First mow of the year today. It might have happened last weekend, but for the non-functioning of my lawn mower. My old adversary, the Briggs and Stratton two-cycle engine, strikes again. The first time starting in the spring is always an adventure. Normally I can get it to start by spraying a little starter fluid into the cylinder, but my trusty can of starter fluid seems to have gone walkabout. I didn't make it over to Wal-Mart to pick up a new can until yesterday. One spritz and I was good to go. Take that, B&S.

In retrospect, I probably could've waited a few more days. The grass wasn't as high as I thought it was. It's been a really strange spring. March was essentially April in disguise, which has many of the plants in my yard very confused. It's interesting to see which plants have been affected by the warmer temps and which haven't. For example, the grass greened up and grew like crazy during the one week in March when it got up into the seventies, but slowed a lot once the spring temperatures became a little more normal. My crocuses were apparently up in late February, because they were already past their prime before I'd even noticed they'd popped. The cherry tree bloomed in late March, about a month earlier than usual, while the Bradford pear waited until about a week before its usual mid-April to puff out. The forsythia have been golden for a couple of weeks now, while the rhododendrons lagged behind. The daffodils on the south side of the house are mostly gone. The ones on the north side started popping Easter weekend. The tulips, being more mercurial, shall arrive in their own good time. (Actually, the first started to bloom yesterday.)

Up until this weekend, April was April-like, however it got up into the seventies today, and, depending on which weather site you check, we'll be up into the frelling nineties tomorrow. Yikes!

I suspect I may have to buy some tomato plants early this year.

Rode my bike home from work today, the first time I've ever done that. That wasn't Plan A. I was originally going to drive home, then go to the bike path and ride later. Unfortunately, that got the kibosh applied to it when the truck wouldn't start at lunchtime. AAA came and, after I had the presence of mind to grab the bike from the back of the truck, took the truck off to Tire Pros for some diagnostics. Apart from a longish detour around the crazy traffic by the Home Depot, which included my first real hill climb of the year, it wasn't too bad. Map My Ride tells me the trip was 9.6 miles. It wouldn't be a bad bike-commute, except for the whole smelling like old sweatsocks at work.

The lion-like part March finally got tamed this past Monday, just in time for daylight savings to commence. It's been gorgeous during the days, and even though a chill fog has been rolling in over the path in the evenings, it's been nice to get out after work. Fortunately, I have tomorrow off, so I don't have to worry about getting to work in the morning. The flip side of the time change is that it's really dark when I leave in the am.

Now here's hoping they'll figure out what's the up with the truck in time for me to pick it up sometime tomorrow so I can drive to Connecticut Saturday for basketball, ribs, and hockey.

We finally got some real winter weather over the last two weekends, mixing snow and sleet and gale force winds at various times and in various combinations. And just to rub it in, both yesterday and today the sun popped out to give a taste of spring, but only once it was too late in the day to get a ride in. Sigh.

---
There was one good weekend for riding a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't take advantage because I was up in Boston for Boskone. Boskone was sort of up and down. I was able to find an reasonably interesting panel to attend most hours there, so that was good, but I didn't take a lot of notes, so I guess I didn't find much of it noteworthy. Still, there was a good panel on writing genius characters which included an observation by Charlie Stross that writing is a somewhat like doing stop-motion animation in it takes about an hour to write three minutes worth of reading material*. There were some other good panels and talks, including one by Guy Consolmagno, who works at the Vatican Observatory, on astronomers through the centuries who had the right data, but then leapt to totally wrong conclusions. Poor Schiaparelli did it on three separate occasions**.

* Or considerably longer if'n you're me.

** The most famous of these was his drawings showing the canali on Mars, which Consolmagno attributed to the tendency of the human mind to apply an unsharp mask to blurry objects.

Anyway, I enjoyed myself there, and had a couple of great meals at Tennesee's BBQ in Braintree, so not a bad weekend.

---
The good news for the week is that it looks like I won't be going to Brazil after all, which is fine by me. This may yet change, because it has already changed several times a few times over the last few weeks, and we are now on victim designated traveler #3, but at present I am considered too indispensable on my current project to go anywhere but my office for the next month or so. Meanwhile, one of our other technical people is making arrangements for the awe-inspiring robust vaccination regimen required for the trip***. So it goes.

*** Which, like the whole visa situation, was not even thought about by the higher ups until designated traveler #2 happened to mention the trip to a friend, who, in turn, then mentioned the bit about all the needles...

A conversation* en passant between a cyclist and a rollerblader on a cold day.

* Sort of. It's hard to maintain a sustained conversation while cruising in opposite directions with a closing speed of about 20 mph. This is mitigated slightly by the fact that the cyclist can do almost two laps in approximately the same time the rollerblader does one, providing them with at least three opportunities to yell something at each other as they zoom by.

First pass...

Cyclist (Me): I thought you said it'd be warmer today.
Blader: <shrugs apologetically>

Next pass, on a very deserted path...

Blader: This just means we're tougher than everyone else.
Cyclist: Oh, yeah!

Last pass, this time going the same direction...

Cyclist: You know what one synonym for tough is?
Blader: Stupid?

