I wasn't going to be expecting any alley-oops from the munchkins, so I grabbed a ball and headed to the other side of the court. Sure enough, a couple of other guys were shooting around who looked like they had driver's licenses for a little while. I was obviously the elder of the team, and probably the slowest, definitely the heaviest.

Turns out, the opposing team was a bunch of freshmen from a local high school. We have no idea if they were on the high school team or not, but they played with heart.

No matter. We crushed them, nearly 70 to somethign like 30 points. We out-rebounded them, out shot them, played zone (which I don't think they'd ever seen before), and generally dominated. It really wasn't fair.

I did fairly well, especially considering I hadn't played a real basketball game in probably 3 years. I probably could have scored a little more if I dragged my butt down the court, but I felt it was better to "play deep defense." And I missed half a dozen short shots, and missed a number of assists because our guys didn't cut to the hoop. Oh, and I brought the ball down like the point guard I never was.

Next week we'll hopefully play a team who wasn't in diapers this decade.

Three Songs

I've now learned a third song (two variations) to play on my hammered dulcimer. The song is: "Mississippi Sawyer" - it's yet another reel (that's the timing of the music, as opposed to a waltz, or a jig, or ...). The lessons on CD are good, and I'm getting pretty good at reading the tablature. However, the author of the series has definitely deviated from the tablature on a couple of occasions. The first time was just three notes, but for this song, the two examples of variations for part A are complete wrong. They might be acceptable sound-wise (hard to tell when I'm trying to play them), but the do not match the music on the CD at all.

Though, perhaps it is because my dulcimer is further out of tune...

Lemons (and limes)

Mmmmm.... lemons.

Well, it is winter, and that means citrus fruits are in season - and the Meyer lemons are at their peak. This lemon is a little less acidic than the standard lemon - it also has a hint of orange. Anyway, it's got a nice mild taste.

So, what do you do with lemons?

No, it's not summer - you don't make lemonade in the winter.

You make lemon curd. Mary loves lemon curd with fresh gingerbread. What lots of the recipes don't tell you is that it's safest to cook lemon curd in a double boiler so that you avoid curdling the egg (read that as avoid making lemon-flavored scrambled eggs). If you happen to scramble a little bit of the egg, it makes the lemon curd very lumpy and unappetizing. I've tried using a wire mesh strainer, but that really doesn't work well because the holes are just too small. What works really well is a food mill.

But I bought a ton of lemons. There's only so much lemon curd you can eat between two people. What do you do with the rest of the lemons?

For some reason I've wanted to make preserved lemons for a long while now. Much easier than lemon curd: you just stick some quartered lemons into a jar and with some good coarse salt. After a week (or a month) they're ready to be used. I've no idea what they taste like, though I imagine perfumey and exotic. I think I'll probably try making this salad. Whether or not they taste good, they are beautiful.

I also had a few limes that needed to be used. In Mexico I found a drink I really liked. It's not your standard lime drink - as opposed to flavoring with the juice, it is just flavored with the zest. You take the zest and soak it in water (with a little sugar). That's it. As opposed to the acidic limeade flavor you normally get with limes, it is much more subtle and complex. In a way, it's kind of like drinking rose-water, only with a lime taste. The zest from 3 limes finely grated, half a cup of sugar and a quart of water makes a tasty drink. Let the zest soak for 10-15 minutes or longer, and strain out the big pieces.

A New Sport

Perhaps now that baseball and softball are out of the olympics, there will be room for a new sport.

Go Figure

What I don't understand is how the RIAA can get all pissy about the pricing of the music CDs, but it's sister company (the MPAA) lets folks buy their products for almost half (it's easy to find recent releases for under $10, try to find an album from the last 15 years for that).

A music CD can't cost nearly as much as a movie, yet you can buy them for half the cost. What the hell is up with that?

Yay, a step in the right direction

Nutrition labels must now show the amount of trans-fats in the food. This is great stuff, people will now be able to more closely watch what they are eating.

