Teleidoscope

Thu, Sep 11, 2008

Elk

Posted at 7:12 pm MDT to Technology

Elk steak is a little bland compared with buffalo, but the one I made tonight was cooked just right. I took it out of the fridge and let it set on the counter for a half hour or so to take some of the chill off but didn't let it come all the way up to room temperature. Meanwhile I turned the George Foreman grill on high and let it preheat.

I put the steak in for exactly 3 minutes and let it rest for a few minutes before I cut into it. It was beautiful: brown on the outside, but almost entirely medium-rare all through the inside.

I'll cook the other steak from that package tomorrow, and maybe hit it with some Worchestershire sauce to give the flavor a little more bite.

Next time I buy elk it will be stew meat -- I like venison stew. But I think I'll stick to buffalo for my steaks.

permanent link || trackback || 0 comments || Add a comment

DB2 on Linux

Posted at 8:52 am MDT to Technology

Pullling the DB2 installation out to the host environment, which is non-Windows, has made ClearQuest response actually snappy.

But getting it working was a pain: too much information wan't in the official docs about prerequisites, only by googling and finding messages in obscure usergroup forums.

Prerequisites: libaio.so.1 and libstdc++.so.5

Needed to get the installer to work: set environment variables LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK=1, AWT_TOOLKIT=MToolkit.

Syscontrol settings to make the databases actually usable:

kernel.shmmax = 1610612736
kernel.sem = 250 256000 32 2048
 kernel.msgmnb = 65536
 kernel.msgmni = 16384
 kernel.msgmax = 65536
 kernel.shmmni = 4096
 kernel.shmall = 3774873

These values were compiled from a couple of different forums. I'm sure they are not optimal, but they seem to work.

permanent link || trackback || 0 comments || Add a comment

Yoga Mats

Posted at 8:52 am MDT to Exercise

I have now done the AM Yoga 6 of the past 8 days, so it is becoming routine again. There was a time not too many years ago when it was normal for me to do yoga every weekday: AM yoga followed by other yoga tapes or treadmill work or weightlifting. Today I did a mile on the treadmill.

I did enough yoga -- back before the surgery in 2005 -- that I actually wore out my first yoga mat. (The idea of me wearing out any kind exercise equipment is a little mind-boggling.)

The sore spot where I ripped loose the adhesions is mostly gone now, finally, and that ribbon of tightness running from my collarbone to my armpit seems to be stretching a little, but it is still annoying. Triangle pose (which I was never good at) is at least not unthinkable now. I should pull out the DVD with the routine I used for upper body yoga.

Time to think about starting some free-weight work again, too.

And I really need to work on getting my hamstrings stretched out. Straighter legs with my heels somewhere near the ground would help in downward dog and a lot of other yoga asanas. I can't imagine how women who regularly wear heels adjust to exercise programs.

permanent link || trackback || 0 comments || Add a comment