Poem - Condestruction

CONDESTRUCTION

20140610 - c2013 wlc

Humidity sets in

A waterfall in air

Nebel echoes in my ears

Surrounding me with life

I feel it permeating my body

But my mind remains numb

The trees and pollen try coating the car

I miss them all

I round the curves with practiced boredom

Drawing with humidity

Feet still cold on the vehicle floor

Hands so dry upon the wheel

My heart stops for just a moment

I'm lost in time

A tear inches backward

How fast am I going?

When will I stop?

I think of perfection

Belatedly, I wonder, if this is the end

But practice makes perfect

And it wasn't too fast

I'm just another part

Of the winding old road

And suddenly

I'm waiting on a highway

Stopped dead cold

The winding road ceases to wind

As I sit there growing old

missing.

Sometimes, out of nowhere, I have very vivid images and impressions of people float into my consciousness.  Sometimes it's people who died, or moved, or changed jobs, or that I left behind when I moved or changed jobs.  Or simply people I've lost contact with.

This sometimes makes me smile, or perhaps even makes me glad I no longer AM in touch with them so closely.

Other times, I miss them, and I find myself immersed in the sensation of loss, be it wistful or deep, temporary or permanent.

I am lucky to have known people worth missing.

food

Last weekend, I cooked our extra Thanksgiving turkey from last year.  It came out beautiful.  We had turkey dinner, I reserved the dark portions for later, and then I tossed the carcass into the crock pot after picking it clean of its meat, which we ate for a couple of days before most of the rest ended up being stirfried with spices and rice and then tossed into reheatable portions in the freezer.  The next day, I strained out the crock pot goodness and stuck the gelatinous ooze into the fridge.

Today, I heated up the reserved dark portions of meat - the drumsticks and wings and thighs - and while that was going, cooked up some taters and divvied up the ooze to be frozen for later gravies and soups.  I kept some aside and made gravy for the taters.

Multitasker that I am, I then sat down at the counter with the crock pot and a plate of potatoes with gravy.  I took one drumstick and began to pick the meat off it.  Some went in a bowl for later soup, some went to the cats, and some went into me as I ate the potatoes and gravy.  I discarded the bones and gristle and other such things into the crock pot.  I repeated with each darkmeat piece until it was all gone.

When I was done with my breakfast, I took an aging onion, chopped it up, and then chopped up a carrot and threw in the potato peelings, some spices, a bit of salt... and filled it with water.  The cover went on, I set it to high, and then I set to work on the breadmaker.  I set that to start a few hours later so the bread would be as fresh as I could get it compared to when Dale gets back.  I have no idea when he'll be back, actually, so I guessed.

Hungry from the smells of everything, I just stole some broth and a few pieces of very tender onion from the crock.  The broth is a little weak right now, so I added a bit of soy sauce, srichi, fish sauce, and hoisin.  Then I went outside and snagged some green onions and a bit of cilantro (which I was surprised is popping up on its own... it must have seeded itself last year, yay).

It always amazes me how easy it is to make fresh, wonderfully complex soup out of bones, veggies, and a splash of a few premade sauces.  Quite frankly, the soup is the easy part of the turkey... picking the meat off the bones is the most time-consuming part.  Turkeys have a LOT of freakin' meat on them!!  On the other hand, the meat can be frozen and makes excellent stir-fries when you're finally in the mood for turkey again.  So it saves time later... and it's probably a heck of a lot healthier and/or cheaper than stuff prepared for you.

Anywho, back to it I go.  The bread is rising in the maker and I've got the dishwasher going.  Oh yeah and I have some beans soaking, too.  I was thinking of turkey bean soup with fresh bread tonight.  Dale ran a marathon.  I figure he needs some protein and carbs.  I know /I/ want them.  Sure do burn a lot of calories sitting around on one's butt all day long playing games on the computer and eating homemade soup... har har

~nv

Morning thoughts

First off, I'm not overly fond of "Fu Brick" Hunnan Hei cha.  It's not horrid, but for a puerh, it's very, very light, and takes forever to separate itself from its little brick.  I suppose in some ways this makes it last longer but it needs to steep a LONG time, even after rinsing.

