Yesterday, the power went out at work for about 10 minutes. For the second time in 2 hours. I wasn't here for the first one, but it sure came as a shock to the guy on the treadmill downstairs. What are you supposed to do when the power goes out at work? I sat around in the dark, thinking about how I just barely figured out what I was doing before I left the day before, and how I'd have to get my computer up and running again.

At sunset yesterday the clouds rolled in. I strolled down to the Lower Mystic Lake again and spied this boat tied up at the shore. I think this is my landlords boat. The water was so still. I tried to capture that calmness in this picture.

Today marks 1 month worth of picture taking! I'm beginning to think that I might actually accomplish this feat. I know its going to get a lot harder as the months wear on. It'll be especially difficult in the winter when its dark at quitting time. I guess I have 2 choices then: get a tripod for some nighttime picture taking or take more pictures while I'm at work.

Laura and I went to Sandy Beach at the Upper Mystic Lake in order to cool off and take a few pictures. The place was pretty crowded for a monday evening. Lots of families were there enjoying a cookout despite the restriction on open fires. There's a tiny little swimming area. Comically small, especially when you consider that there are 4 lifeguard chairs. It makes me wonder how much protection is afforded at a beach where the lifeguard chairs are spaced 100 yards apart.

I like the dramatic effect of taking pictures right next to the water. I didn't think this was a particularly striking picture at the time. Its growing on me, and several people have commented on it on flickr.

This project is making me really want a nice digital SLR camera. I really have to fight my camera sometimes to get decent pictures. I have all the manual features turned on that I can possibly find, but 1/2 the time it focuses on the wrong object, or can't take the macro shot that I'm looking for. I never really know until i get home and load the pictures into the computer. My successes so far have me convinced that I can certainly wait a while.

Do you ever get tunnel-vision? I think I do when I'm nervous, uncomfortable, or generally disoriented. I feel funny taking pictures of random people, especially when they're children. So, after taking this picture of kids cooling off at the Frog Pond, I turned around and immediately stumbled over a chain hanging about 10 inches off he ground. Nevermind that I probably looked like a serious idiot (didn't I just step over the same exact fence not 30 seconds ago?) but now I've got an enormous bruise on my shin.

A contemplative Fat Tony. He was concentrating very closely on the camera-strap, which he then proceeded to attack. Silly Tony.

Some great pictures of "medieval Boston"

Dave and Caitlin have started yet another social night. It originally started as Drinking Wednesday, which then evolved to Poker Thursday (still celebrated every other week), and finally now we have Trivia Wednesday. These are all really just excuses to get together for some drinks and engage in mildly competitive activities.

This past week we decided on a new strategy. Form 1 big team, and try for second place, as first place is reserved for teams with 6 people or less. This worked wonderfully as we all pulled together for an easy 2nd place win!

Ahh food porn, why are you so good. And juicy. And tasty.

Mmmmmmm..... Oranges.....

We live within spitting distance of the Lower Mystic Lake but you wouldn't know it during the summer when a thick stand of trees obscures any view that we might get through our kitchen windows. It turns out our landlord often commutes via the lake in a little dinghy. Given the traffic around here, its probably faster and less stressful in any case.

I love how the after picture is always much more smiley and happy, as if the transformation undertaken so greatly improved my life that I can't help but take money to evangelize. Except in this case I'm not particularly happy with my haircut from the "Arlington Hair Salon". They do a decent job, but they don't have a #4 on their shaver! WTF? Instead the stylist guesses how long it should be, and let me tell you its way too long. While I'm sitting in the chair, I can't really tell as I'm not wearing my glasses. Instead I realize a week later when I look in the mirror and think, "Wow, I really need a haircut again".

I really miss the Kendall Barber Shop. They did a great job, including a straight-razor on the back of the neck. Alas, with the Company now in Waltham, going there isn't exactly practical.

Yes, I missed a day. Go suck on it.

Poker can really kiss my ass sometimes. Last thursday I lost my stake on the 3rd hand. I lost a ginormous pot on the 1st hand when I had a pair of Kings and got sucked out by suited 6-8. I guess I didn't jam the pot enough pre-flop, but knowing Jeff, he would've called anyway. Aggravating. I lost the rest of it 2 hands later when I had a pair of 8s in the big blind. I lost a race to Jeff, of course.

Don't mind my complaining, I'm just slowly realizing that I'm really not as good at poker as I'd like to think I am. I definitely have my moments, but I have just as many moments when I get badly outplayed.

Roy recently left the Company to go work at a summer camp for the criminally deluded. They teach kids to fear the olive companies who've secretly hatched a world-wide surveillance conspiracy. You thought those were pimentos? What he will do in the fall no one knows, but I have hopes that he'll come back here!

