I haven't knitted in forever. Life just keeps getting in my way. But then a fickle friend pulled me back into the knitting world, and I figured it was ok as long as I limited myself to only one kind of knitting, so I picked socks.

And, since I've done a whole one pair of socks in my life, making me a master of the old ways, I decided to work on a whole new way of making socks... with 2 circular needles and magically weird heel turns.

So I started on the first practice sock. 17 times. I cast on 2 24 inch needles for this leetle sock and they got all tangled up and confused, so eventually I went down to one needle for a while until I had to go to 2, and it was generally a big old life lesson, wrapped up in a miniscule sock. My daughter asked why I was still working on this doomed socklet and I told her eventually I would finish it.

And so I did! I have one leetle sock! I am so looking forward to making an adult-sized pair of socks! I looked ahead in the book and realized that the socks I most want to make are the toe-up socks, which means I have to make another leetle sock, and I'm not sure I'm up for that yet. So perhaps I'll pick a leg-down pair to make first. Because focusing all of my knitting energy on socks means I have, um, a *lot* of sock yarn. And some fancy Addis I'm just itching to use.

5 cups bisquick
1-1/2 cup cornmeal
2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp baking powder

5 sticks butter (1-1/4 pound)
5 eggs
2-1/2 cups milk

Combine dry ingredients and mix well. Pour melted butter or margarine over dry mixture and blend together well. Beat eggs and milk and mix with the above mixture. Blend until well mixed and not lumpy. Pour into well greased pans and cook at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes, then turn the pan 180 degrees in the oven. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake another 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and the center springs back when lightly touched. Poke with toothpick to check doneness.

2 pounds of ground meat (turkey, beef, whatever you like)
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp of chili powder
1 tbsp cumin powder
1 tbsp smushed or chopped garlic

1 package of trader joe's frozen roasted corn (or regular corn is fine too)
1 8 oz can of tomato sauce
1 16 ounce can of seasoned chopped tomatoes
1 can of green chilis
4 oz red wine

1 can of cream-style corn
1 package of trader joe's cornbread mix
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cups grated Cheddar
1 medium package of Frito corn chips

Fry the ground meat up with the seasonings until it's browned. Add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, corn, chilis, and wine to the meat and simmer for 20 minutes.

While it's simmering, mix the cream style corn with the cornbread mix. Add 1/2 cup of the cheese and enough milk to make it runny (about 1/4 cup). Crush the fritos and combine them with the remaining cup of cheese.

When the meat is ready spread it out over the bottom of your casserole dish or 9x11 baking pan. Spread the cornbread mix across the top, reaching all the way to the edges. Cook at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, then sprinkle the frito cheese mixture over the top and put the dish back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Happy Birthday Victoria! My daughter turned 9 yesterday and we had a weekend filled with celebratory fun.

On Saturday we had a wonderful party at the Perfumer's Apprentice in Santa Cruz. The woman who runs this place is truly incredible, with her love of all things scentual and her vast stores of knowledge. I bought an ice cream cake from Coldstone, and Linda (the Perfumer's Apprentice lady) did pretty much everything else, and as a mom I can tell you it was one of the least stressful birthday parties I've ever been involved in. Some of the moms stayed to play and we ended up with 16 people mixing and matching the smells to find the best combination for them. Everybody created their own special scent (using the hundreds of essential oils available for mixing) and went home with a vial of scented oil as well as some body mist. It was like a girly science experiment party and it was incredibly fun for everyone. I can't recommend this place highly enough if you live anywhere near Santa Cruz. It's a real treat and quite a deal at $15 - she's created a wonderful space just to hang out in, and the making of your own perfume is a great bonus.

Mixing perfume is hard work
Originally uploaded by synedra.

Instead of having all presents for Victoria, we had a game swap, so all the participants got to go home with a fun game to play as well. I really prefer this kind of thing for larger parties, because otherwise you end up with a gazillion things that never get played with again, and it's much nicer than the usual goodie bags... I think we've all had enough of those for a lifetime :-)

We came home on Saturday and colored eggs for Sunday (see below :-). Also Victoria got her presents from us, including a FireFly cell phone, which made her deliriously happy.

