So, my sister is coming from Maryland to visit for Thanksgiving. We did a lot of prep work this weekend to prepare, but I'm always looking for omens as to how the week might go.
Well -- both Penny and my car are sick. Penny had to take a de-wormer (ick) and my car needs new brake-pads (ka-ching).
At least Penny gets to sleep and I get to drive around in a 1-series loaner. Now how'd they know I was eyeing up one of those....
Hope everyone has a great week!
So, anyone that spends time here probably knows that we like a good cocktail from time to time here at The Aerie. But as hard as it is to believe, a good stiff drink isn’t always the right accompaniment for every occasion. Sometimes you just have to have a good glass of wine.
Wine (as opposed to booze) is something that I’ve come to a little later in life. When I was younger, I was intimidated by the somewhat snooty air that went along with the growing “wine culture” in America. I mean, could I really taste “ripe berries” and “burnt oak” and “hints of melon” in the chianti being served at my local Italian joint? Hardly.
And then I moved to California.
Wine is of course a huge industry here and for good reason – there are a lot of really good California wines. And so, when I moved here, I started trying some and learned how to say “Pinot Noir” correctly so that I felt better about myself. And two things happened, a) I began to know what I liked and b) I began not to care what other people (read: wine snobs) thought.
So, about the time we moved into The Aerie, the Beloved and I started taking more of an interest in wine – traveling to Sonoma County several times over the last couple of years. There, we were able start finding some places that we liked and buying their wines, and over time, we built up a good little stash.
Which bring me to today’s timewaster: CellarTracker. This is a free (though they ask for a donation) website where you can input the wines you have (and even the wines you want to have…) so that you know exactly what you’ve got, how it’s rated (both by the CellarTracker community and in major publications) and in cases of wines that need to be “laid-down”, when you should drink it.
I have to say that the website is very easy to use, has a great searching algorithm (so that you don’t have to enter in everything precisely, it will find the wine for you from its database…) and if you’re a data-nerd like me, you can sort and sub-sort your wines in all sorts of interesting ways.
As it turns out, we have ~75 bottles of wine and I was able to get them all entered in maybe an hour and half. Pretty cool.
There are also fields for you to enter private and/or public tasting notes (which I think would be useful for wines you have in restaurants and would like to jot something down before the next time you go to the store…) – though I give everyone free rein to come smack me if I write one with language like “overtones of ripe plums with hints of chocolate and coffee…”
Bottoms up!
I'm really not one that spends a lot of time playing video/computer games (Facebook Scrabble and Word-twist, notwithstanding), but in the past couple of weeks, I have spent some time with a complete productivity abyss called "Conquest".
If you're like me, you spent a good chunk of your pre-teen and early teen years playing RISK on a board with some friends and rarely if ever actually finishing the game in an afternoon. RISK was a game that was always better in theory (good balance of chance and strategy) than in practice.
Well, imagine my delight when I came across the Conquest app for the iPhone and iPod Touch (I have a Touch). Conquest is essentially a RISK emulator in which the computer controls the other players. One thing I like is that it's pretty customizable -you can vary the number of players and their skill level, as well as control/vary the value of cannon-horse-soldier cards.
In addition, the app includes about 10 different "worlds" to play on, so that you aren't always trying to capture Australia and then move out from there. The play is quick and intuitive, providing both an interesting strategy game and a dose of fond nostalgia.
Great for the airport or if you've got 20-30 minutes to kill -- finally it doesn't take all afternoon!
There’s a point in a football game when you sense that it’s over. And after staking the home-team Chargers to a 14-point lead, the Eagles were looking to get back in the game after a very good drive that had them 1st and goal from the 1 yard line. Yep – 3 feet away. Naturally, Andy Reid outsmarted himself and the Chargers D by calling play action passes and fade routes – eschewing the run as always --- and after three plays, the Eagles found themselves --- you guessed it, 3 feet from the endzone. David Akers kicks a field goal and a good 80 yard drive feels like a failure.
If this tune sounds familiar, it is. Much like in their loss to Dallas at home the week before, the Eagles squandered opportunity after opportunity by being unable to convert short yardage situations. Overall, the game was one that had to please fans of wide open offenses – each team scored five times, and after the first quarter both defenses seemed to be hanging on by a thread. With their Red Zone woes, the Eagles scored 2 TDs and 3 FGs (all the field goals being the dreaded you-can’t-score-a-TD 25 yd or less variety). The Chargers (who were outgained 462-331) were more efficient with their chances getting 4 TDs and 1 FG.
So, once again, another chance slips by and the Eagles sit a game behind the Cowboys (who were humbled in Green Bay and missed THEIR chance to take a hold on the NFC East) and tied with the reeling Giants had a bye. Clearly, this is a division that might be won by default.
On the upside, the loss was made a little more bearable by making some pretzels that The Beloved and I shared in the second half. Not surprisingly, after a few of these guys, there was little need for dinner.
Suggested by JM:
“Life is too short to read bad books.” I’d always heard that, but I still read books through until the end no matter how bad they were because I had this sense of obligation. That is, until this week when I tried (really tried) to read a book that is utterly boring and unrealistic. I had to stop reading.
Do you read everything all the way through or do you feel life really is too short to read bad books?
I've almost always completed books that I've started. Maybe because I usually read books that have been well-reviewed or maybe because I'm generally an optimist and that even after a slow start I hope that it might get better, or maybe I have a stick-to-it-iveness that says if you're going to start something you might as well finish it.
