In which this site is moving.
There’s a server co-located in a data center somewhere in California, and it’s been acting weird.
Every bit of hardware in it has been replaced except for the hard drive itself, and it still hangs and needs to be rebooted at least once a day.
That server is the server goblinbox.com lives on. (And Chaos’ RV Blog, and gibblesnix.com, and beerafraid.com too, for that matter.)
It has been decided to replace the hard drive.
What this means is that goblinbox (and Chaos’ RV Blog, and gibblesnix.com, and beerafraid.com) will be down for a bit while everything is migrated from the old drive to the new one, and there may be some wonkiness while we get everything situated.
But never fear! It’ll all be fine soon. *mwah!*
In which my weekend was one part really good… and one part REALLY bad.
Friday was nasty. Whoo boy. Out of the blue I had a panic attack for the first time in a really long time and it sucked. And all because my heart decided to go arrhythmic. I sat at my desk in my own private hell and waited for the day to end so I could go home and curl up in my room in my misery.
The Dread continued on Saturday. I walked the dog and did laundry and cleaned the front bathroom, but was in and out of anxiety all day long. There were a few bouts of scary arrhythmia that pushed me from anxiety into full-blown panic.
Saturday night, I had a gig to go to. In spite of feeling like shit I took a shower and got dressed and went because I’m tough like that. Somewhere between the second and third sets I had a moment of pure terror, certain that this was it, it was finally happening, I was having a heart attack… but I didn’t pass out. I didn’t even fall over, actually. So I reminded myself yet again that the problem was actually my panic disorder and not some kind of actual physical malady and soldiered on out the door, which was where I’d been heading when my skin lit on fire for a second.
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In which this will have to suffice!
I was gonna write about my weekend, but it really needs a particular image to make the post work, but I still can’t send images from my phone to Flickr and I forgot the phone’s USB cable at home so I can’t get the image online until later. Ergo: no real post until tomorrow.
In other news, I just got off the phone with a guy who is running a dual boot XP/Kubuntu box, possibly a laptop. He could connect and surf in XP, but not in Kubuntu. I had him put Google’s IP into the browser and the page didn’t load. I said he wasn’t online. He said he was. I asked him if he knew how to ping. He did not. I told him I’m not trained to support Linux distros, but that I suspected his problem was one of the following: lack of appropriate drivers for the wireless adapter; firewall settings; or conflicts from trying to connect to the same wireless router from two operating systems with the same MAC address. I explained that I couldn’t fix his problem.
He asked me if there was anyone else in tech support who could help him. I said there was not. He asked me if I could ask around. I explained that no one here was trained to support Linux and could do so only from personal experience and that NO ONE HERE RUNS KUBUNTU AT HOME, TRUST ME.
Stymied, he then went into detailed questions about encryption types and the fact that he has a wireless DSL modem with a wireless router behind it. I replied that I had no way of knowing which encryption type he had enabled on his wireless AP and that having two broadcasting wireless routers in his LAN was a personal problem. He then went off on another round of 1D10T questions that were only tangentially related to ANYTHING AT ALL EVER.
I finally said, “Listen! Since you can surf when you’re booted into Windows, we know that your connection works and that your hardware works. Therefore, your PROBLEM is with your LINUX DISTRO and as I’ve said NINE TIMES already I am not required to nor INTERESTED in supporting your issue, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to because YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO PING. So! Go log into Windows, go to kubuntu.org, and surf the forums until you find your answer.”
Moral: if you’re running Linux, (1.) be a geek, and (2.) GET OFF MY PHONE.
In which I make a list.
Since I’m in the second half now, I should start establishing baselines. Don’t you think that’s wise? I haven’t had a regular doctor since I had a pediatrician, so no one really knows what typical or normal readings are for me.
I’ve decided to choose a GP more or less at random and go in for a meet-and-greet and suffer through a basic checkup. Because when I’m sitting in front of a doctor I always feel fine and I forget all the things I wanted to cover, I’ve decided to make a list so I can get everything on the table in the six-to-twelve minutes of actual facetime I’ll get:
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In which I might finally tackle the whole ‘learn to make decent bread’ thing this fall! Srsly!
Since bad bread isn’t even worth eating and good bread is expensive, I’ve been thinking for a looooooong time about maybe learning how to make my own bread. It’s not rocket surgery, so it can’t be that hard, right? Well, in preparation I’ve found the following items of interest on the Internet:
1. This recipe for Sicilian No-Knead Bread.
2. This article about baking your own bread.
3. This recipe, apparently from an issue of COOK’S (I found it as an image online and typed it out myself):
Almost No-Knead Bread
An enameled cast-iron Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid yields best results, but the recipe also works in a regular cast-iron Dutch oven or heavy stockpot. Use a mild-flavored lager, such as Budweiser. The bread is best eaten the day it is baked but can be wrapped in aluminum foil and stored in a cool, dry place for up to 2 days.
