The Biped's Burden

I was attempting to pull off my best "good student" facade in class yesterday and I catch something very disturbing in my left-side peripheral vision. A foot. A bare, naked, human foot. I found the foot to be distressing. Not necessarily because the foot was gross, although it appeared to be in desperate need of a pedicure, but because of the impropriety of the situation.

Evidently I have some built in crazy that decides when it is and is not acceptable for feet to be bare. It's the context of the bare foot that is important to me. Bare feet in a house, no problem. Bare foot in a car, problem. Rationally there should be no difference in the context of the two situations. I can't think of or express any good reasons why a bare foot in a car is wrong. They just are.

However, as bad as bare feet in a car are (let's put them at mortal sin level,) bare feet in a class room are worse. New levels of worse. A bare foot in the classroom is easily a cardinal sin. The way I see it, if you aren't responsible enough to look after and clothe your feet in public places, then they should just be taken away from you.

I don't ask for much, only the smallest nod towards footwear. Looking down and seeing a mostly bare foot in a flip-flop would have been perfectly acceptable.

[I would have included a picture of foot with the post, but in deference to Jamey, and not want to find fetish cites at work, I've refrained.]

I Got Your Fountain of Youth Right Here...

After my misstep with an automatic your mother joke I've been on good behavior. I've been careful and have successfully not spouted out anything nonsensical or insulting (at work). The nonsensical stuff is definitely harder to keep at bay. The spoonerisms are returning.

I did, however, say something that dated me. I can't remember what it was, but the youngest of the minions caught it and decided to ask how old I was. Normally I love this game. Actually the game I love is "guess how old my wife is." That game never gets old. It works best if Dawn is in the room. The victim struggles with being accurate and flattering. I assume they try and pick an age that errs on the side of flattering. They always overshoot Dawn's actual age. Dawn is insulted, Dawn in turns insults the victim, everyone wins. Well actually, only I win. I guess that why I like the game so much.

I go ahead and ask the minion to guess my age. He guesses 26-27. He might be attempting flattery. I tell him I'm actually 30. I think I see a mild look of surprise on his face....perhaps he wasn't trying to flatter me.....or perhaps he's really good at it.

More inane discussion passes. I point out that I'm probably a young 30. He replies "you really can't be that old if you're still making your mother jokes." So that must be it. I have discovered the fountain of youth! The fountain of youth is simply immaturity and irreverence. If that be the case, then I might live forever....with your mother.

Two-fer Tuesday

Everyone knows computer scientists are deft romantics. Well known fact.

Dawn and I were conversing on our way back from lunch. The subject meandered to romantic computer science luncheons (naturally). As a result the following "poem " was written.

My love for you is infinitely often false.
For one day we shall both be dead.

I doubt a liberal arts major could have constructed something so concise, beautiful, and verifiably true.

In Search of Useless Truth

I heard a new phrase in class yesterday. The situation reminded me of when I first heard the phrase "vacuously true." It was just casually dropped, only briefly defined before moving on.

"Infinitely often true." Roll the phrase around in your brain for a sec. It's nice, no? It was used in contrast to when something is always true.

A good example would be even numbers. It would not be correct to say that it is always true that numbers are even....because you can probably think of an odd number. However it is correct to say that it is infinitely often true that numbers are even.

The test for truth is simple, if as you head towards infinity there will always be another true instance, then it is infinitely often true. In the case of even numbers, since there will always be another even number it's infinitely often true that numbers are even. The same can be said of prime numbers....they just get very sparse as you head towards infinity.

I think I really enjoy these concepts because they're mostly useless. Harmless if you will. It's not an especially powerful concept. It's not paradigm shifting. It's just a splitting the hairs on a concept that people probably don't care about to start with. In short, you can find useless trivia no matter where you look.

I'm still missing software on my new machine. There is a cool symbol for infinitely often true, but you'll have to wait for it. Yeah, yeah, I know. You're crushed. In the mean time I included a picture of a bird with a penchant for infinity.

Too Much Art at Work

Sorry I missed a post on Friday. While, I am no way contractually obligated to post everyday, I like to try to post often. I just got a new computer at work, so I've been busy moving everything over and setting up shop. It's a Vista machine, so I anxiously await finding out what doesn't work on it. I'm still missing a few key software packages on it (where is my Microsoft Office and Photoshop?)

Overall getting settled into my new office has been going well. My minions are starting to hit their strides and produce some quality work. There is one danger I have to readjust to though. For a long time I've worked mostly by myself, which meant I didn't have to completely switch into my "work persona" everyday. Now I pretty much have to if I want to maintain the appearance of professionalism at work.

