Teleidoscope

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Tue, Aug 12, 2008

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.

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

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.

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

Mon, Aug 04, 2008

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.

permanent link || trackback || 2 comments || Add a comment

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.

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

Sun, Jul 27, 2008

Chard

Posted at 5:48 pm MDT to Technology

Man, that immunization really knocked me out. I've been a slug for the past few days, and after 4 days I still have a noticeable bump where the injection happened, though at least it has gotten smaller and less itchy.

I worked farmer's market yesterday. Rowan was in San Diego for the big comic convention, so it was just Nanette who did the picking and the two of us setting up. I went over to Nanette's for a little while afterward, and stopped at my local Whole Foods (that used to be Wild Oats) on the way home, and I was exhausted when I got home.

I brought home some zucchini (which I need to do something with tomorrow) and chard. I made the chard for dinner today.

My traditional use for chard is in a frittata, but it is kind of hard to make a frittata without eggs, so I experimented a bit.

I stripped the stems out of the chard, chopped them, and started them sauteing in a little olive oil while I chopped the leaves, then added the leaves to the skillet and put on the lid, so the leaves would partly steam in their own moisture.

While that was cooking, I chopped up some thin-sliced cooked salami and added it to the pan to render out some of its fat blend the flavors a little.

After cooking another minute or so, I grated a little hard goat cheese --'Sunlight' from Haystack Dairy -- on top. Stirred it through, and added a little more on top when I dished it up. (I got the cheese at the market last week from the Haystack Dairy folks, but the local Whole Foods carry it too, so I can get it in the off season.)

The mixture was interesting but a little strong, and the proportions were a little off. I stirred some into some cooked and cooled elbow noodles, with a little more cheese. and I think I've got the beginnings of an interesting pasta salad, once I get the proportions balanced. The mouth-feel was rich enough to satisfy some of the craving for mac and cheese that's been attacking me when I shop.

The next batch needs to be a bunch of chard, an ounce or so of chopped salami, a quarter to half a cup of grated cheese (I didn't have nearly that much this time) to about a half pound of pasta.

I'm starting to watch some of my cooking shows so I can clear them off my DVR, and I encountered the concept of a veloute, which is like a bechamel but based on stock instead of milk. I wonder if I could do a chicken veloute-based mac and cheese casserole with some goat cheese. Maybe when the weather gets cooler.

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

Thu, Jul 24, 2008

Vaccines

Posted at 4:16 pm MDT to Technology

I went to the doctor replacing my previous internist to get my thyroid levels checked yesterday. She seems OK, so I may stay with her instead of looking for a new doctor.

While I was there I mentioned that I thought I was due for a tetanus shot, and she suggested I get the DTP (diptheria, tetanus, pertussis) shot they give to little kids. It seems the ones people my age got as children are wearing off, and there are outbreaks of whooping cough (pertussis) these days because idiots are not getting their children immunized, so the diseases are able to spread. The DTP shot sounded fine to me: I don't need more crud in my lungs after the winter I had.

There have been recent outbreaks of measles, too, so they are going to test some of my blood they took for antibodies. The vaccine was after my time, but I never had the measles even though they were prevalent in the grammar schools I attended.

I should probably get tested for mumps antibodies next time, if they have a test for mumps antibodies: I missed them too. The only one of the 'standard' childhood diseases I actually experienced was chicken pox.

My Mom made sure I got immunized for German Measles when I was in junior high, since I had never had them, because they would cause birth defects if I caught the later in life while pregnant. And I think my youngest brother might have gotten the full set of measles immunizations: Chris is 7 years younger than me, and measles immunization was commoner by the time he reached school age.

I really don't understand people who don't get their kids immunized. But then, I'm old enough to remember when mumps and measles were things you hoped would come through your neighborhood without any of the nastier effects for you or your classmates.

