Teleidoscope

Sun, Dec 30, 2007

Work You Love

Posted at 11:25 am MST to Miscellaneous

There is a link on Making Light to a great essay on doing work you love.

It strikes me that I have done a fair job of finding something I love to do, annoying though it is at times. My work is productive: I help people to get things done that they often could not do without my help. And my arms would be in a lot better shape if I didn't like playing with computers so much that I do it on my own time as well as during the time I'm paid for.

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Weight Bench

Posted at 10:38 am MST to Exercise

I got the weight bench cleared off yesterday. I still need to make more open floor space by moving the tubs of manga down to the basement.

Today's exercise:

AM Yoga for Beginners: 20 minutes. The twists went a lot better: Marti's work made a noticeable difference. My hamstrings are horribly tight (they always are unless I work on them regularly).

Whatever the arm equivalents of hamstrings are, are also horribly tight. Lying on the floor with my arms straight out to the sides, I feel a lot of pull in a strip just below my collar bones (worse on the right, where the surgery and radiation tightened things up, to the point of being painful) that goes away if I bend my arms at the elbows.

Lifting my arms over my head works OK when I'm standing, but not when I'm laying flat. But that's due to a different set of things being stiff.

Abs Yoga for Beginners: about a quarter of the 20 minute tape. I did more of it on Friday, but I'm still sore from then. Strengthening my abs is good for my back and bad hip, but I need to take it slow so I don't throw something out while the joints are relatively unsupported. Being as overweight as I am adds to the danger (my scale says I'm more than 40% body fat) because the weight distribution is off, and it pulls on my spine in the wrong ways.

Free weights: I just used 5 pound weights in each hand, more to check the range of motion than to really stress things. But I'm sure I'll be stiff in the morning, which will give me some incentive to do my AM Yoga.

I can't do a decent butterfly, due to the tightness mentioned above. But at least that means I know something to use to work on that tightness below my collar bones. There's another weight move (I'll have to look up the name) that should help the overhead stretches, too.

I didn't try any squats or lunges, even without weights. I think I want my abs and lower back a little more stable before I try those. I really don't trust the left leg and hip at the moment. I need to find a place in this cluttered house to do leg-up-the-wall stretches and get my hamstrings to extend a bit before I try squats.

My weight has been stable lately: I might have gained a pound over the holidays, but my weight is still within the range where it has been hovering for the past several months. I don't really eat very much, and my diet is fairly healthy since I do most of my own cooking. I'm not going to try to lose weight while I ramp up this exercise program. I mostly want to reorganize the weight I've got. But if some of it wants to go away completely, I won't complain.

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Sat, Dec 29, 2007

XP Recovery

Posted at 10:31 pm MST to Technology

Earlier this week I updated VMWare to a newer version, and browsing from my XP virtual image stopped locking up my laptop. Today I restored my XP image (which had been rolled back to a snapshot from August) from a recent backup that includes most of the stuff I've been working on recently, including ClearConn and the eclipse installations. Microsoft Windows update is actually running instead of locking up the whole laptop instantly.

It took a long time to get things reset: I had to shuffle huge (12 Gig) tar files back and forth between the laptop and the server so that I didn't risk losing the working-but-old XP image in case the restored image still locked up. I think I need to clean out the older snapshots for the virtual image (since they are backed up anyway) and make a new one once the Windows update completes.

I really need to get to work recreating that lost ClearConn CGI script, though I have to admit a week of relatively little computing has been good for my eyes and arms.

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Fri, Dec 28, 2007

Salt Cellar and Spices

Posted at 5:59 pm MST to Technology

After my massage therapy appointment this morning, I went over to the Pearl Street pedestrian mall (Boulder's 'Main Street' shopping area). Many of the locally owned shops that used to be there have been replaced by national chains. Or Nepali and Tibetan importers: I sometimes think someone passed an ordinance that there needs to be a Nepali shop in every block of the mall.

But some of the old shops are still around. Hurdle's, a jeweler, is celebrating its 60th anniversary and had a copy of the two-page spread that announced their Grand Opening in their window, along with a photo of their original store.

The 'Boulder Art Cooperative' is still cooperating. And 'El Loro: Clogs and Jewelry', which hasn't changed much from its roots as a head shop. The Boulder Army Surplus Store is down-playing the 'army' in its signage, but it's still in the Odd Fellows' building.

I spent some time in 'Peppercorn' which sells kitchenware, gourmet ingredients, dinnerware, linens and such. I was really looking for a free-standing pot rack to fit one nook in my kitchen but they didn't have one in the size I wanted and a color I liked.

However, I did find a salt cellar like the one that Alton Brown uses, half-hidden on the back of a shelf. (I was amused to note that the product code on the register receipt was ALTN.) My existing salt cellar was a ceramic thing meant to hold a container of ParKay, but there is a small chip on one edge, and the lid sat down inside the edges of the bowl so that it did not always protect the salt from drips. I was glad to be able to replace it with un-chipped container with an over-hanging lid and a rubber gasket. My salt will be much safer. And more accessible, since the new salt cellar has a fliptop, not a separate lid that needs to be removed and ends up wandering around the kitchen.