That was last Sunday, when it was just barely 40° out. Still, it wasn't all that bad, and it was actually quite pleasant while standing around in the parking lot in Kingston. This past Friday it was almost 50°, but it was windy so it felt much colder while riding or standing. It really has been a mild winter. I broke my all-time record for mileage (a whopping 25 miles) for February on my second ride of the month, which tells you something about normal February conditions. It pushed the total past 40 miles on Friday.

The rest of this weekend was much more like normal. It snowed yesterday, although it didn't stick at all. Today was the coldest day of the winter so far, never even getting into the thirties, and windy as all get out. Having already proved how "tough" I am last weekend, I did not ride. I probably won't get the opportunity next weekend, either, regardless of weather, since I'll be up in Boston at Boskone for most of it.

---
Some great news on the work front. Someone in senior management took leave of their senses and decided that employees with fifteen years in shall now get four weeks of vacation instead of three. Couple that with my current four days on three days off flex-schedule, which means I don't even have to take one of my extra vacation days to go to Boskone, and I suddenly have a ton of free time on my hands. Go me! If only they'd have done the vacation thing 12 years ago or so.

Got to ride a little bit this weekend for the first time since winter finally showed up. Friday it was raining elephants, but the temperature was close to 60°. Yesterday was cooler, high 40's. I cut yesterday's ride short because my legs were toast after only 10 miles. It had been three weeks. Atrophy is a bitch. Tried again today. It was sunny, but only in the low 40's. I wasn't really enjoying the cold, and the bike was complaining, too, so I called it a day after one lap of the path. Still, it was my best January ever at 76 miles.

---
A couple of the regulars showed up yesterday as I was finishing up, and I socialized a bit. One turns out to be another woodworker, so we compared some notes. Good day.

The Brazil trip is postponed until at least March whilst we try to figure out the visa sitch*, and also because the tickets will be way cheaper. The visa thing is weird. My visa is one set of fees because I have a Jersey drivers license, while the vp's is another because his license is from Maine. The rules are more complicated than those of some of the old SPI wargames.

* Thank you ellenbs. Nobody here thought of it, nor did our travel agent mention it.

---
Got the first substantial snowfall of the season over the weekend, but it's already melting pretty quick. It's been too cold to ride since the first week of January, so shoveling the fluffy stuff was good replacement exercise.

---
I've been watching The Finder, mostly because it's on, rather than for any investment. I wonder how long it'll stay on the air without making some major changes, like ditching the annoying juvenile delinquent who looks too much like Zoe Carter. It's a bad sign when they're already bringing in Bones crossover guests in the second episode. OTOH, I never watched Miami Vice back in the day, but the send up was funny**.

** Remember when Mario Van Peebles was the next big thing? And what's worse... he's only four years younger than I am.

But that wasn't the best meta reference in the show. The best was when Michael Clarke Duncan told the death row inmate "If you're lying to me, I'm going to bring you back from the dead and electrocute you again." That was terrific.

So, I roasted an oven stuffer last weekend, and buoyed by my stock making effort for Christmas dinner, yesterday I took the stripped carcass of the roast, threw it into a pot, added veggies, herbs, and water, and set it to simmering. After about four or five hours, I strained out all the bones and stuff, and simmered it some more to reduce it down to about a quart of liquid. Then I set it on the counter to cool off some before sticking it in the refrigerator, and forgot all about it until this morning. Nothing like some good ol' salmonella soup. Rats!

What I should've done was just stick it in the back of the truck last night, because it was the coldest night of the winter so far. It was 11° when I woke up. It's only 21° as I write this mid-afternoon. The cold is putting a crimp in my current project. I need to paint it, but it's too damn cold down in the basement for the paint to apply, much less cure, properly. I tried using an electric heater down there yesterday, but not much joy. I was able to get it warm enough to apply primer with a roller, so that's something, but the spray cans I have for the main coats have to be used at 65° or above. It's 50° down there today.

..while waiting for this week's episode to turn up online.

( A change in tone... )

Eight days into the new year and I've already broken my all-time best mileage total for January. Mind, the previous best was only 49 miles and the current total is only 58. It's not from any extraordinary effort on my part, either*. The weather has been surprisingly moderate for January in New England. Yesterday it even touched 60°. Today was the coldest weather I've ridden in recently. It was 45° or so. And sunny. The only weather related complaint I have is that it's been windy.

* Well, apart from the fact that I haven't ridden this much since mid-November, which meant my legs and back were and still are complaining vociferously.

I'm living on the weather equivalent of house money. I'm know it can't last, but I intend to take advantage when I can.

---
I cooked for a crowd this weekend, the crowd being me for the next couple of weeks. Yesterday it was an oven stuffer (on sale). Today I put a big ol' pot roast and a pile of pintos in their respective pots and shoved both in the oven for three hours. All came out splendidly.

Ooh, this week's Sherlock is ready to watch. Gotta go...

I was disappointed about one thing in "A Scandal in Belgravia," but I forgot to mention it in the previous post because I got distracted...

( More behind the curtain... )

Sherlock is back. Hurrah!

I liked the episode a lot. ( Spoilers within... )

Ringo: Books are good.
Grandfather: *Parading's* better.
Ringo: Parading?
Grandfather: [nods eagerly] Parading the streets! Trailing your coat! Bowling along! LIVING!
Ringo: Well, I am living.
Grandfather: You? Living? When was the last time you gave a girl a pink-edged daisy? When did you last embarrass a sheila with your cool, appraising stare?
Ringo: You're a bit old for that sort of chat, aren't you?
Grandfather: Well at least I've got a backlog of memories! All you've got is - THAT BOOK!

