Chris Schmidt's Journal

but I may have gotten a job. details as they become available.

www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/12/no_injuries_rep_2.html

Hi! Can any one think of a Cambridge/Somerville store that might sell candy thermometers? I've tried a few big supermarkets and they have meat thermometers but those don't go up high enough in temperature.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it!

Thanks!

Edited: Woo hoo! I called Tags and they say they carry them. Thanks for the suggestions all.

Now I can try my hand at these Fleur De Sel Caramels by Barefoot Contessa! :)
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/fleur-de-sel-caramels-recipe/index.html

Hi All,

Looking for a recommendation for a local FTH Buyer class.

Thanks

( Cut for those who don't want to read every little update about his situation )

---

In unrelated news, Amy and I went out to a "Schweinske" restaurant in Harburg today. We arrived just a bit too late to take advantage of their noon meal deals, so I had a "Schweini" meal (the "Schweini" is their version of a hamburger: a slab of "Kasseler" style pork in a bread roll with some special sauce), and Amy had spag bol. Though she mostly ate the fresh bread rolls and less of the spaghetti. Also, she wanted a high chair but she's really growing too big for them: she had a hard time fitting her shoes through it while getting in and out.

CLOSE ON

GEORGE BAILEY is having suntan lotion massaged on him by two women while on his own private beach in the Caribbean. An ANGEL appears.

ANGEL
George, I’ve come to restore your life. Come on.

GEORGE
From before Mr. Potter made me his heir? Said I was the smartest man in town.

ANGEL
No.

GEORGE
From when I almost got hitched to that frumpy girl. (snaps his fingers) The one who secretly wanted to be a librarian?

ANGEL
Um, no. I’m talking about when you almost covered up for that abusive pharmacist, who liked to put rat poison in baby formula.

GEORGE
Oh, yeah. What was I thinking? Course I turned him in. You know he’s a wino now, don’t yuh?


ANGEL
But that action lead to a million others. I’m here to return you to the life that would have been. Sometimes its better that babies die.

GEORGE
How’s that? Talk into my good ear. Lost my hearing when my damn-fool brother took a swim in an iced-over pond. That’s what I get for altruism. And how did he repay me? Tried to stick me with the dead-end family business while he off and married his meal ticket.

ANGEL
But George, instead of your current life as an international architect, you could be in a drafty old house, having dozens of kids because you can’t afford birth control, forced to employ drunken members of your family who eventually will lead to your imprisonment.

GEORGE
I can picture that in my mind.



GEORGE
Ergh, looks grim. I’m going to have to say ‘no’ to that.

ANGEL
But if you don’t, I won’t get my wings!

GEORGE
Go ring a bell for the Salvation Army, will yuh? Or buy a stick of gum: I hear even a cash register chime will do.

ANGEL
But, George, the blinking-light voices in the sky have decreed that you’ll have to take one for the team. For the whole of your life.

GEORGE
Now, I’ve heard of this mumbo jumbo. It’s voodoo hypnotism, I tell you. Ayn Rand put me straight on this. So get outa here.

And so, George goes on to invent building materials that save millions from extreme heat and bitter cold, lives on his own island where he grows replacement bodies in his own free-range clone farm. Mr. Potter—Dad—visits him regularly whenever he can get discount airfare for the handicapped. Yes, George Bailey, you had a wonderful life.

Happy Solstice, everyone!

I'm glad that the days here in the northern hemisphere will start getting longer again, now.

(Future-dated to the minute of the solstice since I'd probably forget to post this evening. Edit: Back-dated since I actually forgot it and posted it the next day, thinking it was that day!)

Als wir bei Ireens und Emilys Geburtstag waren, hat Ireen einen Witz erzählt, den ich so genial fand, dass ich ihn hier aufschreiben wollte.

Was lebt am Strand und spricht undeutlich?

( Ein Seestern mit Sprachfehler? Ein Krebs mit Essen im Mund? )

Herrlich!