My Italian grandmother, Nonna, had two cut-glass sugar bowls in her kitchen. One was clear, pinkish glass, and the other was clear greenish glass. I don't remember, after all these years, which one had the salt. It was kind of tricky to make coffee or tea in that kitchen if you were a stranger.

My own kitchen is a bit dangerous for strangers these days, too. I used to use a sugar bowl and creamer (I keep powdered milk in it) that matched my Corelle dishes, but the lids were very light-weight and the mice got into them along with almost everything else in the kitchen when Dinah Kitty was with me in Boston. Ick. Now I have three 12 ounce canning jars on the counter, with the plastic storage lids that are available for them. Two are Ball jelly jars with quilted sides: one for sugar and one for the powdered milk.

The third canning jar is a Kerr jelly jar with smoother, curved sides. That one has pickling salt in it, for baking and other uses where I want salt that will dissolve more quickly than the large kosher crystals. (I got tired of lifting the salt canister down from the top shelf of the spice cupboard.)

The spice cupboard is getting re-organized, too. I've ordered a bunch of opaque, air-tight tins in various sizes, a grinder, and some bulk whole spices from a place that has the option of selling them in bags, not always in fancy clear jars that are 1) expensive and 2) unable to protect the spices from light. Even the 'chili powder' and 'curry powder' were available as whole spices, so they won't lose strength as quickly, especially sealed in the tins.

When the new spices arrive, I'll toss out the spices in the cupboard and on my spice rack that are very old. The Italian herbs get used and replaced regularly, but I can't remember which year I experimented with Indian cooking, so I'm sure the ground cardamom is thoroughly deceased...

I may replace the rack that holds some of my existing herbs and spices with a Velcro mounting system for the tins: it's in a handy location, but too bright for stuff in the existing clear jars.

And I need to stop at McGuckins or Michael's and get something to label the tins. (I think I'm going to label the tins, not the lids: much safer that way.)

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Ankle

Posted at 3:19 pm MST to Exercise

I had a session with my massage therapist this morning for the first time in far too long. When she moved from working on my left leg to the right one, Marti said "Hey, you have an ankle on this side."

It's true. My left leg is stiff and bloated compared to the right one. And, Marti says it is shorter, too, which it didn't used to be -- which is partly the result of the muscles being all clenchednon that side, but partly a sign that my hip is going wonky again. Which will mess up my lower back.

My hip and left arm (which is also a mess compared to the right one, though even the right arm isn't in great shape) are both sore now, but that's partly because the blood is getting into places that had beenlocked tight.

I was in good shape in 2001, before I started travelling so much and had my exercise routines disrupted, and before the surgery and radiation treatments.

It's a good thing I started the yoga again. And I haven't been doing much computing this week: I can imagine what Marti would say about the shape my arms were in last weekend.

This weekend I'm going to excavate my weight bench, which turned into an auxiliary bookshelf during the years I was travelling, like every other horizontal surface in the house. I'm going to have have to start slowly or the range of motion problems will mess up my form enough that I may do more harm than good.

I've also prepaid for a series of bi-weekly massage sessions. With Marti working on my circulation and range of motion from the outside every two weeks, and the weights and yoga working on the inside, maybe I can get my limbs working properly again before I end up crippled.

I also need to contemplate furniture: working from home, I need to pay more attention to ergonomics.

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Thu, Dec 27, 2007

OLPC

Posted at 1:42 pm MST to Technology

While rummaging in my ISP's spam filters, looking for an email that might have been delayed, I found a notice from the One Laptop Per Child project about my laptop: it should arrive before January 15. They apologized for it not arriving before Christmas Eve and provided a link to a special IOU gift card to use if the laptop had been intended as a gift.

The laptops donated through the G1G1 program will be going to Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia and Rwanda. I approve of all of those destinations.

Especially Mongolia. Somewhere I have some brochures that the Mongolian embassy to the UN sent me about 20 years ago when I was thinking of writing a Mongol character in a space story.

I'm not sure why I have this thing about central Asia, but I've had it for a long time, and it seems to have cropped up again recently: Tosun Bekdeli, in the Techlands, stories is Turkmen with some Mongol ancestry. And Rakkas the tri-mule is part khulan, a wild equid not yet extinct in Turkmenistan and Mongolia.

Just for fun, a picture of a khulan is after the cut.

See more ...

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Wed, Dec 26, 2007

Yoga and Other Exercise

Posted at 4:25 pm MST to Exercise

For several years I exercised regularly: yoga, walking and free weights. Even when I started living in corporate housing in far away places (and gaining weight) I tried to keep up with the yoga and free weights. Then I had some surgery and radiation treatments, and between the loss of range of motion and the weight gain, the exercises I was used to became too awkward and painful.

In the year I've been home, my weight seems to have stabilized: I haven't lost any weight, but I haven't gained any either. I haven't been trying to limit my intake particularly, either, and my exercise patterns have been about as minimal as they can get for someone who isn't bedridden.

I've noticed in the past that scars seem to take about two years to settle down: my throat looked like Frankensteins's monster for about two years after my thyroid surgery, and then the scar faded and flattened out. It's now over two years since the end of the radiation treatments.

