I've been spending the evenings with Karen since she's returned - we've been curled up together on the couch and watching TV. Maybe that sounds kind of normal, but for us it really isn't. We're trucking right on through Babylon 5 - now in the middle of the 3rd season. It's not super active or anything like that, just time to watch something together that we both enjoy.
In the later evening, I've started reading (gasp!) again. This time, a science book on the financial markets: The (mis) behavior of markets by Benoit Mandelbrot. And if that name sounds familiar, it should. He's the fractal dude, and not surprisingly the book is about fractals as an application to financial markets.
It's a laymans book - which means he keeps the equations out of the core of it, which is a damn fine thing because that math is pretty hot and heavy. I've only started to skim the surface of the book so far, but it's intriguing. Not even sure why I picked it up in Oak Harbor, other than it looked interesting and was by Mandelbrott himself.
I've not been posting much of late, but I guess that isn't all that surprising right now either.
So the world all knows - SkunkHill Studio is live. It's Karen William's artist website, as mentioned in her newly published article in Quilting Arts Magazine.
Karen insists that I tell you all it's functional and has more work to go - but I'm thrilled that it's up and available.
Now you all can see the work she's been developing over the past few years and where she's going with a style that's completely her own. In fact, a number of pieces from her recent exhibition are available for viewin' online - all the were pieces of the City and Guilds of London course 7802-18 : Machine Embroidery. The work that really kicks me the most is her Scythian Gold piece - down at the bottom of those Resolved Samples. The picture doesn't due the texture and color justice - it's simply exquisite.
After I got home this evening, I immediately pulled out the laptop and started back in on things. I left work a little early today for a doctor's appointment, so I felt a little behind. A few minutes later, I was smack back in the heart of it all with emails flying, word documents getting rapidly hacked, edited, and spit back down the email pipe, and a remote ssh session or two into work to capture some notes.
I originally intended to work on a little python this evening. Funny how that works. I at least still have my original work that I started with, but I've made no progress at all on the little network stats side project that I meant to knock out this evening and have ready for a run tomorrow morning.
So what am I doing now? writing here. Yeah, avoiding it I guess. And with that tacit acknowledgement, I'll get back to work so I can whip up some magic at work tomorrow.
I'm missing Karen, but I'll get to see her tomorrow - heading up to Whidbey Island to attend her graduation from this art class and view her classes exhibition, which should be just wonderful. I've obviously seen a great deal of Karen's work, and I'm looking forward to seeing the other work from the class, as well as Karen's stuff formally presented.
I decided to treat myself out a bit tonight. After a long day that concluded pretty sucessfully, and looking forward to a continued heavy week - I thought it would be worthwhile to go do something I haven't done in quite a while: get some good sushi.
I'd eaten previously at Ototo Sushi, as it's near home and open reasonably late, but it had been a while. Tonight I went back, and wasn't disappointed. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the octopus, but the other sashimi pieces were delightful in freshness, texture, and flavor. And they had a lovely green tea.
So many places serve black teas, but Ototo has a really good green tea which I thoroughly enjoyed with the rest of the meal. I didn't even spend a horrific amount, and found the medium combo pretty much filled me up.
If you're lurking about Queen Anne and looking for some sushi, try it out. It's not the cheapest in the world, but I think it's a pretty good value for a sushi place outside of the International District.
So this weekend was (is) Hempfest. They're having it at Myrtle Edwards park (which our office overlooks), and I'm here to report that this is a seriously pot-smokin' town based on the turnout down there.
I actually didn't spend all day overlooking the crowds (determined crowds mind you - the rain didn't really stop them, and it was very heavy rain for Seattle) - mostly I spent it in a garage getting various and unique internet back channels working for the infrastructure to an upcoming demo. Shot WIFI across a street (the easy one), and managed to get a satellite comm link going using INMARSAT. That took more work. The (*%#*&%%*(# satellite is way low on the southern horizon from here, and getting a clear shot to it was a complete pain in the ass. We did get it working, though, and then did some really cool networking and voice tricks over it.
