Recently in Journal Entries Category

Another month and another set of stats off the solar panels: February saw 22.4% of our household consumption coming from the panels. We've had rather sunny weather, but it's amazing how quickly the days become longer this time of year and even on the partly to mostly cloudy days the panels' production is up notably compared to the shorter days'.

Looks like Google Maps has quietly added non-freeway traffic in the Portland area. One thing I love the most about the iPhone is near instant easy access to Google Maps' traffic info. It saves me a lot of time on the road. There are a few notoriously bad areas though which I drive through blind and fairly often drive into bad traffic. Now I can avoid them when they're congested.

I am curious though to see how accurate the info proves to be. The lights at intersections have traffic sensors, but I've never seen evidence that they were networked or feed data much of anywhere. Much of the congestion could go away if the lights were talking together and being cycled in conjunction with one another instead of in competition with one another.

I've been thinking for some time of rigging myself something to nestle a coffee holding vessel somewhere on my scooter. Corazzo seems to make good products (though I bought a larger fancier Italian lap blanket instead of theirs) and this seems like an obviously handy one to have.

But patent pending, self-levelling, auto-gimbal? Either they're trying to patent basic physics (inertia, gravity) or that is supposed to be internet humor...

I learned a new word in German yesterday..."Zwickel". Apparently that's a spigot, in particular on the bottom of a brewing cask used for sampling beer.

The local wineries have twice yearly open houses that seem to draw crowds well. On Saturday Oregon's breweries gave it a go under the "Zwickelmania" banner. It sounds like turn out was good, so here's hoping they do it again.

We "only" went to HUB. One of their brewmasters gave us a tour and a few samples of their exquisitely crafted beers. It was amazing to see the "air locks" (bucket with a plastic hose blowing off the top of the fermenter) on their massive fermenters blasting away. That many gallons of wort sure kick out a lot of CO2. Makes ours look absolutely puny.

Among the various interesting things we learned about HUB is that they (the brewers) have an open door policy Friday evenings, they welcome homebrewers and the curious to stop by for a chat, and even sell barley and yeast! And they use Young's yeast for some things...I've got to try getting some of that for our next batch of chocolate stout.

...is the amount of the electricity our household consumed which came from our own solar panels this month. Not too shabby for Portland in January!

Over the holiday I Tivo'd Ratatouille for something good visually to check out the new TV. Since then though I've been wondering what exactly is ratatouille.

Tonight I decided to make it. I served it with a simple broiled salmon fillet (with olive oil, garlic, onion, black pepper and parsley) and couscous (arguably a French connection given their north african connections; made with our home canned chicken stock, black pepper, onion, garlic and parsley). The couscous sucked up a bit of juice from each of the salmon and the ratatouille and really just connected the whole thing into a scrumptuous meal.

The following is a combination of my thoughts plus the Smitten Kitchen's take on the movie Ratatouille and a random glance through the top hits on google for "ratatouille recipe".

Ratatouille:

• 1c diced/stewed tomatoes


• 1 red onion, diced


• 5 cloves garlic, minced


• olive oil


• ground black pepper


• ground thyme


• parsley flakes


• white wine


• 2 bay leaves


• 1 each red, green, yellow bell peppers, guts/seeds removed


• 1 eggplant


• 1 green zucchini


• 8oz cherry tomatoes, chopped


• grated mizithra (or parm or hunks of feta, goat or what floats your boat) cheese

Start oven heating to 375F.

Pour stewed tomatoes in bottom of 9-10" Pyrex baking dish. Lay bay leaves in dish.

Saute onion in olive oil with black pepper, thyme and parsley. Add garlic at end once onions are cooked, stir briefly, layer on top of tomatoes in baking dish.

De-glaze saute pan with a bit of white wine. Pour reduced wine into baking dish.

Thinly slice peppers, zucchini and egg plant. Stand these around throughout inside of the baking dish, alternating eggplant, zucchini and peppers.

Layer any remaining vegetables on top of the baking dish decoratively.

Add additional black pepper, thyme and parsley, and then sprinkle chopped cherry tomatoes on top. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil.

Cut parchment paper to fit inside top of dish.

Bake at 375F for about 45 minutes, until the vegetables are cooked. Vegetables should be cooked and releasing juices and the sauce be bubbling, but the veggies shouldn't be dissolving into mush.

Sprinkle top with cheese and serve.

I'm very impressed with how well Metro area roads were maintained through the last two weeks of storms. Generally I found roads were in better condition than in past years' much smaller snow and ice storms.

Until just recently.

Washington County maintains the main arterial near me. Just in the last two days they've gotten around to plowing it. And made a huge mess of it. The road was previously passable to safe, prepared drivers. Now it's mostly passable to the people already on it, who have clear asphalt to speed along. Those of us not yet on the road have had our side roads and driveways buried by the snow, ice and slush that used to be on the main road by the plows.

The road is normally dangerous to turn onto because of limited visibility and speeding traffic. But when you've got a foot of slush and ice and snow you've got to try to get through on the side of the road and again at the median, there's not much chance given the other cars already speeding along the road.

