Probably a Lot Wrong with this Halloween Conversation...

Me: "See. We're getting teenagers now."

Pooteewheet: "We were getting teenagers before."

Me: "These were chesty teenagers. They're older."

Pooteewheet: "We were getting chesty teenagers before. They were Asian. But they were chesty for Asian teenagers."

On Australians and Mermaids

• Murray: You know, guys, in the old days the sailors used to fall for them. Yeah? They hadn't seen a woman for weeks and the Australians would lure them to the bottom of the sea and they'd DROWN.
• Bret: Oh..that's mermaids!
• Jermaine: That's mermaids you're thinking of.
• Murray: Is it?
• Bret: It's not Australians.
• Murray: Yeah...well, the Australian ones were the worst.
• -From 'Flight of the Conchords,' season 2, episode 5 "Unnatural Love"

Linux

I am horrible at Linux. I believe this makes me a n00b. I'm disturbed that I know enough to be proud I can self identify as a n00b. Today, I typed in some sudo thing that I wasn't 100% certain what it does, but it was the end of a chain that involved installing unixODBC, which required qt, which required an appropriate compiled (gcc-g++), which required yast, which then reported an error that required said sudo-ing. After trying a password (despite having root access) my VM told me, "******* is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported."

Ooooooooo....who are they going to report me to for fuddling with the SLES VM? Maybe they'll send a VP down to yell at me.

Addicting Substances

I had a headache today. I think I finally traced a bit of it back to not having any caffeine. I've been downgrading my consumption for over a week, mixing a little bit of caffeinated into a bunch of decaf in the morning. It's both good for my health and my pocketbook, as I prefer Caribou to the corporate coffee, although I'm still getting Caribou on Monday and Friday when it's between $0.55 and $1.

And I bought the most expensive bottle of Scotch I've ever purchased today. A $70 bottle of Lagavulin, recommended by Chris from work on Facebook when I mentioned Dan, also from work, had put me on to Laphroig. I had a very small drink of it, and it is delicious. Maybe if I give up my Caribou coffee habit I can afford a bottle now and then. In order to make it last, I've given myself a rule that it's a reward for every five hours on the bicycling trainer. Couple your bad habits to fulfilling your good ones, right?

Geeking Out

I think it says something about me that I'm excited this evening because I get to do the initial parts of a unixODBC install on a SUSE VM, and because the new Harvard Business Review that arrived in the mail has the title "The Drucker Centennial: What Would Peter Do?"

Parkour

Eryn watched a few parkour videos on YouTube. This is the result.

Popsicle

I was worried I had spelled Popsicle wrong on each of my photos. Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. My Dad brought down the industrial, steel, popsicle maker that my parents used to make us popsicles when my brother and I were kids. I'm not sure how they ever managed to make this thing work effectively. We used some packaged fruit punch to make the popsicles, and I almost couldn't get the top off the popsicle maker. And my ability to control the depth of the sticks was circumspect at best. Nonetheless, Eryn was very excited.


Here's a better picture of my haphazard stick placement. And I filled it a bit full. You really need to make sure you don't overfill it, or the top sticks. Note the hairdryer. It worked well to blow it through the metal so the popsicles would loosen up. Still, we only managed to reclaim about 2/3 of the popsicles in their entirety. Another 1/3 turned into half popsicles. Eryn appreciated the remnants.


An example of one that turned out correct. Hey! There's Pooteewheet's cold medicine. She got sick right after I did last week and then turned the flu into viral pneumonia of both lungs. Lucky her. She wanted to know how we were going to get the popsicles out if we had to refreeze the popsicle maker each time. I pointed her at the ice cream bucket in the fridge full of individual treats. Sometimes I think she suspects I couldn't manage my way out of a box.

Each of these was made with nutritious, vitamin C fortified, juice. So I'm excited that popsicle time has turned into semi-healthy treat time. Next I'll make some out of Clamato.

Relaxed Readability

Apparently this is the proper way to read a Junie B. Jones (Essential Survival Guide to School) book. I don't think I'd be able to get up again if I read in this position for any length of time.