On Sunday (her actual birthday) we went up to San Francisco to participate in an Ostara ritual put on by the Reclaiming group - we headed up there with my cousin and her family as well as another friend and her daughter. The weather couldn't have been nicer for spreading out a bunch off food on a neat sheet and enjoying the day. Not surprisingly, the circle got started somewhat late, but once it started everyone had fun, singing, dancing, playing with a parachute... and at the end there was an egg hunt for all the kids. My daughter happily reports that it was a wonderful birthday weekend.

Welcome Spring!

Many folks ask me "What's a wiki?" Well, what *is* a wiki, and what do you *do* with it? I found the niftiest example of what a wiki is at 43 blogs, a list of the 43 best blogs... a wiki list. Which means that anyone who views the page can edit it. Go ahead, add your blog, remove another one, the only rule is that there have to be 43 blogs on the list when you're done, because 43 is the magic number of web 2.0.

I spend a lot of my time these days thinking about how people use the web, and recently, through 43blogs, I ended up at BoingBoing (I couldn't resist clicking a link that said 'boingboing'...) and then from there I found a mention of this hysterical text-adventure version of World of Warcraft. Then I went on to look at other things, and a little later I realized I had to share that link, but alas, I am not in the del.icio.us habit and I had to retrace my steps to figure out which of the zillions of paths I'd followed had led there. Eventually I found it (the sad truth is that even though I could find the end point I needed, for some weird reason, to find out *where* I had found it). Thinking about patterns like this is something our company does a lot of.

One of the reasons this blog doesn't get much love is because I spend a lot of the day blogging internally. And while the blogging features of our wiki product aren't great, I'm becoming very addicted to the idea of LinkAsYouThink, so as I type this entry I'm finding this whole html linking thing getting in the way of my stream of thought. Very sad.

In more mundane news, it looks like we'll be moving back to Scotts Valley, which is nice because almost all my friends live up there.

I am very glad that we chose to go. The memorial was hard, but I was reminded of the best things my grandma gave to the world. She was a fiesty woman, firm in her convictions. She was a very active member of NOW and a card carrying member of the ACLU. In her 60's, she took the time to escort girls through the protesters at Planned Parenthood. Mind you, she was a very diminutive person but her steely gaze was certainly enough to daunt even the brawniest of the protesters. At her memorial, the ministers edited the passages from the bible to remove the masculine references to god, in deference to 'liberal Virginia'.

The gathering afterward was nice, and I got to see many family members I hadn't seen forever. Nobody made me feel badly about my long absence. My cousin was treated the same as the other grandchildren (her history with our family is complicated)... and most importantly, I think the day came off exactly as my mother had hoped, so it was a successful day in my eyes.

I'm sorry we didn't always see eye to eye, but her indomitable spirit will live on in the women of her family... in my mother, who is and will continue to be an amazing woman... in me, and in my daughter and her daughters after her. The freedoms and equality she fought for so valiantly will ease our way as we try to make our mark on the world, and for this I thank her with all my heart.

Goodbye grandma... peace be with you.

My moebius scarf is getting bound off tonight, and then I can help Victoria with hers (which is going to be her grandma's Christmas present... shhh!!!)

Case in point: My hosting service had issues several months ago. It took 4 days to receive an initial response to my support query, and by then I'd basically created a workaround on my own. Since the problem was fixed, I stayed with that hosting service, but when I had another problem with them last month I ditched them without waiting for them to respond to my support request. I just plain didn't feel like waiting... I moved over to Living Dot, a hosting service which costs more but has great reviews (including warm praises from one of my friends) for support. Sure enough, they went above and beyond on everything I asked them to do (and a few things I didn't ask for). I'm happy to pay a few extra dollars for this kind of service. It'll take some major wild horses to drag me away from these people.

