June 2005 Archives

According to my Urchin stats, lots of people want to know how tell if a man really loves you. Always glad to help out, I think I'll make this a regular series. For the record,

• #1 is here


• #2 is here

Those were about beads and tears. This one is about beers.

If you're at a gourmet grocery store with your man, scoping out the Big Beer selection (meaning the ones in the big bottles, although there will probably have to be a "big" selection overall to offer much choice here), and he points out a delicious porter that he thinks you might like, you know he loves you. (If he doesn't know what kind of beer you like, he's soooo not serious. Dump him now. Conversely, if you don't know what kind of beer you like, educate yourself. There is no reason whatsoever to drink Bud Light or its equivalent unless you're at a ball game and that's all they serve, and even then you might consider a Coke instead.)

But the real test is this: Suppose he has a really tough day and he succumbs to the call of St. Pete and drinks your beer. I know, this is a terrible thing. But he has a chance to redeem himself. If he stops at the gourmet grocery the next day after work and buys you another delicious porter, he's a keeper.

A few weeks ago I decided it was time to teach the cats to use the toilet, using this book as a guide.

Phase I was easy. Move the litter pan from the MO's bathroom to my bathroom, because there's room next to the toilet in my bathroom. Slowly raise the pan to the height of the toilet. No problem. Both cats accepted this situation with grace. This was gonna be easy!!

Phase II, move the pan to the top of the toilet, then down into the toilet bowl, with the seat down over it. This was not so well received. I perservered with the treats to reward investigation of the pan in its strange new location, and immediate cleanup of the objections. (They would both pee in the pan but Lorax refused to poop in the pan for two days.) After a couple of "accidents" (I have no illusions here--she pooped on the floor 'cause she was pissed off, pun intended, I suppose) we reached an agreement and everybody seemed happy.

After a week of that, I started Phase III yesterday--cutting a hole in the pan. I didn't think this was going to be a big deal, but this evening we've had two votes against. Aaarrggghhhh! I know they know what's going on--even though I call Melvin dumb, she's not really (she's just sort of a dingbat). Lorax is playing alpha cat games. If she doesn't capitulate, the book recommends retreating to Phase II for a while. So tomorrow I may tape up the hole in the pan and see how it goes, but I am really hopeful of a successful outcome from this experiment.

I've actually witnessed the feline acrobatics that have to take place, so I know they can do it. It seems to be a mind game at this point, so I guess it's a question of who's more stubborn....

Big furry Edloe the capsizing cat is gone. In honor of Edloe, treats all around at the Oilman household tonight.

• Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter: Historical Perspectives of Death and Burials
• The Shape of Days: One what, exactly? (I've only seen the commercial once and that was too often.)
• Hog on Ice: Calligraphy Nerds? (Sigh. I actually know who Cheryl Moote is....)

• The Shape of Days: News from the future

  "Apparently trimming your ears is a thing now."

• Kim DuToit: The Art of the Compromise - Part I

  "The social contract demands, I think, that we compromise with others in order that we get along."

• Mangan's Miscellany: Mother sets fire to daughter's rapist

  "Shortly after, the woman walked into the bar, poured a bottle of petrol over Soriano and lit a match. She watched as the flames engulfed him, before walking out."

• Research Buzz: Online Dictionary with Entries in Limerick (Maybe not so helpful if you actually want a definition, but certainly amusing.)

In other home-body news, I have about 1/3 of my WWII Memorial Day scrapbook pages put together. Only one year after the fact.... Anyhow, I found a great deal on big (28 x 30) paper at Texas Art, I finally finished writing up all my notes, and now I'm actually gluing things down. So far I think it looks pretty good.

This was my first experiment with creating "digital pages" and while I'll admit that I really enjoyed the process of creating the pages online (FotoFusion is lots of fun, despite a weird GUI), it's a major hassle and expense to get from there to a physical product. And of course you want a real book, or at least I do. Half the fun is making the book. I like books, and so does the MO. Heaven knows you can tell that the instant you step into our house. We have tons of books.... And making books is just, well, it's like suddenly finding yourself in the principal's office but for some reason the grownups don't realize you're not supposed to be there. It's like getting away with something.

