Messed Up In The Modern Age

I've mentioned before that sometime I make the wrong association with smells. For example, lemon verbena has a smell which I love, but it also smells like Lemonhead candy to me.

To K-poo, it smells like Pledge. It's good to know I'm not the only one with this problem.

Anyhow, in my quest to find a replacement cider, this evening I'm trying Ace Perry Hard Cider. It's not bad -- it tastes like Jolly Ranchers. I do like Jolly Ranchers, but not in my cider.

(Molly and Ginger refuse to even look at the bottle.)

Nobody seems to carry Blackthorn any more, which is a bummer. I may have to start my own import company at this rate.

In other news, as you can clearly see, I've completed the blue sky. Now I just need to do the rest of it.

Now I can lounge about three times faster!

So AT&T recently ran fiber into my neighborhood, and despite the fact that I was already paying for AT&T DSL, the AT&T salespeople kept coming to my door to offer me deals that would speed up my internet connection and lower my final bill.

I took a brief survey to figure out if I was missing something obvious, and the consensus was best declared by Jeff when he said "Stop thinking like an engineer.  Think about a bunch of divisions trying to build their own empires regardless of the greater good to the entire organization."

So I finally agreed to it, and the next day some poor guy came to my house to hook everything up. I had locked up the cats (since Guido likes to jump on people), and Ginger spent the entire time growling at him from where she was locked up in her crate.

Molly Speedbump didn't notice anyone had entered the house for two hours despite the fact that he kept stepping over her.

Anyhow, whatever he's making they aren't paying this guy enough. I say this because:

1) He was clearly allergic to either cats or dogs (although he never actually admitted it and declined my offer of Benadryl), and

2) He had to go into the crawlspace under my house.

In spite of those things he was pleasant and professional and actually knew his stuff. The only real annoyance was the multiple calls from the AT&T robo-dialer over the next two days asking me to rate his performance.

Now I can read all the celebrity gossip three times faster. How's that for progress?

Puzzling Through It

I recently bought a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle because... well, I was at Target, and I remembered that over a decade ago I used to enjoy doing puzzles although I haven't done one since then.

Now I remember why I stopped doing jigsaw puzzles.

Here are the indignities that this particular puzzle has suffered thus far:

1) Scooter peed on one of the pieces. (I know Scooter pees on everything, so this isn't too surprising, but there actually were extenuating circumstances in this case.)

2) The cats enjoy picking out pieces from the box and carrying them around the house. I'm not sure how many of the original 2000 are still in the living room.

3) Molly Speedbump chewed up one (or possibly more, I can't tell) piece and spit it out on the floor next to me.

 

(It's like the blank Scrabble tile -- it can fit anywhere. 

One of my friends pointed out that you get no points for the blank Scrabble tile...)

To be honest this puzzle had a few problems from the start. Even though it clearly states the dimensions on the outside of the box (38.5" x 26.5"), I was convinced that it would fit on the keyboard tray of my table which turns out to be 19" deep.  Guess what? It doesn't fit. Shocking, how the laws of physics apply. I had to find something to put it on and the only thing I could find was the old interior door out in the garage. So I brought that in and stacked it on some old cubes that were also out in the garage. At some point in the last ten years, one or more of the cats (not mine) that hangs out in my garage had sprayed one of the cubes and although I washed it out pretty well, I think that was Scooter's excuse.

The other big problem is that this puzzle is just not very well-made. I thought I was just remembering things incorrectly until Jon asked me about it. I started complaining about missing the little "snick" that you get when putting pieces together, and he suggested that I go with a different manufacturer. Aside from missing the tactile reward, it also means that I can't be sure that anything is really in the correct spot because pieces seem to almost fit and sometimes it's right and sometimes it's not, and there's a lot of blue sky and green forest in this puzzle.

Also, for whatever reason this has become Scooter's favorite place to nap, which means I have to disturb him any time I want to work on it. These images were taken on different days, and it's not like I had to sit and wait for the perfect photo op...

 

(There's a fireplace screen protecting the pieces from being pilfered.)

  

(Look, he's not always sleeping.)

Anyhow, at this point I'm just trying to finish it so I can put it in the recycling bin...

I Shouldn't Be Held Responsible For This

So here's the sequence of events from tonight:

1) Go to the grocery store (my beloved Nugget Market which is one of my top three reasons for staying in Woodland)
2) Note that they still (after six weeks) don't have Blackthorn cider, the only thing I normally drink
3) Decide to buy one of the other seven brands of cider that they carry
4) Get home and decide to try the new cider brand. (It's 22 oz of 6.5% alcohol.)
5) Finish the bottle (Can't have it go bad now, can I?)
6) Remember that I'm supposed to write a blog post, it being Sunday and all.

Anyhow, that's why this blog post is brought to you by the letter B for buzzed, or possibly D for drunk. Luckily there is no heavy machinery involved.

Here's my review of Crispin cider:

 

Brought to you by Molly

The good:
- It's not really that bad. Certainly a lot better than Wyders.
- It's 6.5% alcohol and I can drink it.

The bad:
- It's too sweet.
- It's not Blackthorn.

Pretend I put a bunch of stuff about the bouquet (if a cider is supposed to have one) and ship that review.

