Yesterday, I was visiting a friend on her recently acquired farm. She and her husband are working the land just outside of Martinsville. They have a few acres and rather than just plant one vegetable they are planting what seems like hundreds of varieties. All kinds of lettuce, strawberries, leeks, onions, three different varieties of garlic, peppers, cucumbers, sunflowers, potatoes. Oh there is a lot of goodness coming out of the ground. I made a soft commitment to weed in exchange for some fruits and veggies. I can't wait to see how it all turns out.
While I was out there my friend explained how easy it is to make paneer, Indian cottage cheese. I love cooking with paneer, but I don't enjoy driving to the north east side of town in order to gather up what appears to be the only fresh-ish paneer available for sale. She assured me it was a snap and that all I needed was milk and lemon juice. She wasn't kidding. I googled some recipes today and picked up the requisite whole milk and lemon juice with my regular groceries. All it takes is boiling a half gallon of milk on medium heat, add 2 tablespoons of lemon or lime juice, and allow it to curdle. After you think you have a good amount of solid curds throw the mess into a colander lined with a cheese cloth and let all the whey out. Squeeze out some extra moisture from the cheese cloth and then put it in between two plates with weight on top. Let it sit like that for an hour et voila! Paneer. I happened to have some cheese cloth left over from some past science experiment, and I woke up this morning thinking it was a great day to make cheese.
It turned out great, but next time I'm going to wait for the milk to come to a full flowing-over-the-edge-of-the-saucepan boil before I add the lemon juice. I ended up adding the lemon juice too early so I had to add more and turn up the heat a bit to get my curdle on. I now have some lemony paneer that tastes lovely. My new co-workers and I have entered a pact to bring out lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I can't wait to bring in my palak paneer with homemade cheese this week.
In other news I received a wonderful gift from Persephone in the mail congratulating me on my new job. Gifts are great, and unexpected packages in the mail are fabulous. Underneath the brown paper was a bodum tea press. It's a fusion infuser blending the mechanism of a coffee press with a tea infusing cage. It works great in the office. I've been chugging pots of sencha and loving it. I was so tickled to get it I sat down and hand wrote her a letter, however, I still haven't sent it. I am without stamps and apparently without any gumption to change that. So Persephone, the tea pot is excellent. Thanks so much. You'll be receiving a proper thank you note by post... eventually.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Feet up
I am typing this post from my recliner using my television as a monitor. I have a whole new entertainment system set up in my den, and I just placed the finishing touches of phase one: computing from comfort. I just picked up this little wireless keyboard and air mouse from Fry's electronics. That's right, air mouse. There are all kinds of Power Point presentation mice out on the market these days, but to my knowledge the one from Gyration is the first and most versatile. I'm thoroughly pleased.
The new entertainment system all started with the need to play Rock Band. That meant buying a new console system. I've been in the market for one and I finally settled on the XBox 360 based on ubiquity and superior online gaming system. If I was going to get a new game system I figured I might as well get a new television while I was at it. My current television is from the early Clinton years, and with the mandated digital television coming along I figured now was as good a time as any to take the plunge into the age of televisions with processing power. What was once a desire for a new game turned into a living room altering shopping spree. But I had set myself on my course. It didn't matter then when I saw that Rock Band was available for the PS2. I had already gotten my credit approval at Best Buy and was well on my way to glutting myself in a consuming frenzy.
I went from a 15-year-old 24" tube style TV with rabbit ears and a PS2 to a vast pile of fabulous technology. The large flat panel looks a little funny on the sagging, old TV stand. I'm thinking that should get updated as well.
And speaking of new things, as I was typing this blog my brand new mouse seemed to run out of juice. The jury's still out on that one.
I might start getting some posts in now that I feel like I'm watching TV while blogging.
The new entertainment system all started with the need to play Rock Band. That meant buying a new console system. I've been in the market for one and I finally settled on the XBox 360 based on ubiquity and superior online gaming system. If I was going to get a new game system I figured I might as well get a new television while I was at it. My current television is from the early Clinton years, and with the mandated digital television coming along I figured now was as good a time as any to take the plunge into the age of televisions with processing power. What was once a desire for a new game turned into a living room altering shopping spree. But I had set myself on my course. It didn't matter then when I saw that Rock Band was available for the PS2. I had already gotten my credit approval at Best Buy and was well on my way to glutting myself in a consuming frenzy.
