On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
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31 comments
I’ve got to go mow the grass but I’ll have mine. Good bye and thanks for all the fish.
.-= last blog ..Because They Can =-.
I still have my trusty towel of many years (it’s getting a bit dogeared actually!) It’s a damned good thing it can’t talk… well, it doesn’t talk to me at least… 😉 😀
“Life? Don’t talk to me about life! “
I wouldn’t even consider working outside the next few months without a damp towel around my neck and a cooler of ice water near by, Fallenmonk.
Yeah, Kryten, in a box somewhere I still have a couple of olive drape towels from the old days when they were real cotton, and the blankets were wool. The suckers were indestructible and did what they were supposed to do.
Hey! You guessed… 😆 Yeah… it’s my only surviving Army towel (towel, cotton, large 60x120cm, olive, one of) and I have two blankets (one Navy gray that I swapped one of my olive drab’s for). Amazing how warm (and heavy) those old wool blankets are! With two of those, I can sleep though any winter night here. 🙂 One thing I will say about the military here, they provisioned us well. 🙂 I was told early last year the the new military towels are even better. They use a super-absorbent microfiber that’s also about half the weight of the *old* ones and dry faster. 🙂
Kryten, I have a similar microfiber towel to what you describe. It absorbs as much as a big cotton towel, while being much lighter and compact and drying super-quick. Its only downside is that it tends to pick up “lint” (or random pieces of grass, or whatever) with as much tenacity as it picks up water. Still, it’s one of my favorite pieces of camping gear because as you know, when you have to actually haul crap on your back even a few ounces chaps your cheeks :).
I believe the Hudson Bay Company still sells the old-fashioned wool blankets in their stores in Canuckistan. They are a bit of a tourist item, apparently.
Finally, as an antidote to all this doom and gloom, Twitter has redeemed itself… BP Cares. Favorite tweet so far: “Negative people view the ocean as half empty of oil. We are dedicated to making it half full. Stay positive America! #IwantmyBPtshirt”
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
I have just moved to a new(ish) apartment, and all my towels, good, bad and indifferent, are hiding in a box somewhere. I hope there are no bugbladder beasts around here….
I tend to react badly to “miracle” fabrics, Kryten, so I’ll stay with cotton.
OK, Badtux, I’ll make an exception for backs and tents, because canvas weighs a ton and it doesn’t repel water as much as absorb it to produce that wonderful odor, especially in a tropical environment.
Ah, yes, the living out of boxes phase of moving, Аня, always a joy. The real fun is when you had help packing, and the help ignored all of the writing on the outside of box.
Still, it’s one of my favorite pieces of camping gear because as you know, when you have to actually haul crap on your back even a few ounces chaps your cheeks
Yeah… Don’t I know it! I wish we had a lot more of the micro-light stuff in the 80’s! Carrying anything from 30-60kg (depending on mission requirements) of gear for days at a stretch, no matter how strong or tough you are, especially during a typical steaming tropical downpour up muddy jungle trails was anything but fun. It generally registered at least a 9.5 on the “cursing the Military and every bugger involved” scale, and you began to wish the enemy would show up just so you could seriously vent all over them! 😀 😉
Even basic things like the new high-tech socks the army uses are less than half the weight of the heavy duty ones we had (and I’m told are much more absorbent, comfortable and anti-bacterial & anti-fungal! I want some!) 🙂
I feel your pain Anya! Been there, done that… several times. I moved here almost a year ago, and most of my stuff is still in boxes in the garage. 🙂
Oops! Forgot an appropriate Marvin quote! 😉
“Funny, how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse, it suddenly does.”
Drat! Missed one before also! *sigh*
Hmmm… Which one…
“Why should I want to make anything up? Life’s bad enough as it is without wanting to invent anymore of it.”
😉 😛
My fave IM tool (Trillian Astra) was updated appropriately on Towel Day to… 4.2! 😀 😉
Trillian 4.2 for Windows: Happy Towel Day!
(Ignore the usual whiners in the comments!) *shaking head*
“I wouldn’t want to go anywhere without my wonderful towel,”
–Arthur Dent
It is IM which I have ignored for its entire existence. I don’t IM, text, tweet, or otherwise emulate the ASR-33 twix network or its encrypted counterpart that I used 40 years ago in the military.
i love im.