I've been trying to use my right arm to stretch and reach for things (high shelf in the baking cabinet for example), and I think the range of motion coming back.

Today I got out my favorite yoga DVD and a strap and mat, and the result was very encouraging. I was stiff, especially where the scars are, and the fat that wasn't there 6 years ago still got in the way, but I was mostly able to attempt the abdominal twists. And my right arm was able to do its share in downward-dog, unlike the last time I tried.

I'm going to try to get back in the habit of starting my day with yoga stretches or some other exercise. If I exercise at least as often as I update this blog, my over-all health should improve and I may have fewer problems with arms pain and leg cramps. I'm adding a new blog category for exercise data.

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Tue, Dec 25, 2007

Christmas 2007

Posted at 8:42 am MST to Miscellaneous

Merry Christmas!

Yesterday was sunny and almost warm, with a dusting of last week's snow left on the grass and shaded places. This morning I woke up to find the weather White Christmassing all over everything. My those who need to travel today journey safely and arrive intact.

I actually put my presents under the tree this year. Dinah Kitty has been very good about no bothering the presents of the tree.

Gifts received:

Nanette (Yule)

a quartz Crystal mounted to hang as a pendant
chocolate truffles
a Borders gift card (there is a special Borders edition of the movie Stardust that I have in mind)

Jan (Yule) 

a candle shaped like a deer

Lori (Yule)

a tree-ornament sized stocking containing:
	an evergreen scented votive candle 
	and a small glittery ornament

Nanette (Christmas)

Festive Wine -- a pretty book of translated ancient Japanese poetry illustrated with calligraphic art and block prints, with an essay on ancient Japanese poetry and commentaries on the poems
a sparkly 'jeweled' owl figure

Shawn (Christmas)

a selection of teas in a photo storage box.

Tom (Skip), Mary and Michael

500 Soups cookbook. Some of the recipes look very interesting... and I've been thinking that I should probably eat more soups since my swallowing muscles usually cooperate when I'm eating them.

Aunt Irma and Uncle Tom

a check that will turn into part of the saucier pan that I want

Chris and family

peppermint ribbon candy
little peppermint candies
a chocolate nutcracker candy
complete First Season of the Original StartTrek (which I did not have) in the fancy storage case

Larry and family

The Annotated Wizard of Oz Centennial Edition
The Oz Chronicles (vols 1 and 2) the 14 original L. Frank Baum stories in very nice leather bindings with gold leaf and ribbon book marks

I'm going to re-watch the excellent film version of Pratchett's Hogfather while I eat holiday bread and make some eggnog. The film is supposed to come out on DVD in this country in March -- silly time for a Christmas story to come out.

Then later I'll go all surreal by playing my recording of the "Tin Man" mini-series while reading the Annotated Wizard. I don't know when "Tin Man" will be out on DVD, but it is staying on my DVR until it does.

Dinah Kitty got a (yet another) catnip mouse in her stocking... what do you get a cat that has everything? It seems to have good strong catnip in it: she's playing with it now. When I clean up after the holidays I should discard some of the older toys that are being ignored because the catnip is worn out

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Mon, Dec 24, 2007

Salt

Posted at 1:15 pm MST to Technology

Salt densities, for use in adjusting recipes:

Kosher salt (large grains): 5 grams per teaspoon

Table salt: 6 grams per teaspoon (I found some in an old saltshaker, since I haven't bought any in a while)

Pickling salt (tiny grains that pack with less air between them): 7 grams per teaspoon.

I haven't measured the big salt crystals in my salt grinder: it has three grind settings, and I don't think I want to grind a teaspoon of each. I generally don't use the salt in the grinder in recipes, anyway.

I'll be using the salt and pepper grinders for dinner tomorrow. I had been planning to make frittura dousa, but with big front burner on my stove still broken, making breaded-and-fried stuff would be too annoying. Maybe I'll make frittura dousa for New Year's.

I've taken a sirloin buffalo steak out of the freezer to cook in my George Forman grill, and I've got potatoes and carrots, and several winter squashes to choose from for sides.

I've been looking at new kitchen ranges... but I'm still trying to decide whether to get the kitchen plumbed for gas. There's a KitchenAid range with decent reviews on-line that isn't hideously expensive, comes in white, and has choices of electric, gas or mixed fuel, (Mixed fuel is an electric oven with gas cooktop burners) but I haven't found a live one in any of the stores to look at.

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Sun, Dec 23, 2007

Holiday Bread

Posted at 12:38 pm MST to Technology

I've got two batches of bread rising. One is the first batch of bread made with the new sourdough starter. The other is a holiday bread.

Nonna used to make a holiday bread with rains and citron, but I never knew the recipe for that one. I know it was kneaded and didn't have an over night rise, and the texture was more breadlike than some holiday breads. So I'm improvising based on stollen and recipes I've found for panettone..

My recipe so far:

Put 1/4 cup warm water, a pinch of sugar and about 2.25 teaspoons of dry yest in a custard cup and let it proof.

Cream 1/2 cup each room temperature butter and sugar.