Spending several days at Disneyland also reminded me of the value of customer service. I don't even like the place that much... I mean, it's fun, and the atmosphere is nice, and the kids love it, but, you know, *eh*. I've been there a zillion times. It's expensive and crowded. I even worked there for a summer. However, every single cast member I encountered left me with a little extra smile in my day, and that makes for a very pleasant vacation, even when you're waiting in line to see singing dolls.

One of the customers of my new company has been frustrated recently, and it turns out that a lot of that frustration has to do, not with our actual product or productivity, but with their feeling that we're not listening to them. Hiring a field engineer (me) was a big part of our company's strategy for improving this, but it's always good to look around and see how good customer support is done to see if there's any lessons to learn. We will do better, we *are* doing better, but I'd love to have our customers feel that we go above and beyond... it makes for some very loyal customers.

Of course, everybody has a different idea about what good customer service is. Google for 'good customer service' and look at the dizzying array of opinions... to me, it's really not complicated. And it certainly doesn't need complicated rules. Listen to your customers. Don't do that annoying thing where you play 'find the buzzword' in what they're saying and turn off your ears once they hit one. Just... listen. And try to think about how you can make their experience better (which is easier if you really listen).

PS: on my Disney vacation I got some work done on a moebius scarf I'm working on for Devon's teacher. I'm looking forward to actually having a knitting thing to show off... hoping I might get a new camera for my birthday to make picture taking even more fun.

So now that I have a new "Geek Stuff" Category, I need to rant a bit about the problems inherent in owning a Macintosh. I have one because my work is largely unix-based (told you I was a geek) and, really... prepare yourself... I hate Microsoft. I know, I know, it's a tired old sentiment, but I do love my mac and it does all the stuff I want. But sometimes, just sometimes, I get a yearning to do something *outside* of the sterile, bounded environment defined by the offerings of the Apple Store. For instance, last week I found myself at a customer site in New York. Being a Wall Street Investment Bank, they were fairly protective of their internal network. I was allowed to use one of *their* systems, on *their* network, and not install any additional software. Since our team communicates largely via IRC and Skype, this put me in a difficult position - I couldn't get a network connection for my system, and I couldn't use their system to communicate. So, I need to find a way to use the cellular system to communicate, either on my computer or using a handheld.

After an extensive amount of research (too much, as is my normal habit) I determined that I had 2 options:

1. A Blackberry Handheld. The Treo, while more full functioned, is much more likely to die if I drop it. Based on previous experience with my cell phones, this means that I would probably have a single trouble-free month with the phone before a clumsy moment rendered it useless.
   
2. A Cellular Card for my computer
   

If I get a Blackberry, I can:

• ... sync it with my mac if I buy PocketMac
  
• Install IRC software on it to stay in touch with my team (only works with the BlackBerry 7230, 7280)
  
• I can't use it as a modem for my macintosh, though
  

If I get a PC Card:

• I have found a company in Germany which makes some software to make it work on a Mac. Of course it won't be supported by my cellular service - in fact when I called to ask if the configuration would work the woman wasn't sure what I meant by 'macintosh'. "Does it have a PC slot? Can it do wireless? Then it'll work!" OK, sure.
  

So it turns out that either one can be made to work. And since I'm a geek-with-a-mac, neither will take me much time to get working now that I've invested 3 hours in finding out how to do so. But I ask you, what kind of strategy is this for Apple? They're trying to target their systems to neophyte computer users, making them more accessable and less threatening. It seems like they might want to try to make it a little easier to do something like setting up a cellular modem on my system since most of their users wouldn't even know where to start looking.

I'm heartened by Apple's recent forays into partnerships with different technologies... their Itunes agreements have given me hope that they'll start looking into other similar possibilities. It'll be very cool when I look at adding some new functionality to my life and find that it 'just works' with the system I love so dearly.

Until then, I'll just keep on googling to find the configuration answers to the puzzles, and sharing them here so I don't forget where they are.

For now, I just need to figure out if I need to decide if I can do enough of my work on the blackberry or if I'd rather be able to connect my Mac anywhere.

