Category: Rochelle

News and activities related to my wife.

Tequila Hostage Crisis 2003

Rochelle and I just returned from 11 days touring the tequila region. We went with a group of like-minded tequila enthusiasts, and were lead by the manager of the bar at Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant. In the five official days of the tour we visited eight different tequila fabricas, were treated to the finest hospitality Rochelle and I have ever enjoyed, and drank an average of two bottles of tequila per person per day. My liver hurts.

Rochelle and I just returned from 11 days in the state of Jalisco in Mexico, touring the tequila region. We went with a group of like-minded tequila enthusiasts, and were lead (I use the term loosely) by the manager of the bar at Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant, the best place to drink tequila in the United States.

The entire group of us referred to the trip as the Tequila Hostage Crisis 2003, because of the fluid nature of our schedule, and because it was a train that once you got on, you couldn’t get off. In the five official days of the tour we visited eight different tequila fabricas, were treated to the finest hospitality Rochelle and I have ever enjoyed, and drank an average of two bottles of tequila per person per day. (And yes, someone did end up in the hospital — but no one officially part of the tour.)

In addition to wonderful hospitality, all places we visited were amazingly generosity, in the form of gifts of tequila, or amazing prices on their products, or both. As a result, Rochelle and I ended up dragging home 35 bottles of tequila (and two bottles of Cuban “Puerto Rican” rum), packed into six different pieces of baggage (only two of which were checked), with zero breakage. Although we spent “only” US$500-600 on bottled tequila, the U.S. retail value of what we brought home is easily US$3000. Our five best bottles alone are worth more than a grand — if you can find them.

I’ll post more soon (in particular, I want to revisit my all you need to know post below), but for now I need a lot of sleep, and a lot of water and cranberry juice.

My liver hurts.

We’re in the NY Times

Rochelle and I were mentioned, and Rochelle quoted, in this Sunday’s New York Times.

Rochelle and I were mentioned, and Rochelle quoted, in this Sunday’s New York Times. The article is about couples registering for wine when they’re getting married, which we did, and recommend. Go read the article for more details.

Rochelle’s marking an item off her “to do before I die” list, and we were both happy that we weren’t the couple with the largest age range mentioned in the article (we’re 4 years apart, while the biggest gap was 11 years).

Rochelle. Lays. Down. The Law.

It would appear that my wife has decided I’m not doing enough with my time off, to clean up the house and otherwise work on useful projects (with “useful” being a word _she_ gets to define). She’s decided that I need to get up with her in the morning, take a bath with her, and have coffee with her before she goes off to her job. All of this to ensure that my day at least starts early enough to accomplish something.

It would appear that my wife has decided I’m not doing enough with my time off, to clean up the house and otherwise work on useful projects (with “useful” being a word she gets to define). She’s decided that I need to get up with her in the morning, take a bath with her, and have coffee with her before she goes off to her job. All of this to ensure that my day at least starts early enough to accomplish something.

I suppose this could have something to do with idolizing Sarah Hepola’s life in a previous post. Or that I can never remember everything, or much of anything, I did with the day while she was at work. Or that she’s usually waking me up from a nap when she calls home. Or that the stack of BeBox husks is as huge as ever.

At any rate, I now have to be much more productive and accountable. Expect me to blog more, so I can at least point to the posts as something I accomplished.

Where the Promo Parties Went, Part 2

When Rochelle proposed we go out Thursday, I asked her, given she is planning a summer picnic for 100 people and has a school assignment due, both on Saturday, if she should be going out drinking. She said it was OK, but we absolutely could not go anywhere else after. So of course, when the guy sitting on the bar stool next to me told us about The Glenlivet party that was starting in 30 minutes, we decided to crash that one, too.

When Rochelle proposed we go out Thursday, I asked her, given she is planning a summer picnic for 100 people and has a school assignment due, both on Saturday, if she should be going out drinking. She said it was OK, but we absolutely could not go anywhere else after.

So of course, when the guy sitting on the bar stool next to me told us about The Glenlivet party that was starting in 30 minutes, we decided to crash that one, too. (Thank god I decided to bathe yesterday!)

We finished our drinks, paid our tab, and zipped across town. Finding a parking space was remarkably easy, but in spite of that, we were still 20 minutes late.