Maybe my memory is foggy, but I'm pretty sure that in past years the plow drivers made the effort to not bury us in and even pulled the plow in on subsequent passes to clear things further.

My favorite though is their web site saying:

The county asks residents who remove snow from sidewalks and driveways to deposit the snow on their own property - not in the road. Chunks of ice and snow thrown into the travel lane can become a hazard. Piles of snow along the curb can block drainage when temperatures rise.

Thanks Washington County!

I've been intending to get a TV stand (and someday a new TV) basically since I moved to Oregon. In the meantime the tiny, cheap-o TV was sitting on the floor all this time. I never found anything I liked for a stand, which was also well built and also not really expensive.

Saturday I decided to build one from an IKEA table top and simple poplar from Home Depot. All told it is extremely strong, reasonably built for my first real go at cabinetry/furniture making, and it cost about $250 in parts. I spent Saturday planning/buying, Sunday cutting/joining and Monday and Tuesday evenings on joining. Last night I finished it up.

Having a Kreg pocket hole set up made this work really well.

Now I just need to decide how to paint or finish it. Probably go for a reddish stain to mimic the cherry in the living room.

It's that time of year again. People are asking what I want.

• NSLU2
• archiving supplies: neutral-pH, unbuffered acid free paper desired (to stabilize and store an antique family quilt, pending repair/restoration):
  • cardboard tube (approx. 3" diameter, 6' length)
  • rectangular box (min. dimensions: 6"x6"x6')
  • tissue paper (approx. 100sq. ft.)...at a minimum this must be the acid free, neutral-pH, unbuffered paper. The wider and less pieces (ie: roll not sheets?) the more convenient.
• archiving supplies: neutral-pH, unbuffered acid free paper desired (to stabilize and store 46 antique glass negatives (4x5") and my great grandfather's notes per slide on location/time/lighting/exposure):
  • 46x tissue paper sheets or 4x5" glass slide negative sleeves/envelopes...at a minimum this must be the acid free, neutral-pH, unbuffered paper. (eg: demco.com product# WS20250550)
  • box to hold...minimum dimension to match sleeve/envelope lenght and width, plus approx. 6" deep
• this bit of Vespa bling
• physical audio CD's (non-download)
  • The Cure's "4:13 Dream"
  • Underworld's "Oblivion with Bells"
  • Faithless' "To All new Arrivals"
  • Aphex Twin' "Chosen Lords"
  • George Winston' "December"
  • one or two cd's that that are representative of classic/good Beach Boys studio albums (pref. not greatest hit samplers, but the actual studio album/albums)
  • a compilation of music mentioned in Goedel, Escher, Bach
• iTunes gift card for misc. single downloads
• WeatherLink® for Vantage Pro2 (USB, unfortunately Windows version)
• Kill-A-Watt
• simple analog wall clock with Kanji characters instead of arabic for example something like this. I had a slightly more attractive one than that which died recently, though it was just a simple red plastic frame.
• Nikon S10 "superwide" angle lens
• Nikon S10 "telephoto" 2x lens

I put my foot in front of a shot in a totally routine defensive play but the shot turned my foot under as my weight was coming down on it. I haven't had a turned ankle bad in ages and ages. I'll know more in a few days as the swelling goes down more, but I think I dodged a bullet as the swelling's down a bit today and it's feeling much better already. It definitely looks nasty though.

Kauai. First day and only slightly sunburned, dehydrated and paradised.

We were on our way to the Beaverton Farmer's Market this morning and stumbled on some sort of power tool infomercial filming thing in front of the library. It turns out it was for Kreg Tool Company's pocket screw joinery tools/jigs.

I've been really curious about them as they seem like they'd make my life easier when it comes to doing a number of shelving/cabinetry and woodworking tasks I've got planned for around the house. Plus Darren really extolled the virtues of pocket holes for making the facing on the bathroom cabinets he made recently.

After picking up a copy of their catalog, I was going to move on to the market, but they asked if I'd like to demo the tool and a friendly guy (pictured) told me all about their history and design and the family business (turns out Todd is the founder's son). How could I refuse?

I was quite impressed. They had me make a little wall shelf by drilling about 8 holes to join five pieces of pre-cut wood. I had a clamp for holding one piece to the table and that was it, so the work was a bit sloppy in as much as it wasn't set up for very clean results. But the results were quite good. I whipped the shelf together in a couple minutes and things were mostly flush with basically zero effort. The jig for drilling and the collars for the drills are super fast and easy to set up and use reliably. They pointed out also that if you're gluing you can just keep on working since the screws are holding things, instead of long cycles of gluing, clamping, waiting.

I'd been interested in using pocket screw joinery, but the price of tools versus not knowing for sure how well it worked in practice made me a bit hesitant. But I've got my birthday coupon this month from Woodcraft and a nice demo of their product and will definitely be picking up some of this gear.

Out of sheer luck I happened on a Barnes & Noble ad in the Oregonian a couple days ago. I didn't realize Spook Country has been released in paperback, but apparently a jetlagged William Gibson is just back from a literary conference in Italy and is transitioning to a road show for the book. And Portland's the start. So I zipped over to Clackamas on my Vespa (first time riding it on the 205...not bad).

