Teleidoscope

Mon, Jul 30, 2007

Pesto

Posted at 10:46 pm MDT to Technology

Nanette raises and sells a lot of basil. As well as dill and mint: a customer last Saturday told me we have the best smelling booth at the Farmers' Market. And that day we didn't have the mint on sale, and only three kinds of basil: standard sweet basil, lemon basil and cinnamon basil. Other weeks this year we have had spicy globe basil and holy basil on sale as well, but the Thai basil didn't come up this year.

Purple basil is more of an ornamental (though it makes ugly pesto). I think Nanette and Chuck raised it one year, but it never sold well for culinary use. (I think the flavor is off, too.)

Pesto is not something that I ate growing up: I never had any until I started selling basil.

Living near Costco is handy for making pesto, too: they sell large bags of nuts at reasonable prices, and serious quantities of grated cheese.

The first batch of pesto I ever made, years ago, was sweet basil and walnuts and Parmesan and garlic and olive oil. Over the years I have decided that pine nuts go better with sweet basil and walnuts go better with lemon basil.

I made a lot of lemon basil/walnut pesto yesterday: three batches in my food processor. Two batches went directly into the freezer: one batch was divided into a plastic-wrap-lined icecube tray, and the second was smooshed thin in a ziplock bag with as much air squeezed out as possible. I'm hoping to be able to break off chunks...

The third batch is in the fridge in a sealed plastic container, with a layer of extra-virgin olive oil poured over the top and a layer of plastic wrap pressed into the oil to keep out oxygen. This is another storage experiment. It seems to be working so far: I scooped out some pesto for a sandwich this noon and poured on another thin layer of oil before I replaced the plastic. The extra layer of oil doesn't make the top of the pesto too oily, just thins it out a little. My pesto comes out of the processor very thick (it's mostly basil, nuts and cheese, with just enough oil added to make it ball up in the food processor) and really needs more oil added to make it spread easier and adhere to pasta better. So I think this storage method may work out well.

My lunch sandwich was just two pieces of toast with a thick layer of the oiled but otherwise undiluted pesto between them. I think tomorrow I will try creamcheese and pesto, to make a nice texture contrast. I had pesto on pasta for supper yesterday, but that gets old.

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Sun, Jul 29, 2007

Grass

Posted at 4:26 pm MDT to Technology

I just read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

I was struck by the description of grass farming in the second section: the use of livestock to improve the soil while actually producing as much food as an intensively farmed Iowa cornfield. Looking out at the weeds and bare dirt in my yard is just depressing. It is probably too late to do much about the thistles this year, but I think that next year I'm going to hire a herd of goats to clear the weeds here.

I'm not here enough to keep any pets or livestock besides my cat, but the grass here really needs to be grazed by more than the wild rabbits. I wonder if some of my neighbors would be interested in getting their yards done at the same time.

And I think I'm going to start contacting local companies to get bids on planting native grasses and wildflowers on top of the new septic system and leach field. As dry as it has been, this is probably the wrong time to try to plant grass, but I'd rather have something other than thistles and invasive species.

I am reluctant to do much gardening that would require long-term irrigation: my well water makes good oven cleaner out of the tap. It is a bit less alkaline than the cartoon waterholes with cow skulls that say "You'll be sorry", but not by much.

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Fri, Jul 27, 2007

History Comics

Posted at 10:47 pm MDT to Media

Two web comics with historical settings, both well researched.

The first one, SPQR Blues is set in Herculaneum shortly before Vesuvius blew up (People keep keep asking "Is it true what they say about girls from Pompei?") and has very accurate art. Some of the characters are inspire dby people mentioned in legal documents that survived the eruption. Probably not suitable for really young kids, though it's a lot more reticent about sex and death than the Romans themselves would have been.

It's not often you encounter a comic with dialog in Etruscan (or maybe it was Samnian).

The second comic, Get Medieval involves human-looking space aliens who get stuck in France during the time of the Black Prince and is much lighter. Lots of culture shock. (Also malevolent waterfowl.) It has a cute, cartoony, art style.

