Teleidoscope

Mon, Apr 30, 2007

Book Club Costs

Posted at 9:39 pm MDT to Technology

Someone has been doing cost studies at the Science Fiction Book Club. I received a shipment today that included one wrong book out of three. They're sending me a copy of the book that was missing.

The woman I spoke to said that I could keep the wrong book at no additional cost. When I said I really didn't want it (I got my copy of that book in last month's shipment), she suggested donating it to the local library.

Apparently, someone has figured out that the return postage and processing for the book would cost them more than they could make by re-selling the book.

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Sun, Apr 29, 2007

Ah Hah!

Posted at 11:41 am MDT to Miscellaneous

I finally found the Mortgage closing papers. Two of the lamps I take with me to Corporate housing gigs were standing on them, on the desk in the study. I moved the lamps to the closet where I keep the corp housing kithen and bathroom stuff.

Most people who have two sets of household equipment also have two households to keep them in: their main house plus a place at the beach, or in the mountains, or in Florida (or in Connecticut, if their theoretically main place is in Florida, like my Uncle Tom and Aunt Irma).

Maybe if I ever come to a trustworthy end of this road-warrior working mode, I should look into acquiring an actual second place. That's a joke. But if I ever get to that point, I'm gonna have a heck of a yard sale, or make the Disabled American Veterans collectors very happy.

And even before then, I should go through my kitchen cupboards again and see if there is stuff that the Disabled American veterans would take away. I've got pans and utensils I never use any more because I've changed cooking styles (or found ones I like better) and which are too awkward or specialized to include in my remote-household supplies.

The top of the desk in the study is now bare.for the first time in about forever. Man, do I need to dust! Other areas of the room are still buried, but I've cleared some floor space and some space in the bookcase where I try to keep my technical books, so the ones that have been living in a milk crate can move to real shelves. The top of the bookcase and the tops of the filing cabinets are going to wait for a later round of excavation.

One of the milk crates that used to contain papers is now full of CDs and floppies and cables and adapters. And a lot of papers and other things from the desk are now in a heap in the living room, which gives me some incentive to actually get the stuff sorted: I need to tidy the living room before the next time my cleaning ladies come (Wednesday after next).

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Vitamin D and Cancer

Posted at 8:06 am MDT to Technology

It is reported that some researchers have found a startlingly large correlation between vitamin D deficiency and the incidence of cancer and other diseases including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly. It's suggested that Vitamin D is the reason people in developing countries, who are more likely to work outdoors and not use sunscreen, have a much lower incidence of many cancers and other affected diseases than Americans, Canadians and Europeans.

It's being investigated further, but in the meantime, making sure you have plenty of vitamin D in your diet (or taking supplements) is probably not a bad idea unless you spend a lot of time in the sun.

A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error.

And in an era of pricey medical advances, the reduction seems even more remarkable because it was achieved with an over-the-counter supplement costing pennies a day.

One of the researchers who made the discovery, professor of medicine Robert Heaney of Creighton University in Nebraska, says vitamin D deficiency is showing up in so many illnesses besides cancer that nearly all disease figures in Canada and the U.S. will need to be re-evaluated. "We don't really know what the status of chronic disease is in the North American population," he said, "until we normalize vitamin D status."

I avoid sun exposure because I burn instead of tanning, and I'm lactose intolerant (though the article says you'd need to drink 3 liters of Vitamin-D-fortified milk a day to protect against cancer without sun exposure), so I should check the Vitamin D levels in my supplements, and start taking them more regularly again (I've gotten sloppy about it these past few months: one of my supplements seems to aggravate my swallowing problems, and I'm not sure which).

This data suggests that the official 'daily requirement' levels for vitamin D are much too low. I checked the toxicity levels: keeping cumulative dosage below 10,000 IU would also be a really good idea.

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Sat, Apr 28, 2007

Making Progress, Slowly

Posted at 11:38 pm MDT to Technology

Farmer's Market went well today. The weather was beautiful and sales were pretty good

I worked at market from 7 to 3, then came home, read email and blogs for awhile, then did some more paper-sorting for a few hours.

One of my tasks for tomorrow is filing the papers I've been sorting. I have filing boxes, but I think I need to make a run to OfficeMax for manila folders.

The other task is to make a serious attack on the non-paper clutter in the study:

1. Toss some old boxes and manuals for software I haven't used in years,

1. Get rid of some old luggage that was dying during the road-warrior period and has been superseded by the durable Eagle Creek stuff, after making sure there is nothing left in the pockets anywhere.

1. Get the old laser printer and some other dead or dying equipment ready to take over to the toxic waste drop-off (computers, printers, cellphones, etc. should never go into landfills, some of the materials they are made from qualify as toxic waste, even if you don't count the Li-Ion batteries, which are horrible.)

I'm going to pull the dead hard-drives from the old computers before I discard them, and stick the drives in the basement. I like to know where my data is, even if the laptop drives are pretty dead.

1. Reorganize the remaining computer equipment (and unpack the color printer/copier I bought in Boston and set it up, since there may actually be space for it). I should probably try to mount the wireless router somewhere higher than it currently sits, too. It might give a better signal.