Polio vaccines (both Salk and Sabin) were new and wonderful lifesaving treatments that stopped parents' nightmares and opened the public swimming pools in the summer time in my lifetime. I don't remember the pools being closed, but I remember my parents talking about the change. I was very sick with something when I was one year old, in the summer of 1955, and polio was one of the things they worried about. That was the year the Salk vaccine first became widely available, so I had not been immunized before I was sick. I'm sure I was immunized not long after, and I remember being re-immunized with the oral vaccine later.

And I've read about the European 'childhood diseases' wiping out the Mississippi valley civilizations. We really don't want to have an unexposed, un-immunized population.

I received the actual original 'vaccination' -- against smallpox -- twice that I know of. Once as a small child and once in high-school or junior-high.

Googling, it looks like there is a West Nile vaccine for horses, though it needs to be renewed every year. And West Nile vaccines for humans are in clinical trials in Hawaii and elsewhere. That's one I'd definitely be interested in getting when it becomes available.

And if tropical diseases move north as the climate shifts, we will eventually need to be immunized for some of them on a regular basis, not just when we travel.

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

Mon, Jul 21, 2008

Digital XRays

Posted at 11:30 am MDT to Technology

The locally available medical technology has taken a jump in the past year. Both my dentist and the mammography department at the local hospital are now using digital x-ray camera instead of film. This gives them much clearer images: the computer can get the focus exactly right. The new mammography system is supposed to see through fibrocystic tissue a lot better than the old one, too.

It also gives faster turnaround on the images, of course. At the end of my mammogram this morning the technician showed me the pictures she had taken, after she emailed them to the radiologist. They looked nice and clear to me. This is good. They should not need followup untrasounds or whatever to decide on my status.

The technician was very nice. She did the right-side lateral imaging in two shots instead of one to allow for the fact that the tissue on that side is stiff from being cooked by the radiation treatments. That side just doesn't compress well.

My dentist showed me the images from the digital bite-wings, too, when he was discussing what they had found. He just swung the screen he was using to view them around so I could look at it too.

I still want vise-free Star Trek medical scanners for mammograms, though. The new systems don't hurt quite as badly as the old ones did, but that is not saying a whole lot.

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

Mon, Jul 14, 2008

Marinated Mushrooms I

Posted at 9:24 pm MDT to Technology

These came out very strong. Maybe change the ratio of oil to vinegar next time. Also, red wine vinegar makes them dark: invest in some white wine vinegar, if possible, for the next batch.

Some recipes call for cooking the mushrooms, etc. in vinegar, draining them, then adding oil to the mason jar to cover. That might give a mellower result, too.

Lots of recipes call for red chile flakes. I might stir in a tiny bit after the cooking, just before the mixture goes from the pan to the jar.

Some of the extra kick maybe from including wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil instead of the less flavorful varieties they use in the marinated mushrooms from the store.

I used an oil-packed roasted pepper. A fresh, or freshly roasted, red bell pepper would be nice.

1 pound fresh mushrooms 
    halved or quartered depending on size
1 roasted sweet pepper chopped into shreds
cloves from one head of garlic, sliced thin
1/2 tsp pickling salt
1/2 cup each light and extra virgin olive oil
1 cup red wine vinegar
dried marjoram and other herbs
dried parsley

Put ingredients in a saucepan. Mix together. Add equal parts oil and vinegar to barely cover the mushrooms. Bring to a boil and cook 5 to 10 minutes.

Allow to cool slightly, then ladle solids and enough liquid to cover into a mason jar. Add oil if needed to cover the solids (this batch there was a little extra liquid left in the pan). Refrigerate at least over night before serving.

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

Sat, Jul 12, 2008

Goat milk

Posted at 3:53 pm MDT to Technology

At Farmers' Market today I had Sisters' Pantry Dumplings for breakfast. Yay. I also bought two kinds of goat-milk cheese.

On the way home I stopped at Whole Foods. They had powered and canned goats' milk. I got some powdered: tomorrow I'll make a batch of waffles with goats' milk and egg replacer, and vanilla to compensate for some of the missing richness of the eggs. I hope this batch will be less lame than the pancakes I made with the egg replacer a few weeks ago.