( Books are good, the list... )


---
I went out of my way to try to avoid rereads this year. Apart from one Wolfe book whose turn it was in the Wolfe sequence, all the books were new to me. Toward the end, I was sort of getting desperate to find new books, so I read two entire mystery series, one terrific and one terrible (the Hamiltons were the terrific ones). It was a good exercise. I finally got around to reading Pratchett's Witches sequence, which were wonderful and I highly recommend them. Plus there was a new Vimes novel, and Vernor Vinge's sequel to A Fire upon the Deep came out, as did Barry Longyear's long awaited (at least by me) collection of Jaggers and Shad stories.

There were some duds. I was looking forward to Charlie Stross's Rule 34, but was very disappointed by the ending, or lack thereof. I liked McDevitt's A Talent for War, but the sequel, Polaris, highlighted everything I dislike about his writing. The worst of the bunch, though, were the four Rex Graves mysteries written by C.S. Challinor. Badly plotted, badly written, they're only virtue is that they're short. I really should've cut my losses after the first one, but I already had the other three waiting.

Only one non-fiction, and no baseball books at all, although I have a couple on my night stand waiting to be read. Now I'm looking forward to rereading some favorites.

I started with a couple of recipes I found on the Food Network site*, and added some cheese. Turned out great.

3 large Vidalia onions, peeled and quartered
4 strips bacon, diced
nutmeg
cayenne pepper
salt
black pepper
3 tbsp white wine
1¼ cups half-and-half
3 tbsp flour
2 oz swiss cheese, shredded
2 oz parmesan cheese, shredded or grated
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup panko
2 tbsp chives, chopped

Preheat the oven to 350°. Render the bacon over medium-high heat in a high sided pan until crispy. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Reserve for later. Add the quartered Vidalia onions** to the pan and saute in the bacon drippings until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add a pinch each of nutmeg, cayenne, salt, and black pepper, then add the white wine and simmer for a couple of minutes. Whisk together the half-and-half and the flour, then stir it into the onions. Add the reserved bacon pieces along with 1 oz each of swiss and parmesan cheese, and stir over medium heat until the cheeses melt and the mixture thickens. Pour the mixture into a casserole or gratin dish.

Melt the butter in a bowl, then stir in the panko, chopped chives, and the remaining shredded swiss and parmesan cheese. Sprinkle evenly over the onion mixture. Cover and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the cover for 5 more minutes.

* Source recipes below. Mostly it was the first recipe combined with the bacon from Emeril's. The cheese was my contribution:

Creamed Vidalia Onions

Creamed Onions with Crispy Bacon

** The onions I used weren't actually Vidalias, but were the local equivalent from Schartner's farm stand.

( The best moment of the day came when baby!sis walked into the kitchen and said, Can I help? )

Eldest niece has volunteered to do next Christmas. Let's hear it for the next generation!

The annual ritual...

January — I spent New Year's Eve with friends, playing Apples to Apples and singing along (badly) while the kids played "We Got the Beat" in Rock Band.

February — Last weekend I joined my friend Tom Z on his annual pilgrimage to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. I'd never been before, despite it being no more than 15 miles from my brothers' farm. Tom goes every year for a F2F with his online fantasy baseball buddies. Now I know how civilians feel at b.org gatherings.

March — World Crossing is apparently closing its doors, or rather having its doors closed on it.

April — ...because the dreams can get a little weirder than usual. All I can say is that it is comforting to know that Lea Michele won't be playing Lisbeth Salander in the upcoming adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in real life.

May — Mother Nature finally remembered to flip the switch on her the heating system last Sunday.

June — I suppose I ought to post something, if for no other reason than if I don't, it'll really screw up my first lines of each month meme in December.

July — Today is the 4th of July, which means it was time for the 11th annual Casa Machina shrub trimming extravaganza.

August — I had the best ride yesterday.

September — So, that NASA satellite that nobody can find? Didn't land on my house, so that's good.

October — Previously on LiveJournal, our hero managed to dump a glass of milk into his wireless keyboard.

November — Almost all the snow was gone by last night, so Halloween arrived on time.

December — I have been in the grasp of the Worst Cold Ever(™) for a week now.

---
I noted last year that I hadn't written much. If anything, I wrote even less this year. And once again I didn't write much about the books I read, although I read quite a few. So it goes.

A lot of it is that the process of writing just seems to get harder every year. I have lots of ideas for posts, but when I actually sit down in front of the computer, I can't face the effort of converting those thoughts to into something coherent. If I were to make a resolution for the new year, writing more might be it.

So, spent the day baking cookies (two kinds) and making beef stock for demi-glace from scratch. Plus I made two batches of kolacki* dough, as well as the no-sugar added apricot jam for the kolacki filling. Did not have time to make the third kind of cookie, but the kolackis will be better anyway. Finished dipping truffles Wednesday night, so at least those are done. Now it's just a matter of assembling packages. Also did last minute shopping and went to the company Christmas luncheon. Am very tired.

