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(Wed, 25 Nov 2009)

Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:32

Potato and cabbage soup, roughly from

loosestrife (who gave me the basic gist):

6 cups diced potatoes, boiled
1/2 head cabbage, chopped
1 quart vegetable stock (the standard size container at the store)
2 large onions, chopped
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
3 - 4 tablespoons peanut oil
1 lemon, squeezed

I'm guessing on the caraway seeds and the peanut oil because I didn't measure them, I just dumped in "what looked like enough".

First boil the potatoes while you're getting everything else ready. Drain them. Sautee the onions and the caraway seeds together in the peanut oil until they're soft. Dump everything else EXCEPT the lemon juice (but including the potatoes) in, and cover and simmer for a while. Towards the end, add half the lemon juice, taste, and add the other half if it seems like it needs it. Salt to taste. I added a fair amount of salt -- more than I initially thought I'd need. If it tastes "blah" at first, try adding a little more salt.

This is my second attempt at making this soup. The first attempt was okay but not great. I think the second attempt really worked. :-)

Thank you,

loosestrife! :-)

Comments: 1 (read) (post)

(Tue, 24 Nov 2009)

Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:43

A month or so ago I stopped by the side of a highway to see if I could help a car with its blinkers on. It turned out the guy had no AAA, and his car had overheated because the radiator was low on coolant. So I went to my trunk and got out the gallon of water I've been keeping in there since I got the car in 2004. I also got my flashlight, since he didn't have one of those either.

I've had that gallon of water for five and a half years now and I was despairing of ever getting a chance to use it, and then finally it comes in handy. That felt pretty good.

I don't know what a good amount of water to carry is. His radiator could have taken more than a gallon, so maybe I should start carrying two, but space in the trunk is worth something, too.

A couple of weeks ago I got one of those rechargeable lead-acid battery things that's meant to work as a jumpstarter without needing a second vehicle to jump from (I had plain old jumper cables already, but I got this as well). So tonight I stopped by the side of the highway to see if I could help someone, and it turned out she had no AAA, and her battery had died.

Tonight wasn't a success story -- her car had other issues other than a dead battery. We did get it started using the jumpstarter, but it quickly died again. As I was leaving I realized I should have suggested that we try again and that she hold down the accelerator for a while (with the transmission in park) after it got started. I'm not sure if that would have helped or not. Probably not -- the car pretty clearly had issues.

Still, though, I thought it was pretty cool that the jumpstarter showed its usefulness that soon after getting it. I could have given her a jumpstart using my car, but my jumper cables are short enough that they really only work if the two cars are side by side, and that just doesn't work when you're both on a narrow shoulder.

Comments: 8 (read) (post)

(Wed, 11 Nov 2009)

Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:52

Unix "wants" you to store data in text files, one "record" (loosely defined) per line. How you delimit the stuff *inside* the records is up to you; most utilities can work with a variety of different formats, and you can always munge stuff around in the middle of a pipeline anyway.

I was trying to explain to someone a few months ago the advantages of doing things this way. They wanted to use a database and then feed the data from the database into a spreadsheet, and I was like "... WHY??? Just use a text file like God intended!" But I couldn't really explain what I meant very well, and I was left stuttering something like "Uh, it's just easier that way..."

Yesterday I had a real-world experience that exemplifies what I mean by that. At work we have two commands, which for the purposes of this post I'll call "get-ancestors" and "get-descendants". get-ancestors gives you a list of what a certain product depends on; and "get-descendants -d" which gives you a list of what other products depend on a certain product. The -d flag indicates that you only want "direct" dependencies; the former command, without any flags, will recurse.

Here's what I wanted to find out: I wanted to find out which products, which themselves were dependencies of 'gecko', depended on a certain (old, bad) version of 'build'. I didn't just do "get-descendants -d build-2.0.29.3.1" because that would have given me a ton of irrelevant products. I wanted just the ones that gecko depended on.

I did:

get-ancestors gecko | sort > all-gecko-dependencies
get-descendants -d build-2.0.29.3.1 | sort | comm -12 - all-gecko-dependencies
rm all-gecko-dependencies

In other words, I got a list of everything gecko depended on, sorted it, and put it in a temporary file. Then I got a list of everything that directly depended on the old version of build, and I sorted it, and then I ran 'comm' on both it and the contents of the temporary file, suppressing columns 1 and 2 of its output. Column 3 of the output of 'comm' is the lines that occur in both of its inputs; columns 1 and 2 (which I suppressed) would be the lines that only occurred in the first, or second, inputs, respectively. Finally, I removed my temporary file.

