Meat Store

I went to find some ground beef at the local butcher yesterday and was faced with the eternal conundrum, given two shops that are almost exactly equidistant from my house, which one do I go to?  I usually go to the one north of me as they have a discount on 5 pounds of lean ground beef and I know what the beef jerky and turkey jerky and other meat snacks footprint looks like for my family needs.  But...I am much more likely to BIKE past the other one, so I thought, even though it's winter, I should check it out and see if they were a more bicycling-conducive stop given I roll past twice a day most days of the non-snow months so there's no extra effort involved.

I walked in and couldn't find the discount lean ground beef.  Then I couldn't find the franks I thought would be a good back up.  Then I couldn't find the kind of beef sticks I usually grab.  I didn't see the kind of steak I generally get Aeryn.  And by then I gave up on beef jerky because I was tired of staring at meat.  Now, to be fair, they might have had ALL those things. Probably did. But they were not in places I could discern within a few minutes and I am man with many appointments and less patience, particularly as I age.

So I started heading to the door and I hear, "Scott!"  I looked around and there was Mac.  He's a former coworker, a self-published author, and boss to about six of my former reports [fellow employees] and contractors, not to mention the brother of my kid's pre-school teacher, and co-worker to half a dozen others I worked with at TR.  I hadn't seen him in roughly four years. Not since we talked about potentially coming to work at his company after the great TR manager flattening. Which, to tell the full story, I passed on because I wasn't keen on not knowing where I'd be driving to as a big data contractor and I was in the mood to work downtown with Aeryn graduating.  Ironic, given less than a year later we were all home for pandemic purposes anyway.  We talked work and exchanged pleasantries, and then I walked out to my car.  I kind of wonder what he thought about how lucky he got not hiring a guy who just likes to do laps around a meat store for the smells and eventually leaves without buying anything.  I didn't explain it to him.  So in case he ever asks or I hear it through former co-workers, I now have a place to point him.

Things I Haven't Written About

• Scalzi's Kaiju and how woke that bastard is....
• More Undaunted
• Under Falling Skies
• Python and what I'm doing to keep myself current including
• Geofenced Pinot with Streamlit
• Streamlit in general
• My general how to keep myself competitive targets
• More about Covid
• April's reading
• The Year in Tech 2022
• Rachel's Widowhood
• What I'm Not Getting Done Around the House
• My desire for a new bicycle and treadmill after my endless effort screwing around with carbon brushes on the old one
• Banjo 
• Where's my book at?
• Dan's stone
• Getting off social media because billionaires suck
• All those other things....including Alex leaving.

Things I Learned Today

I learned that your Instagram network is your Instafam.  That's really annoying.  It makes me feel like one of those old dudes who doesn't want to learn new terminology because it feels so dumb.  I blame Alia Bhatt because I learned it reading about her social media from isolation.  I like Alia's movies.  The fact that this picture of her on a bicycle exists from Dear Zindagi with Shah Rukh Khan has nothing to do with my interest in her [I first saw her in Gully Boy, a recommendation from a co-worker at my last work place].

This is less learned and more learned someone.  I got half an M and M out of the house dispenser.  My wife said she only got a half the previous day.  I said that was my half.   She asked what color my half was.  I asked what color her half was.  Mine was blue.  Her half was yellow.  I said, "See."  She noted they were different colors and "see" made no sense.  I explained to her that it was what happens when you split a green M and M.

Mouse

I put the table cloth back on the table finally after it was washed to get my spills off it (better there than the computer).  I reached for my mouse and it wasn't there, so I used the pad.  Reached again, it wasn't there.  Back to the pad.  Finally I looked behind the machine and to the left because I knew I had observed it on the table.  

It's there.

Catching Up

I think I finally have a pile of photos all sorted, so I can catch up a bit.  And some books sitting nearby, and things.  But tonight...tonight I just went for a run.  Which was really more of a walk.  I picked up ZombiesRun again.  Eryn and I originally ran it back in 2013, so I qualify as a legacy member and get the first three seasons free rather than on a sub.  That's nice - because I think it's like 100 episodes.  That'll get me through months before I need to worry about what else I should run to, or if I want a yearly sub or if it's simply going to destroy my feet.

I bought some wireless ear phones and a phone arm band.  I don't intend to go full on runner, but I don't want an excuse like I can't hear in the winter without gloves.

But tomorrow I'm going to catch up on our Chicago picks from last weekend.  We took a short trip out there.  Primarily to eat.  But we also caught the field museum.  It was a fun trip.  Not as involved as our trips to Chicago in the past, but it's nice to know we're still capable of driving out there and back without falling apart.