To be completely honest, I'm pleasantly surprised at how very stable the network link is over the satellite. It is geosynchronous, so most of the latency was actually heading up into space and back, but the ping times were way, way stable (~950ms). I've seen far, far worse ping times on the internet with a 56k modem, that's for darn sure. Also got a force-learning session on PPP for linux, which made me revert back to the days of MacSLIP and MacPPP to recall what the hell was actually happening under the covers.
So for working on a Sunday, it was a long but delightfully productive day. One of these days I'll get a regular 2 day weekend again - hopefully soon. I think all the infrastructure crunch is about over - at least for the time being. Course, I've said that before - so I've probably just jinxed the snot out of myself. Eh, well hopefully not.
Spent the evening out at Golden Gardens park tonight - Leah and Nate secured a fire pit and we had a wonderful evening watching the sunset, roasting some hotdogs, making smores (I find I can't eat as many as I used to - although that's probably not so bad), and generally having a wonderful evening.
Now as we've returned home, leaving our fire pit to the folks next to us, I'm still smelling wood smoke on the clothes and kicking sand out of my sandals. I'm actually a little appalled at how dirty my feet are after wandering around barefoot in the sand, but I guess that just goes with the territory.
The really cool news was that I was able to get out of work at a very reasonable hour to get Karen to the park by 6:30pm. A demo coming up very soon looks like it's going to require a little work on this coming Sunday - but I think that will work out reasonably well with Karen's schedule. She's finishing up the last bits before a show next week in Oak Harbor. In fact, aside from this evening, I don't really expect to see her much out of the studio this weekend.
So it's a little reading to catch up on the state of the world outside my little microcosm of networking weirdness that work entails, and then a shower to loose most of that wood smoke smell before hitting the sack.
picked up Karen from teaching this evening, and we've both returned home. She's working on her artwork and prep for the class bits she has going, and I'm sitting here in the couch vaguely staring off into space and writing this.
I'm not so physically tired tonight as much as emotionally exhausted. I came home at 5:30pm this evening, and just stared at the walls for an hour. I did get a few house errands dealt with, but only a very few - and nothing to really take up the time between 6pm and 7:30pm when I left to get retreive Karen from northgate.
I think it's just time to go get some sleep and try and let everything sort itself out in my subconcious tonight instead of attempting to do anything useful.
I guess today has been a day of coincidences.
After my appointment this morning, I hopped a bus down the hill heading towards work. I wore some blisters into my heels monday morning when I walked into work to make a support deadline of 6am for a demo in a foreign country. Blech - but I'm taking it easy on my feet for a bit now. Anyway, as I reached the bottom of the hill, who's waiting there for the downtown bus' but John. I jumped out and chatted with him until his bus arrived and then I walked down on to work.
Coming home, I stopped at Larry's Market to get some grub for an evening of watching Babylon 5 with Karen (season 2, disk 4). When I came out of the market, there was a guy standing there at the bus stop, waiting for the next bus up the hill. Yep - John. So we chatted some more on the way up, and he hopped off to meet Sue and Ersala for whatever dinner plans they had.
The last one occured this evening when Karen said "did you read the National Geographic that just came in?"
I hadn't looked at it even beyond scanning the pictures - the issue focuses on Global Warming. She handed it to me between dinner and two of the episodes. It reads:
I grew up on a farm in west-central Missouri. I never wanted to stay on the farm, but after college I realized I never really had a choice in the matter, due to the economic reality of farming. One day in the mid 1990's, my father and I attended a county soils and crops meeting. There were probably over 200 farmers there. Fewer than 20 were under the age of 40, and of those only three, including myself, were under 30. I have often wondered what America's agricultural community will look like in 20 or 30 years when these older farmers pass on. I fear that most of our family-owned land will be sold and consolidated on an unprecedented scale, mostly to entities ending in "Inc."
Signed: Brandon Walker, Columbia Missouri from National Geographics online forums nationalgeographic/magazine/0405.
It just so happens I'm pretty sure I know this Brandon Walker. I helped drag him out of tech support at the University of Missouri central IT group and into system administration, where I thought (and still think) he excels and has a natural talent for the job. He's also a mean shot at Quake 3. And he doesn't have a blog. But I'll bet he hears about this....
I managed to slip out of work a touch early today for Karen's birthday. Met up with her at the Seattle Center to fiddle and goof around - just having a good time wandering about. We had to slip back home for a brief bit to feed the kitties, but headed almost immediately back downtown for an evening out.
