Argh, domain thieves

(Originally posted on Saturday, November 12, 2005 by Cathy)

A combination of errors today:

• My credit card expiration date came and went since the last time I paid dotster for a domain.
• The email address I use for domain email (and mostly spam) was on the fritz.
• labarchive.net expired
• I didn't notice during the grace period.

So someone poached it. Don't bother going there to look, you'll just drive up their traffic. The lab archive is now at labs.timistry.net. Go THERE for science lab experiments of all sorts.

Let's Celebrate!

(Originally posted on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 by Tim)

CELEBRATE NATIONAL PAYROLL WEEK!

Did you know that it's National Payroll Week? Neither did I. The above message greeted me in cheerful, bold, capital letters when I opened my paychecks today. When I think of it, pretty much all of my paycheck is written in bold and capitals. Well, that is, everything except the actual amount I am being paid. That is written small, non-descript type. If fonts were animals, my payment type would be an ant. Not the big, black ants that seem to follow us around from state to state. It would be a small ant...the kind without mandibles.

So how the heck did we get a National Payroll Week anyway. Did some past president stand behind the podium and announce, "I hereby dedicate this week to all the payrolls out there who work hard to maintain this great nation of ours." How am I supposed to celebrate? Am I supposed to buy someone a card? Can I go down to my local Hallmark and find the Payroll Week cards between those for Plumbers Day and Lawyers That Aren't Evil Day (a small section). Once I have picked out an appropriate card, who do I give it to?

While you reflect on this questions, I wanted to share another funny moment from my day. Cat and I work at different schools that are about 25 minutes drive apart. As such we communicate alot by email. Well actually, we've been known to communicate by email when we've worked six doors down the hall from each other, but now it's better justified.

We only have one car and so one of us drops the other off each morning. I try to drop Cat off more often than vice versa because she can take the bus home and that makes the total car commute 45 morning minutes and 15 evening minutes vs. 45 morning minutes and 45 evening minutes. It just so happens that I did the driving this morning. Cat's parents and sister were in town this weekend and we are still trying to finish off the massive quantities of leftovers from when we had them over for dinner. In pursuit of this goal, I packed some large lunches.

As I drove in this morning, I ended up arriving at work just as the lab I am teaching was starting. I have three labs to teach today as I am covering for a co-worker and this means that I have only 11-12pm and 2-3pm to eat my lunch. At 11am, I head back to my office feeling hungry and I am decended upon by multiple students who delay me by about 20 minutes. I now only have 40 minutes to eat my lunch, grade some papers, and finish off my annual faculty report. I start hunting around my office to find my lunch and it is no where to be found. I think, "Hmmm, I must have left it in the car and the car is at Virginia Tech. Rats (not the actual word I used), I'm going to have to buy lunch and I've got no free time today." I fire a quick email off to Cat and ask, "Did I leave my lunch in the car?" I then proceed to do a bit of grading.

Cat replies to the email in a couple of minutes. Remember that I have the car at Radford as I dropped her off. Her reply is, "That module in wife is not installed. In addition, YOU have the car. However, based on your question, I would have to assume the answer is yes." Sigh, well this doesn't quite seem as funny as it did earlier today. I guess you had to be there.

Just in case you were curious, my lunch was in the car and it was quite good.

I also love my swing

(Originally posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 by Cathy)

We're slowly evolving into a pattern where Dalton takes a morning and afternoon nap. Well, sort of. If we're out and about (like this morning, when we interviewed a daycare provider), Dalton will snooze in the carseat, but we'll get home and he will be tired and cranky and need a longer nap, but it can be a couple of hours of struggle and fuss before he takes one. (Can you say "overtired"? I can say it, but I keep causing it anyway.) So today the "morning" nap started at noon. Then the afternoon nap starts who knows when. Actually, I'm a big fan of the "afternoon" nap starting around 5pm, so that we can make dinner using all four adult hands. On Sunday, the afternoon nap started late enough that it was still going at 7pm. "Oh great, I thought, I'd better wake him up so that he'll actually sleep tonight." So I procrastinated until 8pm (some things don't change), and then tried to wake him up.

You'd think, having slept for three hours that he'd have been ready to wake up, right? Nope. I even changed his diaper, which is usually good for several Moro reflex startles, followed by wide eyes. Well, he did open his eyes and look at me, then promptly fell back asleep and the end of the diapering routine. Aw heck, I thought, we're really in for it now. So our quiet baby free evening had this overhanging sense of dread, since we both figured we'd be up at 2am. Miraculously, he actually slept (aside from more or less constant nursing) through the night, and wasn't raring to go until 6am. Phew.

