Loch Levern

I went hiking in the Sierra and to Nevada City over the weekend. Still more snow than I expected, so not all the way to the higher lakes.The trail is the line in the middle.

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. Toto...?

The start of the post holing section

For no particular reason

Calistoga, CA

Best operating instructions ever

1. Use the quick start guide to brew your first cup of coffee.
2. Sit down with the coffee and read the user guide.

Sticker on Swiss espresso machine.

Boredom meets can't-find-a-bookshelf I like...

$45 of 1" by 12" by 60" redwood, 60 bucks of 1/2" galvanized steel plumbing supplies, two hours of shopping, two hours of labor. Only thing that sucked was that I had to go back to Home Depot because I forgot to buy the two knees on top.

Smells cool, though. I need to go back sand a bit and put on some beeswax.

A post for Cindy

Since she had a couple of roughish days, I wanted to demonstrate how some people spend on the idiotic consumerist pursuit of kitchen knives. From left to right:

1. Wusthoff 5 inch utility knife. I had it for about 8 years, sharp, pretty indestructable, but too long for paring and too light for most other things.
2. JCK Gekko Damascus GE-1 Petty 140mm. Damascus blade of Hitachi white steel and 420. Brilliantly sharp and it has this really interesting hammered surface texture they leave and don't polish out. THE onion knife. Unfortunately not entirely stainless.
   
3. Global 5 1/2 inch vegetable knife. I bought this mostly due to the fact that the 8" Wusthoff was a bit heavy for veggie cutting--and because I read Kitchen Confidential and this was the cheapest one. OK, totally stainless and plenty sharp, just not as much as the two other Japanese knives here.
   
4. $20 Cold Steel 7inch serrated knife from a bargain bin in Chicago. Actually, even at full price, this is a bargain. Not very good steel on the face of it, but I've had it for 10 years and it's still pretty sharp. Great bread and tomato knife. My dad ruined the other one by cutting drywall--a lot of drywall.
5. Hattori 7inch V-10 Damascus kitchen knife. I'd lick it if it wasn't so sharp. Cutting with it feels as if the blade gets sucked through the food. Hard to describe, but it's an incredibly sensual experience. It's perfect for microscopic mirepoix. If a recipe calls for 1/4", I do 1/16", just because it's so much fun. Due to the 15 degree bevel, it's not that robust, though. (Unrelated side note, this is the only one that's completely hand made by a guy named Hattori)
   
6. 8" Wusthoff Global chefs knife. Can do everything from smashing garlic to trussing a chicken or breaking down beef ribs--it's a total tank. My dead-cold-hands knife. I think I bought this in my sophomore year, has to go for professional sharpening every couple of years, though.
7. Wusthoff paring knife. Bought it because everyone tells you you need a paring knife and because it was on sale for like $10. I found out that I can do most paring jobs three times faster with the 8" and ten times faster with the Petty, so I hardly ever use it.
8. El cheapo carbon steel French paring knife from Crate and Barrel, for opening letters, cutting tin foil off wine bottles, packages, duct tape. $5 or so.
   

Ouch

I went to Oyster Fest on Saturday and caught the worst sun burn in the last ten years. Cold and foggy != Safe.

The local oysters were very good, but 7 with two pints of Guinness is still my absolute limit. And I probably don't need any until next year.

Here's something fun. The last two images were taken about 20 minutes apart...when the fog comes in, it really comes in.

The world catches up to me again

A year ago, I mentioned in my blog how US coffee companies over roast their beans. Now the Chron brings up basically the same sentiment, quoting a coffee shop owner saying "the coffee is kind of over-roasted and the barista techniques aren't up to par."

No shit Sherlock! Anyway, read the article, it gives a good overview of how we ended up with semi-burned espresso. As I suspected, it was mostly Starbucks, but interestingly, it started with Berkeley icon Alfred Peet who trained the Starbucks founders.

Another one drops

My sister had her second baby on Saturday. Three weeks early. Anyway, they are all doing well, so here's the first picture of two year old Katherina and Konstantin. (No, my sister is not a KDE developer, nor does she play one on TV).

Flat head screws

• Don't use them, use Phillips or Hex.
• If a plan says to use flat heads, ignore it and use Phillips screws.
  
• If anything comes with flat head screws, throw them away and buy Phillips screws.
• If anyone suggests you should use them, hit him in the head and buy Phillips screws.
• If your best friend buys some for a project, hit him in the head, make him return them and buy Phillips screws.
• If your life period partner brings flat head screws, get a divorce, and buy Phillips screws.

