Defrosting the Mini Fridge

So today at work I dropped off my direct deposit sheet and then proceeded to collect and transport a stereo (no calls so we can have MUSIC!), two chairs and a small fridge loaded with ice. That was the tricky bit. We got help from a coworker who had a Toyota 4Runner and could actually fit the three big objects, then brought them down to the shop. After, she drove us to Staples for a desk and a few other bulky things. I spent part of the day trying to update a windows Vista laptop, which is harder than it sounds. Crashed it completely on the Java update. Had to pull the battery just to reboot. I'll figure it out in time.

Also did a conference call for the quarterly meeting, all 10 of us. Small companies are fun. There's still drama about the product getting here, but hopefully that will be resolved in coming weeks. I spent much of the afternoon assembling a desk from piece parts in the box. Rather labor intensive, but I wanted to do it right, too. If you screw up with particle board, it breaks and that's a bad joint, a weak spot. That's no good so I did it right. Nearly done, too. Unfortunately, there's some kind of guilt-dance-march thing today so we bailed at 5:00 sharp to avoid them ruining our commutes home. Ladies? Get a baseball bat and just say no to codependent relationships. You can do it!

This might be my next commuter.

I took a long hard glance at a Yamaha Zuma, what looks like a 125cc, at the local used motorcycle yard as I passed by. I wonder what they want for it? Does it still have rings? Will I have to buy tires? It would be a good commuter though. I'm going to be at my building with the tiny parking lot for at least a year, possibly more. Possibly the rest of my working life. And that would be okay. Its not a stressful job, not yet. The Zuma would be a good functional commuter vehicle on those many many dry California days. I'd drive the car when it rains, but we're 300 dry days a year, here. I wouldn't bother if its only 50cc, however. I need 125cc to climb Hughes Road. Its very steep. Cars struggle there. I could park it right outside my door, or even on the back porch, out of the way. The hair salon, Bang, is run by and older woman and two of her stylists are probably just barely 18-19 years old and live downstairs. I really like that there's businesses everywhere. The more of them, the better. This is real re-localization.

I setup the electric kettle and used it, finally. Oh, and Earl Grey this afternoon with lunch was divine. I love that tea. I think we need better water, however. Dunno if we're gonna do water deliveries or a filter setup. I'm okay with filters because I know they work. The stuff in the pipes is almost gritty with minerals, but the house is probably 110 years old and I think the pipes were probably installed around 40 years ago. The ones in the street are probably even older.

The folks I work with, the women are all mothers, many with 12 year olds. They're pretty stable people. Not fuzzy like I first thought. The best description is they're normal people with 1 (one) hippie interest. The general manager likes yoga. The owner is all about the world travel and promoting the product. Honestly I consider that very hard work. One woman likes environmental subjects. Another woman lives on San Juan Ridge, which is hippieland, but she drives an SUV and is locally raised so despite a few tattoos seems pretty normal for the area. Most of the folks who work there are locals so they are here for a living and accept the lower wages and short commute, being close to their kids in particular. I like scooters and want to ride one because they're both fun and good fuel economy. Fun. Remember that. They're fun. That may be harder when it rains or snows or someone in a big hurry doesn't see me and drives me off the road, but there's a lot of motorcycles and scooters in town and the more of them there are, the more visible they are. I saw a young lad on a red Vespa on my 8 minute commute home. Possibly this model:

I spent about 25 minutes before lunch defrosting the mini fridge we borrowed from uphill until we get a proper fridge in. We're planning three large fridges for product storage, actually. I wanted to defrost it because the little ones don't work right otherwise. That took lots of boiling water thrown from a coffee mug onto the ice block on the "freezer" portion, and eventually the use of a fork as an ice pick. This was the best way. Anyway, it's done. Boss is happy so I'm happy.

