November 2003 Archives

Carole went back to Tucson today, this time with Buddy. After she pulled out, I was looking in the now empty garage, and saw my motorcycle. It was time for a ride.

I waited until the early afternoon for the day to heat up, and left about 1:00pm. The tank was on reserve, with 168 miles showing on the trip odometer, so I bee-lined to the gas station at Duarte and Rosemead. From there, I didn't really know where I was going to go, but once I hit the 210 I headed towards Pasadena to go up Angeles Crest. I toyed with the idea of Palmdale, but once I hit the 3000 foot elevation sign, I knew it was way too cold for that. I went past Red Box to Upper Big Tujunga Canyon, which I'd done one other time, so I knew it would be fast and fun. I turned south on Angeles Forest Highway, and started to go southwest onto Big Tujunga Canyon, but wimped out and eased back onto AFH for the ride back to ACH.

All in all, about 70 miles of fun. It felt good to get back on the bike. If only it had been about 10 degrees warmer.

Buddy left for Tucson this morning. It was kinda sad.

The kids and I had an nice Thanksgiving dinner at my sister Carol's at 2:00 on Thursday. My nephew Sheehan 'learned to fish' - he cooked the turkey, carved the first side of white meat, and did a great job.

We walked up the driveway for the McConnell festivities. Dinner was planned for 5:00, but Rick's turkey fryer went on the fritz, so it was closer to 6:25 before things got started. Since we had just eaten at my sister's, it was no problem for us, but Susie was getting really hungry by the time she got to eat. I brought enchilladas - my traditional Thanksgiving dish. They sufferred a little from the long wait, but everyone said they were good.

Pat didn't want anyone to talk about my situation, so we didn't - too much.

All in all, it was a good day. A little too much food, maybe a little too much noise from the little kids - but nothing unmanageable. Logan spent the night, but went home with Pat and Harvey about noon.

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I spent the morning doing stuff around the house - moving my books from the family room into the cupboard that's back in my bedroom, and organizing the file cabinet.

In the afternoon, I ran a bunch of errands - those little trips that take way too long and cost way more than you initially expected and hoped. I bought some file folders, file hangers, and envelopes at Staples; I bought a couple of folding chairs at Cost Plus to replace the ones Carole took to Tucson; I bought an apple pie and a French Silk pie at Baker's Square to take to my sister's for Thanksgiving; I got some sodas, ice, and cheese at Ralphs to take to Ann's for Thanksgiving; and I picked up 20 lbs. of cat food at Petco. (They didn't have any - and I mean any - hairball control, so I got the regular Science Diet Adult formula.)

There was too much traffic, some guy at Staples insisted on trying his declined credit card over and over and over, Ralph's is still on strike/lockout so it was a zoo, and Cost Plus only had walnut finish chairs. But, Baker's Square has the holiday pie process totally nailed.

Carole came back from Tucson for the holidays. What a day.

I finally got my photo albums posted - use the Photo item on the main navigation bar at the top of each window.

I've been using Feedreader, a freeware RSS aggregator, for about 6 months now, and am generally happy with it. But it has some problems that leave me open to considering other RSS tools.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81)
British Prime Minister

After having the last five years of my life based on the first two, I'm on my way to becoming one of the third.

Carole moved to Tucson over the weekend.

I almost always use my ATM card to purchcase gas, but had a couple of occasions over the weekend to use cash.

Why, when you put in $20 for gas, does the pump go to super-slow mode with 15¢, 20¢, even 25¢ left to pump? Is this really necessary? This morning, the Arco station at Santa Anita and Foothill went super-slow with 15¢ left to go; each penny took 2 seconds to pump.

Now, my time is certainly no more valuable than anyone else's, but can't the pumps go slow with 5¢ left? Does it really take 15¢ for the pump to get ready to stop? My cynical side says the vendor wants you to get frustrated at the delay, and stop pumping with a few penny's left on the tab.

"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility."

Eleanor Roosevelt

The picture tube in Dad's old TV was fading away, so I sent my sister some links to various replacement possibilities from the Best Buy website, and they want shopping last Monday. USC-UCLA play on Saturday, so there was an understandable deadline.

Justin and I went over to install his new set on Wednesday night. He got a good-looking 27" RCA - he really liked the brightness, color separation, and overall picture once we got it going. (I tuned his cable box to Cartoon Network - a lot of high contrast, colorful stuff to make an evaluation with.)

