So apparently, thanks to LiveJournal and ICQ, everyone around the world now knows it’s my birthday. Yay.

Actually, I’m very ambivalent about birthdays. For me, it’s pretty much just another day. This year isn’t even particularly momentous – I’m turning 34, an age whose distinction is that, uh, it’s twice as old as I was when I was 17. At takaza‘s workplace they tend to “decorate” the cubicles of birthday celebrants; I’m so glad they don’t do that here – that would annoy the hell out of me. I guess my whole attitude is yet another example of my descent into curmudgeonhood. Grump, grump, grump.

On the bright side, Takaza surprised me this morning with a lovely bouquet of roses and a card. He’s so wonderfully sweet that way {melt}. And my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday when I talked to them during our weekly phone call yesterday (yes, I am the Dutiful Son – every Sunday morning at 10 AM or thereabouts, I call them and we chat for an hour or so). I couldn’t really think of much – we have too much stuff as it is, and I really can’t think of anything that I want or need. We compromised and they’ll probably be sending a check to cover a nice dinner out for me and Takaza. That will be lovely. I feel bad because on the one hand I’ve been in the situation where I have no idea what a gift recipient might want, and on the other hand I feel like if I come right out and say something it will either be too expensive or I’m being greedy or I’m not being helpful enough…you see why I really dislike gift-giving occasions?

Anyway, it is nice and very much appreciated when friends pop up from out of the blue and wish me happy birthday. It’s a reminder that even though sometimes we feel somewhat isolated down in North Carolina away from many of our friends, folks are still thinking of us.

I’m watching Tony Bourdain‘s A Cook’s Tour – it’s his TV series follow-up to his vastly entertaining book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. He’s visiting his childhood home in France, and it reminds me very much of the time I spent in France a decade or so ago. Nice memories.

Anyway, it’s been a nice, relatively quiet Sunday following an eventful Saturday.

Saturday was spent at the Tourney of Ymir, an SCA event. I dug through my old garb and managed to come up with a tunic and a pair of pants that wouldn’t get me laughed out of the event and got ready to go. Unfortunately, takaza still had a sinus infection, and a headache akin to a migraine that left him very sensitive to light. We agreed that it would be better for him to stay home and work on feeling better and maybe join us for dinner at Rob and Janet’s after the event.

Ymir was an absolute blast. It was a beautiful, clear, warm sunny day – just right to spend outside. I ran into many friends I hadn’t seen in years, got to hang out with Tracie and Jen, and re-establish contact with some good folks I haven’t talked to in too long, including a friend who blamed me for piquing his interest in furry and then disappearing 🙂 I’ll be looking him up again in the next few weeks, since he’s local. I need to send the URL’s for the ceremony pictures and this journal to several people, now that I think about it.

Dinner at Rob and Janet’s was nice, though I was tired after being out in the sun all day long. Fortunately, Takaza was feeling better and was able to join us. Quail pot pie, venison steaks, and other yummy goodies. It was all great, but I was pretty much falling asleep by the time dinner was over. Though it was night watching the Olympic mogul competition with people who actually knew something about it and were able to provide intelligent commentary (as opposed to what NBC provides).

Today was a slower start, a nice Sunday with light background music, the Sunday paper, and minimal rush. We had lunch with some old friends, then came back home and I took a nap while Takaza went out and did the week’s grocery shopping. Now, it’s a quiet night at home, doing some laundry, and catching up with the TiVo. Mmmm…domesticity…

Hey, I made it to Friday. Yay, me!

We’ve got preparations to make for the weekend tonight. I need to search through my old SCA garb and see what I have in there that will fit takaza. Fortunately, it’s going to be on the warm side this weekend (around 60) so I can rely on warm-weather stuff, which I have more of. I’m looking forward to the event because hopefully we’ll surprise some friends we haven’t seen in a while there. After that, it’s off to Rob and Janet’s place for an evening of Game and Game – venison, duck, and I’m not sure what else accompanied by various games like Outburst or Apples to Apples. My contribution will be fresh spinach sauteed with bacon and garlic. Not sure what Dan’s making yet.

Sunday will be lunch with some old friends from my Clemson days, which reminds me – I need to pick a restaurant and email them directions, since they’re only familiar with the People’s Republic of Chapel Hill and its environs. Hmmm…maybe Copelands? I’ll have to hit Citysearch and see what pops up in the Cary area. Nothing planned after that, except an evening at home and laundry. But that’ll be nice, too.

Dan emailed me with a bunch of info about upcoming theme park trips. Looks like we’ll be buying season passes for Six Flags and Paramount parks again this year. We’ll definitely be hitting Paramount’s Carowinds and Six Flags Over Georgia since they both have the cheapest season passes (yes, they’re good at any park in their respective systems, but some parks charge less for season passes. Go fig). We’re working on a plan that could take us up to Six Flags Worlds of Adventure, Cedar Point, and Paramount King’s Island this spring, but we need to coordinate the dates and vacation time. I think we’ll get to two of the three at best, but we’ll see. We’ll definitely be setting up the trip so we can meet up with Chicago friends (like Linnaeus and Datahawk and Posicat, at the very least) at the parks.

Looking at my friends list, I see that several folks have added me as a friend – yowza! If I don’t add you reciprocally, please don’t be offended; I only have so much time to read LJ sometimes, and until I learn to organize my Friends pages a bit better I’ll have to limit the number of folks on there. It’s a pleasure to meet some new folks, though, and learn a bit about their lives.