Unix makes it very easy to perform an absolutely staggering variety of things with data. No fancy spreadsheets required.

Comments: 4 (read) (post)

(Mon, 19 Oct 2009)

Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:35

I dreamed last night that I was about eight years old. ( Cut for explicit babyfur content )

(Wed, 23 Sep 2009)

Subject: Good universe Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:41

A long long time ago (I don't even remember where I was living at the time, or with whom), I was living in a place that had a refrigerator poetry set. I just ran across one of my creations from that time, that I had saved:

as a growl would linger and bring decay
we the brothers of animals desire always magic
father make embrace some coffee & a bath
good universe

(Mon, 21 Sep 2009)

Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:17

I've owned a bicycle chain tool for a long time, and I always kinda-sorta knew how it worked, but I never actually used it until tonight. The chain was slipping and I had lubricated it and wiggled all the stiff places by hand and there were still stiff places, so I just went "okay, it's time to learn how to use that thing".

So I did. It turns out there are two places on it that you can put the link you're working on. I didn't understand what the difference was at first. It turns out that on one of the places, the screwing action will cause the "rear" piece of flat metal to fetch up against a solid barrier, thereby causing the pin to be forced further into the flat metal. This has the general effect of tightening the link. And on the other place, there's no such solid barrier, so as your screwing action causes the pin to be pushed further back, the path of least resistance is for the flat piece of metal to bend further back (there's enough friction between it and the pin that the pin doesn't *want* to penetrate further into it if it doesn't have to). This has the general effect of loosening the link.

So there are four combinations. Tighten and loosen, but you also get to pick which side you're working from; if the pin is too far over to one side, you choose the general direction that you want the pin to go, place the tool in the appropriate orientation to make the pin go that way, and then make the tighten/loosen choice within that.

Comments: 5 (read) (post)

Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:57

I ran across this story about a dog this evening.

That dog is every single one of us. We just hide what we're going through better. And we have this useless fucking concept of "dignity" that prevents us from ever really truly communicating with each other -- that makes us *get offended* when someone does reach out and try to help.

(Wed, 27 May 2009)

Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 23:27

Imagine if self-replicating nanobots got loose, or something -- and everyone's digestive systems were retrofitted to be able to function on a diet of nothing but candy bars.

Imagine if that's all everyone ate, anymore. When you "went out to eat with friends" it was just assumed that you'd have candy bars. If you expressed a wish for anything else, you'd be considered weird, and nobody would want to eat with you.

Imagine if it was that way for you, for years, decades.

You'd probably get unreasonably, screamingly angry at the candy bar industry, and the sheep who eat the stuff. The mere sight of a wrapper might become enough to anger you and make you ashamed for your entire race.

Imagine if, one day, you found someone who likes steak, and corn on the cob, and tuna fish sandwiches piled high with lettuce and onion. And you were *so relieved* to find this person, and you placed all your hopes in them, and you told them all your secrets, and you started to feel better about life now that there was someone who shared your feelings.

Imagine if, after a particularly good meal of curry and rice, your friend pulls out a couple of candy bars and hands you one, for dessert. Because he likes *both* kinds of food. But you've gotten so sensitized over the years that you just can't enjoy it. You eat it, and objectively speaking it's good chocolate, but the experience cheapens the whole evening for you, and you ask your friend, no more chocolate. He's a bit hurt, and explains that he feels closer to people who he can eat chocolate with.

...

I feel like that about a lot of things. Maybe the chocolate is roleplay (as opposed to therianthropy). Maybe the chocolate is sex (as opposed to being gentle and compassionate and accepting). Most recently the chocolate was sex. It's not that I mind sex, but I am FUCKING STARVED FOR CLOSE FRIENDSHIP, and this feeling that you can get anything you want in this world, anything at all, except what you really need, is really painful.

I wish things were less tangled. I wish I knew what to do about it, or saw a way forward.

(Thu, 19 Mar 2009)

Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:43

I went out tonight to water, and to cut the dead flowers off the daffodils.

After watering, I went to go get a flashlight so I could see what I was doing with the daffodils, and... there were SNAILS! About a dozen or more of them, each having crawled to the very top of one of the daffodil stalks. They were being very active, turning their heads this way and that.

I was wondering if my watering had given them something to drink. I tried to water the daffodils some more, very gently, not aiming the spray directly at them. I hope I didn't hurt any of the snails. They were beautiful. I'm really glad I saw them when they were being so active. I'm glad they think of my daffodils as a nice place to chill for a while on a spring evening.

