Pirates III and Bacon Chocolate

I saw Pirates of the Caribbean III last night. It still wasn't as good as the first one, but it was much better than the second one. It still needs major editing. After two hours, I was wishing it would end. One interesting aspect is that I think Keith Richards looks less creepy as a pirate than he does normally.

Some of you will remember when I blogged about the bacon ice cream at Tayst, in Nashville. It was one of those "I am not making this up" blog posts. Thanks to the Amazon Daily blog, I discovered that Vosges is now making a bacon chocolate bar. Intriguing!

3 Column Layout

I finally added a third column to the blog's layout template. It seems to look okay in both Firefox and IE, but it must not be quite right, because the Blogger tool for adding Page Elements doesn't seem to like it at all. You can still add elements and, but elements in the new right column produce these weird gray bars across the window, making it hard to see the elements in the left column. As long as it continues to work ok, I won't worry about it too much. It's fun working on this stuff, because I still haven't taken the time to figure out what I'm doing. I used a little bit of code from a Blogcrowds template, but quickly realized that it had all kinds of things that I didn't want. Fortunately, what little I selected and tinkered with seemed to mostly do the trick.

Easy Rider

I saw the movie, Easy Rider, last night. It's one that I've been meaning to see for a really long time. I'd always heard of it described as a movie about motorcycle riding with an awesome soundtrack and a sad ending. Surprisingly, I hadn't ever heard of it as a movie that reflects poorly on the South. It certainly does. My question is, have things really changed that much since 1969? Has intolerance for long-haired hippies just been replaced by fears of Middle Eastern looking men and illegal immigrants? Or has this xenophobia just spread to the rest of the country as well?


I also saw this beautiful bike in downtown Hillsborough last night. My Treo didn't really do it justice, but I accidently left my Canon at home.

DurHamFest 2007

I would say that that the Durham FM Association hamfest was a success! We had two to three hundred attendees and I had a great time visiting with friends, one of whom I hadn't seen in a long time. I sold thirty brownies and coconut macaroons, at $1 each, all donated to the club. Best of all, I have 16 left. It was held at the Little River Community Complex, in Bahama. It seemed like a great site and the surrounding area was quite pretty. This is the club's infamous Mobile Communications Unit (also known as a bread truck with ham radios inside). Notice the nice trees and green stuff behind it. After working hard to get ready last night and all the festivities today, most of us are pretty tired now that it's over.

Hamfest and Free Cake

Well, if only one fifth of a person attends due to reading this in my blog, it will be worth it:
This Saturday is the Nth Annual Durham FM Association Hamfest, which will be held in the vicinity of Bahama this year. It's a great opportunity to wander around, talk to friends , look at all the random electronic parts, feel nostalgic while looking at old computers and stock up on reasonably priced LED flashlights. You will also be able to buy coconut macaroons and brownies. Yes, I'll be spending my Friday evening baking again this year. If you are interested in going and you can't figure out how to get there based on the information in the link, let me know and I will be happy to confuse you further.

I have been incredibly busy the last couple of days. GM went to a Math-Biology conference at Duke and stayed in the Purple Guest Room. We went out to dinner with friends numerous times, which required lots of spamming as the plans evolved. Tuesday night we played a crazy game that GM invented. Just to give you an idea, RN said that people who overheard us in the Barnes'N'Noble where we were playing probably thought we were from an insane asylum.

In other earthshaking news, Nantucket Cafe & Grill no longer has chicken pot pie on the menu. This is a horrific tragedy and I need to write to them. I wasn't angered as greatly as I could have been because they had a soft shell crab special and they have decided to offer free giant pieces of cake (any non-cheesecake cake on their cake menu) with each entree, Monday through Thursday. Their sauteed soft shell crabs are excellent, too.

Tonight I went to a small party at SY's new house and it was unbelievably pleasant having dinner on her porch while listening to all the birds sing and talking with my friends. The weather and the conversation couldn't have been better.

The other night Venus and the moon were positioned such that they were right night to each other. It was worth going all the way to the end my driveway to get a clear view. I thought that all my photos were blurry, but they are actually quite nice, so I'm very pleased. It still doesn't compare to actually seeing it, though.