This showed up in my inbox just now…

From: “Jennifer XXXXXXXX” (XXXXXXXX@msn.com)
To: (tabrady@ concentric.net)
Subject: Hey Hey
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 10:01:15 -0600

**~Hey Hey~**
Hi I juss wanted to tell you how good i think that you are..to me you are the one that really motivated your team and i am really proud of you. I do have to admit that i am a Rams fan cuz i mean i grew up wit them for my 14 years and i have learned to love them. I think that your team deserved everythin they got and i swear if the Rams would of won i would be happy in a way but i would also be very ferious cuz i mean your team and you outbeated them ever since the 1st quarter in the game. I juss wanted to inform you on how great you played at the superbowl and how proud i am wit your team. I am only 14 and i have grown up to love the sport of football and yea that was one of the greatest games in my intire life i have seen so for and i know that you guyz are goin to come back and win and yea i did hope that my team would of won but oh well who always said that second best in ones heart cant sometimes win every once in a while.

It goes on, by the way. For another two paragraphs or so. And this is the fourth or fifth email I’ve gotten, though thankfully they’re not all so, um, effusive.

I suppose it’s nice to be getting fan letters, even if they’re not for you.

Not much to say today – a whole lot like yesterday at work, though somewhat less stressful. Still, no time at my desk and certainly no time to duck into Furrymuck to say hi. Bummer. Tomorrow will be more of the same, but with extra solvent fumes! as I spend the day cleaning up the mess we made yesterday and today. Yay.

So tonight was spent getting takaza‘s new iBook configured. Migrating Eudora from PC to Mac took some deep knee bends (had to dig up an 8-year-old Mac utility to strip out the CR/LF out of all the mailbox files) and he still needs to nail down some basic programs for everyday use before he turns his laptop over to me. I’m not sure if I’ll nuke the laptop and rebuild from scratch or what – I’ll have to see.

That’s it from me tonight. I’m off to bed.

Good grief, what a day. I started the dreaded 200-gallon batch at work today – fortunately I got the help of a couple of coworkers who will be working on a similar scale in a month or so. I reckon I’ll be helping them then; nothing’s been said, but it’s only right since they’re taking the time now. I hate working on this scale, though – we’re working with smelly, nasty materials, and in spite of the fact that we’re in coveralls and gloves, I always end up with the stuff on me somewhere. Then there’s the silica – fumed silica is a solid powder that’s lighter than air. If you look at the stuff the wrong way, you’re lost in a cloud of it. We had to put in about 50 pounds of the stuff – it was all over me, in my hair, in my socks – bleah. At least I was wearing a respirator. And tomorrow I’ll be doing it all again as we finish off the batch

OK, that’s enough of my whining, ’cause that’s all it is – whining. I came home, took a thirty minute shower (and ramalion is so right – massaging shower heads are indeed da bomb) and started to feel somewhat better. Add to that a lovely foot massage from takaza and some, uh, other stuff, and I feel much, much better now.

Meanwhile, in the second of the three times that I was actually able to visit my desk today I put in an order for an iBook for Takaza. I also went ahead and ordered an Airport card – we got a good deal on that and we’re finding wireless network cards for the laptops to be indispensible items. Both will arrive tomorrow and then the fun begins. We’ll need to figure out how to integrate the OS X iBook into our PC-centric network. Actually getting it connected and onto the net is easy, it’s the file sharing with the other PC’s that’s going to be a challenge. A quick Google search shows that it’s going to involve some Samba/CIFS configuring. OK, I’ve dabbled in that a bit so this should be do-able.

On the bright side, as soon as Takaza migrates over to the iBook, I’ll be moving over to his laptop and can finally reformat the IBM Aptiva I’ve been using, since it’s starting to shake apart under all the hardware and software that’s been added and removed. Best thing to do is to just wipe the drive and reinstall Windows 98. We need to figure out what to do with the Aptiva, either leave it in our room or put it in one of the guest bedrooms as a guest box, where we currently have a console-only Linux box.

Mmmm…happy shiny tech. Big fun, you betcha.

I am so NOT ready for this week to begin. Maybe I could hide under the bed and make it all go away.

By the way, a special hi to my parents, who now know this journal exists. Not sure that they’ll ever read it, but who knows?

We watched the Super Bowl last night. The commercials were only so-so, though there were some amusing ones – that helped. I’m vastly amused that AT&T’s mlife.com website that they had been promoting with teaser ads apparently wasn’t live until sometime well into the second quarter. I suspect that whole marketing campaign is going to be a flop – the product that they’re trying to sell is too indistinct.

We also recorded the pregame show on the TiVo, which allowed us to (blessedly) fast-forward through the worst of the blather. The blatant displays of pandering, linking the September 11 events to the Super Bowl turned my stomach. It’s a freakin’ football game, people – this isn’t about freedom, or patriotism, or any of that treacle. All I can say is, thank the gods for the fast-forward button. I also learned that TiVo is great for watching the game itself. The snap, the play, the tackle, fast forward to the next play (ignoring the announcers’ blather), repeat. Made for a much more enjoyable game.

Funniest moment: we switched inputs to let the TiVo build a buffer and surfed around some other channels. Something funny came on and Dan asked me to pause it and rewind – took me a second to realize I couldn’t. The TiVo virus: know it, fear it.

I did have fun cooking last night. I made a nice batch of chicken and dumplings, with an excellent recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. Took a good long while, though – about four hours int he kitchen. It was worth it, I think. That, coupled with a nice white bread fresh from the bread machine was heavenly. Adding the dry milk powder to the recipe really makes a big difference – I now see why so many recipes call for it. Fo dessert, takaza made a delicious mint chocolate chip ice cream with a recipe he got from the net. We’ve mostly made custrad-based ice creams up until now – this method is much easier and very tasty as well.

Looks like we have new evilness on the horizon: After some research, it looks like we can add digital cable for only $13/month. That would give us about new 15 channels that we’d actually watch, plus a whole slew of music-only channels. I think we’ll try it for a few months and see how much use we get out of it. Scary thing is, this will push our Time-Warner bill a hair over $100/month (basic cable + “standard tier” + digital + broadband). Not that big of a deal, but still psychologically significant.