There was a crack in the persona on Friday. I was under a bit of stress trying to solve a critical problem in my project. Most of my mental power was focused on that....leaving whatever semi-conscious bit of my brain that there are to stray and cause trouble. One of the minions was evidently talking about some cookies that got brought into the office, he said something along the lines of "I've got dibs on that cookie." Automatically I responded "yeah? Well I've got dibs on your mother."

I actually didn't even know I said it until after the fact. Dawn and I make a lot of "your mother" jokes at home. We aspire toward art in our crafting of fine your mother jokes. I was not aware that the "your mother joke parser" was now so deeply ingrained in my head. I guess there is just a tenuous conscious filter that prevents me from sharing my art with the world.

Must remember not to share art at work....

She Dominant To Atkins

There’s an on going joke in our house about the Riblet Weight Loss Plan™. Apparently her motto is “Be dominate to your hunger.” This is not surprising being that Riblet has dominance issues. For a declawed cat missing a canine tooth she has a very high opinion of herself. We think she believes herself to be dominant to just about everything in the house with the exception of me (most of the time), Dawn (about 50% of the time) and Dyson (100% of the time). Dyson, our vacuum cleaner, holds a special place in the pantheon of Riblet’s fears.

The best part of the Riblet Weight Loss Plan is I’m able to accurately visualize what it would be like if her plan was a success; this is how I amuse myself in otherwise quiet moments. I imagine when you are first confronted with an item of food that you don’t want to eat you should show your dominance to it. The food does not control you, you control it. The best way to display your dominance is a low, but audible, growl. Continue growling for at least three or four minutes so everyone knows you’re serious. Imagine the scene in a nice restaurant, the dessert tray comes around, you hear a course of people offer up a firm but low growl. How awesome would that be?

Everyone knows that growling is a warning. The message is simply: I’m dominant, you better keep your distance. If the dessert tray does not heed the growls and continues to close on the patron following the Riblet Weight Loss Plan™ they are of course allowed to resort to violence. I imagine them just slapping the tray to the floor. Take that. If they exhibit true Riblet behavioral traits there might be a momentarily look of surprise that the foray into violence worked, quickly followed with a smug look of “I told you so.”

Perhaps I have a low opinion of weight loss books, but I’ve started to wonder if Riblet could sell her method. It seems like there might be a market. The basic message is self control via empowerment, which seems to be a pretty bankable message. It would be fun to follow the plan, you get to make strange noises and hit things. Her book would probably be full of LOLCAT images; people will buy books in the bargain sections for that reason alone.

It’s probably best that Riblet’s book does not get published though. I can’t imagine what Riblet would spend her royalties on. I don’t expect she give any to Dawn and I as rent. I expect she’d probably pay to have the carpets replaced by a couple of inches of memory foam, a room completely filled with stinky fish, and of course, a ninja assassinate Dyson.

On the rain slick precipice of research

I’m getting close to a crossroads in my grad school education. Before too long I will have to decide if I want to opt for a thesis or a non-thesis masters. I can keep coasting on my current path until the spring, but come May I should probably know if I’m going to hang a left or a right at the intersection.

If I opt for a non-thesis masters I need to take a comprehensive test over four core subject areas and continue to take another three courses (after the ones I will have completed come May). If I opt for a thesis masters then I’m done with courses in May and I need to start working on my thesis.

Realistically the thesis option will take at least a semester longer than the non-thesis option, however a thesis is an open ended proposition, so there is the risk that it might take even longer than that.

What’s the attraction for the thesis option then? Well, everyone I’ve talked to says if I have aspirations of getting a PhD (and I admit I harbor such dark desires) then in the long run it’s faster to do a thesis masters if the thesis is on a related topic to my eventual PhD dissertation topic. So again, there is a bit of risk involved, but it should be faster if everything goes my way.

Of course the scary part of the equation is that I should probably have some idea of what my dissertation topic will be in order to ensure I’m choosing a useful thesis topic. So that’s where I am now, starting to look around and decide what area of research I would be interested in. I don’t need to answer that question for at least 6 months, but I should probably be thinking about it. I confess, I find the question to be daunting. Whatever I choose I will be spending a lot of time thinking about. How would you elect to murder a considerable amount of your free time for the next seven years? [yeah, yeah, besides becoming a baby dispenser……]

I’ve already had an hour and a half meeting with a professor that would make a likely advisor, so I guess I already know which direction I'm leaning. I just have to decide if I truly want to jump. The sub-topic within computer science that I seem to find most stimulating is knowledge representation. I guess I need to start reading more about it to see if I can call it home.

