[The kids are watching “How To Train Your Dragon 2”]
“Hiccup looks like Uncle Sam.”
“… Oh, yeah. A very young looking Uncle Sam.”
“Yeah, when he shaves.”
Author: H Walker Jones, Esq
A professional programmer with a sordid past involving sysadmin, tech support, and cooking.
Ice-pinging on Silver Lake
While walking the dog around the lake this morning, I heard the newly-formed ice ‘pinging’ as the sun rose above the trees. Turn up the volume to hear it.
New Year’s 2014
We have established some new family traditions around Christmas and New Years:
- a family night out to Quincy Market to see the Christmas tree and have some dinner;
- the early-evening fireworks on Boston Common for New Year’s Eve.
These are real, official traditions – we’ve done them for at least two years in a row.
The night at Quincy Market isn’t fancy: a casual stroll around the touristy section of Boston, with some overpriced dinner and maybe some trinkets from the various and sundry vendors. A ride on the carousel, before it closes for the year, is mandatory.
Along with the Christmas tree there is a light show called ‘Blink,’ which plays every hour or so. Music by the Boston Pops is piped in over the loudspeakers.
We chose to stay home for Christmas Day, rather than travelling to Connecticut to join our folks. That is a tradition I can get behind – so much less stress than driving around all day.
We didn’t plan much for the day. We held open the possibility of going to the cinema, but the girls wanted to stay home and watch a movie we got for Christmas (Guardians of the Galaxy). Having a low-stress holiday is refreshing, so unlike the holidays of my childhood.
My folks weren’t thrilled with not seeing us – my father is very resistant to change, and he’s accustomed to hosting the entire family – but we had Christmas Part II on the following Sunday, which was actually pretty fun.
This year Baba (the kids’ name for their grandmother) joined us for the fireworks. We took the train in, ate dinner in the city, and walked to the Common with hot chocolate in hand.
The weather was cold but the sky was clear. The show ran a little long, about 15 minutes, but the kids were thrilled and we all forgot about the cold for a bit.
D-Angelo’s #9
I discovered the D’Angelo’s sandwich chain in my late teens and fell in love with their ‘Number 9’ grilled sandwich. It’s very easy to make for yourself and it’s delicious!
This recipe makes enough to feed two or three people (or more, if they’re kids).
Ingredients
- 1 or 2 chicken breasts (2 if they’re small) or a steak’s worth of beef
- a quarter of a green bell pepper, diced
- half a small yellow onion, diced
- a couple of spoonfuls of sliced mushrooms (optional, kids get weird about ‘shrooms)
- a couple of slices of american cheese
- a loaf of french bread (softer is better)
Steps
- add a little vegetable oil to a hot pan on medium heat, and throw in the onions, peppers, and mushrooms. Let it soften.
- While the above is cooking, dice the meat and add to the vegetables. Occasionally flip the whole thing over so nothing burns and the meat cooks evenly.
- While the above is cooking, slice the bread grinder-style
- When the meat is cooked, pile everything together and add the cheese to cover it
- When the cheese melts enough to collapse into the meat and veggies, scoop it into the bread and serve.
The Mysterious Crashing Network
This is a second-hand story, so take it with a grain of salt. My first tech job was for a local computer shop owned by a guy who’d been around a bit. This is his story, from before I knew him, with some added flourishes:
A call came in on a Friday afternoon, around 2 pm, from one of the larger customers with a support contract: the network is down, nobody can get to the fileserver. We’re dead in the water, you have to come out.
Andy makes haste to arrive on-site, but it takes a while due to starting on the other end of town. As he’s arriving, the network has miraculously recovered.
These things shouldn’t just solve themselves, but then again they shouldn’t randomly happen, either (but this is back when hardware was touchier than it is now). Everything checks out now, nothing looks amiss – the netware server is running like nothing happened and everyone has file access again. Chalk it up to solar activity or something.
Next Friday afternoon, 2 pm: same call, same problem. And as Andy arrives, the network is coming back to life. Check again, netware indicates no downtime. Clearly something happened, and un-happened before anyone could try to fix it.
This happens a couple of more times, and the Andy decides that this calls for a pre-emptive strike. He clears his calendar on Friday afternoon and shows up at the client’s site just after lunch. He’s going to wait it out.
Now, this is in the days of Netware, IPX, and 10-base2 cabling: one long common circuit of coax cable to join everyone, running at a staggering 10 megabits. Netware is pretty solid but 10-base2 is touchy: the cable must be unbroken and terminated at both ends, or else it doesn’t work. It’s slow because of all the cross-talk but nobody complains because it’s cheap to install and files are still relatively small. Nobody has email and the internet is unheard of.
