Category: general

Where I put something when I’m too lazy to categorize it.

Posted on

reeking of oaksmoke

logo400.gif
Wednesday night – I ran away from work today. Well, only in the physical sense, I suppose… as I actually did work-type activity, but from the comforts of my home rather than the cubicle. It was good, and I feel like, despite my Bush-when-he-was-in-the-Texas-National-Guard questionable work-ethic of late, I deserved and needed it. Now I sit here with the windows open, when they likely shouldn’t be – because the residual heat of the 100°+ day we had today here in brown Northern California hasn’t quite subsided yet – but I like them open, it makes me feel in tune with nature, or some such escapist notion. Yesterday I was at a conference in the city, and made the best of the hobknobbing time afforded me. I went to meet and greet, and both met and greeted to my satisfaction. I arrived home around midnight, and just didn’t feel like trudging into those oppressive aisles today.

Today I had planned on breaking in the new barbecue in a practice run, cooking a traditional meal for Sharaun and I the way I remember my grandpa doing it. My main goal was to figure out how to properly cook over the new grill, this being my first true woodfire barbecuing experience. But, the best laid plans… Anyway, we ended up supping with a good portion of our close friend base, and what had started as a “test meal” ended up more like my first official cook over the new contraption. Happily, things worked out fine. The meat was tasty, if just a tad more done than I’d like, and I could certainly taste the oak. I even cooked some pinquito beans to round out the authentic Santa Maria-ness of the whole thing. Overall, I was happy with the grill’s performance and the outcome – plus, it was totally fun tending the fire for hours prior to cooking (burned seven cuts of oak, more than I expected, but had a nice bed of cooking coals). In the end then: bravo.

I’m glad for the abbreviated week. Monday wasn’t busy at all, Tuesday was the conference, and Wednesday was today (you just read about it). Thursday is a regular day, and Friday we have a work-related getaway to the wine country for some good ol’ winesoaked camaraderie. Then, it’s Father’s Day and next weekend we’re off to Oregon to visit my folks again. After that, vacation while Sharaun’s parents visit one week, and again the next week as her sister and brother-in-law come calling. It’s all downhill until Labor Day folks, which is, you’ll soon find out, the much-anticipated beginning of my two-month paid “sabbatical” at work. Yes, the idea is autopilot from here on out.

Goodnight.

Posted on

santa maria style


Hey Monday night folks, or Tuesday morning folks – whatever the case may be. Pulled two tomatoes, one strawberry, and eight green beans from my garden yesterday. Ate the tomato and the strawberry, both were awesome, and am saving the beans until I can pick enough to make two tiny portions for Sharaun and I. There are plenty still on the bush, so I think by the end of the week we should have enough. More of the tomatoes are coloring-up though, and I just hope the things keep producing. Onward we go.

Anthony and I finished the Santa Maria style barbecue on Sunday, welding the final critical bits into place, giving it a once-over in high-temp black paint, and transporting it from his garage to my backyard. I still want to add on a few accouterments, like some hooks for fire-pokin’ tools, a raised grate for the wood/coals, some custom-fit cutting boards, and a “lid” kinda thing to place over the coals once I’m done cooking – but, it’s ready to cook on now.

Anxious to see it in action, Monday I picked up some oak at a local wood-gettin’-place. Santa Maria purists maintain that only Southern California native “red oak” produces the trademark Santa Maria barbecue flavor – but it’s just too hard to get up here. So, I instead went with a close relative, the so-called “interior” red oak of the Northern California foothills. It’s hard to judge exactly what you’re getting sometimes, as some folks refer to “mountain oak” as black oak, while some mean interior red. Things get more complicated because both the black and red interior oaks are all hybridized together in some cases. Either way, I stomped the woodyard until I found a sweet smelling reddish-colored wood called “mountain live oak,” which I think is about as close to Santa Maria Coastal Red as I’m gonna get easily here. Wow, a wood lesson.

