May 2003 Archives

Apparently, one of the henchmen in Neverwinter Nights is a l33t D00d.

At the end of the game, right before the final fight, my good buddy Tomi Undergallows initiates a conversation about what's about to happen. Check this screen capture to see his final comment.

w00t!

I hope you all had a good Memorial Day weekend.

We spent the weekend with Katy's roommates from college - the four of them lived together all through school, which amazes me. Even more amazing to me is that they are still friends. Anyway, we had a good time hanging around in Lake Arrowhead, which I highly recommend.

Ok, It's summer now. Get cracking!

Last week I completed a quest I began in February. That's right, I finished the campaign included with Neverwinter Nights. My mad D&D skillz have been restored.

A big shout-out goes to my sister-in-law, Kristen, for having their baby last Wednesday night - since Katy and the kids went to spend some time with the new addition, I was free to spend a couple evenings plowing through the last bit.

Good stuff. I am looking forward to the expansion pack.

Overheard this morning, regarding a woman who had just exited the elevator.

Woman 1: "Her hair was so shiny and full!"

Woman 2: "Lucky bitch."

I LOL'ed.

Yesterday we took a trip to the Peterson Automotive Museum. They have a new exhibit / sponsorship tie-in that I found most interesting. They are displaying famous Hot Wheels cars and their full-size counterparts. When I stepped off the escalator and into the exhibit space, I was hit square in the face with the two-by-four of nostalgia.

By Don “The Snake” Prudhomme.

If you are anywhere close to my age and have a pulse you will remember the Don “The Snake” Prudhomme and his funny car. Hot Wheels pimped this guy like nobody’s business. I can still hear some announcer extolling the virtues of a drag race set featuring him and some other colorfully-nicknamed racing character.

The museum was full of Cub Scouts yesterday. They were running some local pack’s Pinewood Derby races in the parking structure, and Don Murphy, aka “the Founder of the Pinewood Derby” was reputed to be in attendance. He wasn’t sitting on a dais or anything though, so I didn’t get a chance to say hello. Too bad, I would have liked to thank him for some fond memories.

I remember my first Pinewood Derby quite distinctly. My car kept winning. I don’t know that it was anything other than blind luck – we didn't have any special tactics beyond the standard “melt down some fishing weights for ballast” and “put graphite on the axles” but I kept advancing.

Even as it was happening I couldn’t believe it. The number of cars on the scorer’s table kept shrinking and shrinking, until my car was sitting there with three other finalists. I don’t know how they do it these days, but back in the day Pack 355 gave trophies for the first three finishers, so anything other than a dead-last finish meant I was Taking Home Some Hardware.

I finished fourth.

Maybe it was because I didn’t expect to do so well, but I didn’t get too upset about missing my grab for the brass ring that night. I never caught lightning in a bottle like that again, but oh, that first time, baby…

Isn't wireless ethernet great?

Last weekend I sniffed my neighbor's 802.11 network with my office laptop and Mike's cantenna. Their cable modem access is considerably faster than my good old dialup account.

Being an upright sort of guy I approached them to let them know I was doing it. "Work is paying for it, I don't care" was the response I got. Cool.

Tomorrow I need to go to Fry's at lunch to get a card for my home PC.

Please note the time and date of this entry.

Having done so, bask in the realization that I have already seen The Matrix Reloaded.

Yes, I am cooler than you. At least for today.

Sure enough, when I got home last night, Katy was building a new Lego structure from Lego Kit 950 (see previous postings) for The Boy.

After the kids were in bed I picked up where she left off, struggling to create the desired model with only a single isometric photograph to guide me. (Yes, I did succeed. Don't you doubt it for a second.)

I spent about an hour and a half on it. Katy had already turned in about forty-five minutes. Two-plus hours of Lego Craziness.

Hey, wait a minute - why am I complaining? I can't remember the last time I got to play with Lego for an hour and a half. It's fun!

I had a great day on Friday.

To start with, Katy made me waffles and bacon for breakfast. Mmmm, bacon. I got in to work a little later than usual, which was also nice.

A big group of us went to lunch at Tony Roma’s – Mmmm, ribs. Who doesn’t love the pork products?

After lunch some of us ended up in a used book store that was going out of business. I found a first-edition hardback of Frank Herbert’s “The White Plague,” which I snapped up. Thanks to the going-out-of-business sale and a cashier who was suffering from “too cool for this job” syndrome, it was marked down from $35.00 to $1.75. Woo Hoo!

I left work a little early because we were having some people over for dinner. It was a little hectic – the kid/adult ratio was a little unfriendly - but Katy served a delicious Greek kebab thingy, giving me the rare and coveted Pork Trifecta.

