The only problem with her size has been with diapers and clothes. The compostable diapers the diapers the hospital used were too big so we switched to the newborn size we had Those were too big too. At this point they fit and it’s nice not having to wonder if something is going to come out the side. All of the clothes, even the 5-8 pound clothes tend to be very baggy on her. Some of them are starting to fit but I think having enough bod to fill out the clothes will make her too long to fit in other ways.

Going into this I figured the early weeks were just a process. Figure out what’s needed for feeding, cleaning, and sleeping and the rest will take care of itself until she became more interactive. That’s still true, but now I see that in some ways she is pretty interactive right now. She’s also often a sleepy lump, like right now with her laying on me like a frog. She’s happy, I’m happy.

Some things I’ve learned so far:

I think she’s great!

Critter’s page

I’ve been running XP in the classic (old) UI so I wasn’t sure how well I’d get along with the latest Windows UI but it all seems to have a nice logical flow so far. I’m fairly impressed with the whole experience. Now if only Windows had the equivalent of Spaces on MacOSX.

On the cake front I tried to make Cranberry Obsession Snow Cake. It’s a cake I wanted to try making last year but the blood clot got in my way, and then cranberries weren’t in the store. So finally I’ve done it and it isn’t as ugly as most of my cakes are. I think it’s ugly on the inside, or certainly not as pretty as the picture. How is it? I don’t know yet. It felt like a serious effort to make so it will have to really blow me away to make me want to make it again. It’s almost time to take it out of the fridge so the co-workers can try it out though.

I walked in and the guy recognized me and told me that 10 minutes after I left he tested it and it tested fine. I asked him why it didn’t test fine for me and he told me that when he asked the lamp guy about it he was told that it needed a minimum of a 25W load to operate. Also the lamp guy posited that the problem was the socket since he had replaced a number of sockets on lamps like mine. I was told I would have to bring the lamp in since four different sockets have been used on that lamp.

Yesterday I brought the lamp in and I was shown to the back room of the electrical room (almost a back room in its own right) when a tall man name Larry looked at it. He said it could be the socket the the look on his face didn’t indicate confidence in that. He said he would work on it that day.

Today I went to the post office and decided to stop by and see how progress was. I walked right back to the back room of the back room and Larry was packing something in a box. I said I had come to check on the progress on my lamp. “Is this your lamp” he asked while tilting the box so I could see inside? I affirmed that it was and I asked him what the problem was. He explained that the installer had over-tightened the screw that holds the coaxial power cable in place which ended up causing a short. I’m guessing that me having to replace the original transformer caused enough movement in the wire to highlight the problem. Larry re-tightened the screw properly and applied some glue stuff to the damaged section so it wouldn’t short anymore, and here I am with a repaired lamp on my desk at work.

I was worried the scooter would be in bad shape after no riding for almost seven months, but the batteries don’t even seem to  be any worse after the long period of neglect. The front tire can use some air and it’s more dirty, but it’s almost like there wasn’t a break in there!

We rode the Giant Dipper on Monday (1907 night). I avoided it before because it can be jarring and I just didn’t want to risk it. Here it is:

I don’t remember the prompt in the checkout process that led to the card, but I remember what I wrote: “Send me a limerick.” The card contains “limerick” printed on a blank label-sticker stuck to the inside.

That’s customer service!

Now this weekend I am packing for another tie occasion and I already know the answer so I don’t even look. Then I get a memory flash about a box in a closet. I go look and sure enough, they’re all there! Packed up away since we remodelled. Sure they needed to be cleaned and pressed but they’re back!

I think I need more occasions that require dressing so I can keep track of these things.

When I had my hernia surgery about 10 years ago I was similarly frustrated at being immobilized and the recovery time, but really the downer to my mental state was the feeling of mortality, or maybe it’s the feeling of a blow to the normal state of “everything is fine” which plays into the natural state of immortality. Normally you don’t think about that, it’s just the normal state. There is an implicit expectation that things will continue as they have and when they don’t the continuum has been spoiled and the awareness of mortality sets in. Well as of this morning I feel really good! Like this isn’t going to dominate my life from here on out. Like it’s going to heal quickly and I’m going to be back being active shortly and begin making myself better than I was.

I hope everyone has a happy new year!

The broken thing was the Blackberry Pearl I had for work. It was still in my jacket when I washed it. I took it apart made sure it was dry, re-assembled it, and it would charge the battery and blink some status LED but that was it. Then I followed the directions I later found that said to put it in a sealed comtainer with rice and put that over something warm like a DVR  for 5 days. That definitely pulled more moisture out and the backlight came on and some bad looking streaks showed on the LCD and then it was back to how it was the first time. I now fully admit it is dead and just when I was getting used to the keyboard and starting to appreciate the e-mail features.

Saturday evening was another Santa Cruz Roller Girls roller derby match, this time between Fistful of Dollies and Beach Flat Betties. These two of the three local teams that the all-star team draws from to play against teams from other cities.  The Dollies ended up winning by about ten points but it was pretty close all the way though. Robin Yo Life joined the announcers which was nice for clarifying what was going on at various points and amusingly it sometimes turned into comments that were meant more for coaching what was happening at that moment. Next match in Santa Cruz is on June 28.