I went from a 15-year-old 24" tube style TV with rabbit ears and a PS2 to a vast pile of fabulous technology. The large flat panel looks a little funny on the sagging, old TV stand. I'm thinking that should get updated as well.
And speaking of new things, as I was typing this blog my brand new mouse seemed to run out of juice. The jury's still out on that one.
I might start getting some posts in now that I feel like I'm watching TV while blogging.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
A soggy greeting from Hope
I recently started a new job that has better pay and less stress with more interesting work than the old slog. Not bad, huh? I'm pleased as punch about it. After 18 months hard time in a supermax facility, aka working in an overstretched I.T. department for a fortune 300 financial institution, it's gratifying to know there is reasonable work available. This is my third week and I'm on my second business trip. Last week I was in California. Yay, right? Not bad. I had a lot of work to do and not a lot of time for sight seeing. No beach combing. This week I'm in the birthplace of Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee. Hope, Arkansas has a Walmart, a restaurant called Dos Locos Gringos, and a Western Sizzlin franchise. Hope is a small town with not much to offer, its main export being politicians that are able to hit national standing and high end speakers.
My flight into Little Rock was entertaining. While squeezing into his dwarfed seat on the tiny plane an enormous old German traveler confused me for his proctologist and shoved his ass in my face. It was the kind of experience I could only imagine would happen at a thirty year reunion of dancers from the Unicorn. Flabby ass cheeks draped with loud gold, blue, and brown checkered pants hit me square in the face. Awful. I was later informed that the airline lost his luggage. Karma's a bitch I guess. Also on the plane was a god squad in wool suits and bibles. They looked like a bunch of fresh faced MBAs looking for a job or a sales team getting ready for the next pitch. The Little Rock airport is small and brightly colored. Red support pillars shoot up to the vaulted ceiling. On the way to baggage claim a sign welcomed all and sundry to Arkansas. Another sign welcomed the World Series of S.W.A.T. which is being held in Little Rock April 9 - 12. I hear tickets are still available if you're interested.
It takes a little less than two hours to drive to Hope from Little Rock. After a quick meal at a lovely bar/sandwich shop/restaurant we hit the road in the rental car. That's when the heavens opened up. Sheets of rain so thick I could hardly see the road in places. And while the hail wasn't constant it was large and in charge. My boss half believed that the windshield was about to crack at any moment. It was rough. Strangely enough though the satellite radio never gave out. Equally strange were the three distinct moments no longer than two seconds a piece when the rain simply stopped. It was as if I had driven underneath a small, invisible canopy. Completely bizarre. The rain stopped and lulled us into a false sense of confidence only to start up again with renewed vigor. I got off the road two hours ago and the thunder continues. It's a lovely sound.
My flight into Little Rock was entertaining. While squeezing into his dwarfed seat on the tiny plane an enormous old German traveler confused me for his proctologist and shoved his ass in my face. It was the kind of experience I could only imagine would happen at a thirty year reunion of dancers from the Unicorn. Flabby ass cheeks draped with loud gold, blue, and brown checkered pants hit me square in the face. Awful. I was later informed that the airline lost his luggage. Karma's a bitch I guess. Also on the plane was a god squad in wool suits and bibles. They looked like a bunch of fresh faced MBAs looking for a job or a sales team getting ready for the next pitch. The Little Rock airport is small and brightly colored. Red support pillars shoot up to the vaulted ceiling. On the way to baggage claim a sign welcomed all and sundry to Arkansas. Another sign welcomed the World Series of S.W.A.T. which is being held in Little Rock April 9 - 12. I hear tickets are still available if you're interested.
