Coyo

fly blood

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:04:56 GMT

There was a fly on the wall, and I shot it with a rubber band. It left a red mark.

goats of Chabot

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:38:18 GMT

The neighbor's motion sensitive lights tripped off this morning at five, presumably sensing the dawn. Nothing was moving outside, but they went one at five, and did not stop going off. I took a shower and went for a walk at Lake Chabot, not too far from our place.

I took a trail that I usually walk on. It winds over a few hills and through a few wooded areas. This time, I saw something new - goats. There were two areas with temporary electric fences. They were wired with car batteries. I only saw a single goat in one pen. The other contained dozens.

The goats had all sorts of horns and different coats. When I approached the pen, lots of goats got up and started moving towards one side. They were mostly quiet, with the occasional bleat. The weather was overcast and cool - weather I love.

guns and grey

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:23:41 GMT

So the NRA called this morning with the message that the UN is going to institute a world wide gun ban. I paused my shower and listened to a recorded message from their vice president of a conspiracy that involved Hillary Clinton. They were asking for like 140$.

Aliens! I told them. The aliens must be behind it. They calmly said they didn't think that was it, and asked for money. Had they opposed the patriot act and attacks on other freedoms, I would be more supportive. I don't oppose gun ownership. I am both a little leery of people having the ability to carry around an implied threat of death towards others. I'm also leery of so much control being exorcized by a government against people. How dangerous should people allowed to be is something I've never been able to answer for myself.

That doubt taints me in the eyes to whom the world is black and white. Their gutshot reaction has the advantage of being very quick in a fast paced dangerous world. Given two shades of grey, the slightly darker one will be black compared to the pure white of the slightly lighter one. To the black and white people, there has to be a good guy and a bad guy, even for things like the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. In a debate, you can't say anything good about the 'bad guy' or bad about the 'good guy'.

I am cursed with the urge to dig deeper in most cases. Still, I have trouble not thinking of the Bush administration in the worst possible light. It's very easy for me to instantly beleive when I hear things like

Bush drove drunk
he drank in office
he didn't like Harry Potter books because of witchcraft
he went AWOL
his administration desired something like 9/11 to consolidate power
he was swayed by biblical references in military reports
he told the then French President that going into Iraq was to defeat the demons Gogg and Magogg

Each of the above could be true, fits with my mental image of the man, and is nearly impossible to disprove. The man can be judged harshly just on the decisions he was known to make. We don't need the above myth to demonize him any more than that.

more sad

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:28:55 GMT

Murphy the Hedgehog died. I think she went into hibernation due to the cold, and warming her back up made her go into shock. I'm very sad about this. I feel like such a bad parent. She didn't make it to a year and should have made 10.

We buried her last night, along with a favourite toy, underneath a favourite blanket and in her cosy little stuffed fabric sleeping cup. We planted a blood orange tree on top of her. Will think of her as the tree grows.

What I'll remember about the little hedgehog.

Her nose
Her ears
The cute little whiffling squeaks she would make when happy
The tea kettle just about to boil hisses she would make when upset
how she liked to run up my chest and cuddle in my neck
how she liked to snatch food
how she liked to help Tracy cook
how she liked to watch TV with us

One day, she got loose. I paniced. I looked all around the house and did not find her. I was worried she had fallen down the ash chute in the fireplace and dug ash out of there. I blocked it off after I didn't find anything, so that she couldn't fall in it. I was not at work that day, and I felt something on my toe. At first, she nudged my toe, then nipped it, saying "here I am, I want to go back in my cage now".

lost post from months back

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:22:55 GMT

Live Journal found this entry that I had meant to post but didn't

I've not posted for a while. Not only am I lazy, but things have been happening. Click below for more.

Saturn's Return? The astrologers say its a great time of upheaval. That return happened now quite a while for me. I'm sure something dooms me to not play by the rules. Certainly, the time of saturn's return for me was tumultous.

This year is another doozy. The last year was an other doozy. The year before was as well. I have moved once a year since college. I have lost count of the number of addresses I've had, the flights I've taken.