Vision Event

I had a weird experience at the coffee shop this morning.  I looked up and exactly one item in my vision was fuzzy.  Not the closest item.  Not the furthest item.  A coffee cup about thirty feet away next to several other items.  It had that jittery look that you get in science fiction movies when something is coming or going from this plane of existence (I think they did it in The Butterfly Effect, although in Back to the Future it was just a fade out), Bioshock Infinite when Elizabeth is phasing things in and out, or on The Flash when he's vibrating himself  to mask who he is (spoiler: he's Barry Allen).  I looked at my keyboard, looked back up, and it was still like that, not just a momentary glitch.  So I stared at it and it came into focus.

Intuition tells me it's my brain having a momentary lapse processing something it's used to seeing but that was in an unusual configuration (just turned in a way it didn't expect so it was trying to fill in the gaps with what it's used to seeing).  Or, second thought, it's those little bits and pieces in your eye that start to degenerate as you get older and one just happened to be in an unusual spot.  I popped out to Google to see if there was anything related to one object in my vision is blurry/fuzzy.  Lots about one eye being blurry, about near or far objects being blurry, but not one object.  Literally nothing.  I get a no results on "one object in my vision is blurry"; ditto for fuzzy.  It's wild to find something I can't Google in 2018.

Finding eye floaters was much easier and that looks like what it probably was.  Is it wrong that I think getting old enough for a weird eye floater event (non critical) is neat if it provides me the illusion I'm in a scifi movie?

Postpourri

Some links I don't want to lose, but don't want to track in my inbox...

• 11 Highest paying tech jobs in America in 2016 - proof that your title sort of matters.  I should always go by Application Development Manager.  It pays more and is just as valid - perhaps more so - for my job as IT Manager.
• Kyle's link he sent for the best burgers in Philly, link only so I don't have to look at the overalls.  No burgers in overalls.  Nasty.
• How to do a Magic draft round - watch these while on vacation so I'm prepped for draft rounds at work.
• The animation tooling behind Ghibli and Futurama is going open source.
• Career Advice No One Tells You - I thought this was actually pretty solid and matched up with Dan Pink's career advice.
• Make a Living as a Writer - upbeat, but it seems to be implying you should keep your day job.
• 7 standalone novels for fantasy lovers - they mean people who like fantasy.  It's not a vaginal book club.  Some things I haven't checked out.

Catch up (and not the blogging kind)

I think I'm almost caught up with most of the big things.  My team was at work 8-2  yesterday (Saturday) getting our product ready to go out the door and, as a non-programming manager, I took care of tracking down representatives for systems that weren't functioning properly and working on the employee awards program work I've been putting off forever because I had/have taxes to complete and rental property fences to help with and so much other work and family time.  The awards program work included fixing an Infopath form, which was the tricky bit, because I didn't have the right licensing originally and the intern who had created it wasn't around to work on it.  The very last button I pushed overrode all the historic forms and wiped the team view for five years, but the data is still there, just hidden and, like a smart person, I backed up the xsn so I can get back to a few versions.  At least I hope that's the case.

I have a bit left to do on my personal taxes, but my wife was still getting her data entered and I have them 99% of the way there.  And I have application security work to do this week (security artifacts in the backlog as part of the delivery process - I'm not even vaguely sure what documenting that looks like yet) and a product to get out the door and a dryer to replace at a rental property, but all that stuff was also there when I had other work, so it feels more under control.  I think post-Saturday work, it'll turn out to be a quiet weekend of bicycling, coffee, and treadmilling while watching the new Daredevil series on Netflix.

Ah, and I ordered the Castle Panic expansions (the Wizard one and the Dark Titan - better description from Fireside games here), although they won't get here for a few days.  I really like Castle Panic, so hopefully this will get my family reinvolved.  I don't think The Dark Titan released before yesterday (table top game day).  Klund says I should play Star Realms, but I'm a little wary of starting a semi-collectible deck-building game. Eryn has an urge to play miniatures and I can't support two hobbies at once.

Old dog, new trick

That's sort of how I feel when I learned that frozen olive oil looks like a bottle full of lard.  Makes sense when you think about it.  It's not much different than margarine.  I forgot it out by the grill overnight after making pork chops, and it's not so warm in Minnesota yet that you can get away leaving things out.

Randomness

I enjoyed these two items from The Chive.  My save to images option is gone on my iPad, but it's easy enough to do a screen scrape by touching the screen to eliminate the ad bar and simultaneously pushing the two buttons to take a scrape.  So maybe not so easy as 1 in 4 I get the ad bar in the picture and have to try again, and it tends to include the letterbox bar.  But sufficient.