Marek's in the ICU now, so Stella called to say that she'll be coming home and staying till tomorrow—since she can't sleep in the same room with him now anyway, she sees little point to spending the night in the hospital. So the nurses will have to feed him and let him inhale during the night.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091221.html

In the center of star-forming region

My boys in their hats
Originally uploaded by coffeechica

The Cubs hat is from Amie. Lap blanket from my Grandma. Cat is opportunistic.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

I noticed in Modern Brewer a new sign has been put up behind the register. It lists a number for the main (NY) store, and says if you ever have a problem with one of the staff members, to call it. If the owner is not available, it lists another number for the Western MA store. It goes on to say that rude or disrespectful behavior by staff is unacceptable, so I wonder if they read messages here about the problems other have had.

I have to say that I've only had good experiences there, occasionally I get a sense of "I know what's right, but if you MUST buy that malt instead of the other I guess so", but that's something you get from any hobby store. Just stick with "I really would like to use this", and they'll move on pretty quick. Of course, I also happen to have a penis, so YMMV.

Marek's in hospital right now, probably with pneumonia.

A week or so ago, he got "vaccinated" (is that that the word? They didn't give him dead or disabled germs but instead antibodies) against pneumonia, since preemies are apparently at risk for that (and the shot cost on the order of €1000, apparently; thank goodness insurance paid for it).

On Saturday, he was drinking very little, only about half of what he "should" be, so Stella took him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with bronchitis and discharged hom again, with orders to report back the following day.

So Stella took him back on Sunday (missing Ireen's and Emily's birthday party... probably just as well, since with the snow on the roads, coming back took me an hour and a half and I was glad I just had a sleeping Amy in my car and not a possibly-cranky baby as well), but he seemed to be doing better so he came home again that day.

Then today at physical therapy, he had problems breathing and Stella took him to the paediatrician (where they snuck him in between appointments); then he got taken to hospital in an ambulance.

Stella was only home for a couple of hours this afternoon, and she'll be spending the night there.

If it does end up pneumonia, he'll probably stay in hospital for a week or so, and Stella will probably spend most of that time there with him; the nurses asked her to do so because they're too short on staff to take care of him properly (attend to him when he cries, that sort of thing; I don't think they'd let him die), returning home only for a couple of hours a day. She did say she'd spend the night of the 24th/25th at home, though.

So, we'll see. The antibodies (or globulins or whatever it actually was) will hopefully make his case of pneumonia an easier one, if that is what he has.

Poor chap.

And especially because he's been in hospital so often that they have a hard time getting a blood vessel for an infusion or a blood draw or whatever; much of the likely surface area (hands, head) is already covered in scars.

Okay, I know everyone hates travel questions, but I'm in a pinch and MBTA isn't really helping me. I'm trying to get from Hinghham (south shore) to Lowell (north shore). I can take the commuter rail from West Hingham into south station, take the t (red line to orange?) to north station, and take the commuter rail from there to Lowell. My question is, is there any other way to do it? Any alternative routes that I'm missing? Also, once in Lowell, I have to rely on a bus to get me to the exact street I'm going to (http://www.lrta.com/LRTA%20Bus%20Sched%2010410Final.pdf schedule here) which apparently stops running at 7pm. Basically I'll be leaving my house at 10, arriving at my destination at quarter of four, and leaving by 7 to do the whole trip home again. This costs roughly 35 for the day and is really stressing me out... I don't have access to a car, but any other options are really appreciated!!!

(PS: I'm doing this to visit a close friend who just got out of the hospital, so it's something that's really important to me, I just want to see if there's a way I can spend more time actually with her than traveling/stressing).

I wanted to see what my satnav would do with the Swindon Magic Roundabout, so I entered two cross-roads on either side and told it to calculate a route between the two.

Unfortunately, it treated the Magic Roundabout as a normal one and told me go clockwise 4/5 of the way around it rather than going 1/5 of the way anti-clockwise around the inner (big) roundabout. It also didn't display the mini-roundabouts on its map.

Google Maps did a bit better, though the directions were a tad confusing; the mini-roundabout it told you to leave it it simply listed as "Go through 1 roundabout".

On the other hand, it did know that the road around the roundabout was called "The Magic Roundabout" and could route you to that, or tell you that you were driving on The Magic Roundabout.

To help relieve my seemingly perpetual state of poverty, I'm selling a selection of books from my collection. Most of them have been sitting around my house for ages... It is time for them to go and I am selling them cheap.

If you like to read, please have a look! I'm a student currently working an unpaid internship, so I really need some extra cash. You know the story.

