October 2007 Archives

after reading about it last year on paulp's blog, i remembered a week ago about that month where you write a novel, and i recalled that i thoguht it happened about this time of year.

turns out it's nanowrimo and it starts tomorrow.

fortunately, i have an idea. it was sparked by an implication in the final episodes of NGE and the title of an unfinished phil k. dick novel. it's total crap, i've written already maybe 40 words of notes, and if i can sustain the verbal dysentary needed to get to 50k words, that'll surely be something.

but what else have i got to do for the next month?

tide obscures the skies
shores release the sea's caress
new life ascendant

out of scotch first night
second night enjoyed by some
fire speaks: DNR

switched to an ipod for running today. that, plus my new cheapo senns solved all problems.

i couldn't have asked for better SQ, in fact, halfway thru i realized i needed to turn them down, and i still got good SQ. my only gripes are a) ipod shuffle shuffled my music even when i asked it not to and b) contact is poor between the ipod and the senns and sometimes i get static if i jog (ha ha!) the cable.

but really, the SQ is unbeatable (for running, and the crap i listen to while running), the cans stay put, and the shuffle is teeny tiny.

also, my lungs dont hurt as much this time. maybe the AQ was better today, or i ran earlier, or i'm getting used to.

the lights went out at 9:00 on the dot.

someone said "what, you didn't know that? you haven't ever been here this late, have you?"

yes i have. it's just... nobody had invented timed lights back in those days.

and just got another "what are you doing here still!?!" remark...

a wise man -- okay, a wise-acre -- once told me that expensive headphones may, instead of making what i listen to sound good, change altogether what i listen to. i would not say that i am voraciously consuming classical and chamber music, but those two genres seem to occupy my home listening time.

beets, vivaldi, camille - i liked them all before, in another life, but haven't really listened to them much before now. now, i reckon i'm spreading out a little. hooray for culture.

there's a fuckin moonie downstairs at the entry to the building, he tried to sell me some crappy artwork to support his cult.

i've never been propositioned by a cult member at the entrance to my place of work, before, unless you count the time that mac guy was talking to me, but he was a coworker!

i was polite in my rebuff but in the elevator i kicked myself for not attempting to convert the guy, or at least grab him by the shoulders and shake him, shouting, "dude, what hte fuck! you're a fuckin moonie? aren't you smarter than that?!"

to those of youse who may have read the previous running post and worried that i mentioned i was in pain during running, not to worry, it doesn't hurt all the time.

only when i breathe.

sadly, it's a little too dark. i've lately been afraid to roast into vienna, the slightest hint of smoke throws me into a panic. but i managed to squelch my fear and take my espresso past second crack.

a little too far past 2nd, it seems. not exactly charcoally, but perhaps a bit ashy, and definitely far, far, far from bright.

where barefoot is roasted reactionarily against peet's, that is, way way too bright, this roast was roasted reactionarily against barefoort, that is, just a hint too dark.

i'll nail it next time, i'm certain.

bought another fridge over the weekend, kegerator-ready (same model as my kegerator fridge).

purpose was to cold-condition (for belgian ales, you insensitive clod!) and cold-store beer and excess beer. also, to fast-carbonate without crashing the kegerator. in that regards, it's a smashing success. on sat. night, i kegged the ORA and crash-carbonated it at 35F/20psi. by last night it was well carbonated.

the beer itself is another story. read all aboot it at beer.sainttoad.com, i shant repeat myself.

sunday, i went and visited the Cheap and Easy Brewing Co, to witness and lend minimal aid for the brewing of 10G of belgian pale ale. those crazy mofos start their brewday at 8am and finish 5pm. me, i start my brew day at 11am and finish at 5pm. i'm not entirely sure where i get such time savings, but two obvious differences are 1) i dont boil 10G of anything, and b) i batch sparge -- it takes a helluva long time to fly sparge enough wort for 10G post-boil.