Speaking of of finishing it, that does remind me of one of the few books I didn't finish -- "IT" from Stephen King. Clocking in at over a thousand pages and at the apex of his drug-addled, no-one-will-edit-him 80s long windedness (Steve: more isn't always better) -- I plodded along in this for about 400 pages and then said, "No mas!"
Oddly, I know several people for whom this book was one of their favorites, but I couldn't stand IT.
It was a big day for Penny yesterday as she completed and graduated from her Family Dog I class. For the past month and a half or so, we’ve been working on sitting and staying and heeling and coming when called – all the things that are needed to be a good dog citizen.
Good job, Penny!
Xkcd is usually pretty good -- but this is genius.
Happy Friday!
So, one of the things I’ve gotten to spend some more time with during my – err – sabbatical from gainful employment – is my piano.
For those who’ve been around here a while, you might recall that a couple of years ago, I was stressing about and then actually enjoying learning a little music theory in the last piano class I had before I started taking private lessons.
So, last year, after I’d settled in and developed a bit of rapport with my teacher, I’d described the things I’d liked and not-liked about the classes I had taken. One thing I’d said I’d appreciated (and that maybe it was my analytical-science side coming out) was the introduction to music theory that I’d had – how it helped shaped the way I heard and learned new pieces. She suggested that I start a series of workbooks on music theory for the piano.
I think this series is pretty good, and after a year or so I’m right in the middle of the set. I’ve really enjoyed learning the hows and whys of how a musical composition is put together. We’ve covered meter, scales, keys, intervals, chords, ornaments, motifs and have begun to analyze different compositions for melodic phrase structure. There are also sections for ear training and sight-reading. Altogether, I think they’ve really helped me be a better (and I use this word very generously) musician.
So, of course, reading and dissecting music naturally began to make me curious about how it gets created. Do you start from a motif and build? Do you start with a feeling and go? What are the “rules” that make something sound “good”? And so on…
And so, last month, I started another series: “The Craft of Music Composition”. This also has several levels and naturally I’m starting at the entry level, since I’ve never written music in my life. The first book has a sort of a lead-you-by-the-hand way that takes some of the intimidation out of the idea of putting notes to paper (or notes into Finale’ as the 21st century equivalent might be…) – while learning some of the common techniques used by composers.
I’ve never really considered myself a “creative” person. Insightful, maybe. Analytical, for sure. So composition is way out of my comfort zone – and maybe that’s good. I don’t know that there will be any critical successes coming from my brain, but it sure is fun to sit and plink-plunk-plink at the keys and decide what you think sounds good.
Wish me luck!
I’m still bummed, so I’ll keep this short. Great season. Good playoff run and lost to a very good team that got more clutch pitching and better clutch pitching in this Series.
Hideki Matsui (who had SIX RBIs tonight – holy crap -- and who hit the cover off the ball all Series) and Andy Pettitte were great examples of both of those tonight as the Yankees closed out the World Series at home, winning 7-3. Pedro Martinez was fair but really it was the Durbin-Happ tagteam that couldn’t stop the bloodletting.
Anyway – good job from the Yankees, they got it done when they had to. And at least as a silver lining, Noelle still owes me lunch for the NLCS…
Today, the NIH announced that they are spending $27MM of your Recovery money on creating a social network for scientists in the biomedical research community. You can read about it here.
The goal is summed up as follows:
These Web-based initiatives will bring the power of Internet-based tools, as exemplified by social networking, to biomedical research. Modern technologies for communication and collaboration have the potential to enhance interdisciplinary research, enabling individuals to connect with each other and with resources — irrespective of location — to address challenges in new ways.
That’s very nice – but I wonder if this is really necessary? Frankly, most of the social networks among scientists that I know involve a couple of pints. And though I don’t want to be a Luddite, I wonder if it can be successful. Do I really need a social network to help me solve scientific problems of a common sort (Hey peeps, I’m out of ammonium sulfate, anyone in 92121 got any in da house?)?
Because I’ll tell you, the first thing that popped into my mind when I heard about this was two little letters: “I” and “P” as in Intellectual Property. The who “owns” what question is always a contentious issue that plagues researchers from the --- whose name gets to go on a paper, or whose name gets to go first on the paper questions on the academic side – to the industry ones of who had an intellectual contribution worthy to be on a patent to which organization owns the rights to this new discovery and can license it out to the highest bidder(s)? Can you imagine “Hey peeps, I’m looking to cure Parkinson’s Disease with this new compound I made, anyone got a validated preclinical animal model in da house?” Somehow I don’t think so.
I think this also raises the question of how many social networking sites do you really need? I have three that I can think of – Facebook, Vox and LinkedIn – which seem to adequately cover the personal and professional sides of life. I’ve eschewed Twitter because I think it only enforces America’s short-attention span problem. Though I did just get a GoogleWave test-account (thanks, DeWitte!) – and I’m not really sure how to classify that. So – is this new endeavor supposed to be a less “career networking” and more a "work networking" site than LinkedIn? Perhaps.
I’m sure being supported by the government, they’ll come up with some terrible name out of committee – NerdNet, Science Communication And Networking Tool (SCANT), Fritter? Maybe the social network itself should organize and name itself.
What do you guys think? Good idea, bad idea, I'm not a scientist so who the heck cares and I want my $27 mil back?
