Friends

I've been really productive lately... Witness the complete success of my pulled pork experiment, fixing the sinlaws DirectTivo (I think I fixed it, at least), sprinting towards deadlines at work with reckless abandon, and traveling all over the place to be with family and friends.

I made a mad dash to get my project to Alpha release by the end of June, and managed to demo it at our weekly development meeting on the 30th. I think I impressed everyone in on the demo, I'm pretty sure several of the people who were doubting whether or not I could deliver on my performance and compatibility claims were put in their place. And really, while I referred to this as an Alpha release, imho it is Alpha-in-name-only. While it's the first release to grace the hands of the testers, it's feature complete and has been pretty well beat-upon by me and my fellow developer. Hopefully they will beat the hell out of it and track down anything I missed, but I feel great about the quality as it stands now (not quite shippable, but definitely branchable).

The pulled pork has been going over like gangbusters (with everyone besides coco_b , that is, who isn't a fan)... I brought some coworkers home for lunch and each had a few sandwiches... For my entire life I thought Barbeque was some kind of voodoo art which required tons of specialized equipment, but it turns out you can make the real deal with stuff most people have access to.

I just figured out all by myself that the vocal samples in Orbital's Halcyon are Kirsty Hawkshaw from "It's A Fine Day".

Damn I feel dumb.

--Matt

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: take a frikken guess

Today is the first Monday in a long time that I am feeling good. It is so nice. I have a feeling this weekend is at least partly responsible for this. Over the weekend Matt and I went to Firefly, which is a festival of sorts. Middle of the Vermont woods with lots of different kinds of smells, loud thumping music until 9am, and a variety of awesome people. I am very happy I went, however it was definitely tough. Insert sleep complaints. I think that will be the last of my camping for 2008.

This was a very new experience and what made it worth it was my getting to know some people I have only met briefly in Boston and it really pushed me out of the comfort zone that I think may have been allowing me to stay feeling kind of ill. So I think this really propelled me into my second trimester and not being sick over every little movement or change in temperature.

Thank you to those who suggested we make it out, eHawk! I had a really great time and I am glad that I went.

Still no movement from the baby, but my pants are getting very tight.

Current Mood: chipper

From Schneier's blog:

Top 10 Anti-Terrorism Patents

I am torn between the airplane trap door and the mobile crematorium.

This is why I am not rich, I am not creative enough.

Current Mood: amused

Sunday was a Day of Biking -
pengcognito, transer, i_am_moof, sister_katana and I biked up to the Port of Rochester terminal for sushi, where we were met by gramatan,lizreay, moad_terran_hq, Jen's Uncle, and K.

the trip up was fun. We had to wait a *LONG TIME* for the sushi, although good, the wait got to me. We then meandered back through the city then home again. With the added leg of back-to-my-house on bike, we figured it was roughly 34 mi round trip for me. It was a good day over all- and I'm feeling pretty good today too: an added bonus.

next week the Faire starts; which means the next 6 weekends are eaten up.
All in all, it was a good last weekend of the summer.

Earlier in the year, Maria and I bought a copy of 200 Waterfalls in Central & Western New York, and we finally took the opportunity to start following some of its directions.

On Friday, we went to three sites: Medina Falls (Medina, NY), Serenity Falls (Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, NY), and Eternal Flame Falls (Chestnut Ridge Park, Orchard Park, NY). After this, we tried out the Anchor Bar (the claimed home of Buffalo Wings); Maria liked them, but I thought that they were over-crisped and had insufficient sauce.

On Sunday, we toured Stony Brook State Park (Dansville, NY) and enjoyed numerous waterfalls there and some of its trails.

I placed some of my pictures online.

How exactly did Braxton-Hicks contractions get so named? Specifically, why are they named after a man? I imagine they must have been experienced by women for thousands of years and not just since 1827 when they were first described. Isn't that the height of audacity that a man gave it his name? When women give birth it appears that they go through a rather painful ordeal as they pop a large object (called a baby) through a rather small opening. The intensity and duration of this pain is variable from woman to woman. I call this The Modell Process.

Current Location: nyc
Current Mood: annoyed

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you really love (and strikethrough the ones you hate!).
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

( book meme )

Current Mood: accomplished

Some of these Chimaeras are pretty good.

The pulled pork turned out great, although not exactly as I expected.  I estimated it would be done in about 14 hours, which should have been ~8pm.  I figured it might go until 10pm, but I figured that was definitely the outer bound.  The internal temperature seemed to park itself at ~160F, and I really needed it to get up to 190-205F.  It stayed around 150-160 for the final several hours I left it on the grill.  Finally, around 10pm without any temperature movement I moved it to the oven.  As soon as I moved it to the oven the temperature slowly started to move up.