Tea is not what my post is about, though.

Over the past few months, I have felt myself sliding slowly backward somehow, even while still moving forward.  New job seems to be going well, and I've learned a lot of new things, and have much more to learn.  So it seems illogical that this would be the cause of anything.  However, I still miss a lot of people from the old place and I spend a lot more time alone.  So much so that I crave solitude despite missing my friends.  Does that make sense?  Probably not.  I tend to gravitate towards logic in a lot of things and I can't make heads or tails out of this myself.

I have trouble speaking to people.  I've been losing words for the past couple of years and it's probably just the aging process.  It starts happening about now, I reckon, a little bit at a time, until you're a nonsensical idiot drooling in your lap.  It's not just that, though.  I have trouble holding onto my thoughts long enough to form them into words.  It's like having less interaction with people is dumbing me back down to who I was before I was thrown into the mess of people.  I kind of miss my people.  Not just my friends, but the interactions.  Even the meetings, to some extent.  At least when I /did/ have to speak, I could sound intelligible.  Ish.

Listening has gotten better and worse.  Better because I feel less need to contribute, but worse because I have trouble hearing again.  It's a bunch of mumbo jumbo that just tumbles around in my head for a while and I get too tired to process all of it so I miss half of what's said.  The rest is prone to being quickly forgotten.

I'm no longer sharp as a tack.  This bothers me.  A lot.  I've tried to convince myself it's OK, that everyone hits this point.  But it's not OK.  I've stopped feeling like a failure, like I'm imperfect, when it happens.  But I feel frustrated.  I feel slow.  I feel stupid.  I guess stupid, for me, is failure, but still.  The frustration hits me hardest.  I can no longer multitask without a pad of paper in front of me.  I'm constantly reorganizing my notes.  People converse with me about conversations we'd had previously and I've lost all context, even if it's a project I've been working on.  Dale tells me where he's going and two seconds later I figure out where he's going based on other clues, then verify.  He gives me an odd look and I realize he probably just told me exactly what I concluded on my own.  I don't remember any of it.

Yet, I haven't totally lost all of my communication skills.  I haven't forgotten everything.  And some things I'm forgetting feel like they're being replaced by older skills.  Skills I'd forgotten about in the hustle and bustle of having to deal with so many people.  The ability to focus on one thing for long periods is returning.  To block out any and all sound.  I keep wanting to read, to immerse myself in two-dimensional verbiage.  I've been wanting to write more.  (Hi!)

In other news, I've made it 21 days without drinking any mountain dew at all.  Sometime after Monday of this week, it stopped badgering me.  I actually don't really want it now.  If I really think about the taste, sure, I want it, but I don't have a craving for it, a need, or the thought of it every three seconds.  I honestly think it has to be a mental addiction because I never stopped drinking tea, so the addiction is likely not the caffeine.  It likely wasn't the sugar, either, because I began craving potatoes within the first two weeks of giving up the Dew.  I didn't really eat a lot more sugar than usual so I figure the starch replaced the sugar.  So it had to be mental.

At any rate, not going back down that road for a while.  I don't trust myself with Dew.  My mother used to tell me that her smoking habit was not a physical addiction but a mental one.  She LIKES smoking.  I think I sort of understand that now.

Back to the subject at hand, though... Dale and I went to dinner last night and I hashed out a few of my thoughts about my state of mind.  He didn't seem to think it was overly concerning and thought I was still growing just fine.  Oh, I left that out here.  I mentioned that I may have realized that it's not just my mind slowing down, but my growth and passion for growth.  He's like, "You were just learning two languages."  Well, yeah, but that's different.  Somehow.  Um.  Right.  But I am not currently still learning them...

Seriously, though.  The growth thing.  I was unhappy for much of my life and pushed myself until I became happy.  I grew professionally, spiritually, mentally, and as a human being.  FAST.  And then I reached a point where I was content.  Very content.  But being content, in and of itself, is causing me discontent.

I'm unhappy being happy?  Seriously?  Yes, because now I worry it will all go away.  Wow.

That made me feel better.  Now my new goal is to enjoy what I have so long as I have it.

