Teleidoscope

Thu, Aug 28, 2008

Abs

Posted at 10:19 am MDT to Exercise

I still have abs, under the fat! I did the AM Yoga routine again today, and most of the 12 minute, shortened Abs yoga routine I used to do, and they both worked!

I can lay flat on my yoga mat and do a straight leg lift. The result is kind of sloppy, but that's because of my usual problems with tight hamstrings, not weakness through the abs. And twists work as well as they ever did, allowing for the extra belly volume.

Marti said that the core muscles along my spine were still in petty good shape -- probably why having my hip out last winter didn't take the illiosacral joint with it, the way it would have 10 years ago.

Things are still a bit sore from the aftermath of the fall so I didn't push the abs work too hard. I expect it will be at least a week before the muscle patch that was locked stops being tender (I suspect it's getting more blood than it's had in ages), and the other areas that were stressed in the fall really settle down.

Once I can't feel the stressed patches any more, I'll break out the free weights and try to build back some upper body strength. With the muscles actually moving agross the ribs the way they are supposed to, lifting should work again too.

It's nice to have a body that mostly does what I tell it to again, instead of stalling. Having that patch along the lower ribs be just sore, instead of locked rigid, makes an amazing difference.

If there are places that are still stiff in a week or two, I may look into myofascial therapy to break loose any places that are still locked in the aftermath of the radiation. I really can't tell at this point how much of what I'm feeling is remaining long-term problems, and how much is the aftermath of the fall. I think a lot of it is from the fall: I mostly feel the tight and tender spots when I happen to lean my weight on my right hand.

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Wed, Aug 27, 2008

Accidental Therapy

Posted at 7:46 am MDT to Exercise

Last night I kind of got tangled in myself and fell in my living room. I managed to avoid smashing my face open on the metal frame of the coffee table by pushing away from the floor with my right arm -- not quite straightarming it -- and I felt something rip along my lower ribs.

This is actually a good thing. The sore spot corresponds to a patch of muscle that has been locked immobile since the radiation treatment 3 years ago, and the force of the fall seems to have broken it loose. It was kind of weird: I could feel the surrounding muscles stretching and contracting to absorb the shock of the fall, while that patch just sort of exploded.

I just did a little yoga this morning and had equal range of motion for spinal twists on both sides for the first time in ages. Not a lot of range of motion because of the overweight, but there was no more pain or stiffness on one side than the other. This is wonderful.

There is another stiff place up near the collar bone, but I can attack that with yoga and free weights now that the second anchor point is gone. I can already feel that the strain patterns are different.

The second spot is in a place where a massage therapist can make better progress, too. I wish Marty had not left town. I should find another massage therapist.

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Mon, Aug 25, 2008

Chard

Posted at 3:51 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

It's weird to be relieved at having a fever, but that is where I am at the moment. From Saturday evening through this morning I have felt horrible, and I was wondering if I need to have them test for allergy to Swiss chard when I go back to the allergist. Most of the symptoms I was having yesterday might possibly be allergic responses. But I don't think my current fever (especially after most of the other symptoms have faded) is an allergic reaction.

This is weird: I don't know where I caught whatever it is. I have had minimal contact with the outside world for the past couple of weeks because the county guys are repaving the paved road and getting in and out is a hassle.

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Sat, Aug 23, 2008

Jigsaw

Posted at 6:43 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I need to let my brain recharge. Since I got home from Denvention I have been totally immersed in getting this computer set up -- I haven't even read more than a few chapters of the many books I have acquired recently.

Nanette has been out of town, so I haven't been working at the farmers' market. I was glad to skip last week because the weather was cold and rainy, but the last time I worked was 3 weeks ago and I needed to restock, so I went down to market this morning to shop.

Peaches are now in season. And eggplant. And peppers are starting to come in. I also stocked up on goat cheese, mushrooms, chicken breasts, and buffalo and elk steaks. This was a good week to buy expensive meat, since I was leaving the market right away, and would be going home before the meat had time to defrost.

I just had chard (sauteed in bacon grease with garlic) for supper, and tomorrow I will do something with the eggplant and peppers and cucumbers. (Cucumber yogurt sauce for the felafels I have in the freezer. Yum.)