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I prefer long form. 😉
I’ve been on a few IRC channels (security, support etc) for over a decade and I’m the Op on one. Most of my friends use AIM or ICQ (I managed to wean a few off MSN!!) Been chatting with Lady Min for years on AIM, and now Astra. 🙂 We prefer it to email because we can have a 1024 bit ‘one time pad’ type encrypted direct connection and know it’s private (well, a lot more private than plain-text email or MSN etc)! 😉 😀 Emails generally pass through several mail servers, and I know for a fact that many of them store your mail for an indefinite period and nosy people can easily get at them (and some servers will send your mail to wrong addresses etc). If everyone followed the proper RFC’s for email, the ‘net would be a far safer place. You’s be a-mazed at how many mis-configured mail servers there are, even from major organizations that have absolutely no excuse!
If you are sending anything sensitive… NEVER use plain-text eMail!
BTW… That applies to ‘snail-mail’ also! The mail services around the World have been corrupt for ages! 😉
I use 2048-bit pgp for a couple of clients, but my own stuff that I don’t want people reading requires a specific book as it is all page/line/word coded.
People who use web-based e-mail systems might as well post their mail on a blog.
Generally you have to settle for an e-mail system that usually works. Expecting reasonable security is a “bridge too far”. The standards are there, but no one seems to find the time. Hell, you’re lucky if they bother to patch on a regular basis. The big players are the worst offenders because they won’t spend the money to hire and keep competent people.
Generally you have to settle for an e-mail system that usually works. Expecting reasonable security is a “bridge too far”. The standards are there, but no one seems to find the time.
Hey, I resemble that ;). As an email administrator you’re darn tootin’ that I’m not going to expect my “private” email to stay private. But one thing I *will* tell you is this: I’m not going to read people’s email on a routine basis. Frankly, I have better things to do. But I *can* do it, anytime I feel like it. This is for regular unencrypted email, of course. If it’s PGP-encrypted then I’m SOL.
Carrying anything from 30-60kg (depending on mission requirements) of gear for days at a stretch, no matter how strong or tough you are, especially during a typical steaming tropical downpour up muddy jungle trails was anything but fun. It generally registered at least a 9.5 on the “cursing the Military and every bugger involved” scale
Heh. Yeah, I carried around 30kg of gear for one hike that crossed three climate zones, and swore never again, at which point I went looking for the lightest gear possible and trying to get rid of any gear I don’t absolutely need. I even experimented with not carrying a stove and a tent, but found that having a place away from the bugs makes life a lot easier as does the ability to heat a cuppa hot cocoa or coffee, so I found the minimal for both that will do the job for me. My pack weight is about 10kg now, minus water (which adds a few pounds more depending on how much water I must carry), and backpacking feels more like I’m just strolling around my neighborhood without anything at all on my back. Life’s too short to deliberately subject yourself to 30kg of gear on your back, methinks ;). I do curse bears every time I have to add the 2kg bear canister to my load though, when I go on hikes in the Sierra Nevada… alas, there is no alternative, hanging doesn’t work anymore (did you know bears can climb trees? 😉 ), and otherwise any food you carry becomes bear chow shortly… At which point you might as well put a sign around your neck saying “I’m a moron who just got a bear killed”, like the idiot up above who fed the hot dog to the alligators.
Badtux, I have never worried about the administrators reading it, it’s simply that almost everyone uses the same directory structure and stores them in the same place, and then fails to lock down their servers, so people with a minimum of knowledge can access them.
As for hauling stuff, I joined the Air Force to avoid than, but when you can’t avoid it, the suckers don’t even provide a rucksack to carry things in. They have all of this handy stuff in the survival kit, but not even a tote bag if you need to move.
Instead of providing one, they teach you how to cobble one together from your parachute at survival school. It’s a major PITA, and the result is heavy and uncomfortable.
I should clarify that the ’30-60kg’ wasn’t all in a backpack. 🙂 Apologies. When we planned gear weight, that included weapon(s) and items carried on the belt, thigh pouches, chest rigs, etc. 🙂 Sometimes we had 2 or even 3 1ltr canteens for eg, or if it was an extended mission away from supply lines, lot’s of spare ammo etc. I once had to carry 5 spare clips for the MP5 and 2 19-round and 1 33-round clip for the glock (as well as the loaded weapons) + food, water, smoke + frag grenades, C4 + detonators & remote, med supplies, extra clothing, wet weather gear, sat-nav/coms plus the combat fatigues, helmet with com’s & visor, binoc’s, knives (incl. 4 throwing stilettos), garrote, silencers, & other stuff! I think that was just over 68kg all up.
