Tuesday, November 30, 2004
And Before I Forget…
DoctorMental checks in with this week’s Grand Rounds, a nice collection of links to a variety of medical blogging posts. Yay!*
* Gratuitous usage to continue unchecked the series of posts that happen to contain the word “yay,” initially unintended.
I Am Pleased To Report…
My home computer booted just fine with a replacement power supply. Yay!
It’s also considerably cleaner, courtesy of a significant amount of canned air. Amazing how much dust and crud gets in them.
Dell
They rock.
I ordered a replacement server just after 3:00 PM on Tuesday, November 23. Expected ship date would have gotten it here Friday, with complimentary overnight shipping.
It shipped yesterday and arrived this afternoon.
What’s funny is I got a shipment confirmation e-mail this morning, which I didn’t actually read fully, and assumed related to shipping today, arriving tomorrow. So I was shocked when the server arrived “same day.” Turns out the e-mail was telling me it had shipped on the 29th.
They are so good about trying to beat expectations like that. Now to open it and make sure it’s intact. After I clear a space on the work table to set it up. Since I still plan to do the actual changeover from the old mail server to this one during the weekend, they have given me tons of extra time to have it ready to go. Should make for an easier weekend. Yay!
She’s a sleepy mama.
And she’s too dumb to sleep, unlike her baby, who is sleeping very well indeed.
We had our two-month visit this morning, and Sadie got her first shots--from someone other than her doctor’s nurse. The gal who was supposed to give them sent one of the other nurses in because she couldn’t stand to do it herslf. LOL! She’s such a nut sometimes.
Sadie took the insult like the trooper she is. She even smiled at me when we got home. Weird kid. Heh.
Anyway, she’s growing great...up to 10 pounds 11 ounces and 22 and 1/2 inches. Yay, Sadie!
I am, of course, exhausted...she was up often last night to nurse. I think she was a little overtired from her big weekend and she had some catch-up cuddling to do. And of course, I got all teary-eyed this morning with the whole first shots thing. It’s been at least a week, though, since I’ve checked many of the blogs I normally read, so I’m sitting here trying to stay awake long enough to check them. I’m also behind with e-mail, among other things. Had a wonderful holiday, but the catching up is hell...more later, if I stay coherent and the baby stays asleep…
Monday, November 29, 2004
11/29 Carnival of the Capitalists Is Up
Carnival of the Capitalists is up, hosted by Lachlan Gemmell, who invited and got some discussion of the merits of capitalism for society.
In a bizarre twist, I found it was up, after checking repeatedly today, from Instapundit, who normally learns it’s up from me. Nice to see things hum along so efficiently. I’ll get the CotC page updated and the normal notices by e-mail (except to Glenn) sent out as soon as I can.
Looking at the Carnival of the Capitalists page, I see next week’s host is Jeff Cornwall of The Entrepreneurial Mind. As always, send your entries to cotcmail -at- gmail -dot- com by Sunday evening.
It’s Spreading!
My brother’s “new” van died. Luckily it was local, after having driven to New Hampshire and back just fine. It was rainy and dark, so he left it in a parking lot and got a ride home.
By new van, I mean a used conversion van someone gave him when they would otherwise have sent it to the junkyard. A full van, not a minivan. His old one gave up the ghost, so he had spent a few weekends making the new one usable for non-handicapped and fixing whatever most ailed it, then started driving it just recently. Naturally this is the second or third time it’s done this kind of thing, where the old, crappy looking van only stranded him once.
Anyway, he called my mother, only to find her car is in the shop. Oops. So he called here while I was doing the “pick up a few groceries” run that was needed after we got home.
I offered my van for him to borrow, if he wanted to fix the loose wiring to the starter. Not the day to do it, of course, having been pouring. It was sufficiently wet to make the Sentra act up a little coming home from Vermont. It hasn’t done that in ages. He expected the Sentra, but since we know it runs and it is all setup with the car seat, just as well.
Apparently the car trouble is spreading. Along with the computer trouble.