Anyway, back to the picture. Dalton generally won't fall asleep in the baby swing, but he will sit in it for a solid 3 minutes (long enough to pee!), staring at the rotating stuffed bugs. He'll also nap in it, as long as he's asleep when I put him in. He tends to open his eyes and/or make cute little whining noises every so often, but then the eyes slam back shut and he goes back to napping. Good enough.

Mmmmmm, turkey leg

Cathy left town to see her family today so it is a bachelor’s weekend for me and dogs. As you can see, I decided to celebrate in style. Turkey legs were one of my signature foods when I lived alone. They are easy to prepare and quite tasty. In addition, they tend to be pretty cheap. Somewhere in my life, I acquired a taste for dark meat. It has been my impression that this is contrary to the population at large. Most relegate dark meat to the same category as broccoli stalks, apple cores, and onion skins. They are all unfortunate side products that come with the things that people really want. As such, I usually can get what I want at a discount. On a side note, I have a recipe that makes tasty use of onion skins. I could have sworn I had written it up, but I can't find it now.

Bachelors’s Baked Turkey Leg
One two pound turkey leg
3 tbs of vegetable oil
3 tbs fresh chopped parsley
Salt
Fresh ground pepper

Remove your only baking pan from under the dishes in the sink and wash thoroughly (remember, this is a bachelor’s recipe). Pour oil in pan. Next, remove turkey leg from plastic wrapping and place in pan. Pause cooking motions to yell at dogs for standing on your feet. Rub oil into turkey leg and sprinkle with parsley on all sides. Liberally salt and pepper the leg.

Push dogs out of the way and set the oven to bake at 350^oF. Place pan in oven uncovered. Allow to bake for 20 minutes and then run back into the kitchen to turn off fire alarm caused by splattered grease hitting the heating element in the oven. Remember to jump over dogs when returning to kitchen. Cover pan with aluminum foil and cook until leg exudes a clear (not pink) liquid. Allow leg to cool for 10 minutes, throw dogs out into the backyard, and enjoy.

Gravy

(Originally posted on Saturday, July 16, 2005 by Tim)

It has been a long time since I?ve written up a recipe here. We actually haven?t been making many new meals lately. To be more honest, I haven?t been making many new meals of late. Cat has been trying new things and she?s found a few that are quite good.

Our big score this summer has been ?Chicken Fried Tofu?. Dave and I had a long discussion on ICQ over this one. He objected to the fact that the actual recipe contains no chicken and is not fried. This recipe come from our cookbook by Crescent Dragonwagon. Yes, that is her real name. I would guess she blames her parents. Almost all the meals we have made from this book have been good or great. We may have had one recipe that was OK. Once.

The best part of the Chicken Fried Tofu is an accompanying recipe for vegetarian gravy. Crescent goes on and on about how great this gravy is. I?m a pretty skeptical person and take all such ramblings with a nugget of salt. In Crescent?s case, I should just get over my cynicism. Whenever she goes on and on about something, it?s really good.

Vegetarian Gravy
4 cups vegetable stock
1 whole head of garlic, unpeeled
1 carrot, halved
1 onion, chopped
1 bay leaf
½ tsp coarsely crushed peppercorns
¼ cup nutritional yeast
½ tsp paprika
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
Extra salt and pepper to taste

Place stock, garlic, carrot, onion, bay leaf, and peppercorns in a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and allow to simmer for 45 minutes. Remove from heat and pour stock through a strainer. You're interested in the garlic in the strainer and the stock so make sure to save both.

Allow garlic to cool. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of the skins into the stock. Mix in the paprika and nutritional yeast and place on low heat.

Melt the butter over low heat. Whisk in flour and cook until flour paste browns slightly (3 to 4 minutes). Slowly add butter/flour mixture to stock with stirring. Simmer stock until slightly thickened. Season with salt and pepper.

This stuff is amazing. I like to season it with lots of salt and fresh ground pepper, but I'm like that.

Things you don't want to hear from your dogsitter.

(Originally posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2005 by Tim)

So I've neglected to mention one detail of Cat's adventure to graduation on Friday morning, the call from the dog sitter. Cat got the call when we were speeding down Fair Oaks street (roughly 3 miles from Caltech). I didn't hear the conversation, but it did involve the phrase, "an impressive amount of diarrhea."

This is not a phrase you ever want to hear from your dog sitter. We have a great service that does the dog sitting. Besides the being great with the dogs, they also have a steam cleaner if you catch my meaning.

The event got me to thinking about what other things you wouldn't want to hear from the dogsitter.