His next step is a new VCR/DVD combo - hopefully Jeremy can help him install it later today.

en·co·mi·um ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-km-m)
n. pl. en·co·mi·ums or en·co·mi·a (-m-)

1. Warm, glowing praise.
2. A formal expression of praise; a tribute.

[Latin encmium, from Greek enkmion (epos), (speech) praising a victor, neuter of enkmios, of the victory procession, from enkmios, of the victory procession : en-, in; see en-2 + kmos, celebration.]

November 16, 2003
By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY
Original article

CASCAIS, Portugal, Nov. 12 — It is easy to imagine the next America's Cup here in 2007. It is easy to picture high-tech yachts gliding offshore instead of the cargo ships that were plodding by in the sunshine earlier this week. Or to imagine Russell Coutts and his formidable band of Alinghi mercenaries driving their luxury cars or taking their training runs along the pretty coastal road with its ocean views and seafood shacks. Or to imagine Patrick Monteiro de Barros, commodore of the Clube Naval de Cascais, greeting the sailing world in any one of the six languages he speaks.

Carole turned 41 today. She had an interesting 41st year...

The boys and I took her out to Claim Jumper for dinner. Seriously too much food - we declared Tuesday a left-over day. I still have left-over's from Saturday's trip to Outback for Jason's birthday.

We got her a 50th anniversary exhaust plate as a gift - she really wanted one. I ordered it a few weeks ago, to make sure it got here in time.

No need to frost. A little light dusting with confectioners' sugar is the most you'll want.

Preheat oven to 325°. Beat butter and sugar together for 10 minutes with an electric mixer. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Add flour and lemon extract and mix to blend. Fold in 7-Up. Pour into heavily greased Bundt pan and bake 1 to 1¼ hours. Cool in the pan. Serves 16.

From Ruby Wahlgren, by way of my mother-in-law Pat McConnell.

Mix until well moistened; pour into greased loaf pan(s). Bake at 350° for 60 minutes

From Terry LaSource.

Break bread into bottom of greased 9" x 13" pan. If using sausage, sprinkle it on. Sprinkle both cheeses on top. Mix together milk and egss; pour evenly over casserole. Cover with plastic and refrigerate over night; remove plastic before cooking. Bake at 325° for 30-45 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Temple City was assigned to referee two games on Sunday - a GU-16 semi-final at 9:00am, followed by a BU-16 semi-final at 11:00am.

I started the GU-16 game as an AR, on the vocal team's side. The center ref made an unfortunate call about 10 minutes before the first-half ended, whistling a foul on a semi-breakaway. Only a couple of people actually heard the whistle on my sideline, and as the play continued the attacker got some daylight and blasted the ball into the goal. The CR called me over, told me what happened, and asked me what his options were. I told him that the book said he had to call the play back and restart with a direct kick at the point that he had blown his whistle, but that he could really do anything he wanted, and I'd back him up. He took the high road, and brought the play back - much to the dismay of the team on my side. The direct kick was high.

As I was telling another referee later, referees are taught to make a few bad calls each game, so that the losing team has someone to blame their loss on other than themselves...

The center ref tore up a leg muscle 3 minutes before half-time -- the field conditions were bad, with lots of peaks and valleys to mess up your stride. I took over as center, with Randie grabbing my flag. The rest of the game was uneventful.

I did the center of the BU-16 game - two teams from the same region. Nothing unusual during play, but a few of the boys were referees, so I had a running discussion on some of the finer points of game management during the game.

Jason was out of town on his birthday, so we did his birthday dinner this afternoon. Beforehand, the boys and I went to see Master and Commander, the new movie based on two of the twenty Aubrey/Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian.

I've been a big O'Brian fan for many years, and own all of the A/M books. The movie was very true to the overall atmosphere of the books: the sad, dreary life below decks, the harshness of months at sea, and the friendship between the Captain and the doctor. Russel Crowe with blonde hair closely matched the descriptions of Aubrey, and he did a more than credible job in the role.

A freakish thunderstorm rolled through Southern California last night - cells of heavy rain, hail, snow in Wilmington, and cars stranded in 3 feet of standing water just south of the 105. No big problems at home, although Justin got caught in the beginning of the rain on his way home from school.

