Rochelle - Aldoblog

DHI 92-98

Daily Home Improvements: cleaning up, online and IRL, retirement planning, more accurate pings, and listing this site for sale.

DHI 92: Some housecleaning on my e-mail setup. My business e-mail address wasn’t being passed through my spam filtering system. Now it is.

DHI 93: Ongoing cleanup from the party. Yes, there’s still debris. Did I mention that it ended at 5am? Two people passed out on our bed, and one person puked. Two recycling bins are full of all the bottles of beer and wine that were drunk. One person gained six pounds. All in all a pretty good party!

DHI 94: Signed up for online access to my 401k plan. This required visiting the site, then phoning them, then waiting for the PIN to arrive via mail, then visiting the site again to register and confirm my identity using the PIN. Painful, but actually appreciated, since we’re talking about our retirement funds here.

DHI 95: Reallocated my 401k contributions to be more distributed, and signed up for the auto-rebalancing plan.

DHI 96: Fixed a lingering problem with this weblog, where the update pings to weblogs.com were sending the wrong URL for this site.

DHI 97: Listed this weblog on blogshares.com, a trading exchange for blogs, i.e., you can buy shares in different sites, trade them, etc. By listing my blog, I get 1000 shares in it, without having to buy them, and it becomes available for actual trading. While I doubt if this blog will ever become terribly valuable on the exchange, it is interesting to participate in yet another online experiment on how to measure social reputation, etc.

DHI 98: Expired an e-mail address that was receiving too much spam. See my other posting about this strategy for reducing spam.

How Not to Party

It had been over a year since the last time we threw a party at our house, so we were overdue. And you could forgive us if we forgot a few things, namely, never throw a party on the weekend of the change to Daylight Savings Time.

It had been over a year since the last time we threw a party at our house, so we were overdue. And you could forgive us if we forgot a few things. Which of course we did, but it went well anyway. We send the last few folks home at 5am.

Note to self: never throw a party on the weekend of the change to Daylight Savings Time — you lose an hour of recovery time on the day after, which was…painful when I went to work today.

DHI 85-91

Daily Home Improvements: recycling, sucking hard, painting the house, the hanged man, prep work, party time, and the aftermath.

DHI 85: I pulled a bunch of old computer boxes from the pile in the basement and broke them down for recycling. It’s a substantial improvement that’s almost unnoticeable in the huge pile of crap we keep in the basement…

DHI 86: I used the vacuum to suck down the cobwebs from the ceiling and walls in the parlor and office.

DHI 87: Graffiti.

DHI 88: Re-hanging a bunch of photos and illustrations in the hallway and parlor.

DHI 89: A whole lotta gettin’ ready for our party.

DHI 90: Party.

DHI 91: Sober up. Clean up party wreckage.

Quotation of the Year Candidate

“I may be lazy, but I’m not stupid.”

DHI 72-77

Daily Home Improvements: ransom notes?, basement dumping, general cleanup, mite shit removal, and a new jungle gym for the cats.

DHI 72: I started the list and instructions that we need to give to our house cleaner, because she’s been doing a pretty sucky job lately, and I don’t want to have to fire her…

DHI 73: I finished the list, incorporating input from Rochelle, and formatted it and printed it for our house cleaner. These instructions apparently caused much anxiety due to not completely understanding it, as our cleaner’s native language is Spanish. Perhaps a translation will be a future DHI…

DHI 74: I moved a few things to the basement, and generally rearranged the parlor, so that it would be easier to vacuum.

DHI 75: A (very) little help to Rochelle, who was on a roll Saturday night, under the influence of our decorator, some booze, and Disco Saturday Night on the radio station she listens to sometimes. Our parlor is nearly completely cleared out, and will be available for use by company and other civilized folks, instead of just me and Basta.

DHI 76: This one’s a little gross. While watching basketball I cleaned out Luigi’s ears using some Q-Tips. He had ear mites when we got him, and while those are gone, their crud remains in his ears. He doesn’t like having things stuck in his ears, though, so I only got a little way through the job. I’ll do more next weekend, while watching more basketball.

