weird al buying 123s. thought it was interesting.

lisa and i just went out for sushi, my first time doing so. it's been scary due to a past experience, so i've been avoiding it for the last... 7 years or so.
was soooooo nuuummmmmmy. *squeee*
also went to the agriculture museum today (on a farm) and saw sheepses and shearing and such, and i got to weave on a loom a little bit. was fun and nifty and dangerous, as looms are large and the *last* thing i need is another hobby to take up time/money/fibre ;)
having a very, very, very good vacation. :)

I'm not sure how long this has been around, but it's pretty old. There have been talks in the works for years of either tearing it down and building something else in its place or fixing it up. But they haven't done anything about it yet...

( Nueces Hotel, Corpus Christi, Texas )

Tim Curry is love. Kind of a strange little number, though. Also, push-button light switch!

Today is the annual city-wide cleanup, during which you can arrange for heavy item pickup or just haul stuff yourself down to Athletic Park and dump it. We already took one load and found out they take computer monitors so Charles is going back with three (he thought we had four, but we couldn't find the other) defunct monitors. We thought about hauling the HP computer out as well, but we never did investigate to find out why it stopped working and how terminal it is, so we'll try to do that one of these days; though after however many years we can probably live without whatever data is on it.

Anyway, we hauled a bunch of crap out of the garage and basement, neither of which was particularly clean when we bought the house. (Thanks, Hammonds' daughters... though one lives out of state and apparently they're from two marriages and don't get along, etc.) Among the stuff was a bunch of hay that some birds stuffed into the garage rafters. There's a nest up there, but apparently about half of their nesting material just fell into the main loft. We hauled out all the old paint and other chemicals that were left for us, some old styrofoam ceiling tiles, a bunch of our own old paperwork (we overheated the shredder twice dealing with old bills and statements; guess we need to buy a less cheap one next time) and general crap. There was a cardboard box of old dishes that were kind of interesting--the tan Corelle pattern that was apparently hugely popular in the 70's and some rather pretty hobnail saucers, but even after a soaking in bleach I wouldn't trust a dish that had lived in that cellar for God knows how long. (The big wooden cabinet was lined with newspapers from 1968 so probably a lot of that stuff dates from around then. I'm not sure how long ago Tom died. The cellar appears to have been his mancave, as the small side room with the potato-bin-looking thing had a coax cable running up into a wall.)

Now we just have some stuff to put on Ebay and maybe Freecycle. Anybody want a Chauvet foam machine or a hod of medium-yellow wall tile? Or an Ablounge Sport?

Just rewired the AV system. Since we don't have a fancy amp, we have a "classic" amp from 1989, we have to be creative with the video switching.

In short; removed the VCR, added the Laserdisc player, and pushed DVD/LD switching to the Amp, rather than solely at the AV switch.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/292434996/google-treasure-hunt-update.html

Posted by Phillip Grasso, Manager, Engineering/Operations

Avast, matey! As announced on the Google Australia blog, we've launched Treasure Hunt — a puzzle contest designed to test yer problem-solving skills in computer science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia. You'll find the first of four brainteasers at http://treasurehunt.appspot.com/. A new puzzle will be posted every week for the next three weeks, and a few lucky gobs to submit correct answers to every question will receive a prize.

The second puzzle will be appearing soon — to be exact, 936266827 seconds before Y2K38, so keep yer eyes open. We'll also be highlighting our Mountain View mother ship, so step smartly, lads and lasses, and good luck!