Anyway! 😉 SO I was thinking last night, after talking about soup here… That I haven’t posted a recipe for ages (not counting the Xmas pud). And I promised some trad Maltese recipes. The good news is that I finally found my mothers cook book a couple weeks ago (that I mentioned in an earlier recipe post). 😀 I was very happy to find that! I plan to post a couple faves of mine, Ross il-Forn (a delicious baked rice dish) and maybe Timpana (Pastry-covered baked macaroni). 😀 I got curious and did some searching, and discovered a Wiki for Maltese cuisine! There really is a Wiki for everything! 😆
Have a look everyone (this means you hipparchia) 😉 and let me know if you’d like me to post a recipe for something! 😀
Wikipedia – Maltese cuisine
BTW… The Maltese make the BEST bread!! Seriously… You’ll find many sites drooling about it! 😉
MALTESE BREAD
The Maltese make excellent bread. Most villages have at least one bakery, where you pick up delicious hobz (small soft rolls) or ftira (a ring shaped loaf that is similar in texture to Italian ciabatta.) There is nothing like the smell of the fresh, warm Maltese bread. It is said the best bread in the world comes from Malta and I totally agree.
The Maltese Food
One thing I find strange is that most sites, whilst acknowledging the influence from Italians, British, Moors, Spanish… don’t mention the strong Turkish influence. *shrug* The food from Malta is very ‘multi-Cultural’! 😀
I *REALLY* miss my fave drink from when I went to Malta, Kinne! Sadly, it’s not exported much and hard to find outside Malta! 🙁 I think they do it on purpose to get the tourists!) 😉
Anyway… let me know what tickles your fancy and I’ll see if I have a recipe (I should have for most things). 🙂
“I should clarify that the ‘30-60kg’ wasn’t all in a backpack.”
We call that “skin-out” weight in the backpacking business, as vs. “pack” weight. And is why I usually hike in trail running shoes rather than in 5-pound boats err boots ;). But yes, I understood what you were saying. Carrying a heavy load sucks, whether it’s on your back or on your belt or on your feet :).
Kryten, let me know if you find a Korean food wiki. I do so love a good bibimbab or jigae :). Nice thing about living here in Baghdad by the Bay is that we have all these ethnic grocers so you can get pretty much any ingredient that you could get in downtown Seoul (with the exception of dog 🙂 ). There’s one *huge* place called Han Kook which is like a whole *supermarket* for Korean and Japanese groceries, then there’s 99 Ranch which is a supermarket for Vietnamese and Chinese groceries… and so forth. If you post a recipe for it, I can find the ingredients for it here in the Bay Area :).
.-= last blog ..Crashing halt =-.
I’ll do that Badtux. 🙂 I love Asian food also. We have many Vietnamese & Korean restaurants here. We have just about everything here! I even went to a Himalayan Cafe here once! 😀 One of the good things about living in a truly ‘multi-cultural’ State. 🙂
Here’s a Korean Wiki:
Wikipedia – Korean cuisine
And one for Vietnam:
Wikipedia – Vietnamese cuisine
I also found a site with some nice Korean Recipe’s:
Korean Recipes
Hope you find something you like. 🙂
BTW, our Multicultural TV channel had a weekly special on Asian food. Apparently we have 55 Korean Restaurants here. One of my fave dishes is Salt and pepper squid
More here (the site also has dishes from many other cultures also):
SBS – Korean recipes and Korean cuisine
Oh… I checked my bookmarks. 🙂 I use this site as a reference sometimes, they have something over 400,000 recipe’s, and I found over 300 Korean there! 🙂
Recipezaar – 303 Korean recipes
It’s a good one to keep as a reference. 🙂
As has been alluded to earlier, I am moving. I am moving into the middle of Santa Clara’s Koreatown, yum :). There are reviews on Yelp of 77 Korean restaurants in Santa Clara, CA. I can well believe it, within three blocks of my new place there’s at least a half dozen Korean restaurants (and a pho place and a taqueria and a Paki restaurant and a Mongolian restaurant and Japanese restaurant and and … well, just lots of good food, 62 real restaurants within a half-mile walk in addition to a McDonald’s :)). So anyhow, I will check out the links above, and hopefully when I get unpacked I shall go get the supplies for a good bibimbap or bokum or something :). (Note: English transliterations are so touchy, I’ve seen so many different ones for these dishes!).
