A Brit in the Court of the King

Roast Stuffed Pork Loin

2011-12-26T16:35:00.001Z

The title was a bit of a mouthful, but the results are a very nice mouthful. There's a lot of little bits in this, but, when you get to the end, it all comes out well and tastes great.

250g fresh spinach	6 smallish button mushrooms
1 dozen chestnuts	0.5lb sausage meat
1 tsp Mustard	1 tsp Mace
1 tsp Coriander	a little Salt and some Pepper
2.5lb Pork Loin	2 tsp Bisto Gravy Powder
Cotton String	Red wine

Measure out the spices and place them into a small frying pan for later
Cut the stalks from the spinach and wash it. Chop it fairly finely.
Peel the chestnuts - do it like this to avoid frustration and singed fingers!

Cut crosses in the flat sides of the chestnuts
Place them into boiling water for 3-4 minutes
Remove the heat but leave the nuts in the water
Two-by-two, take nuts from the water and cool a little under the tap
Cut in four with a sharp knife, and extract the meat.
Blend/chop the nut meat - I used my Magic Bullet.

Chop the mushrooms fairly finely - about a quarter-inch pieces
Heat the spices in the pan on a low heat
In a large mixing bowl, combine the spinach, spices, mushrooms, chestnuts, and sausage-meat
With a good-sized fork, mash the parts together. You will probably end up with a mix that is way too dry, so add an egg or two until it binds together. This is the stuffing mix.
Now take a sharp knife and cut the loin in two, length-ways. This should give you two fairly flat pieces of meat of the same length. In the US you often get a package that contains two parts already: in this case cut each part almost in half, so that it will lie flat
Place one part of the meat flat and season it with a little salt and pepper, and some rosemary
Put as much of the stuffing mix as will reasonably fit onto the meat
Lay the second piece of meat on top
Use the string to tie the whole thing together. You shouldn't need to go around more than five or six times at most
If there's a lot of stuffing left, pin up one end with cocktail sticks and push more into the other end!
Place the meat in a (non-stick if you can) roasting pan and cover over with foil. I put a cup of wine into the tray to keep the meat moist: don't bother if your meat is not sitting on the bottom of the pan
Place in the oven:

Start at about 450F for about 20 minutes
Take it out, turn the meat over, recover and replace for another 15 minutes or so
Measure the temperature - it'll probably be about 60C inside the meat
Uncover the joint and raise the oven temperature to 500F or more for about 15 minutes. This will get the temperature up and also colour up the top of the joint for serving

Once done, take from oven and let rest on the plate or block you'll use for carving for 10 minutes or so. It's still cooking at this point! Remember that you'll get liquid out of the joint, so be sure to use something that the juices won't simply run off of!
Mix the Bisto powder with a cup of red wine to liquify it
Take the roasting tray, add a cup or two of red wine and place on heat.
Use a spatula to scrape off the meat stuck to the bottom of the trat and break it up
Add the Bisto mix, bring to the boil. Almost immediately it will start to thicken, so be ready to pour into a serving jug.

I served this with mashed potatoes and corn. Peas or beans would also contrast well with the flavour of the pork. It'll certainly feed four hungry people.

Enjoy your meal - we certainly did (that's why there aren't any pictures!!)!

TTFN

Stuffed Mushrooms

2011-12-25T23:04:00.001Z

So, for lunch, there were Stuffed Mushrooms. I stopped in Wegman's yesterday for general "stuff", and saw some nice big Portabella mushrooms, so bought four. As it happened, I only needed three for lunch, but the stuffing for dinner will need some more.

I put the mushrooms on to fry very gently in butter, gills-down and stalk-removuff".ed. At the same time, with a little more butter, about a half onion and a good amount of garlic, both well chopped, to fry somewhat more savagely.

For the "stuffing", which it really isn't, 'cos Portabellas are too wide open to "stuff", take about a half of a pound of Jimmy Dean or Bob Evans sausage (or, if you're in Europe, minced pork), add about two teaspoonfuls of Herbes de Provence and some pepper. Mash out the meat with a fork, and then add in three eggs and keep mashing until well mixed. Now the mixture is made, start adding breadcrumbs until it all starts binding together. You need to get it to a consistency that is a little wetter than you would normally use for burgers.

Turn over the mushrooms!

By the time you're done with all this, the onion/garlic mixture should be ready to add to the meat mix, so do so.

Let the mushrooms fry gently until they start getting softer (not mushy!!), and then, for each one, take some meat mix, put it into a small pan flatten it down to about 3/10th of an inch thick and fry it, flipping once or twice. When done, sprinkle Parmesan cheese generously onto the mushroom, pop the cooked meat onto the top, and serve.

TTFN

Another Year Older ..... and it's time to get cooking !

2011-12-25T19:46:00.001Z

Yes, it's Christmas time again - that time of the year when I get older and decide not to cook for the next year. Then comes Christmas Day!

This year the daughter is returning to the fold for a few months, so there's been much moving of things from one room to others so she has somewhere to sleep, etc. What would be her room has been being used as a computer room - not something that will meet with much approval, I suspect, from tomorrow onwards!

Right now, in fact, the room looks more like Mission Control in Darmstadt than a bedroom, There are six screens in all - from a desktop, two laptops with extra screens, and an eeeBox. One of the laptops is my faithful Acer Aspire 9300 - a 17" Windows machine. The other is a new System-76 Bonobo machine - 17.3", 8 core Intel i7, 12 GB RAM, 1 Tb disk. It runs Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows in VirtualBox virtal machines. Life is turning out to be simpler this way, despite the normal hiccups of moving to a new OS.

Not, of course, that Ubuntu is really new to me - the eeeBox has been running 10.04 since it was released - early 2010, I suppose - with the NetBook GUI. Strangely enough, that's rather like the new Unity GUI that 11.10 comes with as default.It's a little bit of a pain atafirst to get used to, and also seems like a step back in time to be using more keyboard short-cuts, but I'm getting used to it. Slowly!

These two Linux machines really are a joy to work with. I run Windows virtually on the laptop because I keep my email in a program called TheBat! - a really good email client from RITLabs in, of all places, Moldova in Europe. As I have about 370,000 emails stashed in there, the store is really quite big, and I'm very happy with the way it all gets organised and kept. Very reliably, I might add! Unfortunately it only runs under Windows - I haven't been brave enough to try WINE!

Anyway, I also have a Windows desktop (under the desk), which I use without mouse, keyboard, or monitor - Vinagre remote control on the newer Linux machine or even in a virtual Windows machine inside the Linux machine will work fine. Only the RDP option works, which Ubuntu 10.04 doesn't have. Oh well - there are benefits to upgrades!

So, now I'm off to pick up some Windows PCs from a friend to disinfect, so the next blog will probably be full of stories of that.

TTFN

Emergency Food

2011-10-28T02:55:00.000Z

Food is necessary for lots of reasons, but when the wife says "Feed Me" then you know you have to come up with the goods!

2 spoons chopped garlic	11/2 onion, chopped
2 lbs ground beef	1 lb mild sausage-meat
1 large can diced tomatoes
1 pack cooked sausages, chopped	1 tsp fennel
1 tsp savory	1 tsk bay, broken into small pieces

Fry the onions and garlic gently in some vegetable oil until they're just beginning to get translucent.
Add all the herbs
Add the sausage-meat. Use a spoon to chop the sausage up into ever smaller pieces as it browns
Add the ground beef and brown it, breaking it apart as for the sausage
Add some salt and pepper - use your nose to smell the dish now for flavour
Once the meat is browned, add the sausage pieces and the tomatoes
Bring up to a boil and then simmer for maybe 20-30 minutes to let all the flavours infuse together

I served this with Rotini, and escaped with my life!

TTFN

Dennis Ritchie R.I.P.

2011-10-19T16:44:00.000Z

Last Thursday the news broke that a retiree from Bell Labs in New Jersey, one Dennis Ritchie, had died at the age of 70. I had the great good fortune to meet him once, at a conference in the mid-1980s. I have to say that I was totally in awe of the man, while he made me feel quite normal as we chatted, discussed the lectures we had taken in, and our opinions of the subjects and presenters. As said of so many great men, he seems to have had the facility of putting others at ease with him, despite their initial apprehensions.

At the same time there was an outflowing of commentary on the fact that Steve Jobs had died.

If you feel that Steve Jobs was an important person in the realm of computing, I won't disagree with you. However, please follow this link and read the article about Dennis Ritchie.

You'll see that Apple's computing success (which enabled the company to survive long enough to introduce products such as the iPod and iPhone) is founded on two things - the Objective-C language for people to use to write programs for an Apple and UNIX (adapted into Apple's current line of operating systems). You'll also see that Dennis Ritchie created both of these !

Of course, there are many other companies that depend on these developments and inventions. Unless you use an operating system descended from IBM's OS-360 you are almost certainly using something which is directly or indirectly descended from UNIX. MS DOS, for example, from version 2.0 onwards, incorporated chunks of UNIX code in order to comply with DOD requirements. The computers in your car probably run Q-OS, also based on UNIX. The list covers almost every processor running code in the world today!

These things are what makes Dennis Ritchie one of those giants upon whose shoulders we stand (see Newton, 1676).

TTFN

Food for a Hurricane

2011-08-27T17:04:00.001Z

Hurricane Irene passed yesterday, bring periodic rain, which was nice. Other will get it worse as it goes north. Cooking was needed and frozen chicken breasts were waiting their fate, so the base was decided upon. Now, what to do to them? We had a tub of Ricotta Cheese in the fridge that we hadn't opened, and spinach, so I decided to stuff the breasts and serve them on rice.

What

Ingredients
1 lb ricotta cheese	1/2 lb spinach leaves, lightly chopped
3 tsp chopped garlic	1/2 onion, chopped
4 frozen chicken breasts (thick ones)	1 pack of Wasa crispbread
2-4 bell peppers (depending on your taste), chopped	1 bottle dryish white wine
1 lb pack of bacon	cocktail sticks
2 tsp dried thyme	1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

How

Start thawing the chicken, but intercept the process before it's completely finished, so that you can hold the breasts on edge without them flopping all over the place. Cut through the breasts parallel to the flat sides in order to "butterfly" them, so they will fold back like the cover of a book.
Put some olive oil in a casserole (mine is from IKEA) large enough to take all four breasts and put on to medium heat. Add the garlic and about 1/4 of the onion and fry gently until the onion is soft.
Raise the heat to medium-high, add the spinach, and start stirring. Keep doing this until the leaves all turn dark green, are liberally covered with the garlic pieces, and are well wilted. Take it out and let it cool off.
In a bowl, mix the Ricotta, Parmesan, Thyme, and some salt and pepper (use a fork and be rough about it!!!)
Add the cheese mix to the spinach mix and mix the two together well.
One-by-one, lay down the breasts, put as much mix as you think they will hold on them, fold them gently back together, and wrap them with rashers of bacon (probably 2 or 3 per breast. Secure with cocktail sticks.
Spread the remaining cheese/spinach mix on pieces of crispbread to serve as nibbles.
Put some olive oil into your casserole, bring it back to medium, and add the rest of the onion. Put a lid on and cook for a few minutes.
Bring the heat to high and gently add the chicken breasts. It should take about 2 minutes for a side to brown, so brown each side.
Once the chickens are browned, pour in the bottle of wine and add the peppers.
Replace the lid and cook on medium for about 40 mins

I served it over basmati rice.
It has to be good hurricane food, 'cos we've blue skies and puffy white clouds today!

TTFN

Making Mistakes - T-SQL Tuesday 021

2011-08-10T02:37:00.000Z

SQL ~~Tuesday~~ Wednesday

I'm a database developer and sometimes a DBA, as you'll probably have realised, despite the amount of food and yarn that appears on this blog! Like all developers, I've made mistakes. Like all honest developers, I try my best to admit them, learn from them, and move towards being a better developer.

A better consultant than I (or, at least, one better recognised as such!), Adam Machanic, has posted a challenge to those of us in the SQL Server community who claim to be honest. You can see it by clicking on the caption of the logo on the right (I can't make the logo itself a link, as it is really a link to the page itself!).

The challenge is to publish a blog post today (Aug 10th, 2011) talking about the bad code we've written. The aim is to provide people with examples of what not to do.

null values
One new thing you learn when you start out with databases is the concept of "I don't know". Rather like the famous statement "there are things that we know we don't know, and there are things that we don't know we don't know" implies, these unknowns have to be treated with care. One learns to use tri-valued logic (True, False, null (or "I dunno!"), for example). One also learns that, because of nulls, there are sometimes queries where the sums don't always add up as you might expect. Here's an example.

You have a table to report from. You've made it by pulling data from tables supplied by colleagues from their parts of the system. One of the fields defines the type of an item - let's say possible values are Computer, Printer, Router, and Unknown. As this is just a temporary table you're got in memory to organise the data for reporting from, you've not bothered with any referential integrity ...

Computer        2706

Printer          522

Router            47

Unknown          174
--------    ----
Total           3449

So you create your report and all looks good, until you see that the sum of the items that you've produced doesn't match the total sum - in fact, it's 551 too small. The real error is not in the query here that outputs from a sproc for an SSRS report: it's in the underlying assumptions!

select Type, count(Type) as 'Quantity'
from @taReport
where Type is not null
group by Type
order by Type
The programmer didn't realise that sometimes the Type might be unknown, so added the where Type is not null clause quite reasonably to avoid the report row saying that there were zero entries with type "NULL" (and, anyway, that always showed a zero!).

Adding this line just before the select statement would convert the null values into Unknowns, which is really what they are!

update @taReport set Type = 'Unknown' where Type is null

The Unknowns number goes to 725 and the total to 4000, which is the correct total number of objects!

Moral of the Story: A database contains a representation of the real world. It isn't a complete representation, to be sure, but so far as it goes, it must be accurate and complete. In this case the programmer made an assumption about the data quality that wasn't warranted.

Obsolete Code
When one works with a database with some history, such as when one is hired into a company with an already-functioning system, it behooves one to enquire into the history of the system. In one project I was investigating the reasons behind the terrible performance of some queries. One reason that I found was the use of functions in the where clauses of these queries - a well-known bad practice. Investigating further, I found that the functions (there were two or three only, used in a number of places) were very simple, and easily replaced with an existing native function in SQL Server 2000.

It was only after I had tracked down and fixed these function calls that I had a chance to learn more about the system history. It had originally been written in Access only, and these functions didn't exist so had to be written by hand! When the database part of the system was moved to SQL Server the code was re-written, apparently without any concern for whether any pieces were actually necessary!

Moral: Think about what you're doing! you may be creating something totally unnecessarily!

TTFN

A Colour Nook!!

2011-08-06T04:46:00.000Z

The wonderful AG, the Keeper of the Books, allowed me to get a new eReader a couple of weeks ago to replace the Pocket PC (picture, right, from Wikipedia) I've had since about 2001. Don't get me wrong, now: the HP Jornada 568 has lasted a very long time for any piece of electronics, was relatively easy to program, has a nice clear screen for reading (a little small, I'll admit), and, recently, has been frequently the object of great curiosity from many people, asking if that was a prototype for a new Apple machine. To be honest, a piece of electronics that lasts 10 years of fairly continuous use definitely gets my respect.

Anyhow, it's coming to the end of its life, with the batteries starting to lose their ability to hold a decent charge and the beast as a whole becoming prone to testy reboots, so I finally decided that a new reader was needed. The problem was, as many have found, one of choice. Many people never moved to an eReader until Amazon introduced the Kindle, so their choice was easy, as they had no history of books to bring forward. I, on the other hand, have around 200 books in a variety of formats - .LIT, .EPB, .PDF, .CHM, .ePub, etc. - that I would really rather not buy all over again.

So, I looked around and found that the Nook Color is really a kind of mini-tablet, running Android 2.2. You could get an emulation on a PC in 2010, so I started playing with it there back then. I also started looking for ways of converting my eBooks (very few of which are Secure, or locked, luckily). I found a program called calibre, billing itself as an eBook manager program, that runs on Linux and Windows, and which will convert a number of formats into ePub, which is the Nook's "native" or preferred format.

Anyhow, I got my new toy a couple of weeks ago, and a few extras that I, for one, really consider necessary. These include a cover, of course, but one that can, as you can see, be used as a stand to hold the Nook at a convenient reading angle.

The next extra, equally important in the short term, but essential for the long term, is a supply of film screen covers to protect the capacitative screen from damage.

Finally, as I have used the small HP for some ten years and am totally accustomed to using a stylus to work the on-screen keyboard, a stylus. The one you see to the left is a rooCase, and comes in the form of a foam tip to an otherwise rather attractive ball-point.

So, it was a few days of play to explore the Nook, get used to expanding and shrinking the screen (annoying, that - web sites used to be written to self-adjust in the days of the old HP!). Anyway, it's certainly got some nice features. One thing I could do with is a set of smaller keys (as I'm not using my fat fingertips) with some extras, rather than having to continually hit an alt key to switch to another keyboard full of numbers and symbols. The text presentation is, on the whole, very good and at least the equal of that in the Microsoft Reader software on the Jornada, and the idea of swiping ones fingers on the screen to turn pages very quickly becomes natural. Then, after getting well stuck in to The Art of SQL, it was time to convert books from other formats. I can only say that calibre worked without any fuss or problems. It uses all the cpu power it can get its fingers on, and definitely isn't the fastest program on the planet, but the output (ePub in my case) is just as good as the originals that I fed it.

Do I have any grouses about the Nook Color? Well, one or two. I'd like to be able to see the list of books that I have to select from in the equivalent of Windows Explorer's Detail view, instead of icons with only a quarter of the title in view. Of course, that may be possible - just a feature that I haven't found yet.
The other thing that surprised me to start with was the sheer weight of the thing! 654 grammes (with the cover that I bought), 1.44 pounds. Compared to the HP, which only weighed a few ounces, the Nook is a huge monster, and definitely takes getting used to - when reading in bed, for example.

Overall opinion: very favourable. I'd definitely recommend it to people with existing eBooks: ePub and PDF are readable immediately. I'm very happy, and can see the end of paper book purchases in this house looming closer.

TTFN

New Foods ..... New Technologies

2011-07-16T22:46:00.001Z

We went off to the H&L Food Store on Rivers Avenue in Charleston today. Very much the usual Asian food supermarket, except rather larger than most on the east coast. We cruised up and down the aisles, wondering what we could send to the far-flung DD ... some sweet things here, maybe some dried squid there ... (well, maybe not!). Certainly not the whole dried Croaker, neatly packaged, very flat, and staring beadily back at the prospective customer with a fixed and glazed stare.That would certainly freak granny out! Then there were lots of green teas in different packages for great-gran, Thai curry paste and ginger sweets for me, and some nice tea for the AG. Peas for the Offspring. Looks like there'll be a box heading out west very soon!

The AG rather liked that grooving on this little 85-cent can of peas, so we got it .... but it says "Dry Peas" on the outside, and, when I shake it, it definitely has water inside. Should they be "Self-Dry Peas"?

Food
So, it'll be stir-fry tonight, methinks. We have rice in the fridge from a few days ago, which is good, as it'll be dried out and not too wet to be fried. Chopped Kielbasa (thin medallions quartered) and maybe some other meats. Celery, mushrooms, some cooked carrots, and red bell peppers, all chopped and cooked a bit. I'll beat some eggs and then cook them in the wok to get a kind of scrambled egg, and then add the rice. After that the warmed meat and veggies go in to get properly hot before serving.

Tech
Finishing a revision go-through of LearnDevNow's SSRS 2008 course, before working therough The Art Of SQL Report Writing on Aranya's site (see Tech List on sidebar). I'm looking towards taking PragmaticWork's SSAS course as soon as I can, as I can see a need for it coming soon.

Home
It's been rather nice, living down here in Charleston for a while, so it's a shame that it may be ending soon. We've really been enjoying late-night swims together, without all the kids and without the glaring sunshine. We'll see what the future brings. Fun, hopefully, and enjoyment.

TTFN

An Example of Computer Evolution

2011-07-12T13:33:00.001Z

I'm writing this on a laptop with a 17" screen, an attached 19" monitor, 4 GB of RAM, about 300 GB of disk space (mostly used, unfortunately), a couple of terabyte drives attached, and a 2 GHz AMD processor. Fairly normal, you might think, except that this PC was bought in 2006, making it five year old! Not surprisingly, it runs Windows XP.

The other day I downloaded a small piece of software in order to do some work, and was cautioned that the software required that my PC should have the following minimum assets:

The following minimum computer hardware and software requirements must be
met in order to access or retrieve the materials herein: IBM
compatible or Macintosh personal computer system with internet connectivity;
available hard disk drive space of at least 50 kb; a computer pointing device,
such as a mouse; 128-bit SSL (Secure Socket Layer) compatible browser, such as
Netscape 4.0 or Internet Explorer 4.0, or higher; Adobe Acrobat® Reader ® 5.0,
computer monitor capable of displaying internet web pages and graphics;
graphical user interface operating system, such as Windows 95, OS8 or later.

Seeing as I was actually viewing the requirements on an internet site, the requirements for internet connectivity and monitor capabilities seemed a little redundant. However, I find that I have forgotten how long ago it is that a PC would function with less free disk space than 50 kilobytes! Certainly well before 1996 and the advent of the Web for most people!

Still, it all worked flawlessly, which just goes to show you how well Sir Tim and his colleagues at CERN designed the Web in the first place.

TTFN

Oops

2011-07-10T04:03:00.001Z

I generally a clumsy oaf in many things - like steaming three fingers while cooking this evening!