My boss/supervisor is very reasonable and I'm providing useful tips on logistics and getting stuff done without being asked, so that's taking strain off of her and building trust between us. So we're saving time and trouble every day and are ahead of schedule on our project of turning this house into a business space we can use for bottling and shipping our products, which are technically considered cosmetics or health supplements (non-FDA). So calling it perfume isn't wrong. I found out some of the oils are $2K/Liter so I better not spill them. Fun! So more office setup is ongoing, probably Friday and much of next week and hopefully we'll have product to put on those shelves very soon. We need electricity that can handle two fridges and a computer in one of the interior walls, and we're still expecting the bottling machine next week, which I'll be setting up and operating. That goes in the back room in a corner with good light. This is going to be fun. We're planning to setup a priority list with shipping at the top and bottling below that, and resupply/inventory control below that. These are things the current contractor in Colorado was doing badly and why I was hired for this job.

I get this right, I'm set and I can get serious about the scooter. I just wish the local Honda dealer sold the Wave 125 EFI. Its ideal for the area and my needs.

Its got large wheels to roll over the potholes and enough suspension to bounce through them, but is still light enough to get properly fuel efficient and practical. That's 80 mpg. I wonder what they'd charge to import and do the paperwork? I understand its pretty easy to fill out a few forms the state wants, and it sidesteps the whole carbon and safety nonsense. Something to investigate in coming months, after I get my motorcycle license.

Parfum or Perfume

I finally, after months of searching, got a job. I have been unemployed since May 23rd, when the poison factory fired me as a warning to others who dared to stand up for safety and health in the workplace. Their method resulted in most of my shift quitting over the following months. They have new victims now, ones who will eventually be part of legal action if there's any justice in the world. My former employer was like Foxconn, just to give you some idea.

My new job is a local company that does aromatherapy and attar perfumes. While I'm not sold on its medical benefits, the boss and the customers are and I know for a fact that scents trigger memory, which can cause a person to destress, which then aids the immune system so it is possible there really is something to this. I'm keeping an open mind about it as long as the check doesn't bounce. The main office is up on the hill a couple miles away from where I'm working with one other person, Wendy.

The two of us spent my first day on the job setting up metal shelving units, very similar to the ones we used at my old job. We will have bins of product and raw materials on these shelves and a sequential bottling machine, which is likely similar to a sequential ammunition loader (women knit, men make bullets).

The shop itself is between the main drag in town and a major creek which is running cold and swift right now. Sandbags suggest it sometimes floods, which would then flood the lower floor. We'll be careful about things on the floor when we get flood warnings. Our downstairs neighbors offered to act as backup security for us, which is really nice. Small towns have their upsides. There's also space for me to park a bicycle or even a scooter there if I want. It would free up a parking space for the neighbor so I bet she'd be all for it.

After hours of assembling shelving and letting the Comcast guy install cable internet and phone service, we went to lunch at Carl's Junior (Santa Fe Chicken sandwich is pretty good, low fat, has a skinned green chili inside the right way), then bought things for the kitchen and bathroom. Did you know you can get a microwave from Kmart for $70? Of course it was broken, but still. We'll exchange it for a good one tomorrow. They've got 6 models there for that or less, and a 7th for $85. Amazing. The last microwave I remember buying was over $450. Oh wait, that was 1990. When I was graduating high school and the parents moved to a better neighborhood.

We also bought some teas, some fruit for snacks, silverware, a cutting board, a couple cutting knives (not to be confused with MENDING knives), and dishes. With an electric kettle rather than a coffee pot since we both agreed that tea was easier on the brain than coffee after that morning cup. And I get paid lunches. My job is 1.93 miles from my current residence and there are hills in the way. Its mostly downhill on the way there, but that means its mostly uphill on the way back. More motivation to either get in better shape to bicycle it or get my license and scooter or motorcycle it. A light motorcycle, in the 200cc range would be dandy, provided its quiet enough. I don't want to be obnoxious when I have nice neighbors at work. I saw someone go buy in a 100cc 1950's bike, lovingly restored, with a high school kid at the wheel. I was impressed. It was obviously 2-stroke and loud, but I also saw a 1960's BMW go by earlier as well.