The poor author only had an hour before hopping on his next plane so no reading or anything. Just a cookie, coffee, a few signatures/photos and chit chat.

The threatening clouds in the sky were only that and were offering a great sunset so I toodled back home on surface streets through Milwaukie and Lake Oswego via the Sellwood Bridge. It made for a nice ride and beat doing homework (ie: turning myself into a cabbage head by trying writing about quantum mechanics and adiabatic quantum computers).

It's that time of year...summer's just around the corner and I had too much hair on my head. It's really short now. I didn't actually measure the length of the hair before putting it in the mail today but I think it was about 14 inches.

I haven't gotten around to blogging anything in forever, so here's what's been up:

• Trip to Europe at end of March
• Got a photo speeding ticket on first day (approx. $40)
• We went to Paris for a couple days and stayed in a most excellent apartment.
• It snowed while we were there!
• It snowed in Portland while we were gone (or poor lemon and lime trees!)
• I got stopped by the Polizei after leaving a bar with my sister for a breathalizer test (first in my life). They were watching the bar and pounced on us as soon as I started the car. I hadn't had anything to drink in a couple hours and had only had a beer earlier. They seemed a bit disappointed when the test showed my blood-alcohol level was zero point zero zero (not sure what scale that was).
• I've finished the mason bee house. Still waiting for warm enough weather to get the blueberry blossoms open before I emerge and put out the first set of bees.
• I transplanted a row each of red rasberries, black cap rasberries, and marionberries from Paul's "weed" vines. They all look healthy now after two weeks
• Gloria Campagnone passed away unexpectedly. She was an amazing influence an countless people's lives.

This week I saw the photo of a fellow IBMer's house that burned down. Then we saw a segment on the news about home fire drills. With a hidden camera they showed kids sleeping through blaring smoke detector alarms.

So we decided to give it a try. Dark house, kids asleep...press the test button and half a dozen smoke detectors all start wailing.

After about a minute one door opens with a concerned, "Mom?" The other door never opened.

This morning both say they didn't know what the alarm was. So we've gone back over fire safety basics and will do a few more fire drills to make sure they do know the sound and they do get up out of bed.

Went back to the doctor today for first time in two weeks. I've not actually looked at the web at all in the time I've been hurt in terms of concussion symptoms or recovery. That's a bit interesting because the doctor says I have "post-concussion syndrome" which some doctors appear to think isn't even real. For what it's worth the symptoms that wikipedia lists describe pretty much exactly what I'm feeling. Whatever the cause it's definitely real and wierd. The Mayo Clinic's page on post-concussion syndrome notes it's been in the public eye a lot lately because of explosion related injuries to soldiers in the middle east.

The Mayo Clinic also notes one bummer of a fact that the doctor really emphasised. There is a "second impact syndrome" which can even be fatal. So I'm not supposed to do anything which could get me a bump on the noggin for quite some time. That means no snowboarding this whole season and no soccer until late summer.

I'm free to do anything not a contact sport which I feel up to. I'm starting to be able to manage to focus on work for part of a day and have seriously lucked out with school this quarter with a fairly easy class. I still haven't driven the car (much less Vespa) since the concussion. My headache has died down to mostly background noise most of the time, but it and the light/sound sensitivity has me constantly on the verge of a migraine. And I'm not sleeping marvelously despite getting tired very easily. And it's definitely hard to concentrate on something heavy for more than a few minutes.

Woah.

I'm surfing the web because I'm supposed to stay awake.

This plays really well on a concussion.

Apparently I got hit on the head playing soccer a few days ago. I don't remember much of December. What I remember is a confused of the last few days are mostly sleeping and going to the doctor.

My memory seems to be coming back but after a few seconds or minutes I forget what's going on and then it starts coming back later. That mashup song sounds more or less just like the radio's playing normally through the filter of my foggy brain.

We made a cat boarding reservation with the so-called Cat Care Professionals of Lake Oswego and it's gone bad in a hardly even believable way. I have rarely been so upset by a demonstration of utterly unprofessional behaviour. I've given them highly a negative review on at least five web sites now and have filed complaint #5863027 with the Better Business Bureau.

We made a reservation here for our cat for the week of Christmas. We called to verify drop off hours and were told they would be open 4-6 on Christmas Eve. We arrived shortly after 5pm and saw two people through the front window/door. They got up as we walked to the door, seemingly stowing cats so they wouldn't get out the door. But then we noticed a sign saying they were closed the evening of Christmas Eve. The two people proceeded to hide from us, crawl around on the floor and peek out windows rather than talk to us! For one hour!

Cara made Jenn and I these beautiful snowflake ornaments at school.

I'm looking forward to actually doing a tree next year for the first time. I've picked up a few cheap glass ornaments on sale this year and hope to find some more in the after Christmas sales. Plus my mom's got a number of ones that are "mine" which she intends to give me the next time I see them.