Rant and Skeedaddle

A couple of days ago, I saw the movie Pan's Lambrynth. It's basically a Spanish film about how a girl who loves fairy tales experiences one for herself. I thought it was fascinating that this tale, which on the surface would be appropriate for children, was depicted with a great deal of fairly gruesome violence. It's done in such a way that makes one feel strongly against one of the characters, but I'm guessing that it wouldn't have taken much to make it suitable for a wider audience and retain much of that character development. On the other hand, I'm strongly against sanitizing everything for children. I think it's important for kids to be aware that, yes, there are people who torture others. They need to know that this is something that's condoned by many, including our government. Despicable people are unfortunately not rare. Parents who are expecting their children to learn such things on their own, when they are adults, are endangering the lives of their children.

Last night we went to Caffe Driade, in Chapel Hill, to see Hugh and Anastasia (also known as HC and AM) play in their band, Skeedaddle. I'm using their actual names because they are now famous, having appeared on a small stage. They were probably famous in Charlottesville, too, but I didn't know them then. It was a lot of fun. They and their band members are so very talented and can play an impressive array of instruments. Caffe Driade has great coffee, too. We were worried that the concert would get rained out, but we managed to only hit rain on the way home.

Oops. Never Again.

I am currently annoyed with myself for making a stupid mistake. Last Wednesday, I decided to try taking a picture of my soft shell crabs at ACME Food & Beverage Co. using the lowest resolution, to see if by any chance it took better pictures in low light. It didn't. I knew there wasn't much of a chance that it would make a difference, but I thought I would give it a try anyway. Unfortunately, I forgot to switch it back and I've taken many pictures since then. My only consolation is that these don't take long to upload, but it's still sad.


This frog was peeking next to my front door the night I changed the setting.



This cute little bird kept me company while I was eating lunch (the leftover soft shell crabs) last Thursday.


I took some nice spring campus shots on the way back to the office after lunch that day.


On Saturday, this squirrel was acting bizarrely by hanging off the side of the deck for minutes at a time while kind of vibrating.


Sunday was graduation. I only attended the Computer Science Department's ceremony, as usual. This is actually a shot from my Treo, because it was more interesting than what I took with my camera.


Finally, is a photo of verbena bonariensis, which I took when I got home from work today. This is when I noticed that I could take over 1500 more pictures before running out of memory. Oops.

Some of My Favorite Music

I was practicing the guitar this evening and I often like to look for YouTube videos of songs that I'm learning. I started out looking for more Creedence Clearwater Revival and ended up finding a 1963 recording of Joan Baez playing Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind, which I am also learning.



Here are links to several other links to videos of Joan Baez performing favorite songs of mine that I hope to learn in the future:

• Sweet Sir Galahad
  
• God On Our Side
  
• Farewell Angelina (partial)
  

No Ice, Thanks

Yesterday I asked for another blogger to make his blog's banner image be a link back to his blog, to make it easy to get back if viewing a single post. I just noticed that my blog doesn't work like that. Well, it does now, but it didn't a few minutes ago. It's very simple. I don't read my blog, so it doesn't have to meet my usability expectations. Ok, so that's not a very good excuse.

Would I read my blog if I weren't the author? I'm sure I would if I knew me, but probably not if I didn't. I rarely read the blogs of complete strangers on a regular basis, unless they have some connection to someone I know (particularly a family member) or have a local theme. If none of the above are true, they have to have lots of pictures of cats, dogs, have a large progressive following or write about gadgets. If I've heard them speak in person, then I don't consider them to be complete strangers, I usually sit on the front row, after all. So, if I spoke, heard myself, and were a good speaker, then I'm sure I would read my blog.

Last night I saw Alice's Restaurant, by Arlo Guthrie. It had been highly recommended by LA and the song had been referenced many times by JJ, so I thought it was time to see it. I guess I would describe it as tangential, which coming from me, of course, is a compliment. It's definitely worth seeing.

Normally on this day and at this time, I would be on Duke's East Campus for the graduation reception on the East Duke Lawn. We, however, are having a hail storm right now and I like only so much ice in my punch.

Fun with Yeast

I spent most of the weekend cleaning and preparing to have a bunch of friends over on Sunday night. I made two pizzas: one bacon, onion and tomato sauce and one shrimp, bacon and pesto. The dough rose beautifully, unlike my recent batches of roll dough. We also had a salad with spinach, lettuce, strawberries, walnuts, grapes and the Honey Asian Citrus dressing. I made brownies, too.