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Thu, Jul 26, 2007

CRUG -- Colorado Rational Users' Group

Posted at 9:37 pm MDT to Technology

This afternoon I went in to the office to take care of some paperwork, and Shawn reminded me that this evening was the CRUG meeting. ReleaseTEAM sponsors the group, which is a gathering of people interested in the ClearCase and ClearQuest software tools we specialize in, and related tools. Martina Reidel, one of our consultants, was this session's speaker.

The meeting site (not one we have previously used) was much closer to the office than to home, so I hung out for a couple of hours and then went to the meeting. It went fairly well. And I ate too much pizza.

One attendee came all the way from Sidney, Nebraska for a meeting that took much less time than the drive. He said that he would have flown in his small plane but there are too many thunderstorm cells around at the moment.

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Wed, Jul 25, 2007

Autonomy

Posted at 11:45 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Someone in the Harry Potter comment thread at Making Light pointed out that Harry tries to do too much himself because his childhood in the Dursleys' household had taught him that he could not expect help from others.

The lessons I learned during my adolescence were that I was not safe except in my own place with the door locked, and that the people who supposedly had the power and responsibility to help me were useless, at best, and could not be trusted for support.

I never had a roommate in college, in the usual sense. I spent all of the four years living in a building that had clusters of single rooms.

And the only time I have shared a house or apartment for any amount of time, since I first left my parents home to go to college, was when I shared a house with another student during the year I worked on my library science degree. We shared the kitchen and bathroom, but otherwise, she had one end of the house, and I had the other.

Looking back, I wonder what would have happened if I had not successfully avoided undergraduate housing involving an actual roommate in shared space. As it is, I had a bout of what I suspect, looking back, was undiagnosed clinical depression, but pulled out of it

Would having to deal with a lack of my own space have relaxed some of my barriers? Or would it have led to a complete meltdown? I suppose it would have depended on the hypothetical roommate.

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Mon, Jul 23, 2007

Harry Potter

Posted at 11:01 pm MDT to Media

I went down to Costco after lunch to buy fresh fruit and cheese and "Deathly Hallows", which I just finished reading. I read the last half dozen chapters twice: some of the logic of Voldemort's defeat made more sense the second time around, when I was paying more attention to how things fit together and less attention to what was happening.

I think, on the whole, the series ended well... it came full circle on many of the major images from Harry's introduction to the wizarding world. And the magics from the beginning -- Lilly Potter's protective spell and the magic of wands -- are the keys to the resolution.

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Sun, Jul 22, 2007

Dreams

Posted at 9:10 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I tried to sleep late today, but had some very weird dreams. I'm not sure why my dreams almost always include strange architecture, and today was no exception. At least this time I wasn't searching for a particular room or building. What I can remember of the plot involved an academic environment... and explicit betrayal of trust But it was not clear whether I was one of the victims or merely an observer. The way dreams work, I may have been both.

My swallowing muscles are still not working right, either.

I may start taking St. John's Wort again. My stress levels are not behaving sensibly, and probably need a nudge. But I haven't been taking my vitamins and supplements regularly, either, because they seem to set off the esophaheal spasms.

I need to decompress.

I have started doing yoga again, but it will take a while for that to take much of the edge off. This week, while I have some time to work on the house, I'll see about getting my weight bench and treadmill set up and working again. Exercise is uncomfortable when I'm this much overweight and have so little energy, but I have to do something to get re-balanced.

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Fri, Jul 20, 2007

Moon and Buzz

Posted at 9:27 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Thirty-eight years ago today, I was watching people land on the moon for the first time.

The next day my family bought a dog and named him Buzz, in honor of the moon-landing. (Neil Armstrong's name did not work as a dog name.) I think his registered name was actually Buzz of Apollo.

Buzz was a pedigreed toy fox terrier, but the size genes had recombined: when he was 3 months old he was already bigger than his mom. He had one ear that stood up like a chihuahua's ear and one with the tip flipped down, so he looked a lot like the dog on the old RCA labels. (He was a smooth fox terrier, not the fuzzy kind.)