And what did we have for dessert? Why, chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, of course – It was my birthday, don’tcha know?

Katy wanted me to go fishing on Saturday. Who am I to argue? I decided to go in the afternoon so that I could go to the kids’ gymnastics class in the morning. They seemed to have fun:

When we got home I got packed up and headed for my local trout stream. Yes, there are local trout streams in Los Angeles – and since this one is hardly a secret I don’t think I’m going to ruin the place by talking about it. Part of Piru Creek runs between two reservoirs – Pyramid Lake and Piru Lake – and they keep enough water in it year-round to support a trout population. Access is about ten minutes off Interstate 5 on what used to be California 99. It’s kind of funny – you come to a point blocked off with big stanchions and start walking up an abandoned four-lane highway to go fishing:

It gets pretty crowded and hot in the summer, but this time of year it’s still pretty nice during the day. I was there in the middle of the day, which is not really prime fishing time, but it was fun. I managed to haul in a couple whoppers just before I needed to get going:

This shot was carefully composed to remove any sense of scale. Since I know you’re curious, it barely stuck out both sides of my hand while I was taking the hook out. Piru Creek may be full of trout but many of them are tiny. A few minutes later I did catch another, bigger fish. Really. Anyway, for those of you who flyfish, I caught both fish on a prince nymph.

On Sunday I got up with the intention of making Katy breakfast. I did get the breakfast made but it took a little longer than I expected. Those pesky kids, I tell you.

I have to give you some background here. First, I am a pack rat. I keep everything. Second, I love Lego. As a pack rat who loves Lego, I have some fairly old Lego sets around, including two “Advanced Builder” sets, which were highly prized. Nobody ever got to play with them but me. Nobody.

At some point in the last week, Cameron noticed the tell-tale Lego logo on these boxes, which were stashed high up in one of the bedroom closets. He wanted to play with them. I told him they are daddy’s and that he can play with them when he is older. He would not be deterred. If he couldn’t play with them, he wanted me to build the sets up so that he can play with the finished product. He wanted to set a time when we will play with them. He was most persistent.

I told him that we would look at them on Sunday.

It should come as no surprise to you that Cameron asks me about said Lego while I am getting breakfast ready for him and Claire. I got the sets down and started putting together the forklift. It took me a while with all the helping and question-asking and examination of the instruction sheets and boxes and such.

Here is what the end product looked like:

(I found this very cool ray-traced picture at Coby Bassett’s website.)

Of course, when we got back from our Mother’s Day excursion to Descanso Gardens he wanted me to rebuild the kit into a grader:

And this morning he wanted me to rebuild it into some other thingy that is pictured on the box. Those of you familiar with Lego will know that if it is pictured you can usually build it from the kit – however, most kits only have step-by-step instructions for one or two models. There were not instructions in the kit for the thingy Cam wanted built so I referred him to Katy for assistance. She may as well put that architecture degree to use.

Soon he will want me to start building stuff from this kit:

This is the UberLego from my youth, Advanced Builder Kit 956. It was the most expensive kit available at the time, and I spent a month’s paper route money to get it. I may have to hide it for a few years.

Anyway, pop that off the stack. Let’s talk some more about Mother’s Day.

For Katy’s Mother’s Day Brunch I made Eggs Benedict. The key to this dish is the hollandaise sauce. Some of you may think that you should just go for the packet but don’t – it’s not hard to make, you just have to give it your full attention. Hollandaise sauce has been around since the 19th century. We’re not talking rocket science here.

I recommend toasting the English muffins and cooking the Canadian bacon first. Keep these ingredients warm in your toaster oven. (You don’t have a toaster oven? You should get one. Now.) Once that is done you can prep for poaching the eggs and making the sauce. Poach the eggs, assemble the egg/bacon/muffin stacks, and put a towel over them to keep them warm. The sauce doesn’t take long but you don’t want to be distracted.

Hollandaise Sauce:

3 egg yolks
1 stick butter, melted
1 T lemon juice
salt and white pepper to taste

Heat some water in the bottom of a double boiler to just below boiling. Meanwhile, mix the egg yolks and lemon juice together in the top of the double boiler. Put the top on the double boiler and slowly add the melted butter, whisking as you go. Do not stop whisking. After you get the butter in, add salt and white pepper to taste. Keep whisking.

When the sauce starts to firm up – don’t worry, you’ll notice it getting thicker - take the top of the double boiler off. It will continue to cook a bit after you take it off and you don’t want it to go too long.

This whole process (assuming you’ve separated the eggs, juiced the lemon, melted the butter, and heated the water beforehand) takes less than five minutes. And you will look like a Hero.

