Bazooka

Dawn: can you do something about all these cars in our way?

Dylan: sorry, I forgot my bazooka

Dawn: what's wrong with you?

Dylan: hey, if that's the only thing we forgot we're doing pretty well.

No, really, everything is fine!

I love BART. I can always tell they're having a problem if there are significantly more people on the platform than normal. Of course, their service advisory page admits of no problems...

Cover Every Detail

I am on BART, reading a book about petroleum refining over the shoulder of the guy sitting next to me. The chapter he's on right now is about simple distillation techniques, and includes a discussion of a moonshiner's still. There is a drawing of a rudimentary still, with wet rags for cooling at the appropriate spot. Also, a shotgun, for accuracy.

Now that's a tongue!

I take a lot of pictures of butterflies and birds (and, OK, really lots of things - when I spent 10 days in Yellowstone & Grand Teton National parks last year with friends, I came home with about 650 pictures or something. And that doesn't count the ones I deleted before coming home. But I digress.)

Yesterday, Dawn and I were in the back yard with Zachary and a butterfly fluttered by and Dawn said I should get my camera. We wound up walking down the block with Zachary, and I got a chance to take a bunch of pictures of a couple of these butterflies at a neighbor's garden.I had the camera in auto-drive mode and took a lot of pictures, including several in a row at this point in which you can see the butterfly is feeding and then rolling its tongue back up...

Somewhere Over Berkeley

Way up high, we were treated to a double rainbow (and I don't mean the ice cream) just before dusk Saturday... It was really cool, especially after the very odd rain. And then the sun started to set and the sky turned red but the rainbow was still there.

Reading Between the Lines

From: [one of Dylan's co-workers]
To: [friendly office manager]
Cc: Dylan

Hi [friendly office manager],

Dylan came up with an idea for a lunch and requested (due to his work load) that I pass it on to you.

What do you think of a Chicken Wing Feast lunch for the office some time?

Dylan recognizes that while chicken wings are terribly dis-healthy, they do fill a certain spot in the “must-occasionally-have” section of the food-o-meter. Dylan further states that having chicken wings for lunch instead of dinner mitigates the dis-healthiness of the wings by allowing those who ingest them further time while awake and “active” to … process … the wings.

There is a place, well-known for its wings, and they do deliver. The following link is to their menu and information.

Dylan thanks you for your attention to this idea.

http://www.originalbuffalowings.biz/San%20Francisco%20Togo%202008.htm

[one of Dylan's co-workers]

-----------------------------------

My response:

Wow. I didn’t realize this is what I was really saying when I said “I’m not much of a wing person, but if you guys are ordering from there maybe I’ll order something too”. Go figure.

Lying sack of *&#$.

:-)

Cottage Cheese Pancakes

My father's been making these pancakes on Sundays, when they're not traveling, for as long as I can remember. We started making them some weeks, maybe even most. Not as often or as regularly as he does, though.

Tools:

Large mixing bowl
Copper bowl or equivalent
Rubber scrapper
Balloon whip, or other wire wisk
1/3 cup measure
Tablespoon
Teaspoon
Spatula

Ingredients:

16 oz small curd cottage cheese (they favor Knudsen, but as long as it's good...)
6 extra large eggs
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tb sugar
1 tsp salt (I tend to go a little light on the salt)
dash of cinnamon
vegetable oil

Directions:

Separate the eggs, whites in copper bowl, yolks in mixing bowl.
Mix in with yolks the cottage cheese, flour, sugar, salt and cinnamon.
Beat egg whites until soft peaks have formed.
Quickly but carefully fold in whites with everything else.

Using the 1/3 cup, measure the batter onto a lightly oiled griddle.
Note: if adding blueberries, do so now.
Cook for about 3 to 3 minutes and flip over, then cook for another 2 minutes.

We have always served them with butter and cinnamon sugar, which we make by mixing 4-5 Tb of sugar with 1 Tb of cinnamon. They're also good with maple syrup.

Enjoy!

Expedience

A few days ago, I saw an ad by Microsoft for their business intelligence stuff; naturally, my interest was piqued, considering that is what my company does.

Dawn was watching something live on our Comcast DVR. I suppose there is probably a way to record the video from the DVR to a computer, but I don't have any good, easy way right now, nor time to play with the nearly easy solutions (connect output to digital video camera, then transfer it to the computer).

A few days before this came up, I upgrade the software on my CrackBerry. This was a reasonably easy process, and I didn't lose much. I have found a number of nice UI enhancements, and since I put a MicroSD media card I happen to have into the BB, I can now record video as well as taking pictures. I am sure the quality won't be very good, given how bad the photos tend to be.

Nevertheless, I was able to queue up the ad and record it from the TV on my blackberry and then email it to some of my colleagues.

I found this rather amusing...

A Brave New World

Rachel started reading the front page of the Chron today. She's 7, and there are definitely things I'd rather she not worry about just yet.

She read a couple of sentences about the BART officer who killed a man who was prone on the platform with his hands behind his back. She only got that far because then she started asking questions and talking about it.

She wanted to know what "prone" meant, and why the officer shot him. The large picture with the article was of a demonstration outside Oakland City Hall at which a number of people lay prone on the ground and chanted "please don't shoot", so we discussed what a demonstration is (in that context).

We didn't really have a lot of time as we were getting ready to leave, but it was quite fascinating. If a little disappointing that she is starting to get this stuff.