No problem! The program has already started, just go in and find yourselves seats. We won’t hold you up here with any registration crap, since then you’d miss the wonderful information our speaker is imparting! Woohoo!

The program was actually a vertical tasting of four Glenlivet Scotches, very cool. It was clearly a promotional program for The Glenlivet. I’m sure they’re doing dozens of these around the country, hoping to raise awareness for Scotch and The Glenlivet.

Rochelle and I have been to a few of these kinds of parties (a few times we were even invited). Done well, people leave feeling like they learned something cool, that they can now be the expert on this subject in their social circle. Ideally, they turn into enthusiasts and evangelists for the product. (God knows we have on the subject of tequila, so we know this does work.)

In other words, there is both thought and purpose behinds these kinds of promotional events — unlike so many of the dot.bomb parties that were thrown. People are still getting drunk on Marketing’s dollar, but Marketing can explain clearly what they plan to get out of it, and in all likelihood, can point to improved regional numbers afterwards.

Now we just need to figure out how to learn about these types of parties in a predictable, repeatable way, instead of by randomly talking to strangers in bars.

Where the Promo Parties Went, Part 1

Yesterday at 3pm Rochelle asked me if I wanted to go out, to a party she had seen posted on Chowhound.com, at a local bar, Butter. The Food Network was going to be there, shooting footage of Butter’s unique approach to bar food, and there would be free food samples and giveaway goodies. Most importantly, there would be 25¢ pints of beer, and $2 cosmos. I was in like Flint, as they say.

Yesterday at 3pm Rochelle asked me if I wanted to go out, to a party she had seen posted on Chowhound.com, at a local bar, Butter. She included the description of the event, which explained that the Food Network was going to be there, shooting footage of Butter’s unique approach to bar food, and there would be free food samples and giveaway goodies. Most importantly, there would be 25¢ pints of beer, and $2 cosmos. I was in like Flint, as they say.

I got there before Rochelle, and watched the Food Network crew of three methodically lighting and shooting individual servings of Butter’s food, which Butter calls “White Trash Bistro cuisine.” I.e., Spaghetti-O’s, corn dogs, Frito pie, Tater Tots. That sort of thing.

Now, Rochelle and I both have a high appreciation for the possibilities of that kind of food. In the right hands, re-imagined, it could be amazing. Indeed, one of our favorite dishes at Memphis Minnie’s is the Frito pie, because it’s Bob’s own chili on the Fritos, and Bob’s chili is amazingly good.

Alas, Butter is literally opening cans of Spaghetti-O’s, and canned chili, and bags of Tater Tots, etc., and heating ’em up before serving. Worse, they’re mostly using a microwave to heat them up. Microwaved Tater Tots are not good. Only the corn dogs were decent, and even those would have been better if they’d been deep fried, the way god intended.

Fortunately, you have enough 25¢ beers and you stop worrying about the food. The beer was Pabst, but at 25¢, it’s hard to complain. And the bartenders were all friendly and fun, we had a good time talking to Frank in particular.

The best part, to us, was the giveaways. We each got a baseball cap with the bar logo on it. Truly, I have reached the pinnacle of head attire, now that I have a hat that says “butter” on it. Everything’s better with butter, so I plan to wear the cap everywhere.

Trying Thunderbird

Today I set up Mozilla Thunderbird, the new e-mail client that’s coming out of the Mozilla project. I wanted to give it a whirl, because I’m looking for a new e-mail client for Rochelle. She’s been using Netscape 4.7 to manage her e-mail, and it’s becoming more and more inadequate.

Today I set up Mozilla Thunderbird, the new e-mail client that’s coming out of the Mozilla project. I wanted to give it a whirl, because I’m looking for a new e-mail client for Rochelle. She’s been using Netscape 4.7 to manage her e-mail, and that application is getting old, and has a number of issues, mostly having to do with the fact that it’s now completely unsupported software. Also, Thunderbird has best-in-class spam controls, which is very important, since Rochelle is beginning to receive more and more spam.

Problem is, I haven’t found a better e-mail client than Netscape. Outlook and Outlook Express are out of the question. They are deeply insecure applications, and the number one vector for spreading computer viruses. (Mark my words, in the next 12 months there will be a malignant virus that will wipe Outlook users’ hard disks clean. It’s just a matter of time.) They are also spam-friendly applications (though an Open Source project, SpamBayes, gives Outlook robust anti-spam tools). People who voluntarily use Outlook or Outlook Express are stupid. IM!HO.