I find myself moved from baking back to programming, and specifically analytics programming. That means I work with math moreso than I've done in a half decade. I hired on to an internet dating company, later to discover that their largest source of income is .. well, porn. They call it adult dating. The irony is that this job might have the best path to AI development than any of my previous jobs since Kick, mostly because its laid back enough and we're not micromanaged. We are busy, but its not of the 80 hour week variety busy.

This year started off with the suicide death of a coworker. Paul was probably 10-15 years older than me, a NASA geek who worked on many missions. I'm not sure how he went from NASA to a dating site, but he's dead now. He left us with a few dozen O'Reilly books and we built a memorial library for him.

In the week where he died, another coworker had a car accident, another had a flooded apartment and something else sucky happened to yet another. Best to get that crap out of the way first.

On a more positive note, the house is lovely. We don't have *quite* enough storage for everything, but its very close. My commute is about an hour each way. Remove the traffic and it would cut in half.
fenowyn
is going to be talking to her old employers about having a position there and probably a rather high baking position. There's great potential.

Well, I'm alive. Tom says hi and meow. Huck says meow a lot. Hedgehogs are cute. We'll have pictures.

where am I?

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:22:06 GMT

I've not posted for a while. Not only am I lazy, but things have been happening. Click below for more.

Saturn's Return? The astrologers say its a great time of upheaval. That return happened now quite a while for me. I'm sure something dooms me to not play by the rules. Certainly, the time of saturn's return for me was tumultous.

This year is another doozy. The last year was an other doozy. The year before was as well. I have moved once a year since college. I have lost count of the number of addresses I've had, the flights I've taken.

I find myself moved from baking back to programming, and specifically analytics programming. That means I work with math moreso than I've done in a half decade. I hired on to an internet dating company, later to discover that their largest source of income is .. well, porn. They call it adult dating. The irony is that this job might have the best path to AI development than any of my previous jobs since Kick, mostly because its laid back enough and we're not micromanaged. We are busy, but its not of the 80 hour week variety busy.

This year started off with the suicide death of a coworker. Paul was probably 10-15 years older than me, a NASA geek who worked on many missions. I'm not sure how he went from NASA to a dating site, but he's dead now. He left us with a few dozen O'Reilly books and we built a memorial library for him.

In the week where he died, another coworker had a car accident, another had a flooded apartment and something else sucky happened to yet another. Best to get that crap out of the way first.

On a more positive note, the house is lovely. We don't have *quite* enough storage for everything, but its very close. My commute is about an hour each way. Remove the traffic and it would cut in half. fenowyn is going to be talking to her old employers about having a position there and probably a rather high baking position. There's great potential.

Well, I'm alive. Tom says hi and meow. Daphne rubs her cheek. Huck says meow a lot. Hedgehogs are cute. We'll have pictures.

hunting down the houses

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 03:32:13 GMT

Hey folks,
Am looking for a house and have pictures of the following houses. I'm curious as to what you think of the houses we are looking at currently. I have pictures at
http://www.bigpanda.com/~wolf/house/index.php.

Note : I'm not a photographer
Note2 : I don't have a coolio photograph program, so I wrote a nearly brainless one.

new home?

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 06:43:35 GMT

Well, I visited Hayward at night. I wanted to get a feel for the neighborhood. Hayward has a mixed reputation, with dangerous neighborhoods close to Oakland. This neighborhood is further east, up the hills not far from a university.

There is a cute house up there that fenowyn and I might buy. It's up the hills, 2 or three blocks from Mission St. There is a horse farm visible from the front gate. You can hear roosters. One block north is just hill or (mountain depending on your point of view).

It's a one story with no basement of course. A decent sized yard though. It would be about 20 miles from my work and about 20 miles from the Copenhagen bakery.

bye bye Michigan

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:29:43 GMT

I'm leaving Michigan. I didn't get to explore much of the state. I feel weird about leaving. I will be back in the Bay Area by the end of the week.

I experienced many things helping out in the bakery. I'm sure the experience has changed me in ways. I don't know how permanent those changes are.

I should be looking forward to my new job more than I am. It's a perl programmer position combing through data. I do like that sort of thing. I'm maybe a little shell shocked and am expecting to go "whoopee" at any moment, but that's not hit me yet either.

