Eric's Blog

Problem Solving

2011-09-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

So, when you come up against a problem you don't know how to solve, how much background information do you need to be confident that you can locate and understand the information needed to actually solve the problem? I'm going to use installing a SATA hard drive into one of my computers as a case in point.

I actually physically mounted the drive a few days ago, but I had forgotten what a SATA power cable looks like and consequently installed a drive without plugging it in. This morning I opened the case back up and attached the power cable. However, still no luck with the computer recognizing the drive. After reseating the cables and trying the other SATA connector on the computer's motherboard, I started looking at the OS level (Ubuntu Linux) for reasons why my drive wouldn't be recognized.

After looking at a few different forums, I saw that someone had said something about telling the BIOS to enable SATA support. So I rebooted the computer and went into the BIOS setup. Now, anyone reading this far is either saying SATA, BIOS, what are all these acronyms? Or they already know without me having to explain. So that's probably one level of knowledge that was needed to even attempt to solve this problem. However, going into the BIOS, I didn't see anything useful which led me to search for the manual for my motherboard on the internet.

I'm not sure if it amazing or predictable the number of computer component manuals that can be found on the internet. It's probably a cost saving measure for manufactures to some degree. Anyway, I'm reading along when I notice that my motherboard only supports SATA up to 1.5GHz when I installed a 3.0 GHz drive, maybe that's the problem.

So I do a little more internet research which indicates that things still should just work even if the drive can pump out data faster than the motherboard can read it. Good, no messing with jumper settings. So that was another thing I didn't know when I started trying to make my drive work, but it was a potential wild goose chase. Thankfully I recognized it as such before I started going through my boxes of random computer components looking for a jumper I no longer needed.

Back to the manual, I find the section I needed, finally, in the On Chip ATA menu, you have to set it so that both PATA (a.k.a IDE) and SATA are both supported at the same time. So there's another level of knowledge needed. I had been in the BIOS and looked at all the settings I could potentially change, but that one didn't jump out at me as the one I needed to change. Maybe it should have, after all, ATA is very similar to SATA in name. However, since it didn't, it was back to the manual for me. (And why the %*&! isn't this the default setting? The motherboard should be set to detect everything it could possibly support unless you tell it you aren't running a specific type of device.)

Back to problem solving, the ultimate issue wasn't what I expected it to be, it wasn't even the 2nd thing I looked at. On top of that, I didn't recognize the actual solution until I got more information by reading the manual. It also took a fair amount of time. I started baking a loaf of cornbread when I realized that it wasn't just a matter of poorly seated cables, and I heard the timer going off just as I was saving the BIOS settings to turn on support for both PATA and SATA at the same time, which was 40 minutes. However, I never really thought I wouldn't be able to get the drive working. I was sure I knew enough to find the solution.

I'm sure having assembled 3 computers from parts was a big part of why I felt confident I could get the new drive working, but other than checking the cables that wasn't what got the drive working. Check the cables, see if someone else had the same problem, RTFM is a pretty basic set of troubleshooting steps., but I don't think that would have been enough without a 20 year background in working on and with PCs. What makes me keep thinking about this is that there isn't one specific thing I could point to which would be the key piece of information I needed.

New Blog for 3 things learned in a day

2011-09-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Posting a month's worth of this at a time produced a "drinking from a firehose" effect.

Check it out!!

http://threethingslearned-eric.blogspot.com/

I'll try to get caught up to the current date in a few days. (While trying to avoid a "drinking from a firehose effect".)

Things learned in August, plus a little of July

2011-09-05T16:35:00.000-07:00

Aug 31

There is a book called how to read a French fry.
Loading people onto a plane at random works better than loading by blocks. (link: http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=739022568&ids=0TczsScj8VcPsIc3oNdjcOejcTb3wUcj0McjwUdyMTcPoUcPoVcPsIe3oRcz8MejcT&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod-b-ttle-4)
I had a pinhole leak in one of my pipes in the downstairs shower. (Fixed now, but I have to do something about the hole in the ceiling and the water damaged drywall.)

Aug 30

One of the arguments for cutting Pell Grants is that they just encourage colleges to raise tuition.
Viking cues (my 1st cue was a Viking, sadly lost) went out of business for a while but has reopened.
Algae that live on coral produce a chemical that effectively works as sunscreen for the coral.

Aug 29

I seem to have a slow leak above the basement shower. Need to call a plumber.
Jim Morrison’s dad commanded an aircraft carrier.
There is a Shiraz restaurant right at Hourstbourne & Shelbyville.

Aug 28

I can still brake and run an 8-ball rack.
An emperor penguin washed up in New Zeland, which is very rare last happening 44 years ago. (Said penguin is on his way back to antartica after recovering surgery to remove 3 lbs of sand from his stomach.
A school superintendentLarry Powel gave back his 267K/year salary to have more money to use for school projects.

Aug 27

DiOrio’s pizzia is tasty. (Good cheese, really liked the sauce, crust on the thin side, in between thin crust and hand tossed.)
Testor’s company was once the world leader in balsa wood use. (I bought some model paints of theirs today.)
Rafa has a book out. (My mom is already reading it.)

Aug 26

Japanese PM Naoto Kan is stepping down after 15 months on the job.
Huricane Irene may hit the Jersey Shore, among other places. (And the MTV show Jersey Shore is being called Macaroni Rascals in Japan, which has nothing to do with a hurricane.)
A bomb was detonated in the Nigerian UN building today.

Aug 25

Steve Jobs stepping down at Apple.
Object which is most probably a Jupiter mass chunk of diamond orbiting a pulsar.
Warren Buffet investing in BofA.

Aug 24

Why quilts matter should start airing on KET2 on 9/5.
Samsung Cites Kubrick's '2001' Film as Prior Art Defense Against Apple's Injunction Request. (I’m not even sure what that’s about, but I like the headline.)
Banks create money when they issue loans in a fractional reserve system. (I already knew that, but now I understand it again.)

Aug 23

Lybian rebels took control of Quadafi’s compound today.
KBR wants an employee who sued over rape to pay their $2 million court bill.
Homemade goat cheese doesn’t really taste like feta.

Aug 22

There really is head shaving organized on St. Patrick’s day under the name of St. Baldrick’s day. (I thought my nieces were making things up.)
There is also a St. Balderic who founded any abby in France in 7th century.
The method for loading by Explicit ID changed between ParAccel version 2.5 and 3.1. (Set the seed to zero, load by explicit_id, and PA will set the new seed value appropriately.)

Aug 21

There is a product known as: Castelll Morella Spanish ash coated hand poured goat cheese. (Not sure about the ash, but the rest sounds good.)
http://www.coldbacon.com/cheese.html is a repository of cheese information.
Lybian rebels have entered Tripoli.

Aug 20

Cowboys and Aliens has been a disappointment at the box office, but I enjoyed it.
Lucy Lawless got the role of Xena pretty much by accident.
There was a mathmetician, David Hilbert, whose claim to fame was leaving the 20th century a list of 23 difficult to solve problems. (Some were solved quickly, some are still worked on today.)

Aug 19

The British consul building in Kabal was attacked by gunmen.
High frequency trading requires supercomputers to look for inconsistencies in the market and exploit them. (The inconsistencies may only last for a few seconds.)
Estonia has the highest per capita wealth of the former Soviet republics.

Aug 18

A bus carrying Israelis to a resort city was attacked by gunmen today.
Nevin Shapirio claims he funneled cash, cars, and hookers to Miami college football players. (He is currently in jail for orchestrating a Ponzi scheme.)
Shawn Johnson is recovering from major knee surgery.

Aug 17

Rick Perry also does not believe in human caused climate change. (This guy is not going to be one of my favorites.)
Two guys in England got 4 years in jail for suggesting a place for people to go riot even though no one (except the police) showed up.
Monkey Picked Oolong tea tastes a lot like Iron Buddah Oolong.

Aug 16

Rick Perry called the quantitative easing policy treasonous.
China’s population now eats about 110 lbs of meat per person a year, about half of what the US population eats per person.
My parents were among the last 28000 houses to have power restored.

Aug 15

128,000 houses out of power at the worst point after the storm.
Time Warner wants to buy Insight.
There is a restaurant that serves an escargot lollipop.

Aug 14

Taggart’s Ice Cream parlor in Canton OH makes a milkshake (The Bittner) with ¾ pound of vanilla ice cream.
The guy from Hootie & The Blowfish (Darrious something) is now a country singer.
The alert siren in Hikes Point got blown down in the storm.

Aug 13

I don’t have enough flashlights.
Chatanooga billiards club is a good place to play pool.
There are over 400 Firehouse Subs locations now.

Aug 12

fg %[job #] pulls a job back into the forgeground. (The % is the key.)
Birmingham is England’s second largest city. (About 500,000 larger than Manchester.)
There is a book dedicated to competitive scrabble players. (http://www.amazon.com/Word-Freak-Heartbreak-Competitive-ScrabblePlayers/dp/0142002267)

Aug 11

The IRS is going to start collecting cost basis information from mutual fund managers.
The beginnings of trench warfare began in the US civil war.
There is a really long live version of The Chambers Brothers Time Has Come Today (http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DuHfB63ln1Ig&h=mAQCmOrK1AQA-7-PN7B1tnug6aDSfXPUUcQ7fTJo3KKyoEQ) on uTube.

Aug 10

Sarcophagus is Greek for flesh eating stone.
Myoglobin is similar to hemoglobin, but is found in the muscles. (It’s not good if found in the blood.)
Some HIV positive people have started getting tatoos (like the biohazard symbol) to advertise this fact.

Aug 9

The Fed is going to keep interest rates low for about two years.
London has brought in 10,000 police to try to prevent rioting tonight.
Swearing will allow you to keep your hand in a bucket of ice cold water than would otherwise be possible. (However, the more often you swear on a daily basis reduces this effect.)

Aug 8

The stock market had one of it’s worst days in history. (5.6 on the Dow Jones)
London is experiencing it’s worst riots in 25 years
CRPG Adict made a new post on 8/6.

Aug 7

Ip Man was a Wing Chun martial artist and instructor of Bruce Lee. (Also a very entertaining movie.)
An executor does things like cancel credit cards and collect any monies owed to the deceesed along with dividing up possesions according to the will.
The last of my barbs died while I was away this weekend.

Aug 6

There is a concoction known as stain paint.
There is a purple people bridge connecting Cincinnati to Newport.
There is a new provost at Xavier.

Aug 5

There was a celebrated sniper called California Joe during the Civil War. (Although he may have been all or mostly hype. He was discharged for poor vision and senility about a year after enlisting.)
The Mid Ohio Business Objects Users Group (MOBOUG) meets quarterly.
Teachers and Professors tend to do better with large cash gifts (better = saving instead of spending) than do most other professions.

Aug 4

About 3.5 million millionaires in the US.
Mike Tyson and Snookie rumored to be DWTS contestants.
Asian tiger mosquito probably made its way to the US in used tires.

Aug 3

Dwarf Fortress got a write up in the New York Times.
A woman in Sydney had a device removed from around her neck which may or may not have been a bomb.
HMU means Hit Me Up; texting lingo for “call me”.

Aug 2

Derby winner Ferdinand was slaughtered in Japan after failing as a stud horse.
Tesla Motors is selling a luxury EV for about 50K.
Under pressure (behind) soccer goalies tend to dive right.

Aug 1

MTV went on the air (err, cable?) on this day 30 years ago.
Fall River Manufacturing will make items out of anything from plastic, to carbon steel.
There is an awesome video of 2 chess pieces being milled on You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXUHZxweBcw&feature=related

July 31

APA anual dues are now $25 a year instead of 20.
The local NPR station airs a program from Radio Netherlands Worldwide called Earth Beat on Sunday nights. (I thought they just pulled from BBC broadcasts.)
BBC’s Nut Brown Ale is pretty tasty.

July 30

Chip was invited to Sarah & Richard’s wedding during the time I lent him my copy of The Watchmen. (Graphic novel)
Buckheads at the Gardner Lane shopping center seems to use a custom video/audio program for the restaurant. (Mostly Queen and AC/DC while we ate there today.)
The Thundercats reboot has received good reviews by friends and family.

July 29

Amy Winehouse may have died after going cold turkey.
Boehner’s debt bill got out of the house today.
Mauritian noodles look a lot like Ramen.

July 28

The Durbin ammendment of the Frank Dodd financial reform act goes into effect Oct 1 modifying the way credit card fees are charged.
There is a severe drought in the horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya), the worst in 60 years.
Glen Beck compared the Norwegian Youth Labor Party camp to the Hitler youth. (While sponsoring vacation liberty schools this summer for US children.)

Cleaning makes me tired

2011-08-23T23:05:00.001-07:00

So Caroline was over last night to help me clean, and I got very sleepy. Some of this is undoubtedly that I stayed up late the last two nights reading books online. Specifically books from http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home However, I think it's just as much that cleaning makes me sleepy.

I was buying those books through my teen years. Many of them from a small, independent bookstore near the Village 8 theater in Louisville. How can you do better than seeing a dollar movie and getting a new book all in one day? Anyway, the dollar theater is now $3 and the prospects of the dodo look better than those of independent bookstores. With Borders closing, the future of big bookstores is in doubt too, but I'm digressing. I was never able to find book 20 of this series in print in the US.

If you haven't clicked on the link above, these books are part game/part story. So with a spreadsheet instead of paper and pencil, I went through all 20 books recently. I think my nephew Blake would like these, but maybe a book that is also a game is less interesting in the era of PS3 & XBox 360. At any rate, I enjoyed going through them and finishing them up.

So back to the sleepyness. I went to bed last night about 10PM, which is very early for me. Perhaps it might be better to say I took a nap at 10PM last night since I woke up between midnight and one. That's why I'm writing a blog post at 2 in the morning now. At some point I should give some thought about going back to bed for real this time.

Busy Weekend

2011-08-02T18:38:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I saw all my nieces and nephews, all my aunts and uncles on my dad's side of the family, all my siblings, rebuilt 5.5 billion rows of data, and played APA pool for the 1st time since I moved back to Louisville.

Between all that, I'm really tired. I probably didn't get to do as much family stuff as I would have if I hadn't been working so much, but it was a good weekend.

Three Things I Learned Today

2011-07-27T18:58:00.000-07:00

Three Things I Learned Today

This was inspired by Arya’s training to be an assassin in A Song of Ice and Fire. I’m tempted to publish it online somewhere, but that also seems kind of vain. Does anyone really care what I learned today? I guess I'll find out if anyone comments.

July 15 2011

Alan Verasko now claims he is working for his father and was underpaid for his work on the crawlspace.
[jobnumber];l[linenumber] displays a page at a time when viewing Tandem spooler output.
http://wallbase.cc/start/ is a great place to look for interesting digital images.

July 16 2011

Inverted round maile becomes much more stable when you trap rings in it every so often.
Nurse Naniko is really only worth watching for the fan service scenes.
In the Philipines, a fat gecko might fetch over $1000 for use in folk medicine.

July 17 2011

Michael Pollan has a variety of tomato named after him.
The “side” of my crawlspace facing the back yard is pretty flimsy.
Zooey Deschanel sings in the new Winnie the Pooh movie.

July 18 2011

British PM wants to convene a special sitting of Parliament on Wed July 20 to issue a statement about the phone hacking scandal.
Clarks are having their last swim meet of the summer tonight.
Apparently it’s not only annoying that my gutters didn’t get put back up, it’s against the law.

July 19 2011

Cornell physicists have demonstrated a temporal cloak, which can hide short duration events from the rest of the universe. (Short is currently 110 nano seconds.)
Somewhere between 2 and 15% of women have an extra type of cone in their eyes for detecting colors.
The band Vampire Weekend was sued over their use of the photo on the album Contra.

July 20 2011

Google can detect one particular type of malware that intercepts google results and warn infected users.
Borders liquidating all stores. :-(
The Latin word for meat really means the meat of mammals and birds, which is why Catholics can eat fish on Friday. (Along with amphibians, reptiles, and insects.)

July 21 2011

Lytro is making a camera that captures enough spatial information to refocus the image at different points after the shot is taken.
Rhubarb is very sour, kind of like a sweet tart without the sweet. (Unless you dip it in sugar first.)
There is still extensive road construction on 71N in Northern KY.

July 22 2011

Oracle and Google are in court over use of Java in Android phones.
There was a terror attack in Norway
The left hand keyboard part of Break on Through is the rhythm and the right hand part tracks the lyrics.

July 23 2011

Celuose Gum is another term for wood pulp in a food label.
You can get a pretty good photo of a helicoptor at 300mm zoom.
Amy Winehouse was found dead today in London.

July 24 2011

Parent’s AC went out.
Getting off at exit 191 is a good way to get to Dan’s house in the event of bad traffic on 71/75 S.
Tilted Kilt’s Boddington’s is now functional.

July 25 2011

Parent’s replaced their AC with Bryant. (Same company that tried to sell the Fritsches on new units when they didn’t need them.)
I’ll be shooting pool with Stephen, Bobby, and Katy on Sundays at Bank Shot.
WASPI is an open source security project.

July 26 2011

It was a neighbor who complained about the weeds in my yard.
Drilling into masonry by eye to try to match previous holes is a bad idea.
The plastic things for attaching downspouts to the house must come in at least 2 different sizes. (Maybe I should have stuck to aluminium bands, but the one on the left front of the house worked so well.)