~nv 

Duggars' 19 kids

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/02/carefully-scripted-lives-my-concerns-about-the-duggars.html

I read through the above article and found many points to be similar to /many/ parents I've known.  The tendency to overpower a kid, make them believe what the parent does, make them act the way a parent does, this is universal and has nothing to do with a large or single-kid family and is regardless of social status and religious or other beliefs.

My mother did not have lots of kids but I still raised myself, and her too in many ways, didn't have much of a childhood or teenage years, and in different ways.  While these kids might have their whims literally beaten out of them, mine were put down and called evil and whatever else might make me more like the nut that doesn't fall far from the tree.  I know I'm not alone... lots of kids can recount such things in either direction, my own mother included.  Patterns repeat themselves for a reason.  Even if you're not pushed into it, you still want to be accepted and loved by your parent.  It is of note that not all kids become like their parents.  Some become "black sheep" of the family and are ousted, much to their own joy.  So an upbringing is not going to MAKE you into anything, it'll shape you, but you still end up deciding in the end whether you're going to be a mini-them or a major-them.

Further, we are only recently as a human race (in this country) able to have small families where kids do NOT raise each other.  Farms needed boys and girls to help keep things going.  It wasn't thought of as a horrible thing at the time.  However, now that we have smaller families, the children still mentor each other on playgrounds, in schools, in daycare.  Kids naturally gravitate to their older peers, siblings or not.

They think females need to dress modestly.  We are now putting down this culture of theirs because it's no longer mainstream, but it used to be, and in many places still is.  We are afraid of them spreading their crap through our culture, but it is us who spread our crap through their culture.  Their culture was in this country before ours!!  So who is the real danger?  Why is their way so far-fetched and dangerous?  Why is it more dangerous than ours?  Ours is full of drugs, murder, rape, and sex plastered all over the TV.  Do we seriously fear people acting nicely towards each other?  Letting our teens be teens certainly doesn't seem to be helping, either.  Maybe we're just human?

And yes, kids are naturally curious, but so are dogs and cats and we send dogs, our loving companions, to obedience school because we want them to act a certain way.

The point I'm trying to make is that nothing above is necessarily wrong, it's simply how various people hold their own beliefs, and one particular culture is not any better than another - it's because we were raised differently that we think ours is.  We need to be stroked and be agreed with, it's our human nature.

That being said, of course they wish to isolate their kids.  There aren't as many like them now.

Not that I'm condoning them.  That lifestyle would drive me nuts.  But again, I was raised very differently.

~nv

traffic fun today

In the complicated little jog today I saw dumptruck, me, bicycle on my bumper, big 18 wheeler on his bumper.  Light turned green.  I was glad for hill assist so I didn't bump the bike behind me.  Dumpy and I went, I lost the bike somewheres, and the 18 wheeler took a while to make it up the little hill 'round the bend.  Behind me I see a white truck cross lanes and appear to my left as we rounded the corner.

I thought, "Wow, it's amazing that nothing bad happened with all the danger right there."

Then as the road became simple again, a pickup with a smashed back end cut in front of the dump truck.  He made it.  As I marvelled at how he didn't die, a minivan tried to cut in front of me from a complete stop.  I slammed on my brakes and looked up, prepared for a sudden manoeuvre should the 18 wheeler be hanging out there again, but he had disappeared somehow and the coast was clear.  She looked at me like "WTF", stopped in the middle of the left lane, blocking traffic, and I proceeded.  She came in behind me, I think.

I never did find the 18 wheeler again.  Not sure where he went.  Maybe he and the bicycle eloped.

shower vs tea

This morning I aimed to take the shortest shower possible.  I attempted to do this by putting a fresh, hot cup of tea on the sink.  The faster I showered, the sooner I got my tea.

Irish Breakfast, to be exact.

The problem is that I could smell the tea in the shower.  That made me want to skip the whole performance and just dive into the tea cup.

Then I realized I could also smell the Herbal Essences shampoo/conditioner that I'd bought yesterday.  It was the kind in the familiar yellow and golden bottles... I haven't seen this in a few years.  It was my favourite.  Is my favourite.  I was forced to switch to Aussie something when (I thought) the Herbal Essences was discontinued.  Apparently it is still carried in stores I don't always shop in.

