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desperate house-husband

Man.  This staying at home stuff is some hard work.  Stay at-home Moms should get a medal.  Can I get a medal?
Some observations and things I'm doing:

  • I'm somewhat watching over the construction guys who are rebuilding our porch (woohoo!)
  • I've thoroughly cleaned the bathroom, cleaning the bathroom is usually something I don't do.
  • Making dinner and thinking about stuff to make is harder now than when I had less time, because now there's more time to think about it.  It's counter-intuitive but true.
  • I'm doing a bunch of laundry and constantly washing dishes or loading/unloading the dishwasher.
  • When I go out I'm surprised to see a lot of people out and about — a lot of older people and I'm not sure about the rest, retired young people, off day?  Why isn't everyone working.

I still have steam clean the carpets, work on the landscaping outside and getting a landscaper, paint the master bedroom, get some artwork hung up, and lots of other stuff.

Rather than soap operas though I'm surfing the Web and checking out what's happening in Mozilla-land here and there.  I'd like to devote the two hours I used to use to commute to work for mozilla.org stuff.  What's interesting about not commuting to Mountain View is that my car stays a lot cleaner longer.

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Vacation Review: Kailua, Hawaii

Summary:

Kailua is a great place to stay when visiting Oahu for folks looking for a "real" Hawaiian experience, enjoying the local life and just hanging out on beautiful beaches. Kailua beach and Lanikai beach (same area) are two of the nicest beaches in the world and not too many folks around which make it even nicer.

more photos

Highlights:

  • Lanikai and Kailua beaches: blue clear, relatively calm waters. Swimming areas and great views of the "Mokes" islands and flat island. Lots of activities like kayaking and windsurfing available. Not crowded at all. Surprisingly and happily very, very few people on the beach. Stop by Kalapawai for coffee and snacks before heading to the beach. Also check out Island Snow for shaved ice.
  • Buzz's Steak and Seafood was surprisingly excellent. Ate there twice. Lanikai Juice for smoothies and their Acai bowl was also very good. Maladasas, or Portuguese donuts are excellent from Leonard's Bakery. Also, Boots and Kimo's for breakfast in Kailua was also yummy, banana pancakes w/ mac nut sauce is their specialty.
  • Kailua's Thursday night Farmer's market was killer. We had our best dinner of the night there and got a pork lau lau plate for $9. We spent maybe $30 that whole day on food. Rachel Ray has nothing on me.

Lowlights:

  • Stay away from all the tourist traps especially Polynesian Cultural Center and their luau. Waikiki is cool for people watching but that's about it. There are better beaches out there.
  • Sam Choy's restaurant (his flagship one) was pretty disappointing. Sam Choy is like the Emeril Lagasse of Oahu but Emeril's restaurants are actually pretty good. I wasn't impressed at all with the dinner we had. Wasabi cheesecake topped w/ Ahi poke, that would be a cheesecake w/ raw fish on top. Enough said.

Logistics:

  • Used Kayak.com and Orbitz to shop around and we finally booked our flights directly w/ Hawaiian Airlines. Used Budget for car rental, and stayed at Papaya Paradise B&B (actually her daughter's place right next door – she also has vacation rentals) in Kailua. I don't believe there are any big hotels in Kailua, it's a relatively small town and not very touristy at all.
  • We also went to Haunama Bay for snorkeling. It's a nice beach/location as well. The North shore also has some great beaches but not very swimmable. Waimea Bay is nice as is Sunset Beach.
  • Weather wasn't the best in May, cloudy w/ intermittent showers. Another week or two and it would probably have been a little more perfect.
  • We missed out on hiking Diamond Head this time and hanging out at North Shore beaches some more.
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summer movies and playlist

Summer movies on tap for this summer that I want to watch:

If there's anything else I should be watching let me know.  The last movie I watched in the theatre was A Prairie Home Companion just last week but before then it may have been Lord of the Rings Return of the King.  That was a long time ago :(

I'd like to post my iTunes playlist too a la the celebrity ones at iTunes music store.  It's actually a really cool way to discover new music.  We wanted to do the same thing for Firefox, e.g. Celebrity Bookmarks.  Ma.gnolia.com kinda already did it.

I don't know how anyone can remember ma.gnolia.com.  I can hardly remember where to put the periods for deli.cio.us (aka Backflip 2.0.  I didn't use BackFlip either).

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training starts on Monday

Ironman Canada is in August so I've got a good 4 1/2 months of training left (most of August will be tapering). The real training starts and it'll be pretty intense — where weekends are shot, and we're essentially doing a century bike ride a week.

All good stuff. Can't wait.  I'm feeling hungry this year.

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Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

– Pablo Neruda, W.S Merwin translation

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Home Computer Setup – Apple Mac Mini and 23" Cinema Display

prodshot_23_inch_3display.jpgmm_step1_hero_060228.jpg

The hard drive in our iMac (lampshade version) seems like it's dying. We're going into our fifth year with the old iMac so it's about time for a new one. Plus, I'm in the "industry" so I should have a more up-to-date machine. A 2-3 year hardware cycle for a software company or someone in the business is about right.