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Thu, Jul 19, 2007

Stardust

Posted at 9:52 pm MDT to Media

Ohhh. I just saw a TV ad for the movie version of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, due out August 10) and it looks very good. Something to look forward to. Neil Gaiman seems quite happy with it in his blog, and this is not a minor production. The cast include Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Robert De Niro, Ricky Gervais, Peter O’Toole, Rupert Everett, Sienna Miller and Charlie Cox.

The commercial was on the Food Network, which seems a little odd...

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Wed, Jul 18, 2007

Real Estate

Posted at 9:57 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

This afternoon someone knocked on my door to ask about the ownership of the house whose driveway faces mine. (This is about the third time this has happened in the past few months.) I made my usual speech about how the property has been bought for open space and the house will be torn down.

We chatted for a few minutes and he insisted on giving me his card. He told me to call him if I ever decided to sell this place, even years from now.

This feels a little weird.

I wish the county (or city, I can't remember which government bought Ron Campbell's place) would do the demolition and fencing they supposedly have planned.

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Tue, Jul 17, 2007

Truck is Home

Posted at 7:48 pm MDT to Technology

It was two weeks ago exactly that my truck overheated in downtown Denver. Even allowing for inflation, I think these repairs cost more than I paid for the first car I ever owned.

The dealership repaired everything they could find that could possibly need repairing, including some pending recall work. The engine sounds better than it has in ages. I think the front end felt better too: I really wonder if the mechanic that worked on it in April got it right.

Now I waiting to see what my gas milage looks like. For the first few years I owned the truck, the gas milage was pretty consistent. Then it dropped by about 10%, and stayed at the new level consistently. With all the bits and pieces that have been replaced in the engine compartment, it would be nice if the milage went back up to the old level.

This truck is the fifth vehicle I have owned in my life.

The first one was a used Ford Maverick I bought in 1977. It was green and sunfaded, and when I tried to paint over some rust spots I was unable to match the color, so it had a sort of camo look. It had no trunk space to speak of.

The Maverick overheated once when I was driving home from an SCA event in Providence, Rhode Island (I lived in Danbury Connecticut it the time). Fortunately, I was only a few miles from Aunt Irma and Uncle Tom's, so my friend Diane Thome and I spent the rest of the night there. In the morning a friend of Tom's got the car working again -- it was just a thermostat -- even though it was Sunday morning. I think Irma and Tom were still in the house across the street from the mill building in those days.

My second vehicle, purchased in 1982, I think, was a blue Ford Escort hatchback. That was a nice little car, and I drove it back and forth dozens of times between my condo and the house on the ridge here when I was moving. I moved everything in that little car except a few of the largest, heaviest objects like my Mom's piano, the waterbed and dresser and sofabed, and the safe.

Then November came, and I learned that if I wanted to get home in the winter time, here on the mesa, I would need something with a little more heft. I traded it in on a used Subaru station wagon (note how the available storage space is increasing from one vehicle to the next).

That Subaru was a lemon, but I drove it for 7 years because I couldn't really afford a new vehicle. I even drove it for a couple of years after an accident that pretty thoroughly wrecked the front end: the insurance company didn't admit that it should have been totalled. But I did like the four-wheel drive.

In 1992 I finally traded the Subaru in for my first pickup: a 4 wheel drive Dodge Ram50, which was really a Mitsubishi truck with Dodge on the tailgate. (It turned out that a new 4WD pickup was much less expensive than any kind of new 4wd station wagon.)

I liked that truck enough that I replaced it with my current Dakota (which was the follow-on model from Dodge) in December 2000 when I decided it was time for a newer vehicle.

I wish Mitsubishi still sold trucks in the US.

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Mon, Jul 16, 2007

Iguana Social Structures

Posted at 10:48 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

A fascinating article at Tetrapod Zoology. The mother iguanas don't stay arounf until their babies hatch, but the siblings take care of each other. Way more complicated social behavior than we usually think of for lizards.

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Sun, Jul 15, 2007

Projects and Appliances

Posted at 11:17 am MDT to Technology

Now that the septic system project is done, the next really big project around this house needs to be the electrical service and driveway. The truck is doing its best to eat the money that I was expecting to use for that, but I shouldn't put it off too long put it off too long.