Just call me…
– Badtux the Soon-to-be-waddling Penguin
.-= last blog ..Crashing halt =-.
How about this then:
The Korean Secret Garden in Santa Clara – Bi Won Restaurant
I came across this comment on a SF cuisine board…
I had a wonderful time sampling food in SF and Santa Cruz! I didn’t want to leave… I have to say, they were my fave places in the USA. 🙂
Speaking of Yelp, I found this:
Hankook Supermarket
“Hands down, the best Korean Grocery store in Northern Cali.”
Hope that helps. 🙂
And… Speaking of backpacks and heavy gear (and yeah, boots were a pain! Especially as ours were Kevlar reinforced.) Near the end of my tour, my team volunteered to field test a new backpack. Was exceptionally good! Had much better compartment layout, was tougher and lighter, and had an inbuilt insulated water bladder that could take several liters of water, and it was cooler than ambient. 🙂
On several missions, we had to also lug my Steyr AMR in two man-portable field packs. The weapon alone was 18kg (about 40 lbs) plus the heavy secure portable field packs, sighting gear (daylight, low-light and IR scopes) and ammo (which was heavy given it was 15.2mm caliber ultra-high velocity APFSDS projectile. Had a muzzle velocity of approx 1.55 km/s or mach 4.5 & point blank was 1.5km). We also had to carry a gillies suit and other special equipment. Though generally on those missions, we were dropped off by chopper when possible, or some other means of transport, and gear was distributed among the 6 man team, except for the fwd scout. 🙂
Oops! Meant to put the uRL for the supermarket… looks BIG!!
Hankook Supermarket
Yes, it *is* big, Kryten! I shop there from time to time, they have a huge set of salad-bar looking things with a great selection of banchan (Korean side dishes) already pre-prepared and ready to put into to-go containers and taken home. Dining on spiced bean sprouts, kimchi of various sorts (cabbage, cucumber, root), fried tofu, etc., none of which needs cooking… quite a nice quick noon meal on a weekend, yum! They also have a small grill area with a few tables set up where you can take your ingredients and they’ll toss some rice and your ingredients into a hot pot for you so you can have bibimbop right there in the store! To say that I’m happy that I’m moving *much* closer to this store is an understatement, I’m salivating just thinking about it even though I just finished eating some tasty Korean noodles and tuna :).
Regarding the Corner Restaurant, disaster overtook them. I went by there a few months back to get some bibimbap and there was a notice in the window, “Closed By Order Of The Health Department”. Siiiigh! I hate when that happens! However, that’s okay, I went to the Korean tofu place next door and got some soondubu (spicy tofu soup) instead ;). Sadly, that was the end of that restaurant, the sign is gone and now there’s just a ‘For Lease’ sign in the window, but hey, there’s 76 other Korean restaurants to try in Santa Clara so I’m not exactly distraught :).
Ohhh.. That’s a shame about the Corner Restaurant. 🙁 Happens hear too often also! Still… some do survive somehow! My fave place here (a Cypriot Restaurant) has been operating since 1935! And, as you say, there are plenty more! 😀
I figured you’d know that market. 🙂 I thought I’d post it for others if they were interested. Looked very impressive! If the quality is as good as it’s size… Wow! It might almost be worth me even moving there… 😆 I didn’t get to see Santa Clara, but as I said, I did really like Santa Cruz. If they are at all similar, I’d like it (even though Cruz is mainly a University town, unlike many others, it’s not that noticeable. 🙂
All the Sushi places here are being put on notice or closing! They found up to 80% of them has serious health issues! Including
Sushi warning
🙁
I’ll never eat Sushi here again! I actually did get severe food poisoning about 10 years ago after having Sushi for lunch in Sydney! I spent over 21 hours in emergency! I was on a morphene IV injector that gave me a shot every half-hour. I LOVE morphene! 😀
Ya know… Hospital staff are REALLY not very bright! I’d just had food poisoning, had my stomach pumped, and been pumped full of morphene for over 20 hours… and they insisted I had to have breakfast before I left!! It came up faster than it went down… and I told them it would! Idiots.