* A small Czech pastry, that is sort of a cross between a tart and a Danish. I will post the recipe. They apparently all the rage in Texas. It's pronounced ko-latch-key. It seems like every "c_", be it "cz" or "ck", in Czech is pronounced as a soft "ch", except for "ch" which is pronounced "ck".

Have I mentioned I'm cooking Christmas dinner? Not here, but at my sister's house. I did this once before, and it was fine. I'm overthinking and overdoing, of course. Menu to be rib roast with both brown gravy and Tchoupitoulas sauce (thus the need for the demi-glace), roasted potatoes, peas, carrots of some sort, creamed onions, Yorkshire puddings, and rolls. Rie is getting the beef and potatoes, and I think I have everything else I'll need. Now I just need to remember to put it in the back of the truck tomorrow. Plus the potato slices that are marinating in the frig for the potato salad for tomorrow night's traditional cold cut dinner. (The Italians do fish on Christmas Eve, my family does cold cuts. It's a thing.)

Still need to roll out, fill, and bake the kolackis, and finish making the potato salad.

The weather has been insanely moderate for this time of year. I might have ridden my bike today had I not been running about like a madman. Now I'm worried about keeping stuff cold for the trip.

So, after two weeks of misery, the Worst Cold Ever (™) seems to be abating at last, and I'm feeling mostly human.

---
I rode my bike yesterday. I wasn't sure I was up to it, but it was sunny and 50°, and forecast is for colder temps the rest of the weekend, so I bundled up and went. It was chilly, but I was warm enough, and the wind wasn't nasty for a change. Even better, no lungs were hacked up in the process. It was the first time I felt close to normal in two weeks. It was a short ride, 12 mi., just enough to nudge me over 1750 for the year.

---
Afterwards I took a ride up to the big box stores in Coventry to lay in my truffle making supplies. I took the back roads up to avoid the misery that is the interchange between Rt 4 and I-95. To wit, there is no interchange between 4 N and 95 S. One has to exit 4, negotiate the three traffic lights on Division Road as it passes between a shopping center and a multiplex, and then north on Rt 2 to the 95 S entrance ramp. Another of RI DOT's many hall of fame designs. I try to avoid the area as much as possible, but it was the best way to get to the big box complex off 95 from where I live.

That is, apart from Hopkins Hill Road, which runs straight down through Rhody's backwoods from Coventry to Exeter not far from my house. I often came home that way, because the return through Division Road is even worse. The only problem with the whole scheme was that when Hopkins Hill hit the Exeter town line, it turned into a dirt road.

Now, I like dirt roads. I enjoy the nostalgia of a simpler time. I think they're neat, so I don't mind occasionally driving on them. Hopkins Hill was kept up pretty well by the town, so it was bumpy, but not atrocious. But they're no fun at all in lousy weather, and they take a toll on the shocks. So I didn't use Hopkins Hill all the time.

Then, last September, they paved it. Now it is wonderful, sailing through the woods and past the farms smooth as silk. Of course it is dark as pitch at night, but that's what high beams are for.

I'll miss the dirt road a little. It was the only one I drove on with any regularity. There are a few other still in Exeter, so I can still indulge occasionally. Although there is another one I'd love for them to pave, Ten Rod Road from where it stops being Rt 102 to where it intersects with Rt 3. That would be so useful.

I have been in the grasp of the Worst Cold Ever(™) for a week now. It all started innocently enough. I went to a party last Saturday, where the hostess mentioned that she and her kids were trying to get over a cold that just seemed to linger. The party was fun, but already on Sunday I had a scratchy throat, which I knew was a bad sign. Monday it was worse, but I went to work and managed to get through the day without medication. Monday night the snot monster hit, along with a sore throat like as I don't remember experiencing since I was a kid*.

* Although I must have come close sometime in the mid-90's based upon the evidence of the mostly unused box of Sucrets that had expired in 1997 that I found in the medicine cabinet. I have to be in serious pain to suck on a Sucret.

After a lousy night where every swallow was burning despite a healthy dose generic nyquil, I called in sick and mostly slept until after lunch. The sore throat abated quite a bit, and I slept better than I had during the night. But the throat came back with a vengeance Tuesday night, and I was again miserable. Took Wednesday off, too. What was interesting was that the sore throat once again disappeared during the day, so I took a closer look at the bottles of generic dayquil and nyquil that I was swilling like cheap gin during the day and night, respectively. They both had the same ingredients except that the dayquil had a decongestant and no antihistamine, while the nyquil had the antihistamine, but no frelling decongestant. I'd been assuming that the only difference would be the presence or lack thereof of the antihistamine**. Live and learn. Wednesday night I took the dayquil before bed, and slept like a very sniffly baby. The throat was only scratchy.

** Antihistamines are mostly useless on colds, but they do make you sleepy.

I returned to work on Thursday, and was damn near dead by the end of my usual ten-hour day***. I worked a shorter day on Friday and brought some work home. I'd hoped things would start to get better this weekend, and to a very small extent they have, but I'm still feeling pretty lousy.

*** Have I mentioned that I changed my work schedule to four 10-hour days a week now? Three day weekends every week!

---
I would've liked to ride this weekend. The weather's been reasonable for the time of year, and it's sunny out, but I don't have the inclination or the strength. It's a pity, too. I've already broken my all time best for mileage in a year, previously just over 1700 miles in 2008, and I'm just 10 miles short of 1750, which has been a sort of next milestone goal of mine since I first broke 1500. I'm surprised I got this far. The main reason I did is that the weather was very moderate for November, and those three day weekends really add up in terms of number of available riding days, especially when it's too dark to ride after work.

