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December 29, 2005
The First Visit from the 'rents
Dawnises' folks left today after a 10 day visit. It was only slightly hampered by the fact that it rained pretty much the whole time (her dad loved it), Dawnise got sick shortly after their arrival (and is still, and still refuses to seek medical attention), and that the last two weeks have been hell on earth for me at work (I'm on a release call at 11pm tonight which will hopefully put out a number of the fires), and that we had no power on Xmas day.
It was a good visit, we enjoyed having them, and we're hopeful that a positive first experience will increase the chances that there will be repeats in the future. Perhaps when it's not raining, Dawnise isn't sick, and when I'm not completely consumed by crisis at work.
Despite the madness at work, I managed to get out of the office to meet them on the Seattle side of the ferry, help them with their bags, and see them off to the airport.
We're staying fairly low key for new years eve - heading for dinner somewhere and then watching the Space Needle fireworks display from a friends 20th floor apartment adjacent to the needle, possibly with a few friends.
Then next weekend we prep the house for the other set of 'rents.
Posted by dberger at 6:51 PM | Comments (1)
December 27, 2005
An unhealthy fascination with coffee makers
I like coffee, and even more than coffee, I like mechanisms for making coffee. It's sorta weird. In some respects I like the act of brewing coffee more than the act of consuming it.
French presses, vacuum pots, and more traditional carafes, there's something cool about coffee makers.
So when I saw this at a local upscale kitchen store (Sur La Table, in Pike Market) I knew I wanted one. I kept trying to tell Dawnise about it - and she had a pretty ho-hum reaction.
I didn't realize she was playing dumb - so I was completely surprised when it showed up as a Christmas gift. Apparently it arrived the day after I had first seen it - meaning she had already ordered it before I stumbled onto it a couple months back.
I used it the other morning - it made good coffee. It'll take a few tries to get the grind just right, and the amount of coffee, but it's definitely better than the normal drip process, and unlike my stove-top model, you don't have to watch it like a hawk.
I would like a way to tune how long it keeps the coffee boiling (and hence brewing), which seems to be the common complaint on this model.
Posted by dberger at 1:51 PM | Comments (0)
December 26, 2005
The Great Xmas Blackout of '05
My "get up and go to work" alarm woke me up at 6:15 Christmas morning. I turn it off and went back to sleep. The "get up and feed the diabetic cat" alarm on my phone went off at 7:30, at which point I wandered out into the other room, measured out Junior's food and put it in his cage with him, without so much as really noticing. A half hour later, the "mediate the diabetic cat" alarm (also on my phone) went off and I put on my glasses, walked out and tried turning on the light.
Nothing.
I quickly decided that we had lost power. I dosed the cat in the dark, and called the electric company. It turns out that there was a pretty serious wind storm on Christmas eve - enough to knock power out for some 15,000 customers in the Puget Sound area - us included.
The way I figure it, it's all my mother-in-law's fault.
Continue reading "The Great Xmas Blackout of '05"
Posted by dberger at 8:42 AM | Comments (0)
December 23, 2005
Just someone who looks like me
Damn this is a good album. And so's this (in a completely different way).
You should check 'em (both) out.
Posted by dberger at 9:43 AM | Comments (3)
December 22, 2005
Well that wasn't quite how it was supposed to go...
It seems Dawnise is really trying to re-enact our wedding.
She's sick, and running a pretty good fever.
And of course, refusing to seek medical attention. (To be fair, I'd refuse too, it's only just over 24 hours).
So we had a low-key dinner last night at the Pub with her folks, who arrived on Monday and are staying through next week.
Dinner was good (it always is) and desert was good, but it wasn't really the celebratory dinner we had planned.
Oh well, once she kicks this cold we'll try again.
Continue reading "Well that wasn't quite how it was supposed to go..."
Posted by dberger at 7:56 AM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2005
Less mud, more wood
Good to his word, John Paget and crew at Salty Dog Construction (hadda work with 'em, loved the name) finished our back deck yesterday. It promises to greatly increase the usability of our "back yard" and use of the back doors.
There's about a 12'x12' deck off the kitchen (2nd story as viewed from the back of the house) and a 16'x35-ish deck off the den at ground level. We did the final walk-over this morning, identified a few minor things they'll come back and take care of after the holidays, and handed him the final check.
Once it dries out a bit, we'll have to have a party to break it in.
Next year.... landscaping.
Posted by dberger at 9:16 AM | Comments (0)
Nine years pass in the blink of an eye
Today, at about this time, nine years ago, Dawnise and I were soaking wet, standing in a tree that had been hollowed out by a lightening strike in Muir Woods exchanging vows in front of a small audience of close friends.
The nine years since have been full of more ups than downs, more happy than sad, and only occasional moments of sheer panic.
I wouldn't trade a them for anything.
"Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love."
Happy Anniversary, beautiful.
Posted by dberger at 9:11 AM | Comments (3)
December 16, 2005
Rhapsody on Linux (and Mac)
A couple weeks ago we released a web version of Rhapsody (rhapsody.com). It doesn't offer 100% of the feature set of the Win32 thick client (no playlist management yet, no download or CD burning support) but it supports Firefox on Linux/x86, and Firefox and Safari on Mac/PPC.