July 27

Courtny Farms discontinuing A la carte program (too error prone and time consuming)
Gallup poll shows congressional approval rating lowest ever recorded.
Running a gcc compiler on AIX might be a short term solution, but is hardly ideal since the default AIX make command doesn’t understand gcc make files.

Five Movies that Have Very Little in Common

2011-07-11T20:31:00.000-07:00

The last five movies I've seen, working forward are:

Monsters Inc. - The first time I saw it, I thought it was good, but a little sub-par for Pixar. However, watching it a second time with Blake and Regan I've decided that Pixar has nothing to be ashamed of in this film.

Kung Fu Hustle - If you don't like martial arts movies, you should stay away. However, if you do like martial arts movies you really need to check this out. The escalating weirdness straddles the line between humor and action without ever loosing its balance.

Green Lantern - Somehow they spent $200 million making this. I thought CGI had gotten cheaper. Anyway, a decent superhero flick, but if you've got a HDTV and a surround sound, you can certainly wait for the bluray.

X-Men first class - There's a lot to like here. I think there maybe should have been one fewer mutant on each side of the battle. Also, I looked up some of the characters, and the ones whose powers I thought I had seen before were relatives of those characters from earlier movies. I thought the payoff at the end of the film was the best part of the movie, and since I think the hardest thing to do when telling a story is to end it well, I think that's high praise.

Black Swan - The was without a doubt an interesting and well made film. However, the story is only shown through the eyes of one character, and you can't always trust what you see. The one thing I had heard from everyone I knew who had seen it was that it was disturbing, but it didn't really bother me. I might watch it again to see how things seen now that I know how it goes.

Rye Bread

2011-07-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

Rye Bread without caraway seeds is like Batman without Robin. Well, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight both did just fine without Robin.

Steak without potatoes. (Why does the plural of potato need an "es"?) Actually, steak is pretty tasty on its own. Sure, it's better with a potato, but it's still steak without one.

Barbie and Ken. That's no good. Toy Story III revealed that Ken is narcissistic and treacherous.

The point is, rye bread, even if it's made with 100% whole grain rye, isn't going to taste like rye bread without caraway seeds. Why is this the case? I don't know, but having made a loaf of rye bread without caraway seeds, I know it to be true.

I made a batch with caraway seeds this week, and it turned out to be one of the better breads I've baked. I'm wondering if it was because I was being too inconsistent with my treatment of my bread starter my first time around. I would feed it, then rush it back to the fridge as soon as I had made the dough. This time around I've been leaving the starter out for a full 24 hours to let the microbes really work before making dough.

I've also been trying to be more scientific in how long I give the stand mixer to use the bread hook on the dough. 4 minutes from the time the ingredients start to pull away from the side of the bowl seems to be working well. The texture of the last few loaves I've made had been very good.

At any rate, I even attempted a marbled rye this week. I mixed half the dough with 1/3 rye and the other half with 2/3 rye. The color difference was most noticible when it was first out of the oven, so I think I would save this for special ocasions. However it's nice to know that works.

Bacon without eggs...oh I give up.

Existential Sushi

2011-06-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a coworker came back from lunch talking about the happy roll, and how it had made her happy. That's when I realized that if I ever opened a sushi restaurant, I would go the opposite direction: Existential Sushi. The menu almost develops itself. The malaise roll, the boredom roll, the ennui roll, the futility roll.

Now, what actually goes into one of these rolls? Who knows, we're talking marketing at this point, not production. Additionally, decorating would be easy too. Just take some public domain images of famous essentialists, Camus, Heidegger, Sartre, and Photoshop (well Gimp, I prefer open source) in some sushi! A simple but effective way to merge the two pillars of the endevor into a common image.

Speaking of Jean-Paul Sartre, there would have to be a nausea roll, but even with this strongly themed menu, that might not be a big seller. But it did remind me of a story I was told of an unfortunate attempt to get someone to try sushi for the first time which resulted in projectile vomiting. The story was told, ironicly enough, at a sushi restaurant, so maybe this idea of an existential sushi has been bubbling up through my subsconscious for a while now just waiting for the correct overt triggers.

So there it is, my idea for a restaurant should I ever want to give up on computer programming. No stealing!

The Craft, Dog, and the Tipping Point

2011-06-13T13:35:00.000-07:00

I went to Dayton for the first time since Feb, and had a good trip. I got caught in traffic Saturday morning heading up, but I left early enough that it was probably a wash between heading straight up 71/75 and taking 275 around. That road is a complete mess right now. They've got it torn up to the point that you can only use one lane, and even that gets blocked sometimes to let construction equipment onto the road. On the drive I listened to The Tipping Point, and that book is really fascinating. For example, if you want to found your own army, organize the men into fighting units of no more than 150 men, otherwise you'll have discipline problems.

Suzanne and Jon have been watching episodes of Dog the Bounty Hunter, and that's interesting for different reasons. I would have never guessed at how much help they get from the friends of the fugitive. The "wisdom" of Dog is usually enough to make you laugh more than once an episode, so the show is pretty easy to watch. I took pictures of Abby, and I think I converted Suzanne to Gimp over Photoshop. (Gimp does have the advantage of being free.) I even learned about the red eye reduction tool when Suzanne asked about it. I haven't been zapping red eye in my photo editing, but I guess I don't have an excuse not to now.

Chip and I completed a minor woodworking project; I needed a new flap to cover the crawlspace on an addition to my house. I wanted something more sophisticated than a sheet of plywood, and the final result ended up looking almost impressive. Now I just need to get it painted and put in place. We also watched The Craft, yes it's kind of cheesy, but it's also the style of movie I enjoy. It kind of freaked me out how much Robin Tunney http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000677/ looks like Kristen Stewart http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0829576/. It's really surprising that I had never seen that before. Also ironic was the use of of the theme song from Charmed in this movie. (However, since this movie predates Charmed by 2 years, it would be more accurate to say that it's ironic that Charmed picked a song used in this movie for their theme song.)

Finally, I stopped by Michele and Dan's on the way home. Karina was completely wild. I did get to see Ethan take 2 steps. (One step on 2 different occasions.) She introduced Ethan after Thomas and Percy the trains and a toy airplane, however, that's more credit than he usually gets from Karina. She probably spent a good half an hour or more spinning in circles and talking about the need to spin faster and faster in musical terms. She also told me Pluto is a dwarf planet and repeatedly made use of the word Gondola as a synonym for boat.

What if the Lord of the Rings movies had been cast like Tarintino films?

2011-05-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

I first thought of what the movies would have been like if Samuel L. Jackson had been given the role of Gandalf.

Gandalf [facing the balrog]: You shall not pass mother...

So (not that the Tolkein estate would ever allow a travesty like this to come to pass) here's my casting proposal:

Gandalf: Samuel L Jackson
Saruman: Ving Rhames
Elrond: Christopher Walken
Galadriel: Uma Thurman
Aragorn: Bruce Willis
Boromir: John Travolta
Legolas: Brad Pitt
Gimli: Kurt Russel
Eomer: Tim Roth
Eowyn: Daryl Hannah
Faramir: Michael Madsen
Denethor: Harvey Keitel
Arwen: Rose McGowan

Priceless gem found while cleaning up last night

2011-03-25T08:16:00.000-07:00

Lest anyone start casing my house and contacting disreputable pawn brokers, the gem in question is a TV preview DVD put out by Warner Brothers for the fall 2005 season. What makes this so priceless, well I'll get to that. Caroline made the good call to check out the contents.

Close to Home - Looks like a Cold Case variant, except the main character is trying to solve suburban crimes. Looked bland but tolerable. Wait, this aired on CBS??
E-ring - Starred the late Dennis Hopper, probably the best thing it had going for it. Plot was something about how the people working in a certain section of the Pentagon protect the world. What's going on here, this show aired on NBC???
Freddie - Irresponsible guy tracks his family down and has his sister & grandmother mother move in with him. Caroline actually saw this in Costa Rica, I may vaguely remember adds for this from '05, but it looked really bad. This aired on ABC, what's going on at the WB's marketing department????
Hot Properties - I don't think the term cougar had made it into widespread use yet, but that's the only recollection I have of this preview, and I just watched it last night. What in the world, this aired on ABC too????? (Surely the next show will be a WB show.)
Invasion - I actually remember the ads for this. Aliens take advantage of a hurricane to body snatch a local woman and the only people who notice are her young daughter and a couple of crackpots. I don't think the show lasted long, and it's...another ABC offering??????
Supernatural - Finally, I know this is a WB show, I've heard of and remember the previews for. I've only ever watched one episode, but this may be the only show on the disc that didn't die a quick and overlooked death.
Reunion - The gimick, a bunch of perfect looking friends turn out to be not so perfect. You find out how one year at a time. I bet the makeup department was sweating that one, fortunately, I don't think they had to worry about that for long. #*&^%& this is a Fox show!!!!
Related - Looks like an attempt to recreate friends, except instead of 6 friends you have 4 sisters. I think I remember ads for this back in the day too. Finally another WB show.
Just Legal - The only person an 18 year old who has already passed the bar can get to hire him is a burned out drunk of a lawyer. I remember the ads for this one too, but I don't think it lasted long either. At least is was another WB show.
Twins - It had one of the Rosanne kids on it, and oh my, did it look awful!!! It's a WB show, but wow, who in the world ever green lit this. The Rosanne kid is the smart responsible one running the family business, and her twin is blonde and vapid. Oh yeah, Melanie Griffith is the mom after she looks all weird from too much plastic surgery. It's another WB show, but maybe they should have left this one out.
The War at Home - I've actually seen an episode or two of this. It wasn't bad, and it might have lasted for more than a season, but it's a Fox show. What's up with this WB promo??????

Seriously Warner Brothers, you put out a fall preview disc, and only 4 of the 11 previews are your own shows. what were you thinking???? I don't even remember how this ended up in my possesion, but 5 and a half years later, it provided quite a bit of unintended comedy.

My Life in Concerts

2011-03-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not a huge concert goer, so here's a quick list.

38 Special - KY State Fair
Bad Company (w/o Paul Rogers) - KY State Fair
The Violent Femmes (College)
The Moody Blues - Jacksonville
Jethro Tull - Jacksonville
The Moody Blues - Jacksonville (yes again)
The Moody Blues - Jacksonville (yes again)
Queen plus Paul Rogers - Jacksonville (closes a circle of irony with Bad Co at the state fair)
The Police - Wrigley Field
The Moody Blues - Southern Indiana (yes, yet again)
Lady Gaga - Louisville, won tickets at work

So, one thing that should be immediately apparent is that I really haven't seen bands playing in their heyday. Many of my favorite bands, The Doors, Hendrix, The Rolling Stones had members die before I was born. Others like, Led Zeppelin and The Who had members die before I was a teenager.

A side effect of this, the crowd at The Lady Gaga concert was more energetic than any I have been to so far. There were a lot more women in their thirties than I would have expected. The number of mothers their with either their daughters or a group of teens was about what I would have expected. The number of women in the 30's or 40's in the crowd was really quite surprising.

At other concerts I've been to, being dressed up was owning one of the band's t-shirt or a tie-die shirt. At this concert, fishnets and heels were nearly ubiquitous, even among guys in the crowd. Frilly little tutu things were also popular as was face paint and caution tape worn as clothing. Then there were some more exotic costumes elaborate costumes that mimicked something Lady Gaga had worn at shows or in videos.

This was also by far the biggest production at a concert I've been to. This is the only one with props, fire effects, costume changes, and dancers. Actually, there were multiple stage changes where the entire set of props in use changed.

My biggest fear was that Gaga would just phone in a performance since this was just Louisville, but she was high energy from start to finish, still jumping up and down during the 2nd encore. She was also good at getting audience participation, however, I have to confess, the Gaga claw as a form of crowd participation still mystifies me even after having seen the show. Still, the bottom line was that I was entertained. I'm glad I won the tickets and went to the show.

Childlike happiness

2011-03-10T20:54:00.000-08:00

Caroline showed me this link this week:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple

I especially like the 4 panels where the main character is happy with his purchase. The way he carries around his iPride remind me of the way my nephew Blake carried around a toy that was called Kasey the Kinderbot, or something like that. He was too young to understand most of the educational games, but he loved the idea of having a robot friend. He carried it around with him and took it to bed much like the character in the comic.

Now, the cartoon's happiness soon vanishes into a spiral of foolish materialism. However, I keep wondering what it is about kids that they can be so happy with either a favorite toy, or just playing that we seem to loose as we grow up.

Kids and To-do lists

2011-02-03T16:52:00.000-08:00

I watched my sister Michele's kids last Sunday afternoon. My nieces took to the idea of a to-do list for the visit when I suggested it. Blake kind of came up with an implicit to-do list of play video games and read about video games on the web.

Here's Taylor's list:

Paint
Play Rock Band 1 (because we haven't played that one in a really long time)
~~Bounce on the ball~~ (a big red exercise ball)
Play chess
~~Practice Karate kicks and chops~~

Lauren's:

~~Eat candy cane~~
~~Color pictures~~
~~Help Eric do chores~~
~~Play Lego Rock Band~~
~~Eat rest of candy cane~~ (added after she decided she wouldn't eat the candy cane all at once)
~~Eat fancy chocolate now~~ (as in, before lunch and not for desert)
~~Eat lunch~~
~~Do Karate punches~~
~~Bounce on ball~~ (the ball was popular)
~~Help Ma do chores~~

Regan's

~~Help Eric do chores~~
~~Color pictures for Ma~~
~~Draw weird pictures~~
~~Eat lunch~~
~~Do Karate kicks~~
~~Do Karate punches~~ (she scared Lauren & Taylor with her kicks & punches)
Play Lego Rock Band
~~Eat fancy chocolate for desert~~
~~Bounce on big red ball~~ (I told you the ball was popular)
Help Ma do chores

There are some interesting differences. Taylor's list was the shortest, and she was the least interested in keeping the list up to date. For example, she did paint a picture of her suffed dog Mojo, but didn't mark that item off her list.

Regan was most concerned with accuracy. For example, she didn't mark off Rock Band even though we decided we didn't have time for it.

Lauren on the other hand was most concerned with making sure everything was scratched off the list. To this end she, marked off Rock Band once we decided we didn't have time to play, marked off Help ma with chores when she left my house, and marked eat lunch when I started cooking it.

One thing I thought was interesting was how Lauren and Regan mixed fun with work on their lists. Arguably, Taylor's list and Blake's implied list are nothing but fun. I don't think most adults would approach their to do lists that way, but maybe we should. To that end, my list for the weekend will include the following:

Do taxes
Watch Superbowl

Time is a funny thing.

2010-12-05T07:21:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, Lauren and Taylor turned 7. When they were born, I was working in Jacksonville at Blue cross. I didn't get to see them until Christmas, and I had never seen babies so tiny. They were both probably in the 4, maybe 5 pound range.

I like to tell this story, but my co-workers in Jacksonville wanted to see pictures of the twins. I had one with Michele, Suzanne, and Caroline all in the picture with Lauren and Taylor. One asked which of my sisters was the mother. Ironically, I think that was probably another Lauren Elizabeth who asked that question. Another, Robbin Thomas, didn't let me answer, she said, "Oh that's easy. She's the one who looks tired." (I wish I had a digital version of that photo to attach.) All that would have been December of 2003 and the first week of January 2004.

When I moved back to Louisville in 2007, the twins would have just turned 3. In that time, I would have left Blue Cross to take a job at another company, been laid off from that job, and found a job in Louisville so that I could move back home. Also, when I moved back home, Regan was 5, and Blake was 7, the same age the twins are now. Furthermore, Karina, Ethan, and Abby had yet to be born.

Oh well, I guess that's enough musing on time for now.

Transcript of a saved message on my phone

2010-11-21T19:53:00.000-08:00

Michele) Say it's Taylor.

Taylor) Uncle Eric, it's Taylor

Taylor) It's TAY-lor!

Michele) Is he there?

Michele) Are you talking to him?

Mom) Are you talking to Uncle Eric?

Michele) Hello

Michele) You might have gotten his answering machine.

I love this! I have to make sure I don't delete it accidentally.

Regan the Storyteller

2010-09-22T08:42:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, there were pigs who said: “Oink, oink.” They had names. The first little pig was called Taylor, the second one was called Lauren, and the third one was Regan. One day their mother sent them out to build their own houses. The first pig, Taylor, made her house out of straw. The second pig, Lauren, made her house out of sticks. The third pig, Regan, made her house out of bricks.

One morning the big bad wolf came to town. He was looking for pigs to eat, and he came to the first little pig’s house. He said, “Little pig, little pig, won’t you let me come in?”

And the pig said, “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.”

Then the wolf said, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I will blow your house in.” Then Taylor’s house blew down because it was made of straw. She ran to the second pig’s house.

The big bad wolf came and said, “Little pigs, little pigs, won’t you let me come in?”

Then Lauren and Taylor said, “Not by the hair of our chinny chin chins.”

Then the big bad wolf said, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in.”

Lauren’s house was made out of sticks, so the big bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew the house in. Lauren and Taylor ran to the third pig’s house.

Regan told Lauren and Taylor to come in when they got there.

Then the big bad wolf showed up. He said, “Little pigs, little pigs, won’t you let me come in?”

“Not by the hair of our chinny chin chins.” The three pigs said.

The big bad wolf said, “Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in.”

