Popcorn prices popping up

The demand for ethanol is forcing up prices for ice cream (b/c dairy herds are fed corn), and popcorn.

globeandmail.com: Ethanol demand sends corn prices popping

Of course, nobody seemed to care when Mexico complained their tortilla prices went up...

But rising food prices kind of misses the point. We now spend less than half of our disposable income on food than we did 75 years ago. The other day I saw an ad for meat at Safeway and beef was selling for $1.50 a pound. That's simply ridiculously cheap. It takes 10 times the energy and resources to grow a pound of beef than it does to grow a pound of produce, yet I can buy it for less than much of the fresh fruit at the store. Between 50% and 70% of the total cost of a beef cow is feed cost, and since most of the beef in the US is finished with corn, the price of corn will have a definite impact on the price we see at the store.

Needless to say, corn-fed beef isn't as healthy for you as grass-fed beef (higher CLA and Omega-3 fatty acids). Corn-fed beef have much higher of bacteria in their guts - requiring them to be fed antibiotics.

Anyway, considering the health impact of beef in general, and the environmental impact of growing beef (corn is a very petroleum-heavy food b/c of pesticides and fertilizer), I'd be happy if beef costs were higher in the store - something more along the line of the cost of fish ($7-$15 a pound).

iBike WW27 (1)

Simone and I rode downtown to pick up some fish for dinner. Beautiful sunny day, nice gentle ride. While downtown, we walked through the farmer's market and into the post office and that kind of thing. Simone got most excited when she saw the water fountain on the waterfront.

It's one of those fountains that is flush with the ground and has about two dozen water jets that shoot straight up. They turn on and off in different patterns and with different heights, and the kids love it. Simone started by just walking in the water that was draining off the side. Then she decided to go check out one of the spouts. After that she was shrieking like all the other kids, putting her hands into the spouts of water and walking from spout to spout. Lots of fun. She got to ride home in just her diaper because her clothes were soaked.

You can check the water fountain out here.

Beep

Beep!

That's Simone's first word. When the timer on the stove goes off, Mary and I often echo "beep" every time it does. Simone has picked up on that and she says, "beep" now.

Learning to Walk

It's fun watching Simone starting to learn to walk. She's at the point where she sometimes tries walking while only holding on with one of her hands in yours, with the other one either free floating or holding onto the couch/chair.

One thing I've noticed is she seems to exhibit the kind of behaviors I remember when I first learned to rock climb. You get to a point where you're too tired to do anything but hold on, and you get scared b/c you need to move, but you can't. There's also the obvious problem of keeping your weight over your feet - same thing in both climbing and learning to walk. And there's always the fear of falling, even though you know it won't hurt (b/c you're either 2 inches off the ground, or you're tied in).

Uber-cool reusable water bottle

So there's this guy in NYC who's trying to live w/no impact on the environment. Pretty ambitious goal, and he's taking his wife and kid along with him.

His latest post reminded me about an issue that bothers me a fair amount, bottled water. A bunch of friends of mine drink bottled water, and it's just wasteful. Anyway, I liked this guy's water bottle:

No Impact Man: My ultra cool reusable water bottle

Democrat versus Republican pardons

Like everyone right now, I have an opinion on W's commuting of Scooter Libby's jail sentence.

Of course Bush has the power to do that, he could commute the sentences of (or pardon outright) everyone in the jails, but that's not the point.

In general, the controversial pardons by Democrats appear to be different than the ones by Republicans. Bush Sr. pardoned folks involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, Bush Jr. pardons (well, commuted the sentence) someone in his administration involved in outing CIA agents, Ford pardons Nixon. Clinton, on the other hand, pardons rich folks who gave money to Democrats, and Carter pardoned Vietnam vets. Of recent presidents, only Reagan appears to not have had too controversial of pardons.

What's the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans? The Republicans all pardoned folks working for the Executive branch. That just seems like plain corruption to me. Republicans can get away with breaking laws when a Republican is president. There's no accountability. So the president (or vice-president) can have folks do shady deals, and the people doing them don't have to worry about being caught because they know they can get pardoned.

There's always going to be controversy over pardons, I'm not arguing the Democrats have only pardoned angels. I'm just saying that Republican presidents pardon people in the Executive branch, and that smacks of corruption to the core.

Not that I needed the Libby decision to show me that W is corrupt.

Twinkle Twinkle

It turns out, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is the magic song that helps Simone stop crying. I don't know how Mary figured it out, but it works almost all the time. For example, last night Simone was having a little trouble staying asleep (really tired, but waking up periodically). She woke up really angry and I went in to check on her. As soon as I got to the line "how I wonder..." she'd stopped crying.

I'm sure the song will lose its magic soon and I'll have to resort to actual parenting, but it's pretty cute how she responds.

iBike WW26 (1)

I connected with the guy from Craig's list on Tuesday and went for a ride in the forest. We biked to the top of McCulloch Peak and then down the trail known as South Side Slip. Again, I had trouble with the first section of that ride. Last time I just ran into a (small) tree, this time I did an endo and scraped myself up pretty well.

Some say that when you have an accident, time stops. My experience is a little different, I get a slight pause right at the beginning where I can revel in my imminent wreck, and then I'm picking myself up and surveying the damage.

With bruised ego, shoulder, and upper thigh I continued on the ride, enjoying most of it. At this time of the year the trails are pretty overgrown, and you just plow through small branches and point your tire where you think the trail continues. That was half the problem with my wreck, the trail was only about 6" wide, it wiggled, and grass obscured half of it. The other half of the problem is I obviously don't quite know what I'm doing.