Most of the big food manufacturers have already switched away from trans fats (note: no increase in prices, no decrease in taste). Betcha didn't even notice that the Oreos you've been eating are now less bad for you. woo-hoo!

Finally, the general public will become aware of what pig farmers have known for years (they stopped feeding their pigs trans fats a long time ago because their pigs died).

Church Sexual Abuse Lawsuit

The latest ruling in the bankruptcy lawsuit came down, basically saying that all the parish property belongs to the Archdiocese.

Now, the whole issue is really disgusting - people in power, especially those of the church, abusing their power by abusing kids is horrible. And unfortunately, not amount of money will make things right.

I don't normally agree with going after those with money, but in this case it does appear that the Archdiocese did have a hand in concealing the problem from the public - which in my mind is actually worse than the original charge of child abuse. So, given that, I'm all for sticking it to the church for the whole thing.

Sadly, if the parishes' properties end up being liquidated, it's going to really hurt their communities. The people who belong to those churches will likely be disillusioned and the good services that the churches provide will be disrupted (if not completely discontinued). That's the potential downside to this ruling.

But in the end, I think it's the right course of action. The Church so completely controls all the parishes, it is only right that the Church lose the parishes. Perhaps this will be a wakeup call to the people attending the Church that still seems to be covering child abusers. Perhaps it's time to find a new church.

Just Stop It

I've gotten pretty accustomed to using my MS Windows laptop. But it occasionally pisses me off.

Right now it's the fact that when I want to kill a process, it just doesn't die. It takes like 5 minutes and freezes up the whole system.

In Unix, if I want to kill a process, I can do it. It happens instantly. No fuss, no muss.

Hot Fudge Sauce

Mmmm.... hot fudge sauce.

There's a recipe in my favorite cookbook I'd been wanting to try out. Hot fudge sauce.

Growing up, my favorite ice dish was the Hot Fudge Nutty Nutty at Farrell's (there used to be one in Portland). Why did I like the Hot Fudge Nutty Nutty? Because it had two (yes two) sides of hot fudge sauce. Wow.

You can always buy fudge sauce at the store, and the sauce at the co-op is top-notch. So far my cookbook has not led me wrong, so I put it to the test tonight.

I won't bore you with the recipe, let me just say that the fudge sauce was much tastier than the all-natural strawberry ice cream (which I normally groove on). Now I've got two batches of it stored in my freezer. Just stop by with some good ice cream and I'll show you how tasty the hot fudge sauce is.

Law Shows

I've watched a number of different law shows on TV and one thing is always bugging me.

The people hauled into jail almost never get a lawyer. "Close to Home" "NYPD Blue" "Law & Order (all 23 variations" etc. I just don't get it. Sure, some people are dumb and ignorant and don't know to get a lawyer. But come on, are the defendants always this clueless? People need to know they should get a lawyer as soon as they realize they're under investigation. So don't you forget it.

Oh, and I really dislike how the cops and prosecutors are often "bending" the rules or even breaking laws to go after people. There was one where the lady prosecutor completely ignored the defendant's right to an attorney to get some information. And while the show gave a small nod to the fact she was breaking the law, the whole scenario was set up as justified because a woman's life was saved (as though they couldn't have done both at the same time). Miranda Rights are pretty much guaranteed by the constitution (indirectly, but interpreted from the Fifth Amendment).

It's this kind of mentality that's lead to this attitude.

Classic Bush

As this Yahoo news story says, the administration is looking into the person who told the world that the NSA was spying on U.S. citizens without any oversight.

Classic "shoot the messenger" mentality. They never admit doing any wrong and just try to find and destroy anyone who reveals anything negative about what they've done.

It's not ok for Clinton to lie about a personal matter (sex), but it's ok for Bush to lead us into war on false pretenses (making us less safe), it's ok for Bush to spy on U.S. citizens (what Constitution?), detain people indefinitely (it's just a piece of paper), torture (what Geneva conventions?), and behave very non-Christian (cuts to benefits programs, tax cuts for rich - i.e. help rich, screw poor).

