Category: Personal

Some people complain there isn’t enough on TV but I am definitely not one of them. And then new shows come on. Like Jeremiah, the cool new post-apocalyptic Showtime series from Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski. Opening premise: our world is destroyed as all those people over the age of 13 die when a superbug is released from a lab (or on purpose, this episode doesn’t address the issue and I expect JMS is keeping it in his backpocket) but the kids live. The show opens 20 years later with Luke Perry (Jeremiah) and Malcom Jamal Warner (Kurdy), both all grown up, meeting and finding they need to partner up for survival. Not going to recap the story here further but suffice to say that they find a thriving community living under Cheyenne Mountain, using all the facilities of the NORAD HQ to prepare to relight a tech civilization. The duo take off again at the end, this time as agents of “The end of the world.” The appeal here is that not everything is predictable even when I’ve read dozens of stories with post-apocalyptic premises. The writing is good, the visuals are worth watching, and there’s decent acting. Not surprising for a JMS show, the website is pretty decent, with all the credits, drawings, interviews, and behind the scenes features. Oh yeah, the series is recommended too.

Little Steven Van Zandt has been a musical god of mine since the mid-70s with his work on Born to Run and the first few Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes LPs. Nowadays he splits his time between acting on the Sopranos (yeah, that’s him owning the Badda Bing), his solo career, playing with Springsteen, and leading the revival of Garage Rock. He posted an excellent essay on the history and current status of the genre on his website, which I encourage you to read even if (especially if) you don’t know what kind of music this means. Little Steven writes with a real attitude, the same kind of tone you hear in his music. If you haven’t heard his first solo record, Men Without Women, you don’t know the rock and roll nirvana you’re missing. Anyway, back to the Garage rock, Van Zandt is launching a nationwide weekly radio show called Little Steven’s Underground Garage on April 7, with him spinning favorite tracks and providing commentary. And rumors persist of a new, hard rocking Springsteen/E Street release in the Fall, keep your fingers crossed.

I can’t say that the name of this dish is really that useful but the best we could do on short notice. I was motivated here by seeing the incredible selection of meats at Ditmars Wurst Haus on San Antonio Road the other day when I stopped in for a pastrami sandwich.

Ingredients

• 3/4 lb. ground veal
  

• 3/4 lb. ground pork
  

• 1 bunch baby broccoli
  

• 8 oz oyster mushrooms
  

• 24 oz crushed tomatoes
  

• 8 oz tomato paste
  

• 1 large onion, halved, then the halves quartered and separated into large flat pieces
  

• 5 cloves of garlic crushed and diced
  

• 1 bunch of fresh oregano
  

• 1 bunch of fresh cilantro
  

• 1 bunch of fresh basil
  

• olive oil, salt and pepper

Preparation

• Mix ground meats together in a bowl with salt and pepper
  

• Heat a skillet with oil, brown the meat, set meat aside
  

• Sweat garlic and onion until onion is translucent
  

• Add tomatoes, then tomato paste
  

• Add baby broccoli, a little salt and pepper
  

• Add 3/4 of each the basil, oregano, and cilantro, chopped roughly, stir well and simmer five minutes
  

• Add meat, stir to coat thoroughly, simmer a couple of minutes
  

• Add mushrooms, simmer three minutes
  

• Remove from heat and stir in remaining herbs

Serving suggestion: spoon on top of some thick fresh bread and top with grated parmaggiano cheese.

We took advantage of the beautiful weather here today to see the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. Well, just the first floor, we saved the second for a future visit. The museum is a lovely new building which was reopened in 1999 after closing due to damage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The biggest permanent attraction is the Rodin Sculpture Garden which features 20 bronzes by Auguste Rodin, including a stunning piece titled “The Gates of Hell.” The major current exhibit is called “Aerial Muse: The Art of Yvonne Jacquette.” Jacquette is a modern American artist whose distinction, quality of the work aside, is that she flies in small planes or looks at from skyscraper windows and draws or paints what she sees. The works exhibited can be broadly divided into daytime and nighttime scenes and I have to say that the nighttime paintings seemed too much a like for my taste, although I did enjoy the greens of many of the daytime pictures. We took some ordinary film pictures, so I’ll post them once the come back.

There is a neat quote from Rodin in the exhibit: “Art is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there defines the spirit by which Nature herself is animated.”

Hey, how many bands do you know that have been making amazing music for 22 years and can still get it up? Sure Bono may be spending lots of time lobbying the White House and 10 Downing Street for African debt relief. But I’m watching a concert on VH1 taped during their 2001 tour and these guys just blow me away. Especially Edge and who even remembers his real name? Bono said during the band intros that even his mom calls him that now. From the opening ringing tones of “I Will Follow” on Boy to on “Beautiful Day” on All That You Can’t Leave Behind. And their performance at the Super Bowl. Just fucking amazing.

garret points to this CNet article, When a city’s cost is bad for business, which suggests that many companies are considering leaving Silicon Valley due to the high cost of doing business here. Of course, the only source for the article is the head of a company that makes a living helping companies relocate. No conflict of interest there, eh buddy? I would suggest that this article is on the same level of use as the one by Frank Moss, also from CNet, which I discussed in the previous log entry. I can’t find the article online but I did read in the last day or two a similar article in the (still unlinkable) San Jose Mercury News which had other sources of information and refuted Boyd’s claim by pointing out that productivity is far higher here than other areas, more than making up for the difference. Also, there have been a number of articles delving into the Why Sillicon Valley Can’t Be Replicated question and the answer generally comes down to two key factors: top academics (mainly, but not only, Stanford and Cal) and mission critical density of brainpower and money.