After I got home I got out a jigsaw puzzle I bought last year and have never assembled and spent several hours working on it: I needed to do something non-verbal for a while.

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Wed, Aug 20, 2008

Magpies

Posted at 12:31 pm MDT to Current Events

This is cool. There are only a few species that are known to recognise themselves in mirrors (as opposed to thinking they are seeing another animal). Humans, apes, dolphins and elephants are all large brained mammals.

Now scientists have shown that european magpies can recognise themselves in mirrors, even though they have very small brains by mammalian standards, and a very different brain organization.

The test was pretty straightforward. They put little stickers on the birds, on their necks under their chins where they could not see them directly. If there was no mirror, the birds did nothing. If the sticker was black, and blended into the feathers, the birds did nothing. If the sticker was a contrasting color that the bird could notice in the mirror, it pecked or scratched it off, then stopped pecking or scratching.

So they clearly knew the bird in the mirror was them.

I wonder if magpies have a way to tell each other: "Hey, dude. You have a shmutz on your chin"?

Equally cool: there are links in the comments of the item I linked that lead to scientific records of magpies (both european and american) having funerals when their neighbors die.

The aliens are among us.

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Mon, Aug 18, 2008

DNS Hell

Posted at 9:47 pm MDT to Technology

I spent most of the weekend fighting what turned out to be some really annoying interactions between VMWare, DHCP-Client on Linux, and the resolver DNS functionality. But I have finally achieved a state where all four of the 'machines' are linked by smb and the two Linux 'machines' are linked by NFS.

I also spent an unpleasantly large of yesterday evening, early this morning and later this morning (after sleeping) repairing a major deletion of installed packages on my host system (due to my clicking yes at the wrong time because I was tired). Fortunately, I did a full backup of the current /home, and /etc over Saturday night/Sunday morning, including a capture of the installed package list, so recovery was straightforward, just slow.

Some of my attempted fixes had domino effects. At the moment, yrhel5 (the RedHat image), is just running off its hosts file, not real DNS, but that is enough for it to connect to the other test images. The fact that it joined the domain before its DNS went down seems to be enough for Samba to communicate.

The original problem I was struggling with was that network configuration information in the environment hosting my vmware installation kept getting stepped on and reverting to bad values, usually at boot time, but also at other times. Because of this, the machine was reporting an incomplete value for its own ID, and this was preventing it from joining the Active directory domain. I now have the IP addresses of my ISP's DNS servers memorized, becaues I have typed them so many times.

Setting the IP to static instead of DCHP didn't help: the resolv.conf and hosts data just got cleared instead of set to bad values. I am not entirely sure where all of the places are that this is coming from, but I strongly suspect that vmware is treating the host system as a dhcp client even though it has a fixed IP address, and then the dhcp client software on ykchaua fills in the files with the (empty) data from the vmware dhcp servers.

I have installed two packages that seem to be helping with this. One is called resolvconf and is supposed to handle the resolv.conf file in a more structured way. I'm not sure at this point whether it is doing any good, but it does not seem to be making things any worse.

The second package, which does seem to be helping, is called dnsmasq. It sets up a small cacheing DNS server in a Linux system, using /etc/hosts as data, and you can tell it to ignore resolve.conf and use a different file to define the upstream DNS servers. It can also act as a DHCP server, and the DNS piece knows about (and can provide DNS mappings for) any machines that get their IP addresses from the DHCP server side. I'm not using the DHCP server piece at the moment: I'm trying very hard to get DHCP out of the picture as much as possible to get things stabilized.

I am going to shut down everything tonight. It will be interesting to see what breaks when I boot back up in the morning. Once all the images are talking to each other again, I will load the Rational tools from the release areas I set up today and actually begin developing and testing the software I need to be working on.

In the meantime, I'm going to google for more information about dnsmasq. Maybe there are hints about using it with VMWare.

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Sat, Aug 16, 2008

Development Platform

Posted at 10:45 am MDT to Technology

My development platform. I haven't decided where the DB2 server is going to live, preferably one of the Linux servers. I may need to rework things I am trying to as much as possible of the configuration be supported platforms.

