It's good to have a big pipe...

So, here I sit at 12:30am at the Vontz Center for Molecular Studies downloading different Linux distros. Since I am functionally incapable of getting Debian to boot up to either KDM or GDM, I'm going to be trying SuSe 9.1 Personal and 9.1 Pro, Mandrake 10.0, and Fedora FC2. Who knows. At home, I've been using bittorrent and straight downloading. I rarely, if ever, saw better than 30KB/sec. Here, at the Vontz, I'm getting 1570KB/sec. 2 downloads at the same time max out the 100mb/sec ethernet connection. I would bet that a gigabit ether (1000baseT) connections would have seen even faster downloads. Anyways, it's good to have a big pipe.

Tonight I felt like cooking. So I made an old family favorite. Chicken Crescent squares. "What's in it?" I hear you asking. Well, I'm not gonna tell you. But, Janey is taking half of one for lunch tomorrow, so it must be good. Sure looks good.

The Case of the Dissapearing CreamCheese...

I know that I purchased a 6-pack of 8oz Philly Cream Cheese. I remember taking out of the fridge section of Costco. I remember putting it in the backseat of the truck. Janey remembers touching it when looking through stuff in the back of the truck. It's on the reciept. What I don't remember is taking it into the apartment. Nor does Janey remember putting it away as I was carrying stuff in. What I want to know is, "How does a package of cream-cheese, and this was a big silver box, dissapear between leaving the Costco Parking lot and arriving at the apartment. That was $6 worth of cream-cheese. That was many bagles, lots of crab salad and spinach dip represented by that silver box with the blue and red lettering. So, Kroger's has Philly for $1/box. Same price as Costco, but I didn't have to buy 6 packages....

I went to Greatclips. Not normally a portent of doom, but in this case.....

About 5 years ago, my sister (Now a nurse) was in beauty school. She was learning haircuts at the time. I thought I'd be a nice guy and go in so she could cut my hair in class and get some credit. She did the top and sides just fine, but was spending a lot of time trimming in the back. I kept feeling more and more of a draft on the back of my head. I started to get really worried when I noticed her classmates walking by slowly and looking at me funny. I got very very nervous when her teacher walked up and stopped and my sis turned to her and said "It's my brother" and the teacher looking releaved. That was one of the worst haircuts I had ever had. Until today, it was the worst.

So, I'm sitting in this chair. The "barber" (You'll se the reason for the quotes in a minute) is trimming the top ok. The sides are getting a bit short, and she keeps on breaking out the clippers to even stuff up. The sides are getting closer and closer to the top. Now, hopefully I'm starting a job soon, and I sorta need to look presentable, so I finally say, "Just buzz it all off. Use the #4 guard." I have never said anything like that my entire life.

I have the fear. The fear that my head will be all lumpy and misshapen. So, she clippers it all off. I put on my hat and go home. Only to find out that she can't even do a buzz-job even. There's some long bits here and there.

I have a brilliant idea. I have a "Beard Buster". Sorta like clippers with a built on guard. You can adjust it to almost any length. I turn the dial to 4. I start in the middle. Oops. #4 on the beardbuster is not #4guard on a pair of good clippers.

It's not what I had in mind, but I like it.

New Haircut

Now I remember....

I am a food snob! i can't belive the lack of certain foods at most grocery stores. Thank goodness we found Jungle Jim's. I was talking with one of Janey's classmates and she had never heard of eating raw tuna. "Isn't the tuna in a can raw?" I'm not making fun, just showing some of the cultural differences between western Iowa and the California Bay Area. I am also a beer and wine snob. The big bilboards around here for wine are advertizing 0.9g of carbs. Not great taste, not fermented naturally, but 0.9g of carbs. Somehow that doesn't inspire confidence. You know how you can walk into a Safeway in California and pick up any number of around 20-30 microbrews? You can't do that here. I like to look for local microbrews anywhere I go, but all the local ones around here are fizzy yellow beers. I don't drink fizzy yellow beers

Anyway, I have recognized that I am a snob. At least about food/wine/beer.

great...