So, today is to be spent prepping for the big coating batch to be made tomorrow and Wednesday, with Thursday and Friday probably spent on cleanup. I can hardly wait (not). Off to work now…

It’s been a delightful day – and last night was fun, too. We had dinner with the gang at San Remo, a nice little Italian place not far from our house. After dinner (and a somewhat disappointing tiramisu), we took advantage of the balmy evening and walked around the shopping center for a bit. They have a lovely lake with fountains there, so it was a pleasant setting. We packed it in early and came home, where takaza scanned in pictures and I futzed around on the net.

We had an early start this morning for a nice round of shopping with Franklin and Rob. We hit United Restaurant Supply, where I got two half-sheet baking pans and one full sheet pan (for $16 total! Yowza!), then it was over to a nice little Italian market where we picked up some pasta and other items (and then a stop by Krispy Kreme across the street. Evil, evil place!). After that, it was off to a barbecue grill store to see what they had in the way of outdoor gas burners (Alton Brown gave us some good ideas in his show about squid). Looks like we can get a burner for about $50, and a nice wok would be another $20-30 or so. Hmmm…interesting ideas for our Memorial Day party…

After that we made the obligatory stops by Best Buy and Circuit City to look for a DirecTV/TiVo combo for Franklin (they were out). After that it was back here to finish scanning pictures and putting up the website with our commitment ceremony pictures on it, then a nice evening of eating dinner while watching pretty pups on Animal Planet.

Boring married life at its finest 🙂

Well, it only took two and a half months, but we finally have them online and ready for everyone to view. Ladies and gentlefolk…

Pictures from the Brady/Hauschild Commitment Ceremony, 18 November, 2001

Let me know if you have any questions, wonder who’s who, what’s going on in a picture, or whatever. We’re going to be getting some reprints for our parents (we have the negatives), so if anyone wants copies we can negotiate. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay for each pic you want reprinted, sorry – we wish we could cover the costs but it’s just not possible right now. Anyway, if you’re interested, let me know.

Friday, glorious Friday! It’s just amazing out there right now – mid-70’s with a good stiff breeze. The front’s supposed to come in later today bringing with it rain and temperatures into the 30’s, more January-like than anything we’ve had for the last few weeks. It’ll be a welcome change, though.

(Completely pointless aside: I have commaphilia. This is, of course, the tendency to put commas all over the damn place whether they’re kneaded or not. I usually try to edit out the extraneous ones, but if you see any extras please pretend they’re hyphens or maybe (just for fun) an interrobang.)

Hmmph. I always knew I was a frustrated English major. Silly me, I wanted a degree I could actually make money with (dodges thrown objects from Liberal Arts majors everywhere 🙂

It’s been a quiet week in Holly Springs…no wait, that opening belongs to someone else. Anyway, we’ve been doing the married-folks-at-home thing a lot this week, so just to be different we’re getting some of the gang together and going to San Remo’s for dinner tonight, followed by either a show at Six String Cafe or chatting at the Paradigm Coffee House. In general, a nice, low-key kind of night that gets us out of the house.

I’m a bit concerned about Takaza. He’s had a headache pretty much nonstop since Sunday, and headaches aren’t supposed to do that. By all the symptoms, I’m strongly suspecting a sinus infection. He’s got an appointment with the doctor this afternoon, which makes me feel better. I love my wolf, but he’s mighty stubborn sometimes 🙂

Plans for this weekend include another nice, lazy day tomorrow; maybe I’ll even get motivated and do my taxes, since I’ve got all the forms in hand now. Sunday should be a nice, though chilly day. Another great day for a hike, I think – I’ll see if anyone is interested at dinner tonight.

Enough of my scattered prattle. I’ve got to head back to work and go make some coatings, yay.

Oh, by the way – The News and Observer had an interesting interview with the president of Lord Corporation (my employer) where he talks about the neat stuff we do. It’s a good interview, and he even mentions some of the products I’m working on. Cool!

Another warm, almost hot day here. Temperature is supposed to be over 80, under sunny skies. Welcome to January in North Carolina, kids!

So plans now have us possibly attending Tourney of Ymir in a few weeks. This will be interesting – I was in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) for seven years, from 1992 through 1999. The last event I attended was up in Maryland in 2000, and the last local (NC) event I attended was…Tourney of Ymir, 1999. More on that in a bit.

Read more ramblings about the SCA and disaffection and fandom politics…

Ever heard of the concept of the “Versus” remix? Neither had I, until I came across it in BoingBoing. This site has an assload of links to these remixes. I especially like Dexy’s Midnight Runners vs. Public Enemy (“Come on Boiiiii!”)

(And the “giddy penguin” icon is ky00te!)

Well, this explains a lot.

President lacks features

When placed amid an aggregate of utensils and other easy-to-find consumer items, the leader of the free world was accurately identified by an average of 1.7 out of 100 shoppers. This held true even when the focus groups were prompted by a small mustachioed man with a megaphone saying, “Ok shoppers, which of the items in front of you is the President of the United States?”

Read the whole article here. Truly Onion-worthy, even if that isn’t the source.

On a day like today, that’s where I’d like to me: miles away. It’s sunny and in the mid-70’s, and likely to stay that way through Thursday. Hmmm…it’s supposed to cool off this weekend but still stay warm-ish and sunny. I need to scope out more possibilities for hiking.

Work is still keeping me busy, though this week is a bit of a breather. Next week is going to be hell, though – large-scale batch with not enough equipment, space, or manpower. What fun! Thank heavens that should be the last one for a few months, at least. After that, it’s on to conductive adhesives for attaching heat sinks to circuit boards. That should be a fun project, if only because it will take me out to Indianapolis for a few days at some point to use their equipment out there. Hmmm…I need to track down some folks I know out that way and give ’em a shout.