We weren't sure where we were heading for a birthday dinner, but we did some good wandering. Glanced through a pile of shops in Pacific Place, looked at the movies (nothing was really appealing), and ended up poking around in Williams Sonoma there. While we were there, a lady was asking about "Where to eat" that was nearby, not outrageously priced, and good. I immediately thought Icon Grill and suggested it, which the cashier backed up with a "Yeah! That'd be perfect!". I'd only been there once before - one time with Nathan before catching a flick at the Cinerama - but it was fun and I remember the food being outstanding.
It also so happens that the Icon Grill is where we ended up for dinner ourselves. We had the signature dishes - meatloaf for me, macaroni & cheese for Karen, and a wonderful grilled pear salad. We ended up spending the better part of two hours there, with some incredible recommendations by John (ask for him if you go there - he's very knowledgable about the menu, has his own opinions, and was a generally delightful server).
Anyway, great evening. Plenty to do tomorrow - it could be a long day - but tonight has been wonderful and worth every minute.
Yep, more Babylon 5 tonight. We're in the middle of Season 2 now, and the story line is really working the characters around. Seasons 3 and 4 will work the story line arc to it's eventual completion - part of which Karen and I have already seen once.
It's been really nice to come home and re-watch the series. The story is complex with multiple main characters all charting out their courses through the over-arching storyline. It's like having four or five stories all played out at once, with periodic seguey's scattered throughout to keep things lively or to show off some different point here or there.
It's Karen's birthday tomorrow, and I dare not report how old she'll be here in the blog for fear of terrible and dire retribution (in case she didn't like it). I've been waiting with (I think) a really cool present for her since this past weekend - so I'll be glad to finally be able to give it to her.
I guess it's sort of a weather predictions - scattered postings with occasional sun. I've been cranked down to the bone at work, and while I had this weekend completely free to write for all of you, I took the time to unplug as much as humanly possible and decompress from the past week(s).
I keep expecting that I'll get some comment from Ryan, or more likely Byron of late - who's been tracking Ryan's postings as an interesting headliner to his blog. Did actually chat with Gus this past friday - that was sort of a first contact with normal humans since I went underground with all the extra hours at work. Ah well, the next couple of weeks don't look light, but they also don't look like they'll be incredibly hellish either.
On a completely different topic, I saw something in the paper that other day that gave me a groan - they're going to be putting in a Whole Foods far to close to me. Apparently, there's plans to land a Whole Foods grocery in the south lake union area - Lenora and Westlake or something like if I recall correctly. It's not that I don't like the grocery, it's that I like it far too much. Whole Paycheck is the real name of the place, and don't you forget it. There's nothing on their site verifying the build out - but then web sites are rarely as up to date as newspapers when it comes to saying something about a company.
Ended a relaxing weekend well by seeing John Renbourn at the Triple Door this evening. He's a wonderful acoustical guitarist, who I only really knew by reputation from his work with Pentangle.
Not that I'm musically savvy enough to put all that together without help - Leah and Nate said "You gotta come see this!", so we did - and I started looking at what he'd done previously. If Nate and Leah say "go see this or that artist", it's generally a recommendation that carries 17 or 18 stars (in a ten star scale), so we do it.
The music tonight was delightful as well as all over the map. The pieces he picked ranged over the jazz to celtic fare, which tweaks and twiddles that are uniquely his own. I had a great time listening to all he put out there, it was a fantastic show.
Took today and headed out of town. After running a few short errands in the morning, Karen, Nathan, and I did a random road trip heading out towards La Connor and Camano Island to see the sights. We finished it off with something I've been wanting to do for quite a while - pick up a bunch of oysters and get a shucking knife and start learning how to really make that happen.
Turns out I'm not too bad at shucking oysters at all. And I can now say I've shucked quite a few dozen (that would be five as of tonight). And the craziest thing about it all? I found a pearl. Yep, a real live, honest to goodness natural pearl. It's mishappen and not really all that pretty, but it's still a pearl.
Yeah, whady'a think I'd do with it - I gave it to Karen.
I woke up early to help take the cats to the Vet this morning (they're fine, just the routine stuff) - and realized that I just felt like crap. So I called in sick for the first time I can remember in quite a while, and spent the morning in bed vaguely sleeping on and off.