I was all set to make a new post, but then I forgot what I was going to post on. So, I'll just put up some links. Like this one is my wonderful wife, Janey. I have a link to a website about my car, and the stuff that car people think about... These are my wife's good friend and her fiance... Cathy and Fred. This one is one of my Wife's old college roomies.

This site has some very very funny cartoons. This other site is made by the same people as that last one

That's it for now....

Are there really any groceries here?

Yesterday Janey and I went up to a grocery store. Not just any grocery store, but Jungle Jim's. This place is big. It's a grocery store like Little Americe is a truck stop. Imagine, if you will, that Trader Joe's merged with 99Ranch Market and then grew to the size of a Costco and a half. This place is odd. At one point there is a beer/wine section that would make a Beverages and More close up in shame of not having any selection. There is a walk-in Humidor that puts most tobacconists to shame. There is a selection of cheeses that you wouldn't believe. Their natural foods section is the size of a standard grocery store. The place is like a gourmet's theme park. Heck, outside they have an old Disney Monorail train mounted above the parking lot. Inside there is a re-creation of the S.S. Minnow. I counted 2 fire-trucks, 3 Nascar (Show cars, not the real racecars...) and 5 palm-trees. There are penguins in the freezer section. I could have spent more than the 2 hours we spent in there. In the beer section, they even had my favorite beer. I am definalty shopping there for the more exotic foodstuffs that Janey and I both like.

Other items of note:
An abso-frickin-lutley huge hotsauce selection
Jungle Jim himself walks around the store
There are singing characters all over the place and even a Live Band!

There are even more attractions that I haven't even touched on.

Below is a picture of the Monorail in the parking lot.

Jungle Jim's

Let me take a look up here.....

So, I was talking with Janey, and she told me about a PhD at her school that looks up noses. Really. And she's a neuroligist! In your nose's mucus membrane is the only place that neurons actually contact the outside world. AND (get this) in Alheimer's patients, the neurons in their noses had the same type of damage as the cells in their brains. So, next time an MD looks up your nose, (s)he could be looking for brain damage!

Tweetle Beetles,

Stop it! Stop it!
That’s enough, sir.
I can’t say such silly stuff, sir.

Very well, then Mr. Knox, sir.
Let’s have a little talk about tweetle beetles….

What do you know about tweetle beetles?
Well…

When tweetle beetles fight, it’s called a tweetle beetle battle.

And when they battle in a puddle, it’s a tweetle beetle puddle battle.

And when tweetle beetles battle with paddles in a puddle, they call it a tweetle beetle puddle paddle battle.

And when beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a bottle…

…They call this a tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle muddle,
and…

When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s an a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles…

…They call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle,
and…

Now wait a minute Mr. Socks Fox!

When a fox is in the bottle where the tweetle beetles battle with their paddles in a puddle on a noodle-eating poodle.
THIS is what they call…

…A tweetle beetle noodle poodle bottles paddled muddled duddled fuddled wuddled fox in socks, sir!

Fox in socks, our game us done, sir.
Thank you for a lot of fun, sir.

— excerpt from ‘Fox in Socks’ by Dr Seuss (1904 - 1991)

I didn't

But I have been holding the volume down on the music and I don't turn on the sub on the PC much anymore. This really sucks. The walls are plaster and lath, but the ceiling and floors are paper. You can't hear your neighbors, but a good jump feels like you would end up in the apartment downstairs. That apartment that I had in Walnut Creek was concrete construction. No sound at all came through the walls or the floors. In the model home that we looked at last weekend, I jumped up and down as hard as I could. In all the rooms on all the floors. Feels very solid. 12" on center joists and 16" on center studs in the walls. Also interlocking sub-floors.