And what is Congress doing for us? They're the ones we've elected to represent us. They're playing politics. Democrats are remaining useless because they don't know how to run a unified party, and Republicans are so busy toeing the political line that they are blind to the atrocities committed by our commander-in-chief.

Golden Slippers

Mary gave me a wonderful gift for Christmas, a hammered dulcimer. I was totally blown away by the gift. Over a year ago I rented a hammered dulcimer for several months and used the John McCutcheon Hammered Dulcimer Instruction Series CDs and book to learn how to play a couple of songs. After a couple of months I had to return the dulcimer - I wasn't playing as much as I should have, and it didn't make sense to continue renting.

Anyway, I've now got this beautiful musical instrument. I sat down yesterday and spent an hour getting re-acquainted with the dulcimer. I can now play the first version of Golden Slippers (one of the two songs I learned over a year ago). That's one thing that is nice about hammered dulcimers, they're relatively straight forward to learn. I'd put up a recording, but a couple of notes are pretty out of tune.

Anyone know how to tune an instrument with 62 strings?

War On Christmas

Happy Holidays everyone!

That's my little mini-war on Christmas.

I don't get the whole uproar. It's not as though those big companies are turning their backs on Christmas (just look at all the stuff they're selling), and "Happy Holidays" is just a little more generic, more inclusive. Isn't that what Christ was all about? Bringing religion to those shunned by the popular religion (Judaism)? How hypocritical.

Oh, and there was one thought I had recently that's related to the whole fundamental religious movement. Teaching abstinence as the only method of "safe sex" doesn't work for many reasons. Ironically, Christians believing in the Virgin Mary also know that abstinence doesn't work either. :)

Merry Christmas

Lovely

Well, looks like we've failed yet again. The Iraqi election appears to have resulted in a fundamentalist Shiite dominated Iraq. I don't think this was the "freedom" that we were promised by our leaders when we entered Iraq. Oh, right, we weren't promised to give Iraq freedom, but to rid it of WMDs. Good thing the Iraqi constitution guarantees freedom of religion ... oh, wait, it says that clerics can be in the courts.

But that's ok, it's not as though our own Constitution has been violated. Ah, but it has.

I do like Benjamin Franklin's quote on the subject of freedoms, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Scott Adams on Intelligence

Leave it to a comic strip writer to have deep insight into intelligence and God.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2005/12/intelligence_is.html

For What It's Worth

I've put the contents of this blog under the Creative Commons license. Not that people have been scrambling to use my writings elsewhere. I could have chosen the GPL, but ... I don't know that I care about imposing that set of restrictions/freedoms on my blog contents.

If you don't know what those are, don't worry, you really only need to know if you were planning on using my text somewhere else.

Embarrassing display at work

I came across a display in the conference center at work last week. The goal of the display is to show the history of the area, and ultimately how great it is to have Intel in the "Sillicon Forest."

There happens to be a quote in the display that I found disgusting. This is what I wrote in my weekly status report. Only one person responded.

---

"[Native American] numbers were greatly reduced by the disease and aggressive expansion visited on them by European newcomers."

This is a quote from a prominent display in the JF Conference Center. The display provides a brief history of the area (Washington county in Oregon).

I'm a bit ashamed that we (Intel) would put up something describing the history of Native Americans and so drastically minimize their loss of land, culture, and lives.

First of all, the sentence is in the passive tone. Basic writing 101 tells you not to use this, so it must have been used purposefully.

Second, there is no hint of intentionality in the sentence. The European newcomers knew exactly what they were doing when they did it.

The "disease and aggressive expansion" is further removed from the "European newcomers" by the phrase "visited on them". And, this phrase has a transient sound to it (visited - not permanent).

It would have been better had the display not mentioned the decline in Native American population at all. At least then we wouldn't be propagating the idea that the Native Americans either died off of natural diseases or were crowded out.

Couple of random links

Here are a few links I found interesting/aggravating this week.