I suspect that the grill was too cold, even though I had a probe thermometer telling me the temperature of the grill.  My current thinking is that the probe was reading wrong; perhaps the probe needs more density (than air) to get an accurate reading.  Which might have meant that my temperature was off all night.  The thermometer on the grill lid read just under 200F the whole time while the probe was reading around 250, so it's very possible that the lid was right and the probe was wrong.

Regardless, after I moved it into the oven I set up the remote probe to beep when the pork got to 203F.  This happened at 4am, and the remote woke me up to attend to the pork.  I let it rest for about 30 minutes then started to pull it.  And it was like heaven.   It just fell off the bone and pulled apart like nobody's business.  It tastes delicious, although at 4am I only had a bite.  I'm very-much looking forward to lunch today. :)

Did a big circle drive hitting

Mystic Ct - to go to the aquarium and see LZ,
New Cannaan, CT to camp with kids and JR,
Croton-on-Hudson NY, - Clearwater festival to see
Pete Seeger
(watching folk music during a thunderstorm certainly makes it exciting, unfortunately we got too wet to hang
arround for Cheryl Wheeler who has been selling out the
smaller venues near us.
Then on to Middlebury NY, to rest up. swim with the kids, and break up the drive to
Ohio to see Mom, make candles, and talk with the bishop for the Serbian Orthodox Church (not that the bishop was expected)
Followed that up with a trip to Buffalo to see a lot of the family, plus WALL * E Which was great (though I liked The Incredibles better :)

Current Mood: accomplished

I just finished playing an awesome game of soccer. The other team was WAY better than us and by the end of the half it was 7-1 (them). Shortly into the second half, our goalie bends over backwards and hurts his back. He got off the field slowly and was fine by the end of the game, but I told him I would sub in for him as goalie. Later I was told about the conversation that some of my team had on the bench as the game started back up:

Girl 1: Has Dave even played goal before?
*Great shot by the other team
*Great save by me
Girl 2: Yeah, I’d say he has played once or twice before.

I had A LOT of great saves, but our team was tired and had pretty much given up near the end so there were a lot of 5 on 2 situations. If we were playing indoor soccer, I might have been able to protect the goal in those situations, but with a full sized goal and me not having played in probably 5 years (Linus, has it been that long since I stopped playing goalie?) I was a little rusty. In any case, I had a blast! I think the final score was 14-1. Next game I’ll probably go back to playing defense or mid field. They seem to just toss me in wherever they need someone.

I wish Americans would stop thinking one magic solution will solve everything.

today we import 65 percent of our oil. And while we are mostly self sufficient for power (electricity) producing fuel, that is at risk as we continue to import greater amounts of liquid natural gas because virtually all new power plants built in the last 10 years are natural gas.

so. what solution do we do?

Answer: all of them...now.. in a big way.

1) develop more oil... shale oil, bio oil from saltwater algae, smart ethanol coal oil (fischer tropsch) , arctic, offshore, tar sand, and old well re-openings . .
2) develop power production of all types. nukes, clean coal, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal... Along with this develop efficient large scale energy storage systems.
3) demand destruction through enforced efficiency across the board.

each of these options *might* offset 20 to 30 percent of our energy import needs over in 15 to 20 years. even then, as populations climb, we are likely to remain shorthanded.

Until then, our dollar is becoming worthless as we flood the world (and a lot of the world who hate us) with trillions upon trillions of our hard earned cash.

Last week I spent traveling, eating up vacation and visiting.

( First stop: Colorado Springs )

I was back in Rochester for about one day. In that time I got a lot of the yard work done, Bohdran was glued to me every time I was inside, and the plumbers came to fix the faucet and the toilet upstairs. Turns out it was never secured to the house. It had the potential to become a SERIOUS issue ... fortunately it was discovered in time, and no damage done.

In and around all of that I packed for the convention, including sorting through a lot of minis and preparing them for travel...

Wednesday I left for Columbus (after Fiasco was finished with Chris)

( Next stop: Columbus )

Now it's back to work,
back to life...
... and prepare for the coming Ren Faire ...

How did it get to be july already!!!

Well, the summer is going well. Working part time is wonderful. It gets me out of the house a couple days a week - and allows days where I can catch up - since summer usually gets so hectic with sailing.

I bought a bike this week to ride down to the boat. It's a Trek 7.2 WSD. The ride to the boat last night took 38 minutes - including the traffic in Charlotte and across the bridge and then through the gravel lot. It fits in the back of Eric's car, but we need to find a place to mount them on the car.

Wedding planning is coming along. We booked the Honeymoon this week. Just need to book the airfare.

This weekend we're sailing to Sodus and back for a race, and next weekend I'm in my best friend since 1st grade's wedding. I'm very excited for Carin and Jon!

At someone's wedding... An entire buffalo. That's one way to feed the people.

I'm Back.
Still somewhat wiped out from vacation.
I'll get something more concrete posted soon.

'til then.. did I miss anything?