I had been planning to get some interior wiring and cabling done when the breaker box is replaced, but that project may need to wait due to the septic system project. Clearing the study enough so that the electrical guys can get at the phone jack, etc. it a prerequisite for some of these projects. Items on the list for the wiring project include:

a) Run coax from the satellite receiver in the livingroom to the bedroom (when I upgraded the Sat system to HD, the installer drilled some holes but couldn't pull the cables properly. That installation needs to be finished). He left me a long coax cable, but it isn't really usable.

b) Put the speaker cables for the back speakers and subwoofer inside the walls.

b) Redo the interior phonelines, which are not up to modern standards. At least make sure the DSL data connection is running through actual phone wires, with a clean connection. And add a jack in the basement, and one in the livingroom for the satellite dish to phone home with (the phone cord that runs across the living room floor is a safety hazard).

c) Run some Cat-6 computer network cable. At least one line from the study/computer room to the living room where I usually work on my laptops. It might be cheaper in the long run to do the phone and data cabling together and put a data jack everywhere there is a phone jack.

d) Split the circuits in the living room and study so the computer and AV stacks are not each on a single breaker. Using separate wall outlets for various surge protectors won't help if they are all on the same circuit.

e) Once upon a time the furnace fan was on the same breaker as the microwave and coffeemaker (which I use for tea). The furnace circuit was split off years ago, but the breaker for the microwave and coffeemaker still occasionally trips if they are both running and the furnace turns on. I need to make sure that gets fixed with the new breaker box, which may involve splitting the circuits even further, or rewiring. I need to talk to Ross, my electrician, about that one.

f) This one is kind of silly, since I get very, very few visitors, but I would like a real, wired doorbell that won't be bothered by dying batteries or RF interference.

g) The porch light by the front door eats lightbulbs. I think it is mostly because of vibration from the extreme winds I get here, but it might be possible to anchor it better.

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Fri, Apr 27, 2007

Small Wars Center of Excellence

Posted at 11:25 pm MDT to Technology

I just found (on rec.arts.sf.composition) a reference to a wonderful source for researching various topics for TechLands

The US Marine Corps has a Small Wars Center of Excellence website that has articles and reading lists for things like urban warfare in the 21st century.

I'm a little weak on the modern and postmodern stuff: most of the books I've bought from the Military Book Club over the years are Renaissance or earlier. Or Pre-Meiji Japan. Or high-level theory -- though I have to admit I haven't read much of my copy of Clausewitz (I blame the translator). Sun Tzu and Musashi and Machiavelli, yes, and some late 20th century stuff trying to do mathematical strategic analysis of different campaigns through history that was really fascinating.

The Marine Corps site also has things like a reprint (hard copy and pdf, I downloaded the pdf) of the Marine Corps Small Wars Manual 1940 edition, which includes things like logistics and planning for travelling with horses, or even oxcarts, as well as other practical considerations.

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Nice Weekend

Posted at 9:39 pm MDT to Weather

They are predicting beautiful weather this weekend: a high of 77 for tomorrow and 81 for Sunday.

I'm helping Nanette at Market again tomorrow (her usual help is out of town so I need to show up early). Considering what the temperature differentials are likely to be between 6:30 or 7:00 am and 2:00 pm, I'll need to wear lots of layers.

At least it's better than cold or rain or ...or ... that white stuff. I don't want to mention its name. It might be listening, and I'm really hopeful that my lilac bush might actually bloom in another week or two.

I took a close look at the lilac last week, and I think one reason it is still small is that the deer (also known as rats with antlers) have been browsing it. The top twigs look like they have been bitten off, though not recently.

Some of the yucca plants look seriously chewed on, too, but I think that was the rabbits. There are lots and lots of wild rabbits here, and when the snow was deep they wouldn't have been able to get at the grass they usually eat. Now that the weather is getting warmer and dryer I'm going to start putting out a dog waterdish for them again.

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Thu, Apr 26, 2007

Papers, Papers and more papers....ahhhh

Posted at 11:50 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

The survey from the finance company arrived, and I have found all of the other papers I was looking for.

Part of the reason for this mess is that I've been travellling so much that I tend to do a lot of financial stuff online, and I'm getting out of the habit of paying attention to the hardcopies.

Part of the reason I can't find the Refinance closing papers is that I was living in corporate housing out of town almost continuously from Labor Day 2004 to Memorial Day 2005. I was home for a while in March during which I closed on the ref-fi and had a mammogram that had problematic results. I didn't take the closing papers out of town, but as a result they are not with the other financial papers from that period, which actually were hauled back and forth.

And then I spent 8 months of the next year in road warrior mode, living on planes and in hotels and only coming home on weekends. Followed by 7 months in Boston. It's a wonder I can find anything at all in this place.

I put the closing papers somewhere where they wouldn't get lost...famous last words.

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Wed, Apr 25, 2007

Shredding the Night Away

Posted at 10:31 pm MDT to Technology

The new shredder I bought has a special slot for shredding credit cards and CDs. I'm not putting everything through it: envelopes and non-financial junk mail are just getting dumped, so with a little luck it won't burn out on me. The cleaning ladies came today, so I have two weeks available for spreading papers all over the dining room table to sort them.