Oops.

sometimes you just can't believe
how well you can be treated
we're told "forgive others" but that's
been difficult since we were created

I forget the timezone and ring too soon
I'm a klutz and drop the china on the floor
I misspell your town's name
and spill chocolate down your pure white blouse !

somehow you know that it isn't intended
that forgetting anniversaries is just how I am
your speciality seems to be forgiving me
which just helps me love you more

TTFN

From BJs to Costco

2011-07-06T04:48:00.002Z

For the last few years we've been BJ's customers and very happy ones too. However, our nearest BJ's is now a couple of hundred miles away, so the question was: who now? Here's a few things we've found at Costco here in Charleston that are nice:

A cool room where all the berries and pre-packed fruit and veggies are kept.
A huge pile of Canon EOS Rebel T2i cameras (18 MPxl) at $800.
Single-unit Magic Bullets at $45 (with at least six mugs). Ours is still in NJ, but all the mugs will interchange.
Interesting and nice specialty breads - like cheese bread and various herb breads.
A good selection of frozen foods (I didn't find the 3-packs of peas and corn that BJ's has, but I haven't explored everywhere yet!).
A good variety of fresh food - fruit, veggies and meat - all well-kept (except for one occasion where the bottom layer of boxes of bananas pretty much dissolved and when someone got to them ... well, they still smelled nice, but were just about liquid!

There's a Sams Club that's nearer, but not nearly as good for fresh food. It has a lot of pre-packaged things - far more as a percentage than Costco.

The local Walmart (almost a mile away) has good fresh food too. On the other hand, I've been to a couple of the local store chain, Piggly Wiggly, and will definitely leave it!

TTFN

A Phishing Email I Just Had To Share!

2011-07-02T13:06:00.000Z

Welcome again from South Carolina! We're settling in to life here - a routine of getting up, having breakfast, going to work, coming home, eating a snack for dinner, going for a swim at 10 pm, and then sleeping the night away. Not such a terrible life. Work isn't too terrible either - after over three weeks of very compressed and rushed training (which is an unheard of luxury for someone on contract but which, in this case, was absolutely necessary) I find that I, at least, appear to be making some positive contributions to the project I'm assigned to, and am actually having my efforts recognised and appreciated. How nice!!!

That Spam
Anyhow, to the subject. I got this email this morning - twice!

ANTI TERRORIST & MONITORY CRIME DIVISION
FBI HEADQUARTERS IN WASHINGTON , D.C.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING
935 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW WASHINGTON , D.C. 20535-0001
www.fbi.gov

Dear Fund Beneficiary,

Some time ago, your friends from Africa and London, I mean the people that introduced you to the project approached you and requested you assist them conclude a money transfer deal they had with you, they requested you to assist them by removing the original contractors name, from the bank vetting computer and replacing them with your name and your details in order to make you appear as the rightful beneficiary of this funds. You agreed and they said you will share the money with them as soon as your name appears as the beneficiary.

So this is just a clue to show you that we are investigative and have all details to persecute you, but we shall give you the opportunity to receive the funds and make it clean, since it is coming into our dear country, but if you do not co-operate then we shall take negative actions.

Maybe you think, that we are joking , but by the time we start taking actions you would know how serious we are, you do not have his document in your files, if you did the account would not have been freezed. We did not believe this at first , but when we saw the wire we had no option than to contact you. It has come to the attention of our Money Trafficking investigation department, that you have some funds valued at U.S $8.3Million to your name , The said payment is awaiting adjudication and credited to your name this funds are from Inheritance 'willed 'to you from Nigeria C.B.N precisely and bank in London With full concern of The F.B.I and the Internal Revenue Service(IRS)
You are under an observational /Investigation in connection with money laundering.
If your funds comes from a legitimate and legal source ,the proper guidelines for you to recover the right of transaction is for you to provide the DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY SEAL OF TRANSFER (DIST) so that your funds will be legally processed and recorded and accounted for and then finally released to you .

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (ANTI-TERRORIST AND MONEY LAUNDERING DEPARTMENT )Is Here to wipe out terrorism , and will stop at no length in doing our duty for the American people .

You have 48 hours to produce legal proof of the below frozen wired transaction number coded:3456711 owned by you , You do not have any rights to receive this funds if the documented legal wire information is not complete. The very heart of FBI operations lies in our investigations--which serve, as our mission states, 'toprotect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats and to enforce the criminal laws of the United States.' We currently have jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal law. So you can see that the we can track you down through Investigative programes.We have your address an

Note ,the funds are very legal and from a good source, so as a matter of National interest you have to provide the documents to certify the money as clean funds. The funds are in the Citibank New York right now, and will be released to you as soon as this document is procured, even if you do not want the funds you still have to obtain the documents to clear your name as, the funds are already here, so the decision is yours. If you have the document then forward it to us immediately, if you do not have the documents then contact us immediately so that we can advice you on what it will take and where to obtain the documents.

Note: that you have just 48 hours to complete this process of national interest.
NOTE: If you failure to produce the above requirement in the next 48 hours, legal action will be taken immediately from our office

Sincerely,

Yours In Service.

Agent Shawn Henry,
Assistant Director, FBI Cyber Division.
Email : fbiofffice1@qatar.io

CONFIDENTIAL NOTICE:This E-MAIL may contain information that is privileged, confidential, and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution, copying, or use of this document is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us by email at the E-MAlL listed above to arrange for the destruction or return of the original document to us. Thank you
© 2011 Federal Bureau Of Investigations All Rights Reserved

As you can imagine, I was somewhat amused. I get rather a lot of spam - currently about 60 messages per day that I am aware of, although it has been as low as 20 and as high as 120 over the last few years - and it's quite rare that something like this gets through the spam filters that my email provider has in place, so I thought I'd share it with you. Be amused, but please don't get taken in by this sort of thing when it lands in your inbox!

That's it. Have a good holiday weekend.

TTFN

A Very Brief Message

2011-06-05T15:59:00.000Z

We've moved! From New Jersey all the way to Hanahan, just outside Charleston, in South Carolina. It seems nice so far ... quiet development, nice people, friendly wildlife (birds, squirrels, alligators), although we'll refrain from swimming in their reservoir if they refrain from coming inside snap-range! The weather is nice too (sunny - what else, it's summer!), although that may end up being too much of a good thing later on. The first truck is about 3/4ers unpacked, and we'll be going back in a month or so to get the rest.

The To-Do list at the moment includes things like "Finish clearing truck", "Construct bed", "Get living area planned", and "Find whatever we need in the boxes" (of which there seem to be many more that I remember filling in NJ. Do they multiply under the conditions in moving (repeated vibrations, being hot, being close together, being unobserved) ?

More when I unearth a camera!

TTFN

Maryland Sheep and Wool, 2011

2011-05-08T01:15:00.001Z

This last week has been an utter killer in many ways, so the opportunity to walk in the fresh air and sunshine and look at beautiful colours was especially welcome. Therefore, the first weekend in May has been very welcome, as with it comes the annual Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Like last year, I've posted all the raw photos up on PhotoBucket, here. Please accept my apologies that some haven't been rotated, and others look a little weird (they're raw photos for panoramas that I hope I'll get up here very soon).

Anyhow, we got in around 7 am after a surprisingly early night, and went straight to the main barn and the Clover Hill store, as the AG needed to get some Three Irish Girls mini-skeins for a friend, and some of their full skeins for herself. In fact, we left leaving it all behind, because their card processing system wasn't up yet ..... but we got the yarn!

Next on the list was The Fold.

The Fold seems to be one of The Mystical Places for knitters visiting this festival. There is always a long line (about 50 people!) waiting for opening time, many with long shopping lists and the hope of getting maybe one or two items from their lists.

They have one of the best organised check-out systems in the whole event (and they need it!), and they're still backlogged half the time, trying to get people paid and away!

Meantime, the queue for the merchandise (t-shirts, etc., was reaching epic proportions!

Oh who would think a girl and lamb would be well accepted everywhere (ref Harry Nilsson & Simon Smith).

One can always be happily surprised at things you find at the Faire.

And we made it past all the crowds to Tess Designs, to find it utterly mobbed!

Of course, this is perfectly natural (I'm in love with her colours just like the AG is in love with the Three Irish Girls colourways).

No Yarn Event is complete without Sheep Incognito!

And so to lunch (Lamburger courtesy of the scouts) and to the car to rest.
More later

TTFN

Food (again !)

2011-04-29T04:26:00.000Z

I always keep a couple of food-saver boxes of something like chilli or stew in the freezer, in case of emergencies (like sloth in the kitchen!). For other emergencies I also like to keep some sort of microwavable food there too. If you've read the Food parts of this blog you'll have realised that I don't really "do" microwave cooking, but they're handy for when you're in panic-mode, or need to make melted butter immediately.

A few weeks ago I was out shopping in, I think, Trader Joe's, and saw this. Curious (I know and love the dish) I grabbed a box and put it into the fridge.
Tonight I tried it, fearing the worst! The worst, however, was not to be. It was perfectly palatable, had a good taste and texture, and left a nice, fragrant aftertaste when all was done. It was not at all spicy-hot, probably as a nod to the innocent taste-buds of the American public, but then, Muttar Paneer isn't really supposed to be a hot dish.

So, what's the verdict? I'll go back and get another to put in the freezer for when I'm feeling lazy and hungry. It isn't particularly big, but the taste is definitely better than most of the frozen meals out there.

TTFN

Searching for an Answer

2011-04-24T07:58:00.000Z

Wow!! Another month without a blog post! The work project came to the end of a cycle and, of course, there were lots of last-minute things to do, corrections to make and pieces to add. I've been hitting the sack every night totally beat! However, there are some things to talk about, that could help!

Taking On New Responsibilities
About three weeks ago our project DBA moved on suddenly to another post - and, at the same moment, took a well-deserved two-week vacation. He'd been filling in for a colleague for some weeks prior to that. So, I realised, coming in on a Monday morning, that I was now the project DBA as well as the project database developer. Great! - nothing like a Monday morning for news like that. It makes you understand the feelings behind the girl whose excuse for shooting people was just "I don't like Mondays"!

Anyway, I did a quick check of the system and all seemed fine, until I got to the Job Log and spotted a couple of red "X" marks - one I knew about, as it was a job I'd run a few weeks ago and which had failed, but I had fixed it and never bothered to delete it (sloppy, I know!). However, the other one was the weekly full backup from the previous Monday night. This meant that we had been running on nightly differentials for almost two weeks. Eeek!

On investigation I discovered that it was only a couple of databases that were a problem (out of about a dozen), but that backing up had failed for lack of available disk space. And the next full backup was due to run that Monday night! Not only that, but I was running some SQL right then that was fairly eating up what space there was by growing the transaction log like a B-movie monster!

As you can imagine, there was a certain amount of panic and feverish work going on to clear enough space for the log and the next backup (moving old backup files to another disk drive) before the more measured approach took hold, and I realised that all the backups were being done from SQL Server 2005, and so weren't being compressed. Zipping them up in blocks (a full and all the subsequent diffs before the next full) got us about a quarter of the hard drive back that day, and about another quarter over the next few days. I'm now waiting for provision of a DVD burner and a spindle of discs in order to get the data off-machine.

My good fortune was that this is, really, just a development machine, and a lot of the data just doesn't change very much. Had it been a production server with a lot of users the problem would have been much more pressing.

Moral: Always check the job log, and always check where your disk space is going - it's fairly simple to fix, but big-time bad if you miss it!

No Easy Way

The other day I was handed a new request: just some ETL to .CSV files, one per department, but it'll need to happen repeatedly. Ok: some stored procedures to get the data (it's not a particularly simple extract, so easier that way than with straight SSIS transformations), and then SSIS to get it out to the file system.

My sprocs worked pretty well - I provided an input parameter of the department number and got the data into a table named with the dept number. Great! Now the SSIS. I can use a ForEach block in the control flow to run the sproc and then have the data flow pick up the info from the appropriate table and drop it into the correctly-named .csv file.

So, I set up the ForEach block with a counter (1 to 16, as it happens), and pass that in to the SQL string invoking the sproc in an ExecuteSQL block. Great!

In the Data Flow I create everything for department 1, test it, and then set up the connection string of the FileDestination to be determined by an expression including the number from the ForEach block (in a variable declared outside the block). Doing conversions and other things at the same time in the expression editor is a nuisance, so I used a neat SSIS trick - making a variable's value a function of the value of another variable.

What I did was have an int variable for the loop counter, and a string variable for concatenation. The string variable is defined as

(D_STR)[User::intLoopCtr]

so it's always the right value. Then, for making names, I have the template (disk & path) stored in another string variable in order to make for easy changes. Creating the file name is simply concatenation.

Now for the DataSource - the table filled by the sproc. Arrrrgh! You can't make the source table a dynamic entry, as there isn't an Expressions entry in the properties list! Time to sit back and think.

After a few minutes hard thinking, lunch, and a few more minutes hard thinking, I decided to follow Rule Two of Mike's Three Rules of Programming: "If it's getting really hard, then you're doing it the wrong way".

Instead of making the sproc generate a new table automatically, let me tell it what name to use. So I change the sproc, adding a new parameter and changing some code.

Now all I have to do is tell the sproc the number and the file name, and keep the file name always the same. That's all just a matter of concatenating some strings ("exec sproc ", the string version of the counter, and the constant table name) and using it in the ExecuteSQL task. The DataSource can now always look to the same table, so it's happy, and the whole thing works like magic. That's the way I like to leave things on a Friday night. Doesn't always work out like that, but you've gotta try!

Moral: Always be ready to go back and alter your design - you never know when what you didn't think of at the beginning will get in the way later on.

Training
There's no knitting pictures and no food stuff this post (sorry!). I'm writing this at 3.30 am because I couldn't sleep (I crashed at five for about four hours!), and I've been watching SSWUG's DBCon videos. It was on for the last three days but, of course, I had to be in work, beavering away for the good of the company. So, the wonderful thing is that all the sessions (77 in all, including things like opening remarks and keynotes) are available for on-demand viewing.

That means that, although I knew I wouldn't be able to watch them live, with the ability to chat to other viewers in real-time, and ask questions, I do have the opportunity of seeing all these great presentations when I can get an hour or so to myself. In fact, I have until June to watch them, and I can watch each one up to six times! How cool is that? I can watch them in the order I want to, so, for example, I just watched Chris Shaw's Growth Pains, about what happens in IT when companies grow. This was just part one of three, so I'll look at the other two tomorrow before going on to other things. My next target will be the PowerShell sessions, and there's another one called Agile for DBAs and Developers that looks really interesting ...

Obviously it's too late to watch it live (it finished on Friday), but you may be able to buy the DVD of the conference from SSWUG (they are available for people who paid for the conference, so ...). I don't know this for sure, though, but they would certainly be worth it!

In fact, with all the stuff it produces, membership of SSWUG is an amazing deal! Thanks to Stephen Wynkoop and all the people there for making so much valuable info so easily available.

Happy Easter everyone!

TTFN

Blocking EMail

2011-03-26T17:36:00.000Z

This post is all-technical, rather than all-food like the last few! However, at least to begin with, I'll keep it not-too-technical.
EMail
What a wonderful thing email is (well, unless you're a postman!). However, just like in the physical snail-mail, there's a huge amount of it that you don't want. In fact, well over 50% of all email sent is not stuff that nobody wants! Things like George Leyba and associated Nigerian cronies offering you vast sums of money, and assorted Canadian Pharmacies promising that your wife will love you forever if you buy their purple pills! These are just the tip of the iceberg - you get them because there are, believe it or not, people out there who fall for these scams, send off their money, and, of course, either receive nothing back, or get some aspirins painted with food dye!
You can see your email in two ways - either using a web browser or by downloading it all to your PC and using an Email Client, such as OutLook, Evolution, TheBat!, or any one of a number of others. The more popular browsers, like Netscape, used to have email facilities built in for a while. Either way, there are ways to make your day a little easier and to avoid the pain either of being duped or just of wasting the time of reading them, realising what they are, and deleting them. Here's my suggested steps (if you think there should be more, please comment and I'll look at adding them!).

Turn off the browser's automatic display of HTML. Believe it or not, simply opening an HTML document in a browser or many email readers can result in running code that could be harmful. I have my email client set to only show text except for from a few trusted sites. You'd expect that I'd get to see lots of messages that start "Your browser doesn't support frames" or "To see this email as a web page go to ", but I don't - read on!
Get an email host that does a good job of filtering unwanted spam. When I visit the spam trap for my principal email account I see anywhere between 50 and 150 spam messages per day. Sometimes one or two shouldn't be there, but those are invariably new things that I've subscribed to. My other email account gets maybe 10 spams a day, but only one or two are ever trapped.
In your email client, filter FaceBook messages to Trash. Why? Because if you're on FB you'll have seen them anyway. At the end of the day you can check them over to make sure you didn't miss something important.
Filter everything from HotMail to Trash. Sorry if you're a HotMail user, but about 95% of all the emails I ever get from HotMail accounts are variations on invitations to me to buy some prescription stimulant to improve my love-life!
Don't be afraid to create a filter to send not just fred@xxx.com to the trash, but everything that comes from xxx.com to the trash At times I've set whole countries that way - Finland was one notable example in about 2005.

The easy way to decide whether something should be filtered is to look in your trash - if there's lots of stuff from that email domain (the xxx.com part) then filter it all out - you can always look at it later! Don't forget that filters are applied one after the other, so if you find that you're filtering aunt Edna's emails to the trash, put another filter in before that one, to move hers off somewhere safe first.

That's all for this time - more soon!

TTFN

Porc Provençal

2011-03-20T23:23:00.001Z

My son finally cooked off his first full meal - rather than being my sous-chef. No photos, I'm afraid, but tasty all the same. Taken from Rosemary Moon's 1995 book Classic French Cuisine (0 8317 1121 3), from which I have garnered many fine ideas and produced many a fine meal.
He used 3lb of sliced pork boneless chops, 1/4lb of butter, 4 cups of sliced onions, a large teaspoon of Herbes de Provence, 2lbs of sliced potatoes, and a 28oz can of diced tomatoes.
He browned the pork in half the butter (there were twelve slices, so quite a lot of taking and putting happened here!) and set it by. Then he browned the onions in the same butter before adding in the herbs, tomatoes, salt, and pepper. This mixture, was brought to a boil and reduced a bit before we filled a casserole with layers of vegetable, pork, and potato. Finally, it was cooked for 90 mins covered and then 30 more uncovered before serving.
Here's to Chez Mon Fils!

TTFN

Stuffed Mushrooms

2011-03-18T02:18:00.001Z

I was late home this evening - not a healthy thing to do when your wife's hungry!

Not only that, but I had to get on the phone and deal with things before starting to cook. By the time I actually started, we'd both snacked enough that the edges were off our appetites, so we remembered that we had mushrooms in the fridge, so why not that!

Ingredients:

1 stick of butter 20 mushrooms, stalks removed

1 egg 2 slices of bread, crusts removed

1 tblsp vegetable oil 2 tsp Herbes de Provence

3 clove garlic, chopped (I used 2 tsp of pre-chopped)

salt & pepper grated Parmesan cheese

You'll need just a frying pan and a small mixing bowl - and a safe source of flame. I used a gas candle lighter. A spatula and a pair of tongs comes in very handy!

Method:

Tear up the bread, add the oil, Herbes, garlic, some salt and pepper, and the egg. Mash all this up well and you should get a fairly loose paste.
Take the stalks out of the mushrooms and fill the resulting holes with the mixture - don't heap is, because you're going for taste, not quantity.
Melt half the butter gently in a pan. Once melted, add ten mushrooms and leave for about five minutes. By this time the mushrooms should be hard on top, still, but lightly-browned on the bottoms.
Flip all the mushrooms and cook for a couple more minutes, on a higher heat. This will cook the egg, which will expand, forcing the mix further into the mushroom.
Take out the mushrooms and arrange on a plate. Sprinkle each with Parmesan cheese.
Go over the top of each mushroom with the flame, browning the cheese.

The ten should be enough for two people: for another two, repeat the process, but add about a quarter stick of butter, as it'll be getting "used" as well as absorbed by the mushrooms.

Enjoy your meal! We did!

TTFN

PhotoShoot Catchup

2011-02-06T19:18:00.000Z

The last few blogs have been totally text, which can be a little boring. Now I hope to make some amends! Also, I promise to add pictures of food in future - and maybe edit old posts to include photos of the food as I re-make them. Ok, now you know one of my New Year's Resolutions!

So, to start off withm here's some yarn that's waiting for the AG to come back and see to.

Three Irish Girls produced the first three: Maeve to the left, Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree to the right, and Maureen below,

Left are two balls of Pretty Pirate from The Yarn Pirate: on the right is the AG sitting in the only chair in the house, with knitting and PB to the fore.

In Pery's Hotel in Limerick they're mirrored the lift - a surprise!

On the N18 between Shannon airport and Limerick you pass a castle ... nothing unusual, in a country where anyone who wanted to see their children grow up lived in something like this (not so big, maybe, but anyway ...).

Bunratty it is (left) and it offers special period evening dinners (somewhat better than Medieval Times, possibly because of the setting).
In the village you find Durty Nellie's pub and (especially for the AG), Blarney Woollen Mills (although Blarney Castle is over 100 kilometres away, in Co. Cork, not here in Co. Clare!

Left is the bar, and right the safety features (or the escape-prevention features, although with the food and drink on offer it's more likely needed to keep people out!

TTFN

Food From Faraway

2011-02-05T20:36:00.000Z

Food
Last time I mentioned visiting Al Duomo in Brighton and being inspired to a recipe by an item written on their daily menu. Their offering, so far as I recall, was Pasta con Funghi Porcini e Rucola. "Pasta with Porcini mushrooms and Rocket" in England, where Rocket (from the german Rauke) is the name for Arugala.

After we finished out (very good) antipasto lunch snack we went to Asda to get ingredients to make dinner. These quantities were intended (roughly) for two but ended up enough for three!

about half lb of pasta                                      half bottle of light red wine
a dozen mushrooms, 1"- 2" across    quarter lb butter
half lb rocket                      quarter pint crème fraiche
half a medium onion                 teaspoonful chopped garlic
olive oil

Boil salted water, add a little oil, and set the pasta to cook.
Fry the onion and garlic gently in the oil for a few minutes, add the butter and melt it. Slice the mushrooms in two or three and add them to the mix, making sure that they're well cooked to be tender.
Once the mushrooms are done take them from the heat.
When the pasta is cooked to a little less than your taste, drain all the water from it, leaving it in its pot.
Add the mushrooms only to the pasta and return that pot to a very low heat. The pasta will finish cooking.
Add the crème fraiche (or light cream, or plain yoghourt, if you can't get crème fraiche) to the onion/garlic mixture in the frying pan and heat. Add a little Worcestershire Sauce for flavour, and then pour enough red wine into the mixture for it to turn a pleasing pink colour.
Take the pasta from the heat and mix the rocket in.
Lastly, add the sauce mixture to the pasta and serve.