That's all.

If we only had smellevision--a breathtaking experience

Elephant seals in Ano Nuevo SP. No, they're not sick, they are molting. And they stink to high heaven--imagine a huge pile of dead fish and dog poo.
Funny story about the lighthouse, it was basically abandoned in 1948, because the island was overrun by thousands of California sea lions. They broke down doors, overran the gardens, and were generally driving the light keepers insane. If you click on the picture, you can see a couple hundred chilling out on the beach.

Eejit proof cake

As a way to apologize for running out on chatting with Cindy to make some cake for dinner, here's the recipe for my 5 minutes or less prep time cake. I normally HATE to bake--flour gets everywhere and I hate wet gooey stuff like batter. But I am having guests over for dinner, so it's back to one of the two cakes I can do off the top of my head. It's adapted from the if-you-don't-have-it-drop-whatevs-you're-doing-and-get-it Silver Spoon.

Peel, core, quarter and slice 2 medium apples (or pear, or cherries, or)
Toss with juice of a lemon and a bit of sugar (not really necessary, but it keeps them from discoloring)
Put 3/4 cups of sugar into a food processor and give it a few whirls to make "superfine"
Add the eggs and pulse until fluffy
Add 6 tablespoons of butter, pulse
Add 2 3/4 cups of self raising-flour and run until you have a pretty stiff batter.
Mix with the fruit slices (I added dried cherries and a bit of rum this time)
Dump in 9" cake pan lined with non-stick aluminum foil (if you don't have it, buy it. Best kitchen invention of the last three years)
Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

The things I like is that I only mess up the food processor and one other dish for the apples and the final mix. And since the apples contain a fair bit of moisture and sugar, this cake is very forgiving against slightly off proportions, over-, and underbaking. It's also not that sweet.

Never were so many so baked by so much so early

After the farmers market (damn, peas are already almost out of season), cooking a gallon of jam, and putting two slabs of ribs in the oven, I went to the How Weird Faire on Second Street. Since we a living through a cold spell, it was less lively than usual, and some of the more scantily costumed were sporting serious goosebumps, but they had a lot of really good DJs.

As mentioned in the headline, the smell of oregano was permeating the air already at noon and only got stronger by the time the earth shaking beats died down at 5:55. But a grand time was had by all--I think I might still have a second hand buzz.

In any other town, a hard core techno dance-in would probably not be a family event; in the city by the bay it definitely is. And weirdly, 65 year geezers rocking their tie die and Birkies next to neon haired 16 year olds wrapped in aluminum foil doesn't even seem out of place.

P.S. Hand knitted pants seem to be de rigeur amongst the great unwashed this year.

I think they go with a wedding dress...or a bathrobe

Harley Davidson steel toed boots . Every women should have one pair to ride, wear around the house, and pair with an awesome wedding dress.

Go Arnold!!

"And that's why I always encourage the legislators in Sacramento, because some of them come from those little towns," Schwarzenegger said. "You know what I'm saying? They come from those little towns, and they don't have that vision yet of an airport or of a highway that maybe has 10 lanes. Or of putting a highway on top of a highway. They look at you and say, 'Well we don't have that in my town, what are you talking about?' So they are kind of shocked when you say certain things."

If he only wasn't so right.

EMF danger in hybrid cars

The New York times has a fascinating article about EMF danger in hybrid cars. As a physicist who got his advanced degree in the town Einstein was born in, I would like to offer some comments and solutions to victims of this vile new thread to people who put their own physical and mental health (and maybe life) on the line to save the planet.

First of all, it is somewhat comforting to know that DC engines and batteries by their very nature are much weaker emitters of EMF per mass unit than for example radar stations or the 4p->alpha reactions found in stellar bodies. But it is important to keep in mind that a typical hybrid car battery has a reactive mass that is thousands of times larger than a cell phone battery--and we've all seen studies that indicate that cell phones can cause brain cancer, autism, or general malaise.

So, what is an environmentally conscious person to do? Risk life and limb every time s/he gets into a Prius or Chevy Tahoe Hybrid?

Thankfully, there are some fairly straightforward solutions. Most bio-relevant EMF fields can be effectively dampened by water, or a wetted fabric. For a good simulation, there is still nothing better than watching the animation about 10 minutes into the futuristic movie Total Recall. Notice how the agent dampens the electrical signal from the tracking device implanted in his head by wrapping a wet towel around his head. The same approach would of course work with a hybrid car battery, or a cell phone. But while putting a wet washcloth (or even a sanitary hand wipe) between the cell phone and your ear while making a call reduces the risk of EMF induced brain damage by 87% per 100 micron, wrapping a car battery in wet towels is both impractical and potentially dangerous.