Laura demanded that I take the nerd test. I had to score higher than her of course. There was actually a question about whether or not you were taking the test to prove you were nerdier than somebody else. Well, I won this round!

In other news, the pizza dough that I made the other night turned out very well. It was really easy to stretch and toss; much more so than my recent attempts. I made a pizza with basil, shredded cheddar, feta, olives, and carmelized onions. It was quite delicious. Like a pizza party in my mouth!

Ariel, aka "fluffy girl", doesn't meow. She says "fluff" instead. This is especially true when, upon arriving home from work she accosts me at the door and demands to be fed. "Fluff, FLUFF!" she says. "Fluff, right now!" Lately I've been ignoring her, feeding the cats at my leisure.

Even when Ariel pukes she says "fluff". Its sort of a head-bobbing belly busting fury that curiously sometimes never finishes. Where does cat puke go when it doesn't come out?

Pizza is one of those crazy foods that you can really push the culinary boundary with. Take this balsamic-soaked cherries, goat cheese, onions, and walnuts pizza here. Absolutely freaking delicious. Previously, I've had pears on my pizza. Again, absolutely freaking delicious.

I've tried to make a few more ambitious creations myself, but they usually involve adding a little goat cheese, or some olives. Nothing ground breaking. But had you asked me at this time last year if I'd be making pizza from scratch (okay, canned tomatoes are involved) on a regular basis, I'd have called you crazy. In fact, you are crazy. Or maybe I'm crazy. But this is good pizza. If you live near Arlington, and haven't been to Za, then you're crazy too.

I'd love to have a pizza making party at some point (as Danielle helpfully suggested), but I just can't figure out the logistics. I've only got 1 pizza stone, and I am lacking in the peel department. This means that its a little difficult to make the pizzas ahead of time. The longer the pizza is sitting on the baking sheet, the harder it is to get off (it soaks up the corn meal), which can lead to some pizza disasters on the floor of my oven. Not the kind of thing you want to clean up at 500°.

Holy smokes was that a heat-wave. High 80s even before I was out the door in the morning. You have to understand, the weather up in Boston just isn't like that. Spring comes late, and lasts a long time. The heat broke in spectacular fashion. One morning it was in the high 80s as usual, but by the time I left work in the evening it was in the low 70s. The reservoir down the road was steaming like mad. Of course, the one day I don't bring my camera with me.

Tony and Ariel basically get along these days. When they fight, they're clearly playing. That's not true with Ziggy, who doesn't appreciate any intrusion into her personal space. She'll start growling whenever her insolent brother Tony gets too close, and eventually give him a swat on the head. Tony loves bugging her though. He'll chase her through the house, and then play the game of "How close can I get to Ziggy without her running away?" He'll stand about 10 inches away, and slowly raise a paw while Ziggy growls and hisses the whole time.

This picture looks a little weird with white background. What a crappy cropping job. Maybe I'll revisit that at some point. However, looking at this picture makes me wish it was a little warmer so I could enjoy a big glass of the hooch.

A week ago, Laura and I needed some comfort food. But not just any comfort food. Homemade comfort food. So I took a quick stop at the supermarket and picked up some cheese and penne and whipped together this mouthwatering macaroni and cheese.

My roux have been coming out really well lately. I think in the past I haven't been heating up my target liquid (in this case milk, but previously vegetable broth). I have no idea why that works, but I don't really care either. The liquid doesn't have to be boiling, just hot, and everything thickens up quite a bit.

A few people have said that this photo looks like it should be in a cookbook or a magazine. What do you think?

Laura and I went to Dalí last night to celebrate our anniversary. We've been there a few times before and it continues to impress. Dalí is basically a Spanish tapas bar. As such, the menu consists mostly of appetizers, although there are a few traditional spanish dishes such as paella.

We started with a small pitcher of sangria. Their sangria is on the expensive side and while good, it's roughly equivalent to the sangria I make at home with two $6 bottles of merlot. (Believe me, I don't ever drink merlot, except in sangria. But the sugar and fruit make the wine hit heights of which it never dreamed.) With the drinks comes a loaf of bread with a delicious chick pea spread. The spread has a drier texture than hummus, but its sort of along the same lines.

For our dinner, Laura ordered a vegetarian crepe and fried spanish cheese with honey and roasted onions. I ordered herring with asparagus and a saffron cream sauce (Pescado de San Pedro), and saffron battered shrimp with mojo sauce. (Yes, mojo sauce. I don't know what was in it, but it was downright excellent). We shared Patatas Ali-Oli (cold potatoes in a sort of mayonnaise sauce), and a dish of marinated olives. Let me tell you, I have a newfound respect for olives. Simple, and delicious. I am going to start eating them much more frequently.

