Down in the dumps

A few years ago we had cubicles that were eight feet by eight feet. It was decided that that was too large. The industry average size for cubicles (we were told) is around 40 square feet so that's how big cubicles at NCR were going to be (because NCR doesn't need to be more generous with its space than the industry). Not only that but managers will be happy to work in a cubicle. No more offices with doors. If anybody needed privacy they could get it for a short time in a conference room. So our cubicles were reduced to five by eight feet.

And there was much grousing.

I never had much of a problem with the smaller cubicle. After all, I sit in front of the computer monitor and don't use much of the desk space. About the only problem I have with the narrower cubicle is scraping the back of my chair on my whiteboard and that probably annoys whoever is on the other side of the wall than it bothers me.

Then one day I walked into my cubicle with a runny nose and reached to the right as I went through the doorway for a tissue. The tissues weren't there. They never have been. They're down at the far end of the desk. When I was finished with it I went to the far end of the cubicle to put it in the trash and, again, that was the wrong end of the cubicle.

Then it dawned on me...I had been transported our bathroom at home. The two rooms are configured the same. They're long and narrow and when you go through the door there is the horizontal surface along the right hand side of the room and there's a place to sit at the far end. In the bathroom the tissues are by the door and the trashcan is at the other end.

Maybe I do have a problem with my smaller cubicle if it makes me feel like I'm working in the john.

(Not that our bathroom is unpleasant. It's got Jasmin, after all!)

Flood!

All these years we've lived here we've had a little problem at the end of the driveway whenever it rained:Sometimes the newspaper would be delivered to the end of the driveway just before the rain comes and the paper would be in the middle of the lake by the time we wake up. Or we'd have to wade a bit when going to get the mail. We've been wanting to get the driveway to quit being a lake after the rain. We couldn't dig a deeper trench downstream...it would cause broken bones when people fell into it and it would fill up anyway. We tried filling in the lake bed with rocks but that just made the lake a bit shallower.
On Monday, I came home at lunchtime since I was in Escondido for a doctor's appointment. I was checking the mail and talking with Mom on the phone when somebody drove by and asked if I wanted to fix my driveway. He was going to be doing some paving for a neighbor and while they're in the area with all their equipment they could do the job for a reduced price. (Right!) Since we did want to fix our driveway and money is just burning holes in our pockets, I decided that we've dilly-dallied too long on this project and we should have it done without even comparison shopping.

Today I came home for lunch to see this:
It looks like the lake problem is solved. There might be a little bit of a puddle upstream but I don't think it will go over the neighbors' driveway. The puddle area should fill up with dirt pretty quickly and solve that puddle problem.

I wonder if we should have gotten a better idea about how much this project should have cost. Who cares now?

Bring on the rain!

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Update: I forgot to say that Jason, the person doing the work, is the sort who says "ashphalt."

Oops!

While I was on the phone dealing with my Verizon order I was upset that some things that one part of their operation were doing weren't being told to another part in a timely manner. (The canceling of my order by the money part of the business should have unlocked my online ordering ability in the web part, for example.) I mentioned to the nice person that perhaps Verizon should think about getting a better database system to handle some of these issues. Teradata has a great database and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that works with it.

Today I found out that Verizon is a Teradata customer.

Well, I tried.

We skipped "The Great American Trailer Park Musical" for this?

We were double booked today. We had tickets for the 2:00 performance of the San Diego Opera's "Tannhäuser" and the 8:00 performance of "The Great American Trailer Park Musical" at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. Tannhäuser was going to last about four hours so that was going to give us just enough time to drive from San Diego back to Escondido, get coffee and supper and shift gears from German Romantic opera to trashy Off-Broadway fluff.

Then San Diego Opera decided that they needed to start at 3:00 instead. So much for the time to get from one to the other. We turned in our tickets to the Trailer Park Musical.

I'm wondering if we made the right decision.

I had never seen Tannhäuser before so it was a good thing to experience but it seemed to be a rather silly story (it didn't seem all that silly while I was growing up with operas on records). Their Venus seemed to be a bit weak and their Tannhäuser seemed to be too strong. The Elisabeth sang well but why is she so determined to save that lout's soul?

I wish I knew how to analyze opera.

(I wonder how the Trailer Park Musical was.)

Mycology in action

I was getting worried with my mycological inaction. My bucket of mushrooms was doing very little. The little mushrooms were growing stalks but no caps. I thought that maybe they were just too cold out in the garden room so I brought them in the dining room and set them by the door where I thought they'd get the light they need and the heat they were missing. They seemed to be doing no better so I figured that they wanted more light. I moved them back to the garden room and put them where they get more afternoon light than they were getting in their original spot.

Turn your back on mushrooms for a day and look what they do:The patch of mushrooms that grew caps were on the side of the bucket that wasn't shaded by the bucket. So I do believe that light was the thing that was missing. I should rotate the bucket each morning so they all get a bit of sunshine.

I harvested the bunch at the top of the picture and Jerry put them on my pizza tonight. It was good. The mushroom flavor came through the sauce and cheese and Thai flavored baked tofu.

Let's hope that this isn't the end of the harvest.

Jerry's being a jerk!

Remember the food dehydrator story from last weekend? The full name of the dehydrator is "Nesco American Harvest Gardenmaster Food Dehydrator and Jerky Maker." Today it is living up to its jerky making ability. It's made jerky once before. That time Jerry used some spices on it and that filled the house with a peppery aroma. Today's batch was marinated in teriyaki sauce and that's not masking the meatiness as much. Oh, well.

I understand that the jerky turned out pretty good. I'll take Jerry's word for it. I hope he enjoys this round.

All living things need coffee

Poss asked about coffee roasting so here's the scoop.

Yes, I'm still on my first Hearthware I-Roast 2 coffee roaster. I am on the second roasting chamber. The first one got cracked. I think I rubbed too hard while cleaning it. At least it was just a crack and kept working until I got the replacement! The lid doesn't fit this roasting chamber very well so I have to fight to get it on. I'm bound to break this one sometime in the fight so I really should order another one just in case.

I get my green coffee beans from Sweet Maria's these days. I usually get some Espresso Monkey Blend. (Did you know espresso blends include some robusta beans? And we thought robusta is evil!) And I try some single-origin coffee that they say makes good espresso. I need to pay more attention to the flavor because after a while I can't remember what might be different between the various coffees. I used to appreciate the differences. I wonder what's changed.

I grind the roasted beans in Rocky and brew in Silvia. They're a great pair. No home should be without them. (I got them from Whole Latte Love.)

And now for a 20 megabyte experiment: here is a minute and a half view of the coffee roasting! (I should have recorded it in lower resolution.) I've never done this before so I hope it works.

(What a waste of bandwidth...at least it's not porn! Though some religions do find coffee to be sinful.)

The movie starts with me forgetting that I hadn't selected the roast profile. I first go for the start button then have to remember to do all that needs to be done to select Roast Profile 2. So that's what all the fumbling around is about. There are 30 seconds at the beginning of the roast, 30 in the middle and 30 at the end of the cooling period.



And here's the finished product cooling in the colander.


Tomorrow we get to find out if it's good. (It is I'm sure.)