I drempt that two bald friends (they were dream friends...not actual people that I really know) had their skulls removed and were walking around with their brains exposed. It was uncomfortable for me to watch them, and see their brains kind of wiggle a bit. They were so exposed and I kept hoping they would put the skulls back on soon. I think one of them had misplaced their skull, too.

I feel sad, weary, restless and scared about the future.

dream of peace

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:55:30 GMT

The setting was a burned out marketplace/mall/grocery store in the desert. There were no walls taller than about 3 feet tall. It was maze-like and there were snipers from both sides that would come there. I was on one side for whatever reason and had the mission of clearing out snipers and setting a trap for them. I really didn't want to do that, so I just farted around there. I was too late, the snipers were returning so I just got up and walked nonchalantly out of the store, passing by the snipers who noticed me but did nothing. I had left some apples there, and I heard the people who came to the store talking about them. They were Palestinian and even if they were snipers, they really didn't care to fire a shot. Eventually, a tacit and unspoken agreement was made by both sides to not get to any fighting. We'd hang out and talk mostly and after a while, there were more groceries in the shop. War was raging elsewhere, but it was deliberately being procrastinated here.

reading live journal

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:54:17 GMT

I was reading live journal and I hear the noise of the truck. It was the Dawn delivery truck that made the turn on our corner. I had thought they didn't see anyone downstairs in the bakery and took off.

I ran downstairs with my keys and wallet dressed in a bathrobe and in barefeet. I waved to the truck and they kept on going. I see them turn a corner so I jump into our delivery van, barrel through the light making a turn, then heading to that corner where their truck was. The low speed persuit ended at a donut shop. I roll down the window and chat with the guys. No, they didn't have our order. This was the second time in a row that they had screwed up. The delivery folks were nice enough to call in to their office and they called us to reschedule. Some bakery with a similar name in Ann Arbor got our shipment apparently.

welp, the plan

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:58:06 GMT

Just woke up from a 4 hour nap. In an other four hours, I'll be back at work in the bakery, doing stuff and things. We have a small order for a small coffee shop in Saginaw (a nearby larger city than Bay City). Sleep either comes or it doesn't. I might go downstairs and much on spaghetti brought from one of the many spaghetti fundraisers in Bay City.

The plan these days? Get a tech job back in the west coast or east coast. Don't particularly care right now. The bakery's drivin me freakin' nuts. It's the lack of anything else in my life other than that thing. I seem cursed to try something new once a year. I'd go gladly with something old.

Might be fun to work at a search engine company. Might be hell too. Better the devil that I don't know. I've been putting together a portfolio of sorts. Another experiment. This one hosted on bigpanda. I will probably dig out my midi music generator and maybe animal learning game to include in the portfolio.

The "new jersey" category is kinda fun. It comes up with what you might expect, but then includes
a category for Kevin Smith.

healthcare

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 17:10:05 GMT

If could open a non-profit healthcare company, this is how it would be. It would be based upon the thesis that people who strive to be healthy would tend to wind up being so, and that active health maintenance reduces the overall cost of heatlhcare.

There would be no group plan, just a flat rate for all.

Twice yearly checkups are not merely free, they are mandatory.
Doctors would be able to perscribe smoking cessation, draft exercise regiemes and general health maintenence counciling.

Covering all right off the bat in this country would not be possible. This company would only be open to minors initially and those without pre-existing conditions. That policy would continue until the company has enough capitol to insure everyone else.

America

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 14:55:16 GMT

Happy Birthday America!

I watched the fireworks last night (yes, last night), and Bay City does a fine fireworks display. The rockets are launched from an island and the shore of the Saginaw river and we found seats about 100 yards from the launch point.

I have done a little traveling in my life and I do have to say that there is nothing quite like the US with its mix of people, quick adaptive culture. It's not a country, a government, a people. It's the culture. It's problems and evils and sins are the problems, evils and sins of humans in general. The ability to genocide, enslave, erase cultures and religion and ideas, this is intrinsic in people in general, and not any specific group or race. Vigilance, luck and caring are the only defense.

nightmares

Thu, 17 May 2007 19:53:03 GMT

I don't have nightmares like normal people, but lately maybe I have been. Not nightmares, just rather bad dreams. It's been a constant stream of stress dreams. At least I have been dreaming. It's been a while since I was in that world. It's as real to me as any other reality, just not necessarily as seemingly stable.