Sunday we went to Bay Meadows for the final day of live racing and it was really crowded, both from people there for Mother’s Day and people there for the last day. For the first half there was a lot less smoking going on than normal, but then the parties with mothers thinned out some and the smoking kicked it up a notch. The horses ran, we lost money on our small bets, we ate junk food, it was a lot of fun.

Anyway, I made it to work and the chocolate pies were devorured along with the cookies. I checked in the last of my code changes, visited with a lot of people, had a goodbye lunch. Things were good. HR person wasn’t made aware until very late that I was leaving today so my exit interview was over the phone. I found the big box of kazoos from our wedding party that was left over and I gave them out throughout the building. I gave away the cube loot people wanted and since cube space was available at the new job so I carted all the stuff I was keeping on cart to the new cube in the new building. I answered some questions at the new job and ran back to the office so I could turn in my badge before the person I needed to turn them in to went home.

I had Dan go with me to Long’s so I could get back into the building after I bought a lot of chocolate to leave on my desk so people wouldn’t have to go cold turkey. Then I said my goodbyes to those still remaining and went home. I’m going to miss working with everyone there and I hope I get a chance to work with them again in the future.

Now that we’re in the new year I can get back on a more regular eating schedule that consists of more regular foods. I didn’t do too poorly over the holidays though; I gained 0.4 pounds from the day before Thanksgiving (November 21) through today. Now I just need to get myself to the gym.

Highlights for me:

• Al looked like he was having the time of his life on stage, singing with a big smile on his face.
• Althought the stage was about the size of the Catalyst stage he still managed to ride a Segway out for White & Nerdy.
• He had a medley of his older songs that must have gone on for 20 minutes with about5 quick changes thrown in there.
• During “Wanna B Ur Lover” (he pickup line song) he came out into the audience and sang them to women in the aisle.
• He did his version of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful,” which is “You’re Pitiful” while stripping off wardrobe. One of the shirts read “Atlantic Records Sucks” since they didn’t allow him to put that on his album.
• When the bomb drops in “Canadian Idiot” streamer cannons shot red and white streamers into the audience.
• During an “Al TV” interview with Michael Stipe he asks him for lyrics for a song they can collaborate on. Michael Stipe says “Everybody’s got cell phones, get real.” At the start of the encore Al sings the song he made out of it. Also everyone took out their cell phones and waved them like lighters.
• For his encore he performed “Albuquerque” which I had always hoped to see in concert but never thought I would since it’s about 11 minutes long on the album. He extended the doughnut section for another minute or two.

I made a  dessert appetizer composed of graham cracker, semi-sweet chocolate, and boysenberry butter. It ended up being a lot less sweet than I thought it would be which was a good thing since I was worried about it being too sweet. To make it I started melting chocolate chips while I got to work on the graham cracker pieces. I cut the graham crackers into quarters since ther perforations weren’t deep enough to break evenly by hand. I put the chocolate on one end of the graham cracker sticks in an attempt at a very shallow bowl and to leave an easy way to hold it without getting chocolate fingers. The best application I came up with was to use an espresso spoon to blob the right amount on and then do a swirl with the bowl in the center to spread most of the chocolate to the outside. The boysenberry butter was about 6 or 7 tablespoons of salted butter softened with boysenberry syrup added until it tasted “right”. I think that was about two tablespoons. The butter was then applied with another espresso spoon.

The final if the show I thought was great! I liked the live reveal in Chicago (where season 4 is filming right now). I liked the sous chefs they were provided and how they were delivered. It seemed to give a better look at the preparation and cooking than previous finals in Top Chef. I liked the head-to-head matchup of the food. I liked having many guest judges for the meal, and I liked the outcome! Going into it I thought Casey had an edge with her flavors as long as she didn’t panic, and Dale would be a contender if he stayed away from dough (altitude) and spicy (smoking has killed his hot receptors). I figured Hung would be excellent and finally able to bring his flavors which is exactly what happened.

The downside of the trip is that it wore Nicole out and now she has a cold.

Anyway, Nicole’s machine now has an energy efficient power supply and an AMD64 processor that tops out at 45W. With it slowing down when not in use, it actually spends most of its time using around 15W. Tomorrow I need to recycle all these boxes, donate the working old parts and take the rest to e-waste recycling.

I found on some random hardware message board with messages from a few years ago discussing motherboards with similar failures. They were from about when I got mine (6 years ago) and the failure apparently was drawing too much current from the power supply, making sure to take the pwoer supply with it.

I was planning to do the computer upgrade next year and wasn’t really prepared for this, but I kept in mind my goals for the new machine: to be quiet, to be energy efficient, to be relatively inexpensive, and to be upgradable. I picked up a low-end motherboard sporting AMD’s most recent CPU socket since they change sockets less often than Intel and upcoming processors will be backwards compatible. The CPU is an AMD X2 4600; I’m coming from a dual AMD 1900 world so the speed bump isn’t as huge as it might be coming from a single processor, but the tripling of the RAM speed makes the difference quite noticable. An extra bonus, my old CPUs were about 70-75W each, but the new dual core processor is just 65W by itself and it can be clocked more slowly when not in heavy use for even more power savings. The motherboard has pretty much everything built into it so I have no extra cards installed right now which also helps with cooling and air-flow though if I can’t get the on-board graphics to start driving two monitors I may have to resort to buying a video card.

