/dev/zero

Friday evening I went with Mom and Dad to go shopping for a new washer, dryer and refrigerator. Mostly I went along because the plan for dinner was to eat out, and we combined the trips.

Saturday, Mom and Dad went to do some more shopping and I went to the twice monthly Champions game at Erich’s. I was running quite late, as I usually am. The game normally starts at 3:00; I didn’t get out the door until around 5:30. I got to Erich’s at a little after 6:00 and found no one there. I wasn’t sure if the game had been called and I hadn’t gotten word, or if I was tapping on the wrong door, so I called Erich’s cell phone. It turns out the game had been moved to Erich’s girlfriend, Crystal’s, place and somehow I missed the email that went out two days before letting everyone know. When he said Crystal, I HEARD Kristell, so the first words out of my mouth were “Oh, luckily I have the directions…” good thing he only heard part of that and put Crystal on the phone. Normally when I run across references to Crystal and Kristell, it’s online, so I SEE the difference. But spoken, you have to listen for the emphasis, so I fell into the confusion that I hear has been quite common since Erich started dating Crystal.
Anyway, Crystal gave me directions to get to her place from Erich’s, and it was only about 5 minutes away. When I got there I called Erich and she came out to the parking area to lead me the rest of the way to her apartment. I apologized for being late, and found out they had only just started. Skipper’s wife Shelley had been by with their new baby and everyone had been cooing and going gaga over the tot, as people do. She had only just left. I’m sorry I missed seeing Shelley and the baby, but was glad I wasn’t as late as I thought I was for the game.
Today we went to church and I decided to go to Rev. Jack’s Sunday school class instead of the Life Search class I’ve been attending. Life Search is supposed to be for those age 25-35, “Married or single, with or without children.” Except I’m 32 and the only single, childless person in the class. It turns out I’m probably one of the eldest in the class (Except for Marti, the associate pastor and leader of the class), but I feel like the youngest, since everyone else is “smug marrieds” with partners, careers and kids. I feel like a kid sitting there with them. I guess being 32 and living with my parents, being completely dependant on them to pay all my bills and give me an allowance again, doesn’t help the feeling that I’m not really an adult yet. I guess it’s true what they say about no matter how old and mature you are, and no matter how much your parents try, you still end up feeling like a child around your parents.
So anyway, I didn’t go to Life Search today, going to Rev. Jack’s class instead. Last time I went to Jack’s class, he was doing comparative religions. That week was Buddism. This week Jack was teaching the visitor’s class so someone else was filling in for him and they were discussing issues relating to children and government programs to protect children (TANF, Head Start, etc.) All well and good, but let’s just say my political views on Wellfare and gov. spending on social programs are rather at odds with the highly liberal viewpoint of the literature being used in the class. Let’s just say my political viewpoints are quite at odds with the viewpoint being advocated by the literature used in class today. And I was (almost) the youngest person in class. (Another one of my motivating factors for attending Jack’s class is the attractive young college student that I know attends that class. Only I found out today she’s younger than I thought. Too young.)
After church service, Mom and I went to donate blood at the donation van in the parking lot. Mom’s iron was low again so she was turned down, but they took me, so Mom and Dad had to wait for me in the car while they stuck a needle in my arm. This is the first time I’ve given blood and the needle HURT. The lancet used to draw a few drops to test my hemoglobin hurt like hell to. Normally I barely feel the lancet at all, and the needle for the donation just pricks a little and if there’s any pain at all it’s a mild sting from the anti-coagulant getting into the vein.

In another example of “small world” syndrome, an acquaintance from the Ufie list was trying to find the web site for Bill Holbrook’s On the Fast Track, which is hosted at Plan 9 Publishing. When he got a weird error message from the web server he emailed webmaster@plan9.org about it. Plan9.org is hosted by yours truly; webmaster@plan9.org goes to me. So I wrote back explaining what caused the error, that I had been alerted to it by Godmoma about half an hour before and fixed it. So we got to chatting about the relative merits of Apache 2.0, Red Hat and up2date and it’s tendency to overwrite config files, the problems this causes for Sendmail, IPv6 and the recent major events in his life, including his daughter’s wedding and his son breaking his neck

After dinner, Mom started illustrating to me what the financial situation is around here. What with paying for my tuition, and suddenly having to replace 3 major appliances all at the same time, things are a little tight around here. I really do appreciate my parents giving me this “safety net” when I need it most. Hopefully I can find a job soon and start paying them back. And hopefully Dad can find another job soon, that doesn’t drive him insane, and pays closer to what he’s used to making.

