Tralfaz

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  • Marking a Half Century…

    Marking a Half Century…

    Today, May 10, I turn 50. Like many milestones it was both looked forward to and dreaded at the same time.

    I was working on a long, sappy, post, but screw that.

    I kind of remember turning 30. I was working at Read Rite as a process engineer, having fun, but still felt young. Life was simpler then, but living in Silicon Valley meant that I wasn’t going to be buying a house anytime soon.

    40 was much more of a struggle. Your metabolism changes, and it is difficult to adjust. It became really difficult to control my weight.  That was a struggle. Of course, by then I had:

    • Gotten married (to my wonderful wife and best friend, Barbara)
    • Become a “marketing” person in product management
    • Moved to Arizona, with the snakes, desert and blistering hot heat.
    • Became a huge proponent of Greyhound rescue.

    The most ominous time though came at the age of 44, where I had a heart attack. An eye opener, and really the first glimpse of my own mortality, and the limitations of my body.

    Today I mark the 50th year, and I am seeing a lot of changes. First, post heart attack I get to take a not-so wonderful array of medications. Statins, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, and anticoagulants. These all mess with my metabolism, and are by no means “fun”. But it is better than the alternative.

    I no longer ride motorcycles. I gave them up in 2008 when a few close calls on the streets of Tucson reminded me that my reflexes were beginning to suck. That was a hard hard thing to give up, having ridden since my pre-teen years, it was a big part of who I was.

    My sense of invincibility is now gone. I used to think nothing of heading out for long hikes on isolated trails, or bicycle rides with no particular route chosen. Heck, in the 1990’s I used to load up my truck with my dirt bike, head out on a weekday to one of the riding areas and ride alone, oblivious to how bad it would be to get hurt when you were in a 20,000 acre riding park alone.

    I am quickly getting to the point were I can’t play guitar anymore. A few years ago I was struggling with pain in the base of my left thumb, and instead of it being some transitory ailment, it is osteoarthritis, and the cartilage in the joints is virtually gone. Hence, my ability to play is evaporating. A cortisone shot provided remarkably little relief, and the surgical options, well, let’s just say that the doctor said we don’t do them on people as young as you, as the downsides are drastic.

    It is this which I am lamenting the most. I am at a point in my life when I can afford the fine instruments that I have long desired, and I can’t possibly enjoy them.

    Wrapping up…

    As I enter my 6th decade, I am recognizing my limitations, and accepting the future as it comes. It is sobering, but it is also hopeful. I still bicycle, I still hike, I still enjoy listening to music, I still enjoy exploring technology, and the advent of social media like Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with many people from my past that I had lost touch with.

    I am back in the San Jose area, where I grew up, and enjoying that (although, I really loved living in Tucson), regardless how the demographics have changed.

    For those who have read this far, thank you for the time you spent. I remain amazed that anybody reads the dribble I write.

     

  • WordPress musings

    My first flirtation with WordPress was in 2009, and I have been a regular user since. It has mostly been an enjoyable experience. Initially, I created a free site on wordpress.com, and quickly dove into the self hosted solution.

    Early on (pre 2.0 era) I got hacked. Entirely because I used sketchy plugins from authors who were only a little more sophisticated than myself.

    As time has gone on, and I have become (ever so slightly) more sophisticated and diligent, I have had good success with WordPress.

    However, recently, an incident that was a throwback to an earlier era threw me for a loop. On the installation for my wife’s page wordsbybarbara there was an included plugin, the Revolution Slider (a slideshow plugin), that I installed, but never used. Sure enough, it got a driveby sideload of a series of malware exploits.

    After spending far too many hours cleansing, scanning, cleansing, scanning, and then recreating content, I am getting fed up.

    WordPress is a great platform, and the creativity of the community and the team that maintains it has matured greatly. If you stick to using plugins from the WordPress.org repository, and are diligent about doing updates, you will be fine. The theme selection is fantastic, and with some modest CSS and HTML skills, even a duffer like myself can put together a decent looking and functioning site.

    But I am beginning to move my main properties away. I just have far less “fun“maintaining it then I used to, and my time is valuable. I have moved my product management blog to the new Ghost platform (with their hosting solution, so I no longer have to futz with the back end), and I am beginning to curate my content here for a similar migration.

    I am not sure when Tralfaz will make the switch, as my, uh, discipline with using tags and categories has left something to desire.