( Book list and details cut for courtesy. )

Plenty of books left. Check it out. :)

While Boston didn't get it as bad as the rest of the East Coast, nine inches of snow fell on us from late Saturday night into early Sunday afternoon. This wouldn't have been enough to dissuade us from jiu-jitsu (grr! we're tough!), but since Watertown declared a snow emergency, we couldn't have parked on the street our dojo sits on (we obey the law!).

That sounds like a mis-translated Shaw Brothers movie, actually: Tough Guys Who Obey All Laws. Starring Gordon Liu and Sun Chien; directed by Chang Cheh.

So I stayed inside all day Sunday and watched movies. Including and limited to:

Get Carter: Brutal and compelling, of a style that found frequent imitators through the 70s and 80s but retained little of the source's art. A young Michael Caine (whom Matt W. told me I resembled once, back when my hair was curlier and my sideburns longer, plus I was carrying a shotgun and slapping around the proprietor of a Newcastle B&B; only now do I get it) plays Jack Carter, a London mob enforcer who goes north to investigate his brother's death. He sinks waist-deep into a genuine mystery, popping pills and assembling clues until he uncovers the predictable, yet still galling, truth.

What puts Get Carter a head and shoulders above its imitators (including Tarantino) is its art. The cinematography is excellent: from the opening shot of Carter, backlit in an apartment window and staring over London with a drink in his hand, to the crane shot that follows him as he flees pursuers on foot and jumps into a waiting car, to the film's tense climax. Midway through the film, a local youth group parades down a main street in full mufti. They play some stirring march in a kazoo chorus. The cookie-cutter rowhomes of the street they march on frame a massive factory and burbling smoke stacks at the bottom of a hill. ThinK Pittsburgh without the charm: it's a beautiful juxtaposition.

Jack Carter is a psychopath. He lets the people who help him get beat up, robbed or even killed without much in the way of tears. He holds nothing sacred except family. And even that, we feel, is not out of some duty to the hearth but as a way of redeeming his past. "Frank wasn't like that," he yells at one point, shaking his listener by the shoulder. "I'm the villain in the family, remember?" Carter wants proof that the sadism he engages in is a choice, not in his blood. The fear that his family - his brother Frank and Frank's daughter Doreen - might have fallen as far terrifies him. And like a terrified dog, he bites and never lets go.



Strangers on a Train: One of Hitchcock's sharpest. Two men meet on a train ride from New York to D.C.: a handsome young tennis player, Guy Haines, and a rich, idle bachelor, Bruno Anthony. The two get to talking - Haines reluctantly - until it comes out that Guy wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, while Bruno chafes under his father's thumb. Bruno suggests that two people who'd met by accident - like he and Guy - could swap murders and solve each other's problems. Guy patronizingly agrees in order to get away from Bruno. But when he arrives in D.C. a day later, he discovers that his wife has been murdered ...

All the usual elements are here: a man falsely accused. A woman uncovering a mystery. A maniac with a twisted relationship with his mother. Odd psychological contrivances. Races against the clock. Climactic battles in odd locales.

Example: In the film's climax, Guy must win a tennis match as quickly as possible in order to hop a train to Connecticut. While avoiding the police who are tailing him. So he can catch Bruno planting evidence. But at the same time, through Hitchcock's genius we find ourselves rooting for Bruno as well. We hope that nobody spots him, or that he doesn't lose the crucial piece of evidence - because that would deflate Hitchcock's meticulous ending into an anti-climax. Compare this to J.J. Abrams, whose idea of cranking up tension involves making everyone run (q.v. Star Trek, Mission Impossible 3).

Robert Walker as mama's boy Bruno Anthony is the real gem here. He wavers between harmless eccentricity and casual brutality in a way that Anthony Perkins - to say nothing of Anthony Hopkins - must have mirrored. We find him fascinating in the way that a snake fascinates a rat. Sadly, Strangers on a Train was his last film. In August 1951, he suffered an acute allergic reaction to a dose of sodium amytal, administed by his psychiatrist for nerves. He died (like Brittany Murphy, who just passed this Sunday) at age 32.



Original post

Can somebody clue me in about some weird Massachusetts stop lights?

We saw one that was a green light... with a flashing red on top. WTF is that?

I've heard of something similar, like a yellow light with a flashing red on top.