I don't have a lot on my list this year. Stupid LEGO had to go and make a $500 Millennium Falcon which has forced up the ebay price of the old discontinued ones (and at this point I'd feel guilty ripping open an old New-In-Box one of those), so that's fallen of the list. Jenn already got me the router base I was looking for. What I could really use is some new tunes. And to lower my footprint on the planet.

• carbon offsets for whatever you give me (eg: cut your spending in half and spend half on offsets)
• LED Tire Pressure Indicator (two packs, or 8 caps total)
• this bit of Vespa bling
• Underworld's "Oblivion with Bells" audio CD
• Faithless' "To All new Arrivals" audio CD
• KD Lang's "Hymns of the 49th Parallel" audio CD
• Radiohead's "In Rainbow's"...not sure if/how this is giftable as it's not available in stores and the physical media version is really expensive. I'm unclear on the license for the download version and since it's not available anymore (wtf Radiohead?!) does that mean I'm just supposed to steal a copy from somebody who did get it earlier this fall?
• plastic under chair carpet protector mat for the office

The one other thing I want to do is a bit more involved. I need to find somebody (like Dan Crowell for instance) for a consultation on residential solar. I want to get my electric and gas bills perused and with consideration to the type of appliances and major energy usage I have in the house get a quote on a solar electric (and water?) system for my house. And of course get info on the relevant financial advise on local, state and federal incentives and details on the Oregon SELP loans vs. normal home equity loans. Having somebody play administrative assistant and set up an appointment and list of todo's would be swell. But I'll probably do this in some free time over the next couple weeks anyway.

Quite some time back I'd seen Mike Libby's creations linked on BoingBoing and this year I decided to spend my Oregon state kicker check supporting artists and some favourite charities. I purchased the above dragon fly which to my great excitement arrived in the mail today. I was crushed though to open the box and find the tail split off and in pieces!

Thankfully the body and wings aren't damaged and Mike says he can fix it up. Even in its sad state it is a gorgeous piece of biosteampunkery. I can't wait to eventually get it up on my wall.

In my last entry I didn't really describe what all the kids had to do this year and I should have.

Each year the FIRST LEGO League competition has a theme. Last year the theme was nanotechnology which was a real challenge for fifth graders. But this year's theme was much easier because issues of power consumption, reduction and alternative energy production are all around us day to day. The kids started out somewhat familiar with the concepts already and it was much easier for them to research and comprehend the problem space.

In addition to move visible aspect of building LEGO robots which compete on a table to manipulate challenges in a proscribed way, the teams also get points in the competition based on judging of the technical merits of their robot mechanism and software designs, judging of an interview on their teamwork skills and judging of a presentation.

The presentation this year had three components: go out in the community and perform an energy audit, analyse the audit data to find ways to reduce energy consumption and adopt alternative energy sources, and finally return to the community building to present the findings and proposals. LEGOtricity audited the headquarters of Medical Teams International here in Tigard. Their primary observations were that the heating of the office space was poorly balanced, the windows and concrete walls and were not sufficiently insulating, their water heating seemed inefficient (old boiler far from usage) and there was a substantial amount of electricity being used for lighting and appliances. MTI in particular was interested in their suggestions for tank-less water heaters and removing one of three tubes in the flourescent light installations throughout their cubicles. The team also researched solar power, but found MTI would need something like a $4million installation of panels (which they did calculate could fit on MTI's roof). The bummer is that MTI is a non-profit so they don't pay taxes and can't take advantage of the massive solar incentives available today.

To that end I really want to thank Dan Crowell (Excalibur Solar, LLC) for answering the kids questions about solar electric. After going to the NW Solar Expo earlier this year, I've been thinking seriously of trying to get a photovoltaic installation on my roof and need to give him a call so see about spec'ing something out. I greatly appreciate his willingness to interact with some kids in his local (Tigard/Portland/Oregon) community to help them learn.

The FIRST LEGO League team I've been coaching/mentoring competed yesterday and did really well! I was a bit worried because they were seeming nervous and unenthusiastic this last week, but I think it was just nerves and being a bit tired after three months worth of meeting every Sunday afternoon. At the competition they had a lot of fun and were confident and proud to show the judges what they've learned and accomplished this fall.

And they won a trophy for robot design too!

Last night we did the pay-per-view over the web thing from usllive.com so we could watch the Timbers play the Atlanta Silverbacks in the first of their two game playoff series. We've listened to the Timbers many times and our local commentators sound like any other sports commentators, if not bit better than average given the state of soccer commentary in the US. The Atlanta commentators though on the pay-per-view....horrible! They didn't know players names, they didn't call the game as it happened, they droned on about the ref's calls in a completely one-sided fashion. Similar for what parts of the game they did call, it was all about Atlanta. And they even referred to the Timbers as "Seattle" once. One of them had their little kid in the booth and was talking to them during the game with their mic open.

We got so fed up we put on the Timbers radio to get a less biased call, but it was something like 6 or 7 seconds out of sync ahead of the video which made things very confusing.

I know "our" commentators certainly show some bias to the Timbers, but they at least are quite professional about that and about calling the game evenly. If this is the norm for the USL broadcasts, I'm not so inclined to pay for them unless I also get a delay to pipe the radio audio through.