The RAM was a good brand and on sale so I picked up 4GB. The only thing that kept the previous set of hardware from feeling old and slow after 6 years was the 3GB of RAM in it so I knew I didn’t want less than that.

I wanted to keep my hard drives since they have plenty of life in them. The only problem is that modern motherboards are all Serial ATA and I have old-school drive interfaces. So I picked up some adapters for them that I had only heard would exist when Serial ATA came on the scene. Despite seeming a little sketchy with not even a sheet showing what to hook up and just being a bare circuit board they work perfectly!

The new power supply is an Antec NEO HE (high efficiency) power supply. It’s definitely the heaviest PC power supply I’ve used. It is part of the new wave of pwoer supplies that is about 20% more energy efficient, which means it hovers around 80% efficiency. It controls its fan based on temperature, but with not enough noise that I can hear so far. Another nice feature is that you only plug in the cables you will be using in the system so there is no need to find a place to stash all those loose ends; yet another bonus for air flow!

The result? Something much faster, much quieter, much more energy efficient, and hopefully a platform that will last awhile. Oh yeah, a most of the components are RoHS compliant which means they don’t have the usual nasty stuff used for building electronics.

I tried booting into the Window recovery console, but that told me that I had no hard drives in my system. I figured I was going to be buying and installing another hard drive. I tried different controllers, and different cables to see if that would help but no change.

Finally I was resolved to trying to salvage data and get a new hard drive so I plugged it in as a slave on Nicole’s computer. That managed to boot after trying chkdsk and failing with something like: Unspecified disk error. That’s good for confidence building. I set it for the thorough fixing and had it reboot into that and after about an hour it repaired the file system! I lost all my bookmarks, but I had a recent enough copy that I was able to restore. Yay!

On the home front, we bought a fountain for the front yard but it isn’t in place yet. I’ve added another irrigation zone to better handle parts of the front yard, and I planted 3 heirloom tomatoes, a serpent cucumber, and an Israeli melon, all provided by a co-worker. Painting of the tv toom is about to happen, followed by carpet, followed by the couch which is now delayed 2-3 weeks to mid to late July.

Oh yeah, last week Grover and Sage got in some disagreement during a 10-15 minute window from the time I left to the time Nicole got home. Sage ended up the worst with a bruise above her eye, a cut below her eye, and a flap of skin torn under her jaw. Grover had a cut on his leg. Both required staples for their cuts. I was hoping to go to the Maker’s Faire on Saturday but figured we should stay around to watch Grover and his bandage. Grover hadn’t shown any tendency to mess with his bandaged and taped leg whether we were present or not, except while we were gone today. He unwrapped the whole thing and then pulled out his staples but didn’t otehrwise mess with the wound. He was already scheduled to return to the vet tomorrow so they could check his bandage. We’ve re-bandaged it for now.

Oh yeah, we went to the Artichoke Festival today, saw some cool vegetable sculpture, bought a case of artichokes cheap, and finished off the day with frozen custard.

Shortly after arriving downtown I walked by a shoe store and some shoes caught my eye. The sign said up to 50% off so I decided I would go back later. Off I wandered, to find a snow globe for Nicole and maybe some frozen custard. I found the snow globe but didn’t get it in case I ran across a better one later. Then my mom called randomly and hearing I was in Atlanta said I needed to check out the underground.

I found the underground, and it’s really neat to be walking on old restored street. The stores are mostly generic, but I found some replacement singing magnets and some good fudge.

The World of Coke was closed and the New World of Coke doesn’t open until later tis month so I went there at the exact wrong time for a Coke pilgrimage.

In Atlanta there is a lot of music played on speakers outside of businesses. Not to drive people away, just to have music. So when I exited the underground and walked by the big Coke sign and heard some jazz I didn’t think anything of it. Then as I kept walking it sounded not like it was from small speakers and it was really good, and then I was at a park where apparently on Wednesdays for lunch there are concerts. The performer was William Green. He would throw in things liek Birdland in the middle of a song or the Jefferson’s theme, saying it was to see if we were paying attention. Afterwards I went up to give him all my money $9. CDs were $10 but I didn’t care if I got one or not. I told him I appreciated the Birdland and I ended up with a CD. I want his current CD now. I recommend seeing him in person if you get the chance.

Anyway, back to the shoes… I got back to the shoe store and found one fo the pairs I liked and asked if they had my size. They didn’t but they had a close size so I tried that. It wasn’t right, but it was enough that I could tell that if it were in my size it would be the most comfortable shoes I had ever worn. Good thing they weren’t right though because they were $700. But with the sale I could get a second pair for free. The shoes are made by Fennix and one of the pairs I liked looked similar to these. The pictures of the ones I liked don’t seem to be available anymore which is a shame because the blue ones were great!

