iBanjo

A rather large spider has taken up residence in the driver’s side-view mirror of our car.

When you come out to the car in the morning, he has an elaborate web going from the side-view mirror to the side window. When you begin to drive, he notices the heavy wind and immediately starts dismembering the web. He crawls up and down the web, flailing violently in the breeze, removing the strands. Amazingly, he doesn’t blow away. After about five minutes, the web is gone, and as soon as you come to a stoplight, he zips back into the rearview mirror to hide out for the rest of the day. The next morning, the web is back again.

This has been going on for over a week. Wife has dubbed him “spidey”, our official driving companion.

When I was 17 years old, just graduated from high school, I was awarded a summer internship working at a DoE laboratory. It was my first “real” job (beyond washing dishes and bagging groceries), and the lab was nice enough to arrange a car pool for me. Every day, a nice 50-something-year-old meterologist who lived near me would pick me up and take me to to the lab with him.

During our morning commutes, he would often ask me about my interests, how I liked high school, and what I planned to do as I entered college. I have a distinct memory of one particular conversation in which I said, “Well, you know, I guess college will be just like high school, but a little harder, and I won’t be living at home anymore. No big difference, I guess.” He just laughed and said, “Oh my, you have no idea.”

“What do you mean, I have no idea…?”

“Enjoy the summer. The rest of your life is about to begin, you’ll understand someday.”

Sure enough, I went off to college and jumped right in. I made a bunch of friends in the dorms, dove into classes, and loved it. At first, it was a bit odd, being out of my parents’ house… sort of like going off to summer camp. Except that camp kept going on, and on, and on, and on… and then I lost track. After three months, I went home for christmas break, and sure enough, the guy was right. Something was different. It was weird and uncomfortable being at home. It wasn’t quite “home” anymore. I had changed, or life had changed, and some sort of bridge had been crossed when I wasn’t looking… I couldn’t backtrack. A year later, I couldn’t even imagine what life was like before college.

These days, I’m experiencing dejavu. With a baby due soon, I’m getting all sorts of similar messages from friends and relatives: “your life is about to change forever”. It’s kinda weird. I guess I’m coming up against the next “rest of my life”. Perhaps someday, I’ll be incapable of remembering life without kids.

This week’s tuna comes to us from the waters of Portugal, then
distributed by a company in Genova, Italy. The brand is As do
Mar, and it’s titled Tonno Trancio Intero.

As you can see from the packaging, it claims to be “hand worked”
(lavorato a mano), packaged in olive oil.

I was impressed upon first opening the can at the distinct
lack of aroma. The oil drained clearly (almost no fish
sediment) and had almost no smell at all. This was not your typical
low-quality olive oil which tends to overpower the fish and come away
smelling like a rotten seabed. No, this oil was delicate enough for
me to use in cooking dinner, without over-fishing my stir fried
vegetables!

The tuna itself appeared to be white tuna, and was packed extremely
densely. It took a bit of force to break through the dense fibers
with my fork:

Coming near the nose, the fish had a slightly spicy, salty aroma,
but then after a few minutes of airing, it opened up into a more
subtle herbaceous bouquet — perhaps that of distant seaweed. The
olive oil had barely any flavor exchange with the fish, which was a
pleasant surprise to this old can-diver.

On the tongue, a very quiet start, not too strong at all. A heavy,
meaty texture, with a definite (though not overwhelming) tuna flavor,
followed by a clean finish. This stuff would be perfect for hors
d’oeuvres, edible even by those who typically loathe fishy dishes. It
wouldn’t offend a flea. Overall, I give it 3 1/2 fins, an excellent
find.

The back of the box says

“Il Trancio Intero di Tonno As do Mar e da sempre un prodotto
dalle caratteristiche eccezionali grazie alla perfetta pulizia
eseguita da mani esperte, all’ antica lavorazione artigianale e alla
selezione delle parti piu adatte per ottenere un Trancio Intereo dal
gusto unico.”

…which, according to Babelfish, means

“The Entire Trancio of Tonno As I give to Mar and from always a
product from the exceptional characteristics thanks to the perfect one
pulizia executed from expert hands, to the ancient handicraft working
and the selection of the parts piu adapted in order to obtain a
Trancio Intereo from the only taste.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

I just received a “safety recall” letter from Honda, regarding my Civic Hybrid.

My first thought was, “uh oh, I wonder what part is dangerous? What needs replacing?”. But amazingly, the letter says that the car’s software has a bug which leads to eventual failure of the catalytic converter. The letter instructs me to bring the car into the nearest Honda dealer, where they will patch the software for me at no cost.

I wonder how long it will be before I can just ask the car to download software updates itself, just like my computer does.

It’s actually a bit scary. The first week after we brought the Civic Hybrid home (back in 2003), I was driving about 20 mph down a quiet side-street, and the car suddenly shut off. The motor stopped, lights went out — as if I had yanked the key out of the ignition completely. I couldn’t accelerate, only steer, brake, and gently pull to the side for a rolling stop. I restarted the car, and it was fine again. After immediately bringing it to the dealer, they apologized and said that the problem was in the software, that the software had accidently shut down everything. They claimed that they reintsalled the whole operating system, and that it would be fine now.

I’ve not had any problems since then. But still, programmers used to make dumb jokes about “if cars were computers, they’d explode spontaneously everyday” and such. It’s not so silly anymore. My car has an operating system, and I’m not so sure I trust it anymore.

So I succumbed to (1) my gadget addiciton and (2) the cultural rule that all imminent fathers must buy video cameras. Bought a Panasonic PV-GS150, and it really is neat. It has three CCDs, so the color quality is way better than other cameras in its price range. We did a lot of comparisons in the store, and the difference is dramatic.

So after filming two minutes of cats and wife shaking fist, I plugged the camera into the Mac’s firewire port and clicked the ‘import’ button. The video got slurped right into iMovie. Now I just need to figure out how to edit the stuff. Though in the long run, I guess I’ll be doing the editing on my XP music-studio box. The machine actually belongs to me, is faster, and has way more disk space.

However, Mark and Marg were kind enough to do an iChat videoconference with me as a test. It worked really smoothly over 802.11b… though they claimed the audio cut out for them now and then. I’m not sure if that’s an indication that I need to a faster DSL upload speed, or if I ought to just go buy an 802.11g router.

Blueberries. Fresh. The taste of July.

Enough said.

Apple has finally caught onto the popularity of podcasts. A podcast is similar to a weblog — instead of amateur journalism articles being posted to a web page, it’s an amateur radio show posted a series of mp3 fies. Both blogs and podcasts are syndicated through RSS feeds, and can be “subscribed” to through aggregation programs that automatically download the latest broadcasts.

In any case, Apple just released iTunes 4.9, which now has the ability to subscribe to podcasts. After installing, I searched the podcast directory for “bluegrass” and found a radio show released by the Bluegrass Preservation Society. It’s basically one guy in the mountains of West Virginia who records local bluegrass bands and narrates a show around them. The music is fantastic. And the guy has a nice cat named Buster, who he claims runs the booth controls for him!

As requested on his radio show, I sent the guy an email, letting him know he had a new fan in Chicago, and he wrote back a really nice response. I recommend you download an episode of his radio program, it’s great stuff.