Precisely 2:05 pm, on schedule, the network goes out. The office is small enough that he can see everyone, and confirm that there isn’t someone doing something nefarious. Just people going about their business – working on documents, having meetings, neatening up the office before the weekend, watering their plants…
It turns out there was a stress fracture in the cable’s sheathing. It wasn’t causing a problem most of the time. But this crack happened to be behind a secretary’s desk, under her new plant.
Every Friday she would overwater that plant, causing the excess to overflow down the back of her desk and over the cracked sheathing, effectively un-terminating the network.
After an hour or so it would dry and things went back to normal.
I originally posted this on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2p6qy5/4_impossible_bugs_any_other_stories_like_these/cmu7hte and realized that it really belongs here. Andy, if you read this, you still owe me some paychecks!
Christmas Tree 2014
The tree is up, and it’s gorgeous!
This may actually be one of the best-shaped trees we’ve ever had. The guys at the tree farm said this is a concolor fir. It smells nice!
We generally go to cut-your-own tree farms; this year we went to Rollie’s Farm in Lowell.
Mexican Stuffed Shells
Ingredients
- 24 uncooked jumbo pasta shells (about one 12 oz box)
- 1 pound lean ground beef
- 1 (16 ounce) jar salsa
- 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
- 1 cup frozen corn
- ½ cup canned black beans, rinsed and drained
- 1 cup shredded reduced-fat Mexican cheese or cheddar cheese
Toppings:
- 8 tablespoons reduced-fat sour cream
- 8 tablespoons salsa
- ¼ cup sliced black olives
- ¼ cup sliced green onions
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Cook pasta shells according to package directions; drain.
- Meanwhile, in a nonstick skillet, cook beef over medium heat until no longer pink; drain.
- Stir in salsa, tomato sauce, corn, and beans.
- Spoon beef mixture into pasta shells and place in a 13×9 baking dish coated with nonstick cooking spray.
- Sprinkle with cheese. Cover and bake for 25-30 minutes or until heated through. Top with sour cream, salsa,, olives, and onions.
North End travels
Beta is more intrepid than her older sister, so the two of us go on adventures when Megh is busy and Alpha just wants to stay home. On Sunday afternoon we headed into Boston’s North End to explore.
I actually found legal, on-street parking (oh joy!) and only had to reverse down a one-way street to get it.
We ate gelato at the Gelateria, around the block from where we parked. I had chocolate (very chocolate, very smooth) and Beta had mint chocolate chip.
The trip was cut short because she decided that she wanted to home home — it was late, she was tired (it was her idea to come, I wasn’t dragging her anywhere). I have to admit her timing was pretty good, though. So we grabbed a few cannoli for after dinner before we headed out the door, two chocolate chip and one nutella. I’m not a fan but Megh said they were delicious.
Rollerskating
With Meghan working at the Lego store for the afternoon, Alpha, Beta, and I decided to go roller skating. I haven’t been since before I got married, Beta has only been once, and Alpha has never been.
We went to Roller World in Saugus, since Beta had been there once with friends and liked it. It’s also not too far and had good reviews on Google. They offer a choice of roller skates or -blades (for a few dollars more). We elected to rent roller blades instead of skates, to make backwards tipping a little less likely.
Beta took off after a moment of getting used to the skates again, while Alpha spent a few minutes just trying to stand. I had my own troubles but got going soon enough.
After a little while, the most amazing thing happened: the sisters started helping each other out. Alpha was still a little unsteady on her skates, so Beta stepped up and tried to help her out. They did a few laps around the floor together as Alpha slowly worked away from the wall. I’ve seen the “sisters-against-the-world-thing” in other people, but I’ve had my doubts that these two would ever bond like that. I’m glad to see that I was wrong.
After a couple of big spills (but no injuries) we decided to head out. We were all surprised to find that we had been there for a couple of hours – even I could have sworn it had only been an hour. Time flies when you’re having fun! The girls spent the ride home talking about going back and buying roller blades for themselves.
Swimming in Beverly
On one of the last warm days in September this year, Beta asked me ever-so-sweetly to take her swimming. Silver Lake smells terrible at the end of summer (and that day was no exception), and, though Beta insisted that she didn’t mind the smell, I refused to take her there. The ocean was the only option! Meghan had to work on a book and Alpha didn’t feel like swimming, so Beta and I piled into the convertible and headed out.
One the closest spots we can go to see the ocean is Lynch Park in Beverly, MA. I picked it by browsing on Google Maps. We’d never been there, and didn’t know what to expect.
The water was cold and a little dirty (natural dirt, not pollution) so I elected to stay out, but Beta (and some paddle-boarders) braved the water. The park itself is gorgeous, with a spectacular view of Salem. There’s an amphitheatre, a short walkway along the ocean, and a broad expanse of grass for people to plan on.
We spent a couple of hours there until the air started to turn chilly, and then took the long way home to avoid the traffic snarls on I-95.