Halloween Costume

My sister once posted about the little dead boy who lives at her house. He perished eating a bad potato. I'm going to lift the story and my comment from her blog and post it below so that you have some context around my Halloween costume decision. Lissy Jo, let my nieces know I'll be knocking on the door looking for a treat!


...

As soon as the toddler woke up, she asked with some concern, "How did the easter bunny get into the house?" I didn't know how to answer. Then she told me how he woke her up in the night.

3 yr old, coloring: "He's a little boy and he is soooooo dead."
Me: "He's what?"
her: "He ate a potato and it made him so dead."
me: "um...what?"
her: "When you eat a potato it makes you dead."

Happy easter, you've been warned!

Scooter said...

The bottom article is the most important. If Ame' met a ghost of someone who had died by solanine poisoning, it would have to be a little boy, because he would have had to have ingested an oz of poisoned potato for every 6.25 pounds of body mass. Ask her how big the boy is, and you should have a pretty good idea of whether he could have died by potato by comparing the weight. At 4 or 5, a boy would weigh about 30 pounds, not taking into account historical changes in weight and stature - so about 5 oz. of potatoes would have been sufficent. A medium potato is around 173 grams, which is in the neighborhood of 6-7 ounces, perfect for someone in that age. So...ask Ame'...was the boy about your age/size? If she says a little older, you're still in the ballpark. Nice ghost.

------

Solanine is a glycoalkaloid poison found in species of the nightshade family, such as potatoes. It can occur naturally in any part of the plant, including the leaves, fruit, and tubers. It is very toxic even in small quantities. Solanine has both fungicidal and pesticidal properties, and it is one of the plant's natural defenses.

------

Seventy eight schoolboys became ill after eating potato at lunch on the second day of the autumn term. Seventeen of the boys required admission to hospital. The gastrointestinal, circulatory, neurological and dermatological findings and the results of laboratory investigations were in keeping with solanine poisoning.

------

While death from potato poisoning is rare, eight ounces of a green potato can contain high enough levels of solanine to affect a 50 pound person, and 16 ounces could impact a 100 pound person. Symptoms of glycoalkaloid poisoning include gastrointestinal upset, headache, fever, convulsions, drowsiness, rapid breathing, delirium, and coma. Three to six milligrams of solanine per kilogram of body mass can be fatal.

March 23, 2008 5:43 PM

A Quote for My Sister from Community

The Advanced Criminal Law episode:

Annie: You listen up, Pierce! I'm gonna tell you what my mother told me when I wanted to quit cheerleading. 'You're not very pretty, you have no boobs, and you can't do a basket toss to save your life.' But you made a commitment. So pick up your pompoms, Pierce, stuff your bra, and get ready for the team bus to forget you at a Taco Bell, because life is tough. But we soldier on, and that's just the way it goes.

A Bit More Dan Savage

A Bit of Dan Savage

Bert and Ernie

I strongly recommend Bert and Ernie at the Children's Theatre Company. Eryn thought it would be too young for her. And Pooteewheet and I thought it would be incredibly annoying. But it was very funny and Eryn laughed through the whole thing. A+

Observation

I suspect that when it looks like cops are pulling over cops, you're in a rough neighborhood.

Managerial Lesson

I made the mistake of using the phrase "more technical manager" in front of other managers yesterday. No doubt this will amuse French Dip. It took less than a second for another manager to jump in with "What do you mean? We're all technology managers!" Sigh. Serves me right. I should know better. I dissembled a bit and moved on with achieving my objective in other ways.

But I suspect that manager knew what I meant. I mean someone who could literally sit down at their desk and code up a Java or C# app without having to dust off a book, possibly in multiple IDEs, and might be able to tell you about the semantic similarities and differences between those languages and others, like Ruby (et al.) and give you a best case for each of them and when they actually wrote something in each one. I mean an individual who knows how to create WSDLs and REST interfaces in more than theory and can, with little effort, create stylesheets and web pages, all tricked out with CSS, XHTML, javascript and, just because it was fun, have worked with Silverlight or AIR. Someone who has a virtual machine on their desktop, or access to one for personal use they've squirreled away on the network. Someone who can read SQL, knows how to optimize it, and has used a few of the latest bells and whistles in the more recent incarnations of database products. Someone who not only knows that Inversion of Control is a software term, but has implemented it in some capacity. Ditto for at least a handful of patterns and anti-patterns. There's a lot more to it then that. So much more, and I'm not even going to get into CI, source control, and unit testing. But that's what I meant and I suspect the question wasn't meant to get that response but to send a message, despite that I didn't mean it in any way that implied a non-technical individual was lacking. They just didn't exhibit the particular strength set I was after in order to resolve a situation. Live and learn, eh?