He huffed and he puffed but he couldn’t blow the house made of bricks in. He had to come up with another plan to get in. He climbed up on the roof and tried to go down the chimney, but the pigs heard a noise.

The big bad wolf did not know that they put a big pot under the chimney, there was water in the pot, and a fire was burning under the pot. When the big bad wolf got in the house he landed in the pot. Then he flew out of the pot, and his tail was burnt.

The big bad wolf had to go to the Dr. Wolf. Then another wolf was making a robot wolf, and it said, “Little pigs, little pigs, tomorrow lets go to the apple tree to pick some apples.” It was just what the new wolf wanted his robot wolf to say.

The new wolf told the little pigs let’s go at eight AM to the apple tree. The pigs got up early, and they went to the apple tree and picked some apples. Then they went back home. A while later the new wolf showed up at Regan’s brick house to get the pigs to pick apples with him.

The pigs said, “We already picked some apples.”

Then the new wolf said, “What! How could you do that so fast?”

The robot wolf tried to punch down the brick wall, but it was too strong and the robot wolf fell apart. The robot wolf looked at the wall before he fell apart and said, “How did a pig make such a strong wall?” Then he fell completely apart.

The new wolf was upset that his robot fell apart.

The End

I found this on one of my USB drives while I was trying to free up space on it. It ends kind of abruptly, but I love the inclusion of the robot in what started out as a traditional Three Little Pigs Story.

WoW vs Other Computer RPGs

2010-09-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

This is the second time this has happened to me. I'm currently playing Dragon Age Origins, and it's making me want to start playing World of Warcraft again. The sad thing is, it's not the multi-player aspect that makes me want to jump back in, it's the loot. The other time this happened was with Dungeon Siege. That one did make me jump back into the WoW world.

Ironically, it's the non-linear nature of Dragon Age that makes me frustrated with the loot you find. There are 7 tiers of material in the game. For the first 2/3 of the game, finding a weapon made out of the 6th tier material would be a big deal. Shops don't carry them, so for the most part you have to get them as quest items. That's fine. The problem is, late in the game, hired goons are running around armed with gobs of them. It's absurd. Another problem is that a tier 1 item with a +2 bonus to armor well might be more protective than stuff made out of the top end materials, yet I don't find the good stuff with the same sort of bonuses. It just feels wrong to have your max level character wearing unfinished light leather gloves because they provide better protection than massive dragon bone gauntlets.

Which gets me to another issue, the strength based requirement to wear different quality levels of armor is very annoying. WoW has a game mechanic that lets you wear anything you get as a reward for a quest. Sure, you might need to enlist some aid to finish a difficult quest, but once you're done you can automatically use your reward. What kind of game design is it to give a quest item that the player won't be able to wear until they level up 4 times? I also dislike the design decision to make the very best items in the game expensive shop items instead of quest rewards. I don't even want to talk about the economics of this game.

A large part of the fun of computer RPGs is decking your character out in increasingly better gear. Each item might only make a tiny difference, but those tiny differences add up by the time you've replaced every single item your character is using. It's a design mistake not to allow the player several opportunities to upgrade gear over the course of a game.

The long lifespan of a MMORPG is going to give the programmers far more time and resources to polish the mechanics of their game than the developers of a stand alone game will ever have. However they need to at least make them smooth enough so that when someone decides to play one, it doesn't drive them away from single player games back into the multi player ones.

Now from my post, you might think I didn't enjoy Dragon Age. That's actually far from the case. I love the game. I'm nearly done with my second play through. The story is awesome, but some of the mechanics and design decisions have made me want to play WoW again.

Visual C++ and Googletest

2010-08-14T11:23:00.000-07:00

This post will probably only be of interest to Chip, but I'm writing it anyway.

First step was to download my software packages. I got visual C++ 2010 from http://www.microsoft.com/express/Windows/. Then I got the version 1.5 zip of Googletest from http://code.google.com/p/googletest/downloads/list.
Visual C++ installed without a hitch, although there is a mandatory reboot required by the install. Googletest doesn't even require an install, you just unzip the package and stick it somewhere.
Looking for a pattern to follow, I found http://www.freshclickmedia.com/blog/2009/10/getting-started-with-googletest-the-google-c-testing-framework/. This is a short video, and being a video is both it's greatest strength and weakness. If you use it, you'll probably be rewinding a lot and cursing the inability to cut and paste. However, watching someone clicking on the interface is very useful. This really covers everything you need to get up and running, but you have to play close attention. I cost myself some time searching for files that were pointed out in the video by not rewinding far enough.
The fist step is to compile the vcpp version of Googletest. The google example was probably built as a vcpp 2008 project because my version told me I needed to convert the project. At first the conversion failed because the project was read-only. I figured that I had the original zip, so it wouldn't hurt to make these files read/write. After I did this the project built without any issues.
There are two "gotchas" I missed the first time through. The first is the runtime library. Multi-threaded debug and multi-threaded debug dll are not the same thing. There is a warning about linker errors if you get these wrong, but the warning in the video isn't really stern enough. The other is that the 2 libraries built when you compile Googletest ~\msvc\gtest\Debug where ~ is wherever you unzipped Googletest. This is the part where I didn't rewind far enough and had to hunt for these files.
I started a new console project. You need to add the two libraries, gtest_maind and gtestd to Configuration Properties | Linker | Input.
Next, under Configuration Properties | c/c++ | General, add the ~\googletest\include to Addition Include Directories.
Time for the second issue I ran into, I didn't set Configuration Properties | c/c++ | Code Generation to Multi-threaded Debug (/MTd). The default is Multi-threaded Debug DLL (/MDd) which is very similar looking, but not quite the same.
I've seen a few ways to include the tests. The one that seems the most intuitive to me is to set up a header file which declares a test class and has the constructor, destructor, SetUp, and TearDown methods. This creates a class which can be used as a test suite. The easiest way to get started is to paste in some boiler plate code from http://code.google.com/p/googletest/wiki/GoogleTestPrimer.
The actual tests go into a cpp file with the same name as the header. Here is a simple test set up by the TEST_F Macro: TEST_F (SimpleTest,DemoTest1) { ASSERT_EQ(1,1); }
Two lines of code go into the main function to cause the tests to run:
::testing::InitGoogleTest(&argc, argv);
return RUN_ALL_TESTS();
One thing I like about this is that you just tell it to run all tests, you don't have to list each test suite you created. For my simple, just get it running, project, this doesn't matter, but for a large project, automatic inclusion seems like a very nice feature.
My first try was a complete loss because of the run time library mistake I made. My second try, I realized my mistake and I got to see the test results pop up at the end of my run.

Books I've Decided I Need to Read

2010-08-09T16:13:00.000-07:00

After going through several lists of top 100 books, I decided that there are some things I need to read that I haven't. In no particular order.

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand When I told someone at work about my lists, he had only two. This was one of them. I do remember from high school that the person who read this when we each picked a different book from a list enjoyed it.
Illusions - Richard Bach This was the other book that the guy from work would have put on his list. Atlas Shrugged would have probably ended up on my list without his recommendation; this would not have. (In fact, I wouldn't have even known about it.)
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee My English class never read this, but the people in the classes that did liked it. On the theory that high school students don't like anything I need to read this.
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller This book has spawned an English phrase and I think I'd like it for the irony contained within it.
The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger See the comments for To Kill a Mockingbird
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut I thought I had read a Vonnegut short story or two, but when I checked on the Internet, the story I was thinking of was by a different author.
The Godfather - Mario Puzo My dad doesn't read many books, but my mom said he stayed up all night reading this one.
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett I keep coming across the phrase "hard boiled" when I look for reasons to read this.
Kidnapped - Robert Lewis Stephenson I bought this thinking it would be good to read a classic. I need to make myself read it and decide if I was correct.
The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer I got this one from a pile that was otherwise headed to Half Price Books. This has some of the appeal of The Odyssey (although not nearly as old) in that people are still reading it many centuries after it was written.
Le Morte de Arthur - Sir Thomas Malory I've read several versions of Arthurian legends, but I'm fairly certain that I haven't read this collection.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain This is mainly on the list because I feel the need to include a uniquely American writer.

In addition to books I have never read, I decided I need to re-read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and A Wrinkle in Time while composing my book lists.

Books (I Think) Everyone Should Read Part II

2010-08-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

Last time I published the books that didn't fit onto my should read list for one reason or another. This list is the 10 books I would say everyone should read.

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley This book is embedded in our culture mainly through movies. You could argue that Dracula is as well, but I think this book has more universal appeal with the theme of there are some things man was just not meant to know.
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift Gulliver's first journey to the land of the Lilliput gave us a word, Lilliputian. If giving us a word and providing iconic images of a man tied down by thousands of strings isn't enough, the satire in all four is still valid today. We've still got countries going to war over things just as foolish as which end of the egg to open. Also, it was someone who was not at all familiar with this book that got me thinking about a must read list.
The Oddessy of Homer The fact that people are still reading this after over 2000 years speaks for itself. I think this is the more readable of the first part of the story, the Illiad. You couldn't go wrong reading any of the major classic epics, but I think this one is a must read.
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle How can you not put a book on the list which starts with: "It was a dark and stormy night." Many books have stories about a secret struggle between good and evil, The Dark Is Rising comes to mind, but I think that this is a particularly well written one. It was also the first book I ever read that used a four dimensional construct known as a tesseract . Traveling through one is the namesake wrinkle.
A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin Long before J. K. Rowling had ever gone into the coffee shop to write about Harry Potter, Le Guin wrote this book to answer the question: Where do wizards come from. When I was in second grade, this book was featured in a Reading Rainbow type show. Several of the boys in the class with me had been excited by the excerpt of the book which featured the Wizard's battle with a family of hatching dragons. We worked out a plan to get a copy of the book and the order in which we would read it. As far as I know, I'm the only one who ever got a hold of the book and read it. Rereading the book as an adult, I realized I that I had absorbed much of the philosophy of the book without even realizing it.
Dune - Frank Herbert I've lost track of the number of times I've read this book. There are so many ideas contained in it. Politics, religion, planning, revenge, loyalty, hero worship, human thought vs. thinking machines, ecology. Forget the David Lynch movie, this is one of the finest books ever written.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Usually I don't want too much humor in my novels, but this is an exception. In what other book can you learn the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley In some ways, I feel like we're living in the dystopian world predicted by this novel. It's amazing that it was written in the 1930's, it feels like a book that could have been written today.
Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein I know this is a trilogy, but that's because the publisher wouldn't put it out as a single volume. There is probably a big section at your favorite bookstore that wouldn't exist if Tolkein hadn't written this tale of middle earth. While it is a work of fiction, the world of Middle Earth is so well thought out, it reads like a history of another world. While inventing languages for the people of world to speak isn't a prerequisite for great literature, it does add something to this story.
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll This is another story with imagery embedded into the culture. The rabbit in a waist coat, the Cheshire cat, and little bits of food and drink with the labels eat me and drink me should be familiar to everyone.

One thing that struck me after I had assembled this list is how many of the must reads I've picked are often put in the young readers section of a bookstore.

Books (I Think) Everyone Should Read Part I

2010-08-04T19:16:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start of with books that didn't make the list. I was going to create a top 10 list, and promptly put 20 items on it. I'm not even going to start on books that I think are excellent, but lack some feature of universal appeal.

So, in short, while you should read these, I've got another list of books that I think are more deserving of being read.

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card If two alien races meet but cannot communicate, is one fated to exterminate the other? To what limits can you go to defend your entire species? This would probably be the first novel to move up to the main list if I expanded to 11, but I think this lacks just a touch of universal appeal.
Aesop's Fables - Not on the list because it's not a novel, but everyone should be able to come up several fables off the top of their head. "Grasp at the shadow and loose the substance", "Try to please everyone and you'll end up pleasing no one", "sour grapes", "slow and steady wins the race"
Grimm's Fairy Tales - See above, everyone should be able to come up with several Fairy Tales off the top of their head too.
1001 Nights - Again, not a novel and not as familiar to Western culture as the first two, but still full of stories people are familiar with.
Neuromancer - William Gibson A novel about crime, drug abuse, artificial intelligence, and great wealth. Apart from that, it essentially launched an entire sub-genre of fiction, cyberpunk. It's amazing to think that this book was written before the 90's internet boom.
Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson If Neuromancer is a book about the age of computers, this is a book about the age of nanotechnology. In this novel, diamond is literally cheaper than glass. Carbon atoms are lined up in the proper pattern by a fabricator to make diamond, but glass requires someone heating up sand in a fire. This novel raises questions of society, culture, education, and what it means to be a parent.
Little House on the Prairie - There is so much science fiction on my list, I thought for a long time on something to balance it. I think this is a good choice. Everyone probably knows the title of the book from the Michael Landon TV Show, and it's an interesting slice of life from 140 years ago.
Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein First, forget everything and anything you might know about the Paul Verhoeven movie. In some ways, this is not on the main list because it is more political manifesto than space opera, and in other ways because the solution to organizing a society can't be as easy as Heinlein makes it out to be. However, reading this book will make you think.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick First of all, this is the book that inspired the movie Bladerunner. Second, it's the only book on my list that thinks about the question of how our relationship (after we've nuked the vast majority of them to extinction) with animals separates humans from androids, unless of course, the android hunting Deckard, who is very fond of his electric sheep, is an android himself.
The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan - This non fiction, but you'll never look at a chicken nugget or think about a feed lot or a corn farm the same as you did before reading this book.

Moody Blues Concert

2010-06-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

I went to see this at the outdoor stadium at the riverboat casino in Southern Indiana. It was a little bit warm and bright at the start of the night, but the sun set shortly after we arrived and the night was really comfortable.

It looked like some people in the audience were trying to relive Woodstock, but I had fun. It was the 4th time I had seen them play live. Here's a review of the concert I found online.

http://www.louisville.com/content/moody-blues-leave-no-doubt-they-are-singers-rock-and-roll-band-music

Chess, Africa & a Wedding

2010-06-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

I played in the KY Open chess tournament last weekend. I ate some good food downtown, Bearno's by the bridge, Z's Fusion, and Cunningham's. Laura's husband Dallas was working at Z's when I stopped in. That was the best meal of the weekend. I got a chicken stir-fry, but the vegetables tasted like they had been grilled first. The fish sandwich at Cunningham's for lunch Sunday was quite tasty as well.

The chess on the other hand was not good. The two games I won I should have lost, but held on and fought back. I lost the best game I played, then in the final round, I accidentally picked up my d pawn instead of my c pawn on the 2nd move of the game. It didn't cost me the game, but I wasn't playing the variation I wanted to play. In the end, I won 2 games out of 5 and beat the people ranked lower than me and lost to the ones ranked higher.

My cousin David went to Senegal and my friend Chip is headed to Kenya. Chip is probably about halfway through the 29 hour trip to Kenya. They're going to be on opposite sides of the continent, but it's unusual to have two people I know in Africa at the same time.

Finally, my cousin Kim got married last night. St. Brigid really isn't far from my old house on Oak St. The reception was at the Olmstead. The reception was very nice and I got to see a lot of family that I hadn't seen in a while. Also, I got to see Jessica's daughter Tess for the first time. As Emily's husband Brian said, if Max could get through the reception without busting his head open and if I could avoid a stomach flu the next day, it would be a successful reception. After Laura's (Kim's older sister) reception I picked up a stomach flu that had torn through the Clarks during the week leading up to Laura's wedding. That was one of the worst 12 hours of my life.

Lisbon Day 3

2010-05-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

10-22-2009
We went back to the hotel after breakfast, but we didn't get as lucky with the TV as we had the day before. We got a Simply Red top 10 video countdown, only in Europe. Then we got the same geezers behaving badly show. We ended up watching the news and saw how some robber had prayed with the woman he was robbing before he turned himself in. We stayed in the hotel because we were going to need to check out and didn't have any really concrete plans for the day. We left our luggage at the hotel, but they really didn't have a luggage room. We were a little nervous about leaving it just sitting under the stairwell by the check-in desk, but we couldn't very well lug it all over town. We stopped by the Internet cafe after checking out, then headed into Lisbon for our last day here.

We walked back to the main square, and there was some sort of soccer festival going on there. The main portion of the square was packed, and there were team and national tents and booths set up. One of the British teams was doing some sort of chant, and it looked like the police broke up a minor scuffle elsewhere in the plaza. We walked to see some of the public monuments, which took us through the heard of the modern business district. After we ate lunch, we found an English language bookstore. It wasn't what I had expected, but perhaps it should have been. It really catered to the students reading English language books for classes. I found two books that I bought. One was a dictionary of mythology and the other was the start of a Robbin Hobb series I hadn't picked up yet.

From there, we took a shortcut to the botanical garden and the Lisbon Basilica. After getting thoroughly lost on our first outing, taking a shortcut from the bookstore to our next destination was something of a triumph. I know a basilica is the highest designation for a Catholic church, but after some of the churches we saw this trip, this seemed modest by comparison.

We used one of our last two metro rides to get back to Intendente station. Michele had trouble with getting her ticket to be recognized as valid. We went to information, and they showed it had the two rides we thought it should have. One of the metro workers had to fiddle with her card to get it to scan. I had put my card in the back cover of one of my books, so I was able to enter and exit the metro just by setting my book atop the scanner. I almost looked like a native navigating the metro. Another metro worker had to fiddle with Michele's card again, but this time I saw how they bent the card to get it recognized.