Anyway, the ride was pretty good. Stats are: 1h54min, 9.4mph average, 18.15m total. And about 40 minutes of that was just riding to and from the gate.

Sigh... Organic isn't

The USDA just approved non-organic ingredients to be allowed in food labeled "USDA Organic"

USDA Waters Down Organic Standards (TreeHugger)

Send a letter to the USDA NOW

Something Many Folks Should Read and Internalize

America's Secret Obsession - washingtonpost.com

I've Had Interviews Like This

Way back, years ago, before I started telecommuting, I interviewed people. I don't know where Intel got its resumes, but HR managed to send us all the mediocre resumes with people who only lived up to their resumes by having the same name. I couldn't believe the depths of knowledge those folks had. There was only one guy I interviewed who I thought was a solid candidate (and he's still doing very well @ Intel).

Anyways, I saw this and it was deja-vu all over again:

F'd Factorial - Worse Than Failure

An Overview of Peak Oil

I pay attention to a blog named "The Oil Drum" - it has very well written articles on energy - usually oil, but also ethanol, wind, solar, coal, etc. This was a nice overview of peak oil.

The Oil Drum | Peak Oil Overview - June 2007

39.4

Being the hippie-wanna-be that I am, I'm not crazy about driving an hour each way to work, it uses a lot of gas (in addition to taking a lot of time). I am happy to report that the Mazda has gotten over 39mpg each of the last two tanks, this morning it worked out to 39.4 miles per gallon. Pretty impressive for a 15 year old car. It also makes me angry that the auto-makers are fighting the increase in CAFE standarda...

iBike WW25 (1)

I rode my full suspension bike this time - the first time in ... 8 months? I first had to change two flats, one of which was caused by a nasty thorn.

I was gonna meet a guy I'd connected with on Craig's List, but either he never showed, or I was a bit too late.

Anyway, it was a beautiful night and a nice ride. All the running has kept me in reasonable biking shape for (up) hills. The going down was a bit rough, I'm definitely out of practice with regards to dodging roots and trees.

Stats: 15.24 miles, 1h19min, for an average speed of 11.5mph.

Some pictures from the mud party

Simone in the mud:








And the actual product of our (Simone's) work:


All pics from Mile's cob web photos page.

So Many Things

Well, Simone passed the 1 year mark last month, and is about to round 13 months in a few days here. She's got 4 teeth with another starting to poke its way out. She's walking with assistance - just yesterday she walked the entire length of the hall plus the front room. And her personality is getting stronger and stronger (she does the Hulk thing where she holds her hands up and vibrates a little bit when she gets frustrated).

Simone no longer looks like a baby, she's looking more and more like a kid, so I guess we're past that stage (sigh...).

I finished the Intel job, had a party at Tim's place. I started the job at Mentor. Lots of nice little perks (the gym, the grounds, dual 1600x1200 monitors, an actual office). The job looks like it will be interesting - of course there's lots to learn, and I've (after a week) finally got all the hiccups out of my environment. Well, almost...

Last weekend we had a mud party where folks came down and mixed adobe and made bricks. Sam, Ingrid, Miles, Robe, Elizabeth, and Kirsten all showed up to help. Simone got to play in the mud (and eat a little too). Everyone had a great time, and the bricks are already dry enough to assemble - though that stage will happen later.

And, sadly, one of our cats, Jade, is missing. She's been gone for just over a week now. We don't know what happened, but fear the worst. Her leaving happened to coincide with a guy coming to clean the heater/dryer ducts, and Mary and I had noses that mislead us to think something had died in the dryer duct - so we crawled under the house and tore apart the ducting looking for Jade. Luckily it was just a case of hallucination. We're still hoping she's gonna come back home...

Note: upon hearing that Jade is missing, many people proceed to tell us of all the horrific things that might have happened to her. um.... thanks...

iBike WW24 (1)

Just in the nick of time, I got my bike ride in. Saturday evening, en-route to picking up some dinner. Whew!

Stats: 38 min, 12.8 mph, 8.21 miles, (37 mph max).

iBike WW23 (1)

Mary, Simone and I rode to swim class today. They held it outside because a party had taken over the pool inside. Simone liked class until the instructor dunked her a little too long - I even got it on video tape.

But it was a beautiful day, so we picked up some salad rolls, ate lunch in a park, got some groceries for the weekend, and slowly meandered our way home.

Ride: 9+ miles, about an hour.

Bigfaceworm

The nickname 'bigfaceworm' was given to me by a guy on the freshman basketball team (way back in high school). Only a couple of guys on the team ever called me it (or some variant like BFW or Worm), but it's stuck in my head.

Leaving Intel

Today is my last day at Intel.

I leave with mixed feelings. At this point, I'm pretty happy to be starting something new (I'm going to Mentor Graphics). But I am sad to leave a lot of good friends, a very good group, and an exciting project with great potential.

For those who don't know the story (earlier, posts, are, here): the division decided that telecommuting was bad. I've been successfully telecommuting for 7 years now, but this was no longer allowed. I was told to move or quit, and after weighing the benefits of staying versus leaving, it was obvious I should leave.

I really liked the project and team I worked on, I think we wrote some pretty good software (doing things nobody else in the world has done yet). However, the department head who took over about two years ago has made lots of changes, and in the last year to year and a half, morale in the department has sunk and there is (still) a lot of uncertainty about the future. So, while I like the people in my immediate group, it's still unclear they will remain a team for more than a year. So... why stay with a team that may not be there?

I realize the new policy (no telecommuting) was not personal, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back. I certainly wish my old team the best of luck and continued success.

For me, however, it's time for a fresh start.

Note: For those who don't know, I live in Corvallis - which is at least a 90 minute commute to Intel.