As a tapas bar, the food comes out when its ready, so Laura got her first dish the fried cheese much earlier than the rest of the meal. She seemed to really enjoy it, much more than the crepe. ("Its a crepe, with vegetables. You know how I like vegetables" says Laura.)

My food was astounding. The saffron battered shrimp paired well with the spicy mojo sauce. The herring was blast-furnace hot, probably just coming out of the deep-fryer. The asparagus in the dish was cooked to the perfect texture. Not overcooked, but enough that once it got to my mouth it disintegrated with ease. This is a feat that I've never accomplished. My asparagus is usually a little too undercooked. I like it that way, but Laura tells me she doesn't.

For dessert, Laura had a seasonally-offered dish: battered strawberries in a delicious sounding sauce (something with cream and liquor), along with some chocolate ice cream. I had a fruit-filled crepe with a rich dark chocolate sauce. Dalí is very big on seasonal foods, and only offers some dishes (asparagus, strawberries) when the ingredients are at their best.

Dalí isn't some place I would necessarily go on a regular basis, as its a little on the expensive side. With a party of 4 hungry adults, the bill could easily top $200-250, especially when you start throwing in big pitchers of sangria. However, it is an excellent place for a special occasion. This seems to be a common thought, as there were no less than 8 birthday parties being celebrated at the restaurant during the hour and a half that we were there.

This elaborate relief sculpture is above the door to the kitchen of Dalí, where Laura and I went to celebrate our anniversary. If I had taken a moment to compose this a little better it wouldn't suck so much. I've got to learn to not care what people think as I'm taking pictures on the street. As it is, I feel sort of stupid with this little tiny point & shoot camera, but I'm getting better.

4 years ago right about now I was trying to relax as I freaked out. Why do weddings affect you so much, when really its all about an exciting new beginning. Fear of the unknown I guess, that and being the center of attention for the entire day. Luckily I had a beautiful bride to distract those that came to celebrate with us.

These past 4 years have absolutely flown by, and yet I can't imagine my life with out my wife.

Happy Anniversary Laura!

This new trivia place, at the Powder House Pub sucks. The competition is much harder, and the only big tables are way in the back. It doesn't help that we aren't doing very well. Last night we were going pretty strong right up until a few stumbles at the end. Isn't that the way it always is? Its funny, we try to stack the teams sometimes, but I'm not convinced that we can make the perfect A-Team. With too many good people it becomes a competition of who's more sure. Sometimes, the person who is 100% positive of their answer is dead wrong (limbic system anyone? Sorry Kim!). If you're not assertive enough about your unsure answer, you tend to get overlooked. But if you're the only one putting an answer forward, it gets written down.

Go Iron Monkeys!

Okay, there are some things in the press that are really bugging me about this Apple announcement. The one that I hear over and over is:

"The most visible risk is that there could be some pushback in the developer community, as the move would require programmers to rewrite some applications," Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a research note.

Most applications will simply have to be recompiled. There are a few mistakes a developer might make that would limit your CPU type, but programming practices to eliminate these problems have been standard for decades. Those most affected: programs that maintain binary file-formats. Once again, showing the evilness of these (oft undocumented) formats. Most applications will simply require a recompile, and at worst a few byte-order tweaks. The second:

The big risk for Apple is that customers will stop buying Macs until the first Intel-based systems arrive in the middle of next year. The upcoming holiday season could be particularly bleak.

Indeed, if you're considering the purchase of a Mac right now, you might want to wait a month or two. Apple could be forced to offer significant discounts to prevent sales from slumping.

Now, this might be true. But in reality, it shouldn't be any more true than normal computer buying. Waiting a few months will always get you a faster/better computer. If you want a computer right now, there's absolutely no reason you should wait. All future applications, compiled as a Universal binary will be fully compatible with PPC-based Macintoshes.

Since I am considering buying a Powerbook in the relatively near-future, I may personally wait to see if prices go down. That's not to say I'm going to delay my purchase, my time-frame is already flexible to begin with, and if Apple does start offering discounts, they may be too tempting to resist.

Updated: Yay, The Unofficial Apple Weblog agrees with me! This announcement does not obsolete Apples current product line anymore than Intel announcing a new chip for Wintel PCs.

WWDC liveblog + Dave Winer

NerdFactor++; This shot is from my biweekly D&D group. Originally titled "Beware the Caltrops", the adventurers were entering a fortified hallway with javelin throwing goblins at the end. We survived, with nary a flesh-wound thanks to some clever thinking. See, we tricked the goblins into coming to our end of the hallway, so they wouldn't have several free rounds of tossing javelins at us.

What a strange day. First, Apple announces that it will be using Intel CPUs. Developers can get an Apple Intel machine one month from now.

