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October 31, 2007
Happy halloween, kids.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2007
Five point six.
When the shaking began, I was sprawled across the bed with my laptop, thinking about ordering hot soup from a Thai restaurant.
I had enough time and presence of mind to point Firefox to the USGS earthquake map for Northern CA. Their sensors indicated a seismic event was underway, but they'd yet to fix the epicenter or intensity, offering only the local time, followed by "?"
Once the windows started to rattle, I felt fear and excitement in the pit of my stomach and immediately chastised myself for not submitting the order I'd set up on Safeway.com for our 72-hour kit. I sat up and moved to the bedroom doorway. This thing was taking far too long.
I grew up on Long Island. For me, the word "earthquake" conjures images from 1970s disaster films. The actual tremors I've felt since moving to San Francisco haven't topped out above 4.2, I don't think. I'm no mathelete, but tonight, I viscerally understood the concept of a logarithmic scale.
Things stopped moving, and I slipped on shoes while I called Liz at her parents' house in San Jose. After a few false starts, she called back with a persistent connection. I refreshed the USGS page and read her the specifics: 5.6, with an epicenter within about 8 miles of her current location.
Other than a few broken plates and some tense nerves, everything appears to be okay on their end. Missing her somewhat, I kept her on the line while I checked the gas main and water heater.
When I came back upstairs, the cats were sleeping on the couch.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 08:39 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2007
How to startle a raccoon.
Initially, I was going to attach this security light to the front of our house, but affixing this homely hunk of plastic to the facade of an Italianate Victorian hardly seemed like a home improvement. And besides, why give the huddle'ems something to swing for on Halloween?
After gazing into our backyard on a moonless night, I realized that the closest security light was nearly a block away. It's well and right that my neighbors should be so stingy with the electrons, but I'd rather light a candle than curse the darkness.
So, I purchased a Solar Centurion. Buying it was a smart move, but my decision to install it under a noontime sun was positively Rumsfeldian. After the infrared sensor is activated, the halogen bulb throws off plenty of light -- I set it up in our living room one evening and invited the cats to play "burglar."
They didn't like getting 1200 lumens in the face, and I doubt anyone else will, either.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)
Right, as usual.
My wife, that is.
This mirror was in the hallway, which meant that we had exactly one place to stand when examining our fine selves.
With the mirror now mounted over the stove, we have multiple vantage points, plus beaucoup natural light -- as opposed to a single 60W bulb overhead.
Smart thinking, that woman.
Bonus: I'll be the star of my own cooking show.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2007
Traduzione: "Perbacco" = "Wow!"
Until this past Tuesday, I hadn't eaten gnocchi in seven years. The last batch I ingested at a Pasta Pomodoro in 2000 left me with a foodborne illness that would have been at home in an early Michael Crichton novel.
I'm very glad I climbed back on the horse; the gnocchi at Perbacco were the best I've ever eaten. They were so good, I had three bites in the restaurant before asking our waiter to box it up. "It's fantastic, but I want to make sure I have room for what's next," I said sheepishly. Jonathan, our stellar server, smiled and arched an eyebrow at a compact, mustachioed fellow in a black vest who whisked it away.
My beautiful wife and I started my birthday dinner with the salumi misti, all of which were cured in-house. The salami was so-so, and the mortadella wasn't bad, but we agreed that the coppa was a standout. A ramekin of lardo was a revelation -- with bits of roasted pork and a dash of cognac, the velvety pâté did pirouettes across our palate. Jonathan insisted that pâté is the perfect dish to prepare for company, as it's elegant and easy to prepare.
"And we must be honest," Jonathan added, his Marseillais accent dipping a half octave. "Fat equals the flavor."
For the salad course, Liz tucked into a Technicolor roasted beet salad while I made short work of a plate of sliced heirloom tomatoes dressed with ricotta and basil. I enjoyed it so much that I scarcely noticed that my hangar steak was plated with more heirlooms (and even recreated the dish again at home the next evening). Liz's roasted duck with chestnut polenta was cooked to a turn, and the 1/4 liter of hearty Sangiovese we shared dovetailed nicely with both entrees.
We were seated at 9 p.m.; by the time my moscato arrived, the restaurant was as nearly silent as the newbie staffers wiped down the kitchen; we were the last in our section. Jonathan urged us to relax and take our time. We heeded his advice.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 03:59 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2007
Copywrong.
I don't care for Cory Doctorow's online persona. His Disney fetish, his OCD haircut and his relentless self-promotion creep me out. For a forward-looking geek, I find him to be one of the most doctrinaire voices on the web.
So it was with a healthy scoop of schadenfreude that I read his apology to Ursula K Le Guin for re-publishing her work against her will. Setting the controversy aside for a moment, I thought it was extremely telling that Doctorow was slow to learn that he'd violated her copyright:
The situation with Ms Le Guin was made more complicated by an accident of circumstances. Andrew Burt, the person whom Ms Le Guin chose to communicate the matter to me, is someone with whom I had put in a killfile following an altercation. I delete all emails from him unread, and if he sent me a message, I did not see it. So I didn't find out that Ms Le Guin objected to the quote until someone sent me a link to a page that Jerry Pournelle had put up about it, in which he quotes a letter from Andrew Burt. Burt is the Science Fiction Writers of America VP who had previously sent a fraudulent takedown notice that resulted in my novel being removed from an Internet document server.
To summarize: because Doctorow does the digital equivalent of sticking his fingers in his ears and singing "la, la, la" when he receives email from someone he doesn't like, he embarrassed himself personally and professionally and undercut his credibility on one of his signature issues.
Maybe the gang at MAKE magazine could knit Cory a replica of Walt Disney's frozen head to soothe his bruised ego?
Posted by Your Protagonist at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)
Your drum collection...
... doesn't mean we have anything in common.
I'm glad you've purchased percussion instruments from brown people in various parts of the world, but sadly, this doesn't confer any insight into the Black Experience. If anything, your totems have permitted you to foster an unwarranted belief in your own generosity, wisdom and moral superiority.
Tell you what: let's you and me go to Union Square some Friday night around 12:30. You bring your drum collection and invisible melanin, and we'll see which one of us can hail a cab first.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 12:11 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2007
A few things.
- As one wag put it, "at least Hugh is trying to improve himself, brushing up on a bit of Norwegian, eh?" I don't follow celebrities closely, but it fascinates me that Grant's persona took a sharp turn since the Divine Brown incident and has been on the same track ever since.
- Occasionally, a magazine article is also an excellent piece of literature. Case in point: Frank Sinatra Has a Cold by Gay Talese (Esquire Magazine, 1965).
- Sometimes, when I'm having trouble getting to sleep, I'll browse Wikipedia, pressing CTRL + x to bring up a random entry from their database. I ckeep track of how many clicks it takes before I'm presented with a topic with which I'm familiar; this is how I count sheep.
Late last night, I came across a page that described the video below. According to the person who posted this to YouTube, "It's a word-for-word parody of Susan Powter's first workout video." Sublime.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 02:15 PM | Comments (0)