brainwagon

I always seem to get sick around the holidays. Starting yesterday afternoon, my throat started getting sore, by the time I was home I had the chills, bodyaches and general lassitude (annoying, given that there is lots of cleaning and cooking to do). It’s now 5:11AM, and I’m up with a dry cough, slurping back a couple of liters of water, taking some ibuprofen, and hoping that I begin to feel good enough so that I don’t keep waking my poor wife up. I’m now working on paring back my holiday plans to levels that won’t kill me.

Two rooms to clean, I’ll let Roomba vacuum (that doesn’t suck), I need to mix up the turkey brine, and get the sweet potatoes cooked and peeled. Then, I will sleep. A lot.

I admit it: I hate it when I don’t know stuff. I find not knowing what’s wrong with my car infinitely more annoying than knowing it will cost $500 to fix. It’s just part of my personality.

It’s also somewhat annoying that I’m a pretty light sleeper. Little noises can wake me out of a sound sleep, like when my son’s alarm clock goes off at the other end of the house, or a door opens, or someone opens the refridgerator down in the kitchen.

These two eccentricities collided this morning. I’ve been awoken a couple of times to a sort of low frequency booming sound, kind of like the resonant sound you get when you slam the lid on one of those big plastic trash cans, but it happens repeatedly, as if someone was doing it multiple times, just to annoy. And, of course as is the case so often, by the time I pulled on some pants and went outside to investigate, it would stop.

But I finally figured it out: it’s pidgeons.

They are apparently landing on my chimney, and doing something which booms down the metal lined resonant chamber and echoes into my skull. The little blighters have been plaguing my next door neighbor’s house, but a few seem to come and settle on mine, usually in the morning, and that’s why I can only get six hours of sleep instead of the nine I really need.

Still, I feel better now, although I suspect that maybe a chimney inspection is called for before the winter season really begins. Who knows? Maybe there is a pile of dead pidgeons (or, more likely, pidgeon droppings) lodged in my chimney.

Now I have something new to worry about.

Well, Adam doesn’t read my blog, but today is his birthday. Happy Birthday, Kiddo. His girlfriend is coming into town this weekend, so we’ll be holding off on the celebration mostly till then.

The milestones of life just keep tickin’ by….

For reasons which actually remain entirely unclear, my wife has been muttering about renting a boat at the nearby San Pablo Dam and taking it for a cruise. This morning she bounded up cheerfully and said that today would be the day. I dragged my sleepy body and bursitis pained shoulder into a hot shower, and we were off. We rented a small boat for an hour with a little six horse power engine, and took a nice relaxing cruise around the lake. We snapped some pictures. I must admit, it was relaxing and fun.

We’ll probably do it again.

Most of the time when I bother to blog about things that are going on in my life, I tend to do it in the form of an impromptu podcast. Today my wife woke me up and said that we should go out to Infineon Raceway and catch the qualifying for tomorrow’s Indy Racing League event. We had these discount coupons, and it sounded like it might be fun. But it turns out that our coupons were only good if we bought a pass for the whole weekend, so we decided to avoid the huge crowds and expense, and instead just bummed around Sonoma (which I hadn’t really done before). We ended up sampling cheese at the Sonoma Cheese Factory, hiked a bit in Jack London State Park, finished the day with a diet friendly meal at Fresh Choice in Novato, and just generally relaxed.

Oh, and I took pictures too. Sonoma is nice, and a little less… serious than Napa.

Oh yeah, while at Disneyland, we gave a shot at the new Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters ride. At the end, rather than trying to convince you to spend $12.95 to get a photo of yourself, they just have a bunch of terminals where you can mail your picture to yourself. Like the one on the right. I managed to outscore Carmen, but my score was pathetic.

Sorry to both all of my loyal readers, but I’ve been off with the family enjoying a brief vacation stint at Disneyland. We took the opportunity to see the 50th anniversary celebrations there prior to this week’s SIGGRAPH conference. Both the wife and son are now back in the Bay Area, while I go off and enjoy the week’s conference.

I got in around noon today, and got checked into my hotel room and then trudged down Figueroa to the Convention Center to pick up my registration. Courtesy of their new barcoded acceptance letters, I merely had to wave a letter under a laser scanner, click OK and within 30 seconds, my badge was printed. Not bad, and beats the long lines of years past. I also picked up a Boston 2006 pin to clip onto my badge. Boston will be cool. SIGGRAPH was last in Boston in 1989, which was also my first SIGGRAPH conference. I think I’ll go.

It’s actually been about five years since I last went to SIGGRAPH. A combination of the dotcom bust, and various internal jugglings and departures made it seem un-fun to go for a number of years, so I just stopped going. It’s kind of nice to be back, although it doesn’t really seem to have changed much, except for the possibility that people are getting younger (or, more likely, I’m getting older in a field dominated by the young and enthusiastic).

I made a brief jaunt through the art show galleries. The coolest thing I saw was Sustainable: an installation art piece which consisted of a number of tanks of water, each with a gong suspended inside and a pair of hammers controlled by solenoids which bonked them in a periodic fashion. Each tank also contained a series of water level sensors, and they each can pump water from their own tank to the one on the right. Internally, they maintain some notion of how much water they “need”, and will vent or not depending on some calculation they internally perform. As the water level rises and falls, the pitch and falloff of each gong is modified. The ensemble of them creates an interesting, continuously varying cadence which I found pleasing. I would have snapped my own pictures of it, but I was immediately accosted by the resident security droid who informed me that photography wasn’t permitted, despite the presence of the artist himself, who assured me that he didn’t mind.