I served this in bowls: plates would be equally good, and serving it over sliced toast would add a good base texture. Grated Parmigiano or a similar hard cheese goes very well indeed, with the rocket providing a crunchy texture to offset those of the mushrooms and pasta. A light red wine is an excellent accompaniment.

More Food
This morning a noted on FB that I was having Oeufs Pochés on toast for breakfast, which raised some interest, so here's what they are.

You may know "Poached Eggs" from England, which are made by cracking an egg gently and decanting it from its shell into an open-topped little hemisphere in which it will cook by floating in boiling water, You can get special pans for this or an insert for your normal frying pan. You can recognise the germanic influence here when you find that oeufs pochés are the original poached eggs, but created in an extremely free-form manner.

In this form you just boil some water. Then you crack the eggs gently on the side of the pot (so you don't get shell in the water!) and pour the whole content gently into the hot water, taking care not to break the yolk. Then you just wait for enough time to pass for the yolk to cook to your taste and use a large spoon to rescue your egg and lay it onto your freshly-toasted piece of bread. I like salt, pepper, and grated cheese on top.

Tech
A lot of people, especially people who don't use SQL very often, have found the Cursor and recognised that this is the equivalent of the loops found in procedural languages such as FORTRAN, Pascal, C, C#, SmallTalk, Java, and others. Then they cling to this construct like survivors of The Titanic to lifeboats.

If there's no great pressure of time, and if the tables involved are not in much use by other processes, then all is fine, and the cursor satisfies the need of the programmer to write code that varies according to the content of the individual tuples in the dataset obtained by the cursor.

However, a cursor (unless it is specified as real-only) can lock large parts of the table(s) from which it is drawing data, meaning that the process using the cursor is getting in the way of other processes seeking to work with the data. When these other processes are also using cursors life can get a little slow!

There is a simple way to improve this sort of code: use a table variable. This feature, introduced in SQL Server 2000, allows you to declare a table within your code and work with it there, completely independently of all other processes. Contrary to lore, a table variable will appear in the temp table, but only if it needs to - if it is big enough to exceed the amount of memory SQL Server has available in cache. However, the independence and specificity are the main attractions here.

The independence is provided by the ability to work with your own copy of the data - 80+% of all data accesses are reads in almost all installations, so you read in your whole dataset in one fell swoop rather than tuple-by-tuple, which is what the cursor will do. The specificity advantage is obtained by only pulling in the data you really need, and no other fields or tuples. Again, this reduces the impact on the system as a whole.

Once you have the data, you can use a simple while loop as below to work through it (the scalar variable declarations aren't shown but are obvious):

   declare @ta table (ID int identity(1, 1), --Identifier for the rows

                      Field1 nvarchar(50), 

                      Field2 int, 

                      Done varchar(4))       --Use to mark when I've done the row

   insert into @ta

      select Field1, Field2, 'No' 

      from   database.dbo.tblInfo 

      where  field3 = 'condition'

   while 'forever' = 'forever'              --This loop will never end

   begin

      set @intID = (select top 1 ID

                    from @ta 

                    where Done = 'No')      --Get top remaining unmarked record

      if @intID is null break               --Null if none left, so exit loop

      select @strFld2 = Field1,

             @intFld3 = Field2

      from  @ta 

      where ID = @intID                     --Get data to work with

/*

Do whatever processing you need to do here 

*/

      update @ta set Done = 'Yes' 

                 where ID = @intID          --Mark record "done" to avoid repeats 

end

Taking the principle of doing less a step further, you can also use table variables for storing pointers (i.e. primary keys) to the data you want to work with in a much larger table, so that even when you do use a cursor, you've already done the searching part of the work with a set operation. In fact, creating a list table like this means that you can use it for further set operations, reducing the procedural part of the code even further.

These suggestions aren't one a par with the ones you get from the SQL Gurus at the sites on my Tech Links list (right), but they are techniques that should be part of your everyday arsenal of methods, kept on your Code Snippets CD, just like things like code for searching for code in all the sprocs in a database.

You do have a Code Snippets CD, don't you?

TTFN

February Is Here

2011-02-05T18:22:00.000Z

Back in the USA, and snowed under with work, which delayed these posts here.

The last post was written the day after my father rather suddenly died, the day after I returned from seeing him, and I'll admit to not feeling on top of the world. However, I have to thank all of you who took the time and trouble to comment on it, here, on FB, on Ravelry, and in person. I wasn't trying to be pretentious or anything - I just wrote it as a commentary to myself on how I felt and it seemed right to share it with friends. I just discovered that I had a few more friends than I realised!

The next next few days were spent working during the day and trying to organise events in England and Ireland. I took off with family for England on the 25th, spent a couple of frantic days trying to help organise things and going to my father's funeral in Brighton on the 27th, and then flew to Shannon for his interment in the family plot in Limerick. Sunday saw us all flying back to England for a few more days before returning to Philadelphia.

So, a busy fortnight, which meant that I appear to have missed all the snow and ice that the New Jersey are has experienced over the last month. In fact I think I've actually seen it snow here just twice this year, a record only beaten by prisoners and the blind!

Food
The next recipes will be in the next posts. I have to tell you, though, that England and Ireland are not the culinary deserts that you've been led to believe! We had some excellent food in both countries, and a menu item written on a blackboard in an Italian restaurant, Al Duomo (just outside the Indian Gate to the Royal Pavillion in Brighton), conjured up a meal in my mind for the evening as we sat there enjoying antipasto and hot chocolate, sheltering from a wet and blustery day.

Tech
There are many pieces of advice that one can offer, but educating oneself is always important. So, coming up in April is SSWUG's DBTechCon, a technical conference that is both reasonably priced and convenient. The downside is that you don't get to do much networking, but everyone knows that if you get two goodies there's always a third piece that suffers!

Why do I recommend looking at this conference? Well, first off it's a virtual conference, so you don't have to go anywhere to get there.

Secondly, it's so virtual that you don't even have to be on time - the whole thing is available for 45 days after it starts, so you can see all the presentations in all the tracks without having to resort to getting your own Time-Tuner!

In fact, the lack of that third measure of a conference - networking - is ameliorated by the fact that if you actually are on time to watch a presentation you can chat to the presenter in real-time, and get questions answered for the benefit of all!

Enough of the advertising! Go off to the SSWUG site and check it out! I have a tip or two for SQL Server developers for the next post.

TTFN

An End

2011-01-18T21:14:00.000Z

To some the End comes quickly - a bullet, a sword-thrust,
The End not really expected, just discounted until it arrives without warning.
To others there's the long drawn-out agony of waiting, being eaten alive from within
That most terrible of human fears - of animals, larvae, or, today, cancer.

Three-score and ten is our allotted span, we're told
And all after that is a gift from chance, or luck, or the Almighty
As if we stay through temporary lack of space in Hell
Or through our own stubbornness too unwilling to move on.

Last week I saw my father, spoke to him on a sunny morn
We chatted over finches at a feeder and how nurses were not for chasing.
A talk between man and man, common enough you'd think
This morning he was gone - stubborn and obstinate no more

They say that, near the end, some folk
Wait for something - a visit, a word, an action
That will release them from this mortal coil
Was he waiting for that visit?

J.M. Irwin. 1927 - 2011. R.I.P.

A Quick Visit to England (Again)

2011-01-17T06:09:00.002Z

For those of you who read this and don't know, my father has been in a nursing home for just over a year now, with increasing dementia. It's not a pleasant disease to witness, as, totally aside from the catastrophic physical deterioration of someone you've grown up always feeling would be a constant presence in your life, the fact that they remember you but appear to have little or no short term memory beyond about three minutes seems almost as confusing to you as it must be to them.

While they're out in their own flat or home, fending for themselves, people seem to manage to survive for themselves. Their homes may be very messy, but what actually has to get done does get done, like shopping, eating, and putting out the trash. When they go into care they don't have to do many of these things, so they just let that part of the effort of their lives disappear, and seem quite happy to just sit in a chair and daydream and doze. Sometimes this is necessary - when they simply can't do them for themselves - but it also seems like a lot of their reason for living - living itself - has vanished, and they just start slipping away.

I went to England last week because the doctors became quite alarmed that my father might die very soon. As if to prove them wrong, I got over there and went to see him and found him apparently better than a couple of months ago, before Christmas. No blame on the doctors, though - his two brothers exhibited the same off-again, on-again behaviour towards the ends of their lives.

So, that's why I was there. England can be a wonderful place for photography, but - especially in the winter - you need some time to get back into the bare countrysides and the low light levels - the skies are normally leaden grey! In fact, in 10 days we caught about 30 minutes of sunshine. So there aren't any picture of Brighton or anything - sorry! I've now added pictures of two shops - Quilty Pleasures and Purl (most links to them seem to miss out the "www" prefix, which you do need), which are a quilting and a knitting shop, respectively, in the Dike Road area of Brighton, almost overlooking the railway station. Purl is just down the road from The Chimney House, where husbands can go for a pint while the wife is clearing out the wallet!

As you can see, Purl is a well-stocked shop, seeming somewhat Tardis-like after you enter the smallish front door. As well as all the yarn, there's a nice large table for gathering around for knit-meetings.

Below-right is a shot of another wall-display of yarn (the little blue and pink tags tell you what you're looking at and the price, so you don't have to pull everything out all the time - nice idea!). To the left is a rather sweet example knit up, and, because I really liked the sheep, I've left two more pictures of their shop window display trail the left margin.

Also worthy of mention is the knitting group on Wednesday evenings at Temptations in Gardiner St in what is now called "The North Laines". Nice friendly group and an excellent meeting spot. Very good food, good drinks (alcoholic and non), and an overall good place to meet people.

Brighton in general has lots of places like that. Others to look out for include The Prince of Wales at the western corner of Churchill Square, The Bath Arms in The Lanes, TicToc (Meeting House Lane in The Lanes), and both pubs in Preston Village. TicToc is run by a Frenchman, much to my surprise, and, while excruciatingly small, provides very good food. I also had lunch in the Cafe Roue, which is an excellent Bistro in exactly the form you'd expect to find in the heart of Paris (excepting no Biere Pression :( oh well. I can live without Kronenbourg! ).

TTFN

Later That Night ...

2010-12-27T03:33:00.001Z

New Jersey declared a State of Emergency, but we were already out and looking around, as most of the local crazies were off the roads. Here are a couple of pictures of The King's Highway in Haddonfield.

This is stitched together from three images.

As you can imagine, it was rather cold. It was also very windy, with a lot of snow blowing around - hence the shakes in the camera!

You don't see the snow in most of these pictures, despite the long exposure times, but here (left) I had turned the camera off and on again and forgotten to turn off the flash! Snowflakes are amazingly good at reflecting light!

Below is a set of three pictures of a house display where the lights weren't flashing, but the colours were cycling nicely.

So we came home (everywhere was closed, excepting 7-11 and Wawa) to have a snack.

Near where we live one guy has some decorations up - no! that isn't the afternoon sun! It's a halogen street-lamp!

Took one picture of the edge of my building as I came home. There's a large light at the corner of the building, which is causing the lens flare.

So, the weather report says that there's about 18 inches of snow near Atlantic City (since around noon), which is a sustained rate of about two inches an hour. It's about half that where I live, maybe a little less. Even so, work will definitely be done with tele-commuting tomorrow!

TTFN

Another Christmas Done!

2010-12-26T22:23:00.001Z

Time once again to look back at another Christmas. The presents and wrapping littering the floor (thanks to all who gave!), the list of thank-you cards to send (should really be doing that right now!), the beautiful weather (until about 10 am this morning!).

It's a little later than last year, by two days, but we have snow again! Just a little so far, but it's settling in for an evening's snowfall. This is the view at about 4 pm from the front door - hopefully I'll be able to get out to take some more pictures later on.

Airline Food

2010-11-15T04:39:00.001Z

So you're sitting in the airport lounge and contemplating your Tums and wondering if you've enough to last you through the next seven or eight hours of cramped flying with airline food attacking your stomach walls. Dismal thoughts of days of diarrhea and gastric pains occupy you until the voice on the speakers stops asking for various passengers to please turn up immediately, and suddenly welcomes you to your flight and invites VIPs and people with kids to board now.

Your stomach lurches in fear again, as if it was to be left alone to face Voldemort on a dark night. Your seating range is called, you walk down the ramp and are greeted by the young ladies in scarlet who direct you to your seat. You definitely aren't a size zero model,, and just manage to squeeze into the seat, but the belt won't cover your artificially-protruding gut. Oh the shame of it! You clamber to your feet in search of an attendant, and ask with red face and downcast eyes if they have such a thing as a belt extender. "But of course, sir. I use one myself at times. Here you are." and the object is discreetly handed over. Score one for the service on this airline!

Take-off and you get given a little plastic goodie-bag. Wow ! - socks, blindfold and ear plugs, toothbrush and paste. Still, you remember that next comes food and drink and the stomach lurches again - all I've had on Delta recently is salty pretzels and no liquids (peanuts are suddenly too dangerous), and Southwest hasn't been much better. I got the cheapest flight from NYC to London that I could ($624 return) so who knows what'll be offered. Hard tack and weevilly biscuit, maybe!

Ah! Here come the drinks: Water, juice, half a dozen sodas, including English lemonade (like Sprite), red & white wines, scotch, vodka, gin, ... is there some mistake here? Maybe they're getting us drunk and will stage a mid-air mugging later!

And now another pair with a food trolley. "Would you like beef stew or chicken curry, sir?" It took a couple of seconds to parse that, given the environment, but I managed to ask for the curry, and the AG got the beef stew. Serious surprise. There's a cup and a container of water, a small salad (lettuce, some veg, and fruit, all very fresh) with a tasty dressing. The main course is a very reasonably-sized (and very hot!!!) foil-sealed container. The curry (more a korma, really) turns out to be very tasty indeed, great flavours, and not spicily hot in the least (the AG doesn't do spicy-hot, and lots of other people are likewise disabled).

If you bought this as a frozen instant dinner in a supermarket you'd give it about an 80% overall approval mark; compared to normal airline food in 2010 it gets about 120%! It doesn't compare with my first time across the pond ("fish or steak, sir ... and how would you like you steak, sir", along with real metal steak knives), but that airline is no more, for obvious economic reasons, and steel knives are forbidden! For today, however, it's outstanding. The beef stew was, I am reliably informed, just as good.

On the way back the overall treatment was the same, except that it was a choice of sweet-and-sour chicken (the AG claims it as very good) or "bangers and mash", which I chose. Ever the pessimist I was expecting a pair of ratty hot dogs, but receive three nice plump savoury sausages, a good helping of tasty mash, and a generous helping of onion gravy. Excellent flavour all through.

So, if you're flying the pond, my recommendation is to fly Virgin Atlantic. The prices are good and the service and food are way beyond what you'd expect these days.

[Food]
Go here! French food the easy way!

Another Version of Omlette
The Spawn wanted omlette and I was really dragging, so I chopped some spring onions (3 or 4, without most of the tails), and a good handful of sliced ham. We broke six eggs into a measuring jug, added the onion and ham, some salt and pepper, and summer savory.

We also added a couple of good handfuls of grated cheese, fresh from the freezer, and then took the stick blender and blendt the mix so well that it was entirely aerated, had turned somewhat greenish from the onions, and had about tripled in volume!

This made us two "omlettes", which were rather strange because they were really difficult to cook, 'cos the mix wouldn't flow around the pan when you pulled some back off the surface, as you do with a beaten egg mix. However, with perseverance we managed to persuade them to cook, and they turned out to be absolutely excellent on toast!

Fast Shepherd's Pie
Empty a can of diced tomatoes, some frozen green beans, and a heap each of frozen peas and corn into a big casserole dish. Fry an onion (or use onion powder, like I did, 'cos the onions were all eaten!) and mix in a pound of sausage meat (I used some "hot South Carolina" sausage) and a pound of ground beef. Cook until it's all brown and well cooked. and then add the solids to the casserole, reserving the liquid. Use Bisto (Wegman's or a British store near you) or equivalent with water to make a fair amount of gravy (at least a cup or two) in the frying pan, and add that to the casserole. Add three bay leaves and mix everything well.

Boil a kettle and make four servings of instant mash (Idahoan brand) - just follow the instructions on the tin. Smooth the spuds over the meat mix and then cook at about 350F for about 45 minutes. Serve. You'll get a very quiet table, I promise you!

TTFN

Yarn Store Reviews - DC

2010-10-25T21:45:00.009Z

Well, this is a little late, but I mislaid the chip with the pictures on. In fact, as is usually the case, it was in exactly the right place ..... but I'd not remembered where I'd decided that "exactly the right place" was (this time).
A couple of weeks ago I was down in DC and the AG decided that that just wasn't good enough, and that she should also get a chance to go to the nation's swamp - sorry!- capital. I've been there enough times to realise that anyone running for office in Washington, DC, is not only totally untrustworthy (pre-requisite for being a politician), but also certifiably insane (the federal government got DC because nobody else wanted it!). Have you seen the rats there? - bigger than most cats.
So, after leaving the Spawn off after taking him to the PA Renaissance Faire (seriously recommended!), we set off for DC and our hotel room. Bless Red Roof Inns - we got there at about two in the morning and there was a guy in reception, wide awake and smiling to say "hi" and give out keys and directions. Way more awake than we were!
Next morning, after a looong stop at a World Market, where we bought one of about 10% of the whole store, it seemed, we drove off to find WoolWinders. After that, we went further on to an absolutely wicked good chicken lunch at Pollo Rico and then chased down The Yarnista who was visiting at at The Yarn Spot.
Now the photos. They're all from a phone camera, I'm afraid, but seem reasonable, all the same.

Woolwinders
This shop is on a street in a modern area of Rockville that seems to be just a suburban residential area, but then you find shops interspersed into the housing, just like in Europe and, just beside a Quizno's, the Local Yarn Store, Woolwinders.

It's been run by a new owner for almost a year, is spacious, airy, and was full of sunlight on the sunny Sunday morning when we visited. My AG is mainly on the look-out for sock yarns, and commented that, although it didn't have a huge amount of the "standard" brands (Opal, Trekking, Regia), it did have a lot of "indie" labels. The AG bought some Spud & Chloe Fine Sock yarn, so doubtless you'll see pictures of that here in a few months, after it hits the needles.
One yarn that Woolwinders has quite a bit of, and which has great (to my fingers) texture and certainly great colours, is Blue Ridge Yarns, from a lady in Amissville, VA.

Another nice thing about this shop is that, with all the light, they also have lots of knit-up samples, so you can see just how a colourway will turn out - useful if you've no experience with the dyeing patterns.
For all the pictures that I took of Woolwinders please see this album on PhotoBucket. You'll see how roomy and well-lit the shop is.

The Yarn Spot
Laid out very differently to Woolwinders, The Yarn Spot on Georgia Ave, Wheaton, was actually our real reason for being in DC ...... the AG belongs to the Three Irish Girls yarn club, and the Boss Lady of the three was due to teach and have a trunk show and sale there that Sunday. As she's been moved to the far northern wastes of Duluth, MN, for most of the year, getting a chance to meet her in the area (well, only 150 miles away) was irresistible. As a result, I regret to say that the photos are almost all of her yarn, and not of The Yarn Spot, which is a rather nice and very friendly shop, despite being totally overrun with Yarnista-fans!

Here's the AG with The Yarnista herself (fresh from the wild northern wastes, of course, first discovered by the Sieur de Lhut). I, of course, was handed her rather swish Nikon to take a picture of her with two other customers, and blazed off three in a row to demonstrate that only a man can make the same mistake twice in under a second! (She might have warned me that it was on burst repeat [grin]).

To the right is what the AG scored from the afternoon. I'm now looking forward to more sox!

Here are some pictures of the Trunk Sale.

Please excuse the odd blurred area - if you look closely you'll see that most of them are actually people taking or replacing items, and being "caught in the act"!

For the rest of the pictures please see my PhotoBucket album here.

So thank you to both stores for being welcoming, friendly, having great wool, and being totally worth the 300 mile round-trip.

[Tech]
Just one item today - for those involved with SSIS there's a great resource at Sherry's BI Corner.

TTFN

Comfort food!

2010-10-24T21:25:00.004Z

Here's the product of owning just two pieces of modern kitchen equipment - The Magic Bullet and a Slow Cooker. The former means that you can make smoothies without all the elbow-grease, and the latter that you can good food slowly without having to have an open fire going for about three days!

[Today's Smoothie]
We needed to clear out bananas, so I split four, each halved, between two cups. Apple "cider" (american name - no alcohol, so really just unfiltered apple juice) to about two-thirds full, two or three teaspoons of syrup, two tablespoons of vanilla ice cream, and top off with milk. Wizz! Wizz again!! Open, drink, and let the world envy you!

[Beef Stew]

Slice an onion and chop another; fry them gently with three heaped teaspoons of chopped garlic (BJ's, of course) until they are getting translucent. Add parsley (a big pinch), sage (another big pinch), rosemary (a teaspoon), thyme (a teaspoon), and bay (two leaves), stir well in with some salt and pepper and let fry some more. The mixture will start to dry out as the herbs absorb the fat: after a few minutes put the mixture into a bowl.
Slice up and fry (in butter) about a dozen button mushrooms; once done, these go into the slow cooker.
Chop up about a dozen baby carrots and put them into the cooker, along with a good helping of peas (fresh or frozen).
Cut up about a pound and a half of chuck into cubes about 2 cm (3/4 inch) on a side. I cooked the meat in thirds - it depends how big our frying pan is! Fry it in some oil for a minute or so, stirring to get it browned all over, and then add in a portion of the onion and herb mix. Fry on for another 3 or 4 minutes and then add to the crock-pot.
Repeat the last step for the remaining portions of meat and herbs.
Add a bottle of red wine (Not too expensive, but try not to use the cheapest plonk!) to the crock-pot, put it on High until it starts to boil, and then set on low and leave for three days or so. Remember to stir every few hours and to turn off when you go out!
When getting ready to serve, take two teaspoons of Bisto powder (buy at Wegmans or any English Store), put into a small bowl or large cup, and add about a cup of cold water. Mix until smooth. Then add lots of juice spooned from the crock-pot, mix well again, and return the whole to the pot. Bring to the boil and the liquid will start to thicken.
Serve when thick enough with mashed potatoes and more veggies like peas, broad beans, carrots, and the like.

