Radio Songs

Calgary-natives Tegan and Sara's "Speak Slow," from their 2004 album "So Jealous," on the Vapor and Sanctuary labels. Video.

Brooklyn-based Plushgun's "Maybe Tomorrow," a single on the Tommy Boy Entertainment label. I think. Audio.

Wedding Reception Notes

A place to collect ideas/thoughts:

• Backyard ala the movie Chocolat?
• Brainteasers to break the ice?
• Food from Sacramento Co-Op?
• Casual elegance
• Formal cute
• Connection via guests
• Aesthetics important
• Magpie Caterers: $2,000 minimum; tends to favor larger groups
• A Healthy Kitchen (http://www.ahealthykitchensac.com/)

Cherry Blossom Festival

Dawn and I visited the 2009 San Francisco Cherry Blossom Festival on Apr 18.

Notes:

• Mochi balls
• Sake
• Belly Good Cafe & Crepes: Dawn got a strawberry/kiwi yogurt; I got a lychee nut yogurt crepe.
  
• Lumpia
• Gyoza potstickers
• Purification ceremony (rice pounding)
  
• Parasol for Dawn and Lanna
• Taiko drumming (video)
  
• Tea ceremony
• Manga exhibit
• Okinawan soba
• Long bathroom waits
• Cosplay
• Nikkei
• Ghibli Museum
  
• Nemu nemu web comic
  
• Okonomiyaki: beey and egg, squid
• Cha soba (green tea flavor, cold) with a dipping sauce
• Swensen's ice cream: not sure we stopped here, but recommended?

Color

• On the way back, we boarded a bus, only to find the bus driver had caught the front of the bus under the bus stop shelter. o_O We left the bus and walked to where we needed to go.
• Free sake! Completely unexpected. Right after the purification ceremony, they broke the casks of sake, then began handing out cups of clear liquid to the guests in attendance. Water? One sniff told me otherwise. They continued to provide free sake to the crowds throughout the afternoon, until supplies were exhausted. We stopped back several times. Donations were solicited, so we contributed.
• Food! Too much to eat everything, but we tried a lot of it throughout the day.
• We plan to go back for the Asian Art Museum's Samurai exhibit.
  

Two thumbs, way up!

Regex Cookbook

Drool...

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001274.html

Plastic Bag

Walking home some day last week, my attention was caught by the sight of a plastic bag above Watt Avenue. It was very high up, maybe 100 feet. As I walked south toward Auburn Boulevard, the bag slowly, gently, made its descent. It seemed to follow me as I walked along; it must have been several minutes. In front of me, a bus was parked as a driver took their break. The bag floated down and touched the driver's side window, resting finally on the asphalt. An amazing (and somewhat sad, given the amount of litter on the roadways) coincidence.

Sort of like this (except in reverse): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUzBMDWxFp8

My New Diet/Exercise Hero

He learned from LL Cool J!

http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/?p=420

There, I Fixed It

Something to fall into:

http://thereifixedit.com/

o_O

Say ACK to PortBunny

Brilliant. :)

http://www.recurity.de/portbunny/portbunny.shtml

Somewhere Out There

In 1987, I watched Natalie Cole and James Ingram sing An American Tale's "Somewhere Out There" live at the Academy Awards. Top Gun's "Take My Breath Away" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song that year, but (in my opinion) this song still wins out.

Links

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somewhere_Out_There_(An_American_Tail_song)
  
  
• http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/somewhere/video/x26nwn_linda-ronstadt-james-ingram-somewhe_music (music video featuring Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram)
  
  
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRjb8sMjYu8 (movie version featuring Phillip Glasser and Betsy Cathcart)
  
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_My_Breath_Away

Also, Linda Ronstadt's and Aaron Neville's Don't Know Much (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1wt4e_linda-ronstadt-dont-know-much_music?from=rss&hmz=706c61796572)

Zucchini Herb Casserole

Tonight's dish, Zucchini Herb Casserole:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Zucchini-Herb-Casserole/Detail.aspx

A co-worker gave me a 1.4 kg zucchini (big!). What do you do with zucchini? Apparently a whole lot. I also want to make Zucchini Patties (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Zucchini-Patties/Detail.aspx).