I went and got him, we made easy work of getting the van running, and his theory is that it wasn’t the starter at all. The connections to it were all tight. He thinks it was the transmission lockout being out of whack, so it thinks the car isn’t in park or neutral when it really is. If it’s in gear, it won’t start. Whatever happened, the thing was repeatably startable in the driveway.
He visited for a while, played with Sadie, talked movies and stuff with us, and went on his way in my now - apparently - working van, with a duplicate copy of Double Jeopardy I’d been meaning to give him or someone. I goofed and bought it twice. He hadn’t seen it and had wanted a copy, so it was perfect.
Damn cars.
Spammers too. I need to go through the comment spam and delete it, which is weird not being on my own computer.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Pending Carnival
I just remembered it’s Sunday night and checked to see if Carnival of the Capitalists had been posted yet by this week’s host, Lachlan Gemmell. As I write this, it hasn’t, but there is a rather significant time difference.
I noticed he has a post announcing the fact he’d be hosting and discussing the hope of entries on capitalism as a generally beneficial practice and philosophy, beyond being so to whoever profits directly. Or, of course, views to the contrary. As opposed to merely ordinary entries talking about this or that item of business or economics.
While I am on the unabashedly positive about capitalism side of things, and find it easy to forget that it’s perhaps not self-evident so surprising numbers of people, I always thought it would be fascinating to have a fair amount of the more raw, philosophical types of entries. It’s too bad I did not see the post soon enough to encourage people accordingly.
At any rate, with the computer madness, I have no idea when I will be able to announce that CotC is up and so forth once I am aware it is. You may want to keep an eye on the host blog in anticipation. It should also include entries that last week’s host was unable to include.
Sigh…
So we arrived home, safe and sound. Since it has now been reported to the California grandparents by phone, I can tell you that Sadie’s big milestone yesterday, witnessed by four of us, was rolling over from her back to her belly at 8 weeks and 3 days old. Slow down kid!
She recognized she was home after we set her down in here, and was all happy about it, a regular smile factory. I agree.
However, it would have been nice not to come home to a dead computer. Doh!
I shut it off while I was away. Normally it stays on. Popped in, turned it on, went out to the car for another load, came back in an found it repeatedly attempting to boot itself, giving no video signal, running the CD drive lights non-stop, and clicking.
Go figure. Leave it off so it can’t fry while I’m gone. Current first hope theory is it’s the power supply, which could make it do this sort of thing if it’s “dead” but not dead. I may borrow Deb’s power supply tonight to test. Her machine is what I am using now.
My secondary thinking involves things like fried BIOS and/or motherboard. I need a new computer, but I don’t need a new computer, nor is this the time for it. My P3 1000 is more than enough power for anything I do at home. Heck, I am more in need of a modern machine, say a P4 3 GHz, at the office where I use a P3 450.
We also got as heavily spammed over the weekend as we have any time since I closed off comments on the oldest 80% of the posts. I think it’s time to close them on more. We’ve also been having spammers “register” as users in some kind of effort to be able to post comments more easily. I need to determine how to turn that off even though it can’t be turned off. I think that will be a similar renaming of a .php file and all references to it in code as is a solution to part of the comment spam problem in WordPress.
If it’s not as simple as the power supply, things will be interesting the next day or two. I have spare computers I can use, including Deb’s laptop, but just the whole thing of having to try to fix it, and if not fixable, to try to replace it temporarily and/or permanently, all while ideally not losing any accumulated data. sheesh.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Miles and Milestones
Today we went to the craft show in Barre, which takes place every year this same weekend at the Barre Municipal Auditorium. Sadie was amazingly good once again, nearly as much so as yesterday. We got more Christmas shopping done and had a nice, scenic drive.
There was also another baby milestone I am not at liberty to report just yet. Stay tuned for that after we are home and the grandmother can hear it first by phone rather than blog. She’s “talking” up a storm tonight, kicking, playing with her hands, trying to maintain her place at the center of attention.
She’s so cute! That’s what I left to check the state of the world according to blogs.
Normal blogging should resume tomorrow night.