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus additional for dusting work surfaces
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1-1/2 teaspoon table salt
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons mild-flavored lager
1 tablespoon white vinegar1. Whisk flour, yeast, and salt in large bowl. Add water, beer, and vinegar. Using rubber spatula, fold mixture, scraping up dry flour from bottom of bowl until shaggy ball forms. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 8 to 18 hours.
2. Lay 12- by 18-inch sheet of parchment paper inside 10-inch skillet and spray with nonstick cooking spray. Transfer dough to lightly floured work surface and knead 10 to 15 times. Shape dough into ball by pulling edges into middle. Transfer dough, seam-side down, to parchment lined skillet and spray surface of dough with nonstick cooking spray. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rise at room temperature until dough has doubled in size and does not readily spring back when poked with your finger, about 2 hours.
3. About 30 minutes before baking, adjust oven rack to lowest position, place 6- to 8-quart heavy-bottomed Dutch oven (with lid) on rack, and heat oven to 500 degrees. Lightly flour top of dough and, using razor blade or very sharp knife, make one 6-inch long, 1/2-inch deep slit along the top of the dough. Carefully remove pot from the oven and remove lid. Pick up dough by lifting parchment overhang and lower into pot (let any excess parchment hang over pot edge). Cover pot with lid and place in oven. Reduce oven temperature to 425 degrees and bake covered for 30 minutes. Remove lid and continue to bake until loaf is deep brown and instant-read thermometer inserted into center registers 210 degrees, 20 to 30 minutes longer. Carefully remove bread from pot; transfer to wire rack and cool to room temperature, about 2 hours.
The recipe also has an Olives, Rosemary, and Parmesan variation I might try.
In which you simply cannot make this shit up! LOL!
CALLER #1
My caller wanted to “buy bandwidth… enough for, say, a thousand?”
Me: “A thousand what?”
Caller: “You know, people. Computers.”
Me: “What, you want an OC-3 or something?”
Caller: “Yeah, I have a T-i at one place.”
Me: “You mean a T-1?”
Caller: “Yeah, one of those.”
Me: “What do you want to do with it?”
Caller: “Sell wireless in Post Falls.”
Me: “Do you, ah, have any technical experience with wi-fi?”
Caller: “I know people.”
Me: “Ah.”
Caller: “Where’s, like, the demarc? I want to buy a lot.”
Me: “The demarc?”
Caller: “Yeah, where, like, the Internet comes into town. Someone told me it was a few blocks from here. I want to connect to that.”
So, because I’m SUPER AWESOME, I explained that: (1) backbone is owned primarily by telephone companies, and, as much as he wanted to argue with me about it, it was still true that he’d need to contact his local telco to buy “a lot,” (2) in order to sell wireless successfully he’d need to buy a frequency, which often cost millions of dollars, because wireless companies who do not tend to go WAY out of business, (3) wi-fi is not typically delivered through plate glass windows via laser (whatever he meant by that), and (4) he could probably start by putting, say, cable or something into his “thousand unit building” and getting off my phone.
I did give him a sales rep’s number in case he wanted to call back tomorrow during regular business hours, but I don’t know that the gentleman was quite ready to become an ISP just yet.
CALLER #2
The caller after him has been calling every single week for months, and was calling back today for the forth time when I got her.
She contradicted herself nine times in two sentences (can you get online OR NOT? can you surf OR NOT? can you send mail OR NOT? can you receive mail OR NOT? JESUS, LADY, MAKE UP YOUR BLOODY MIND!) and I basically told her that her operating system, Mac OS 9, was retired seven years ago and that no one is going to support it, especially not me.
I love tech support! Love it!
In other news, tomorrow is VUBOQ’s one year unemployment anniversary so I sent him something from his wishlist. You could, too!
In which no news is… well, no news.
Since I haven’t got anything to say, here’s a picture of my lunch:
Yay bento!
In which I gig and consume media.
Friday night I waited for nearly an hour for my bro to finish an instance in WoW, then we went to Rosita’s for dinner. Mmm, chile rellenos!
I went to bed early Friday night because I was tired from going out Wednesday and Thursday.