It was great to do some cooking again, because it's something I really enjoy. As usual, my enjoyment of a particular activity is inversely proportional to the time I spend on it, perhaps with the exception of blogging.

The important thing is that I had a really good time with my friends. We played Pictionary, which I probably hadn't played in 15 years or so. I think it was even more fun than I'd remembered. It was also great to have HS over, who turned out to be an excellent cooking companion.

Monday night, my parents and I watched Paradise Now. That was a very interesting, but sad, film about two Palestinian suicide bombers. It seemed to fit well with what I could remember having learned in Dr. Miller's historical terrorism course at Duke. I had trouble with the subtitles, because the bottom half of the last line always got chopped off. There is probably some way to move them around or move the image on the screen, but I wasn't able to figure it out in the length of time that one can fool with such things before the rest of the audience starts to become restless.

Tonight we celebrated Mother's Day. In the Triangle, Mother's Day always coincides with graduation at at least two of the local universities. At ACME Food & Beverage Co., they decided to make up for this by offering free dessert for mothers tonight instead. So, I took my parents out to eat, which was a nice mid-week treat. I don't have any pictures of the food, since it's too dark for my new phone, but take a look at this enormous portion of food that I got for lunch today at the Refectory.

It Pays to Give Something Another Chance Or Maybe Five

Friday night, after guitar practice, we went to Vin Rouge again, because 2/3 of us were craving steaks. In the past, that's been a bit of a pain, because most of their handicapped parking sign had disappeared and you had to use your imagination when looking for paint indicating where parking was prohibited next to the actual space. They've always had to look for someone in the restaurant or the one next door to ask the people parked there to move.

Well, look at the glorious work that they've done! That blindingly white area is the new sign, which appears to also be quite reflective. JJ and EB were hiding on the other side of my van.

My duck confit salad was exquisite.

Metaverse Misgivings

Yesterday, I went to the TRI-IT conference, hosted by UNC-Greensboro. For some reason, driving to Greensboro always seems like I'm traveling half-way across the world, despite the fact that it's approximately the same distance to Raleigh, which seems comparatively close. I think this is partially because you have to go through the splitting of I-40 and I-85 and I have this fear that I'm going to end up on the wrong one. It could also just be that I don't go there very often and it's not as familiar to me.

TRI-IT is an organization of instructional technology staff members at universities in central North Carolina. We meet approximately once a semester and it was started at Duke several years ago. It's a nice community of people who are facing many of the same challenges.

One of the highlights was a keynote on Second Life. In many ways, Second Life is cool. The graphics are nifty and you get to fly around. I, however, am still not very excited about the whole thing. I think the 3 dimensional models of buildings and trees are neat, but the whole avatar thing turns me off. I had a similar reaction to MUDs 15 years ago. It seems as if some of these virtual worlds add additional barriers to tasks that are more easily addressed by "standalone" applications. On the other hand, while I have seen an hour long demo now, I don't want to criticize it too much without having actually tried it myself.

New Treo, Showcase and an Anniversary

I was planning to spend the majority of this post whining about the quality of the lens on my new Treo 700p cell phone. Unfortunately, I am going to have to find something else to write about. I just transferred the photos to my laptop and even the ones that I thought were just horribly dark don't look nearly as bad after running them through Picasa's "I'm Feeling Lucky" filter. I had even been wondering if I needed to carry around my old Treo 650, just to use the camera, which I absolutely did not want to do. I don't think that will be necessary.

Over all, I am very pleased with the new phone. Since it's on Verizon's network, I get a better signal at home and can actually use it at the office. That is marvelous. I have missed so many calls because people assumed that I had some way of finding out that I had a message. It's also just nice to be able to make calls wherever I am, particularly in an emergency. I usually couldn't even get a signal outside in the parking lot most of the time.

Thanks to Verizon's EV-DO broadbandesque network, I can use my the browser on the phone much more easily. It is extremely fast and makes everything much more practical. It's particularly impressive when using the Google Maps client on the phone. Recently, the mobile version of Google Reader has been my favorite app. I've been using TreoTwit in order to avoid per message SMS charges.

