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newer entries...
08-29-99 "Nice sword." "Thanks, I've read up to chapter twelve."
08-28-99 Sit back, relax, and listento an MP3...
08-26-99 A dash of this, a pinch of that, a smidgeon of... doh!
08-23-99 Do the Thermoregulation Shuffle
08-22-99 A leopard gecko just arrived!
08-22-99 Excuse me sir, there's no smoking in the pyrotechnics storage room
08-21-99 View or sign, the choice is yours
08-21-99 I'm looking for...
08-20-99 Cowtown cuisine
08-19-99 I see movies about dead people
08-18-99 Log in, veg out
08-13-99 Sugary goodness
08-12-99 come closer to bowl
older entries...
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"Nice sword." "Thanks, I've read up to chapter twelve." |
| 08-29-99 |
When I got back from work around 3:30 AM, there were a couple of mealworms missing off the
food dish and my gecko had a terribly smug expression on her face. I'm glad she's eating. I
wonder if it was the visual thing, or if calcium-dusted mealworms really are better than
freeze-dried crickets and flies... I'm not about to take the taste test myself.
There are a bunch of alteration merchants in DragonRealms as I type this, and I'm just
amazed at the sort of thing people think can be engraved on a sword blade. A blade is
typically a long narrow sharpened piece of steel meant for cutting, in contrast to a
billboard, which is an outdoor sign several cubic yards in area. If you can't write it or
sketch a rough outline on a business card, it's not going to fit on even the most macho of
weapons. If it's anything more complex than simple line art, a sword blade is probably not
the best medium for the message. Go to some Ren fairs, SCA events, and SF/fantasy cons;
check out the Museum Replicas catalog (the
hardcopy version is better) and other dealers and smiths. You'll see what's within reason
and it'll do good things for your creativity. One of my favorite little knives has a very
simple double-edged blade, but it's being grasped by a detailed bronze mermaid. Visually
appealing, but very functional. But I'm really a minimalist; my current favorite blade is
an unadorned dull black thing resembling a bayonet, the hilt wrapped with black cord.
Expanding on that thing I said yesterday about "my own domain name" -- yes, my site will be
moved again. I feel like I'm leaving this trail of "My site has moved!" pages all over the
net. Hopefully this one will be for keeps.
Despite yesterday's rant about MP3s, I like Dencity. It's by far the best of the free web
hosts I've used, in terms of speed and lack of BS. But I've just about completed a mini-
site that's a religious tribute and the subject wanted Her own domain name. (If you're
curious about that, wait and read the pages, if not, don't worry about it 'cause I ain't
preaching at anybody.) So the domain will be split into three distinct mini-sites: the
religious stuff in one, this journal thinger in another (I'm no longer claiming it's a
Hero's Journey page but you never know when a news tibdit might show up), and geek goodies
in the third (wallpaper, music, skins/themes, links, etc.).
As the first step to reorganizing stuff I indexed the archive. Can you believe I do this
sort of thing for fun?
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Sit back, relax, and listen to an MP3 while enjoying a
nice can of mealworms and a steaming mug of chai. |
| 08-28-99 |
Dencity won't let members upload files over a certain size, and my old host (quite
reasonably) doesn't like acting as storage for pages hosted elsewhere. A lot of hosts out
there also have problems specifically with MP3's. For some reason, there's this assumption
that MP3 = copyright infringement, completely ignoring the entire angle of promotion by
distributing legit MP3's, as MP3.com and other sites
do. It just assumes in advance that people are criminals.
MP3's have sold me on artists whose CDs I would not have bought otherwise. It's never
worked the other way for me -- I've never failed to buy a CD because I could listen to free
MP3's instead.
I'm not actively trying to promote my music, 'cause it's secondary to the other stuff in my
life. But I think it's rather silly that, while no web host would ever have a problem with
me distributing my own original graphics, most of them forbid me from doing the same with
my own original music. It's the principle of the thing; I hope sense wins out over
paranoia.
I'll have my own domain soon though, and while I'm not going for a hosting plan with a huge
amount of disk space, there'll be room for an original MP3 or two.
I've been monitoring how much Kalila is actually eating: not very much. Not enough for an
adult gecko, much less a young growing gecko. There are a few possible reasons. Moving can
unsettle them and they can refuse to eat for a couple of weeks. A gecko used to eating live
crickets and/or mealworms needs to be conditioned to eating non-live food. And color,
apparently, is a major factor -- they don't seem to see dark food items (such as undusted
crickets or dark mealworms) on a dark background or light food items (dusted crickets,
newly molted or dusted mealworms) on a light background very well. And what have I been
doing? Trying to get a gecko who only moved in a week ago to eat dark brown dried food off
a dark green plastic lid. The one piece of food that I know went AWOL was one that fell off
and landed on the nice white paper towel...