The first is a humorous look at ID, and it is titled Designing Women. And Men. Made me laugh. Why? Because it's true.

The next piece of news really pissed me off. The national park service is considering a plan to allow corporate sponsorship of national parks. Please read this summary and sign the petition against the proposal. Can you imagine it? "Alaska arctic refuge, brought to you by Exxon, Mobil, and BP!" Or a big "Anaconda" sticker on El Capitan (Anaconda is (was?) a huge strip mining company).

The last link is an interesting twist on environmental activism that sounds like a good idea once you think about it. It is titled, How Prius drivers are gross polluters and other lessons of carbon credits.

Enjoy.

Train Mountain

Growing up, my family occasionally went to Shady Dell, a mini-railroad club with tracks that cover 4 acres. You'd show up with a picnic, hang out, and hop on and off the trains - riding around the park. There were big bridges, streams, and an honest-to-goodness roundhouse.

I thought it was pretty big, but it turns out there's a similar thing called Train Mountain somewhere between Crater Lake and Grants Pass. They've got 25 miles of track, freight trains (carrying 7,000 pounds of cargo), mountain grades, everything. I've got to check it out sometime.

Mexico Follow-up

Two things I forgot to mention about the Mexico trip.

1) The best deal of the trip was a little juice stand we found a couple of blocks from the hotel in Mexico City. On our way to the airport we stopped there and got a large orange juice. 32 ounces of fresh squeezed orange juice for less than a dollar. Mmmmm....

2) Everywhere you go in Mexico, people are sweeping the sidewalks and streets. And they're all doing it with brooms that look like they're straight out of a Harry Potter movie. I wanted to grab one of the brooms and try to fly away on it. But I figured I probably exceeded the weight capacity...

Mexico

Mary and I just returned from a ten day vacation in Mexico with my parents. We went spent time in a few days in Mexico City, a couple of days in Cuernavaca, and the rest of the time in Oaxaca. There was far too much to try to detail, so I'll go over the highlights.

The market in Cuernavaca has an entrance you'd never guess. Some innocent steps off a regular street lead you down some stairs, around a corner, and past a ton of singing Christmas lights, up more steps, down steps, up steps, down more steps. It was like walking on a serpents' back. You then enter the market - past guys selling live bugs as appetizers. The vegetable stands don't show the food as prettily as the stands in Oaxaca, but the spice stands have very nice displays - often in very nice wooden cases. The entrance (if you could ever find it) and the pretty spices make this market a winner.

The main cathedral in Cuernavaca was also pretty cool. Unfortunately, most of the frescos were pretty badly damaged. However the ret of the church is very simple yet modern. The baptismal pool is huge (the babies could swim laps), and the main altar is in front of a large metal cube that has half a dozen beautiful, modern, red glass candle holders hanging. The podium and actual altar also look like (tasteful) modern art. Worth checking out.

In Oaxaca, Mary and I took a cooking class at El Naranjo. Iliana, the chef, takes great pride in traditional Oaxacan cuisine. Before this class, I never thought I liked mole. In this class we made one of the 7 traditional local recipes, Amarillo. Iliana explained the history of moles, their importance in Oaxacan cuisine, and showed us how to make them. Oaxaca is in the area where there are more varieties of chilis grown in the world - and when you go through the markets - you cannot avoid noticing the prominent role chilis play. The stands in the Oaxaca market have more chilis than the stands in any other markets you'll find in Mexico. Anyway, the class was a bunch of fun - 4 hours of in-depth discussion of cooking. We got lots of hands-on experience with most of the dishes - dry roasting the dried chilis, blending the salsas and the soup. Mary was having flashbacks to sitting in lectures (the stools were remarkably not-comfortable), I was on cloud nine. After cooking everything, Iliana took us on a tour of the market and then the chocolate shop. Then we sat down to a meal of everything we had just prepared - a huge, delicious meal.