I actually bought Eudora Pro for Windows for Rochelle’s computer, on the basis of my experience using Eudora on the Mac for the last decade. But Eudora for Windows uses the obsolete Windows MDI interface paradigm, where all of the windows are contained in one “parent” window. It’s maddening, and a relic from the late 80s. The application has a number of other quirks, differences from the Mac version, to the point where I found it unusable.

So I’m evaluating Thunderbird, to see if it’s ready for Rochelle. I plan to use it regularly over the next few weeks, configured to manage one of my less-used e-mail accounts.

It’s a good thing it’s a less-used e-mail account, because already in my first 15 minutes, it’s clear that Thunderbird is still pretty raw (giving double meaning to the “trying” in this post’s title). Basic e-mail functionality is there, and the application seems solid (no crashing). This is the result of Thunderbird’s gestation as part of the Mozilla Suite. You can use, and even rely on Thunderbird. But there are a lot of fit-and-finish issues, which seem like small things, but add up to making it unsuitable — unenjoyable — for daily use.

Some examples:

  1. The first thing I want to do when setting up an e-mail client is turn off automatic downloading of HTML images. (Loading images in a spam message can tell the spammer your e-mail address is valid, resulting in a lot more spam.) There is a control for this in Thunderbird’s preferences, hidden a little too deeply (Advanced -> Privacy -> Block loading of remote images), but easily checked once you find it. So far so good.

    The problem is when you get messages with graphics from valid senders. The graphics don’t display, as per the general preference, but there’s no way to override that for the one valid message. This renders some messages unreadable.

    Solution: a toolbar button in the message window to download that message’s graphics.

  2. The default font settings render many messages a blur, with the text far too small to be legible. (This is on Mac OS X, it might be better on Windows or Linux.) The “minimum size” preference seems to do nothing, and the View -> Text Zoom menu option does not appear to be a global setting. I finally solved the issue by changing my Serif font setting to Lucida Grande, a sans serif font that is highly readable, even at small sizes. But all in all, there are far too many settings and options that affect text size and font choice, and it’s not at all clear what does what, how they interact, or how to accomplish specific goals with regard to text rendering.

    It reminds me of Don Norman’s description of refrigerator / freezer settings in The Design of Everyday Things. In most home refrigerators the freezer and refrigerator compartments share a single compressor, the key component of the cooling system. Because it’s shared, making changes to the freezer setting, e.g., setting it lower, can affect the refrigerator setting, making it lower too. So you turn up the refrigerator knob to keep your lettuce from freezing, but that makes the freezer less cold, and your ice cream oozes out of the carton. You have to fiddle and fuss to finally get to a balance you can live with.

    It’s a ridiculous thing for an end-user to have to deal with, and it happens because the designers give you controls that affect the system’s internals directly, instead of letting you choose a goal state (e.g., a specific temperature for each compartment), and have the system figure out how to achieve it. Product designers and programmers do this because it’s easy to build, and because they don’t see anything wrong with it. The problem is that users don’t think like programmers, and have trouble figuring things out.

    Thunderbird is supposed to be a simplified, easy-to-figure-out e-mail client, vs. the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink e-mail client in the Mozilla Suite. They have a ways to go with the text settings.

  3. Thunderbird makes some assumptions about my e-mail reading workflow that are wrong. If I open a message, read it, and then delete it, Thunderbird automatically opens the next message, in a window sized and positioned exactly like the first message.

    First of all, while this straight-through workflow may work for some people, it’s deeply distracting to me. I pick and choose my e-mails, working via priority order (or whim), not on the order the messages arrived. I suspect most sophisticated e-mail users do this. Auto-opening a message I would prefer to defer looking at just means I have to close it, and then right-click to mark the message as Unread. Pain in the ass. There appears to be no way to affect this behavior.

    The second issue with this is that Thunderbird’s screen redraws are extremely efficient. There is zero flicker when one message disappears and the other appears. Because the new message appears in the same place and is the same size, only the text changes. If you’re looking at a new message that is visually similar to the previous one — say, two text messages — you might not notice it was new, and think that you didn’t hit delete at all. Guess what you’d do then.