Thursday was CIT's 7th Annual Instructional Technology Showcase and it was definitely a success. I worked at the registration desk early in the morning. I got to attend Malcolm Brown's keynote, the lunch and the poster-session. Lunch was catered by the Refectory and I must say that their hummus wraps are great. All of the door prizes that I gathered from our sponsors now have happy homes. I also got to see RN and KD, which was cool.

We had worried about Dr. Brown's arrival, because his original plane had engine trouble, as was depicted in a dramatic collaborative 2D reenactment by HC and SM, drawn on the glass in between their cubes.

After the Showcase, we had out traditional drinking party. This year we went to Satisfaction's and I tried their selection of virgin daiquiris. First, I had a lime one, which was very sour and good and was served in a wine glass. Various other people recommended their strawberry daiquiris, so I tried a virgin strawberry one. That was served an overflowing 16 oz. cup! By that time I'd also eaten several onion rings, cheese sticks, chips, wings and one jalapeno popper, so that was a little much.

Yesterday, at lunch time, a bunch of us went to the Duke Farmer's Market. We ate leftover Showcase wraps while listening to HC play Old Time music with his buddies. The weather was perfect for it. LA and I bought things for our mothers' birthdays.

Today, my mom and I went to the Flying Fish for lunch and we stopped by Callaway Jewelry afterwards. I visited FIFO in the afternoon and followed him around, taking pictures with the Treo 700p. We celebrated her birthday at ACME Food & Beverage Co., of course. What we should have also been celebrating is the fact that today is the first anniversary of the appearance of my doofus woodpecker who has been slamming his head into my windows for the past year. He was at it bright and early this morning. It's so nice to be loved.

Remember the Milk

Thanks to a couple of articles on Lifehacker about why it's better to keep a to-do list using pen and paper, I read about a new (to me) productivity / to-do list web application called Remember the Milk. Aside from having a cute name, it meets a lot of the requirements that I've been looking for in such an application. You can access it from the web application, your Google Personalized Homepage or Netvibes page, or from a mobile phone. It has tons of features, but one of my favorites is fairly mundane but rare from what I've seen: you can have repeating entries. I, for example, water my orchid plants once a week and I would like to be reminded rather than relying on a memory that only seems to kick in right as I'm getting into bed. Remember the Milk can do that for me, even to the point of sending my phone a text message.

Now if only it could actually water them.

La Forchetta

I keep getting Zogby polls about flatware. It's very frustrating, because there aren't any write-in comments where I can complain about the Bush administration. No, I don't know what company makes those forks you're showing me and until I have the opportunity to stick the tines in a neo-con's hand, I won't need to know where to send my letter of appreciation.

Tonight I went to Cinelli's for dinner and had linguine with clam sauce, substituting rigatoni for the linguine. Unfortunately, the pasta way more al dente than I like, which is better than the alternative, but a little too chewy. Otherwise it was good. We also shared garlic bread, which was great.

Afterwards, we went to see the Ciompi Quartet in the Nelson Music Room. While I'd seen the quartet perform a couple of times in the Levine Science Research Center, I'd never been to a concert there. When I was a student, the second floor of the East Duke building was completely inaccessible and that actually became quite controversial, leading them to cancel all concerts there for a time. Not too long after I graduated, they completed the Richard White Building, next door, which provides access via a catwalk. In any case, it's a very nice venue for music. There was a reception downstairs after the performance, which is apparently traditional for the last Ciompi Quartet concert of the season.

Down on the Corner, Out in the Cathedral

For today's Visualization Forum, we had an excellent talk by Caroline Bruzelius on her course on cathedral building. Basically, each of her students designs a cathedral and writes fake historical documents to go with it. She introduced us to two of her students, one of whom drew the architectural drawings in AutoCAD and the other who rendered his drawings in 3D, using Maya. Both projects were stunning and the ultimate goal of the second project was to convert it into a format suitable for use in the DiVE, so it will be possible to actually walk through his cathedral. I am unusually envious of students who are able to take the course, because it sounds like a lot of fun. I also got to see one of my former professors, Dr. Hans van Miegroet.

Guitar practice was particularly fun tonight, because we spent a lot of time on Down on the Corner. In between verses, there's a base line, which is really fun to play. This is the first time I've played one, so it's tricky for me.


JJ, JA and I went out for sushi afterwards. Cafe Zen had particularly good yellowtail and mackerel tonight. The photo shows most of our order, except for two rolls.