Walking around the Jersey shore, the tidal wave was gathering. I thought it was further than it was, then it rained down around. This wasn't life threatening, but was a deep change in the me of me and of my dream companions. Things were flooded then, and we were floating with it.

Last night, I got on a bus going the wrong direction. I would turn about when I reached Essexville. The road was from an earlier dream with little towns along the way. As the bus was making its way, a woman in a convertable smashed into a front fender of the bus. We stopped the bus and tried to see if she was allright. I called on my cell but the police or ambulance were not coming. She seemed all right, but then I had to wake up. I had mis-set the alarm and I had to wake up early to go to a conference that HealthMedia put together.

mind hacking

Fri, 11 May 2007 17:05:16 GMT

Long ago in my long evaporated past, I was
a rather different person than I am now. I was
shocked to learn at 5 or 6 (my Mom's mom was
alive then, and this was on a trip to visit her. That is how I arrive at the age)
that humans were animals. This horribly offended me and I wished to deny it, but I realized I could not.
At that young age, I wanted to be a scientist, to play with technology.

When I was a little older, I saw Star Wars and decided soon after
that I wanted to build R2D2 and C3PO. I suppose the reverberations
of that want still constitute the framework of my mind.
The old me may be diluted by time, but what it set up endures in me.

I have a scant bit of time before I must head north back to
Bay City and the bakery. I have prepared myself as best I can
with sleep and very little caffine through the week.
The accursed (yet occasionally blessed) bakery tears and rends at us,
it has swallowed us and shreaded us and is ripping us apart.
Right now, I don't know if we can survive this thing. It's eaten all
money, time, life and relaxation. It has the hint of a promise of
more relaxing times, but only if we get dependable help, and Bay City seems to have little of that.

rain in ann arbor

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:14:21 GMT

Today it is raining in Ann Arbor. Lorena McKinnet
is playing Sunday and there are tickets to get,
but the bakery calls on Monday, and who can resist
that siren call? Business is steady, our oldest
employee succumbed to stress and quit (either that,
or the camera watching over the till made her
nervous).
In any case, we had to do the tacky thing and put
a camera to watch over the till. Since that was
put in place, the till has been balancing very
closely.
Things will be rough without her for a while,
but there was little she did that
required all that much training. Even I made
decent looking napoleons on the first try.

Darth Vader's bathroom

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:58:32 GMT

Darth Vader is a busy guy I'm sure. He is probably
always on his feet, doesn't have much time to do
laundry, go to the store or go for a walk. His
work his hard and he almost never takes a break.
Every so often, he allows himself a short 10 min
bathroom break. You see that happen in Empire Strikes
Back and even there he is interrupted.
I can sympathize after a crazy few hours in the bakery.
There are days where you on the counter and a steady
stream of customers if coming in, and everyone else
is insanely busy. I tend to work more quickly and
even more accurately when I have to go to the
bathroom bad. It allows for extra focus some how,
but when I can finally pull away for a few moments
and lock that door, just sitting down for those
five minutes feels amazing.

twilight zone

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 04:20:38 GMT

We ran out of heavy cream and there is a cake due to-morrow that requires some. While shopping at the largest grocery store on the east side of town, I could not find any. I asked a clerk who had never heard of it. 'Heavy Cream?' 'Whipping Cream'? I was pointed to the cans of spray whipping cream crap. I asked the greeter who made a phone call about it. An older man, he recalled that his mother used it to make whipped cream long ago. It is as if the stuff has been edited out of the history of Bay City somehow.

