The Price of Free Speech

I do have good news. I figured out why my Treo 650 was bombarding me with messages whenever I turned off bluetooth. Apparently the keyboard application (or any third party connecting application) will keep trying to access bluetooth unless that is also disconnected. So, once I made sure the keyboard application was turned off, it stopped asking me if I wanted to turn bluetooth back on. As it may now be obvious, I hadn't tried out bluetooth at all until I got the keyboard.

On Tuesday I went to a Durham FM Association meeting and we had an excellent speaker, Carlo Tomasi, who talked about his work with Canesta on the laser virtual projection keyboards and 3D sensors. I'd been admiring the keyboards on ThinkGeek for some time, so it was neat to see one in person and learn more about the technology.

Last night, I went to the Duke Symphony Orchestra concert, which was great. I didn't think my dad was going to be able to go with me, but he decided he would rather do that than grade midterms. We went to Taverna Nikos beforehand and I seem to be in another trout rut. My last one lasted over a year, but we were eating there a lot more often at that point.

Today, AE had the day off, so she came over to campus and we ate at the Refectory for lunch. It was such a beautiful day and it was delightful to eat outside. We had "Sopa du Soya", which is the faux chicken version of my favorite Mexican casserole dish. I like the chicken better, but whatever soy product they were using was quite good.

I'm going to do something unusual for this blog and weigh in on the Don Imus debate. I had actually didn't even know who he was until this controversy arose, so obviously this was a good publicity move. I've read various articles that say that it was his first amendment right to say what he did and therefore he shouldn't have been fired. That just doesn't follow at all. The constitutional right only applies to the legality of what he said, which I don't believe is being disputed. Don Imus, as an employee of a business, represented that business. If a business believes that it is not profitable to have him represent them, then it is that business's right to fire him. I am almost positive that if it had been financially advantageous to keep him, then they would have. Then that would suggest that advertisers thought that the majority of their consumers felt that this was acceptable behavior. If that were the case, then we would have a much larger problem on our hands than just one announcer.

Misbehaving Mobile Device

My beloved Treo 650 has been frustrating me. Yesterday afternoon, while I was watching a movie, Immortal Beloved, it beeped, indicating that its battery was low and needed charging. I dashed off to my bedroom and plugged it in. This morning, before I got up, it beeped again, so I charged it while I was in the shower. Note that it never did this before yesterday.

I decided to try turning off bluetooth, since I enabled it a few weeks ago for my bluetooth keyboard. Well, apparently if bluetooth has been on, then it doesn't like being turned off. There could be a way to turn it off for longer periods of time, but it kept popping up messages saying, "Do you know bluetooth is turned off? Do you? Do you? Feed me."

I eventually just ignored it. Well, eventually it got to the point that I could neither cancel the message nor re-enable bluetooth. It just kept flashing the message over and over. This afternoon I just decided to take out the battery. Then it started rebooting itself, over and over. It just wasn't my day.

I ended up having to do a hard reset and now I think it's fine. Fortunately, I sync it with my laptop fairly often, to get all those food pics off of there, so I have the meeting minutes that I took last Wednesday. I don't think I lost much, really. I guess I just lost yet another picture of an ACME lemon pudding cake from last night and some really nice Shade Tree Coffee latte art from Saturday. I think I'll live.

I think my phone has been listening to my talking about ditching Sprint and upgrading to a newer model on Verizon.

Spring Beauty and an Ant Experiment

I'm conducting an experiment. Can and will teeny ants get out of my new Black & Decker hand vacuum? It's shaped quite differently, so it's possible that they can't. They easily got out of my previous one, but spiders were too lazy. I had a bag of birdseed in the garage that was full of ants and they seem to have decided to visit my less than immaculate kitchen floor. I guess I haven't been swiffering often enough. Given the fact that I can't remember the last time I swiffered might also be some indication as well.

It feels as if I've been neglecting my blog, but I guess it really hasn't been that long since I posted. I spent much of the end of last week and the weekend working with SE and SM on an internal CIT April Fool's newsletter. That was just a tremendous amount of fun and I have even more of an appreciation for GoogleDocs, because it handled three people's working on the same document beautifully. I also had to work on DFMA minutes and other secretarial duties, which were not nearly as enjoyable.

Speaking of beautiful things. The spring flowers around here have been stunning. Even more daffodils have bloomed in my yard, thanks again to a regular reader and our neighbor/landscaper. Other flowers bloomed about a week early, so there was much more of an overlap of the redbuds, dogwoods and wisteria. My commute, primarily on Highway 70, has just been bursting with light purple and white. Since we've had a decent amount of rain, just about every dogwood is gorgeous and full of blooms. Unfortunately, a cold front is coming through tonight and, if the weather people are correct, I'm going to have to appreciate brown blossoms instead. I hope they're wrong. Many of the trees have their leaves out, too, and I'm afraid they're going to get zapped.

Recently, I've had lots of good dinners and lunches with parents and friends: DS, AE, NP and JH (serendipitous). In the evenings, I've been busy working on collecting gift certificates to use as CIT Showcase door prizes. so I've been going out to eat even more than usual. Since I want to finish this post and still get some sleep tonight, I'm not going to go into detail this time.

What else? I met two lovely cats last night. I really miss being around cats. I was photographed by the paparazzi yesterday. I went to the Duke Computer Science picnic on Saturday and had a good time.

We have a lot of pollen here and it's everywhere. We breathe it, live it and photograph it. Fortunately, I'm not terribly allergic to most of it, so I think it can be pretty.


Well, it looks as if I may have solved my ant problem.

Familial Feasts and French Foyers

Thursday night, my dad and I went to see Murray Parahia in Page Auditorium, at Duke. The pianist's concert consisted exclusively of works by Beethoven, Bach, Schumann and Chopin. I enjoyed it a great deal. I need to get more recordings of Beethoven piano sonatas, because I believe I only have three of them.

Friday, I went to the Visualization Forum and saw OLA give a talk on visualizing code. That was awesome. It was like being in college again, except I got to eat while I was listening. He is just hilarious and I think the audience really had a good time.