TTFN

Food, Study, and a New Job

2010-10-11T03:17:00.008Z

[Food]

I was out at the green-grocers (Produce Junction) the other day with my son, and we picked up a couple of cauliflowers. A few days later I gathered a little flour, some butter, some whole-seed mustard, and set some water to boil. I cut off the bottom stalks and broke the flowers into florets and, once the water was boiling, I dropped them in for about 7 minutes. Meantime I melted the butter in another pot, put in three teaspoons of flour, and stirred rapidly on a fairly high heat. From this point I had to alternate the ingredients of this sauce - first some water to thin it out and then some grated or shredded cheese to thicken it up again .... and repeat, and repeat ... until there's a full pot of sauce.

After the cauliflower has cooked for about seven minutes it'll be cooked but still pretty hard. Drain the water and put the cauliflower into a dish for baking. Add the mustard (2 or 3 teaspoons will be enough to have black specks through the sauce) and then pour the sauce over the cauliflower. Bake uncovered at 350F for a good 40 minutes.

[Tech]
I'm slowly getting into the PL/SQL studies, with the intent of shelling out the $125 for an exam in a few months time. Hopefully it won't be a case of studies getting overtaken by work events, as has happened to me before. Oracle's version of SQL is somewhat different to Microsoft's, so it'll definitely be a matter of concentration. However, it looks like I may be using it in the near future, which will make life easier all around. One neat thing that Oracle has done for many years, and which Microsoft only started relatively recently, is to make full copies of their flagship database available to developers for almost or actually nothing.

You have been able to download - or get on CD - the latest version of Oracle since, I believe, version 8 (maybe even before then). Microsoft has offered a "mini" version of SQL Server since 2005, but also a Developer version - essentially the Enterprise Edition - for just $50, which is an absolute steal! You just have no excuse not to learn how to develop for one of these two systems other than that you don't have the time or interest!

Oh yes - and before I forget. The email restore I mentioned the other day was to recover a backup from 2005 - I didn't know I had it, and it brings back emails from 1998-2005. Some of these I already had, but many not. I now have about 250,000 emails on my hard drive, managed by my email client, RIT Lab's The Bat!. Take that, you overbearing Exchange Administrators, trying to keep me locked in to 5,000 messages!

For those who are configuring computers and looking at what to use for security, I use Alwil's Avast! for anti-virus and Check Point Software's ZoneAlarm for a firewall. Yes, I know ZoneAlarm can come with an anti-virus package, but Avast! was there first, and ZoneAlarm came to my machines second! I happen to like the way Avast! works, and also the fact that the three programs all work together well. Now if I could get something that would take an Outlook appointment announcement and set it up in my Google calendar I'd be very happy!

[The Bad News and The Good News]
The AG has decided that she doesn't really relish freezing her pretty little buns off again at Rhinebeck, so we're not going. So there won't be a picture gallery of images from Rhinebeck this year unless some ShutterFreak sends me a heap to comment on and put up for you all to see.

On the other hand, we're going to the PA Renaissance Faire this Saturday, and a yarn store in DC on Sunday, so I should have pictures for you RSN (real soon now)!

TTFN

Notes to Self

2010-10-06T04:03:00.003Z

1. Take photos of food!

2. There was something else but I can' remember what right now - probably to keep a to-do list!

A few random thoughts to pass the time as I'm waiting for a few tens of thousands of emails to restore ...

Don't Panic! (Douglas Adams)
On a clear disc you can seek forever. (Anon)
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen all at once!
Programming is like pinball. The reward for doing it well is the opportunity to do it again. (Rick Cook)
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. (Wernher von Braun)
In the fight between you and the world, back the world. (Franz Kafka)
A Polar bear is really a Rectilinear bear after a coordinate transform!
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it! (Arthur Kasspe)
Adding manpower to a late project makes it later (Fred Brookes)

Ok. The stuff's recovered and it's time to quit for the night!

TTFN

More Greek Food!

2010-10-04T18:57:00.008Z

Last night we had the Sister Missionaries over to dinner. One had expressed a hankering after Spanakopita, so they got the Tiganites to start with, and Spanakopita for main course. They must have liked it, as they refused ice cream on the grounds of being over-full already, and went off happily with all the left-overs. Next will have to be something Hawai'ian for the new arrival. In the meantime, though, here are last night's details.

[Food part 1]

Tiganites is a variety of Saganiki, or fried appetiser. So, you beat up a couple of eggs (about 1 per two people you're cooking for, and lay out a good healthy carpet of flour mixed with some salt and pepper. Put a fair old amount of olive oil into a frying pan - about 3 or 4 mm deep - and set to heat. Slice block feta into slices about 5 -7 mm thick. Dip each slice in the egg, dredge it very well in the flour, and lay it gently in the hot oil. By the time I have six pieces in (all that will fit in my smallish pan) the first ones should be almost done on the bottom - a rich golden-brown with some darker specks. Turn them all ... by the time all are turned and another couple ready and waiting these should be ready for taking out. You can put them straight onto the plate with some veg (I used chopped orange peppers and slices of tomato, for colour), but they can come a little drippy with oil. If you think that this may be too much for your guests, lay them first on a slice of plain white bread to soak up the excess fat before putting them onto the plate. The bread later can give wonderful toast!

[Food part 2]

Spanakopita. Spinach and cheese pie. Lots of people love it at the Greek restaurant, but never dare to make it at home. That's a shame, because it really is very easy to make. Here's how.

You'll want a box of frozen phylo dough, 2 pounds of frozen chopped spinach, a pound of crumbled feta cheese, a stick of butter, a couple of eggs, half an onion, and salt and pepper. You'll also need a baking dish that's about the size of a piece of letter-sized paper - 13 by 9 - as that's about the size of pieces of phylo dough. Before you start you'll need to leave the phylo out of the freezer for zbout two hours, and the spinach too - unless you like getting frozen hands! Before starting cooking, take the phylo out of the box and unroll it to let it warm evenly while flat.

Chop the onion up and start frying it gently in a prety big frying pan - it should take about 5 minutes for the onion to get to the translucent stage. In that time you can open the spinach (thawed, of course), put it in a bowl, and dump in all that cheese. Mix the spinach and cheese and then take it out in handfuls, squeeze it hard to get the water out, and add it in to the onion. Stir it all up and pop it back into the big bowl you mixed it in, add some salt and pepper, and let the mixture cool.

Now the delicate part! Melt the butter (I use a microwave) and brush the inside of your baking dish with melted butter - all over! Now gently peel off just one single sheet of phylo dough from the pile of sheets and place it carefully onto the bottom of your dish. Smooth it gently down, rather like wall-paper, and then brush it over with some more butter. Now repeat this with another half-dozen sheets, remembering to "paper" the sides, ends, and corners.

By now the spinach mix should be down to room temperature; mix in well a couple of eggs and then fill the dish with the mixture, getting all the corners well-filled. That's the easy part done - now back to being careful! "Paper" over the top of the dish with more phylo - at least another 7 sheets, brushing off the last sheet with butter too so as to get a good golden colour when it cooks.

Put in the oven for between 45 and 60 minutes at about 300F, checking at about the 45 minute mark: it should be all crisp, flaky, and golden when it's done, and it smells unbelievably good!

[Tech]

Computers are wonderful things - utterly reliable and safe. When they're turned off!

TTFN

Two High-speed Efforts at Feeding People

2010-10-03T00:54:00.006Z

[Food 1]

On Wednesday I get to the ex-wife's at 6 pm, with a 6.55 departure ETA for "Back To School Parents Night" and a hungry offspring (male, 13) to feed. I brought Spaghetti, eggs, and bacon, and the memory of the Spaghetti Carbonara that my wife made from a Ruth Reichl book some months ago (warning to reader: Ruth's page is here: eat before you go to visit there - otherwise you'll suddenly start to feel excruciating hunger pangs). As the Offspring seemed to have no homework I enslaved him and sat back to instruct.

Fill that pot with water, salt it, add a few drops of oil, and put it on to boil. Then open that pound of bacon, take half out and return the rest to the fridge. Put a frying pan on to heat. When the water gets hot, put in the spaghetti. Chop the bacon up into pieces about a centimetre long and put them into the frying pan. Fry somewhat gently until about half-done, and add two large teaspoonfuls of chopped garlic. While the bacon continues to cook, break four eggs into a bowl or measuring jug and beat hard.

When the bacon and garlic are done, take them off the heat and leave them in their pan to keep warm. By now the spaghetti should be just about cooked, so pour out the water and pasta into a sieve, replacing it in the pot with the eggs. Add the spaghetti back in again and start mixing it up to get it coated with egg - the heat of the spaghetti will cook the eggs. At the same time, add in the bacon and garlic mix - just pour the whole pan in! Keep stirring until the egg is just about all solid, and serve!

Time taken - 16 minutes!

[Food 2]

This afternoon I was in BJ and saw some smoked salmon at a good price, so bought a pack. Later, I needed to feed the Offspring and AG. Put a pound of tagliatelle on to cook, and take out about 4 ounces of salmon. Chop the salmon and put it on to gently fry in some butter. I added basil and chives - nice green flecks! When the salmon is nicely cooked (it changes colour) add some milk and some cream in order to create a sauce. Keep adding the dairy to get the right volume, and add shredded cheese to thicken it up.

When it's done, drain the pasta and replace it in the pot: pour the salmon and sauce over the pasta and mix before serving. Again quick, about 20-25 minutes. Enjoy!

[Food 3 & 4]

Thursday night we'd been doing far to much and I didn't feel like cooking in the slightest (besides which there wasn't too much in the fridge to cook!) so we went to Balsamo's for a 16" Works pizza. Definitely hit the spot, as I'd missed lunch (as the AG realised as she watched almost half the pizza vanish in a matter of minutes). Friday night we had the Offspring, and he wanted pizza, so back to Balsamo's for a Conway (lots of ricotta and ham). You'd really think that pizza two nights in a row, with lunch in between, would jade the palate, but not yet.

[Tech]

Today was clear-out day. Two AMD-based towers went off to the computer store for refurbishment and whatever happens to PCs when they retire. That means that we're down to six computers in the house (not counting the fridge or the car), a level not seen in at least three years. Tomorrow is Oracle-study with overtones of PL/SQL until I have to cook for visitors.

TTFN

New Socks!!

2010-09-27T02:31:00.005Z

I got a new pair of socks!

The marvelous AG sent me to get yarn a few months ago and I got some Noro Kureyon (S148). As a result she handed me these this afternoon.

They're quite weird: they're thin and quite tight to begin with, but stretched out nicely. They're definitely very comfortable and nice and warm.

However, I would offer this health warning: the coefficient of friction between this yarn, when knitted-up, and a surface like a linoleum floor is as near to zero as makes no odds.

(Layman's Translation: wearing just these into the kitchen without caution may result in you being very quickly a**e over t**s !!)

Oh yes - and I do like the colours, despite what the AG was worrying about in advance. They'll be on show on Tuesday!

[Food]
So happy at getting new socks this evening, I tried my hand at a form of saganiki (fried appetiser) called tiganiti (fried cheese; usually feta). The Wikipedia page has a good picture of a square piece - I did mine in slices, but they looked the same. It was a little saltier than I'd recalled, but ace all the same. No pictures, I'm afraid - I was hungry!

TTFN

Autumn is Finally Here

2010-09-26T20:22:00.005Z

That's right! The Philadelphia area's finally getting into the 80s (F) with some reliability - yesterday was 89 and today almost got to 80. Maybe the cooling will have some effect on the area's drivers, who have been demonstrating wild and reckless stupidity (at least, on the roads that I travel) for the last six to eight months. I doubt it though: given the economy, there has to be at least one occupation that's looking for more workers - the auto-repair business! Honestly, though, I get the impression that about 50% of the drivers here only have intact cars because they've sold their souls to the devil in exchange for a crash-free life!

[Food]

We'll be having guests soon and one of them is a vegetarian, so that takes a little thought - she's not vegan, but I don't think that it's fair to offer a dish made with vegetables fried in meat fat, for example! So, one possibility is going to be cheese tortellini in tomato sauce ... and who knows what goes into the tomato sauces you get at the store. Hence you'd have found me yesterday afternoon slaving over a huge pot of bubbling redness.

It turned out really easy to make: just get two 3 lb boxes of tomatoes from BJs, chop them up, and dump them into a really large cooking casserole - I used one from IKEA that's oven-proof as well as for the stove-top, and non-stick into the bargain. It holds about 5 litres, and ended up about 80% full!

In with the tomatoes goes about quarter of a litre of water and half that of olive oil. Three heaped teaspoons of chopped garlic from a jar of the stuff in oil (BJs again!), and two very heaped teaspoons of chopped dry Basil (sorry mum - I just didn't have any fresh!). If it's destined for kids, a little sugar (a soup spoon or two) will make a lot of difference to the sweetness (so don't go overboard, or you'll be having it with ice cream!)

All this just about fits into the casserole, so fine! Turn on the heat, pop on the lid, and get it to the boil. Once it's there, lower the heat pretty much as low as it will go and let it simmer for about 45 minutes. After that, take your trusty stick blender and totally obliterate any lumps of any sort. Then you can let it cool off, put it into food savers, and keep it in the fridge - up to a week is safe. For longer than that it should freeze fine.

Oh! You don't have a stick blender? Well, aside from making off with granny's, you can part with about $25-$30 for on in most shops, although they do come more expensive. I don't see why, as all they are is a miniaturised outboard motor, but what do I know? In fact, if you're really in need, and really want to make sure that you never ever, ever have to buy another on (and probably your great great grand-children won't, either!), you can go to MyChefStore and splurge on a RoboCoupe MP450 Turbo model. They tag it with a "Lowest Price Guarantee", but I can't see anyone willing to shell out $572.42 as being unduly worried about another dollar or three! It boasts 3/4 of a kilowatt of power and a maximum speed of 12,000 rpm, so I'd keep it securely under lock and key if your other half is doing anything like mixing concrete (not that the concrete would have an ice-cube's chance in hell against this beast!) By the way, I would have added a picture, but Chrome 5.0.375.127 (55887) for Ubuntu 10.04 doesn't seem to get on too well with BlogSpot, for uploading images.

[Tech]

Pet peeve of the week. Companies that think that they're really "with it", but don't test their stuff properly before pushing it out, and don't offer enough support when the inevitable happens. I'll not name names, but a company should, in my opinion, use a technology like Flash on a site where its new recruits are required to log in and fill in information about themselves, etc. Adobe aficionados will immediately rise up and threaten to stone me but it remains a fact that, so far, the maker of the most popular hand-held sate-form computing device, the iPad, still does not support Flash. Many many young people use iPads as their primary computing devices - and why not? Anyhow, I recently saw a site, obligatory for new recruits, when Flash was used throughout. One or two of the links to other pages worked fine, but ..... most didn't come up as links at all, and the page as a whole was very slow to load. On a 2 GHz machine with plenty of memory and a good high-speed connection it took over four minutes to load when the user tried - as suggested by the support people - to use MS IE!

Guys! Testing is everything! You can have the most wonderful product out there, but if people can't get it to work then it isn't just useless - it's actively promoting your bad name!

TTFN

Fruit Destinies

2010-09-14T12:48:00.003Z

Just a few thoughts that came from a friend about a year ago. I saw a "Like" on Facebook for part of this, that reminded me...

This should probably be taped to your bathroom mirror where one could read it every day.
You may not realize it, but it's 100% true.
1. There are at least two people in this world that you would die for.
2. At least 15 people in this world love you in some way.
3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you.
4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don't like you.
5. Every night, SOMEONE thinks about you before they go to sleep.
6. You mean the world to someone.
7. You are special and unique.
8. Someone that you don't even know exists loves you.
9. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it.
10. When you think the world has turned its back on you take another look.
11. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget about the rude remarks.
Always remember..... when life hands you Lemons, ask for Tequila and Salt and call me over!
I would rather have one rose and a kind word from a friend while I'm here than a whole truck load when I'm gone.

Which was rather nice.

For all you programmers out there, take a look here. It isn't always what you might want to hear, but very possibly the best thing that you do hear at times.

TTFN

Meeting Old Friends

2010-09-13T16:11:00.003Z

Meeting a friend that you haven't seen in a long time is a great experience - it lets you catch up on lots of things that you never finished talking about. The AG and I went into NYC last weekend to meet her brother who has just finished a year studying at Durham University in England. He used to live in NYC before departing for England, so it was a kind of homecoming for him too, seeing places he had missed for a year before heading off to family in ID.

[Sharp Pointy Sticks Part]
At the behest of the AG we went to a LYS called Purl, on Broome Street in SoHo. That's their picture of the shop-front, and here below are some more of the interior.

The rest from Purl are here on PhotoBucket.

Doubting Your Own Life

2010-09-02T23:57:00.002Z

If the fabric of your life as you live and like it depended on some particular thing, would you attack that thing? Would you adulterate it and dilute it ? You might, if you wanted to replace it with something better or longer-lasting, but surely not out of ignorance or spite.

We see our advanced world dependent on oil for much of its energy supply. So much so, in fact, that if the demand for oil stays exactly as it is today then we'll have to discover new reserves equivalent to four times that of Saudi Arabia to keep us driving for the rest of the century - maybe less. That's a very large target, so finding replacement sources is a good idea. In fact, it's an absolute necessity!

As an engineer by education, I have to say that with situations like this there's a requirement to look at every single possibility, and, maybe, use them all. Even if we were to manage to make pocket-sized fusion reactors in, say, 20 years' time, we'd still have a need for oil - if for nothing else then for lubrication! Eventually we won't be using oil as a portable energy source, but some other substance will have to make do. Petrol is just too darned convenient - easily transported and dispensed and with a lot of stored energy per unit volume.

Task for all of us: support all the people trying to replace oil-based fuels.

TTFN

Weather

2010-08-23T03:55:00.002Z

You may recall that I posted a number of photos of where I used to live when it snowed during the first couple of months this year.
It does also rain here in NJ. We got an inch or two this afternoon in about an hour's downpour. This is a snap of the woods; unfortunately the camera is good enough to peer through the rain - visibility was actually quite limited, so I used flash and you can see the raindrops captured en route to wetting my toes! Yes, those big circles are raindrops - the camera lens stayed dry throughout (not sure how!).

TTFN

A Healthy Attitude Towards Work

2010-08-22T20:08:00.002Z

Quite some time ago, in a workplace that shall, hopefully, remain nameless and unidentified, I was sent this email. It surfaced the other day as I was doing some cleaning-up, and I thought I'd share it with you all.

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: New Company Policy

DRESS CODE

It is advised that you come to work dressed according to your salary. If we see you wearing Prada shoes and carrying a Gucci bag, we assume you are doing well financially and therefore do not need a raise.
If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage your money better, so that you may buy nicer clothes, and therefore you do not need a raise.
If you dress just right, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a raise.

SICK DAYS

We will no longer accept a doctor's statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

PERSONAL DAYS

Each employee will receive 104 personal days a year. They're called "Saturday" & "Sunday".

TOILET USE

Entirely too much time is being spent in the toilet. There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the stalls. At the end of three minutes, an alarm will sound, the toilet paper roll will retract, the stall door will open, and a picture will be taken.

After your second offense, your picture will be posted on the company bulletin board under the "Chronic Offenders category". Anyone caught smiling in the picture will be sanctioned under the company's mental health policy.

LUNCH BREAK

SKINNY EMPLOYEES get 30 minutes for lunch, as they need to eat more, so that they can look healthy.

NORMAL SIZE EMPLOYEES get 15 minutes for lunch to get a balanced meal to maintain their average figure.

CHUBBY EMPLOYEES get five minutes for lunch, because that's all the time needed to drink a Slim-Fast.

Thank you for your loyalty to our company. We are here to provide a
positive employment experience. Therefore, all questions, comments,
concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations,
aggravations,insinuations, allegations, accusations, contemplations,
consternation and input should be directed elsewhere.

TTFN

Busy Month

2010-08-22T02:30:00.007Z

Well that's been a busy month, that has! I've been hard at work all day and studying for a lot of the evenings too. Hence the utter lack of a squeak from me.

[Tech Stuff]
I've been doing a lot of studying recently, mainly on SQL Server things but some Oracle too. The most visible result - aside from me appearing tired out half the time - is that the links on this blog have split, spawning a Tech Links section. This is because I use this blog as a hub where I know I can find the most important places to go and read and relax, and sometimes it just has to be somewhat work-related.

So recently I've been the beneficiary of webinars from quite a few well-known luminaries in the field, including Brent Ozar, recently of Quest and now of SQLSkills, Brian and Devin Knight of PragmaticWorks, and Kevin Kline of Quest, amongst others. My brain is definitely moving in the right direction, but boy does it hurt at times !

[Not Tech]
We visited The Fudge Shop in Flemington (on Rt 202 in NJ) again today, and spent way too much on chocolate. There's only one problem with that place - it's not too far away to go to when one really needs a chocolate fix! They hand-make all their own things - today there was a guy just behind the counter making chocolate bricks! - and the aroma that hits you as you walk in is as tangible as a brick wall! If you like chocolate, GO THERE!

