Merlin of Chaos

Other than having to spend some dough on the Jeep, and having...intestinal excitement...all week, it's been a pretty decent week. I think I've finally shaken off the malaise that hit me when I got back from CO, and can actually start to feel excited about things again. That said, I still had a couple of cranky days this week where I spent the bulk of my time pretending not to be so I didn't rip somebody's head off for something that was well and truly not deserved, but even with that it wasn't as bad as last week, where all I wanted to do most of the time was sit and veg.

Oddly, this whole post took only a paragraph, because I actually have nothing to write about.

Up: Yesterday I woke up feeling a lot better than I had in awhile, for the 2nd day running.
Down: Costco killed it. I have a problem with crowds. It's something I try not to let bother me, but somehow it always does. People getting in my way make me cranky beyond reason, and they tend to throw me right into that ugly funk.

Up: Today I feel better again.
Down: The Jeep was particularly cranky about starting. And then it didn't want to idle. So I ran it for awhile and it got better. Let it sit for 5 minutes and it got worse. Gotta take it in. Hope it's just the battery.

Up: Yesterday I weighed in at 260, which is my first primary goal.
Down: Weigh-in is Wednesday and this morning I was 262. Dunno what's up with that, but it's probably just retention. No big deal, but showing me my goal weight and then taking it away is annoying.
Additional Down: Got a new scale. Now, I've always known that the scale I use weighs a little light, but it's not really been in my face and without another scale I didn't have any alternatives anyway. So experimentation this morning suggests that my scale is 7-8 pounds light. Fortunately, even tho WW doesn't let me edit my starting weight, it does let me edit every weight since (no idea why it's weird about that). So I just added 6 lb to all of my readings--meaning I'm still going to take a 1-2 lb hit as the scale adjusts, but I guess I've got to live with that. It's a much nicer scale and it gives a much more reliable (as in, same reading 3 times in a row, within .2 lb) reading than the old one (which could vary by 4 lb just stepping off and back on it)

I watched the original Battlestar Galactica movie.

I will never get those memories back.

I just feel like sharing for a change. I've been in a selfish mood since we bought the house, meaning I really haven't felt like sharing the day-to-day stuff with other people. Maybe I didn't feel it was interesting enough to journal.

Anyway, today I got Fedora Core 2 installed on a pair of Via C3 1 gigahertz Mini-ITX boxes. They're very small--12" x 12", and the power supply is only 80 watts. They make very little noise.

Fedora had a kernel bug which made the install problematic, and I eventually had to download a special boot CD which used the patched kernel that fixed the problem, and had to do a little magic to make sure it installed the patched kernel and not the stock one. Luckily the current kernel works fine, so the next Core release should be hunky dorey, as they say.

My plan is to split the services maelstrom offers across the two boxes. In particular, spamassassin chews so much CPU and we get so much spam (4k/day and that's only spam that's actually addressed to a deliverable account) that I was starting to really notice how much processor time it was taking on the machine.

The new machine will be named tempest; it'll mostly just handle mail service, backup DNS and it'll end up being our primary fileserver, since it's got a nice fat 120 gig drive ($87 at Fry's. Plus a $40 rebate).

I'm going to retool the firewall and turn it into a backup server, I think. I've been very lucky, i think, running a server 7 years without any data loss. I need to get a backup solution in place, and the firewall machine can be the place the data is put. I would just put it on another drive in maelstrom or tempest, but the small boxes can only handle one disk apiece. The problem with very small boxes. I will name this one firestorm.

And then I have to get back to the dissonance project. I've already got it mapped out. Just have to knuckle down and take the time to do it. That's the media server. I have some software that works, but it's been unstable, and it's not customizable. It doesn't do quite everything I want. I know what I want and approximately how to do it.

Oh, and I'm liking my new job too.

On one hand, I'm happy that my leg hurts. It didn't hurt when I cut it and it didn't really hurt except in proximity for the first couple of days. I figure this means I severed the primary nerve that feels pain in that region. No big deal, really; so long as we take care of it, great.

Fortunately, now it hurts, suggesting that nerve is healing up quite nicely. Unfortunately...OW. Dammit.

1) The party this weekend went tremendously well. There was a lot of meat. Thanks very much to mallen for inspiration and recipes for the pork and the tri-tip. Though the BBQ sauce was entirely my own.

2) Yesterday I made soup for dinner. I expected it to be so-so but somehow this lazy experiment turned out fab.