Any idea?

I have a completely ignorant question. I have a document that I need notarized by end of business tomorrow. How do I find a notary public? I have no idea where to even start, beyond a google search, which I did do. I'm worried that a lot of businesses that often have one 'on call' may not because it is a holiday week.

Thoughts? I'm in Davis all day today and nearby tomorrow as well.

ETA: thanks to all for the info!

We wake up on Saturdays in time to hear the second half of Saturday Live, which always includes the inheritance tracks slot. The premise is simple - pick one track you've inherited from your parents and one to pass on to your children, taking the prompts any way you like, and then talk about them while the track is playing. Simple enough that we often end up discussing what our picks might be afterwards and therefore surely simple enough to turn into an internet meme, yes/no?

The track I inherited from my parents is Tweeter and the Monkey Man by the Travelling Wilburys. It could have been a huge number of things - both my parents are very into music and listened to a huge variety of things. In the end, I chose this track because I also associate it very strongly in my memory with us as a family. It was on a mix tape we had in the car (called Road Songs by me and my brother) which we always wanted to have put on when we were driving home. I particularly associate it with driving home from the round trip to both of our sets of grandparents to exchange presents just before Christmas. For years, we didn't really listen to the verses, just sang the chorus lustily from the back seat, sometimes in our pyjamas if we were driving back late and supposed to be sleeping; in fact I thought it was called "When the walls came down."

It wasn't until years later that I was listening to it and said "I could swear that's Bob Dylan" and Mum or Dad explained to me who the Wilbury's actually were, by which time I was awed to think of these incredible musicians getting together to play in one group. I loved imagining what it would have been like to be a tech at that recording studio, listening to them jam. These days, I love the ballad verses of the song, the pace of it, the weird story. It's very evocative and I almost see it as a comic strip in my mind as each verse plays out. It's a track that reminds me of how much I love music, both to listen to and to make, and that's definitely something I inherited from my parents.


This is the best vid I could find - all the YouTube ones are of a cover. It cuts out before the coda verse but you get the idea.

The track I would pass on to my future imaginary nephews and nieces is Mr E's Beautiful Blues, by Eels. I first got into Eels when Alex gave me a mix tape of tracks progressing alphabetically through the music he'd bought to college with him that term containing Novocaine for the Soul (that was also the tape that got me into Drugstore and Alabama 3). I bought the album, was too ill to go see them when they passed through Oxford, much to my distress, and although I wasn't so into ElectroShock Blues, continued to keep an ear out for them, as it were.

I can't remember now where I first heard MEBB - it probably wasn't on the radio which means oxfordslacker or coalescent probably played it to me when it came out, but I immediately fell in love with it. It's just one of those tunes that you can't help grinning when you listen to - there's something about it that just picks you out of whatever state of mind you're in and pushes you into a kind of laid back, alert happiness, too cool and worldly wise to be perky but coming from the same sort of place. It's partly the bounce of the tune, which should be cheesy but somehow isn't, and partly the content and tone of the lyrics. "Goddamn right, it's a beautiful day." I can't sing that without feeling like actually yeah, it is. Corny, I know, but there it is, and that's something I definitely want to pass on. Not just that feeling, although that's pretty important, but the knowledge that music can be transformative. That when you're feeling tired and grumpy, you can put on your bouncy playlist and within five minutes you'll be belting things out and grinning again. OK, it may not last, depending on what caused the mood in the first place, but just for a while you can get lost and feel good.

Squits and Giggles by NiT GriT

Posted via email from Breyten's posterous

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091220.html

If you went outside at exactly the same time every day and took a

Am overwhelmed with responses to my Red Velvet querie. Thanks so much. Forgive the generic "thanks" to all but I worked this weekend, and working tomorrow nite, and not sure I have time to repsond individually, but wanted to say thanks non the less.

They all sound so delicious, I can't wait to try them! And, I'll let you know which one I picked!

*throws flour and cocoa about the room*

I haven't seen anyone mention it, but the Air Force Academy and/or its critics has just circulated a report that that the religious freedom situation at the Academy is much improved. IIRC, one cause of the improvement was the replacement of its commander, who was promoting Christian evangelism in the Academy's activities. One interesting element that was mentioned explicitly by the new commander was support of a neo-pagan group, though without using the P-word (probably deliberately): 'The academy superintendent, Lieutenant General Michael Gould, says the improvements are the result of a top-down campaign to foster respect and a commitment to accommodate all cadets, even nonbelievers and an “Earth-centered’’ religious group that needed a place for a stone circle so it could worship outdoors.'