I still haven't found the refinance folder with the survey, or a couple of other documents I'm looking for (though the original hard copy returns for my 2005 tax year have surfaced), but I'm making a dent in the clutter around here, which feels good. I'm seeing a bare spot on the desk in my study/computer room for the first time in ages. It's just a tiny dent in the appalling clutter in that room (which has been used for equipment and storage, not as a work environment for the past few years), but at least it is visible progress.

I really should pull the hard drives from some old computers and take the computers and my old laser printer down to the toxic waste dropoff. I need space in the study more than I need nostalgia. And I can't build the server I've been thinking about until I have a place to put it.

The crate of papers I sorted this evening turned out to contain a lot of stuff that should have been sorted and filed around the time I started being a road warrior, including a lot of things that I didn't discard at the time because they needed to be destroyed more thoroughly than I could manage without a shredder (I hate credit card statements with 'courtesy checks' attached). I think I discarded and/or shredded 2/3 of the total volume of papers, which is encouraging. One third of the current volume of papers over-all would be much more manageable than the current mass.

The next crate should have much more recent stuff. I also have some Amazon boxes of very recent papers (2005 and later) queued up, but they mostly contain small papers like credit card statements. I already know those don't contain anything as large as the folder of Refinance closing papers, but they are already partly sorted, so they should go quickly.

I now have a nasty suspicion that the folder I'm looking for actually got stuck in one of the filing boxes in the sewing room (which I absolutely don't remember doing). But since I'm not sure which refinance the survey was done for, I'm not really sure which layer of sedimentary paper I need to discover and excavate. Tomorrow morning, by daylight, I'll pull the rest of the possibly financial papers from the study out into the dining room, along with the top filing box from the sewing room (which contains stuff that's only partially sorted).

Between all the books and papers, it sometimes feels like half the volume of this house is paper. If I don't want to achieve 'crazy-old lady in fire-trap' status, I need to do a lot of pre-emptive sorting and discarding. This shredder is way overdue.

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Tue, Apr 24, 2007

TMJ

Posted at 10:57 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Ever since I had the crud last month I've had pain in my temporal-mandibular joints: the kind where you feel a nasty snap when you yawn or move your jaw from side to side, and it still is sore when you aren't doing anything to annoy it. First it was on one side, then both, then the other side. It started when I had a sore throat: I think things in there got swollen up and annoyed.

Since it started I have been dealing with the septic tank business. I got my taxes done, and the truck repaired. I traveled to California and back, then worked a nearly full day on Saturday and a full work week the following week, on top doctor's appointments dealing with being called in for the special views mammogram. And I've had a plumber, electrician and HVAC guy doing things to the house. And gotten word that there were problems with the septic design.

Today I got a call from the septic engineer saying he had figured out what to do about my weird yard, and gotten permission from the Health Department to do it, and he gave me an estimate for how much it's likely to cost, which turned out to be quite feasible for me financially.

I still need to either get him a copy of the lot survey that was done at my last mortgage refinance or take a couple of measurements that his guy forgot to do once it stops raining bucketfulls (or both). But the mortgage company is mailing me an extra copy of the survey document, so I'll have that one way or the other.

As I hung up the phone from talking to him (or rather, set it back down in its stand/power-supply) I felt the TMJ unlocking. It felt rather weird.

There is still some residual soreness. The pain has been worst in the mornings: it will be interesting to see whether things get better or worse over night.

It would be nice to get my stress levels down to where i have the energy to work on Techlands, or some side programming jobs I've promised the office...

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Mon, Apr 23, 2007

Home Repairs

Posted at 6:26 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

This has been a good news/bad news kind of day.

I had a couple of light fixtures replaced and the electrical and HVAC systems checked out.

The HVAC tech found mummified mice in the bottom of the furnace (ick) and recommended getting the ductwork cleaned (it's probably overdue, even without the mice).

The electrician had recommended a new breaker box last fall (the current one is 30+ years old and doesn't meet current code) He recommended replacement more strongly this time (the winter has done a job on things. But he also suggested that if I decide to put the power underground and buy the materials for re-doing the driveway, he could take care of the regrading at the same time that he does the other work.

That's the more or less good news.

The bad news is that the engineer designing the new septic system called and said he is having problems with the layout. He is calling the Health Department to see if they have any suggestions, and I am going to spend the evening looking for the closing papers from the Mortgage refi before last: they did a formal survey with detailed measurements, and gave me a copy. I've been away so much the past few years, I'm not sure where anything is, so this may be a major project.

Gah. I knew this was going to be a mess. And I can't really schedule the electrical and driveway upgrades until I find out how much the septic system is going to cost. Which they can't tell me until they figure out what they need to do.

Thank goodness I have good credit, high credit limits, and low balances at the moment. But I was just looking forward to getting everything except the mortgage paid off before all of this blew up.

I need to go buy some catfood this evening. I think I'm going to buy a heavy duty shredder while I'm out and toss some of the old papers while I'm sorting things.

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Sun, Apr 22, 2007

What American Accent do You Speak

Posted at 5:55 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Another Web quiz. It pegged my accent accurately (at least my basic accent, I tend to pick up a little from wherever I'm working).