Splitting Twitter and Veggies

Regular readers of this blog may have observed that I write about the (hopefully) not so distant past and never write about what I'm planning to do in the future. At work, we've been using Twitter to let each other know where we are. I started wondering whether I want random strangers to know when I'm not at home or I'm driving home. Most likely, it wouldn't matter if they did, but I've decided to change the username of that account and only send updates to "friends". If I actually know you, you are welcome to add me on http://twitter.com/lenoreramm If you don't, you can still get my public updates from http://twitter.com/eronel I don't know what I'll be using it for, though, other than plugs for blog updates and random bursts of enthusiasm, but we'll see.

In other news, we got our first share of vegetables from Elysian Farm yesterday. Now we've had two delicious dinners with asparagus, radish, spinach and green garlic. I've had two pretty heavy lunches (Searle Center yesterday and the Refectory today), so that's been particularly nice.

Fangirl Favors Fancy Flashlight

Last night, at Ted's talk, I bought four $1 raffle tickets for various toys donated by his company, Lucasarts. I put my personal e-mail address on the tickets, so I was mildly disappointed when I didn't hear anything last night. Well, this morning, I had e-mail from SR, at work! I won the grand prize, the Obi-wan Kenobi Lightsaber! Wow! I thought I'd be lucky if I won an Artoo-Potatoo. If you grew up watching the movies, playing with the action figures, and listening to the soundtracks over and over, then you will understand me when I say how awesome it will be to wave this overgrown flashlight around for hours on end. The sound effects are great and turning it on and off is too cool.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we've had quite a bit of wind. The power was off at my house for approximately 24 hours. Unfortunately, this branch is still precariously balanced in one of my neighbor's trees, along my property.

Could Be In the Dark

The power has been out at my house and for much of this area all day long and there's no sign that it will come back on any time soon. It's been extremely windy here and there are trees down all over the place. I'm really appreciating my generator right now. After having endured literal weeks without power after hurricane Fran and the ice storm a few years back, I don't think I'll be taking it for granted for a while.

At lunchtime CIT had a fun brown bag celebration where we played games the whole time. HC, SE, SM and I played SET, which was challenging and fun. You can play on-line, but it's probably more fun playing in person. The same company also makes Quiddler, which I'd played before and didn't like as much. I was, however, in the mood to play hearts at the time. Before I joined CIT, they used to have game lunches about once a month, so I was happy to finally participate in one.

After work, I went to an ACM talk given by Ted Hung. He was a computer science major, who graduated just two years after I did. It was great to see him again and learn about what life is like as a game programmer. Going to an ACM meeting again was fun. It was definitely a mixture of nostalgia combined with the pleasure of not having to preside over the meetings anymore.

No Child Left Behind

Today was fun and hectic. Not long after I got to work, I had to go to an interview. Then I drove a bunch of co-workers to the American Tobacco Campus for a software presentation and a brown bag meeting. The excitement began when we left and SM was missing! We waited quite a while and I called various labs trying to get cell phone numbers. We finally gave up and decided that he must have gotten a ride with someone else. When we got back to the office, he still wasn't there. I was really beginning to worry, but it turned out that he and LA had gone to Cafe Zen for lunch. Next time I drive a van full of children somewhere, I'm going to make them all hold hands for the whole trip, so no one gets left behind.

Oh, and Mike Nifong walked by me while I was making those frantic phone calls from the parking garage.

Guitar practice was fun. Playing in the spring is so pleasant, because we get to sit out on the front porch. A lot of people walk along West Club Blvd, so sometimes that attracts attention, but not tonight. It was chilly and I was very hungry, so I was eager to go to dinner. We went to Red Robin, which I'd never been to before. It was very crowded, the service was pretty bad and it was very hard to hear. The food, however, was pretty good. I had fish and chips, which isn't the sort of thing one usually orders at a burger joint, but they did a nice job. Unfortunately, they must have forgotten my order and didn't give it to me until everyone else had almost finished, but JA spoke up and they took the entire price off my bill. I'm afraid I was too hungry to photograph the plate when it finally arrived.

My shipment of guitar picks arrived today and I'm very pleased. All of them have non-slip grips, so I shouldn't have any more problems with their rotating in my fingers in the middle of a song. I also now finally a thumb pick that won't twist off my thumb while I'm playing. It's a "bumblebee" pick, so it's even yellow.