You might be wondering about the frozen custard. I’d only had it once before in 1996 or 1997 when I attended a friend’s wedding in Virginia Beach. It was the best frozen treat I’d ever had and was disappointed that it’s pretty much an east coast and mid-west thing. This was my chance to get some but it wasn’t just waiting for me out in the open. I told my co-worker about it and he decided he needed to try some. After the meeting, we were taken to a Korean food feast which was very good, but it was clear we weren’t going to get custard there. So when we got back to the hotel we looked up directions to a custard place, called to maek sure they were going to be open, and finally got frozen custard. It was just as good as I remembered. It was good enough that my co-worker suggested we come back the next day before heading to the airport (we did).

The second day the meeting was earlier but I had enough time to head back downtown and get Nicole the snow globe and experience the escalator where if you are going up and tilt your head at a 45 degree angle to match the tile it feels like you are just travelling horizontally.

Upon returning and telling Fish about the custard his response was “You can get that in San Jose!” And sure enough you can! You only get vanilla, chocolate on weekends, and it’s not quite as smooth as ther others I’ve had but it’s still great! We’ve been twice already. Now if only it were in Santa Cruz.

Atlanta as a whole? Everyone seemed nice there. Not just pleasant or polite, but nice. I think it’s funny that there is so much construction that the city slogan is “Everyday is an opening day.” As far as I can tell they close highway lanes every night just so they can re-open them in the morning.I don’t know that I’d want to live there, but I did enjoy my visit.

I was also able to repair almost all the damage to the irrigation system so most of the plants should be getting water again. There is still more work beyond the repairs, mainly in setting up drip rings for the trees and drip lines for the bamboo so they start getting enough water. After that I can evaluate whether I need to split the system for different watering needs.

I also chose the two “deadly” chocolate recipes I’m going to make for Mortal Chocolate. The Chantico Death Cake and Carol’s Chocolate Death Cookies.

I was most concerned about Opera’s data since that’s also my e-mail reader and note keeper. I didn’t realize how much I had in there. Quicken was the easiest to restore and Trillian was a little tricky, but not too bad.

Next up is installing the sound card drivers, the extra IDE drivers, and catching up on everyone’s pages so I know what’s going on in everyone’s lives.

Date: Sunday, April 1, the day before Passover starts
Time: 6:30PM

Making something is not a requirement for attending, but if you feel inclined, I would like for people to make a recipe found here and bring it for all to judge its deadliness. Previous winners have the round they won next to them and items italicized are not deadly enough. If you see a recipe you would like to make, please let me know so I can put your name next to it to help avoid duplicates.

This time I’d like all recipes there by 7PM to start the tasting. Last time late entries didn’t get tasted as much since people were chocolated out.

After having played the Nintendo Wii briefly after Thanksgiving, Nicole and I decided it would be our holiday gift to one another. Unfortunately around that time they became impossible to find unless you had nothing else to do during your days except camp at stores hoping for a shipment. On Thursday I heard that a lot of stores were going to have a lot of Wii on Sunday, and GameStop was having $50 off if you traded in your old Gamecube which is a good deal since the Wii plays all those old games. Saturday night I confirmed that GameStop would have some in stock and rather than wait another month for probably the next chance to get one I got up at 4AM and got there at 5AM. No one else arrived until 6:15. By 7:30 there were 5, and by the time the store opened there were probably 40 groups in line for what turned out to be 20 units. A kid waiting for the store open and trying to peer in was singing “Wii” over and over to the tune of the Imperial March, and another kid trying to peer in ended up in a kneeling position that made it look like he was praying for a Wii.

More errands on Sunday kept us from playing it until Sunday night. The dogs seem to be freaked out by the Wii Bowling as we do things they haven’t seen before going through the bowling motions. We actually had to put them in another room. I think they’ll adjust soon enough.

I’m ready for a slow week to relax.

When you drive in you pay and they tell you to turn off your headlights and turn your radio to 104.1 to listedn to holiday music. Then you cruise through slowly in a line of cars past all sorts of animated lights for 10-15 minutes.

Saturday all the decorations came out including the Christmas village and a tree that lights up. The batteries were corroded in so I cleaned that up with a 50-50 white vinegar and water mixture and an old toothbrush. I had to re-solder one of the wires too. The switch is very touchy but functional and probably requires a trip to Santa Cruz Electronics. Fry’s and Radio Shack didn’t have them.

After the model tree I decided to tackle the Star Wars Lightsaber game. I bought it just over a year ago after having played it at Anne & Dave’s. Unfortunately we had just started the remodel so it went into the shed unopened. When I hooked it up recently there was no video and the audio was bad. Getting apart was a small challenge and then I just bent the contacts for the A/V plug in more and all was working perfectly. Yay!

Sunday I finally installed the curtain brackets and rods that we bought from IKEA a little while ago so that leaves the hemming of the curtains as the next part in that job.

We arrived Wednesday night and had tri-tip and potato kugel. After 4 helpings of kugel and two of the tri-tip, salad, and bread I was very full. Or yeah, we had molten chocolate cake for dessert.

Thursday I went with my dad to get the lobsters. The smallest one was 3.5 pounds that Nicole and my mom split. Tami’s was 4.5 pounds, mine was 5.5, and my dad’s was 5.7. They were big enough that we had to use channel locks at times as a cracker. I was sooo full. But then the chocolate mousse had to come out for dessert. Good thing we ate early because I needed digestion time before we went to sleep.