So it turns out my mother is reading my journal.
I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s right there on my front page, and I knew both my parents had at least glanced at it before.
But it gives me mixed feelings knowing that Mom is reading, and posting comments. Must be careful what I say, since, unlike LJ, I can’t limit who can read what on my MT journal. I can either publish it so everyone can read it, or make it completely private.

I’ve got an account on a friend’s mail server. They use Qmail and Courier IMAP server, with Vpopmail as the MDA.
I’m trying to get Procmail to filter my mail for me. Normally I use Sendmail, with Procmail as the MDA, so it’s a cinch. Just drop my .procmailrc file into my home directory and Procmail reads it automatically whenever mail arrives.

Unfortunatly, with this setup, vpopmail is invoked instead. Wes was going to take the steps to do what it takes to make it invoke procmail and read my .procmailrc for me when mail arrives, but he’s busy with other things, so I’m working on it on my own.
All I’ve been able to find online so far is that qmail will read a .qmail file in my home directory, which can be used to give delivery instructions. So I’ve got a .qmail-default file that reads:

|preline procmail -t

Which should invoke Procmail, which will then read .procmailrc. Then I have to give the right arguments in .procmailrc to invoke vdelivermail and deliver my mail to the right folders. I’m stuck at this point right now. I’m not sure I have Qmail invoking procmail right either.
I DO have procmail calling vdelivermail, putting mail in my inbox, when I pipe a test message through Procmail.
I still need to work out -

1. How to tell vdelivermail to deliver to a folder other than Inbox
2. How to get Qmail to invoke Procmail on mail arrival, instead of going straight to vpopmail

As mentioned earlier, our gas has been turned off since Monday evening. I got a warm shower on Tuesday, but there’s been no hot water since. The plumbers came out today and FINALLY started actually fixing the problem, so we have gas turned back on so we can run our hot water heaters. They still have to turn it off again on Monday to replace a union between two of the main pipes, then get the inspector out here so we can have it “officialy” turned back on.
It was good to get a hot shower again tonight. Nice to not smell myself for once.

Sauteéd fillet of Sole with a white wine sauce

Ingredients

1. mushrooms
2. 1 shallot
3. scallions
4. clarified butter
5. whole butter
6. white wine
7. sole fillets¹

Mise en Place

1. Slice the mushrooms and scallions, mince the shallot.
2. Dry the fillets, season with kosher salt and fresh black pepper.

Preparation

Place fillets on a plate garnish with your white wine sauce. Serve with some rice or rice pilaf.

1 Substitute any high quality fish fillet. The original recipe called for red snapper. I have served this successfully with sole and sea bass.

This house has been nickel and dimeing my parents since I got here. Or as Dad put it, not nickels and dimes, more like quarters.