I did finally wake up and get out of bed around 1:30pm. I'm not surprised, but I am kinda at the same time. I worked two weeks worth of hours in the past week, so it's not surprising that I needed the sleep. Physically, mentally and emotionally I was completely drained.
The later afternoon was a trip over to U Village so I could indulge myself in going by the Apple store to get a view of what one of those Airport Express things looked like, and we headed to the Zoo for the show afterwards.
The show was decent, but frankly not great. A few of the classic tunes, but mostly stuff from their latest album "No!", focused on kids. Neat stuff, but it was all rather marred by a pack of teens who just had to stand up in front (and right in front of us) and the sort of confrontational aspect that developed from that. We left the show with me being rather nonplussed, and headed to Golden Gardens to watch the sunset and sit on the beach.
That was nice - quiet and relaxing, a little chilly with the cool air coming in off the sound. We watched some sailboats come in from the CYC race, but we arrived fairly late so I didn't see the Manta Ray and it's crew come in. At least I presume they were out there for the race. The sunset was the real gem though.
That the last bus up the counterbalance at night stops at Denny and 1st at 1:12am?
damnit.
The push is about over. Tomorrow I'll sleep in a bit, and we can start to recover normalicy both at home and at work. We have a normal planning meeting tomorrow morning that I'm looking forward to. Regular process, regular schedules. nice.
Even the cats are being pissy - they've been reacting much like when I was gone from Columbia and first here in Seattle - demanding attention all over the place, and then being nasty and performing retributive kitty-strikes when they couldn't.
Few more packages to build, a few more CD's to burn, and helpin' some guys pack for a 6am flight tomorrow morning.
Oh - and the ocean air smells really nice tonight.
I had no idea that you could access many of the direct pics and logs of Alvin's scientific dives. I guess you learn somethin' new every day.
Spent a wonderful day with Karen, quietly (mostly) ensconced at home chatting, watching TV, and just being together. We even got some good errands done together, including new shoes for both of us, mowing and weed pulling, and a dinner of munchies while watching Babylon 5. We're almost through the first season, courtest of Netflix, which really has been pretty good.
I don't expect we'll be watching much more TV for a few days this week, as work will undoubtably claim all my time (maybe literally) until tuesday morning at 9am. Tuesday evening Karen is working until 8, and wednesday night we're heading to Zoo Tunes to see They Might Be Giants.
Blue Angel #6 (and the others) just finished roaring over Seattle and lake washington for the SeaFair air show. Karen and I watched from in front of the house, seeing them tear through the air nearby - or more often in the distance in formation.
They did a number of different formations and stuff, with the end having all six of them banking pretty much over Queen Anne Avenue and roaring low overhead near our house back towards Lake Washington, where the formal "air show" is centered. We didn't see a huge amount of it between houses and trees, but we got a good view of a number of the planes or portions of the formations.
Mom said my grandfather (James Monroe Goodbar) was a formation flyer in the army air corps (yeah - before there was an air force). I never met him, but I bet that would have been cool to see.
so how do you pronounce it?
"too-pul" or "tahw-pul"
I've always been of the "tahw-pul" pronounciation myself, which matches with Sam (at work) - who was excited to hear that someone else actually pronounced it the same way. Brian (also from work) was of the "too-pul" persuasion, but we were able to make ourselves understood when discussing the new return values from a method call in python today.
I don't remember from where I originally learned about Tuple Spaces, but I remember them well and seem to recall the concept from something to do with IBM. Ah well, fading memory on the specifics of that I guess.
Dear Diane,
I never met you, and yet I feel the loss of your no longer being with us. Karen is sad that you're gone, upset and grieving really. I found out you'd died this morning at 2am when I got home. Karen heard last night at 7pm - her parents called with the news. I heard second hand that you're probably better off, as your MS was pretty bad and causing you suffering. I hope you're in a better place, and my thoughts are with you. Memories, even secondhand through Karen, are the best I can offer for you.
For the record, happy hardware hacking involving a drill and a breadboard is a terribly amusing thing for me at 1am. And it's a very, very good thing we had more than one breadboard.
They won't let me solder though. I can't imagine why...