A quick way for a friend and I to earn 1500 ringgit

We could go to Terengganu in Malaysia and pretend we were an Islamic gay couple who want a divorce.

"Malaysia's eastern state of Terengganu is offering free honeymoons worth up to $440 each to rekindle the romance between married couples on the brink of divorce." (Reuters)

I Scratched...

I scratched my head so much that it feels bruised.

ITCHY!

I spent a portion of the weekend working on rental property. Saturday was efficient, because I assessed the overloaded closet (in their defense, overloaded by the previous tenant), went to Home Depot, bought two cobalt drill bits (in case one breaks), four lag screws, slightly larger than the stripped screw that had come loose, and a spare L-rod in case it all went pear-shaped. 30 minutes later, I had the old screw hole redrilled, a second hole drilled, and the shelf up and solid. My only concern was the slight crunching noise the wood behind the wall made as things went up. I suspect if I were to rip down the wall I wouldn't be happy with the state of the pine.

Sunday was more difficult. We have a house of 10 that had a garage door opener without functioning safety sensors. When we fixed the opener and ran the wire before, it didn't work at all. Taking a multi to the wires revealed they were broken/clipped at several places. So I bought 100' of heavier wire and went to work, climbing over all the boxes the new renters (combining two familes, so just imagine) had in the garage. I even managed to hurt my back a little moving book boxes. I ran the wire, confident I had enough because I'd estimated: over my head = 8', at least twice that far back into the garage, 24', and about 1.5x that to center, 36' of wire per side. So imagine my surprise when I got to the end of the second wire a good 8' before the sensor holder. I checked the packaging and realized some nice customer had dumped a roll of 50' in the 100' bin. So it was back to Home Depot. Ugh. But it works, and all is safe.

Except me. I came home, only slightly beat up from straining my back with the box off books (it was actually several boxes of books, and many more boxes off other stuff, and while I was in a maze of boxes clearing a way to the wall, one of the renters dropped a number of 40# bags of salt under the garage door line, so I had to move those as well), with a generous amount of crusty blood all over my thumb from poking it with a razor blade, worries about how all the renters had been suffering from H1N1 only a week earlier, and an itchy head. The back ache got better with advil. The thumb washed clean and only feels a little numb in one spot. I don't seem to have H1N1 despite being sick. But the itchy head wouldn't stop! I scratched and scratched, and then dumped lotion all over my head. It itched through the lotion, but I fell asleep. Then today, it still itched. And got worse, and worse (and I was sick on top of it). By the time I took Pooteewheet to see the doctor, I was scratching non-stop. Grating, finger-nail etching, trying to pull up skin from my head, scratching. Then the hives started. And the itchy ears. And the back ache (not the back ache from lifting the books, but an allergy-style back ache like I get from rum and too many tomatoes). Finally, aboout 4:30 it faded a bit, and I'm still scratching at 8:05, but it's better.

I don't know what fell on me while I was running sensor wires, but I don't think I'm going to climb around that garage again any time soon.

Cultural Appropriators Thy Name is Malaysia!

I was reading this article at associated content about how Malaysia has been trying to steal the Pendet from Indonesia. Allegedly, they've tried to claim a number of items:

"The Wikipedia entry on Malaysian 'cultures' even mentioned more of questionable art forms which Malaysia had claimed: the song Rasa Sayange, the Javanese shadow theatre Wayang Kulit, the traditional dance Reog (Ponorogo) from East Java & the Ninang Tari Garinging dance from West Sumatra."

To the long list of countries annoyed with Malaysia for cultural appropriation, I'd like to add my own, as evidenced by this clip of line dancing the Achy Breaky.

Red Headed Woman

Bill Woodson sang Bruce Springsteen's Red Headed Woman last night. It's been a long time since I last heard that song.