their style is much more laid back than mine, with no scriptsheet, hop bags (okay, normally they use them but this time could not find them), or sanitizer all over the place. in fact, in comparison to theirs, my sanitation regimen is over-the-top, with a giant bucket of it in which i dips my hands any time i touch something post-boil. to me, this seems sensible, but at CaE i saw many things which go against this spirit.

still, they produce most excellent beers, one of which is up against mine in the Trappist category of an upcoming competition. so there's more to brewing than laborious sanitation.

it was educational to brew with others. i think i may have convinced them to batch sparge, and i think i learned a thing or two myself, but i can't remember what, on account of all the good beer i drank while i was there.

uh, top.

went running on saturday. it's been many many months. i'm many many decapounds heavier than the last time i'd run. i worried for my knees.

turns out it was more a problem for my lungs and calves. i'd forgotten how a tough run (and this weekend, 2.5-3mi was "tough") knocks out the old URS for the remainder of the day, and evidently, not running for 6 months and then running => sore calves for at least 3 days (and counting). but the thing i noticed most, of course, was how crappy my mp3 player sounded. i reckoned it was just my crappy running cans, but i swapped out my player for hops' ipod and it turns out it's my sandisk mp3 player (i name names!). that thing sucks big time, and in more ways than one: besides the distortion, clipping, and absolutely muffled sounding presentation, the thing sorts songs -- songs with id3 "track number" tags and a naming convention of \d\d_.*\.mp3, no less -- by... wait for it... timestamp. that's right, by the time at which the OS decided to copy the files to the mp3 player's flash drive.

LAME.

anyhow, that part was lame. and so has been the recovery. and the lead up. pretty much everything about running i dislike except the actual running. that part was better than i remembered.

for me, i can have a perfect moment when i'm running, even (apparently) on a short run like that one, where a confluence of events and impressions (pain, heat, sun, music, posture, motion, direction, air) are reduced in the crucible of my brooks to a philosopher's stone of mixed metaphorical nibbana.

or something. anyhow, i enjoy it. for me, the moment on saturday came (and was marred by poor performance from my sandisk mp3 player) as i began the downhill on Fleas, "heavyweight" reached its crescendo, the sun beat down on me, and i raised my eyes and arms heavenward to breathe. it were a beyootiful thing, i tells ya.

and then for the rest of the day, with the hurty lungs. the price i pay.

smoking asshat outside now
napkin protects nose
crud, smells of TJ's chilli

so in my favorite, and possibly, only recording of a performance of "Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso" by saint saens, listening on my k701s reveals not only an outrageously wide soundstage, gorgeous reproduction of intrumentation, and of course, sublime composition, it also reveals: some jackass coming back from the shitter.

there's a distinct "thumpawump" as a door closes, through which, presumably, some toilet-paper-heeled asshat has ingressed.

creaking chairs in "danse macabre".

even so, neither one ever sounded better.

on phone, user of my software : did you just do something?
me : i haven't done anything in weeks, it's a wonder they still pay me.
user of my software: wonderful! then your fix worked!

the following is, of course, fiction. a thought experiment that explores a (naieve) method for obtaining non-alcoholic beer, the making of which i was challenged this weekend to perfect. my mother's cousin's wife pointed out that there's a huge market "out there" for a drinkable NA beer, and though my motivation is not swayed by market forces, it is an interesting challenge, and if i can pull it off in a month, before she goes back to drinking the good stuff, i'll have a whopping two consumers of my NA brew, maybe three, if i like the stuff.

so with all this in mind, i performed the following thought experiment last night: i located a bottle of emperor norton's, which had gone to visit the abovementioned mother's cousin's wife's house the night before and had spent a day lounging in a defrosted cooler. i mentally visualized putting the bottle into my freezer, then visualized myself going asleep. that done, i went to sleep.

this morning, i mentally visualized myself getting up, and when i had a clear picture of that, i did it, and visited the kitchen, where i mentally visualized the freezer, which turned out to be a waste of my mental capacity, since the freezer required no mental visualization, being, in fact, an actual, physical present appliance in my kitchen. i stopped wasting time mentally visualizing physically present objects and resumed my imaginings of what would have happened had i actually frozen a bottle of beer over night instead of just visualizing the act.