So I figured I'd go buy the little weasel some nice mealworms. PetSmart seemed a good
choice since they have crickets and various frozen/refrigerated foods for reptiles and
other critters. Alas, no live mealworms. They did have mealworms in a can though, flavor
sealed, refrigerate after opening. (Let me just interject that I'm eating ramen noodles as
I'm writing this and I'm watching them very carefully for signs of movement and thinking
Taco Bell might be a good change of pace tonight.) Gotta be easier than keeping live ones,
because you don't have to warm them up and feed them once a week... but they won't make
that tempting "hey look, I'm food" movement on their own either. So I'm giving it a try.
The, er, aroma when you open the can is no worse than cat food. Really. And picking them
out one by one with tweezers, dusting them with vitamin/calcium supplement, and putting
them in the dish (where they stand out quite obviously) is not a big deal. Oddly enough,
the weirdest thing is opening the fridge to get a drink or a snack and seeing a little cat
food can sitting there that you know is filled with mealworms.
I hope she likes 'em. If not... does anybody know any Klingons?
BTW, a couple people asked me what the heck chai is. It's an Indian spiced tea with milk.
Here's a site with a description
and recipes (not that I've tried them). So far, my favorite brand is Oregon Chai, either
iced or milkshake at Java Jazz & Blues on old main street in the St. Charles historic
district. Ohhh yeah.
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A dash of this, a pinch of that, a smidgeon of... doh!
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| 08-26-99 |
For some odd reason, I thought it would be a good idea to keep recipes on some dusty corner
of my web page. Why I thought that was a good thing, I don't know... it must have been
influenced by the Martha Stewart stuff going on in After
Y2K lately.
As it turns out I only have one successful recipe, and it's my mom's. I've only made it
twice but it went over big at the office Thanksgiving dinner last year. Sweet potato
casserole -- emphasis on sweet, it's really is almost closer to a dessert than a side dish.
It might go into an Elanthian cookbook sometime if we get around to doing one.
So I wrote off the idea as goofy, and forgot about it.
But tonight I had a craving for sweet stuff, and no urge to cook. I have some cheap vanilla
ice cream, and some Third Street Chai concentrate that's supposed to be mixed with milk
(but isn't as good as Wild Oats house brand or Oregon Chai). I love chai milkshakes
downtown at Java Jazz & Blues, so I figured I'd give it a try. Scooped out the ice cream,
poured the chai mix on it.... uh-oh, no milk. This could be scary. Well, I have a little
Hershey's syrup left, I'll throw that in...
Yeow.
What I have here is the haba&#ntilde;ero of chai milkshakes, the OC24 of chai milkshakes, the other
guy just found the gluon gun and all I have is a crowbar of chai milkshakes, the Trent
Reznor of chai milkshakes, the jump off the roof into a big pile of free AOL disks chai
milkshake, the race-modified TVR Cerbera of chai milkshakes, the I hope my medical
insurance will cover this of chai milkshakes. In other words, it's a bit strong. It's like
the ice cream doesn't even begin to think about cutting the intensity at all.
Unfortunately, my available choices for things I could dampen it down with are Shasta creme
soda and dark green Powerade. Hmm. Sesame oil? Aloe-based sunburn gel? Windex? Garbage
disposal.
I don't have recipes for things. When I cook, I throw stuff in a pan, throw some other
stuff in a pan, and poke at it and add more stuff until it looks edible. Sometimes looks
can be deceiving though.
Steak gets semi-thawed out, then thrown in a pan with some plain old oil and some sesame
oil, lots of soy sauce, some English mustard powder, and garlic, until it's somewhere
between thawed and medium. Chicken (which I've found comes in big bags of frozen boneless
tenders) gets sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic, lemon, black pepper, sometimes a little
"Mongolian Fire" pepper oil, and when it starts to look done (it's not -- and not only is
not-thoroughly-cooked chicken a great source of salmonella, it tastes like crap too) a
whole bunch of sesame seeds. Minute Rice works well just thrown on top of the chicken when
it's done, just use about half the water it says to use, add soy sauce if it needs more
liquid, and just stir fry it until it looks done. Of course whatever else is available can
be thrown in as well, as long as you can rationalize somehow that it complements the other
things you've thrown in.