Whole Foods also had goat yogurt. It's very expensive, but at least it is there. So it is available for use as an ingredient.

And they carry lots of kinds of goat and sheep milk cheeses (including cheese from the farm I buy from at the market, so I can keep buying it over the winter). I'll get a sample of sheep cheese to be tested with before my next allergist appointment.

I bought some meringue cookies, too. Sugar and egg whites, with no dairy or egg yolks. It's nice to buy some regular things. it would be even nicer to find a brand of hotdog and hamburger buns without malt in them, but I think that quest is hopeless.

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

Wed, Jul 09, 2008

Mediterranean Food

Posted at 7:57 pm MDT to Technology

The allergist's office hadn't been planning to do more skin tests today but they did three: olives, Russian olive pollen, and goat's milk. They all came back negative.

The Russian olive is interesting: I was pretty sure i was allergic to it in the early 90s. Either it was something else that pollinates at the same time (like ragweed and goldenrod) or I've adapted to it over the years.

The olives and goat's milk are a big relief. I can have goat cheese, in small quantities. And olive oil I've been using in place of butter should not be a problem. (I suspect that means I need a fresher bottle of extra virgin olive oil) I can eat some Greek food, or Moroccan. As long as I stay away from eggs and butter... and maybe find a source of goat milk yogurt. I don't think I've ever seen goat butter for sale.

The Doctor also agreed that I can add small amounts of egg whites back into my diet, since I tested negative for them last month. I can have Sisters' Pantry dumplings for breakfast at Farmers' Market!

My next appointment is scheduled for September 8, and this time they have scheduled more skin tests. I think there is still something occasionally triggering allergic reactions, so I'll be trying to keep track of what kinds of things I've been eating before I have swallowing problems.

permanent link || trackback || 2 comments || Add a comment

Tue, Jul 08, 2008

Ingredients

Posted at 11:13 pm MDT to Technology

I got another piece of birthday present from work today: a set of Mario Batali utensils to accompany the cookbooks.

I went down to Salvaggio's deli to see if they had any Pecorino Romano cheese, but it was very disappointing. It's just a sandwich shop. (Years ago it had some actual imported stuff.)

Herb's Meats, which I visited last week, does a better job of being an Italian deli. But it didn't have imported cheeses. I have a rabbit from Herb's in the freezer.

I think there is an Italian deli in downtown Louisville, but I didn't go there. Instead I explored some of the other international markets in Boulder, to see what other ingredients are available.

Next door to Salvaggio's is the Mediterranean Market and Deli. Arab rather than Greek: they sell halal meat, along with a lot of other interesting stuff. I bought some orange blossom water (they had rose water but only in large bottles) and pomegranate concentrate. I suspect there may be a kosher deli somewhere in town... I should explore. Probably starting with the yellow pages.

A few blocks away there is a strip mall with a deli/sandwich shop and three sources of international food. I didn't go into the Panaderia Mexican bakery. But I bought rice, tapioca (pearls and flour), fresh ginger and soba noodles at the Asian market (which also stocks Mexican ingredients).

The Indian market was more sparse, but smelled wonderful. Incense and curry. I mentioned to the shopkeeper that I was recently diagnosed with allergies to milk and eggs (many of the packages did not have English ingredient lists), and he said he was a nutritionist who had spent some time in medical school, and had experience dealing with allergies and Ayurveda. I think I need to look up Ayurveda cuisine... I got some bake-at-home naan bread, and a curry sauce mix for chicken to try. The shopkeeper said he has 65 different sauce mixes.

I came home the long way, and picked up (finally) the Mario Batali lasagna pan I've been thinking about. Now I need to figure out how to make a dairy-free lasagna. Or buy a roasting chicken. I need to check the allergy cookbooks I got for my birthday.