They got the AC that services my apartment upstairs serviced before I got here.
They had to have it serviced again about a month later because the AC people forgot to put a filter in, so the heat exchanger coils got dirty.
They had to have the AC people pay the cost of fixing the ceiling in my office when the condensation off the heat exchanger coils started dripping through, because they knocked the condensation collector drain pipe loose.
The swimming pool filter blew it’s guts apart and let all the DE (diamataceous earth) into the pool water. It was cloudy for a week after our pool guy came. The pool guy also managed to break the hose coupling for the Polaris (the little robot thing that runs around on vacuuming the bottom of the pool). It was like that for a week before the pool guy came back to do the weekly service and noticed the DE. I asked him about why the water was so cloudy and he showed me the DE sitting on the bottom of the pool. He said it so matter of fact, that I’d be willing to bet if I hadn’t mentioned it to him, he wouldn’t have done anything about it. It was almost another week before his technician came out to look at the filter system to figure out why there was DE all over the pool and found the problem. It took another two weeks for him to get the parts and fix it, then the pool guy had to come out and clean the pool. It took two more vacuumings, a week apart, before he got it all cleaned up. A month and a half that the pool was out of service.
We ordered cable internet service. The installer came out and we spent 4 hours trying to figure out why the existing cable into the house was not getting a signal to my office. Finally he ran a new drop to just go around all the bad cable. We smelled gas coming out of the cable box in the back alley.
When another cable crew came out to bury the new cable line in the ground for us, they smelled it to. Dad called the gas company to report it.
The gas company came out an hour later and determined there’s a broken pipe under the alley somewhere and ordered a construction crew to dig it up and fix it. While he was at it, he inspected OUR gas line, found 3 leaks on the service side of the meter, which he fixed, then determined our side of the line was leaking as well and turned our gas off. That was Monday.
Tuesday we got a plumber out to fix our gas pipe so we could have the gas turned back on. He inspected it, found one leak RIGHT by the meter, then told us we’d have to wait for the city inspector to come out and inspect our system, before the gas company would turn our gas back on. The inspector couldn’t get here until Thurs.
When the inspector got here Thurs. morning, he failed our system, as it wasn’t holding pressure. We got the plumbing company back out here pronto to fix it. The guy came out, declared the problem was the wrong kind of pressure gauge, left, came back and put a different kind on and left. We got the inspector out again, and again he failed our system as it was still not holding pressure.
Dad called the plumbers to scream at them because we’d now been without hot water for 4 days. Today the plumbing company sent a different plumber out (the 3rd) and THIS guy actually seems to know what he’s doing. unfortunately he’s found leaks in just about every valve in the house. The first guy didn’t even turn the valves at each appliance off before pressurizing the system to test it. The estimate is $1,600+ to replace all the leaky valves and a few lines that are not up to code. Luckily MOST of that will be covered by the home insurance.
We still don’t have cable TV service.
The foundation needs to be jacked up.
The AC people still need to have the ceiling in my office repainted, to cover the spot where it was repaired.
Our refrigerator motor is dieing. It smells like burned plastic inside the fridge, and it’s not getting very cold.
Both the washer and the dryer need to be replaced. The dryer sometimes doesn’t turn off when it’s done, and the washer sometimes overflows. It’s already done that once and flooded our front hall.
The wood floor in the front hall needs to be replaced, because of the washer flood. The carpet in the lower family had to be replaced because of the washer flood.

Every time we turn around, something in this house is costing my parents more money. For as nice a house as this is, you’d think it wouldn’t be trying to fall apart so quickly.

Reaching to click the “close window” button, and clicking the “maximize window” button my mistake.
Grrr…

Nothing like cleaning off your hard drive to crate enough space to unpack the your latest game update, deleting a bunch of programs you actually use to make room, then finding the dir for a game you uninstalled weeks ago was still there and taking up nearly 1GB of space. Damn Maxis and their inability to actually delete their files when you uninstall the game. I uninstalled The Sims weeks ago, but most of the game files were still there.

You are Kermit the Frog!! You are loyal to your
friends and don’t really know how to say No.
No matter what you were doing, you would drop
it in a second if a loved one was in trouble.
You are also a born star. Everyone loves you!

Which Muppet are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I got home from class just a little bit ago. It was raining and thundering when I came in. I hadn’t been home 5 min when there was a load crash that shook the windows, and it rolled for about 15 seconds.

I was just looking out my window about 2 minutes ago when the whole sky light up. That lightning bolt couldn’t have been more than 1/4 mile away. I saw the window jump at me and the whole house shook.
I’m surprised Senar is taking it so well. He doesn’t even seem to notice all the excitement out there. I have a skylight in my office where I’m sitting, so you can hear the rain pounding on it.

Senar is just begging for attention today.
Here I am, reading my LiveJournal friends page before leaving for my 2:00 class, and Senar wanders in talking to me, gets on his hind paws and pats my arm with a forepaw. I don’t respond so he starts nibbling. I look at him, say hello, then turn back to my screen. Not getting what he wants, he drops down, ables over to the other side of my chair and tries again with the other arm. I look at him, smile, and scratch his ears, then return to the screen. Not giving up, he drops down again, and returns to my right side to try a 3rd time. So I pick him up, set him in my lap and pet him for about 10 seconds. That seems to be enough to satisfy him as he then jumped down and ambeled away and out of the room.
Silly cat.