Jenn and I took this afternoon off and I decided my arm was healed enough (it's been over three weeks now since I got an avulsion fracture in my elbow, or not, depending on which doctor I believe) to ride our scooters downtown. We went to the BodyWorlds3 show at OMSI and then had dinner at Piazza Italia.

We'd noticed her LXV150's odometer was really racking up the miles. But after comparing our route home according to Google and the mileage on both of our odometers...she's actually really racking up the kilometers. Presumably there's a little knob somewhere inside the console that needs twiddled.

I managed to do most of what I wanted to this weekend. Lots of updates to my server OS and serving softwares. Most everything is working although there are a few quirks. And new versions of software to get used to.

My blog sidebar photoblog (I think I'd set it up like this) isn't working anymore. I'm sure it's something easy...will have to fiddle with that later though.

Am playing sysadmin this weekend and working on a few years of accumulated wish list things I've needed to do on my server.

So far everything has gone very smoothly on the back end. Basically all that's left now is to do some reading tonight on gallery2 and MovableType 4 and then hopefully get moved over onto them tomorrow. My gallery especially is a disaster and gallery2 has been the answer for most of my problems for a few years. Well, besides the problem of having the time to figure it out and move to it.

On another positive note had the neighbours over today for a barbeque. Need to do that more often.

Last month Jenn and I did the Team Oregon basic motorcycle training and earned out motorcycle endorsement from the DMV. Since then we've been researching different scooter options and test riding different bikes around town. Today I finally kicked down and bought a Vespa GTS 250ie.

The ride home was uneventful outside of getting lost trying to get through all the construction and onto Barbur. I need to get a feel for how accurate the speedometer is, but assuming it's accurate I easily got it up to 70mph on the way home.

Seems like I manage to get some new stitches every three or four years. After an afternoon of woodworking I guess my hands and arms were tired. I knicked my left middle finger while chopping for dinner...something I rarely do. But that wasn't enough warning to be careful. A bit later I was cleaning up and sliced my right middle finger after putting the knife in the sink.

I just missed the only local Kaiser urgent care and spent nearly 5 hours downtown at Kaiser's overnight urgent care which was super busy. For something that is just going to take 10 minutes of doctor/nurse time I wish I had a reasonably priced option to pay for service. But the last time I paid for stitches at an uninsured urgent care facility it cost something like $500 for the suture kit, numbing shot and 10 minutes of a staff member's time. Health care is a crazy industry.

It's that time again...everybody trying to figure out what to do for Christmas and gift exchanges. Here's my current working list:

• A respirator that is sufficient for protecting against paints/solvents and wood/MDF dust


• One of those hand tools that is a rolling cutter thing for edging the lawn (instead of using a weed eater power tool)


• Some Smartwool socks (12's any colour)


• Restoration Hardware has these awesome retro-technik german goggles I'd love a pair of


• The LEGO Millenium Falcon's still on my list


• I could also use an extra LEGO Mindstorm (RCX) motor and the sensor pack


• An RCX DC power supply would be handy


• A LEGO solar cell and capacitor would also be useful if I'm going to mentor an FLL team again next year.


• Soccer shin guards (I'm probably a men's large and don't have a strong preference for the ankle guard or plain shin/sleeve type)


• A jig saw


• Bosch fixed router base or under table router base (Bosch 1617EVSPK appears to be the same as the Craftsman Pro router I have...word is Sears OEMs it from Bosch)


• I'd be interested in a Umax Astra UTA-2A transparency accessory for my old Umax scanner...or a newer scanner that works with linux and can handle negatives of at least 4x5 inches.


• Large/mens black or grey yoga socks

I've been meaning to bike to work some since I moved to Oregon almost two and a half years ago. It's the first time in years that I haven't lived about 25 miles from work with massive urban and/or geographical obstacles hindering a bike commute. But...I've been lazy.

There's a local bike commute challenge which encouraged me to try the ten mile ride at least once. I can't believe I've been so lazy. It only took 45minutes which isn't necessarily much more than it takes to drive (anywhere between 15minutes and 45minutes) and I got some exercise in during that time. The ride was flatter than I thought too and I didn't really feel like being on a mountain bike slowed me down...not that I wouldn't like to get a road bike.

I definitely need to plan ahead and try to ride more, especially in the half of the year when the weather is dry.

Tonight was the last game of the Timbers season. Even though missing the playoffs was a disappointment, as fans we had a good season.

Woot! All your base are burn down!

I've got some really clever neighbours who are slowly using up their illegal (ie: fly, explode or act in an uncontrolled manner) fireworks after the 4th. Apparently "legal" fireworks may be used at any time though, so I'm sure they'd just claim that if confronted (and do you have....a warrant to go with that suspicion officer?).

The really brilliant thing about these upright citizens (and some others nearby who lost their homes a week ago) is that they have wood shingled roofs.

What a disappointing showing in the World Cup!

