Seasonable suds

Last weekend, I volunteered to go along with Turtle to the grocery and push the cart. She can manage on her own – though the how of that remains an amazement – but I like to help out when I can. The one rule is that I'm only along to serve as brute labor. Requests such as, “Would you grab a package of macaroni and cheese off that top shelf?” are fine, but questions requiring decision making (a la, “Would you like [this] or [that]?” are strictly verboten.

Anyway, we had just survived the frozen food aisle and deftly dodged the UT alumni holding a reunion at the endcap when we achieved nirvana: the beer aisle. I had thus far on this trip suppressed the urge to inflict bodily harm on any of my fellow shoppers and decided I was entitled to a reward.

“I'll catch up with you,” I told Turtle. “I'm going to pick up a six pack of some fancy beer.”

What I ended up selecting was something called Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale. It wasn't my intention to buy a Michelob product, but I didn't notice that affiliation until later. At right, you can see how Michelob describes the brew on the side panel of the packaging. Hint of vanilla: check. Hint of bourbon: check. Their evaluation of the hoppiness seemed pretty on the mark, as well, and was more in line with Blue Moon or something you'd get from Flying Dog than I generally associate with “ale” – but maybe that's because I lean more toward a pale ale.

Anyway, if you like a little more adventure in your beer than just the typical Budweiser or Miller Lite, you might pick up a six pack. Winter's Bourbon Case Ale is a bit more desserty than I'd choose for my mainstay, but I enjoyed it for a chance of pace.

Weekend update

By this time last week, I'd packed up my desktop workstation, my technical books, and the rest of the contents of my cubicle. Unseen hands and backs were conveying these things to a new location about five miles down the road, in colorful plastic rental crates that smelled faintly of orange cleaner.

Based on the tour of the facilities that we'd received a couple months ago, I wasn't feeling optimistic. We were going from two floors to a small portion of one floor. The cubicles we were shown would be the same 6'x8' to which we were downsized in the last move, but the cubicles would be closer together. Along with various arbitrary-seeming restrictions, the prospect of being packed in with loud-talking groups like customer support and marketing convinced me that this move would be yet another turn in the downward spiral our work conditions have taken since 2005.

This week, I'm feeling much better about the situation. After a predictably loud and chaotic Monday, when everyone scrambled to get unpacked and resolve network connectivity issues, things calmed down quickly. To my surprise, it has actually been quieter in the new workplace. Part of this is due to the staggered work schedule that has split up some of the groups more prone to standing around and yukking it up; but I think that because we're all in cubes now and so close together, people are generally more aware of their volume levels. This is a Good Thing™. We were also pleased to discover that our 6'x8' cubes had magically expanded to 8'x8' (the company's standard size for developers). You wouldn't think that two feet one way or the other would amount to much, but it's significant when you've got a second computer and monitor taking up about two feet of space at one end of the desktop.

The facilities people at the new place have been stellar. One guy in particular has been running non stop since we got there, doing his best to get us everything we need to make ourselves at home. He's even promised to work on rebalancing the heating/cooling vents so that those of us who tend to be cold natured aren't freezing all the time.

Now playing: Queens of the Stoneage, Songs For The Deaf

Creative Pause

I've long felt that I do some of my most inspired thinking just after waking in the morning, while in the shower. On those occasions when I share this information with family or coworkers, the listener tends to smirk and imply that my inspirations may not be entirely technical in nature.

Which is why I was interested to find Cameron Moll's posting, “Why thinking in the shower may be an ideal model for ‘creative pause’” – and find comfort in knowing I'm not the only one.

Now… that dream I had last night about Madonna? That, I can't explain. Not that I need to – Turtle dreams of Vin Diesel and can't afford to be judgmental – but why couldn't it have been Jennifer Connelley or Diane Lane?

At the skate park

I was wondering what Turtle's up to when I'm not around…

On a piano

I need a break from all the election hoo ha. How about you?



Now, if you've got that song stuck in your head and need to dislodge it, I recommend this.

Home again

It's good to be home. It was good to be on vacation – even better than I expected, since I couldn't get a VPN connection and so couldn't do any of the work I'd intended to take on as a compromise to not going at all – but it's always good to be back home. Everything's still standing, which tells me that the cats didn't get too angry about being abandoned and that the neighborhood kids didn't trash the place as revenge for our not being here to hand out candy.

We went to Destin again this year to spend a week with my in-laws. The weather was a bit chilly, but unlike last year we had all sunny days. Turtle and her mom got out a couple days to lie by the pool absorbing carcinogenic rays and did some shopping. Meanwhile, I hung out with my father-in-law. Like me, he generally prefers to just hang out, chatting and catching up on reading; but on Thursday we took a little guy excursion to the Air Force Armament Museum at Eglin Air Force Base.

Like a lot of guys, I've always had a certain fascination with planes and guns. When I was a kid, I was particularly interested in WW I and WW II aircraft. I read the stories about Eddie Rickenbacker and Jimmy Doolittle and became somewhat familiar with the planes they flew and the weapons with which their planes were armed. It's one thing to read and look at pictures, but it's way cool to see the planes and weapons up close. Antique Vickers and Spandau machine guns, General Electric gatlings ranging from the smallish helicopter mounted variety to huge ship-mounted specimens with barrels 20 feet long. And bombs of all shapes and sizes with explanations of what they were for and how they worked. On the one hand, it was disturbing to think about the destruction of which their live counterparts were capable; but from an engineering perspective… fascinating.

Outside, I got to see and stand under the wings of an SR-71 Blackbird, a B-25 bomber like the one Jimmy Doolittle flew on his historic raid, and a B-17 “flying fortress” like the one on which one of our friends from church was a ball turret gunner during WW II. Talk about claustrophobic! The ball is so small even with the guns and seat removed (was there a seat?) that I couldn't imagine how someone could fit in it, much less track and fire on enemy aircraft while hanging exposed under the belly of the plane.

And then there was the MOAB – the emerald-green, schoolbus-sized bomb of the type used in Afghanistan for bunker busting. The thing was so huge, I can't even picture how something like that would be deployed. If you want a look go here and mouse over “MOAB” on the map.

I'm still kicking myself for forgetting my camera.