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

Sun, Jun 15, 2008

Cider Raisin Tapioca Pudding

Posted at 10:10 am MDT to Technology

2 cups organic cider
1.5 Tbs Minute Tapioca
allspice
raisins
.5 tsp vanilla

Mix everything but the raisins and vanilla. Let sit for a while. Add the raisins. Let sit for longer. Heat while stirring to a very full rolling boil. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Cool 20 minutes and put into desert cups. Serve at room temperature or cooler.

Notes: Needs more Tapioca next time, probably because it doesn't have eggs or dairy to help bind it. I also didn't use enough raisins, since I didn't want to waste them if it turned out inedible.

I think I'm craving textures and mouth-feel as much or more than flavors, when it comes to missing the dairy stuff. This pudding makes a change from dry, oily or grainy. And it's smoother and less pulpy than apple sauce.

By grainy I don't mean gritty. There is a difference in mouth-feel between real milk and veggie milks like soy or almond: the tongue can tell the difference between a solution and a suspension. Or maybe between starch and protein.

I'm sure rice milk will have the same effect, since I also noticed it in the dairy-free risotto the other night. Using stock instead of broth might help applications like the risotto, or possibly adding a little unflavored gelatin.

The starch vs. protein thing may also be part of the problem with the Egg Replacer stuff. I don't think gelatin will work in pancakes. But adding vanilla might help with the boring, cardboardy flavor. (It's a good thing Costco sells real vanilla in industrial quantities at reasonable prices. I have a feeling I'm going to be using a lot of it.)

Additional Notes:

I should get tested for cinnamon when I go back to the allergist.

A lemon-honey or lemon-orgeat tapioca pudding might be interesting.

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

Fri, Jun 13, 2008

Risotto

Posted at 8:44 pm MDT to Technology

Risotto just means 'rice' in Italian. What I'm making tonight isn't a classic risotto, since I can't use the usual small amount of butter nor the grated cheese, but a lot of the 'creaminess' of a good risotto actually comes from the starches in the rice.

I'm trying to add some layers of flavor to make up for the lack of cheese.

Ingredients

EV Olive Oil
chopped onion
minced garlic
a few strands of ancient saffron
chicken
dash of red pepper flakes
pinch dry basil flakes
pinch dry marjoram
pinch dry rosemary
dried porcini mushrooms, rehydrated
dried shitake mushrooms, rehydrated
canned mushrooms
white wine
tomato paste (enough to make the sauce very slightly pink)
anchovy paste (1/2 tsp?)
chicken broth
salt

It's OK. I'll add black pepper and a little more salt when I eat it. Maybe go a little heavier on the red pepper and anchovy paste next time.

Needs cheese.

Also needs the dried mushrooms cut smaller.

At least it's a change from cauliflower and salmon. (Eating alone means there are almost always leftovers. Someone needs to invent mini-cauliflowers) At least risotto freezes tolerably.

Capers. Adding capers at the end might be interesting... Maybe I'll try adding some to one of the leftover servings when I reheat it to see how they go with chicken/mushroom... stuff.

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

Sun, Jun 08, 2008

Pancake Experiment

Posted at 1:43 pm MDT to Technology

One advantage of the powdered Egg Replacer is that you can make a half-egg's worth batch of things.

I made a 1/2 batch of my usual sourdough pancake/waffle recipe using egg replacer and almond milk. The texture was ok, but the flavor of the plain pancakes left a lot to be desired. (Fortunately, good maple syrup will cover a multitude of sins.) I think the rest of the batch is going to be donated to the wild birds.

They seemed to cook slowly. I wonder if the dairy and egg proteins affect the rate of browning. Need to review On Food and Cooking on maillot reactions.

The egg replacer seems to work all right as a binder, but it doesn't add any of the richness you get from milk and eggs. Cooking in bacon fat might help -- I've got some in the fridge.

Or schmaltz (rendered chicken fat). Can you buy actual schmaltz? I'd think places with serious kosher departments might have it. But I don't really know whether it has any flavor.