Friday, November 26, 2004
CotR and Adventures of World’s Best Baby
I just thought I would pop in to note that the latest Carnival of the Recipes is up, if you can bear to think about food right about now.
While I’m here, I should note that we have an amazing baby who road in the grandparentmobile to Stowe with nary a peep, let us go into Cold Hollow Cider Mill and stayed sleeping in the car with her grandfather to watch her, and then let us shop in one more store before needing a quick feeding and change. Then she road in the sling, fascinated by all the people and neat stuff in the Mercantile building and Shaw’s General Store, charming everyone, and got most of the way home before complaining again. That after barely complaining for the drive to Vermont or the rest of the time here. My father is going to assume we’re lying if we ever complain about her.
Tomorrow we’re going to a craft show in Barre, so I hope she’ll be just as happy then as she was today.
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Happy Thanksgiving
We’re safely at my father’s house in Vermont for the weekend, planning to leave early enough Sunday so Deb can see more scenery on the way home. Dinner was yummy. Sadie is being even better behaved than usual. Right now I just want to sleep.
But there’s news to report! Sadie had a milestone last night, at exactly eight weeks old. She rolled over for the first time, front to back. All the more impressive as she hasn’t been placed on her belly all that much.
She also has come close at least twice to rolling back to front. Got all the way on her side and could have finished it easily.
We are going to be so in trouble soon, chasing her around, not able to simply set her down wherever.
I hope you all had a great holiday too.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Of Course, Of Course…
Or is that “off course”?
I just moved my tools from the Sentra to the van, then tried starting the van. Same thing as last night. And we parked it in a manner inconvenient for getting under it and fondling starter wires, and there is no frickin way I am going to do that every time we have to turn off the damn car.
The chances of us taking the Sentra and being cold and crowded for the drive to Vermont are somewhere around 90% now.
Damn cars.
Of course…
The aforementioned minivan drove to the office and when we left, after more than $700 of work, it wouldn’t start.
I ended up on the ground under it, fondling the wires to the starter, and that was all it took. Now we’re more nervous than we would have been about driving that, rather than the rock-reliable yet foible-ridden and chilly and tiny Sentra four hours to Vermont. At least the starter wires have nothing to do with the work done by the garage. My brother installed the starter.
I think it will be fine. In the morning I’ll see how it starts and runs. If it has wire problems again I’ll at least have light of day. At least when the Sentra won’t start, the wire to jiggle and caress is up near the edge of the hood, no getting dirty on the ground needed.
Sadie of course thought this was fun, as long as we didn’t try to leave her in the car, away from the action.
On another note, I don’t know how much blogging will happen the rest of the weekend while we are gone. In the morning we’ll be packing and loading the car, after I clean it out (much accumulated debris and stuff stored in it while it was parked), after we have decided for certain we won’t resort to the Sentra.
There is likely to be a non-zero amount of blogging, between taking the laptop and having access to a computer there. It just may not be much or regular.
Carnival of the Capitalists is in good hands and I should be back in plenty of time to update the list and announce that it’s up. Take this as a reminder, cotcmail -at- gmail -dot- com by eastern time Sunday evening.
Okay, off to bed and/or getting ready for the trip…
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Busy busy busy
Did I ever tell you the story about the time the President of the California Maritime Academy called me a willing little worker bee to my face, while I was holding two sacks of garbage, and that she escaped uninjured and unsoiled? And people say I have no self-discipline. Hmmph.
No? That’s OK...that’s pretty much the whole story.
Anyway, I spent the afternoon with a high-maintenance baby, followed by a quick dash out of the house to go pick up the van (YAY!!!), which has landed us at the office so that Jay can finish up what he needs to finish up before the long weekend. Then when we get home I’ve got two loads of laundry to do, supper to cook, and packing to finish.
I almost miss the days when I could pick up and go at a moment’s notice.
Actually, to tell you the truth, it’s not a close contest. I may think of those days wistfully, but I’m so amazingly blessed. I love my family madly and I’m very, very happy. Hell, I’m so crazy happy that I’m excited to be driving a minivan, and that’s pretty crazy. And pretty happy.