Some people think it's weird, but I like Cream of Wheat with butter, salt, pepper, and
usually I'll throw an egg in there. Maybe it's just a family thing (my gramma made it that
way) or possibly just a Southern thing. On the other hand, I find it really weird when
people add maple syrup to hot cereal of any kind.
Some people think it's weird, but soy sauce can be a breakfast food. Couple of eggs, some
cheese, soy sauce, scrambled, on top of a slice of cheese on soy-sauce-soaked toast, then
toss it in the microwave for a little. Maybe it's just a family thing... wait, everybody in
my family thought I was a complete freak for doing that. Nevermind.
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Do the Thermoregulation Shuffle
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| 08-23-99 |
I think Kalila has decided that things are groovy. At first she just sat in the warmest
corner. Each time I'd check on her she'd changed positions though. This morning, there she
was still sitting in the corner... but some of the food was gone. A good sign. Stressed out
geckos tend to not eat, and some just won't eat dried food anyway, so to see that she'd
actually had some chow the first night was encouraging.
This evening she got up and went over to the cool side of the terrarium to sit in her hidey
cave thinger, so that must mean the temperature is okay. Right now she's sort of sitting on
top of it... dang, I need to get a webcam or something. Pet stories are much better when
illustrated. Then again, some of them probably aren't interesting at all to the general
public...
"Today my gecko ate a dried bug and hiked three feet. Here's a picture. I went to the mall
and bought a Pikachu bouncing ball (pictured here) and a journal (pic) with natural deckled
paper (click here for an image gallery of pages 1-20). I had a $3 bottle of mango tea
(picture), which really wasn't that good, and gave the bottle (image) to Steph (pic)
because she liked it."
Okay, so a camera won't be a high priority.
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A leopard gecko just arrived!
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| 08-22-99 |
I gotta gecko! Her name is Kalila, and she's about a month and a half old. She's fairly
colorful, but I'm 95% sure she's a normal phase leopard gecko rather than any of the
designer breeds. She's in a long low terrarium with a mesh lid, lined with paper towels
until she gets old enough that she won't get impaction from the nice red sand I bought.
There's a Zoo-Med under-tank heater under one side and when I checked it wasn't quite warm
enough yet, but it's supposed to take up to 6 hours to reach its normal temperature so I'll
give it some time.
It was really cute when she emerged from the little plastic tub she had to travel in -- she
looked back and forth, checking things out carefully, looking for cats or oncoming trains
or Steph or other dangers. She then took a careful step, testing the ground, and looked
around once more. Finally she decided it was okay, and mosied on out into the terrarium.
So now I'm doing the Pet Owner Thing that I never really identified with before... I want
to go home and make sure little Kalila is OK, or maybe take the whole terrarium back to the
office with me. And I was just there two hours ago. Sheesh.
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Excuse me sir, there's no smoking in the pyrotechnics storage room
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| 08-22-99 |
Three updates in one day, can you believe it? Oh wait, it's after midnight.
We went to see Phantom Menace again one last time before it leaves the theaters. The final
lightsaber duel just gets better and better every time. This time we paid close attention
to the ending credits, and lo and behold, my name was there. Well, sort of. David Deane,
Fire Safety Officer. Respect my authoritah!
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View or sign, the choice is yours
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| 08-21-99 |
Just for the heck of it, I have a
guestbook now. Knock
yourself out.
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I'm looking for...
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| 08-21-99 |
I was planning on saving up my money to pay off VISA, get airline tickets home for
Christmas, register my own domain name, and one of these days actually upgrade my computer.
So I'd pretty much decided not to get a leopard gecko until maybe after Christmas. But the
St. Louis Herpetological Society is having its
annual breeders' expo this weekend, and I had to go just to see. I wanted to know what a
uromastyx really was, and give bearded dragons one last chance, and most importantly what
they use to house leopard geckos.
I'm hooked. The little guys are just so cute, and their intelligence-to-size ratio seems to
be way above dogs or even certain humans I won't mention. :)
I have 12-hour shifts both today and tommorow, but I'm gonna get up early, go out there,
get a tank and light and food and substrate and a gecko. Expo prices are generally better
than store or online prices, and it's easier to compare. One exhibitor has terrariums in
all shapes and sizes, so rather than a 20 gallon long aquarium, I can get a long, low
terrarium that'll be a much lighter weight and rather cheap, without resorting to a cheesy-
looking plastic "sweater box" home.
There are a couple of different options for dried food, one that's simply fortified freeze-
dried crickets and one that's supposed to be specifically for leopard geckos that's based
on flies, but if my little guy or gal doesn't get into those I'll just have to keep
crickets. It'll be just like the office...