My brother, KR, and DC arrived late that night, but not long after they got there, KR started telling me about the Fujitsu P1610 and the OQO model 02. They are adorable. I need one of each. Not really. I started thinking of various fanciful scenarios of ditching my treo and my current laptop and dreaming of having a real itty-bitty computer with me at all times and a real phone that you can actually hear people talk on. The warranty on the laptop that I use is about to expire and I need to switch cell phone carriers, so it's not completely crazy.

On Saturday, my dad and I made crepe pancakes and DC became thoroughly engrossed in my Geomag collection. Early that evening, we went to A&M Grill for dinner. I still think the food there is just ok at best, but KR wanted to show off a representation of North Carolina barbecue. The sauce and the cole slaw are just too sour for my taste. I tried a spoonful of their brunswick stew and I'll probably have that next time, if I remember.

Sunday, we went to Eastern Lights and it was almost as if having KR along was like bringing a celebrity. When a family has been going to an incarnation of the same restaurant for 25 years, the owners and staff are very happy when a kid comes home to visit. KR wanted to show off Duke's campus to DC. I figured that it made sense to check out the new French Family Science Center while we were there. It's pretty impressive and it makes the Levine Science Research Center look old and boring in comparison. I guess that's the result I would expect from a donation from the Gates Foundation.


That night, we went to ACME Food & Beverage Co., which lived up to its superbness. I had another duck confit empanada and shared another serving of warm lemon pudding cake with raspberry sauce. I could eat warm lemon pudding cake every single day for years.

Monday, we went to the Original Q-Shack and it was hard seeing the Thai Cafe from across the street, just wishing I could have some Thai Cafe baskets and some Thai Iced Tea. I had a baked potato with "all the fixins". With butter, sour cream, chives and bacon, it's really good but way too greasy compared to what I'm used to eating these days. I like their hushpuppies. I tried their jalapeño deviled eggs and they weren't as exciting as I'd hoped, but they weren't overly hot either, which was good. It was nice going to a place like that at lunch time, so I could have a nice quantity of sweet tea without its keeping me awake. The weather was perfect, so we got to eat outside, too.

Volunteering and Twittering

I'll try to make this quick, because I want to finish loading the dishwasher.

Last night, I volunteered for UNC-TV by answering phones, taking pledges and eating food. I coordinated the library's volunteer effort with a few good spams. I had a good time and got to see JE! That was exciting, indeed. She showed me several pictures of her cats. It was also nice to meet the people from other areas of Duke, with whom I coordinated the logistics. The programming wasn't too exciting, so we didn't get a tremendous number of calls. They've continued to improve the technology, so I was actually able to hear every single one of the people I did talk to. Last time when I volunteered it was pouring rain, so I was also very thankful that I didn't get soaked this year.

Today the weather was beautiful, so I had a very nice time during my lunch hour getting more Pauly Dogs veggie dogs. I did that yesterday, too, actually, but the weather was nicer today so my inhalation was more leisurely.

Tonight my parents and I went to Taverna Nikos for dinner. I had the fruit and cheese platter, which was very good.

I've been joining the masses and checking out Twitter this week. It's basically broadcast IM, which has enormous potential. It reminds me of zephyr classes, but on a massive scale. I'm sure it would be more fun if I actually knew some people on there, so let me know if any of you use it.
It's been very slow with all of its publicity this week, so if you do check it out, you may need to be patient. I believe they are working on beefing it up so it can keep up with the traffic. You can also take a look at a neat Twitter / Google Maps mashup called Twittervision.

Scrap the dishwasher idea. It's time to sleep.

Why Buy One When 900 Will Do

Yesterday, I was talking to my mom in the great room, shortly before I was going to a get a haircut. I spotted a pileated woodpecker through the windows. We both managed to get some good shots of him.



Last night, I had an early dinner at Madhatter's Cafe & Bake Shop with AE, JB, and LB. EG's flight was delayed, so she couldn't join us. We had a great time chatting and then we went to Whole Foods briefly. That didn't take long, so AE and I decided to check out the new theater at Northgate Mall. Neither of us had been to that mall in years.

We spent a long time figuring out the optimal parking spot, since we weren't shooting for a particular movie time. Even though it's been extensively renovated, it's still an old mall, so it wasn't easy finding a space that would work that well with my van that had a curb cut anywhere nearby. We did find a good space, though.

By the time we actually got to the theater, it was about 7:45pm and we would have either had to have gone into a movie late or wait almost an hour. There wasn't anything that we were that eager to see, so we decided to wander around the mall some. Eventually, we went in Hungates.
Hungates used to be the only store in Durham where you could buy art supplies.

AE noticed that there was a whole display of colored pencils wrapped up and marked down to $200. There were over 900 Berol Prismacolor pencils, which normally sell for just under a $1 a pencil. I thought that was just incredible. They are my favorite brand of colored pencils and are almost the consistency of very smooth, but hard, crayons in wood pencils. Even though I haven't produced a major piece of artwork in 8 years, I knew I had to get them. It's not as if they will go bad or anything.

Apparently Hungates has been hit very hard by large chain art supply stores, such as Michael's and A.C. Moore, so they are getting out of the art supply business all together. Vic, the very nice salesperson that explained this, said we could drive behind the store and pick them up.

Very little is marked back behind the mall, but we knew we were supposed to see the Durham police substation and two dumpsters. I parked and AE called Vic on the phone, to let him know that we had found the dumpsters. We waited. We waited a good 15 minutes. We were very entertained at the idea of waiting behind a mall, in a large white van, waiting for a guy named Vic to deliver our large package of...colored pencils. There was one problem.

They were the wrong dumpsters.

AE called again and we found out that we needed to keep going around the mall. We found Vic and they loaded the pencils into the backseat. We were on our way. I actually found a place in my art studio for them, which is perfect.

Tonight my parents and I went to ACME (to celebrate the pencil acquisition, of course). I had another serving of pan seared scallops with cashew-ginger pesto, baby arugula and grapefruit. We shared a lemon pudding cake for dessert. That's one of my favorites.

Serendipitous Selections

As of this morning, I was #1 out of 16 in the library basketball pool! I must point out that no money is involved in this contest. I think it's just bragging rights and I need to be bragging while I can, because this won't last.

