SimpleWeblog

Behold the Power of Custard

I had talked to my parents on Sunday, and my mom warned me I would be receiving a perishable gift in the mail at work on Wednesday. I was a little nervous - was she going to try to send me the traditional birthday cake?

Today I got the email from the front desk that I had a package, so I went down to there and was greeted with a "It is a really strange package. Did you order some bait or something?" Even more confused, I see that it is a huge cooler with a FedEx label and some other stickers on the outside, packing tape-sealed shut. It could be a cake! It's huge.

I take it back to my cube (needing to answer questions from co-workers about whether I have received some kind of biological agents or something) and open it up. And it turns out to be frozen custard! And not just any frozen custard, it is Kopps, my favorite frozen custard! 10 pints, hot fudge, and pecans. OK, I don't really like pecans, but the custard may be the best thing about the state of Wisconsin, and the hot fudge is what first taught me the wonderful difference between hot fudge and mere chocolate sauce.

I decide to share with a few people at work, who I have been telling for years about the joys of frozen custard over mere ice cream. We actually needed to wait for it to thaw out a bit, getting it up to the good custard temperature - they had done an excellent packing job with the dry ice in the cooler. Finally, all my boasting was put to the test. And they all agreed with me! The smooth, creamy vanilla. The rich, flavorful chocolate. Ohhhh, so good. And some other flavors - turtle, Mr. Fudgie (a new one for me! mint custard with fudge!), cookies and cream... all so yummy.

And it turns out they have a regular way to ship frozen custard anywhere in the U.S.. I may go broke, but it removes a big reason to ever move back there. But it was still a great, unexpected, birthday gift. Best birthday gift ever?

CD Store Adventure

Yesterday, I go to a CD store to buy the new CD by the Extra Glenns, Martial Arts Weekend. It combines the talents of two great artists, the Mountain Goats and Franklin Bruno. This is a big deal in my little music world, so it is one of those rare times I want to go get it on release day. Of course, I realize this may not be a big deal to the world at large, so I go to the local Streetlight Records, which usually has a pretty good selection of indie stuff, and has always had some Mountain Goats stuff when I have been there, whereas most big music stores don't have any. They even already had it listed on their website - how could I go wrong?

So I get there, and I look in the "indie/punk" section (why to all music stores have to categorize?) under "E". No luck. I look under "M" in case it is filed under Mountain Goats. Nothing but 2 lonely Mountain goats albums. I look by the cheap new releases - maybe they got actual placement! Nope. Nothing on the called out albums along the top of the racks. I look under "B" to see if it is filed under "Bruno, Franklin" but it's not.

So I give up and ask. They look in the computer and see they have 6 in the store. Yes! But where could they be? The employees look in the places I just looked. They look in the miscellaneous sections for all the relevant letters. Nothing. They ask if Franklin Bruno had been in a band, and I am able to remember "Nothing Painted Blue" so we look under "N" with no luck. One guy goes to the back to look. I wait, and start finding other things I want. Is this a ploy to get me to buy more?

The guy comes back without the CD. "It is now my goal in life to find where these CDs are," he tells me. I feel bad that this is so difficult, but am excited by his enthusiasm for the task. He looks around more, and disappears into the back again.

I find something I actually need to buy in the meantime.

And he finally comes back, with the CD. "It was under some piles of other things in the back."

Yes!

So, while I wish they treated this album like the special event it is, I am impressed they put in the effort to make sure I got it. Thanks!

The Simple Weblog Theme Song

Yes, thanks to the fine people at King Everything, this site now has its own theme song. And it is great fun! So give it a listen and get your own theme song for your web site! You know you're jealous.

Coolest thing ever

I just need to get the technical kinks worked out, and it will be all set. Hopefully tomorrow! And then I may try to start a little meme of my own...

Shhh!

Don't tell anyone, it's my birthday. To celebrate, I am playing hooky.