These are three examples, but I’ve seen many other issues. I can hold my nose and manage this low-priority e-mail account, but it’s clear that Thunderbird has a few more months of development in front of it before I’ll give it to Rochelle.

OK, Enough Goofing Off

Ok, it’s been two weeks of sleeping in and doing nothing (much) more than web surfing in my underwear. I should start doing some real work. So today I’m putting together a weekly schedule for myself.

Ok, it’s been two weeks of sleeping in and doing nothing (much) more than web surfing in my underwear. I suppose I should start doing some real work.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been unemployed. Rochelle and I both left our jobs about two and a half years ago. It was a coincidence, Rochelle taking a planned leave of absence to find her dream job (which she’s now doing), and my dot.bomb suddenly going under. That time we spent our days together, doing cheap stuff around San Francisco, and taking cat-sponsored naps every afternoon. For three months we basically spent all of our time together, and had terrific fun.

This time Rochelle is still employed, thank god. It’s not possible to stay afloat in SF on unemployment insurance payments, which are $370 a week, before taxes. (Yes, you pay taxes on unemployment. Tax cuts on stock dividends, paid for by the unemployed. That’s an economic plan that makes sense!) With Rochelle in a good job, we can tread water almost indefinitely.

Getting laid off is “winning the time lottery.” All of a sudden, I have time to work on the literally dozens of projects that have been building up around me. But in two weeks, I’ve accomplished nothing on any of them. Everything I’ve read or heard about being unemployed in today’s economy says that you have to come up with a routine, something to keep you on track, driving forward to the next job, or at least keeping busy and not frittering the time away. Certainly, when I took the job at Persistence after three months with Rochelle, I looked back and decided I hadn’t accomplished much with that time beyond improving my relationship with my wife. No small thing, that, but still…

I need this time to be different, in no small measure because I don’t want to do marketing in my next job. I’m planning to go back to hands-on technical work, probably software development, and that means rebuilding a number of skills that have gone fallow, as well as acquiring skills for the technologies that matter today. I have a lot of work to do!

So today I’m starting to put together a weekly schedule for myself. I need dedicated, scheduled slots for networking, job hunting, exercise, e-mail, socializing outside my house, technical development, home clean-up, blogging, bathing, naps, reading for both pleasure and research, web surfing, cat petting, going to the movies (matinees only), etc.

Some of these need to be done every day, but it’s impossible to do all of them in a single day. So I need a weekly, or even a bi-weekly schedule of activities. I’m sure I won’t get it right the first time, but with the economy the way it is in SF, I’m sure I’ll have time to perfect things. In any case, look for my first schedule draft on Monday.

Ninja!

Rochelle is closing in on her Ninja degree in tequila, which is the optional degree that comes after the Ph.D. The Ninja degree is when you (a) have your Ph.D., and then (b) drink (yet another) 35 tequilas, neat — i.e., in a snifter, straight, not in a margarita or other cocktail. You don’t need a Ninja to become a Demigod, and indeed, fewer than a dozen people have achieved all four levels.

Rochelle is closing in on her Ninja degree in tequila, which is the optional degree that comes after the Ph.D. The Ninja degree is when you (a) have your Ph.D., and then (b) drink (yet another) 35 tequilas, neat — i.e., in a snifter, straight, not in a margarita or other cocktail. You don’t need to be a Ninja to become a Demigod, and indeed, fewer than a dozen people have achieved all four levels.

While we both got our Ph.D.s at the same time, Rochelle’s Ninja degree is coming about a year before mine will, as I just can’t drink more than one in a sitting. I have bad memories of bad tequila from my early 20s, that there’s just no doing away with.

At any rate, Rochelle will be graduating this Sunday. With our planned trip to Tequila, Mexico in late October, Rochelle is slated to become the latest person to achieve all four levels in the Tommy’s Blue Agave Club.

Woohoo! I’m proud of my baby!

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Rochelle’s a big fan of the makeover show “What Not To Wear”, down to playing the same game with Hilda, our upstairs neighbor. They’ve been spending a couple hours on multiple weekends, going through each other’s closets, trying things on, nixing some, swapping some, and putting the rejects in the Goodwill pile. Now comes a great new show, for men, called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Rochelle’s a big fan of the makeover show “What Not To Wear”, down to playing the same game with Hilda, our upstairs neighbor. They’ve been spending a couple hours on multiple weekends, going through each other’s closets, trying things on, nixing some, swapping some, and putting the rejects in the Goodwill pile. Overall, about 5 bags of clothing and shoes have left the house.