Usually I'm not much into quotes that might describe my life, but I liked, "Never be ashamed of a scar. It simply means you were strong than whatever tried to hurt you."  I have a lot of scars.  Birthmark.  Roster + chicken pen.  Roof flashing.  Three thumb scars from knives: Katie's pear and two related to carving in Boy Scouts.  A scarred toe from the broken jar my brother left in the running path in St. Michael.  Stomach, where I almost died as a baby.  Knee where I removed a pinky nail cube of flesh falling between the boards at my grandparents' swimming pool/oil pit.  I probably have one in a place I wouldn't want anyone to have to look at.  Hip!  I have the car-related scar that's longer than my abdomen scar is wide.  And the knee dent from where they put the post.  That's on both sides of the knee.  For a long time I had a scar related to pouring a whole pan of bacon grease down the front of my leg at National Scout Jamboree in Virginia.  That seems to be gone unless you really look for it.  I've got another knee scar (so both knees) that I don't even remember where it came from. A scar on my wrist from a deep burn from solder at the duplex trying to fix a water pipe. That should be all of them.  A healthy collection of a life that was more exciting than I intended, although not so exciting that I can point to scars from mountains or sharks.

And not uplifting like a quote, but Pretty Spock setting his phaser to stunning is just funny.

jne

It has a been a long time since I did a postpourri, but I wanted to capture a few links:

• Required Javascript Reading - a very good list.
• 30 Nerdy Coffee Mugs
• MAKE weekend projects Google+ entry: the actual link to the projects is here
• YoYo Games Framework - don't know if I'll try this out.  Was looking for something Eryn might like to use.
• Eryn tried out a Johnson Telecaster and liked it while she was buying her oboe for band next year.  I see they just came out with a Wilko Johnson Telecaster, but I don't think that's it.  My wife said it was fairly inexpensive and Eryn liked the sound.  Might have to ask the oboe salesman what he showed her.

Miscellaneous Photo Montage

I have a lot of pictures left over on my camera.  This is Eryn and I at Ring Mountain enjoying ice cream and sending Wali a picture to prove we were there within moments of his visit.



Better if you go to Flickr to see it in full size.  A panoramic of Eryn at the Day By Day Cafe for breakfast.


In addition to Sign Makers, Kyle and I went to see Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan, involving a militia, a lot of guys with beards and mustaches, a very old Grizzly Adams, a violent Paul Bunyan with three times the average life span of a human, the grave of Babe the Blue Ox, and a Minnesota camp for juvenile offenders.  Worthy of Trash Film Debauchery, but put on as a private showing with the help of Twin Cities Beard and Mustache Club.


Our first round of The Farm Game, a gift from Kyle.  Our cows seemed to be committing hari kari.  Death by dog.  Death by car.  Death by lightning.  It was endless.


Allison on the Amtrak train on the way back from Grandma Madeline's funeral preparation.  We shared a sleeper car.  I bunked it.


A photo I sent my wife from Sidney, Montana, that Allison photobombed.



This was in the hotel in Sidney, Montana.  This is amazing and should be sold for $50 so everyone could make pancakes with the push of a button whenever they want.  My happiness at food in Montana was only superseded by a piece of rhubarb pie ala mode.  If there was a machine that could make instant rhubarb pie and pancakes, I'd be 80 pounds heavier again.


From Eryn's tenth birthday party!  We had a late party, post ballet season, so we could invite her friends and family to hang at grandpa's studio, drink root beer, eat fruit snacks and cake, and listen to The Sudden Lovelys, Paige and Danny.  Eryn played their song Waxwing Birds with them which made her very happy.  She dropped her pick at one point but recovered nicely.


I hope she felt hip having her party in an art studio warehouse with live music.  It was a lot of fun.  Hopefully made up for a bit of the annoyance from last year when I was laid up.

Thanksgiving

A pleasant day.  We had two turkeys for only one turkey's worth of visitors.  One uncle, one father in law, one mother in law, a sister in law and family, one grandma-in-law, my sister and her family, and Cookie Queen and family much later.  So fifteen eaters, nineteen people total.  Twenty if you include the dog.

I'm currently eating leftovers in the form of little whole grain bread open-faced sandwiches with turkey and cheddar.

We had the usual Texas Hold 'Em games, $3 a game.  I won the first two, largely in part to three of my first four hands being A-A, A-A, K-K.  But I ended the day only $3 up.  I always donate my winnings to the Eagan food shelf, so at least they made something off my early luck.

Otherwise, I'm thankful for the Black Ops Call of Duty game Ming gave me for my birthday.  I played quite a bit of it today, and I like the greatly expanded challenges, the medals, and the larger maps.  At first, I thought I was a horrible player, because I kept dying so much, but when I was able to by myself an assault weapon upgrade, I became much more skilled.  I don't understand the whole exploding RC car thing at all. I try to drive it toward someone, and all I manage to do is drive in a straight line while someone sneaks up behind me and caps me.

And I'm thankful Mark taught me about some new apps for the iPad.  However, every time I look at Felicia Day in the RSS reader, the app crashes.  That's no good.  I only get as far as picture 10 out of 27.  I'm not thankful for that at all.