All is not lost, because some elementary research online shows that the effect is caused not by the water itself, but by the dissolved salts. It almost sounds too good to be true, but if you are skeptical, you can verify it easily with some distilled water, a bit of salt, and a simple multimeter like this one at American Science.

Simply fill some distilled water into a glass and inset the two probes about 3 inches apart. Note down the resistance displayed on the multimeter (lower numbers means more absorption of EMF. Then add a table spoon of salt (kosher is ok, but sea or rock salt will give you a larger effect). You'll notice how resistivity--the technical term for resistance to EMF absorbtion--plummets.

We now proofed that the EMF absorbility of water is caused by salt, so we loose nothing by taking the water out of the equation.

In summary, the best way to prevent EMF exposure in hybrid cars is putting salt nest to the battery. Normal kitchen salt will probably do, but as shown above, rock salt is superior and also has other health effect. According to my calculations and simulations with Wolfram Research's excellent Mathematica software, about 2 pounds per Ampere hour is the optimal weight. For a 2006 Prius, this would be about 13 pounds of rock salt.

And additional benefit is that a rock salt crystal also improves mileage slightly by straightening out EMF lines and keeping them closer to the battery.

-------------
Since I published this article, I got a number of inquiries, so I will keep updating the FAQ:

Q: Won't rock salt in my trunk cause corrosion?
A: Good question. Most of the chassis of a Prius is made of aluminum which is not very susceptible to salt-induced corrosion. If you are concerned, you can pack the rock salt crystal into waxed paper (do NOT use zip lock bags because they are not biodegradable).

Q: Salt is hydroscopic, so won't the crystal melt?
A: There will be some loss of mass, but since the volume to surface area is very high in a 13 pound salt crystal, it is pretty negligible.

Q: Do I have to change the crystal regularly?r
A: Not really, EMF is fairly light, so the crystal can absorb a lot before loosing its effectiveness. If you are really concerned, weight the crystal occasionally and replace it when it shows a mass increase of more than 4 oz.

Q: What do I do with a used up crystal?
A: While EMF binding in salt is very stable, and it would take a lot of energy and specialist knowledge to extract EMF form a salt crystal, I understand that you don't want to throw a contaminated crystal into the trash or have it around your kids. Contact your local recycling authority. If your town doesn't have one, you can also usually drop it off at your power company who will extract the EMF and use it to generate electricity.

Not quite the Jesus phone

Here's hoping that the Enlightened One puts an enlightened boot up Nokia's ass.

On junk mail

After reading Cindy's and Bridgey's posts about junk mail, I'd like to mention that Catalog Choice worked for me. Even if you (like me) don't think it's my job to deal with sales people and phone trees, they make it easy to opt out of catalog mailings. Almost all of mine went through, except for a Mormon outdoor store who didn't do the Christian and outdoorsy thing to remove me at my request. So I had to call them and let them know that I won't buy anything again unless they stop sending paper--which they didn't.

While I am at it, Get Human is invaluable when dealing with companies. The site tells you the number codes to by pass the electronic voices.

Greetings, Sonny Chiba

A couple of weeks ago, I gave myself a Hattori knife for Easter. I've had a couple of really good German and Japanese knives for about ten years, but this thing is scary hair shaving sharp. Frankly, I am a bit scared every time I use it. It cuts through tomatoes, peppers, meat and miscellaneous veggies basically by putting the cutting edge on top and watching it melt through the object. In one case, I accidentally cut through a polypro cutting mat. Obviously not a bread/chopping/deboning knife, though.

Thankfully, I stopped intimidating tomatoes in pseudo Japanese slang before using it.

Microsoft

What went on in this programmer's head is anyone's guess.

WTF doesn't even begin to cover this

Quote from a technical discussion board.

First off, excel is not a database, but it's a really easy way for non-tech folds to look at data. And no, Access is not the answer. It's too hard and confusing.

I work as a deputy auditor for a large county in Ohio.

We've got 400,000 properties. We have a file of the sales / transfers for each parcel. An average of 6 sales per parcel = 2.4 million lines

Now, we can split the data based on years, type of sale, type of property etc., but when you need a report that spans those boundaries, it makes you think "Gee, it'd be nice if Excel could just support an infinite number of rows, or let me set how many rows I wanna deal with"

And of course, over the course of time, the number of sales / transfers/splits/merges/who knows what will continually increase the size of this file.

pics

Freaking windy out on the coast today. Oh yeah, I'm taking entirely too many pics of this bridge.