Book Review: All My Sins Remembered (Haldeman)

Wow, it has been a while since I actually finished a book so I can do a review of it...

I really enjoyed this book. It is a science fiction book that tells the story of a man who wanted to join the foreign service to leave earth, but gets recruited into a secret organization that turns him into a spy and assassin by overlaying his personality with other people's. Every time he finished a mission and becomes "himself" again, he questions what he has done as part of the mission. It is a neat set-up, and as usual Haldeman's writing is extremely engaging, making it hard to put down. This continues the very obvious anti-war theme that Forever War was also full of, but there was only one point where I felt like it became a little too preachy. I think this also addressed the issues of personality, what makes someone themself, and how conditioning from other people can affect that. It was an enjoyable read, and makes me think I should try reading some of his other books, although if they all keep the same theme I probably need to space them out a little.

Scientology

I should probably post this regularly - Operation Clambake is a really good source of info about scientology. The FAQ for kids makes me think of how terribly unfair that is for kids.

Digital Camera

Yes, I am finally getting around to playing with the digital camera.

There were better pics, but I'll keep pictures that actually show what I look like much harder to find for now, thanks.

Genre Death Match

I think more music genres should have the guts to include intelligent in their names!

Movie Review: Crumb (Zwigoff)

Crumb was a really depressing film to me. It was entertaining, but there were just so many sad things in it that it made me a little sad. Robert's relation to the outside world, how they interpret his comics, his family, the stories about his father, his views on what is wrong with the world... all these jumbled together ideas. I've never really read any of his comics, and this movie doesn't particularly inspire me to, but it does seem like he was able to use them to channel a lot of his emotions into something productive, and it may have helped him get a better handle on the world than his brothers. Which is weird, because he has a very unusual take on the world. But the movie does a good job of presenting his story, and some of the viewpoints surrounding his work, and letting you make up your mind about it, although he is definitely shown to be somewhat sympathetic. The director is his friend, after all. But I enjoyed it, it made me think about things, and I got an interesting view into other people's lives.

EFF History

This was a nice story about the history of the EFF. It sometimes makes me sad we need organizations to defend our rights, but it makes me very happy that there are people out there willing to keep doing it. I feel bad I don't do more to help.

Women in CS

The Commonwealth Club of California (yeah, the one from the KQED shows), is having a lecture next Tuesday based on the results of a survey about women in CS programs at universities. I'm very interested in the topic, and it will be especially neat to see this talk since I was actually a research subject for the research this is based on during my undergrad days at CMU. We'll see if I skewed the results!

Web site

I seem to not be putting any time into the web site project these days. Maybe that's ok, until I am really inspired. I miss the bay area concert website, so I sometimes think about working on something like that, but that makes me think I just need to stick with the original review site plan. But the other projects seem to be going OK, so I'm not too worried. Really, I need to stop going out if I am going to make any progress. And stop this IM thing. Ugh. No one tells you this stuff is dangerous!

Band Songs

Maybe, or maybe not, we'll see, but I do need to write this down somewhere:

Thanks for not laughing to my face.

Movie Review: Brotherhood of the Wolf

Brotherhood of the Wolf is a French film that combines a historical setting with some kung-fu fighting and werewolf intrigue to make a film that would have been much better if it had been a little shorter. There was some gratuitous extra camerawork (freeze frame! slow motion!) that distracted from the fight scenes and a few other scenes, which was unfortunate. The story was interesting for a while, but there were a few too many unnecessary twists as it went on. I won't spoil the surprises, I guess, although I was quite happy with the resolution of the main plot point. Overall, it seemed like an OK action movie with a little bit nicer than average production values (except the lame CGI!) for the historical setting. Oh well.