Apply sauce to the waiting egg stacks, garnish with a dash or two of paprika and you’re done. Ta Da!

One last picture and I'm done:

Public Service Announcement: Sunday is Mother's Day, for all you U.S. residents. Get a card in the mail or you're dooooooomed!

Rant: Sunday is Mother's Day. Mother's Day. It is not Grandmother's Day. It is not Great-Grandmother's Day. I have taken care of my mother for Mother's Day - she will be receiving a thoughtful card and some flowers. (Mom - if you read that, sorry for spoiling the surprise.)

Katy called me yesterday and asked me to pick up cards for the Two Grandmothers and One Great-Grandmother in the Extended Clan on the way home.

I tried to battle with her. I pointed out that "Grandparent's Day" isn't until September. (I did not express my belief that "Grandparent's Day" is a holiday manufactured by Hallmark to sell greeting cards. One fight at a time here, folks.) I mentioned that each of these women had children that would doubtless be honoring them on Mother's Day. I argued that Mother's Day celebrations should be a ladder, with children taking care of their mothers, who take care of their mothers, from the bottom of the ladder on up - and that you should jump generations only when a rung of that ladder is missing. I stated that in all my years I had never sent a Mother's Day card to my grandmother. My arguments were lucid, concise, and well presented.

I could imagine my wife's thoughts: "Yes, yes, fine - just pick up the cards."

And so I found myself buying Mother's Day cards for women that are related to me, but are not, in fact, my mother. I was torqued up enough that I ended up complaining to the cashier about it, getting a good "how quickly can I get rid of this crackpot" look in the process.

I really don't think I'm too far off-base on this one.

Last week we finished assembling the kids’ new swing set. (If you prefer you may use the parlance of the day and call it a “play structure,” but who are we kidding - it's a swing set.) Saturday afternoon found me in the back yard with the kids as they played on/with it.

Claire has mastered the art of the swing and can keep herself going quite nicely. Cameron, on the other hand, has not shown much interest in self-powered swinging and generally wants to be pushed. This week he started to try to figure it out, however, which is a good thing.

And so I found myself alternating between pushing him and encouraging him to try to keep himself going. Katy shouted down from upstairs, “Don’t push him!”

Hmm. She sounded pretty serious about that.

And so I shifted gears, trying to convince Cam that he should pump his legs. Claire got into the act too, trying to pass on some tips about when to lean back and such. Cameron just kept getting upset that he was slowing down.

Normally I would have just pushed him for a while - good exercise, that - but Katy seemed quite firm that I not do that. And so I kept it to a minimum, getting him going and then letting him be. He was not pleased.

A few minutes later, Katy stuck her head out the back door. "Why aren't you pushing him? He's getting pretty upset about it."

My brain hiccuped. Didn't she just tell me not to push him? I mean, it didn't make much sense but I figured she had a good reason. I approached Katy for a consultation.

Turns out, what she meant when she said "don't push him" was not "don't push him" but "don't pressure him into trying to pump his legs - he's been really stubborn about it lately and I don't want him to dig in his heels and stop altogether."

Oh.

I returned to the swingset, where I pushed my son to his heart's content.

I saw the beginning and the end of a good story this week in Vegas.

I was walking down the strip and noticed the glow of a camcorder LCD viewfinder on the sidewalk. The camcorder was propped up on a knapsack at the base of one of the entry stairs to the Monte Carlo casino, but I didn't see anyone near it. Finding this strange, I altered my course to get a little closer.

As I approached, a young guy came flying down the stairs on his skateboard. Ok, so he's taping himself - fine, whatever. I kept on walking, wondering how long it would be before security showed up.

Five or ten minutes later, the same guy passed me on the sidewalk. He was holding his skateboard. It was in two pieces - the deck was broken between the two wheel trucks, clean in half.

What happened? I felt like I had seen acts 1 and 3 of a play, so I came up with a few scenarios for Act 2:

(a) He landed funny on the board and it broke on the stairs. (boring)

(b) One of the security goons came out, stomped on it, and threatened to do the same to him if he didn't scram. (or whatever word the kids these days are using for "leave.")

(c) Those pesky aliens escaped from Area 51 and pulled another of their telekinesis pranks.

What do you think happened?

Who loves free stuff? You do.

Mister P is running a contest at his Knight Rider website.

He's giving away copies of the new Knight Rider video game. You should enter, even if you don't want the game - haven't you ever heard of EBay? I told him that I could guarantee that all six of the Flying W Things readers would likely click on the link - maybe. And that three of you might even enter!

The more entries he gets, the happier he'll be. Let's make Mister P happy, ok?