Comedy of Errors: Bikes and Laptops

by on January 6, 2014 at 2:29 pm
Posted In: Test

MalwareWell, it was an interesting week for all things involving technical maintenance.

The first thing came as a surprise on Saturday morning when on the way to the U-district I discovered my front wheel was literally bent out of shape. My best guess of how it happened was when I tripped picking it up the night before. It was one of those stumbles where you know you are going to fall no matter what going to fall down so the best thing to do is (again literally) roll with it. It seems weird that after being a bit of a klutz this December with a handful of tumbles I was genuinely surprised I was able to walk away from, the only one that actually damages my bike was a comic pratfall in my front yard.

The biggest pain about it was rescheduling my afternoon around going to the bike shop which involved going to the bank for petty cash, breaking the twenty at a Dick’s Drive-in, and of course waiting for the damn bus. When I got to the shop it turned out I had to get the wheel replaced, which only took another fifteen minutes.

Compared to that, the problems I’ve had with my laptop this week was merely tedious. Over the past year it had been having problems with the back light going out to the point I’d stopped using it for a couple of months. One of my Christmas presents to myself was taking it to the Apple Store Genius bar. It turned out to be an easy fix and I was very glad to have my portable office back. I quickly decided to take the next step and finally get a travel tablet so I could do more than just letter strips It turned out that none of the drivers that Wacom provides run on anything older than OS X 10.6 and my laptop still runs on the OS X 10.5 it came with. To a certain extent this is just as well. I’d been putting off upgrading the operating software on both my computers. The only real stumbling block was in order to upgrade to the current operating system on my laptop I first had to upgrade to 10.6 and guess what software Apple still keeps in disk form and still sends to you by snail mail? (In hindsight I should have checked to see if the Apple Store had a copy but so it goes)

I finally got my copy on Saturday but just to be on the safe side I’m backing up everything before I do anything and since I’m using an old portable hard drive I’ve had way too long and it’s taking forever. (By forever I mean about 1 gig every 15 minutes and that’s not counting the number of times the computer went to sleep and the time I accidentally unplugged the laptop when I moved it to the office!)

All fun but still the sooner I get this over with the better.

 

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Friday Museum Sketch

by on January 3, 2014 at 10:28 am
Posted In: Art

ChineseSculpture20140103Today’s Sketch is more from the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s China collection. Both are from the Tang Dynasty (between 618 and 907) the first is a Lokapala Guardian King the second is a tomb attendant. I’ve always liked the tomb attendants as a reference for faces and period costumes (of course since most of them are broad caricatures of ethnic minorities it is easy to imagine them as the era’s equivalent of a lawn jockey.)

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A Fun New Year’s Eve

by on January 1, 2014 at 9:48 am
Posted In: Rhapsodies

Well I had a very nice evening with my friends Steve and Barbara Schwartz. It was a nice small affair with a number of acquaintances talking while waiting for midnight.

It was very nice with the only stumbling point being the lobster they had gotten not thawing in time (important tip if you’re thinking of thawing something outdoors… it it’s 45 degrees outside… DON’T. It finally got cooked in the microwave.

The rest of the spread was excellent with a selection of cheeses, wantons, and finally chocolate cake. (As Barbara pointed out it was the chocoholic doing the shopping.) As for drinks lots of beer, a 2001 zinfandel that Barbara took out because she was worried it might have turned into vinegar but turned out to be excellent, a frozen vodka and of course champagne for the fireworks.

By the time it was time to go home I felt like I was going to explode and was more than a little worried about having to fight a hangover in the morning, (and getting home was a bit of a challenge since heavy fog meant the risk of drunken partiers was the least of our problems)

Still, fun was had by all and here’s hoping everybody else has a happy new year!

 

 

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My Wassail

by on December 27, 2013 at 9:56 am
Posted In: Test

I should have shared this earlier but as I mentioned it earlier but one of my personal Christmas tradition (though it’s a good general winter tradition too) are good steaming batches of mulled cider or wassail, as my mother’s old Crockpot cookbook which I originally got the recipe from calls it.

It’s really very simple what you want is

  • two parts cider or apple juice.
  • One part cranberry juice (I forget what the actual measurements are here I just buy 3 of the medium sized containers)
  • one orange studded with cloves.
  • A couple balls of allspice
  • two sticks of Cinnamon (three to four if all you can find are the small ones)
  • A cup of brown sugar
  • a dash of bitters

Mix this all together, bring to a boil, and simmer for at least three hours. You want to squeeze all of that flavor out of the fruit and spices. Trust me on this anything less and all you’ll get is warm juice.

There’s room for variation here. You could add booze… or a guy who sells cider at my local farmer’s market tells me if you use the good stuff you don’t have to add sugar. I’m sure he’s right but to know for sure i’d have to experiment and the good stuff is pricey.

Either way this basic version will do you right.

Enjoy.

 

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This Year’s Christmas Report

by on December 26, 2013 at 1:53 pm
Posted In: Test

Well Christmas is gone for another year.

Mine went as well as could be expected. Generally Christmas is very low-key for me being the only member of my family in the northwest and most of my friends bugging out to their own family gatherings I generally found myself alone for the holidays. My first couple of years out here it generally hit me with some pretty severe seasonal depression to the point I would darkly joke that my traditional way of celebrating Christmas was locking myself in my room with a bottle of cheap hooch. It got better over the years. For a while I threw a potluck dinner party for my fellow transplants and things got really better after I got the worst out of my system by getting a proper New England Christmas with a few visits home at the appropriate time.

Since then I’ve found my best way of observing Christmas has been doing the Rhapsodies Christmas story. The one downside of that is that I’ve streamlined the process over the years so technically for me Christmas is over around the fifteenth, which feels a little weird since it’s going strong for another ten days.

And while it’s tempting to blow it all off I’m old fashioned enough that I feel a need to observe the rituals. There’s a small bundle of them reading “Night Before Christmas.” A proper dinner, a walk in the woods, going to Christmas Mass etc… the only one on my check list I haven’t been able to do is watch the Great Performances version of the Nutcracker starring Mikhail Baryshnikov I haven’t found that on television for years. (Sooner or later I am going to have to find a copy)

Anyway this year went well. I had made a batch of my mulled cider recipe (I’d learned the hard way it’s better to make it the day before and reheat it at whatever party you’re making it for.)  I started my day with going to University Friends Meeting’s Christmas meeting, or more accurately I went to University Friends Meeting to help with the finger food potluck that happens after that meeting. It wasn’t the biggest turnout we’d ever had but it was nice. The cider went over very well.

Afterwards I did the next thing on my Christmas checklist, the walk in the woods, this involved going to Discovery Park. It was very nice and the view of the Olympics looked like a study in blue pastels. The one downside was it seemed like everyone else had had the same idea so it was a little hard to do the commune with nature thing but that’s not something you hold against people.

The final thing on my list was the nice dinner. I did a chicken with giblet gravy that came out very well (though making the gravy was more time consuming and tedious than expected.)

Anyway a very pleasant Christmas and I hope you all had a nice one as well.

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