On a completely unrelated note…..Figs appear to be in season. Publix had two varieties of figs with a buy one get one free special. So we bought one of each and decided to have us a good ol’ fashioned fig-off. We got Kadota figs which are green and smaller than the Brown Turkey figs which are larger and purple. We’ve been eating them in a variety of culinary situations: breakfasts, appetizers, both sweet and savory. Thus far I think the Brown Turkey figs are winning, but not by much. Here’s a photo from a figgy breakfast we had over the weekend. In this instance the figs were simple quartered and drizzled with honey. Très artistique, no?

More than you wanted to know about my Wii

Dawn and I started playing Alien Syndrome this weekend, or I should say, we started playing Alien Syndrome for the second time this weekend. We had tried to play the game once before a couple of weeks ago….and we hated it. We were surprised when we kept hearing positive reviews of the game from our friends. So we gave it a second try.

Our second experience with Alien Syndrome was more positive. I think the difference was being awake for the second attempt. This is not a game you should try and learn while half dazed. It’s just different enough to cause all sorts of confusion. I think the initial troubles arose from all the experience Dawn and I have with action RPGs. We know the formula and how they ought to work. When confronted with something not in the formula our reaction was, “oh no, they got it wrong.”

Our second playing revealed that Alien Syndrome has done something that seems to be difficult to do on the Wii. Make a game that uses the Wii’s new controller scheme that isn’t plain stupid. Too many Wii games seem to make you shake things or point at things for no damn good reason other than the designers felt obligated to take advantage of the new controller’s ability.

Alien Syndrome’s controller scheme makes good use of the Wii’s new abilities without being frivolous. It’s actually forcing us to develop some new coordination skills that haven’t been honed since the advent of the PlayStation. Bully for you Wii.

There are some issues with the game. It appears easy to unbalance a party. Dawn choose a character that uses energy based weapons. Her damage output is very modest, but she never runs out of ammo….or is not firing her gun. One time she put her controller down in order to take care of something else in the room and it struck me that the constant screeching of her laser fire wasn’t actually part of the games background noise. My character on the other hand uses exploding shells. I deal massive amounts of damage but have to worry about running out of ammo, except ammo plentiful in the game. However, I do have to occasionally hold back and let Dawn catch up in experience otherwise I’d get a couple of levels ahead of her. So our game sounds like a constant screeching of lasers punctuated with the staccato of bombs.

Fortunately there is no friendly fire, or we have it turned off. If there was friendly fire our game wouldn’t last very long. One of my weapons is called a “mine layer” and it drops little metal boxes on the ground that eventually explode. Dawn, the consummate looter, is drawn to any metal box on the ground with flashing bling on top. The little drama of Dawn finding a piece of loot that she can’t pry off the ground only to have it blow up in her face is acted out over and over again.

I’m looking forward to future playings of Alien Syndrom.

On an unrelated note, I finished Super Paper Mario last night. It was the first Mario game I’ve played since Super Mario 3 on the original Nintendo. Over all I thought it was done pretty well. There are some good levels and they made good use of their “flipping into 3D” gimmick.

What I really wanted to mention is if anyone is looking for a pretty kick-ass, albeit obscure, Halloween costume let me recommend the bad guy from the game, Count Bleck. All you’d need is a white top hat, white cape (with stars on the inside), white gloves, a monocle and a cane. The great thing about the costume is you can totally use all that stuff year round!!!

The Pulled Pork Prescription

I came down with a nasty head cold this weekend. It started Thursday night with a sore throat and by Friday night I was fully within its grips. I kept waking up throughout the night with the distinct impression that I was suffocating. Bleh, head colds. I decided to give up the farce of restful sleep early Saturday morning. I was awake and miserable and it was early. Early enough that the sun had just come up and it was still cool outside, like 70 degrees cool. I decided to try and capitalize on my misfortune by going ahead with my grill project for the weekend – pulled pork.

I knew the pork was going to need to cook for a long time, so why not take advantage of being up early to start the cook off early. Perhaps my loss (of sleep) could be Dawn’s gain (of porky goodness ).

This was going to be my second attempt at pulled pork. My first had been at Jeff’s party. There I had been following a Hawaiian recipe. The texture had been impressive for a five hour cook, but the flavor was pretty muted. I decided to do away with the aluminum foil and banana leaves for my second attempt. I wanted the smoke to get into the meat.

I prepped the Boston pork butt by scoring it a bit and giving it a spice dry rub. I just used a pre-made spice rub out of the cabinet. I then prepped my stoker grill temperature controller for its inaugural run. Setup was easier than I had anticipated. The wireless network extenders worked like a charm and my grill was online within minutes.