My son and the ex are down at the shore on LBI this week, so the weather's suddenly getting less oppressive - and the water's about 80F - ! Hopefully we'll be able to go to the PA Rennaissance Faire in September; I know that my son's eagerly looking forward to seeing Barely Balanced again and, to be honest, so am I. The RenFaire crowd are all happy and friendly, despite the huge numbers of people there every weekend, and BB are just one of the acts that stand out.

TTFN

The Power of Writing Back!

2010-07-22T14:53:00.004Z

I really like some newspapers - I suspect that most of us have preferred ways of getting information about what's going on in the world. The other day I read an article that was most unfortunately un-proofed, and wrote a letter to the editors about it. The next day it had changed to this.

Here are a couple of parts of the current story, with the original lines just below then, shaded in teal.

Mrs Cromar, from Murray, near Salt Lake City, Utah, has been told she is due to have a boy and a girl.

Mrs Cromar, from Murray, near Salt Lake City, Utah, has been told she is a boy and a girl.

Less than 100 people in the world are known to have "double pregnancies".

Less than 100 people in the world are known to have given birth to babies that are not twins.

As you can see, the new version is a lot more believable, but the original was definitely very entertaining to read.

[Food]

The food item I forgot to blog was one a few weeks ago, and is called Cheese and Onion Pie. It's a recipe from my mother, is great hot, and, strangely, is really good cold too, especially in this weather. Before we start, however, I should reassure all of you who think that onions are round stinky things that make you cry. This doesn't have to be so - onions can be tamed, and we'll see how here.

Ingredients and Things

You'll need an oven-proof "thing", like a casserole or fairly big pot to bake it in. If you can, use one with a lid, to cover it after you've served.
A normal pot to cook the onions in.
Enough onions to fill the casserole twice when raw - when cooked they fill in the holes!
At least a pound of grated cheese - maybe two.
Salt & pepper.
Frozen pastry - two pieces (one to line the casserole, one to top it. The top one may well "lend" to help the lining.
Some butter.

What To Do

Put water into the pot and boil it
Peel the onions (probably as quickly as you can - use running water to rinse them as you cut to stop the tears) and chop each into 8
Put onions into pot and boil for about 8-10 minutes. They'll start falling apart, which is good, and begin to go soft. Take them out as soon as they begin to soften.
Wipe the inside of the casserole with butter so that the pastry doesn't stick too much when you serve.
Line the casserole with pastry.
Put in a layer of cheese, topped with some salt and pepper.
Add a layer of onion pieces.
Add another layer of cheese, salt, and pepper, and another of onions.
Continue until you reach the top, or run out of something!
Use the rest of the pastry to make a lid.
Cook in the oven at 350F for about 30 minutes. The top should be brown and crisp now.
Serve hot!

Bon appétit!

TTFN

Another Sufferer

2010-07-02T20:04:00.002Z

Just over a year ago my AG was suddenly struck down with the most terrible pain, which turned out to be caused by gall stones. She had them removed and all has been lots better. The writer of the Bold Soul blog, in Paris, has just gone through the same thing. Here's hoping she gets well soon.

TTFN

On the Feeding of Guests!

2010-05-30T16:35:00.004Z

Last night my son and ex were to dinner, along with two sister missionaries, making it six to feed. I'd been promising the AG a reprise of Tortellini alla Panna, so here it is; intro, story, and all.

A long time ago I used to work in Frankfurt, West Germany, in an office just down the street from the Bourse (stock exchange), so it was common to see young men in the street with the most garishly-coloured jackets (from the exchange floor, where each company had its own colour). There was a tiny Italian restaurant - almost exclusively stand-up and spread over, I think, three floors - literally stuffed into a street corner near the Bourse. It was very popular with the brokers and you'd often find the place packed with them, standing on the steps between floors and drinking glasses of wine or beer while waiting for their meals to be cooked - few people actually got to eat there; it wasa almost all take-out ("essen zu mitnehmen") food.

This is a dish that I first found there and have loved ever since, as it is really simple to make, has a surprisingly immediate flavour, and is almost impossible to destroy!

Tortelline alla Panna
The ingredients are:

1 lb of Tortellini of whatever style and content you desire. Frozen, dried, chilled, or fresh - there are lots of types to choose from with lots of different fillings, and you can get them in red and green as well as white, which makes a nice change.
2 rashers of bacon, chopped finely
1/4 of a medium white onion, chopped
1/4 of a stick of butter
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
1 large handful of chopped mushrooms
1 large handful of frozen peas
2 large pinches each of Basil and Thyme
3-4 slices of cooked ham, chopped finely into squares about 1/8 inch on a side.
Half a pint of either chicken stock or white wine - some people don't like cooking with alcohol, but the alcohol will be long gone before anyone eats this!
Half a pint of full milk or heavy whipping cream (cream is better, of course!)
Salt and Pepper to taste

Now to make it:

Read the instructions for cooking the Tortellini carefully: the people who make it usually have a very good idea of how long it will take to cook it! You can make the sauce mix and keep it hanging around for a long time as the tortellini cook. So, I'm not going to address timing - that's up to you! I'm concentrating on the sauce.
Melt the butter gently in a medium pot (preferably with a lid), drop in the onions, bacon, and garlic and let fry until the onions are getting soft; this may take between 5 and 10 minutes.
Next, add the mushrooms, cover, and let the mushrooms absorb butter and flavour - probably about 10 minutes.
Now add the herbs, the chopped ham, and then the wine or stick. Stir well, cover and leave bubble away for another five minutes or so. Stir a few times during this time to make sure it's not getting too hot and burning.
At this point you can add the peas (they'll thaw happily) and stop cooking the stock, set it aside, and cook the tortellini.
For tortellini you have to remember that, despite their shapes, they do actually swell by about a factor of two - even the fresh ones. So you really need quite a big pot for a pound - I had to use two pots last night and do some panicked redistribution half-way through!
When you cook them, get the water good and boiling before dropping them in, and don't forget to put salt in the water and also some olive oil to stop them sticking together.
When you consider that the tortellini are almost cooked, put some gentle heat back under the sauce and add your milk (or cream!).
Drain the tortellini, return them to their pot over very low heat, and pour over them the sauce mix. Stir well to mix the sauce and paste well, and serve.

Stuffed Cantaloupe
This is a recipe from one from my mother's cookery book. It's actually three books all bound into one, and the one I was using was Good Housekeeping's Picture Cookery from the 1953 edition, copyright The National Magazine Co., Ltd. I had been looking through it for a recipe for possibly making a trifle, but wasn't that enamoured with any that I found. In that same section (Fruit Salads and Trifles) I came across Fruit-filled Melon (page 132 if you're looking!), which looked rather good, as I'd seen that the local Produce Junction had an offer on melons, so off I went, hot-foot in search of a large cantaloupe and lots of little fruit to fill it with.

I chose the largest melon that they had, which wasn't really large enough, and some strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. I got all this home, beheaded the melon about a third down, and then eviscerated all the innards to the trash! Then I cut out almost all the remaining orange flesh, chopping it into bits. I left some at the bottom to ensure that I didn't go completely through the bottom, and filled it up with some melon but mainly berries. I poured about a quarter of a pint of cream over the content, popped the "lid" back on, and put it into the freezer (I was about two hours from serving time, and all the fruit and berries were warm).

I mixed most of the melon flesh, the rest of the berries, and the content of a jar of mandarin oranges into a fruit salad mix, which was consigned to the fridge to cool. The remaining pieces of melon were made into smoothies, using some ice cream, cream, and orange juice and the not-so-tender ministrations of what must be the ultimate smoothie machine, The Magic Bullet Blender.

So, everyone came, was introduced, and we sat down to eat. The main course was tortellini, of course - two pounds of tortellini expands to fill a huge bowl! Everyone who cam enjoyed it, and the SMs went with boxes of "thirds"! Dessert was greeted with some curiosity when the unadorned, apparently untouched, melon was brought out, but as soon as the lid was off everyone was surprised and eager to eat! All went well, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of my AG in making the apartment neat and presentable.

TTFN

Food, Glorious Food!

2010-05-30T02:30:00.005Z

Yesterday and today I've cooked dinner - yesterday for three and today for six. I'm tired now, but happy that it all seems to have gone down well (pardon the pun).

Tilapia en Papillote
Strictly speaking this should be something like Tilapia en AluFolie, but I can't remember the French word for AluFolie, and anyhow, it wouldn't sound anything like as elegant as the title, so I'm leaving it!

I had to feed my son and wife, so three tilapia fillets were sufficient (I get them individually wrapped and frozen from BJs in six-packs). That's really for two reasons - cost and sloth! I'm getting mean and lazy in my old age - !

Anyhow, tear off three pieces of aluminium foil each large enough to wrap a fillet in, lay them down on a flat surface, and put a fillet in the middle of each. Drop a knob of butter on each and some salt and pepper. Pop on some chopped onion, and whatever other herbs you feel like, all sparingly. I put in garlic and some chive. For me alone some dill (the AG's not keen on it).

Then fold up the foil around the fish, so that you've made walls all around it (important, this, as the butter will melt and run! Now fold the walls in gently over the fish, lowest wall first to make an envelope. Pick up the now-encased fish and place it onto a cookie tray or similar to cook. I cook them at about 350F for about 15 minutes - you know that they're done because there's suddenly a wonderful smell of cooked fish from the kitchen!

I served this with couscous, which took all of five minutes to cook, so it waited almost ten for the fish, which is about right. I put about a third of a stick of butter in a pot, melted it on low heat, added almost three cups of couscous (yes, we have some left over!) and stirred well for a minute or so, to let it get hot. Then I added between a half and three-quarters of a cup of chicken stock and stirred that in very well, so that every piece of the wheat got to see its own liquid! I fluffed it up a couple of times while waiting for the fish, and then served the couscous in the pot and the fish in their foil. There's a fair amount of liquid with the fish, which helps moisten the couscous for eating. During cooking it also makes sure that the fish stays moist and doesn't dry out, so you should get nice succulent fish to eat.

I'm tired and going to bed, so I'll edit and finish this tomorrow.

TTFN

Visiting some Friends

2010-05-23T23:17:00.008Z

Phew! Back home, and almost time to go to Balsalmo's for some pizza. That's right! We haven't Balsalmo'd yet today! So we'll be going in just a little while to get pizza. Meanwhile I'm here to write about yesterday.

[Lo-Tech]
J, this good friend of mine, asked me to go up to White Plains and visit his mum, M, and give her a hand with some computer problems that she was having. I duly did so and, after some to-ing and fro-ing, we decided that the easiest and most effective way to get her computers all straightened out would be to ditch one old one completely and replace it with a little eeeBox. The eeeBox could act as Network Attached Storage and, in a pinch, take over for the Vista-powered hp that is the main computer.

So I got the disk from the old computer last week and the new eeeBox during the last week. I had time to copy all the files from one disk to the other, and the AG and I made our way to White Plains yesterday morning.

It took about 30 mins to unveil the little ASUS eeeBox and connect it all up; M was amazed at the lack of size of the thing, as is almost everyone who sees them. Then I had to fix up the network, and do some other housekeeping, but nothing much, and we'd be ready to roll on deciding what could stay and what could go. Then came the surprise. M had to go out and I was being left to cook. Now I knew I would be cooking that evening, and had brought some things, but not totally alone in a strange kitchen! This may sound weird, but cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen is a very difficult thing. Nothing is ever where you expect it to be - in fact, nothing ever seems to be quite where you left it five minutes ago! In short, all the inanimate objects of the kitchen - like knives, forks, spoons, plates, can openers, etc. - all seem to conspire against you, and the ingredients appear to try to hide from you in order to sabotage your efforts.

[Food]
Whatever! I thought: dinner has to be made. So I got myself finished on the computer side and got stuck in to the food side. The target was to be a traditional Italian-style tomato-based meat gravy to eat on some paste - target pasta last night was Ziti, although my personal preferences are Farfalle and Spirale.

0. Ingredients
Before starting, look at this list of ingredients. Best to actually do the chopping before starting.

1 lb Italian sausage - sweet 1 lb Italian sausage - hot
1 lb commercial sausagemeat (Jimmy Dean or Bob Evans)
1 lb three-meat mix (veal, beef, & pork).

1 large onion, chopped.
About 2 oz (three heaped teaspoons) chopped garlic (I use a jar from BJ's!)
2 28-oz cans of diced tomatoes, opened
1 can of tomato paste, opened
1 egg, a bag or pack of breadcrumbs
Olive oil

Salt, pepper
Basil, Oregano, Bay leaves
Red Wine (not sour, but cheap is fine)
One Baguette (per four diners)

1. Make the Meatballs
First off was to mix together a pound of ground three-meat - veal, beef, and pork - with a fair amount of breadcrumb in a bowl. It's difficult to accurately estimate how much crumb to use because the idea is to get the meat to be somewhat dry, and how much you need depends on the condition of the meat at the outset. Once the meat mix is getting somewhat dry and sticky, beat off an egg, some salt, and pepper, form the meat into a cup, and add the egg. Now carefully mix the egg in to the meat mix, and add more crumb to help dry out the meat again (it'll be plenty wet with the egg!). Keep squidging and squeezing the lump of meat until it has a nice, pleasant, firm texture.

Now you have your meatball, you'll want to reduce it to cookable, edible pieces - meatballs. Make a huge ball and cut it into four; then do the same again and roll each piece into a ball, so you have sixteen balls of about an ounce each. That's about the right size. If you find that you have meatballs with gaping cracks then you'll want to squeeze them hard and roll them into cylinders and then back into balls and the cracks tend to vanish. You do want to get rid of the cracks if you can, or they tend to fall to bits during cooking.

2. Cook the Sausage
Next, we want to part-cook the sausage so that we can cut it up without having bits of sausage all over. Usually I get a pound of hot and a pound of sweet Italian sausage, each in one long sausage. This time I experimented and bought individual ones, in packs of five to the pound. They worked well and were easier to brown! Either way, don't forget to stab the sausages lots of times all over with a form, to relieve the pressure when they get hot.

I put them into a pan with about a cup of water and a tablespoon of olive oil - a strange mixture, but I'm looking to cook the sausage, not fry it. You get this up to close to boiling in the pot you'll use for the whole gravy in the end (so it's big enough to do all the sausage at the same time), and then add the sausages. Cook them, turning every minute or two, until they're good and cooked all around. Probably about 8 minutes.

3. Cook the Meatballs
Take the sausages out, put them on a plate, and reserve for a moment. Meantime, add some more oil, the chopped onion, and the garlic and set to a low heat so that the onion slowly gets to be translucent. As the onion cooks you should cut up the sausages. I cut them into thin pieces for sweet and larger ones for hot, so guests who can't take the heat know what to avoid. However you cut them up, cut them carefully with a sharp knife and you should find them only partly cooked, but cooked enough that they will cut properly. Oh by the way! run some cold water over each sausage before cutting - they stay really hot for quite a time, and burning your finger-tips really hurts!

After you've cut up the sausage the onion should be ready: add about a teaspoon of Basil and another of Oregano, some salt and pepper, and four large Bay leaves. Mix this up (you may need a little more oil) and let fry very gently for a minute or two.

Now add the meatballs. Gently!! Don't break them! Nest the meatballs in the onion - not on the base of the pan - and let them cook for about five minutes. Turn them over (tongs are great here!) and give them another four-five minutes before taking them all back out and setting them aside.

Now we've introduced the meatballs to the joys of herbs and spices, we leave them to finish cooking on their own while we start the gravy brewing.

4. Make the Gravy
You've got the onion-garlic-bits of meat mix gently simmering in the pot, so now add the pound of commercial sausage-meat. I've tried both of these brands and they both work well. Traditionally one would use sausage-meat from the butcher's, but butcher's shops almost don't exist any more, here in the USA. Use a fork or spatula to break up the sausage-meat and turn up the heat to get it to brown in all the herbs. You need to get it to break up into little bits - no large lumps, please!

Once you've got the sausage-meat all cooked and broken down into bits it's time to start some liquid. Turn up the heat and add about a third of a bottle of the wine! Stir it in and keep the heat up and it'll soon start to sizzle.

Once there, add the sliced pieces of sausage back in and let them cook in for a couple of minutes, before adding a can of tomatoes. Let this get hot, stirring well to stop it burning on the bottom, and then add the tomato paste and another third of the wine. Keep stirring and the whole mixture should start to bubble again, at which point you add in the last can of tomatoes. Get that hot again, and then turn down the heat to the lowest point possible and cover.

Leave for about an hour!

5. The Finishing Touches
ok. You've about 30 minutes left before everyone will be expecting food on the table. Get the water on for the pasta (don't forget salt and some olive oil in the water for stopping the pasta sticking together. Get the heat up under that water and also get the heat on in the oven - to about 350F!

Pour the meatballs into the gravy mix and gently submerge them. They need to come back out in one piece! Up the heat some.

Cut the baguette in four, and then slice each quarter to give a top and bottom half. Drizzle about a teaspoon full of olive oil onto each eighth of the baguette, along with at least a teaspoon full of chopped garlic (BJ's - I love you!). Put the baguette halves back together and lay on foil on a cookie tray. Cover the bread with foil too, but don't seal it off - the bread should dry a little.

20 mins to go: put the pasta into the boiling water, put the bread into the oven. Make sure that the serving dishes are ready and that the table is laid.

10 mins: taste the gravy: if it is too sweet, add some more wine. If too sour you can add some sugar if you like, but be very cautious! Too much would be bad! Remember: this is your last chance to tweak the taste!

0 mins: take the bread from the oven, plate, and serve it, maybe with foil over it to keep it hot. Get the pasta drained and into the serving bowl. Lastly, shut off all heat and start ladling gravy over the pasta - be careful of those meatballs! Every few big spoonfuls you should stir up the pasta mix to make sure that it's all well mixed.

Serve. Relax. Eat. Drink. Sleep and let the others clean the kitchen!

[Socks]

2010.05.24: P.S. I just got told that I have new socks. Admittedly they look like one was knitted in a straitjacket and the other fed LSD while growing, but they'll be warm and comfy, so who cares!

The AG rules - big-time !

TTFN

"Official" Spam ?

2010-05-19T12:13:00.006Z

No, that isn't an oxymoron. I would, and I would think that you'd probably agree at first blush, that it might mean things like election materials, public safety notices, etc. I'd have agreed - until the last few days - about that. However, I'm revising my opinions to broaden the scope right now.

I recently started working on a small project and am using my own laptop for some development. To do this I have had to install Access. This is not something I really want to do - I have been working to keep OpenOffice.org on this m

achine as the only office suite and, so far, its worked pretty well. However, Access is needed, so Access gets installed. Access 2003, that is. After that, I run Microsoft's update program to see what I need in the way of patches and fixes and find a whole list of items for MS Office 2003, about 5% of which are for Access, so I install the appropriate ones and continue.

It's been about two weeks now, and every day or two I find the machine demanding to install new software patches. I look at the demand, allow the Access ones, and tell it not to bother me again with the ones for Office, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and whatever else might have come along for the ride! A day or two la

ter I get the same sort of demand for the same sort of patches! Usually they're new patches, but I've got this message three times today already:

and I've unchecked the two items, because I don't want them, and clicked OK. Then I get this message:

Here I check the "don't do it again box, and click OK. Then the *%$*&%$* thing comes back a little later. In fact, right at this moment, as I type this, there's a little yellow shield in my tray, with a hint saying "Downloading updates: 14%". What's the betting that it's the same pair of unwanted updated for products I don't have?

Now, I'm sure that Microsoft isn't producing patches at the rate of several a week, so I can only think that this is some weird sort of marketing campaign to get me to install the rest of the MS Office suite. Something along the lines of "look what good care we take of users of our software". Well, it isn't working: I know the saying "any advertising is good advertising", but in this case it's just telling me how bad, buggy, and generally unfit for use this whole suite is, and that I'm far better off without it. It's acting rather like aversion therapy, and being rather good at it too! As you can imagine, I'm looking forward to the day that I can get rid of Access again!

TTFN

Lunch in Ten Minutes

2010-05-16T19:08:00.002Z

We woke late today. So late, in fact, that I stumbled up and realised that I would have to do something very quickly indeed about lunch or face the Wrath of Wife!

Half a stick of butter went into the pan on a very low gas while I washed and plucked some cilantro. Passing the pantry I grabbed pots of Basil, Mint, and Chives together with the couscous jar; then a couple of tomatoes, some scallions, and some chicken broth from the fridge.

The butter is melted, so dump in a couple of cups of couscous and stir well to make sure the butter is well mixed in. Leave it on the same really low heat to warm through, stirring occasionally. Then chop the tomatoes and scallions and put by in a small bowl. Open the herbs ready for use.

The couscous will be beginning to turn a little brick-red in places - it's done!!! Add about 3/4 cup of broth to the couscous and stir well; turn off the heat. Wait for about 3-4 minutes and then fluff up the couscous. If it seems (smells, mainly) done then add the veggies and cilantro and mix in well. Add a good shake of basil and two of chives and some mint.

Mix the lot together and wait for a couple of minutes for the dried herbs to gain moisture and start to offer scent and taste; then start the process of tasting and (if necessary) adding mint and tasting again (and so on), until the mint gives a nice, slightly tart, tinge to the salad. Each cycle will take about 5 minutes with dry mint. Of course, if you get it right to start with then the time taken will be nothing! Finally, put in fridge for about an hour to cool, then remember to fluff up well when serving.

TTFN

SteaK

2010-05-15T02:19:00.005Z

Medium-sized pieces of beast, with a little olive oil, salt, and black pepper rubbed in to each side. The potatoes have been peeled, sliced, and boiled soft already and the AG is pounding them into smash with milk, butter, and pepper to assist. The corn has thawed in boiling water and is hot and put into a serving dish.

The flesh hits the almost-red-hot pan with an angry sizzle. Some smoke vanishes up the exhaust fan and the outside starts to brown.

A minute slowly ticks past.

Another minute slowly ticks past.

The spatula and tongs flip the flesh - more seething sizzle and two more minutes of heat. The top is nicely etched with medium-brown lines on a grey background; the bottom suffers more.

Two minutes are up ... slice into a steak.......really pink. good.

Serve it all quickly and everyone's happy with flesh-in-face.