My next step is to get the NTP server set up on ykchaua and get everything syncing, and attack the problem of the clocks running too fast in the VMware clients: Samba and NFS are not happy with the wicked clock skew I'm currently seeing. Once Samba and NFS are connecting cleanly, I'll load the Rational Tools.

• ykchaua
  • 2.96 Gigs physical ram
  • 9620 MB root partition, 175029 MB /home/partiton, plus swap space
  • Dual core nominal 2 GHz Intel T7300 processor
  • direct net connection outbound, NAT connection to VMWare guests
  • Kubuntu 8.04
  • VMWare host
  • Samba file server
  • Backup AD Domain Master
  • LDAP server
  • NFS file server
  • NTP server
  • firewall
  • ClearCase Web and CCRC client
  • ClearQuest Web Client
  • Web server for CGI development
  • Rational Release areas
  • MySQL server
  • DB2 server?>
• sophia2
  • 512 Megs virtual ram
  • 16 Gig virtual drive
  • NAT network connection
  • Windows XP Pro
  • vmware guest.
  • Clearcase View server and client
  • ClearQuest client and schema designer
  • Web client
• ywin2k3svr
  • 512 Megs virtual ram
  • 20 Gig virtual drive
  • NAT network connection
  • Windows 2003 Server R2
  • vmware guest.
  • AD Domain Master
  • DNS server
  • Clearcase View server
  • ClearCase VOB server
  • ClearQuest client
  • ClearQuest license server
  • ClearQuest Web Host if necessary
  • Web client
  • DB2 server if necessary
• yrhel5
  • 512 Megs virtual ram
  • 16 Gig virtual drive
  • NAT network connection
  • RHEL 5.2
  • vmware guest.
  • ClearCase VOB Server, license and Registry
  • Clearcase View server and client
  • ClearQuest client
  • ClearQuest Web Host if possible
  • ClearCase Web Host
  • Web client
  • MySQL server
  • DB2 server (2nd choice)
  • Note: Make sure Virtualization is de-selected during installation of RedHat as a vmware guest.
• quadriga
  • Physical system with two dual core processors and a RAIDED disk array.
  • Backup server
  • Note: if I can get bridged networking working in the vmware on ykchaua, I will added some test configurations in the vmware guests on quadriga, but bridged may not work through ykchaua's wireless connection.

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GParted LiveDisc and vmware-vdiskmanager

Posted at 9:23 am MDT to Technology

I used VMWare Workstation on the old laptop, sophia, but I want VMWare Server on the new one, ykchaua, so I'm not going to migrate the license. Server allows functionality I need (like multiple guests running at the same time) but it doesn't support some features of Workstation, in particular multiple snapshots.

The XP guest image that I migrated over from sophia had some old snapshots, so it was taking up 37 Gigs of space to provide 10 Gigs of usable disk. And 10 Gigs had gotten a bit tight. (My first ever hard drive held 20 Megabytes.)

Rather than push everything back to sophia and clean out the backups, then pull everything back to ykchaua, I googled and found some tricks that let me do the cleanup at drive speeds rather than network speeds. And I was able to expand the virtual disk, too.

1. Back up all the guest files to another directory.
2. Verify the guest can be booted in vmware from the new location.
3. Identify the .vmdk file that is the head of the latest snapshot. It's visible but grayed out in the settings for the guest in the vmware console.
4. Run as root

   vmware-vdiskmanager -r snapshothead.vmdk -t3 newname.vmdk

   Use quotation marks around the names if they have spaces in them.
5. Go into the vmware console, bring up the settings for this guest and remove the existing 'hard disk'. Note any settings like "IDE 0/0" before you do the remove.
6. Create a new hard disk using the newname.vmdk file and the same settings as the previous disk.
7. Verify that the guest is bootable with the new 'drive'.
8. Delete all of the local copies of the old vmdk files and files with Snapshot in their names. Also remove the *.vmsd file, since there is no longer a snapshot chain.
9. Verify that the guest is bootable.
10. Delete the copy of the old guest configuration from the backup location.