So, yeah, I want a physical book. In this particular case, I made my online layouts 12 x 12, since that's a "standard scrapbook size" and heavens-to-betsy, we wouldn't wanna be non-standard, now would we? So that's great, and they look terrific on my monitor, but did you ever try to find somewhere to print an image that big? Open your wallet, my friend. I got lucky, in that this whole techno-junkie thing is in the blood, and my dad had a yen for a large-format ink-jet printer, so my mom & dad printed my pages for me as a Christmas present. (This plan pretty much limits me to one scrapbook per year, you understand....)

Being me, I am not satisfied with just slipping these printouts into sheet protectors in a binder. There's still that whole BOOK thing to contend with. So I needed even bigger paper to mount the 12 x 12 pages on, and ideally this big paper would be twice as wide in case I want to stitch the binding, thus the wait for the sale at Texas Art.... And I've decided on a boring old post binding after all, but that's okay, it's still fun to play with the big sheets of paper. I have nine folios, thus thirty-six pages. Subtract front and back for the flyleaf and that leaves thirty-four. Twenty-four pages of pictures, ten pages of text. I've physically completed twelve of those pages so far, but they're all laid out. Haven't a clue what the cover is going to look like as yet....

I guess it wouldn't be nearly as much fun if you could just click the "make it a book" button, after all. I really do like the trimming and planning and gluing as much as taking the pictures in the first place :-)

BuyWord by Face 2 Face Games. The MO had finally reneged on so many games of Settlers that I proposed he buy me a new game to cancel the debt ;-)

So this afternoon we dropped by Nan's and picked out BuyWords, primarily because it wasn't very expensive ($25) and it has a solitaire varaint (big plus in my book). We're a little wary of word games because Quiddler is just so incredibly ridiculously insanely good that it's really hard to have patience for any other word game. But BuyWord has promise. The rules are very simple and the strategy is pretty easy to figure out (make long words) but there is enough luck involved that so far we've ended up with fairly even games. I'm looking forward to playing with more people and trying some of the variants suggested in the rule book.

Today the MO and I went on an adventure. It all started with a need for ammo. (It's always all about the guns for us, isn't it?) The MO thought it was time to visit T's Guns & Ammo down in Texas City, and well, if we're gonna drive that far, we might as well do something else while we're there. So he said he'd take me to the Texas City Dike, since I hadn't yet been there.

Sounded good to me, so we hopped in The Petromuncher and headed out. First stop was brunch--Goode Company Seafood to the rescue. Campechana and hush puppies for me, fried shrimp and grilled trout for he, Bass Ale all around. Thus fortified, we hit I-45, pointed The Muncher south, and stepped on the gas.

We found T's with no trouble, snapped up 1200 rounds of various sizes, and five minutes later we were at the dike. I guess I was basically expecting a jetty, but it's a bit more impressive than that. This thing is five miles long and you can drive the entire length. It juts waaaay out into the Houston Ship Channel and so affords a fantastic view of the marine traffic.

The south side of the dike is big granite rocks, and many of these rocks are populated by fishermen. There are also a few shrimp boat slips, so I guess it gets relatively deep pretty quickly. The northern side is more beach-like--here the fishermen wade in up to their necks (insanity!) and little kids splash in the sloughs. There's not a wave in sight and the water is generally prettier than what I associate with Galveston (that would be "brown"). There are several parks with boat ramps, and there is room to pull off and park a car on either side of the road at almost any point.

We drove all the way out to the end, where the granite rocks curl around the tip of the dike. It's an easy hop to the top of the rocks, where you can sit down, prop your feet on the next row of rocks down, watch the boats go by and get the occasional splash on your toes. Talk about soul-satisfying.