To my great shame I hadn’t tried out the fancy data logging software I found for the Stoker ahead of time. When I tried to launch it there were problems and I didn’t want to sit there and try and troubleshoot it while I had a fire starting in my grill. Must not jeopardize my first cook with the Stoker for some software I found on the internet. I’ll have to play with it later when there isn’t a pork butt at stake. I was able to configure the Stoker via a web browser so I didn’t have to resort to setting it using the actual buttons on the device. I mean, how plebian would that had been.

The Stoker functioned beautifully. I let the pork butt cook and smoke at 225 degree for 12 hours and didn’t have to adjust the grill a single time.

Eventually I pull the pork off the grill and brought it inside the house to rest. When I checked the grill for charcoal there was a surprising amount still left. I think I could do an uninterrupted cook at that temperature for 24-36 hours.

It was at this point that the full effect of my head cold really hit me. As the pork butt rested Dawn made guttural sounds of wretched anguish. I asked her what was wrong and she proclaimed it was the heavenly aroma that was filling the house….and the fact she was not allowed to grab the meat in her jaws and shake vigorously….just yet. I couldn’t smell a thing. I actually felt pretty devastated at this point. If I couldn’t smell this talisman of meaty goodness while standing right over it, and Dawn could sent it from across the house that meant I wasn’t working with a significantly impaired palate. I wasn’t going to be able to accurately taste my creation to compare it again my first pulled pork attempt. However, even with a muted palate I was able to detect some notion of smoked meat which was completely absent in my first attempt. So the second attempt was a success….I think.

Fifty Feet of Doom

Yesterday was the great office switch. I got to move into my new window-laden digs while a couple of students had to move into my old office.

We had started to prepare for the move on Wednesday night. We cleaned out all of our desks, unplugged all our computers, wiped all the surfaces down, etc. I had a meeting scheduled for early the next morning so I got to delegate all the heavy lifting to my minion. I instructed him to be sure and vacuum the room as he moved out, after all who would want to move into a nasty office?

When I arrived at my new office yesterday morning I found my minion furiously cleaning. The students who vacated our new office did not feel compelled to leave it in the same state of cleanliness as we had left ours. To be fair to the students, it wasn’t just them. They were but the most recent inhabitants of my new office. From inspection it appears clear that no person for the last decade had taken it upon themselves to clean the room.

We spent the better part of the day cleaning and organizing. We created many a nasty-black paper towels and vacuum crannies which had been collecting debris for who know how long. We discovered that the windows were locked open. From the rust we assume that the windows had been swung open about an inch for a couple of years. With a little hard work, a pair of pliers, and someone pushing from the outside we were able to get the window closed.

I was in my new office for all of about 3 hours before I managed to piss off a university vice president.

The room currently has four network drops, two on each side of the office. We really need four on one side of the office. So I decided the easiest thing to do would be to buy a couple of 50’ network cables and run them up one wall, over the ceiling, and down the other. There are already cable conduits that run up and down the walls so we could just stick the cables in those and the job would be very clean. The mistake we made is not closing our door before starting to run the cables.

Evidently we have a vice president who is in charge of networking. He happened to be walking by my office when he saw us playing with his precious network conduits. He griefed me for awhile - actually he was pretty darn condescending. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I had dressed down for the move and looked like a normal student; I hadn’t realized that my cufflinks were the secret to people respecting me around this place.

He, in turn, sent in one of his minions to further check up on us. We explained what we were doing. He told us it was dangerous to hook a 50’ network cable up to the network. Evidently that is an extraordinarily long cable and networks aren’t meant to handle it. I find it to be wholly remarkable that our building is more than fifty feet long and all the rooms seem to have network connectivity. He also exhibited trepidation that we were just planning on throwing the cables over the ceiling tiles… evidently our roof is a mere few ounces away from crushing all of us.

They also decided to tattle on us to our center director. I had already alerted him that I was causing a horrible network crisis. He assured them that he’d take care of the matter. He later came into my office and reprimanded me for “taking initiative, saving the center time, money, and inter departmental work orders.” He pointed out with that sort of behavior I was likely to accidentally accomplish work and be productive. He also pointed out that he was taking Friday off and asked if I could try and make it through the day without distressing any more university vice presidents.

The Garage Door Debacle

One source of unpleasant surprises when we bought our house was the garage door. The first surprise was that it had no garage door opener. Our house isn’t that old, I found the lack of garage door opener to be ridiculous. I suppose it should have been a warning sign of the type of owner we were buying a house from, someone who would buy a brand new house but skimp on the details.