I plan to take pictures for my work and see if they'll allow me to blog it via my work email/blog. Since I'm a fast typist I can put this together pretty quick. I'll ask the bosses if that's okay first. I'm sure I can do this easily. I am having fun setting up the place and despite it being in a carriage house between a busy street, a stream, and an offramp, its going to be peaceful. And I need that. The first two years at the Poison Factory were peaceful because I had a good boss. After that, all bets were off. I think they'd say they were addressing issues in a harsh marketplace but there was no reason to be cruel when the labor of a few (mine in particular) paid the wages of 300 people who did very little or nothing. And since I'm not saying the name of that company, I can say whatever I wish.

This company is more stable and despite growing, they reward lateral thinking instead of punish it. Very small companies are like that. It reminds me a lot of the winery business I worked for right after college. I'm management here, even if my job doesn't look that way so far, which is the right direction for my career. Eventually I will have an assistant of my own. When you work for a startup, you get promoted fast and the rewards come fast too. Working for a big established company offers no mobility. Everyone is in job-protection CYA mode at a big corp(se). They're fearful of change because it might make their job go away, so they hide behind laws and Process, deliberately crippling their company's efficiency and virtually guaranteeing their company will go under. That's what my last employer was like. Its worse in a shrinking market (biotech) or a saturated one dealing with price wars (cellphones). Technology companies can be very cruel because obsolescence and out-sourcing can destroy your business model very suddenly. They are, by their inherent nature, unstable. Technology is all about science, and science marches forward on discovery. If you provide the tools or money for discovery, your business has to adapt. My prior employer was maladaptive. I am glad I don't own a single share of their stock.

Now that I'm working locally in a peaceful town where people are mostly nice, I can breathe easy and focus on getting the job done. Most of today is probably going to be IT and passwords setup so I can configure my PC to do the job I'm paid for. I can already see value in various gizmos to help. I suspect I'm going to want a barcode scanner seeing as there's a hundred different pure products. We don't do many blends, apparently, since these are technically medicines. They do smell really nice.

Burgundy, France

I often consider how epically LAME the English are in their hypocritical insults towards the French when they vacation there half the time. They aren't wanted. The English are rude to the French, and the French just want their pathetic English pounds. English tourists are easy marks.

Then again, France is full of 1400 year old medieval manors, castles, and thousand year old vineyards.

This village is probably 2000 years old.

Get invaded and sacked enough times, you stop seeing the point of jumping in front of a bullet "for France". Just wait it out.

Clos de Vougeot Vineyards and Castle/Keep

The English invaders come in their big cars with the steering wheel on the wrong side so they can never pass. They refuse to speak French, which just gives the French the right to rip them off. Its asking for it. This village below shows clear signs of German influenced architecture. Its very much a tourist destination, the medieval village of Champagne, from whence we get the bubbly drink.

For all that, when I look at pictures of France I see what my home town looks like, only with stone buildings everywhere instead of the more earthquake resistant wood frames appropriate to California.

If the hills were taller, this could be Sonoma or Alexander or Napa valley.

California has vineyards all over the place, not just Sonoma and Napa valleys, but Alexander valley, up in Lake County, out in Mendocino's Booneville area, down in Santa Barbara (north of the hills in the valley actually), and down in Lodi where they grow good Zinfandel grapes. And that's just California. Oregon has excellent Pinot Noir, and Eastern Washington State has surprisingly good wines thanks to careful irrigation and the fact that grape vines are dormant in the winter so are frost and flood resistant. In Calistoga, at the head of the Napa Valley on top of the eroded remains of the former 10,000 foot volcano, there are even wine caves similar to this one in Burgundy:

kudos to the photographer who took this one.

While the wine business is a business, its also an art and science of high precision. There's huge amounts of competition and the way to stand out is high quality, which most small wineries do because they just can't compete on price with the big places and the multi-billion dollar investments in hardware, land, and vineyards they hold. The big guys are producing $3/btl wines, but they're doing it for around 75 cents/btl so its good profit even if the wine is almost nasty. For $6-8/btl you can get very drinkable wines, and for $12, something a snob probably won't turn their nose up at if served at dinner.