The power at work is always flaky, and a few systems took some hits. Atlantic is particularly sensitive to voltage spikes and valleys, and Cory and I decided to leave it unplugged overnight as a precaution. Normally the computer room UPS provides conditioned power, but an outage earlier in the week left the UPS in a fault state, so the computer room equipment got raw, unconditioned power during the storm.

Back in 1997, this recipe made the e-mail rounds under the title "$250 Nieman-Marcus Cookies".

** Measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder.

Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla; mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar, and nuts. Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes at 375°. Makes 112 cookies.

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The 100 Years War, as seen through the eyes of an 18-year old English archer. Not Sharpe, but what is?

I've seen many 5D license plates in the last few months, but today I saw my first 5E, on a snappy little dark blue Mini-Cooper, going west on the 210 through downtown Pasadena.

See My first 5C plate for some background.

I have a treasured first edition from the UK that I keep wrapped in cellophane in the top cupboard of my bedroom. I first started reading Quiller back in the early 70's, when I stumbled upon one of the early ones during a bored afternoon at my Grandmother's, and have been hooked ever since. Jon Peralez (quiller.net) and I have been running the Quiller mailing list for over six years now.

Nothing is better (well, almost) than finding a new book from a favorite author, waiting to be read.

After a long hiatus, a new publisher got the rights to Balalaika, and I had to have a new copy to re-read. It arrived from Amazon last Friday.

“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”

-Patrick Overton

I was originally scheduled to referee a BU-16 playoff game at 11:00 this morning. When I got there, another team of referees was doing the pre-game check-ins. I found Nelson - he said he sent me an e-mail moving me to the 1:00 GU-16 game, so that the refs from Palos Verdes could be assessed for the center's National badge. I had nothing planned, so told him I'd be back at 12:30.

When I got back to the park, it was apparent the center was not quite ready for prime time. The game between So. Pasadena and Arcadia was fast, physical, and end-to-end, and the man was indecisive and often out of position. Oh, well.

My GU-16 game was well played, but not as tough as the BU-16 game. Pasadena and So. El Monte were evenly matched, and came to play. My ARs were first-rate, and we got a nice rapport going early on that carried throughout the game. So. El Monte scored on a deflection off a defender's head, and won 1-0 to advance to the Area semi-finals next week at the Rose Bowl.

After the game, a Pasadena parent came up to me and said it had been one of the better refereed games he'd seen in a long time. It made me feel way better than it probably should have.

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After a day of refereeing and chores, I went to work after dinner to catch up on a few things and hang the pictures I had taken down from my previous office. I stopped at OSH and got a new set of anchors, and brought the cordless drill, so the picture hanging went quickly. (I keep a hammer and level in my desk drawer for just such an occasion.)

I poked around for some boxes for Carole, but didn't find any. I did find a couple of left-over bulletin boards that Karen had asked about for her kids' church rooms, so I took them over. I stayed and chatted a while - Jake was being silly, as usual.

I'm going to make these for Thanksgiving.

Broken Glass Cake

Oatmeal Cookies

Justin had an assignment in his science class to build a car. The teacher provided a motor, and each group had to build a car that would go around a 5-foot table-top - apparently the more times you went around the table, and the closer you stayed to the outside edge, the better your grade.

I'm not sure how or why, but Justin wound up doing the entire project, with little if any help from his group mates. I provided some technical assistance, and acted as a sounding board for some of his design ideas. Here's what he came up with:

As you can see, he's kinda got a thing for masking tape. The body is a 4"x6" piece of panelling left over from the kitchen table area. He scammed some Lego parts from Jeremy for both axles and the wheels (including the rear wheels, which came off the one Lego car that Jeremy said he COULD NOT USE). The initial design had four wheels like the fronts, with the motor driving the inside of one of the rear wheels (the outside of the tires have ridges). In a trial he found that if the motor was tight enough to drive the wheel, it would force the wheel off its axle. He substituted the forbidden wheels, and things worked much better.

We tossed around a few ideas on how to make an adjustable front axle, so he could find a good turning radius. We considered and discarded things like: using velcro to attach the axle to the body; using binder clips; bolting the axle itself to the body. In the end, he decided on using an extender Lego plate, attached to the body with a bolt, washers and a wing-nut for adjustability.

Carole was out with her friend Terry, so he layed down a five-foot diameter circle on the garage floor, and ran a couple of tests after setting the final steering angle. He thought the criteria for an A grade was 7 laps in one minute, and the car was doing a lap every 7 seconds, so he was happy. The grade would be based on the best of up to three attempts.