Despite my intention of not predicting any upsets in the first round, I did accurately pick the Winthrop upset. It was an accident, actually, because I was filling out my picks so quickly. Go Winthrop!

Downtown Dining

We went to the Flying Fish tonight and sat next to the window. My parents and I were thoroughly entertained by Donald, a corgie, who was vacuuming French fries from underneath all the outdoor seating. I got to meet him as I leaving and he was very sweet.

I then immediately ran into my builder for the first time in almost three years and got to tell him that I still love my house.

They had fried soft shell crabs as the special tonight and they were very good. The tartar sauce was not necessary.

The NCCA tournament is underway. I'm going to make an attempt not to even look at the bracket that I entered into the library pool, because I always enjoy it a lot more when I base my cheering on how I like each team rather than my predictions. I did, however, break my tradition and not pick any upsets for the first round. So far so good.

Gadget Joy

Today I went to my weekly meeting at the American Tobacco Campus, but I came back to West Campus for lunch. AE wanted to show her friend, DS (many name collisions on these intials lately- I leave distinguishing them as a hopeless exercise for the reader) around Duke. As I mentioned previously, there isn't a lot on campus that is open this week, so we met at Twinnie's. We then carried our stuff back up the hill and ate on the library patio. The weather was perfect.

My parents and I ate at Thai Cafe tonight. It's the time of year when I need to convince restaurants that donating gift certificates to be used as door prizes for the CIT Showcase is good advertising. It is!

When I got home, my Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard was waiting for me. That was very exciting. So far, I am extremely pleased with it. It's lightweight and compact. I downloaded the Treo 650 driver and then I was ready to go. Configuring the secure connection was a little tricky, because I was finally watching the second half of West Side Story and not paying attention to the instructions closely enough. It's a little tricky anyway, because you have to keep putting the keyboard in discovery mode while configuring the passkeys. It is very cool, though. I like the idea of having something that should also work with whatever tablet or phone I get in the future, too, since it uses bluetooth.

A Ghost of Dancing Daffodils

Those of you who are regular readers may recognize one or more of the photos above. I just wanted to show you all what a particular area on Duke's campus looked almost exactly a year ago and what it looks like today.


This has caused me to rant ad nauseam and now I will rant again here. Daffodils bloom EVERY YEAR. The perennials that used to be planted there continue to be happy and bloom EVERY YEAR. I shudder to think what has happen to all the poor forsaken plants and bulbs that were there. It looks as if they are putting in some sort of irrigation system, but that is no excuse.
It just annoys me to no end to see money wasted and that's exactly what happened if they were thrown out. You can see more photos of what this area looked like with perennials planted here as well as some other plantings on campus here.

A Discreet Awakening

Bzzzzzz....Bzzzzz..
Bzzzzzz.

I opened my eyes and realized it was my pager that was buzzing. That meant it was after 8am. NOOooooooo! Normally I get up at least an hour before that. Normally my alarm is set to go off at 6:23am. I had forgotten to set it the night before. I've forgotten before, but I generally wake up around the right time anyway.

It turned out ok, because I didn't have any early meetings. I called NC and I ended up not being more than about 20-25 minutes minutes later than usual. I was embarrassed, though. I did, however, feel rested.

Guitar practice had been moved from Friday to last night, because of the ACC basketball tournament. Most people had other things they needed to do afterwards, so MP and I went out to dinner. We decided on Blue Corn and then determined that they were closed, based on the fact that the restaurant was empty and there were upside-down chairs on the tables. Fortunately, we only had to deduce this by staring for a few minutes from the parking lot. After much discussion, we decided on either Parizade or Verde. Our decision was then made for us, because Verde was also closed.

We had a lovely dinner. I had baked goat cheese with very good bread and a Parizade salad.
Parizade salads have lettuce, feta, strawberries, toasted pine nuts and a raspberry vinaigrette. It's a wonderful combination. I had a cup of decaf coffee for dessert and MP tried their butterscotch creme brulee. Then I drove MP to EB's, so she could get her car. Heading back, I missed a turn and got lost. I've gotten to the point that I almost enjoy getting lost if there are no time constraints, because it's almost like a puzzle to figure out. I, however, prefer not to do it at 11pm when I have to get up the next morning. I wasn't lost long, though, and found a different I-40 West On-ramp from the one I'd originally planned to use.

It was a beautiful day today. I had lunch on the the library patio and ate the crab dip and crackers that CL gave me on Saturday. Then I wandered over to the Bryan Center Walkyway with the hope that the on-line schedule was wrong and that the Keva Juice stand was really open. It wasn't. It's spring break at Duke this week, so almost everything is closed. I ended up getting some fresh squeezed orange juice from Alpine. I then headed back to the library. I stopped to drink more right in front of the old Perkins Library entrance, giving the juice the opportunity to spontaneously squirt down my shirt. NP came out of the building just at that moment and pointed out that people were going to accuse me of having a drinking problem.

Again, it's been gorgeous here. March and April are my two favorite months of the year, because the weather is usually lovely, the flowers bloom and then the leaves start to come out.
Here are some photos of all the wonderful daffodils blooming in my yard. (Thanks to a loyal reader for taking these pics.)

Smitten State Fan

Tuesday, I had lunch with NP at the Refectory. I had delicious chicken and dumplings, sans dumplings. I guess they got away. That was perfectly ok with me, though, because I got extra rice.

That evening, I celebrated JA's birthday with him and our friends (JJ, HB, JM, DS, AP, AY, and GMc) at Tyler's, at the American Tobacco Campus. I discovered that Tyler's has excellent (extremely tart) lemonade. We shared wings, calamari, pickle chips, nachos and French fries.Tyler As expected, we had a great time.

The next day, I was back at the tobacco campus for my weekly meeting at OIT and had lunch at the Mellow Mushroom with AE and M. For some strange reason, I hadn't noticed that they sold pizza by the slice before. Spinach, tomatoes and feta was a nice combination.

Thursday, LA brought Gizmo Monkeybear Batrabbit over so all of the dog lovers within CIT could meet him. He's AT's dachsund pekingese mix puppy. He's adorable and his tongue is out of control.