Anyway, I set an inaugural two-log fire in the barbecue Tuesday afternoon to see how it burned, judge the heat and ventilation, and just get an idea of the smell of the particular wood I bought. Oh man, smelling that pungent smoke rise from the grill immediately took me back to my Grandfather’s back porch in Southern California. The barbecue seemed to function perfectly, and now I just have to break it in with a nice tri-tip. A

Here’s a couple pictures of the finished product. We did end up engineering a spring-tension mechanism on the crank so that the grilling surface stays put when you let go at a certain level (we even did an engineer-style nerd-test to see how much weight the springs could support before the crank was pulled into unwinding: ~30lbs). Check her out:



Sitting in the backyard.



Fired up as a test run.

That’s really all I had today. Wednesday I’m off to San Francisco for a day-long visit to a work-type conference – probably be back too late too blog.

Goodnight.

Posted on

you see the balls on that thing?


Oh man it’s great having a blog that works. Or, I should rather say, it’s great having a host that works. I can write with ease, I can preview with ease, and, hopefully, you can enjoy the end result with ease (or, at least you could not-enjoy the end result… but still with ease).

A long, long time ago, I wrote a blog wondering about how penguins “do it.” This was a genuine question on my part, albeit passed off for laughs for the blog. The question had stemmed from a curiosity that I’ve had since I was younger: Where are birds’ naughty bits? I just took it to the extreme form of bird in an extreme environment for the sake of the blog because I thought it’d be funnier. Actually, I looked it up, and it’s a pretty decent entry – you can read it too, if you want. Anyway, this is a relevant opener for my blog today – because I finally figured it out.

Today, folks – today I saw a bird with huge balls.

I got home from work around five. Stopped on the way home to see the Saigon Turtle (I love this guy now, every time he cuts my hair I just sit there and marvel silently at his backstory). And, of course, my slight OCD requires that I must take a shower post-haircutting, lest those little unseen bits of shorn mane find a way to burrow into my skin and sprout more of the evil stuff I’m cursed with (which I clearly do not need). Anyway, my dome’s tightened-up, I’m home, and I’m showered – that’s where we were.

Fresh from the shower, I step into the living room to Keaton smiling as she toddles towards me chanting, “Dada!, Dada!” My heart melts, and I scoop her up and whirl her around a bit. Then, I ask her, “Wanna go outside and check on Daddy’s garden?” Not really giving her much time to answer, I assume she does, and crook her in my arm to head outside.

And now, I’d like to switch the narrative voice here to Sharaun, and write the next sentence as I like to imagine she would recount the tale:

Then I heard, “Oh my God! Quick, get the camera!”

There. Done. Now back to me.

As I turned the corner to inspect my garden, I could hardly believe my eyes. There, inside my less-than-twenty-four-hours-old “Fort Knox for Strawberries,” was my arch-enemy: the dang bird. One ripe strawberry, folks… one dang berry. I had intended to pick it today, and was happy that the dang bird hadn’t even touched it yesterday (must have been full from eating the one that prompted Fort Knox or something). And here, flapping madly, I had my quarry penned. Keaton “oohed” and “ahhed” as we approached the increasingly frantic berry whore. I still couldn’t quite believe it, it was almost too good to be true – and my mind immediately went to how fun it would be to write this very entry. “But, it’ll be nothing without pictures,” I thought as I once again hollered to Sharaun for the camera.

A full thirty seconds went by while Keaton and I examined the trapped beastie… fruitlessly (well, depending on the definition) flapping around looking for a way out. I laughed. Sharaun finally arrived with the camera, and I edged in to get a good shot. As I did, Mr. Berrybeaks became even more agitated – obviously sensing his impending doom. He threw his winged body wildly against the confines of For Knox for Strawberries. I snapped one picture:

As I reviewed the image, I was unhappy with it, and moved closer for a better shot. Then, out of luck, Berrbeaks found a weak seam in Fort Knox and was free. You’d think, harried from such a terrifying experience, he would immediately fly fast and far away. Oh no, not that bastard Berrybeaks – that bastard has an image to maintain.

He instead flew to the fence, alighted there, glanced down at me, shat, and then casually took wing.