    I should be cautious. WordPress doesn’t suck. Far from it, it is solid, reliable, well supported with a fabulous community of support, and so many themes/plugins/modifications that you can do pretty much anything you might want. But because of this complexity, it has become a hassle to manage on the back end.

  • Not too happy with WordPress right now…

    Nothing like getting an out of the blue “Abuse Notification” from you webhost provider. Sigh.

    About 9:00PM last night I got the warning that there was malware on my wife’s WordPress site. Scripts in three unrelated files, and who knows what else damaged.

    Earlier, doing my normal maintenance, I found that the plugins and theme updates would fail. This was the first hint that something was amiss. (for the record, the three other WP blogs on the same VPS were and are fine).

    I manually changed the permissions, and forcibly re-installed these plugins, and thought all was well.

    Then the Abuse message. Shit.

    The hosting company quarantied the affected files, and they all were in a plugin that was part of the theme. Revolution Slider. We weren’t really using it, so I removed it (forcefully), yet there is still something hinky going on.

    This weekend, I will do a deep clean, and fix it all up. Alas, I really didn’t want to blow a bunch of hours on this. I will also look at a malware monitoring tool for my VPS.

  • The joy of Vinyl

    Last year my father in-law passed away, a sad occurrence. However, we inherited his stereo and music collection. A couple hundred LP’s with a lot of jazz and big band recordings from the 50’s through the 70’s, and even some more modern items.

    This weekend, I have the stereo setup, an okay Marantz unit, with some decent bookshelf speakers, and a Sony belt drive turntable. Nothing too fancy, but it gets the job done.

    In the albums are a ton of great jazz albums. Lots of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington and many other less recognizable names.

    Right now, I am listening to Don Ellis recorded in SF at the Filmore. Damn fine recording.

    I have of course added a few of my own, but I am listening to the old albums now.

    There are some oddities though, the Scottish pipers for one.  Nothing like bagpipes in the AM.

  • Apple Disappointment – Photos

    Being a long time Apple fan, I have often sung their praises. Products that work, fit in with my natural workflow, and in general delight. That said, a recent experience has tarnished the gleam.

    About 6 years ago, I realized that the built in photo management tool, iPhoto, was completely unsuitable for the task. I had graduated to a decent DSLR, and started shooting in RAW format. iPhoto did read the files, but the size of the files, and the huge quantity of files brought it to its knees. It really was painful.

    I jumped to Aperture, a "Pro" application that had a decent workflow. It was that or the Adobe product, Lightroom.

    Aperture worked well for a long time, but about Mavericks timeframe, it was reworked to add in the photostream, and the quality of the experience was diminished. I had made the decision to bolt to Lightroom, knowing the end was in sight.

    Recently, Apple deprecated iPhoto, replacing it with "photos" that more closely works like the photos application on the iPhone. Meh, but whatever. However, the path was to migrate from iPhoto or Aperture to Photos, a one way migration.

    It went OK for my aperture library, but the wonkiness was helping a friend migrate her iPhoto library.

    She had a well aged (but quite serviceable) MacBook Pro. It was bought in 2009, and works. She had about 38Gigs of photos from her digital camera, in iPhoto. the '09 version that came with the computer.

    A hard disk failure, and the genius bar upgraded her to 10.10.3 when they replaced it. iPhoto is not supported so she must go to Photos.

    But it hung up at 24% in migrating. She brought it to me, and I tried all my magic.

    • Used an external drive and a clean copy of the iphoto library – no dice
    • repaired the library with my wife's computer – still running the same version of iPhoto (the advice from the support forums). No dice.
    • Disk warrior – rebuilt and optimized the directory structure – no dice
    • Repaired permissions – No dice.

    After about 10 hours of fiddling, nothing would get past the 24% hump. I had to admit defeat, and advise her to make a Genius bar appointment.

    Yesterday, I heard that after 4 hours, the genius bar tech was importing a year at a time. Painfully slow.

    From reading the forums on apple.com, it is clear this is not an uncommon problem.

    My suspicions: Apple didn't test enough variants of iPhoto, assuming that people upgraded as it was available (a faulty assumption), that minor glitches in iPhotos databases can fatally halt the migration.

    There really needs to be a built in database check/rebuild that eases the migration.

    In the mean time? I am moving all my photos to Lightroom. At least Adobe just uses flat file system folders for storage, so future migrations will be simple tasks.

