« April 2005 | Main | June 2005 »
May 29, 2005
I hate casinos...
I had wandered up to our neighbors place this afternoon - they're hosting a 3 day party over the memorial day weekend - when Brad and Kat called asking if I wanted to join them for dinner. "Sure" says I - and Brad asks if I'm opposed to checking out the buffet at the Clearwater Casino, just across the Agate Pass bridge.
At first glance it looked like any other casino - lots of video slots, a handful of card tables, and a few restaurants (a steakhouse, and the buffet). The buffet was themed - a different theme each night - tonight (Sunday) was "homestyle cooking." Uh-oh.
Dinner was, without putting to fine a point on it, disappointing. Brad was looking for Vegas-style casino buffet, and got a pale shadow of it. What selection was had was of reasonable quality, but the selection was lacking. At some point during dinner it was observed that Vegas, which is land locked, is known for seafood, yet for some reason here in Washington, nearly surrounded by water, there wasn't anything resembling seafood to be had.
After dinner we stopped at a firework stand where Brad was - according to his wife - "acting like a five year old hopped up on pixie stix" before coming back to the house. Brad and Kat stayed for a bit, and we chatted over tea before they left and I wandered back up the hill and hung out at Toki and Gretchen's place. After a couple hours sitting around a firepit, listening to the group tell stories from their shared college experiences, I decided I'd had enough of being the odd man out and came home.
Time to wash the mosquito repellent off and hit the sack.
Posted by dberger at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2005
Strange MT Bug
I'm using Movable Type on a sqlite2 database, and I discovered that after my upgrade to the 3.1.16 on the 26th, publishing was slightly strange. Older entries weren't being included in date-based archives.
I did a bit of poking around and discovered that they "fixed" a bug with timestamp handling - and that the fix caused the timestamp format in the database to change:
[alpha@sulphurous mt]$ sqlite mt.db SQLite version 2.8.15 Enter ".help" for instructions sqlite> select entry_created_on from mt_entry; ... 20050520205326 20050526171309 2005-05-26 17:23:11 2005-05-26 18:07:56 2005-05-26 22:53:38
The cause was the following code which had been added to lib/MT/ObjectDriver/DBI/sqlite.pm:
sub ts2db {
sprintf '%04d-%02d-%02d %02d:%02d:%02d', unpack 'A4A2A2A2A2A2', $_[1];
}
Not sure why they wanted to change the storage format of a timestamp, but even if it was intentional, it didn't quite work as expected. Commenting out that code, touching the timestamps on the entries in the new format, and rebuilding the site "did the right thing."
Posted by dberger at 8:12 PM | Comments (0)
And then it hit me, I live here...
I've needed a new face shield and breath guard for my helmet for a while, and I've been putting it off. Finally, I lost the second vent in the face shield and rain started getting in - no good, so I decided to ride down to the "local" Cycle Gear - 50 miles away in Tacoma. I called 'em to make sure they had what I needed (more later) and set off.
My route took me through some absolutely beautiful scenery - and about 10 miles away from the house I was hit by the powerful realization that I used to have to ride for a whole day just to reach scenery like this, and now I live in it. Cool. Passing lakes, mountain vistas, lush woods, wild flowers growing along the road, sprinkled with lavender... Hard to beat.
Of course, when I got there, they didn't, as advertised, have the breath guard - so they had to order it. While I was there, I picked up a pair of Frank Thomas gloves that were on clearance.
On the way back, I wandered into a Mazda dealer, where I proved that I can't buy a Miata. I told the sales guy "if I decide to get 4 inches removed from my legs, I'll let you know." He suggested a Ford Thunderbird... Um, no - on so many levels.
So I rode around the corner to the Pontiac dealer and chatted with the guy about the new Solstice - apparently they'll arrive on the lot in July or August. He's going to get 5, three are sold. I made it clear I'd probably wait for the second production year, but I'd really like to test drive one to see if I fit. They happened to have a used S2000 that I was happy to sit in (but I'd already determined I couldn't drive one). I have a feeling that the Solstice will be the same story - too little legroom (ah, the perils of being 6'2")...
I made a couple other random stops on the way home - just enjoying the ride and the weather.
Not a bad way to spend a Saturday, all in all.