OK, so I made up the part about him crapping – but I bet he tried and just couldn’t make, knowing him. Alas, I only have the one picture. But, I’ve gone to the trouble to go extreme-closeup for you:

I don’t really know what I was going to do had he really been trapped and at my mercy. I’d like to think I would’ve wrung his little bird neck. But, then again, I am the guy growing delicious berries outside in full view. So, feeling incredibly defeated, I set about fortifying Fort Knox for Strawberries. I think I found my flaw, a weak front-flap opening I designed specifically for picking access. After being so handily beaten though, I doubt it will work. I guess I’m just not meant to have strawberries… dang bird.

Moving on.

Sharaun lost her keys again today, she called me as I was sitting down for lunch at home. Called while performing a CSI-style grid-search of the local grocery store where she and Keaton were now stranded. I asked her if she checked with the counter to see if someone may have turned them in – she had, and no one did. I asked if she’d checked the parking lot between her car and the store – she had, and they weren’t there. “OK,” I said, “I’ll be right there.” I hastily finished my food and jumped in the car. As I pulled into the parking lot I spotted her and Keaton standing around. I parked, used my key to open her trunk and loaded her bags, then lifted Keaton from her buggy-seat for a hug. Eventually, when I got to opening her driver’s side door, I ended up finding her keys there on the floorboard.

Something wrong with that girl… but man do I love her.

Wow, I’m quite proud of all the linking I did in today’s blog – I have back-references galore, huh? To me, if I was a reader, that’d be key. It’d be like getting several more paragraphs than there actually are (y’know, by virtue of the old stuff you can go back and read?). Yeah, well, I liked it.

Goodnight.

Posted on

home alone


Today Sharaun and I reached a parenting milestone, although, we admittedly reached it long before I thought we would. See, today, we left Keaton at home alone for the first time. Now, before you go calling up CPS, let me elaborate. Sharaun usually heads to the gym early in the morning for an early morning “spin” class (not being a gym kinda guy myself, I imagine this is a Grateful Dead concert style dance class for women in long flowy bohemian skirts). Also important to let you know: Sharaun locks her keys in the car all the time.

Now, with those two pieces of knowledge, you can better appreciate my story. So, Sharaun leaves the house around 5:30am or something for spin class, I’m merrily sleeping – dreaming Natalie Portman is feeding me Pizza Rolls in her underwear (a.k.a. foreplay). ‘Round about quarter-to-seven, my foggy brain thinks it’s hearing a knock-knock-knock at the front door – I groggily dismiss as an auditory hallucination. Couple seconds later and the knocking is back, now loud and unmistakable. I climb out of bed and peer through the peephole: Sharaun. I open the door and retreat behind it so as to hide my unbridled magnificence from the world at large.

“Hey,” I say. “Hey,” she says. “What happened,” I ask. “I’m screwed,” she replies, “I locked my keys in my car.” “Mmm… and you’ve been using your spare key, so you really are screwed,” I concur. “Yeah,” she says, “I’m totally screwed.” “How’d you get here,” I ask. “Susie dropped me off.” “Huh, that was nice,” I say. I then head off to the shower, while Sharaun makes an audible vow to redouble her key-finding efforts. Over the past couple weeks, she’s dumped out and sorted, archaeologist style, through Keaton’s toy bin multiple times. She’s pulled off all the couch cushions twice, poked around under couches and even ruled out odd locations like the garage, bathrooms, and the fridge – all with no results. At this point I’m not too worried. Worst case, I figure as I shower, she puts Keaton in the stroller and walks several miles to the gym to call AAA (on a payphone, because her cellphone is also locked in her car.. with her keys) to come open the door.

But, it never got to worst case – Sharaun walked into the bathroom before I could even hit the showers proudly holding out her found keys in front of her, beaming. “Where were they?,” I asked. “In the couch, where I’ve looked a hundred times,” she replied, “But deep in the crack, way up in there.” “That’s good,” I say. All’s right with the world, right?

“How am I going to get to my car?,” she asks. “We’ll have to leave Keaton here,” I say. At the time, Keaton is still sound asleep in her bed – probably dreaming about Job feeding her Cheerios, or something. “Can we do that?,” she asked. “Well, what else can we do, she’s still asleep,” I say.