Friday is for the full turkey dinner. I had some eggs for breakfast and some cinnamon-bites from Cinnabon as an afternoon snack. Then for dinner was the turkey wing, cranberry sauce, stuffing, bread, more potato kugel (2 servings), and two helpings of mashed potatoes.

Saturday we returned and this morning I weighed in at 200.2! I attribute it to the water I was constantly drinking. Yay!

My week was good though. Aside from two simple e-mails I was work free. So we got a light installed in the sitting area off the kitchen, pulled a lot of weeds, took out the dead lemon tree. Another lemon tree will get planted soon but right now I’m not feeling burnt out on work. Yay!

The other event was in the last race, the only female jockey of the afternoon was racing on a horce that was like 22 to 1. We bet on that horse to come in first and it was behind the entire race until the final stretch when it passed all the other horses like they were standing still! But it was too late and there wasn’t enough time to catch the first place horse. Still an impressive run.

Last Saturday we went to the Monterey County Fair. Right when we entered there were two tents, one for Hercules the Giant Horse, and one for White Mountain the Giant Steer. We first went to see Hercules and while it was a large horse, I’d seen other large horses. It was a Belgian Draft Horse which tend to get close to that size. After that we were a little reluctant to spend another buck on a cow that might not be that out of the ordinary, but we did anyway. Damn, that is one huge-ass cow! If you look here you can see the top of its back over the partition. Yeah it’s on a pile of hay, but that only raises it about a foot. It’s 6.5 feet at the shoulder and weighs over 3400 lbs. For comparison, the average steer weighs around 1000 lbs.

The rest of the fair was fun. I had a good cinnamon roll and there were some great pictures in the exhibit hall. The giant cow is what keeps coming to mind though.

From there Brick took over the navigation and it wasn’t long before we had looped back to the first big decision point which allowed us to take the only remaining option that led up. Quite a hill it was too. I think we were climbing that hill for 10 minutes. When we got to the top there was some more climbing, and then a decision point led us to a decision to climb the last 0.7 miles to the summit.

Once we got up there and Tammy located some shade at the actual summit, we sat down and ate and the views were definitely worth it. You were able to hear an occasional airplane in the distance but aside from that the only sound was birds and the moan of wind rushing through the trees.

After lunch and the photo-ops, we headed back down along a much more direct path to the park headquarters. I didn’t need an inhaler (yay!) and today the only major muscle soreness is from lateral stabilizing muscles in my hips. Not bad.

I’m glad I got to spend even the short time with Stephanie and others I haven’t seen in awhile and I hope it isn’t as long before it happens again.

After Jeff consumed his 4oz of broth he started getting sleepy so we left and went to the cafeteria for some dinner and then called on mo. Mo was asleep but she woke up enough to say hi and then woke up enough for fun conversation. Mo was looking good too after a major surgery and having a major lack of sleep. Shortly after her parents arrived we decided it was time to take off and get back to the dogs.

Here’s to a speedy recovery to both of them!

The sand-bags were 200lbs for the light-weight men (actually middle weight but no light weights showed up so there were referred to as light-weights), 250 for the heavy-weights, and 125 for the women. There were three women competing openly since there weren’t enough for any one weight division. Apparently the main problem in carrying the sand-bag is breathing since you have to carry it in front of you. The force you exert holding on to it also keeps you from breathing effectively. You got a real feel for that when they stopped as some were light-headed and needed to be guided off the course. Walking in sand didn’t help I’m sure. The best heavy distance was about 160 feet. The best light distance was about 300 feet. The best woman distance was a tie at 180 feet.

For the dead lift the heavy-weights had to lift 500lbs as many time as they could in a minute. The lights had to lift 400, and the women had to lift 235. The best for the heavy was 11 reps, for the light I think it was 28, and for the women I think it was 9. It was a little chaotic around the platforms and hard to hear.

The boat pull was towing a row boat over a max of 60 feet in 75 seconds. The heavy contenders had to have two girls (the same each time) sitting in the boat, the lights had 1 girl, and the women towed a small weight sled with 135 lbs on it. Why they didn’t just tow the empty boat I don’t know. With the actual boat towing no one got all the way to the end. The closest someone made it was within about 4 feet. The women all made it well under 75 seconds but they didn’t tell us what the times were.

After that the top four men in each division had to do a tug of war do get more points. First got 4 and last got 1.

The big news there was that a local guy won the heavy-weight competition and thus gets an invitation to the nationals where if he does well he can turn pro and be on tv.

Thanks to for watching the dogs and cat for the weekend, and thanks to for letting the dogs out Friday afternoon.

We drove because flying is too expensive right now. The drive there was uneventful. We stayed Thursday night in Buttonwillow and continued on to arrive for lunch on Friday. Friday night we went to wander the strip. After watching the Atlantis animatronic thing in Caesar’s (bad animatronics and bad sound) we tried to get out to get to some other casino. 15 minutes later we managed to find an exit.

From there we went to Paris where I won $5 on The Price is Right slots. We were hungry but the restaurants there had a 2-hour wait so we went in search of a less popular place to eat. Standing outside it was about 90 with a strong breeze which felt nice and after the crazy guy walked by we decided on Bally’s. After a few minutes we found Chang’s and had good chinese food.