The people upstairs

I really really can't wait to get a house. You see, Janey and I live in the 3'rd floor of a 4 floor building. It's a decent place. The entryway in on the 2.5 floor so we have to walk up 6 steps to get to our level. I don't know that I would want to live on the 4'th floor as we would have to go up 1.5 flights of stairs will all of our crap when we moved in, and the same amount back down when we will move out. The people that live in the apartment just above us like to play football. Tackle football. at 11pm and later. Tonight it started early. Around 8:30pm. I thought that if it was a bunch of guys that were rooming together, I could go up there and say something clever. Something like, "Hey guys, could I join the football game?", and we would laugh and they would try to hold it down. Well, it didn't go over so well. Guy answered the door. His SO was in the other room and she screams "Who the hell is that?!?!" The words just came out of my mouth. I couldn't help it. From the other room the SO screams, "Well that asshole plays his music too damn loud!!!" So here I sit. I wrote an apology letter that I am still contemplating sticking to their door in the morning, but I don't know if I will.

Geeze I wish we were in a house already. Come on, Matt. You said that you wanted to hire me 3 months ago, already!

Starlings

Tonight Janey and I went down to UC. Saw a performance of the Starling Chamber Orchestra. Very very good players. Not one of them over 16. Incredible. Also, the music Conservatory is a very very cool building. Had fun. Only a 35-40 minute walk either way.

Looking at homes and hooters

Yesterday, Janey and I looked at a new development (new homes that is...). It's about 15-20 minutes out of town, so it had been missed by our previous searches. Our previous favorite housing development had been very close, but this new community offers so much more for just a short drive. It has large park areas, playgrounds and ponds. The people that we saw were very nice.

Old favorite neighborhood benefits: Small neighborhood, we could afford the largest floorplan in the neighborhood, huge yards. Downsides: Small neighborhood, we would be the biggest house in the neighborhood, huge yard to mow.

New favorite neighborhood benefits: Lots of open space, many parks and bike trails, the lots are more square rather than the football fields at the other neighborhood, we would be squarely in the middle of the house sizes (Helps for re-sale), the houses are nicer for equivalent money, the neighborhood will be growing for another 5 years, so the house values will be going up steadily for the next 5 years and who knows what happens after that, the houses have a 30 year structural warranty. Downsides: HOA(but only $200/year), commute (Around 20-25 minutes to drop Janey off and then another 10 minutes for me to get to work. It's far enough out there that Janey wants to carpool, but she could also carpool with her classmate that lives in the same neighborhood.). That's about it.

The 3 models we liked are: Burton, the Bromley, and the Landon III. All were very nice homes. We liked more, but by the time we would option them to where we would want them, they got expensive. Now all I need to do is hear back from my future boss on when I start, then M/I Homes can start.

After lookig at homes, we ate at the Hooters that's just 5-6 miles away from the neighborhood. I wish this restaurant had been around CA when we lived there. Good food, and delightful eye candy. This is the one we ate at.

Walking around town and more food.

I like food. I enjoy exploring. Last night Janey and I had a fair amount of both. We walked about 2 miles to Ludlow avenue in the Clifton district of Cincy. Decent walk. Some hills, but not too bad. We looking into lots of little shops. To me it seems as though Berkely and Piedmont had somehow joined and merged and was transported to Ohio. There is a very cool Neuvue Retro furniture shop called Paolo. It was actually 2 shops. One was a custom jewlery shop and the other was the furniture shop. Same guy ran both. This guy makes custom jewlery in house. He specializes in platinum. Going to have to remember this shop.

We ate at a very cool burrito shop. Reminded me of Planet Fresh in Livermore. It's called Habanero's. Anybody that decides to come out to visit us (plea for company) will be taken there if in the mood for very good, somewhat unique burritos. When we had come out to visit before, we went to a place called the Cactus Pear. That's a bit more traditional mexican. We each ate half of our burrito, and then walked back to our apartment. Actually, Habanero's feels a bit like Planet Fresh style burritos mixed with Dos Coyotes style decore and salsa. The fact that Dos Coyotes and Habanero's both seem to exclusivly be staffed by tattoed and pierced college students doesn'tr hurt that impression.

Thoughts for this entry: While I would have gone wherever Janey had picked for her PhD program, I am very glad that she picked Cincy over NYC. Utah would have been good too, but I think that Cincy is culturally diverse enough that she doesn't stick out too badly and while it's very religious, it's not LDS.