Anyway, check it out, it was pretty cool.

Tomorrow will be a busy day. I should be there for the first paper session, and have animation theater tickets for tomorrow night, so it should be a long day. Tonight, I trudged over toward the Wilshire Grand, and had a sweet sausage pizza at the California Pizza Kitchen. You can spot the SIGGRAPH attendees: they all look the same to me. More on that some other time.

Today’s T-shirt comes from a simpler time, a time when computers had only eight bits, and all colors were simple primaries. It is just beginning to dawn on me that things which are retro are actually the stuff from my teen years.

Yeah, my blog was a little sparse on the nerd front this weekend: Carmen and I were off for a short anniversary getaway in Napa, sampling some of the local food and wine and generally trying to relax. We give a hearty thumbs up to Julia’s restaurant in the Copia center in Napa. We began with salads: I ordered a beet salad which was very delicate, Carmen had an assortment of fresh vegetables including peas and beans. Both were perhaps a bit subtle for us, but delicious. I ordered a pork chop, and was pleased when the waiter said that the pork chop was brined and assured me despite its juice texture, it was fully cooked. Bravo! People fear undercooked pork to the extent of ruining perfectly delicious chops by cooking them to 180 or higher. The best pork chops are cooked until they are slightly pink on the first cut, but turn opaque white after a couple of seconds, more like 165 or so. And brining helps. But I digress. The pork chop was excellent quality, large, delicious, flavorful and tender. It came with a tart made from cream, onions, and bacon and a side of purple potato chips. Delicious. Carmen had the rib eye steak, which I sampled and gave it my seal of approval. Also delicious. Dessert for me was a sampler of three cherry desserts, while Carmen went with a sampler of three chocolate pot de creme with small cinnamon churros. Each chocolate was infused with a different aromatic herb. Delicious again, but perhaps a bit too refined for our more rustic tastes. Still, a great meal for our anniversary.

The next morning we decided to ride the Napa Wine Train from NAPA to Calistoga, and sample their gourmet breakfast/luncheon service. I am a huge fan of Eggs Benedict (which I sample very rarely now that I am trying to lose weight, but it was our anniversary), so I went with their variation which substituted beef tenderloin for ham. Carmen had a stuffed French Toast, filled with creme cheese, craberries and grapes. Both were good, but not likely to be classic recipes. The tartness of the cranberries tended to overwhelm all the other qualities of the French Toast, and I don’t really think that Eggs Benedict is improved by the expensive beef tenderloin. Give me the classic any day.

For dinner that evening, we went to Tuscany in downtown Napa. I had an interesting pasta dish which had chunks of stewed wild boar. It was a very rustic dish, with hand made pasta served al dente. I suspect that it is a dish which originally would have been made with venison, and I enjoyed it a great deal. Carmen had a roasted half chicken, which while competently done, was nothing very exciting. The ambience of the restaurant was nice though, with an open fireplace and lots of roasting chickens. We had fun.

The following morning: a picnic at the Clos du Val winery consisting of a loaf of bread and two kinds of cheese: one, a rustic Irish cheese and a softer mild cheese. Good stuff, and a beautiful setting.

A fun time. Happy fifth anniversary honey, and I’m looking to the next five, even as I rue the scale this morning (back on weight watchers for the rest of the week).

Well, I’m back from the Bay to Breakers. Carmen and I mostly walked the course at a fairly brisk pace, we completed in about 2h 15m. I snapped some pictures, and got a GPS track of the parade route. Expect an update after I’ve rested up a bit.

Carmen and I spent a short weekend at Reno/Tahoe, and I snapped this picture of her at the shore of Lake Tahoe. A nice trip, alas, all to short. Love you honey! Every moment with you is a vacation all by itself.

Picture seems overblown because I used my cameraphone, and let’s face it, it’s not the greatest camera.

I’m freshly back from a whirlwind trip to Reno to scout locations for my father-in-law’s 80th birthday party, and I’m going to be tied up with SIGGRAPH sketch jury duty through next weekend, and the following weekend I’ll be trying to paint my garage door and run (or more realistically, walk) the Bay To Breakers. Busy busy busy, and I haven’t been able to get to recording a podcast in a while already.

I’ll see what I can do short of popping amphetamines, but likely the blog will take back seat for the next two weeks.

On the other hand, my new Dell 20.1″ LCD monitor is the bee’s knees. Beautiful 1600×1200 resolution, with no bad pixels. Yum.

My son’s Chevy was in the shop this week for difficulty starting.

Today, I got it back, after paying $700 and replacing three seemingly unrelated parts.

Tonight, its check engine light is on, and it’s running rough.

Sigh. Back to the shop tomorrow, with a calm but stern discussion.

I’ve been busy all weekend, caught Sin City, the Courbet exhibit at the Legion of Honor museum, spent some quality time with my wife including a night out eating sushi, listened to a little baseball and in my down moments, blew away my Windows XP installation and reinstalled from scratch. Expect a podcast in the next day or two with these and many other topics.