The station turned out to have one last surprise for us. There were, we though, two ways to exit the metro, and it seemed to me like we usually picked the one further from the hotel no mater what we tried. It turned out that there was yet a third exit that we hadn't even noticed before on our trips to and from the hotel. I picked up a Lisbon shot glass and a little writing pad and pen so I could write down some notes on the trip during the flight home.

We snacked at the cafe to rest after a long day of walking around town. It had taken half an hour to take the metro back to Intendente from where we had ended up in the city. We got sweets and soup for our final meal in Portugal. We had plenty of time to kill at the bus station, but we had gotten tired of sitting in the cafe. By getting there early, we had an unusual experience at the bus station. A guy said something in Portuguese to us, and when I said English he ended up asking for money in English, which turned out to be quite good. He said he was homeless and wanted to get a sandwich. I pulled out a single 50 cent piece first, and I didn't think that was really enough money to be helpful. I reached in again and came out with a 2 euro piece. That was more than I had planned on giving him, but at that point I thought it would be rude to put it back in my pocket. He was genuinely surprised and said, "Wow! Thank you." I'd have just bought a half liter of coke with it from an airport vending machine, so it probably did him more good than me.

The overnight bus ride back to Madrid was a strange one. When we crossed the border, Spanish police boarded the bus and checked every one's documents. They pulled three people off the bus, but one got back on. Michele thought she understood enough Spanish to gather that two of the people were from Africa, but had no documents. When one of the police told one of them that he couldn't go to Madrid, he responded that he would go to Barcelona instead. The police laughed and said something like, "Madrid, Barcelona, it doesn't matter. You can't stay in Spain at all."

Then at the first stop for a meal, two girls who looked like they were Japanese tried to get back on the bus shortly after we stopped and the bus driver got really mad at them. I was a little bit afraid that the bus driver would leave people behind from the stop. They sat with us for a little while and we talked a bit in English. We couldn't figure out what they had done to make the bus driver so mad. Despite the strange events of this bus ride, we were back in Madrid that morning. Michele and I split up on the Metro. I headed to the airport and she headed back to the hotel at the Plaza Mayor.

It was a really good trip, but there are three things I would have done differently.

I would have paid more attention to the little warning light on the camera for blurry pictures. Seeing some of the blurry pictures next to ones that came out crystal clear made me sad.
I would have waited to get more cash until we were in Villanueva. We had plenty of cash for the trip and I'd still have my backpack if I'd have done that.
I'd have flown out of Lisbon. Flying into Barcelona would have made it difficult to meet up with Caroline, but the amount of time we spent on buses would make me plan a second trip to Europe differently.

Lisbon Day 2

2010-04-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

10-21-2009

Michele and I had stayed inside the big cities except for when we were in Villanueva with Caroline, so we decided to take a day trip on this day. Our choices were Mafra and Sintra. We chose Mafra because the bus to Mafra was just outside the metro station. We weren't sure where we would need to catch the bus to Sintra. We finally found one of the green busses we were looking for. We asked a driver if we were at the stop, but we were actually in the area where busses parked when not in use. He gave us directions to the actual stop in English. His English wasn't great, but it was understandable and enough to get us where we needed to go. This illustrates another way Lisboa was more accessible to Americans than just the food. English is more often understood and spoken here than in Spain.

It took about an hour and a half to get to Mafra on the bus. One thing I saw along the way that I'm curious about was the three bladed wind turbines. I wonder how much power those put out when they're spinning at 20 RPM. I looked around online a bit, but couldn't come up with anything conclusive.

Mafra is the site of a hunting palace for King Juan the something. (I looked it up online and it's Juan V.) I don't have access to my vacation photos since I'm typing this up at Panera, so I'll just link to its wiki page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafra_National_Palace

We went through the church incorporated into the palace before lunch. It was modeled off St. Peter's in Rome. It wasn't as big as the old gothic cathederal or the Sagrada Familia, but it was still very impressive. I'd say it was on par with the gothic cathederal despite the size difference. The Sagrada Familia is so unique, that it's hard to compare anything else to it, and it's still under construction. There were six different organs, and forty plus statues, any of which could have been on displayh as the centerpiece of the art museum we had seen the day before.

We were hungry, so we got lunch before we saw the paid portion of the tour. We picked a little caffe and got the local burger offering. It's a little unusual in that it doesn't come with a bun, but is instead topped with a sunny side up egg. Despite being odd, it's actually a tasty combination. I got a 375 of wine with my meal, so I was feeling pretty mellow by the end of lunch. The caffe worker's (owner's) daughter played behind the counter while we ate. She would hide if Michele or I smiled or waved at her, but by the end of the meal I caught her watching us from behind the counter. She was very cute and looked to be about four.

We toured the palace, which was the complete opposite of the castle we had seen the day before. Somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 man years of effort went into the construction of this palace. The effort was financed by gold returned to Portugal from Brazil. My notes say that the pictures provide a better picture of royal comfort than I can describe, so I guess I will need to attach a few to this blog post when I get home.

The game room had an immense pocket billiard table, it had to have been at least a 6x12 foot table, but it could have been 7x14, 8x16 or maybe even larger. Apparantly, side pockets had not been added to the table yet, so everything would need to be shot into the corners. That would make any game played on that table difficult beyond belief.

Another oddity was the trophy room. I have never seen so many antlers in one place. The legs and backs of every chair were made of antlers. The legs of every table were made of antlers. All the wall decorations consisted of antlers.

My favorite part of the castle was the library. The had 40,000 books, which is a vast store of knowledge in the 18th century. The monks who did the book binding kept bats in the library to hold down the population of book eating insects. There was even what looked to be an early copy of Newton's Principia Mathmatica on display.

When we took the bus back to Lisboa, I'm not sure what the posted time was for our stop, but it seemed like we waited at least half an hour more than we should have. This had been a good day for a side trip. It had been drizzling most of the day, but we spent most of the time we would have otherwise been getting rained on indoors or on the bus.

After we got back to town, we found the bus station to get tickets for the bus ride back to Madrid. We had to follow the red line all the way to the last stop to get to the bus station. It was confusing to find the right ticket stand to buy tickets. We ended up having to ask someone where was obviously not the one we needed to buy tickets from where to go. We used most of our remaining Euros for the tickets and the rest for dinner. The woman who sold us the tickets spoke very litte English, but she was able to tell us where to wait for the bus. The bus didn't leave until 9:45, so we were a little worried about how to spend our last day in Lisbon since we were going to have to check out of the hotel in the morning.

Lisbon Day 1

2010-04-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

10-20-2009

When we got up for breakfast, it was raining. My stolen umbrella would have been useful. We got complementary breakfast for staying at the hotel. That consisted of a hot drink, I always got tea and Michele coffee, either a ham or a cheese sandwich, and a little yellow muffin which was more like a cupcake without icing. Very tasty!

The little teapots they used were tricky. You had to lift the lid up to pour without making a mess. The lid was still hot on my second attempt to pour, and that didn't go very well either. Even when I finally had the hang of it, I still dribbled a little tea when I poured.

On the way back to the hotel, it was pouring. My umbrella would have come in really handy now. I got completely soaked going half a block back to the hotel. It was more the water coming down off the roof than anything. I was afraid I was going to have to pitch the t-shirt it was so wet. However, I was able to ring it out enough to get it to dry by hanging it in the window. While we were waiting for the weather to clear, we watched a top 10 countdown of Aerosmith videos and a show called Geezers Gone Wild which showed celebrities over 50 doing strange things.

Once it stopped raining, we headed to the Baxia district and worked our way down to the waterfront. The Baxia district is the old center of town, and it's where we had eaten the night before.

The streets in the Baxia district kind of merge with the plazas and walkways because you're always walking on Marble. After a few surprises the day before where cars were driving in places we didn't expect them, we learned to follow the crowd.

We were going to try to find an archeological museum, but we ended up finding an art museum instead. Other than a few priceless statues, the rest of the musuem was underwhelming. I guess seeing a few priceless statues was worth four euros though.

Our main goal for the day was to see the castle in the Alfama district. This is the old Arabic part of town; it is also the portion of the city which survived an earthquake a few jundred years back. The guide book warns that you will get lost even with a good map. Our map wasn't that good, but more on that later.

Finding the castle wasn't too bad because it was located on top of a hill. Even when you would take a staircase up to an unlabeled road, you could just keep heading uphill. About one third of the way up, we stopped at a church. According to my notes, I need to look at the photos to see what kind of church this was. We saw so many churches, this one really didn't stand out in my memory. However, as you can see from the images above, it's still a rather nice example of a medieval church.

About another one third of the way up, we stopped to eat. The special of the day got me a huge slab of salmon, boiled potatoes, bread, wine, and grapes for desert. Michele got 2 pork chops, fries, bread, wine, and creme brulee for desert. This was the best meal I had in the entire vacation, and it was just 20 euros for the two of us to eat. I liked the restaurant so much, I got a photo of its name. Now that we were well fed, we headed up the rest of the hill to get to the castle.

The castle was amazing; the walls kept getting higher as you moved into the central keep. There were so many ways defenders could shoot or drop things down onto the heads of attackers who managed to clear the previous wall. There would have been nothing romantic about living in this castle. It was all function and no comfort unless you count a stone chair as comfortable. The views of the city were absolutely amazing, especially from the towers.

We should have tried to come up with our exit strategy for leaving the castle while we still had a bird's eye view of the Alfama district. Just heading downhill isn't a working strategy, and we quickly got turned around on the nameless streets and stairways which hadn't been a big problem when heading uphill.

We kept looking for a way to get back to the Baxia district, and according to the map we should have been able to get their multiple ways. It seemed like our best bet was to head due West, instead of heading South the way we had come to the castle. However, we obviously were not in a tourist area any longer. There were mothers with young children about, so it seemed like a safe residential area we were in. However, once we saw four men doing something that involved exchanging money, Michele ducked into a shop to ask for directions. I would describe it as an area where you could find trouble, but trouble wouldn't come looking for you. However, I wouldn't want to trust that statement to hold true after dark. Fortunately, it was still mid afternoon.

We pointed to the Baxia district on the map and said metro. The shop keeper and his wife started giving us directions, but we couldn't understand a word of them. The Michele pointed to our stop on the metro and said "Intendente." (The name of our metro stop.) Immediately, the shopkeepers said, "Oh, Intendente!" The motioned for us to follow them to the front of their store. When we reached the doorway, the motioned for us to keep following the road we were on as far as we could. We followed that little street until we saw an obviously larger one running parallel a block over.

That was Avenue Almirante, the same road our hotel was on. We exited the Alfama district three blocks south of our hotel. That night, after getting thoroughly lost, we wanted to stay close to the hotel for dinner, so we just ate at the same cafe where we got breakfast. We ended up eating there a lot. We got a cold flatbread pizza with several toppings and then some sweets. I also tried one of the Portuguese beers the guidebook mentioned, Superbok. I don't think the Germans would describe this beer as a bok; it seemed more like a pilsner to me. However, it was good.

From Spain to Lisbon

2010-04-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

10-19-2009

We had gone to an internet cafe, and it had looked like there would be plenty of space on the bus from Badajoz to Lisbon. The bus ride from Villanueva to Badajoz was uneventful. Unfortunately, that's when things started to go wrong. The people working the ticket counters were extremely unhelpful passing us back and forth between two different windows without telling us why. Not that I would have understood, but Michele might have. After going to the information desk to find out that we had been at the right desks, Michele wrote out the question of how do we get to Lisbon. Only then did the guy at the counter write back that the bus was full.

We called Caroline but couldn't get her. We tried calling Juan Carlos, who was at a different school, so he couldn't have her call us immediately. When Caroline did get the message to call us, she told us to try taking a bus to a different destination, and trying to get to Lisbon from there. There was one to Elvas Portugal, and a guidebook told us that there should be plenty of busses running to Lisbon from there. Badajoz and Elvas are both very close to the border, so you don't actually need tickets for the bus between them. You just give the driver a Euro or two for the fare.

We got a little nervous waiting for the bus, because the noon bus was about fifteen minutes late. While we were waiting, an American couple from Columbus Ohio asked what we were waiting for, and they wanted the same bus. We talked to them on the bus ride. They had been down in Morocco and had come back through Gibraltar. They said they had crossed five different languages in a day's time. French and Arabic in Morocco, English in Gibraltar, then Spanish and Portuguese.

When we arrived in Elvas, we had a little over an hour to wait because of a time zone change. It looked like there were interesting sights to see, but I just took what pictures I could from the bus station. The other Americans were more adventurous. They had and extra half hour to wait for their bus, so they took their backpacks and went sightseeing. They would have been happier with some lockers to stow their stuff in, but they were willing to lug it around for a closer look at the town. Michele and I were content to sit and read after the difficulties we had securing passage to Lisbon.

Driving through Portugal, I was struck by how much greener it was than Spain. The terrain was still rocky, but green. Actually driving into Lisbon is an impressive sight. It is almost like the city was built on the side of a bowl and at the bottom of the bowl you have the Atlantic Ocean.

We discovered that our guidebook was a bit out of date when we went to buy metro passes after getting off the bus. You only got 9 trips per pass instead of 10, and you couldn't share 1 pass for two people. It ended up working out, but we did a lot of walking our last day in Lisbon to conserve those final few trips.

It was only a half a block from the metro stop to our hotel, Residencia do Sul. It was the most modest of all the places we stayed. We had seen the street from Google street view, so we knew we were in the right place. In fact the picture below is from Google, which is really kind of Amazing when you think about it. This was the most modest of the three hotels we stayed in. The lift was a tiny little thing and you had to shut the door manually. We only used it to get our luggage into or out of the hotel. (That is, twice.) There was just enough space in the room to walk around the bed, and it was a 3/4 bath instead of a full bath. This room was also tiny. One hazard of this was that the pipes ran atop the tile, and you could burn yourself on the hot water pipe if you weren't careful.

The hotel was old, but it was also nice. It was also the least expensive of the places we said. Only 162 Euros for 3 nights. One modernization was that the hallway lights were on motion sensors. One oddity was that it used a real key instead of a keycard, and you left it at the desk when you went out into the city.

After unpacking, we took the metro down to the main square and looked around a bit. Once we picked a place to eat, I decided that Portuguese food was more accessible than Spanish food. I might be in the minority, but it seems like a pretty good guess that the average American would agree with me. The pictures on the menu all looked good to me. In Spain, my reaction was, more often that not, what in the world possessed anyone to cook that? I had read that cod was an important food in Portugal, so I had some fried cod. Granted, that's not very exotic, but it was tasty. Michele, got a saussage which tasted like it had some seafood in it when I tried a bite. The other difference I noticed was that the portions served here were larger than anything I received in Spain with the exception of the hotel meal in Barcelona. There were fewer fries than you would get in America, but the piece of cod was huge. Perhaps it was no accident that the average Spanish person I was was skinnier than the average Portuguese. After we were done eating, we took the metro back to the hotel and rested after a stressful day of travel.

My trip to Spain: Villanueva de la Serena

2010-01-17T07:58:00.000-08:00

10-17-2009

It’s hard to sleep on a bus. If we had known how little used this bus route was, we’d have known that there was no need to get our bus tickets ahead of time. If there were more than half a dozen passengers on the bus, the count was only 7. It was hard to sleep on that bus. It wasn’t very comfortable. It helped that I moved back a seat, but it still wasn’t very easy to stretch out. Some of the other passengers showed Michele how to work the reading light since she had given up on even attempting to sleep and started re-reading one of the twilight books for the nth time.

Caroline met us at the bus stop. I think we called and she gave us directions, but things are kind of fuzzy after more or less staying up all night. I don't think we tried to actually act on any directions she gave us. She took us to her friend Holly’s apartment. Holly is very British, or as the Spanish would say, muy Britanico. I slept in the guest room, and Holly told me not to mind her bits and bobs. I guess that’s British slang for odds and ends, or keepsakes. I think Michele slept on the couch. However, she might have stayed awake on the couch for all I know.

After we had rested, Caroline took us out to meet Juan Carlos and his wife. Jaun Carlos is into weightlifting and body building, which is rarer in Spain than America. It’s still not super common here, but he really stands out over there. His spoken English was so good that I got going too fast for him to understand. Michele could kind of communicate in Spanish, but I really couldn’t. His wife didn’t speak English, so there was a lot of translation going of as we talked. We got topas and drinks. In the big cities, the topas were kind of pricey for what you got. Here, they came free with every drink. We got some traditional jamon and tomato on bread at the first place, then we headed to a second place. I guess this is the same in any small town, but Juan Carlos and his wife were always running into people they knew.

We got a variant of Sangria at the next place which was a mixture of wine and lemonade with ice cubes in it. Given the fact that a major way to eat in the local bars was to order drinks, something like this makes a lot of sense if you’re going to be drinking all day. We got a lot of food there. We got Calamari, which Michele and Caroline surprised me by agreeing to try. They seemed to like it pretty well. That was even more surprising, because this was obviously cut up squid. It hadn’t been cut into strips that could have been just about anything after it was battered and fried. The next order was a potato omelet fresh from the pan. In the cities, we had only seen this offered cold. I guess once you were used to eating this meal, it would be fine cold. However, as a foreigner, starting out with the cold variety was not appetizing. Maybe I should try making something like that for myself sometime. The last thing we got was a pork stew garnished with French fries. I have to give the food I ate here credit for convincing me that Spanish cooks were not all insane.

