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I listened to the latest episode of Downloadable Content from Penny Arcade and heard the parties told tales of his father battery acid mishap and air-sawing.  I had heard rumors of air-sawing from my dad (one holds the piece of wood in one hand and a circular saw being either braced by nothing or with another body part) and thought such feats of daring limited to imagination or possibly inner Appalachia.

I should have known that of all the places where a father would exhibit such daring, a Pinewood Derby would be the place to see it.  One kid’s Pinewood Derby car came in over weight and seeing the race time approach the father took drastic measures to reduce weight.  Normally, one may file off a few things here or there or may be drill lightly, this man put the Pinewood Derby car in his palm, wrapped his hand around it, and with the 18.5 volt power drill and a 3/8ths bit started drilling into the car towards his palm.  This act was not taken lightly as shown by his tightened jaw and the bulging of previously non-existent arm muscles.  If the drill had slipped and he’d bored through his hand I’m confident his anger would be not at the fact that he’d given himself an impromptu case of stigmata but that the blood splatter would add to the weight of the car.

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I’m incapable of down-scaling a recipe.  I can make a double, triple or quadruple batch but not a 1/2 sized one.  So, when I made a cake that produced two rounds instead of my normal 3 I had to get create in icing.  After dismissing the idea of frosting the bottom, I started cutting divets to create holes across layers that became cream cheese frosting veins to connect the strata of sugared cheese and butter.  I was unsure if it’d turn out too rich and my answer came from a comment from a coworker:  “Terry, the frosting with cake in it was wonderful.”

Further confirmation came from the guy who kept coming in with fake questions so he’d have an excuse to coyishly have more cake.

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Ryan’s gone.  With the exception of the attic which stores the offal of my family’s collective experience and now a lot of Scout stuff, the trails he made have been largely over trodden and the upstairs bathroom is clean for the first time since Reaganomics.  This was the impression under which I operated until I took a closer look.  One still can’t open the microwave without a shiv, talons or telekenesis (I use the talons option when the cat’s cooperative) but luckily there’s a sign in Ryan’s handwriting of “Handle Broke, will fix when I get back”, the “back” to which this refers was his November (?) trip to Scotland.  His collection of 2″ x 2″ wrapping paper squares still lie under the pool table waiting to shroud a regifted spider ring or to act in concert to sheeth a pez dispenser.  And then finally, the curio filled with shot glasses.  My favorite being one that’s just a set of acrylic boobies.  Gone but not forgotten.

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I’m not one to protest cake combinations but today’s rasberry chocolate vanilla pound cake was simply a travesty.  The cake used a royal icing which consists mostly of powdered sugar and egg whites.  The lack of an emulsifier or other softening agent creates a frosting that could be used to forge a murder weapon.  Being one of the lucky ones, I landed a corner rose only to howl in pain when the rose/spear hit the portion of my gums recovering from being hit by my overzealous toothbrush.  Lesson learned, piece two received a haircut and the office praised me for my wisdom.

The the vanilla on raspberry on chocolate.  Any two of those layers together tasted fine as later confirmed by rigorous empirical testing but the three together somehow created a melange of tongue violence.  Normally, when there’s a fight over the last piece until volumetric deference kicks in and it is brought to me by supplicants, no longer.  Today, this amalgamation of sheets made me fail in my role of gourmand of justice. :-(

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I’ve never liked District Commissioner Meetings. If someone’s having a problem with a unit, the District’s already been contacted and hopefully dealt with. I vented on the miscommunications of the OSR leader guide another commissioner talked about the five calls required to get a Philmont policy question cleared and our fearless leader discussed the the difficulty of getting more Commissioners.

I looked around the table at the gaggle of volunteers who are filling two and three jobs and realized Commissioner Meetings are the closest Scouting comes to Group Therapy. If you’re a Scout and feel taxed, I strongly recommend becoming a unit commissioner, it’s… therapeutic.