But Man, the html it gives you to cut and paste needed a lot of cleaning up. I finally gave up on it, so this piece doesn't pass validation.

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Sat, Apr 21, 2007

Market, Mead, and 'The 13th Warrior'

Posted at 11:00 pm MDT to Media

Farmer's market. Feels like being home: it's nice to get back into a familiar routine.

I spent today helping Nanette at the Farmer's Market. The weather cooperated and people came out in droves to buy stuff. I think everyone is reacting to the winter finally being over.

The Market was having a wine and mead tasting as a special event (all local producers) and I decided to take part. I tasted several kinds of mead and chocolate truffles -- I'm not fond of most American wines: the characteristic called 'foxiness' sets off my hyper-sensitivity to bitterness. I've been fond of mead ever since I first tasted it at an SCA event years ago.

I ended up buying some of the chocolate truffles and two different kinds of mead.

I need to re-watch "The 13th Warrior". I haven't watched it in a while, and mead always reminds me of it. The protagonist is a Muslim traveler, Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan Ibn Al Abbas Ibn Rashid Ibn Hamad (played by Antonio Banderas), who has gotten entangled in the Beowulf story. When he tells one of his Viking companions that he is not allowed to partake of grape or grain, the warrior assures him that it isn't a problem, because the drink he is being offered is mead, which is made from honey.

That movie is really impressive in many ways. The Vikings are one of the historical periods and cultures that I've spent a fair amount of time studying over the years, and I recognized several scenes as being taking directly from primary sources. There is a Viking funeral scene early in the movie that is taken directly from the account of a real Muslim traveler named Ahmad ibn Fadlan who visited the Viking settlements that later developed into Russia.

I also like the way the movie handled language. Translators (through multiple languages) early in the story. Then when the protagonist is travelling with the Vikings, whose language he doesn't understand, we initially hear them speaking their language (not sure if it's actually Norse or Old Friesian -- Wikipedia says Norse, but it says the translators were using Latin, and I remember it being Greek. Definitely time to re-watch the movie).

Gradually, as Ahmad begins to understand the conversations around him more and more of the Norse words and phrases are replaced by English. It's a very nice montage depiction of language learning through full immersion.

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Fri, Apr 20, 2007

Big Brother is Watching (Your Prescriptions)

Posted at 8:14 pm MDT to Current Events

Whenever I get my prescriptions filled, the pharmacist goes through this big routine that's supposed to protect patient privacy. I'd like to know why they bother ... apparently, for the past two years, there have been federally funded databases of prescription information in all the states, which pretty much anyone who's got a law enforcement badge from any source (possibly including Cracker Jack ™ boxes). It's called the National All Schedules Prescription Electronic reporting Act of 2005.

Avram Grumer on Making Light found out about it because he noticed a CNN article that mentioned that according to the federal databases Cho at Virgina Tech had never taken anti-depressants.

Arg. just.... arg.

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Thu, Apr 19, 2007

Cattle

Posted at 10:04 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

The Open Space herd of cattle has drifted into the field beside my property. They only seem to come up this far in the spring. They generally graze the field once in the spring and then spend the rest of their time in other parts of the Open Space. That field was a private farm when I bought this place, and may have been overgrazed.

These are beef cattle. They are generally either all black or all brown. They look kind of plush and fuzzy, because they haven't shed their winter coats. The calves are still tiny compared to their mothers, and cute, and kind of fuzzy, too.

They also look sort of compact to me: we had Holstein heifers over the back fence in Montville, and the milk cows have a very different shape. Their bones stick out more. (Connie Nelson, the dairy farmer who owned the heifers, took advantage of that. He bred the heifers to a Black Angus bull for their first time so that the first calving, with a smaller-boned calf, would be easier on them.)

The Open Space cows keep careful watch over their babies, which is a good thing. Last Saturday when I was driving up the hill from Boulder, the herd was by the road, and not long after I passed them I saw a huge coyote trotting along beside a streambed, not far from the herd. It was hard to judge scale, but I think it was a big as the smallest calves.

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Wed, Apr 18, 2007

Mammogram

Posted at 9:07 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Public service announcement:

If you are female and haven't had a mammogram in a while, get one. Soon.

If you are male, pay attention to yourself. If a lump shows upon your chest or in your armpit, see your doctor. Soon. Guys can get breast cancer too. And it tends to get caught late because they don't think about it.

I HATE mammograms. I have extremely dense breast tissue and fibrocystic breasts and mammograms HURT. A LOT. But it's going to take something realy big and strange for me to notice it on self-examination.

What they euphemistically call 'special views' hurt even worse. I had 'special views' today. I knew it was too easy when the regular mammogram I had two weeks ago finished quickly. I never have quick half-hour mammograms. I always get called back for special views and/or ultrasound. Today they had scheduled ultrasound as well as the 'special views' but decided that they didn't want them after all. I'm off the hook for another year.

I hate mammograms. On the other hand: I am now several years older than my Mom lived to be.

GET A MAMMOGRAM.

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Tue, Apr 17, 2007

Kitty Cuisine

Posted at 10:01 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

WARNING. Not for the squeamish. I'm not talking about Iams here. Or Meow Mix either. WARNING.