DHI 77: Rochelle and I went out to B & B Pet Supplies, a pet store on Geary, and picked out a groovy new cat climbing tree for Billie. It’s five (cat) stories tall, and Billie has already learned that she can defend the top story from all attackers, which makes her very, very happy.

So another week without a full list of achievements, but considering I took Thursday and Friday off to watch basketball in a sports bar, and sat in bed all day Saturday and Sunday, again to watch basketball, this is an amazing level of productivity.

Everything’s Better With Bacon

The other night Rochelle and I watched Monster’s Inc., in every way a better movie than the Oscar winner, Shrek. Before watching the movie, we made popcorn. With three different fats on top.

The other night Rochelle and I watched Monsters, Inc., in every way a better movie than the Oscar winner, Shrek. Before watching the movie, we made popcorn. I bought these popcorn packets, with coconut oil, seasoning salt, and popcorn, that are phenomenal.

But we weren’t satisfied with the basics. We skipped some of the coconut oil and substituted bacon fat. And then we shaved Parmesan cheese on top of it. Hey, that’s only three different fats. Rochelle talked me out of pouring melted butter on top of it all.

DHI 64-69

Daily Home Improvements: power upgrades, pillow talk, the framers, sticking my battery where it belongs, peace talks, and the inevitable blog tweakage.

DHI 64: I cleaned a bunch of crap out of my car, replaced the batteries in my car flashlight, and fixed the terminal clip for my portable jump-start unit.

DHI 65: I’m gonna count this, because we really did try. We wanted to try a more stable frame for the bed, and bought a really heavy-duty frame at the Salvation Army the other weekend. Tonight we tried to put it together and move the bed to it. Unfortunately, the frame is a king size, and we have a queen mattress. Ah, well…

DHI 66: Carried a bunch of stuff down to the basement, including the heavy-duty bed frame that didn’t fit our bed, above.

DHI 67: Charged the portable jump-start unit, and put velcro strips on it so it can be mounted in my trunk, and mounted it.

DHI 68: Met with two cat behaviorists, who are helping us achieve peace in our own time. Amongst the cats, anyway.

DHI 69: Tweaked my blog a bit more, and fixed a problem with my RSS syndication feed.

Another week of only six DHIs, but this is actually amazing given that I watched nearly 10 basketball games over the week and weekend. What will be really interesting is to see how many I achieve this coming week, since I will be watching basketball nearly continuously from Thursday morning until Sunday night.

The Last Burger

I just ate the last burger. The last burger sold by Rosamunde Sausage Grill. I took it next door to Toronado, ordered a Big Daddy IPA, and ate it. It was the last one. Because today is the last Burger-Day.

I just ate the last burger. The last hamburger sold by Rosamunde Sausage Grill.

Rosamunde’s is a sausage place (hence the name), but on Tuesdays — and only on Tuesdays — they served SF’s best hamburger. A large 1/2 pound patty of incredibly good beef, grilled perfectly, with lettuce, tomato, grilled onions, melted cheddar, and your selection of Rosamunde’s fabulous mustards. For $4. If you never had one, you missed out. Because I had the last one.

I ordered it about 2:30pm. I had gone by earlier, and it was too crowded for me to wait in line, order, and wait for a burger. I mean, it’s just a burger, right? Except it’s not. But they’ll just make more, right? Except they won’t.

So at 2:30pm, I decided the crowd wouldn’t go away any time soon, and I should get one. (Actually, I planned to get two, one for Rochelle.) There was only one person ahead of me in line, although Rosamunde’s itself was packed with people eating their burgers.

We both waited patiently, as the four men behind the counter worked their way through the 10 or so burgers that had come up and needed to be distributed. One guy on the grill, two setting up buns and fixin’s and doing assembly, and one guy running the register and The List.

The List turned out to be important. It’s the only way the chaos of a Burger-Day could be managed. At any given time during lunch, there are 20-30 entries on The List, with different levels of doneness, different condiments, special requests, and above all, a name for the person who gets to pay for and eat it. There’s a fixed number of burgers on a Burger-Day, 120, and when they’re gone, it’s over. Wait until next week. Except there won’t be a next week.

