Off the Top: Personal Entries
Showing posts: 271-285 of 368 total posts
Mister Rogers has died
Mister Rogers has died at the age of 74. I learned a lot from his shows and as an adult would watch the shows when I was home sick. He taught kids (and adults) not only about the world around them, but how to care for others.
I have known folks who knew him personally and said he was just the same in real life as he is on the show. This is one of the best role models for kids that has ever been on television and it is wonderful to know he is just as nice and caring off the camera.
Yes we have snow
Snow update. After four rounds of shovelling yesterday I took the night off. We went to open the front door's storm door this morning and it was blocked. This means it was more than 5 inches of new snow and sleet last night. We were able to open the kitchen storm door enough to grab the snow shovel and dig off the landing outside that door. The snow next to the landing was even to its height, over three feet high. This is from shovelling and drifting. I had dug out paths from the kitchen to the garage and carved out a ledge six to eight inches up to keep snow from falling back into the paths. The paths are now indistinguishible from the ledges. I am enjoying the view out the office window. Pictures to come.
Snowing for real this time
I am about to give up shovelling show. I have been out four times already to shovel. Now it is snowing harder than at any point yet. We woke to about 8 inches of new snow this morning and I have shovelled two or three inches with each new venture out. As you can see the roads are not too clear (this traffic cam is a few fee from our house) and have not been all day. We took the truck out about two hours ago to return movies due back and to pick up some paper products from the grocery store. The roads were not in great shape, people are walking in the road, people had abandoned cars and SUVs in the roadway. It seems that we have 15 to 18 inches of snow already with the heavy snow just beginning and is expected to stay heavy for a few hours. The snow will start to subside tomorrow mid-day the reports are saying.
Good thing we have cornish hens and fixings for dinner tonight.
Joy home
Joy is back home from her trip to San Diego for work. Life is good again and a good Valentine gift, her. This has been an odd week to have a loved one away.
One for the sniffer
Last night I went shopping at a normal supermarket (not a Whole Foods store, Trader Joes, or the occasional Sutton Gourmet) as I needed deoderant and contact cleaner and I know the prices are lower than the pharmacies. I was disappointed that they did not have my deoderant. I have been wearing the same deoderant for years, decades even and it was no go. It was one of those moments when you see the spot where it should be and it is empty all the way to the back. I started checking all the other shelves and end of aisle displays. For years I had two to five extra sticks of the same old stand by scent just incase I ran out and the store ran out. Joy told me the store would never run out. Well the store ran out and I was too tired to go to any other store. I sniffed the three other deoderants (I don't wear anti-perspirant, which is another story all toghether and for good reason and wished I did as there are 20 options for other anti-perspirants) that the store did have in stock. Old Spice was not the ticket, Sea Breeze scent was tangy, and I went with Lightening. I have no idea what scent lightening is, but I did know I did not smell like me today and it really bugged me. I smelled like a bad day at the scent factory. I really want my old scent back, it has been normal since I was 15 or 16 years old. I may go back to hoarding sticks in the future too so this never happens again.
Oh yes, I have issues.
Snowing on my birthday
Well, at least it is snowing on my birthday. This would be a good year to invoke the birthday week to relax and enjoy, but work in really hectic right now. (A shameless wishlist plug
Hiptop helps show extending the model of attraction
I am already enjoying my Hiptop for much of the reason that I picked it up. I wanted access to information. More importantly I wanted information to be able to follow me. I found information or thought of information I really have been wanting to have access to that information from where ever I am. I wanted the ability to share the information from where I was and have others be able to use that information to better their understanding.
Yes, I have had cellphones and have called others, but the information is not that useable in voice form. The information needed to be convered to data elements that could easily be used and reused. Voice only (at the current time) allows us to hear then act upon the information and not store that information in a searchable repository or to easily share that information back out.
Yes, I have PDAs (Palm-based handhelds), but they need to synch with other devices to share information and the e-mail capabilities were not the best around. The 3rd party applications on the Palm and the fantastic operating system that is fast and small are great features that will be hard to beat by anybody.
I have been looking for a solution to have the information I wanted when I want or need it in my hands. The Hiptop gets me much closer to that goal. I tend to use e-mail to share ideas with myself and others. This weblog is another method of doing the same. Being able to search for an address and get a map is a solid tool to have at all times.