We left this bar, and went to a bakery. Caroline got Holly to meet us at a bakery for desert. Like all the European cafés and bakeries we visited, the chocolate deserts are the bomb. I don’t remember exactly what it was that I ordered, but it was really good. Some of Caroline’s other friends met us at the café too. At this point there was too much Spanish from native speakers for me to keep up with anything that was said. We went to yet a 3rd bar. Here the topas we were served with our drinks were decidedly of the snack variety. Juan Carlos and his wife left us at at this bar. We stayed a little while longer after that.

When we left, we went back to Holly’s apartment. We had done our laundry before we left, and it was all out on a line to dry. That was an odd exercise of hoping it wouldn’t rain and rearranging things which dry faster and spreading out the things which dry slower. We watched the movie Twilight and ordered Telepizza (the largest pizza chain in the Spanish speaking world) for dinner. Caroline likes corn and tuna for her toppings, which sounds disgusting, but really wasn’t that bad. I got a ham and pineapple pizza which was pretty good. The other thing we had to munch on was ham flavored potato chips. I thought they were really tasty, it may be a good thing that I can’t get them here.

Back to the movie, it kind of made me groan in many parts. I had been avoiding Twilight because of the sparkly vampires, and boy, did that “special” effect in the movie really suck. However, I’m a sucker for vampire stories and the movie effectively served as and advertisement for the books. Also, the book I had been reading was stolen from the bus station, so borrowing Michele’s twilight books was really my only option. I had finished the book I had which had not been in the stolen backpack, China Miéville's Iron Council. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough for me to want to re-read it.

On Sunday, Michele and Caroline went to church. I had slept in too late, so I stayed in the apartment and watched a little Spanish TV. I saw something on bullfighting, which seemed to be more advertising for a few prominent bullfighters. I also saw Davydenko beat Nadal to win a tournament. Davydenko may have had a big win leading into this tournament, but I think that was really the start of the surge he’s had in the past few months.

We ate lunch at a Burger king. I have to say, the onion rings and fries they serve in Spain are better than what you can get here. We mostly took it easy this day. Caroline took us by to see her apartment, but her roommates were out. We also walked around the town to see the school where Caroline taught and walked to the town park. Holly cooked pasta in a cream sauce for us for dinner, and it was really good. This day may not have been all that exciting, but we needed a rest after Barcelona.

Recent Movies

2010-01-13T19:56:00.000-08:00

I'll work backwards.

The Hangover - I gave this to Michele and Robert for Christmas. I thought the first 10 minutes or so were kind of dumb, but then the movie hit its stride. It's not the funniest thing I've ever seen, but I did laugh a lot.

Avatar - Go see it in 3-D. You've seen the story before, but not done in this way.

Iron Man - Robert Downey Jr. is perfect as an irresponsible rich guy who has a change of heart after nearly being killed by one of his own weapons. It doesn't change his personality, just the decisions he makes.

The Wrestler - Awesome movie. There is wrestling in it, but by showing you how it's faked it really reveals the physical impact of putting on a show. The main character is easy to pull for despite the fact that he makes few good decisions and has a hard time following through on those.

Let the Right One In - Another awesome movie. If you can stand sub-titles, watch it with the Swedish language soundtrack. I actually switched the English off about 15 minutes in, and decided that the inflection and tone of the original actors is much better than whoever read the lines in English. A pre-teen boy, who is the target of bullies, makes an unlikely friend when a vampire girl who appears to be roughly his own age moves into his apartment complex.

Ghost World - I don't know what I think about this one. It's got Thora Birch, Scarlet Johanson, and Steve Buscemi. It's odd, but I'm not sure if it's good or bad. If any of this inspires you to watch the movie, let me know what you think.

Curse of the Golden Flower - I was expecting a martial arts epic. The movie is really a movie about political intrigue in the Chinese royal family with a smattering of martial arts thrown in at various times. I liked it, but I liked things like Hero or Kung Fu Hustle more.

Winter of Frozen Dreams - I didn't care for this one. It's a movie based on a true crime, and I think a 30 minute documentary would have been more interesting that the 90 minutes dramatization I watched.

My trip to Spain: Barcelona Part III

2010-01-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

10-16-2009

This was our last day in Barcelona. I got pictures of the art decorating the hotel before we ate breakfast at the buffet. We left our luggage with the hotel and headed out.

The block of discord was near the hotel, so we walked there. It was something that we had wanted to see yesterday, but we were too exhausted from the trip to Park Guell. The block of discord is a section of town where building designers basically had a duel to see who could come up with the strangest designs. You can see from the two images I uploaded that there are some wildly different designs.

From there, we headed to the Picasso Museum. This was actually somewhat near the Gothic Cathedral. This didn't contain really famous Picasso works like the Reina Sofia did. Instead, there were representative samples from throughout his entire life. His early works are very realistic, which is kind of odd when you think of a Picasso portrait having three noses. Later in his life, like in his fifties and sixties, he turned his attention to etching and pottery. I suppose he is an artistic genius an all, but it's odd to think of someone picking up a new hobby at the age some people start to retire and becoming world class at it. One thing about this museum that was interesting was that it was established out of items from Picasso's personal collection.

After we left the Picasso Museum, we went to the Museum of Chocolate. The chocolate sculptures are really amazing. I've included a sample chocolate sculpture.
There were sculptures of every conceivable subject imaginable. There were chocolate monuments, animals, and even a chocolate Homer Simpson. There were also articles and displays chronicling the history of chocolate. The gift shop was as much of a draw as the rest of the museum of chocolate. I picked up a 90% cocoa bar for Dad. I thought about getting one for myself, but it's probably good that I didn't. Michele picked up some chocolate for her kids and some for her kids. Also, the tickets to the museum were themselves chocolate bars. We ate at a stir fry place, again not very Spanish. The place had just opened up, and if I had bout a chocolate bar for myself I wouldn't have been able to eat. They wouldn't have been able to break my large Euro note.

We got through both museums much faster than we expected. We had picked up our bus tickets the day before. So we didn't have any reason to get to the bus station early. We took another trip to the end of Las Ramblas, and looked around the mall at the end of the street. When we walked back to the hotel, we tried to walk down the side of Las Ramblas that we hadn't before. We still had time to kill, so we went to Otto's for a few drinks. I had two Catalan beers, which were both good. I liked the dark beer better than the red I had. Michele had some local wine. We collected our luggage, and headed to the bus station.

I had broken my last big bill at Otto's, so I went to use the ATM at the bus station. We had to use it the day before to get our bus tickets as they didn't process credit cards. Michele had propped up her legs on our luggage and my backpack was sitting on the seat next to her. When I got back, the backpack was gone. We had cleared it out of valuables since we intended to take it with us onto the overnight bus. However it still had souvenirs, chocolate, and the books we were reading. Here's the list I had when I made notes.

Umbrella
2 packs of cards
4th Twilight book in English
The Road between the worlds
Post cards
Uneaten tickets to Chocolate Museum
Gaudi book for mom
Gaudi coloring books for kids
Gaudi refrigerator magnets
Sagratta Famila bookmark
toothbrush, toothpaste, and dental floss
Spanish dictionary

There was a police station next to the bus stop, and we headed over there in hopes that the police might know of a dumping area where we might finds useless stuff. Unfortunately, they didn't have anyone there who spoke English. They had me fill out a police report, but I'm sure it went straight into a filing cabinet. I've never really had anything stolen from me, so the whole indecent was kind of shocking to me. If nothing else, sitting in the police station we were sure nothing else would be stolen.

While I was filling out the police report, someone came in to turn in a backpack she had found on the metro. The reason she turned it in was that there were music books an an envelope with 130 euros in it. I guess the money was to pay for music lessons. While the college age woman was filling out her paperwork, a frantic woman came to the police station with a child. Sure enough, it was her backpack and her missing money. So even though I had something stolen, that kind of renewed my faith in humanity.

When we got on the bus, the bus driver was puzzled that we had a one way ticket. He asked us something in Catalan, which neither of us could understand. Michele asked him to ask the question in Spanish, and she was able to answer that our sister was a teacher and we were going to Villanueva to visit her. The bus driver was so amused that two people would leave Barcelona for Villanueva without having a way back already planned out. There were only six or seven people on the whole bus, and I think we were the only two who rode the bus all the way to Villanueva. Overnight bus rides save time, but they are not a comfortable way to travel. Neither of us got much sleep on the bus, but it did get us safely to visit Caroline at her home away from home.

My trip to Spain: Barcelona Part II

2010-01-01T19:12:00.000-08:00

10-15-2009

We started this day, as we did every day in Barcelona, with the free breakfast buffet the hotel provided. Our plan for the day was to see the egg shaped sky scraper we had noticed from Mount Juic. A tall building really stands out in a city where most of the buildings are exactly the same height. We took the metro to the closest stop, and walked up to the building. We were hoping to see something that explained the history or the purpose of the building, but there were no signs. Michele askes someone in a kiosk at the foot of the building what it was in broken Spanish. I believe she had to resort to English for the words "this building." She was told that there were offices inside.

I did a web search, and the name of the tower is Torre Agbar. Here is a link with some construction information: http://www.peri.de/ww/en/projects.cfm/fuseaction/showreference/reference_ID/275/referencecategory_ID/6.cfm

I apologize for the pictures which haven't been rotated. I haven't gone through to edit my digital photos yet, but I felt this day's update just wouldn't be complete without a few photos.

We left the Torre Agbar on foot to see the Sagrada Familia. When we visited the Gothic cathedral the previous day, we had both commented that we couldn't believe it was the three star and not the four star cathedral. Well, I believe it now. This has got to be the most visually impressive structure I've ever seen. Technically, the most impressive would have to be the Sears Tower in Chicago, but even its immense high doesn't give it the visual impact of the Sagrada Familia. I had seen the Sydney opera house on my only other major international vacation, and, as much as I like the Aussies, this is far more impressive. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the structure is that it is still under construction. It's untelling how impressive it will be when it is finished.

This is easily the most ornate building I've ever seen. On the outside are many different kinds of carvings on the wall. Inside you can see the workmen carrying out tasks in the center of the cathedral. Also on the inside are stations which explain the math of Gaudi's design for the Sagrada Famila. We took an elevator up to the top of one of the towers. There are several impressive views to be had from the elevated vantage, but the towers are, on a whole, a little bit scary. There are no hand rails or guard rails, and the passageways and stairwells are only wide enough for a single person at a time. There are a few niches and side paths that could be used if you needed to get around someone, but there isn't a whole lot of room to maneuver. Here's a shot of the spiral staircase to get back to ground level.

One thing that was kind of sad is that people had written graffiti on the tower and staircase walls. It makes me wonder at the sort of person who would deface something that is clearly a work of genius and millions upon millions of man hours of effort.

One interesting aspect of the construction of the Sagrada Familia is that it has all been funded by the donations of visitors. The city of Barcelona has already spent over one hundred years on the construction of this masterpiece. The idea of keeping so many generations working on this task is in and of itself amazing.

After we got back to the ground floor, we went through a little school building that was originally built so that the children of the workers could attend school while their parents worked. It's been turned into another mini-museum of displays about Gaudi and his designs.

When we left the Sagrada Familia, we ate at a nearby gelatto and sandwich shop. Michele wanted to see another of Gaudi's endeavors, Park Guell. (There is supposed to be an umlaut over the u.) The park was originally designed to be part of a gated community. This one failed, but if you dislike gated communities, you can blame Gaudi for designing one of the first. On the other hand if you like them, you can give Gaudi credit. We took the metro to the nearest station, and followed the signs to Park Guell. We went up steep roads and steeper stairways set into the roads. There were even a few escalators on the way, but they really didn't prevent much exhaustion.

When we reached the park, the view was amazing. Much like Mount Juic, you were looking down on the entire city, but from a different angle. However, the rocky and bare nature of the park didn't leave you much too look at in the park itself. I do have to admit I enjoyed the view, but this wasn't what I had expected. As tired as I was, Michele had done her uphill walking on a recently sprained ankle, and she was flat out exhausted. Ironically, the walk back downhill wasn't really much easier than the walk uphill. The path was so steep that it took almost as much energy to make it down the hill as it did to make it up the hill.

It was only later on the trip that a closer look at the guide book revealed our mistake. Immediately after getting off the metro we should have looked for a bus to take us to the front entrance of the park. We had, as the guidebook described it, made the exhausting hike to the side entrance.

That night for dinner, we got take out from Otto's to eat in our room. The hotel had provided a complementary bottle of cava. I'd describe it as a Spanish Champaign. I know we were in Spain, but the sausages and bratts from Otto's were good. I had planned on writing up our final day in Barcelona with this post, but it looks like I'm going to need a part III.

My trip to Spain: Barcelona Part I

2009-12-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's taken my two months to get back to writing about my trip to Spain.

10-13-2009:
The bus ride to Barcelona took most of the day. We got to the bus station by 9, although Michele's suitcase was so heavy we ended up switching who carried it through the metro. We got to the bus station by 9, but couldn't get on the 10 AM bus. We got some breakfast in the station in the bus stop. Spanish OJ is good, it rivals what you can get in Florida.

At the lunch stop, I was tempted to try this exotic looking seafood soup. Not wanting to risk that before getting back on the bus, I got an order of french fries. I took a few pictures of the countryside from the bus, and then some pictures of the Barcelona streets as we drove into the city. Barcelona has a unique look. When the city expanded, the zoning laws were such that buildings could be build to be 4 or 5 stories tall. Not wanting to waste space on the street front, all the buildings were built to the maximum size the law allows. There were no laws specifying how the buildings had to look, so the whole effect is both very uniform and varied at the same time.

When we got out of the bus station, we were looking for any sort of sign that would direct us to the metro. We also had trouble finding the street signs. The next day we figured out that you find them on the side of building, but we kept looking for them on poles or hanging from traffic lights. Who knows how long it would have taken Michele and I to find the Metro if we hadn't run across a couple speaking English. We asked them were the metro was, and of course, we had been going the wrong way.

The trouble with the street signs continued to plague us as we tried to find our hotel. It didn't help that University is a one of a few diagonal street that kind of cut through the rest of the city grid that made navigating around the hotel kind of odd. We finally found our hotel and got checked in. We ate at a German place called Otto's for dinner.

10-14-2009
We got a free breakfast buffet with our hotel stay by mentioning the Rick Steeve's book. The breakfast was awesome. Lots of fruit, the ubiquitous thin sliced cured ham, chirizo, pastries, orange and pineapple juice, hot tea. We headed into the Bari Gotic, the Gothic district, to start our sightseeing. The medieval cathedral is quit impressive, and it's not even the main sightseeing attraction in Barcelona as cathedrals go. We happened upon a bookstore in the Bari Gotic, and Michele found the 4th book of the Twilight series there in English. She was reading and rereading the other three so she was glad to pick that up.

We had some trouble making our way to Las Ramblas from the cathedral. I think we would have been fine going straight through the neighborhood to the docks, but Michele was nervous since the travel guide said the area south of the cathedral was seedy. I did have a gypsy try to sell me a rose and dance with me, but we turned our backs on her and left.

Las Ramblas is a very busy crazy place. It's popular with tourists, and I'm sure I heard at least a dozen different languages. It's also really overpriced in my opinion, but more on that later. We walked down to the Columbus monument. The monument is pretty impressive. It's a big ring with metal plaques showing the various stages of Columbus's trip to the new world. I the center of a ring, there is a pillar with a statue of Columbus atop it. I believe the Spanish are more enthusiastic about celebrating Columbus day than Americans are, or at least they get the day off work.

I don't know if it's a fair comparison, but my initial thought of Las Ramblas was that it was kind of like M street in DC on acid. We started heading back up the street after seeing the monument and stopped for lunch. Looking for a place to eat lunch is one reason I decided that the street is way over priced. We stopped at a place more out of exhaustion than anything else. I got calamari and a coke, and the coke cost something like 6 or 7 Euros. It was a bigger coke than most places in Europe served, but you could buy several 2 liters for that much money.

On the way back up the street, we discovered the bird market, which we had bypassed by going through the Gothic district on our way to Las Ramblas. It was more like a giant outdoor pet store, even noisier that the rest of the bustling street. It was really too much for me since neither of us had any intention of picking up a live traveling companion. We stopped by a farmer's market too. I think I've got a photo or two of some of the stuff they had on display there. It was another human zoo, so we headed back to the hotel to rest for a while.

In the afternoon, we took a funicular up to Mount Juic. I actually knew what a funicular was from my trip to the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney. It's a train line with a cable attacked to it because of the steep grade. Mount Juic was very peaceful after the trip to Las Ramblas. The Catalan art museum and magic fountains were on the list of sights to see at Mount Juic. The magic fountain wasn't in operation, and the Catalan art museum was under quite a bit of construction. From what we could see of it, the building would have been really impressive if not under construction. We did get to see the Olympic stadium, used for the 1992 games I believe.

I was correct. This was the Olympics of Shannon Miller and the Dream Team. I list them in that order because I don't think basketball is a good sport for the Olympics. Tatiana Gutsu edged Shannon Miller for the all around gold. During these Olympics, Caroline said of the Russian gymnast: "I like Tatiana better than Gutsu." I love the Olympics, so I enjoyed getting to see the stadium. We finished up the trip to Mount Juic with a trip to a castle overlooking the city. We tried to walk up to the castle, but got turned back by construction after making it somewhere between a third and half way up. We ended up taking the cable cars up to the castle. The view was outstanding. There were modern cannons at the castle which had been used to defend the port. They were huge. A guy from Ireland had us take a picture of him standing next to one of the cannons so his friends would be able to see how large they were.