I decided that my house would indeed have a garage door opener, and it would have it the day I moved in. I arranged for an opener to be bought and installed right before closing. My realtor said he had two guys who could do the installation, one guy who was an awesome contractor but was sometimes expensive. The other guy was his handyman who was cheap but wasn’t always as professional. I was assured that the handyman “always got the job done.” I opted for the more expensive contractor (twice as expensive) because I suspected the handyman always got the job done in spite of his own bumbling incompetence.

The second garage surprise was a bait and switch. Evidently the awesome contractor had a scheduling conflict, so instead of rescheduling the job my realtor gave the installation to his handyman. This made me very upset. The realtor defended himself by pointing out that he got the job done on time and it cost me less than if the other guy had done it. The job also looked like it had been done by a shaved baboon whose principle tool was a mud covered stick that he used to beat the garage door into place. There were greasy fingerprints all over the place, wires sticking out of places that were suspect, metal brackets that were bent at strange angles instead of being trimmed. The whole job was ghetto. I made him come out and clean up some of the work. After meeting him I decided that he was such a distasteful person that I would finish cleaning up the work myself, just so minimize my contact with him.

The third garage surprise was when we actually moved in there was a discarded garage door opener sitting on the garage floor. Evidently the previous owner had a nasty-ass decrepit garage door opener at wherever he was moving to, he decided to replace that one and leave the nasty one at his old house. I suppose it was just easier for us to throw it away than it was for him to throw it away. However, if he was being lazy, why did he expend the effort to get the damn thing over to our house? Very strange. We didn’t like the previous owner so we decided it was just easier to throw it away then ask him what his damage was.

The fourth garage door related surprise was last night the opener ceased working. Evidently the opener must remain connected to the garage door in order for the system to operate correctly. This is, unfortunately, not the case. It seems that the shaved baboon sometimes used the screws he was given in the kit and sometimes used little trinkets from the fur pouch he kept around his neck. (I’m not saying he actually had a fur pouch around his neck…but I imagine him having one. He probably keeps bits of bone and especially intriguing rocks in it.) I already knew that he would sometimes save time by inserting one screw into a bracket instead of the recommended three (imagine the time savings!) I guess he decided wood screws would work well in our aluminum garage door. Funny how they backed out over time.

Sufficed to say, I hate that baboon. I’m also tempted to punch our realtor if I ever see him again.

Too Much NPR Hybrid Coverage

Perhaps I’ve just more finely attuned to this sort of thing because Dawn owns one; but has anyone else noticed that NPR’s has done a lot of stories about hybrids lately? It seems like I hear two to three a week….and on the most part they’re pretty bad.

I think they keep trying to cover it from different angles and I don’t understand why. Usually when they are talking about hybrids they are talking about the Prius. I’ve heard stories about how people mostly buy the Prius because it makes a statement, I think the point of that story was people buy because they want to be perceived as green. Basically Prius owners are hypocrites. I’ve heard people buy the Prius because they want to save on gas. Then they point out how long you’d have to drive the car in order just break even on the extra you spent on a hybrid. I’ve heard them do a story on how driving a Prius is a futile effort, because the amount of gas all hybrids owners together have ever saved doesn’t even amount to a single day of what the US consumes gas-wise. I heard that hybrids are now mainstream cars since they represented 3% of total sales last year…. 3% is mainstream?

This morning there was a story about converting a Prius into a plug-in Prius. I think they wanted to do a story on plug-in electric cars…..and they could only find a plug in Prius (I guess NPR wouldn’t pop for a Tesla). Then they went about pointing all the flaws in plug-in electric cars……but he was driving a plug-in hybrid. None of the faults apply to the plug-in hybrid….

It’s not that I’m upset that they aren’t claiming the Prius is the best car ever. If you want to tow something it’s not the car for you. If you think you’ll save a bundle on gas, that’s only true if you ignore the initial capital it takes to buy one. I think the Prius is a really good car, but I don’t think it is the end-all be-all of cars.

The story I haven’t heard, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they have done, is hybrids effect on emissions. That’s really the only place that hybrid cars really trounce normal vehicles. Even the hybrid SUVs that get the same gas mileage as the normal SUVs do better in the emissions department. Perhaps that’s not as interesting a story because it doesn’t involve image or pocketbooks.

Monday Morning Mix

I finally heard back about my project. I got an A+ on it. Obviously, I’m pleased with the result…but now I can’t help but wonder if I put too much effort into it. After all, an A or A- would have been just as good for my GPA. Too late to change that now…

Dawn and I watched Downfall last night. Talk about a very well done depressing film. It’s about the last few days inside of Hitler’s bunker…. and the atmosphere of the movie conjures is palpable. When the movie was over it felt as if there might be a dementor in the house….but that turned out to be Riblet. We had to watch a Venture Brothers cartoon just so didn’t go to bed on a profound down note.