This brought the disk usage from 37 Gigs down to 10 by way of a process where maximum disk usage was 84 gigs. Obviously some planning (and possibly an external drive) is needed when doing this.

Increasing the size of the virtual disk was comparatively straightforward, but it required an additinal (and very neat) tool.

I downloaded the GParted Live Disk from its site. This is a tiny iso image that will fit on a credit-card sized cdrom, or a regular cdrom. There are optional versions for usb drives available too. Vmware has a handy feature of being able to treat an iso file as a virtual cdrom, so I didn't need to burn a disk.

This Live CD is not configured as an operating system, it comes up as a partition manager tool. And because it does not boot from your usual system drive, it is easy for it to resize a system partition. To increase the size of my virtual disk I used the following steps.

1. Copy the vmdk files to the backup space
2. Run the following command.

   vmware-vdiskmanager -x <new>GB myDisk.vmdk

   where <new> is the new total size for the virtual disk. Use quotation marks around the vmdk name if it has spaces in it.
3. Verify that the guest boots with the modified disk file.
4. Shutdown the guest.
5. In the guest settings, swich the CDROM to use the Gparted iso instead of the physical drive.
6. Restart the guest. As it comes up, very quickly hit the F2 key.
7. Tab over to Boot, move cdrom higher in the list than the harddisk. Save the changes and quit.
8. Boot the guest.
9. Accept all the GParted defaults until it shows you a display of your drive partitions.
10. Click on the partition you want to grow to highlight it.
11. Click the Resize/Move button
12. On the Resize/Move Popup, drag the right handle on the partition image as far tothe right as it will go and click Resize/Move.
13. Click the Apply button, and select OK in the verification window, and wait a few seconds while the resize is completed.
14. Close the operations window.
15. Bring up the guest settings in the vmware console and set the CDROM back to the physical device. It will complain that it can't find the device. Tell it OK, and to scan for the device everytime it boots.
16. Exit from GParted. The big red Exit button did not seem to work. Right clicking on the desktop and selecting 'Exit/shutdown menu' worked once for me, but there is nothing open on the 'hard drive' so it is also safe to just shutdown the guest. It may complain about not finding the cdrom drive: just click OK.
17. Restart the guest.
18. If the guest is a Windows image, it will scan the disk for problems after boot, and after you log in it will say that it needs to reboot to record the new configuration. Let it.
19. Verify that the new disk size is visible inside the guest.
20. Delete the obsolete vmdk files from the backup space.

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Fri, Aug 15, 2008

Rain, Finally

Posted at 8:32 am MDT to Weather

We are having a rainy day for the first time in months. This is good. The radio said we are 5 inches below normal for the year.

Normal precipitation for the Denver area is only 15.81 inches per year, so this is a serious drought.

The high temperature is predicted to be 56 F, which is about 30 degrees lower than it was a couple of days ago. I switched the HVAC from AC to heat to take the edge off the dampness.

They are predicting snow for the high country.

I'm going to take it easy today: no walking on the treadmill. I'll do my PT exercises and maybe some yoga instead. I spent a day and half in the office using Shawn's desk and chair (he was at a customer site) and I think the ergonomic mismatch pulled my bad hip out of line. The hip feels off, and the skin on my left heel went leathery and split again, which seems to be a sign that the circulation is off in that leg.

I'm going to take it a little easy on the computer work, too. I figured out that because of working until midnight on Monday and Tuesday I had already done more than 40 hours of work related stuff by noon yesterday, and I haven't been sleeping well. I really don't need to run myself into a wall and wreck my health again.

One advantage of doing billable work is that the contract puts a limit on the hours of tight Focused work I do each day: I need to relearn to pace myself when I don't have that external limit. Though I was never good at doing that -- probably one reason I've done well as a contractor and consultant.

Paying attention to that bad leg may give me an indicator of when I'm pushing things too much.

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Thu, Aug 14, 2008

Shoes

Posted at 10:05 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I realized last week that the heel of my right shoe was totally worn down and starting to self-destruct. I didn't shop for shoes then because I knew that we would be doing a lot of walking at the convention, and wearing shoes that my feet were used to was a better idea than wearing new shoes.

