Odds and Ends

There are 66 posts filed in Odds and Ends (this is page 7 of 7).

Friday Grab Bag

Jeremy and Jennifer and Harrison and Emma came over last night to test a candidate dish for Friend Thanksgiving. (The test was very successful, by the way: Caprial’s fantastic smoked salmon chowder.) At the end of the evening, Harrison (nearly four) and Emma (just two), in pajamas, chased each other around and around and around the kitchen, laughing and cackling, bursting with childish vigor. Jenn says she can’t remember being that rambunctious as a child. I can.

Jeff and Tony and I used to play the same games: chasing each other and squealing and loving every minute of it — we had no cares in the world. Now our adult version of this game is sitting around Custom Box, telling stories and insulting each other.

It’s been a few weeks since I shared interesting links. You didn’t have anything else to do today anyhow, right? (As usual, many of these links were found at the in-decline-but-still-fun Metafilter.)

Mac and Pam are hosting game night tomorrow. We’re supposed to arrive in costume, but I haven’t any ideas. We’re already doing costumes for next month’s Harry Potter premier. I’m not fond of costumes in the first place, so trying to find two suitable disguises in one month is testing the limits of my resourcefulness!

Comments


On 26 October 2002 (08:29 AM),
Jeremy Gingerich said:

Hey, I think you should go as a soccer goalie. This requires no funny costume making and you already have all fo the stuff. I hope your not offended by my bad email address and website.

-jeremy

Cheese

I like cheese.

I’ve liked nearly every cheese I’ve ever tasted.

My current favorite cheese is feta (also here).

At the moment I’m eating fresh-grated parmesan.

I like cheese.

Some cheesy links:

  • cheese.com: “the number one resource for cheese!”
  • ilovecheese.com: “ahh, the power of cheese” — this is the official cheese site for the American Dairy Association (how long til they muscle in on cheese.com?)
  • CheeseNet: “the Internet’s cheese information resource since 1995”
  • The American Cheese Society: so good they don’t even need a catchy slogan!

Have a cheesy day!

Comments


On 14 May 2002 (09:33 AM),
Amy Jo said:

Have you tried Rambol? My cheese of choice.



On 08 May 2003 (02:54 PM),
J.D. said:

It’s a year later, and I still love cheese, and I still have not tried Rambol, Amy Jo’s cheese of choice. I’ll have to make that a goal for the coming year…

Non-Competitive Competition

When Nick was young he attended Drift Creek Camp for one week every summer. Each evening all of the children came together to play some large group game such as Capture-the-Flag. It was the highlight of the day. One year there was a new camp pastor who didn’t believe in competition. Instead of Capture-the-Flag he had the kids play co-operative games. For example, one evening the group took hold of the edges of a giant parachute and each kid got a turn to be in the middle, being tossed in the air by the others. The kids hated it. The new pastor was gone the next year and Capture-the-Flag was back.

I’ve begun to do research on games that Kris might enjoy. It’s difficult, though. I was under the impression that she enjoyed the games that we were playing. This isn’t the case; she wants games that are less competitive, where there’s less “screw your neighbor” type activity.

The greatest difficulty is that the games that I find most enjoyable feature a high level of player interaction. Without player interaction, a game is generally sheer luck. Admittedly this is not always the case. For example, Boggle has very little player interaction yet is based entirely on skill. Boggle might be a good option.

Dane suggested Baron Munchausen and Once Upon a Time, both story-telling games. These sound fun, actually, but I’m not sure how a group would like them, and I’m not sure how Mac and Pam would like them. (Mac and Pam are our primary game-playing partners, so it’s important to find games they’d like, too.)

I need to find games that feature either strong elements of player interaction or strong elements of skill, but not both. Most of the games I own feature both, and these are the games that are causing Kris such frustration. Luck and interaction, or skill and no interaction. Or something completely different. These are my choices.