Maybe I should consider roasting a duck.

And I really need to figure out how to add some protein into the pancakes. You'd think, with almonds being nuts, the milk would have non-trivial amounts of protein. But it seems not. I'll need to check the protein in the different brands of non-dairy, non-soy milks next time I'm shopping for them. There were some actual nut 'flours' in the Whole Foods baking aisle, too. It might be worth checking the nutritional content on those.

The batter was too thick for the first pancake I made, but the way it puffed up makes me think it would do OK in the waffle iron, if I can get some flavor into it that isn't totally bland and boring.

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

Egg Replacer

Posted at 10:08 am MDT to Technology

Yesterday at farmers' market was depressing: there is almost nothing in the food court that I should eat. Even the oriental dumplings have eggwhites and the tamales have butter.

I had teriyaki chicken with rice from the fusion booth for breakfast after we were set up. (Which had soy sauce, but the brewed soy products have less active phyto-estrogens than something like tofu does.)

I also bought a vegan cookie and brownie to take home (fortunately, Boulder is the kind of place that has a vegan bakery that shows up at the farmers' market) and a loaf of rosemary bread to nibble on for lunch.

But I'm hungry for protein and there are depressingly few prepared veggies that don't include eggs or dairy or both.

It's going to be a good thing my neighborhood grocery store is a Whole Foods. I stopped in the big Whole Foods in Boulder before I came home, bought some stuff and did some scouting.

Unlike Costco, they carry pitas and flour tortillas without anything I'm allergic to. They have a big selection of rice and almond milks, too. I got one of each to try. Vanilla flavored, not plain: I used to eat cheerios with vanilla soymilk and got used to the flavor combination. If one of them works, I will at least have something to have for breakfast -- toast with extra virgin olive oil just tastes wrong at that time of day, and I really want something besides plain carbs and tea.

The problem with both kinds of non-dairy milks is that they are meant for drinking, not as ingredients while my use of milk has for years been more as an ingredient than for drinking.

Their gluten-free aisle had two varieties of egg replacer. The store employee who showed me where they were said she found the one that is called for in most of the vegan baking recipes on-line has a baking soda aftertaste, and the ingredient list for it contains leavening agents which I think would throw off recipes, especially at this altitude. And it is recommended only for baking, probably because of the leavening agent.

The alternative product is from Orgran in Australia. The ingredients are just potato starch, tapioca flour, vegetable gum, methylcellulose, calcium carbonate and citric acid. And the recipes on the box (in several languages including Italian!) include lemon pie filling and batter for pan frying stuff. (Also a 'custard', but that needs milk.) This looked a lot more useful as a general binder, which is what I really wanted it for. I'm going to try making pancakes for brunch, since I need to toss the last couple of waffles from the last batch I made, and I want something to put maple syrup on.

I forgot to look for margarines (I was sort of flinching away from the dairy aisle) or lemons, but I can stop at my neighborhood Whole Foods on my way home from Nanette's this afternoon. I'm bringing her the dairy good from my fridge and freezer, and also the whiskey from my liquor cabinet because of the malt allergy.

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

Wed, May 21, 2008

Upgrade to 8.04 status

Posted at 6:17 am MDT to Technology

Aaaand... we have wifi this morning! Yay.

I'm going to celebrate by doing yoga, and eating breakfast and, you know, doing other stuff that doesn't involve a computer keyboard before I need to go on the clock.

I wonder what I did yesterday that made it start working?

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

Tue, May 20, 2008

My Joke

Posted at 8:29 pm MDT to Technology

This is not my joke because I made it up -- I originally heard it during a filk session at a World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago about 20 years ago.

It is my joke because it is the only joke I know where I can reliably remember both the setup and the punchline.

---

One day an electrical engineer (EE) died and went to hell. And the devil took him down the hall and opened a door and said, "This is where you will be."