I also got a chance to play Mario Strikers Charged. The game has a bit of a learning curve to it. It took a good hour to figure out what was going on….and how to influence the madness. I enjoyed the game once I got the hang of it. It reminded me of when I used to play PlayStation hockey with friends. It has the whole pass-pass-shoot teamwork thing going for it. I’ve read that it’s not as much fun to play solo, and I think I can see that too. I never had as much fun playing hockey against the computer by myself. It always helps to have someone else in the game who will attest that the computer is cheating.

Dining in Madson

Dawn got back in town last night, which was a couple of days earlier than she had originally planned. To celebrate her return we decided to go out and try someplace new. Pauli’s Bar and Grill in Madison has recently opened a “Tapas Parlor“ called Vinotini next door to their existing restaurant.

The food was pretty good. The current standard bearer for tapas in Huntsville, as far as I know, is the Chef’s Table. I’m not prepared to say that what we tried matched Chef’s Table offerings. However, it’s hard not to be proud of Maidson, after all, we have a wine bar AND a tapas restaurant now. Dawn ordered some crab cakes which were very tasty…they just were not over the top. I had a martini, some marinated artichokes, olives, red peppers with a side order of spicy pecans. The marinated veggies were standard fare (the ones you get served at the Chef’s Table when you sit down are better). The spicy pecans were really good and I’d order those again. Obviously we were out to eat light.

The vibe of the place is really cool. I’d definitely take friends there to hang out. It feels more like a martini bar to me. Speaking of which, they have a pretty good martini menu if you like fru-fru martinis.

I have both cheers and jeers to hand out for the martini I ordered. I’ll start with the cheers. The martinis come in small martini glasses with a sidecar. The sidecar is a giant snifter filled with water and ice with a little Florence flask in the center holding the rest of your martini. I really like this set up compared to the giant-ass meniscus testing martini served at Surin. Having the assorted glassware on the table in front of you makes you feel like a bistro chemist performing a tasty tasty experiment. Science can be fun. On the practical side, it ensures that the second half of your martini will still be nice and cold when you get to it. That’s something that can’t be said of the giant single serving.

It was a tasty martini, perhaps a tiny bit watered down. That may have something to do with the fact that instead of shaking or stirring their martinis, they muddle them in ice (which is kind of fun to watch.)

My biggest jeer has to do with the wording of my martini on the menu. It said something like:

Classic Martini: Think James Bond.

I found this to be confusing, is the martini gin or vodka? A classic martini would be gin, but James Bond always drank vodka martinis…. I had to ask the waitress if the classic martini was a gin martini or not. It turns out the classic martini is a gin martini. She agreed with me that the menu was perplexing and the wording bothered her as well.

All-in-all Vinotini was a fun experience, but it’s kind of hard not to have fun hanging out in a “parlor” discussing the onomastics of martinis.

Need Room To Grow

I really like my job. It features low stress, a great boss who always seems to be looking out for my best interests, and completely 100% pays for school (and I’m not talking about that we’ll reimburse you later crap either). One of my job perks is an honest to god office instead of a cube. How many offices can boast 30 foot ceilings? Mine can.

For the most part I’ve had the office all to myself for the last year. A couple of months ago I got a student assistant who now shares the office with me. There is plenty of room for two people so I’ve had no complaints.

Yesterday I found out that I’m getting a second student. There was a young but exceptionally promising candidate that my boss decided he wanted to snatch up. Being that his interest is in software he’s being assigned to me. I’ll now have two of the youngest, and arguably brightest, employees our center has.

When notified about the addition I raised an eyebrow as I tried to figure out how to add a third person to my office. There is room, but I might have to lower my standard of personal workspace luxury. Currently my personal setup consists of four monitors and two desks. I personally consume three of the four available network jacks in the room.

I commented about having to consolidate my swank pad in order to make room for the new guy. My boss raised his eyebrow and suggested that instead I just get a bigger office. The ceilings won’t be 30 feet high but there will be a window. I’ll actually have room to expand my personal workspace (which is probably a bad idea, right now it borders on ridiculous) and have room for a couple of minions. Things just keep coming up Bill. I pointed out that the new office only had four network drops, obviously not enough for three people if one of them is consuming three of them. I was told not to worry; we’d get some more installed.

The really funny part is there are already people in the proposed new office, three of them. The plan is for us to simply switch offices. So while my current office to too small for me and the minions my boss deems it the right size for them. Awesome.