Jeff and I had a good shouting match this morning. We started at the top of our lungs, swearing, each accusing the other of gross negligence in performing his duties here at Custom Box Service. By the end of the discussion we were talking calmly, trying to determine what we could do to make the other person happy. We’ve both been trying to be more diligent since February but feel the other is still slacking. Obviously we’re not paying attention to each other, giving proper credit for changed behavior. Now we’re going to each try to be more diligent and to be aware what the other person is doing.

The joys of a small family business…

Rugby and Stephen King

Fox Sports World keeps showing the same rugby match over and over again. For the past week, I’ve been trying to tune in to watch some more rugby. I want to learn more about the sport. I want to try to determine when a ruck occurs and when a scrum occurs. I want to determine why and where a team has to be on-sides. The sport is fascinating its foreign-ness: similar to football and soccer, but sufficiently different to be something completely original. It’s not gratuitously brutal like football, and seems to have some depth to it.

But whenever I fire up the digital cable box and jump to channel 107, the only rugby game I can find is the NLC match between Canterbury and Otago that must have been played weeks ago. I always seem to find the game at about the eighteen minute mark, about the time that one of the Canterbury players becomes enraged at an Otago player and lays into him with his fists, pummeling him to the ground. The score is tied 3-3, but I know that by half-time Otago will hold a 16-6 lead, despite being the underdogs.

“Don’t get too cocky!” I want to shout. “Stay sharp!”

I know that the second half is a long and painful one for the men in the blue shirts. Canterbury comes out and dominates, moving the ball at will. I don’t recall the final score, but I think that Otago gets only another try, but Canterbury gets nearly 30 points in the final half.

“Watch your backs!”

I really want to see another game, though, not Canterbury vs. Otago again.

As I read Stephen King, I am again struck by how effortless he makes it seem.

King doesn’t write well, in a technical sense, but he doesn’t write poorly, either. His writing is serviceable, and in fact lives to service the story. It’s his story-telling that enchants the reader, dulls the outside world.

I’ve heard that a movie is well-directed if the viewer is unaware of the direction. Maybe the same is true with writing. Maybe a book is well-written if you don’t notice how it is written (technically). I’d like for it not to be so — I dearly love the work of Ursula LeGuin, and books like Cold Mountain and As I Lay Dying, books in which the writing is obvious, is part of the story, is a feature that cannot be ignored.

With King, though, you don’t notice the writing. You swallow the story effortlessly. You consume it. You sit down to read a few pages and when you look up, an hour has passed. Where did the time go? How many pages did you read? What’s going on around you? You note that you’ve read seventy pages. Seventy pages in an hour? That’s impossible; you don’t read that quickly! Oh crap — didn’t you put the tea kettle on? Damn! It must be dry by now. (A whistle-less kettle seemed like a good idea at the time, didn’t it?) How could you forget about that? And why is it dark already?

Several times, Kris and I have tried comparing Stephen King to Charles Dickens. Dickens was immensely popular in his day, both in England and in the United States. The masses loved his novels. For the most part, his stories dealt with every day life, every day concerns. They were populated by distinct characters and propelled by compelling stories. King’s work is nearly identical in these regards: popular, based in the every day, with strong characters in strong stories.

Admittedly, the two authors differ in objective and tone, but that’s not necessarily a strike against either one of them. Critics often deride King’s books as lacking merit, as being fluff. I used to join the chorus, denouncing King as a hack churning out one piece of junk after another. I’ve had to change my position after actually reading him, of course. In particular, his recent work has become something greater than what he once produced. His stories acquired greater depth, as if he were consciously attempting to add resonance. Is there symbolism in his work yet? Perhaps not, but not all great work needs symbolism (and some would be better without it).

One hundred years after his death, Dickens is firmly ensconced in the English canon. In fact, he’s generally elevated into the upper echelon of English writers, resting at the feat of Shakespeare. Will King ever attain such heights? I doubt it. But I suspect that one hundred years from now, his place in the canon will be more firmly established than we can possibly imagine: greater than Lovecraft (who, honestly, does not even near the canon), greater than Poe — King will be recognized as the greatest author of supernatural that ever lived.

Sam the Shih Tzu

The ride home on Tuesday the 20th was interesting.