Plans are shaping up for the next few months. Looks like while we’re at Technicon we’ll be leading a panel on “What is Furry?” At least that’s the plan at the moment, this may change. I’m just concerned that we don’t step on the toes of the furry group up at Virginia Tech, but one of the organizers of that group was the one that said we’d be welcome to lead the discussion. So, it should be interesting. I’m not sure what tack to take, but probably start out with the least-outre’ parts of furry, mention spiritual aspects later, and only mention the freakshow stuff that has hit the media at the very end, marginalizing it as much as possible. I’ll have to kick ideas around with Takaza.

Well, work calls…

…and I’m stuck inside all day. It figures.

Saturday was almost what I’d hoped for: a nice, lazy day around the house. takaza got us motivated around 2 PM, though, and we went out looking for ceramic tile stores for possibilities for the kitchen backsplash. The two places I knew of turned out to be closed, of course, but we did walk through Lowe’s and a carpet/tile place where the salesman ignored us completely (he had to be gay – what straight man would ever wear a black turtleneck?) I’ve got a line on some other places, though. I’m looking for someplace that has lots of sample boards set up so we can evaluate some different design possibilities, then we’ll buy a couple of sample tiles and see how the colors work in the kitchen.

Anyway, after that we stopped by Target, CompUSA (bleah – high prices), and K Mart, where I was reminded of why K Mart is in Chapter 11 – dirty parking lot, dingy store, surly help, and lousy products. We did buy a crosscut paper shredder, though, since I’ve been getting paranoid about all the credit card solicitations and such that we receive getting fished out of the trash, even though I tear them up before disposing of them. Naturally, after we bought it at K Mart, Dan saw an ad in a Target circular on Sunday witht he same thing for $10 cheaper.

Anyway, Donald and Janelle invited us over for dinner, and we spent the rest of the evening with them and Thomas, chatting and noshing. Whee!

Sunday was just fabulous. A group of nine of us took a three-mile hike out at Jordan Lake. It was a gorgeous day – blue skies, temps near 70. Dan was in shorts, but then he figures anything above 50 degrees is shorts weather. He’s weird, but I love him 🙂 Anyway, the walk was mainly through conifer forests with a small scattering of what appeared to be oak and tulip trees. The combination of a heavy coating of pine needles and leaves and the fact that the trail isn’t apparently heavily-used made navigating a bit more interesting than usual; after a bit of losing the trail, I wound up taking the lead (lead dog and all that…) and keeping an eye out for the trail blazes. And as a bonus, we got to hang out with Cliff, the spastic husky!

Afterwards, we hung out over at Donald and Janelle’s house and made grillables and things that are bad for us (mmm, mushrooms sauteed in garlic and butter…). I sauteed up some peppers and onions to go with some grilled Italian sausage, and life was good. The usual Sunday night gaming session was to follow (there’s a group of about eight of us who have a weekly Mage game running) and I announced I was dropping out. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve missed a lot of games since last September due to commitment ceremony and convention planning, and in the time away I found I didn’t much care what was going on with the game or my character. Rob put it best: he’d rather have people either in or out, not halfway in, dragging down the group. Everyone took it well, so it’s cool. I’ll probably still show up on Sunday nights since there’s a couple folks who don’t game but just hang out, chat, and play other games like Fluxx and stuff. Plus, that gives Dan some time alone at home every week, which is also good – I love being with him, but there’s also times that it’s good to be apart.

There’s more to ramble about, but for now I’m off to get some work done…

Blogsurfing: it’s an addiction.

Some fun blogs I’ve turned up lately:

Little, Yellow, Different: I’m a 24 year old recently laid off, recently re-hired web developer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m Chinese and I live with two Mexicans. Do you know what they call that in Hollywood? A sitcom.

Ernie (of the above blog) organized a completely insane game of Weblog Survivor; not just once, not just twice, but three times. If you’ve got time to kill, these are hysterical reads. Also, check out his blog version of “The Mole” – Puppetmaster

The Jon-Jon Diaries: Gay guy living in Madison, WI. His “compilation of phrases to be banned from gay erotic literature” had me giggling up a storm. This man is whacked-out, but very, very funny.

GLBT Weblogs and Journals: Just what it says. I notice they don’t include LiveJournals in there – guess LJ isn’t “legit” enough 🙂

And finally, remember that it’s always important to check if your ass is too small.

I have in mind lots of projects, but never seem to quite get around to them.

One thing that is going to get done soon is putting in a tile backsplash in the kitchen (picture taken before we moved in, but you get the idea). I think that will really change the look of the room, and brighten it up from the omnipresent beige. takaza and I need to work out what colors we’re going to use still – we need to stop by a tile store and see what our options are. Who knows? If we get motivated enough today we’ll head and do that.

Once we get that done, the next step would be tiling the master bath. It has a nice garden tub and shower, but the walls are vast expanses of (again) beige. Some nice tilework would really revitalize things. The trouble is, we’re stuck in that perpetual homeowner quandary: how do you spruce things up and not make it too individualized? We’re only here for a few years, so every project has to be viewed from the standpoint of how it affects resale. Yeah, I’m a mercenary fucker, so shoot me.

Then there’s the bookshelves that need to go on either side of the fireplace. We’ll probably need to get someone in to do those, although what I have in mind is pretty basic: a cabinet base on either side, with shelves above (leaving enough room for a television to sit on top of the cabinet base on the left side). Given enough tools, time, and inspiration, that might even be a project we can tackle ourselves, but that’s at least a year off.

.–. .- –. . -… .-. . .- -.-

Last night was a blast. We joined Donald and Janelle, Thomas and Sherry, and Rob, Janet, and Ian for dinner at Errico’s Ristorante. Dan split a pizza with Sherri (pizza with meat, meat, meat, and a side of meat 🙂 while I had a very tasty stromboli stuffed with sauteed elk, basil, and mozzarella. After the meal, we had a chance to chat with the owner and also the chef – both very pleasant fellows. Even though the service was spotty (they’d been unexpectedly reviewed in Friday’s News and Observer and the resulting influx of people left them short on wait staff), we’ll definitely be going back, hopefully for one of their wine dinners. Yum!