The USS Bonhome Richard is floating past my office window right now. Dear load, is that a biggun.
The week is going about like I expected - relatively quiet in the early parts of the week leading to quite a run of effort in the end of it. I didn't expect it at all, but I didn't get home until a little after 8pm tonight. Even still, Karen and I found some time to watch Babylon 5 and continue into the first season.
Last night I completely passed out at 8:30pm or so and slept through the night. We went to a block party after work, and when I got into the house I sat on the couch, laid back, and was out. Karen woke me up long enough to crawl back to the bed, but I was definately not moving anywhere fast.
So I guess it's reversed a little today - even though it was a long day, it seemed to go by blazingly fast. Now it's almost 11pm and I'm still wondering what happened to the day. Getting a bit tired though... so it's bedtime soon.
And as a completely geeky note, it was interesting to see DrScheme available for MacOS X cross version-tracker. I started to play with Scheme in a vague attempt to grok lisp-like thinking a few years ago. I'm up to my neck in c++ isms now, so I'm not likely to go too far down that path, but it's still pretty cool. And of course if you're mentioning anything Lisp like, it's worth pointing out Squeak, which is a really impressive little runtime and language option in that basic genre (you language lawyers can go bitch about the differences elsewhere).
Spent most of this afternoon retrofitting unit tests onto code that never had them. It's sort of part archeology and part experimentation to really determine how the various modules were put together.
I'm constantly surprised at how writing out tests really defines out how something works (or doesn't work). It's particularly effective at showing out the inconsistencies of quick code - returning an empty string instead of a null value for example. Some methods do one thing, other's do elsewise. Each is simple and generally a valid method, but randomly cycling between the two leads to a LOT of frustration when debugging code.
On a similiar note, we painted in the kitchen tonight. The lower walls are all getting "Super White" - and it looks like we'll need to drape a second coat across some of the bead board simply because there's some variation in color. It was really absorbing the paint in quickly, and we had to use brushes instead of rollers to make sure we got the fills all in place nicely.
With any luck, this will mean we can scoot the stove back into place (it's currently in the middle of the kitchen - and we don't have a large kitchen) and our kitchen will once again close in on being usable for a while. The upper walls are all set to go as well, although I think we're going to wait a day or two before we attack them. We have a warm beige/yellow color for it (can't remember the name) that I think will make a lovely warm color for the winters.
It should come as no surprise that a house built in 1914 is not perfectly square in 2004. Yep, our kitchen. In fact, our kitchen is smaller at the ceiling than it is at the base or even in the middle. And it's not a gentle slope either - the top three inches of the the kitchen seem to be slightly inset at an angle.
Why would I know this dreary and somewhat pointless fact? Because I spent part of the day making mitre cuts for crown moulding to go up there. Took several rounds of measuring, cutting, etc - but it's up there. And I'm here to say that painter's caulk is freakin' awesome. Much like speckled or ragged paint can hide a multitude of sins, painter's caulk can make up those differences when you cut 45 degree mitres perfectly, only to find the angles of the corners are something quite other than 90.
So the trim is done, the beadboard is up, the various pieces of wall patching and baseboard inserting all complete. The thresholds are stained (although I think I'm going to give them another coat before I call it good). The next steps are priming the raw wood and then covering everything in a fresh coat of paint. (By the way, I am a complete convert on spending the cash on good paint - if you're going to paint something that you care about looking good and lasting well, I recommend Benjamin Moore paints)
More progress! No photos though. Mostly cause I don't know where the camera is at the moment. We've got all the major wordwork for the walls complete (there's still some cabinet doors to work on), and the thresholds for the tile to the hardwood are all cut and stained downstairs. There's still installation left to go on those guys, but that should be pretty quick - a few small finishing nails strategically placed and they'll be there. After all that is said and done, there is some grouting left to do to close the gaps between the hardwood thresholds and the tile - and I expect that will be about the last stuff we do in the kitchen. Probably even after painting.
Speaking of which, we picked up the paint today too - although we're not planning on tackling that part right now. I think the last things we have on the list for today are the various bits of trim to get installed. So the mitre box is upstairs, and I'm waiting for Karen to finish fiddling with the wood putty so we can tackle this last bit and get back to a relaxin' weekend.