i opened the freezer and to my horror and surprise realized that i was mentally visualizing a bottle of beer with a swollen cap and a giant, globby cloud of bubbly beer foam mentally visualizing itself down the side of the bottle. it closely resembled a mental visualization of a slow motion explosion or clouds of fog billowing forth from a mentally visualized cold front.

i imagined what would happen if i were to take the hypothetical bottle of foaming, leaking, possibly distilled beer from the freezer and remove the cap. in my mind's eye, i saw: nothing much at all. the bubbly mess emanating from the imaginary bottle would most likely feel like slushy foam, and the icy barrier that had formed as the supposed frozen carbonated visualized beverage expanded its way up the hypothetical neck of the bottle sealed off the greater contents of the beverage container.

i strained my mind's eye and mentally visualized myself running warm water over the bottle, causing it to foam immensely and reconstitute the beer, or at least recombobulate it back to a very much alcoholic state, at which point i realized that really, freezing bottles, hypothetically, was not the method i was looking for to produce a flavorful non-alcoholic beer.

and it's a good thing i played that all out in my head instead of actually trying it, since, as my mental visualization revealed, actually trying it would result in little more than a messy failure.

chalk one up for thought experimentation.

ah yes, i'll use my triple basket.

hey, who put these blackberries in my ristretto?

okay, once again, i am rediscovering my favorite music.

saint saens, carnival of the animals, elephants.

the cello, heard on proper hardware, is unbelievable. rich, luxuriant, humongous, gorgeous, thunderous, expansive. like an elephant, i reckon :)

when searching for the man page for /sbin/pump, you need to google something other than "man pump".

that is all.

on the drive home from sunnyvale last night, i happened to glance at my odometer and found that my car had just passed 30k miles. that got me to thinking, somehow, about how my previous car, the saturn, was also my boyhood dog and reluctant dumb friend. i've spoken on this before but i can't find the link so there you go. in summary: the saturn was not "imbued" with the spirit of my departed friend, it was not "reminiscent" of him, it was him, probably in the same way those nutty catholics think that wine is blood and the same way Palmer Eldritch kept on showing up.

so last night i got to wondering about my current car. i've known since i got it that it isn't my erstwhile friend, but i hadn't considered the question of identity for a good long while.

i wondered for a while if it even has an identity: i think i found out who my saturn was simply because we spent so much time together, and because for a good long time, he was my only companion. this is not so with the g35, and so, while perhaps it does have an identity, we have not spent enough time together -- quality time -- for me to find it.

these thoughts spun off two different lines of thought that captured my attention. the one noted that it had been a while since i'd had these sorts of thoughts, and that perhaps i should resume generation of the world view which elicits them, since while it was no more productive than my current view, the self-delusional spiritualistic belief system was certainly more entertaining and mentally stimulating. of course, the mental stimulation had no purpose or useful end, but then, what does?

the other line of thought was right in line with the first, and involved exploring the question more thoroughly: who was my car?

i couldn't come up with an answer. i could come up with personality traits, but no firm concept of identity. i considered that she might actually be me -- she likes to run while listening to infected mushroom, for example -- but i really couldn't sell myself on the idea.

one day on the long-ish ride back from sunnyvale, i may find out who she is. for now, though, she remains a mystery, and perhaps that's how she wants it.

as i finish off this article, i'm listening to my saint saens "best of" cd. for me, this fantastic music is associated with another car, my first, i suppose, though not "mine" in the same way of the saturn -- my inherited caddy, the car i drove to my first "real" job, the only job i ever hated but never left. i have clear and fond memories of driving down empty roads at 3 in the morning to open, blaring old camille from the luxury speakers of the old caddy, arriving at work to find that i'd driven there in the dark with my headlights off, but it didn't matter since nobody else was up at that hour. and then, passing my shift by replaying the music in my mind (since, heaven knows, my coworkers had nothing to say).

ah, good times.

it's Frobuary 1, YOMHC 0x19!.