Our next machine is going to be a Mac Mini with a 23" Apple Display.

I wish I wrote down all the systems I've ever used, it would be pretty neat to be able to reference it all. From memory I've had an IBM PS/2 desktop thingie, a PowerBook 240, a Compaq notebook, an HP notebook, a SGI desktop, a Dell notebook, an IBM Thinkpad X31 and an X40, and an iMac.

Specs for the new computer:

  • 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM – 2×512
  • 100GB Serial ATA drive
  • SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
  • Wireless Keyboard & Mouse Set – U.S. English
  • Apple Cinema HD Display (23" flat panel)
  • Mac OS X – U.S. English
  • AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac mini (w/or w/o Display) – Auto-enroll
  • 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo
  • Intel GMA950 graphics
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Porcupine Roach

P3260157

I looked up roach on the various search engines and all I got was Papa Roach, Roach clothing, and cockroaches. Not a peep about porcupine hair roaches not even on Wikipedia. That's awful.

Here's the history of the porcupine roach which is a Native American headdress made out of porcupine guard hair and deer hair. Sometimes roaches are made out of skunk hair (instead of deer hair) and I've heard the very early ones were made out of turkey beard hair.

Porcupine roaches are what essentially every modern Native American pow wow dancer wears on their head, except for the women and not all Southern Straight dancers (who wear a hat made out of otter fur).

Most roaches are between 15" and 24" long, mine is 24". It's broken down like this, an inside layer of deer hair, a main row of porcupine hair, another row of porcupine hair in the front, and then a layer of deer hair on the outside. Traditional deer hair colors are red all around or white all around but modern roaches have some bits of color on them.

Roaches cost about $300-$500 or $75+ for a roach kit. I've made two roaches, one I still have and one that was 15" that I sold a long time ago. They take forever to make. The hardest part is sorting the hair. You have to sort the hair in .5" groupings from 5" all the way to 11" – that by itself could take you a week to do. Probably takes a month to build out a roach.

To put on a roach the right way, you have to have long hair. You take a braid of your hair, put it through the hole in the roach, and secure the roach down with your hair and a roach pin. I'm talking about a different roach pin…I don't have long hair so I use leather laces.

The finishing touch to the roach is a couple of eagle feathers secured via a spreader. The spreader is supposed to spread the roach hairs so that it fans out and looks cool, versus sticking straight up and looking not so cool.

So that's a porcupine roach.

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Sightseeing in San Francisco

For my friends at Mozilla, I'm going to keep updating this as I go but Tine, Grace, mcolvig, etc if you've got ideas for sightseeing activities for friends here at Mozilla, that would be great. We've got folks from Japan, Europe, etc.

So restaurant ideas, sights, etc.

  • Golden Gate Bridge
  • Ferry Building (Saturday Farmer's market)
  • North Beach
  • China Town
  • Cable cars
  • Golden Gate Park?
  • bar hopping on Broadway St

Stanford University tour hang out on University ave, UC Berkeley Tour hang out on Telegraph Ave

Updated: Check comments and also check out this virtual tour from Riya.  It's pretty neat, just drill down to San Francisco.

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Raf's Beadwork Collection

Full collection (more photos)

Materials cost me about $2-3,000, and I would value all of this stuff to be about $10-$15,000, but priceless really. I have sold some stuff before and gave away other beadwork (bags, jewelry, beaded turtles).

Top to bottom:

  • beaded headband, via a loom
  • beaded choker, w/ Thunderbird drop, lazy stitch
  • matching beaded armbands, lazy stitch
  • beaded belt, that still fits, lazy stitch
  • beaded apron, lazy stitch, back is ribbon work stitched up by Mom (Mom was also in charge of sewing on all the fringe and backing, I did all the beadwork and design though)
  • beaded side tabs?, lazy stitch
  • in the middle is a 24" roach that I wear on my head, it's porcupine hair and deer hair
  • beaded knee drops, via a loom
  • angora goat leg coverings
  • fully beaded mocassins, lazy stitched, latigo soles
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take care of your belly and your back

I need to visit a few folks that I haven't seen in a while, Mrs. Orear an old grade school teacher who's teaching over at St. Isidore's now in Danville, Father Pat who's over at some church near me, and Mr. Anderson (Daddy-yo). I ran into Daddy-yo in January but didn't get to talk to him much. Hadn't been comfortable chatting with him since he had gotten me my first job out of college. I ended up not liking that job very much, left as soon as I could, and high-tailed it over to Netscape.

Daddy-yo was Troop 89's Scoutmaster. He's very old school, and is partly why I'm old school. He had one rule to live by that I still follow, take care of your belly and your back. That's it. Makes life easy when you break it down like that – meaning make sure you eat, and have clothes on your back/roof over your head.