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.
Today’s Top Nine
Thank God the election is over and everything’s getting back to normal again! In fact, it’s gotten so much better in the last few days that I actually remembered today why I liked blogging so damned much in the first place.
Example the first: Dean having fun being provocative and his readers having fun being provoked.
Example the second: Nathan’s essays.
Example the third: Zombyboy calling the Puppy Blender out on an essential point of Heinlein.
Example the fourth: Kim talks about running away from home.
Example the fifth: Steven Taylor on Star Trek.
Example the sixth: The joy of finding new blogs through old blog friends.
Example the seventh: Watching the latest goofy scheme to gain some control over those crazy bloggers.
Example the eighth: Kitty carnivals.
Example the ninth: Rosemary’s baby shower.
*fights temptation to go on*
*gets up and goes to pack for the trip*
I love this job.
Got yer medblogging right here…
Grand Rounds #9 is up at Shrinkette.
Also, EchoJournal is the home of the 2004 Medical Weblog Awards. To see the nominations as they currently stand, go here.
Monday, November 22, 2004
Happy Birthday!
A not quite belated happy birthday to my oldest niece, Amanda, who was born the same year as Deb, 28 years before my youngest niece, who was born two years before my oldest child, who was born the same year as my youngest grandniece. Confused yet?
I haven’t seen the niece in just about five years, and before that it had been about nine years. Which means she’ll probably never see this post, but hey. I still remember she’s out there.
Woo-hoo!
Sadie is, right this minute, happily chowing down on a bottle of breastmilk. This is the first time she’s had a bottle since she was just a few hours old and the nurse talked me into allowing it while I was drugged out of my mind. She’s actually past the recommended age to offer it, but she’s coping pretty well. And Jay’s getting to feed her and is enjoying it tremendously. And I’m getting a feeding off and enjoying it tremendously. *grin*
Speaking of which, yesterday he left her with me for a few minutes, and she fussed and she fussed and she fussed. None of the usual tricks managed to calm her back down...but she settled as soon as her daddy walked back into the room. Smart girl. Very smart girl. And she loves her daddy like crazy, as befits her smart girl status.
And yes, the baby blog is pretty much dead. I’m going to revamp it eventually, but the little one has me a little pressed for time right now, and for now it makes more sense to just post here.
Turned out just like my husband in the last goofy quiz, so I had to do a different one.
Luckily, Caltechgirl pointed the way:
|
You Are Turkey and Gravy Soda |
Gobble. Gobble. |
Gack.
Amusing Description
|
You Are the Stuffing |
|
Via Jen
11/22 Carnival of the Capitalists Is Up
After much toil and trouble, delayed by the kind of family emergency that can hit any of us, disrupted by trouble with the Gmail account, Greg has posted a nice looking edition of Carnival of the Capitalists for this week. Be sure to check it out.
Many entries did not get into this CotC due to problems with Gmail access, but they were received. I will ask the next host, Lachlan Gemmell, to treat those as submissions for the 11/29 edition, and to allow two entries freely if one had been meant for 11/22. I suspect this will be a light week due to U.S. Thanksgiving, so that will beef it up.
Raining, Pouring
So on top of a dying mail server, many other things to do, web sites to create, personal stuff like the car to tend to, and a bad situation I caused by attempting to be overly helpful to a departing client employee…
I got a call giving the opportunity to bid on a job upgrading a law office in Brockton to accomodate several additional people moving there from the firm’s Boston office.
This is the same Boston firm that had a failure of their lone server and then couldn’t restore documents and templates from backup after it was reinstalled. I met my partner there to try to help them, and after a nightmare trip on the T following other obligations making me late here, was half an hour late. We did everything right to try to recover the data, couldn’t make it work, and suggested a data recovery firm as the next likely option. My partner was mad at me for being late and underdressed, so he volunteered that we wouldn’t charge them anything for what would have been two billable hours in all, a half hour of which took me 2.5 hours of time on the T, to and from, to incur. I’m still mad at my partner for that, even if it was three years ago. I’m not sure I’ve looked at him the same way since. Then they had someone else come in, do exactly what we did, and it worked. That was embarrassing, even though that kind of thing happens.