TTFN

Scallops & Rice

2010-05-12T16:54:00.000Z

So, here is the recipe as promised by the AG on Facebook. It started with a very hungry AG, and me looking in the freezer for something fairly quick to cook for her. What we had left over was about a quarter of a 2 lb bag of Bay Scallops from BJ's. They're shelled and cleaned and frozen raw, and about a centimetre across – that's about 50% too big to fit through the hole in a CD, for all you empirical measurists out there! We had a good portion over, and last night I made the recipe again, scaling it up from smallish portions for three to decidedly small portions for six. We had a main meal of the Italian favourite in America – meatballs and sausage in a thick tomato sauce.

So, the ingredients are:
¾ lb Bay Scallops
3 rashers of streaky bacon, if possible left out for 2-3 days to get dry!
½ bottle of white wine (the alcohol burns off in cooking!)
1 medium onion, chopped fairly fine
2 good teaspoons of chopped garlic, or three cloves, crushed. We use chopped in jars from BJ's 'cos I'm lazy!
1 teaspoon of Allspice powder. This makes the dish a little bitter ...
2 teaspoons of Ginger powder. This makes the dish a little sweet and very slightly hot!
½ stick of butter (1/8 lb)
3 teaspoons of dry chives
10-12 chopped leaves of fresh cilantro, preferably, or else 3 teaspoons of dried cilantro
2 cups of brown rice.

1.Put a pot of water on to boil for the rice. Don't forget to salt it! Least of all, don't forget to put the rice in when it comes to the boil! Stire the rice well when you put it in, and occasionally thereafter. It should take about 30 minutes to cook.
2.Melt the butter gently in a frying pan and set the onion and garlic to simmer. Minimal heat is best here.
3.Chop the bacon up as finely as you reasonably can, so that slices across the rasher are about 2 mm thick, and you slice the rashers 2 or 3 times length-wise.
4.Drop the bacon in to the onion mix to start frying. The onion should be getting translucent by this stage, but resist the temptation to turn up the heat, or the onion and butter will brown and burn.
5.Add the ginger and allspice to the fry, making sure that you stir them in and, if the mixture starts drying out, add another ½ stick of butter.
6.Add the cilantro now, again making sure to stir it in well. At this point you should have a mixture of herbs and spices with an infusion of cilantro that will gently change the taste of the scallops as they cook in it.
7.Break the scallops apart from each other (run warm water over them in a sieve) and then add them to the frying mixture.
8.Stir this mixture well, so that the scallops are well covered by the mixture in the pan, turn up the heat to about ¾, and keep frying for about 5 minutes, stirring to make sure that the scallops get cooked from all directions and don't burn at all.
9.Add the wine. It may seem like a lot, but about 15% will vanish as the alcohol evaporates, and you'll want a reasonable amount for wetting the rice.
10.After the mixture reaches a boil turn it down to a simmer and let it cook for about 5 minutes. Meantime, check out that rice! It should be almost done by now – lots more chewy than white rice.
11.When the rice is done pour it into a sieve and then into a serving bowl, and cover with a plate to keep it warm.
12.Back at the scallops, pour the whole mixture out into a service bowl.
13.Take everything to the table and wow your friends!

An Anti-Stress Diet ..... ?

2010-05-10T15:15:00.007Z

Doing some re-arranging recently I came across a very very faded fax sent to me when I lived in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in May 1993.

Under this Far Side sketch (see here) a friend had sent me a suggestion for a diet. Now, I wouldn't, in all honesty, take this up for the next ten years with the expectation of slimming down from a 300 lb tub to a size zero beach-blonde bombshell in line for the next episode of Legally Blonde, but it looks like a fun set of principles to live by. Or not!

Breakfast
1/2 a grapefruit
1 slice of whole-wheat toast, dry
31/2 oz. skim milk.

Lunch
4 oz. of lean broiled chicken breast
1 cup of steamed spinach
1 cup of herb tea
1 Oreo cookie

Mid-Afternoon Snack
Rest of Oreos in package
2 pints of Rocky Road ice cream
1 jar of hot fudge sauce (topping for ice cream)
Nuts, cherries, whipped cream, to taste

Dinner
2 loaves of garlic bread, with cheese
1 large sausage, mushroom, and cheese pizza
4 cans or one large pitcher of beer
3 Milky Way candy bars (unwrapped!)

Late Evening News Snack
1 frozen New York cheesecake (eat directly from freezer)

Dieting Rules

(These all-purpose rules may be applied with equal effectiveness to any diet, with similar results)

If you eat something, and no-one sees you eat it, then it has no calories.
If you drink a diet soda with a candy bar, the soda cancels out the calories in the candy.
When you eat with someone else then calories don't count so long as you eat less than they do.
Food used for medicinal purposes never counts in a diet. Examples are hot chocolate, brandy, toast, Sara Lee cheesecake.
If you hang out around fat people, or fatten up everyone else around you, then you will be thinner.
Movie-related foods don't count, since they are part of the entire entertainment package, and not part of one's personal fuel. These include - but are not limited to - Milk Duds, buttered popcorn, Junior Mints, Raisinets, and Twizzlers.
Cookie pieces contain no calories since the process of breaking causes calorie leakage.
Foods licked off knives and spoons, like peanut butter and ice cream, don't count if you are in the process of preparing something for someone else.
Foods that have the same colour have the same number of calories. For example, spinach and pistachio ice cream and mushrooms and white chocolate have the same calories. Note: Chocolate is a universal colour and may be substituted for any other colour.
Food eaten over the sink, without dirtying a dish, does not count.
Using the adjective "just" cuts the calorie count in half - as in "I'll have just one more cream puff!".
If you make it a habit to eat continuously, you need not worry about between-meal snacking ruining your diet.
Smoked fish eaten over the weekend has no calories and no cholesterol, even when eaten with creamed cheese.

I rather liked it!

TTFN

Sheep & Wool 2010, Epilogue

2010-05-07T00:33:00.003Z

All the pictures for this year are up on Photobucket. Have fun and se if you saw what I saw!

Next; install a new copy of Windows and then Oracle 10! Fun Fun Fun !

TTFN

Sheep & Wool 2010, Part Five

2010-05-04T22:27:00.008Z

These first five or so are all from Tess' Yarns. I still love her colour combinations and the way the colours blend and merge on the yarn skeins.

And the red / grey / black combination is good enough to show more than once.

After Tess, the AG had to go back to Cloverhill in the Main Barn, so off we staggered in the heat!

There was still some Three Irish Girls left on the tall upright display (left) (the shot to the right is the lower part of the display).

The other display, with the sets on skeins in different colours, had all gone, however, and were replaced at this stage with the Dragonfly Fiber yarn in the next two pictures.

And the last yarn here is Unique Sheep

If anyone has corrections, please tell me: if anyone wants the pictures then you can contact me on Facebook or Ravelry ("dcpking") and I'll send them all to you.

TTFN

Sheep & Wool 2010, Part Four

2010-05-04T01:03:00.015Z

Well, it's 11 pm and cooling off, thank heavens! Almost time for news, and for me to post yet more pictures!

In Philadelphia there's a LYS called loop, on South Street.

Imagine our surprise to find this stall! They're from Gamerville, NY, and also called loop.

Next, after joining up with the Woolbearers gang (not shown - we were all way too hot to be pictured!) we hit Creatively Dyed Yarn.

Here are some more pictures:

And on the right is the pastel Hand Dyed Seacell yarn that we noticed last year.

Of course, wandering around, we fell under the hooves of Sheep Incognito, and spent a few minutes there.

I don't think that the wit can really be getting better by the year - it just seems that way, though!

Then, our final stop for this year, just like last year: Tess' Designer Yarns.

Yes, yes! I realise that I'm a guy and that guys aren't supposed to like pastel combinations - primary colours like Scarlets and Blacks and Blues are supposed to by for us; maybe "Earth" is the closest we get! Well, take a look at these!
(Yes, it does look like everyone's running to get there, doesn't it!) We'll start with some blues.

I have to go do other stuff now, so I'll finish this post tomorrow

TTFN

Sheep & Wool 2010, Part Three

2010-05-03T19:25:00.013Z

Phew! It's hot 'n' sticky here in Lindenwold today! More pictures, everyone! This had a sign caying that it was "Cotten", but that got taken down between one picture and the next !
Great colours, anyhow.

Just like this yarn here!

We also found Jerry Womack's Wild Meadow selling a Hand-crafted Electronic Yarn Spinner.

However, they were a little expensive - the AG thinks about $900! They did look very nice and neat, were indeed very silent as claimed in their flyer, and seemed fairly easy to use (I watched one or two visitors walk up and try their hands and succeed.

They also had some hand-dyed wool for sale, safely kept in what were possibly rabbit cages (to protect unsuspecting stall visitors ? )

Emerging from the Main Barn onto the small piece of meadow there we encountered a young lady and her lamb. I think it was learning tricks, although it seemed rather reluctant to be out on the grass!

We stopped in the small Cheese and Food barn to buy some Stony Man sheep's cheese and to collapse awhile (it was already, by 11 am, very hot). I tried a Lamb Sausage and found it mild and flavourful. We decided to stop off at the car and off-load our purchases, before returning to the fray. En route we passed the broom maker, and bought a yard broom from him. He has quite an assortment and we got one with extra stiffened bristles in the middle, especially for yard work.

As you can see from the picture on the right, the yurt (also seen in Rhinebeck last year) was here too. I wandered inside to see how it was in blazing heat (it had been warm with both doors open at Rhinebeck, where the weather was cold and rainy). It turned out to be pleasantly warm, and the two openings gave some breeze. The roof was open, giving the hot air a way out and encouraging a draft.

More of this in a while

[Tech]
I found a rather cool version of a bookstore up online yesterday. 101 Free Tech Books is a site that raffles off 101 books every month. You put your name in for some books and wait to see
what may happen. Maybe you win, maybe not!
Anyhow, normally you only get one chance per month, but if you have friends who will join in, then you get more chances. It's kind of a referral network, but you don't pay anything - its done by sponsorship. Of course, if you want to click on the links here and join in, it'll be me who gets referrals and more chances (just thought I'd better be honest!).

TTFN

Sheep & Wool 2010, Part Two

2010-05-03T16:40:00.013Z

Ok. Well, we didn't go to Glen Rock yesterday after all. We didn't even go to Woolbearers! Instead, we went home in the hot weather, unpacked the car, luxuriated in the cool shower water, and crashed!

The one thing I didn't mention yesterday was that the train line at Sykesville really is used! We kind of thought that it was a once-a-week affair, but if it is, then that's at about 6.45 on Saturday mornings - of course!

Here come the pictures! First off, the early-morning pics of the Main Barn.
The first thing we saw was this display of woodwork. There are pens here, to be sure, but also almost anything you could imagine that's made even partly out of wood! The workmanship was gorgeous!
There were quite a few vendors selling soap made from sheep product, and this was one very attractive display.

OK! I admit it! I'm a colour and texture junkie! I hadn't seen this sort of thing done with felted wool except with Loden in Germany. Certainly never with these colours!
I could be wrong, but I think that these were called "The Looms you always Wanted"!

Ok! Now we got to CloverHill and the Three Irish Girls yarn displays. Here's the main display at just four minutes past eight am!.
The bunches of yarn on the top are the sets of mini-skeins shown in yesterday's blog
And finally a close-up of the main display two minutes later: you can see that some skeins are already gone!

The AG bought about six herself. Selection took about 3 minutes, but then there was a huge line waiting to pay (CloverHill was definitely a popular store, and they seemed to do a fair amount of restocking through the day). However, the line wound through the (double-stall) shop, so buyers didn't seem to get bored at all!

Opposite CloveHill was The Golden Ram, full of antique objects associated with sheep, as you can see.

Another great store, where we spent a while chatting, was Trawitz leathers. I think the AG fell in lust with several skins!

More in an hour or so!

TTFN

Sheep & Wool 2010, Part One

2010-05-02T01:33:00.004Z

Hi everyone! We've been at the Maryland Sheep & Wool today. We got there at about 7.30, and things didn't get really open until 9, so we sat in the car listening to NPR and chatting until about 8.30 and then went in. We went first to the Main Barn (although it was pretty much the furthest from the gate) because the AG needed a fix of Three Irish Girls yarn. The store carrying it was Cloverhill Yarn, because the Yarnista couldn't be there (she lives in MN now, I believe!). Anyhow, the AG bought lots of yarn, including some sets of mini skeins of all nine spring rainbow colors: this is the Yarnista's picture of them:

And I'll post up mine of thee yarn when I get the pictures out of the camera and onto the PC. For the rest of the morning we wandered around the barns, slowly getting hotter and hotter! Last year was wet wet wet! - this year has been hot hot hot! - mid- to upper eighties Fahrenheit, and hotter expected tomorrow (Sunday)!

We went to the food barn (nice and cool) and I bought some Stony Man cheese and ate some lamb sausage (very good indeed!). Then we queued for a long long time getting a t-shirt and bought a straw broom before getting back to the car.

Back at the car, hoping for AC, we find that the battery is dead and won't turn over the engine - obviously we listened to too much NPR! Oh well! Ring AAA and wait. Only about 40 minutes and the guys arrive in a minivan full of batteries! It turns out that ours is just drained, so they jump it and leave, and we sit in blessed cool for about an hour as the battery charges. Then, nice and cooled down, we go back into the melée, grab a tin mug of cola from Brians stand and then meet up with friends from Woolbearers for an afternoon stroll.

Half past four finds up leaving again. We go back to our friends' house, showerm change, and go out to visit their church, where there's a Scouting fundraiser: buy and eat donated dishes. So we buy and eat good home-made food.

Now I'm blogging this from the Marriott in Columbus, where some of our friends are staying, and working out which pictures I'm going to add to this post.

Tomorrow we will probably hit the Fairy Festival in GlenRock, PA, and then go home.

[Tech]
I have a friend who wants to take an Oracle exam for certification, but is blind, so I'm going to be teaching him in ten days of so. Maybe I'll take the exam too, afterwards; I've never bothered before, as I haven't ever used Oracle for more than about six months at a time before. That could be changing, of course.

TTFN

Sheep & Wool 2010, Part Zero

2010-05-01T02:21:00.005Z

Well, here we are at a friends' house in Sykesville, MD, about seven miles from the fairground. It took up quite a while to get here, for various reasons to do with the road systems (and blockages thereon) in New Jersey and Maryland.

For example, we started on 295 in NJ. Big mistake. Someone, somewhen, didn't build the road aright and so, this morning (of all mornings, naturally) the road decided to collapse into a sink-hole. Not a huge one, but just large enough to reduce a three-lane highway of moving traffic into a 5-mile stretch of hot, sweaty, and cursing frustration.

After getting past this blockage things went fine until we stopped at the Flying-J truck stop at the bottom of New Jersey, just before the Delaware Memorial bridge, to top off the tank. As we got to the top of the off-ramp we found another jam. Not a big one, this time, but caused by a car with police, a fire truck, and an ambulance in attendance. Seemingly the car had caught fire! We got past this and pulled in for fuel. The attendant started ours and went to see to another car: this was a woman in a red mini-van who had the window rolled up and was talking on the phone. Fine, but she wouldn't stop talking on the phone to roll down the window and tell the guy what she wanted! Slow sign language followed! She was still talking (illegally, in NJ) as she drove off!

Life got better for an hour or so, although we did see long long lines of cars moving slowly northwards, until we got to the exit for 695 off 95. Taking this was good, because there was a two-three-mile tailback from a crash that extended almost to the exit. 695 was better than that, but not by much in many places, so we were hot and sweaty when we arrived at our rest-house for the night.

In "payment" for putting us up for the night we took our hosts out to Beck's Bar & Grill in Sykesville. Nice bar, good food. I had seafood pasta and Tola had London Broil salad. Servings are big and the food is excellent.

Tomorrow the Sheep and the Wool!

TTFN

Pick of the Week

2010-04-25T21:56:00.002Z

Do you like cake? Do you like cookies ?

Yuh, well, few don't! So go to this site and see some cool cake. And buy it!!! I just had some of the PrimePoint cookies featured in the gallery, and I'm a fan!

Remember this: Life is short - eat the cake first!

TTFN

2010-04-24T11:27:00.006Z

[Hot news from England]
David Cameron (C) isn't the sure winner of the general election after all! The country is totally fed up with Labour, but Nick Clegg (Liberal Party) is up there with Cameron. A quick primer on party politics in the UK:

Conservative ("Tories"). Traditionally the more right-wing of the major parties. Think Thatcher, Churchill, etc.
Labour ("Socialists"). Founded around the turn of the 19/20 centuries, first came to power in the 1930s. The 1920s in the UK saw coalition governments.
Liverals - now "Liberal Democrats" ("Whigs", traditionally, although the nickname has vanished now). Last in power during WWI, last in coalition in 1974.

In the mid-70s the Liberals almost got into power in a Lib-Tory coalition, but it failed to get sufficient seats in parliant and Labour took power for six months, followed by the disastrous Labour pre-Thatcher government. Certainly in the last 50 years the received wisdom in British politics has been that a Liberal vote has been a wasted vote - a point of view endorsed, naturally enough, by both Conservatives and Labour!

In the mid-70s some polls put Lib support at around 25%; today it appears to be agreed to be in the low-30s! The Libs passed Labour some time in the last month as both Labour and Conservatives have been trending down in support percentages. Traditionally the numbers suddenly resolve on election night with lots of people suddenly deciding not to vote for the smaller party after all, despite their poll answers.

It seems like the Libs may soon hold the balance of power as they so nearly did in 1974. The results of this will be huge. The political system in the UK is described as "winner takes all" - every seat is a separate election and the winner is the winner; the party with over 50% of seats is the winning party, and results are very quickly known - within 4-6 hours of polling closing.

The Liberal Democrat party will almost certainly look for electoral reform in exchange for parliamentary support, as proportional representation would suddenly make their position in politics immeasurably stronger.

So my pick-of-the-month is watching the UK election. It'll be exciting like so many elections aren't, and it certainly beats watching bankers in the euro-zone getting ready to pay billions to bail out Greece.

[Tech Stuff]

Just finished a two-week data migration. Worst part: the pain of working with Windows 95 (I skipped Win/9X and went from 3.11 to NT4!). Frustrating part: the way that the documentation had to be written to demonstrate that we had done "it right". The best part: the happy customer!!
Hopefully I have another contract coming up very soon, and that'll keep the rent paid, at least.
Just finished a course on Reporting Services 2008 from Pragmatic Works. I've seen another of their courses, on Integration Services, and also a number of their one-hour events that they put on periodically at no cost for the benefit of anyone in trouble in this economy. They're very professionally produced, very effectively presented, and chock-full of useful information, explanations, and techniques. I give them an 11 out of 10! Be warned, though: their information density can be very high, so make sure you don't blink!
Still working away on the MCTS DBA stuff from Insider Training: there's jst so much to try to get your head around before being ready to put down your $125 for the exam!
Going to be assisting a friend in learning PL/SQL in a couple of weeks: after that I might just try for an Oracle SQL Certified Expert exam!

[Wool]
Nothing this week, but next weekend is the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival, and we're going, just like last year. Hopefully it'll be sunny but cool: rain's no fun and blazing heat'll just make it miserable.

Well, that's all for now: see you all when I do! To those with new phones: "Text On!"

TTFN

Life goes on!

2010-04-24T11:23:00.002Z

[Hot news from England]

Just finished a two-week data migration. Worst part: the pain of working with Windows 95 (I skipped Win/9X and went from 3.11 to NT4!). Frustrating part: the way that the documentation had to be written to demonstrate that we had done "it right". The best part: the happy customer!!

TTFN

Sometimes Trusting isn't Enough

2010-04-21T20:01:00.003Z

If you use anti-virus from Comcast - or McAfee in general - you'll have received an update this afternoon. Be careful about installing it, as it's apparently got an error. Please look here for problem and solution.
Personally I use Avast! from Alwil, but the choice is yours.

TTFN

Addition: Fox News caught up on the story; however, I'm not at all sure how a piece of inanimate code could "go berserk" !

Back on the Road

2010-04-11T11:24:00.003Z

Over a month ago I was asked, because I work with SQL Server and because I used to work with a database system called Paradox (think "Access the way it should have been"), to go to a meeting at a pretty well-known company and meet on of their manager. It seems that they found a program with data that they need to have access to, but they don't know how to run the program and/or get at the data. Turns out that the program is a DOS version of Paradox, believe it or not, and the PC it's sitting on is equally old. No problem -- should take a week or two to do. Finally -- a month later -- we get the go-ahead to do the thing, so I'll be commuting about 70 miles daily for a couple of weeks to do the job.

It'll make a nice change from studying for a while, but very soon I'll be back listening to one of Brian Knight's pals from Pragmatic Works in a course on SSRS 2008. Meanwhile the study for an MCTS (SQL 2008 DBA) goes slowly on -- eventually I'll get to doing the exams (I'm almost finished the SSIS stuff!). Studying isn't the most enthralling stuff, but it matters in the end.

I took a few hours off the other day and read Michael Lewis' book about the current recession, The Big Short. This is an absolutely excellent book, and I recommend it to you without any reservation at all. It really offers a clear insight into what was going on in Wall Street from 2004-2008 and how what people were doing, and what they didn't understand, caused the financial crash.

[Tech]
You can get a copy of MS SQL Server 2008 Developer's Edition for just $50. This is exactly the same as the Enterprise version, except that you can run it on, for example, a copy of Windows XP and you mustn't use it for your production system. OK, fine; why do you want it if you're working in, for example, Oracle or MySQL? Well, the SSIS part alone does neat things like give you tools for programming import and export processes in and out of almost any database (I'll probably be using it for import from Paradox), which definitely helps the perpetual emergencies we all get run down by!

TTFN

Databases

2010-03-25T17:44:00.005Z

[Tech]
Here are some useful links that I've been coming across in my recent travels. These ones are mainly for DBAs.