Next time I want Sushi & Sushimi etc… I’ll go to Japan! 😉
maltese cuisine? you mean those cute little fluffy white dogs have a cuisine?! or do you mean they are the cuisine? not so sure i want to know about this one… 😛
srsly, though, it does sound interesting. i’m a fan of anything even remotely mediterranean.
Kryten, the thing about Santa Clara is that it looks like a typical American strip mall suburban community… until you notice the Korean writing on many of the shops and restaurants in those strip malls. I.e., there isn’t much to “see” here, Santa Clara doesn’t even have a downtown (it was only a few blocks near Santa Clara University, the university being a Catholic university that was the whole reason the town was founded in the first place, it got run-down so they tore it down to build a mall, but then never built the mall because really, a mall by a university far from any freeway and barely a mile away from the biggest mall in the area, Valley Fair Mall, just doesn’t make any sense). But anyhow, it’s a nice place to live, but not much of a place to visit, except for the part along El Camino Real where all the ethnic shops and restaurants are and even that looks like a typical American strip mall other than the writing on the buildings (and it’s not just Korean, there’s all sorts of ethnic shops and restaurants here, though the Koreans are most numerous). So you didn’t really miss much :).
I do visit Santa Cruz from time to time. It’s a cool funky town. I like walking along the waterfront and people-watching, humans do the strangest things ;). They’ve renovated downtown a bit since you came through, assuming you came through before the Loma Prieta quake… the quake shook down several buildings downtown, so they went through and did seismic fixes on everything, and renovated the streets and sidewalks too. It’s gone a bit upscale compared to what it was, but still plenty funky and cool.
And of course San Francisco remains San Francisco. I do visit there from time to time but mostly for things like festivals and bands that never make it down here because well, sleepy suburban towns aren’t much for nightlife. I certainly don’t go there for food, we have plenty down here in the South Bay.
Regarding sushi: I will only eat raw fish that I caught and killed myself ;). But really, if the Great Penguin had intended mankind to eat raw fish, then He would have never created fire. Just sayin’ :).
LOL Yeah… I first visited CA around ’85 and was invited to Cruz in late ’89 by a small company that was based there called Imagine That! It was a small husband/Wife software company at the time… It’s good to see it’s a lot bigger now, though I have no idea if they still own it. I was distro here for their simulation tool he wrote called Extend (at that time). There was a quake while I was on the phone talking to the wife getting directions before I set off from where I was staying in Cruz to their house for dinner. I heard a loud noise and a crash and an exclamation from the lady over the phone, and the building i was in was shaking. She said that the back of the house had just fallen off! I was almost knocked down. I left to go to the house, and the town was a mess. My friends had lost the back section of the house (mainly kitchen and laundry). They were luckier than many. So yeah… I remember the Loma Prieta quake… was… October, I think… My memory isn’t what it was! I know it was near the end of ’89. A relative of theirs phoned to say that the ‘ocean was disappearing’! We discovered later that the water level in Cruz harbor had dropped about 3ft, and half an hour later, a tsunami hit Monterey! Part of the Oakland Bay Bridge disappeared also. I stayed longer than I was originally intending and helped with cleanup. My recent Military experience helped a lot… I even helped deal with some looting from damaged buildings, though there was more of that going in SF apparently. And because of that quake, I missed my only chance to go to a World Series game! My friend had gotten good tickets for the third game (I think) at Candlestick Park. I didn’t even care who was playing! Oh well. 🙂
When I got back here, my *boss* showed me photo’s, apparently taken by a U-2 from Beale AFB. They were amazingly good! You could even see some structural details. 😉 That was just before I bid ‘fare thee well’ to the DIO and the company I worked for that they basically controlled, and went back to a ‘legitimate’ job in Engineering. 🙂
Sushi is great… so long as you can trust the people preparing it!! (Otherwise, the Japanese would have ceased to exist long ago!) 😉 I’ll never eat it here again however. I’m not known for taking *stupid* risks. 😉