Notes

• Doubled the batch
  
  
• My Perfect Vegetables book recommended grating, then squeezing the liquid out of the zucchini to make it more suitable for baking. This helped a lot.
  
  
• I bought a string of tomatoes on the vine for tonight's dinner, but came up just short of three cups.
  
  
• Per a comment, I tripled the amount of herbs (except for the garlic salt) and added in a few extra garlic cloves. Before I realized the commenter referred to the garlic salt, I had measured out 7.5 teaspoons of garlic salt. I had also dumped about 1 teaspoon of basil on top of the garlic salt before I realized what the commenter meant. I attempted vainly to scoop out the basil, and ended up tossing all of it. Lesson learned.
  
  
• Cooked the double batch for close to 30 minutes in a three-quart casserole dish.
  
  
• Had some leftover spinach, so added about 1.5 cups of that into the mix. Turned out great.
  
  
• Took me about two hours from start to finish.
  
  
• I thought I had paprika but could not find it. :P So I went ahead without it.
  

Tastes great!

Zucchini joke: https://zone.artizans.com/images/previews/GMACH538.300.jpg

Banana Bread

Yesterday evening, with midsummer sun setting, we made banana bread.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Banana-Bread-IV/Detail.aspx

Results

• Dawn likes it :)
  

Rhubarb

Last Sunday Dawn and I made three things:

Rhubarb Pie
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fresh-Rhubarb-Pie/Detail.aspx

Apple-Rhubarb Pie
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Apple-Pie-by-Grandma-Ople/Detail.aspx
Note: extra rhubarb used up in this pie

Homemade Pie Crust
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pie-Crust-IV/Detail.aspx

Results

• Fantastic pies, after they had cooled. We helped ourselves to a slice of each fresh from the oven and felt disappointment at the thin crust and juicy insides. After a day or so, everything came together nicely.
  
  
• I borrowed a tart pan from our neighbor as I did not have a second pie pan. The crusts on both were thin, but this was probably due to the size of pie pans used.
  
  
• This was the first homemade pie crust I made myself. Not sure about calories, but I am hoping it is less than the 1600 calorie pre-made monstrosities at the grocery store. Probably wishful thinking!
  
  
• Total time from start to placing the pies in the oven was about two hours, including a trip to the store for rhubarb (I think).
  
  
• So far, in a household of two people, the pies have lasted at least one week. Down to half-a-pie.
  

CloneZilla LiveCD + Samba + Windows XP = Disk Image Happiness

Situation: I want to clone a laptop hard drive (30GB of 40GB used) to a destination laptop hard drive (also 40GB, identical hardware) using CloneZilla. I am out of DVDs, unfortunately, and burning tens of CDs does not sound pleasant.

CloneZilla (http://clonezilla.org/) and Samba (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(software)) to the rescue! I have a desktop running Windows XP with 200GB storage, so I installed Samba on it and connected using CloneZilla Live to save/restore the image.

1. Get CloneZilla Live (http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/) and burn the ISO to a CD
   
   
2. Install Samba on Windows XP via instructions at http://smithii.com/samba
   
   Note: my Windows XP desktop has storage on a separate physical drive (namely, "P:\"). By default, the Samba setup for Windows creates a share point on C:\windows\temp. To setup a share point on a separate drive: (1) create a registry entry for the destination folder in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cygnus Solutions\Cygwin\mounts v2", in similar fashion to the keys already there. For example, my destination drive is P:\, so I created new key "/p" with REG_DWORD "flags" set to 'a' and REG_SZ "native" set to "P:\SAMBA". Ensure folder P:\SAMBA exists--I also shared folder P:\SAMBA on the local network, but I am not sure if this was necessary; (2) Edit file "C:\Program Files\samba\lib\smb.conf" to have another entry similar to "tmp" but pointing to the new share. For example, I created new share point "p" with attributes "comment = /cygdrive/p/samba", "path = /cygdrive/p/samba", "writable = yes", and "public = yes"; (3) Restart the Samba daemons. Namely, kill all existing processess named "nmbd.exe" and "smbd.exe", then run "cd /d C:\Progra~1\samba" and "start_daemons.cmd"; (4) Verify everything looks correct by running "smbclient -L localhost -U guest%password"
   
   
3. Boot source laptop with CloneZilla Live CD. Go through the normal steps (if using http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/, steps "Save Disk Image, 1-7") until you reach "Mount CloneZilla Image Directory". Select "samba_server". The Windows XP desktop was on local IP 192.168.1.100. Domain was given by running command "smbclient -L localhost -U guest%password" on the Windows XP desktop. For mount point I used "/p". I used user "administrator" with appropriate password (I had changed using command "smbpasswd administrator" on the Windows XP desktop). After that everything went smooth!
   