Mix in three eggs

Add 1/5 teaspoons pickling salt, the yeast mixture, 1 teaspoon lemon peel,and 1/2 teaspoon each vanilla and fiori di sicilia.

(Note 1: Fiori di sicilia is a flavoring blending citrus oil and vanilla, but I wanted more vanilla in the balance.)

(Note 2: Pickling salt is very pure and fine-grained, but like kosher salt, the quantities need to differ from table salt. I suspect I will need to adjust the salt in the future.)

Mix in about 1.5 cups of flour and leave the mixer on medium high for a few minutes to stretch the gluten.

Put about a half or three quarters cup each of citron and raisins in a bowl with about three quarters of a cup of flour and stir so that the fruit and coated, add to the mixer bowl, blend it in, then switch to the dough hook.

Keep mixing in flour until the dough ball cleans the sides of the bowl, then turn it out and finish kneading by hand.

I'm going to give it two room-temperature rises plus the one after the loaf is shaped. (The plain bread will get only one rising before shaping: the sourdough critters tend to digest some of the gluten so the dough has less spring.) Maybe I should try a holiday bread using the starter later in the week.

I'm pretty sure this is a richer dough than my grandmother used...I may back off on the eggs, butter and sugar if I make it again. I should ask my Aunt whether she remembers any of the details. But Aunt Irma was never really into cooking.

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Sat, Dec 22, 2007

Yule 2007

Posted at 10:13 pm MST to Miscellaneous

The stollen came out well and was very popular at Nanette's party. I took some ginger-snaps and pizzelles along to Nanette's, too, which was useful since she has been too busy to bake. Galen had made a buche de noel with meringe mushrooms on it, which was delicious.

Nanette. Me. Galen. Jan. Linda. Lori. Marti. Nanette's husband and her four daughters were in and out.

There is light from a nearly full moon shining on the snow and lighting up the hills to the west.

Tomorrow will be another baking day: the new sourdough starter arrived this morning and I am breeding the culture up to full potency. It should be ready by then. There is something neat about starting a new strain of sourdough at Yule, though the symbolic resonances were unintentional.

It was nice to have an audience for my cooking. I think I really like the process more than eating the food. It's a geek thing.

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Thu, Dec 20, 2007

Cookie Tech Notes

Posted at 10:04 pm MST to Technology

It is officially Christmas time: I just made a batch of Ginger Snaps.

My Kitchenaid mixer turned out to be strong enough to stir the dough after the last dry ingredients were added, at least as well I ever did it by hand.

And the cookies turn out well when cooked on baking parchment instead of a lightly greased pan. The pans don't get dirty and it is easier to move the cookies from the pan to the cooling rack: I just slid the whole sheet onto the rack. No spatula-mangled cookies. (And none that tried to fall through the wires of the rack: the paper was in the way.

Tomorrow I will start the dough for a Stollen to take to Nanette's Yule gathering on Saturday, since the dough needs to rise over night.

I will also make another kind of cookie, probably something more festive than chocolate chip. I have lots of choices: a cookie gun (with recipes), a shortbread mold (with recipes), a pizzelle baker (I can't find the recipe book for that one in my kitchen, but I found it on-line).

I will probably do the pizzelles, because the traditional recipe includes anise, which I love. Neither my Mom nor Nonna had a pizzelle baker. And I don't think Aunt Irma ever had one, but I remember having home-made pizzelles on special occasions, usually at Irma's house. I think either Magna Irma had a pizzelle baker (the wife of my Grandfather's brother John) or someone in my Uncle Tom's family made them.

I asked for and received a pizzelle baker for Christmas one year, and make them most Christmases when I'm not stuck in some remote city without the baker, and occasionally at other times

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Stuck Garbage Truck

Posted at 8:33 pm MST to Miscellaneous

Today I went over to Nanette's farm at lunch time to get some eggs for baking. That was just as well: when I got home, my driveway was blocked by a stuck garbage truck. I parked at my neighbors, walked home to put the eggs in the fridge, walked back out and got to work a bit late. Which turned out not to matter because the guys who need to let me in had forgotten that I arrive at 1pm on thursdays, not 1:30.

The stuck truck was very impressive. It was one of the very long ones with one axle in front and two axles in back. It looked like the front wheels had sunk into the dirt that was stirred up for burying the electric cable. The wheels on the rear-most axle were lifted up so they were no longer touching the ground, and the other rear wheels were on ice/hardpacked snow. When I left to go to work, the truck driver was crawling under the truck trying to install chains.

When I got home after 5:30, he was gone. I wonder how long it took him to get out?

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UPS

Posted at 9:08 am MST to Miscellaneous

I need to praise UPS.

Last week, when I was insanely stressed, with three simultaneous part-time gigs that were all going badly, I shipped out some Christmas presents to the wrong street address. (I need to reorganize my address book.)

I realized the problem on the following day, and got in touch with the UPS store. For a handling fee they were able to re-direct the packages to the correct address.

I verified today that the packages had arrived safely.

I can't imagine trying to get the Post Office to redirect packages en route... it's no wonder they say they are losing business.