After the house electrical system upgrade -- or during it -- I may replace some of my appliances.

My washer and dryer are 20 years old, and the dryer has developed a funny rattle. I will have someone take a look at it, but it may not be worth repairing. If I replace one, I will probably replace both: the modern appliances are supposed to use water and power more efficiently.

The first built-in dishwasher I installed in this kitchen was an upper-mid-range Kenmore. It worked well for years, then began to leak slightly and short out. I replaced it during one of my brief periods home with another upper-mid-range Kenmore, but this one is either badly designed or a lemon. It doesn't clean well: after a few months of use, tea mugs are showing stains that were never left by the old machine, and my Corelle and Corningware are showing stains, which should not happen, even to 30 year-old Correlle. I think the sprays are feeble, or not aimed properly or both. The Salvation Army has been advertising that they will take working appliances... It would be nice to have a dishwasher that actually works again.

My refrigerator is even newer than the dishwasher. It is another case of a hasty replacement of an old, reliable, machine at the end of its life: the old one started making strange noises and cycling oddly last year when I was only home on weekends, and I replaced it because I worried about coming home to a refrigerator that had been dead for a week. It is moderately annoying. It is loud when it cycles. And the vegetable crispers are deceptively tiny and useless --I think there is a motor behind them taking up most of their space. The new freezer-on-the-bottom refrigerators are very tempting, but the current one is usable, so it will probably be the last my current appliances to be replaced.

The stove and range hood are about fifteen years old, I think. The large front burner has gotten very erratic, and the problem is not the coil. And I'm not sure I trust the oven thermostat any more. If I get Leo's Appliance Repair to check the dryer, I may have him take a look at the stove as well. My problem with replacing the stove is that I want one designed for serious cooking. The new electric models with high-end oven features all seem to have those stupid smooth cooktops which cannot be used with cast iron skillets ... or canning kettles ... or enameled stockpots ... instead of proper burner coils.

I have had piped natural gas in the house since my second to latest furnace was installed. The original furnace used propane. One winter the delivery company delayed a delivery because of the holidays and a blizzard, and I ran out of fuel. And one summer, the delivery truck set my yard on fire. The newest furnace installation, besides adding the central air-conditioning, included a new water heater that is gas rather than electric.

I should probably investigate the cost-benefit ratio of getting the house plumbed for a gas stove (and dryer, while I am at it). I know that the electrical circuits for the stove and dryer use aluminum wires instead of copper, which is marginal according to code, and something of a safety hazard. Those aluminum wires are supposed to be replaced as part of the big electrical project, anyway, and it might not be a lot more expensive to switch to gas.

A gas stove would be an adventure. I have never cooked on a gas stove except a few times when I was visiting Nonna (my paternal grandmother). My Mother and Aunts always had electric stoves. And I have had electric stoves everywhere I have lived.

Grandma (my maternal grandmother) always had electric stoves because her sense of smell was destroyed by an illness when she was young. You have not known boring food until you have eaten traditional New England cuisine (boiled everything) cooked by someone with no sense of smell. We used to visit Nonna for Sunday dinner, then Grandma and Grandpa for supper: Grandpa had been a cook in a logging camp when he was young in Canada, and he made great pancakes.

I think, between the appliances and the fact that I am thinking of replacing the truck next year, that I should probably invest in a subscription to "Consumer Reports". "Cooks Illustrated", which I read occasionally, only does kitchen gadgets and small appliances.

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Fri, Jul 13, 2007

"Wess'har Wars" by Karen Traviss

Posted at 7:19 pm MDT to Media

I just finished reading the first three books of this series, City of Pearl, Crossing the Line and The World Before, which make a story arc that comes to a fair amount of closure at the personal level for the central character. .

The science is fairly hard: no faster-than-light travel. The aliens peoples and ecologies are interesting, and quite alien. The human characters are varied and three-dimensional. The politics, unfortunately, are believable... and in a state of flux at the end of the trilogy.