The French have their vineyards and their castles. California has its vineyards and its villas. They have slate roofs. We have Spanish tiles and the Kings Road and Franciscan Missions all along it. I am glad more vineyards are planted here. Its profitable and its a good export to civilized countries. I hope the French keep after their grapes and keep milking the Tourists. The English get out of Britain for a while and maybe someday they'll learn to be more polite. We can always hope.

Chinese Garden, Portland, Oregon

In Portland, downtown near the Greyhound bus depot and the train station, there's a very carefully maintained and exquisite garden built by the Chinese settlers in Portland, perhaps as an apology for all the people they Shanghaied onto ships and then murdered if they complained too much about being slave sailors on a slow ship to Shanghai. Portland is where the phrase originated since that's where it actually happened. Whatever the case, the garden is magnificent. The docents there explained that it is built for feng shui, with lots of odd angles so luck can't escape easily. That's a very odd approach to building but the results are fantastic. I took these pictures back on a vacation there, perhaps in 2005? I'm not quite sure.

That's my wife hiding in the background with the red hair.

I'm particularly proud of this one. The balance and composition with the reflection in the foreground and details of the buildings beyond the garden walls? Excellent.

We really were there at a good time. There's lots of color and detail and the light was good. I took all these photos with a Minolta the size of a deck of cards. Love that camera.

Carefully placed potted plant, probably blooms like crazy later in the year.

Those things which look like paving stones? Guess what:

The light in this was ideal to capture every single pebble. So much effort.

Brilliant colors, stone and tile details, and my wife photographing everything with her professional grade equipment.

There are several of these limestone rocks imported from China, carved by raging rivers scattered around like statuary.

Note the angles of the roofs that don't meet. I bet there's a lot of splashing and drips when it rains. And this is Portland. It rains most of the time. 

I got a great shot of this bridge and its reflection. The colors there, and the smell of the flowers. A really great day.

Some of these end caps are cast bronze, and the dragon's whiskers were copper.

I tweaked the brightness and color saturation to make this photo more surreal and bring out the details in the building a bit. With better angles and without the color tweaks it looks more like this:

My best friend in the grey shirt and my wife to the left.

This is what the Tea House looks like from further back. Magnificent, right?

The Portland Chinese Garden is worth visiting if you've got a few hours to spare and find yourself in town sometime. I recommend it. I can't promise the weather will be this nice, but you can't have everything, can you? Hope you enjoyed my pictures.

Washing Your Car Brings Rain

I just finished washing my car. I do this rarely, mainly because it is parked outside and the cleaner it is, the more bugs climb on it (many are attracted to the color white) or birds crap on it (some consider white to be a mating-challenge color). Also, for some reason, whenever I wash my car, it rains withing a couple days, even in the summertime when there's a drought. I don't get that, but its often the case.

My car has a lot of chips in the paint, and it hasn't been waxed in a long time. I hope to put some wax on it later, once the air temp is warm enough for it to stick. Its about 56'F right now. A little chilly for Carnauba wax. Since we're having mostly sunny days in the mid to low 60's with a couple hours of rain every 8-10 days this winter, washing and waxing the car does make sense. It might stay clean and dry for a whole week.

I also filled my tires with the right pressure air. Most were a little low, slow leaking valves being pretty normal. Considering how cheap a tire pressure gauge and an air pump are, I'm surprised everyone doesn't carry that in their car trunk. They weigh about a pound and can literally save your life if you actually use them once a week.

You might think this is so basic it deserves no comment, but I have noticed many people don't seem to know them anymore. It's like adults who can't cook. How did that happen?

I just want to keep my car going as long as I can, until the oil runs out. When I upgrade, I want it to be something which can burn whatever fuel is available, efficiently. And it had better be AWD/4WD because the roads here suck and sometimes have snow or black ice on them.

I also want a motorcycle for daily commuting when the weather is nice, like today. Something vintage, with style and grace. I don't even mind a kickstarter so long as it really runs reliably and can pull me up the hill and sometimes take me for a picnic at Sardine Lakes. I wanted a scooter, but the roads are so bad, it would be suicide.