Posted by dberger at 6:06 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2005
I do miss living downtown...
As I type it's 10:53 and I'm sitting on the 10:55 ferry heading home. What started out as a plan for a small group of colleagues to head to Ipanema (the Brazilian BBQ on 1st and University in Seattle, I've mentioned several times before) morphed into a group of 13 people descending on the place at 7pm.
Tonight they almost completely redeemed themselves from the horrible experience we had the first time we took a large group - the service was exactly as it should have been, and the quality was excellent, as always.
As I was finishing dinner someone mentioned desert and I suggested we head over to Tango for an ElDiablo - a magnificent cube of dark, rich, spicy chocolate served on a bed of caramel and fresh-made marshmallow. I guess my description convinced folks, 'cause 9 of the 13 ended up making their way to Capitol Hill where the camaraderie and carousing continued. (Like that alliteration?)
I left in time to walk the roughly 10 blocks back to the ferry in the dissipating heat (it hit 90 today - first hot day I've experienced up here - and it's still around 80 at 11pm), and got there in time to buy a ticket book and walk on.
Nights like this make me acutely aware of the tradeoff we made living on the island as opposed to downtown. I'll get home and to bed around midnight and tomorrow it's up at 6 (plus or minus 15 minutes of denial) to catch the boat back to work.
Posted by dberger at 10:53 PM | Comments (1)
MT Upgrade
Seems there was a bug in the software I use to run this blog that may have broken email notifications, but I'm not sure (since I don't get notified when I publish entries).
In any event, I've upgraded to the latest version which reports to fix that problem - so if you think I've just been silent, it may be that notifications were busted.
Posted by dberger at 6:07 PM | Comments (0)
Form an opinion, but don't make up your mind
I've been getting rather frustrated at work lately when I run into people who've made up their minds on a technical question before, it seems, they've gathered and analyzed sufficient data. Worse is when it comes out later that they've made their decisions not on knowledge, but on assumptions that could easily be demonstrated to be incorrect.
A hallmark of a good engineer is that when confronted with a problem, they immediately start to mentally solve it - making assumptions along the way. With more experience the time between hearing about a problem and having the rough draft of a solution decreases; previous similar solutions are dusted off, shaved to fit the new situation, and mentally whipped into shape.
An equally critical hallmark is that they not marry themselves to the assumptions and solution that they reached while the problem was still being described.
Good engineers re-use patterns heavily - eschewing reinvention in favor of adopting proven solutions - saving innovation for where it counts.
Continue reading "Form an opinion, but don't make up your mind"
Posted by dberger at 5:23 PM | Comments (0)
The couple that blogs together...
...probably needs to turn off the computers and talk to each other.
All cynicism aside, Dawnise has resurrected her disused LiveJournal account - you can find it here.
You won't find much activity this week, I suspect, as she's down in Southern California on business - which means I'm playing bachelor for the weekend. Not sure what I'll end up doing, but some of our neighbors are having a three day party over the long weekend, so I'll probably wander over there at some point.
Posted by dberger at 5:13 PM | Comments (3)
May 20, 2005
A Wine Tasting and Dinner
We decided to try the local Indian restaurant for dinner, and on the way stopped at the tasting going on at the local wine store.
The wine tasting was good - bought 6 bottles; two of a Muscat d'Asti that Dawnise really liked (and I found the bubbles cut some of the syrupy sweet that Muscat's can have) and 4 bottles that I found pleasant.
Dinner, unfortunately, wasn't so good. As we put it walking back to the car "We went to the local Indian place, and now we really want some good Indian food." The meal started well, with some good appetizers, but the main course was almost completely forgettable. We had a Mixed Tandoori Grill that, aside from the fresh onions and peppers, had very little flavor at all. The Chicken Vindaloo looked and tasted like it was made with a Marinara sauce, and the Paneer dish was the only one of the three that was reminiscent of actual Indian food.
The place just opened, and how long it stays open will heavily influence my opinion of the Northwestern palate.
Posted by dberger at 8:53 PM | Comments (1)
How would a "normal" Mac user handle this?
I upgraded my powerbook (yes, the one I've given up on - I still haven't found a suitable Dell to replace it with) to OS X 10.4 yesterday. Everything was fine yesterday and this morning, 'till suddenly the VPN software we use stopped working.