Probing the Depths of Terror

Oh gentle reader, I have such a harrowing tale to tell. They say the man with two watches never knows what time it is. Let me tell you about the man with four probe thermometer probes, two probe thermometer base stations, an Evil Egg grill dome thermometer, and two Stoker Temperature Controller probes. (By the way, I say the man with two or more watch should be commended on his stylish accessories…)

I read somewhere about analog probe thermometers, like the one that monitors the Black Evil Egg’s dome temperature, getting a bit out of whack. I thought about that thermometer, out there, exposed to the elements, and furrowed my brow. Then I read that fortunately they are easy to calibrate.

So I decide to check and see if my egg thermometer is legit, this seems like a fruitful endeavor because I can also check the probes that come with the Stoker Temperature Controller that I got for my birthday. After all what’s the point of it constantly monitoring my grill if it isn’t polling the correct temperatures? While I’m at it I might as well check all the probe thermometers in the kitchen; the more the merrier, right?

So I need something to calibrate against, a pot of boiling water seems to be a popular choice. Ought to be 212°, right? Well, barometric pressure will throw that off a bit. Usually barometric pressure changes with elevation so water will boil at a bit lower temperature at higher elevations. I don’t expect Huntsville’s elevation to a big factor….but I go ahead and check it out.

I find out that weather will also play with the barometric pressure, meaning that water will boil at slightly different temperatures on different days. That’s kind of neat. I probably haven’t thought about since science class in elementary school. I also find a couple of javascript applications that will calculate the temperature that water will boil at written for nerds like me. A quick trip to weather.com to find the current barometric pressure for Huntsville and I’m in business. Based on my pressure and elevation water ought to boil at 210.2° Good deal.

I start a pot of water boiling. I decide to do my kitchen probe thermometers first. I notice that I have four of them in the drawer and two base stations. I plug the first one in and plunge it in the water (without touching the sides or bottom). 179°, that’s not right. I plug the second one in, 208°, ah that’s more like it. The third and forth measure at 176° and 177° respectively. I’m starting to panic, I place the Evil Egg dome thermometer in….150°. This is a disaster.

I try my other base station. The temperatures are 210°, 250°, 209°, and 210.° Ah, I think I see what’s going on here. I the connectors on top of the probes are different colors, I bet three of them belong to one base state and one belongs to the other one. That would make since. I’ve never been real careful about matching them up, but with this evidence in hand it seems pretty obvious that a thermocouple is not simply a thermocouple. I bet Dawn could have told me that. Lesson learned; probes may not be swappable.

Now that the kitchen probes are sorted out I find a wrench and calibrate the Evil Egg thermometer. It turns out that calibrating the analog thermometer is a simple adjustment. Phew.

Lastly, I place the Stoker’s probes in the water….206.4° and 209.1°. The fact that it reports tenths of a degree is kind of cool….but I would have hoped for it to be more accurate. A quick trip to the manual that comes with it reveals that the Stoke is smart. Very smart. There is a way to digitally calibrate it! A little bit a fiddling and the new readings are 210.2° and 210.6° Much better.
They say that ignorance is bliss. All I know for sure is multiple thermometers lying to me is torment. I’m glad I was able to help them get their stories straight. I’ve also gained a new found skepticism for their information. A skepticism which I am sure is healthy. Here that thermometers of the world…I got my eye on you.

Cooking for one, no fun?

I enjoy cooking, but apparently only if there is someone else to cook for. How messed up is that?

I’ve noticed the trend before. If Dawn or a friend is around I’ll gladly launch into preparing a feast. When it’s just me, ramen noodles will suffice.

It makes me angry. I have a fairly high opinion of myself, surely I think myself worthy of the effort? Yes, of course I do.

Perhaps I’m afraid of the staggering amount of food I might prepare. I’ve never really gotten the nak of cooking for two. I routinely overshoot all my estimates and make a glut of food more fitting for four. Dawn thinks it must be my up upbringing, and I imagine that she’s right. Who knows what crazy amount of food I’d concoct for one.

I’ve decide I’m going to stop falling prey to whatever strange notion might present itself against cooking for one. From now on my stove will happily serve a party of one….unless of course cooking will steal too much time away from Super Paper Mario. After all, it’s important to remember one’s priorities…

Everday is a lolcat day

Are you familiar with lolcats? I assume most of you nodded your heads. If you’re not familiar with lolcats let me take a moment to acquaint you with them. It will help give context to the rest of this post.

A lolcat is a picture of a cat, usually being cute, on which someone has placed text. The text can be anything, but text that somehow relates to what is going on in the photo is preferable. Extra points are awarded for poor grammar and horrendous spelling. I can has cheeseburger will serve most of your lolcat needs.

Dawn and I are burdened with a cat, Riblet. I’ve included a picture of Riblet for reference.