It took a while to get everything in order - a lot of trial and error. But we had a good time - this kind of thing is a great way to teach science.

Post-script: The car did 13 laps in the minute allowed on the first try. After his graded run, he tried some laps with multiple 9-volts hooked up in series, but found the front wheels couldn't handle the extra power without sliding.

Jason, Jeremy, and I went out to see Matrix Revolution on the IMAX at Universal City Walk last night.

I never really got into the whole Neo/Zion pseudo-religious thing, and the brief love story scene when Trinity dies was a little weird, but I still enjoyed the movie, if only for the spectacle of seeing a high-end CGI-based film on the big IMAX screen with the serious sound system.

We drove around afterwards to find some food, and wound up by chance at a Carl's Jr. at Magnolia and Vineland in (I guess) North Hollywood. As we left the drive through (with Jeremy cleaning up some theater soda he had spilled on the back seat floor - errgh), Jason spotted a sign reading 'Super Duper Video'. He spent a few years working at a Super Duper Video store about a half-mile away from the house. Amazingly, he had worked a couple of shifts at this North Hollywood store. The sign on the street still read Super Duper Video, but the actual store is now a just-opened Hollywood Video - a step up from the small, family-owned Super Duper chain.

We finished up telling all the local family members about the upcoming separation. We started on Tuesday afternoon, driving up to Big Bear with Logan. We told Pat, Harvey, and Crystal all at once.

Pat didn't take it well, understandably. Harvey was somewhat stoic, but he and I shared some quite conversation while the ladies shared their own opinions. Crystal was great - she was supportive, helped deflect an awkward phone call, and generally stepped up to the plate.

The next stop was Rob and Yvette, at her condo. I predicted that Rob would be cool, and he didn't disappoint - he rarely does. Yvette had gone through a similar situation, and offered some good advice. Both offered to talk things through if I wanted, and after a while I plan to take them up on it.

We got to Karen and Cary next at about 8:00 (still Tuesday night). They were like the others: surprised, sad, but supportive. (I had a nice long phone conversation with Karen on Wednesday afternoon.)

Randy and Suzie were next. More surprise, sadness, and support. Randy was cool, and Suzie is always the best. Randy wasn't shy about asking the tough questions, but he did it to try to understand, not to cause any pain.

We tried to track down Rick, but he was on the road, so we arranged to meet him and Ann at their house on Wednesday morning. More of the same - Rick asked the tough questions, and was supportive. Ann and I had always been on the same McConnell in-law wavelength, so she came through for me like always.

We met my sister at her office late Wednesday morning. I'm glad I've got her as my sister.

My late Wednesday schedule was weird, so I arranged to come by my dad's house this (Thursday) morning. It also went well. He asked about Carole's parents and the fire, and we talked a little USC football before I had to leave to get to work.

None of it was fun, but my family (on both sides) came through for me, and I'll always appreciate it. Thanks everyone.

I used this as my wallpaper for a few months.

The weather turned cold and rainy starting last Wednesday, which helped the firefighters get everything under control. My mother-in-law had evac'ed down to her sister's house in Mission Viejo, and Crystal and her family had gone to stay with friends in Bakersfield.

Things settled enough that they let city workers and their families return to Big Bear on Saturday, with other residents allowed up on Sunday. Crystal and Terry were both going to be very busy once they got back, so Carole met her at Shelley's in Victorville late Saturday afternoon, and brought Logan home to stay with us for a few days.

He's a cool kid. He hangs with each of the boys for a while, playing video games with Jeremy, or drawing, or playing outside with Justin, or just being silly with Jas. He wandered into Jason's room, and he decided to dress Logan up in his hockey gear.

It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept.

- Calvin, to Hobbes

I was documenting the new license borrowing setup, and had the following sentence:

If this feature is a group->royalty feature, the standard number of licenses are checked out;

but it didn't feel right. I pulled out my handy-dandy Gregg Reference Manual, Ninth Edition, and did some searching. I finally found ¶1024:

When subjects expressing periods of time, amounts of money, or quantities represent a total amount, use singular verbs. When these subjects represent a number of individual units, use plural verbs.

So, I revised:

If this feature is a group->royalty feature, the standard number of licenses is checked out;

We told the kids today. They seemed to take it as well as could be expected.