Today I went shopping for shoes at the Flatirons Crossing Mall and the surrounding big-box stores. My pair of brown shoes died 6 months ago and the black ones I've been wearing are not really fit for customer meetings, and wouldn't be even if I got them professionallly polished. I do have a pair of dressier shoes in the closet, but they have higher heels than I really prefer.

The store that used to be a DSW is now a Famous Footwear and has no inventory to speak of, and what it has is hdeous. That whole block of big-box buildings is almost empty, and Linens 'n Things, the largest remaining store in the block is having a store-closing sale. I saw for sale and for lease signs in some of the neighboring blocks, too.

The Flatirons Village outdoor adjunct to the main mall is empty. There is Borders and one other store and the cinema at the end away from the mall, and a few big resaturants at each end of the Village, but everything else is empty. I think I heard somewhere that they had discovered some structural problems in the buildings, and needed to reconstruct things. If that's true, the lawsuits must be mindboggling.

The shoes in the main mall were as hideous as the Famous Footwear ones.

There were a couple of stores that were empty or being reconstructed, but not many. But I noticed that some of the existing stores had a lot more empty floor space and a lot few display racks than one would expect. That can't be a good sign. Radio Shack was so empty that I asked if they were planning to close, And Eddie Bauer was surprisingly sparse.

But I bought a new purse at the luggage store (Eagle Creek makes purses and beltpacks, now, not just luggage. Yay!) and some zipper pouches to help me organize things in my Eagle Creek briefcase.

I also encountered some neat items that will be useful Christmas gifts. I don't think I've ever done this much of my Christmas shopping this early.

And I picked up the latest manga in some series I've been following at Borders on my way out of the mall.

I found the DSW: they are in a different clump of big-box stores on the other side of the mall now, and managed to find shoes that fit me and did'nt make me want to gag. I got two pairs of Naturalizer shoes -- the same plain style of flat in black and brown, so I have something presentable.

I also picked up a pair of Sketchers so I have something other than the good shoes to wear for working farmers' market and shopping, and around the house and yard. I will probably use them on the treadmill, too. I've been using the same old rubber-soled black loafers I've worn for everything because the official walking shoes are uncomfortable. I seem to have lower ankle bones than the designers expect: the sides of most sports shoes rub against places they shouldn't. The Skechers are cut lower on the sides, with sport-shoe style soles and decorative, not athletic, uppers.

The clerk at DSW asked if I had their preference card. I told her that since I only buy shoes about every three years, it wouldn't do either of us any good to put me on their list.

At least the massage and exercise has reduced the bloating in my left leg and foot so its back to being a reasonable 9 1/2 medium. Buying shoes 6 months ago would have been problematic.

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Wed, Aug 13, 2008

Ykchaua

Posted at 9:12 am MDT to Technology

Ykchaua is the name of the new laptop: named after the Mayan god of chocolate and merchants because it is brown.

I just verified that I have the ability to print to my laser printer, so the infrastructure seems solid. There is nothing worse than trying to do development on a machine that is going flakey: when something breaks there is no way to tell whether the problem is due to something you have done, or because of a problem with the system.

In a little while I will go over to the office to start loading Windows images and Rational software that I need for my development project

Out of curiosity, I weighed the ykchaua and its power cord and sophia (the old laptop) and its cord and power brick this morning.

Sophia plus AC adapter: 10.4 pounds

Ykchaua plus AC adapter: 6.6 pounds

That is a big improvement, especially for hauling it through airports.

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Primary Results

Posted at 9:12 am MDT to Current Events

The state primaries were yesterday.

Jared Polis won for the Democrats in my district. I am pleased that we have avoided both the surrogate Republican and the Democratic machine candidate.

And the good people of Colorado Springs seem to have experienced a rush of brains to the head, since they declined to nominate wingnut Douglas Bruce (the only man ever censured by the state senate) for another term.

