procrastablanca

Why move to Austin?

2006-09-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

Even McConnaughey has a beard

2006-09-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

You are not cool. That is all.
http://www.misprintmagazine.com/

Arandinas

2006-08-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

I live in an interesting part of town, I'm about 2 miles from Austin's froo-froo shopping center and new Neiman Marcus and Saks, and about 2 miles from one of the most gut-bucket poor part of town. Guess where I go for a $3 burrito? Usually not a big deal, but 9pm last friday I go to arandinas number whatever over by the HEB . Tonight they have a band - accordian, bass, guitar. I listened while I waited for my burrito al pastor. The bass player sang and played the lead line. He had a beat-up white p-bass with a huge green pot-leaf sticker on it. He wore a stetson, white shirt, sky-blue sans-a-belts, and sky-blue custom ostrich boots - with the pointy toe so you kill the roaches in the corners. He was about a 1/4 step flat compared to the accordian, but nobody seemed to notice. It was fun. I was the only anglo in the place, which is actually kind of unusual in austin these days.

saturday morning-

2006-08-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

Roll down to Cameron looking for the Tandy store to get stuff for a new mandolin strap. It's a hard place to find - tucked in one of those low-rent garage/body shop strips in a place with bad traffic access like underneath a tangle of texas flyover interchanges - you know the usual Austin kind fo place. There's the leather store (with harleys out front), a thrift store, the amature radio supply shop, and a goodwill. They were teaching a class in back of Tandy and there was a special on full cowskin rugs - pretty cool if the dog wouldn't eat it. Got my 'superior grade' latigo lace and briefly considered the fringed moccasin kit for $27. I tried to figure out where I'd wear fringed buckskin moccasins, cause the kit looked like fun and a pretty good deal for buckskin, but I decided I wasn't sure enough of what size I'd be to buy it right there. I stopped in the thrift store which had a real old VCR - the kind with tape-deck mechanical switches for play/stop/etc. Cool. Anyway, continued my drive over to the east side to check out the lofts where Tamara's 'naked as you want to be' art show was the night before. I didn't go, but I'd never been in that neighborhood and wanted to check it out. It is pretty neat, and you could imagine being in mexico with the way the houses are painted, the restaurants, and the cool-ass spanish colonial style churches, if it were for the ass new 'apartment homes' being built all over. Next stop - South Austin farmers market - I've never been to this one, and figured I'd check it out. There was one stand selling some crappy yellow organic tomatoes. Baah. So back up to the downtown farmers market, which is always bumpin. I didn't have a cooler, so I passed on the buffalo steaks, but it was already getting hot so I got an iced black coffee. I'm always eyeballing the plant guy who has the exotic plumerias, but he's always asking ~$50 for the cool ones, and I haven't been real lucky with gardening in texas. Over to Lamar, stopped in Whole Earth provisions to look at yuppies buying hemp shoes and rock climbing harnesses. 'The Tavern' is up the street from there, around 11th and Lamar. It's a cool old german bar with a deck on top - it looks like a cuckoo clock - I need to check that place out later. It's 11:30am and already 90 degrees, but the iced coffee helps (and the truck's AC).

Cheeseman

2006-07-22T06:11:00.000-07:00

From an AP story -

Food and Drug Administration officials have told companies to look for a manufacturing technique that does not use lead, which can cause learning disabilities and behavioral problems.

It is not clear whether this lead can contaminate food stored in the lunch boxes. Mitchell Cheeseman, associate director of the FDA's Office of Food Additive Safety, noted that since food in lunch boxes is generally stored inside bags, the potential for contamination is minimized.

If the agency were able to prove that lead is migrating from the lunch box lining into food, it would step in, Cheeseman said.

The associate director of Food Additive Safety is named "Cheeseman"? Could this mean something sinister about cheese?

e46 alternator

2006-07-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

Maybe someone will find this useful. I was stumped for a while figuring out the best way to remove tension on the belts without breaking something.