And the EE went into the room and looked around. It was a huge room, full of acres of lab tables full of state of the art -- no beyond state of the art -- test and diagnostic equipment. And along one side were racks and racks full of every kind of spare part imaginable.

The EE turned to the devil and said, "But, I don't understand! This is an EE's dream. Just look at all this stuff! This is an EE's dream!"

But the devil just smiled and answered, "You don't understand. The problem ... is intermittent."

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

Upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04 continued

Posted at 4:57 pm MDT to Technology

Last night the wifi was working fine with a 2.6.22 kernel, which is what I was running vmware on top of all day yesterday.

This morning neither the wifi nor vmware would work with 2.6.22.

After two hours of thrashing I hauled the laptop into my computer room and set up a cabled ether net connection. When I rebooted, the wifi came up too.

Arggh. Having something work for no known reason is only slightly less annoying than having something not work for no known reason.

I got vmware working (with only NATed internet, not the bridging I was able to use with Ubuntu 7.10) and spent the day in the computer room. With the 4 fans in the big server a few feet from my ear.

Now I have come out to the living room, and the wifi is still working after a reboot. I wonder if whatever is going on is partially temperature dependent.

I wonder what will work or not work tomorrow. I'm not going to change anything in this laptop's configuration this evening.

In the meantime, I'm going to get vmware working on the new laptop, which has completely opensource wifi drivers. I'm still having tool chain problems. VMware server is now happy with gcc4.3, but the client piece seems to want a library from 4.0, which I don't think is even available for Ubuntu.

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

Mon, May 19, 2008

Upgrade to Kubuntu 8.04

Posted at 6:59 am MDT to Technology

Arg. The upgrade went smoothly except that Ubuntu has doone something to the way they handle driver modules. I cannot seem to generate a current driver for the wifi that will also let VMWare work.

And I need VMWare for work. I had one configuration working last night with and older kernel, but the shutdown and reboot over night seems to have chanes things just enough that it won't work.

I'm running an even older kernel, but I can't get the newest VMWare to load against it. Toolchain inconsistency problems.

I tried setting up the new laptop (which has a different wifi driver) but I'm having problems with toolchain inconsistencies there too. I may upgrade that machine to 8.04 to try to fix those.

I may need to work in my computer room today, so I can use an ethernet cable.

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

Four-Lobed Bread

Posted at 6:47 am MDT to Technology

When Nonna made bread she used to make two pieces that were sort of dumbell shaped, and cross them to make a four-lobed loaf. I tried that this weekend, but there is a trick for getting the bread to come out in four lobes instead of just sort of cross-shaped that I do not quite remember. I think the neck needs to be twisted to keep the two ends from pullin back together.

I think the dough may need to be drier, too.

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

Tue, May 13, 2008

Dead Phone

Posted at 6:45 pm MDT to Technology

Qwest is doing their best to challenge XCel for bureaucratic stupidity. I have two voice lines, one of which also carries the DSL.

The DSL line is permanently hooked to the Dish receiver, which for the past couple of days has been complaining that it couldn't phone home. Today I tested the lines and discovered i have no dial tone on that line, even though DSL has been working with only occasional minor glitches.

I carried my most protable phone around and plugged it into various jacks and determined that the no-dial-tone startsat the network box outside the house.

When I called Qwest tech support, the first technician I spoke to said that I wasn't supposed to have a dial tone on that line, just the DSL. When I insisted that the phone had been working a few days ago, she switched me to customer service, who said that the line is supposed to have a dial tone and switched me back to tech support.

According to the second tech support person I talked to, there is a problem on the line about a mile from the house, and someone will come out tomorrow to fix it. The tech support department still had the wrong address (though I have been telling them about the change of address -- and they have been promising to update it -- a few times a year since 1999) so it isn't just XCel that is incapable of updating its database.

The only surprising thing about this is that it is usually my other line that goes out when the line gets flakey. That's one reason I still pay for dialtone on both lines

permanent link || trackback || 2 comments || Add a comment