That little carton of heavy cream is a quarter of a quart not, as I decided for some reason, a quarter of a cup.

I thought the ganache seemed a little soupy.

Almost all the snow was gone by last night, so Halloween arrived on time. Got about the same number of trick-or-treaters as usual. The most adorable were a sister and brother. The sister* was a fairy princess who tried to clean me out of candy whilst diverting my attention from the candy bowl by a) being cute as a button, and b) engaging me in conversation about the fact that I have not one but two porch lights. I had to cut her off at three Kit-Kat bars. Someday she will be a real heart breaker. Meanwhile, her parentals were trying to coax her little brother, aka, the littlest pumpkin, along so he could get his treat. It's his first trick or treat, and he's not yet much of a walker, but he made a game effort for a while trying to lug a bucket o'treats almost as big as him across my front lawn. Unfortunately a mean tuft of grass tripped him up, and the bucket o'treats spilled all over. Fortunately the parentals were right on it, and no treats were lost. Meanwhile I'd decided to meet him halfway, and handed him a package of M&Ms. He certainly recognized that. His eyes lit up and he lit out at a stagger for my front door in search of more. His mom managed to cut him off before he reached the stoop.

* Who resembled my cutie patootie niece so much that I half expected to see my sister standing out on the street waiting for her.

In the "plans that seemed like a good idea at the time" department were two boys about 10 or 11, one of whom was pushing the other in a stroller. I assume it was the older brother, aka, the inventor of the cunning plan, riding and the younger brother pushing. Probably hard enough on the street, but really tough trying to push the thing across my lumpy lawn. I suppose I should feel for the younger one, but I was the oldest brother in my family so I appreciate the genius of the rider.

Sure there was snow up Worcester ways a couple of days ago, but really, Mother Nature? REALLY?

I wasn't expecting this at all. They were talking about heavy snow in Massachusetts, but all it was supposed to do down here was rain, which is what it was doing when I went to bed last night. Sigh. It's nice and sunny today, too. I was planning to ride, but I don't have snow tires on my bike, alas.

Pity. I've already had my best October ever, and I could've easily broken 200 miles for the month today (and 1600 for the year).

Sorry, teach, still way behind on book reports. Here's all the Pratchett I've read so far this year.
(Note: There's some general description of Snuff, but no real spoilers.)

( The Wizard... )

---
( The Witch... )

---
( and the Watch... )

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"The Brain Thief" — hollimichele

And just to tie things all together, I also read holli's Discworld fanfic, "The Brain Thief," a terrific story of a now grown up young Sam investigating the discovery of some gruesome corpses, with the help of Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling Garlick. It was a lot of fun. Not quite the real thing, but certainly a reasonable facsimile. and the characterizations are quite good. The story brings up something I hadn't really thought about, to wit, who will replace Lord Vetinari when he finally meets Death? Holli's answer make perfect sense, and I wish I'd thought of it.

Oh, woe! My private home improvement warehouse is closing. Okay, so technically the Quonset Lowe's was open to to the public, but oftentimes (especially weekday evenings) it seemed like I was the only customer in the place. When Lowe's announced that it was closing underperforming stores, I had no doubt which store would be number one on the list.

To be honest, I was stunned it lasted this long (it opened January, 2009). As I said, on weekdays there always seemed to be more employees than customers, and it wasn't much better on weekends. It wasn't the recession. The Home Depot by me is always busy. It was that they stuck it in the middle of an industrial park, where it's not on the way to anything except a couple of marinas and the port where all of the northeast's Subarus and Audis arrive from overseas. You can't see it from the main commercial drag in town.

On the other hand, it's within eye shot of where I work, so it was very convenient for me on the way home at night. Not so much on weekends, because I live just a couple of miles down the road from the Depot. The two stores are comparable, but each had strengths and weaknesses. Lowe's had better hardwood and a better specialty hardware aisle. I shall miss that. There are still a couple of other Lowe's in Warwick and Cranston, but neither is particularly easy to get to from here, except by bike

Woe!.

So, after doing my projects, I planned to get in some riding in, but it rained buckets Thursday and Friday, so no go. However, I did get out on Tuesday, and it was quite a ride, at least for me, anyway.

( Longest. Ride. Evah!!1! )

There are some pictures from the ride here. I rode yesterday in a chilly, 20 kt wind, which wasn't a lot of fun. Today's plan is to head up to Blackstone and admire the foliage, if yesterday's wind didn't knock it all off.

I am at home using up vacation days, and so far I've been pretty productive. Yesterday I replaced the storm door on the front of the house. There was nothing actually wrong with the old door, but it was getting old and it's various operating parts were starting to creak, as aging mechanisms (and aging people) do. It also wasn't particularly attractive, and since a new storm door isn't very expensive (compared to other home add-ons), I figured what the heck.

( Door Number Two... )

---
Another thing I did was I finally reassembled the incredibly heavy jointer I bought two years ago, and installed it on a roll-around frame for machine tools. Now I can shove it out of the way until needed. Time to consider a woodworking project.

Previously on LiveJournal, our hero managed to dump a glass of milk into his wireless keyboard.