Using dynamic management views to monitor and tune performance of SQL Server. New in 2005 and expanded in 2008, these allow you to query aspects of the DBMS
Data collection the automated way in SQL Server 2008. A blog on one of the new features of SQL Server 2008.

TTFN

SQL & Saturday

2010-03-12T19:56:00.003Z

I was going to have a rant today on why I think the political setup in this country doesn't work (which it obviously doesn't, given the inability of Congress to pass legislation to fix the health care situation). But I'm not going to bother, as it wouldn't do any good whatsoever. The political establishment in this country has taken a very nicely designed system and, because the two sides are able to put nearly-equal numbers of representatives into each house, the whole system has ground to a halt.

The system is designed to stop one side with a large majority from taking over the system entirely, giving the other side no further hope. With the two sides so polarised, as they are now, and with the "middle" either apathetic or equally split, we have a system where nothing gets done at all.

So I'm going back to repairing my bed - which fell apart again because the screws won't hold into wood that's dried out over 35 years of use - and trying to work out some sort of furniture for a kitchen that is more like a closet than anything else. Americans, they say, are spending less and less time in the kitchen. I'm not surprised! The kitchens these days are too small to swing a kitten in, let alone a dwarf cat!

TTFN

New Digs - and a New Symbiote.

2010-03-11T16:07:00.005Z

We moved two weeks ago. Yep, just upped and moved. About 10 miles down the road. New place has a smaller kitchen ([bad], and only one (larger) bathroom ([mixed]), but the same space overall. It's about 35% cheaper and has free gas ([good]) for heat and cooking. Now to get back to cooking with gas - I haven't done that since I lived at home with my parents, and that's a very very long time ago.

New apartment does have a floor problem, so cannot set up some furniture: have to wait for floor repair so floor is level. Why do people build houses here in the USA in such a way that, after 30 years, they're in the same dilapidated condition that you'd expect to find in Britain or Germany after about 250 years? I've lived in houses in England that are 150 years old and they're in far better condition than apartments here after 30 years!

DD rang the other night and then later next day. Very stressed: had got into much-wanted photography class in school, but had no camera. Possible end-of-world scenario imminent! Problem fixed by immediate dispatch of cameras & lenses: film and filters to follow. Many sighs of heartfelt relief.

As for me, I'm still looking for a new job (SQL Developer) and waiting on some people to come back with interview requests. One company that said that they wanted me to do some work for them, but since agreeing on the work we've heard nothing. Internal politics are just something crazy that you have to live with.

Oh yes! The symbiote. I came down with a cold. Yesterday. At about 7 pm! I know pewcisely because that's when I realised that I needed to mop my runny nose [grin]. About every 2-3 years I get this problem, and then I have a semi-permanent symbiote until it dies (obviously sometime in the last few days!) . Last night I felt terrible when I got home, and went to bed. Today hasn't been any better at all, so it's been bed rest all day today, and now I'm writing this while listening to last Tuesday's lecture. Another starts live at 8 this evening and I'm coughing and snuffling and getting a red nose from blowing and mopping it all the time.

Oh yes - I never said. I'm taking a course from Insider Training in Coeur d'Alene. Hopefully I'll be taking the MS exam in a month or so's time, to get certification as a DBA for SQL Server 2008 (an MCTS cert.). After that I suppose it'll be time to start trying to take the exams for Oracle PL/SQL programmer. I keep on helping people out with PL/SQL so I might as well get some recognition [grin]! After that I'll have to start looping at the second step for SQL Server - an MCITP certification.

Right now, however, it's first things first: getting on with learning enough to get the MCTS cert. It's when you start doing learning like this again that you realise just how tough learning without very much hands-on experience really is. Practical experience is easy to get when you're doing it at work, but if you're not in work, or if you can't get the experience at work 'cos you're not doing quite that work, then it gets difficult.

[Tech]
So I'm getting told all about partitioning tables so that one can place parts of a table where they can be best stored. That part was find, but the explanation of how lost me. So I looked it up - MS KB was weird, but this article by Mike Chapple on About.Com made it so simple!

Anyhow, I have two possibles waiting out there for me to work at tomorrow. Have fun, everyone.

TTFN

You Will Eat What You Are Offered ... or something else?

2010-02-19T16:16:00.002Z

How many menus does your favourite restaurant have? One? I would think at least one, but why more? The menu is the presentation of the food on offer - you look at the menu and the prices and decide to go in and eat or to walk on to another restaurant tonight.

At least, that's how I always though life was lived.

In France there's a chain of restaurants called "Quick". Rather like Burger King - they're all over the place. Very convenient and usually very clean when you want to stop in and have a quick (sorry!) bite en route to somewhere. Emergency food. You look at the menu, see what you want, check you're not allergic to it, buy it and eat.

It seems that the politicians in France have a different idea about how a restaurant should be run. In the small city of Roubaix, near Lille in the Nord region of France, the eight local Quick restaurants noticed that a lot of people in the area weren't using the restaurant because, it seemed, they had pork and bacon in their food. As you can imagine, people who have a religious objection to eating pork - like Jews and Muslims, for example - would not be buying a double-bacon pork-burger!

So the enterprising managers pulled the pork from the menu, replacing it with, for example, bacon made from turkey. They then got approval (how isn't clear) to declare that the restaurants served only halal food. Of course, this was too much for the local council, and the mayor took out a law suit against the restaurant, accusing it of discrimination and urging it to offer food to suite a wider range of tastes.

Of course, this would be difficult, because mixing halal and haraam seems to be almost impossible. In addition, it seems ludicrous, as the Quick chain, by its very nature, appeals only to a certain portion of the population - one could hardly imagine M. Sarkozy and wife popping down to the local Quick (there are two on the Avenue des Champs Elysées) - but for the group that does frequent such restaurants (15-25 years old, 80% male) one can see that if a town's proportion of people who won't eat, for example, broccoli, is increasing then one tends to drop the broccoli. In this case it's pork.

Now, on the other hand, one should look at the background across the country. The french people (not the recent immigrants) see themselves as historically descended from the Franks who, under Charles Martel, threw back the Moors at the Battle of Poitiers (Tours) in 732. As a result, they are somewhat sensitive to the increase of muslim influences in their country. A lot of French people appear also to think that they are going to be overrun by a wave of muslims as the current generation start bearing children. Demographically, while France is suddenly one of the most fertile countries in Europe, this doesn't appear to be the case (ref).

So here we have a case where politicians of both sides are up in arms over a commercial move, and are trying to use ill-founded public belief to gather popular support for their cause. Can anyone think of anything similar anywhere in the last two hundred years? No prizes for guesses :)

No [Tech] this time - I'm too busy studying!

TTFN

The AG Strangles Babies !

2010-02-15T02:07:00.005Z

Amidst a florid mixture of surface-floating fish, unicorns, dogs and what looks like a shrimp ...

you find the AG hard at work squishing the living daylights out of Tabasco the Bull. You can see just how red he's turned with the strain of it all!

There's a weird thing about this blog site. I'm posting at 21.25 in EST, five hours behind the UK, which is running on GMT. Therefore you'd expect to find this blog posted at 02.25. Take a look.

TTFN

Another Morning After ... All Day!

2010-02-11T04:28:00.024Z

In case you hadn't noticed what the weather man has been telling you about the state of US weather, the north-east had a major snow-storm last weekend. Well, we dug out on Sunday and got a second hit from a second major snow-storm yesterday and all today. Here are some pictures.

[Snowmageddon (Snow 2)]
This was last Friday and Saturday. The federal government was closed on Monday as a result. These are pictures from afterwards.

I went out in the snow, cleaned off the car, drove around a bit, and went back inside. Two hours later the snow stopped and I had this much more to clear - and that was the end of the snow!

So I went back up the way between the houses. It all looks very peaceful (left) until you realise just how much show has fallen!

And, of course, it warms and cools, so the next day the buildings have all grown icicles. Then, on Monday morning, there's a terrible banging and you think that the house is being demolished. You go to the door and a man with a very long pole yells at you to close the door and stay in, just as a heap of ice hits the path in front of your toes! He's going around knocking the icicles off the houses.

Of course, the icicles above the balcony were too high, so they survived.

A few more hours.

[Snowpocalypse (Snow 3)]
So all that left us feeling rather blasé about snow. We'd already had over a foot in December, just before Christmas, so another 18" was respectable, but certainly within our ability to withstand! Monday night we started seeing dire warnings about the next few days and snow. Tuesday dawned sunny and it really wasn't until about 4 pm that the snow-laden grey clouds started rolling in and hazing the sun.

So we went and met friends in Haddonfield for Stitch 'n' Bitch and the snow wasn't anywhere to be seen. I went for food and returned and was in the middle of saying
"it hasn't started yet" when one of the others broke in to say "It has, you know!" and pointed out of the window.

And she was right! In just a few seconds it has gone from a cold damp night to a night full of falling white bits.

It snowed continuously all day today. It started, like last night, with great big heavy wet flakes, weighing down the trees.

Obviously, this appears to be my Brief Blue Period! The predominant colour reflects my feelings about the weather at 7 pm this evening - very fed up with snow!

So much for the Blue Period! Three hours later the snow was still falling, although for only another hour. The total is reckoned at about 16". On top of the 18" or so just three days ago.

TTFN

Climate is what you expect - Weather is what you get

2010-02-07T08:45:00.009Z

Despite the combined wisdom of all the professors of climate science, who tell us that the annual mean temperatures are going up, Robert Heinlein came out right once again - he usually does! In fact, I think that the prediction that the weather will get more extreme as the mean temperature rises is a better prediction than the apparent expectation by most people that everything will just get warmer. As evidence I offer the last summer - nice, but not wonderful, and definitely rather muggy for quite a long time - and this winter - well, the last 6 weeks of it, anyway - with two snowstorms that have dumped around 40" of snow on me so far and look to be bringing more soon.

The snow is pretty - don't get me wrong - as some photos here should show.

The first is a footpath, not a road, and is only about two feet wide - about as deep as the snow on either side!

Where people leave tables, etc., out for the snow can result in some fun images

[Food]

I'm sure the AG will consider this in terrible taste, but both I and The Spawn considered her Spaghetti Carbonara (recipe from Ruth Reichl, the former editor of Gourmet magazine) really excellent. She always claims that she's incapable of cooking, and then produces something so good! Such a modest woman [grin]!

[Tech]
I'm nose deep in revising SSIS this week - re-learning all the bits I've forgotten over the last year or so - before starting to drown in a SQL Server DBA course. About half-way through these courses I always get to a point of thinking "what am I doing this for - I'd much rather be tucked up in a nice warm bed!" but it's always fun in the end.

[Life]
We stayed in almost all of yesterday - except for going out to sweep the car, which was a waste, as it was totally covered again in two hours - and so I had the unexpected luxury of getting to watch England beat Wales at Twickenham. BBC America TV was so nice to bring this to me, and should be doing a Saturday match every week for the next few weeks! I think it'll be France vs Ireland next week, which should also be great - no prizes for who I'll be supporting (sorry, mes amis!). Still, 30-17 was a nice score to see, despite the fact that Wales almost grabbed it ten minutes from time. I was amused to see the royal presence - Wills and Harry so obviously on opposite sides - well, you could hardly expect the Prince of Wales to cheer an English try, now could you? [grin]

More photos of snow next time, I'd predict!

TTFN

The Morning After

2010-02-02T15:05:00.004Z

It's ten in the morning, I'm clean and happy, and have just a light ache in the upper-right jaw. Yes! It's the day after the removal of a wisdom tooth. Many thanks to the dentist - the actual operation of taking it out took less time than filling in the pieces of paper telling them that I wasn't allergic to anything! Last night I probably violated all medical rules:

I went to the dentist in a fair amount of pain, but pretty well drugged to the eyeballs with OTC pain-killers.
After the op I came home and ate (Swedish meatballs and spuds), but was very careful to keep the gauze over the wound.
As the numbness wore off I replaced it with a generous amount of Speyside, much to the horror of my poor wife.

It all seemed to work, though. No hangover and little pain this morning.

[Food]
For those challenged at cooking, go to your local IKEA and buy a bag of frozen meatballs! I think you can get pots of sauce too, but if not, there's a good recipe on cooks.com that will get the job done very well - my mushroom-averse son ate it and liked it! Finally, there's always the people who want jam with it! Blueberry will do fine, or redcurrant, or cranberry - just pick a jam or jelly with sourness: strawberry jam is just too sweet!

TTFN

Why it's Good to live Today!

2010-02-02T00:48:00.002Z

Every day we hear lamentations for "the good old days". Well, I'm not going to bother with answering any of those nostalgic dreams: I'm just going to give you a list of a few reasons why I think living today is better than it has been in the past. Contradictory views are encouraged!

Having just come from having a wisdom tooth extracted - it took about 15 minutes in all and, while not totally pleasurable, was totally painless. Thank you Hr. Alfred Einhorn of Hamburg, Germany, for inventing Novocaine. Note that the reference on the inventors site has some dating problems ! Wikipedia is better. Before Novocaine I suppose one used alcohol, but before the advent of distillation getting sufficiently drunk might have been a very slow process.
Heartfelt blessings to a surprisingly large variety of people for persisting in the idea of using water to flush toilets. The alternative (going out of the nice warm cave in the middle of a cold winters night) isn't very appealing!
Talking about nice warm caves, we really all just live in (heavily personalised) caves, even now, so the next reason is definitely heating - central or otherwise. Anything to stop shivering!
Electricity, to move power easily to where I want it.
Computers, so I can work at home, learn at home, and read this (and the newspapers) wherever I wish.
Whiskey in convenient bottles to help after tooth extractions. Life is suddenly fun !

TTFN

Those who don't Read History ...

2010-01-21T04:29:00.003Z

Wind your mind back to 1995. Yuh - lots of weird things, like the internet, being introduced. The Web Bubble still five years into the future. Netscape being written; Internet Explorer doesn't yet exist! There's a guy called Steve Perlman with this idea that he can get TV to be interactive. Put a keyboard on your TV and you can do things like get the recipe for what you just saw made without having to go to a book. He calls it WebTV. It was kind of a good idea, but far too slow to succeed, as we can see now. Microsoft bought it when it still seemed like a good idea, and it's still alive, for some reason.

So what's the latest gimmick? Putting Twitter and Facebook on TV! Here's the advert - notice the use of the handset to control the video image of a phone keyboard. You think that it's a cool idea? Wait until you've tried using a Wiimote to work the on-screen keyboard on the TV - same idea; a disaster. At least WebTV gives you a keyboard!

Happy tweeting (do you pay Verizon FiOS to type in your tweet and Verizon Wireless some more to carry it?).

TTFN

Food, Glorious Food

2010-01-19T05:34:00.003Z

Someone I met complained to me that, while their husband was perfectly capable of cooking, he only ever made very simple things, not having the confidence for "proper meals". Well, I have to tell you that I do all the major cooking in my household, for exactly the same reason - but in reverse. My wife, the AG, has been so demoralised by people telling her that her cooking is awful that she just won't try any more. This is a great shame, because what she does cook is always beautifully cooked. Oh well!

So, for those of us who believe ourselves to be culinarily impaired, here's a recipe for Grilled Pork Steaks. As with every dish, there are a few principles to remember. The main one is to get all your ingredients out and ready in advance. Then do the preliminary work, like trimming, chopping, etc., so that all the cooking effort can be done without distraction. Finally, enlist some others in the household to do things like setting the table, putting out drinks, etc.

The ingredients are
4 pork cutlets or steaks, each of about 6 ounces (160g)
Pepper

(for the marinade)
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tablespoons of cooking oil
2 oz sesame seeds or ground-up peanuts
0.5 teaspoon of Cayenne pepper
1.75 pints of beer (e.g. Heineken)
2 teaspoons of honey
2 teaspoons of mustard (e.g. French's)
4 teaspoons of lemon juice

The method is:

1. Fry the onion and garlic in the oil until the onion is becoming translucent
2. Add the sesame (or peanut) and continue to fry until the seeds are lightly browning.
3. Add the Cayenne pepper
4. After a minute or two, add the beer, honey, mustard, and lemon. Mix in well.
5. Remove all this from the heat, allow to cool somewhat in a bowl large enough to add the meat.
6. Roll the steaks in the pepper and add to the bowl of marinade.
7. Cover the bowl with foil, and leave in the fridge for 3 hours or so (the longer the better!).

When ready to serve, scrape off most of the marinade from the steaks, sprinkle with salt, and grill them for about 5-7 minutes on each side at a medium heat. Do not use a high heat for this, as the pork will become dry and leathery! During the grilling process, baste the steaks frequently with marinade in order to keep them moist.

So you see that actual cooking time is about 10-15 minutes, with little maintenance during this time. This means that you can be finishing up cooking whatever else you want to serve as the steaks cook. A good accompaniment is cubed and fried potatoes, where you first boil poattoes for about 20 minutes (instead of the normal 30 or so), cut them into little cubes, fry another chopped onion and then add the spuds and fry them too. Wonderful taste!

Have fun cooking.

TTFN

And you Hate the Phone Company ?

2010-01-15T18:38:00.002Z

I just want you to watch this.

It could easily be one of my best mates, who also works for Verizon. Go here for the Verizon page about this.

Just Something to Smile About

2010-01-14T12:58:00.003Z

This cartoon is the work of Peter Brookes, and appeared in The Times of London on Jan 15, 2010. no mechanism for requesting reproduction permission appears to exist for bloggers. Still, I felt that I would like to share my appreciation for such a talented wit.

Re-installing Windows Continues

2010-01-11T16:36:00.003Z

Obviously I'm getting spoilt by Linux. You know, how the Update Manager pops up every now and then and tells you that there are updates waiting, so you do them and, ten minutes later, you're done? I'd totally forgotten howlong Windows updates take! Of course, I've just added Win XP SP3, so now I'm automagically getting every security update under the sun!Right now I'm on number 27 of 59, Win Genuine Advantage Notifications is finishing, and Logitech's installer is waiting on a system re-boot. Needless to say, I declined to be shown some of the many advantages to using genuine Windows software - too slow!

So, after 3 hours, Windows updates are complete and I can reboot. Whoopee! 11:53:40. Press the magic button. ... 11:54:27 ... it's back. Wow! Who says Windows takes a long time to boot? Mind you, just wait until I install SQL Server again!

Now it's time to install Avast! again. That'll take about five mins or so and then I'll be able to restart again! I've lost count of how many times now, but this one won't be quick, because Avast! will be doing a boot-time complete scan. At least most of the disk is empty - I'd hate to do it on a full disk! ...... yup! That took about 30 minutes to get to the music. Still, everything is clear and Windows should stop whimpering that I'm not protected by anything now.

Ok. Now it's tomorrow, we didn't have power, and I'm done with Windows. I've installed Sun's VirtualBox, and I'm (I hope) all ready for Oracle's OTN day in NYC tomorrow. I have to get up way before the lark to get there for the start at 8 a.m., but one has to be dedicated !

TTFN

Two Brains, One Body

2010-01-10T22:02:00.005Z

[N.P. Opus - Live is Life]
So, it's a nice, peaceful, Sunday afternoon. Cold as all get-out outside (-9C - 27F with a 10 mph breeze), and I have to go to the ex and fix a database (my own fault - I forgot to change something!). Brrrr!

A Day In The Life of a Developer
Meanwhile I've just changed the hard drive in my 17" Acer laptop and it's busy formatting a 160 GB drive. You might wonder about the small size, but ordinary ATA drives (not SATA ones) are getting scarce! TigerDirect, for instance, only has four 2.5" drives, and, when I was buying, the 160GB was the largest in stock. Of course, now they have 250GB and 320GB ones, but 160GB is really all I need. It's a WD Scorpio and all of these spin at 5400 rpm, which is a shame - raising it to 7200 would have been nice. However, it'll do for now, and I'll hope to get another development machine sometime in 2010, as this one was bought in 2006! The more recent machines that I have, like the Asus netbook and all the newer desktops, have SATA drives.

The main raison d'être for the change is the fact that I'm starting studying for an MCTS cert in SQL Server 2008, so I'll need to put on Visual Studio and SQL Server. I'm looking at SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition, and all the Express Edition languages - C#, VB, and C++ - and also the Web Development system. The current system had this already (for the 2005 versions) but something happened to it in early 2009, and using SSMS and VS 2005 together started to fail. After that I started to get problems with many other programs under Windows XP, where one program after another would take 99% of the cpu, despite actually doing nothing. Hopefully a complete restart will improve things, as I see no need to jump to Windows 7 at this point.

Once WinXP is back up I'll have to prevent it installing new versions of IE - I have no wish to suffer IE8! - and then get it up to the latest SP level, with all security updates. The trick to stopping installation of IE is to add these entries into the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\7.0
with a key value name of DoNotAllowIE70 and a dword of 1
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\8.0
with a key value name of DoNotAllowIE80 and a dword of 1
Then you get a CD with all the hardware drivers for your laptop and load all the special drivers - for me that included a LAN driver! Next, install Win XP SP2 and then SP3 (SP2 won't load unless you have SP2 or SP1a already installed!).
At this point one has a copy of Windows XP that reboots in about 45 seconds, much better than the 10 minutes previously. Of course, it doesn'tdo anything, but hey! you have to make trade-offs, don't you!

Then it'll be time for adding the development stuff. Firstly, MS SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition, and then all the Visual Studio stuff. I'll also be adding Oracle 10, because I also have an Apex day on Wednesday, which should be fun - maybe! New York in January just isn't going be sun-bathing weather! Finally there'll be the ordinary stuff that everyone has on a PC - OOo.org 3.1 for office stuff, Pidgin for IM, Thunderbird (maybe) for email - I'm not too sure about this yet, as I've already accumulated 2 GB of saved email in just one year of using T'bird. I may be going back to TheBat,but I'm seriously looking for something that I can make proper backups and recoveries with!