This is inspired by a post on John Scalzi's "Whatever" about his cat catching some baby bunnies. Which led to a comment thread about lots of different predatory cats and their quirks and habits..

Things I know my cat Dinah will eat:

Dry Iams cat food, an occasional small piece of ham or bacon, the juice out of canned salmon, chicken or water-packed tuna but not the actual meat or fish. The juice from onion leaves (she upchucks if she actually swallows any of the leaf, but this is shedding/hairball season so that may be why she wants the onions.)

I'm not sure whether dried organic catnip leaves count as a food, a condiment (they do give her the munchies) or just recreation.

I also have to be careful to keep anise flavored cookies stored out of her reach. (They aren't good for her, and they are MINE.) I haven't tried her with fennel leaves or anise

She will also eat Mice.

Dinah is an indoor cat, but an excellent mouser, Thank goodness! When we moved back home from Boston the house had been taken over by mice to a degree that was profoundly disgusting, but the only mouse I've seen on the main level in months was one that Dinah caught in the basement and brought up to the living room to eat. She has a special trilling meow that means "I am a mighty hunter and I have a mouse in my mouth", so I can often tell when her hunting has been successful.

She ate the whole mouse except a jelly-bean-like organ I suspect may be the gall bladder, which she frequently (usually?) leaves uneaten. Quite frequently the only evidence of a mouse that I find is a tiny blood stain and the gall bladder. She can be a very neat predator.

Other times I find partial mice on the bedroom or hall floor in the morning. She knows learned that mice on the bed are NOT welcome. (She still gets praised for catching the mouse, of course, and maybe a catnip treat. Even if I have to remind her about "No mice on the bed". See comment above about profound disgustingness.)

Sometimes the partial mouse is the front end, sometimes it is the back end. Sometimes she leaves the head, the gall bladdery thing, and a chunk consisting of the pelvis, hind legs and tail.

Partial mice vs mice eaten completely (except the gall bladder) do not seem to correspond to the size of the mouse. There is clearly something more subtle going on.

I clearly watch too much Food Network. I have this vision of a feline Alton Brown gesturing toward a chart of mousy cuts of meat and discussing what the different sections of the mouse are good for...

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Mon, Apr 16, 2007

Plumber and the Landscape

Posted at 10:41 pm MDT to Technology

One nice thing about working from home (now that I am home again) is being able to deal with various home maintenance workers without being stressed out by delays or just the need to be here.

Today I had my plumber (James Johnson of Nautilus Plumbing) in for the first time in several years. The bathroom toilet started leaking around the base just before I left for California. This was the soonest I could do anything about it: I wasn't going to try to get a plumber out on Easter (and the leak seemed to happen when during flushing, so it didn't leak while I was gone). I'm not sure what was wrong, but it's not leaking now and the handle feels different when it's flushed.

While he was here I had him tighten a handle on a sink faucet that had gotten wobbly: I try to do little stuff like that myself, but there was a decorative cap over the screw that needed to be tightened and I couldn't figure out how to get it off without mangling the faucet.

At least now the inside plumbing is taken care. I still haven't heard what the new septic system is going to do to my yard, or my bank account.

The bit about the yard is mainly curiosity. My soil and well water are both horrible. 1300 parts per million sodium bicarbonate in the water: it makes fair oven cleaner straight out of the tap. And the soil is horrible clay which is going to make the new septic system expensive. Since my lot is adjacent to county open space I generally just let the wild plants do their thing, and anything I plant needs to live on available water as much as possible: I call it Darwinian xeriscaping.

There were a few trees on the lot when I bought the place, but mostly what I have are native grasses and wildflowers. Mean wildflowers. I have little wild roses with stickers and pink flowers that make rosehips, and little prickly pear cactus with spines and yellow flowers, and other flowers that are blue or red or yellow. I'll put up some pictures when things start blooming.

But mostly what I have are yucca plants. Lots and lots of yucca plants. I call them MIL-SPEC dandelions. They are tough and fibrous so they sneer at weed-wackers. (The Indians braided sandals out of yucca leaves. I should look for a weedwacker with flint or obsidian blades.) And they have huge taproots, so if you do manage to behead them they can regrow from the root pretty much forever. And they are sneaky, with stiff leaves that taper to very fine points that stab you in the legs when you think you are safely away from them

The one plant I have that isn't native is a lilac bush (I love lilacs, maybe this year I will be here to see it blooming). It hasn't grown much in the years since I planted it, but it has survived droughts and blizzards with little or no attention after the first year. Its only advantages are being partly sheltered by the house and one of the trees, and being planted near the end of one of my gutter downspouts so it gets extra rainwater. I keep meaning to plant some more lilacs near some other downspouts, but I haven't been here at the right time of year.

If the septic work doesn't wipe out my spare cash, I may see about adding some more plants. I like some of the plants they use in landscaping down near Santa Fe, like rabbit brush. They should be as tough as lilacs with a little get getting established.