Mr. Pink

She Says asked me to donate to her cause, The Walk for Hope (that's her donation page), "a national breast cancer walk that supports breast cancer research, treatment and education at City of Hope, a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. The event is family oriented and a great way to get involved in the fight against this terrible disease," which she's walking tomorrow.

I know I'm horrible for making fun of anything breast cancer related, but hopefully my donation and giving space to breast cancer on the blog gives me a little leeway. I have to state that I find She Say's Mr. Pink donation graphic to be a bit risque'. Particularly after we donated. It appears I'm stimulating the cause. And I worry those tic marks represent inches.

Bill Woodson

Pooteewheet is off to play poker tonight (a luxury I gave up so I could ensure I was going to plays at the Children's Theater with Eryn) with my coworkers and coworker-friends, so Eryn and I were left to our own devices. I was going to take us to St. Paul to see a ghost tour, but then I found out Bill Woodson was playing at Ring Mountain, the local ice cream shop.

Bill's wife works at my company, so when he's singing about You're My Angel, I can look across the ice cream shop and actually see to whom he's singing. Good voice and music I really like (Springsteen, Beatles, and some of his own songs).

Eryn and I had ice cream (I splurged and let her have the medium, which is too much cinnamon ice cream for anyone) and listened to Bill for almost an hour and half, well past her bed time, particularly as we read a few chapters from Benjamin Button (the graphic novel) after we got home. Eryn danced and clapped and Bill gave her a CD (titled English Motorbike, both words which made it into our game of hangman) to play at home, although her bedroom CD player is broke. I promised her a replacement tomorrow so she can listen to him at bedtime. I read the Harvard Business Review, so you know I'm sort of a geek.

I have this urge to see if Bill is affordable (plays for food) for my departmental picnic next year as I'll be manager in charge. We'll have to see if Kari allows business and home to mix.

Hulu Is a Tool of Satan

I used to watch almost nothing on a regular basis. I had to wait for it to come out on DVD via Netflix, or catch it reruns, or just never, ever watch it. Hulu has created a problem. I can add a show, and it never goes away. If it's passable, I have it forever. Yes, I quite often ride my bicycle while watching hulu, but still...that's a lot of television. Add Miro in the mix, where I watch almost daily 10 minute episodes of Attack of the Show, and the new DVR, where I can watch The Soup and Man v. Food, and I start to get a backlog.

I submit, just the list from Hulu:

• 30 Rock - enjoyable, fortunately they're 30 minutes long and not on as frequently as other shows.
• Community - I like Joel from The Soup. I've been watching the Soup since... damn... perhaps since I lived at the U of MN? It's been a very long time. Greg K. is visibly older, I know that much. There are some moments of comic genius. And a lot of dubious moments. That's a good mix for a bicycling show. And it feels edgier than Modern Family.
  
• Defying Gravity - scifi. You'll see a pattern in my television watching. Scifi or comedy. Love this show. Well acted and they try to inject some humanity into a scifi premise. The show isn't moving very fast, but the actors really make it enjoyable.
  
• Dollhouse - hit or miss. When Whedon is on, it's great. When I have to watch s*it about backup singers and lactating mothers, I question my commitment.
  
• Eureka - I don't watch this on Hulu, although it's queued up. I keep it as a bookmark so I remember to watch it on Netflix with my wife (who loves it).
  
• Family Guy - funny.
  
• Flash Forward - new, and I like it. X-files-ish. There are some serious holes. The world should be a bit more organized after so many planes crash/etc. But willing suspension of disbelief, and it's enjoyable.
  
• Fringe - X-Files. They even make X-files jokes if you watch for them. One of my favorite scifi shows because of the actors.
  
• Heroes - not always good. I enjoy the arc, but sometimes they seem a little loose, slow and not up to the level of other shows.
  
• Modern Family - new and I'm enjoying it, although it's sort of humor aimed at white, 40 year olds, which isn't exactly my sweet spot.
  
• Sanctuary - not very good acting, but the fact that it never goes away on Hulu and is scifi makes it the backup if I get through my bicycling backlog.
  
