Skinny Kittyby Angie
5 Apr 2009
9:04 am1
Last night, Jon (who is staying over for Conference weekend) mentioned that Jaquie was looking a little thin, and I was inclined to agree. When Jim and I were upstairs later, getting ready for bed, the subject came up again. We had noticed that she had missed some easy jumps in the last week or so (scraping up my leg on one of them), and that she has seemed an odd combination of physically placid but more “talkative” than normal. None of these individual symptoms had seemed alarming, but when we began to consider them together, we started to worry.
We wondered if she was hungry, but Jim said he had checked before coming upstairs and her food dish was full. Then he asked me when was the last time I actually put food in her bowl. When I answered, “Over a week ago, I think,” his eyes went wide with concern. He couldn’t remember the last time he had filled her dish, either. He thought I had been doing it, while I thought he had. This, apparently, is the downside to the whoever-notices-it-empty-fills-it system.
I gave her a couple of treats I keep in our room that she adores, and she gobbled them up. They were hard, so that ruled out anything wrong with her teeth. Then Jim took her downstairs to examine the food dish in question. Apparently, some of the hard food had gotten wet and was clumped, so he dumped it all out, and gave her all new food and water. She wasn’t much interested in the new food either, though. He then offered her some tuna, and she was willing to eat a little of that – not entirely encouraging, however, since she’s usually willing to eat a lot of tuna.
Poor thing – she must have just been starving for a week! She had a little more tuna with some dry food mixed in this morning. I’m just hoping that the wet, old food was the culprit and that she’ll bounce back quickly.
Grocery Hoppingby Angie
31 Mar 2009
12:03 pm6
When I lived in Orem, I was loyal to one grocery store: Macey’s. They were friendly, inexpensive, and relatively close to home. Oh, I made convenience stops at Harmons, Albertsons, or Smith’s sometimes, but Macey’s generally took care of everything I needed.
Here in California, I have struggled to find any one store for the majority of my shopping. In our little Springtown area, there is a PW Market close enough that I can walk to it, if my load will be light coming home. After having a horrible experience there once and noticing that their produce isn’t very good, however, I haven’t been back often. Safeway has some neat things: fresh-ground peanut butter, a gelato counter, and an extensive kitchen-ware section that takes me there every other month or so (there are no proper kitchen stores in this city!), but their stuff is generally pretty pricey. It was wonderful, though, to have Safeway delivering groceries for a few weeks last year, when I had surgery – what a great service! I visit Costco once or twice a month to stock up on pantry and freezer items (I never thought I’d say so, but their salmon and shrimp are so good!), but I have learned to never buy bread or produce there.
The one store that has the best blend of everything I like & need is probably Nob Hill – a friend of mine suggested I go there several months ago, and it is a really great store: decent prices, yummy bread, nice variety of healthy stuff, and really good produce. Their staff is very nice, too. Unfortunately, they’re way over on the other side of town. I usually take my shopping there on the weeks that I have my blood tests, since it’s right by the lab. Trader Joe’s is near there, as well, which has a lot of unique items, good produce, and reasonable prices. My husband loves it when I shop there, because I usually bring home one or two interesting new things to try.
Last of all, I try to save some of my grocery money each week to go to the Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings. It’s out in Pleasanton, which is about a 20 minute drive, but it is such an interesting and rewarding experience that I really feel that it’s worth the extra time. I’m learning more about when different fruits and veggies are in season, and it’s neat to actually get to know the local growers.
Consequently, I find myself grocery hopping. I guess that with my resolution to get more fruits and veggies on the table, a husband who is avoiding cow milk (we’ve tried soy, rice, and almond so far – our dentist says it’s healthier), and a cat who is rather particular about her litter and the brand of food she eats, on top of just trying to save money, I can’t expect to find everything in one place.
The Circuit Boards are Inby Jim
17 Mar 2009
8:03 am2
So Jon and I are working on a new sculpture project and this time we’re doing things a little differently. I decided to use an online milling house to create the boards rather than using prototype board. This means lots more work planning and preparing, but a much more compact (and hopefully better) design. Here are some pictures of the boards I had milled for Elrae:
And here is the board for the power plug:
As you can see from the pictures, some of those traces are tiny. I’ll be soldering all of this by hand, so wish me luck. I’ve never printed my own circuit board, so this was a very fun project and I’m really excited to see how it turns out.