UPDATE: Just finished waxing the car. That was a lot of work. Its shiny now, and every flaw in the paint stands out. Looks like there's some polishing in my future, and some touch up spots needing done. 

More Than Basic Transportation

When you first get into Peak Oil, you panic. You realize that Fossil Fuels really do run out, that the oil companies are lying about their reserves, and OPEC is lying even more, mostly to keep the money coming so they can avoid revolutions like Iran. Saudi is down to their last 6% of their oil, and that won't feed or uplift their 2 million bigots out of the Dark Ages and into the modern world. So they treat them like mushrooms and pretend there's lots more oil in the ground. There isn't.

Westerners, like us, panic because we think we need to change our own habits first and give up everything which makes Western living good. This isn't so, not yet. We SHOULD experiment to find what's comfortable and adapt our thinking to life that way, however. This is why I encourage all the people I care about to either move close to work or work close to home and to ride a bicycle and scooter or motorcycle sometimes, just to get used to it. The parts are cheaper now than they will be when it counts, probably just 2-5 years away. I'm being conservative with my estimates because I was way wrong about them previously. Of course, if Saudi Arabia had a revolution tomorrow, all bets are off and you can feel free to panic.

A bicycle or scooter is basic transportation. It moves you to work or the market and back, not very comfortably compared to your car with its heater and stereo and door locks and windows that go up and down. You don't get all the frills on 2 wheels. If you don't mind looking like a doofus or overpaying, you can buy a Smart or a Geo Metro. Or you can get one of those 3-wheeled covered scooters or a golf cart. Not great either, but in a downpour they're better than pushing on while soaking wet. I realize that the Nissan Leaf is pure electric and suitable commuter for most suburban people, but I don't live in the suburbs anymore. I'm in the boonies, or at least in a town in the boonies. I can't give up on liquid fuels.

When I price scooters against the cost of tanks of gasoline my heart sighs. They cost too much. The cheap ones are notoriously unreliable and all of them have wheels so small you may as well fall into traffic thanks to all the potholes. This points to motorcycles. Honda has some good 500cc commuter bikes this year. They'll pull the hills and ride all day at freeway speeds. Suzuki has a new 250cc twin which looks very nice, but I like their more vintage TU250x best, on looks and reviews its a very reliable machine. It can be modded easily many ways for even better looks and styles.

And then there's Deus cycleworks, who restores old bikes found leaning against sheds or in the back of a barn and turns them into unique moving artwork. Look at this.

Deus SR400TT Cafe Racer

Imagine commuting on that. Its not some poseur Harley that breaks down every 20 miles. People who see that will not turn up their nose in disgust. This is an old bike, restored and fixed up. It could use a better rear suspension, but otherwise the bike looks nice. Its got the crucial hardware, yet is minimalist, just like our future economy and our ambitions. It is a reflection of the Real America, not the fake one Hollywood keeps trying (and failing) to con everyone with. People are LEAVING LA, not moving there. Hollywood has failed. The nonsense has failed. This is a Post Oil world, and easy driving is over. The Deus bikes are built for places like Bali, for farm roads and gravel tracks and back streets. This would be a fantastic machine to ride on highway 20 to see my brother and his family. It does all that at 45-60 mpg. Take that, Prius.

ANIME: Robotics; Notes

Robotics; Notes is an interesting anime which makes extensive use of palmtop computers, wireless broadband, voice recognition, and Augmented Reality. It starts off as a sport anime for "robot wars" competitions, where remote controlled robots a foot tall battle each other to destruction. Cute right? And then they throw in a subplot with a video game played on the ubiquitous palmtops which lets you control a bigger battle robot in a 3D game, coded by a quirky blonde who talks in LOLs and ROTFLs and GTFOs in internet IRC chat speak. She's fun, right? And the hero's girlfriend is a total Genki girl, all gushing enthusiasm and loud cheerfullness. You gotta like her she's just that irrepressible. She motivates her friends to help her build a giant robot in a world that basically admits they only exist in AR, that they will never exist in the real world. There's no reason for them, and they're physically ridiculous. There are many things I like about this show. I like the tooled leather holster the gamer hero wears to carry his palmtop. I like that everyone seems to ride around on Honda Supercubs because its an island so gasoline is expensive and its stupid to own cars there. I like that the space launch base is largely unused. This island actually exists, btw, and they really did launch rockets there. Mostly agriculture now. Really beautiful place in Google Earth.