That was Wednesday night. I took it over to the sink and ran a bunch or warm water through it, then left it leaning on one end to drain. Friday morning it seemed thoroughly dried out, so I gave it a try. It connected all right, so I figured all was well and detached the wired keyboard I'd been using as a substitute. I opened a browser window and that's when odd things started happening. Every time I typed something into the browser, it opened a new tab. The first time I thought I'd accidentally hit the new tab key combination by mistake, but by the third time I realized something was amiss.

Keyboards are tricky things. The keyboard is a PS/2 rather than USB, and if you plug as PS/2 keyboard in after the system has already started up they often don't respond at all. So I figured a quick restart would do the trick. The next thing I know I'm looking at the system setup screen* cycling through all of its options as fast as it possibly can. I hit the [Esc] key to exit, and that brought up the screen where I have to answer [Y] or [N] to exit. Yay! Except the [Y] key didn't work. Nothing for it, I plugged my wired USB keyboard back in, gave the machine the old three-finger salute, and... It did it again. Handy tip&emdash;If you're having issues with your wireless keyboard sending incorrect commands to the machine, make sure you remove its batteries when you plug in its replacement.

* You, know, the one where if you hit [Del], or sometimes [F2], right after start up so as to set your boot order and suchlike.

I put it aside, and tried it again yesterday. It was sending long lines of the number 2, but otherwise seemed functional. Put it aside again, then tried it this evening, and it finally seems to be back to normal. I was able to type this post without issue.

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I have declared the garden season to be over. It was a very mixed bag of results. On the good side, I got seven or eight spaghetti squash for my mother. I also got a softball-sized cantaloupe, and four pickling cucumbers that got made into icebox pickles. On the bad side, I didn't get any particularly large tomatoes. There were plenty of smaller tomatoes, particularly plums, but anything of size that approached ripeness either exploded thanks to the combination of very little rain followed by buckets, or got eaten by critters.

I haven't mentioned the critters before, but back in early July my neighbor mentioned that all of his ripening tomatoes were being gnawed by chipmunks. I noticed the same signs, including burrow holes, so I got some rodent repellent down at the Agway and sprayed it around as best I could**. It seemed to work for awhile, and I finally got some non-prechewed tomatoes, but it turned out to be a losing battle. I also discovered that it wasn't chipmunks after all, but field mice. I actually saw one of them duck under a leaf as I tried to pick a tomato. It's a shame, really. There are a lot of half-eaten tomatoes out there that could've been mine. The ones I got were tasty.

** It's made from rotted eggs, hot peppers, and something else nasty that escapes me at the moment. It's not supposed to be sprayed directly on the edible portions of the plants, which was kind of difficult at that point, so coverage wasn't great. I was able to direct a stream down one of the burrow holes, though.

The threat of the field mice going after the other stuff made me pick things sooner rather than later. The cantaloupe was ripe, but not very flavorful. The squash aren't quite as yellow as I would've liked. Stupid mice.

When I'm at home I eat practically every meal at my desk. I have no kitchen table (no room), and my office is in what any sensible person would use as the dining room. This is usually not a problem. Tonight at dinner, however, I knocked over my glass of milk, most of which wound up in my wireless keyboard. Considering how much crap is piled upon my desk, I'm amazed at how little other stuff got doused. Got lucky.

Meanwhile, I'm typing on a spare wired keyboard whilst the wireless drains over next to the kitchen sink. It could've been worse. I spent New Year's Eve 1984 cleaning semi-dry and very sticky Coca Cola out of my completely dissembled, three-month old Commodore 64.

So, that NASA satellite that nobody can find? Didn't land on my house, so that's good.

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Long time, no post. There really hasn't been much to report. The weather has been lousy most of the month. I took the week of Labor Day off, planning to do some long rides on the week days, but the remnants of Lee decided to show up and wash out the week. It rained most of this week, too. This past weekend has been abominably humid in the aftermath of all the rain, the kind of humidity that saps all one's energy.

One longish ride I did take was to try out the new section of the South County bike path over Labor Day weekend. It's nice, if short. It's also hard to find. The original path ends behind a strip mall, then you have to cross Rt. 108, and ride aways down a side street before the new part of the path picks up again. Would it have killed them to put some signage the point out the way?

The new section ends behind Narragansett Elementary School, and when I got there it occurred to me that it's only about a mile to the sea wall. I hadn't been down there in years, and local TV (and even the Weather Channel) had been doing live reports from it during the hurricane, so I decided to keep on going for a quick visit. The next thing I knew I was all the way down Ocean Road to Scarborough Beach, watching the sunbathers. Left to myself, I might have kept on going to Pt. Judith and/or Galilee, but it was lunch time, I was hungry, and my wallet was back in the truck at Kingston Station.

The ride was about 24 miles, round trip. I was surprised that it wasn't longer. It's about 15 miles round trip from my house to Kingston Station, so I might actually plan a nice 40 mile ride from here to Scarborough and back. Maybe if this humidity ever lets up...

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I discovered a big old puddle of water down in the basement on Friday. I thought at first that it was from all the rain, but it turned out that the dehumidifier was overflowing. It seems that the little sensor that shuts it off when the tank gets full had stopped working for some reason. Bother.