OK, THIS is Friday. And thank heavens for that.

Very busy day at work here, mostly working in the lab. One of those days where everything that can go wrong, does – broken glassware, spilled heating oil, that sort of thing. No major crises, but lots of tedious little things.

Looks like a nice weekend lined up – nothing planned for Saturday. I like that. I think it’s important to have a “cat day” every so often, even if I am canine 🙂 Read the paper, finally watch the Babylon 5 movie we recorded last weekend, maybe tinker with my computer a bit more (and finally reinstall Windows 98). Probably make some more bread, too; Dan tells me that the multigrain bread that I improvised earlier this week is perfect for sandwiches.

Sunday will have a bit more going on. Some friends have proposed going hiking at Jordan Lake, so that should be pleasant. I enjoy hiking with a group, though it’s an entirely different experience from when I hike solo, which is my preferred method. I like being able to hear the sound of the forest around me, the wind blowing through the trees, the small animals scurrying in the brush (and seeing an occasional deer). With a group it’s more of a social experience, talking and tromping through the woods. If the company’s good, it’s not so bad, but it’s a reminder that I need to get my butt out to one of the many trails in the area.

Enough of the future – gotta deal with the present. Off to check on things in the lab, then grab some lunch.

I woke up this morning, and the first thing I thought was, “Yay! It’s Friday!”

Then I realized it wasn’t. How depressing.

Anyway, after a late night at work yesterday trying to get stuff wrapped up, I’m off to Red Cross training all day today. This should be interesting since I’ve never had anything like it before. Plus, it gets me out of work all day today (I know, my work ethic is awful. Ah well).

Looks like one of my upcoming projects may include a trip or two out to Indianapolis. That would be kinda nifty – I haven’t seen our facilities and capabilities out there, so it would certainly be useful.

Hmmm…I just have time to tidy up a few things then head off to training. @whee

(Re: the music – What can I say? All the radio stations in the labs are tuned to the local 80’s station)

So we’ve begun preparations for our (suddenly) annual Memorial Day party. Last year we had four or five folks over and had a wonderful time just hanging out, grilling, and enjoying the company. Takaza and I have toyed with the idea of trying to make it into something bigger – maybe find a hotel, reserve some meeting rooms, something like that, a la the first year of Mephit Furmeet. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, but certainly not for this year. First off, we’d need to get more in touch with the local furry community, but given the difficulty they have even organizing an occasional dinner out (and the fact that the average age of the group is most likely below 20), I’m not sure how well that would work out.

Naturally, not long after we sent the invitations, Mom called to remind me that we might want to come down for the hot-air balloon festival held in their town every Memorial Day weekend. We’ll have to pass, though I think it would be fun. Eek – they’re expecting 175,000 – 200,000 people? Might be a good reason to avoid it. Last time I attended (when it was in Greenville), it was more like 50,000.

Check this out: A Picture a Week, an amateur photographer’s attempt to get one good picture a week in his role as “street photographer.” While the pictures are good, what really captivated me was his analysis of what he learned in the 52 weeks he spent on the project. When I have time, I look forward to checking out the other Picture-a-Week sites. (link courtesy of Bifurcated Rivets)

Everyone is taking off for Further Confusion this week. Lucky sods. One of these days we’ll will actually be able to attend. I’m curious from an anthropological standpoint whether there is actually a difference between “East Coast” and “West Coast” furry conventions. I suspect not. By the way, I see from a recent announcement that Aetobatus and Loran are moving up in the world. Way to go, guys!

A few days after September 11, Doc Searles posted a remarkable commentary that has really stuck with me ever since: What tale are we spinnning? which describes The Fairy Tale of the Just War. Good thinking fodder, and something which only reaffirms my pacificist tendencies and deep and abiding suspicion of the “official story.”

More in a bit…

Note to self: Short journal entries get more comments than long journal entries 🙂

Back at work today and in the lab working. Finally getting this urethane taken care of – it’s not complicated, just time-consuming.
I took a break in the middle of the reaction to go to the dentist and get scolded by the hygienist for not flossing regularly. This is what happens when you move away from your parents: you pay people to give you guilt trips.

Just got word from our plant that the raw materials we need for a batch to be delivered to the customer by February 4 won’t be delivered until February 5. Hmm…this makes the logistics a bit difficult. I’ve spread word around that we’ll have about a two-week delay and no one is too upset. In the meantime it looks like I’ll be going to work on a thermally conductive adhesive for connecting heat sinks to chips on circuit boards. This will be interesting because it’s new technology to me – we’ll see how much fun it really is once I get started.

I got to play with the bread machine a bit more yesterday. That thing is fabulous! I wanted to make a multigrain bread, but didn’t have the “seven-grain cereal” called for in the recipe. I improvised with pulverized Wheat Chex and uncooked oatmeal – it came out just great. I need to work at it a bit more to see if we can come up with the perfect sandwich bread, though.

Nothing like popping halfway across the country to rejuvenate yourself…

Read more about Duncan and Takaza’s Weekend in Chicago

Just thought I’d mention that today is the two-month anniversary of our commitment ceremony. I think I’ll buy Dan an anniversary doughtnut.

I know, I’m so romantic…

Well, we’ve cleared the TiVo (and got our weekly West Wing and Good Eats fix), so now we’re on to the business of finishing laundry and packing. Gotta stuff everything into carry-ons so we don’t have to endure the endless lines at check-in. Tomorrow morning we leave for the airport at 6:45 AM for a 9:40 AM flight. I suspect we’re going to have a LOT of time to kill.

Anyway, if you don’t see anything in this space for a few days, it’s because we’re off in Chicago for the weekend. I might steal Dan’s laptop and make a post or two, we’ll see.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, I did go back and add links to text I’d written and posted hours earlier. It’s my idea of fun.