One reason I use UPS is that they are convenient for me. There is a UPS Store near Costco, on my way to and from home to anywhere. The USPS refuses to build a Post Office in Superior, Colorado. (Or even give it a zip code, which makes sales tax collection complicated for the town of Superior.) If there was a Superior Post Office, my address and zip code might be Superior rather than Boulder. Or maybe not, since I'm outside the city limits.

There isn't even a blue mail box anywhere in the big-box sales district that includes the Costco -- when I have outgoing bill payments and won't be going to the office, I drop them at the UPS Store. I don't like putting outgoing mail with checks in my rural mailbox, which is on a busy road 1/2 mile from my house.

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Wed, Dec 19, 2007

Dressed Tree, and Baking

Posted at 9:49 pm MST to Technology

I finally decorated my Christmas tree this evening. It is a small tree, so I only used two strings of lights and two tinsel garlands. I didn't put up all of the ornaments, but most of the special ones are up.

I may add some more of the ornaments by daylight tomorrow, or move some around to fill empty spots, but for tonight, lit mostly by its own lights, the tree looks fine except for the star on top. The tree is very fresh and the top is bendy and the star is heavy. I think I need some cable ties to strap the star to the top of the tree instead of trying to perch it up there. Another project for daylight...

I have been buying bread for the past couple of weeks (a sign that I have been over-stressed). I overstressed my sourdough starter to a skunky point where I decided it was best to discard it and order a fresh batch rather than trying to recover it to a point where it would rise well. People with families to bake for can keep starters going for years and years, but one person cannot (or should not) eat that much carbs. I can generally keep a culture going for three or four years, and this one was about that old.

I like the sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour's Baker's Catalog. I suspect that is partly because they are a New England company and I am a New Englander. I'm not really fond of west coast sourdoughs.

When I bake with whole wheat flour (I usually blend it with unbleached flour when baking bread), I use King Arthur White Whole Wheat. It has less tannin than the usual whole wheat flour made from red wheat and gives a smoother flavor. I don't mail-order flour. When Whole Foods opened in Boulder several years ago they carried the King Arthur flours, and these days even the big super market chains sometimes carry King Arthur unbleached, and sometimes their newer Organic varieties.. I usually need to shop at Whole Foods or Wild Oats to get King Arthur White Whole Wheat here, though some of the Boston area Stop & Shops carry it (King Arthur being a regional supplier for them.

The package including the new starter has not arrived yet, shipping being what it is at this time of year, so tonight I baked bread using packaged yeast. And I used only unbleached flour, no whole wheat. This was proper bread by Italian and French law: the ingredient list is: water, yeast, salt flour.

I forget how fast bread rises using packaged yeast instead of culture and without wholewheat flour weighing it down. (Setting it on a stool over a heat register helped, since I keep the house fairly cool. If I get a new stove I definitely want a proofing drawer.) It made a nice change to knead something so springy.

At least it demonstrated that my yeast was still alive: the jar was a bit beyond its use-by date, but the bread puffed up nicely.

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Good News, Bad News

Posted at 7:28 pm MST to Travel

The bad news is that my client will not be sending me all over the world. (I suspect somebody calculated what the travel expenses would add up to.)

The good news is that they have signed up for a 6-month contract beginning mid-January, and I will mostly be working from my living room couch again.

International travel would have been nice, but I wasn't looking forward to spending a ot of time in airports and on airplanes.

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Tue, Dec 18, 2007

Java 64 bit support

Posted at 11:22 am MST to Technology

Does not exist. It does not work on Windows XP and it does not work on any flavor of Linux I have tried. Seems damned flakey on 32-bit Linux, too. So much for Sun's ambition to provide "run anywhere" development support.

Java-based apps for key enterprise finctions? Not if you want your enterprise to function!

The repeated hangs and crashes are making all of my environments unreliable. At this point, trying to run ANY browser in the Windows locks the whole laptop so hard that I have to use the power button to kill and restart it. (Oddly enough, the mouse cursor still moves, but everything else is dead, includig network connections.)

I think I'm going to save everything I care about from that space, then see if I can get Windows to update. Maybe going to IE 7.0 (ick) will fix the breakage I'm seeing.

It doesn't help that IBM requires an antique version of java... the chances of everything working right are a lot lower. Big software companies need to support modern hardware and software.

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Sun, Dec 16, 2007

Revels 2007

Posted at 8:40 pm MST to Media

The concert/event was very nicely done. The local Revels company has made great strides over the years: we attended a performance the first or second year they had them here, and it was a bit rough around the edges. Last year's version (Scottish music) was fun, but this year's version (Irish music and 1890s texts, with step dancers) was well staged and performed and just clicked.

They brought a guest artist in from out of state this year -- a first for the local Revels group, I think. And the local soloists and dancers were impressive, too.

For next year they are trying to do an original Revels based on early settlers in Colorado 150 years ago, not one based on Revelses (I don't think there is a good plural for a Revels) that have been done elsewhere. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

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Naked Tree

Posted at 9:33 am MST to Code

Yesterday I tok a break in the afternoon and went out to do a little shopping. I ran into Nanette and our friend Susan at a store that sells Christmas Village pieces, which was fun.