Got cable modem.
Cable modem good.
Cable modem FAST.
And I’m only using the USB connection, which cuts it’s throughput in half.
/me is happy.

Waiting for the Comcast guy to get here to hook us up to cable Internet service.
Whee bandwidth. For the first time in my life I’ll have >dialup bandwidth at home.
<bounce><bounce><twitch><twitch>

Today was a pretty relaxing day. I think I slept in until about noon (stayed up late last night) when Dad woke me up to complain that one of my cats had left a deposit in the upstairs hallway again. <sigh> I need to figure out which one is doing it and why. I know Senar has done it at least once now, so it isn’t always Soba’s fault.

I spent a good part of the afternoon on the computer, then went downstairs. Mom sent me to the store to get some stuff she needed for dinner. I invited Han Sol to go with me, since he didn’t want to play Chinese Checkers with Mom and his mother (he hates that game for some reason, and they both like it.) but he didn’t want to go.
I went to the store, came home, and while I was putting away the groceries I bought, Kelly (Han Sol’s mom) dashed out the door to the bank, as Mom and Kelley decided we were going to go out tonight to have dinner at some Korean restarunt with Han Ju, a friend of Mom’s from her Korean class. I sat down and played Payday with Mom and Han Sol. Then Kelly got home and I had to run up stairs to take a shower before dinner, so she took over playing for me.

Showered, shaved, I came down and we went out. We had a little trouble finding the place (”Naan”, in some up scale mall north of Legacy), but when we did, there was Han Ju waiting for us. We went in, sat down, had a very nice dinner. I had the Seafood bi bim bop. Mom had the steak tar-tar bi bim bop, Dad the sashimi bi bim bop.
Dad and I quietly compared notes on our waitress and another wait person who came to bring stuff to our table at one point. I thought our waitress, a tall, black woman, was particularly attractive.

I just corrected an error in my MT config (there was an extra / at the end of the archive URL setting, so LiveJournal was getting URLs with http://andrew.pure-chaos.com/mt/archive//blah). Now LiveJournal seems to be seeing all my entries as “new”, even though the dates haven’t changed. My apologies to all my LJ friends who are now seeing a ton of “new” posts from me that aren’t new. I guess I should have left well enough alone, since the extra / worked OK.

Ok. I’m ready for this cold to go away now
I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was an allergy. Except I’ve never had any allergies in my life, and nothing new has been introduced to my environment.

Some people should not be allowed near a computer when drunk.

We lost both Johnny Cash and John Ritter today.

(posted earlier today to the UFList)
Oh geez… I was surprised a couple of weeks ago when I found out Johnny Cash was still alive (I thought he’d died years ago). I remember thinking how glad I was. He was the only “old style” country artist I could stand. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten in Dad’s car and was annoyed by that “dang twangy country stuff” on his radio, then Johnny comes on and I’m all happy.
John Ritter… I grew up on Three’s Company. It has to be one of the dumbest shows ever made… and funny as hell. I was watching an episode of That 70’s Show the other day and Eric and the gang were watching TV. The Three’s Company theme started playing and I laughed my ass off. I only caught one episode of Ritter’s new show and thought it was pretty good.
I’m gonna miss them both.

I got home from my morning class, put the flag up, then brought it down to half-mast.
It started to rain lightly after that. I figured if it looked like it was going to rain for the rest of the day, or if it got to raining harder, I’d take the flag down.
10 minutes later it was pouring down. I got soaked taking the flag down. I think I was wetter than the flag by the time I got back inside with it. My coat is spread out on the floor under the stairs to dry. The flag is draped over the bar.
I was surprised when I got the flag out of the closet to find that Dad had just folded it in half over and over (like you would a towel or a sheet), and not neatly into the triangle it should be.

Murphy, my Intro to Economics professor, gives a mini-quiz at the beginning of each class. He puts a question up on the board, and we write down the answer on a 3×5 index card and hand it in. It’s his way of taking attendance. The questions are usually pretty easy, based on the previous lecture.
I missed the lecture because I stayed home from class that morning to be with Mom and Sam as Sam was put to sleep.
In an example of just how much repeat lecturing is going on between Intro to Econ and Macro Econ, I knew the answer to today’s question because it was covered in Wednessday’s Macro Econ class.
Sheesh. And I get out of bed early for this? I hope these classes start to cover different material soon.