Removal of bmw e46 alternator (mine was a 2002 325i 2.5L)-
First disconnect the battery in the trunk. Remove the ram-air duct held by 3 expanding rivets at the top of the radiator - don't lose them. Remove the intake/air filter housing - two clips hold it to the MAF sensor, 2 screws hold it to the driver's inner wheel well. Remove the two screws that hold the power steering reservoir in place - it can be moved aside without disconnecting the fluid lines. Disconnect the alternator positive cable and regulator sensor connector which are both on the back of the alternator. Disconnect the two sensors from the electric fan assembly so the fan can be removed. The fan assembly is held with a torx on one side and a plastic expanding rivet on the other - remove those and it slides up and out. You now have a space to get to the accessories at the front of the engine. Examine the sepentine belt route - there is an idler attached to the side of the alternator and a belt tensioner below the alternator. The belt tension must be relieved to remove the alternator. Removing the hub cover from the tensioner pulley exposes an 8mm hex recess. This must be torqued clockwise (facing the engine) to compress the tensioner spring and slack the belt. You wont be able to do this with a regular Allen wrench without it sliding off and breaking something. You'll need a 8mm hex on a socket and 2' breaker to apply enough torque. It will rotate about 60 degrees from its rest position and you should then be able to slip the belt off the alternator's drive and idler pulley. Remove the cover from the alternator idler pulley hub to expose the top alternator mount bolt which is 16mm - not that common. The idler will come off the alternator. Remove the second (bottom) alternator mount bolt - again 16mm. Slip off the air duct going to the bottom of the alternator fan shrould, and the alternator should lift out - if it binds, wiggle it until it comes out. Goes back together the same in reverse - take time to consider that everything is replaced properly.
If you're doing this, it's also a good idea to replace the accessory drive belt - having it break can be bad news. The accessory belt mounts the crank pulley behind the AC drive belt so the AC belt must be removed first. It's pretty easy and has much less tension than the accessory drive belt. I just pushed it's tensioner down with my hand, and jammed an Allen wrench into a little slot that opens up in the tensioner's base.

The Lake

2006-06-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

I laid beside her, drew my breath slowly to take it in - the soft smell of her fine skin, her dark long hair. She turned to kiss me and I met her tender lips. I put my arm around her and pulled her close, burying my face in her hair drawing her closer. Rubbing my leg against hers, I remember how smooth they were, and how soft the bottoms of her feet were against the tops of mine. Nothing spoken. The sun filtered in through the window, from across the lake, languid late afternoon sunshine. Time stopped, two people shared a moment, both tired but aware, excited but relaxed.

Bored?

2006-05-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

Time to kill? My new thing: having a few beers and watching random Numa Numa videos .

aliens

2006-04-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

I think 'Jogbra' would be a great name for an alien.

Politics

2006-01-22T08:28:00.000-08:00

What's conservative? what's liberal? what's left or right? How does your political stance compare to Thatcher, Ghandi, Hilter? Check out the political compass quiz and find out. (I'm economic left/right -0.13, social libertarian/authoritarian -1.28 . About as close to middle as it gets.)

New Stuff

2006-01-12T19:32:00.000-08:00

(SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY) TXRD roller derby has moved to the Crockett center, over by Chuy's and the new Chinatown complex. I hope they don't double-book with the gun show that's there the third weekend each month - GO CHOLA! Saturday, Drop Trio from Houston are playing in town. I haven't heard them, but they're described as 'space jazz' - I'm hoping along the lines of Emperor Penguin, Stereolab, or Tipsy. Oh, yeah - Horns Win, Horns Win! I'm I the only one who thinks 'the eyes of texas are upon you' is a little creepy? I'm trying to decide between 2-step, yoga, fencing, or the UT Odyssey course on human infectious diseases for a spring class. I also just saw the the Capitol City Highlanders Pipe Band are giving free lessons, and there is a Monday drumming group at Drumz. Still trying to make it to Wednesday night contra dance, or over to hole-in-the-wall for Monkey Butlers and the Ridgetop Syncopators.

It's dry here. It hasn't rained in a long time. Last year, it rained every weekend for about 8 weeks straight. It was cloudy today, and I was almost giddy. It's weird getting excited about an overcast, cloudy day. It's been so warm here over winter that the plants are all goofed up. My banana plant by the pool is sending up shoots, and I got a feeling we're not out of it yet. But the next time it rains, I'm going to go running around outside in the puddles.

Renaissance weasel

2005-12-04T19:10:00.000-08:00

What's up with Da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine" ? She's got a 'lord of the dance' headband, flight certified hair-helmet, AND a gold unibrow enhancer. And how did Leonardo get that weasel to stay still for a portrait? It looks really pissed off.

