Archive for July, 2013
Obit watch: July 23, 2013.
Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013Cause.
Monday, July 22nd, 2013I haven’t gone crazy since I got the new job. I did purchase a few things: I bought a couple of DVDs during the Criterion 50% off sale. And I bought myself a snazzy new lunchbox, because I really needed one to take my lunch to work in. (I can’t use one of those plastic grocery bags, after all.)
I haven’t bought any guns, yet. (One of our local gunshops had a really nice US property marked Mossberg 44, at a reasonable price. But first I had to leave town, and then I dithered some when I got back, and when I went back Saturday they’d already sold it.)
There are a few other things I have on my agenda, but those may wait either until I get paid or until I empty the change bank. (I don’t really need the money in the change bank that badly, but it has actually gotten so full that the coins in it are interfering with the mechanism and keeping me from adding more coins.)
There’s one thing that I was glad to be able to do before time ran out: donate to the Evict Lyme FUNdraiser.
I don’t know Bonnie of Squeaky Wheel Seeks Grease. I’ve never met her in person, and if I did, I suspect she’d want to punch me in the nose. But she has a problem of the kind that requires expensive and extensive surgery, and she needs help paying for it.
I don’t know Jennifer, of In Jennifer’s Head, either. I’ve never met her in person, and if I did, I suspect she’d want to punch me in the nose. (If you think you’ve detected a theme here, you’re right. I pretty much assume everyone wants to punch me in the nose until proven otherwise.) But I feel pretty confident in saying that Jennifer is a good and decent person. Why? Because she’s running a raffle to help Bonnie out.
Not a charity, a raffle. With some pretty nice prizes. I like that leather range bag from Brownell’s (and I like the fact that Brownell’s donated it; it makes me feel all squishy inside when I think about them. Or that may be the enchilada burger making me feel that way. I can’t tell.) And that’s a swell looking holster from Dragon Leatherworks. (If I don’t win that one in the raffle, I’m planning to order a holster from Dragon soon-ish.)
There’s other nifty prizes as well. Would you like a shot at a pen and a bottle opener made from spent 50 BMG brass? A nice rifle sling? Wind chimes?
Go over and check out Jennifer’s post for rules, instructions, and a full list of prizes.
As I’ve said before, I don’t like using this blog to beg folks for money, so I try to keep the number of charitable solicitations down. I also don’t like asking you to give to a cause I haven’t given to myself, which is why I waited until I had a job and could chip in before posting here. In a way, I kind of feel that being employed now is sort of like being touched by grace, and giving money for Bonnie is kind of a thank-you prayer, or a way of paying that grace forward.
(Yeah, my theology is probably a little messed up. But this is the theology I have, and which is mine.)
Personal and administrative notes.
Monday, July 22nd, 2013Those of you who have been following this blog know that I have been unemployed since late last November.
I am pleased to announce that things have changed. I started working today (on a contract to hire basis) for the IronPort division of Cisco here in Austin. I will be doing support for their email security products.
I’m pretty happy about this. So far, the environment seems better, and this puts me closer to where I would like to be in terms of personal and professional goals.
What this means to the blog:
- There’s going to be a period of adjustment while I figure out my blogging schedule. I think I can blog in the morning before work, but we will have to see how things go.
- I won’t be discussing Cisco on this blog, per my policy of not discussing non-public matters involving my employers.
- This does mean that I will not be attending DEFCON 21. Sorry, Borepatch. (For some reason, I can’t post on his blog: neither Google nor OpenID work for me.) I am hoping to attend both next year’s DEFCON and the S&WCA convention, though.
My thanks to everyone for their support during this difficult time.
Ad astra per aspera.
Sunday, July 21st, 2013I was busy yesterday (the fun kind of busy, shopping for guns and drinking saké) so Lawrence beat me to posting about Apollo 11. Let me see if I can trump him.
From PetaPixel, here’s NASA video of the first few seconds of the Apollo 11 launch, originally shot on a 16mm camera at 500 frames per second.
From Wired, a tribute to the Hasselblad camera used by NASA.
(If I ever get a little ahead, I’d like to pick up a used Hasselblad. And a used Leica, too.)
I heartily endorse this event or product. (#9 in a series)
Sunday, July 21st, 2013These folks are interesting for a couple of reasons:
- They are making saké in Texas.
- They use Texas rice to make their saké.
- If it matters to you, the rice they use and the saké they produce are both organic.