I'm glad that there is a second trilogy "Matriarch", "Ally", and "Judge", (the final book comes out in 2008) addressing the larger problems, and I'm looking forward to reading them.

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Thu, Jul 12, 2007

Milking Robot

Posted at 10:07 pm MDT to Technology

Oh, neat. A program on Food Network just did a sequence about an advanced robotic milking machine.

The cow walks into the booth and the machine identifies her by a chip in her collar. Then it gives her a snack to eat while she is being milked, cleans off the udder, and uses a laser-sighted control system to locate the teats and attach the milkers. It does the milking and immediately disconnects, so the cow does not need to wait for the farmer to get around to disconnecting her.

The cows can get milked whenever they want (unless the machine is busy with another cow), and some of them choose to get milked as many as 6 times a day (even during the night), not just the twice daily milking they get when humans need to set up and remove the milking equipment.

And the farmer is not the prisoner of morning and evening milkings either. He commented that the cost ( about $160,000) is cheaper in the long run than the combination of regular milking equipment and a hired hand.

Somehow it makes sense that the machine was invented by the Dutch.

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Financial Safety

Posted at 9:47 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

First, a handy link I found at the blog of author Andrew Dennis. This site, GetHuman gives phone numbers and instructions for how to reach an actual human customer service rep -- instead of getting stuck in phone-menu-hell --for many major corporations. My link is to the US page. Andrew (who is British) also has a link to the UK site.

My credit union has been breaking their website login functions again, and they changed the site so that if you can't log in, there is no way to send them a message oneline: no more support email address. Fortunately, their phone tree is not also broken: I was able to get to a live person.

Not that the live person did anything. I called yesterday and today and both times was promised a callback by the end of the workday. Next payday I'm going to open an account at another credit union so I have options the next time the Bellco bozos decide to make their website unusable for non-Windows users.

I have not received the promised calls, but when I retried the website at lunchtime I was finally able to log in and move the money from my savings account to checking so that I could write the check for the Septic System rebuild.

Today I wrote the largest check I have ever written that was all my own money, not derived from a bank loan. This was like paying cash for a well-equipped new car. And until that check clears, my checking account balance is huge. It won't be wiped out even after the check clears: I have enough to cover my usual expenses for this pay cycle, including the mortgage, and the unusual expense of 6 months of car insurance which is due this month without coming near the minimum balance on the account.

And my savings are not wiped out, : I didn't touch my non-IRA CD (much less any of the retirement funds) and there is still some money in regular savings too.

I don't have quite enough cash before next payday to pay cash for the truck repairs that are going to be coming due any day now without hitting the CD, but that isn't a problem since I have plenty of headspace on my credit cards: high limits and low balances. I can spread paying for the truck repairs for a few months without a problem.

This is the first time in my life that I have been in such a stable place financially. I can handle financial emergencies without counting pennies to pay my utility bills this months, or worrying that the next thing that goes expensively wrong will wipe me out, or leave me facing the need to take out a bank loan or cash in my retirement funds.

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Wed, Jul 11, 2007

Tapioca

Posted at 7:01 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

The first time I ate tapioca pudding was when I was 7 years old, when my youngest brother was born. My other brother and I spent a few days at my maternal grandmother's house, and she made tapioca pudding one day. I think there were raisins in it.

That was also the first time I read a book that wasn't a picture book for myself: Grandma had given me the first Bobbsey Twins book for Christmas and I took it with me. At Christmas in the middle of first grade I hadn't had the vocabulary to manage it, but by July 4th between first and second grade, I read it fairly easily. My parents refused to let me learn to read before the school started teaching me, so i was a comparatively slow starter.

I soon made up for lost time when it came to reading...

I'm thinking about tapioca because I bought some ready-made tapioca pudding at Costco this evening. I wanted some comfort food. I haven't been sleeping well or swallowing properly (choking on well-chewed grapes is not a good sign... fruit doesn't usually get stuck). It's just as well I'm such a hermit -- between lack of sleep and esophageal spasms, I'm feeling really cranky.

