more blogs about buildings and food

So in addition to Rakhi and AndyF, we also have blogs from Patrick and Haus Vorbaus. Way cool. You wouldn't necessarily know it from reading their sites, but these are some A-level creative geeks. Hey, somebody should get these folks together and see what they might build, wouldn't that be funny?

racky she wakhi

My friend Racky, she pretty wakhi, she blog for long time but never tell me, how very takhi! Just kidding Racke, I think you rakh!

[go visit philosophise.com]

of salmiakki and shiraz

Okay, that was a nice long break but it's time to get cracking. (I wonder where does that phrase come from…)

First up, best wishes to Peter, Vesku, Raimo, Jari, and the rest of my finnish friends on Independence Day. Hey, why don't you guys get your blogs up for the holiday? Such an auspicious day to declare your allegiance to the future ;-) Same good wishes also to bloggers of a feather Matt and Chris, with admiration for your works and your fortitude against the deep Nordic winter ;-) And apparently, it’s also appropriate to say happy birthday to Foe :-D Is it true that birthday cake goes well with a bit of Salmiakki? I really love Finland in winter, it matches the color of my mood so well, and I am so jealous of all of you…

Next, if you have any ’86 Ridge Montebello Cab hiding in your closet, please drink it. It’s well past its prime, and it was a fairly light vintage to begin with. The nose is still pleasantly fruity and peppery, but the color has gone to brick and the tannins have fallen away, leaving very little there there. You know, some advancy-schmancy sensor network tech would have been useful here, digital sommelier alerting system or something, n’est-ce pas?

Finally, if you like good seafood and rumbling trains, you might want to try Pisces in Burlingame, sister restaurant to the more famous Aqua in SF. It’s right next to the CalTrain tracks which is a little weird for a fancy bistro, but the occasional heart-stopping roar of an express train makes for a good conversation piece, heh. Our antique friends Irene and Lesley introduced us to this fine jook joint, and we’ll undoubtedly be back again soon. The grouper with black trumpet mushrooms in parchment was great, and the wine list is a nicely eclectic mix of California, French and world. We had an elegant Stony Hill chard, 2001 I think, and an Aussie Shiraz called Sheep’s Back with huge fruit and a minty eucalyptus note that reminded me of Bonny’s Vineyard. Mm-mmm good.

Ahh, there’s nothing like a coherent, well-integrated blog post to fix you right up...

new blogger welcome wagon

Hey Megan, I'm happy to see you've started your blog, finally (snark snark) ;-D Really, this is going to be great. Welcome to the neighbloghood! Oh M, turn on trackbacks why don't you?

For those who don't know Megan, she's a true web goddess who has been the producer and driving force behind a bunch of excellent sites, including mPulse, cooltown.com, and the now mostly lost E-Business. As usual I'm biased, but I'm also right, so go visit and drop her some encouraging comments to get her momentum going.

much ado about...knitting?

I love the way the web makes communities visible, that you had no idea even existed. Case in point: web goddess Amy's new blog threaded thoughts, where you can discover just how deep the rabbit hole goes...into extreme knitting, purling and the arcana of the fiber arts.

I frogged the extra two rows as well as the row where I should have increased originally, and then did it again.

Back to starting the fair isle. Quickly I run into two things. First, with the number of stitches I have, the pattern won't be centered or symetrical as written, which seems odd. And, the repeat of 6 doesn't work properly with the number of stitches I have since they aren't divisible by 6.

So, you can't just read the pattern left to right on the purl side.

Amy, I tried running this through babelfish, eep it didn't help ;-) But a warm welcome to the neighbloghood anyway! Now if you can just get Megan blogging we'll really be in good shape. You've got MT running, so how hard can it be?

the political compass

Fredshouse friend Dwight is a registered Republican, although I've always thought of him as a fiscal moderate with socially liberal tendencies. So I'm quite heartened to see that he "crossed the aisle" and joined a Kerry meetup. It suggests to me that there's actual hope for a change in leadership come November.

So now I wonder where Dwight falls on the political compass. Political beliefs are a complex subject, so it always galls me to see the parties, the candidates and the popular media characterize them in terms of binary choice, left and right. You're either with us or against us, as the saying goes. In public politics today, there's no room for shades of gray, no accomodation for a nuanced view of policy, no way to self-identify as a thoughtful individual with complex, interdependent opinions. The Political Compass attempts to map your beliefs onto a two-dimensional space of economic and social attitudes. It's simplistic, but it is substantially better than "are you [hot] or [not]".

I'm currently at (-2.38, -5.95), which is an economic left-of-center, socially libertarian mapping pretty much diametrically opposed to that of our Shrub-in-chief. Where do you fall?

new marketing vp at fredshouse

D-man is such a yahoo these days!

[Now playing: Eric Clapton | Unplugged | Before You Accuse Me]

hey google, shout out!

A shout out to some old friends, hey where all y'all been hiding?

Mike Kraus, mikeobaby, I thought you were coming out West this week. The left coast just hasn't been the same without you! Jeff Vaughan, my old partner in crime from F-M days, downhill racer, pingpong savage, partier extraordinaire, where you at these days? Bill Wishart, sixes of Bud and radio baseball down by the old Erie Canal, RPI guy and Supertramp fan, do you still drive that Chevy Vega? Carolina Arango de Ruiz, la chica de Lesley College, dear friend and wise soul, teacher and mother, where? Doug MacIntyre, I lost your email address again but you come to mind every time I hear an Iommi riff...ping me and forgive me for losing it yet again. Jon Knott, pride of Muscatine, three degrees of MIT and who knows how many more, we all wonder where you went next. Jeff Arnold Ziffel, and MPC, you too. Are you still up there at Tech Square? Work? Life? Kids? Inquiring first floors want to know. Bennett Baker, o Beanie, don't you ever google yourself? Evan Fraser Klein, long long time since that trip to LA to see you with Dwight, and I'm sure someone at House 5 still has the EFK memorial paraphernalia collection in their careful stewardship...

So what's it going to be, folks? Gone forever, tra-la? Or maybe a long overdue catchup of too many years? Hope it's not the tra-la thing ;-)

omg it's mob

W00t! I was trolling through my moblog on textamerica, and found this comment by old compadre Mike-o-baby, whom I haven't heard from in too many moons. I don't know how he found me, but hey this internet community stuff is pretty kewl.

MOB, if you're out there: it's amazingly great to hear from you, and I can't wait to hoist one in your general direction 8-D

economic recovery is here

A longtime friend of ours was laid off yesterday, a casualty of the continuing repercussions of the telecom bacchanal/meltdown. A few of us old timers met at Zots for a beer. It was a reunion of sorts, not quite as festive as you might wish for, but at least better than that other cliched reason that folks have for getting together.

Woofered.