• The Simpsons - the show I'm most likely to drop, except Eryn likes it, so sometime we watch it together before school/work when Pooteewheet isn't yet up (I get Eryn up at 7:00 a.m. because she's much more cheerful with a consistent awake time).
  
• Stargate Universe - first episode was sort of boring. We'll have to see. I'm primarily watching it because I watch all of SG-1 and a lot of Stargate Atlantis.
  
• Warehouse 13 - see Sanctuary. However, if you watch carefully, there are some excellent moments of writing in Warehouse 13, despite it being a show reminiscent of Friday the 13th (the series). Seriously, just every episode or two, a couple of lines that make you realize someone with creative talent managed to make their presence known.
  
• Spaced - old show from the Beeb. I keep it in the backlog in case I chew through other content while bicycling.

And...via Netflix, Weeds and Dexter. I am a cultural whore.

Jesus

Seems like JESUS (and he must be the Jesus, because it's all in CAPS) would have something better to do than play MafiaWars on Facebook. What's he going to do with his $200,000? Give it to the victims of MafiaWars crimes?

"One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: 'Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!' "

"Nay!" replied Jesus. "For I don't have enough energy, nor have my friends given me an energy pack today. Or perhaps it has not been 24 hours since I last used an energy pack. Will you help me fight off an ultra-national gang?"

One Hair

I know I'm getting old, because weird physical things are starting to bug me that would have been hidden when I was younger. For instance, I have one hair on my head that's below my general, and receding, hairline, that always grows back. To put it another way, while all my hair has, and is, retreating toward the tonsure at the back, this one hair refuses to depart.

My response has been to take a tweezer to it and violently rip it, root and all, from my head. Tonight was perhaps the 100th time I've tweezered it in just a few years. All my other hair is disappearing. Yet this one loner can grow back no matter the depravities to which it is subjected. Why isn't all the hair on my head like that? Why can't scientists isolate those rouge hairs and trick the others into acting the same way?

Stop it. Stop staring at my head.

Cool Place to Cache!

Klund should definitely go here to geocache while he's in Hawaii. It's the Pineapple Express geocache near the Dole Plantation Maze in Hawaii: 64-1550 Kamehameha Hwy, Wahiawa, HI 96786-2915. Touted as the world's largest hedge maze. It's disappointing the cache isn't in the middle of the maze, but you could make finding it conditional on solving the maze first.

I am 6% of the Artistic Crowd

I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art tonight to learn how to be an "Art Friend" for grade schoolers. This involves learning about eight pieces of art and doing some teaching for kids at my daughter's school. At the end of the night, Beryl, the nice Canadian lady doing the 2.5 hour tour of our eight pieces of art looked and me and said, "I wish more men would participate in this program." I was the only guy with 16 women (including two girls there with their mother), so I was definitely in the minority. There were two other guys I saw in the two other groups walking around, so at least we were representin' across the board. I'm fairly certain if I need to pick up single mothers because Pooteewheet leaves me, this is an optimal venue.

Some highlights:

• I (re)learned my rule about impressionist art. If it's good, I hate it. If it's not so good, I despise it. If it's incredibly good, I tolerate it.
• I can navigate by type of art from point z to a despite having not paid much attention from how I got from point a to z.
• 6'+ artsy women in designer glasses, a black skirt, a white blouse and high boots get a thumbs up from me on my personal fashion assessment scale.
• I don't know much about art.
• I still hate Gaugin. See bullet #1.
• If you leave two tween/pre-tween girls to their own devices, they'll sneak off to check out the wang on the nearest statue.
  
• I used my Tudor/Stuart undergraduate history major for the first time in about 20 years. I pointed out that the Tudor room was probably Elizabethan because it has Tudor roses in the woodwork and plasterwork, and that if it had been designed later, it would likely have had a few thistles to represent the union with the Scottish crown. I added that the Tudor roses, if not rendered in brown wood, were white and red, which could be traced back to the War of the Roses between two British royal families that were united under Henry VII. I also had an urge earlier this week when someone asked me about naming six new Linux (SLES) boxes if I could call them eg-Catherine, eg-Katherine, eg-Cleeves, eg-Anne, eg-Howard, and eg-Jane. Probably wouldn't have been all that funny to my fellow techies.