After dinner we played Hot Hot Penny slots where Julie won $70. From there we wandered to the Bellagio and got some gelato and watched the fountains for a few songs.

Saturday morning my Uncle Dave and his wife, Carol, picked us up and we went to breakfast at Arizona Station. It was good to catch up with them since it’s apparently been 13 years since last we met. After that it was an afternoon of laying around. Nicole and I drove north of town to look at Red Rock so we took the scenic rout and looked at scenery. Scenery that day included a dead body. Two police trucks and two other trucks were parked in a turn-out and there was a sheet over the body. There was no sign of an accident so we were thinking heart attack. When we got back Nicole went to the Liberace museum with Fish and had a great time. That night we went to Starbucks for the internet to look up possibilitied for Nicole staying longer, but it ended up that she was coming home with me on Sunday.

Sunday we had breakfast at Blueberry Hill (good pancakes) and then got ready for the drive home. We learned that going through Barstow Sunday afternoon is a bad move.

The population has tripled there in the last 6 years.

I think the police there are the busiest of any police I’ve seen. They either have someone pulled over or they are rushing to go somewhere with sirens on.

There are no minor accidents, when the wreck they do it right. Lots of crazy drivers too.

I only have a few pictures of the desserts because I got too busy.

brought the Dr. Delicious cake and it was by far the best looking chocolate there. Suitable for service in a restaurant easily. It was delicious but it wasn’t very deadly

Joel and brought chocolate mousse made with 72% cocoa. Rich and addictive, but also not too deadly. Unfortunately, Nicole threw the rest away when she had all she wanted instead of saving it for me.

brought mummified life-after-death truffles, mummified in white chocolate. He reported that it was a big hassle to do the mummification and looking at it, I would agree. The results were really good though and several people chose these as deadliest.

made Igor bars from The Dork Tower. They weren’t deadly at all but they were good and creative and much loved by some.

Dan made cereal bars which were like Cocoa Pebbles crispy treats with a layer of fudge on top. Dan himself considered these the 4th deadliest.

Shelley made the Hershey Syrup cake with glossy fosting and this got a number of votes for being the deadliest and was declared the ideal chocolate cake by some.

I made three recipes. I was just going to make two but since I didn’t know who was coming or bringing anything I feared lack of variety. Unfortunately the ones I made didn’t make it to the tasting table until 30-60 minutes after everyone was already tasting so people were already at chocolate saturation and they were only tried by one or two.

I made a brownie brandy trifle with the help of Julie. I couldn’t find instant mousse so Julie made chocolate fudge pudding for it. It was well liked but it wasn’t deadly. Looking at the other trifle recipes after this one, I don’t believe any will every be deadly.

I made a simple chocolate pie. It was very good even though I didn’t quite mix it up correctly. For Nicole it surpassed the Hershey cake as her favorite which means it didn’t really go overboard. It went really fast at work.

Finally I made a recipe that claimed to be deadlier than death by chocolate and tasting the results I personally have to put this one first one the list of deadliest so far even though I overcooked the base a little so it didn’t stick together or the top. The look of shock people get when they pop it into their mouth often followed by an exclamation show its potency. Oh yeah, I messed up the top too since I was ina hurry and used unsweetened chocolate instead of semi-sweet. But I realized my mistake and added some sugar to the right level before it was too late.

Because of the staggered introduction I have to list three recipes that will come back for the final rounds…
Hershey Syrup cake with glossy fosting
mummified life-after-death truffles
deadlier than death by chocolate

Stay tuned for Mortal Chocolate II in a few months.

MORTAL CHOCOLATE!

That said, the cooktop works very well and I was able bring 1/2 gallon of water to a high boil in 4.5 minutes. A watched pot does boil.

The oven (which has a Sabbath mode) did a wonderful job cooking a chicken. It’s also amazingly insulated. We turned off the oven and went for a quick trip to Joel & Cathi’s which ended up being 1.5 hours. When we got home the chicken was still almost too hot to handle.

Nicole loves her coffee machine and is tuning it to make the perfect cup of espresso.

MORTAL CHOCOLATE!

The bike cages at work were activated again so we can lock up our bikes (scooter) again.

The Coke machine has been so allowing coins to flow through it very well fo rthe past few weeks. I generally dislodge them with a coffee straw and get a free Coke. Today that wasn’t working so I started pressing the coin return button really fast and a quarter came out. So I continued and about $3 in change came out including a penny. Was the penny causing the blockage all this time? The coins put in after seemed to work perfectly.

The project I’ve been working on at work had it’s first sale today. Now there’s six weeks to get everything working the rest of the way.

Good in only one respect… There was a project based layoff at work today. The good part is that this guy who talks loudly on the phone a lot (disturbs everyone in a 2-cube radius) is among them. I’m tired of knowing about his kids, of him giving live driving directions to her on her road trip, him confirming her reservations, etc.

Try of hula hoop with your dog!

In addition to that, the visual ad has a www.worldchill.com url that takes you to not the greatest Flash site, but I really like the idea behind it. You can select your own “chill” level and make a thumbtack where you are with your chill level. That in turn gets averaged by localities and regions up to the world level so you get a “chill level” for the entire world. The screen saver cycles through areas showing the chill level of that area.