The team had no leadership on the field. The bigger name players weren't generating much of any chances or showing any passion for the game. There wasn't a player on the team that appeared to be consistently working hard in any of the games or across the matches. None appeared to want a win. Knowing how the ref's were calling penalties throughout the World Cup there was also a real lack of intelligent play.

Given the match fixing scandal in Italy I'm inclined to think Beasley and Donovan had a lot of money riding on US losses or something.

Went to the funeral of some family friends' father today at Willamette National Cemetery. It was really good to see them (hadn't seen them in around ten years) even though it wasn't the best of circumstances. It's sad though when funerals are one of the only times you see extended family and friends.

This was the first time I went to a military style funeral with an honor guard and presentation. I suppose growing up around the military has made hearing taps sort of tug at my emotions, but since my grandpa's funeral it really gets me. Seems like playing taps on his trumpet at my grandpa's funeral must've been one of the hardest things my dad has ever done.

Got home late from Jenn's house after breaking out the Scotland Yard game I'd given Madison for Christmas. Went to move the beer into the crawlspace after reading the lager info finally and realising we were supposed to just get the primary going initially at a normal temperature and then go cool (had it in my head from the brew book that primary happened completely like normal). After only five days the primary fermentation seems to be going quite slow already so hopefully we haven't messed anything up. But I have more major worries on my mind now...

Popping the hatch to the crawlspace I noticed I have a puddle! Looking around I've convinced myself there is no internal leak in the plumbing but rather that exterior run-off and rain from the last week of storms has the northwest corner of the property extremely saturated. I think this is "just" water percolating up under the house. I got soaked but spent quite a while cleaning out the french drain I'd hastily added on the west property line when my water main burst on my birthday.

The ground out there is extremely wet on the surface and wasn't really flowing anywhere. After my new digging in the dark it seems like a larger portion of the rain is now flowing and away from the house. But still the whole north side of the lot is very wet and while sloped away from the house on the surface, I don't know what the fill is like. There could well be layers in it that slope towards the house. The spot where the water is seems to have seeped from the northwest towards the center of the house and I'd guess is 3-4 feet below the ground surface level outside the northwest corner of the house.

I might need to do some major digging out back. I've never been quite clear on whether the rain gutters for the north side of the house drain into the sewer system or if they're just leech lined into the back. I've assumed sewer given the super clay fill dirty used and the amount of rain here. At a minimum I need to do some reading to see if and what I can do about underground water movement.

I guess Jenn and I are nerds and bored cause we're sitting on the couch this evening surfing the web. We got on classmates.com looking for old friends and it seems to make you pay to find anything useful even though the site is almost unreadable due to advertising obliterating the screen.

That got me wonder if a googler would find me...

Searching for "tim pepper mojave high" didn't find anything (although maybe now it will ;). Trying "tim pepper calpoly" got some random usenet postings which are mostly old college email addresses which probably don't forward to me anymore, although one of the top five or so hits has a current email address for me. Checking "tim pepper ibm" shows my blog as the first hit, even though I've probably never used my work email to post to anything public...but there have been blog entries which tie me to work slightly. I'd have thought my resume might have shown up. The occasional random headhunter manages to find it. I just tweeked it a bit to see if it does eventually.

So somebody who knew a little about me would probably find me. Guess that means nobody likes me! Or that people I know or have known aren't computer weenies.

(Updated: suppose it helps if I spell Mojave correctly)

This afternoon we were thinking of going for a little drive, doing some shopping and maybe grabbing a coffee before hitting the grocery store for something for dinner. The weather had been saying freezing rain starting around 6pm, but then around half past one it started almost hailing. We decided to just make a quick trip to the store as it was getting a little slippery and drivers here don't know what they're doing in this weather. I have never in my life been at a grocery store that was soooo busy!

Jenn's sister came to visit this week for a belated birthday present to see Madeleine Peyroux. The show got changed last minute-ish from the Schnitz to the Aladdin and Susie Suh was added to the bill. Both were great, but Susie's performance really stole the show for me. Plus when she was chatting during the set and said something like, "Nobody probably knows me..." I whistled and she laughed and said, "Well maybe one person." It's always cool when you can see an artist in a small venue and get a little interaction with them.

I actually got Susie's signature on her "CD" (crippled Sony fake-CD) and Jenn bought one of her t-shirts and got it signed too. Chatted briefly and told her I was "the one person" and she asked where I'd heard of her...told her KCRW. I'm not sure if I'll actually send the disc into Sony for a non-crippled rebate one or what since it's now autographed. It's just the booklet, so maybe I can hold onto that much?

Anyway, the thumbnail is Susie and the big picture is Madeleine. Yes cameraphones take sucky pictures. They record even suckier audio (terrible clip of awesome trumpet player in Madeleine's backing band). I should say though that cell phones are great when you need to google for Wesley's phone number which isn't in my phone for some reason so I can ask him how the Sony "cd" return program works (ie: will it work if I have no receipt because I bought the disc for cash at the show).

