Hey, Chinni
August 29, 2008
Hope you’re happily chasing peacock feathers and the cement is dry enough for rolling. Miss you.
Jobs, jobbed
August 29, 2008
I really had to chuckle over this one: Bloomberg accidentally published their Steven Jobs obituary, much to the consternation of the high tech world (and probably Mr. Jobs).
Most people don’t realize this, but large publications usually keep fill-in-the-blank obituaries on file for celebrities and assign the newest reporter-in-training the job of keeping them up to date. That way, if someone famous dies, it’s relatively easy to add a few lines about where/how/why and quickly get out an obit.
A friend had the update job for awhile, and said she was given a list of “at risk” celebrities, i.e., anyone past 60, sick or doing dangerous things, for frequent updates. I’d imagine that the recent news about Jobs’ bout of pancreatic cancer and weight loss dumped him onto the “at risk” list and somebody hit the publish button by mistake.
Ooops.
Giders and spoats
August 29, 2008
What do you get when you cross a spider with a goat?
Actually, that’s not a joke, ’cause the guy with the glasses over there did it a few years ago. Crossed a spider with a goat, I mean. His name is Jeffrey Turner and he’s implanted spider-silk producing genes in goat embryos. The result, a herd of affectionate-looking billies and nannies (each with four legs, not eight, I counted), produce a form of the silk solution in their milk. No idea if the milk is drinkable.
Boil down the milk, process it, and you have artificial spider silk solution that can be spun out kinda the way spiders do it, although it’s only a tenth the strength of the real thing. It’s called BioSteel and it’s the product of an ailing biotech firm, Nexia. The rest of the company’s been scavenged for the parts, but the goats were moved to a new farm and are supposedly still going strong.
Gosh. I can come up with all KINDS of stories dealing with that scenario. 
Firkin & Frog
August 28, 2008
- Restaurant website
- Location: Vancouver, Wa
- Price to fill up two people: About $30
Saburo’s House of Sushi
August 28, 2008
- Restaurant website
- Location: Sellwood/Westmoreland
- Price to fill up two people: About $30
Until I had dinner at Saburo’s, the words “sushi” and “jumbo” weren’t related. Now they are.
Robyn suggested Saburo’s for dinner; I checked it out with Trever, my resident Asian/Middle Eastern restaurant expert. “It’s really popular, but the pieces are a little big for me.” Didn’t seem like a huge problem, so we headed over there.
I arrived late (thanks to the closing of the Sellwood bridge, which sparked my quest for GPS, an entirely different story) and Robyn had already ordered so I’m not entirely sure what we ate. There were a couple different types of marinated eel sushi, a couple of rolls with crab and avocado, some salmon sashimi, but from the looks of it, just about anything on the menu is good.
Ours were delicious. They were also absolutely, completely ginormous, well beyond the realm of handling with simple chopsticks. At a guess, the slices of maki (rolls) were a good 3-4 inches across. The grilled (teriyaki?) eel on top of my favorite piece was longer than my hand.
I tried picking up a slice of roll with one hand–Robyn snickered–and discovered that sushi really isn’t structurally sound enough to hang out in space while you chew at the other end. It’s meant to be eaten in one bite, but I’d love to see the guy that could get one of these beasties into his mouth at one go. (Uh, come to think of it, I would NOT love to see that)
I don’t know if there’s an imperative here to follow the crazy American custom of barrel-sized sodas and supersized fries, if perhaps making one roll instead of six cuts down on labor costs, or the chefs are channeling Paul Bunyan, but I’m with Trever: Their sushi is too big.
Size aside, however, this is really good sushi at a bargain price. We couldn’t finish the $27-worth that we ordered, and we were both hungry. Our table-mates, a couple with a little girl, couldn’t finish half of what they ordered–it filled a take-out box maybe 12-inches square. “Uh, that’s for the dog. We have a Japanese dog,” the guy deadpanned.
Like many neighborhood bistros in Portland, this one is very crowded with neighbors and friendly chatter. The service is pretty good. The location, in one of those little boutique enclaves old Portland is famous for, is good for postprandial strolling. There are a couple of nearby parking lots and street parking for different lengths of time, I found a close-by parking place without a problem.
Definitely, put Saburo’s on your list.