This is a personal quest to have the Model of Attraction (MoA) extend back to myself. The MoA not only helps us think about the attration between the user and information during the finding tasks, to help improve findability, but in phase where the user wants information to stay attracted to them. My Hiptop is my information attraction device. I can push an e-mail to myself that has the name, address, time, and phone number needed to do to a party with friends that have come in from out of town. I can access my Amazon Wishlist when I am in a store to help remember the author or title of a book, CD, or DVD I have been seeking. This bookstore amnesia (or musicstore amnesia) can be a thing of the past. The Hiptop provides me the information in my hand and gives me the access to the information I do not have at hand wirelessly.
There will be some experiments to see if I can improve on the information attraction to keep the information closer to me. Am I getting rid of my Palm? No, as there is information in it that I prefer in the format it is in. I will be keeping my cell phone as it has great reception and is CDMA (I found having a non-dominant cell phone technology is an advantage during emergency times, like being in San Francisco during September 11, 2001, which is a TDMA and GSM dominant city. I was one of a few that had no problem getting a signal to call out). It is rather awkward having three devices with through out the day. We will see how it goes.
Learning proper French Cooking at and Inn
We has a wonderful weekend at a L'Academie de Cuisine French Cooking weekend held at the Mercersburg Inn in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. The Inn was fantastic, with wonderful accommodations, great common rooms, caring innkeepers that are friendly and very helpful, and very good food.
The cooking portion of the weekend was great. It was a present from Joy and it turned out to be a wonderful gift. The weekend revolved around the founder of L'Academie, Francois Dionot guiding the 14 students through making a four course French meal each day. The 14 split into four teams that prep and cook their portion of the meal. The meals are prepared in the kitchen of the Inn, which is just large enough for the 14, the instructor and his wonderfully helpful wife, and one person helping clean-up. Saturday's meal was a Cream of Cauliflower and Roquefort Soup with a Roquefort Flan, Quennelle of Salmon with Saffron Butter Sauce (our dish we helped create), Beef Goulash with Mashed Potatoes, and a Caramelized Pear Cake with Calvados Creme Anglaise. Today's menu was a Bourride of Fish with Aioli, Quail Salad with Polenta and Porcini Dressing (our dish), Chicken Blanquette with Root Vegetables (including salsify), Phyllo Tart of Chocolate and Raspberry with Chocolate Sauce.
We had a lot of fun and learned a lot. Francios is a perfectionist as one would expect and hope for as it pushed us to expand beyond what we knew. We also learned about adding more salt, not table salt, but wonderful sea salt (Sel de Mer) and kosher salt (containing all the minerals that should be in salt). Everything that was made was wonderful and a glass of wine was raised to the team that helped create that course. We also met wonderful people also taking the course, which was an added blessing. We plan to make courses at L'Academie a regular part of our lives and hope the rest of them are as fulfilling as this weekend.
Six degrees of cold
I went about my normal Saturday morning caffination ritual, a jaunt to my local coffee house, with out looking at the temperature. I did notice is was mighty cold. When I returned to the house I came in to a seemingly warm house then realized I left my coffee in the car. Walking back out I realized it was really quite cold and check the temperature when I came back in. It is 6 degrees Farhenheit at 9 in the morning. I am now wishing I left my coffee at full heat (usually add a little cool water to drink it more quickly).
Blog odometer moves to 1,000 posts
Well my friends this is entry 1,000. The counting of each entry began June 1, 2001 when I moved off Blogger and began completely handcoding again.
In May of 2001 I put together my TravelBlog tool that allowed by to post from any Internet connected Web browser again. This step was only used while I was on the road or I did not have ability to FTP new content. In September 2001 I moved my hosting of vanderwal.net to PHP Web Hosting, which I had been using with great happiness for other projects for over a year. In October I began using the hand built CMS that I am still using and developing. This gave me the ability to set multiple categories for each post, which no other tool allowed at that time, and to set location and entry type.
I keep making updates to my own tool and it has served me well. There as some changes to the administration tools that I really want to make and a couple changes to the tools that will allow all of the pages generated out of the CMS to produce valid XHTML. I am also wanting to build a mobile admin tool that I can use from my cell phone, which would give me the ability to post information to myself from anywhere.
Each of you are basically voyeurs. This has been my place to post my thoughts and annotated links so that I can get back to them later. These offerings are open to all as they may spark and interest or help others resolve problems. Finding information that is helpful or entertaining is a blessing of the Internet and having a resouce like a weblog (the term makes me cringe - I do not know why) is a benificial method to share information. I learned most everything I know from others sharing openly or getting new ideas based on reading what others openly shared.