Llama supplements

2005-12-03T13:27:00.000-08:00

I went down to Callahan's general store today, to gather Tex-arcana and various other booty for Christmas gifts. That place is a trip. At first it seemed kind of small, compared to a Farm -n- Fleet I used to frequent in Central Illinois, but they have a good selection of weird stuff. All the Lodge cast iron cookware, Japanese spiral cutters for vegetables, welding equipment, ah - and the familiar row of small fasteners, just like my favorite old hardware place, Nena's. Places like Lowes and Home Depot have mostly run these small places out of business, and although you can buy 2x4's and microwaves, they universally have a paultry selection of hardware odds and ends. I always check to see if they have Woodruff keys, and sure enough, Callahan's had sizes 1-13 and A-E, which is pretty good. Anything bigger than E you'd make yourself from barstock anyway. A bell went off as another box filled in my mental checklist. I'm uneasy unless I know a local place to get good hardware, and this place fits the bill for me.
The other interesting thing to me was how different this place was to an Illinois feed store. I overhead part of a conversation "... it's 4ppm of copper. If it don't hurt goats, it won't hurt a llama." At the other end of the store, there was a black guy in a cowboy hat ordering some complicated-sounding feed cropI didn't recongnize. A mexican family looked at birdhouses. There was a incubating room where they had baby chicks for sale. They had 8 kinds of leather horse saddles. It seemed like a lot of the customers were here buying feed for livestock, which seemed odd to me. In Illinois, if you have livestock, you pretty much grow your own feed - but I guess that's tough here on a ranch with poor caliche soil and low rain levels. The chicks reminded me of feeder goldfish at a pet store. I immediately thought -"what the hell is on a farm that needs to eat that many chicks?" - before making the leap that they were for people to eat.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

2005-11-25T16:41:00.000-08:00

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

to do

2005-11-13T18:23:00.000-08:00

Build a ukulele from Grizzly Industrial .

defenestration

2005-11-10T19:24:00.000-08:00

I actually heard the word "defenestration" used on TV today - something on A&E. There are a lot of neat words associated with windows- muttons, mullions, muntins...

bleh

2005-11-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

The problem with not smoking is the smell.
People say when you stop smoking, you regain your sense of smell. That's technically true, but I find you pretty much regain the ability to smell bad things the most. When I smoked, I could smell everything I wanted - the jasmine vines blooming in my yard, the hop aroma on a fresh sierra nevada, that sweet grassy tarragon-like smell of the weeds on highways on hot dry days, the little bit of cumin and cilantro in my favorite salsa, the special floral notes that distinguish key limes from those big honking persian ones. Not smoking allows you to also pick up the other end of the spectrum - a cheesey sweaty fat guy at a concert, the patchouli-ass-and-onion-ring smell on some hippies, dishes left in the sink too long.

the great escape

2005-10-23T17:33:00.000-07:00

I just saw some thing on TV about that son of an appalacian turd farmer who defected to north korea 40 years ago. Anywho, he got out and went to japan and the army let him off easy. They asked him what he was most surprised to see after 40 years in relative isolation from the west - computers, cars, new technologies? He said he was surprised there were women in the army, black police officers, and that you couldn't smoke anywhere any more. That kind of surprised me, being used to the 3-5 year rush of technology of nerdliness, 18 month transistor doubling, etc. The things that are hardest to change, and most surprising when they do, are these cultural things. Ok, its obvious, but maybe something that's easy to lose sight of in day-to-day life.

To do

2005-10-23T08:37:00.000-07:00

Nickel Creek - Stubb's
Hedda Layne - Rain
Ridgetop Syncopators - Hole in the Wall
Li'l Alice and the Monkey Butlers - Hole in the Wall

maps

2005-10-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

I just looked at a google map of my hometown, and I never had a clue of it's shape. I mean, I knew how to get places, I drove all over the place. I knew which roads were the boundaries, what went where. It's odd. Every other place I'll lived, I figured out what's what with a map, so I've had an inherent sense of geography. Odd. How important is global position understanding vs. context based location really?

Waffles

2005-10-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

I've recently become obsessed with waffles. During the week, I often run out of either cereal or milk, so I'll pick up a donut at the gas station on the way to work. Mmmmm. dougnuts. Then after watching Alton Brown's show - waffles! wait, follow me here. I can make french toast - but its too much for an everyday breakfast and the bread always goes bad. Pancakes are good, but they're pretty labor intensive with all the watching and turning. Cereal is still the bomb, probably the invention with the greatest impact on productivity until the personal computer, but eh, the milk. Waffles - I know, I still need milk and eggs, but once made they're freezable - so I can always have a few on hand. Bam, jimmy!