Tip: Pay attention to the words “very crowded,” in this review; there were at least as many people sitting outside on the sidewalk, waiting to get in, as there were inside the restaurant…and that was on a Tuesday night. Took maybe 30-40 minutes to be seated, so pick your parking space accordingly.
Burgled…
August 27, 2008
…well of sleep, anyway.
I’m beginning to think that somebody up there (or maybe down there) thinks sleep is superfluous. Last night around 10:30, faced with a choice of going down the studio and finishing up a sculpture or going to bed, I…actually went to bed. Snuggled in under the covers, I drifted off by 11, which has to be some kind of record.
A piercing shriek at 11:15 and I’m awake. The burglar alarm was letting me know that its battery was low. I hit the cancel button, went back to bed…and 10 minutes later it started up again.
Go talk to Gary
August 25, 2008
My most avid commenter, Gary-the-fusedlight-Brown, now has his own blog and I think I’ve the honor of being the first person to comment on it. And wouldn’t you know it: Just as I’m getting fed up with the whole dual-party American system and ready to start my own political party (we can’t let the French and Italians have all the fun)…he starts a political blog.
Nothing like a nice, non-controversial subject to kick off your blogging experience. If you get a chance, go over there and tell him what you think, folks.
Olive vectors
August 24, 2008
Here’s an interesting physics problem:
You have a flat plastic container full of virgin olive oil and one dozen jumbo green olives stuffed with feta cheese. The container measures 4×6x1.5 inches. The oil has been chilled to approximately 36 degrees, increasing its viscosity.
You drop the container from the second-from-the-top shelf of your refrigerator, at a height of approximately four feet. It strikes a solid maple floor on the tabbed corner normally used to open the container, bounces, then does a three-quarter turn. The lid opens as it rotates and the assemblage lands upside-down on a Tibetan wool rug with a pile approximately 1.25 inches thick.
Two olives remain in the container. Nine come to rest within a three-foot radius of the refrigerator. My question is, where did the 12th olive go?
–sigh–
Meaningful(less) art
August 24, 2008
So I’m in a gallery (not owned, managed or as far as I know displaying the art of anyone who reads this blog), looking at one particular (and very expensive) work, and a nice-looking fellow sidles up to me. “I love that one too. Doesn’t it just hit you? The sense of isolation, the rejection of modern materialism, the knowledge that all our aspirations eventually decay. He’s really making a statement of urban life, isn’t he? I have nightmares about this piece, it’s so powerful.”
We were looking at a chunk of frosted glass on a rusted steel base. So help me.
The REAL geek squad
August 22, 2008
How does that prayer go again? Oh yeah: Lead me not into temptation.
Well, that’s one prayer shot all to hell. That’s because a conversation at work today went something like this:
“Cynthia, my home PC won’t even turn on, not a single sound or anything when I hit the power switch. Any idea what the problem is?”
“Mmmmm…might be a busted power supply; if there’s a computer store around here you could pick one up fairly cheap.”
“There’s a place called Fry’s just down the road, I could walk to it.”
“Really? Well, that’s all my work done for the day, then. See you Monday!”
Yup. Fry’s. Within walking distance.
There goes my discretionary income.
For those of you not gadgeteers or geeks, Fry’s is sorta the quintessential warehouse for electronics buffs. Think Best Buy with people who know electronics. Radio Shack with a decent selection. CompUSA without the rotten policies. Costco and Trader Joe’s combined, but for gadgets.
Now it’s not as cool as the BucketMouth Shop, that long-gone place I hung out in during my salad days, where the Sierra Online folks came down to trade hacks and you could pick up an 8080 processor for about a quarter. But it’s about the closest thing left.
And it’s full of real geeks, the kind that didn’t spend their stock option money on manicures, Gucci and BMWs. The ones that drool over really cool PC cases and clog the aisles arguing the relative merits of RedHat vs. Ubuntu. Who gleefully grab a salesman to point out a mistake on the spec sheet (and, more than likely, the salesman just as gleefully points out an obscure geekism that makes it totally correct).
It’s where I can come in with an idea to build a black box casting controller for the Intelligent Kiln Project that needs to survive grinding swarf, high temps and maybe some water splashes…and have the salesman suggest a mineral oil-cooled system with a membrane keyboard before I can.
Great place for peoplewatching and discreet eavesdropping (“Dylan, if your mom didn’t specifically SAY the money was for college, then she can’t get mad at you for buying it, right?”).
Drat. Get thee behind me, Fry’s.