I have to say, I love Rhapsody ('s one of the major reasons I work where I work), and enabling playback on my linux box, and my Powerbook, are probably the coolest thing the company has done in years...
So I'll start posting links to cool music, like this, and all you need to do to listen is sign up for a Rhapsody account. There's a free service tier that allows you to listen to 25 tracks of your choice from the collection each month, but once you've had a taste, you'll probably want to upgrade. As with anything good, the first one's free.
For our expatriated friends, sorry, it's still US only - don't blame us, blame the gorram lables.
Oh, and in case anyone else out there has trouble downloading the plugin from a 32bit Firefox running on an x86_64 linux system, override your useragent string from something like this:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050922 Fedora/1.0.7-1.1.fc4 Firefox/1.0.7
to this:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050922 Fedora/1.0.7-1.1.fc4 Firefox/1.0.7
by setting general.useragent.override. (enter about:config the the URL bar, right click, add a new String value with the aforementioned name and value).
Posted by dberger at 9:57 AM | Comments (1)
December 15, 2005
Chocolate Induced Coma
Some colleagues from San Francisco are up in Seattle this week on business, and they, Dawnise and I, and two colleagues from the Seattle office made an 8pm reservation at The Melting Pot on Queen Ann.
The food was awesome, especially the desert, and the company was terrific.
We're waiting for the midnight ferry home, both trying not to slip into a sweets-dipped-in-really-good-chocolate coma...
Yum.
Posted by dberger at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
December 11, 2005
Holiday Party, Part 2
Last night was our seventh annual cookie exchange party. We had a reasonable turnout, considering we've only been in WA for a year. About 20 people attended, with 9 varieties of cookies exchanged.
We had mulled wine, cheese, bread and various dips, and other non-cookie munchies, and folks seemed to generally enjoy themselves. Edmond's mom is up visiting from LA, and brought home-made Baklava (mmmm), which we'll be over-dosing on for weeks. Little did she know that she'd have a pre-established fan-club consisting of all the folks who attended our house warming and sampled her home-made sausages.
At the last minute, Dawinse organized a white-elephant exchange which included some very cool (but not at all white-elephanty) gifts.
We finished cleaning up and hit the sack around 1 this morning.
Posted by dberger at 6:30 PM | Comments (0)
December 9, 2005
Holiday Party, Part 1
Tonight is the company holiday party. I left work @ 4, caught the 4:40 boat home. Nise braved Friday night traffic to pick me up, and we went home to get ready. For some reason I had it in my head that we were aming for the 7:30 ferry, so we left @ 7, leaving plenty of time.
We were about two miles from the ferry when we saw the traffic coming off the ferry coming toward us. Turns out, the boat was actually at 7:10, and only by the grace of the parking gods, and the fact that I married a woman who can run in high-heeled boots, did we squeek on the boat.
And away we go...
Posted by dberger at 7:21 PM | Comments (0)
December 7, 2005
SoCal Triumph to the Rescue
I broke my motorcycle yesterday. Aside from being embarrassing, it means I have to get parts which, for a Triumph, I've learned is non-trivial in most of the country.
In fact, when I called him today I learned that my local "wrench" (Burton Motorports, great guy, recommend him) has had such a hard time reliably getting the right party in under a month that he's pretty much sworn off doing any work on a Triumph that requires Triumph parts. (So I guess I'm doing the next valve job on my RS after all...)
So I called the (excellent) shop where I bought the RS - Southern California Triumph - who seem to be one of the few shops that can reliably get parts, and identify the one you need with fidelity. The part will ship tomorrow, USPS Priority, and probably be here on Monday. Which leaves me only to figure out how to extract the busted one and put the whole thing back together.
Posted by dberger at 8:46 PM | Comments (4)
December 6, 2005
Unpleasant Surprises...
I've been sick lately, and it's been cold, so I haven't been riding the motorcycles to work lately. The other morning I noticed a small puddle of something petroleum based under the RS. When I got home from work tonight I decided to go start both bikes, just to exercise 'em.
The RS started right up, and I left it idling to warm up while I darted inside to grab the phone. When I returned, I saw a growing puddle under the bike, and quickly determined it was gasoline.
About 20 minutes later I'd pulled the rear body work off, lifted the tank and found the source of the leak. One of the two fuel feeds out of the fuel tank was loose and gas was leaking through it's threads.
Because of the shape of this particular part, and it's proximity to another feed coupling on the tank, I had to remove it's neighbor to remove it and re-tighten it from a different start position. (It's hard to explain without a picture, but trust me...)
Continue reading "Unpleasant Surprises..."
Posted by dberger at 10:30 PM | Comments (1)
December 1, 2005
Snow
I'm home today, trying to kick this cold. I'm sitting on the armchair in the front room, typing away, when I happened to look up and see snow out the front window.
In the time it took me to call to Dawnise (who was downstairs) the snow turned back into rain. She looked skeptical, 'till she looked out the window a moment later and saw... snow.
By the time she got her jacket on and stepped out onto the front step, it was back to raining.
She stood on the front porch for a few moments, indignant, before coming back inside.
It's been snowing indecisively for the last 10 minutes. They're predicting accumulation up to (drum-roll please) 1 inch.
This snow I can live with - it looks cool, makes the world pretty, and then goes away.
Posted by dberger at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)