No time to blog

Well, between loads of work, being out on weekends, and simply nothing interesting going on, I have neglected this blog. Sorry. So, here's a pic of Point Arenas from Easter.And a seal rock outside Santa Cruz from last weekend.

Chicken

For some obscure reason, the temple of overpriced food, aka Whole Foods had a 99c sale on organic chicken. And winter truffles.

So I put a $5 fryer with $4 of truffle medallions tucked under the skin in a 450F oven for 40 minutes and served it with the world's easiest salad: tomatoes sliced almost all the way to the stem end to make a fan; stuffed with slices of fresh mozzarella, and topped with basil chiffonade, olive oil, a bit of lime juice, and S&P.

Pretty good according to the guests. I think I add some lemon zest to the oil the next time.

About those butt wipes in San Ramon

Not to rile anyone up, but that's what it looked like today from Lands End Trail.

The New Physics

Larry Spring, the Ft Bragg genius I mentioned before now has added Flash animations to his web site. Take a look if you want to have a good laugh.

PS. Yes, he's serious.

Purple food

No, not jello! Mashed purple potatoes and purple cauliflower with pan fried pork tenderloin. 

I got the blue stuff at the Berkeley farmers market last week and those were the leftovers. The whole process took ten minutes:

1. Cut the potatoes in half inch cubes and separate the cauliflower into small trees
2. Put in a tupperware container and nuke for 10 minutes
3. Add a bit of butter and milk.
4. Nuke for two more minutes
5. Dump in food processor and pulse into the desired consistency
6. Add s&p

The tenderloins were even quicker. 

1. Cut in half inch slices
2. Coat thinly with flour
3. Sprinkle with s&p
4. Fry in a hot pan with butter and olive oil
5. Take out and replace with finely chopped shallot
6. Add a half cup of white wine
7. Reduce, s&p, add a bit of corn meal slurry

Combine and serve with the rest of the bottle--in this case 2006 Clos du Val Sauvignon Blanc.

Art

I bought this Doutreleau poster on sale yesterday. It looks awesome in "person".

  

Lunch and dinner

I picked up some great boule at Model Bakery in St. Helena on Saturday, so lunch was obviously artichoke cheese sandwiches. Two slices of bread, some Dubliner cheese (I was out of Gruyere) and a few marinated artichokes on one of them. Then into the toaster oven at work for one round of toasting. Slap the pieces together and eat. 

Dinner was a variation on this. I don't like pecans, and accidentally chopped a bit of Italian parsley before I noticed, so my version was with walnuts (roasted in the dry pan before the tofu went in) and a parsley/cilantro mix. Amazingly, the end result didn't taste like tofu or Brussels sprouts, but really really good. Oh, I also used veggie stock instead of salt and added a few grinds of pepper at the end. 

It only took six weeks

But I finally got around to uploading the rest of the Big Sur pictures.

Two soups

The first one was the best lunch I had in months: Brazilian Fish Gumbo at Wappos in Calistoga. I still have no idea what was Brazilian about it, but from the taste of it, it was

• A boatload of shrimp and scallops
• A bit of cod 
• Red Thai chili
• Coconut milk
• Fish stock (I guess 1-1 with the coconut milk) 
• Onions
• Plantains (I think)--maybe that was the Brazilian part
• Garlic
• Lemon juice

I'll cook it pretty soon, but I'd probably omit the cod. It really didn't add much and tended to overwhelm the scallops.

The second one was the world's laziest roasted squash soup I just made for dinner:

• Toss two cups of cubed squash (I used butternut), a cup of cut carrots, and a sliced onion with olive oil and pepper.
• Put in a 450 degree oven or under the broiler for 20 minutes or until almost done and caramelized. A baking sheet with aluminum foil works well.
• Throw in blender with a cup of veggie stock
• Warm up in a sauce pan, add parsley, and season with salt and pepper

You could probably add some protein like pork or chicken, butter, or maybe cream, but it really doesn't need it. Total time, 25 minutes, total prep and cleanup: 5 minutes. The leftovers separated a bit, a dash of cornstarch would probably take care of that. 

Politics

I just made the first political donation of my life: a few hundred dollars to Barack Obama. The main reasons were:

1. As a resident, I finally can.
2. I don't want Hillary in the White House.
3. I don't want John McCain in the White House.
4. I don't want Huckleberry in the White House.
5. I want the Dem establishment and super delegates to get hit where it hurts.
   