Meetings here, seminars there, reactions in the lab – yay!

It seems that the day before your vacation, everything always falls into your lap, and today has been no exception. Looks like we’ll be making a 200 gallon batch of coating here (usually the largest we handle is about 20 gallons). This is the second time we’ve made the coating on this scale, and the logistical difficulties presented are numerous – pumps, hoses, filters, big-ass mixing equipment. I reckon it’s what I signed up for when I became a chemical engineer, but I’d prefer it if we were a little better equipped to handle batches on that scale. As a for instance, once we fill the tote tank with the material and are ready to ship it to the customer, we have to estimate the gross weight – we don’t have a scale big enough to weigh it.

We finally got the fume hood back into working order and I’ve started the urethane reaction again, but there’s no way I’ll finish it today. I’ll have to put the polyol into the oven (it freezes at room temperature) and pick up where I left off on Monday. This has been the easy part – starting next week I’ll be working with the isocyanates. Man, I hate isocyanates.

On the agenda for tonight: laundry and packing. Gotta make sure I don’t have any AK-47‘s or straight razors tucked away in my luggage for the airport security people to find. On the bright side, according to American Airlines all of their Chicago flights that have flown out from RDU today have been on time or even left early. That certainly seems promising.

The Zagat restaurant survey compiles opinions of ordinary patrons about restaurants all ovr the world. They’ve put up a page of quotes about restaurants that they couldn’t print. Some of my favorites:

Food is icky, tables are sticky, waitress has a hickey, stay home if you’re picky

Buy a six pack and eat at Burger King instead

——-

We’re busily making plans for the Chicago trip. Today, it appears we have added a stop by Whole Foods Market to get 365 Brand Canola Oil for Dan’s mom. Ooookay. Though the mayo made with it does taste better than your average brand…

Such a pity we won’t have time for Clearwater, while we’re up there, though. Nuts.

…and speaking of TeeVee, they have a great commentary on Fox’s newest game show/horrifying-spectacle, The Chamber. The funny thing is the same thing happened to me when I went to watch The Simpsons:

So I check Tivo to watch The Simpsons, and it’s been replaced by a
half-hour of something called The Chamber. It appears to be a game show,
but instead of making the questions hard, they torture the contestants.
No, really, actual torture. With screams of pain and everything.

Honestly, watching this thing is an intensely uncomfortable experience
as the camera lingers on the grimaces of the contestants as they try to
remember their parents’ birthdays while strapped down in a chair. They
might as well come into my home and punch me in the face repeatedly.

What a wretched piece of crap. For this they rescheduled The Simpsons?

Fume hood is still down. Looks like I’ll have to empty out another hood and move the five-liter reactor to that, along with all its attendant glassware, oil bath, vacuum pump, vacuum trap, etc. This is so going to suck.

AvantGo is my hero. Essentially, it goes out and grabs web pages (plus links to a user-specified depth) and dumps it to my Visor whenever I HotSync at home. Boring meeting? Got time to kill? Pull out the ol’ Visor and there we go! Here’s what keeps me happy, in the order I usually read them:

– Daily headlines from The Advocate

– The latest from SciFi Wire

– Caustic essays on the state of television from TeeVee

– Wired News headlines

– Headlines and in-depth analysis from the Christian Science Monitor

– The latest from the New York Times

– Entertainment business news from Variety

– News and commentary from ZDNet

– Top news from Flayrah (though I wish comments were also included, hint hint 🙂

– Movie times and locations in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area from Movieminder

– Hard core geekiness from AnandTech

I see that LiveJournal has an update feature that utilizes AvantGo to update your journal – I might download that, I might not. If nothing else, it might be fun to play with on the plane flights to and from Chicago.

Take a small Flash file. Send it to a bunch of artists and tell them to make whatever changes they want and send it back. The result: Blankimage (by way of Bifurcated Rivets)

A wonderful New Year’s ebullition from Eric Norlin: “Laugh more than I worry.” I like that!

This is just beautiful. Did you know Bernard Shifman is a Moron Spammer? Well, now you do.

You know, I look at this and I’m reminded why I need to get a subscription to National Geographic. (Link from Flayrah – sorry for leaving out the attribution earlier!)

We’re thinking about getting an iBook for desktop publishing. I came across this site that has useful information for poor, ignorant Intel junkies like me. (I just ran the numbers to see what a brand-new super-spiffy iBook would run. $1,827. Ack!)

I want my Gay TV!

I confess: Takaza and I are complete Survivor addicts (by the way, check out this hysterical summary of the final episode) The Advocate has an interview with gay Survivor Brandon Quinton, who didn’t get nearly bitchy enough about that homophobe, Frank.

Here’s a great new book for your family:

(Courtesy of this page)

Hmmm…LiveJournal was down last night. How annoying.

I finally got the pictures from the Christmas Year’s party up! Yay! Look closely at the pictures here and here. There you’ll see Dan and I completely at a loss for words. Janelle and Beth presented us with a beautiful work-in-progress and commitment-ceremony gift: a quilt, in gorgeous blues and tans. You can’t see it in the pictures, but the tan squares have little paw prints all over them! They’ve been working on this since September, and will give it to us when its done, sometime in the next few months. Our friends are so amazing!

(and not the Styx song…)

Not too much to do at work today. The reaction I’ve been waiting to run since Thursday still can’t be done because the fume hood where the reactor resides is still unusable due to a burned-out fan motor. I sure hope it’s up and running tomorrow, otherwise it’s going to be crunch time come Thursday.

Why Thursday? It’s a short week for me. We set out for Chicago Friday morning aboard American Airlines. It was originally supposed to be Friday evening, but we clicked on the wrong option on the website. The tickets came, and lo and behold: they said 9:40 AM instead of 6:40 PM departure. Ah well. We’ll be having lunch with Dan’s mom and dinner with friends on Friday night, so it’s fine by me.