If you turn north at the base of the dike, you can drive up a one-way road through another spectacular park. This road follows the water's edge up to the flood gates, but there is a broad meadow that slopes down to the rocks at the bottom. We saw windsurfers and kite fliers galore, and some crazy folks using kites as sails. (Or trying to, anyhow. I didn't actually witness what I'd call very successful movement this way.) Both on the dike and in this park we saw people with tents or awnings to provide shade. I think that looks like an ideal way to spend a day--in the shade but with that salt air blowing through.

We wandered our way north up miscellaneous little roads back towards Houston. The MO was intent on finding something but I didn't know what. I had the map, and I was instructed to get us to Morgan's Point. When we got there, we found a shipping terminal full of freight containers stacked four and five high, the huge cranes that move the containers, and rail lines running every which way. We drove around and ogled all the big equipment, but this didn't seem to be the MO's final destination. He wanted to be on the other side of the cut. After a bit of wandering we drove through a little residential section and then out a dirt road to the water again. Left turn, along the channel, and voila, The Point--one of the most delightfully situated ice houses I've ever had the pleasure to patronize.

We sat at a picnic table with our beers and watched the birds and boats go by. I had thought the ships were close when we were on the dike! At this place, you could practically flick your bottle cap onto their decks.

Suitably refreshed, we drove around in the residential section for a bit. It's a real mixed bag--everything from rambling shacks to new McMansions, but as a whole quite appealing. I'm thinking this is a perfect destination for The Eventual Parental Migration.

After that, back to town for a trip to Border's and Spec's, and then home for a leisurely evening. We had to give an offering of our time to the traffic gods on 610, but we'd had such a great day even that didn't dampen our spirits.

These impromptu road trips are a standing tradition in the Oilman household, and they never disappoint. It's amazing what wonder you can find in your own backyard.

Here's a picture of our house that I snapped on the way to work a few days ago--on the longest day of the year. Doggone that crepe myrtle is huge! Even just a few days later it has tons more flowers. The lawn will be pretty for weeks with little pink flowers falling down on it. And our hedge is so much nicer now that we're actually paying someone to keep up with it....

Keeping with the carblogging theme ;-) I saw this on the way home today. Now, this is not the ThunderChicken, but it definitely qualifies as a cool car.

I saw this on the way to work this morning. Who needs a pickup truck, anyhow? As long as your cargo is tall and skinny, that is....

I re-visited this 17th Airborne remembrance site the other day:

Dad was a veteran of World War II,
and served in the Glider Infantry
and was attached, for most of his service
as an infrantryman,
to the 17th Airborne Division,
during the Battle of the Bulge
and other critical engagements

and in the comments found out about these guys who are a group that hosts a multi-player first-person shooter on-line. (I think. I admit to not being really up-to-date on this stuff.) Anyhow, someone there has put together two videos (see the lower right section of the site). One of them is a photo tribute "to the real soldiers of the 17th" and the other is built from scenes from the video game itself. They're both worth watching, and are moving in different ways.

I think it's pretty neat that someone from this group took the time to seek out the men whose "brotherhood" they've chosen to represent in their game, and especially that they respect the history.

It has been a long day. I struggled with a seemingly intractable problem at work, finally decided that what I wanted to do couldn't be done within the bounds that had been set, and realized that I didn't have the knowledge to expand those boundaries. Tomorrow I have a meeting with someone who says it can be done (oh, my wounded pride!) but also knows how to change the rules, if necessary (small amount of salve there).

I got home with only minutes to spare before our neighborhood association meeting so I availed bolstered my spirits with a glass of wine and trotted off to do my civic duty. We were supposed to hear from our State Representative about some bills he has proposed, but it turns out they're not quite done up in Austin so we were on our own. However, our program coordinators take their job seriously so they spent some time on the net and came prepared with quite a few printouts, and we had vocal representatives on each side of the issue present, so it was actually informative and entertaining.

And I didn't even have to walk home in the dark :-)

I worked on the genealogy database over the weekend. I upgraded to TNG v5 and I really like some of the new features. The tabbed navigation is much easier, and the new Document object is a good idea. I spent a lot of time trying to decide how to organize sources vs. photos vs. documents and I've settled on a scheme that maybe isn't perfect but seems to work so far.