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Sun, Apr 15, 2007

Looney Tunes

Posted at 8:32 pm MDT to Media

They have just released the Looney Tunes Gold Collection Volume 4 DVD Set. Like its predecessors it contains 4 DVDs for a total of 60 beautifully restored old cartoons. This set has one disk of mostly Bugs Bunny, a disk highlighting the work of Frank Tashlin (mostly old Porky Pig films), a disk of Speedy Gonzales, and a disk of cartoons involving cats, including Sylvester.

Extras include a documentary, featurettes, commentary tracks on many individual cartoons, and various historical items 'from the Vaults'.

Some of these toons were played on Cartoon Network and Boomerang a few years ago in their unrestored state, and the clarity and brilliant colors of the restored versions are wonderful.

The first thing that comes up on the screen on disc one is a warning that some of the cartoons reflect the stereotypes and prejudices of the time they were created. Commentaries on the previous sets have stated that they intend to restore and re-issue ALL of the Warner Brothers cartoons, even the ones that are now considered embarrassing, so that everything will be on the record permanently.

[In slightly related news: there are reports that the newest Sony DVDs, including 'Casino Royale', will not play on many existing DVD players. Sony has locked down the copy protection so much that legally purchased discs will not play in most existing equipment. People online are wondering if Sony is actually trying to drive people to using pirated copies (which will work in existing equipment). If you buy a Sony DVD that does not work, try to return it to the store or to Sony. Letting them get away with selling merchandise that is designed not to work will just encourage them.]

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Sat, Apr 14, 2007

Long Week

Posted at 9:20 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Travel last Sunday, a full 40 hour week plus travel on Friday, and 6 and a half billable hours today. I'm fried and having trouble typing straight.

At least I made it to the Farmer's market this morning, so I have some fresh veggies and organic chicken. It was nice to spend a little while out in the fresh air, especially on a day that turned out to be quite nice.

And I had Sisters' Pantry dumplings for breakfast (my custom at the market). My usual: a combo bowl of Chicken and Veggie dumplings with vinaigrette dipping sauce, prepared by one of the Sisters. Yum.

I should invest in a bottle of their vinaigrette: I can get frozen dumplings at the local Whole Foods or stock up from the Sisters' booth (they sell them frozen as well as cooked) but they just aren't the same without the sauce.

I was planning to go to Wild Oats or Costco to stock up on fresh fruit and some staples I'm running low on, but I decided that will wait until tomorrow.

I'd go to bed early, but I have bread rising.

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Fri, Apr 13, 2007

Home again

Posted at 10:06 pm MDT to Travel

On the one hand, the weather cooperated, the flight was smooth and it's nice to be home.

On the other hand the TSA were trying to justify their paychecks, and either the TSA acquired the power supply for the customer laptop I was traveling with or it's still in the cube at the work site.

Fortunately, I have a spare 'universal' laptop power supply I got for my old laptop (after leaving its power supply at home once on a trip). The spare won't work with this LinuxCertified laptop, which has a weird power connector, but one of the interchangeable power tips works fine with the customer laptop.

I should probably see if there is a more universal universal power supply with a connector for this laptop, or maybe some kind of adapter.

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Thu, Apr 12, 2007

Snowy April

Posted at 8:33 pm MDT to Weather

April is supposed to be the snowiest month in the Denver area. According to the Weather channel, the average is about 12 inches, and that is also the upper end of the predicted snowfall for the next 24 hours.

We seem to be getting our regularly scheduled Friday storm (this is getting silly).

I may be wading through that foot of snow to get to my truck in the airport parking lot, and then to get to my house from the truck... the truck has been repaired so I will have usable 4-wheel drive, and Robert from the office drove it to the airport and swapped it for Shawn's van so it will be waiting for me. (Shawn was afraid I wouldn't be able to get to my house in his van if the snow was bad: that slope coming up onto the mesa can be nasty when things are slippery.)

I think I'm going to wear jeans to work tomorrow. Not something I usually do, but it's a half travel day for me, and I don't want to be wading through snow drifts in my dress slacks when I get to Denver. And I'm going to pack the flannel shirt I wore for trvelling last Sunday where I can get at it easily for layering under my suede jacket. There should be gloves and boots in the truck, if I turn out to need them... a little snowshovel, too and some other equipment. I'm glad the guys arranged to have the truck waiting for me at the airport.

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Wed, Apr 11, 2007

TurboTax Security Problem

Posted at 8:55 pm MDT to Current Events

Damn. I'm glad I looked for another Tax solution instead of switching to TurboTax Online. Thanks to paranoia and reports that it didn't play well with Linux based browsers.

Apparently they had some serious security and privacy problems this year.

I've gotten my Federal refund. And TaxAct cost about a third of what I spent last year on TurboTax.

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In-N-Out Hamburgers

Posted at 8:30 pm MDT to Travel

In-N-Out Hamburgers are legendary. People on John Scalzi's Whatever blog go on and on about how wonderful they are. Since I am here in California this week, and there is an In-N-Out between my work site in San Jose and hotel in Sunnyvale, I decided to try them out.

I had a Cheeseburger, Fries and a Chocolate Shake for about 6 bucks.

The shake was decent.

The fries were adequate, though a bit dry. On the other hand I know they are fresh and made from real potatoes: I watched the cooks putting peeled potatoes through the slicing machine and into the friers.