Friday, AN, SM and I went to the Visualization Forum, which was an interesting program, given by David Kidd, from the National Evolutionary Synethesis Center, on Visualizing Evolution. He focused primarily on 3D phylogenetic trees, which were cool. Later in the afternoon, AN, NC and I took a field trip down to the Duke Computer Store and checked out the latest tablet PCs. They had the new Lenovo X60 with the touch screen that allows you to either use your finger or a stylus. More exciting to me were the Sony Vaio UX series tablet PCs. They are about the size of a paperback novel, have 1GB of memory, a 1.33Ghz processor, WAN, Cingular cellular access and a 40 GB harddrive. It has a slide-out keyboard, which looks somewhat easier to use than a Treo keyboard, but would have similar issues. I was certainly smitten. It's so portable and is really impressive considering that it's so small, but its computing power is almost as good as the machine I'm using now. That said, one would probably have to have an additional monitor and keyboard to make it practical for everyday use. It's possible that it might be a good Treo replacement, which would mean also carrying a real phone that actually works well as a phone (a novel idea). I don't think I'm going to get one, but on Amazon I saw a strong recommendation for a portable bluetooth keyboard, Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard for PDA, which would work with a tablet PC, a PDA, or with my Treo 650. I decided to order one and give it a try. I take a lot of minutes at meetings and I don't like hauling a heavy laptop around, so I'm betting it will be extremely useful.

That night I met AE at Nosh and we shared another SRB pizza with chicken.

We take basketball very seriously in this area and it's very obvious. We had cable installed in a conference room just for the ACC tournament. So, anytime you want to see what's going on, you can look through the room's windows and check it out on the projection system. Library HR had a bracket contest and I got everything wrong except for UNC's wins. That was amusingly pathetic. I, however, am temporarily a rabid State fan, because I think it's exciting that they are doing well, despite their having knocked Duke out of the tournament. I would love to see them beat UNC tomorrow.

Today I went over to CL and JL's house for an ACC tournament party. We watched the two semi-final games while eating wings, brie and crab dip. It was nice getting to meet KC and CC's baby son and the rest of their family. I experienced another example of good intentions not going so well. I brought over a four-pack of random cold sodas and on the drive over, they decided to leap out of the cartoon, out of the basket I keep on my backseat, and hide between the back seat and the side of the van. One of the bottles actually opened! It was the blueberry one, of course.

Fuzzy Concert Photos!

Friday, after work, we had a happy "hour" at Twinnie's. We had a grand time laughing, talking and playing SV's new ukulele. It's great having a place so close to the library that serves iced
lattes to me and beer to everyone else.

Saturday night, I was within the Cary city limits twice and only had to turn around once. I made the mistake, yet again, of looking up the address on a map before I left, so I was looking for a street that was actually an unlabeled entrance to the shopping center. Fortunately, I was pretty sure that one of the shopping centers was a likely candidate, so I just had to turn around once I was past it.

The destination was Japan Express, where I met CL and JL for dinner. The food is pretty much identical the food at the one on Hillsborough Road, in Durham, which means it was good, fast and cheap. I had the hibachi shrimp.

From there, CL and I took off for the RBC Center to see Billy Joel in concert. Once we got to the the Edwards Mill exit, the one that normally leads to the arena, we saw a sign that said "All Concert Traffic - Take Blue Ridge Exit". Uh oh. Well, we had 50 minutes to get there. It was only the next exit. We were only only driving at .00008 mph. Pretty soon I was saying that I hoped that we got there only an hour after the concert was supposed to start. The whole thing was just a mess. Fortunately, CL is about as calm as I am in such situations, so she was a good person to have along. We also were in a great spot to view the total lunar eclipse, which was a bonus. Needless to say, we were still annoyed. Once we got there, we still had the challenge of finding a parking spot. There are advantages to going there with an avid soccer player who can get out and run like lightning in order to find a space. She was able to talk someone into letting us park in the VIP parking, with all the stretch limos.

Finally, we got inside! We were only a half hour late. Fortunately, it sounded from what Billy said as if he hadn't played too many songs yet, because he knew that the majority of the audience was late and still arriving. It was a great concert. His voice has not obviously deteriorated over the years and his piano playing ability is just incredible. It's like seeing a concert pianist perform. Ok, perhaps most concert pianists don't play their pianos by sitting on them, but they are usually almost as skilled as he is. He's skilled at twirling a microphone stand in the air like a baton, too. Of course, he teased the audience until he played Piano Man at the very end.

I drove CL home to Cary and then made it back to I-40 by making five correct turns. If you don't know me, this will not seem like such a big deal. If you do know me and know that I'm scatterbrained all the time anyway, but even much more so if I'm driving, you should probably make sure that you aren't letting in any flies. I just have the uncanny ability to have a pretty good idea of where I am at all times, but still not know in which direction I should be going.

Changes, Food, Food and Disdain

Before I start rambling about food I've eaten, I thought I should point out some of the changes I've made to the blog recently. I've added a Google Reader module that contains items from other blogs, which I've shared from my reader and I think are worth checking out. I've also added a del.icio.us module so you can see what sort of things I've bookmarked recently. I'm working on migrating some things over from my original web page, so there are some new links that started out there, but may have new content. Finally, I've added a new subscribe button to make it easier to read this blog in a syndicated format, in the aggregator of your choice. Note that this feed does not currently contain the comments.

Sunday morning, I had brunch with AE at Nosh. Look at those yummy buttermilk pancakes. I woke up craving pancakes and they just happened to have a pancake special.

Sunday night, I cooked dinner for my dad. I was feeling experimental, so I made spaghetti sauce out of Paul Newman's tomato sauce, a can of whole soybeans, a foil packet of (effectively) canned salmon and ginger. I have yet to figure out how much ginger you need to add to something to make affect the flavor substantially, so I should probably look at some recipes that call for it. Well, my dad deemed the dish "interesting" which he later updated to "not that bad". I think it was really ok after adding half a cup of parmesan to my serving, but I haven't been eager to eat the leftovers.