Movie Review:Series 7: The Contenders

Series 7 is a movie designed to feel like the ultimate reality TV show: the contestants have to kill each other, last one left alive lives. It is a fantastic premise, with lots of clever bits, but a lot of the scenes fall flat. Several of the characters really seem to be acting, and the nurse comes across as a weak stereotype. There also seem to be some inconsistencies with how the game works, and they never really try to explain it. It might have been easier to get into the movie if they had a little more set-up, or it was more completely over-the-top at the beginning, since I did think it picked up a lot towards the end. I guess it seemed close at first to being something that could have been a real show, but then the unexplained parts, or apparent inconsistencies, made it too hard to suspend that disbelief. Oh well. By the end, when they had the student video art project, and the dramatic re-enactments it was really entertaining, and seemed to do a better job of parodying the whole genre. Overall, I am glad I watched it, but would be careful recommending it to someone else. If you're patient, though, I think there is enough payoff to make it worthwhile.

Road Trip

Well, I made it back from Santa Barbara in one piece, although certain pieces were quite sore after the ~5 hour drive. It was nice to get away for a while, and I had a lot of fun, and it makes me really unexcited about going to work tomorrow. Not an unusual mood to be in lately, is it?

Concert Report: Noelle Price

Deep in the twisty mountain road area of Santa Barbara exists a little place called Cold Springs Tavern. This is not exactly the kind of place I am used to seeing music, since there were several pieces of dead animals on the walls. But my friend down here knew a person playing there, so we went. She was actually pretty decent, singing and playing guitar and having another guy playing lead guitar. All the songs were her own, and some of them were pretty interesting. I think my favorite was the "Chucking Altoids" song. My friend tried to get her to sing her song about malaria immunization medication, which she tried but couldn't exactly remember. She seemed to really enjoy playing, though, which is really one of the main criteria for whether a performance is enjoyable to watch, so that was nice. She has a good voice, and the songwriting was good enough to keep it interesting. Not what I would have expected from a little set of wood buildings on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

Evolution of hypertext

Lance Knobel refers to the Commonplace Book as being similar to a weblog. That is certainly neat, as is the rest of the discussion of the history of non-linear texts. I can't help but think of this as a Dead Media Project entry waiting to happen. But all media is doomed to death at some point, right?

Weekend

I am going down to Santa Barbara this weekend, which will be my excuse for not posting anything here. I will save the excuse of not having anything interesting to say or link to until later.

Drupal

Drupal is a blogging tool I want to check out. Maybe if I put this link here I will remember to do that. It looks like it has a more flexible architecture, so maybe it could work for the infamous review site project.

Morpheus

I had been having good luck with morpheus lately, which has probably spurred on the most recent round of cd purchasing. All of a sudden, though, it doesn't seem to want to play with my firewall. What the heck? Stupid machines.

Concert Report: Jacinta

The show was supposed to be a Portugese female vocalist doing a tribute to Bessie Smith and doing some more traditional Portugese and Brazilian songs. Not something you see every day. She had a backup band of a trumpeter, upright bass player, and pianist. They were good, except the trumpet player, who couldn't always keep up. She started the show with "My Funny Valentine", a song that was ruined for me to take seriously by hearing it so many times on Ron Cuzner's jazz show way back in high school. But I felt like I was at a real jazz concert! She then went into a bunch of Bessie Smith songs, and I really enjoyed the songs but her voice was not right for them. I'm not sure if some of it was just due to my preconceptions, but her voice was very clean and not very emotional, and I think the songs would have benefitted from some more texture and emotion. The friend I went with also commented that she never really changed the intensity of her voice, which I think led to the emotionless feeling. It made me really want to see a good blues singer, cause I really like blues songs. After the intermission she played a few portugese songs, which seemed to fit her voice better but were not as interesting to me. Then she played a few american swing songs, which I enjoyed more, and she did some nice scatting across parts of them. At one point she and the trumpeter went back and forth, which was cool, although the trumpet solos kept fading into nothing. He should have gone for it! The crowd was pretty responsive, though, which was nice. They even got an encore, although it turned out to be the "These are a few of my favorite things" song from The Sound of Music, which really was the wrong direction for an encore I felt. So we left in the middle of it after putting some money in the tip jar. Overall, a nice concert, especially one with no cover, but it didn't really all come together. I did also learn that Espresso Garden has good sandwiches, though.