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I spent a good chunk of yesterday making a burrito. Actually, I started making it Friday night when I put some pinto beans into a big ol' container of water to soak.* Plus there was the pot roast that got shredded for the meat. It was a pretty good burrito, but it probably would've been easier to head over to Trini's or Caliente. OTOH, I have plenty of fixin's left.

* Be sure to pick though your beans before soaking, the way they tell you to on the package. They really mean it about the bean-sized rocks.

Huzzah!

Alas, I need to go mow the lawn at the moment.

Cable is still down at the house, which makes for boring evenings. Fortunately I can get on elsewhere. Things at work are back to what passes for normal, with the last two issues fixed yesterday, so that's good.

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I rode my bike Monday evening and was surprised to see the bike path in almost pristine shape, with not so much as a leaf to be seen on the path itself. There was plenty of debris off to the sides, including some downed trees, so they must have cleared and swept the path. As a matter of public policy that seems to me to be a strange ordering of post-storm priorities, but I'm not going to complain. Last night the path was back to is normal leaf strewn self. The weather has been wonderful, bright sunny days in the seventies, with not much humidity.

Apart from the very brief outage already discussed, I never lost power. What I did lose was Cox Cable, i.e., both TV and internet, so I had nothing to use all that excess power on.

OTOH, the Bradford pear continues its charmed existence. My next door neighbor lost a good sized chunk of hers, although she probably won't have to cut the rest of it down.

Just lost power. Thank goodness for the laptop and UPS. Still, should probably ration the batteries. Time to make a cup of tea and read a book or two

Update 9:05: And no sooner did I post and power down the laptop than the power came back on. Well done, National Grid.

For obvious reasons, The Kinks' "Lost and Found" has been running through my head all day.

Waiting for the hurricane
To hit New York City
Somebody said it's hit the bay
This is the nitty gritty

And all the bag ladies
Better put their acts together
We're near the eye of the storm
This is really heavy weather

We were lost and found, in the nick of time
While the ship was going down
We were lost and found, just in time
With the hurricane crossing the coast line
We were lost and found, just in time
Oh

This thing is bigger than the both of us
It's gonna put us in our place
We were lost and found, just in time
Now we've got no time to waste

They're putting up the barricades
Because the hurricane is heading up this way
So won't you come in from the cold and the pouring rain
And the old sea dog says shiver me timbers
The sky's gone black
And it's like the dead of winter

We were lost and found in the pouring rain
When the hurricane swept across the coast line

This thing is bigger than the both of us
It's gonna put us in our place
We're gonna see what really matters
When you see that storm stare us in the face

We were lost and found
And we beat the fear
We came through the storm
Now it all seems clear
We were lost and found, standing here
Looking at the new frontier

Ray Davies, The Kinks


There's a video here, but YouTube disabled embedding, so you'll have to click.

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Spent the day getting ready for whatever comes. Tried to get some D cells, but everyone was sold out. Plenty of AA and AAA, but none of the big guys. I briefly considered looking at generators, but they were already long gone. I can rig up a makeshift using an AC inverter that I got years ago that plugs into a car's cigarette lighter. It won't run a refrigerator, but I can probably charge my laptop with it.

Took some photos of the Bradford pear out front, to capture what it looked like on what is likely its last day with most of its limbs.* I moved the gas grill and some of the other backyard objects close by the house and out of the wind. I also pulled the air conditioner from the bedroom window so that I can seal the window. I learned the hard way when hurricane Bob rolled through in '89 that air conditioners do next to nothing to prevent horizontally projected rainfall from getting through them. The downside is that it's been high 70's with 80%+ humidity all day, so it's been frelling miserable without the a/c.

* I've mentioned before about how Bradford pears are terribly susceptible to storm damage after they pass ten years old or so. I lost one of the two I had about five years ago. The remaining tree is now about 22 years old, and has lived a mostly charmed life so far. If the winds are what they predict, I suspect most of it will be on the ground by tomorrow evening.

They're also predicting flooding, so I spent some time in the basement making sure nothing was on the floor should the water table rise up through the floor like a year and a half ago. I never did dig a sump for the sump pump I bought back then, so since I had the time today, I hooked up the air hammer** I bought a while back for just that job to the compressor, and had at it.

** I got the hammer sometime over the winter, so I should've tried this out before now.

Turns out I'm gonna need a bigger hammer, or a better chisel for the hammer. I managed to chip out some of the top layer of concrete, down about half an inch to an inch below the surface, over about a third of the foot square or so of floor that I need to dig out. Looking at the chips that came out, the hammer works well until it reaches the level the aggregate settled to when the concrete was curing. Once it started hitting the stones of the aggregate, it was less effective. I saw Tommy Silva dig a sump on an episode of Ask This Old House, and he used a portable jackhammer, which he also said are rentable. I will need to check this out.***

*** If for no other reason than because when I was very young, I loved jackhammers. My parents even got me a toy one. Unfortunately, it only simulated the action of a jackhammer, and wasn't actually able to penetrate concrete. Sigh.

I'm not too, too worried about flooding. For one thing, I had warning to get stuff off the floor. For another, unlike most of the Northeast, we haven't actually had all that much rain this summer, so I don't think the ground is saturated as it is in many places. I had to water the garden the other night, and I've only had to mow the lawn three time since the 4th of July. We could stand some rain.