Fun food facts: before the Spanish came, the people of "Mexico" only cooked using the methods of dry roasting, steaming, and grilling - they did not cook using fat. The meat used in mole sauce is generally very bland (boiled) so as not to compete with the intricate flavors of the mole sauce. The Amarillo mole is not yellow (amarillo means yellow). The mole negro is not the darkest mole - Chichillo is (mole means black). The cinnamon used in Mexico is not the same as the cinnamon used in the U.S. and Mexico uses 80% of the cinnamon produced by Sri Lanka (the Mexican version isn't as hot, but is more complicated and yummy). The corn meal (masa) is made by cooking the corn with lime - which greatly increases the available protein content in the corn. In Oaxaca, black beans are often flavored with avocado leaves (not your regular avocado - whose leaves are poisonous) which tastes quite a bit like anise.

We later ate an actual dinner at the restaurant, which was delicious and very reasonably priced. Highly recommended. Not quite as good, but very tasty as well, was Grandma's (La Casa Abuelita) on the Zocalo. Both restaurants turned mom and me to moles.

The other high point in Oaxaca for me was the Ethnobotanical Garden. From the current entrance, the garden appears pretty boring. The four of us took a tour right before sunset on a Friday night with a Spanish-speaking guide. I picked up a little bit of what was going on, but not too much. We were all amazed by the beauty of the garden. I decided to come back the next day when an English speaking guide gave the tour. Very much worth the return. The tour lasted 2.5 hours and it zipped by so fast I didn't realize how long I'd been following the guy around. The garden is right next to the Museum of Oaxacan Cultures (worth a visit) and is intimately tied to the museum and the history of the region. The guy who led our tour was personally involved in getting convent and the old grounds turned into the museum/library/garden, and he was obviously proud. Turns out, about 12 years ago, the government was considering turning the whole thing into a high-end hotel and large parking lot. The state of Oaxaca is unique in Latin America in that over 90% of all land is communally owned (i.e. not private), and turning a piece of its history into a hotel would be a slap in the face.

The highlights of the garden tour were all the ways the garden had been organized to reflect the history and art of the region. The layout of the garden is intimately tied to the architecture of the convent, and makes as much use of the archeological findings possible. All rainwater from the convent and church is gathered in a cistern system to water the grounds. Unique and attractive water aqueducts water tie the entire garden together. Neat things I learned during the tour were: the natives made rubber from cactus (Spaniards never saw balls that bounced before), they domesticated squash for the seeds (protein source), several species of cacti (to make fences and dyes), a species of insect, and most importantly they domesticated corn. The insect, Cochineal, is used to die fabric, paints, and cosmetics. The dye is the reason Oaxaca exists: just after the time the Spanish found the dye, it became the most expensive agricultural product in the world, and the wealth brought in by the dye is the reason Oaxaca is the cultural and artistic center of Mexico that it is. It was also too expensive to gather the by slave labor - so the Spanish let the natives keep their freedom and land and simply imposed a tax on their sales - this is the root of the reason that Oaxacan's own over 90% of the land in the state to this date. The natives domesticated three varieties of prickly pear cacti - partially to eat, and partially to grow these insects. The Cochineal were then bred to produce more dye (and less wax). The most amazing feat of domestication is, of course corn - which was bred from a simple grain (with a single row of seeds) into a plant having 10's of rows of seeds around a central cob. And corn is gearing up to be the most important grain in the future: it can be grown at all elevations, and from the equator up through the temperate zones. The guide talked about how people in Mexico want the government to assert their property rights over corn and demand a portion of the profits Mansanto is starting to gain from privitizing corn.

Anyway, the tour was great. The garden is simply beautiful, and very impressive since it was an barracks for the army just 10 years ago.

The trip ended with Mom hunting down a guy selling a painted, wooden burro she seemed to have taken a liking to just before our last lunch. We had a little time to kill before catching the bus to the airport, so we tried to find the seller. No luck. Mere seconds before we hailed the cab, Mom let out a shriek when she saw the guy. Needless to say, she bought the thing and smuggled it through customs.