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Tue, Aug 12, 2008

Denvention and Marrakesh

Posted at 9:56 pm MDT to Travel

The panel discussions at Denvention were wonderful, but I have to admit that we weren't impressed by some other aspects of the convention. The art show and Masquerade were disappointing compared even to some regional conventions I've been to in the past. And the Dealers' room was small compared to the ones I remember from past conventions, though that didn't stop me from spending a lot of money on filk CDs and book from smaller publishing companies.

Food was a problem, too. What was available in the Convention Center was limited in variety and hideously over-priced. And even at a good deli, I had trouble finding anything I could eat for breakfast Friday morning.

Saturday we made a quick trip back to my house to fill Dinah's cat-feeder and to run an errand for Nanette's husband, so I ate breakfast at home. Sunday breakfast for Nanette was a capucchino and for me was a mediocre smoothie.

We got the the convention near lunchtime, which we skipped on Thursday, We had hotdog cart hotdogs on Friday (discarding the bun and Saturday, and real food at my house on Sunday afer we left the convention.

For dinners we went out: to Z Cuisine for our memorable meal on Thursday and for a quick meal at QDoba before the Masquerade on Friday.

On Saturday evening, we spent some time exploring the LoDo end of the 16th Street Mall, and found a very nice Moroccan place: Marrakesh Restaurant. The food was excellent and there were plenty of dishes for me to choose from (I clearly need to learn more Mediterranean cooking). And Saturday is one of the evenings they have a belly dancer: she was very good too.

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Migration 2

Posted at 8:40 pm MDT to Technology

It has taken a long day, but I now have VMWare and the LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql, Perl) stack working on the new laptop. My development copies of my blog and the CGI programs I have worked on for the company website are now accessible using the new laptop's local web server.

I really wish Debian and Ubuntu would leave the apache2 config files the way they are described in the actual apache documentation. And I'm not sure why the configuration that was working on the old laptop (Ubuntu 8.04 that got there by way of upgrades) doesn't quite work on the new laptop, which started out as Ubuntu 8.04.

And they really need a reliable way to configure apparmor so that mysql can have its data in a non-default location. I had to block apparmor from affecting mysql to get things to work.

I have all the data that is likely to change and needs to be backed up in /home: /home/mysql, /home/www, /home/vmware, but the config files aren't nearly as cooperative as they should be about setting things up that way.

Tomorrow I'll go into the office and load the Windows images I will need for testing the new application I need to develop.

Tonight I'm going to download a 32bit Centos image for the UNIX side of the development and testing and get that loaded into VMWare. I'm also going to rsync /home and /etc back up to the server, so I have a record of things in a working state. I should dump a list of the installed packages, and back that up to0.

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Mon, Aug 11, 2008

Migration

Posted at 9:10 pm MDT to Technology

If you can read this, it means that I have nearly completed my migration from the old laptop to the new laptop.

Everything was backed up from /home on the old laptop to my server, which was pretty quick because I have been using rsync for backups. Then I copied everything from the backups into a staging directory and did some cleanup (so the full backup still exists). I renamed .kde and .mozilla to .kde.old and .mozilla.old so they would be available for reference and cleaned out most of the other config files so they would not step on the clean ones on the new machine.

The staging files are still downloading (rsync again) to the /home partition on the new laptop, but things have gotten far enough that I have my emails accessible here, and my Konqueror bookmarks are set up and working.

Next I attack Firefox, which is a different set of bookmarks, mostly ones that need Flash. I probably need to redownload the Flash plugins, but they should work better since the new machine is 32bit.

VMWare will need to wait until tomorrow, and I need to decide whether to load VMWare Workstation or VMWare Server.

This keyboard is driving me nuts: I am used to the old one, which had only one Control key, with the Delete key in an odd place. It will take some time to adjust to a more normal layout.

Other than that, I really like this machine. The screen is a little smaller than the previous one, but not enough to be annoying (I think it may be a similar screen layout with smaller dots) and having the screen shiny instead of matte is less of a glare problem that I had feared, at least so far.

The new machine is enormously quieter: if it has fans, I can't hear them, and the drives are silent, too. I haven't tested the sound system yet, but it can't be worse than the previous one. It would be nice to have speakers that actually speak again.