Anywho, the shampoo kept me in the shower long enough to actually wash myself, and the tea pulled me out.

I'd say it was a wash.  ;)

~nv

tea

This morning I'm cooking pan bread and drinking An Ji Bai Cha.  It occurred to me that I drink tea like I eat food.  It must have variety.  I always have my favourites, like Earl Grey or ripe puerh, that sort of thing, but even though I've been in a darker tea mood as of late, this morning I opted for the lighter white-green with its gentle little leaves that open up and look perty in a glass tea pot.  Funny how that works.

Anywho, in other news, I finally caved and bought techietutorials.net.  The .com is still being hoarded by an advertising company of sorts and I still hate godaddy for being assholes about the whole situation two years ago, but bluehost has been very nice to me so far - nice site, great support, easier to navigate, etc.  So, it's all good.  And given the content, the .net makes more sense anyway.  Now people are getting used to the different domain names to an extent so no big deal, especially since there are such things as bookmarks and my websites are more for me than others anyway.

So... big whup.  I'll get over it.  I'm just happy to have my site back.

~w

IT memory

I was just sitting here at work doing some vmware stuff when I had a very sudden flashback to probably about eight years ago.  I was working remotely somewhere (Mom's?  Dale's?  My house?) and jumped through 4 or 5 machines to get to one I needed to work in.  I had some sort of virtual software open and edited or created a server, increased server space, something.  I'm not sure what I was doing.  I only remember thinking how cool it was that a) I could do it remotely and b) I was reconfiguring something virtually.  I am pretty sure this was relatively new to us at the time and that it was big.  But I must have been following a procedure of sorts because I wasn't that high on the food chain at the time.  I was probably a level 2 tech, in fact, nowhere near a sysadmin yet.

There was certainly a feeling of elation and power, though, whatever I was doing.  It is rather scary to think that I had such power in my hands at such an early point in my career, but, thankfully, I never blew up anything that someone else could not readily fix or that couldn't wait for me to fix.  LOL!

Anywho, virtual computing is still freakin' awesome to me.

~w

Pan Bread

My pan bread recipe... give or take a dash.

Pan Bread [sweet version]

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp yeast

1 tsp cinnamon

dash nutmeg

dash ground clove

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 tsp anise seeds

1/2 to 3/4 cup warm water

Mix dry ingredients, then add water 'til you get a sticky but workable dough.  Add more flour to the bowl as needed until you can work it into a kneadable thingie.  Let it rest on fresh flour and powder the top of the thingie with more flour.  Let it sit there an hour or whatever.  The yeasticles will drink the water like alcohol, and burp and fart inside the sticky glutinous bonds.  This will stretch the bonds, making the thingie rise like a stinkbomb only to us it smells good.  When you're done letting the party happen, heat up a fry pan with some oil (olive oil works fine).  Get it good and hot but don't tell the yeasticles what you're up to.  Then knead the thingie a bit more and flatten it into the bottom of the fry pan.  Don't listen to the screams.  They'll get over it.  Fry about 5-10 minutes somewhere around just short of halfway on the heat, and flip when golden brown on bottom or it starts to burn, whichever you notice first.  Fry another 5-10 minutes, turning down heat a notch so it can cook through a bit more slowly without burning and setting off smoke detectors.

Voila!  Pan bread.  You can adjust the spices to taste or swap them with thyme, rosemary, cajun, chile, etc. depending on what you're in the mood for.  I'm sure it's awesome with powdered sugar and maple syrup on it, but, it's usually gone before such accoutrements escape their hiding places.

~w

Jewellery

I went to type "jewellery" in my last post and it kept getting highlighted as being incorrect.  I looked it up.  Figures, my version of the spelling, which I have been using since who knows when, is the "British" version.  What is it with me and British spellings??  Why couldn't Webster just have kept his dirty little fingers out of the damned dictionary?!  Then I would not be constantly battling dimwits and spellcheckers!!