A machine I used to use to host some web services, bots, and repositories became no longer accessible from the Internet, as a result of which I've had to move what I was serving from it; some to switchb.org, some to personal machines.

I took the opportunity to clean things up a bit, as a result of which I now have better backups, more polished services, and know a little bit more about configuring Apache — though not as much as I perhaps should.

• My Subversion repositories are now served over HTTP, and therefore browsable; and they are now backed up daily (using svnsync triggered by a cron job) to my laptop, and thence to all its backups.

  (I wasted several minutes on remembering that cron will ignore the last line of a crontab file if it doesn't end with a newline; after listening to me grumbling about this, someone made a suggestion to end the file with a comment, so that the last line is harmless whether ignored or not, and also reminds one of the issue.)

  If you have a working copy of one of my repositories (E-on-CL, E-on-JavaScript, MudWalker, Den, etc.), here's a guide to the changed URLs.

• My other Tahoe-LAFS volunteer grid storage node is now residing on a machine on my home LAN.

• Finally, some simple data-querying web services I wrote for Waterpoint's word games have now been moved to switchb.org; I also took the time to prettify their URLs (no cgi-bin or .cgi) and write documentation.

I haven't yet gotten to working on the bots, darcs repositories, or miscellaneous other stuff I had there.

(Pondering moving my blog over to switchb.org as well so as to not have ads, especially now that I found I can still have LJ-friends by way of OpenID. (Hm, but reading friends-locked posts over RSS might not work since there's no username+password for LJ to accept. Anyone have experience with that situation?))

Apache configuration questions:

1. If I have multiple variants of a document (e.g. foo.html foo.pdf foo.txt) handled by MultiViews, so the canonical URL of the document is extensionless (“foo”), how do I properly control the default variant to serve in the event that the client does not express a preference via the Accept header? (Without doing so, I found that it would serve the .txt version, whereas I would prefer the HTML.) All that I found that worked was to create a type map file named “foo” with quality values, and force it to be interpreted as a type map using <FilesMatch>. This seems kludgy to me.
2. What is the right way to serve CGIs, not in a designated cgi-bin directory, and without any .cgi extension in the URL? I initially tried to apply mod_rewrite, but I couldn't get it to work such that /foo internally contacted foo.cgi whereas /foo.cgi redirected to /foo. I resorted to another <FilesMatch> explicitly listing the name of each CGI and doing SetHandler cgi-script.
3. What is the right way to handle “testing” vs. “deployment” configurations, where the relevant Directory, Location, etc may be different depending on which server or subdirectory the site is set up on? I see that one may use environment variables — should I just set up variables containing the path prefixes for the particular host before including the generic configuration file?

Jay Smooth from illdoctrine explains how to tell people they sound racist. This is great, and applies for lots of -isms other than racism.



(via Queering Domesticity.)

Playing Apples to Apples with Jason's co-workers
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Hi, I found a pretty nice camera while I was out sledding on President's Hill at Tufts and would like to return it to the owner!

- Casio Exilim with a 4 gig SDHC SanDisk card

- was found at the bottom of the hill, in the snow, had been there a while

- pictures of kids sledding earlier that day, a church/choir event with a banner in Portuguese, and what looked like a Christmas event at Medford High School

Please send this around to anyone you know.


( Do you know any of these ladies? )

Fiona's Radio Show starts in about twenty minutes: Snow storm, Christmas cookies, tree, sisters http://ad.vu/qcca

The City of Somerville has lifted its snow emergency as of 4 p.m.,Sunday, December 20, 2009. Residents parked in municipal or school lots during the snow emergency have a two-hour window starting at that time in which to move their vehicles. Cars still parked in city lots at 6 p.m. on Sunday evening may be subject to ticketing and towing. Residents, landlords and business owners are required by city regulations to shovel their sidewalks but may not shovel snow into the street. For more information, please dial 311 (627-666-3311 from outside Somerville) or visit the city’s website, www.somervillema.gov

Next to Guru, in the space formerly occupied by Marinos Pizza (for what was it, all of 3 months?).