In case ye missed out on the first week's puzzle, it's still available, so 'tis not too late! ARR! (Can you tell we can hardly wait to Talk Like a Pirate?)

http://feeds.slashfood.com/~r/weblogsinc/slashfood/~3/292438110/

http://www.slashfood.com/2008/05/17/great-green-garlic/

Filed under: Vegetables, Recipes, Magazines, America

In the New York Times Magazine, chef Daniel Patterson, owner of Coi in San Francisco, admits to a massive kitchen taboo - he doesn't like garlic. Well, he doesn't like eye-stinging, cutting-board ruining radioactive garlic, that is. What he does like is green garlic, the young stalks of the garlic plant plucked before they reach maturity. Also known as spring or new garlic, it goes perfectly with springtime dishes like lamb, peas and fava beans. Patterson likes to turn it into a aioli-like sauce by pureeing it with egg, oil and vinegar and using it as a sandwich spread and an artichoke dip.

The story includes a great-looking recipe for linguine with green garlic sauce, which I'll have to try next time I get my hands on four pounds of Manila clams. If you try it, please let me know how it is!

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My iPod froze a couple hours ago. I can't turn it off or anything. When I plug it into the computer nothing happens. It's fifth gen.

What the hell is wrong with it and how can I fix it?

Thanks

Took a short drive along part of the Old Federal Road near me, found this interesting building,


( Two more )

http://feeds.slashfood.com/~r/weblogsinc/slashfood/~3/292411412/

http://www.slashfood.com/2008/05/17/would-you-drink-wine-from-a-juice-box/

Filed under: Wine, Newspapers, New Products, Europe

I still look down on box wine as cheap and presumably bad. Bordeaux wine in what amounts to juice boxes? I just don't know how I feel about that.

However I feel about it, juice box wine is coming. Called Tandem, it'll be introduced in London soon, but there's no word on if we'll see it here in the US. Apparently French wine makers don't like the downward trend in wine consumption. This is an attempt to get "young urbanites" to drink more wine. A spokesman for Tandem says that this is the ideal way to have a bit of wine with lunch, especially if you eat at your work desk.

The wine juice box even has a special straw to ensure that you get a full taste experience. The sensory straw, as it's called, has four holes in it so that the wine is dispersed throughout your mouth. I'm not sure how well that'll work, but, as it's been pointed out by traditionalists, you still can't see or smell the wine before you drink it, which are both important aspects of drinking wine. Do you think this product will take off? Would you buy it?

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http://groups.google.com/group/net.flame/msg/d350304f63071c75?

Complaints about Apple’s exorbitant markup on factory-installed RAM — from 1984.

http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0rc1/releasenotes/

Release notes for the first release candidate of Firefox 3.0.

I can has milestone! ...Not a point milestone, unfortunately (I would have loved to have had 25k points exactly, but I don't), but a temporal milestone. Which, technically, is more of an anniversary, but I like saying "milestone" better, because it sounds cooler, or something.

And no, this isn't in the wrong community. :)

Six years ago today, I got two emails, both telling me I had shiny new supporthelp privs: one in comms, and one in general/unknown. This came out of nowhere -- oh, I'd been quietly doing support for a while, but I wasn't expecting a promotion -- and I was quite literally bouncing off the walls the entire day because of it.

Mind you: This was before interims, which meant that the jump was from complete screenie to complete SH. (It was a ritual of sorts to go back through old requests, once you got SH, to look at the approval comments and ICs.) So I still had a bit of a heart attack when I opened my first SHable request and saw all the various options. But it was awesome.

I will admit to being a dorky SH at times*. On what I think may have been my first approval, I very carefully copied out the (Approving answer #xxxxx) that I'd seen in other approval ICs. I also remember one of my first self-approvals in comms, where I wrote a freaking /novel/ about why I was doing my own answer rather than contacting the volunteer who'd written an existing-but-flawed answer. And so on.

[*or, y'know, pretty much always. *grin*]

And slowly, I gained more privs, until I achieved total world domination, by which I mean privs in all public categories at the time, somewhere around September 2003, two years after my first touch. Solar-system domination also happened for a time -- some of you may recall me being an admin at one point (for clients, and then clients and syn, and then styles) -- but then I reverted to mere world domination.