It complained that it's service wasn't started, so rather than trying to figure out how to restart and reload it's kernel extension, I rebooted (gracefully) to restart it.
When I logged back in, any app I tried to launch (even the terminal) crashed, immediately. And then the Apple Crash notifier crashed. And then Finder crashed.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
I was screwed.
Continue reading "How would a "normal" Mac user handle this?"
Posted by dberger at 2:40 PM | Comments (1)
May 19, 2005
All it took was $130 and a 6 month wait...
Non geeks should cover up their heads right about now...
[16:00:46] dberger@prova : ~ 502 $ /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Commands/java -version java version "1.5.0_02" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_02-56) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_02-36, mixed mode, sharing)
[16:01:12] dberger@prova : ~
503 $ uname -a
Darwin prova.local 8.1.0 Darwin Kernel Version 8.1.0: Tue May 10 18:16:08 PDT 2005; \\
root:xnu-792.1.5.obj~4/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
Posted by dberger at 4:01 PM | Comments (0)
What is up with this weather?
As I mentioned in my last post, I ran a quick errand during lunch today. At the time I left the office, the sky was an uninterrupted sea of grey cloud, and the rain was somewhere between a drizzle and actual rain.
Now, about an hour later, it's clear blue with white fluffy clouds.
go figure...
Posted by dberger at 1:18 PM | Comments (0)
New Utilikilts
Sometime last year, while still living in Southern California, my first UK started coming apart. One of the surged seams started to unravel. I contacted UK and described the problem, and they told me to take it to a reputable tailor, have it repaired, and they'd reimburse me.
Long story short, we moved, and I never did get the UK fixed. Fast forward almost a year, and I now work within 5 miles of the UK store in Seattle. So this morning I grabbed the kilt in question and during lunch I ran over to the UK store to drop it off for repair.
While there I saw their latest product - a UK made of the same sort of silky flowy material boxers shorts (not boxer shorts, but the shorts a boxer actually wears) - complete with racing stripes up the side. They have an elastic waist band, and the front panel snaps are vestigial, but it definitely looks like a UK.
No pictures on their website yet, so if you want to see (or buy) one, you'll have to find your way to their store.
Posted by dberger at 1:10 PM | Comments (1)
That Was Then, That Was Comcast
On hold with Comcast canceling our cable TV service. Dawnise and I talked about it a fair bit - and I think I've turned the TV on (to watch cable) three times since getting service established, she's done only slightly more often.
The icing on the cake was that the Comcast DVR sucks the sweat off a dead man's balls - if you've ever used a real DVR (TiVo, ReplayTV, hell, even Media Center) it's failings are painfully obvious. I thought about buying a stand-alone TiVo, but that wouldn't address the "I don't care to watch TV" part, so killing it seems the right thing to do.
We figure we'll save a non-trivial chunk of money every month, and probably bump our Netflix subscription level by a disk or two. Maybe I'll even get around to watching the season of West Wing that a friend gifted us with a year or so back...
We're keeping their high speed data service - despite the fact it's going to cost me $10 more a month without bundled TV service.
Once the Comcast/TiVo deal produces hardware we'll probably try it again.
Posted by dberger at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2005
King Rat
Finished China Mieville's King Rat the other morning on the ferry. I enjoyed it - a good story, with good texture. Not as richly imagined as some of his other work, but a good read.
A significant aspect of the story revolves around the Jungle music scene - which I'd no exposure too, so I pulled up a genre sampler in Rhapsody. Some good stuff there, interesting weaves of heavy percussion with loops sampled from just about every other genre imaginable. Not something I'm likely to listen to all day every day, but interesting.
Posted by dberger at 10:12 AM | Comments (2)
May 16, 2005
A Warmed House
The housewarming party this past Saturday went well - we had somewhere around 40 guests over the course of the day - the first arriving spot on 2:30 and the last leaving around 1 the next morning (not counting the 6 people who crashed at our place).
Many thanks to Edmond for bringing his mom's home made sausages and baklava - and to his mom for providing them - they were the culinary hits of the party.
Thanks to Brad for running home at 11pm and grabbing his projector so we could inflict Firefly on folks in the appropriate huge-screen fashion.