I'm not sure how long Pauly Dogs has been on Duke's campus, but I've avoided it since I don't eat beef and I love hot dogs. On Monday, I decided to be brave and try my first veggie/soy dogs since my previous valiant and unsuccessful attempts a couple of years ago. I ordered one with sauerkraut and spicy mustard and Paul(y) thought I had to be a yankee. He seemed quite surprised that I'm not, but I did explain that I'm half-German. So, it was actually pretty good. I was impressed. The dogs were made by Morningstar Farms and either I've forgotten what hot dogs taste like in 3 years or the texture was actually pretty accurate. I'm pleased, because it's nice small lunch that's comparatively inexpensive and the cart is just across the Bryan Center Walkway from the "Passion Paradise" smoothies at the Keva Juice cart.

Monday night, I went to a computer science faculty candidate recruitment dinner at SR's house. It was fun talking to people from the department and TN has beautiful tropical fish tanks.

I had lunch at the Refectory with NP yesterday We ended up sitting near and talking to Debbie Moose, a writer who specializes in food. I told her that she had my dream job, but I don't think she knew just how serious I was! I had chicken pot pie and it was great. It certainly rivaled, if not surpassed, the chicken pot pie at the Nantucket Cafe and the style was very similar.

Last night, my dad and I went to the monthly Durham FM Association board meeting. I actually enjoyed this one, because it was held entirely at the Bennet Point Grill, the way it used to be. The service was uncharacteristically slow and the fried oysters in my usual Caesar salad were much cooler in temperature than I would have liked, but the meeting was short and we had a fun crowd attending.

Right now I'm watching the Duke v.s. Maryland basketball game, including the commercials. I know this will be unpopular with many of my geeky readers, but I think that the realistic violent video games that they are advertising these days, particularly those that turn on-going military conflicts into "games" are sick. I wonder how much money the pentagon is funneling into the industry to boost recruitment, if not accuracy.

No Popups For You

Good News! After all these months, I finally determined what was causing the annoying popups. It was my webstats4u counter. Webstats4u bought out nedstatbasic a while back and they added popups at the same time. I was not aware of this and had attributed the popups to something else. Sitemeter is far better anyway, so I'll be removing all my other counters on my website. I apologize to all my readers who had to close the pesky windows for so long.

The take-home message: Beware of Webstats4u.

Duke Plays and Serves Sorbets

Yesterday, at the weekly Visualization Forum, Jeremy Block gave an interesting talk on biochemistry modeling using the DiVE, the "cave" or virtual environment cube that has images projected on all six sides. We had penne pasta with eggplant and great desserts, so it would have been enjoyable regardless.

Last night I met AE, KD and JH at Chai's, followed by Shade Tree Coffee. We had a lot of fun and celebrated JH's two job offers. He accepted both of them!

After that, I went to Duke Plays, a huge party that was an effort by two Duke seniors to provide alternatives to lacrossesque drunken off-campus debauchery. The huge party (and I do mean huge) was hosted in the first floors of the two library buildings. As far as locations, they could not have picked one that was more convenient. I really liked being able to lock my heavy leather coat and purse in my office. The party was open to faculty, staff and alumni and since I qualified on two counts and am even library staff, I thought I should attend. I believe it was actually only the second alumni event that I have attended since graduating seven years ago.

The food they served was absolutely incredible. It was all dessert hors d'oeuvres and was all delivered by by roaming people with serving trays. Again, it could not have been more convenient. They served mini-chocolate éclairs, weird little pies with a cherry in the middle, mini-creme brules, mini-white chocolate thingies, chocolate dipped cheesecake on a stick, samosa-like pastries containing warm peanut butter and jelly, canolis, pineapple mousse with whipped creme and pistachios, and more. The two best things were individual spoons filled with orange honey sorbet and skewers with balls of melon and pineapple dipped in honey and chopped mint. Wow. They also had lime sorbet, but I never ended up getting a scoop of that. I got three scoops of the the orange, due to AT's help, for which I am very thankful.

It's a good thing they had the roaming serving platters, because it was simply impossible to move once the party got going. I would guess that there were at the very least a thousand people there, if not more. I look forward to hearing the official estimates. It was a semiformal occasion and most of the attendees dressed up quite a bit. The library was almost completely transformed into a glitzy nightclub. There were four different bars, colored spotlights and exhibits depicting recreational activities of Duke students since the beginning of time. There were two bands, Katharine Whalen of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Pulsar Triyo, both of which I inadvertently managed to avoid for the most part. I spent the majority of the time talking to LA and YB safely between two bookcases. I also got to chat with with several other co-workers, too. I even had a couple of very brief encounters with actual undergraduates, which were entertaining.

Was it a success? By most measures, absolutely! I couldn't have been happier with the food and that is, of course, my main criterion of judgment. I had a great time. Alcohol, however, was served and I certainly witnessed some things near the end of the party that suggested to me that not all were partying in the spirit in which it was intended.

Today, I saw part of West Side Story. In the middle, it suddenly started freezing up. It would just lurch along. It eventually became ridiculous enough such that we gave up. It's possible that my DVD player is particularly sensitive, because I suspect it's not a particularly good one. It came free with my television, after all. Believe it or not, but I think that this is the only (albeit partial) live action musical that I've ever seen other than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Boing Boinger and the Bamboo Garden

Last night I met up with a bunch of my former fellow IBMers at Inchin's Bamboo Garden, in Morrisville. We had a good crowd: CL, JL, PS, KC, GA, and TH. It was particularly fun, because we sat at four tables pushed together into a square, so we always had one group-wide conversation going. The restaurant is owned by a very close friend of PS, so we had lots of inside information about the dishes and PS went into the kitchen a couple of times. It is a small chain and wil soon have six restaurants across the country. They make everything fresh, so it's on the slow side, but that's perfect if you're catching up with friends. They have good selection of Indo-Chinese dishes, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. I noticed that they do not serve pork. I had a bowl of sweet corn soup with shrimp, which was very good. For my entree, I had vegetable "coins" with manchurian sauce. They reminded me of disc shaped vegetable pakoras more than anything else. I enjoyed it.

This morning I went to the latest in the series of talks put on by the Duke Web Communicators Group. It was a question and answer session given by Cory Doctorow, co-editor of BoingBoing, who is also a science fiction writer and activist, among other things. I thought he was very impressive, funny and adeptly imparted a great deal of information in rapid fire fashion on DRM, collaboration, the logistics of running BoingBoing, etc. He also was actually wearing what I believe was an iPod inside his shirt, with earbuds dangling around his collar the whole time. His shirt snapped instead of buttoned, which made the player more accessible.