The Progress of the EeeBox
As you'll recall, I got a little EeeBox B202 a few weeks ago, and promptly bolted it to the back of a monitor. It runs a version of Linux and personally I think that it fills the requirements of being "cute". However, the AGis somewhat dissatisfied with Linpus, and I think that sone of the apps are old, too. Firfox and OpenOffice are both v2 versions, which is way too old, and there's no easy way to upgrade them. So, I'm looking at the possibility of putting Ubuntu 9.10 onto a 500GB, 7200rpm Seagate drive for the little box. Hopefully this will help acceptance, as the AG has two main uses for the PC - browsing the web and iTunes for her iPods. If not, then it'll be reverted to a copy of Windows XP, I suppose.
TTFN

How Come These don't come to the USA?

2010-01-08T15:43:00.007Z

I was looking at the possibility of living in England again (for the first time in almost 30 yers, mind you) or, at least, in Europe (which might be better!). One thing I was looking at was, of course, a car. Now I'll freely admit to being a fan of Top Gear, but I can't see me ever getting a car loan for something like a Tesla. Here I drive a Subaru Impreza right now (although the AG would maintain that I rally it whenever she's in it!).
So, I started by scanning the hire car adverts to see what kind of cars were being hired out, on the assumption that fleets like Hertz go for cars that are relatively
inexpensive (lower insurance) and also pretty reliable (more up-time equals more potential revenue). I cme across a little 1000cc beast called the Ford Ka (named by a Bostonian?).

It looked very small, with just a 1000cc engine, but what the heck - I'd certainly try it out from a car hire company for a week or so, so I googled it ("Ford Ka") to find out more about it. There were the normal car magazine reviews, and also some youTube videos, which I ran in the hope of seeing some video of it in motion. Most of them were adverts from Ford - a series where a family of man-eating fluffy monsters are getting an impossible number of people from a Ka. Very funny and good for brand name reminders. There's also this clip that someone made, about the feeding habits of the Ka. Watch the intrepid pussycat and remember the warning "curiosity killed the cat"!

When your Dreams come Alive
For many years I've been a fan of the articles of Celia Walden, of the Daily Telegraph newspaper. Not content with being one of the best newspapers in print in the UK, the Telegraph has made a habit of being awarded Digital Publisher of the Year, etc. over the years that it has been on line. So it was somewhat of a surprise to see Piers Morgan on the Today show this morning (apparently he's been on all week, but I've been too busy to see it).

Surprise turned to outright shock when "Celia" stepped on-stage and I realised that it was Celia Walden. Afterwards I checked up, found a video on the Today show where he admits to having got engaged to Celia. Lucky guy!!

Strange Development of the Day
Here's a riddle: what can you read from that's transparent? Well, you'd probably say something like a tube monitor, 'cs the glass is transparent, and you'd be kinda right, but for all the wrong reasons!
ZDNet found this at the CES 2010 show. It's rather neat, but who really needs to see their keyboard when they're not using it? Maybe it's designed for those of us for whom "seeing really is believing" and "out of sight, out of mind" isn't just a proverb, and who have severe attacks of fear, uncertainty, and doubt whenever we can't actually see something. You know - those people who put cameras in the fridge to check whether the light really does go out when you close the door!

TTFN

Learning What You're Doing

2010-01-07T01:46:00.010Z

Always good, that - knowing what you're trying to do. Understanding it. Knowing what pitfalls might happen underfoot. So I got hold of Insider Training and ordered up a course in order to learn all there is to know for passing the MCTS exam for DBA for SQL Server 2008. This should be a shock to the system!
Actually, it should do me good - I've been playing DBA on-and-off for years now, so actually learning the stuff properly under some pressure should do me good. Anyhow, I'm just talking to the guy at Insider about the scheduling and the postman rings the doorbell with the courseware for the course! It wasn't due to arrive to me for about another 4 days, so top marks to the USPS for managing to let my packages weave around all the junk mail.
[Interlude]
I mentioned a few blogs ago that Blogger had altered its editor, and didn't have paste any more. Well, I'm using Firefox 3.5 on Ubuntu 9.04 right now and I've lost the insert bar (the little vertical line that shows you where the next letter you type will appear). I've alst lost the highlighting when I want to select some text! Now I'm adapting, as it's eerily reminiscent of working on a DEC 10 machine with about 40 other people - the machine couldn't keep up with your typing, so you never watched the screen much, but just took a quick glance now and then and then remembered where you were and navigated "in your head", so to speak. Of course, there wasn't such a thing as a mouse then, but the effect is quite similar. I hate to say this, but then was 1984!
I should note here that this is only happening to me with Firefox under Ubuntu, and may go away if I re-start the browser, of course. One thing I definitely will say, comparing the same program on the two systems (Ubuntu and Windows XP) is that the visual impression provided by GNOME 2.8 is much nicer than WinXP SP3.
[/Interlude]
Well, so the SQL Server 2008 Implementation and Maintenance Training Kit book and CD arrived. Hot on the heels of a copy of SQL Server Database Design and Optimisation. Now I'm looking at the main laptop - a 2 GHz, 2 GB Acer 9300 Aspire and wondering if I should pull the hard drive, drop in a new one, and set it up as a dedicated learning machine. It seems like I should, so my next task is to work out what software absolutely has to come with me, along with its data. Thunderbird and the email is a definite yes there.

Then there'll have to be a copy of SQL Server and of Visual Studio. Looking at what I have on for next week there'll have to be a copy of Oracle too! Suddenly I'm thinking of an array of laptops, not just one!

TTFN

It's a Cold Day in NJ

2010-01-02T23:00:00.002Z

It really seems to be frigid - and cooling. However, we're supposed to be gay and upbeat at this time of year. After all, the Ubuntu machine hasn't crashed yet, I haven't broken any New Year's Resolutions (I only kept one of 2009's - the one about not making any for 2010!), and I haven't starved to death yet.

Last time I commented on the insanities of changing a keyboard layout, noting that Asus had shipped a non-standard one with my new Eee-Box, despite having a normal one with the Eee-PC I got in 2008. Well, I did ferret out a way of swapping the two keys (Control and Function) within Linux, and will be playing around with it to experiment. Meanwhile, it's here. It looks uncannily easy, so I'm worried!

TTFN

Seeing in a New Decade

2010-01-01T05:08:00.004Z

[N.P. Andrew Zimmern - Australia]
Just stuck my nose out onto the balcony to shout "Happy New Year" to the neighbours ... its raining on snow right now, and really not warm! Brrr! Andrew says "you know what there's nothing like? The smell of roasting turtle-guts over an open fire. Yum. Then wallaby-tail hot off the barbie!"

Tech Update
Last time said goodbye to an old friend and raved over a neat new machine. Now a few more words on the EeeBox. My son did his homework on it yesterday and the OpenOffice.org system produces .odt and .doc files just fine - they were emailed out to his home afterwards with no problems at all. However, I've noticed that the version provided with the box is OOo version 2, while the current version is 3.1. Also the version of Firefox provided is a version 2.something, and we're heading into 3.6 right now.

Now please don't think that I'm complaining - the software all works really well together, and that's what you really want with a system like this; something that a user who really isn't interested in learning a lot about computers can use. What is really missing is an intro-video to show people who really are totally computer-illiterate how to use a computer. Still, the fix most people use is to accost a 10-year-old off the street and get them to do it all for them - how do you think I get the VCR programmed ? !

On the other hand, I do have one major complaint about this machine and that's the keyboard. The keyboard as a whole is very good indeed, but for one thing - the Function Key is outside the Control Key at the lower-left of the board.
A few years ago Microsoft used its sway to get a "Windows" key stuck in in between the Control and Alt keys, as you can see from the photo on the right, but it really isn't used very much - most users have no idea that it can actually be useful.

In most laptops you will find a Function Key inserted just to the right of the Control Key, and this includes the Sony VAIO, the Acer Aspire, and the Asus Eee-PC - I just checked! This gives your fingers the "habit" of automatically feeling for the bottom-left and knowing that that is a particular key. However, as you see in the photo, the Ausu keyboard supplied with the EeeBox has reversed these two keys. This is an incredibly annoying "feature", as you'll soon discover as soon as you want to cut, copy, or paste and haven't ever learned the original non-Mac keyboard short-cuts. Control-C suddenly becomes Function-C, which doesn't do anything at all, except replace the selected text with a "c", which doesn't help you in the slightest!

If you are running Windows on your Eee-Box, go for KeyTweak, which is a little program to grab the key signals and swap them around before any other program gets its electronic mitts on them. I've been looking for something like this for Linux - specifically Ubuntu because that's what I normally use - and found some info here that would work for the Asus too. However, that is waay technical and much too difficult for most people, and it's "most people" that'll be tearing their hair out over this.

[N.P. Pre-game before ice-hockey at Fenway Park]
Semi-Tech Update
A few years ago my ex succumbed to the lure of advertising and bought a Magic Bullet blender. They're still selling 2 for $99 on their site today. Anyhow, it never ever got used, after that first month, so I begged it the other day. I also bought a melon and some other fruit for New Year. Ice-cold smoothies when you're toasty-warm and watching other people freeze their rear-ends off out in the cold parades, or playing ice hockey at Fenway Park, is a really nice and decadent luxury. Go whoever-you-are-out-in-the-cold!

Friends for Dinner
Assorted sausage and cheeses for hors d'oeuvre (amuse-bouche, to be strictly correct). Two chickens (thank you, Shoprite!), "Potatoes O'Brien" (chopped, cooked, fried with onion, and then baked in sour cream and cheese, and Cauliflower Cheese (barely-cooked cauliflower baked in a roux sauce of flour, cheese, and Meaux mustard). Ice cream to follow. Let them walk after that!

TTFN

Happy New Year !

2010-01-01T02:37:00.008Z

[N.P. Andrew Zimmern - Chile]
Happy New Year, everyone. This is now officially "twenty-ten" - not "two thousand and ten", according to the BBC! Over the last month I've loaded up a permanent Linux machine and acquired another to replace a (very) old laptop. I've also enrolled in a SQL Server DBA course, which should be fun (I hope!).

The End of an Era!
Yes - the end of a PC! Back in September 2000 I found that I needed a new laptop to take on a weekend trip to a client to do some programming. My old Sager machine (Pentium 1, your-thighs-are-the-heatsink) was dying fast, so I rang Sony (in CA) on a Thursday morning and begged, pleaded, and even suggested bribery. Friday lunchtime (in work) a guy arrived at my desk with a very big box with Sony written on it. This (right) was the content, a PCG FX540K with 512 MB of RAM, a 15 GB hard drive, and a 14" diagonal screen. It wasn't light - the shell is made of metal! - but it was a beautiful blue machine.

At the end of 2006 I finally bought a new laptop - a 17" Acer - which actually weighs a little less! However, the VAIO wouldn't die - its been used as a sofa-side machine for the last two years, and has had an almost permanent connection to the TV. Yes! a 950 MHz Intel machine running Windows 2000 is perfectly capable of capturing live TV through a USB 1.1 port! I never thought that it would be possible, but it has always worked fine, so I have lots of DVDs of things captured off TV. The hardware I use is an Adaptec "VideOh!" box, but Grabbee do the same thing for Windows XP.

Well, one of the video sync components has finally died, so its getting replaced. Sometime in 2010 I hope I'll be able to get it fixed, as the rest of the machine is perfect, and the hard drive has been replaced with larger versions several times. When that's all done it'll be resurrected, but, for now, it's going into retirement.

The Start of an Era!
Well, the better half can't live without a sofa-side machine, so this is what we're replaced the VAIO with. This is how an Asus EeeBox B202 arrives out of the box. We got a Linux version, instead of a Windows XP version, which costs a little less than $300. It has a DVI video socket (with a VGA converter supplied), an ethernet socket, alittle antenna for WiFi, a card socket for your camera cards, an audio-out socket for your headphones, and four USB sockets. How sweet is that?! And the stand is so simple and effective that it might have come from Apple! Watch out Jonathan Ive!

I plugged it into one of my Hanns-G 19" monitors and it lit up immediately, asked me a few questions, and we were online and googling. Wicked cool!

Asus' EZ-Linux really is very easy - it has all the stuff you need, although not the latest versions, which is a shame. The one thing that nobody will mention to you, which is crazy, because it's a big selling point with a lot of people, is that using an iPod with Linux - even this basic version - is dead easy and safe! I plugged the AG's 1G Shuffle into a USB port and it lit and then started blinking. I started the music program, told it to look for all devices, and it found the iPod. I dragged some MP3 files from the File Manager to the music program and then told it to save them there. Finally I un-mounted the iPod and, after a little while, it stopped blinking. Its light stayed orange until it had finished charging and then we just pulled it, plugged in earbuds, and enjoyed. Problems? none!

The next neat thing to find out is that the Hanns-G has a VESA mount on the back. Normally this is provided in order for you to mount the monitor on a wall, or on an arm that allows you to swing it out of your way ... or whatever. However, Asus twigged that this was about the same size as its whole EeeBox, so it provides a little shelf. You screw the shelf onto the back of the monitor and then the EeeBox onto the shelf. I did all this with the EeeBox still running (I live dangerously, but WTH!) and it all works fine - suddenly all we have is a nice 19" monitor with a mouse and keyboard and a couple of USB socket extenders sitting in front. One power cable provides a pair of sockets for the EeeBox and the Hanns-G, and that's all the cabling. A simple as a laptop.

I can only say that this has to be the simplest, easiest, and downright-coolest computer I have ever met - it really is a personal computer. I give it four thumbs up!

That's all for this New Year's Eve: more soon - probably tomorrow.

TTFN

Back to being a Geek!

2009-11-27T02:24:00.006Z

Learning Problems
I've been getting into programming stuff in C# and ASP.NET over the last few days, so you're in for a sprinkling of geeky advice for the next few weeks, as I work through the insanities of working with MS development.

Firstly, I'm using the 2008 Express versions of both. I bought a small book "Build a Program Bow!" by Patrice Pelland of MS that has SP1 versions of all the express systems (VB, C#, C++, Web Developer) and also a=one of SQL Server. I already have a developer copy of 2005 installed, so I didn't need to install that. The rest went in fine, and the C# part works fine - better than the full version of VS 2005,

Using ASPX hasn't turned out so easy, however. I ran into a lot of permissions problems, because I'd never used the IIS on the PC, despite it being almost four years since it was installed on my laptop! Eventually, by the expedient of making all folders open for everything, it started working. Then, of course, something else cropped up! The error message was this:
BC2017: could not find library 'C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_32\System.EnterpriseServices\2.0.0.0_b03f5f7f11d50a3a\System.EnterpriseServices.dll'
After a lot of searching I figured out that this file was sitting in C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727, so I copied it over. Fine. Then I got exactly the same message for System.EnterpriseSeervices.Wrapper.dll. Same procedure to fix. All went well. However, after I'd rebooted it all went away and I had to copy the stuff over again! Drat!! Now I have a batch file!

Chrome Problems
Here's another interesting tidbit. I wrote a really simple piece of ASPX (below). It shows two buttons on a browser page and, depending on which one you click, changes the caption on the button. It all works fine on IE 7 (like you'd expect anything else!) on my local IIS server. However, Google's Chrome apears to have some problems with this: one button works fine but the other doesn't always do so well. Try it out and tell me if it's just my copy of Chrome!

[script runat="server"]
'----------------------------
Sub submit(Source As Object, e As EventArgs)
if button1.Text="You clicked me!" then
button1.Text="Click me!"
else
button1.Text="You clicked me!"
end if
End Sub
'----------------------------
Sub submit2(Source As Object, e As EventArgs)
if button2.Text="Boo!" then
button2.Text="Click me!"
else
button2.Text="Boo!"
end if
End Sub
'----------------------------
[/script]
[html][header][/header]
[body]
[form runat="server"]
[asp:Button id="button1" Text="Click me!" runat="server" OnClick="submit" /]
[asp:Button id="button2" Text="Click me!" runat="server" OnClick="submit2" /]
[/form]
[/body]
[/html]
'----------------------------

Blogger Change
Have you noticed that Blogger has added a new editor? It has a nice control bar for selecting things like fonts, etc., but, right now, it doesn't appear to allow you to paste anything in! That makes life a little difficult!

That's all for now ...

TTFN

Yarn, Tech, and a Blog

2009-11-21T02:50:00.011Z

A couple of weeks back we were in Harrison, near White Plains, NY, helping a friend with her computers. On the way home the AG asked that we stop at a yarn store called KnittingNation in Nyack, NY. As always, we got a friendly reception and, as always, permission for me to take pictures.

Nyack is a nice town - really easy to get to (over the Tappan Zee bridge from NYC and the first right off the main road) - and a lot of neat shops and restaurants. To get to KnittingNation go down the main street until you get to Broadway, and take a left. It's on the left, opposite a tea shop rejoicing in the name of The Runcible Spoon, which may well be closed by the time you get back from seeing all that KnittingNation has to offer.

There's a big selection of yarn, books, tools, and accessories to browse through, and the owner (whom we met) is really friendly and knowledgeable.

The other customers that we met we friendly too, and there's a comfortable couch to sit on at the front - always a good sign.

So, in sum, going to KnittingNation looks like a good move. They have a long yarn list and they do courses and instruction for learners.

After we'd spent waay longer than we expected to at the LYS, we noticed a small Greek take-away on the way out of town. Two Greeks and a Gyro looks like a kind of Greek Burger king. However, once you get inside and meet the staff, and see the food, you'll realise that this is really a proper Greek restaurant with all the proper Greek attitudes to food and hospitality, just dressed up in early-21st century Americana!
Then you get your order and settle down to eat. WOW! You realise that you didn't really order all the things you wanted to order to try! You'll just have to back again. And again! And you probably will - it's that good.

[Geek]
In April last year Microsoft bought a company called Danger (a somewhat reckless name, one would think!). This company specialises on creating "premium software" for mobile devices (smartphones to you and I) to provide a "rich consumer experience", whatever that might mean. MS bought it just four months after it registered its first IPO. Obviously the guys at Redmond $aw $omething they liked the potential of.

Anyhow, T-Mobile got the software loaded up on their SideKick phones, which seemed like a cool idea. Then, as MS bought Danger, it suddenly became MS' responsibility to maintain all the back-end stuff that had been run by Danger. For example, all the messages, addresses, contacts, photos, etc. that are kept for use on a Sidekick device are stored on the servers so that the device in your hand doesn't have to be huge.

Fine - it all works great. Until it doesn't. In early October all the info vanished. MS have, reportedly, managed to get a lot of the data back (although how old it is is another question). You'll have noticed a few cynical remarks in the last link of MS' experience with the needs for backups; well, it appears that someone in MS might have placed a little too much confidence in the success of the immediate future.

The exec involved has a long career in MS' divisions handling Mac products and Entertainments products, which is fine, and I'm sure that she's a very good manager, but this looks like a really bad case of forgetting that a belt and braces strategy is usually safer then just winging it. In fact, if things actually happened as people are saying, then it would appear firstly that all caution was dropped, and then the department involved appears to be trying to cast the shadow of the problem on the other, non-MS, parties. Of course, being Sun and Oracle, they can be viewed as competitors .....

So, this can be viewed as a good example of the operations of Murphy's Law. It can also be looked on as an example of people trying to distract attention from their own shortcomings by casting aspersions on others. Oh yes. T-Mobile is giving its users a month's free use and $100 in compensation. For being their valuable customers. The trouble is that the users have probably lost far more in value than that. I wonder how many will be jumping ship real soon now!

TTFN

Rhinebeck 2009 - 3

2009-10-19T12:39:00.009Z

Well, this took a day or so to get to, but you'll have to wait for a post or two to find out why.
Between the first two barns was a rather unusual structure - a yurt. No! not a Hollywood-style plastic yurt, but a genuine Turkish yurt. If you think that they're only from the steppes of central Asia, think a little longer: the turkish people only arrived in what is now Turkey a little over a thousand years ago. The yurt is a convenient and portable structure well suited to nomadic people, and, as people found who entered this one, very warm indeed, even with two open doors.

Yurts are made of felted material - sheep wool or horsehair in Asia, probably, and are held upright with thin wooden supports. Inside this one was a display of art on woolen items, including this piece of material with images of a bird and two people, found in a town called Catal Huyuk, from about 6000 yeas ago.

The people appear to be headless, which accounts for their positions - lying down. A bird-cult? Who knows. Anyhow, the yurt was staffed by people from Ikonium, who are very friendly and have lots of fun stories to tell and info about felting to provide.

Between the second and third barns were a pair of lines of outdoor stalls - very cold for the poor vendors - where we found, amongst others, CreativelyDyedYarns. Dianne Lutz produces hand-dyed yarn of various mixes, including some wonderfully soft mix of wool and seaweed! I want it called Mermaid Tresses, and, like all her yarn, had beautiful colours.

Finally for this episode, some local colour. I believe this worthy was employed to keep the sheep under control: certainly they were all well controlled.

More rambling very soon Photos all on Photobucket.
PS. The MD Sheep & Wool was back here.

TTFN

Rhinebeck 2009 - 2

2009-10-18T03:12:00.024Z

Okay, everyone - here come the pictures!
First, the line in. This was just a snap of the people arriving at 8.15 in the morning - opening was 9 am.

Although Weather.com insisted that it was 42F, it really wasn't very warm all day. For example, you may think that this is a cute picture of a bunny rabbit, but, in fact, there are three white rabbits and at least one black one, all huddled together for warmth!

Above are silk & rayon velvet scarves. We were admiring the colours as the early sun shone through them.

We were looking for Kermit, but I think he's put some weight on recently !

Here's a longer look at some of the booths in the first barn, and the display of yarn at DyeDreams.

Left is a woman's cardigan from Jan, The Village Weaver from Sugarcreek, OH. She had some really nice cardigans and sweaters - for men and women - and I really think I'll be getting one - they look gorgeous!

Right is a collection of little stuffed animals. Things like these seemed to be quite popular at the fair.

The sheep incognito pictures from Conni Tögel were here, just like at Maryland. When you go to a fair with these you have got to see them - if you have the money, buy one! They are just so funny!

Well, Blogger seems to be having upload problems here, so I'll add more in the next blog.
Meantime, you should be able to go here to see all the pictures. Unfortunately, they're in reverse order and I haven't worked out how to get pics in the order I want them yet!

TTFN