Comments: 2 (read) (post)

(Mon, 17 Nov 2008)

Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:36

I hope this article makes anyone who might be thinking of applying at (hell, even shopping at) Meijer's think twice. I want to be *working with* my coworkers, not *competing against* them. Ugh.

Comments: 6 (read) (post)

(Wed, 05 Nov 2008)

Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 9:48

Eight years ago, I had a measure of faith in my country.

Eight years ago, I wasn't single.

Eight years ago, none of my friends had trouble finding work.

It's been a long eight years.

(Sun, 26 Oct 2008)

Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:45

It occurred to me that furry is maybe a bit like the flip side of animal rights. If "animals are people too" and deserve some of the rights given to people, then isn't it also true that "people are animals too" and deserve some of the rights given to animals? Like the right to be petted, and scritched, and fed? Like the right to be led on a leash during those times when you need a little extra guidance? Like the right to be given a warm place to sleep at night? Like the right to communicate with body language rather than human language?

We, as a community, give each other these things. We don't expect them to be handed to us from outside; they're things each of us must both give, and receive.

Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 0:24

Laurie Anderson told a story about birds, that lived before the world existed, and how they reacted to the first death they'd ever known, and how that was the beginning of "memory". Before then none of the birds had ever needed to remember anything.

She was scathingly witty about so-called "experts" and the "problems" and "solutions" proposed by them. She pulled no punches whatsoever in talking about the "weapons inspections" farce in Iraq. Hard to remember back that far, isn't it? We have always been at war with Eurasia.

Overall in this show she was more direct, and confrontational, than I think I've ever seen her. She also got in a dig at Nixon for eliminating the gold standard.

Myself, I'm tired of all the interactions with people I have, these days, being of the kind where I always have to hold part of me back; where I have to keep myself from being too socially inept, where I have to restrict my water intake in order to be within a standard deviation of the norm as far as frequency of bathroom visits, where I have to apologize for being clingy. I'm a dog, dammit. *Dogs* are clingy sometimes. They wouldn't be dogs if they weren't.

Someone else reminded me that something has been very, very wrong in my head for about five years now. There's a part of me that's been missing; the part of me that used to get up early and watch the sunrise sometimes on weekends, and then really enjoy breakfast and the rest of the day. The part of me that really enjoyed being alive. The part of me that meant I was never truly alone even when I was by myself. I haven't had much success journeying over the past two years, either. I feel isolated from that, too.

I am not powerless. I can express intent. Even if I can't *force* anything to happen, I can hold the intent clear in my mind. My intent is to welcome that part of me back into my life. I think that will be easier in the new house; it's hard to really feel comfortable or let down my guard in my current apartment. I will try to keep that intent clear.

(Mon, 20 Oct 2008)

Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:30

I've waited a long time for this -- escrow closed today. I don't feel like talking about it a lot publicly, I just want to post this here as a marker in time; October 20, 2008.

(Sat, 09 Feb 2008)

Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2008 1:30

Please go and read this post by Kyra Vixen. It's... both beautiful, and deeply true, in a way that I sorely miss in my day to day life.

I do try to live by what I believe in. But somehow, it still feels like it was easier to live that way twelve years ago, or even nine years ago. It seems like back then there were people living like that all over, and we all helped buoy each other and keep each other afloat. Now it feels like a constant uphill struggle, for everyone, everywhere. I don't know why. It felt very good to read that tonight. Thank you, Kyra.

Comments: 2 (read) (post)

(Mon, 21 Jan 2008)

Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:53

I have been raving a lot to anyone who will listen about Monsters of Grace lately. I just put mp3s up here if anyone is interested. I think my favorites are tracks 7 and 1, if you just feel like getting a taste of it.

The lyrics are here. They are taken from Rumi's poetry.

Comments: 5 (read) (post)

(Tue, 20 Mar 2007)

Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:36

"Morgensheutegesternwelt" is a word from Robert Anton Wilson meaning "tomorrow-today-yesterday-world", a state of existence where time bends and blurs together.

If you google for that word, at the bottom of the results, you get:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 23 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

I am sort of stunned, amused, and not really surprised, all at the same time. :-)

Comments: 2 (read) (post)

(Mon, 26 Feb 2007)

Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:19

My dentists are getting more and more explicit. ( cut for mild babyfur content )

(Mon, 15 Jan 2007)

Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:41

( Here's something that's confusing the heck out of me. )

(Sun, 14 Jan 2007)

Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2007 20:08

( I'm not feeling at home in my skin. I'm hoping that trying to write things down will help. )

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