Thanks to everyone who attended for making the party a success - I still can't believe we ate all that chili - I thought I'd be saddled with leftovers for at least a week.
Posted by dberger at 2:40 PM | Comments (1)
May 12, 2005
Innocuous things in large numbers
I've observed in the past that a swarm of anything touches some primal fear nerve in humans. One teddy bear - cute and cuddly. 100 teddy bears - disturbing. 500 teddy bears - downright frightening.
Insects, reptiles - just about anything, no matter how non-threatening in small numbers starts to be threatening in large numbers.
I'm sure psychologists have a name for this.
There was a field trip of elementary school students on the ferry this morning - and I've decided that kids are just as disturbing and frightening (not to mention loud and annoying) in large numbers as teddy bears.
Probably just another sign that I'm not ready to have kids (well, at least not 100 of them ;)).
Posted by dberger at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)
A Kage Baker hat trick
If you've never read anything by Kage Baker, I highly recommend you check out on of the Novels of the Company. Over the last few weeks I've read two short story collections (Black Projects, White Knights, and Mother Aegypt) and her first fantasy novel (The Anvil of the World) and I give 'em all a hearty thumbs up.
Mother Aegypt actually introduces several of the characters in Anvil, and I recommend reading them in that order.
Good stuff. I'd have more to say on the subject, but my brain has pretty much taken a holiday at the moment.
I'm about half way through China Mieville's King Rat, which is nothing like Perdido Street Station (which I highly enjoyed) but is quite good in it's own right.
Posted by dberger at 12:26 AM | Comments (0)
Put a fork in me...
Woke up at 4 this morning to catch the 5:20 ferry to catch a cab to SEATAC to get on a 7:40 flight to SFO.
Sitting on the 12:15 ferry on the way home.
Not feeling too hot - I started a sore throat shortly after getting home from Atlanta on Monday.
I've got a 9am meeting tomorrow (er, today, actually), which means I'm back up at 6 to catch the ferry to work. (Assuming I don't just blow off the meeting and catch a later boat.)
I'm so done.
Posted by dberger at 12:23 AM | Comments (0)
May 8, 2005
Mother's Day in the Deep South
Thursday night I took the 5:30 boat home from work, finished gathering our luggage, and turned around and caught a boat back to Seattle, where we got in a car and departed for SEATAC.
We managed to find a fast food place still open, and grabbed a sandwich for dinner as we got on the plane. Our flight left mostly on time at 10:30, and we caught sleep in fits and starts 'till we arrived in D.C. the next morning around six o'clock. Our connecting flight to Atlanta was delayed slightly, but we still go into Atlanta around 9:30, as scheduled.
My sister and brother picked us up from the airport, and we went back to her res hall at Oglethorpe, dropped our luggage, and wandered down to a "mainstream-counter-culture-shopping-district" called Little Five Points to kill some time 'till my parents arrived.
Continue reading "Mother's Day in the Deep South"
Posted by dberger at 7:50 PM | Comments (1)
May 4, 2005
All stressed out and no-one to choke
One of our three cats has a problem using the litter box reliably. It's not a new thing - been going on for years. It causes me all manor of stress and embarrassment. I recently drew the line and bought a cage. He spent a day in it - very unhappy about the fact - and decided that we'd let him out until his next accident - at which point we'd put him back in.
He did ok for a couple days, but when I got out of the shower this morning he was back in the cage.
He was unhappy when I left the house at 7:30 - mewing pathetically.
By the time I got into the office an hour later and called home to tell Dawnise I had arrived safely he had apparently wreaked havoc on the cage, surrounding walls and himself - covering everything with a slimy mix of dry food, water, and cat litter.
So here I am, sitting at work alternating between being fuming mad at the god damn cat for making life complicated and feeling terribly guilty that Dawnise is being forced to deal with the mess alone.
Posted by dberger at 9:33 AM | Comments (0)
May 3, 2005
Visiting hours are over...
Our good friend Geoff was in town on business - on our side of the water, even - at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center down the road in Keyport. He got to the house around 4 this afternoon, and I caught an early ferry home.
We sat and chatted for a few minutes before heading out to dinner at Cafe Nola in downtown Winslow. Dinner was good - but the company really made it. He just dropped us off and left to catch the ferry to Seattle, where he's spending tonight.