After I finished cleaning up down there, I emptied the shop vac so that it would be ready if I need to suck up any water. I also did a couple of loads of laundry.

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The main thing I'm worried about is power. I have city water and a gas hot water heater and stove (plus the grill) so I should be okay for cooking and cleaning. I don't have any reserve batteries for my camp lanterns, but I have some AAs for my smaller flashlights, and I have candles. Worse comes to worst, there will likely be power at work before there's any here, so I can always head there. I was there today, too, shutting down the servers.

Stay dry, everyone.

Did not even notice the earthquake. My boss did, three miles down the bay, but I suspect that all the fill the Navy used to create the current version of Quonset Point, which was basically a mud flat to begin with, dampened the vibrations.

Anyway, no panic at work unlike some places around the state. Pity. It was perfect weather for an evacuation.

Re: This week's Leverage.

FSX saves the day!

Plus there was James Tolkan, who was part of the Nero Wolfe emsemble.

This was from a special Harry did for the BBC. One thing I didn't realize before watching the Nilsson documentary was that he was, for the most part, his own set of background vocalists. It seems obvious to me now that I relisten, but I'd never thought about it before.

Walk Right Back/Cathy's Clown/Let The Good Times Roll Medley

Last Night I watched Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)?, a behind the music type documentary about Nilsson which is currently available as a free online preview. Today, thanks to the movie, I've been listening to Nilsson all day. It's easy to forget at this remove how talented he was both as a singer and a songwriter. The movie is well worth the time. There are even a couple of Nicky Hopkins sightings in some footage taken during the Nilsson Schmilsson sessions.

One of my favorites, "The Lottery Song," with Hopkins on piano.

So I've been working on the big database coding project in earnest, which has resulted in a certain amount of, um, organization to my dreams. Object oriented dreams, sheesh! But that's not the main reason I'm here.

Not long before waking this morning, I dreamt that I happened to glance at a piece of code that went something like this:

If varPerson = "Vampire" Then GasolineDiscount = 50% *

When I woke, I couldn't help but think that that's would be one heck of an incentive to wander around a Sunnydale cemetary after midnight.

* Thinking back, it was more of a lookup table than straight code, but you get the gist of it...

So, there I was at lunch, sitting in my truck under the shade of some pines, minding my own business and reading a book. Some moron on a bike rode by, and yelled at me, "Bike your fat ass off." I was sore tempted to start the truck, run him off the road, stop, open the lid of the bed, grab the bike pump off the the bike under the lid, and beat him about the head with it.

Pillock.

I had the best ride yesterday.

As I have noted elsewhere, apart from one trip to Block Island every year or so, I almost always ride alone. There's lots of reasons for this, not the least of which is that I am not very social. But it's also rare that I see another cyclist who rides at about the same pace as I do. I tend to ride faster than most of the casual cyclists I see, but not nearly as fast as the Lance Armstrong wannabes.

I drove up to Warwick to ride the Washington Secondary path Saturday. I started kind of slowly as I set off for the Cranston end. My legs were still a tad stiff from riding the night before. It was earlier in the morning than I usually get there, so there were fewer people than usual. Hardly anyone, in fact. Very nice.

As I passed behind the Cranston Lowe's just short of the north end of the path, a young woman waved me down to ask if this was indeed the Washington Secondary bike path, and could I point her in the direction of Coventry. I assured her it was, pointed her back the way I'd come, and sent her on her way. Then I finished pedaling the last few hundred yards to the north end and turned around.

By this time my legs were pretty loose, there was no wind, and the path goes slightly down grade, so I was making pretty good speed. That section of the path is pretty straight, and with so few people on it, I could see a long ways down it. The young woman was there, maybe a quarter mile ahead. What was interesting to me was that as fast as I was going, I didn't seem to be getting any closer to her. On the other hand, she wasn't pulling away, either.

The I lost sight of her as the path took the long bend towards Arctic. I didn't see her again until I started across the Bradford trestle and saw her getting back on her bike after stopping on the trestle to take in the view. I waved as I went by, and said hello again. She matched my speed and we started talking about the path. It was her first time riding it, and she wondered if the Coventry end was a little prettier than the Cranston end. (It is.)

It was fun. We rode at a pace that seemed to suit both of us (or, at least, it suited me perfectly). And we talked about bike paths and biking, her future, my past. She's just graduated college, and is soon headed for Prague to teach English. I talked about my grandparents' experiences coming over from what became the Czech Republic, and my very brief attempt to learn a little Czech. We talked about the local bike paths. Although she usually rides East Bay, it turns out we both like Blackstone the best, which is not all that surprising if you've ridden it.

It turned out the reason she'd had to flag me down is that she'd parked at Lowe's, and saw the little side bike path that circles Tongue Pond, thought that was the main path and started riding on that. After a couple of laps she realized she doing orbits, and finally found the access path to the main path, which is when she saw me. So there I was, knight on a shining charger, er, bicycle, pointing the distressed damsel in the right direction. Or something...

Anyway, we got to the far end, where the paved path turns into the gravel Trestle Trail, and we turned around. Another 10 miles later we were back at the 295 parking lot, where I'd started, and we finally introduced ourselves. Then we said our goodbyes and she headed off for Lowe's. It was one of the best hours I've spent on a bike in a long time. Bon voyage.