After the latest burgers got distributed, a quick count of The List showed that there were two burgers left. Two. The woman in front of me, one of the neighborhood’s crack whores, got one. And I got the other. A few minutes later, a gang of seven slackers turned away en mass when they were informed there were no more. Not “OK, I’ll have a sausage instead.” They just turned and left, all seven. Good riddance.

So I left and bought batteries, and took a now-working flashlight out to my car, and pet the cats. And went back for my burger. It was the second-to-last burger off the grill, but the last went to the guy running The List. Mine was the last one sold.

I took it next door to Toronado, ordered a Big Daddy IPA, and ate it.

It was good. It was the last one. Because today is the last Burger-Day.

How to Chase Cats

My buddy at work was laughing, and when I asked what at, he sent me the URL to a funny article, The Horror of Blimps. You’ll probably be disappointed after the build-up, but when she read it Rochelle laughed so hard she cried.

I first saw these things on a UK gadget web site, and I have to confess, my immediate thought was that it would be fun to chase the cats with one.

DHI 58-63

Daily Home Improvements: changes of addresses, a little patchwork, correcting the bounce, a change of view, a quick un-tag, and some payola for the Feds.

DHI 58: I discovered that in the move to aldoblog.com, I didn’t update the URL in the RSS file that this site provides for syndication use. Fixing that turned out to be a bit more work than I expected, but while I was in editing the site files, I changed the e-mail address to something disposable, so that at the end of the year I can change it, and so hopefully slow down some of the spam.

DHI 59: A security hole in Sendmail was discovered this week. Since I haven’t gotten around to learning and setting up Postfix, I’m using Sendmail for my e-mail server, which means I needed to patch and restart my e-mail server. Done.

DHI 60: Rochelle’s flat panel display came today, and I set it up. That’s more work than it sounds, since her old monitor had to be removed, and it weighs about 70 pounds, and all the cables needed to be swapped, since she was changing from standard VGA to DVI, a digital signal. Anyway, she likes it.

DHI 61: A friend alerted me to the fact that the e-mail address for this weblog was bouncing. In fact, every address at the aldoblog.com domain was bouncing. Fixed.

DHI 62: Spray-painted over some graffiti on the front of our house. If you don’t paint over it quickly, you get a lot more of it, as the taggers realize that (a) you’re offering them a canvas, and (b) some other asshole painted on their canvas, and they need to re-tag to own it back.

DHI 63: One word: Taxes.

And yes, this leaves me short one DHI for the week. Rochelle ate half my day today, and college basketball ate the other half. With the tournament action coming later this week, and March Madness shortly thereafter, it’s likely that my DHIs for March will be woefully inadequate, unless I’m allowed to count “removed some popcorn from the house today” and “removed much beer from the house today” as DHIs…

C’est Fromage

We just ate cheese for dinner. Four really fucking good cheeses, air shipped to us from France. Rochelle read about Fromages.com in the New York Times, and talked Hilda into splitting a shipment with us. Our selection arrived this morning.

It’s a really cool service. You tell them on what day you want the cheeses to arrive, and they will ship it overnight the day prior, for delivery the day you select. So if you’re taking the cheeses to a party, or throwing your own, it’s easy to schedule it so they’ll be at the peak of ripeness when you get them.

We ate a lot of phenomenal cheeses while we were in France last year. Yes, there’s great cheese available right here in the Bay Area, but there’s really nothing like the cheeses we enjoyed overseas. So, while it’s a little expensive, it’s worth doing from time to time.

It also seems like a great way to thank France for their courageous stand against the pressure of the US to launch an attack on Iraq. We’ll be eating French cheese, and drinking as much French champagne as we can in the coming weeks.

That’ll be a hardship.

Make Margaritas, Not War

I’ll spare you the politics, and just say once again that we’re huuuuge fans of Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant, on Geary between 23rd and 24th. They have, hands down, game over, the best margaritas in the Bay Area, and probably in the United States. There’s more than 200 premium tequilas available, and a deep and abiding love for the spirit that makes you love it too.

Rochelle and I are spending most of our Sunday afternoons there between now and the end of May, working on our Ph. D. in tequila, timed for completion with Rochelle’s birthday. Come by and drink with us!