This evening, I went to a second talk, also given by Doctorow, to a much wider audience. This more formal talk focused on a variety of issues, including, but certainly not limited to, privacy, the ramifications of inneffective legislation, the risks of RFID and surveilance cameras.

Brown Cow, Rainbow and Goat

First of all, I'd like to write about yogurt. I've recently eaten a couple of cups of Brown Cow yogurt, which were quite good. Today I had apricot mango and it almost tastes like flavored homemade whipped cream. The coffee flavor was good, too. I've just been amazed at how different it is from Stoneyfield yogurt, which is what I usually eat. I once took a long break from Stoneyfield, because once when I was in college, there was a berry barb in one cup of Wild Berry that lodged itself in the inside of my lower lip. That was a fairly traumatic experience. It tastes good and is very healthy, though, so several years later I gave them another try and I've been enjoying it ever since. Variety is nice, though, so I'm glad that I tried Brown Cow.

Yesterday afternoon, there was a hawk that I could see outside my bedroom window. Just as I got out my camera, a second hawk landed in the tree!

Friday night, I went to guitar practice after work. We decided to get Chinese take-out from Rainbow Restaurant. The food was really quite good and better than takeout that we'd gotten from Shanghai in the past. The pork spareribs were great, although apparently difficult to extract from a beagle's clenched jaws. The steamed dumplings were very good, as were the cold sesame noodles. The sauce for the lemon chicken was nice and tart, too. We were all pleased.


Saturday afternoon, I spent the day making a necklace and earrings for AC and baking coconut macaroons. Then I went to HC and AM's birthday and Mardi Gras party. That was a blast. Their house was completely packed with musicians, dancers and people gobbling down food. HC roasted a goat, which was loaded with spices and garlic. I'd never knowingly eaten goat before, but it was excellent. With awesome live music on both floors of the house and more food than could even fit in their dining room, it was really cool.

After doing some Blackboard testing this morning at 3am, I slept quite late. Then I actually washed some dishes. Miracles occur even here at the Heathen Hovel. My parents and I headed over to ACME for another fine dinner. Weekly e-mail from the owner, Kevin, detailing the weekend's menu do wonders for their business. Tonight I had a shrimp and lobster pasta, with goat cheese, tomatoes, artichokes, spinach and bacon. The portions were huge, so we skipped dessert and I took home leftovers.

Contracts and Cucumbers

I hope all of you survived yesterday. I wouldn't want any undead readers.

I'm very excited that we will be seeing at least another four years of my hero, Keith Olberman, on MSNBC. He's one of the few that probably deserves a 4+ million contract, because he is doing a fine job of educating the public about the activities of neocon scum.

I've been eating meals at my various favorite restaurants recently, of course, but I've been ordering the same stuff that I always order. I had a particularly good time with AE, LA and AT at the Thai Cafe last weekend. Afterwards, we went to Sips, the coffee shop in the same complex. I was pleased with my mocha and I'm surprisingly picky about them. The atmosphere at Shade Tree Coffee is a lot nicer, though. I also enjoyed a nice serving of chicken salad at the Symposium Cafe, with DS.

Here's a photo of last Friday's post-guitar-practice Cafe Zen sushi.


Ok, I also can't forget the tuna and pickled cucumber salad small plate that I had at ACME on Sunday.

Last night I went to a wonderful Duke Symphony Orchestra concert with my dad and AN. They played pieces by Abel, Bach and Mendelssohn and it was lovely.

Anti-Smear Campaign

Last night, my parents and I went to the Thai Cafe for the first time in a while. I saw and talked to FW briefly. It continues to be a restaurant where I see people I know almost every time I go. I was happy to have a cup of spicy coconut soup and an order of Thai Cafe Baskets all to my self.

Fortunately, I also had a leftover basil roll to take with me for lunch today. I didn't have much time to eat, because I went to a yoga workshop from noon to 1pm. It was billed as Office Yoga, so I thought it would be perfect and it was just what I hoped it would be. All the exercises were meant to be done while sitting down at one's desk. I'd barely been exposed to yoga at all, except for some exercises that RB would do in mid conversation when we were in college, so this was a nice introduction. The library has all kinds of wild workshops, lectures and discussions all the time. It's one of the many things that makes it great place to work.

Tonight my dad and I went to Eastern Lights for dinner. We shared roast pork with green onion, shrimp with lobster sauce and an order of potstickers. It was all delicious and we had plenty of leftovers to take home to my mom.

Thanks to AE, I discovered that Fisher has lots of pens that are way too cool. I've really enjoyed my Swiss Army pen. It writes so much better than any other ballpoint that I've had. Roller balls and fountain pens don't work too well for me, since I'm left handed. I don't appreciate getting ink smeared all over everything. I'm going to resist ordering a bullet pen for at least a little while, though.

Rationalization

The last couple of nights, I've been fortunate to be able to watch an almost full moon rise from my windows in the great room, while I've been typing away at the computer. I often like to think about how many thousands of people are looking up at the moon at the same time. No one else, however, gets to look at the moon through the branches of the oak trees surrounding my house. It sounds like a good way to rationalize getting a small tripod, don't you think?

Moscow Soloists

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post was that on Wednesday night I saw the Moscow Soloists perform at Duke's Page Auditorium. I hadn't been paying attention and thought that they were singing soloists, so I was quite pleased to see that they were string players. They started out with a work by Beethoven, who is my favorite composer. This was followed by more modern pieces by Britten and Schnittke. While some of their techniques were interesting, modern "classical" music just isn't my cup of chai. Their final choice for the main program was Schubert, which was very pleasant. Not surprisingly, their encores were the best part. They played a short Mozart piece and followed that with another work by Schnittke that sounded to be primarily klezmer based. That was great. It was also good to see AG in his new role as Interim Director of Duke Performances, even though we'll miss him in the library.

Snow Sans Snacks

I have some catching up to do. I'll attempt to stick to the more interesting bits, but I'm not promising anything.

Early last week, I saw V is for Vendetta. I thought it was an excellent movie, because it was both entertaining and thought provoking.