Saturday I woke up at nine. It really pissed me off, so I went back to sleep until eleven. I got my nails done Saturday afternoon. (My nail tech lady told me my skin looked bad and that I needed to cut back on the caffeine and cigs and drink more water. I was all, ‘Uh, okay lady. Will do.’)
After my manicure I went to meet Lannie and Becca at the bar. Not long after arriving I got a call from RB. He said, “Wanna make fifty bucks?” Of course I did!
I drove out to Basel Cellars and sat in with the Coyote Kings, who were playing for a wedding reception. The food was good, the wine was free, and at the end of the night one of the caterers gave me an entire cheesecake.
Fifty bucks and a cheesecake for singing nine songs? Good deal!
Sunday I laid around like a slug. I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on Netflix. (Such a great movie! I’d never seen it before. Loved it.) I repainted my nails because I just couldn’t hack the very whorish dark color I’d chosen at the salon.
I finished reading Ghost Sunday night, even though the book pissed me off endlessly. I realize it’s fiction and therefore fantasy, but Jesus H Christ! I do NOT like gang rape, torture, and murder so graphically portrayed in my fiction… particularly not when both the main character and the author obviously find it sexually arousing! Gah! Sci-fi should not have smut in it! Well, more specifically: I don’t actually mind smut in my sci-fi, but I prefer it not to be pathological smut. I like my smut consensual, thank you very much.
There’s a scene where a group of naked chained co-eds are forced to watch the gang rape, torture, and murder of a couple of their number. Then when the good guys show up, one of them – the good guys, I mean – gives a speech about how not all men are assholes and the girls had better not turn into dick-slicing lesbians who won’t give head.
WTF?! In which universe is such a speech even remotely acceptable when delivered to a room full of naked women, two or three of whom were tortured to death?!?!
Sure, I’m against militant feminists as much as any woman can be. But I’m ALSO against idiots militant masculinists. Let’s all be humanists, shall we?
I bought the next book in the series but I’m not gonna read it. Not if there’s going to be such nasty misogynistic rape-fueled sex in between super awesome action scenes. Ugh.
Other random items: ~My dog is awesome. ~G’ma made a really delicious salad thing for dinner last night, composed of a bed of iceberg, diced beefsteak tomatoes, and a mayo dressing mixed with cucumbers on top. ~I’m drinking a LOT of water today. ~I have a zit on my nose, even though I’m far too old for such nonsense. ~It doesn’t matter how much I diet and exercise, I am apparently never going to have a waist ever again. ~I’ll be sitting in with the Kings at their album release party at Sapolil‘s tasting room next Saturday night. ~My boss left a pile of mail on my desk and left town, and I’m only vaguely aware of what I’m supposed to do with it. ~I shot a roll through one of my Argus C3s this weekend and can’t wait to get it developed.
In which I do open mics two nights in a row. Hell yeah.
Last night RB picked me up from work and drove me to Richland. We ate dinner at the BK Lounge. He had a double bacon cheeseburger. (WTF is up with restaurants these days? Apparently it’s getting damn near impossible to order anything with fewer than two dead animals on it. Been watching TV commercials? The typical sit-down restaurant special these days has three to five different dead animals per plate. It is, quite frankly, obscene.) I had a junior whopper, no patty. And fries.
Dax’s is an adorable little biker bar. The crowd was mainly older; the youngest kid in there was probably in his thirties. The bartenders were individually busty and tattooed, the drinks were strong, the crowd was nice, and the music was good. The Kings had a slot pre-booked at nine and went up and did a few tunes, then they invited me up. The voice was in good condition and I pretty much wailed. IT WAS REALLY FUN.
When I got off the bandstand I couldn’t stand still without ending up in a circle of appreciative dudes. It was awesome. It was probably the best, most appreciative, groovy crowd I’ve ever seen on a Thursday anywhere in my life. Bonus: not a single person mentioned Janice Joplin!
LCG tried to make it over for a bit, but she’s a mom and moms can’t always get out.
Shortly after the set, RB and I drove back to Walla Walla. He invited me to guest with the Kings at a few gigs, so I need to get dates from him and update my gig schedule. It’ll be nice to actually have something to put on there again.
In which the sci-fi I’m reading totally fucking sucks, but I was lying in bed trying to watch a vid the other day and got irritated with the fact that I had to have my head upright in order to feel comfortable.
Being a creature from the bottom of a gravity well means that in order to think about something I must first be able to orient it. This is an awful waste of space.
I wonder what a truly 3-dimensional thought process would feel like. Not even sea creatures are free of up-versus-down.
VSCO
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4 random books from my Library!