"The word jewellery itself is derived from the word jewel, which was anglicized from the Old French "jouel",^[3] and beyond that, to the Latin word "jocale", meaning plaything. In British English, it is spelled jewellery, while the spelling is jewelry in American English.^[1][4]"

I just shut off spellchecker.  I'm tired of that crap.

~w

Stuff

Up until today, I have been aware of four categories of clothing:

1. Work clothes.  The stuff I find comfortable, non-clingy, easy to care for, dark, interchangeable, and work-worthy.  This gets crammed into a large plastic drawer in the bathroom for easy and regular access.  Overflow ends up in a second drawer beneath that one or in the two smaller drawers stashed beneath the hamper and waste basket.

2. Casual/Loungewear.  The stuff I find comfortable, non-clingy, easy to care for, and that I can wear to bed or around the house.  Many items I can also wear outside, just not to work.  This stuff gets crammed into the third, bottom drawer.

3. Fancy wear.  The "fancy" stuff I hold onto for special occasions, such as tea parties, interviews, deaths, weddings, renaissance faires, and the like.  This stuff doesn't necessarily have to be comfortable or easy-care, but I have to at least like it.  This stuff is mostly kept in two boxes at the top of a closet in a spare bedroom.  I also have a collection of scarves kept in my playpen, not far from all the cheap jewellery I never wear.

4. Overflow casual ware.  These are mostly t-shirts that I occasionally remember to rotate into my usual supply so they get used and not neglected.  They are often in a third box at the top of a closet.

Today I became aware of these categories:

5. Old outfits that don't fit but which I remember loving at some point long ago and secretly hope will fit again some day.  (I remember laughing when I heard people saying things like this.  I'm only chuckling now.)

6. Items I love the look of but never wear because they don't fall into the above categories.

7. Items I hang onto because... I have no idea why.

I am grateful I have the problem of having to figure out what I will keep and what I will donate or throw out.  But egads... I never considered myself a clothing-a-holic... when did this explosion occur in that closet?!

~w

POEM: Morning Prayer

Morning Prayer

20140413 - c2014 wlc

To my left is a man

Whose countenance is fair

I hear him there breathing

So I turn to stare

I watch for a while

As morning awakens

Sometimes my heart flutters

As if it were shaken

And I think:

Thank you for being the man of my dreams

And all the times when you understand

Thank you for sharing your passions with me

And for the gentle touch of your hand

Thank you for helping me up when I fall

And for the advice to help guide me through

But most of all, I just want you to know

I'm thankful you're just being you

I flip onto my back

And gaze at the stars

Their lights slowly fading

As the night travels far

I'm human, imperfect

On this road that I plod

Then I turn to my right

And look on the face of God

And I think:

Thank You for the house that's over my head

And for the guy that I love

Thank You for the sunrise each morning

And for the heavens above

Thank You for helping me up when I fall

And giving me Conscience to help Guide me through

But most of all, I just want You to know

I'm thankful You're just being You

I go to turn over

My eyes filled with mist

Feel a hand on each shoulder

Both cheeks gently kissed

I hear two sweet voices

As gentle as dew

And without a sound

They say, "I love you, too."

And I think:

It's morning!!  Dale!!  Look!!  There's DAYLIGHT out there!!  DAY light!!

And my mind starts its racing

And I jump out of bed

And I fly through the house

And the critters are fed

And I have a burst

'Til the chores are all done

Then I sit alone

With tea there in front

I look out the window

And what do I see?

The bursting of colour

The Love before me.

OMG!!

Sometimes I have ok days at work and other days I get to do REALLY AWESOME STUFFS!!  Today so far I've added virtual servers to a virtual virtual environment on its own virtual network so nothing talks to anything outside of the virtual environment bubble.  This is inside our usual virtual environment, which makes it akin to when I used to remote into a machine that remoted into another that then remoted into another so I could remote into anything I needed at work.  Convoluted as all getup but omg it makes life so much easier.