6. The only other Dem I'd vote for can't run because of the 22nd Amendment; the only Rep I'd vote for can't run because of article 2, section 1, clause 5. (Go Ah-nuld!)
   
7. Getting Obama and a Democratic congress elected will do more for the environment and the disadvantaged than any amount that I can spend on Greenpeace (not the US whackos) or Doctors Without Borders.
8. I don't want any more people who's (trans)forming political experience was Watergate in the White House.

Knifework

I can probably handle a knife as well as most American chefs. But every time I watch Jacques Pepin dice an onion, I just want to kill myself. 

Then I come to my senses and really want to kill Paula Deen.

Joseph. Mallord. William...

Where are you when I need you? After the Schulz museum, I drove to Dillon Beach and saw the weirdest lighting I've ever seen on the coast.

Happiness is a wet puppy

Or something like that. I drove to a sale in Santa Rosa today (didn't buy anything), when I walked out on the store, I googled the place on my iPhone and saw that the Charles M. Schulz museum was only a mile down the road. 

OK, Disney, turn over in your grave, because this is the happiest place one earth. It's fairly small and doesn't show a lot of stuff--maybe 400 strips and CMS' furniture and writing desk. But everyone, myself and people between 15 and 90 included, walked around with a happy grin on their faces. Two things I learned--CMS did the guy with the paper bag in 1953, and one of his early characters looked a lot like Stewie.

Oh and the ice rink is right next door.

The day I went out to buy a Acura RSX

Didn't quite work out...I came home with a used Rabbit with 8000 miles on it. 

Big Sur

New Years Eve in Monterey with free museums--including the exhibit about a time when the US invaded countries by accident and actually apologized. White rappers, potato funnel cake, and a couple of hours arguing with a Brit barkeeper about why exactly English soccer sucks.

New Years included a leisurely drive past Big Sur and lunch in a t-shirt in unseasonably warm Santa Cruz.

Good Times

trivia

Did you know that Penny Johnson was Tina Tech?

Episode 2

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a link of the bestest Christmas music video ever. Guess what, someone did a tribute ep2 that made me--to quote my buddy Jay--almost pee my pants.

FUCK!!! I MISSED THIS!!!

I blame Chris and Justine for not telling me about it.

Verizon

I finally worked up the courage to call Verizon to cancel my second cell phone. The call went somewhat like this:

• robot: Welcome to Verizon Wireless. Please enter your 10 digit number
• robot: For billing dial 1...for other services dial 7
• robot: To cancel your account dial 2
• human: Hi, I'm Julie, can I have the last 4 digits of your SS#?
• me: xxxx
• Julie: What can I do for you today?
• me: I'd like to cancel my cell phone contract. 
• Julie: I am sorry to hear that, we'll cancel it at the end of this billing cycle on 12/18. You will receive a confirmation email. 
• me: blblblblblblbblblbl OK, thanks.
• Julie: Have a nice day, thanks for using Verizon.

I'm flabbergasted. Did Julie just have an off day, or is there really a US company who doesn't fight you tooth and nail before allowing you to drop their service? Anyway, yay for them. 

A.W.E.S.O.M.E

A good many people find comfort in faith after traumatic events, and a few of them go on to the ministry or find other ways to spread the word. This guy totally went above and beyond. 

Choking on Apples

I just saw on the web that Apple opened a new store on Chestnut. Now I sorta like Apple, but this just depressed the hell out of me.

Let me explain. One of the great things about the Bay Area (San Jose excluded) is the abundance of shopping streets that feature mostly local stores like Zinc, Heidi Says, small boutiques, socially conscious stores, or local chains like Barney's (best burgers on the planet), Le Boulangerie, A.G. Ferrari, and so on. Some examples are Filmore, Union, and Hayes in SF; Solano in Albany, and Shattuck/Telegraph in Berkeley. 

All of them have a few blemishes, but the big chains are usually relegated to downtown SF and upscale malls like Emeryville, Walnut Creek and Santana Row. 

Even thought Chestnut is in the middle of the Marina aka DINK/DIWK central, it was one of the streets that has tons of cool local stuff. Obviously, the GAP, Williams Sonoma, and the Lucky Jeans store took away some of it, but an Apple store is probably the death knell to the area. 

I got used to Diesel on Castro (after all, the gays need to get their jeans somewhere), but the GAP on the corner of Haight and Ashbury still chaffs my ass. 

So, how long until a Banana Republic is going to ruin Fillmore or Hayes?

Literature on Wikipedia

"Chaucer's language is much closer to modern English than the text of Beowulf"

NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!!!

Point Reyes