I now have my third building: Scrooge and Marleys Counting House (too bd modern accounting companies don't call them selves Counting Houses) and some landscaping pieces. And I totally need to reorganize my village to fit the new pieces in.

Both places I know of in town that seel Department 56 are sold out of Dickensian street lamps. I'll have to shop for them early next year.

I also have a small, naked Christmas tree sitting in my living room. I don't know when it will be decorated: this weekend that I had planned to spend on Christmas stuff is being eaten by software. No baking. Naked tree.

I will go to a concert with Nanette this afternoon, but can't really spend time before and afterward just having fun..

The normal mode of the package I'm trying to recreate is getting close to working right. The CGI package is going to be a problem. There is one key subroutine mentioned in a truncated file that doesn't exist anywhere and probably hasn't for 25 months. Gaaah.

I wish I'd noticed the truncations 2 years ago when all of this was fresh in my mind.

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Fri, Dec 14, 2007

Brain on Strike

Posted at 8:53 pm MST to Code

I'm not at the concert tonight. The weather is being messy enough that driving home would have been a a little scary, especially since I was up past midnight coding.

About two years ago, I made some major modifications to a program that the company sold to a couple of our customers. When I shifted over to other projects I zipped up a package of the software and it sat on the metaphorical shelf.

This year, unexpectedly, a customer asked to buy the package (which we were not actively marketing) so we gave them a copy of the package, which turned out to be corrupt. The newest versions of some of the files in the package were truncated.

All of my newest archival copies had the same truncation. The laptop I was using at the time had some memory problems and was sort of limping along: I suspect that was how the code got eaten.

Fortunately, I had a set of working files for a slightly older version of the package that had not been truncated (and were copied onto this laptop when I started using it).
So I've been working on recreating the package we thought we had for sale from the truncated pieces patched with chunks of the older code.

I worked on it this afternoon, too. (My on-site client only wants me in the mornings on Fridays.) I've done some tweaking and tuning while I was at it.

I should be working on it now, but my brain went on strike a couple of hours ago. I can be very productive with a very tight focus for long hours, but eventually I hit a wall and need a change of pace.

I'll get back to actual coding tomorrow, in between buying and setting up a Christmas tree if the weather cooperates. Most of the primary functionality is there: the bits I know I still need to work on are error handling, and a secondary operation mode that uses CGI.

Maybe I'll at least inventory the CGI scripts this evening and review the docs on how they are supposed to work.

One reaction I had to this mess: yesterday I used rsync to back up the home partition of this laptop to my server. It took all day, but future backups will be faster: I don't change that much from day to day, or even week to week. (And some of the changes I make are effectively backed up on my ISP's web server...)

Note: I make my /home partition large and I have data that needs to be backed up stored on the /home tree even if that isn't its normal home. For example: the data for the local web site I use when developing web apps is at /var/www (the normal location), but most of the directories that actually hold data are linked form /home/www.

I also have a /home/images, where my photos, etc., live and a /home/fonts directory for the good Adobe fonts and other commercial fonts I bought years ago. The fonts migrate from PC to PC as the machines die. If I ever needed to reload them from floppy, I would need to buy a floppy drive for one of my current machines, and hope that the floppies are still good.

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Wed, Dec 12, 2007

Pratchett is ill

Posted at 10:33 pm MST to Media

Damn.

Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimers.

I hope some of the recent advances in treatment turn out to be useful for him. It hurts to think of a mind like that disintegrating slowly.

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Christmas Revels

Posted at 10:23 pm MST to Miscellaneous

Today was cleaning lady day. I left them cards and small cash presents. Some years I leave them cookies, too. but I haven't done any baking yet this year. The next cleaning day is the day after Christmas: less than two weeks to go.

All of my out of town presents have been wrapped and shipped, or ordered for direct delivery, and most of my Christmas cards have been sent (I don't send many cards). All of the local gifts are bought and ready to wrap.

I hope the weather is decent on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. Nanette and I want to attend a concert involving a friend of ours on Friday evening.

And we have tickets for the Christmas Revels (Rocky Mountain Edition) on Sunday afternoon. They are doing an Irish theme this year, with step dancers. Last year the Rocky Mountain Revels were Scottish themed.

In 2004, when I was stuck living in Boston, I was able to attend the Christmas Revels with the founding Revels company (on Yule, which was neat), with a performance on the Harvard campus. That one had a Quebecois theme with lots of fiddling and dancing and Canadian folktales.

The Boston Revels troupe puts on Revels at Midsummer and in spring and fall as well as at Christmas. It might be nice to attend some of the other kinds of Revels, some day, but not if it means living in Boston again for any length of time. Maybe the Rocky Mountain group will branch out and do a spring or harvest festival some time as they get more established. I think they are scheduled for more performances this year than last year, which is a good sign.

The Revels organization was founded in 1971 and they are doing 18 performances this Christams season.

I used to have the original Christmas Revels album on vinyl, then tape: now I have almost all of the Revels CDs, I think. Maybe they will have a new one available on Sunday. (I wouldn't mind one with the Quebecois music I saw live.)