It started with a refrigerated chicken stock paste -- Minor's to be exact. I buy it at Costco but i've seen it other places.
The fact that it's a paste makes it a step above boullion and honestly, I think it's a step above most canned stocks,
though it doesn't compare to real, homemade stock. Of course, real homemade stock takes hours and hours to
make and this takes about 5 seconds to grab some amount of and throw it in water.

Next went some powdered Hon-Dashi that I think was originally picked up at Nijiya market, but may have come from Ranch 99. By themselves, neither stock was really the flavor I wanted. Together they worked very well. I added a little powdered garlic cause, well, garlic. You know?

Into the boiling water went: Bay scallops, shrimp, chopped baby bok-choy and some frozen dumplings (all from ranch 99) as well as some regular mushrooms, cut into bite-sized pieces (mostly quarters, some were big mushrooms tho). The shrimp and the scallops cook in no time in boiling water. I had the boil too high--the stove at this house is horrible for fine adjustments, and it took me 6 or 7 tries to find a setting that was between hard boil and no boil.

I thought it was going to be so-so, but the broth turned out fantastic, and the combintion of shrimps, scallops, bok-choy and wonton-like (but not really wontons) dumplings was mighty fine.

I find myself looking forward to more soup.

For me it began quite early today, as there was a ridiculous amount of prep work to do.

senatorhatty decided we should throw a fondue party. But 'we' he meant me, because he was due to arrive at 8:15 this evening returning from his vacation. But it seemed like a really good idea to me, so I volunteered to go through with it. esmerel, wildpaletz, jendavis77, redhound, and strider attended.

So as I occasionally do, I decided to completely overdo it.

I was a little quiet about it because a fondue party cannot really support a large number of people--we invited a total of 10 and ended up with 7. I had as much as I could prepped ahead of time so I could spend time eating as opposed to cooking and serving, so by the time we got to the party only the fondue needed to be put together in a pot and made ready, and then the same with the chocolate.

Course #1

Each guest got a choice of spinach or spring mix salad. Each salad came equipped with shredded mozarella, shredded carrot, cucumber sticks, half of a hard-boiled egg (sliced), brocolli florets, 2 little chef rolls (roast beef, turkey, ham and swiss rolled together). Several dressings, of course, though I failed to have Italian available.

Course #2

3 different cheese fondues. Basic 3 cheese swiss fondue, black forest mushroom fondue, and french gruyere with onion. Dipping choices: 3 kinds of bread, carrots, brocolli, apples, tomatoes and little dill pickles.

Course #3

The piece d'resistance. An electric griddle (which is cheaper and more effective than a swiss grill) and 4 kinds of meat: alligator tail, ostrich fan, wild boar shoulder and filet mignon. Sauces: K.C. BBQ, pesto mayonnaise, chipotle mayonnaise, asian style orange, spicy peanut, hot sweet mustard, ginger-soy, sour cream-horseradish. All hand-crafted, thankyouverymuch.

Course #4

Chocolate fondue, of course. Semi-sweet and dark. Dippers: apples, strawberries, cream cheese balls (rolled in cinnamon + nutmeg), rice krispie balls, little cookies, ladyfingers, marshmallows and poundcake.

Course #5

Veuve Cliquot Brut Champagne. Because New Year's deserved it.

We got started at 9:15 when the 'host' arrived and even though I had everything as much pre-prepped as possible, we didn't finish the last course until about 1am.

But it was lavish, extravagant and oh-my-god good. I may be willing to do this again next year. As long as I have plenty of kitchen assistance. It's a ton of work.

Yea, I've been a little un-sharing lately. Must be a mood thing.

This morning I woke up crabby. Not sure why, but I think I was having a bad dream. Then I realize I'm being woken up and it's already 15 minutes past when I'd wanted to be up. This is ok, I've been leaving myself extra time for slack--so it just means I didn't have as much slack as I've become accustomed to.

When I turned the shower on, the shower nozzle had been turned to face directly out at the bathroom in general.

Tonight's dinner is 40 clove garlic chicken, courtesy of an Alton Brown recipe. I haven't seen the episode this comes from, and the recipe itself is pretty sparse on details, so I have a feeling there's something relatively key in the presentation I'm missing. It just doesn't seem like the product I'm getting is quite what I expected...but maybe I'm smokin'.

And tonight is the Altaia game. Muahaha. The demon draws nearer...or rather, they draw nearer the demon. Well, the demon's pet, really...

Update: Didn't game. Was too tired to GM and no one really objected.