This is for development... and egads, is this cool.  Used to be you had to have the hardware to do this and downtimes and all sorts of crud.  Now you just sit on your butt all day clicking in UI's and saying, "You.  Over there.  You.  Over there.  You do this.  You do that.  Okay, now, I eat lunch while you do that and I watch gleefully and choke on my rice because I'm laughing so hard internally with insane joy.  Now you do that.  I need a Dew.  Whoa, it's all set up.  Can I ping this?  No, good.  This?  Yes, good.  Wow, lookey there... it's all there and it's not hurting anything outside of itself.  Hah!"  I can't even begin to explain this sort of thing to a lay person right now.  My own head is swimming in excitement.

W00T!!  I AM THE GRAND MASTER OF ALL -- oh, hi, Grand Master of Technology... :: sheepish look ::  Yeah, I know, I know.  I know NOTHING...

(but man does this stuff make one feel powerful for a little while.  It's so freakin' cool.)

~w

Computer Manufacturers

And now let me rant for a while about computer manufacturers that don't care to provide the option to order a Windows disc while ordering their computers from them.

Lenovo.  Is.  On.  My.  Shit.  List.

IBM used to have awesome products, and this laptop isn't that bad, actually.  Seems like a laptop.  Looks like one, acts like one, has a battery, it can plug in and charge up, gets online, does things laptops do.  But man, swap the hard drive with a new one and you're installing Ubuntu whether you wanted Windows 8.1 or not.  Maybe MicroSoft is behind this, I don't know, but not providing a means to recovery your os to a new hard drive?  Bad juju.

I would be willing to accept this seemingly new practice if they only made it clear that it's the case while ordering their stuff, but they don't.  You know, like Dell does!  "Include recovery media" options would do the trick nicely.  Then at least you're not blindsided by assumption.  "They didn't ask if I wanted recovery media.  They must include the discs.  Nice!  Glad I chose Lenovo this time!"  "Wait, there's no disc in this box.  Maybe they forgot it.  Oh, what's this?  You have to order it from premium support?  For a fee?  And wait days to get that, too?  WTF?!"

Screw their one-touch recovery crap.  Anybody in their right technical mind knows these days that hard drives fail.  The laptop came with a regular, failable hard drive.  Hello?  You seriously trust this?  One-year warranties don't fix hard drives that fail in two years, or five years.  Why don't they just rent out computers if they don't want us to own them anymore?

:: mumbling incoherently ::

I hate today's tech world.  I really do.  It moves fast but without any real goal other than to simply race.  No consideration for anything other than a buck or to be first at something.  No thought for quality or comprehensiveness.

Anywho, rant over.  Premium Support should be open now, so I've got a call to make.  :: steps off slippery soap box ::

~w

Ubuntu works great on this laptop by the way

Guinea Pigs are Conversion Factories

I have finally reached a conclusion to what guinea pigs are.

They are conversion factories.

This is how it works:

- Put large bowlful of grain and leafy greens into cage to silence the alarm.

- Wait a half hour for bowl of goods to be converted.

- Observe the mounds of poo and soaked papers in cage, sprinkled liberally with shed hair.

And yes, there is an alarm.  It seems to be there to let you know when there's nothing to convert.  I wish they had made the alarm quieter than a smoke alarm, but, at least I never forget to feed the conversion factory more stuff to convert.  Given I don't use the resulting product for anything, though, I'm really not sure why I got this thing.

I'm trying to figure out what these factories are actually for, though.  Perhaps I should put my guinea pig out on a field full of noxious weeds.  He would simply work his way through them, converting into usable farmland, right?  Is that what he's here for?  I seriously don't know what else to do with this thing.  He doesn't really seem to care about me as a fellow creature, he just wants to convert stuff.  Paper?  Manure.  Water?  Manure.  Greens?  Manure.  Grains?  Manure.  Air?  Manure.  Attention?  Manure.  I swear he puts out more than he puts in - and he puts in a lot.  I can't eat that much salad in a half-hour, let alone with a big handful of grain mixed in.  I'm certainly not eating a half a carrot with it, either, in the time allotted.  And somehow, the alarm still has energy to go off.  It's wicked sensitive, too.  It goes off if our fridge door opens.  It goes off when a neighbour's fridge door opens.  I suspect that it goes off when any fridge in the entire town opens.  There HAS to be an off button for that pesky alarm, or a time setting, or something.  He'd eat the entire back yard of its grass, shrubs, and trees if he had his way, in one or two days.  It would be a big pile of guinea pig manure, squishy, wet, and smelling suspiciously of farmland that is soon to be farmland.  Until he finds it again, that is, and re-converts it back to piles of gp manure.