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I was tired, it was late and I wanted to read something during my end of the day constitutional so as I printed out the Technology Monitor from the Economist my adrenal glands kicked in when I heard the 60″ plotter fire up and begin spitting out beautifully rendered text wide enough to fold an origami canoe.  I ripped the 5′ x 2.75′ printout from the plotter holding 21 pages of text and made an impromptu scroll from two film rolling cores (toilet paper rolls on steroids) and I went off to the can.

Once I mastered the mechanics of rolling and unrolling the cores and my arms got tired of holding my techscroll I realized why very few members of the rabbinate do Torahnic criticism on the can, or why those who do probably have massive forearms and triceps.

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The office tech support provider has been changed from a delightful group of midwestern folk to the standard East Asian fare.   Today, I discovered that this group only offers basic technical support and should you have a trickier question it goes elsewhere.  The real gem is if you have an FTP or remote access issue; from our best guesses one gets to talk to Newark’s finest.

It’s refreshing to hear a corrupted databased referred to as both “whack” and “fubar” compared to a “dope” Oracle setup.  The operator knew his stuff and shant be fronting and recommended we opt for the safer VPN option rather than the FTP/Remote Desktop.   <white circle 1997>I’m not exactly sure in what hood he rolls his non-hoopdie ride but he was so helpful I wished not to get all up his grill about it.</white circle 1997>

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I ran short on time to prepare Monday baked goods for work and was forced to use the boxed stuff.  I felt dirty at first and compromised by using the box brownie mix in a novel way.  I’d switch from oil to butter, add water and make cookies instead of brownies.  I even had a packet of caramel to add to the top to make them look like those adorable (type of cookie where there’s stuff in the center) that everyone likes.  I made thumb depressions in the cookie blanks, added the caramel, threw it in the oven at 350°F for 14 minutes and celebrated my victory by going to town on the beaters.

I pulled them from the oven left them to cool for an hour and came back to…. donuts.   Apparently, the caramel prevented the centers from cooking and with additional weight of the sauce the centers dropped through the grating of the cooling rack.  So, tomorrow I will go to work with not one but two goodies.  First, the donut cookies with their hole slightly creamed with caramel, and second the slightly under cooked centers that I’ve come to call caramel hats.

Stupid like a fox.

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The transfer from the Q6600 running at 2.66 GHz to the Core i7 at 2.66 GHz went smooth. Overclocking the core to 4.2 GHz was effortless but I’ve settled for 3.6 GHz to increase hardware lifetime and allow me to run quieter by not needing to crank up the fans and 8 hours of searching for Mersenne primes over 8 threads has verified system stability. I think the austerity of Windows 7 may help.

Such is my loss. My war against slowness and crapware and unnecessary registry keys defined my relationship with my computer. Much like a couple that breaks up and misses the arguing the lack of conflict in my computing life is disconcerting.

Or at least that’s how I felt until I was in my kitchen, booted up my laptop and tried to make a quick photo edit in Photoshop. After waiting for Photoshop’s startup which I assume involves calculating Graham’s number from first principles followed by the flipbook effect of applying a mask my computation ennui passed.  Just in case I ever again miss technological knuckle dragging I’ve made a user on my new computer that’s identical to my main one except it runs SETI@Home, Folding@Home CPU and GPU apps, Einstein@Home and GIMPS at once.

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Joe’s Pizza on 206 serves mediocre pizza at high prices of around $3.25 a slice for a sixth of a 16″ pie topped with at least 3 meats. Three of us went to lunch today and thinking ourselves sneaky purchased a polymeat pizza while rubbing our hands greedily thinking of the ensuing savings. Instead of a fresh pie at a more reasonable price, we got six reheated slices at a cost of $24.00. Yep, it would have been cheaper to purchase six single slices (19.50) rather than the whole pie. Is there some sort of pizza gestalt such that the whole pie is much more valuable than the pieces? Is this his passive aggressive way of saying “stop eating my food, panda jerk”? Did he see our sneaky handrubbing?

Time to go back to jerky cured in a 40°C environmental chamber. Where else can you get ISO 9000-certified dried beef?