About a mile into the ride, I passed a house and a little Shih Tzu came charging out at me. It was more comic than anything, of course, so I laughed and kept riding. I came to a stop at the highway a half-mile down the road, and what should go charging past me but the same Shih Tzu! Holy cats!

I’m not sure how it avoided being hit, but it did, and I was able to get traffic stopped so that I could retrieve it and carry it back to its owners. I learned that its name is Sam, so I’ll be able to call it by name in the future.

I rode to work yesterday too, but not today. My legs are tired and need a break, so I’m giving it to them. I’m on pace for a 50 mile week, which I consider good.

Actually, I dug back through my copious biking stats and discovered that when I was riding so much in 1998, I was averaging about 50 miles a week, too. So, I’m off to a good start for the year. I wish that I was actually losing weight, too, but I’m not. Maybe I really do need to be tracking calories in order to lose weight, regardless of whether I’m exercising. I’ve never been able to lose weight without calorie tracking. I just eat too much if I don’t.

I’ve also begun remodeling the Custom Box Service web site. There aren’t any actual changes posted yet, but I’ve begun to generate content, which is actually the most time-consuming portion of the task.

I’d like to construct a couple of PHP scripts to facilitate quotation requests and the like, but I lack the required PHP skills. I can modify scripts, but not create them from scratch. I may have the company buy me a book so that I can teach myself to do this, but it’s a low priority. Right now I need to get the web site up and operational.

I continue to be frustrated by my Computer Resources partners, but in a sort of turnabout, I think I’m beginning to frustrate them, too.

First Post

We’ll call this the first official post to my weblog. I’m using blogger to automate the process of updating this log; without it, content would become stale after this first post. There’s no guarantee that I’ll upate with any regularity, but I’ll do my best. Many people see weblogs and webjournals as narcissistic drivel. I view them as a cathartic and creative outlet for the creators, a way to keep in touch with friends and to make new ones. I don’t pretend that I’ll ever acquire regular readers, but I have an urge to write. This weblog will provide an outlet for that urge.

This afternoon was an odd mixture of tumult and silence.

Work at Custom Box Service was slow: the phones just stopped ringing, as did the fax. Jeff sent the crew home at noon, which is a nice break for them, I think. They’ve been working hard lately, and had many hour of overtime last pay period. I hope the business picks up again soon. (I’ve talked with several other people whose businesses are slow now, so I’m not too concerned that this is Custom Box specific — it’s likely an industry-wide slowness.)

Meanwhile, the Computer Resources team experienced friction. We’ve decided to throw in the towel on the computer that we’ve been trying to build. We can’t get the components to work together no matter what we try. It’s the most frustrating computer-building experience that I’ve ever had. The parts need to be returned soon, but nobody is willing to do it. Though I value Jeremy and Andrew as friends, having them as business partners is often frustrating.

Kris and I just finished watching Waiting For Guffman. It came highly recommended, and with a good pedigree (from the same people who brought us This is Spinal Tap and last year’s Best In Show.

All three movies require a certain sense of humor; they are droll and self-mocking and because they are played straight they could easily be mistaken for insipid dramas. Of the three, I like Guffman the least. It has some amusing moments but lacked any of the laugh-out-loud humor that was present in the other two movies (from Spinal Tap: the diminutive Stonehenge, the amp that goes to eleven — from Best In Show: “We have so much in common. We both like soup.”, Parker Posey’s frantic search for the stuffed bee).

I’ll spend the rest of the evening cleaning the house and installing software on this rebuilt computer (I’ve added a new motherboard and processor). I’ve been busy lately, and the house is a pig sty. There’s crap everywhere. I accumulate too much stuff, a habit that I’ll likely never cure despite the fact that I recognize it as foolish. I’d love to find somebody that could use all this crap and just donate it to them. I have scores of computer books, magazines, notebooks, and more. Many of these items are scattered over the office floor in semi-organized piles. Others are stacked in the storage shed with no organization whatsoever. For a guy who is so anal-retentive about order in certain facets of his life, I sure have cluttered surroundings.