  • House Journal – Failed Project

    House Journal – Failed Projects

    Yesterday started innocuously enough, a trip to Lowes to get a few items we needed, and to pick up an under-sink water filter. There was a filter when we moved in, an old GE unit, that was so old, that filters were no longer made, and old enough that I couldn’t find cross referenced replacements. Perfect time to upgrade to a reverse osmosis system.

    A little more challenging to install than a simple cartridge filtration system, a reverse osmosis system will have a solvent stream (drinking water), and a solute stream (the stuff you remove) that will need to be handled (disposed of). This requires a connection to the drain, and therein lies the cause of my failure yesterday.

    As I mentioned, there was a filtration system that was so old, filters were not readily available. It was probably installed when the last owners remodeled their kitchen, 20 years ago. So it is safe to assume that the sink and the plumbing is 20+ years old.

    Step 1 in the installation was to insert the waste drain in the sink drain. Unfortunately, the P-trap holding nut was corroded solid. So, after removing the old filtration system, I was stymied at step one.

    Foiled by a plumbing challenge.

    Many years ago, I would have made multiple trips to Lowes, bought tools, cursed, banged my knuckles, and finally gotten it done. But in my old age (almost 50), I have learned that it is far better to pay the man (a plumber or handyman) and avoid the frustration.

    Things I used to do myself but now just pay for:

    • Plumbing – except for minor things, it is far cheaper (in time and money) to just pay a pro.
    • Electrical work – I will still replace a socket, or a switch, but anything that requires conduit, romex, or cutting a hole in drywall? Pay the man.

    I will still do most appliance repair though.

  • House Journal – New TV

    I have been MIA lately, the move, unpacking, and some insane deadlines at work have meant that I had no time to write, but I will begin to rectify that.

    With the move, the trusty Pioneer Plasma screen was showing its age. When we bought it in 2006, the LCD panels at the time sucked big tool. Side by side, there was no comparison, the plasma kicked their ass all over the playground.

    It was a 42″ unit, and a solid performer, but it was input constrained, and while the picture quality was superb, it was a bit of a power hog.

    With our new house, we knew we wanted something a bit larger (but not too large, as our viewing room was modest) with smart TV capability, and more HDMI inputs.

    I looked long and hard at the 4K screens, but at the size we were interested in, 55″ it just wasn’t compelling. No real content (some netflix, and some DirecTV) and to get something with a good refresh rate, you need to drop about $2K.

    Much browsing at Bestbuy, looking at the Samsung, LG and Sony panels in our range, and they were all good, and apart from the Sony, comparably priced. However, the Bestbuy sales droid pointed me at the Panasonc Bravia 55″. On clearance, and a size exclusive to Bestbuy, the screen was sweet. 240hz refresh rate, excellent colors, and a compelling price, I was sold.

    Hanging it on the wall was a breeze, and our electricians made passthroughs for the cables, so it is almost clutter free.

    Quality of the display is impressive. Bluray movies “pop”. I tossed in The Matrix, and Casino Royale, and the quality is superb.

    I haven’t explored much of the apps yet, but the Netflix app, built in (and a netflix button on the remote to boot) makes it super easy to watch streaming videos. Way better than the old way, firing up the Xbox, and using the app there. That takes about a minute and a half until you can begin watching. Now, about 20 seconds, and you are streaming.

    Our Tivo hooked right up, and covers our DVR/live TV needs.

    HD resolution, on the 55″, at the viewing distances we have is plenty good. I am not regretting the choice of not going to the 4K resolution. This thing is awesome.

    And being a LED backlit display, this unit uses less than 1/4 the juice that the Plasma screen did.

    We did donate the plasma screen, and it has a new home at one of our movers, I am sure it will continue to be a great screen, but we aren’t pining for it.

  • Bravo to my Neighbors at the Hotel

    The joys of travel. Hotel rooms, uncomfortable beds, pillows that are too much or too little support, ice machine runs that you hear, and doors slamming in the halls.

    However, Hotels are often the site of passionate lovemaking. I am used to hearing the hookers in Asian hotels with their clients. But those are strictly business deals. Bang, and they are done/gone.

    Last night though, my neighbors were at it for over 3 hours. Stamina that I wish I ever had. And she was a screamer.

    Starting at about 9:00 PM, the familiar rhythmic bed creaking, followed my grunting, and moaning, culminating in a fevered pitch, and screaming.