And for the curious, here’s the post that I’ve been thinking about – I just sent it off. I think it’s worth repeating here. “Number 7,” by the way, is another one of those anonymous, complaining, useless malcontents for which alt.fan.furry is so famous.

From: Duncan da Husky
Newsgroups: alt.fan.furry
Subject: Re: Work the media
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 13:39:40 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID:

Number 7 wrote:
> Press liaisons are indeed wonderful things, WHEN they do their jobs.
> Midwest FurFest had a press liaison their first year, and look at what
> happened: They were the stars of not one but TWO media pieces that
> depicted furries as kinky sex deviants…..

Pray tell me, what proof do you have that the press liaison didn’t do their job?

Were they supposed to be riding in the car with George Gurley and Ostrich, monitoring every word?
Were they supposed to have been at Foxwolfie Galen’s computer, telling him not to type what he did?
Were they supposed to be in Yote’s room, politely suggesting they speak of other topics?
Were they supposed to be in the rooms of the other fans interviewed, quietly telling them that editing could make them look foolish when the final film was assembled?
Were they supposed to have final editing privileges over all works that mention the convention, so they could prevent the omission of all of the materials and information they provided?

The press liaison did their job. They made sure both Gurley and Castro saw the charities that raised thousands of dollars, the multitude of G- and PG-rated art in the art show, the folks having fun at the dance. They provided printed materials that explained how Midwest Furfest is a family-oriented convention, where people from all walks of life are welcome to attend and enjoy themselves.

In my opinion, the job of the press liaison is to put the best face on a convention, to introduce the media to our admittedly non-mainstream interests and explain why we do what we do. The job of the press liaison is not to be by the side of the media person 24 hours per day, all three days of the convention, protecting fans from themselves. I believe that the jobs of conventions are not to be the saviors of the fandom – they have their hands full doing what they are created for: providing entertainment, programming, and meeting space for people in furry fandom to congregate and have a good time.

-Tom

Good morning!

Nothing like starting the day with a good dose of comics. (You can also build your own)

It’s the ultimate SUV, coming soon to a suburb near you. If I saw a yuppie driving around in this, I’d assume that a bumper sticker that says, “My penis is too small” would be redundant.

Great quote from diveintomark: “13804 » January 14 1:49 AM. Dubya faints after choking while eating pretzel Must…fight….urge…not…to…snicker…….”

I didn’t get the party pictures up yesterday, but not for want of trying. First, I found out my thumbnail program‘s evaluation period had expired. I deleted it, tried another program, and had to reboot. Seven times. It finally took, but it’s just an additional reminder that it’s time to wipe the ol’ hard drive and reinstall from scratch. Too many new programs and too much new hardware makes Windows 98 go barf. I spent the rest of the afternoon backing up everything important in the event the whole thing goes to hell in the near future.

Feren has reduced this whole journal entry thing down to a script. I aspire to his level of efficiency 🙂

I’ve written a response to the article on alt.flame.furry that was pissing me off, but I’m sitting on it for now. We’ll see if I post it or not.

Well, that’s enough randomness for this morning, I suppose.

For no particular reason whatsoever, here’s a yummy chicken recipe. This one has a fun history – I served this to 160 people at an SCA event in 1998. It has the benefit of being inexpensive and relatively easy to prepare. Enjoy!

Orange-Glazed Baked Chicken
(Recipe by Lord Duncan MacKinnon of Tobermory, aka Tom Brady)
(serves 8)

Ingredients:
2 fryer chickens (3-4 lbs each)

1 cup granulated salt
2 gallons water

6 oz. frozen orange juice concentrate
4 oz. water
4 oz. white vinegar
½ cup honey
2 Tablespoons orange marmalade
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon powdered ginger
1 medium seedless orange

Procedure:
1. BRINING: Mix ½ cup of salt per gallon of water. Use 1 gallon of water per chicken, making sure that the chickens are not too crowded in the brining container. Soak the chickens in brine in a refrigerator for 8-12 hours.
2. Remove the chickens from the brine and wash them thoroughly, paying special attention to the cavity, wings, and drumsticks.
3. GLAZE: In a large saucepan, add the OJ concentrate, water, and vinegar. Bring this to a boil, stirring frequently so that it doesn’t scorch.
4. Turn down the heat so that the pot is at a simmer. Add the honey, stirring constantly with a whisk so that the honey doesn’t burn on the bottom of the pot. Simmer for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
5. Place the ginger and cinnamon in a small bowl. Using a ladle, remove a small amount of the OJ/honey mixture and add it to the bowl. Stir it until all the liquid is absorbed. Add a little more liquid and stir. Continue this until the mixture in the bowl is a thin liquid, then add it to the pot. Add the marmalade. Simmer for 5 minutes more, then remove from heat.
6. Wash the orange, then slice the orange into thin (1/4″) slices. Cut those slices in half.
7. Preheat the ovens to 350°F.
8. Place the chickens on greased baking sheets, lying on their backs. Insert as many pieces of orange as possible between the breast meat and the skin. Place a few slices in the cavity of the chicken, if you have some oranges left over (it helps to wear latex gloves during this process – it looks weird, but it works!).
9. Pour the glaze over each chicken, allowing about 1 cup of glaze per chicken.
10. Place the chickens in the oven. Baste every 15 minutes.
11. When the temperature of the thigh is 175-180°F (50-60 minutes), remove the chickens from the oven. Baste one last time. Let stand for at least 10 minutes before serving.

Tom’s notes: I think the brining is the key to this dish – I picked it up from a wonderful magazine called Cook’s Illustrated. If you enjoy cooking, I recommend the magazine highly.

OK, I’m now well caffeinated, it’s a beautiful day outside, and life is good. Now I get to ramble some more.