This afternoon the Chicago tune was running through my head as I was driving away from the iPlanet/Sun campus in Santa Clara. I was there to have lunch with a couple of buddies and afterwards I wandered the halls (shh, don’t tell Security) saying hi. Hard to believe its been more than a year since I last worked. There or anywhere. Which needs to change but in the meanwhile with the beautiful weather I’m enjoying.

Richard Cohen comments on Why Daniel Pearl Died: “But I don’t think I am being irrational when I say that the hideous murder of Daniel Pearl was not just the work of ‘barbarians’ — the phrase du jour to describe his killers — but the inevitable result of policy. Throughout the once-tolerant Islamic world, anti-Semitism — hatred of Jews — has become both common and acceptable.” More and more, the truth about the Arab world, that the governments, the so-called peaceful moderates, are as much to blame for the hatred of Jews and Americans as the radical Islamists like bin Laden. The biggest difference is that the radicals aren’t two-faced liars. Still bad though.

My father adds his two cents: “This is, indeed, very sad, and perpetuated in large part by those who would keep their populaces in ignorance and poverty, while blaming everything on a convenient scapegoat. What should happen is a program of using Muslim Americans who can carry a different message to those parts of the world. I don’t know if it’s possible, but it can’t hurt a lot to try.”

So yesterday’s power outage was caused, according to the wonderful folks at Pacific Gas & Electric, by a bird flying into a substation. Knocked out power to 11,000 people for over two hours. A bird? How did a bird get inside in a way to create this kind of damage? One would hope that these single points of failure would be designed with the understanding that animals can be intrusive but apparently not.

I was out and about this afternoon, enjoying the beautiful weather that is one of the major reasons I had for moving here six years ago. Actually I was out to see the doctor about the pain my hands, which is apparently caused by compressed ulnar nerves and can be corrected easily (phew!). But still, here we are in late February and the Sun is shining and the sky is blue and I can be comfortable in a shortsleeve shirt. Such a contrast from the last few winters I had in New Jersey before moving here.

I come home, though, to find this rather unpleasant story in my inbox courtesy of a buddy who recently had twin boys: Springtime, Taxes, and the Attack on Iraq. For better or worse, the author has way to much credibility to easily dismiss so regardless of the general pronouncements that nothing will happen soon with Iraq one has to be ready. Not my idea of a beautiful spring day but perhaps necessary nonetheless.

Karl Martino, proprieter of paradox1x, a fellow native New Jerseyan, guitarist, web geek, and Hitchhiker fan, has unveiled the Tri-State Syndicate. I have no idea what he means by this, other than weblogs by people who were born or live in the states of New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, but hey a link is as good as a nod, or so Rod Stewart mean to say 30 odd years ago. And haven’t they been odd years? I would say definitely. Conversely Karl has laid out some good, and not odd, Principals From Programming too.

A case from Ohio reached the US Supreme Court today, a fight between a municipality and the Jehovah’s Witnesses over the right to knock on doors without a permit. The town claims they never turn down applications for the permits (there is no charge for the permits) and the applications are to help protect the residents from conmen and the like. The Jehovah’s Witnesses claim they have a 1st Amendment right to anonymous free speech. They position is that if people do not wish to be solicited all they need do is post a No Soliciting sign out front. I believe in this particular case, the law should be struck down.

I find myself conflicted though. Anyone who knows me understands I have no interest in the Jehovah’s Witnesses and in fact I usually don’t bother to answer the door when they ring. But take this a step further, regardless of the permit requirement’s consitutionality. Their position is essentially equivalent to the opt-out approach espoused by direct marketers: If you don’t want us to come in, you need to do something to tell us; otherwise we have the right to contact you. I would suggest that my home is mine and if I haven’t asked you to knock on the door, you have no right to do it (that is, the opt-in approach). I am a firm believer that privacy overrules free speech and I would extend this to telephone and mail (snail or e) solicitation as well. I truly believe in free speech, anonymous or not, even for causes I despise, but only in a public space. My home, my telephone, my mailboxes are mine and I don’t want you coming in unless I invite you. As one of the comments on MetaFilter says, the right to free speech does not guarantee an audience.

This is the age of the Internet, no? And Pacific Gas and Electric is the home team energy supplier, yes? So how come these idjits can’t post outage information on their website? My power was out for two plus hours this morning. A call to the automated information line says they are experiencing a system failure and restoring power might not occur until 2:00. Not great but no big deal. I headed over to the wonderful Mountain View Public Library to use their PCs and internet access, thinking I would check for details and also to see when power is actually restored. But no, they don’t actually publish this information! Hey, if the automated phone system has the data, there’s no way that piping it to the website would be difficult. By the way, did you know that the MV Library allows folks to bring their own laptops and hook into the network? Next time for sure I’ll be bringing my own rather than use the crippled old machines they have.