Now comes a great new show, for men, called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. You may have read about it recently, but the simple concept is, five makeover gurus show up, run a helpless slob through the gauntlet, and in the end, he’s prince charming. The hook is, the five gurus are gay, the slob is straight.

It’s a lot of fun. If you get Bravo on your cable or satellite service, you should give it a whirl. Unlike most makeover shows, this one is 60 minutes, instead of just 30, which gives a lot more time to the different aspects of the makeover.

I doubt if any of this will rub off on my personal sense of style — or lack thereof. But the show’s funny enough, I’ll keep watching anyway.

Reloaded three times

I just went to see The Matrix Reloaded for the third time last night, which will seem like a lot of times, especially to those folks who didn’t like it, or the previous movie. But this is entirely defensible.

I just went to see The Matrix Reloaded for the third time last night, which will seem like a lot of times, especially to those folks who didn’t like it, or the previous movie. But this is entirely defensible.

The first time was the first time. Needed to see it in the theater, had a great time.

The second time was actually free, Rochelle and I just walked into it on a Sunday afternoon, because it started 2 minutes after The Italian Job finished, and we decided to get our money’s worth out of our tickets.

The third time was different. It was amazing. It was in IMAX.

If you haven’t seen The Matrix Reloaded yet, and if it’s playing on an IMAX screen near you, I recommend kicking in the extra $5. Even if you’ve seen the movie already, it’s worth going again. It’s a whole new experience, totally worth the extra money. There’s just way more detail up on the screen, and it makes the movie that much more “real.”

I may need to Reload again.

Ph.D. Exams Completed With Flying Colors

As I described prior to our vacation, Rochelle and I have been working hard on our Ph.D. (in tequila), and had planned to take our final exam this past Sunday (June 1st). I’m pleased to report that we passed with flying colors, in spite of a serious handicap.

As I described prior to our vacation, Rochelle and I have been working hard on our Ph.D. (in tequila), and had planned to take our final exam this past Sunday (June 1st). I’m pleased to report that we passed with flying colors.

The exam is a serious one — maybe not as tough as a real Ph.D. orals exam, but certainly equivalent of a college undergraduate final exam. 70 questions, multiple choice, true/false, and fill-in-the-blank; you must finish in 20 minutes, taking it at the bar, with the other patrons chanting at you.

Many of the questions are trick questions, and require you to know, for example, the difference between Herradura Silver and Herradura Blanco (at most distilleries, they are one and the same). No one has ever scored a 100% on the exam, and only one person has missed only one question. I missed two questions, and Rochelle missed three.

We studied hard for this exam. We bought two very good books on tequila, and read both (and you should see Rochelle’s color-coded page tabs!). Julio provides study material, and Rochelle and I each created a set of flash cards to study it. Although we didn’t do as much studying while we were on vacation as we had planned, it was basically all we did on Saturday and Sunday prior to taking the exam. We knew our flash cards cold, and the couple of the questions that were not in the study materials were either in the book, or had so annoyed our friend David (who took the text a couple months ago) that he kept repeating them, over and over, whenever he talked about his Ph.D. (Quick, what was the original logo for Patrón tequila?)

We did end up taking the exam with a handicap. You only qualify to take the exam when you’ve completed your Ph.D. tasting card, which requires you to sample 35 100% blue agave tequilas while at Tommy’s (and you cannot sample more than three in a single visit). Before our vacation I was two visits away from finishing, and Rochelle was one. We had intended to go once before our trip, so that Rochelle could be done, and I would only have to have two tequilas before taking the test.

Well, we never made it there, and an hour before we headed to Tommy’s for the exam, we realized that Rochelle needed to drink two cocktails before taking her exam — and I had to drink five. That’s 10 ounces of tequila, folks.

Fortunately, we had three hours at the bar before we took the test, and Julio let me start the exam once my fifth cocktail was poured (so I had only drunk four), but even so, I was not even close to sober. So I suppose the fact that I didn’t remember the town where Chinaco tequila is made can be excused.