Pi Day Follow-upby Jim
16 Mar 2009
9:03 pm1
Okay, as promised, here is a picture of me in my Pi Day attire holding our Pi Day dessert.
I’m a geek, I know it.
Happy Pi Day!by Jim
14 Mar 2009
3:03 pm0
3.141592653589793238 462643
383279502884197169399375105820974
9445 9230 7816406286
20 8998 6280
3482 53421
170 6798
214 8086
513 282
3066 470
9384 4609
5505 8223
17253 5940
81284 81117 4
502841 027019 38
521 105559
Happy Pi Day, everyone! Today is 3.14 (aka March 14) and is special in a couple ways. Today is my sister’s birthday (Happy birthday, sis!), Einstein’s birthday (hooray for geniuses), and Pi Day. Pi day is an excuse to make (and eat) lots of pies. We’ll post a picture of the pi we make for dinner tonight.
I hope you enjoy my ASCII art — I made it myself 😉
Mixed Emotionsby Jim
19 Feb 2009
5:02 pm3
Last night was a difficult night for me. Most of it was very enjoyable. For our anniversary in December, I got two tickets to go see Wicked at the Orpheum theater in San Francisco. As an additional surprise, I arranged to meet with some good friends at a restaurant near the theater. Everything was wonderful. We had a great dinner and the show was amazing.
When we went to see Phantom of the Opera in December with Dallyn, we parked across the street from the theater so we wouldn’t have to walk far. We decided to park there again last night because of the convenience. When we returned to our car, I was absolutely shocked to see that our car had been broken into. The passenger side window had been completely smashed and our GPS and my cell phone were gone. I had my cell phone out while driving and left it in the cup holder instead of putting it on my belt. I forgot about it until we were already crossing the street to the theater and thought to myself, “it should be alright, the parking lot is well lit and attended.” Looking back on the situation, I realize that was a very stupid thing to assume. There is absolutely nothing the parking attendant is obligated to do if he were to witness a break-in. There is a sign that says they aren’t responsible for valuables left in vehicles. I was also parked at the far end of the lot, furthest from the booth and by a clear get-away path for a would-be criminal.
I was quite frustrated last night; I felt stupid and violated. I felt bad for Angie and Jon who had to ride in a freezing cold car because the windows had been smashed in (especially Angie, who had to ride all the way back to Livermore with me). Fortunately, they didn’t take our garage door opener, which was also in the car (along with a GPS that has “take me home” button — not to mention our address in my cell phone).
Things could certainly have been worse. I could have been mugged, more damage could have been done to the car, I could have had sensitive identifying information on my cell phone, among other things. I just hate making mistakes like this that make you feel so helpless and stupid. What a way to ruin an otherwise wonderful evening.
A Special Day for Geeksby Jim
13 Feb 2009
11:02 am2
You’ll have to pardon my geekiness, but today is a very special day. Today, at 3:31:30 pm Pacific (11:31:30 pm UTC), Unix Epoch time will reach 1,234,567,890. It is kind of like celebrating January 1st in the year 1000, at the turn of the millennium. So that you can more fully appreciate this special moment, let me give a brief history lesson.
You see, way back in the early days of computing (1969), some really smart guys at AT&T Bell Labs developed Unix. Unix is an operating system (like unto Windows) that runs programs except it didn’t have a graphical user interface (GUI with mouse pointers, icons, etc. — unlike unto Windows). A GUI was developed later, but at first it was all just command line stuff. For geeks, this is one of the things that makes Unix fun. Anyway, they needed a way to represent time, so they decided to use a standard integer value counting in seconds. Therefore, at 12:00:01 AM January 1st, 1970 Unix time started at 1 and they’ve been counting ever since.
Back on Sept. 9, 2001, Unix time rolled around to the 1 billionth second since Unix Epoch (1 Jan, 1970). The geeks over in Denmark thought this was pretty cool, so they threw a big party. Those Europeans are really into the whole Unix/Linux thing. Actually, I think it is more likely they are into the Anti-Microsoft thing.
So, if you read this before the big event, set your alarms and have a moment of reflection for how Unix makes the world a better place.
(This image was modified for demonstrative purposes.)
For those of you who want to witness this event, find your nearest Unix/Linux machine and type:
date +%s
If you don’t think you’re fast enough to get it on just the right second, you can try:
watch -n 1 date +%s
Which will display once a second, so you’re sure to catch it.