While shopping last weekend Dawn found some post-it notes that had a picture of a cat on them that had a striking resemblance to Riblet. The post-it notes also had a thought bubble over the cat’s head so you could insert what the cat was thinking. Obviously Dawn bought several packs of these so we could help annotate our house with Riblet’s thoughts. Our very own lolcat.

Riblet and Her Language
Now, some of you might not be familiar with Riblet. The first thing you should know is Riblet has deplorable language. She swears non-stop. Her filthy language is one of the primary reasons she is an inside only cat. When she does go outside she must be placed on a harness with a responsible adult in order to protect our neighbors from her caustic language. While outside she spends an inordinate amount of time swearing at birds.

Riblet and Her Mother
The second thing you should know about Riblet is she has an antagonistic relationship with her mother. She spends a lot of time swearing about her mother (it’s something the two of them have in common). However, at the end of each day both Dawn and Riblet eventually get sleepy and curl up on the bed and nap together.

Riblet and Her Logic
Recently, Riblet spent a lot of time helping me work on my logic project. I had research papers strewed about my office and she was napping and bathing around and on them. I guess in the process of bathing she took a break to read a few of them. We were startled to find this recent thought expressed in first order logic. Roughly translated it states: “for all stinky fish, there exist some stinky fish, such that stinky fish in my bowl.” I think she botched a bit of it, we both need to work on our use of quantifiers…but not bad for her first attempt at logic.

Caution. Dorks Grilling.

I’ve been posting a lot of grill related stuff recently, and that’s likely to continue as precision grilling is my current subject of obsession. I’m always happiest when I can drive my time into researching something really frivolous. I hope the appeal of precision grilling is obvious: technology + cooking = happy Bill.

Fortunately I’m not alone. There are other maladjusted people out there. I was greatly relieved when I first discovered Alton Brown. It’s nice to know that in the pantheon of Food Network smiling charismatic chefs, there was room for an OCD geek cook. Huzzah.

I also recently ran across my man Amir. Amir also owns a Stoker automatic temperature control system for his grill. One of the really cool things about the Stoker is the ethernet port which allows you to monitor its progress over the internet. Amir realized that if you can monitor the Stoker in real time, then you can write a data acquisition program to log and analyze your grilling experience! Did you feel that? If you’re like me you might have felt a bit of a shiver when you read that. Goosebumps rise on your arms? Oh yeah, we’re totally going to geek out on this.

Amir has made his program publicly available and I can’t wait to install and test it out at home. In addition to simply logging Stoker data, his program uses regression analysis to try and predict when food will reach its target temperature. That sounds pretty cool; I wonder how accurate it really is? It also makes graphs….GRAPHS. Not only will I be able to cook tasty food over absurdly long stretches of time (and maybe know when it will be done with some degree of certainty), I’ll be able to look at the graph of the food’s thermal history while I’m eating it!

Holiday Gift Giving Guide

Many, many years ago, when I was still in high school, I remember being over at David’s house and watching Conan O’Brien. What makes this memory hard to forget, besides David’s smooth operator style, is a bit Conan did about Hello Kitty.

The premise of the bit was Hello Kitty versus the Fisher Price Little People. You may recall the Fisher Price Little People as the creepy paraplegic toys that where basically a peg with a round head on top.

The bit was melodramatic and portrayed the fisher Price Little People as “good” while Hello Kitty was “evil.” It was basically a series of images: an image of the Little People, an image of some peaceful scene, the words “good,” an image of Hello Kitty, an image of something disturbing, then the words “evil.” The images kept alternating back and forth with Carmina Burana blaring in the background for maximum dramatic effect.

There is a kernel of truth in that bit. Somehow Hello Kitty inspires evil. I posted the Hello Kitty murderbot last week. This week I give you the “hello kitty transformation set.”

This got the most attention from Gizmodo, which titled it the “Hello Kitty Cat Humiliation System.” Gizmodo stated that the Japanese auto-translated version of the original Gizmodo Japan page is funny. They weren’t kidding.

Allow me to post some examples for you non-link clickers.
“This the commodity is not daily arrival and the collar. It will stop the use and unreasonable wearing of long haul. “Foppery” to be delightful is potato excessively for the cat.”

“So, when the [ya] it is you dress in the cat of the foppish class upper-class person, attracting the attention of the camera young priest in oneself you are not wrong the shank!”

Oh man. I think we all know what our cats will be getting for Christmas this year. Pretty soon everyone’s cat will be dressed in the manner of a foppish upper-class person. If you don’t have a cat perhaps you can still find a use for a transformation kit. The kit looks to be about baby sized. I don’t expect there is anything that can make a baby cute….but this probably couldn’t hurt.