We ate dinner that night at the hotel restaurant. I got tuna farfalle, which had an unusual tomato based sauce, moussaka, and an ice cream desert which was kind of like an Eskimo pie on steroids. It was very good, and I was happy to eat a big meal after a day that involved a lot of walking. I forget what Michele got, but I think she enjoyed her meal too.

First Two Days in Spain

2009-10-12T07:09:00.000-07:00

I've been in Spain for 2 days now. My sisters Michele and Caroline met me at the airport. I didn't manage to sleep on the plane, so I rested a bit. We went out and got lunch at a place called Pan's. It was a fast food kind of place. I got a sandwich with salmon and hard boiled eggs on it. Given the name of the sandwich, I think it was more Norwegian than Spanish, but it was good. I thought I would be getting something Spanish by ordering nuggets as the side order instead of fries, but they turned out to be chicken nuggets, and they weren't very good on top of that. Our hotel is in Plaza Mayor, and we went West from there to see what is on the Map as Palico Real. I forget what function the palace serves today, but it's quite an impressive structure. Despite being October, yesterday was quite warm, and we were all worn out from walking around town.

We went back to the hotel, and I took a nap. We went out at night to get some supplies from a grocery store, then after dropping those off back at the hotel, we went for an early dinner at 8:30 PM. I got a pizza, which is more Italian than Spanish, but I did get a taste of more traditional food from Carloline's sandwich. It was a ham and cheese, but the ham was more like prosciutto, and the cheese reminded me of Grueye. Spain seems to love ham even more than the US loves beef. I haven seen the museum of beef anywhere before, but there is a museum of ham near the hotel.

Today, we went to the Reina Soffia art museum. The first floor was full of odd modern art stuff. The second floor had some wartime art, and a lot of Picasso and Dali. I liked those. There were a few exhibits that were very mathematical from the 1st floor, but most were just strange. The building was huge, there were two more floors of exhibits that we didn't even get to. We had to get Caroline back so that she could eat and back to a metro stop so she could get to work tomorrow. Michele and I have to get up early tomorrow so we can get to Barcelona. We'll probably do a little more sight seeing later in the day, eat dinner, and try to make it an early night.

( I can't spell check this on the browser at the hotel, so I'll have to clean this up later. Yuck, that was a mess, I'm glad I went back to clean it up.)

One Week Until Spain

2009-10-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

This will be my first trip to Europe. I've actually crossed the Pacific before, having been to The Land Down Under 10 years ago. That was a blast. I have to admit I'm a bit nervous about my very limited Spanish skills. Going to Sydney, the only reason I would have needed a foreign language would have been if I had wanted to talk to one of the many groups of Japanese tourists visiting Sydney in their own language.

Granted, I did have a a conversation in a bar with an Australian woman about the differences between the word pissed between US English and Aussie English. For those who are curious, in US English, pissed means exactly the same thing as pissed off, or angry. In Aussie English, pissed off still means angry, but pissed means drunk. Also, you will hear the word mate for friend, but not nearly as often as in a Crocodile Dundee movie. You might even hear the phrase, spot you a pot of piss mate? Which means, can I buy you a beer? (OK, if this paragraph doesn't get any comments, nothing will.)

I need to get a list of things to do before the trip ready. I've got my passport and a new digital camera, but I still need to pack and I've got a few things to buy. I'm already mentally preparing to eat everything in my fridge before I got and then stop cooking. I foresee an omelet or two in my future. One reason I want to clear the fridge is that the freezer isn't freezing and cleaning the coils hasn't helped. I'm hoping something critical is frozen up, and will go back to normal if left powered off for a while.

Birthday season

2009-09-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

I should more specifically say that it is birthday season for my nieces and nephew. Tomorrow is my niece Regan's 8th birthday. By mid-December, Blake will be 10, Karina will be one, and the twins will be 6. The twins seem older than that for some reason, maybe it's because Lauren has glasses and Taylor is so large for her age.

Speaking of Taylor, I heard that she though wearing uniform shorts to school entitled her to use the boys restroom even to the point of using the urinal.

In non birthday news, the two barbs the Clark kids got me on Labor Day seem to be doing well. They will venture out of their hiding places around the tank, but one of the barbs is noticeably more shy than the other. I think I might try adding another silver dollar or two next.

It's been nearly a month since my last post.

2009-09-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

In a whirlwind recap:

I'm going to Spain in less than a month
Me, Mom, Dad, and Blake went to a Riverbats game for Dad's birthday with help from free tickets I got from work.
I made the last production turn on a 6 month project that lasted 18 this week.
I got two new fish in my aquarium, which seem to be doing well.
I tied for first place in a chess tournament after posting my game against an IM to this blog.
My nieces and nephew wanted to get me the more fish, which is why I have new ones. Taylor rode with me back to my house holding the fish. On the way, she told me that we needed to come to a decision about where to hold her birthday party. She wanted to do it at my house, but her twin sister Lauren wanted to have it at Chuck E Cheese.

My game against an International Master

2009-08-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, I went to Indianapolis to play in the US Open Weekend Swiss tournament. For those of you who don't know what a Swiss style tournament is, the best way to think of it is as a no elimination tournament. In theory, if you're 0-4 at the end of the 4th round, you should play another player who is 0-4. Draws complicate this picture somewhat, but you should end up with a clear winner in a 5 round tournament of 32 players.

With my chess rating in the 1500's, I often end up playing either one of the strongest or one of the weakest players in the tournament in the first round. When I saw the pairings two Saturdays ago, I saw that I would be playing the strongest player in the tournament. His name was Emory Tate, and his rating was high in the 2300's. For those of you not familiar with chess ratings, I would be expected to win about 1 game in 10 against someone rated in the 1900's, the hypothetical 1900 ranked player would be expected to win about 1 game in 10 against Mr. Tate. If you want a different measure of my challenge, type Emory Tate into a google search and wait to see what additional terms Google suggests. I was kind if disappointed since I had white in this game, and the difference in our skill was so great I didn't think having the 1st move would really matter. I would have rather had black so I could play white the next round.

Here is the game:

1. e4 c5 2. c3 e6 3. d4 cd 4. cd d5 5. e5 Bd7

At this point, instead of playing the closed version of the Sicilian defense, we are in a French defense. From my experience, only one time in using the closed Sicilian have we not transposed to the French. My reason for doing this is that I believe that most people playing the Sicilian do not want to end up in a position from the French. However, after the game, Mr. Tate said that he finds the closed Sicilian annoying and wanted to switch over to the French. Also, I didn't realize it at the time, but his last move is preparing to trade off his light squared bishop.

6. Nf3 Qb6 7. Be2

According to Mr. Tate, this was my first mistake. He wants to play Bb5 to trade it off for my bishop now sitting on e2. I should have challenged his plan by playing Nc3 now.

7... Bb5 8. Nc3 Bxe2 9. Qxe2

I debated between this and Nxe2. Taking with the knight provides me with extra protection for my central pawns. However, I took back with the queen trying to keep my knights in more of an offensive than a defensive role. Mr. Tate said taking with the Queen looks natural, but isn't as strong as taking with the knight. One reason for that is that he makes use of the knight sitting on c3 to trade it off creating a weak pawn for me to defend in a few moves, and he immediately threatens the my pawn on d4.

9... Nc6 10. Be3

Mr. Tate pointed out that this pawn didn't need immediate defense. If 10. o-o Nxd4 11. Nxd4 Qxd4 12. Qb5+!! black is lost. With his queen out of position from recapturing and no pieces on the kingside developed yet, the white queen inflicts heavy positional and material damage to black. This gives white more time to develop before eventually playing Be3.

10... Bb4 11. o-o Bxc3 12. bxc3 Na5

I was actually pretty happy to get out of the opening against such a strong player. I can see that his knight is trying to head to c4, where it would be a major thorn in my side, but other than that I didn't really see where I had any problems. However, when I didn't castle at move 10, Mr. Tate felt like he had overcome the advantage white has by making the 1st move.

13. Rab1 Qc6 14. Rfc1 Ne7

Given the piece trades which have occurred so far, I missed 15 Qb5 which would have forced a queen trade. It's not the strongest move on the board, but having queens come off the board early increases the odds of getting a draw. I also missed the fact that even though black has two pieces lined up against my pawn on c3, the queen is in the lead, so my pawn can't be taken immediately.

15. Nd2 Rf8 16. Qd3 o-o 17. Nb3 Nc4!

I was wondering if Mr. Tate was just going to trade off lots of pieces and try to squeeze and endgame win out of me, which is why I played Nb3, when he put his knight on it's ideal square, I should have immediately put my knight back on d2. However, at the time I foolishly decided to press on under the assumption that b3 was the better square for my knight.

18. Bd2 b6 19. Be1 f6!

In hindsight, I have to play ef. I didn't like the f file opening up for black, but it's better than what comes next.

20. Nd2 fe 21. Nxc4 dxc4 22. Qe3 Nd5

I didn't understand this move at the time. Black, going back to move 11, has been trying to win one of my central pawns by creating the weak pawn on c3, suddenly, he's giving the pawn back. I should have known there was a method to this madness, but I couldn't find it so I took the pawn back.

23. Qxe5 Nf4!!!

I read on the web that Mr. Tate likes to give moves triple exclamation points when explaining games, so I'll give this move of his three. At first, I only saw that he threatened to fork both my rook and queen with ...Nd3 and my king and rook with Ne2. I was just about to put my queen back on e3 where it is out of the line of fire and continues to guard e2. At the last instant I noticed that black also has a mate threat with Qxg2. The best defense was f3, but I tried Qg5 and got my queen pushed around before black finally take his extra exchange.

24. Qg5 Rf5 25. Qg4 h4 26. Qf3 Qxf3 27. gxf3 Ne2 28. Kg2 Nxc1 29. Rxc1 Rfc8

I'm in seriously bad shape now, I'm down the exchange and I can't guard the pawn on f3. To make matters worse, I can't even try to make something of my bad bishop sitting on e1 because it's tied down defending f2. I try to get my rook to worm it's way into black's queenside, but my opponent will have none of that.

30. Rb1 Rg5+ 31. Kf1 Ra5!

I didn't expect this, but it's very strong. It effectively eliminates any possibilities I had for counterattacking.

32. Rb4 b5 33. a4 ba 34. Rxc4 a3

I can't stop the pawn, so I resigned. I made sure I tracked down my opponent so I could get his thoughts on the game. Mr. Tate might not have been feeling well that weekend, because he seemed like he was trying to get back to his hotel room between rounds, and he didn't have a good weekend tournament. However, he played in the 6 day schedule of the full open and finished 1 point out of 1st. That put him in 25th place in a 450 player tournament.

It was neat being in the big tournament atmosphere, and I didn't have to pay for a hotel room since I stayed with my sister Suzanne in Noblesville, which was only like a 20 minute drive from the tournament site. By playing in the weekend tournament, I didn't have to take a week off of work for it either. For example, when Abby Marshal won the Denker high school tournament of state champions, I had seen her walking around in the halls of the hotel.

http://main.uschess.org/content/view/9606/544/

I don't know what to title this.

2009-07-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

I lost track of one of my good friends from high school after the summer between our freshman and sophomore year. The last I had heard, his family didn't know where he was and had filed a missing persons report on him. I can't remember when I heard that news. I want to say that it was sometime in the mid 90's.

I got a facebook invite, and I accepted it, but I wasn't sure what to make of it since there were no photos on the page. That was probably earlier this year when I had just started using facebook. My brother and one of my friends didn't know what to make of this page either. Their guess was that someone in his family was using it to try to track down people who might have had information on him.

However, last weekend, I got a message from him that he was in town at a hotel by the fair and expo center. I gave the hotel a call and we met up and hung out for a few hours and caught up. It still seems surreal, and it reminded me how much I missed having him around.

Are things spiraling into control?

2009-07-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

When I first started at SVS, I was looking for a way to get organized. One night, while working in the data center, I came across an article for implementing a system called Getting Things Done (http://www.davidco.com/) using gmail. Since I like gmail, I was interested. What sold me on the system was that things I wanted to do, like read a book or play a video game got to go on the to-do list along with things that needed to be done, like laundry or cutting the grass.

So for a while, all was well. I managed to do things like arrange my schedule to see the Police play Wriggly Field since I was unable to see them play Churchill Downs since that date conflicted with Suzanne's wedding. As I kept coming up with more and more things that needed to be done every week, I discovered that I was mostly just keeping up with day to day activities and (mostly) getting once a week and once a month tasks done.

Things really spiraled out of control when I had strep a few weeks ago. I didn't feel like doing anything useful, and even once I felt better, I still didn't feel like doing anything useful. I was getting frustrated by having a lot of cool stuff on my to-do list that I wasn't getting to. Learing a new ray-tracer, finishing my homemade chess men, learing new programming languages, learning Japaneese, learning how to draw/sketch.

So, I've dedicated a Friday night to getting things back on track. So far so good. I've actually gotten a bit more done tonight (this blog post being one of those things) than would strictly have been necessary according to my plan. And that's even after taking a break to watch a VH1 show on the top 20 one hit wonders of the eighties. (Seriously, 99 Luftballons, Take on Me, Tainted Love, 867-5309/Jenny and She Blinded Me with Science were all better than Come on Eileen)

Weekend Visit

2009-07-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

Dan, Michele, and Karina came to town last weekend. I think everyone had a good time. It did highlight the fact that I need to get box springs and a matress for my 2nd spare bed. It doesn't do much good for hosting guests at the moment. My couch however was not put to the test. Dan and Michele had intended to stay with me, but they had already unloaded their stuff at Mom and Dad's.

They decided it would be easier to just stay there than to move their stuff to my house. It's probably just as well, my cleaning in preparation for visitors was not very inspired.

They got to see Nana and Elaine, which was their main purpose in coming down. My hightlight of the weekend was serving as Karina's safety net while she tried climing stairs for the first time. Attempt one only saw her ascend two stairs, but her second try saw her climb all thirteen stairs to my parents second floor. She was so proud of herself!

Things aren't getting much better

2009-07-04T14:15:00.000-07:00

After my last post, I started feeling better at the end of the week. However I started feeling worse again the following week. This was explained when the doctor's office called to tell me I had strep. Someone at work said the quick strep tests are 99% accurate, so that was some bad luck with that not showing up right away.

The insurance adjust came out, and decided that it probably was the roof causing my problems. However, I didn't see the estimate the roofing guy left until about a week after the fact. I wouldn't have seen it even then except Michele came by while I was cutting the grass to retrieve Blake's Game Boy. The estimate informed me I needed a new roof. I'm hoping insurance will will at least pay for some portion of the repair.

Bah, now I'm depressed about needing to drop $5K on a new roof. I knew the roof was old when I bought the house, and that was factored into the price, but I was hoping to get a few years out of it, not less than one. Maybe playing Demigod will cheer me up.

Rotten Week

2009-06-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I went to the dentist on Monday, and while I was at home that night with sore gums, but thankfully no cavities, I noticed that my throat was getting sore. Sure enough, I was getting sick. I was home from work on Thursday resting when a huge thunderstorm rolled through town. After it had been really pouring for about 15 minutes I started hearing dripping in the spare bedroom. Needless to say, that's a room that's not supposed to have any water in it.

I grabbed the closest thing I could find from the kitchen to catch water, which was unfortunately part of my rice cooker. That's going to need a heavy duty cleaning before it's fit for cooking again. Water started dripping from a second spot, and for that at least I grabbed a small garbage can. I used a knife to poke a hole in the ceiling where the two drips were occuring to keep the water from seeping through somewhere else. It smelled awful, so I'm sure that this has happened before, but that it took a storm of that intensity to bring the problem to my attention. I've got an insurance adjuster coming out tomorrow to look at the damage, so at the moment, I don't even know what repairs are needed.

Kentucky Open

2009-06-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

I played in my first "big" chess tournament in ages. Although it's nothing compared to an 800 student nationals, about 45 players is about 3 times bigger than anything I've played recently. Also, the G/90 time control makes a big difference.

In the first round, I played someone rated about 250 points higher than me, and once we reached the end game, he offered a draw. I was hungry, and considered accepting the draw just to make a lunch run easier, but thought I had better chances so I played on. About 3 moves later I realize I was so hungry I was getting a headache, so I offered a draw back, and my opponent accepted. Ironically, we ran into each other at Chick-fil-a down the road.

In the second round, I played a very nervous 5th grader. This was the only player in the tournament I played who was lower rated than I was. I thought I had a good position out of the opening, then all of the sudden, I had no space to move around in. I turned things around with a little combination that at a minimum caused a bishop trade and relieved pressure on my king, however I got a fork out of the deal too and won easily after that. Up until that point though, I was sweating though.

In the third round, I played a high school student who had drawn his game with the kid I played last round earlier in the tournament. Things were going well until I made I move that had consequences I really didn't like. I ended up moving the piece right back to where it started. (Note to self, castle sooner!). I ended up getting my rooks forked, but by using some mate threats, I at least got a piece and a pawn for my rook, as well as getting the opponent's king out in the open. I found a combination in this game as well that won a piece and a pawn for me. Immediately after this exchange finished, I was telling myself to play carefully and not to waste the advantage I had just gained. Then I realized that, probably shocked to have gone from being ahead to down, my opponent had moved his king into a position where I could fork it and his queen.