Now that I’m taking professional cooking classes (right down to the required pro chef’s jacket, hat, scarf and apron), I’ve been looking at kitchen knives. I have a good chef’s knife, but all my other knives are crap. And the chef’s knife got beat up when a former roommate ran it through the dishwasher (the blade is fine, but the wood handle swelled and contracted in the dry cycle). Now I’m drooling over all the really nice knives out there.
Oh, yeah, did I mention I’m required to have my own set of knives for classes? I can buy a set at school for $180, but there are so much nicer ones out there…
Anyone want to buy me a Wusthof-Trident or Henckels 8" chef’s knife? Or a Global 3" parer? Or maybe a Sabatier 5" boning knife? The Global 6 piece set?

Tonight’s recipe: Purée of sweet potato soup

Ingredients

Yield: 1 pint

• 1 oz onion
• 1 oz carrot
• 1/4 oz butter
• 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1/2 lb sweet potatoes
• 2 oz heavy cream
• nutmeg
• salt
• white pepper

Mise en Place:

1. Chop the onion and carrot
2. Peel and dice the sweet potatoes

Cooking/Finishing:

1. Cook the onion and carrot slowly in the butter without letting them brown.
2. Add the stock and sweet potatoes. Bring to a boil and simmer until the vegetables are tender.
3. Purée the soup.
4. Heat the cream and add it to the soup. If the soup is too thick, thin it out with a little hot stock or water.
5. Season with a dash of netmeg and with salt and papper.

Mine came out almost perfect. I should have thinned it a little bit, and I forgot to warm the bowl before plating it.

Sam Edelstein
? - 9 September, 2003
May he rest in peace.

Sam departed our lives quietly at 10:45AM.
He went peacefully, surrounded by those who loved him.

Makes Andrew a tired boy, when he has to do back-breaking work again.
Which is to say, Dad called me downstairs to help him with “a little muscle” this evening.
The job was to dig a grave for Sam.

Sam is still with us, but the vet is scheduled to come over tomorrow to end it. I’d been considering if I should offer to dig the grave, or if Dad would want to do it himself. Turned out he did want to do it himself, but decided he better have my help. Neither of us have done much in the way of manual labor in some time, and the soil here in this part of Texas is heavy, dark clay soil. Digging in it is difficult work. We worked at it for about an hour and only dug about half as deep as we wanted to, and were exhausted when we were done.
Sam came to the back door asking to be let outside while we were working. It felt weird to be digging his grave while he’s sitting there by the door watching us. I’m surprised he still has the strength to ask to be let out.
Mom called during the day to ask me to go check on him and offer him some water. He barely had the energy to get up on the bathroom counter to get water. When he did get up there, it took him a while to decide if the pain of trying to swallow the water was worth it. Eventually he took one very small sip, then climbed down on the chair and curled up to go back to sleep.
I went down again a few hours later to check up on him again, but couldn’t find him. I searched the entire house but there was no sign. I had gone outside at one point to get the mail, so I thought maybe he had slipped out the door behind me when I wasn’t looking, so I spent 20 minutes searching all around the house outside with no luck. I went back in and searched the entire house again. Eventually I found him curled up in a box at the back of Mom’s closet.
Mom felt bad telling Sam he couldn’t go out every time he came and asked. He did get out for a little bit when I came in from digging his grave. Mom decided to go ahead and let him enjoy some time out in the sun and sat with him for a bit, though he wanted to be alone.
I’m not looking forward to tomorrow evening. Mom will be staying home from work the first half of the day. I’ll be at school when the end comes. Mom will be at work by the time I come home from school, but Sam’s body will be home. Neither of my parents will be pleasant to be around when they come home from work. Then I’m off to the evening cooking class.
I don’t know how I’m going to handle Sam’s death either. I’ve had pets die before, but they always died on their own. Usually hamsters or guinea pigs. Schroeder, our dog, died while I was in high school. This is the first pet we’ve ever had to have put to sleep. I can only imagine how I would feel if one of my cats had to be put down. I know how much they mean to me. I know Sam means at least as much to my parents, and for what he means to them, I love him very much to.
Sam isn’t a human. But he is a person, and part of our family.

