unwiredben

Annelies's roommate, Kirk, has two lovely kittens named Zelda (the brown one) and Daphne (the orange one). They just got spayed, so they have to wear collars for a few days so they won't pick at their stitches. So, I took the opportunity to take some pictures of their cuteness.

I've just put up a set of the best photos from Colorado on Flickr. I'll try to get them labeled and tagged later today, but most of the shots are either from the day trip to Estes Park and the surrounding mountains or from the snow that fell in Longmont on Sunday morning.

We went bowling with friends on Sunday night, and Annelies rolled her best game ever, a 180.  She also got four strikes in a row, and six frames in a row with no pins left standing.  She says that in during that time she spent in Kazakstan, bowling was one of her few recreational activities.  What an amazing girlfriend!

I took a few pictures with my Treo at the "When the Magic's Gone" shoot yesterday.

This weekend, Annelies and I have been extras on the set of a short film called "When the Magic's Gone".  My friend Tiffany Sullivan is directing her first film based on a story that her husband Patrick had published in Revolution SF.  We've been over at the Draught House Pub both mornings to eat our share of yummy craft services food and take seats in the background, where we pretend to chat and drink water from beer bottles.  It's been lots of fun, and we're getting close to wrapping.  P & T have been up since 3AM both days, but we just had to be on set around 7:30AM both days, but Tiffany's looking really happy with how things are going.

Annelies hosted a pumpkin carving and Trivial Pursuit party on Sunday; it was a lot of fun, with some really great pumpkin soups prepared by my talented girlfriend for her admiring friends. During a break in the game, we went outside and admired our craftiness, putting candles in the pumpkins we had carved.  There were a few traditional jack-o-lanterns and some more abstract designs.  I liked the flaming heart one a lot, and the star design was also quite nice.

Here's a quick video recap, courtesy of YouTube:

Ah, back in the Palm office for a week.  The California weather is very nice; it actually is cool in the evenings and morning, unlike Austin where it goes from crispy hot to medium hot. :)

I got in yesterday in time to go to girlpurple's Spetti Sunday party out in Fremont.  It was quite a gathering, with 25-odd people there.  One of the highlights was a fire spinning performance on her lawn.  Here's some of their performance:



The rest of the party was fun too.  I got involved in games of Terrorist Uno (at one time with about 15 players), Carcasonne, and Apples to Apples, had lots of yummy veggie burgers and homemade salsa, got to play around with spinning poi, saw the "lemon-line" hybrid tree that makes large, sour fruit, had several interesting conversations, and met a few new people.  There were a lot of people with Austin connections there, including three people that had lived there in the past.

I got to my hotel about 1AM; they had someone at the front desk waiting for me.  So far, the room looks like it will do nicely, with an Ethernet port on the table, a comfy bed, and reasonable shower supplies (no foil packets of generic shampoo).  It's going to be a very busy week of work, but I will get out tomorrow night to go to the Stanford Palm Users Group where I'm the "guest of honor".  The fun never stops. :)

Yesterday was my 32nd birthday, and I had a small cookout at tangoglenn's place in the late afternoon to celebrate.  There was much grilling of veggie burgers, bell peppers, squash, zuccinni, and sweet potato, along with a cucumber-and-tomato salad I made from kazanya's recipe, and some Central Market apple pie with ice cream on top.  Much good conversation, and I really appreciate all those who came.

However, I'm writing this to make a record of the "mad libs"-style birthday card that lizardprincess gave to me.  My friends aren't particularly ribald, so this is family friendly:

Friends, this is a surprise party for Ben (person).  We are here to celebrate her/his dog (noun).  I must say that she/he doesn't look a day over 6. (number)  Naturally, we have some smelly (adjective) presents for her/him.  And we had the bakery send up a huge loud (adjective) cheese (noun) with 12 (number) candles on it.  We all want to wish her/him a very green (adjective) birthday and many happy trees (plural noun).

Thanks, everyone.  Now, to get finshed packing and head to the airport for my flight to Cali!

I just got back from helping tangoglenn with the Mighty Texas Dog Walk down in south Austin. They were again trying to set the world record for the number of canines being walked together at one time, and from the looks of things, I think they've got a shot. Since each dog needs at least one person to mind them, I got recruited yesterday to walk Ellie while Glenn would walk Jacques. It was a nice morning for this, with the weather being cool but not rainy. Things started off pretty well, although Ellie was barking a bit more than usual. She calmed down a bit, but then it turned bad.