In any case, here's my update on all the recent chaos in my life. I've already discussed the selling of the house and moving across the county, so I'm gonna have to come up with some new interesting topics to keep my readers awake.

Cheerleading: I know, it's not really new. But driving V back and forth to practices and games eats up a lot of my time, so it's worth mentioning. Plus the only picture I have available for this entry is Victoria cheering. This weekend we had a game on Saturday (we won) and a cheer competition on Sunday (the girls came in 3rd out of 16, and I am so proud of all of them!)

Job: I believe I mentioned that I was looking for a new job, and I am happy to report that as of Monday I will be spending my geeky working hours in the service of SocialText. It's a fantastic opportunity to work with some of the smartest folks in my particular geeky industry and I'm really excited.

School: Yet again, the boy was having some issues with the kids' school. So we moved them to a new school, 5 minutes from our house, and we're thrilled with the change. For those of you familiar with the D&D millieu, the school we had them at before was heavy into 'Law' - These Are The Rules and now Let's Apply Them. My boy was in the office every day for a new transgression and seriously stressed all the time. The new school is, I would say, solidly Chaotic Good. Each kid has their own learning plan and goals, and they are very adaptable - my boy is thriving, as is my girl. Did I mention thrilled? Oh, and for those of you who understand the Law/Chaos division and need somewhere to waste valuable time, please check out Order of the Stick. Go on, I'll wait.

Susan: No, she's not chaotic :-) I just wanted to update anyone interested and tell you all that she's doing great! She's learning to walk again, working a couple days a week, and really looking and feeling like a regular person again.

We checked out the pig races...

My daughter, also a ham.

Devon, climbing a wall

Waiting, um, patiently for his funnel cake.

All right!

Note that this particular place also had the very horrifying 'deep fried twinkie'. As an homage to Doonesbury and the Krispy Kreme blogging, I thought I would go ahead and try one of these things and report on it to my readers. I did this, you understand, at great personal risk... I live only 20 minutes from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, where a person can procure one of these things year-round. In the interest of science, though, I got one. The first bite was pretty unremarkable - they coat the thing in funnel cake so it basically tasted like a sorta thick funnel cake. But then, I got to the filling. I just have to say... the filling in a twinkie, heated up, has a particularly notable mouth feel. It's all drippy and syrupy and warm and sugary and... ew. Just gross. I give it a strong 2 out of 10. Perhaps next time I'll try the deep-fried Snicker bar instead. Or maybe I'll just give it a pass...

This weekend at Victoria's game I managed to finish one of the books I was reading... Gil's All-Fright Diner. For those of us who are steeped in the somewhat geeky role playing/horror/sci fi world, this is a must read. A laugh-out-loud book. In fact, I feel I should offer my sincerest apologies to the people at Victoria's football game. I swear I wasn't laughing because our team threw an interception. Even if your only exposure to vampires and werewolves is old reruns of Buffy, I'm betting you'll love this book.

In other horror news, look what I found outside of my grocery store:

No, those are not Sugar Pie Pumpkins. They are not. They are jack-o-lantern pumpkins and it's just the middle of September. Fortunately, I did not encounter Jolly old Saint Nick near the display, although I'm sure he'll be there sometime next week.

Here's my daughter cheering on her valiant Sea Lions:

I'm going out of town tomorrow so I wasn't even bright enough to bring anything to keep me entertained (except, obviously, for the all-important camera).

Did manage to get down to the Gap and pick up some "Curvy" jeans and other pants... and grab lunch at my favorite Mexican restaurant which is, sadly, not very convenient from our new house. On the other hand, the Mexican food available in Watsonville is spectacular, so as always, there are tradeoffs.

Tomorrow I will be spending a fun and exciting 10 hours travelling between here and Ottawa. I could have made it in much less, but the Cisco Travel Network scolded me for being non-frugal, so I shall be languishing in the Chicago airport for 4 hours. It'll give me a chance to work on the presentation I'm supposed to make on Wednesday, so that's good. In fact, knowing I'll have that layover has given me a good excuse to procrastinate on the presentation until now, so in a way it's been very helpful.