Early that week, I also had lunch at the Refectory with NP. This is still noteworthy because I actually finished my equally sized portion of Sopa du Pollo well before he did. It's my favorite dish there. It's basically a "Mexican chicken casserole".


Last weekend, KS and DB visited. DB was so adorable, especially when carrying around my stuffed animals. It was really a treat to have them over for the weekend. Saturday night, we went to Chai's with AE, DS, JH and AHB. I had chicken pad thai and I believe KS did, too. (Sorry, RP, I'm just not certain!) Afterwards, we went to Shade Tree and were joined by JH's friends, L and S. I had a nice cup of cafe mocha and KS had a sundae, which looked very good. Sunday morning, my parents came over and we made crepe style pancakes, which we served with maple syrup and strawberries. I thought DB was very good while we ate.

Sometime this week, I saw Everything is Illuminated, which I thought was another really interesting movie. One of the characters sounds very similar to Borat, which makes it funnier than was probably originally intended. It also took me a while to not think of Elijah Wood's character as Frodo and there's one line in the movie that is extremely appropriate for that context.

I had lunch with NP again on Tuesday and got to hear all about his wearing a kilt and eating haggis at a recent party. We had chicken and shrimp gumbo, which was good.

Thursday was supposed to be the day of our department retreat, where we were supposed to give presentations of research topics that we'd been working on in groups. My group was investigating the future of Learning Management Systems. Unfortunately, we had a winter storm warning and I elected to work on ordinary work from home. All the schools were closed, it was snowing when I had planned to leave home and I didn't want to drive there and get stuck. Well, like many of these things, it fizzled and would likely have been perfectly fine if I'd gone. They did apparently have over 300 accidents in Orange County, but the roads at least looked ok. I was disappointed that I missed it, but probably saved myself from a few extra thousand calories in sandwiches, popsicles and candy that way.

Friday, I went to the weekly Visualization Forum and listened to a talk by Michael Young, from NC State, on "Leveraging narrative concepts in the automatic construction of interactive experiences". He talked about some of the algorithms used for programming dynamic interactive video games. It was pretty interesting. The spinach lasagna was good, too.

Friday night, at guitar practice, I felt as if I actually was making some progress with shifting to and from the B Minor chord on Wild Horses. Afterwards, JJ, JA, EB, MP, HB and I went to El Corral. I had Vegetarian F, which was two spinach quesadillas. That was good. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of ordering a fried banana. I momentarily forgot that their idea of frying something was to add corn flakes. That is actually a nice effect when it's Mexican Fried Ice Cream, but bananas need to be cooked thoroughly before I like them. I need stick to the ones at Kim Son, which are wonderful.

This evening, I met AE, EG, JB and LB at Chai's for dinner. It was nice to see LB for the first time, because she's very cute. It was also good to see EG, since I hadn't seen her in over five months. I ordered what was effectively sesame chicken. It was a lot of sweet fried chicken with rice and no vegetables. AE and I went to Shade Tree afterwards and talked for quite a while. Check out that link, because now they actually have a demo of how they do some of their neat latte art.

Living on Crackers

My dad fixed my van last Saturday night. It turned out that it was possible to access the adventurous bolt while the lift was folded up and then he put the joint back together. He took it to Triad Mobility on Monday where they did some routine maintenance to check everything out. They also replaced the bolt, which was somewhat stripped.

That night, my parents and I went to the Flying Fish and I tried a duck quesadilla special. It was pretty good, but very cheesy. That's what one expects of a quesadilla, but I didn't really notice until I tried to eat it cold, for breakfast, the next morning.

Last Sunday, DS and I went to Target, which was loads of fun. I've liked Target more each time I've gone there. Of course, I think I've spent less and less money each time, too. After a visit with HS, we had dinner at Kemp's. They had excellent oysters, as always. DS made the suggestion that I should get a combination platter that combined oysters with something that warms up better. In my opinion, oysters are pretty awful the second time around. Well, I got flounder and only ate the oysters. I ended up having three additional portions out of that one dinner.

Here you can see 'February Gold' daffodils that have been blooming in my yard. As I recall, it is fairly normal for that variety to bloom in January here.

Monday night, my parents and I went to ACME Food & Beverage Co. I believe that I had forgotten just how spicy the calamari with Asian slaw is, because I ordered it. It is very good, but it's just a little too hot for me. For dessert, we shared an enormous piece of ginger cheesecake with pear-ginger-caramel sauce. It was one of the best desserts that I've ever had at ACME, or anywhere, actually. I'm not a huge fan cheesecake, although I do enjoy it on occasion. This was absolutely wonderful. If you live in the Triangle and you like ginger, you need to go before they change the menu.

Tuesday, I had dinner with Annette at Chai's, which was a nice way to unwind after a super-busy day at the office. I had the udon noodle soup, with tofu.

Wednesday, my mom made fried chicken and I got to visit with FIFO again. My mom's fried chicken is delicious. Hopefully I'll learn to make it someday, if I'm brave enough to try again.

Thursday, we were supposed to have some sleet and freezing rain. We had snow instead. It was very pretty and I got to work at home, which I appreciated. Early in the morning, I got to see a pileated woodpecker on one of the trees in my yard. That was exciting. Of course, my faithful red-bellied woodpecker, provided me with a cacophony of crashes and bangs outside all the windows of the house.

Friday night, after guitar practice, we went to Vin Rouge. I had a watercress salad special with duck liver and proschiuto stuffed figs . It's was interesting, but not something I would ever order again. In fact, I may avoid duck liver in the future. I also ordered a side order of fries, which were very good. We shared some little neck clams and oysters gratin as appetizers and they were the best part of the meal.

Last night I went to a party at the G's and had long conversations with several people. As always, the food was great. I think I've been finding their vertical-windy-terrifying driveway easier to negotiate every time.

We've been having sleeting and freezing rain all day. Everything around here is lightly coated in ice, but it should warm up and melt during the night. I got to play Desktop Support this afternoon. My mom's laptop spontaneously decided to display everything rotated 90 degrees and she brought it over to my house for me to take a look. After looking and various settings (not the useful ones), I used the Google to determine which setting to change. It made sense that it would be the configuration for the graphics card, but it behaved differently depending on which user was logged in. While it's fine now, I think the machine probably needs to be re-imaged, because it doesn't even want to reboot half the time and the screen randomly goes blank. (Thanks to CF for her background image.)