There is one posting that has out drawn all other posts. The why I bought my last Windows-based computer and why I love Mac OS X has received a few thousand readers (2,000 read it in the first three days it was posted). It seems there are many others that felt the same pain and dropped in to read it. More than half a year after it was written it still gets about 50 visitors a week.
I love having this tool at my use and enjoy the friends it has brought closer and people it has introduced to me. Thanks for reading and drop a note to just say hello.
Home for the New Year
We are home from Florida and ready to get back into the usual routines. Okay, we may miss being relaxed and playing a little golf, but not travelling will be nice for a little bit.Harried Holiday
This has been a hectic and food filled holiday season. The highlights so far (still a week to go) include a trip across country to spend an early Christmas with my parents and Grandmother and one of Joy's sisters. Left Thursday after work and returned across country Sunday (yes we are still living in the US and not England or the Netherlands, which would make a cross country trip a little more sane).
Tuesday after work (out at 1pm) it was a train up to NYC. Arrived in Manhattan's Penn station to 8 taxis and just three fares (asking myself if this was still New York). Arrive at Joy's sister and husbands apartment, change clothes and head to Bay Head Brooklyn for Christmas eve dinner. Dinner was great at the Joy's brother-in-law's sister's house, which included 6 or seven courses of stuffed mushrooms, seven layer eggplant parmesean (to die for), mussels in a dill cream sauce, jumbo shrimp in a tarragon vodka tomato cream sauce, marinated calimari and octopus salad, swordfish with a jerk rub and mango chutney, salmon en crote with a cream horseradish sauce with green salad, and Italian pastry assortment for dessert. We left in a new snow falling back for Manhattan after midnight.We had a "toilet incident" that put us out on the streets of Manhattan at 1:30am Christmas morning looking for a plunger (the building could not locate the one they have for a 23 story building. We tried bodegas, one Duane Reed (wagged their finger at us for wanting a plunger and pointed us to the Liquid Plummer, which we purchased). We got back to the apartment to read, "Not for toilets" on the bottle. So we tried the building across the street, which had one for us to borrow and the maintenance guy would not take our $15 holiday gift offer (If we move to NYC we are going to look at the Mondrian just because of this graciousness, bless them). At 2:45am I was able to go to the bathroom, which I had been holding since Brooklyn as I thought I could hold it and I was being a gentleman and trying to be a gracious husband (this all may be reconsidered at a later date).
Christmas morning we woke at 9am or so and had coffee and eggs then opened gifts with in-laws. This was quite relaxing. We changed and went to go to church a couple blocks away. We prepared for the rain, but not completely for the torrential downpour, which had us soaked from the mid-thigh down upon arriving at the church. The services was nice and the modern architecture wonderful to look at as it cast great shadows and provided enjoyable plays with the light. After church we went back and changed to dry clothes and I helped a little with the rack of lamb (good to keep in mind it is 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes not 325 as well as stronger encouragement to keep the oven door shut -- broad cookbook like Joy of Cooking is a needed gift for that house or even for me to travel with. We finally ate wonderful lamb and mashed potatoes (appearantly they had their own adventure the previous day).
We were catching the 6 o'clock train back to DC, which was now going to be in a serious snow storm. We left the building and the wonderful hospitality to hop into a cab (yes the subway is down one long block and down a short block, but there was one or two inches of snow and we had wheelie bags). The taxi did fine until the mid-forties going down 2nd Avenue where stopping and starting turned challenging. We finally made it to Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. The train ride was quiet, but we did have to stop to knock ice off the bottom of the train.
Once home we have had a brother-in-law staying with us as their house is still undergoing serious remodelling (he moved back home last night). On Friday we had a wonderful dinner with friends at Local 16 on U Street, NW in DC. The food was quite good (the white bean soup was a little too salty, but the jerk chicken pasta and mahi mahi were great. This weekend has been a weekend filled of more errands than one could dream of (although Sutton Gourmet in Bethesda had a wine, champagne, and port tasting in their store on Saturday covering 35 to 45 offerings and I found a couple to buy and a few to add to my wish list that will make great pairings). I did get to use my new KitchenAid stand mixer to make a thin pear pound cake (out of Patricia Wells Bistro cookbook), which turned out wonderfully with a dollop of whipped cream scented with pear brandy on top. This followed a potato leek soup, which I have been craving and not made for a few years now.
Soon we are back off heading south to meet up with more parents and three kids and a brand new puppy. I may have hide for the month of January to recover.