Notes:

• Takes a while. Currently projected to take around six hours. Would run faster if the desktop computer was not on wireless. No hurry to get it done though. Averaging around 80-100 Mb/s transfer rate.
  
  
• I am sure there is a better way to do this that people will tell me.

UPDATE:

• The first attempt over wireless failed. It said it finished transferring all the data, but in my haste I rebooted before it had completed all the steps.
• For the second attempt, I plugged the destination directly into the router, so everything went over wired network. The speedup was tremendous (factor of 5x). Instead of 6.5 hours, it took ~1.25 hours.
• The second attempt failed. It completed successfully, but a reboot showed only a blinking cursor.
• The third attempt worked. It completed successfully, and a reboot loaded Windows XP.

Unfortunately, the laptop I loaded the image onto only has 512 MB RAM and no wireless card--so it is unusable for now until I get more RAM. :)

Mission accomplished!

The Art of Escort Maintenance

Discovered the 1996 Ford Escort's rear-light wiring harness assembly is really nicely engineered. All of the wires can be easily removed from the plugs the bulbs plug into.

While at Pick 'n Pull on Saturday, a young man with a dark beard and a cylindrical tan hat approached me and asked if he could borrow a socket wrench to attempt to remove two bolts. I said sure, and let him borrow it while I walked around looking for weatherstripping for the passenger side doors. After I returned, he thanked me and said he needed something with more torque. These looked like bolts on the underside of a transmission. It was nice to be able to have the opportunity to have trust validated.

After repairing my broken tail light and replacing the weatherstripping on the doors, the car looks a lot better!

Spinach and Potato Frittata

This was fantastic:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Spinach-and-Potato-Frittata/Detail.aspx

We added three carrots to the mix and doubled the recipe. Used a large 12-inch skillet. Took about 17-20 minutes to fully cook the eggs over low heat. Two thumbs up from Dawn!

Also, about 8-10 cloves of garlic. Very nice.

We did not add any salt or pepper. I am sure it would taste even better with it, but the taste of the veggies and eggs would only need minimal flavor enhancement, if any, in my opinion.

Cuíca

This is one of my favorite instruments, from Brasil:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuicas

It is a squeaky noise made from friction of a wet cloth. :) Like the banjo, I smile every time I hear it.

Stud Dowser

Would it be made of water?

Adopt-A-Street Sacramento

Thinking of names for our local project:

• Watt and Edison Neighborhood Beautification Project
• I am not your mother, but I am doing it anyway....
• Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood
• Local denizens make good
• Litter Free Neighborhood
• The Broom Brigade
  

Goals:

• Inclusiveness
• Encourage others to participate

Size restrictions on text, from the Sacramento Adopt-A-Street web site:

The following is proposed lettering sizes that may be used for the organizations name by the County, for the first and/or second lines of the Adopt-a-Street plate:

3 inch Letters = 12 Capital Letters, 16 Lower Case Letters
4 inch Letters = 9 Capital Letters, 10 Lower Case Letters
5 inch Letters = 7 Capital Letters, 10 Lower Case Letters

Wedding Photos

http://picasaweb.google.com/schultkl/WeddingPhotos

Cornbread and Chili

Mmmmm! ^_^

Made a fresh batch of homemade cornbread this evening to use up the rest of the buttermilk.

While pushing the middle oven rack back into place, it tilted and sent both 8" cornbread pans sliding off the back. x_x Luckily (?) the front pan landed on top of the back pan. Some of the uncooked cornbread smooshed out onto the surface of the 375 F oven. I think this was one of the worst baking experiences I have had in some time (and not so bad at that, actually).

Cleaned up the pans, reheated up the oven, and everything else went smoothly. Moral of the story: do not trust unsteady wire racks!

And it came out great. :) Yum. Ate with a can of Amy's veggie chili I had sitting in the food storage area.