So how have my New Year's resolutions been going? Well, I've had mixed results. I haven't kept up with practicing the guitar and lifting weights. I have, however, taken my vitamins every single day since the beginning of the year. That's actually exceeding my goal. I don't believe that I've "broken" the other two resolutions, because I an opportunity to start the habits anytime. In the meantime, I'm happy to have some default nutrients, so I can live exclusively on Jacob's crackers and peanut butter.

Caffiene Free Post

Yesterday morning, my van lift died. More specifically, the lift would not close. I guess this is slightly better than other situations I've had to deal with, because I could actually get out of the van easily. It's hard to drive around with the doors open, though. When the lift folds itself up (normally a nice feature), it jams. My dad thinks that there is a loose bolt in the gear box. Unfortunately, the gear box is welded shut, so even though he can see it, there's not much he can do about it. I think he's going to work on taking what he can apart this evening. I scheduled an appointment for the van to visit Triad Mobility on Monday morning, regardless.

It's frustrating, particularly since this is a three day weekend. I hadn't envisioned sticking around the house very much. I did get to spend some quality time with FIFO last night, which was nice.

This morning, I was looking forward to drinking a nice cup of real coffee. Unfortunately, I appear to have left coffee in the pot since last weekend. Both the pot and the filter are molded. Since I want to scrub that thoroughly, I guess I'll be drinking tea instead.

Why We Fight

I saw Why We Fight tonight, and I highly recommend it. It focuses on the history of the military-industrial complex and, in my opinion, is far more effective than Fahrenheit 9/11, in part because it doesn't try to be funny. While I think Fahrenheit 9/11 is an excellent movie, Why We Fight comes across as more objective and educational.

Shoes and Socks

I received my order from baumhouse.com last week! That was every bit as exciting as I'd hoped. It's so hard to find shoes that fit me properly that getting seven new pairs was really amazing. Finally I have Bostons that I can wear in the rain. So far, the screaming bright red ones have received the most attention.

Duke's campus Subway has quit selling the chicken parmesan sub. I don't know why, since they make both fried chicken and meatball subs. It's annoying.

It was incredibly hot at work last week, because of what I believe was routine maintenance. Everything was back to normal yesterday. We've been extremely busy at work with the start of the semester, too.

On Friday, a bunch of folks at the office went to Cosmic Cantina for lunch. HC brought me back a vegetarian burrito. I hadn't had one of those in years and it was just as wonderful as I'd remembered.

At guitar practice that night, we worked primarily on Puff the Magic Dragon. It's such a fun song to play. The highlight of the evening was when Darwin the Beagle decided to climb on top of me while I was playing. My fingering accuracy deteriorates somewhat in such situations.
We went to Baba Ghannouj, at Erwin Square, for dinner. It's hard to beat a healthy falafel sandwich for dinner, which was under $6.

Saturday night, AE, JH, DS and HS came over. We played Khet and Pentago. HS seemed to have a great time and it was such fun having him over. He's so much better behaved than FIFO.
We all met LA at the Flying Fish for dinner. It was really crowded, too. LA and I tried what was supposed to be pomegranate sorbet, but it seemed to be gelato. The flavor wasn't readily identifiable. This is a good thing. I shouldn't eat dessert after a eating a large plate of oysters anyway. Overall, I had a truly excellent time that evening.

On Sunday, after an afternoon of trying to catch up on some work, my parents and I drove in the pouring rain to ACME Food & Beverage Co. They have lobster pot pie on the menu again. That's one of my favorite dishes there and they haven't had it in several years. I need to remember at a convenient time that I have leftovers in the fridge. For dessert we shared two pieces of coconut cream pie with lime curd whipped cream. That was very unusual, because the pie wasn't sweetened. That meant that the strongest flavor was the lime cream. It was quite good, but definitely surprising.

Yesterday, I had lunch with NP at the Refectory. It was nice to have Refectory food again, because I was really starting to miss it. I enjoyed a large bowl of dal. We had a lively conversation about toe socks and iPod random song algorithms.

Today I had lunch with LA at Twinnie's. We primarily discussed dog behavior and bats. This evening, my dad and I went to the Durham FM Association meeting at the Mayflower. The program, by Woody Woodard, KA3VSA, was about publicity and ham radio.

Tres Leches New Year

Last Saturday, my parents and I went to the Monet in Normandy exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art. It was extremely crowded and the exhibit hall was very cramped. I thought it was a very nice collection of his work, but it was a shame to not be able to see some of the paintings at a distance. I guess I've been jaded by seeing some of the extensive collections in Boston and Philadelphia, where you can take your time and see works from almost any distance. I'm also just not crazy about being in crowds. That said, I thought it was very cool and I recommend that local readers go, if you haven't already, by January 14th.

I've been enjoying my new Philips HS820 Compact Foldable Neckband Headphones, which I got for Christmas, from my Amazon wish list. My main criteria when picking them out was that it would be more obvious that I was wearing headphones so people at work would understand why I was not answering them. I also wanted a behind the neck band and for the headphones to sound at least quasi-decent. I'm not entirely sure yet how long I can wear them and have them stay comfortable, but I'm pleased so far. I think they do sound better than earbuds and the walkman salvaged headphones that I had been using.

One cool thing that I was introduced to this Christmas by E&ES was wrapsacks. They are reusable cloth giftbags, which are made out of pretty batik fabrics. They also have serial numbers so recipients can register and track the bags as they are reused. So overall, they are pretty, fun and less wasteful than dumping a lot of barely used paper into the landfill. The only downside is they are comparatively expensive.

On New Year's Eve, I went to JJ and JA's house for a party. It was fun talking to people and eating lots of good food. I had hoped that JA would make his Tres leches cake again and he did! I actually had two fairly large pieces. I am not a big cake fan, in general, but it is so unbelievably good.

On New Year's Day, I spent most of the day cleaning. JJ and JA came over and I made shrimp and bacon pasta for them and my parents. After dinner JJ and I played guitar and then we lit the tree for the second time this year.

That reminds me. Happy New Year everyone!