Movie Review: Enemy of the State

Enemy of the State is the story of Will Smith playing a lawyer who unwittingly gets involved with evidence that a secret group of surveillance rogues within the NSA needs to get back. I know, this sounds like the plot of any number of cheesy movies, including ones starring Richard Grieco. And, well, this one was cheesy. It did have some good actors in it, and Will Smith can be fun to watch, but this movie really didn't make a lot of sense. Some of the technology the surveillance people had was stupidly implausible. And sometimes they didn't use the technology as effectively as they could have. It also relied on Will Smith's character to make an implausibly stupid mistake to keep the plot going. I've said this several times before and will probably need to say it again: if you are spending this much money to make a movie, can't you pay someone to make sure the movie makes sense? Doesn't anyone care about this? So, I guess you could do worse for an action movie, but don't expect anything unusual. Well, heavy-handed speeches about electronic privacy aren't common in action movies, I guess. And they probably never will be after 9/11. Until the ACLU starts funding movies... hmmm...

Movie Review: Valmont (Forman)

Valmont is based on the same novel that inspired Dangerous Liaisons and that strange Sarah Michelle Gellar remake. So it has all the period costumes, nice settings, and lots of people with accents running around sleeping with each other. It was enjoyable, very well made, and everyone on screen was very watchable. A little better than I would have expected if I had really expected something beforehand. It was a little strange to think about a society where wives and husbands and lovers are all accepted. It is definitely not what I am used to. I also wondered about the scene where Annette Benning's character receives a letter that she hides from Valmont. We weren't supposed to know what the letter was about, were we? With the joking around going on during the movie I wasn't sure if I had missed something. Other people who had already seen this said I hadn't.

Cherry Models

We went to eat lunch at the new-ish pasta place by Border's. You know the place, it used to be a cherry orchard and was turned into a strip mall and apartments. (I haven't even been here three years, how can I have a story like that already? "I used to drive past a cherry orchard on that corner every day on my way to work! Now it has a damned starbucks!") Anyways, afterwards we decided to go visit the cherry and gifts store that is the only remains of the orchard that used to be there. A photographer from the San Jose Mercury News was there and asked us if he could take our pictures. Apparently they are moving the building to a new location and they are doing a little story on it. So we got to walk around the store and be unsuspecting cherry models. Which is funny, but not quite enough to counteract the feeling of this farm that has been around for over 100 years finally being displaced. I must have come out here at the wrong time because no one is trying to figure out how to get high-tech companies to coexist with other industries.

Of course, Powell's is still not hiring, so I'm not sure what my backup plan is.

NoisePop 2002 Band MP3s

Well, Roger and I splurged and got all-show passes to the NoisePop 2002 music festival. Now we need to figure out what shows to actually go see. Step one is actually listening to the bands. So let's get started:

Adult. (Is this the right band? and why is this the only actual mp3 I can find?

The Aislers Set

Death Cab for Cutie

The Dismemberment Plan

The Donnas

For Stars

The Glands

The Good Life

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci

Guided By Voices

I Am Spoonbender

M Ward

Modest Mouse (Heh, I know that one well enough already!)

The New Pornographers

Oranger

The Pattern

Paula Frazer

Pedro the Lion

Preston School of Industry

Stratford 4

Virgil Shaw

A bunch were not easily findable, so I will try to dig a little more later, but this should be a good start.

Laid-off: The Flash Cartoon

I still think this flash movie about what happens after being laid off is funny. I hope this doesn't make me insensitive, but we probably all need a little more humor at this point.