Jenn's family does a $60-ish secret santa thing so I'm supposed to come up with a list of things I want. Some of these probably are too much, but my wish list for the year is:

• Star Wars Millenium Falcon LEGO set
• LEGO Mindstorm Robotics Invention System
• A Jig Saw
• A router (what I'm looking for is definitely out of the price range)
• A respirator that is sufficient for protecting against paints/solvents and wood/MDF dust
• A gardening trowel
• One of those hand tools that is a rolling cutter thing for edging the lawn (instead of using a weed eater power tool)
• A thatch rake
• A few wine glasses
• A Roomba but the size/features I think I want/need is probably really expensive (those dust bunnies are annoying)
• Slippers without a rubber sole but I'm picky and can't find ones that are cosy, nice, comfortable and stuff
• Some Smartwool socks (12's any colour)
• A fat separator (wonder if Pyrex makes one?)
• Some simple glass bud vases or larger vase(s) but I tend to like plain/simple things (that would go well with fit in with a craftsman or arts and crafts type aesthetic interior)
• Ditto for candlesticks, bookends, a fruitbowl, and other house nick nack stuff for which my mother would probably say I'm too picky about for others to buy for me
• some shoes
• some double 9 dominos
• I could probably use some good gaiters
• and some new snow goggles
• windshield wipers for a 2003 Honda Pilot
• I've always wanted some ice skates but they're expensive and something I'd have to try on / try out first
• A new pair of bike tyres (26x2.10 I think...knobby)
• A 19" Trek Lance Armstrong carbon fibre road bike :)

And with that I've surely fallen asleep and am dreaming...

My Grandpa Pepper followed his wife out of this world late last week. Earlier in the year I was able to fly to her funeral in Redding on short notice with relative ease and at a reasonable price. But this time around I'm not sure what to do.

I can drive 8hrs each way and pay about $80 in gas. I could spend 10hrs each way on a bus for $110. Or 12hrs each way on the train for $150. I don't trust the latter two to actually be very on time and departures/arrivals in the wee-est hours of the morning aren't very convenient. But neither is spending 8hrs each way driving the car to spend one day somewhere very appealing.

Unlike last time (about $250 for a 1-stop flight from Portland via Arcata), the cheapest option this time is more than that and comes with a number of hours drive from Sacramento to Redding. There is now a direct flight that would be about 3.5hrs travel time including getting to the airport on time and through security, but even with a bereavement fare it's over $400.

Apparently most airlines have nixed bereavement fares and instead don't charge outrageously high prices for last minute travel anymore. But compared to a $139 round trip web special on Alaska into SFO, I'm thinking last minute travel or bereavement actually does come at a significant premium over other options. And that's not an option as given flight/transit time this would end up taking just as long as just driving probably since SFO's further and I'd probably have bad traffic leaving town on a Friday afternoon.

Since their pricing schemes are anything but transparent I think I'll wait a day or three and see what prices they quote me and decide then if I fly or drive. You'd think there'd be some well established curves that dictate how to optimise filling planes up to the last minute without the airlines loosing money, by having too many non-last-minute travelers book last minute to save money.

We got up early this morning and went out to watch the Livestrong riders and hopefully catch a glace at Lance himself. I think we barely saw him...From across the street the riders mostly all look the same!

...or they'd have to be dead to not have felt this show! I'd say it was the best show I've been to in years.

The Bell Orchestre was very cool. Kinda of like band geeks jamming with drums, stand up bass, violin and horns. They kind of reminded me of In The Nursery. Very cinematic.

Not sure what to make of the Wolf Parade, but almost liked them though they weren't quite all there. Judging the crowd I might have been the only one who thought their mix of Talking Heads and Rancid almost worked. There was something slightly Canadian about it though...slightly overdone and forced, trying to hard, not quite smooth and natural.

The set change before the Arcade Fire was torture. It may have been the longest set change I've ever endured...even longer than the one I endured between Underworld and The Chemical Brothers at the Civic in SF and that wasn't worth the wait (I was there for the prior anyway, so no major loss). But was this ever worth the wait!

The Arcade Fire took the stage with members of their two openers and proceeded to _rock_out_. They played most of their debut album and some other stuff as well. We picked up a copy of their first EP so maybe some of the other stuff will become familiar now. Given the length of the set change and their relative lack of material to draw on, I was wondering which would be longer, the set or set change. But they hit it until almost 1am.

After hearing about their Coachella set and listening to them on KCRW (and getting their cd thanks to KCRW) I really wanted to see this show. I'm very glad Jenn scored tickets earlier this summer. It was absolutely packed. Tickets were going for crazy sums on craigslist and those tickets were probably worth it...

I've been in the bay area for a few days and now that I've lived in Portland for a year I can't help shaking the feeling that I'm just in a suburb of LA. I used to really like it here. Strange. Oh well...at least it all it does is rain in Portland so most Californians couldn't stand it.

Seriously though I think I almost dislike it here. I definitely don't miss it, which I really expected would be the case.

Yesterday Jenn and I really got offroad on our bikes for the first time in Oregon. John met us and Forest Grove and we spent a few hours exploring around the lake.