But the best part is that when I wrote to Dick Manning to let him know I'd loaded some of the pictures that he sent (of my grandfather, John Deam) he replied with some more details about what happened at Mande St. Etienne.

I read Company Commander last year and I'm amazed that any man who experienced that remembers anything about it. I'm very grateful to Dick Manning for sharing his memories of my grandfather, sad as they are, with my family. (The book is not long, but it's not a quick read--at least it wasn't for me. It's very matter-of-fact and at times overwhelming, but I'm glad that I read it.)

One more reason why you simply must read Bad News Hughes:

A "madcap duel between mortician & monkey?!" I'm not entirely sure it didn't spring forth from my subconscious fully formed like Athena.

He's like the Candyman of the blogosphere, that is, if the candy is laced with, you know, that stuff you hear about candy being laced with.... The really scary part is that the MO likes the painting....

So it looks like little Mel is a candidate for a kitty diet. HAHAHAHAHAHA yeah that's gonna happen.

Actually, she looks kinda like Kirstie Alley, doesn't she? Maybe we can get Melvin in show business!

The Carnival of the Cats is at Blog d'Elisson this week. Check it out!

It seems there is specialty software for just about everything. Here is a company devoted to making software for the "traffic sign industry." I guess I always thought the DOTs took care of that themselves.

See the chart here which shows the expected power reliability for various markets, as 99.n% where n is some number of nines (more nines = more reliable). I figured hospitals would be at the top level, but no, that would be the internet ;-) (Okay, online markets, which I assume means financial trading, which I guess somehow upholds the entire world order.) Anyhow, even banks are more important than hospitals, which is even more interesting. I guess hospitals have better backup power systems so they can be lower on the list?

I'm very much looking forward to this. I read about it on Kim's site this morning and instantly signed up Mr. & Mrs. Oilman. Chester is going to get a workout, and the MO has an excuse to buy a new gun, so it's a happy thing all around :-)

I have no idea if I can actually shoot 300 rounds in a single day, much less come back for more the next day, but I'm damn sure gonna try!

"Knucklehead, walk your ass over here and I'll pet you."

At least he was saying it to the cat and not to me....

I saw one of these the other day and I thought it said "WAGNUM". Turns out it really said "MAGNUM" which is not nearly as clever, I think. They should have had the nerve to name it the WAGNUM. If I had one, that's definitely what I would call it. Of course, you only get to call it that if you get the V8 version. And if you gotta drive a station wagon, you might as well drive a V8 station wagon. Station wagnum, I mean.

Along with the rest of the online world, I suggest Lileks being brilliant yet again. [See June 9 entry.]

I have an update on the mystery bottlecap, but I still can't figure out the rebus. Hmph.

There has been a lot of talk on our neighborhood email group about researching your house's history. One of the tips was to look at a set of maps that were made for fire insurance reasons. The Houston Public Library has them digitized online (accessible if you have a library card). We had heard that our house was built in 1929, but it shows up on the 1925 map, so it must be a few years older than we had thought. The next earlier map, from 1907 (I think) just has a blank strip two blocks high down the length of our street. The north side of the street has cross streets, but it doesn't show any buildings in the blocks, and the south side is in the empty space. It also shows a rail line just a few blocks away--that certainly isn't there any more!

Check your public library for "Sanborn Maps". At HPL they're part of the Proquest databases and only Texas maps are available online.

The trouble with getting home at 8 is that I'm really not interested in going to bed at 9, or even 10 for that matter. So, I've updated the 'hood website with a couple of articles and now I'm tagging images in PSPA, quietly rocking out with my iPod since the MO is already in bed. A surprise (in that I forgot about it) bottle of cava is helping :-) I'm sorry, Carey, I'm never going to be skinny again....

Sure hope all these furry felines escape: Tim's Badly Drawn Cat Website.