Then, the Director of Operations here at work tells me that Debian Sarge has been released! I've been waiting, oh about 3 years for that to come out. This would've been a masterful April Fool's joke, if it wasn't actually happening right now! I'm installing Sarge on my linux box at home. Hopefully it doesn't break horribly because I won't be home for a while to fix it!

In other news: assuming that I take a picture today, I'll have taken (at least) a picture every day for the past week. There's only 1 lame picture in the bunch, but that was only because I forgot about it yesterday, and the sun was already down. So I was forced to use one of the crappier pictures that I took in the morning. I'll consider posting some of these pictures soon, once I figure out the best way to do it.

Sometimes you just can't find that good picture, mostly because you're too busy and forgot to take a good one. This is the type of thing you're left with, a photo with very little redeeming value.

Occasionally at this intersection there are war protesters gathered about with signs. They never seem to be there when I have my camera, and really wouldn't it be a little weird if I started taking pictures of them from my car? They'd probably think I'm some sort of g-man assembling an enemies list.

Cats love open windows. Ziggy doubly so. I tried forcing the focus on the cat, but my camera wouldn't cooperate. What do you expect with an inexpensive p&s camera. I still like the contrast in the photo though.

Every year Arlington has "Town Day" when they shutdown Mass Ave, and all sorts of vendors open up booths. We went last year, and got the chance to see what's going on in our town. East Arlington, feeling left out I guess, has a "Feast of the East" every summer.

Compared to Town Day, the feast was pretty lame. It was basically a massive open-house of all the shops along Mass Ave in East Arlington. Laura and I took a quick stroll through it, and were about to leave when we ran into Russ & Christina and Jeff & Kim. We all decided to have a quick lunch at the Arlington Diner, which was decidedly unfulfilling. That place is great for breakfast, but the lunch menu was only so-so (and very vegetarian unfriendly I might add).

I like the way this photo of Russ and Christina came out. I tweaked the lighting and colors in Picasa, as usual, but I think as a "candid portrait" this came out really well.

I like to make a simple pizza dough on the weekends. The recipe I use makes enough for 6 9-inch pizzas, enough for two assuming that there's some other food involved. Until recently I've made the dough in my food processor. It comes with a special dough blade (which isn't really a blade at all), but I only have a 7-cup capacity and so its been a messy proposition to stick 4 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 cup corn meal, and 2 cups of water/oil in there. The first time I made the dough it came out perfectly. I had no problem tossing the dough, and the pizzas came out very nicely. That was less true for next few attempts.

Its all different now that I've received my Kitchen-Aid mixer. I stuck the dough-hook on there, and combined the ingredients. After 5 minutes, I had a pile of well kneaded dough. This dough rose a lot better than previous attempts, but I chalk that up to the extremely warm weather we've been having. I usually just stick the dough in my oven (its not on obviously, but the pilot light keeps it warm). This is the first time that the dough collapsed with an audible "whomp" after I punched it down.

I'm thinking tonight might be pizza night, so we'll see how it goes!

I had my first big winning session playing no limit hold'em at Russ's the other week. It does help when you pick up the rockets on the 3rd hand, and bust Russ (for the 1st time). That quick start allowed me to play a little looser than I normally would, and make a few calls of all-in bluffs in somewhat marginal situations. I think I played pretty well, except when I called off a little too much money chasing cards to the river. (The implied odds were huge, I swear!)

This photo was touched up in Picasa, as usual. The flash on my camera is a little harsh, so I usually subtract 1/3-step on the exposure setting, and then raise the settings afterwards. The result on this photo is some great atmosphere, although the reflection off the glass, and the shadows are a tad harsh.

This was the first real photo that I've taken as a part of my daily photo journal. This isn't exactly the best start, since my life is pretty mundane. But I after desaturating the photo a little, I really liked the way this came out.

My desk at work gets messier and messier. For a good 2 months I really made an effort to clean it off every night before I went home. Its funny the things that you stop doing once you get under deadline pressure. I'm certainly not going to take 5 minutes to tidy up my workspace when I'm already staying an hour and a half late at work. The irony is, I'd probably be a little more productive if I maintained a clean work environment.

At work, there's a antique coke-bottle machine, from which these bottles came. It takes 10 cents to buy an 8oz bottle (yes, we have subsidized caffeine at work, we're not barbarians you know). However, I didn't realize this the first time I tried to buy a bottle. Everything else in the building is 25 cents. So I stuck in my quarter and forced the lever down. The machine didn't give me a soda, and I was too embarrassed to find out why. A few days later I noticed a "Dimes Only!!" sign pasted to the front. Now that I've figured that out, I've been enjoying the occasional glass-bottled coke. I find it to be just about the perfect size, and none of that funny metal aftertaste.