The trail has a lot of poison oak and blackberries in places and generally seems unmaintained (compared to what I'm used to from for instance the MROSD), although there were a few little footbridges and there's plenty of fisher/swimmer/sunbather traffic on most parts of the path. But some parts we were essentially just riding over a grassy field trying to tell if we were actually on the trail or not.

It's a pretty flat trail, something like a 14mile loop with some slightly technical sections (enough to make a beginning mountain biker sweat but learn some valuable skills). We probably ended up doing nearly half of it on the road as we lost the trail in a few places. But it's definitely worth returning to do some more exploring.

And it definetely makes me miss the great riding that was so close at hand in the Bay Area. Jenn and I need to get out on a few PUMP rides and meet some people and learn a little more about what rides there are close. Looking online I'm pretty underwhelmed with the choices, which is surprising because the terrain/climate here seem ideal for the sport.

Either my spam filter's keeping me from seeing most of those messages or else the spammers have decided my penis is actually an ok size. But they seem to now think my waistline needs to be bigger.

The thought alone of ten pounds of Goobers or Raisinets makes me want to hurl.

On a somewhat related note, all over the news today is that some people are advocating for softdrinks to have warning labels. Seems kinda silly to me, but it is a real issue. People don't realise the amount of sugar in our most popular beverages.

And on another somewhat related note...Starbucks is at it again. They have for a limited time Green Tea Frappucino. It sounds really good but there's no way I'm going to try it given how they got me hooked on the PSL only to pull it away (although it's still on their nutrition list so maybe it'll be back in the fall).

Whatever happened to Nancy Reagan telling all of us to "just say no"?

Yesterday we finally did our first mountain bike ride since moving to Portland. I haven't even ridden my bike in a year! We rode about six miles into the Lief Erikson trail in Forest Park. If we actually lived in Portland that would be the perfect occasional after work ride...decent gravel pave for most weather conditions, very moderate first two miles uphill then mostly flat for as many miles as you'd want to go.

I'm curious though if there's any legal single track in the park.

On Friday night we saw Rilo Kiley, Feist and The Brunettes at the Roseland. It was a good show. Rilo Kiley didn't do a sound check earlier in the day and it really showed. The first few songs had pretty much no lyrics audible and lots of feedback. Eventually they got it sorted out.

I didn't get around to posting on the 14th as my birthday started with me heading out into the garden to do some watering only to find that my front yard sprinklers had some sort of a water leak on the house main side of the valves. Water was gushing from the ground probably at a gallon per second, had formed a lake about two feet deep and was spilling off north between the houses. Happy Birthday!

I've been thinking lately that we haven't been getting the kids on their bikes much and that we've not been doing our jobs if Cara heads to her dad's for the summer still on training wheels. Today we managed to get a bit of time and I remembered to try to take off the wheels before she actually got out of the garage.

It took a bit of convincing, showing her that she's in control and able to put her feet down so she doesn't need to fall and a pinky promise that I wouldn't let her fall. She's made and broken a few promises pretty lightly lately, but as she grabbed my pinky with hers there was a very noticable and different urgency and legitimacy to it.

Before I left the Bay Area I'd been playing soccer on Monday nights with a group of friends for three years. Once I got to Portland I was really busy with work and home stuff but was seriously missing a friendly game of pickup soccer. A few weeks ago I found out about a pickup game near work Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon. I went out today and had a blast. I'm pretty out of shape though.

Also Madison started soccer season last night and I'm going to her practices to lend a hand to the coach. Cara starts next week. It'll make life pretty hectic for the next two months, but it should be fun and exercise and getting outdoors is good.

I miss pumpkin spice lattes. Starbucks has taken them off the menu and Jenn says a barista told her they aren't allowed to sell them even if they still have syrup on hand. Multiple baristas have admitted they were popular even after the holiday season and they were really popular then (they were out of the syrup a lot at first).

I've been trying various things on their menu but the PSL really became my favourite lately and it's not hot enough out yet for a mocha frap (although it's nearly shorts weather).

I don't see why they'd have peppermint all year round but not pumpkin spice.

Looking at their corporate site to file a comment got me looking at the nutrition info. I wish they had lower sugar options also. I'm surprised the PSL has the same amount of sugar as a mocha frap.

The Ocean Suites Motel is brand spanking new, no smoking, has high speed ethernet hook-ups, full kitchen suites and is clean and quiet. I wish I knew where one of these was everywhere I travel.

Poor Jenn's little one was projectile vomitting Sunday night after complaining of an upset stomach in the afternoon. Now I've spent the day in bed feeling not so good myself with what I'd guess is a stomach/intestine virus (second time this fall).

Since I've slept the day away and feel a bit better at the moment I feel like I should stay awake for a bit in the hopes that I'll be tired and manage to sleep still tonight. So I'm laying in bed blogging. I feel like I should fire up the VPN though and do some work.

Got a lot accomplished this week:

• Refreshed myself on MySQL.
• Refreshed myself on some apache, ssl, and cgi stuff.
• Installed LinPHA, although I'm probably going to change to Gallery.
• Installed MovableType...and appear to have it working.
• Met Andrew Morton at work.
• Started going to yoga again.