Driving and Technology
I think it may well be true that people here learned to drive by watching NASCAR. Today the truck in the right lane, poking along with its hazard lights on decided to drift over into my lane without bothering to look to see if there was a vehicle there. I'd have swerved but there was oncoming traffic. I honked and the truck moved back where it belonged, but the driver didn't seem particularly concerned. I guess you're just supposed to push whoever is passing on the left into the infield.
The funniest thing was watching the behavior at the new stoplight. The primary street's light is flashing yellow. The cross street is flashing red. It has always been my understanding that a flashing yellow light means proceed with caution. The flashing red light is treated like a stop sign. I was traveling along the primary street and was going to turn left at the light. Two vehicles in front of me were going to do the same thing. Several oncoming cars apparently were confused and started to treat the intersection like a stop sign. The two vehicles in front of me did try to wave the oncoming traffic through since they weren't supposed to stop, but that didn't really help. I think the fact that there was turn traffic stopped and waiting for a break in the traffic flow confused some of the drivers. I must say that I was impressed that the confused drivers did stop and try to figure things out. They did not just proceed with abandon and expect everybody else to get out of the way as I have seen happen elsewhere.
Cooking this week...
I didn't get much cooking done this week. I have a half-made pot of squash soup in the fridge (it just needs to be heated up and blended until smooth). I've still got fresh greens too and a freshly made pot of chili. I haven't had any chili yet, but I've been eating the cornbread I made to go with it. I've found a new favorite recipe for cornbread. I even baked it in my cast iron skillet! I've got several meals planned this week using quinoa, millet and lentils to use up some of the pantry supplies I brought with me. I need to work on halving the recipes I make so I don't have leftovers for more than a week. I hate throwing out food but I'm not going to start eating more just to not have to throw it out.
Baking....
For those of you who are keeping track, I've already gone through about 8 pounds of flour since moving here. I predict that I'll use up about 20 pounds of flour between now and Christmas.
This past week, I took cinnamon rolls to work for breakfast on Monday. They got rave reviews and several people asked for the recipe, which I happily provided. Right now, there is a big bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough in my fridge right now for the cookies I'll take to work on Monday, not for eating. I don't really like chocolate chip cookies. Actually, I just don't like chocolate very much. The cookie dough minus the chocolate is really good. But other people really like the cookies I make, so I keep making them. I just sent a box of cookies off to Mitch's hotel in Tampa so he can bribe/reward the SCinet fiber team during staging for SC06.
SCinet....
SCinet puts together the world's fastest high-performance network every year for the The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, also known as SC. It takes a year of planning, a week of setup and it all gets torn down after a week. This year Mitch is the fiber lead for the whole shebang. Last year he was a DNOC team lead. Needless to say, by the first week of November, he's going to be a wee bit stressed, especially if one of the forklift operators insists on driving over the fiber drops again. (Apparently he did that twice before he got fired.) I'm sure the cookies will help. Just as long as nobody gets crumbs in the patch panels, right?
Doesn't this picture make you think of animals in the zoo? Techies/geeks at this level *are* a different sort of animal....
Speaking of technical things....
I discovered this week that the head IT guy at work is now referring problems he can't solve to me. Well, a colleague is taking a Java class and was having problems getting the compiler to run, so she went to ask Michael if he knew anything about Java. He said no, but told her to ask me. We were able to figure it out when standing there in the hallway and I later confirmed my solution with Mitch. Kimberly was very grateful. She's working on a degree or certification course in internet technologies. I told her to give me a call if she got stuck with stuff and I'll help her out where I can. That got me a standing invite to go 4-wheeling. :o)
Now, if I could just set up the server I'm waiting for....
The funniest thing was watching the behavior at the new stoplight. The primary street's light is flashing yellow. The cross street is flashing red. It has always been my understanding that a flashing yellow light means proceed with caution. The flashing red light is treated like a stop sign. I was traveling along the primary street and was going to turn left at the light. Two vehicles in front of me were going to do the same thing. Several oncoming cars apparently were confused and started to treat the intersection like a stop sign. The two vehicles in front of me did try to wave the oncoming traffic through since they weren't supposed to stop, but that didn't really help. I think the fact that there was turn traffic stopped and waiting for a break in the traffic flow confused some of the drivers. I must say that I was impressed that the confused drivers did stop and try to figure things out. They did not just proceed with abandon and expect everybody else to get out of the way as I have seen happen elsewhere.
Cooking this week...
I didn't get much cooking done this week. I have a half-made pot of squash soup in the fridge (it just needs to be heated up and blended until smooth). I've still got fresh greens too and a freshly made pot of chili. I haven't had any chili yet, but I've been eating the cornbread I made to go with it. I've found a new favorite recipe for cornbread. I even baked it in my cast iron skillet! I've got several meals planned this week using quinoa, millet and lentils to use up some of the pantry supplies I brought with me. I need to work on halving the recipes I make so I don't have leftovers for more than a week. I hate throwing out food but I'm not going to start eating more just to not have to throw it out.
Baking....
For those of you who are keeping track, I've already gone through about 8 pounds of flour since moving here. I predict that I'll use up about 20 pounds of flour between now and Christmas.
This past week, I took cinnamon rolls to work for breakfast on Monday. They got rave reviews and several people asked for the recipe, which I happily provided. Right now, there is a big bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough in my fridge right now for the cookies I'll take to work on Monday, not for eating. I don't really like chocolate chip cookies. Actually, I just don't like chocolate very much. The cookie dough minus the chocolate is really good. But other people really like the cookies I make, so I keep making them. I just sent a box of cookies off to Mitch's hotel in Tampa so he can bribe/reward the SCinet fiber team during staging for SC06.
SCinet....
SCinet puts together the world's fastest high-performance network every year for the The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, also known as SC. It takes a year of planning, a week of setup and it all gets torn down after a week. This year Mitch is the fiber lead for the whole shebang. Last year he was a DNOC team lead. Needless to say, by the first week of November, he's going to be a wee bit stressed, especially if one of the forklift operators insists on driving over the fiber drops again. (Apparently he did that twice before he got fired.) I'm sure the cookies will help. Just as long as nobody gets crumbs in the patch panels, right?
Doesn't this picture make you think of animals in the zoo? Techies/geeks at this level *are* a different sort of animal....Speaking of technical things....
I discovered this week that the head IT guy at work is now referring problems he can't solve to me. Well, a colleague is taking a Java class and was having problems getting the compiler to run, so she went to ask Michael if he knew anything about Java. He said no, but told her to ask me. We were able to figure it out when standing there in the hallway and I later confirmed my solution with Mitch. Kimberly was very grateful. She's working on a degree or certification course in internet technologies. I told her to give me a call if she got stuck with stuff and I'll help her out where I can. That got me a standing invite to go 4-wheeling. :o)
Now, if I could just set up the server I'm waiting for....
Comments
And "Gratz!" on figuring out the Javac path problem for Kimberly -- You rock!
Gooooooooo, Mary!
:-)