I just noticed that my previous post about moving my journal off of LJ was messed up. I said I moved it, but the URL got messed up.
My journal is located at http://andrew.pure-chaos.com, or you can add to your friends list.
I’ll be keeping this account to view my friend’s journals, but all my posts will be at my website / . So if you want to read me, and let me read you, put both on your friends list.

I should be in bed.
Really, I should. I have class at 9:00 AM tomorrow.
Principals of Macroeconomics. Isn’t that exciting?
What’s even more exciting is that at 9:30 AM on Tues. I have Intro. to Economics. Same lecture, different class title. Wish I could just skip class, but they actually take attendance at CCCCD, and drop you from the class if you’re absent 3 times. They actually track tardies. First college I ever heard of that is that anal. Most colleges, they have an official policy that you can’t be late to class more than n times, or absent, etc., but it’s pretty much up to the professor to actually enforce it. Apparently at CCCCD they actually make the professors enforce it.
I’ve put off the need to job hunt for a nother couple of weeks by starting college again. Except yesterday Dad lectured me that I need to get a job and that’s “more important than school”. Mom seemed pretty surprised by this when I told today what he’d said. She agrees I need to get a job, but she doesn’t feel it has higher priority than school.

Meanwhile, Sam, my parents cat, a dearly beloved member of the family, is dieing. Both my parents are having a rough time dealing with it. He’s been a part of their family for over 10 years now, and he came along during a particularly rough patch. He helped Mom get through some stuff, and Dad has become quite attached to Samson as well. The poor guy has cancer in his mouth and throat. He’s been having trouble eating for a while now and has lost a lot of weight. He’s now to the point where he really can’t eat and is slowly starving to death. Mom took him to a veterinary oncologist on Friday, who prescribed some medicine for him that should ease the pain in his throat and reduce the swelling of the tumor so that Sam can eat, but it looks like it may be too late. Unfortunately the medicine is an oral medication, and it’s too painful for him to even swallow that. Yesterday Mom was feeling badly that she didn’t have him put to sleep on Friday when she had the chance. By Saturday, Sam was feeling so poorly, and attempting to give him his medicine alienated him so much, that Mom was feeling as if she was just making him suffer needlessly now.
It’s been tough for me watching Dad deal with this. I can’t imagine Dad ever spoon feeding my brother or I as infants, or changing our diapers. Yet I watched as he got down on the floor with a spoon and a can of cat food to carefully coax Sam to eat, one tiny spoonful at a time a couple weeks ago when Sam would still make the effort to try. Watching Mom cry over the deterioration of her cat has been hard enough. Watching Dad break down at the dinner table and cry as he admitted to Mom that he felt like a coward, but that he would rather not be home when the vet comes over to put Sam to sleep was especially hard. I’ve never thought of Dad as the stereotypical “Strong man who never lets anyone see him cry” type before… but I’d never seen him cry before. He’s never denied his emotions, but this is the first time in my life I’ve seen my father cry.

Mom and Dad’s reactions to my cats meanwhile have been rather mixed. Dad’s allergies have reacted rather well, luckily, and Senar has been leaving Sam alone (I think Senar knows Sam is ill). Soba has been leaving little deposits in undesirable places, and keeps getting caught up on the kitchen counters. I’ve been warned that if this doesn’t stop soon I will have to get rid of her. She has not been very warm toward either of them, always running on sight. Of course, since she keeps getting caught misbehaving and getting yelled at for it, this reinforces her tendency to run when she sees either Mom or Dad. She’s a very warm and loving cat, upstairs in my bedroom, where it’s just me and my cats. Downstairs, she even runs from me (since I’ve been yelling at her to get off counters and so on, to).
Senar, on the other hand, has shown himself to be the friendly cat he’s always been. He still hasn’t quite warmed up to Mom enough to let her pick him up and snuggle him, which she so wants to do, since she can’t do that with Sam any more, but he is friendly enough. Even Dad has gotten down on the floor to spend some time making friends with Senar, which surprised the heck out of me. I think they both are looking to Senar to fill in the void that will be left when Sam is finally gone.
And today Mom said she wanted a kitten to replace Sam as soon as he’s gone. Maybe I’ll see if I can find a kitten amongst my DFW friends…