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Tue, Jul 10, 2007

Bozos 3: The Consultant's Mantra

Posted at 4:48 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

My current customer backed out of a contract they had agreed to because they said they couldn't afford me, then found a tiny bit more funding under the sofa cushions and contracted for two more weeks of my time.

So naturally they are loading me with work to take maximum advantage of my skills and expertise while they have them available...

And if you believe that, can I interest you in some land in Florida? Or possibly a very nice bridge?

I am mostly finding things to do that are moderately productive, but it is clear that no one is doing any planning at the strategic level, or if they are, their plans are not being conveyed to the team leads and line managers.

If my time is such an extravagance I should not be asking for meaningful work to do, and I should not be given assignments that don't mesh well with the areas of expertise they are supposedly paying for.

Ah, well, time for the consultant's mantra:

It's not my company.

It's not my company.

It's not my company.

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Mon, Jul 09, 2007

Meyers-Briggs

Posted at 10:15 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Years ago, when I was consulting at AT&T (roughly 1985 to 1990) they decided to do something about the really toxic social dynamics in the group I was working in. So they put us through a two-day professionally-run team communications building program that included serious Meyers-Briggs analysis.

It didn't help the group much, that I recall, but there were corporate political stresses keeping the whole situation dysfunctional. (Polishing mud doesn't get you very far.)

But it means that I have a Meyers-Briggs rating that was determined by a professional psychologist.

I am INTP, quite strongly. The scales ran from 0 to about 60 points in every direction, and I was in the mid 40s on my side of all four axes. The paperwork we were given said that INTP is the rarest combination in North American society, and didn't even bother to give a female example because they (we) are so rare. The male example was the classic absent-minded professor.

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Cheese

Posted at 8:17 pm MDT to Technology

I buy lots of cheese. Sometimes I think I live on fruit and cheese. But I can't remember a time I had trouble swallowing cheese or fruit, and there aren't many other foods I can say that about.

I took a class on cheesemaking once, but I've never made cheese at home. I don't buy actual liquid milk (I use instant powdered milk in my tea) so I don't have the basic ingredients for cheese around.

My tastes in cheese are fairly limited because I have mold allergies and penicillin allergies. I avoid bleu cheeses and others with penicillin related molds, like brie. Having my tongue start swelling is disconcerting. And dangerous.

At the moment, I'm annoyed. I like grilled cheese sandwiches made with thick slices of American cheese (NOT Velveeta, which is all rubbery even when it is cold) and it appears that my local Safeway has stopped carrying the blue boxes of Kraft American.

I tried buying a box of their house brand, and it turned out to be fake Velveeta, not American cheese. It makes horrible cheese sandwiches -- if I put a non-trivial amount of cheese between the bread slices, it runs and dribbles all over the place and makes a mess.

I used a chunk of the 'cheese' in some barely edible mac and cheese this evening: I've been having swallowing problems and at least this is a way to make something swallowable while I try to use the stuff up.

I hope I can find a good source of blocks of American cheese.

(I went to my acupuncturist today, and he could not insert the needles in a couple of key points because the throat muscle tension was so high. And the other swallowing-related points were very zingy. Not a good sign. Especially when I just finished a week of vacation and should be fairly relaxed.)

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Fri, Jul 06, 2007

Moths

Posted at 10:45 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

The weird weather this year may have had one advantage. Some years we are afflicted by a plague of miller moths in May and June, but this year there haven't been very many yet. I've got a couple fluttering around in the house, but it makes a refreshing change fromt e years when there were thousands outside and dozens inside.

I had a cat, Shadow, who looked like the grey tabbies that wore little red smeakers in the art of R Kliban. He used to stare up at the moths and make little frustrated noises because he couldn't get at them. If he did manage to catch a few, he ate them, and then gagged horribly. They are called miller moths because they have lots of loose powder on their wings.

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Thu, Jul 05, 2007

Visitors from Out-of-State

Posted at 11:16 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

My younger brother the accounting professor (as opposed to my youngest brother the history professor) was here in Colorado for a conference last weekend. His wife joined him after the conference, and they have been hiking in the mountains up near Estes Park. This evening they came down into Boulder. We met for dinner at my favorite Mexican Restaurant, Casa Alvarez, and then strolled for a while on the Pearl Street pedestrian mall. We began our stroll at the Boulder Bookstore.