And so, I threw on some shorts and a t-shirt and grabbed my wallet and keys and we took off. And, for about five minutes, Keaton ruled the roost – manned the castle. Now, I don’t know if this makes us bad parents… or if I could get in trouble for writing it here, but she seemed to survive OK without us.

And, in the end Sharaun found her lost keys.

Oh hey, check this neato little “invention” out.

Goodnight.

Posted on

leaving well enough alone


Getting started this morning at work was hard. I felt like an old car on a cold day, sputtering and wheezing my way to life… not quite firing in-time. My muscles still felt freshly tight and a little tender from my two Keaton-saddled mini-hikes over the weekend (baby + pack pushes ~30lbs), and I found myself enjoying the sensation – a physical reminder that I had successfully gotten up off my can and done something.

For a while, I feared it was a further worsening of my increasing disdain for work – but, I think my disdain remains relatively unchanged. I’m just tired of the whole business… and am ever more anxious for my two-month “respite” later this year. I can’t linger on the thoughts though, or else I’ll just get all bummed and it’ll effect the effort I put forth on the job. No, gotta soldier on and continue to perform. Man I wish I was back at that campsite, though. They really temp you with that “14 day maximum stay” sign on the way in – make me think about fourteen days spent camping, with occasional trips into town to re-stock… I think I’d actually love it.

Well, that was quite a schizophrenic paragraph.

Months ago, I decided my sneakers needed a good washing. I figured that, were I to wash them well, I could likely get quite a good bit more life out of them. Not that I’m averse to wearing dirty sneakers, I could care less actually, but I was feeling ambitious and figured I could clean them up and wear them as “new” again for a while. So, I pulled out the laces and set them in a little cup of diluted bleach to soak while I threw my sneakers into the washing machine. The shoes and laces both came out significantly cleaner, and I was pretty pleased. As I was relacing the shoes, I noticed that the little insole inserts had been jostled out of position during either the washing or the drying. I decided I’d yank them both out and try to reseat them properly. In retrospect, this decision is what ultimately decommissioned a perfectly good pair of shoes. I just cannot seem to get those inserts back in there right… they just don’t fit.

Since the washing, I’ve tried multiple times – and it just ain’t happening. After trying that morning prior to work for about 20min, I realized I had to leave and instead resorted to wearing the dingy pair of sneakers I’d retired one generation of footwear prior – I’m still wearing those today. Some mornings, as I reach for my current dingy backup sneakers, I look at my freshly-clean shoes sitting there unused and think, “I’ll try again this morning.” Today was one of those mornings. I got one shoe fit perfectly, but the other just wasn’t having it. Eventually, after another 15min of fighting with the thing – I gave up and again pulled out my backups. Looks like my backups are my defaults now… I shoulda left well enough alone.

Goodnight.

Posted on

sated, buzzed, and sweaty


A three-day weekend spent communing with nature. Three days with dirty feet and dusty skin, greasy hair and smelly clothes; three days spent sated, buzzed, and sweaty.

I had a great time… lounging in the sun, swimming in the river, drinking around the fire, and taking a couple small hikes (4mi and 3mi, respectively) as a family. Keaton enjoyed herself too, and was a great little camper. We arrived midday Friday and broke camp bright and early Monday morning, bellies full of that camping staple – breakfast burrito ala Coleman stove. We were home by 10am, car unpacked and cooler emptied by 11. The rest of the afternoon consisted of trawling for new holiday weekend leaks (some good stuff too, the new Architecture in Helsinki, the new Polyphonic Spree, and the new Paul McCartney), and an afternoon nap. All in all I came away better for it, my only injuries being somewhat sore legs from our short hikes and some painful little nicks on my fingers from trying to open a Newcastle with a rock.

The first harvest of my first foray into gardening is nigh. This weekend, I counted a whopping fifty-nine green tomatoes (several different varieties), at least a few of which are big enough that I figure they’ll be reddening up soon. My corn stalks are all averaging about 2ft-3ft tall and look healthy, and I would’ve had a nice handful of strawberries by now had the dang birds not carried every stinking one away just before they were pickin’-ripe. Of all the things I planted, only the peppers have fared poorly. They’re growing, but they’re just slow… still tiny and seemingly stalled out as seedlings – some have been completely destroyed by some sort of pest, chewed through at the base. I’ve decided I’m going to dig up their squares and plant pre-grown peppers instead – I’m cheating.