    4 more times until 1:00 AM.

    Bravo. Thank you for reminding me why I hate traveling and hotels, even supposedly nice ones.

  • Pizza Primero

    Now I'm hungry
    Now I’m hungry

    One of my specialties is hand made pizza. I first came in contact with making pizza when I got a job at Chuck E. Cheese in the early 1980’s. Apart from the access to wicked cool video games, I got to learn how to build a pie.

    Of course, Chuck E Cheese isn’t known for their pizza, but it was a start. Crust, sauce, cheese, toppings, in a very hot (550 – 600F) oven and 7-8 minutes later you have a bubbling gooey top, yet crisp crust.

    My next exposure was at Florentines. There I was a bit more than just an assembly line like Chuck E Cheese. There, a single person was dedicated to making pizza per shift, and I learned about other toppings than the standard.

    The tools are simple. A peel, pizza pans, a stone an oven that gets hot.

    The Process

    Dough balls ready to rise
    Dough balls ready to rise

    The foundation of a good pie is the crust. There are literally thousands of recipes on the art of making pizza. The one we used at Florentines was good, but it was a bit impractical for home use, as it started with a 50# sack of flour.

    The recipe I use is a very basic one:

    3 Cups All purpose flour
    2 teaspoons fast rise yeast (I use the Fleishmann’s in the small jar)
    2 teaspoons salt (I use kosher salt, but it really isn’t important)
    2 tablespoons olive oil

    In a food processor, with the standard blade, put the dry ingredients in. Start the processor, add the oil (I will admit that I don’t measure it, just a couple of glugs).

    Then slowly pour in 1 cup cold water. You really want to trickle it in, so do be patient.

    If the dough ball doesn’t form, add more water, one tablespoon at a time. If it is too wet, add flour one tablespoon at a time.

    When you are done, you will have a nicely formed dough ball. Remove it from the food processor, and transfer it to a lightly floured surface. Knead it by hand for a couple minutes. Split into two equally sized pieces, and then place in a container and cover with a towel to let it rise.

    After the dough is made, I begin to cook the ingredients. Today, I am making a pepperoni and sausage pie. Since I don’t have a very high BTU oven, that can get to 600F, I precook my sausage to ensure that it is properly cooked.

    pizza-799% of the time, when I need shredded cheese, I use my trusty box grater. Not for pizza though. This is the one time I get out the grater blade for the food processor and let it rip. About 15 seconds for a full package of partially skim mozzarella.

    Sauces – If I am making a margarita pizza, I will make a very simple sauce – canned tomatoes, olive oil, and some sea salt in a food processor. But for all others, I get lazy. Classico Tomato Basil spaghetti sauce is really good. Or I will make a white sauce pizza, again using a premade alfredo to start. Yes, I can (and have) made both, but for the small amount needed for a pie, it isn’t worth the effort.

    The end result.

    Tonight’s pies were the aforementioned pepperoni and sausage, and another staple of mine, a basil cream sauce with mozzarella and fresh tomato slices.

    Delicious.

  • Meals in the new Kitchen – Arroz con Pollo

    Meals in the new Kitchen – Arroz con Pollo

    A series of posts about the meals I cook in our new house. I have posted on some of my culinary exploits in the past, but these will be special.

    For the first time ever, I have new appliances (mainly a quality range) to cook with, and that brings me no small measure of joy.

    The first meal was Arroz con Pollo, a hearty Mexican classic, single pot meal.

    You really need a good heavy dutch oven for this. I have a Le Cruset “second” that I bought at an outlet store probably 25 years ago.

    Browning the chicken
    Browning the chicken

    Arroz con pollo is traditionally made with a cut up whole chicken. You brown it in oil (I use olive oil), remove the chicken to a plate, then cook some veggies in the oil. Onions and bell peppers are essential, but you can get creative.

    After you have sautéed the onions and firm veggies, you add a cup of rice, uncooked, 1.5 cups of chicken broth (the chicken pieces, and cover and cook in a 350F oven for about 90 minutes. The rice will be cooked, and the liquid from the chicken will run clear. Then you add some drained stewed tomatoes, some peas, and any other quick cook veggies. Again, you can get creative.

    Ready to eat! Yum.
    Ready to eat! Yum.

    Back in the oven for 15 more minutes, and Voilá, a delicious meal that is easy to make, and to clean up after.

    Buon Appetité!