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Sun, Aug 10, 2008

Denvention day 1 and Z Cuisine

Posted at 10:05 pm MDT to Travel

On Thursday Nanette and I drove down to Denver to the 66th World Science Fiction Convention, Denvention 3. We checked into our hotel and spent the afternoon in the art show, dealers' room and panel discussions.

In the dealers' room, Howard Tayler, creator of the Schlock Mercenary webcomic, drew a caricature of me, while we were talking to him and gave it to me for free. I stocked up on the hard-copy editions of the comic and got Nanette interested in Schlock over the course of the convention.

That evening, we went to dinner at Z Cuisine a restaurant that buys vegetables from Nanette's farm. It is a beautiful little place divided in two sections, with great original art by local artists.

We started in the wine bar during happy hour, where Chef Patrick (a chef from France) recognized Nanette and comped us each a glass of wine. Along with the wine we had the Assiette de Charcuterie Maison (what I think of as an antipasto tray): pickles, roasted peppers, olives, a little paté, a tiny crème brûlée (which Nanette had to herself due to my new dietary limitations) and cheese. It turned out that the cheese was Haystack Mountain goat cheese, so I was able to have some of it.

Later we went next door to the Bistrot. We both had the Cassoulet de la Maison: duck leg confit with garlic and sausage and beans ragout, with wilted greens (kale, I think). It was amazingly wonderful. Probably the most expensive meal I've had in -- possibly forever. But it was wonderful.

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Thu, Aug 07, 2008

Denvention

Posted at 8:42 am MDT to Miscellaneous

In about an hour, Nanette will stop by to pick me up for our trip to Denvention, the World Science Fiction Convention.

The laptop is staying home. It will be Sunday or Monday before I post again.

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Sweet Potato

Posted at 8:42 am MDT to Miscellaneous

Oh. My. God.

I found this link on matociquala's (Elizabeth Bear's) live journal, and I was laughing so hard I had trouble seeing to read most of it.

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Wed, Aug 06, 2008

Monsoon

Posted at 7:12 pm MDT to Weather

After a record-breaking streak of hot dry weather, it looks like the southwestern monsoon is finally arriving.

This is the second day in a row that I've gotten a little precipitation and a storm cell has gone by that was dense enough to block my TV satellite signal. The cells are still small: Nanette got no rain yesterday and the farm is only 15 minutes away.

At least this indicates that the weather pattern is starting the change.

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Good news, Bad News

Posted at 4:59 pm MDT to Current Events

Sometimes it seems like every time there is evidence of civilization in this country, it comes along with evidence of bigoted idiots.

Acording to a link on Language log the union at the Tyson Foods poultry plant in Shelbyville, Tennesee recently signed a new contract that provides 8 holidays including Eid-al-Fitr, the last day of Ramadan (the eighth holiday was previously Labor Day. The other holidays are New Year's, MLK, Memorial Day, July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the employee's birthday). There are only 250 Muslims among the 1200 members of the union, so I think that union includes some nice civilized people: the new contract was approved by 80% of the members.

On the other hand, the Executive Director of "English First" denounced the contract as "multiculturalism run amok".

Hmmm. I wonder if the union knows that because Muslims don't use a leap month like the Jewish and Chinese calendars, Eid-al_fitr should happen 13 times in 12 Gregorian years? I wonder if Tyson knows?

In other news, according to John Scalzi on tor.com, scientists have found a lot of lowland gorillas in a previously unexplored swamp in Africa.

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Tor Freebies

Posted at 2:46 pm MDT to Media

Tor Books has started a new website with a lot of cool bloggers on various topics (John Scalzi has the science desk) and occasional short fiction. So far that includes short stories by Scalzi and Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow and a web comic by Wesley Allsbrook.

Note that the tor.com online magazine is not the same as the Tor corporate site, which uses a clunky aspx interface. They really need a competent web admin on that one to work on getting the menus and directory defaults to work reliably.

In the run-up to the site going live, they posted (at weekly intervals) electronic versions of a dozen Tor novels. I downloaded the pdf versions.