I’m seriously considering changing webhosts, StartLogic’s performance has been on a steady decline for about a year now – and I’m wondering if they’re just overburdened and can’t keep up with the business. If I do switch, there’ll likely be a spotty transition period while the domains transfer and I attempt to setup all my major subpages again (a little worried about having to restore my blog and gallery…). Anyway, I sent this note to my current host today:

Subject: Database-reliant pages continue to be EXTREMELY slow

Hi there,

This is the 3rd time I’ve mailed about slow performance on all my database-reliant pages, but the load-times continue to get worse. Lately, I get timeout errors more often than not – making my pages nearly unusable.
Is there some concrete answer you can give me about this? At your suggestion, I’ve done many things to try and alleviate the slowdown:

  • Reviewed all my code for efficiency in database calls
  • Randomized database calls from a pool of all available users
  • Removed any high-load code

If I can’t get some increased performance, or if the answer is “upgrade to a higher-price plan,” I’ll be honest and say I’ll likely defect to a more reliable host.

Hope you can help me out – thanks.

We’ll see what happens. Sorry for the geek-talk.

I think that’s enough for tonight. I did upload a bunch of new Keaton pictures from our weekend outing – but I’ve not put them in a public gallery yet as I want to wait for some images from other cameras that were on-the-scene to get ’em all in one batch. Goodnight folks.

Posted on

gold for the weekend


Sunday. Worked outside in the sun all day, building that barbecue over at Anthony’s. Today we took it from about halfway done to around two-thirds done. It looks good, you can even spot it for a barbecue now – before I could’ve seen mistaking it for some sort of shelving or rack or something. We have the grill and the raise/lower system left to build, and then make a rack to burn the wood on, a tray to catch ashes, and perhaps add some ventilation to the “pit” area. It’s maybe another two work-days of work and then we’ll slap on the high-temp paint and start slow-cooking tri-tip over oak. I’m really impressed with how it’s coming together, even if it will weigh 400lbs.

Anyway, sorry the blog’s been so slow lately… my host has really been sucking it up. In fact, I swear if this thing goes down again or continues to be this dang slow – I’m gonna look into moving. And, similarly, we’ll be camping next weekend. Finally, our first real trip of the summer. Right now, I’m planning on taking Friday off to head up there early and stake out enough campsites for the huge group we’re going with (need to claim the prime sites early for the busy weekend). In fact, today, I toyed with the idea of taking Thursday off too – just for the crap of it – to have a nice long five-day weekend. I can’t wait to get out in the boonies. I plan to sit in the sun and drink beer and throw frisbees and go in the river and take naps. Yeah, hurry up weekend, hurry up.

Has anyone else noticed the humongous web-presence explosion of 2008 presidential candidate Ron Paul? I mean, the frontpages of Digg and Reddit have been absolutely blowing up with stories on this guy. First, it was MSNBC’s “cheating” of Mr. Paul via it’s unofficial online “who won the debate” poll; then, it was Guliania’s chastising of him at the GOP debates – a move I bet ol’ Rudy now really regrets. Now, it seems, news pages and blog are just looking for a reason to write about him. I’d say, right now, it’s clear that Rep. Paul has has the internets “en fuego.” It’ll be interesting to see how the GOP machine ultimately responds to Paul if his popularity continues to rise, I’m betting more than a few card-carrying Reds would do a lot to keep him a long way from Pennsylvania Ave. Guess we’ll have to just stay tuned.

OK, I’m gonna be honest – I actually like the new Smashing Pumpkins single that leaked last week. Sure, it’s not exactly classic Pumpkins (the guitar is a little GnR/Prince-ish and loopy at times, but in a surprisingly good way). The more I listen to it, the more I like it – and it’s really raising my hopes for the album. Maybe it’s nostalgia, because I’m pretty sure I’d never pick up a song that sounded like this “off the shelf” and just like it… it’s carried in a big way by the name for me… but still, it’s not bad…

Goodnight.