It takes a little less than two hours to drive to Hope from Little Rock. After a quick meal at a lovely bar/sandwich shop/restaurant we hit the road in the rental car. That's when the heavens opened up. Sheets of rain so thick I could hardly see the road in places. And while the hail wasn't constant it was large and in charge. My boss half believed that the windshield was about to crack at any moment. It was rough. Strangely enough though the satellite radio never gave out. Equally strange were the three distinct moments no longer than two seconds a piece when the rain simply stopped. It was as if I had driven underneath a small, invisible canopy. Completely bizarre. The rain stopped and lulled us into a false sense of confidence only to start up again with renewed vigor. I got off the road two hours ago and the thunder continues. It's a lovely sound.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Goregeous
Today is beautiful. It's warm enough to recall days of real warmth, and I rolled down my windows in my car while running some post lunch errands today. Since I'm going to be oncall for my last two days of employment at my current job I just couldn't help but take an hour or two out of my day today and run a few errands. Driving around in the midday sunshine with a strong musical accompaniment is utter bliss. At the office I just cannot be bothered to pay attention anymore. I feel like I should have taken today off it being so disingenuous of me to call this a day worked. Another day another dollar - although today I just didn't earn it.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The final countdown
It's been a while, but the silence is over. These days my job has had my complete attention. I found that even my downtime was focused on not thinking about my job which meant it wasn't fully released to leisure. Today marks day two of my final week at my current job, and I couldn't be more excited. I turned in my two weeks last week to pursue a new opportunity with an expanded role in a smaller company. Thank gawd! I learned a lot of technical widget skills at this job, but the thing I learned that I value the most is how to be a professional and see a task all the way through to the bitter end regardless of whether or not I think it's a losing proposition. Well, and that I want to work in a small shop with less demands. I'm not interested in forfeiting half of my oncall duties running configuration errands for other business groups. "Sorry it's such late notice, but we need to do it now or the business will lose thousands of dollars. You weren't doing anything Tuesday night at 1 am were you?" I'll just reschedule that appointment I had with my bed.
I keep getting asked why I'm leaving by my management, and I believe their questions are genuine and my answers are heard. Since it's on my mind I'll let it loose on the blog, too.
I work in I.T., specifically in infrastructure, and I'm a fan of making changes to the network during a maintenance window, but it's cruel and unusual to state the time and periodicity of such a window and then say, but if it's X enough (important, embarrassing, a VP has a burr in her britches over it) then this change can happen at the whim of the requesting party. There is some need to be this flexible in this business. The only problem is this back door policy doesn't scale well. In a company of thousands of employees with hundreds of business groups the potential to be called upon to make a change whenever one is watching the network is large. Which brings me to the next point. In my opinion oncall personnel, one who is available to repair a problem after hours, should only be notified when a device or service isn't working that this individual manages. Since I work with infrastructure technically everything touches my equipment in some way so I can expect to receive a page at two in the morning for a problem regardless of whether or not there's any evidence to support that my equipment is even breathing heavily much less broken. Here's an analogy: Bobby is expecting a package via UPS and it doesn't arrive. He contacts UPS. When the UPS service rep says he doesn't know what happened to the package, rather than escalating to the service rep's manager Bob thanks him for his time and calls the Department of Transportation. Clearly the package was lost somewhere on the road and it's the DoT's lot to figure out where and get it back.
I'm told at the new job that there is a window that is kept sacred. Nothing is to be manipulated outside of this window beyond break/fix issues. Also, the network is much smaller so it follows that I'll receive less after hours notifications of broken stuff. Honestly, I may never shake the UPS/DoT problem, but I've been told that my new help desk staff is very helpful and is expected to do the requisite troubleshooting to assign problems to the right place. That alone gives me a warm fuzzy.
I'm looking forward to my week off in between jobs. Originally I was going to quit in the middle of the week so I negotiated to start on the following Monday with the new job, but my current boss said it was fine and that I could make Friday my last day. The funny thing is that I don't own a computer. I haven't owned one since college. I've always just used the laptops that I've been issued through work - not the smartest thing when it comes to privacy, but I'm not checking out porn so it's mostly kosher. The long and the short of it is I'll be disconnected for nine whole days. I have a groovy iPhone so I have access to e-mail, but I'm not going to be composing any long ass narratives on that touch keyboard. It gets the critical jobs done, but it's no substitute for a full computer. I haven't spent this much time without access to the Internet since I was aware of the Internet AP (After Prodigy). I look forward to it. I'll be forced to write with a pen and paper which is just weird and tiring, but I'll also have plenty of time to read and knit. Maybe I'll get some more work done on the old bike and de-winterize the new one. I imagine
I keep getting asked why I'm leaving by my management, and I believe their questions are genuine and my answers are heard. Since it's on my mind I'll let it loose on the blog, too.