Soccer: Pick-up game

The weather was actually nice enough to go play today, and we finally got to try out the new fields that Palo Alto made. They were nice! The game was good, too. People were very friendly, and most of us were suffering from having not played for a while. I played center fullback and had lots of running to do since we were playing short teams. Considering how long it had been, I think I did ok. I did get quite muddy, which is always fun. My right ankle got a little twisted or something, though, so I might be walking a little funny tomorrow.

Blood Donation

After far too long of a delay I donated blood today. You really should go do this if you meet the requirements, some of which do seem silly. When the person I was going to go with couldn't because she was sick I was unable to find a replacement person to take that appointment. That's no good.

I also learned I am A-.

Last days

Today was my boss's last day at work before she begins her crazy sailing adventure. It is sad for me, because she was a fantastic boss and I learned a lot from her in addition to her just being a cool person to work with and sit next to, but I am happy for her because she is so excited.

It is difficult to stay focused on work when all these people are leaving and making big life decisions around you. I seem to be handling it by keeping myself distracted by going out with friends a lot.

Which is what I need to go do right now instead of coming up with a real entry for here.

Personal Issues

What are you supposed to put on your website about personal issues you are having? Even people whose blogs I don't usually read talk about this and make me wonder - and they have a lot more serious things to discuss. With all the work stuff going on, though, I sometimes wonder what I should or shouldn't say.

I actually dug through my archives a bit and looked at some of those really old entries. The most surprising thing wasn't really what I was writing about but the fact that I wrote so much more back then. Makes me think I should try a little harder these days to include more of my thinking about things I'm mentioning or linking to. But who wants to say the wrong thing and have it archived forever?

Relationship Graph

This entry is being posted so I remember to send this to the appropriate people. Very funny, although I'm not sure everything should flow back to "Stranger" instead of "Acquaintance".

Second Harvest

My team from work went to the local Second Harvest Food Bank and helped sort food. It was actually fun, and the 2 hours went by very quickly. We took boxes of food from grocery stores containing dented cans and boxes and cases of things where something had gone bad and some overstocks and took out the edible food and separated it into different categories, like beverages or packaged food or paper goods. People were either garbage people (taking out the items deemed inedible), unpackers (checking if items are editable), sorters (putting the edible stuff into the right category boxes), or boxmakers (cleaning the boxes the sorters used). 2 regular volunteers trained us on the steps and moved the pallets in and out as we filled them. Over 2 hours we sorted something like 8000 pounds of food, which I guess is OK. It was unfortunate they didn't really discuss how the programs work, especially where the food goes after we sort it. It was definitely a good team activity, and it was nice to do some volunteer work again. I really should do it more often.

Short digital film

So a friend is enthusiastic about a short film script he just finished with a friend. Being the only person in our circle of friends to own a digital camcorder, I get to be involved. The first step: finding some video editing software. DigitalVideoEditing seems to be a nice site that has info and reviews of mid to high end products. I think we'll try to go for one of the packages that includes Adobe Premiere. Why the packages that also include a card and cable cost less than just the software I may never know. Why you can't easily buy just the cable (Fry's didn't have it!) I will also always wonder about. I hope this project is not doomed to technological failure, although it would be a change from the usual lack-of-time failure.

Novel writing aftermath

A story about Nanowrimo makes me really hope the guy doesn't lose too much money over this. And I hope he is able to keep it going as the fun, community building event it was. (And I say this as someone who only hung out with other people I already knew and didn't finish...)

Maybe I need to make a donation.

Bad day

I had a really nice weekend. I got to work and I was in an incredibly good mood for a Monday morning. And then I start getting little clues that something is up. And then I get the full story - layoffs because the last quarter wasn't up to expectations. Layoffs including people I really considered friends. Not good at all.

So it becomes one of those re-evaluation times. Where am I? Where do I want to be? How am I going to get there?

Emotional Maturity

I occassionally feel like I have reverted to the emotional maturity level of a middle schooler.

And I'll put this post out here as a way of applying that disclaimer to the world at large, so maybe I will feel better about it when it happens again. Oh yes, that is a "when" and not an "if".