last time, i said something about "taking the final step" in my quest for cheap haircuts -- i was mistaken. in slight violation of the terms of the current No Buy Month, I went out and purchased some hair clippers. I wanted the $13 clippers, but both the ones at the store appeared to have been returned. likewise the $17 model. the $20 model looked a little lame, with a colored handle and colored combs, so i sprung for the $25 model with a chrome body. turns out i should have gotten the $20 model -- the colored combs are to help recall which one you like, not just for girly fashion.

in any case, the $25 model has 35% more horsepower, it says so right on the packaging with a * that doesn't match up to any footnote that I could find. those 35 extra horses really seemed to do the job, though, we were done in no time and with minimal bleeding. evidently, it's been a while since my last cut: there was a ton of hair on the ground.

need to work on our set-up and clean-up. anyhow, 2 more cuts and i'll be deep in the money on this one. that kinda justifies $25 during a NBM. kinda.

next time we'll try the #1.5 (#2 this time since the manual stressed using a bigger comb than you thought was wanted).

whelp, there it is: the god shot.

usually the term "god shot" is prefixed with "elusive", but i suspect that with my new hardware, i'll frequently be using the term unadorned. it was a 45 second pull for less than two ounces -- yes, that's a no-no. no, i don't care. my best shots seem to come in beyond the 30 second mark. i got nothing until about 15 seconds (instead of the usual 7), and if i'd stopped at 30 i'd have had a fine ristretto, without the fullness that i got with those extra 15 seconds.

i cleaned silvia yesterday, with much gusto. i replaced the group head gasket, since, while rummaging through my supplies, i found that i had two spares. also, it's been well over 2 years since i got her and i've never replaced it. once it was out and well destroyed by my extraction technique, it was plain that gasket replacement was unwarranted. nuts. still, removing the gasket allowed me to give silvia a much more thorough cleaning than i'd ever managed before -- the gasket seems to hold on to gunk much more readily than the brass, which itself is a tenacious gunkhoarder. i innovated a bit and blasted the brass with compressed air, of which i have more than any person needs, due to gifts from people who don't know i have (had!) no use for such things, or at least, not so much of such things.

anyhow, with a freshly cleaned silvia and a new grinder, my first shot was good but not fantastic. without changing the grind (meaning: my dosing is inconsistent, as is my distribution and tamp -- hey, at least i've got temp and grind under control!) i pulled a second shot many minutes later, and there it was. viscous, creamy, deep chocolate (from a bean that i had thought i'd underroasted to the point of no chocolate), coffee grounds, and a hint of bitterness. not too little, not too much. this may not be your god shot, but it's mine.

perhaps i can make a habit of this.

i entered my tripel into a statewide home brew competition. i'm mostly interested in "professional" feedback, but i suppose there's a chance i could win something (assuming the beer gets to the competition, which itself is questionable).

the tripel was my first all-grain brew with my own recipe, and it actually came out well enough. i didnt have any of it bottled and i found out about the competition only a couple days before leaving for yosemite. so i hurridly made a few bottles and left them at a drop off point.

if i win anything, i think i'll make a poster or something that says "award winning tripel: on tap!" to hang above the kegerator.

the new grinder arrived. first, the gripes:

too many stupid "safety features" that get in the way of grinding. an unremovable finger guard in the hopper, a plastic bubble over hte on/off switch, another finger guard in the doser.

it slides around with assertive flicking of the doser lever.

it requires brushing and repeated on/off cycling to get all the grinds out of hte chute.

it clumps more than i thought it would, leading me to wonder if, since i'm getting clumping anyhow, i'd have been better off with the doserless model.

and now, the good:

the grind is most excellent. fluffy, fine, even. it makes very much better espresso than rocky, consistently.

even with all the bads, the good is a fair tradeoff. so i'm happy. and overcaffeinated. hooray.

now i've been to yosemite. hops had a 2 day workshop to attend there, and wanted to meet with the chief ranger, so i came along. we slept in curry village, where the cabins have no showers, toilets, or level floors. as soon as i opened the door a lizard ran across the tiny floorspace and, i suppose, exited the cabin via a hole.