I was really happy going into the 4th round with 2 wins and a draw. If I had played just a little bit better I might have managed a draw in one of the games on Sunday, and ended up in a 3 way tie for first in my rating section. If I could have managed a win in one of those game, I would have won the section outright. I'm not too upset because my rating got a nice boost, and I felt like I played well.

I also ran into Hank Rothgerber, who played at St. X while I was there. He was a junior when I was a freshman. Eric Cramer from Central was there too. It was the first tournament he had played in a long time. He was in my section too, and he was one of the players tied for first with three points. Ironically, we recognized each other right away, but I had to say something to Hank before he recognized me. He even said it was my voice he recognized and not the way I looked. (To be fair, I have quite a bit less hair than I did in high school.)

An unexpected trip?

2009-05-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

Out of the blue, my college roommate, Mike, emailed me to see where I was at. He's visiting his sister in Nashville. Robbin from BCBSFL in Jacksonville is also in Nashville, so if I can work out a few details, I may be driving down to Music City tomorrow. If so, I'll add to this update.

I did in fact end up driving to Nashville yesterday. The drive was going well until 40W split off 65S/40E. I'm not sure what kind of construction or accident was up ahead, but coming to a virtual standstill actually forced me off the interstate at a very convenient downtown exit for getting to The Flying Saucer. http://www.beerknurd.com/stores/nashville. I met Robbin and Scott Thomas who worked at Blue Cross with me, and we had fun dishing the dirt on some former co-workers and on Blue in general. Had some excellent beer. There was Murphy's stout on tap, which is very similar to Guinness, but I actually like it a bit better. I also had Stone IPA, which was the best IPA I've ever had (sorry Sierra Nevada) and something called Brooklyn Brown ale, which was a very nice nut brown ale. Robbin and Scott needed to head home to take care of their rabbit, while I stayed downtown to meet Mike and his family.

We met at Jack's BBQ near 4th and Broadway, which was about 6 blocks from where I was. I just walked, and I have to say, I've never seen so many street corner musicians in all my life. The food was good, and Mike and Margaret's kids were cute, but pretty tired from a day at the water park and not sure what to make of me. After the BBQ, we walked down to Mike's ice cream, a coincidence which made the kids smile. From there we headed to a park that has a replica of the Parthenon, of all things in it. It's made of concrete and not marble, but still, a replica of the Parthenon was pretty cool. We were actually close to the campus of Vanderbilt while we were at the park.

From there we headed back to Mike's sister, Meg's house. She's located near Oprieland, and has a house with a huge deck overlooking the Cumberland river. It's really nice. We just hung out and took it easy. Meg's dog, Cooper, didn't know what to make of me, and if he hadn't heard me talking for a while would start barking at me. He even barked at me this morning after I changed shirts. I guess I looked different. Avery and Naomi had gotten used to me at this point, and would talk to me this morning. They headed out about 11:30 to see a great aunt who lived in a convent and I headed back home.

It's probably been 9 years of so since I've seen Mike, the last time was when he was in Louisville on a business trip when I still worked at Humana.

Too Many Nobles

2009-05-25T06:28:00.001-07:00

Well, my fortress seems to have stabilized from the cave bat deaths. No one threw a tantrum or went insane in the spring of 205. I queued up a lot of jobs, and the dwarfs even worked on some of them. I probably have jammed up workshops or something.

No one showed up in the fall because of the deaths being caused from psychological stress. However, the message this spring was that immigrants were arriving despite the danger. With the immigrants I got the Baron, a consort, a tax collector and the Hammerer. It's probably good that the Hammerer wasn't in the fortress six months ago, he's have probably wacked some of the pouty dwarfs upside the head with his hammer.

Another production problem I had was that I ran out of trees. I bought a bunch from the elves, I need to see if they are sitting in the trade depot. I had to tell my woodcutters to do nothing but cut trees. That seems to have helped, but I used up all my refined coal, so I need to cut trees and put them in the wood furnace to create charcoal. However, I also need to turn the trees into beds for my new nobles to sleep in. I don't have doors for setting up their rooms right now either.

All in all, the spring went better. I still feel like my workers are way out of hand, in that I don't know what anyone is doing or where the work is happening. I also feel like my farming is completely out of control. I need to look at my fields this summer.

I want to ride my bicycle

2009-05-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

I got a new bike from Dick's last night. It's a fairly simple hybrid w/ seven speeds. I'd probably need more than 7 gears for the Tour de France, but for riding around the neighborhood, seven seems to be sufficient. I still need to attach the watter bottle, and the handlebars might need to be an inch higher.

I rode down to the street I grew up on, and it doesn't look much like it did 20 years ago. The house I grew up in now has a garage on the lot, and the sapling I ran over when originally learning how to ride a bike has been removed from the front yard. My lack of understanding about breaks didn't kill the young tree, but it grew with about a dozen small trunks instead of a large single trunk. There was an old man who had about 4 lots when we were kids that grew a fair amount of food on them. I believe the whole subdivision was his farm at one point. That's all been sold off and converted into normal sized lots. Another thing I'm not sure I'd do these days is cross the railroad tracks behind the house to get to a park on the other side. The whole area is pretty much overgrown with vegetation now.

Watching the twins

2009-05-16T10:49:00.000-07:00

I watched Lauren and Taylor last night. After the short car ride to my house, they declared that we should have walked. I agree. I was teasing them about them cutting the grass at my parents house, but they said they didn't know how to use a lawn mower. Then I asked if we should get my parents a goat to eat the grass. They thought that was a great idea since it would eat the grass and it could play with my parents two dogs.

They wanted to watch Princess Mononoke, so I've already instilled them with some good taste in anime. They also like Inu Yasha. While they were watching the movie, they said that Blake was a good big brother, but Regan was a bad big sister. Regan, you'll have to work on being nicer to the twins :)

Back to the Dwarves

2009-05-14T21:09:00.000-07:00

Lord this game has a steep learning curve. I hadn't fired it up recently, and I had completely forgotten what my plans were. I did get to see something I had never seen before, I found an underground cavern. Immediately after tunnelling into cavern, a nasty bat flew into my tunnels and killed a dwarf or two. From there, probably 10-12 dwarves have died directly or indirectly of depression. Someone would get upset that their friend died, then they would go mad and starve then their friends would get upset. On the plus side, there are quite a few nodes of gems along the cavern walls, and there is lots of spider silk.

I think the fortress mood has pretty much stabalized. I had been tempted to abandond the fort, but I think I'll forge on. Fortress productivity is way down though, hopefully I have enough food and booze to get by until I figure out what I was doing and where my workshops are again.

Beating up on kids and co-workers

2009-05-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't started picking fights with people. I started playing in chess tournaments again. I've gone 3-0 the last two Monday's at Meijer's chess tournaments. Granted, these are small tournaments, but I have just doubled my number of undefeated tournaments. Again, to be fair, I've been playing grade schoolers and kids, most of whom who are on paper quite a bit less skilled than I am at chess.

At work, people laughed when I said I beat one of my co-workers, an 8th grader, and a 4th grader. However, the 4th grader was the only player who was basically an even match for me. My game against him was the one it took the longest to win. I've got my rating back over 1500 for the first time in ages. My goal is to get back over 1600 so I have to play in the open section of the tournament.

The games on Monday are short, G30, so I'm planning on playing at Barnes and Noble next weekend.

Lacquer the Dög

2009-04-26T07:04:00.000-07:00

With Ulrich von Bek (me) on drums and Thunderbolt (my nephew Blake) on Guitar, our band Lacquer the Dög got off to a rocky start. Our first several gigs, we got booed off the stage. The first song we managed to finish was Nirvana's In Bloom. After a brief setback on the Konks 29 Fingers, the virtual band was able to finish two other songs and actually finished a 2 song set. So far the virtual band has only been playing in a virtual dive, but with 532 virtual fans the Lacquer the Dög can now play in a slightly larger virtual dive.

The band attributes the slow start to the fact that Thunderbolt had never picked up a guitar before joining Lacquer the Dög. Thunderbolt's skills have improved significantly over the first few gigs he attempted to play. Thunderbolt stated, "No one has even thrown anything at me the last few times I've been on stage."

The end is near, an epic battle between light and dark is about to begin!!!

2009-04-17T22:09:00.001-07:00

No, I'm not predicting an imminent Apocalypse. I haven't been reading the Left Behind series or watching the Omega Code either.

My compound sawed chess set is nearly complete. I got six pieces cut today, that equals the output of my entire trip up here last month! Just three pieces left to go, a bishop, rook, and pawn. Once that it done, I need to get to sanding and staining. I'll add pictures to this post soon.

Killing friends and family in a subterranean dungeon

2009-04-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't gone insane. Well, perhaps it is insane to be playing Angband again considering I do have a win over Morgoth with a priest. However I couldn't resist the call once I got my new Linux box up and running. I had forgotten how freakin' hard this rogue-like game is.

I feel bad for Dan and Angela, I did kind of kill them stupidly by reading a scroll of monster summoning. As a result, I decided to give Dan the human priest a second try by reincarnating him as Daniel the Dunadan Paladin.

Currently Helen from the pool league in Jacksonville is atop the leader board of my new install of Angband. She had the bad luck of failing three actions in a row while trying to take down an orc captain from an orc pit. I probably should have left well enough alone after taking down some of the easier orcs in the pit and stayed well clear of the captains, however I got overly ambitions after taking one captain down without too much trouble.

If I haven't already killed you off and you have a request for a rogue-like alter ego, let me know and I'll see what I can do. (If it's any consilation, I killed myself by falling into a spiked pit and bleeding to death.)

Helen - High Elf Mage, killed by an orc captain
Meagan - Human Warior, killed by a kobold archer
Randy - Dunadan Ranger, killed by a giant clear centipede
Chip - Gnome Mage, killed by Bullroarer the hobbit
Angela - Elf Ranger, killed by a blue worm mass
Jason - Human Rogue, killed by a hill orc
Suzanne - Human Paladin, killed by Bullroarer the hobbit (I got wishy-washy about wanting to fight or run, and got my sister's alter ego killed by Bullroarer.)
Dan - Human Priest, killed by a wolf

A week of great inertia

2009-04-03T19:28:00.001-07:00

I had been doing good about keeping the house clean and accomplishing useful things, however being sick, spending a weekend in Dayton, and drinking about a gallon of coke at a party then not being able to go to sleep until 5AM pretty much thrashed my sleep schedule. I shall endeavor to cook, go to bed at a reasonable hour, and avoid mega doses of caffeine this weekend.

My parents are out of town this weekend, so I'm taking care of the dogs. Perhaps the need to get up on Saturday morning so they don't pee all over the floor will help get me back on track sleep wise.

I'm excited to be working on something new at work. I've been supporting our franchise program for the last year and a half. This April, I'll be working on cross currency reporting. Exchange rates, here I come.

Random kindness - random oops!

2009-03-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

I had a coupon for a free sandwich at Chick-fil-a, so I ate there for lunch today. When I was leaving, I realized that someone was about to back out of their parking spot with a coke sitting on the roof of their car. I walked over to tell them, and the young lady driving was confused at first, then she realized what I was pointing at. She had a couple of young kids in the back seat, so I'm sure she just forgot about it getting them into their car seats.

While I was out running errands, I went to Barnes and Noble to use a coupon I had there to get The Watchmen graphic novel. When I went to pay, it said my card was declined. At first I was confused because my credit card company had recently sent me a replacement card with a new number. Then I saw that I had tried to pay with the new card. When I activated the new card, I swapped the new and the old putting things back in my wallet. Unfortunately, I shredded the wrong card just a few days back. I had to call for yet another replacement card when I got back.

Rub some Tussin on It

2009-03-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

I believe that the title of this post comes from a Chris Rock comedy skit. I'll feel bad if I have the wrong commedian, but not overly bad. Most of last week was lost to feeling miserable, except Wednesday, which was lost to Kroger brand Nyquil. I must have looked really rough, because the clerk working the U-Scan lane gave me the senior discount. The fact that I was using the U-Scan lane should have immediately disqualified me though. There were a dozen seniors waiting in the express lane, but I was able to walk up to an empty scanner and check out immediately. I'm mostly better now, but I'm still coughing.

Fortress expansion

2009-02-22T16:31:00.000-08:00

Well, it's the winter of 203 for my dwarves. The fortress population nearly doubled in the spring, and with a few births and a few more migrants arriving in the fall, there will probably be nobles showing up in the spring. I'm not entirely ready for them. I've also noticed dwarves sleeping in the beds I've laid out to use as hospital beds, so the bedroom situation needs work.

One problem is that even though I've dug out some new bedroom areas, they are still cluttered with stone. I've hollowed out two otherwise useless areas on the path into the mountain. One is holding stone, and the other useful garbage. Even with the extra stone storage, I don't have room to store all my rock. I'm going to have to work on that.

I've got quite a bit of ore, but I'm low on charcoal to do anything with it. I'll have to expand my tree cutting and charcoal burning. One good thing that happened is that I've got an artifact leather shield. I'm sure that will be useful if I can get someone to wear it. I did have one dwarf die of melancholy because I didn't have any turtle shell when he wanted to make an artifact. I've traded for some, so hopefully I won't have to start fishing. I've got more food than I really need from farming already.

Puttering Around the House

2009-02-20T19:53:00.000-08:00

I had a great time last weekend in Dayton. Chip and I got some useful stuff done around his house, and I got to see my youngest niece Karina. I'm still quite proud of helping restore Chip's fridge to bachelor status. (see the virtual band post) However, I'm looking forward to staying at home this weekend.

I'm planning on doing a fair amount of cooking this weekend. I saw a gumbo recipe on the cooking channel that I have wanted to try for a long time, so I think I'll finally get the ingredients to make that.

I also got a new Linux box up and running recently. I switched desks between the Linux box and my windows box recently too. Now that those things are done, I want to get my computer room all cleaned up and organized. There was no good way to make progress on that while the room was full of boxes of computer parts.

Many fortress milestones

2009-02-18T20:16:00.000-08:00

I played a little DF last week, but didn't get my blog entry in. It is now early winter of the year 202. The dwarves of Darkbrew the Eyes of Elders have accomplished quite a bit since last I wrote about them.

They constructed a waterwheel, and used it to power gears underground which will eventually power a series of millstones. They also finished construction of a well, which in addition to providing water to the dwarves, not that they would drink any of it unless they were out of booze or wounded, it makes a much better meeting hall than a tiny dining room.

New migrants arrived in the fall of 202 to push the fortress population to 35. I appointed a dwarf to serve as sheriff of the growing community. She's is currently cranky about not having furnished quarters or an office, but she'll get over it.

Finally, the fortress has it's first artifact and legendary crafter. I've got an artifact quality rock idol, and a legendary stone crafter. However, not having enough crafters to fully specialize yet, my legendary stone worker is currently weaving thread into cloth.

Virtual band has virtual dvd debacle - looses thousand of virtual fans

2009-02-18T20:01:00.000-08:00

While I was in Dayton this weekend, Men without Comma, the Band Chip and I created in Rock Band, experienced a severe setback. We decided to record a DVD in the game rock band, which gave us the opportunity to gain extra fans if we had 5 star performances for every song we played at a certain venue. We did well, scoring 21 stars on 5 songs, but that cost us over 100,000 fans. We lost the right to play in many venues, and had to rebuild our fan base. We were able to do that, and got our band over 700 stars for all shows performed. Chip and I were also able to get though some of the easiest songs in the game on expert mode, which felt like an accomplishment.

In other events in Dayton, Chip and I managed to get his fridge back to bachelor status. It now contains pickles, beer, and condiments. I also visited with Dan, Michele, and Karina. I got her laughing at one point by making a do-do-doo sound for her. On the 3rd syllable, she got really amused. However, after a nap that sound was no longer funny. Despite having her laughing (or as close as a 3-month-old gets to laughing) I couldn't get any good pictures of her smiling. The one above is as good as I did.

I had a good time on my trip, but this weekend I'm looking forward to a nice relaxing time of doing nothing but puttering around my house.

I'm addicted to this ASCII game

2009-02-08T17:43:00.001-08:00

Well, after a winter of brewing and digging, I'm playing one more season to try to get some migrants to arrive. At least the digging has given me enough room to clean up some of the loose stone cluttering up the place. The goal for the spring is to get some pig tails growing and set up a loom for weaving the pig tail thread into cloth. Ack! Pig tails grow in the spring. Maybe some elves will show up to trade and I can get some booze off of them, otherwise my dwarves are going to have to live with drinking fermented mushrooms.

One of the things I did in the winter was to set up a row of traps leading into the fortress. They caught an intruder, a "vicious" dear. Yes, my traps killed bambi. I built a butcher's shop and a tanning shop too. My dwarves are making some bambi leather.

Dear lord. I got my immigrants, 19 of them. I've got to figure out what to do with them now. I've got them smelting iron and burning coal, turning trees into crossbow bolts. I made plenty of crafts, but no elven traders showed up. I also cut a few gems. At least I'll be able to brew some pig tails come summer, which has now hit. I'm going to stop the game then post this.

Dwarf Fortress - The Gilded Axe

2009-02-08T13:23:00.000-08:00

I learned about this game in a list of free games from PC Gamer magazine. It's the most ambitious city builder type game I've ever seen, and the graphics are all ASCII art. I decided that I would start blogging about my world for two reasons.