( photos )

Due to a mix up at Zazzle.com, I ended up with about 30 calendars (for 2010) for some dog-related business out of state. Zazzle sent out my real order, and told me to keep the calendars and I'd like to find an organization, elderly housing or something that might want them. They're not bad, but I don't need 30 calendars of dogs I don't know. I'd like to not drop off 30 individually. Any ideas?

Send heat.  Or at the very least, a Wookie to snuggle.

I've been casually looking for them while out shopping the past few weeks, but to no avail. Even Hidden Sweets doesn't have them.

I'm new to Somerville this year, and wanted to use this storm as an opportunity to see exactly how snow procedures work here. Ten minutes before Tom Champion called, I had moved my car into a municipal lot. Then I sat back to see if we really could park on the streets, so long as it was on the odd side. (I'd prefer my car be within sight of my building, rather than two blocks away.)

5pm came around, and no one else on the street moved their vehicles. 9pm came around. A couple cop cars drove past, and a fleet of tow trucks a bit later, but none stopped. I woke up this morning to find every car still parked on the even side of the street (Linden, off of Somerville Ave- right across from the police station!) No tickets, no towing. The plows had just cleared the odd side instead.

So now I'm feeling a little gullible, having been the only person on the street to move. What if I had parked on the odd side like the city said- would I have been ticketed for blocking the plows because everyone else stayed where they were?

Murphy's Law #3339084:  The day of the first snow that sticks, your furnace will die.  Also, it will be on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, so that none of the service technicians in the area will answer their telephones! :D

If it weren't so funny, it'd be tragic.  The boys and I are wrapped up in layers of clothing and I am baking to make the house smell and seem warmer.  Gingerbread, anyone?

Which stores around here sell powdered chlorine bleach? Tired of lugging around bottles to do a wash. I've seen little single-wash boxes in vending machines at the cleaner's, but doesn't anyone sell a two-pound box of this? This isn't the same as color-safe bleach, which is fine, but once in a while I like to wash with actual chlorine.

At the time of the season's first snowstorm last December, the City of Somerville announced that street cleaning was to be suspended for the remainder of the year.  As far as I know, they haven't made such an announcement this time.  Obviously street cleaning will be impossible once the emergency is lifted (at least for several days), but could they still be ticketing for illegal parking per the street cleaning schedule?

You'd think that common sense would prevail here, but having recently been ticketed for parking near a fire hydrant that had been labelled "out of service" for weeks, I know that isn't always the case with the city.

Originally published at Lost Entropy. Please leave any comments there.

Going to Soulwaxmas last weekend made me want to record another podcast session. Music this time around from Faithless, Sidney Samson, Delphic, Florence, Dizzee, Zombie Nation, Felix Da Housecat and more. Get stuck in!

If you love the Unadopted Podcast, please add Unadopted on Facebook and tell your friends about the podcast!

Want to send music in to the Unadopted Podcast? Now you can! Visit the Unadopted Soundcloud and send your music in (it’s dead easy). If I like it, I’ll try and get it into one of the sessions!

1. Hostage – I Get High
2. Calvin Harris – Ready For The Weekend (Fake Blood Remix)
3. Faithless – Insomnia (The Hump Day Project Remix)
4. Sidney Samson – Riverside (Extended Mix)
5. Bingo Players – Get Up (Diplo Remix)
6. Delphic – Doubt (Doc Daneekas VIP Remix)
7. Evil Nine – They Live (Rogerseventytwo Remix)
8. Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden – Bonkers (Soulwax Re-Edit)
9. Zombie Nation – Kernkraft 400 (DJ Gius Remix)
10. Shinichi Osawa – Rendezvous (Crookers Remix)
11. Felix Da Housecat – Like Something 4 Porno (Armand Van Helden Remix)
12. Florence And The Machine – You Got The Love (The XX Remix)

Listen now over at http://unadopted.co.uk/podcast/. If you haven’t already set it up, click the “Subscribe” link on the right-hand-side when you get there to get the podcast automatically delivered right into your iTunes or RSS reader whenever I release a new session!