The makers had the idea that you could have a map like weather maps that showed changes in “chill” over time and perhaps watch trends. It’s definitely not wide-spread or well implemented enough for that. The Flash that lets you place your rating is tricky to use and doesn’t let you easily update your info. It should just be a simple applet, maybe a part of everyone’s instant messenger program. Just a slider that when changed sends the update. It has to be easy and always there.

The more minor problem is the screen saver. It starts at the top level and then steps down to a region and then to parts of the region. When a part is done it has to go back to the region level before going to another part so you end up seeing regions a lot. I understand that it is following it’s internal tree representation of the data but it can skip those things it has been to before pretty easily.

Mine didn’t start out that well with it being taken up by the end of a 17-hour work day, but that just means I have a lot of room for improvement! Are there any other industries besides software that can get so far with so little planning?

There weren’t many entries in the sponsor track due to late notice and probably general apathy and I came in 3rd in my company and about midway overall! I think they’re fun competitions and good practice (when not interrupted too much) and I’ll continue to participate in the competitions. Next year I think a lot more people are going to sign up.

In the preliminary round there were 19 people in the sponsor track total from all the sponsoring companies. Anyone who scored points made it to the next round (13). 11 of the 13 showed up for round 1 and got to move on to round 2. In Round 2 my brain just was not working right. It turns out I read part of the problem wrong but I thought I made a code error so I never looked back at the problem. No points for me. 8 of us showed up and 6 get to move on. It was fun while it lasted and I think I’ll keep trying these kinds of things. Oh yeah, there were only three people from my company so I should get something

The new Space Mountain is more like a Star Trek version of the future in the interior design which I think is unfortunate. What changed on the ride itself? Going up the initial hill/tunnel instead of a rotating light at the end the whole tube appears to rotate (like the ice tunnel at Universal Studios (which you can see in episodes fo The Six Million Dollar Man)) to a much greater effect for everyone and not just those in front. When you enter space you see that it is dark again. When it first opened it was dark, and then it’s been lighter for a long time, but now the dark is back, YAY! The ride is smoother than it used to be and it felt a bit faster. The spinning asteroid projected on the ceiling is gone (yay!) and a large physically spinning rock is in its place (yay!). Some time in the last 5 years or so they had added a soundtrack to Space Mountain that was done by Dick Dale. That sound track, in addition to being a new experience, fit every twist and turn of the ride perfectly (URL to come later). Gradually the speakers in the headrests broke and no more soundtrack. Now they have better speakers, but the soundtrack sucks. I have hope that the good soundtrack is still there at night since there are two different track listings on the official album, but we didn’t get to go at night. The new ending for Space Mountain is fantastic!

Next we went on Indiana Jones, and from there to Pirates of the Carribbean. On Pirates, the first skeleton at the wheel is no longer in rain, but just wind and clouds which I think looks better. There is also not a balcony fight scene done in shadow after the pirate ship/fort battle, and a few extra characters after the auction scene.

The Haunted Mansion was next with the impressive improvement of Madamme Leota’s ball not only being above the table but moving around! I couldn’t tell how that was being made to happen.

After that it becomes a blur. Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Nicole got her turkey leg fix, dinner at Blue Bayou. Oh yeah, Jungle Cruise has fuel barrels floating in the river at the camp the gorillas trashed. Occasionally the gorilla playing with the gun hits one of them causing a big water explosion. Also at the end there are now piranha churning up the water. Shopping, parade (really cool rhino costume!), It’s a Small World, Matterhorn, lots of live music in New Orleans Square, Fantasmic.

The fireworks show was also very impressive even though we didn’t see it from the best spot (facing the front of the castle) instead we saw it by the carousel which was between the two launching points so you had to keep turning around. Definitely see the fireworks show.

We didn’t quite make it to the closing of the park. Nicole was tired and had a big blister and Tami’s knees were hurting, but we did really well and had a great time!

Sunday was for the dogs. We got in and tried to convince Grover to get in the pool at the steps, but it’s bigger than a normal step down and the water probably doesn’t help the depth perception. We pulled him into the pool and then let him out so he could see it wasn’t so bad and he kept coming back so he wasn’t very upset. Then my dad suggested we try encouraging him on to the foam raft over the steps so it would look like solid ground. That worked pretty well and we eventually talking him out on to the raft. We took Grover into the water a few times and had him swim back and he always went for the nearest wall. I think if we had a week to work with him we could get him to swim to the stairs.

Sage was close to jumping into the pool at our urging but wouldn’t quite do it. So we took her in to the pool to swim and she wouldn’t go near it at all after that. She was better at swimming to the steps but we’re pretty sure that’s just because Nicole was sitting right there. We also put the dogs on the raft and had them lay on them for a little while pictures were taken. Even Nugget (my parent’s dog) got to do that and some swimming.

The Cider House Rules (VHS)
Collateral (DVD) – Haven’t seen it yet
The Bourne Supremacy (DVD) – Not as good as the first one but still good
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (DVD) – Brilliant movie
Eight Crazy Night (DVD) – There are a lot of things that make you think “That’s just wrong,” but there’s a lot right with it too!
Die Mommie Die (DVD) – Haven’t seen this but it looks funny so we’ll give it a shot.!