One funny thing I overheard at the expo was a guy telling his girlfriend, "I'm looking for
a couple of male balls." I'm pretty sure he was talking about ball pythons, but you never
know.
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Cowtown cuisine
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| 08-20-99 |
This is for Shon, who wondered if I would start doing this...
I didn't buy a new toothbrush, but lunch yesterday was kinda interesting. On the way to the
movie, we stopped at a little Israeli place in a shopping center. Facing the storefront, on
the left is a Pakistani grocery that sells (I swear I'm not making this up) not just beef
and lamb, but goat and "exotic bird meat." On the right is a casket company.
I had the falafel platter. Not bad, but it needed a lot more to really count as a serious
meal, and it might be an unfair comparison but it didn't stand up to the kibbe at Habebe. I
tried a sip of Steph's Turkish coffee and... yeow! If I ever need a megadose of caffeine to
get me through one of those 12-hour weekend shifts, I know where to get one.
It was so encouraging to find out that there's other ethnic food in Missouri besides
Italian-American, Chinese-American Buffet, American-American, and We Scraped This Off An
American Highway, that it finally occurred to me to do a search on
postnet for restaurants. No new discoveries really
close by, but all within 20-30 miles I found Bosnian, Brazilian, Carribean, Lebanese and
(whoohoo!) Swiss fondue. One of the things I've missed about Florida was a specific
restaurant, The Melting Pot... imagine my delight when I found out it was a chain and
there's one nearby.
I'm getting hungry...
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I see movies about dead people
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| 08-19-99 |
Go see Sixth Sense. Hurry. I'm not going to say anything about it except that it
may be the best of all the movies I've seen this summer. Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll
say why.
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Log in, veg out
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| 08-18-99 |
I'm wired once again. I signed up with Southwestern
Bell Internet so I could get online from home. Unfortunately my modem was not
cooperating. Iit did the same thing it did when I briefly tried Win98, except I'm still
using 95: it dials, and the two modems make their little noises at each other, and then
nothing else happens. No connection. I finally came to the conclusion that the modem -- not
only off-brand but depending on whether you look at the label on the board, the label on
the driver disk, or the box and manual, it's several different off brands -- was a piece of
junk, and set out to find myself a cheap external modem. Why external? 'Cause you know the
danged thing isn't a Winmodem.
Unfortunately, there are no cheap externals. So I settled on a $30 56K PCI modem by some
division of Creative Labs, figuring the card, drivers and support were probably just fine
and also figuring it wouldn't be a big deal if the store wouldn't let me take it back if it
had the same problems as my current modem. It works like a charm. In fact, it's the first
time I've ever gotten a 56K modem to connect at more than 28.8 (it tends to get either 48K
or 49.3K). I'm happy with the ISP too; so far I've had no problems connecting at any time
of day and have only disco'd once.
Now that I can get online at home I've been actually taking my days off as days off --
sitting around the house, being lazy, reading, etc. As
Lord
Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing."
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Sugary goodness
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| 08-13-99 |
I just want to point out that
"belligerent"
has no A's in it, and the only good marshmallow
is a crispy flaming marshmallow. Okay, I'll concede that the ones in Rice Krispie treats or
hot cocoa are okay. But Valomilks still suck.
I found a cool web toy last night at http://www.dotcom-studio.com. I might even use it in a
track if I ever get back to doing any electronic music... but it's a fun little toy anyway.
:)
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come closer to bowl
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| 08-12-99 |
Great vacation. I'm a new man.
If you're wondering about the headline, the place we stayed had these very interesting
signs that read in korean and english, "come closer to bowl." out of context these might
have had a kind of elusive Zen significance... But their context was above the mens'
toilets. That's a lesson in itself.
Support your local, or not so local, Middle Eastern restaurant. There's a place in Chicago
called Habebe that absolutely rocks. It's all about the shawerma. We at Simutronics have
got to make a concerted effort to find good-but-cheap restaurants in the St. Louis area.
After a week in Chicago it all seems pretty bland. Then again, some of that stuff was a
little too exciting... We found a Vietnamese barbecue place that had deep-fried chicken
feet and barbecue pork intestines. We passed.
Mystery Men is a riot. It's absurd and satirical and intelligent and goofy as hell, all at
the same time. I can't wait for the action figures. ;)
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regulars:
moo
third
chat
kimbered
logic
shades
on a whim:
orisinal
bilbanan
smurf
bang
lobster
yugop
skin
wood
rhythm
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