Aw, I'm kinda jealous of DC... if this is how they react to having >12" of snow, I almost wish we got it less often up here! Where's the friendly snow spirit, Boston? Except for the psycho cop who started waving his gun. They can keep that dick, we got enough of those.

 flat-felling seams in the kirtle of many gores.
that's lots of long seams. oh my.

but, i just got another one done, and that's a good stopping point for tonight, and just what I needed to wind down a bit before bed.

*yawn*.

I think I will be happy with this one when it's done.

Whee.

and, splat.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091219.html

Aurora Shimmer, Meteor Flash

In case you thought they might not be serious about the Snow Emergency (see related posts), I just drove by a line of tow trucks parked or working on Sherman St. About six of them, I'd guess. The locals were standing on their porches laughing.

Make sure you're not parked in a Snow Emergency lane. That is all.

Cambridge, MA is so weird. They constantly send a guy in a little truck with a big loudspeaker around to tell us things. Right now, the truck is going around and around letting us know that the mayor has declared a snow emergency and we need to move our cars out of the snow emergency lanes. I mean, it's nice, it's really nice that they warn us. They also go around on every single street cleaning day throughout the spring and summer to give us reminders about which side of the street is safe to park on. It's great that they remind us, and it has saved our butts on more than one occasion, it's just so weird to live somewhere where loudspeakers are always going by. It's so Orwellian, so 1950's.  We used to live in Somerville, MA and our car was towed all the time there. No one was out there coddling us in Somerville. Anyway, it's funny because we don't have a drop of snow here, yet. Supposedly we might get some around midnight. Some forecasts say less than 6 inches and others say more than 18 inches. :) I'm not worried, we've got hot chocolate and apple pie in the house, and lot of good books from the library.

I went to see Avatar tonight. It was incredible, I loved it. discojesus  and oakenguy  tell me that I was sitting right next to Henry Louis Gates. I didn't recognize him, but if that was him, he was a very funny guy. A huge charmer. It was his first 3D movie, he said, and he was completely excited about it.

Hello all. Faithful lurker but seldom poster here....so be kind.

Just wondering if any of you happen to have/recommend a recipe for Red Velvet Cake. My daughter and I are thinking of making it for Christmas, but as I've never made it before, I have no idea where to begin; don't know what it tastes like, or what it's supposed to taste like. It's just RED. (my fav color) :D Which we thought would be cool for Christmas.

Yes, I can google REDVELVETCAKE, but thought I'd ask for something from a live person for a change. Well, as alive as you can be on the other end of this machine, especially after a weekend Blizzard (in which I have YET to see snow falling...).

Anyhow, I want cake. :D Got any good recs?? Much appreciated.

THIS IS FOR COWBOY GENE.

BOMBS, PEOPLE. THE GOV'MENT IS TALKING ABOUT THE STORM BOMBING ACK. I DO NOT KNOW WHERE OR WHAT ACK IS, BUT I FEEL SORRY FOR THEM.



SNOW RAMPS UP THIS EVENING...WITH THE WORST OF THIS STORM LIKELY
OCCURRING IN A 6-8 HOUR WINDOW OVERNIGHT AND EARLY SUN AS STORM
BOMBS OUT SOUTH OF ACK. HOWEVER...WE MAY HAVE SOME BL ISSUES FROM
ACK-CQX WHERE THERE MAY BE SOME RAIN/SNOW MIX FOR A TIME THIS
EVENING. WET BULB TEMPS AND SOUNDINGS SHOW POTENTIAL FOR RA/SNOW
MIX THROUGH 06Z BUT ONCE STRONG OMEGA MOVES IN EXPECT ANY MIXED
PRECIP TO BECOME ALL SNOW AFTER MIDNIGHT. THIS MAY CUT DOWN ON SNOW
ACCUM IN THIS REGION.


ALSO:

High: Heavy snow predicted. Harvey Leonard breaks into huge grin, can't keep his hands off the weather map. Proceed at speed limit before snow starts to nearest supermarket to pick up two gallons of milk, a couple dozen eggs and two loaves of bread - per person in household.

GO NOW.

My dad recently came into posession of some old 78s of my grandfather singing. He'd like to have them transferred to a digital medium for posterity (and to make it easier for grandma to listen to).

He's tried doing it himself, without too much success. Does anyone know of any sort of resource that would be able to get the audio off of the old records, and clean it up so it's comprehensible?

Thanks, guys!