I am certain that he converts sunlight and air into the mounds of hair-sprinkled poo, as well.  He's like the animal version of an air plant.  Mist him a few times a day and he'll live forever.

Gah!  At least he's a shiny little conversion factory.  How he keeps himself so well-maintained is beyond me.  I think he must only poo and pee when he thinks I'm about to look in there.  I mean, I just changed his papers and washed out his cage and within a half-hour of feeding him, MANURE EVERYWHERE.  Are guinea pigs nomadic or something?  They must be.  It doesn't matter how large the cage is.  He.  Will.  Fill.  It.  Every inch.  Even his food dish.  He doesn't get a food dish anymore, just a clean paper.  It'll be soiled in seconds.  Literally, seconds.  He must have manure to sit on or he's not happy.

GAH!!  I say, GAH!!!

Spring is here (sort of)

Spring is my favourite season.  It's beautiful, and as a fellow blogger mentioned recently, it's a nice allegory to God's Promise working in our lives despite all outward appearances at times.  But despite my growing dislike of the Winter cold, I think Winter is beautiful in a different way.  The sun hitting golden stalks of yesteryear, against the blinding white moguls in the fields, with a backdrop of browns and grays littering otherwise white mountains - this is also beauty to me.  Even seeing the litterlike brown chunks of previously turned, plowed, and harvested fields of manured farmland, dotting the snow like moonrocks, is a really neat sight that is lost once the green of Spring emerges and the white fades into the trickling streams of nourishment.

Indeed, Spring is a wonderful allegory of God's Promise, but all seasons are showcases of His work in our lives.  Of course, it's easier to appreciate when you're peering out from the elemental protection of a home or car!

Winnimere Cheese

I am blessed to know a great number of awesome people.  One such person, whom I feel particularly close to, loves to find and try new things and then share them.  She has often gone out of her way to find strange or unique things and share them with Dale and I.

Her latest find was something called Winnimere cheese.  She really hyped this one up... it is hard to find, a wee bit expensive, was eaten at the White House, and has won awards.  It is modeled after a similar cheese in Switzerland:  It is a soft, two month aged cheese from Ayshire cows.  This is wrapped in some moldable part of the spruce tree, imbuing the creamy round with a fresh spruce scent as it ages.  These are all traits common to the Forsterkase.  However, it is then doused with a particular beer to set it apart from its Swiss cousin.  Sounded intriguing, although I did worry about the spruce part... I've had spruce gum.  Not my favourite thing.  But, I couldn't wait to try it anyway.  Surely it must be awesome if it has won awards, right?

Please keep in mind that anything I say about my experience with this cheese is said as lovingly as possible.  The first whiff almost knocked me over backwards.  But, I was warned it was pretty pungent, so I didn't let that phase me.  I tentatively took a few more whiffs and, beginning to feel weary, finally just dove in for fear I'd lose my nerve.  It was surprisingly good... cold, creamy, silky.  I ate several more bites and began to feel all tingly.  Then I paused to talk to Dale about it and the scent rose up into my sinuses.  For a moment I saw stars and the room began to dance sideways.  I quickly ate more and the pleasant creaminess returned.  I began to feel nauseous.  I had to stop.  The cream was rapidly replaced by its... aroma.  I did not get smoke, meat, mustard or fruit, but rather, a dizzying bouquet of toe jam wrapped in the delicate balm of a spruce forest and doused with the fragrant perfume of death.  Somehow I never rooted out the scent of the beer, which I'm sure was lovely.  I suspect the LSD-like effects were preventing me from focusing my senses on that aspect.

I set the spreader down and took a few steps backwards as I regained my balance.  Dale, seemingly unaffected, shrugged and said it was OK but that he preferred pepperjack.  He wrapped the parcel back up and we agreed to share it with others to see if it might be appreciated more by someone else.