Concert Report: Lisa Dewey, ARLO

This concert was at the Espresso Garden Cafe, which turns out to be kind of a neat little coffee shop with some interesting wall paintings. They also had what looked like good sandwiches, although they close the kitchen when the band starts so I didn't get to try one. They did still serve wine, though, which is a little strange in the coffee shop setting, but nice.

ARLO was the first band - two acoustic guitar playing female singers, a bass guitar, lead guitar, and drums. Both singers were decent, and the songs were reasonable folk-rock kind of things. They seemed to have a lot of fans in the crowd, and the show was entertaining. I didn't pay close attention to much of the lyrics, but it did seem a little simplistic thematically at times. But that could have been the wine's fault.

Lisa Dewey and the Lotus Life were up next, with Lisa playing acoustic guitar and singing with a lead guitar, bass guitar, and drums to help her out. She has a really cool voice, especially when using it in some of the lower ranges. The rest of the band was also good, very solid. Some of the songs started to sound a little similar in the setting they were in, and the sound was not as full as it was on the album. Everyone in my group really liked the "Taking out the trash" song. Heh. She also had some good crowd banter at the start, although it became a little strange (maybe too many in-jokes?) as it went on.

Overall, it was a nice show in a nice setting (although it would have been even better if we had gotten there early enough to get a table to go with our chairs).

Paranoid

I'm starting to think too much about other people reading this now. Ugh.

(Paranoid enough, apparently, to forget to hit the submit button on this before I went out for the evening)

breakfast? lunch? milkshakes?

Whatever it was, it was nice. And made me think of The Milkshake Song. But don't read too much into that.

Bubblesleeve

I would like to say that I am addicted to the bubblesleeve for storing my cds. I wish they were easier to find, or that I could order them in larger quantities for a discount. They allow me to cram far more cds into my shoebox than I could with those awful jewel cases. I'm not sure what I will do if I start buying vinyl.

Mean time to email

I sometimes wonder what happens that causes people to not email for a length of time. It is funny how expectations get set.

Meta-review, I love you

An interview with one of my favorite music reviewers that talks about his reasons for writing music reviews. Someday, I may actually get back to working on that project, although the more I read things from the online music community the more I think I don't know enough to write about it. I know, that doesn't stop me from writing about anything else here...

What was the question again?

Watching the repeat of the Errol Morris First Person show about Christopher Langan again I decided to go online and see if I could find more about his theory that explains life, the universe, and everything. Well, here it is. I didn't take the time to read it carefully - at first glance it comes across like a cross between meaningless deconstructionist academic journal writing and metaphysics. Which isn't too appealing, and makes me question people's refusals to agree or disagree with it when asked. And when it gets referenced in places as terrible as this message board I really start to wonder. Somehow, any elite group making decisions about how to run the world doesn't seem like a good idea, even if they are good problem solvers or really do want things to be better or whatever. There is a lot of benefit to be gained from the interplay of a diverse group of people.

2001 Statistics

• 347 Entries
• 65 movie reviews
• 23 soccer entries
• 16 comic reviews
• 9 uses of the word "fantastic"
• 8 concert reports
• 7 book reviews
• 5 references to the Mountain Goats
• 1 picture
• 1 entry in Japanese

Going back makes me think of all the entries I never went back to do, like the missing movies and books and comics and concerts. Oh well, I guess I will not be a succesful archivist. I'm actually surprised by how many entries didn't fit in the review categories. I guess I tried to be a little more weblog-ish some of the time. Well, let's hope next year is even more exciting.

Happy New Year

Happy freakin' new year! Heh. Really, though, I hope 2002 treats everyone better than 2001. 2001 was quite the transition year in a lot of ways. I'm not quite sure what my 2002 goals are (I don't want to call them resolutions) but I am cautiously optimistic. And I wish anyone reading this the best of luck with their goals for the year. Now go do something unexpectedly nice for someone else.