Dogsitter top 10
10. "Did you have two or three plush chairs in the living room?"
9. "Wow, normally dogs get over that around age two."
8. "some dogs are just diggers"
7. "I think he made your vet's day"
6. "maybe you can call us back when he get's a little older"
5. "where did you leave that blank check again?"
4. "the officer left his card on the door"
3. any sentence that contains both the words "barf" and "wallpaper"
2. "Well, the dining room still looks OK..."

and, of course

1. "an impressive amount of diarrhea"

enjoy your dinner :)

B'burg transit

(Originally posted on Saturday, July 9, 2005 by Cathy)

What I love about Blacksburg transit:

• Buses run exactly like the schedule says, to the minute.
  
  This is a first. In Seattle, buses ran pretty much when they felt like it, and could be 10 minutes early or late. (Which meant you could easily stand in the rain for 20 minutes waiting for one.) At VT, you can sit there and watch every bus that timepoints somewhere on the drillfield start up and pull out at exactly quarter past. It verges on freaky.

• Free buses.
  
  Ok, technically they're "pre-paid" for VT students/faculty/staff/spouses with ID. But since that's all of B'burg, they're pretty much free. No scrounging for quarters in the bottom of my bag, no waiting while someone else does.
• They take the by-pass to Christiansburg, instead of stopping every four feet.

What I don't exactly love about Blacksburg transit:

• Limited summer schedule
  
  Granted, the ridership I see seems pretty limited, but not running the first bus on the line I need until noon means I can't take the bus to work. Cutting the bus schedule back so far seems counterproductive. Sure, there aren't all that many people on campus in summer, but the ones that are there are almost certainly either graduate students/post-docs, who have to be in first thing in the morning and last thing at night despite the summer schedule (but might sleep in on Sundays since it is summer), students taking and faculty teaching summer classes, most of which are over before noon, and staff, who work pretty much the same schedule in the summer as during the year (but with fewer interruptions). I guess the problem is that the bus I take home is the shopping mall run, and BB transit figures that no one shops before noon anyway. (Given how late our mall opens, this is almost true.)

• Stupid 20 minute loops around the mall and the Walmart.
  I actually take two buses to get home. The Blacksburg half of the two-town trolley line takes the bypass to the Pepper's Ferry exit, then goes to Walmart, then loops all around the mall before coming to a stop at the movie theater entrance at about 20 'til. At quarter 'til, the Christiansburg half of the TTT heads out. It goes to Walmart, then K-mart, then briefly heads north (right, back towards VT) to catch the DMV and Goodwill. THEN it starts heading towards C'burg. Notice how both buses visit Walmart? If you get off the TTT-B'burg at Walmart, you can actually sit there for 18 minutes (I've timed it) and get on the TTT-C'burg when it gets there. Yep, there's 18 extra minutes in the route. If someone would just offset the two bus-lines by 18 minutes so that the C'burg bus pulled up to Walmart at the same time as the B'burg bus, I could get home in 40 minutes, instead of closer to an hour. And that's without moving a single stop. Let me move the stops around and I could do it in 30. Actually, I guess I'd need to think about the impact on the northbound bus route (maybe that just puts the 18 minutes there), but since the northbound route is precisely useless to me this summer, I'm pretending it doesn't exist anyway.

• Limited stops
  
  Ok, I'll fess up. I love the fact that the B'burg bus takes the bypass. But I want the C'burg bus to stop closer to my house. From Pepper's Ferry, there's no point on getting back on the bypass anyway, so the bus just goes south on 460 business. It hits the highlights - the kroger, the rec center - but other than that, it just doesn't stop. It goes right by these places, going no more than 30 mph, with stop lights and all, but you can't get off. I walk twice as far home as I'd have to, if the powers-that-be only thought that letting me off near my corner was worhtwhile. (Unfortunately, the only thing near my corner is a detailing place, which is pretty worthless for a bus rider!) Given that the C'burg bus generally has like three people riding it, having a few extra stops on the book (that the bus just blows past) wouldn't slow it down. And heck, it might just increase ridership if the bus stops occured in quanta of less than 2 miles.

• Stupid stops
  
  The B'burg TTT bus makes two stops on the drillfield. The two stops are at 9 and 12 on the clock, if you have a Dali-style clock anyway. At 9 o'clock there is no shade and no bus shelter. But down at 6 o'clock is a nice bus shelter, with benches inside and out. (Did I mention that my office is at 6:15? No bias here.) I don't mind walking up to the 9 o'clock stop when the weather is nice, but when it isn't, a 5 minute walk in the rain with NO nice dry bus shelter at the end of it, when there's a nice dry shelter just outside the door to the building? Seems kinda silly. I got totally drenched on Thursday waiting for that bus to show up.