waffle maker

Random idea

2005-10-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

Why do we date our co-workers? Propinquity is one leg of Sternberg's tripod of love. Is it just being close all the time? How about artificial scarcity? For most of the day, they may be the best thing around. Common interest? working together towards goals? what the fuck ever. All I know is it can be great when it works, and terrible when it doesn't. But what if there was a loophole.
How about this: a 'date my co-worker' dating website! You link up people with similar jobs, but different companies. Lawyer at firm A gets a setup with lawyer at firm B. Tech nerd level 3 at gets setup with Tech nerd level 3 at . This cracks another online-dating problem. People are incapable of answering self-surveys properly. A person's self-opinion is seldomly the same of an observer of that persons actions. Chances are that a person who made a similar career decision as you (actions), may hold very similar values, although their reasons may be quite different. Isn't that one of the 'big five'?

science break

2005-10-11T16:06:00.000-07:00

little johnny was a chemist
little johnny is no more
'cause what he thought was H2O,
was really H2SO4.

to do list

2005-10-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

feed ducks rolled up pieces of bread
throw a jar of superballs off the top floor of the frost bank building
catch a bat
strap a flashlight on a dog's harness so he can see better at night
wonder why homemade pizza crust never turns out the same as take-out
try to reverse-engineer the salsa recipe from Labamba
try to grow a banana plant
turn over a rock, just to see what crawls out

The 5 S method (lesson from Japan)

2005-04-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

5S Method

1.Seri –
Sort and Discard.
Eliminate All unneeded items.

2.Seiton –
Arrange and Order
Arrange all items that are left.

3.Seiso –
Clean and Inspect
Clean all areas.

4.Seiketsu –
Standardize and Improve
Maintain the first 3S

5.Shitsuke –
Believe and Disclipline
Believe that the 5S are important

the beauty of surfactants, or DYI hair products

2004-12-05T16:32:00.000-08:00

Ok Dexter, time for some chemistry.

First the backstory:
If my hair is really short, I like to put some kind of crap on to keep it from totally frizzing out. The problem is a little tiny jar of this gunk seems to last me at least 6 months, by which time the packaging or formula has changed. I end up having to buy several kinds to get one that was like whatever the heck I had before, but throw the others out. What's in this stuff anyway?

What am I talking about? the little jars of 'wax' or 'pomade' - what it is and what it's called are seldom the same thing. The water-based ones are nice at first, but once in your hair they either become sticky (collects dust - gross) or get hard and crunchy. I also find that they are very sensitive to the application - if your hair is wet, you get this clumpy look, if it's dry you get this matte sticky look. They can smell nice though.
On the other hand are the oil based 'waxes'. A lot of these use castor oil as a base which smells like shite to me, no matter how they try to cover it up. Others use coconut oil (which is one of the few lipids that stay solid at room temperature - hence the 'wax' bit), but these smell a little too jerry-curl for my tastes.

Example 1: physique precision wax. A full-up oil-based formula.
==
Petrolatum, (Vaseline)
Beeswax,
Oleth-5, (surfactant and coemulsifier)
Dimethicone, (silicone)
Dimethicone Copolyol, (silicone oil?)
Phenoxyethanol, (preservative, similar to ethylene glycol)
Fragrance,
Propylparaben {preservative)

I like this one. Although I've noticed if I use more than just a tiny bit, bees come around. It stays light and shiny, and doesn't matter what moisture level your hair is at when you slap it on.

Example 2: Paul Mitchell Wax Works. A water-oil emulsion (mayonaise anyone?)
==
water
mineral oil
propylene glycol (base for deodorants, helps increase viscosity, non-toxic antifreeze)
oleth-5 (presumbably for emulsification)
DEA oleth-10 phosphate
...
...

Ok stuff. Nice smell. You can't get the original form anymore, they changed it around to some other formula a while back. It's a little more sensitive to how you put it on, but not as bad as the more heavily water-based ones.

Anyway, I prefer Example 1, and as it turns out, you can cook up a pretty good copy and add in whatever fragrance you like (or leave it the hell alone).

Source for many of these esoteric cosmetic chemicals, and good tips - the personal formulator

If you're really interested, it appears that mustacheod folks have done a lot of research in this area - mustache wax recipes

the cat died today

2004-07-27T20:17:00.000-07:00

She'd stopped eating over the 4th of july weekend and never started up again. She had lost a lot of weight and started getting diarhea and not cleaning herself. She could get up and walk a few feet, and then sat down. I kept finding little cat shit smears wherever she had layed. I knew her time was almost up. I called the vet today and made an appointment for her to be euthanized tommorow, but I don't think she'll make it that long.