In other news, I put in an herb spiral this week. I calculated the number of bricks that I would need, then ignored that calculation and built the thing. I have absolutely no idea if my number was even close.

 

(Pre-planting)

 (Post-planting)

 

(With extra help from Molly)

(And even more help from Ginger)

There's something else I was going to mention, but I can't remember what it was, and I have to go yell at the cat who is on the range.

Enjoy your week.

Happy Zombie Day!

Here are some questions that should be on the California driver's license exam:

1. If you are traveling on a busy four-lane freeway and it begins to sprinkle, you should
a) Slam on your brakes to avoid hitting any raindrops.
b) Continue at the same speed, but allow a little extra room between your car and the one in front.
c) It doesn't really matter because the car in front of you will slam on their brakes, so you have to as well.

2. If it has been raining for a while and now traffic is moving at a steady 40 mph and there is a flash of lightning in the distance, you should
a) Slam on your brakes to avoid hitting the thunder that will be coming.
b) Continue at the same speed because the lightning has already struck five miles away and that shouldn't affect traffic.
c) It doesn't really matter because the car in front of you will slam on their brakes, so you have to as well.

3. If it is raining steadily and you are driving in the number one (fast) lane at 40 mph and it starts to hail, you should
a) Remain in the lane and stop your car completely then turn on the emergency flashers. (Yes, this was the answer from the driver in front of me this afternoon...)
b) Slam on your brakes as a preemptive strike because you know that someone else will if you don't.
c) Turn up the radio because hail striking a car is very loud.


It turns out that it doesn't take more than a few people to panic during a thunderstorm to really mess up traffic, but I still made it to the NorCal family dinner. There we discussed such important topics as:

• foot fungus, and why it can't be cured.
• the tradition of hiding out at the Captain's Chest to avoid dealing with terminated contractors on their last day of work.
• K-poo's Chinese coworker who asked if her boyfriend was making her lose weight.
• what, exactly, "dubstep" is.

When I put it that way, we sound like a bunch of old white people...

Water Under The Bridge

Back in the Good Old Days™ I worked on a project that had grown "organically", which is another way of saying that a bazillion cheap programmers had worked on it and the code was full of crap. (For the record, the only other possibility is that the code is rewritten, and then it's crappy code written by fewer people. There is no non-crappy code.)

Anyhow, this particular project had a lot of spatial analysis, and one of the important things was where sites were on the earth. We had libraries full of homegrown functions to do things like come up with the distance between two points on the earth, or determine whether you could see one point from another point if you knew the elevation information for that area.

The main problem was that every time a new person added another function to calculate something, they appeared to have also added yet another structure to specify a point on the earth. All of the structures contained the same information (latitude and longitude), but in order to take the output of one function and use it in another one, you had to convert the first structure into the correct structure for the next function. So not only did we have libraries to do all of the spatial analysis, we had a lot of code to convert all of the different structures (all 14 of them) back and forth. As any programmer knows, this is a great way to add all sorts of random and interesting problems.

It stayed this way for a long time because fixing it would require a lot of work and we all had other things to do, but finally Rvan and I decided to attack the problem and just change everything. So we did.

Or, at least, I did. Rvan got sidetracked a few days into the conversion and decided to leave this inspirational note on my desk:

 

I know you're supposed to forgive and forget and all, and I've more or less forgiven him for this, but forget? Yeah right...


On a different note, I'd like to believe that people walking by my house see things like this

and that's why everyone stares. I'll keep believing that until someone proves otherwise.

Get Out the Vote

This week I'm going to be more disciplined. I swear. Really. Dammit.

Anyhow, I was thinking about my list of fun / non-essential projects and I think it's time to do at least one of them. So here's the current list:

1. Learn to sew. (Yes, I have a sewing machine. I think I've even used it twice, but I'm not sure I can thread the thing correctly any more. There's probably stuff on YouTube to help with this. I may have to Skype with my mom.)
   
   If nothing else, I could make a dog bed to replace the one that I destroyed in the washing machine this morning.


2. Put up a fence (framed with wood, but with mesh (chicken wire?) attached to the frame) with a small gate from the back of the property to the garage so I can destroy the gigantic gate from hell that is blocking my driveway.
   
   I pretty much suck at doing precision things, though, so this may be beyond my skill set. And my set of tools. And my patience.


3. Put up an herb spiral sort of like http://dirtgarden.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/herb-spiral-planted/. I think this would be cool. Also, it would cover part of the used-to-be-a-lawn-before-the-weeds-took-over area in the back yard.
   
   I have no idea where one buys straw, though. The feed store maybe? Will a bale fit in my car (2002 Civic)?


4. Make a "Large Animal Veterinarian Barbie" for Clay Paw Liz, my old resident mate. This request was inspired by an article listing the most ridiculous Barbies sold, including one that included a slide from the exam table into a bathing tub for cats. This could have been designed by the Indian senior students I had when I was an intern who had never handled a cat before. They didn't initially understand why I countermanded their "Leash walk outside q4h" orders.
   
   This one does require me to at least get through part of "Learn to sew" unless I use superglue to make a set of scrubs. I also have to go find a Barbie (or a knockoff), but I think I should be able to find one at one of the thrift stores downtown, and for this project the grungier the better.

So... anybody have a preference? Suggestions? Ideas?

Pretend there is a polling option here and make your voice heard!