But then they throw in this geotagging subplot and if they'd revealled it was JUST geotagging, and the reports revealled by each ridiculous requirement to release items for download were actually part of a game? That would have been a great little note which fit well with the overall theme.

Instead? We get paranoid conspiracy and end of the world murders, cities lit on fire, robots attacking people, and assassinations of decent people by evil govt/corporations out to kill us all for profit? No. Just no. Totally ruined the show for me. Killing great characters just to be mean? No. The hell with you, Kazuya Nomura (show director). You started off so well, and you turned it all to crap. I haven't felt this betrayed by an anime since Asuka got eaten to death by the white EVAs. That's how badly you screwed up.

Thankfully, there are other AR shows, an older one involving children solving mysteries in a town built for AR is Denno Coil, which has Studio Gibli looking characters and Google Glasses to see the AR everywhere. Its a peculiar show which didn't hold my interest. This show does have some funny characters, including a busty programmer in a black leather motorcycle suit who leaves the protagonist girl deeply jealous, something I consider both realistic and poignant. Pity they didn't overcome the boredom I felt from the ongoing mysteries.

Compare all that with a cheerful girls anime about a school sports team with cute girls operating WW1 and WW2 tanks. Yes, tanks. As a sport. Shooting non-lethal rounds and the tank pops up a white flag when hit. The rounds can tear off a tread, mind you, but they're non lethal, thanks to extensive use of Plot Armor. Girls in this alternate universe wear kimono, arrange flowers, serve perfect tea, and operate tanks. Its like Strike Witches with pants. The show is called Girls Und Panzer. The entire concept is so weird you can't help but laugh. And the tanks have realistic mechanical faults which military geeks appreciate.

Another weird sports anime with cute girls being cute is Dog Days, which is about a guy spirited away to a land where warring factions fight for dominance... in non-lethal battles with blunt weapons and sacks of flour. Nobody gets hurt, magically protected that way. Its charming and harmless. The set battles are meant to resemble the butchery of mass infantry of the Warring States Period in Japan. Oh, and instead of horses they ride sort of Ostrich things which can sometimes fly, and all the people are actually cats and dogs with human faces and body shapes, but turn back into cats or dogs when "tagged" or bopped on the head. Utterly harmless.

I'm somewhat baffled why so many Japanese programs feel the need for murders and psychos threatening rape or dismemberment in otherwise charming stories. Problem Children is new this season, supposed to be a tournament anime but I kinda want to stab most of the villains and would NEVER even attempt to deal with them as if they were honest since they're clearly murdering psychopaths. You put down mad dogs. You have to do the same with those sorts of not-people.

So why was it written, much less animated for a children's show? Its cheap, and its mean, and it leaves me thinking: "If I was this chick, I would totally stab that guy in the heart, right this instant." Then again I'm male so my defensive impulses exist for a reason. I just don't see why so many Japanese mangaka (manga artists) feel like they really have to destroy the goodwill they've earned in their audience and take something charming and sweet and cover it in blood and violence. Why? Its not helping sales. You already had that when it was a charming sports story with sweet girls being cute. When I run into shows ruined by their creators with blood and violence? I stop watching and find something better.

I plan to continue on with Dog Days because it will stay sweet and charming and I like that. It's what I liked about Hayate No Gotoku, that and mocking the ignorance of rich kids. Measuring value in Ferraris? Yes, that is funny. I suppose I should just mark my irritation off as another cultural difference which just doesn't translate well into English. Its a good thing their charming stories MOSTLY don't turn into blood and violence. I've had more than enough of that at the Poison Factory, thanks very much.