But I digress. They’re moving in January, so after the holidays I will need to talk to a guy in Boston, arrange to go see what the setup is now, then see what it’s currently like in Brockton, and figure out what they need to do and propose accordingly.
It’s kind of funny, the lawyer I spoke with thought it might be to small for me. Not at all.
Carnival of the Capitalists?
Yes Virginia, there will be a Carnival of the Capitalists.
Greg at Social Twister is aware it is his turn, has the info needed to access the 38 CotC e-mails in Gmail, and will presumably post some time today.
I may not be in a position to announce it immediately once it is up, but you can keep an eye out over there for it.
Light Posting?
Between checking on and presumably picking up my van today or tomorrow, preparing for the trip to Vermont, and server problems for a client on top of busy in general, posting may tend to be light and sporadic from me. It’s a slow week out there anyway, so perhaps it’ll hardly be noticed.
Sunday, November 21, 2004
CoNsisTenCY
We finally got around to watching the past week’s episode of Gilmore Girls on tape.
Previously on Gilmore Girls… They stopped serving lunch at the inn.
Currently on Gilmore Girls… Lorelai invited Christopher, Rory’s father, and Rory, to lunch at the inn.
It’s good to know they’re consistent. I know, I know… for all we know the characters changed their decision off-camera between episodes. But still…
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Oatmeal Fried Chicken Strips
Last week Deb wanted to try fried chicken strips again, so I used it as an opportunity to attempt to quantify it into a recipe.
The thing is, it’s highly customizable and this can easily be used as a guideline and methodology, more than a strict recipe. You could make it more strongly spiced, for instance, as what I describe below is flavored but not that strongly. I also didn’t get the amounts perfect, so I will note where I could have increaed the coating ingredients, and the spices could, probably should, be increased to match.
Ingredients:
The chicken:
3 smallish boneless chicken breasts
The precoat:
2 cups flour (a little will be left but this was good call)
The liquid bath:
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
dash to 1/4 teaspoon cayenne (red) pepper
dash to 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
The oatmeal spice coating:
1.5 cups oatmeal (needed more like 2 cups)
1/2 cup Bisquick (needed more like 1 cup)
1/8 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne (red) pepper
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
The oil:
Enough vegetable oil, lard or whatever to do the job. For this batch I used about 8 ounces of store brand liquid vegetable oil and it stretched just far enough to fry all the chicken in three passes.
Butter melted in with the oil, in this case about 3/4 stick.
The oil is another possible spicing vector and can get a dash or more of whatever you’d like to spice with. As is the precoat, so if you want to be different you don’t have to stick to flavoring the liquid and the outer coating.
Okay, the chicken gets cut into something resembling thin strips:
I put the oatmeal on a plate and smooshed it by hand to make it finer in tecture, but not completely rid it of flakes. I suspect a food processor or possibly mortar and pestle could be handy. Then I added the bisquick and mixed it in. Ditto the spices. Again, those could have been heavier. Originally the concept was spicy chicken strips. These were merely flavorful and definitely not plain. Well, except the last few when ran low on oat mix, threw some of the leftover flour on the oat plate, gave a liberal sprinkle of red pepper, and came out with a few spicy ones. Here are pictures of the coating in process:
The flour goes on a plate, flattened out for convenience.
Beat the eggs and milk, with any spices you might put in, in my case some of the red pepper and garlic powder, in a bowl of the appropriate size for dipping the floured chicken strips.
Coat the raw chicken in the flour.
Dip the floured chicken in the egg mix. I let it soak rather well, flipping and submerging as needed. Here’s that part of it:
Then roll it in the coating until thoroughly covered:
It got harder to be thorough when I was running out:
I tend to get “finger gloves” of sticky coating as I do this, and balls of sticky coating on the plate. There is probably a new recipe idea in there somewhere, given that a fried ball of the coating with no chicken in it can be quite yummy.