Without the blog, I tend to play for way too long in a single sitting. Also, without the blog, you have nothing to show for you efforts.

I generated a world called The Gilded Axe, and I'm going to build my first fort at a river coming out of the mountains into a forest. That should give me a good mixtrue of stone and wood to start with. I selected a dwarven society called The Treaty of Obeisance as my home civilization because I liked the name. And I gave a dwarf named Zulban some social skills so the game should make her the leader of my expidition.

One of my goals for this game is not to build aboveground structures and keep everything below the surface. I was going to customize my group name, but the randomly assigned one fits perfectly. My dwarves will be know as The Banner of Depths. Their fortress will be known as Darkbrew, the Eyes of Elders.

So I'm going to embark and see what I can get done in a single season. The basic goals are to get a spot for the trade depot dug out, underground farming started, and a baracks built. When I get a look at my map, I have an immediate decision to make on where to the entrance to my underground fortress. There is a stream at the north end of the map, and a large plateau at the southern end. I would really like to dig down into the rock plateau, but because trees and water are useful, I decite to start at the northern end of the map.

I got my spring goals accomplished, plus I got a baracks built. I'm going to go ahead and play another season since this first one goes quickly. I want to get my initial set of bedrooms built, and get my initial set of workshops laid out in a good pattern. I want A Carpenter, mason, mechanic and wood burner on the industry side. I also want to get all my storage underground.

Well, I didn't get a wood burnder built in the summer. I should probably produce a few rock crafts as trade goods this fall. Hopefully I get a few imigrants. If I don't, I probably need to put a miner onto farming duty. The bedrooms are dug out, but not fully furnished, so I want to get that done this fall. I need to get my bookkeeper an office too.

Well, I didn't get any imigrants, so that limits my options for expanding things. I went on into winter, where I think my goals are to burn a little wood into charcoal, harvest more trees to make up for what I've been using, and dig out my metal ores. This game is so addicting. I'm going to let it run while I'm not doing anything fancy and cook some dinner.

Drywall

2009-02-08T13:12:00.001-08:00

Well, I helped hang drywall and Michele and Robert's yesterday, and I'm sore today. We made a lot of progress though, the walls are looking pretty good. After we were done working, Michele, Blake, Taylor and I had a good time watching The Princess Bride. Blake is quite a bit like Fred Savage's character who doesn't like all the kissy stuff.

Snow, power, and fish

2009-02-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

Well, we had a big snow and ice storm here in Louisville about 10 days ago. I worked from home on Tuesday, but I lost power that night. My power came back on just before the superbowl. Fortunately we had a warm weekend. It was 38 degrees in my house when I woke up on Saturday morning.

So now that I've covered snow and power, you may wonder why fish are in the title of this update. Well, my poor fish didn't survive the chilly conditions in my house. They hung in there for a while, and if someone had mentioned this technique to me sooner I might have been able to save them by putting sealed containers of hot water in the tank to keep the water warm. Fish have survived for hundreds of millions of years without electricity, but my fish seem to be pretty reliant on it.

The Spirit

2009-01-23T08:12:00.000-08:00

Now I loved Sin City and 300, so I was really looking forward to this movie when I first saw the previews for it. In fact, I thought it was a trailer for Sin City II when I first saw the styalized black and white images on the screen.

I saw this movie a few days ago at The Village 8, a cheap theater in Louisville. I should have known bad things were going on when a movie that opened on Christmas day was already in the cheap theater on Jan 19th. However, I was already there, and Village 8 gives you free refills on a large soda.

The good: Scarlett Johansson is absolutely drool inducingly gorgeous as Silken Floss. Her acting may have even been the best in the movie, or it could have just been that when everyone else is overacting and saying ridiculous things, playing a deadpan straight faced character makes you look good in comparison. Also, all the Sin City style is there. That's it, end of the good list.

I suppose Eva Mendez is hot too, but her character is so annoying you probably won't care. Another thing about her character is that the name is apparently Sand Serif from the printed material, but sometimes the other characters call her San Serif and other times Sand. Couldn't the director have at least made them say her name consistently one way or the other?

There is too much wrong with the movie to make an exhaustive listing, but despite all that, I was entertained. The problem was that it was in a MST3K or USA Up All Night kind of way. When the movie made me laugh, I was definately laughing at it, not with it.

Vacation

2009-01-23T07:40:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm down to a half day of vacation for my 2nd year at SVS, and I have to say that this has been a good relaxing one. I've caught up some on my movie and DVD watching. I need to do more, but if I can watch the Dark Knight today I'll be able to check one more off my list. I also got some stuff done around my house that I had been meaning to do for a while. I'm probably going to head back to Louisville sometime tomorrow so I can get a little more done on my last day before heading back to work.

I drove up to Dayton and saw my niece Karina on Wednesday this week. She looks a lot bigger than when I saw her just a few weeks ago at Christmas. She's also a lot more interactive. She reacts to music and rhythms by smiling. She also smiled when I recited the alphabet rhyme from Edward Gory's The Gashly Crumb Tinies. I'm trying to be a good gothic influence on my youngest niece. I wonder if she would like Poe's The Raven as well? Maybe I shouldn't point this blog out to Dan and Michele, they might not want a young goth on their hands. On the other hand, a gothic influence can't be any worse than metaphysics for an infant, can it?

Chip and I played some Rock Band for the first time in a long time as well. We got our band, Men without Comma, up over 500 stars for the gigs we've played, but we lost some fans on a punk song with brutal fast drumming. To add insult to injury, you can't even practice the song in the practice settings!

Sookie Stackhouse Novels

2009-01-15T18:05:00.000-08:00

If anyone watched the HBO series True Blood, these are the novels that series was based on. There are enough differences that reading ahead in the books isn't going to spoil the next season of the show, even if you do pick up a few spoilers along the way.

Dead Until Dark - The first book, introduces the main characters of Sookie and Bill. Sookie is a telepathic bar tender and Bill is a vampire. Ironically, they're the perfect couple because Sookie can't read the minds of Vampires. Probably the biggest difference from the show to the book is that the show (probably wisely) excluded a vampire Elvis, who now goes by the name of Bubba. Could you blame a vampire working in the morgue from trying to save his hero? Too bad all the drugs in Elvis' system turned him into a dimwit who prefers cat blood to other forms of nourishment.

Living Dead in Dallas & Club Dead - Books two and three respectively. These books start to bring in many of the side characters who were immediatly presented in the HBO series. These were some of my Christmas presants, and I read through them in a hurry. Maybe I'm a sucker for vampire stories, but I enjoyed both of these a great deal and plan on picking up more of these books when I go spend the borders card I got for my birthday.

For the curious, this link leads to the books: http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Until-Southern-Vampire-Mysteries/dp/0441015972

And this to the HBO series: http://www.hbo.com/trueblood/

I apparantly am lousy at blogging regullarly

2009-01-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

I could blame it on the holidays I suppose, or working a lot. However, I haven't been doing anything else on a regular weekly basis either. I could also blame it on my hot water heater being out for a week before christmas, not having hot water is certainly style cramping. I had a good holliday and good birthday, hosted my Dad's side of the family Christmas party almost two weeks ago, and have read all the books I got for Christmas. I must get into a better pattern with my weekly routine and monthly cleaning.

Since this was a rather lame update, I'm going to get a book review up.

Back to Real Life

2008-12-03T19:07:00.000-08:00

In the game World of Warcraft, I recently finished a mad charge to level 70 before the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. I would have hit it if there hadn't been a complete server outage the day before the release of the expansion.

While not completely anti-social, I was leveling with my friends Chip and Angela, I'm trying to get some stuff done in the real world too. Hmm, I'm not sure that posting a blog entry really counts as real world work, but it's at least a different virtual activity.

Greatest Olympian

2008-08-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not writing this to take anything away from Micheal Phelps, who certainly had an unbelievable Olympics. 8 Gold with 7 world records is going to be a record I expect to stand for quite a long time. Mark Spitz's record of 7 gold and 7 world records held up for 36 years. However I do think you have to look at more than just total medal count. Here are some people I think deserve to be counted in discussions of great Olympians.

Carl Lewis - Won 4 consecutive long jump gold medals. Lewis was also unusual for being a gold medal sprinter as well. It is unusual for an athlete to be world class in both a track and a field event. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Lewis

Jesse Owens - Carl Lewis duplicated Jesse Owens accomplishment in the 1936 Olympics, Gold in 100m, 200m, Long Jump, and 4x100m relay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens

Al Oerter - Other than Carl Lewis, he is the only person to ever win 4 gold medals in consecutive Olympics. Al overcame severe injuries in a car wreck (life-threatening according to wikipedia) before his second Gold, and set a world record with torn cartilage in his ribs before his third Gold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Oerter

Johan Olaf Kass - While he won medals in the 1992 Olympics shortly after having surgery, he is most famous for the Lillehammer games in '94. He won gold in the 1500m, 5000m, and 10,000m speed skating events setting world records in each event. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Olav_Koss

As you may have guessed, I've been watching a lot of the Olympics. When one of my nieces pointed out that I had been watching Olympics all day, I responded that I would keep watching all night. She didn't like that answer.

Hide and (sort of) seak

2008-08-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

Last night, we were watching all four of Michele and Robert's children. One of the things we did for entertainment was to suggest a treasure hunt for Regan's Webkinz poodle. Lauren wanted to help me hide it for Regan and Taylor to find. She picked my room, and liked my suggestion of hiding it in a paper bag that was up there.

When we came back down Lauren announced to here sisters, "Here is a clue. It is in a white bag and it is in Uncle Eric's room. That is a clue." Of Course, Regan and Taylor had no trouble finding it. As Blake commented, "That's too big a clue."

Summer Games

2008-08-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

I really love the Olympics. One of my earliest memories is being down in the basement in '76 in the house on St. Thomas. I was too young then to remember any specifics of those games, but something stuck with me.

I'm a big fan of events that can be scored with a stopwatch or tape measure. This includes any sort of race, and the field events in track and field. As I'm writing this, I'm watching a rowing race. I particularly like the way you can see physics in action as the boats speed up and slow down on each pull of the oars.

Other things I like are archery, wrestling and weightlifting. Of the sports with judges who score the competition, the diving family of events is my favorite. The only thing I would say I really don't like is synchronized swimming, but then, does anyone like watching that?

It's Alive

2008-08-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I had to wait a bit for parts, but I got my computer booted last Thursday, and the OS installed Friday after work. The weekend was devoted to program installs and gig upon gig of download. I've still got a few things that I want to install, but my new computer is up and running well.

I had trouble with getting the CPU fan locked in place, and then I overlooked the 2nd power hookup for my video card. However I had the most trouble with the IO plate for the motherboard. That was my mistake in thinking I could install it last. I kind of forced it into place, which I decided was better than basically starting over.

My new machine scored just over 12,000 on 3D Mark 08, which is almost 3 time more graphics power than my PC that died. I think I should be happy with this machine for a few good years.

Spannungsbogen

2008-07-28T18:49:00.000-07:00

The odd title of this post comes from the novel Dune. Frank Herbert used it as a Fremen term for the delay between wanting something and trying to acquire it. The reason I used this is that I'm having to order more parts before I can start to put my new computer together.

Although my delay in obtaining a new computer is from an oversight, so it is only loosely self imposed. However, in general, I've wanted to upgrade my computer for quite some time, but I put it off until a catastrophic hard drive failure forced me to upgrade. I think my use of the term is justified, and I like Dune.

With any luck, I'll have a new PC up and running before the end of the week, but it's not going to be tonight.

Chicago Dining

2008-07-22T20:29:00.000-07:00

We ate quite a few good meals while we were in Chicago. Here's a recap.

Avec - Angela discovered this one through Top Chef.
http://www.avecrestaurant.com/ - It's family style dining, and you will probably end up sitting at a table with another party or two depending on the size of your group. The stuffed dates were quite tasty, but that may have been the stuffing more than the dates. The fire grilled pizza was really different, but really good and the salmon was perfectly cooked.

Phil Stefani's Itialian Steakhouse
http://www.stefanirestaurants.com/437rush.htm - The Hotel we stayed at last time recommended this restaurant. It is awesome. Come hungry and plan on sharing the appetizers. The side dishes are great, but you may want to stay away unless you are very hungry. The lobster bisque may be the best thing I've ever tasted! I've done pasta both times I've eaten there. I may have to do steak the next time I find myself in Chicago.

Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab.
http://www.icon.com/joes/ - We couldn't get in to eat here last trip, so we made this a lunch meal. The food was outstanding, and we could see why they are as busy as they are. I had never had stone crab before, and it is delicious. The crab claws come out pre-cracked, so it's not too much work to get the meat out. It's an almost sweet crab meat. When we were done eating the waiter came out with lemons halves, squeezed the juice in our hands, and gave us hot towels to wipe off with.

Aborted Ball Game

2008-07-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

Last summer I had gone to Chicago to see the Police in concert, and my friends Chip and Angela met me there. We ran around Chicago for a few days, and we had such a good time we went back this summer. We flew into Midway the morning of the July 12th.

We decided to try to get into the Cubs game that afternoon, so we dropped off our stuff in the hotel and took a cab out to Wrigley Field. We had seen tickets online starting at $33, but decided to try to get tickets at the stadium. There was a guy selling tickets for $75, wich was more than I wanted to spend. I'm not a big baseball fan, so I was really just there to eat a hot dog and hang out. We ended up getting standing room only tickets for $15 without really knowing what that got us.

Since we showed up a little late, it was probably the 3rd inning before we got done eating a hot dog and trying to find a place to watch the game. (The hot dog was really good by the way.) We found a cool spot on a ramp, but the problem was the good spots on the rail were already taken. Where we were standing we could only see about 1/3 of the field. We tried to find a better place to stand, but couldn't find any good ones. I suppose all the locals know where the good spots are and rush to them with a SRO ticket. After failing to find a good spot to stand, Chip declared he was done, so we headed out.

We missed a good game. The cubs got up 7-0 before letting San Franscisco tie it up. The cubs ended up winning in 11. I also got hit up with the strangest pan-handling request I've ever heard as we left the stadium. Someone wanted our tickets to get a free hot dog with them. I handed over my ticket and he was happy.

The Book of Three

2008-07-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

I discovered this book when I was a kid after the Disney movie, The Black Cauldron. The Book of Three is actually the first book in Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain. I remember enjoying the books as a kid, but not remembering a great deal about them. Cauldron is by far the best known book of the series, but if you are interested I recommend starting here.

The main character is Taran, the oddly titled assistant pig keeper who craves adventure. (In Taran's defense, he is watching a magic pig, Hen Wen.) Having recently re-read this book, I would recommend it as kid friendly fare to anyone who enjoys Harry Potter. This is actually written for a much younger audience than Harry Potter. It's a book that could be read aloud in a reasonable period of time, and also one that a young reader might be able to tackle on their own. The biggest sticking point for a young reader would be the names inspired from Welsh mythology.

As you would expect from a novel written for children, there is some moral instruction going on while the plot unfolds. It's not heavy handed and emphasises things like not being too proud to accept help, sensible bravery, honesty and the ability and willingness to recognize a mistake so it can be corrected. The plot moves along quickly, and Taran is back home, no worse for wear but wiser before you know it.

Comparing this to Harry Potter once again, this book doesn't suffer from the flaw that Harry never seems to learn. Late into Book 6 of that series, Harry would still be lost without Hermionie and her studious habits. As much as I enjoyed the Harry Potter books, that always bothered me.

I want to compare this to another book that I read as a kid and re-read as an adult, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuin. I would have to say that A Wizard of Earthsea is as deep a book as you would ever want to find that was written in such a way that it is suitable for children. Upon re-reading LeGuin's book, I discovered that I had absorbed the philosophy of that book without even realizing it. The Book of Three is a children's book that an adult can enjoy, and I intend to pick up the rest of series from the library so I can enjoy them again.

Warrior Training

2008-07-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, my niece Taylor saw a show with a Chinese warrior. I forget the name of the show, but I'm sure my sister Caroline will remind me. When I took Lauren and Taylor to the library, Taylor wanted a book with Chinese warriors in it. I showed her a book on China, but after flipping through the pages, she decided that she wasn't interested in that book because of a lack of warrior content.

While she and Lauren played with some toys in the kids section of the library, I found a kids book of Kung Fu. It had pictures of old Chinese men training and a few pictures of Bruce Lee. She was happy with that for a while. However, when I asked her about the book the next day, her response was: I don't want to train any more, because then I would be a warrior, and I do not want that.

This one of my favorite Taylor stories. She went from being fascinated with Kung Fu and Chinese warriors to not wanting anything to do with them all in the span of about 2 days. I suppose that wraps up this Drunken Monkey style blog entry.

Switching away from periodic email updates

2008-07-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

When I left Jacksonville in 2007, I gathered a large list of emails to keep in touch with people. I decided that there were problems with this approach.

Sending a long email to a large list of people is kind of weird. I always felt like I was making it too long for people to want to read it.
Sending a short email isn't all that good for staying in touch.
There are people I want to stay in touch with that weren't on my Jacksonville list. I suppose I could have added them, and very few people would have ever known that I had snuck in a couple of college buddies. However, I always ended up forgetting to add them to the email updates.

So I'm going to try posting to a free blog and see how that goes for keeping people updated. I'm new to the whole blogging thing, so I may end up changing my mind later.