Mike the Musicologist and I went down to their tasting room yesterday and had a flight of the four varieties of saké they currently produce. Their Tumbleweed Saké is a very dry, kind of light tasting saké; it really doesn’t have any kind of assertive flavor, just a kind of dry mouth feel. I believe Mike liked this one the best out of the four. As for me, I think this is an excellent drinking saké, but not a sipping one.
I slightly prefer the Whooping Crane for a clear saké. This has some nice floral notes, and is closer to what I’d consider a sipping saké.
The Rising Star is an unfiltered saké with a very assertive taste. I think this would match very well with food; I’d like to try it with some barbecue, perhaps.
The fourth saké we had was a “double nigori” unfiltered saké. If I remember correctly, not only is that one unfiltered, but they add additional rice sediment in the brewing process. Again, this is another one that I think would pair well with food; the taste is even more assertive than that of the single nigori.
Don’t get me wrong: all four of the sakés we had were very good, and I commend them to your attention. Mike, who is more of a saké connoisseur than I am, commented that they tasted different than what he was used to. Not “bad”, just “different”. I suspect that there are several factors involved; brewing style, perhaps, or a taste difference between Texas and Japanese rice. If you’re not a fan of Japanese saké, the Texas saké may still be worth a try for that reason. In Austin, you can find at least some of them at Whole Foods and Central Market.
And I’d also like to note that the folks at the tasting room – Toji, the head brewer, and the young lady who was helping him – were very nice to us. The tasting room isn’t a big place, and there were quite a few people there, and we didn’t have reservations, but they still went out of their way to make us feel welcome.
Unfortunately, the tasting room is closing down for the summer: it also doubles as the brewery, and apparently it is just too hot to make saké during the summer in Texas. But Texas Saké is having their second anniversary party on September 28th, so you might clear your calendar if you live in the Austin area.
These are swell folks, and they make an excellent product. I’d very much like to see them succeed to the point where they can’t sleep at night because there are too many $100 bills stuffed in the mattress.
Life and death.
Saturday, July 20th, 2013Today is Cormac McCarthy’s 80th birthday. Reliable sources tell us that his presents include a giant box of punctuation.
(Hey, I loved No Country For Old Men. I can make that joke.)
A different reliable source just informed us of the death of Helen Thomas, which is confirmed by CNN.
Random notes: July 19, 2013.
Friday, July 19th, 2013I was tied up yesterday and couldn’t jump on the Detroit bankruptcy story. Here’s coverage from the NYT, the Detroit Free Press, and Lawrence.
The people who run the hospital want to close it, and are trying to wind down operations. But the unions that represent hospital workers are opposed to closing the hospital.
San Jose State made a deal with the online course provider Udacity to offer “low-cost, for-credit online courses” in “remedial math, college-level algebra and elementary statistics courses”. How’s that working for them? Not well. “Preliminary results from a spring pilot project found student pass rates of 20% to 44%”. SJSU and Udacity have suspended the courses while they re-evaluate. One thing that might have been a factor:
Guess who’s getting a raise?
Thursday, July 18th, 2013No, not your obedient servant.
The State of Texas has approved a $15,000 a year raise for all local DAs and district judges.
Quote of the day.
Wednesday, July 17th, 2013Tannhauser asks for her intercession with God, and dies of opera.
–Ken @ Popehat
Runner-up, also from Ken:
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! watch. (#2 in a series)
Wednesday, July 17th, 2013This story has been buried; I had to dig pretty far down in the HouChron sports section to find it.
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Random notes: July 17, 2013.
Wednesday, July 17th, 2013The sport in question is rhythmic gymnastics.
Obit watch: Eugene P. Wilkinson.
(94. Damn, that was a good run. Also: “He received the Silver Star for valor in the Pacific.”)
Congrats to Lawrence on his winning the Grand Panjandrum’s Special Award in the Bulwer-Lytton Contest. Sadly, according to Lawrence, he will not be getting the complete set of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s novels, which is a shame, as I was looking forward to borrowing his copy of Paul Clifford.
You have to go out. You don’t have to come back.
Tuesday, July 16th, 2013Like Robert Ruark, I have a certain sentimental attachment to the Coast Guard. (Unlike Ruark, I didn’t grow up around the water, and nobody ever let me chase a rum-runner on a Coast Guard cutter.)
I have some more pictures of the Cleveland Fallen Firefighters Memorial in the tubes, but not all of them came out as well as I would have liked. I was trying to get some closeups of the memorial that would allow folks to actually read the names on it.