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Mon, Dec 10, 2007

TurboTax 2007

Posted at 8:15 pm MST to Technology

Last tax season was the first time in many years that I did not use TurboTax to do my taxes.

Today I received a TurboTax CD in the mail. "Pay only when you are 100% satisfied". I suspect that means you have to pay for it before it will let you print or e-file your taxes.

Of course, anyone who enters their tax data into one program is unlikely to bother re-entering the data elsewhere...

I'm not really tempted. The disk has the same characteristic that drove me away in the first place: it's Windows-only. I'm not sure what Tax software I'm going to use this year, but it probably won't be TurboTax.

Maybe this year there will be a tax package with actual Linux support, instead of the half-measures I had to use last year.

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Sun, Dec 09, 2007

Pinecone Wreath

Posted at 7:15 pm MST to Miscellaneous

My Mom did a lot of arts and crafts stuff. She made a lot of the clothes we both wore, filled the house with hand-braided rugs and did all sorts of other projects. Slipcovers. Lampshades. Painting on glass: I still have a mirror she made for me in a frame with a painting on glass of a castle in an upper panel.

One of the crafts she worked on was pinecone wreaths. I think she might have learned to make them from her Aunt Blanche, like the braided rugs, but I'm not sure.

We had a 30 or 36-inch round mirror in the living room, and one of the wreaths always went on the mirror. She had given it a colored backing, so the mirror did not relfect the framework and wires.

There was another pinecone wreath that often went on the front door. I remember her gathering green things in the woods (that were actually a kind of moss or fern) that were added to wreaths and garlands, too.

The year my brother Larry and I got our first apartments, Mom made us each a pinecone wreath.
I still have mine:

She used to give each of us kids a Christmas ornament every year, so we would have ornaments with histories for our own trees when we went out on our own, not just boxes of commercial ornaments. I don't have all of those -- some have broken over the years. But I've kept up the tradition of giving ornaments each year to my brothers and their kids (I get one for myself at the same time).

Here's a picture of my village, too. It's on the top shelf of the stereo stack next to the TV, where I can see it all the time. I need to tweak the layout some more. The package of trees included a piece of 'road' that was rolled up and doesn't want to lay flat yet.

The layout is deeper and less two-dimensional than it looks in the picture, too. I need to work on that. Something under the snow blanket to add some slopes might help.

The buildings light up at night. But it really needs some street lamps or something to illuminate the little groupings of people.

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Fri, Dec 07, 2007

Beginning to look a lot like...

Posted at 9:37 pm MST to Weather

My schedule has been very hectic this week, since I was working for both my on-site customer, and mornings and evenings for a remote customer. And I had a dental appointment Monday evening and a user group meeting last night that ran long: I didn't get home until after 10pm.

Today there was snow on the ground at dawn but the roads didn't turn out to be too bad when I drove to my on-site customer. When I drove home at noon time, the snow had mostly stopped, but the snow clouds were sitting on the ridge here, so it was very foggy.

I have to be escorted when I'm on the site and they were having their holiday party, so I had the afternoon off. It was nice to have a little time off. But it is frustrating only being able to work on the on-site project in occasional 3 hour chunks: it seems like I just get some momentum when I have to leave.

After lunch I went over to Nanette's for a cup of tea and a nice long chat. They have the farm decorated with lots of lights, and they already have their Christmas tree up and a gingerbread house on the coffee table. I think that combined with the snow to finally put me into a holiday mood.

I've done a little already: I brought holiday cards and stocking-stuffer presents for Shawn and our employees to the meeting yesterday, and I've bought some gifts...

I stopped at a couple of stores after leaving Nanette's and made some more progress on the shopping, even though the snow never really stopped and actually picked up a bit after dark. One of the stores was McGuckins Hardware, which has a wonderful Christmas ornament department and great kitchen stuff as well things you'd expect to find in a hardware store.

They are predicting more snow for tomorrow and Sunday, and I still need to buy a few more things. But if the weather is bad for the weekend I can spend the time decorating the house and wrapping the presents I've already bought. If I can get the out-of-state stuff shipped Tuesday morning (I can't be on-site until after lunch) I'll be in good shape.

I need to reorganize the house to make room for the decorations, too. Buying a tree next weekend isn't going to work if there in no place to put it.

And I've added some pieces to my winter Village, so I'll need a larger space for it. I added a blacksmith for my blacksmith shop, and a waiting customer and horse, and some carolers for the Dickens' Christmas Carol side of things. I also got a sparkly white 'snow' mat and some trees so it will look a little more like a landscape and less like a bunch of stuff on a shelf.

All of my pieces are by a company called Department 56, but I'm mixing pieces from their Dickens Village and New England Village lines. So far I have:

HollyBerry Cottage
Chas. Hoyt Blacksmith (that's the smithy)
A Christmas Carol Visit (Scrooge and the 3 ghosts)
Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim
The Big Prize Turkey (Poulterer's stall, with man holding the turkey and a boy)

The Hitching Post (Horse and owner)
Town Blacksmith (hammering a horse shoe)
Christmas Carolers
Village accessories (that's the trees)
The snow mat.