Just past the first water station, Ellie was attacked by a pit bull. She had slowed down on the walk and somehow got into the aggressor dog's space, and he just lunged and her and bit down hard on her her hindquarters. The dog wouldn't let go for about thirty seconds; I had to hold Ellie still while the other dog's owner tried to get him to declench his jaw, then we were able to get the dogs separated and to the side of the walkway. The people around the attacking dog immediately started giving their disapproval and saying they had to remove that dog from the walk. I didn't see any blood at first, but we started to see some bleeding after about 100 feet around the base of Ellie's tale. Glenn and I switched dogs and he took her back to the base to get her checked out. Fortunately, Glenn's friend Ken had met up with us, so I continued walking with him and we all reunited at the vet's office after the walk was over.

I hope Ellie is OK. She didn't seem to be bleeding badly when I saw her and Glenn waiting at the vets, but she hadn't really been checked out yet. Jacques was still full of energy after the three mile walk -- he was really pulling me during the last leg of things.

Last night, I also got to go downtown to Progress Coffee to see the opening of an exhibit called "Rock Stars are Easy", a collection of photographs of musicians that my friend Mary Sledd produced. There were quite a lot of great works. The picture shows Mary standing next to a photograph of Coldplay, but also stunning were pictures of Sigur Ros, Billy Idol, Spoon, and the Flaming Lips. Mary's got a gift for catching magic moments during shows and using the ambient light as part of her composition. If you're near downtown (it's on Fifth Street, just a couple of blocks east of IH-35), you ought to stop by and check out her work.

Well, I've gotten everything cleaned up and back in place after a pretty successful Academy Awards party here at Chez Ben. This year, I had eight guests, including local film stars poyboy and senorjacob, taking a break from finishing up their new film "The Cassidy Kids" for its premiere at SXSW. Also in the audience was Bryan's friend Kim, his sister astraether and her boyfriend sentientkhan, my friends Patrick and Tiffany, and Tiff's friend Davide.

The show itself wasn't as exciting as ones in the past. Jon Stewart had a lot of funny moments, but it didn't seem like he was winning over the crowd in the Kodak theater. We didn't like the use of music during all of the speeches, but it did seem that no one went too long this year. Cheers to having the pimp song win for "Hustle and Flow", and it was fun seeing George Clooney mug through his one award. Kim had the record for the most correct predictions with 16 correct answers, including being the only guest who thought "Crash" was going to win best picture.

The food at the party went over well. I made chipotle black bean dip, fridge pickles, and pesto toast rounds with tomato and feta cheese. Davide brought some other more traditional bruschettas, Astra brought vegetables and dip, and the Sullivans provided some nice cheese cubes and chips.

In all, it was about the right size for my place -- I could have handled a couple more, but that would have been it The vibe was nice and low-key, and I hope everyone had a good time. I'll have to come up with a good reason to invite people over again later in the Spring.

This has been a very busy Sunday. Lots of socializing and some interesting fun with food.

1) veggie sushi and tempura with lizardprincess and her fiancee, followed by viewing episodes of "Little Brittan" and "Good Eats".

2) After getting home, I took a hike to the local coffee shop to spend about 90 minutes on work stuff.

3) When I got home, I took my new kite out to catch some wind in the local school yard. I got it airborne, but it's listing to the right, so I need to make adjustments before the next windy afternoon.

4) I got to prepare a few of my spicy chipotle bean dip (a cooked mixture of refried black beans, refried pinto beans, whole black beans, and pured chipotle peppers), and I also setup a habenero cheddar cheese tray with crackers and a plate of refrigerator pickles, garnished with salt and freshly-ground black pepper.

5) Several friends from "The Show With No Name", including poyboy, came over to watch the Super Bowl in high def. I got to reconfigure my couch and some tables, and we had a really great time. I got to make a lot of jokes at the expense of the teams and officials, and we saw several really exciting plays and a pretty good half-time show by the Rolling Stones.

I'm now down here on the re-reconfigured couch, watching the recording of "Gray's Anatomy", and winding down a little before heading off to bed. Let's hope there's plenty of excitement to come this week.

Today marks another year for the jolly vernard... From time to time, he goes by "V", and I remember meeting him for the first time in January 1992. He was the TA for the self-selecting advanced section of Gus Baird's CS 1411 class. I remember doing a Curses-based menu manager as one of my projects, but when we were picking things to work on, he also suggested that we all go and look at this new thing, Linux, that had just started the previous year. So, I did that by printing out the entire contents of the Linux mailing list and reading it. (Printing large amounts of paper was a cheap was to use OIT computing resources back then.)

Quick V story: at one time, back when UUCP addressing still worked, he may have had the shortest email address on the net: v!gatech.

Over my four years at Georgia Tech, V and I became good friends, and we've kept that going over the years with me here in Austin. He's always been eager to throw a party when I visit, help plan my latest project, or just hang out. So, with all that history in mind, I raise my glass to Vernard and wish him well.