I don’t remember when we met in front but we had a fun dinner and Vinna was given a piece of pizza dough to play with. What a good idea! There was catching up and questions asked since it was Nicole’s first time meeting them and the food was good. From there we got some Original Cinn at the Pacific Cookie Company and then headed over to Marianne’s for some ice cream. mmmm ice cream.

We talked some more and Vinna attacked ice cream (hers and others) and wanted to see people’s tongue colors. Then it was time for us to come home and feed the dogs and for Liana and Peter and Vinna to go back to their local haven and get some rest.

I look forward to their next visit.

It took the plumber 8 hours to do everything and clean up. Part of that was because his back was sore but he kept the price the same as his initial bid.

Now we just need to patch up the wall.

You can read more about it here. Go on a Monday or Tuesday evening (after 5) and all rides are 1 ticket until Labor Day.

When I ordered tickets I chose the premium section but was told that they didn’t have 4 seats together so I chose the section behind that (also a good bit cheaper). When we got the tickets from will call and walked to our seats it turned out that we were in the good section after all and our seats were right in front! Aside from being front and center the good seats are good because they have a back and aren’t just benches. Anyway, we had prime seats for listening, a little higher up woul dhave been nicer for formation watching but I’m very happy with the seats.

It all started with the national anthem played by a hot-shot trumpet player who has played with a lot of people and is getting his master’s in trumpet at USC.

First up was the senior corps. I read that the San Francisco Renegades were going to be there, they are a senior corp (senior meaning anyone too old for regular drum corp (21?), and I wanted to see what they were about in case I ever get motivated enough to start practicing trumpet again and want to join. The first one was a medium sized corp but I don’t remember where from. They were ok and kind of what I expected from senoir corps in general. Next up was the Renegades. They marched well, they played phenomenally (they have at least 6 trumpet players capable of playing great solos) as a band, and they ended up being the loudest of all the corps there that night. Nicole actually had to plug her ears at one point. If I want to join them I have a *LOT* of work to do.

After that it switched gears to the juniors. First was the Blue Devils C-corp. Age range is 6-14 and seeing 6-year olds with horns and marching is really cute. Then came several B-corps that I don’t remember too well, Santa Clara Vanguards, Blue Devils, and I think some others. They were all pretty good as a band but lacked in the solo department.

Intermission came and then the A-corps.

It started with a show from Seattle which did a show about the history of flight, complete with bad voice-over. Boeing needs to not dictate the content here.

Next was Esparanza but I don’t rememebr where they are from. They were the tightest of the bands musically I thought. They could start and stop on a dime and made good use of silence. They also made good use of minimal color guard costumes with a long sash.

Then came the Pacific Crest from Diamond Bar. They had flashy uniforms and by far the best color guard show so far but that’s about all I remember. Oh yeah. I thought everyone was better than Seattle. Unfortunately Seattle beat out Esparanza.

The Mandarins, from Sacramento were really good and I especially liked their uniforms. Unfortunately I don’t think their hats go will with their uniforms. They ended up taking third which I think is about right.

Second to last, but placing first was the Phantom Regiment. I knew they would be a good show because they’re always one of the famous ones in the finals, and this show was no exception. They had an amazingly balanced sound and sounded great overall. Good solos, good playing, good marching, really nothing wrong except for a few mistakes which is no big deal this early in the season.

Finally was the home team, the Santa Clara Vanguards. The Vanguards took second place and put on a great show and there were fireworks going off during it from the neighboring stadium which I think added to it.

I need to try to go to these things more often!

They said we migh thave to wait an hour before they looked at it since they weren’t scheduled for that right now but I think a look of shock on our faces at maybe being stuck there for awhile bumped us up to a 5-minute wait. Then it was about 30 minutes of actual fix time and we were back on the road.

At least they were friendly and good and it worked out ok.

Spray candy is liquid candy in a spray pump. The beauty is that you feel like you just had candy and it’s such a small ammount that it’s effectively zero calories.

Anyway, I tried them in the parking structure and they held together well enough and thought it would be good for the dogs. We went home and took the dogs out side and blew some bubbles. They were a little nervous at first but after some encouragement they started to go after them. After they got a taste of them they wanted more and then it was just fun watching them leap all over the place trying to get the yummy bubbles! The only problem was the wind making things difficult. Also the bubbles don’t last nearly as long as regular bubbles, but long enough for playing with dogs!

SO! EASY! Unlike almost any other Home Depot transaction.

Then we went to look for other medicine cabinets for Dar’s bathroom and they didn’t have the smaller one in stock. Then we didn’t see any outdoor lights we liked. Then we left.

This year on our honeymoon I was in a cd store and looked for it and found instead another LTJ Bukem album. Then shortly afterwards I picked up “Journey Inwards”.

Yesterday Nightfall posted about Method-One so I downloaded the mp3 files I found there and liked it a lot. (We’re talking LONG mp3 files.) Today I asked mo what else I should be getting. She told me: Dieselboy, DJ Dara, Kaos, Goldie, and Grooverider. So I went to Streetlight and picked up a geeky sounding album from Dieselboy called “The Dungeonmaster’s Guide”. I’m enjoying it muchly.

Thanks for the pointers!

We’re still waiting to hear about car status.