Some of them were books I had already read, or that already existed in hardcopy in my to-be-read pile, but some were initial books of series that were new to me. In my case at least, the free books are going to result in additional sales for Tor. The books I have read so far are very good, with engaging characters and very well constructed worlds>.

In the past few days I have read two and a half of these. (I have also discovered that the KDE pdf reader remembers where you were in a file, so that when I re-open a book I left in the middle, it puts me on the correct page. This is very handy.)

The first one I finished was A Shadow in Summer, the first book of "The Long Price Quartet" by Daniel Abraham. (It looks like the next two volumes, Betrayal in Winter and An Autumn War are out or scheduled). The magic system in the story is unique and well thought out, the culture where most of the action in the first volume occurs is nicely and consistently alien, with an intricate formalised use of body language as well as speech, and the events of the plot grow organically out of the chanracters and the environment. And there is something to be said for a fantasy book where a major viewpoint character is a middle-aged female accountant.

The second was Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell. He has another book out, Ragamuffin, set in the same universe, and another, Sly Mongoose that is due out in a couple of weeks, both of which I will be on the lookout for. I love the use of langauage in this book. The author is from the Caribbean and uses dialect beautifully in all of the dialogue. And his world-building is very solid. This feels like a Caribbean Poul Anderson to me: the combination of adventure and solid worldbuilding scratches that itch, and I think the non-whitebread speech rhythms are giving me echoes of Nicholas van Rijn, even though the actual accents involved are very different.

I need to find out what cultural ideas are attached to Ragamuffins and mongooses in the Caribbean. I have a definite impression that there are resonances that I am missing.

I am still in the middle of Kate Elliott's Spirit Gate. After WorldCon I will pick it up in hardcopy, along with the sequel Shadow Gate. I may also look into her series for another publisher. I like the characters and the world (refreshingly not-Central-Asia as well as not-Europe), but it is quite long, and my energy for dealing with things going wrong even in narrative is limited these days. Ironically, if I liked the characters less, my patience for dealing with the on-going tightening of the screws might be better. The cultural and religious details hold together nicely.

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Mon, Aug 04, 2008

Swallowing Problem Again

Posted at 1:48 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

Drat. Lunch sort of ricocheted on me today.

Oh, well, at least it's been a couple of months since I had my esophagus lock up. I'm out of practice clearing the blockage. On the good side, it's been a couple of months since this happened, so the dietary changes have definitely made a difference.

I just wish I had some idea what set it off. I hadn't eaten anything in the past 12 hours that I haven't eaten since the food allergies were diagnosed. I'd be surprised if stuff I ate longer ago than that was still causing irritation.

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DSL Down Yesterday

Posted at 1:47 pm MDT to Technology

DSL was down yesterday for several hours. After listening to hold music for a while I finally reached a recording that said my ISP had a failure of a major piece of equipment.

It's amazing how addicted to net access I've become. I spent all evening thinking "I should look this up on the web" about one thing or another.

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Fri, Aug 01, 2008

Falafel

Posted at 2:52 pm MDT to Technology

This noon I made falafel balls (from a mix) with grapeseed oil as the frying medium. They came out pretty well, probably vecause I invested in a good frying/candy thermometer a while back and was careful to let the oil come back to 350 before I added each new batch of falafels.

My 1 teaspoon cookie disher makes a good size of falafel, but if it isn't firmly packed they fall apart or turn to little octopus shaped things.

Next time I fry, I'll use the friedchicken pan: the cast iron will hold the heat better. It will need more oil than the saucepan I used today, but it will fit more balls at a time, so things will go faster. And if I'm careful about the temperature, the oil will be reusable.

Googling says they freeze well and can be reheated in a 350 oven (I will probably use my toaster oven), which is good since the package made a big batch. I'll need to look for a recipe for yogurt dressing: I can make some with goat-milk yogurt.

According to one site I found, I could make scratch falafel from chickpeas with the meatgrinder attachment for my stand mixer. I may try that some time.

I wonder if it is possible to make non-dairy baklava? Store-bought phyllo dough seems to have stuff I'm allergic to, but maybe I could make something like it with my pasta machine. I should probably do some more googling.

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