On flames…

You know, it’s very rare that you’ll ever see me flame someone, on email or on Usenet. There’s a reason for that. I learned a long time ago that writing under the influence of anger only gets me into trouble – I take a few hours (or days) to calm down and reflect on how to reply, or if a reply is even warranted at all. That’s one reason why you rarely, if ever, will see me partaking in the more contentious discusssions in the flamepit. The only reason I mention this now is there’s something there that has really irritated me, but I’m going to think some before replying. Maybe someone with a cooler head will post a more suitable reply. Either way, I’m going to wait a bit.

On our social life…

The party last night was great fun. I’m still pretty bummed that I couldn’t enjoy any of the wine or champagne (for those coming in late – in November a blood test showed one of my liver enzymes was abnormally elevated. I’m off alcohol and Tylenol until my next blood test in mid-February). The food and the company was good, though. We took lots of pictures, and we’ll have those up on our website by the end of today. For other comments on the party, see the journal entry by Takaza. Yep, he’s got his LiveJournal up and running now to. The virus spreads…

On Leftovers…

We still haven’t gotten out thank-you notes for the gifts we received at our commitment ceremony. We suck, I know. We’ve got the list, we’ve got the cards, it’s just a matter of putting them together and taking the time to sit down and write them. Miss Manners says we have three months, but I hope we don’t push that.

In possibly brighter news, we got an email from Jonathan, our photographer, that the pictures from the commitment ceremony should be arriving soon. Of course, that was nine days ago – still no pictures. This is really annoying. We hope to have pictures in hand when we come to Chicago next week, but we’ll see what happens. I suppose if nothing else we can hunt him down in Berwyn…

And finally…

Check it out: an improptu Internet art exhibition!

At the party tonight, we were discussing TiVo and ReplayTV and the possibility of networking appliances, when someone mentioned the existence of networked refrigerators. Trying to see the value of such a product, we postulated there might be a thin screen on the door, and it could be used as an Internet appliance. Then, Dan figured out exactly what its main use would be: Fridge porn!

Well, it made sense at the time.

Gonna be a bit rambly here, so bear with me…

Well, the appearance of my journal has changed a bit off and on while I’ve been playing with styles. There’s a lot of flexibility there, but it’s going to take some time to sort things out.

Here I am, slave to technology: sitting on the living room sofa, typing on Dan’s laptop which is connected wirelessly to our Network Access Point upstairs in Dan’s office. I’m playing MP3’s that I’m pulling from my desktop which is in our bedroom (where Dan’s still asleep). The gas fireplace is turned on (it’s a bit nippy down here this morning) and the TiVo is whirring away recording, I believe, the latest airing of “Hometime” (aka “Ken and Barbie Do Home Repair”). Meanwhile, I can smell the bread in the bread machine starting to rise.

Damn, I could get to like this.

Well, we’ll be heading to the store today to pick up one more gift for tonight’s Christmas-Year’s Party. The Gang down here – a loose conglomeration of Virginia Tech alumni, former SCAdians, and adopted coworkers – agree that everyone is too busy in December for a party then, so we combine Christmas and New Year’s parties into one party in January. We’re at John Franklin‘s new house this year. Gee, I hope he got more furniture…

Planning continues apace for our trip up to Chicago next weekend. We’ll be at NoCoasterCon on Saturday, then the first Midwest Furfest staff meeting of the year on Sunday. I have no concerns about those events, though the flights up and back might be a bit exciting.

Well, what do you know – I thought you had to be a paid member for at least a week before you could invite someone to set up a LiveJournal account. Evidently not. Well, I’ll send that off to Dan – I reckon we’ll be seeing a new journal from him soon.

Hmm…my pictures aren’t showing up next to my recent diary entries, though they do appear int eh comments. I wonder what’s up with that?

I guess I’ll wrap up with some juicy bits of linkage that have caught my eye this morning:

– This site is just plain awesome. A few clicks and you’re opted-out (at least temporarily) of some of the biggest pop-up/popunder services on the net. I need to remember to do this on my desktop upstairs, too. Thanks to BoingBoing

– What do you do when you arrive in a city very late at night, the hotel loses your reservation, and the night clerk gets snarky about it? Why, you prepare a very funny PowerPoint presentation about it and put it up on the net! (After you see the presentation, see the ensuing fallout, which included a story in USA Today)

– TiVo is rolling out Series2, with improved features and functionality. Seems to me like they’re playing a bit of catch-up with the Replay4000. We’ll stick with our older Phillips 30-hour TiVo for now, but I’m keeping an eye on it. For those of you who haven’t heard, the PVR revolution is here, and astonishingly enough, the hype is true: it really does change the way you watch TV.

Laters!

Just got back from what was supposed to be a night of dinner at Tasca Brava, a new tapas place in Cary, and seeing Lord of the Rings with Rob and Janet (she’s a fabulous artist, check out her site).

Well, that’s not what happened. Dinner was late since we missed our reservation by 15 minutes (granted, there’s all of 12 tables in the place) and weren’t seated until after 7:00 PM. The food was only so-so, and overly-expensive. We got to the theater just in time for the 8:15 PM showing of the movie, only to find that the 8:15 showing was actually the 8:00 PM showing and by the way, it was sold out. Bleah.

Just to prove that we can have a good time anyway, we found our way to a local coffee house and indulged in cinnamon muffins and lattes and talked for a couple of hours. It was All Good.

I’ve been a big fan of blogs for the last few months. I like to start every day reading Doc and Dave and Bifurcated Rivets and BoingBoing. Blogs are a reminder of what the Internet can be – a community, a network of friends and friends-not-yet-met, where ideas are the coin of the realm. On a more local level, it allows folks to keep up with friends they don’t hear from often enough, and to let their friends know what’s going on in their life.

I figured it was high time for me to join that community. I just hope I can keep up my end of the conversation. Talk to you soon!