The Cheeseburger, made fresh to order, was excellent: big and juicy and tender and easy to swallow. The sauce they used was delicious, and they had no problem with my request for no lettuce. I accepted the onion option when the checkout clerk offered it, and the onion slice was 1/4 inch thick and as big as the hamburger bun.

I have never been much of a fast-food or burger eater, but when I am in California I will keep In-N-Out in mind for when I don't want a big dinner (Lunch at the cafeteria was grilled ahi tuna with jasmine rice and a spicy ginger-apple relish. Juan at the grill thought it was funny I was having tuna even though it wasn't a tuna melt.)

I think next time I will save the fries' calories for something more fun, though. There's a Ben & Jerry's in the same shopping center.

And they have Dark Chocolate M&Ms in the vending machines at work. This is dangerous. My dark chocolate Easter bunny is (headlessly) waiting for me at home.

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Tue, Apr 10, 2007

Telepathy?

Posted at 10:27 pm MDT to Travel

About a year ago I spent most weekdays between the beginning of December and the end of April here in San Jose, working at the same customer I'm currently contracting for. I also spent a week here in January this year.

When I'm at a customer site that has a decent cafeteria, I generally eat at the cafeteria. The guy who runs the grill here remembered me when I showed up in January after being away for 8 months, and yesterday he recognized me when I ordered my lunch from him (I had a chicken quesadilla).

Today was a little spooky: I was looking at the posted menu and thinking that a tuna melt sounded good, and when the chef asked for my order, he just said "Tuna melt?"

I'm amazed by his memory for faces and food preferences.

I'm pretty sure that I never ordered a tuna melt when I was here in January, but I probably had one once every week or two last spring. I was having LOTS of swallowing problems last spring, and tuna melts are hot meals that are squishy and easy to swallow... and also not huge: most restaurant and cafeteria entrees have portion sizes that are really to big for me.

I assume that other people order tuna melts, or they wouldn't be on the menu, but I suppose other people may not order tuna melts repeatedly.

Oddly enough, I'm not particularly fond of cold tuna salad sandwiches.

I seem to write a lot about the weather, and some travelling, so I'm adding Weather and Travel categories to the blog. I don't know whether I will go back and reorganize existing articles

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Mon, Apr 09, 2007

Security Theater

Posted at 9:33 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

The TSA at Denver International Airport has a new toy. At the phase where you would usually walk through the metal detector, they close you into a phone-booth-sized box and puff air at you. And they still want you to put your shoes on the belt, but only after you have worn the shoes through the air-puffer. I suppose it's intended for the high-security searches: they seemed to only have a puffer box on one of the 8 lanes of Concourse A security. I went through it because that lane was empty (people tend to avoid it) and I knew I was going to be slow. Travelling with two laptops is a nuisance (one belongs to my customer and has my work stuff, the other has my life.)

One odd result of a previous round of security theater: the cheap hotel I stay at when I'm in California is now providing name-brand mini-shampoos. 'Suave' isn't my usual brand (actually, about a year ago they stopped making my favorite brand and I haven't found a new one I like) but it's better than the weird off-brand stuff hotels usually supply.

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Sun, Apr 08, 2007

On the Road Again

Posted at 1:01 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I'm scheduled for a week in California. I fly out this evening, weather permitting (and right now the weather is horrible). And come back Friday evening... when weather.com is predicting snow again. Gah.

Oh, well. At least I'll be driving to the airport in daylight.

Happy Easter...

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Sat, Apr 07, 2007

Snow Bunnies

Posted at 7:34 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I always have lots of wild rabbits running around in my yard. Some times I put out a big dog-dish of water for them, though it has been so wet that I haven't set that up since I got home from Boston. They ran around on top of the snow all winter leaving tracks and other evidence, and I wondered what they were eating. They are running around in the yard now.

It's snowing seriously at the moment... actually not as surprising as the storms that blocked my road and driveway in January and February: March and April tend to be our snowiest months, and White Christmases are less common than White Easters and White Halloweens.

I hope the drive to the airport tomorrow evening will not be too obnoxious.

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Fri, Apr 06, 2007

Unhappy Bluebirds

Posted at 7:15 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

The weather today was awful: freezing drizzle most of the day. We seem to still be stuck in the weekly storm pattern that has been afflicting us since just before Christmas.

Early this afternoon I looked out my kitchen window and saw a small bird perched on a chair on my front porch, in under the roof where it was fairly dry. It had its feathers fluffed out so much it looked spherical, and looked thoroughly disgusted. As I looked around I saw similar spherical birds perched in various widely spaced places around the porch: a couple on the railings, one on the porch light, one on a planter hook on the post that holds up the porch roof. Two or three of them were well lit enough to show that their feathers were bright blue.

When they flew away, it turned out there had been more under the porch deck. The flock probably had about 20 members altogether.

I haven't seen bluebirds here before (they are insect-eaters, and there aren't many flying bugs in this ecological niche). I wonder if the flock was passing through and got caught by the storm on their way to the foothills, which are wooded.