I may eventually get some more landscaping stuff: they make little shrubs and paving and bits of stone walls and street lamps and such. They make a Halloween Village that might have some gravestones for the Ghost of Christmas Future to lurk among. A horse and sleigh or horse and carriage might be nice. too, but I'm not sure I have room for them. I really need to find a better place for the village than I had last year. Especially if I ever want to add any more buildings.

Another piece I need to add this year is a big tub to store all the village piece in their big styrofoam coffins. They won't really fit into my other ornament-storage tubs, and they deserve a home of their own so they won't be lost or damaged in the off season, or colonized by the dratted mice.

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Wed, Dec 05, 2007

Cookware

Posted at 7:21 pm MST to Technology

A while back, while reorganizing my kitchen I gave my glass Visions cookware to the DAV: I hadn't used it much since I began watching Food Network regularly, since Visions cookware on an electric stove is very slow to make temperature adjustments. But it would have been handy to have the extra pots when I was cooking on Thanksgiving. Maybe -- I still haven't gotten that broken burner fixed on my stove.

I got an unusually good deal at Costco tonight. A floor-sample 10 piece set of very heavy duty stainless steel cookware, at an extra $10 off an already discounted price. It's Kitchen-Aid branded, so it is reasonable quality -- not professional grade, but better than the non-stick supermarket saucepans I've been using. (My skillets are good, respectable cast iron.)

Christmas cooking will be easier with the new saucepans.

The one additional pot that I would really like to have is a 2.5 quart saucier: like a sauce-pan, but with curved sides for whisking, and because the sides are curved, one large one can also be used for small batches.

One of the pretty enameled cast-iron Dutch or French ovens (about a 5 quart size) would be nice to replace the Visons one that I gave away. But the good ones are expensive. I currently use my Crock Pot for most recipes that size.

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UPS

Posted at 6:49 pm MST to Technology

Monday Dec 3

I bought the server a serious UPS made by APC. It's staying in the truck until daylight because it is a bit heavier than I can easily lift, and the path from the truck to the porch got churned up pretty badly when the wires were put underground.

I'm not due at my regular current gig until 1 (though I have another paying job I also need to work on) so I've got a bit of time to figure out how to get the UPS into the house without damaging it, or me. (I had guys from the store help me get it out to the truck.

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Tue, Dec 04, 2007

Tin Man

Posted at 10:31 pm MST to Media

The Tin Man mini-series on SciFi network is over. I'm sure Oz purists hated it, but I thought it was pretty good. The credits called it "Based on the Wizard of OZ" but I think "inspired by" would be more accurate: the adaptation is very loose, and different enough to not be predictable.

Actually, I think it was inspired by the Oz books in general. I don't think I have read all of them, and it has been years since I read any of them, but some of the environments and plot points seemed familiar, just not from the first book.

This was one of the Halmi and Halmi productions that worked. Beautiful and imaginative.

It was also well acted and directed, I think. At least, I found I liked the characters and I felt that they had some depth and complexity. The actresses who played the 'sorceress' who was the main villain were very impressive in a complex role, but I also liked 'DG' and her companions.

I find myself wanting to revisit the OZ books, if only to see what correspondences I can spot. According to Amazon there are a couple of different annotated Wizard of Oz books, which might be fun. And there is a 15-in-1 omnibus of all the Baum OZ books...

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Sun, Dec 02, 2007

Stuff Not Working

Posted at 8:29 am MST to Technology

I spent yesterday updating software on the server and trying to get it to talk to the UPS and to the outside world.

I found two different packages that might handle the UPS, but the server can't seem to see the serial port. I'll reboot it sometime today and see if the bios is blocking the serial port. If it isn't, I may buy a new UPS with a USB port instead of serial, and a much larger battery. The current UPS can go on the AV stack in the living room, to bridge power glitches.

I'll need to open up the server case, too. One of the fans isn't working. Not a major problem since that case is heavily ventilated and the server is not heavily used (one of the 4 processors cores stays in the 35 to 40 degrees C range, the other three are usually under 30) but annoying. The case came with 3 fans and I'm only using two, so I may be able to swap out the one that isn't working. Or it may just be stuck because a cable has fouled the fan blades.

The outside world problem is a software problem, but very frustrating. My Zoom DSL modem has very complex NAT and firewall capabilities, and fairly poor documentation, and no tech support available for anything but the factory settings. As currently set up, it lets my home network connect outward, but nothing outside can connect to anything but the modem itself.

At least I don't need to worry about my network being hacked. In its current state, even I can't get into it from outside. I'm sure the problem is the modem and not the router: I've tested and verified the router is doing what I want it to.

I want to set things up so that I can ssh (at least) into my server when I'm at the office or on the road, without disrupting the ability of other systems (i.e. the laptop) to connect outward when I am at home. And without letting the whole internet connect into the server and network.

I'm going to completely stop using the port-shifting NAPT mode that comes from the factory, as a first step. The documentation implies (I think -- it's very disjointed) that you can forward some ports and let NAPT take care of everything else, but that doesn't seem to be how things are actually behaving.

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