[Via Ramage]

I want this to run on my images on my local computer. Ideally it would be some kind of plugin to PSPA so that I could use the tags in the image database to help control which images show up in the color picker. Failing that, I wish PSPA could sort by color. Assigning tags by color just sucks. It's just a calculation, and a program would be much more consistent than I am. Some days teal is blue and some days it's green, ya know? Anyhow, this color picker thing is the bee's knees and I want it.

Topics during last week's beer o'clock ranged from the Norwegian plaice to tv detector vans (with a detour into snipe hunting mainly because most of us didn't believe the bit about the tv detector vans), which is all fine and dandy and thanks to the MO's latest homebrew, the Kearn River Red, a bit more comical than usual.

So what, right? Well, this morning Dave sends me this link: more flat fish and cat detector vans. You can always count on Monty Python.

This is a two-cd + dvd set including music and video footage from various Mark Sandman projects (not just Morphine). I haven't even listened to the cd part yet. The dvd is great. It's well-presented and a bit quirky, but it feels appropriate. Some of the interviews are wonderful, and there is lots of music on the dvd portion aside from the packaged videos. I was disappointed with the selection of footage of Morphine, but the songs chosen from the other bands make up for it, and the videos are superb.

My guess is that you either really love this music or you hate it. I love it. Morphine was one of the best live shows I've ever seen. I dragged a bunch of unsuspecting coworkers to see them in Indianapolis and I don't think any of them liked it but I was standing right in front of the stage and I really didn't care what they thought. That music, his voice.... On stage he was supersexy. To say the least.

It finally occurred to me to see if PSPA could create a video cd, and sure enough, it can! I did a test run yesterday and our dvd player reads it just fine, so I put all the Parental Tour pictures on three cds, and we inflicted vacation pictures on TxB last night on the big tv.

The best part about our setup is that the tv can show the pictures from the dvd player while the receiver plays sound from cable television, so we put on a digital music channel and let the pictures run. It's kind of like having a screen saver with music. I'm really impressed with the quality of the pictures, too. They're full screen and quite sharp. I expect there are various settings to be made in PSPA to add transitions or text screens or whatever, but I'm pretty happy with just the default. I think I'll be making lots of vcd's in the future :-) It's much more fun to watch them in the living room on a big screen than in the office on a little monitor.

While Mom & Dad were here, we played Settlers of Catan at least every other night (we even took it with us to California) and now I am in serious withdrawal. The MO did find some two-player rules on the net and we played the first version over the weekend, but he isn't usually up for games during the week, so I'm anxiously waiting for the weekend. Meanwhile, Mom & Dad have been playing this 2-player variation at home (we got them so hooked we had to go to Nan's to buy a copy to send home with them, and they bought the Seafarer's expansion for us :-) so I'm looking forward to trying that version as well.

I'm learning that the MO and I have rather different approaches to gaming. (He might suggest that I'm learning this very slowly ;-) He's all about winning, and I'm all about having a good time. I especially don't like to feel like I'm at an advantage just because I've played a particular game more often. You can see where these two viewpoints might cause friction....

Anyhow, we spit at each other every now and then over this (usually lightly disguised as a discussion about "being serious"), and lo and behold, here comes an article in The Games Journal telling us we're both wrong ;-) I am certainly guilty of providing unsolicited advice and he has a penchant for suggesting obstruction of the current leader.... Other than that we're both perfect, I'm sure.

Whether you agree with the points in the linked article or not, I do suggest that you check out The Games Journal site (if you're a gamer, that is). I find the articles well-written and interesting, and certainly on topics near and dear to my heart. (Discovering that the MO likes to play games ranks as serious Eureka! moment in my life.)

[In my defense, I don't like to be on the inexperienced end of the teeter-totter, either, so my advice-giving is (in my mind, at any rate) a do-unto-others type impulse, and in his defense, I can get a bit pissy about it if I feel like I've made a bad move out of ignorance. Unfortunately for him, I feel pretty damned ignorant about MTG no matter how many times we play. Have I mentioned that he is a very patient and forgiving man?]