It was a very nice evening, and made a break from dealing with the dead truck (which is now at a Dodge dealership being investigated) and the new septic system (which is now fully covered up and graded).

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Wed, Jul 04, 2007

Olbermann's Commentary

Posted at 9:12 pm MDT to Current Events

Link found on Making Light: Olbermann's commentary on MSNBC. Titled "Bush, Cheney should resign".

I'm faintly relieved to see something like this in a mainstream news outlet. I honestly have very little hope for the near future of this country's political processes. But it is good to see that revulsion is being expressed in the official media, not just the blogosphere.

Happy Independence Day.

Sigh.

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Tue, Jul 03, 2007

Dead Truck

Posted at 10:20 pm MDT to Travel

I have Nanette's youngest daughter's car sitting in my driveway at the moment. Elsbeth is away for a 'semester at sea', and my truck is sitting in the parking lot of a Midas Auto Service place in central Denver, waiting to be looked at after the holiday.

This is really annoying.

I drove in to Denver to visit the Denver Art Museum, and when I got off the highway and stopped at the first light, the truck overheated again. I nursed it across downtown to the museum parking garage and left it to cool for several hours while I went through the museum.

I hadn't been to the DAM since before they built their new addition. It's an interesting space, with no perpendicular walls. I got a bit dizzy at one point in a narrow space -- the diagonals were disorienting -- but the large display areas were fine.

I had a wonderful late lunch in one of the museum restaurants. This was my second great restaurant meal in two days: Nanette took me out to the Brasserie Ten-Ten, a French restaurant in Boulder with great food and equally great service, for my birthday last night.

When I went back to the truck, it seemed OK, but it overheated again after only a few blocks. I found a parking place and called AAA (again) and Nanette. AAA recommended the Midas place as an AAA approved mechanic reasonably close to where I was stuck.

Nanette's husband Chuck, who was at work at their warehouse on the outskirts of Denver, picked me up at the Midas parking lot and took me back with him to the Mile High Comics warehouse, where some of his acquaintances from the New Mexico pueblos had come to sell him some new pieces for his huge and wonderful collection of pottery.

Some of the collection (only 4327 of the pieces) can be seen online at www.pueblotreasures.com. I tagged along as Chuck gave his guests a guided tour of the many display cases at the warehouse. It's been about 9 months since I visited the collection, and there were many new pieces.

I ended up buying a wonderful pottery bear, directly from the artist, Gilbert Sanchez. I don't think I can put up pictures that will do it justice: there are glazed medallions on the sides (most of the bear is unglazed clay ranging from gray to reddish) with images incised with very fine lines: heaven on one side (sun, stars and a comet) and earth on the other (a landscape including Black Mesa, which is near the pueblo where Gilbert lives).

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Mon, Jul 02, 2007

Microsoft Snooping

Posted at 11:55 am MDT to Technology

More reasonsfor not loading Microsoft Vista (besides the fact that it runs like a pig on most known hardware). Lots of the software components included in it periodically phone home to MS with information about your system and activites And you aren't allowed to turn off the reporting. Others collect data but only send it when you trigger a transmission by doing something like running the program.

I wonder what happens if you try to run it behind a firewall?

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Sun, Jul 01, 2007

Allies

Posted at 10:56 pm MDT to Current Events

There is a thread on MakingLight pointing out that official reports by US forces are now labelling all dead Iraqis as members of Al-Qaeda. One of the comments pointed out at least one case reported by the BBC where there are reports that the people actually killed were in fact allies of the Iraqi government. I won't insult the dead by describing them as allies of the US forces, since apparently the US authorities no longer recognize allies.

I am beyond being appalled by this evil war and the administration that instigated and administers it.

A line that has not yet made it into the posted bits of Techlands comes to mind: "If [he] was an animal, someone would shoot him so they could check for rabies."

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