This Australian film stars Anthony Lapaglia (don’t be surprised at his accent, he’s a native of Oz), Geoffroy Rush, Barbara Hershey, and Kerry Armstrong as husbands and wives whose paths cross through work and play. Lantana is a drama that compares the lies that bind couples to the lantana, “a genus of tropical shrub with small, colorful blooms that hides a dense, thorny undergrowth.” In fact director Ray Lawrence consistently uses shots of lantana to move our viewpoint into scenes, beginning with the very first frames of the movie. Perhaps he and writer Andrew Bovell were a little unsure their audience could pick up on a more subtle take but overall I did enjoy this character-driven piece.

Lapaglia is married to Armstrong who is a patient of psychiatrist Hershey who is married to Rush, then Hershey disappears after her car breaks down on a dark country road and police detective Lapaglia investigates. Rachel Blake, who attends a salsa dance class with Lapaglia and Armstrong, sees her neighbor toss a ladies shoe into some lantana across the street and has her husband Glenn Robbins (from whom she is separated) call Lapaglia, with whom she had a brief but ended affair. When Lapaglia shows up at her house, Robbins recognizes him from the pub where they had met a night or two before after Robbins was accosted in the street by Hershey. Confused yet? Don’t worry, the movie doesn’t tax your mind keeping track of all these connections. An arthouse film worth seeing.

A secretive group of lawyers and academics is preparing a lawsuit against companies that benefited from slavery in America before it was outlawed 140 years ago. Of course, some of the allegedly targeted companies didn’t even exist then, they just happened to have acquired companies that did. Apparently this “powerhouse team” is willing to ignore legalities if it suits their needs in favor of using public opinion to force targets to acquiesce. But hey, I’m Jewish and my forefathers were slaves to Egyptians a few thousand years ago, so let’s go claim money damages on the current government. Alan Dershowitz, where are you when your people need you?

Most of the database vendors include a clause in their licenses which prohibit anyone from publishing results of a benchmark test without permission. Typically this has led to a paucity of independent, verifiable published test results. So when I saw Timothy Dyck’s article Server Databases Clash in eWeek today I was pleased and yet quite surprised. Then again his results showed Oracle coming out on top and while that company is usually the toughest in prohibiting publication perhaps these results made a difference in their attitude. I wrote to ask him about this and if and when I get an answer will post it.

CNet posted an article this morning (BEA aims to broaden its developer pool) about the new WebLogic Workshop tool that BEA has just announced. This is probably one of the closest matches in terms of product and target market to my experience and skills, yet my resume has been submitted there twice by BEA employees I know and I haven’t gotten so much as a phone call. These people do not understand how much they are missing by not getting me in as Product or BusDev Manager for WebLogic Workshop. Damn!

This dish works well with leftover white rice but if you have none make some. Ground beef or ground pork could be used in place of the sausage but remember that sausage is preseasoned if you do.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 pounds beef sausage, remove meat from skins and chop into bits
  

• 1 lb diced tomatoes with liquid
  

• 6 oz tree ear mushrooms, rough chopped
  

• 6 oz button mushrooms, rough chopped
  

• 3 shallots, sliced thin (would have used some onion but my dinner guest doesn’t eat them)
  

• 5 cloves garlic, chopped finely
  

• 1 tbsp plum sauce
  

• 1 bunch fresh basil, chopped finely
  

• 2 tbsp oregano (feel free to substitute fresh)
  

• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

• Heat extra virgin olive oil in skillet, medium heat
  

• Stir in garlic
  

• Add shallots, stir well, let oil infuse flavors for 1 minute
  

• Add tomatoes, stir well
  

• Add sausage, stir well so that meat is covered thoroughly by other ingredients
  

• Stir in half of the basil and all the oregano plus salt and pepper
  

• Simmer for 5 minutes
  

• Add plum sauce and stir in mushrooms, a little more salt and pepper
  

• Simmer for 5 minutes
  

• Remove from heat, stir in remaining basil

garret responds to yesterday’s post here admits regulation does not bring perfect behavior. I agree that it’s better than nothing but also that people (and I mean people in general) are not willing to pay for the current level of regulation, much less more. The article to which garret linked that began this discussion points out that Ohio passed a law four years ago “requiring crematories to be licensed and inspected. Today, not a single license has been issued and no crematory has been inspected.” Here in the Bay Area we have a similar issue with stores that sell water: they are supposed to be licensed and inspected by the county but most of the businesses don’t even know they are required to have a license and the county doesn’t have enough staff to inspect the few such businesses that do bother to take a license. And I can only imagine the outcry if the county were to increase taxes to fund more inspectors. So, garret, let’s pass more useless laws, most of which are tailored to corporate desires anyway. You cite Enron and the S&Ls but these scandals came because the executives took advantage of the laws they conned Congress into enacting; why would you expect better results just from more of the same?