i spent the first night ill from one thing or another: the travel, the altitude, the food, some stress -- i'm not entirely sure. by late PM i was better and by morning i was fine. morning was 7am or earlier, and i'm still on the early morning schedule, which is odd after having adjusted to a late morning schedule.

anyhow, since i didn't have a workshop to attend, i was on my own for 1 and a half days. i didn't want to do anything terribly strenuous since we were planning to hike half dome on friday+saturday. so the first day, i hiked along the valley floor, from yosemite falls (stop #6 on the shuttle) to el capitan. i was seriously unimpressed with the quality of both the map and the trail markers -- it's not that i got "lost", since the trail runs pretty much parallel to the road. but i certainly "lost" the trail multiple times, and encountered a half dozen unmarked forks. as i muddled my way through, i managed to take some photos, which, really, seemed pointless at the time: yosemite is among the most photographed places in the world, and i haven't much to add to that with my point-and-click.

i reached the base of el capitan and hiked up and down it trying to figure out what the climbers were doing, it certainly didn't look like climbing to me. it turns out that they were all (several unrelated groups of them) aid climbing. they were all either off the ground or german, so i couldn't discuss it with any of them. eventually i came across a group of old timers and a younger guy lead climbing a route that actually looked climbable (the aid climbers all seemed to be in spots that were inhospitably smooth). with a bit of conversation, i learned that most teams apparently use a combination of free climbing and aid climbing to get the job done, with multiple ascents/descents of each pitch : one ascent to set the rope, and a lot of up/down to retrieve gear (especially as it gets stuck). i suppose having once free climbed a pitch, folks dont care to do it again when they can aid climb it instead.

one of the old-timers claimed to be the first person to have rappelled el capitan. my google-fu isn't up to the task of confirming this.

anyhow, that hour of standing around and learning a thing or two about aid climbing turned out to be more or less the hilight of the trip. i hiked back using the new trekking poles i'd bought just for the trip (since hops' tent requires trekking poles to stand up, and hers aren't up to the task, being old and busted) (which, of course, went on sale the day after i'd bought them). they helped with the descent over the rough terrain but did little of note on flat ground, which comprised the majority of the return trip.

crummy buffet dinner, a little sitting around, and then it was back to the dirty old cabin for another sleepless night. the morning brought rain and hail.

the plan was to wait for hops' conference to end then hike up to little yosemite valley, camp overnight, and then hike to half dome on saturday. while she was at her conference, i checked with the rangers, who said there was definitely snow at LYV and a fair to good chance that there'd be more overnight. sat. was to be sunny.

armed with this news, and the evidence of rain and snow all around us, and the cloud obscuration of half dome itself, hops and i spent a good 2-3 hours waffling and then finally decided to go home, since we were averse to the idea of snow camping, and even more averse to the idea of spending another night in curry village or the like.

on our way out we encountered what seemed to me like quite a lot of snow, at pretty much the exact elevation of LYV. we got out of the car for a while so i could experience being in a snowstorm. i suppose i've been in a snowstorm before, but it's been about 20 years.

so now i've been to yosemite, and i've been in a snowstorm, and i've been in a snowstorm in yosemite. that's three checkboxes i can check.

anyhow, here are some of the better photos i managed to take. since yosemite is the most photographed place in the world (or so i ungoogled assume) i reckon you can guess the subjects of each photo: you've seen them before (in photos if not IRL).

perhaps it was just the difference between front-country and back-country. perhaps it was the lack of a plan for my time there. perhaps it was the food, the lodging, or any number of things. my first evening there, i was unimpressed, and while after a while, i got some of the majesty of the place (standing beneath el capitan helped), overall, i remained underwhelmed.

in judging a place or a thing, comparison helps. perhaps if i'd visited yosemite before being here:

or here (which is, of course, the same place) :

i'd have like yosemite better. or maybe, if it'd been immersed in it instead of simply being "in it" (again, the diff, i suppose, between front and back-country), i'd have liked it more. maybe i'll think more of it next time.