Over the last six years, I've seen a lot. I've seen empires categories rise and fall: split, combine, die (cust is dead, long live cust), get created, change, lose admins, gain admins, explode, implode, and be generally misused (YARTINE!). There are lots of things I remember, lots more I've forgotten: Changes in support policy (first best!) and in site policy. Renames, before the rename plague became a Thing. People whose awesomeness I don't have enough words for (and I'm not going to start listing them because I'll forget some). Tools and toys and in-jokes that have long crumbled to dust. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. I suspect I'm the oldest person (support-age-wise, not RL-age) still in support; I suspect also that on the high scores list I'm (at least at the moment) the highest person who has never been an employee or done abuse. (...25k points for position 10. Man, when I was young, 500 points could get you rank 50. Now you need 5k. Inflation!)

Now, some of you may be wondering why I'm posting this in lj_support rather than supportlounge. (...some of you aren't wondering, because you already know, but never mind that.)

This is why:

Because I can. Because I never used the free post that comes with being an admin. Because it felt like the right place for this. And because I'm stepping away from support. Not as a temporary break, but actually for-real quitting. (Which isn't to say that I definitely won't ever come back, but it's definitely a quit rather than an extended hiatus.)

This isn't a decision I came to easily. (Some of you know this more than others. *wry grin*) LJ support has meant so very much to me over the past six years, been such a large part of my life, that I don't even know where to start. And even though I've kind of been on the fringes of the social aspect of the volunteer community, even though some of you don't know who I am ... this is home, in ways I wouldn't have expected.

It's just... there's this whole Real Life thing that seems to be happening (more or less). If I had infinite time and energy (and patience), I probably wouldn't be posting this, because I wouldn't be quitting. But I don't; no one does. Walking away isn't easy, but it's what I need to do. I'll miss doing support, and maybe support will miss me, but it's time for me to move on.

So, to sum up: It's been a damn long time. I love you all. And, as I can't think of anything pithy to end on, have a Winnie the Pooh quote: "Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would I'd never leave."

<3

Never thought a dietitian would tell someone that, huh?

So my albumin (measure of protein in the blood) was low after I had that horrible case of the flu at the end of February, but that's to be expected after an illness--your body uses up the protein trying to recover. No problem.

As of my blood draw in April, my protein was still lower than normal. Anne recommended I try protein bars and make sure I'm eating lots of sources of protein (kidney patients tend to lose protein in their urine if they're making any... some places see this as a symptom, not a side effect, and put you on a low protein diet. I don't see that that's doing the patient any favours). No problem--nobody more carnivorous than me.

It was STILL low when they drew my blood this month. Anne told me that ALL the PD patients' protein had "tanked" this month. I find this suspicious--either the lab is fucking something up somewhere, which is definitely not unheard of, or we all have some kind of stealth infection that's somehow sapping our protein, which doesn't seem that far-fetched either given all the press about hospital infections.

So she gave me the name of a protein pill or liquid you can take to try to get the levels back up, which still puts me off somewhat as "cheating." I really need to get my head around the concept that sometimes when you have a chronic illness you can't get things back into the normal range through "normal" means.

http://feeds.slashfood.com/~r/weblogsinc/slashfood/~3/292329667/

http://www.slashfood.com/2008/05/17/german-pancakes-a-perfect-weekend-breakfast-dish/

Filed under: Breakfast, Recipes, Baking, On the Blogs

I don't know about you, but I'm always looking for great weekend breakfast ideas. I want something that maybe takes a little more time than you have during the week, but won't take all day to make either. It also has to be something that tastes great and is suitably impressive.

I think I've found a new one to try for this weekend. A few days ago, while perusing the baking blogs, I came across this post from Bakers' Banter. While it starts out talking about whole grain pancakes, the post goes on to give a step by step, pictorial recipe for German pancakes. I seem to recall having seen them in a cookbook before I really got into cooking, but since I didn't cook I promptly forgot about them.

After reading this article, and seeing how good these pancakes look, I am definitely making them this weekend. What about you? If you try this recipe out, I'd love to hear about it!

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