We took it to a friend's house for him to try.  He began unrolling the bag and seemed to think there was no cheese he didn't like.  Then he kindly asked us if we were sure it belonged in his basement as he quickly rolled the top of the bag back up in an attempt to seal in the refreshing flavours.  He was very nice about reminding us to take it with us when we left.  We have such honest, helpful friends.

I really love the texture of the cheese, it's very cool and creamy and would be an awesome dip if my sense of smell was nonexistent.  Until the next time I get all stuffed up and can't even smell cold germs, however, I think I'll stick with Brie.  Sorry, Winnimere, but... you're just not the cheese for me!

~w

Word Macro

Useful for creating paper-sized tags for shelves, etc.

Name:  PaperTags

What it does:

- Asks how many you need

- Sets up page for landscape orientation

- Centers horizontally and vertically

- Begins sequence...

- Makes fontsize 200

- Places A followed by the sequence number on the page

- Changes fontsize to 1

- Places a return

- Creates a page break

- Repeats from the fontsize part until done with sequence

Sub PaperTags()

'

' PaperTags Macro

'

'

Dim strCount As String

Dim lngCount As Long

Dim lngCycle As Long

strCount = InputBox("How many times to repeat?")

lngCount = strCount

Selection.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = wdAlignParagraphCenter

    With ActiveDocument.PageSetup

        .VerticalAlignment = wdAlignVerticalCenter

    End With

    If Selection.PageSetup.Orientation = wdOrientPortrait Then

        Selection.PageSetup.Orientation = wdOrientLandscape

    Else

        Selection.PageSetup.Orientation = wdOrientPortrait

    End If

For lngCycle = 1 To lngCount

    Selection.Font.Size = 200

    Selection.TypeText Text:="A" & lngCycle

    Selection.Font.Size = 1

    Selection.TypeParagraph

    Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdPageBreak

Next lngCycle

End Sub

Titanic vs beads

It just occurred to me that a good analogy for multi-layered security can be had by observing the history of the Titanic.

While there is no single point of failure in that event, there is something that could have helped improve the odds of more people surviving (aside from not getting on the ship in the first place):  More lifeboats.  When the Titanic was built, regulations stated that if you built watertight compartments into your ship to help hold it afloat in a disaster, you didn't have to have as many lifeboats.  I.e., you didn't have to have enough lifeboats for every passenger on board because the ship wouldn't sink in the first place.  I'm not sure why you had to bother with lifeboats at all in that case, but that's another story.

Anywho, the Titanic did not have the proper multi-layered security in order to protect the lives of its passengers because the designer of the day put all eggs into one basket, so to speak, and cut the corner on the lifeboats as he was allowed to do without acting upon the thought of "Okay, it might be unsinkable.  But what if something we haven't seen before happens, and we turn out to be wrong?"

The regulations were changed shortly after the tragedy to state that in addition to watertight compartments to help hold the ship afloat, all ships were required to have enough lifeboats on board to hold all passengers.

I remember as a kid making jewelry out of seed beads.  Even as a child I recall understanding the risks I took when I cut corners or didn't bother to think things through.  One item in particular was a necklace I'd made on the bead loom.  I knew that if one thread let go, the whole thing would dump tiny little beads everywhere.  So I built the basic necklace and then went back through my work with a second thread.  As I was doing so, it occurred to me that I had coated the weft with wax, but had not double-stranded it.  I knew that if one thread in the weft let go, the necklace would not come totally apart but it would be irreparable.  At that point, though, I could not see how to add a second thread to each existing one in the weft.  The weave was too tight by then to weave a second weft through tiny little threads between beads.  I had essentially overlooked the basic structure of the whole thing.  I noted this with grim reality and continued with the sense of "whups" in the back of my mind.

The one major flaw I did make (knowingly) was that I took the ends of the weft and threaded additional beads onto them to make a chain of sorts before attaching each end to its connector.  I wore this necklace carefully for years, knowing one day something was going to break, and over ten years later, it finally did.  I never lost a single bead, but it is indeed irreparable.

Partial caution may help, but it won't solve everything that gets thrown at you.  Still, it was nice not having to clean up beads.  I was lucky the breach happened in the reinforced section and not near the connectors.

~nv