I came home from work and looked for her. She had been outside, but I couldn't find her. She turned out to be over by the shed, near where diesel had killed the rabbit. She looked dead, flies and bees were swarming around her. I was upset. I went and put a mask on, and went back out to check her. I saw her breathe, and she looked up at me and tried to meow. I think she could still recognise me. Her fur around her head was all out of shape, she was very thin. She had probably lost over half her weight since she stopped eating.
I went in and got a laundry basket and the blanket I had wrapped her in before. I picked her up and put into the basket and wrapped her in the blanket. She meowed and seem to been uncomfortable, but she didn't scream or make any really bad noises. I carried the old girl inside and put her down the basement where she used to like to sit and left her there, with a mug of water close to her head. I tried to get her to drink, but she seemed zoned out and didn't respond. When I checked on her a few hours later, she had stopped breathing. I petted her head and yelled into her ear and shook her to she if she was awake, but she was starting to smell like death and seemed limp.
I went back out and dug a hole for her. Afterwards, I came back in to check on her, but she hadn't moved or touched the water I put in the basket in the mug for her. I took out the water and carried the basket outside. I unwrapped the blanket from her and spread it on the ground. I sort of poured her out the basket. She didn't move at all, she was totally limp. I folded the blanket, now a shroud I guess, over her loosely and lowered her body into the ground. I put a board over it so nothing could get at her. I figure if she hasn't moved by the morning, I'll cover her up.

She was pretty independant and a real hard ass. She was mean as a young cat, and survived the fire at my folks place. I'd had her for 8 or 9 years, and mom thinks she was 14yrs, although I think shes closer to 17. She'd mellowed by the time I got her, and never was much trouble. She was kind of a piece of grandpa to me, and for that I'll miss her. I remember going to grandpas house with my mom to find him lying dead late at night. We waited for the funeral people to come and take him away. There's something relieving or satisfying about being there with them dead - those probably aren't the right words. It's definitely not fun, but it makes it easier to have closure and to say goodbye. It seems more natural than a bunch of strangers taking care of everything. Not scary or disgusting. I was really upset to find the cat in such a state when I got back from work, but after I brushed off all the flies and put her in a basket in the place she always like to sit, she looked very peacefull, like she had seen enough of the world, and not afraid or in pain. She looked like she was sleeping, her usual state the last few years. She used to love sitting the the tall grass around the pond and watch the birds come to drink. She never tried to get one, I think she knew she was too old by then, but she liked to watch them still. I wonder what she though about. She and diesel had killed a chipmunk once. I caught the two running down the basement together with it, so I'll never know who was the sucessful hunter that day. What a good cat though, she never got fleas, or got sick. She didn't tear up any furniture, and always used her box, even when I didn't clean it often enough. She'd come an meow at me and give me hell about it. I kind of feel bad telling people her name was 'kitty' but I don't think she cared what I called her, so it was good enough for us. Chris Crowell used to call her mr. bigglesworth - he died a few years ago from cancer, poor guy, the cat outlived him.
Rest in peace good kitty, you were a chain through my family from grandpa to my folks to me, and I hope you are in a better place, maybe with grandpa and his old cat, tiger. Diesel will miss his sister.

math break

2004-06-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

I love you;
You are my hero.
My love for you is 1/x
as x approaches zero.

camel joke

2004-05-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

Osama bin Laden and one of his followers were riding on a camel when they stopped at a small town. Bin Laden gets off the camel and lifts up its tail and looks at the camel's butt, just then a guy comes over and says, "What are you doing?"

Osama replies, "About 2 miles back I heard someone say, 'Hey, look at the two assholes on that camel.'"

the gut feel

2004-02-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

its 4:15. I'm done with work, driving home. It sunny today, spring is coming. I reflect - they're all too tall. I never thought about it much before, espicially in high school. we fit so well. I'm headed home. so what - I'll check email, get the mail from the slot, sit and wait to do it again. rinse and repeat. Could I have said something differently? just let it happen, it's not worth fighting it. my diaphram slowly begins to squeeze. my shoulder tense. I feel my teeth come togther, the muscles in my face and jaw flex then relax. the tightness moves down my throat. My gut relaxes for a second, then it knots up again. My tongue drops down a bit in my throat, my mouth slightly open. I feel my gut reflexively pull up - like straining on the can, but up and in instead of down and out. Not all of a sudden, but like with some kind of autonomic deliberation. Theres the sour taste of acid in the back of my throat, but nothing else comes up..I swallow a few times. Rinse and repeat. Ok enough. I'm in control now. Things could be worse. breathe normally. Pay attention.