While the first of the chicken is being dipped and coated, have a frying pan heating up on roughly medium heat with the oil and butter mix. Here’s a couple shots of the strips actually cooking:
Cook until done to your satisfaction. The nice thing about the strips is they’ll cook fast. I probably leave them in longer than they need, but hey, the result works for me:
The recipe is entirely my invention, apart from seeing the technique of coating, dipping, coating, and possibly the use of oatmeal, in recipes Googled for ideas once upon a time. This was my third try making something along these lines. It’s hard not to come up with something edible, and easy enough to make it tasty enough to enjoy to your preferences.
When I started putting the first pan full of strips in the oil, I caught a whiff that smelled like the fried smelts my grandmother used to make. Probably just the basic smell of the coating hitting the hot oil was about the same. I haven’t had smelts in outrageously long. Yum.
Friday, November 19, 2004
West Wing and Blogs (spoilers)
I noticed surprisingly little commentary about the inclusion of blogging in the plot of this week’s West Wing episode.
For those who don’t watch, it was not especially unbalanced, as one might expect if it were going to be an anti-blog push. Either that, or I am not sensitive enough to be bothered.
Basically one of the characters who works in the White House, Josh, is at a car dealership on the weekend, looking at and discussing the Prius hybrid with a sales guy. He actually spouts some sensible facts, like that gas prices are not record highs in constant dollar terms, and it looks surprisingly bad even going back to the fifties and “cheap” gas, based on relative living standards.
For the rush of it, he insists on test driving a massive SUV/truck that has giant titanium gonads luxuriating in a pool of testosterone. Someone not only witnesses his unplanned reduction of the Prius inventory, but also snaps a picture.
Boom! It’s news that can’t be managed. They use it to humorous effect, and I think if they are making a negative point about bloggers, it’s that “they’re not journalists.” Everything is on the record, so they don’t play nice and by the rules. Imagine! Press freedom, pure and unfettered. The founders would be proud horrified. Much as they would want us not to register and surrender our guns freely.
Once the point was made and the humor was squished out of the scenario, the blog thing didn’t come up again in the episode. It was nice to see the acknowledgment of that reality in the world, however it might have been intended.
In general, West Wing seems to have been on a roll lately. The writing is good, the balance is good, as much as you can expect from a show focused mainly on a Democratic administration, long enough into the series run to risk being tired. It’s watchable because the politics is sensible more than outlandishly partisan, showing the reality of things, how it might be imagined to work behind the scenes, the writing is (back to being) excellent, and the characters and their relationships are compelling.
I wonder what’s next for mainstreaming blogging into the public consciousness.
Ah Yes, Driving Songs
Jay G. has a good post on driving songs. I primarily agree with his number 7 and 8 selections.
The post reminded me (speaking of deja vu) that I had once done a post on the topic of driving songs, which elicited great comments. That was back in the pre-Deb days.
That’s what you call one of those classic topics that doesn’t get old and can be whipped out for further discussion periodically.
I still think Radar Love is my all time, but there are plenty of others. Of my and Deb’s CDs that were with us on the trip across the country, one stood out as the “kept me wakeful and got us here alive when the megadoses of caffeine pills alone might not have cut it” CD. That was Foreigner Records, their greatest hits album. There was a stretch near the end when I must have listened to the same album several times over because it was the only thing keeping me coherent.
Again, All Over, Deja Vu
You ever have deja vu? In episodes where it happens regularly for a while?
You ever have deja vu that isn’t actually deja vu, because something you dreamed in the past, and can remember having dreamed, is happening and triggering the memory of itself?
You ever have deja vu so intense that you can predict something that is about to happen, that you have no reason to expect could happen?
You ever have peak episodes of deja vu flashes that are followed and/or preceded by a significant event in your life, after which it fades to a normal, minimal level?
Yeah, me too.
It’s quantum leakage, right?
Got yer Carnival right here…
The Carnival of the Recipes is up!
Might have to go looking for something to fix for supper tonight…