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Thu, Apr 05, 2007

Groklaw and SCO

Posted at 9:39 pm MDT to Current Events

The stupidest unfounded law suit in history is turning meaner. Now SCO is claiming that PJ, proprietor of Groklaw, has been evading a subpoena. They have provided no evidence that anyone actually tried to serve the subpoena (during several weeks when PJ was home sick). Nor have they explained what they think a journalist who was not a party to any of the items being litigated can testify about.

It used to be a lot of fun following the weirdness of SCP's claims (which often seem unrelated to events in this universe as record by third parties), but I think I may be burning out. I'm very ready for the judges to make a few sensible, definitive rulings.

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Wed, Apr 04, 2007

Wild Kitty

Posted at 9:21 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Dinah has been very restless and talkative all of a sudden. She goes through little bursts of running around playing with her cat toys. And for the past couple of days she has started meowing for her breakfast even before the clock-radio goes off.

She comes over and meows at me while I'm working, too. She's part Siamese and has a voice that can peel paint when she's upset, but this is just conversational meowing, with occasional purring.

I wonder if the recent full moon got to her, or if she is reacting to the earlier sunrises. It could be she is just picking up my current stress levels.

She's not going to be happy about being left alone next week. But she'll be happier having the house to herself than if I tried to board her (she hates other cats).

Dinah has a filtered Drinkwell water fountain, with an extra water container. The combined containers hold more than enough water for a week. She also has a Catmate 5 Meal Feeder with a timer that will open her meals at approximately the right times. I could set it to feed her once a day for about 4 days, but I'll be gone longer than that, and she is used to eating breakfast and supper, so I'll set it for 12 hour intervals and arrange for someone to come in mid-week to check on her and refill the feeder.

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Tue, Apr 03, 2007

Logistics

Posted at 11:01 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

This month is ... complicated. I have medical appointments tomorrow and the week after next (pushed out because of business travel needs), truck repairs, a one-week business trip to California next week, and dealing with septic tank stuff. That's one reason I got my taxes done last weekend. I needed them done before this week got busy and I needed to travel.

Fortunately, I seem to have lucked out with the contractor and engineer for the septic system. So far they have been efficient and done things when they said they would do them. (They showed up today, right on schedule, to dig some holes for soil percolation tests.) And they have done other work in my neighborhood, so they are acquainted with the (nasty) soil and conditions here. They have refused to give me even a ball-park estimate on cost until they finish their preliminary tests, but that is not unreasonable: this is a weird lot, and I'd rather not get a bad surprise from a ball-park estimate turning out way low. On the other hand, it would be nice to have some guidelines for how much money I need to find for this. I think I've got that under control, though.

Plans for the truck repairs are working out OK, I think. My business partner Shawn has an extra vehicle, a van, which he will lend me to get to and from the airport. (He just bought a new truck and doesn't really have parking for the van, so having it sit in the airport parking lot for a week will be handy.) I'll leave my truck at the office friday, and drop him at home. One of the guys at the office will drop the truck off at the mechanic's on Monday, so they can work on it while I am out of town and not using it.

If the medical stuff will just not blow up and use up all my time and money, this all may work itself out.

It would also help if my current customer would pay for some of my past 3 months of work ...

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Mon, Apr 02, 2007

Techno Dreams

Posted at 7:26 pm MDT to Technology

It's a good thing Farmer's market is starting up again (when I'm in Boulder during Market season, I spend my Saturday mornings helping Nanette sell lettuce and stuff.) I think I need a change of pace from home and computers.

This morning as I was drifting awake, I was working on parameter handling for a program. I don't know what the program was for -- the clock-radio going off disrupted my train of thought before I was awake enough to really pay attention.

On a somewhat unrelated note (except that I stayed up way too late last night dinking with the computer) unloading the 9.30 64-bit version of WinE and loading the 9.34 32-bit version instead has fixed the printer setup problem. I'm really tempted to build a 64-bit 9.34 build, to see if the problem was a bug that was fixed or due to some difference in the 32 vs 64 bit environment interactions.

But if I'm dreaming about parameter handling, I should probably spend some time doing something else.

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Sun, Apr 01, 2007

TV Schedules

Posted at 8:09 pm MDT to Media

I'm annoyed. Cartoon Network did something stupid to their schedule last night without notifying the suppliers, so my DVR (Tivo-equivalent) recorded garbage instead of the shows that were advertised as being scheduled.

And the Biography channel has switched their Sunday schedule from British mystery shows to junk about the paranormal. I think I'll be watching a lot of DVDs on Sundays again (I caught up on some of my backlog this weekend)... And probably a lot fewer mysteries: I think they moved them to Saturday, when they conflict with lots of other things I like to watch.

Grr.

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Printing problems

Posted at 7:49 pm MDT to Technology

Setting up printing from Linux used to be a nightmare.

Nowadays, printing from Linux proper is fairly straightforward to set up using the CUPS print manager. However, I need to get printing working from either WinE or VMWare in order to finish my taxes using my laptop. I really don't want to have to use the old 'thoth' machine again, especially since it isn't printing well either, and will need some tweaking, too... I'm keeping that as a last resort.

A certain amount of fiddling with config files is turning out to be needed.

Sigh.

If it isn't one thing it's another.

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