I work in I.T., specifically in infrastructure, and I'm a fan of making changes to the network during a maintenance window, but it's cruel and unusual to state the time and periodicity of such a window and then say, but if it's X enough (important, embarrassing, a VP has a burr in her britches over it) then this change can happen at the whim of the requesting party. There is some need to be this flexible in this business. The only problem is this back door policy doesn't scale well. In a company of thousands of employees with hundreds of business groups the potential to be called upon to make a change whenever one is watching the network is large. Which brings me to the next point. In my opinion oncall personnel, one who is available to repair a problem after hours, should only be notified when a device or service isn't working that this individual manages. Since I work with infrastructure technically everything touches my equipment in some way so I can expect to receive a page at two in the morning for a problem regardless of whether or not there's any evidence to support that my equipment is even breathing heavily much less broken. Here's an analogy: Bobby is expecting a package via UPS and it doesn't arrive. He contacts UPS. When the UPS service rep says he doesn't know what happened to the package, rather than escalating to the service rep's manager Bob thanks him for his time and calls the Department of Transportation. Clearly the package was lost somewhere on the road and it's the DoT's lot to figure out where and get it back.
I'm told at the new job that there is a window that is kept sacred. Nothing is to be manipulated outside of this window beyond break/fix issues. Also, the network is much smaller so it follows that I'll receive less after hours notifications of broken stuff. Honestly, I may never shake the UPS/DoT problem, but I've been told that my new help desk staff is very helpful and is expected to do the requisite troubleshooting to assign problems to the right place. That alone gives me a warm fuzzy.
I'm looking forward to my week off in between jobs. Originally I was going to quit in the middle of the week so I negotiated to start on the following Monday with the new job, but my current boss said it was fine and that I could make Friday my last day. The funny thing is that I don't own a computer. I haven't owned one since college. I've always just used the laptops that I've been issued through work - not the smartest thing when it comes to privacy, but I'm not checking out porn so it's mostly kosher. The long and the short of it is I'll be disconnected for nine whole days. I have a groovy iPhone so I have access to e-mail, but I'm not going to be composing any long ass narratives on that touch keyboard. It gets the critical jobs done, but it's no substitute for a full computer. I haven't spent this much time without access to the Internet since I was aware of the Internet AP (After Prodigy). I look forward to it. I'll be forced to write with a pen and paper which is just weird and tiring, but I'll also have plenty of time to read and knit. Maybe I'll get some more work done on the old bike and de-winterize the new one. I imagine
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Bette Midler
This morning I woke up with "From a distance" rolling through my head. It gets worse. I don't know all the lyrics so this is a jumbled mass of words conveying the world is blue and green, we're at war, and that god is watching us in a loop. I needed to share this immediately.
I'm not dead yet. I realize I've been pretty quiet, but with good reason. The only thing that's been on my mind these days are work and my girlfriend. I'm not interested in blogging about either topic. It is my hope that my work situation will evolve to allow me some freedom of expression here, but that remains to be seen. In the meantime I'll pick a topic out of a random word generator and start blogging on it as filler if I have to.
I'm not dead yet. I realize I've been pretty quiet, but with good reason. The only thing that's been on my mind these days are work and my girlfriend. I'm not interested in blogging about either topic. It is my hope that my work situation will evolve to allow me some freedom of expression here, but that remains to be seen. In the meantime I'll pick a topic out of a random word generator and start blogging on it as filler if I have to.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
A sock is born!
Well really this sock is so enormous I could stuff a leather bottom into it and call it a moccasin. I finally got over my fears of heel turning, gusset stitches and toe decreases and have a finished sock to show for it. This fine piece of knittery to the right here took me a few weeks to knit up. Yesterday, I decided I needed to get cracking on its buddy, and now I'm more than half-way through having completed the gusset shaping. All I've left is the foot which knits up fast. This sock is on display underneath a scarf I knit that I'm going to be replicating with some color modifications for Aganippe. I can't wait to hit my favorite scarf pattern again! Thanks, Maestro!
In other news I've taken up yoga. I went to my first class ever Saturday and afterwards experienced the state my buddy Belerophon refers to as "yoga bliss". This is ashtanga style which, I've been told, focuses on the upper body; shoulders and whatnot. I couldn't tell you how ashtanga compares to other yoga styles, though. I felt so great on Saturday I curled up into a blanket and napped for a few hours. I'm napping dysfunctional so this took me by surprise. I was still more surprised to find myself actually falling asleep that night. Go yoga! I thought of you, Persephone, when it came time to do handstands in the class. Everyone who was going for it was instructed to take our mats to the walls. You are not alone. And now that I've actually attempted a handstand, and only managed to get into position with the overwhelming efforts of my instructor, I can say that your wall free handstand style is totally bad ass and really mean it. So now I've done yoga, and I completely adore it. It really kicked my ass, too.
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