The visit was way too short - and as much as we loved seeing him, we missed seeing Kathye and the kids.
In fact, we generally just miss the hell out of the whole Schemel clan.
Posted by dberger at 9:32 PM | Comments (0)
May 2, 2005
Deadwood
Got the first disc of Deadwood from Netflix the other day and decided to sit down and watch it. Aside from comments in passing from friends, I knew little about the show, but I was warned that it was vulgar and violent.
Turns out it was too vulgar for me. The story seemed promising, and the characters were interesting - but I found myself getting distracted by the language. I briefly entertained the idea of "working through it" - but I'm only willing to spent so much time watching TV, so there's gotta be return on the investment...
So I've taken the rest of the discs off my Netflix queue. 's a shame too, I could have actually been in the mood for a good western.
Next up: Dead Like Me
Posted by dberger at 10:26 PM | Comments (1)
May 1, 2005
Aladdin's Palace
We made two trips to Michael's in Silverdale yesterday. It all started innocently enough when we bought some prints by Ralph Burch (the Red Hot and Mermaid, I've got my eyes open for the other two) and needed frames for them. The prints are double matted - grey under black, so we bought some silver frames, hung them on the wall, and thought we were done.
Not so. About 2 hours after hanging them, I heard a crash - came upstairs to find that one of them had fallen off the wall and broken a glass candle holder on the way down. Inspection revealed that the frame hanging clips had broken, and inspection of the other 3 similar frames revealed that all of them were in various states of failure.
Dawnise returned the failed frames to Michael's the other day, while taking several pieces to be custom framed, but forgot to buy new ones - so we went back yesterday to rectify that.
We bought some new silver frames - of a different sort, stopped to do some other shopping, and returned home with our haul.
The prints wouldn't fit.
The frame dimensions were fine, but the frames couldn't accommodate the double-matting. So we went back to Michael's, bought new frames, tried to fit the prints before leaving the store only to discover the new frames had the same depth problem. One last look didn't find anything suitable - and neither did a trip to JoAnns around the corner.
Frustrated and hungry we decided to stop for dinner at Aladdin's Palace - a spot we'd been meaning to try for several weeks.
The initial signs weren't good - there was one other couple in the place when we were seated. We ordered some falafel as an appetizer, and we both decided on the mixed grill. The food was very good - much better than a little middle-eastern place in a small town had a right to be. We brought a good portion of our food home, and shared an Arabic coffee and Baklawa (it was spelt like that on the van, er, menu...) for desert. By the time we were done, there were two other couples in the place, and it was past closing. The only thing I can think is that we arrived late for dinner and missed the rush.
Posted by dberger at 6:55 PM | Comments (1)
Back in the saddle again...
After a few weeks of procrastination, and a few more weeks of packed weekend schedules, I've finally gotten Dawnise's bike back on the road. It didn't want to run at idle, and it stalled out at any sudden throttle. Turns out, it had a clogged pilot jet (thanks for the tip, Ed!) in one of the carbs.
What should have been a two hour job for an amateur like me (lift the tank, pull the airbox, free the carb assembly, turn it over, open the float bowls, and clean the pilot jets) turned into a four hour job when one of the float-bowl screws stripped. Off I trundled down to ACE Hardware to get some penetrating lubricant (I had a bottle of Kroil that my dad had given me when the movers made him leave it in CA and, guess what, the movers made me leave it in CA... drat) and a new philips screwdriver hoping that a virgin head would get more grip than any of my current tools.
That didn't work - so I decided to disconnect the enricher plungers so I could get the carb assembly out and work on it on a level surface. After stripped screw #2, I made a return trip to ACE and bought an extractor set (and replacement metric machine screws).
The extractors did the trick - I cleaned out both pilot jets (with old high E guitar strings - a great suggestion from my Dad), put it all back together, and it ran great.
But the tachometer wasn't working.
I found the connector that had been disconnected, removed the airbox one more time, reconnected it, and put the rest of the bike back together. I took it for a test ride down to the gas station, came back to the house and Dawnise suited up and, she on her bike and I on mine, we went out for a half-hour spin around the island. Just got back and put some food on the BBQ for dinner.
One less project on the list of to-do's.
Posted by dberger at 6:41 PM | Comments (1)