On a related note, I roused fenowyn from sleep to ask for directions to the larger grocery store on the other side of town. "Cross the bridge" she said, "and come to the light. That light has a dirty pastry bag someone threw on the floor....*mumble*". She's not always coherent when woken up suddenly.

where I live

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 02:56:05 GMT

I live on a flat across from a church in Bay City. Above me is a flat roof and below me is a bakery. The flat was carved up into two apartments some while ago in history. For some reason, the floors are not level. They are not level by some inches which is unnerving. In one room, there is a four inch gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. The flat could have a significant amount of space if the hallway separating the apartments was not there and there were only one kitchen. Our things are unpacked and scattered throughout the apartment. Some day we will have time to unpack and make a place to live. Not today or tomorrow or this week even.

Sometimes when I sleep, bread is baked below. There is a delay of about 1/2 hour for the scents to make it to my nose, so I smell the past. It is usually a good smell, though it was once horrible when I was sick with a domino's pizza (it was very late, they were nearby) stomach virus.

I do not know what is happening much outside of the bakery at this point. I have to make the occasional supply run, but I have not filled up my gas tank since January.

the return of the judge

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 03:57:17 GMT

It was an other busy day in the bakery. A UPS man was dispatched to take 100 pounds of flour back to our importer. He was expecting one 20 pound bag in a box, not two fifty pound sacks of the stuff. We wasn't being entirely pleasant, and he lets one loose. An awful sulfur smell came right from his direction and lingered in the air around the coffee area. It is then that I see the shining face of the judge walk back into the bakery to give us an other chance. It is then when I see that they are cracking lots of eggs in the back. The judge does buy a few things, but I suspect I will never see him in the bakery again, after seeing what he saw and smelling what the UPS man delivered. Five minutes later, the air was clean and bakery smelling again.

the laminations of the women

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 04:57:22 GMT

Croissants are yummy. A plain butter croissant is one of my favorite breakfast bread type things. We make croissants and they are pretty reasonable. At this point, we don't make pure butter croissants, but what we have is tasty none the less.

Our croissants are not all that popular. People here are not that familiar with them, and consider them something to use as a dinner roll and slather button on top of. They are less popular with the men than the women...except for the ham and cheese croissants. People will stop in and get half a dozen of those in the early morning. We bake the ham and cheese right into them. "Ya got any of them ham rolls?" is a common question.

If you look closely at a real croissant, you will see that the dough is flaky and layered. I will reveal a magic trick of baking, a secret. The dough is laminated so that you will have many layers of dough separated by a layer of butter, then curled into the croissant shape. There is a nifty device called a sheeter that is essentially, a giant automated rolling pin. Take an 8 pound block of dough and use the sheeter to make it into a rectangle. Cover 1/3 of the rectangle with 2 pounds of butter or margarine. We use a butter-margarine blend. Yes, that is 2 pounds of butter to 8 pounds of dough that already has some butter in it. Fold the remaining 2/3rds of uncovered dough over the butter and join. Now you have a layer of dough, a layer of butter, a layer of dough. Sheet this thinner until it is a similar sized rectangle. Fold it like a letter going into an envelope. Now you have 3 layers of butter. Repeat the process until you have 9, then 27 layers of butter. You get the picture.

The sheeter saves lots of time. It is an old sheeter though, and if the dough is misbehaving, butter will splat out of the dough with a rude, asmatic sound. If that happens too much, you curse at it, do what you can, and make cinnamon rolls or sticky buns out of it. Those are good, too, and a touch more profitable.

minus soup

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 19:36:20 GMT

When I was around ten, I read a book called 'The Phantom Tollbooth'. It was set in a fantasy land based on school subjects such as math and spelling. The protagonist had gotten lost in these mathematical mines and had wandered across a mining team. He was hungry and they shared their food with him. It was 'minus soup'. As he ate, he became more and more hungry. It was explained to him that eventually, hunger would wear off gradually and when he wasn't really hungry anymore, it was time for more minus soup.

My schedule kinda sucks. I wake up utterly miserable and am sleepy and semi-functional the first few hours of the day. As the day wears on, I get into a groove and start to wake up. Eventually, I reach a point where the second wind is gone and I have to go back to sleep. I dread going to sleep. It is my minus soup.

dollar store

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:56:45 GMT

Walked into a dollar store to buy salt. I was struck by its post apocalyptic nature. The scraps of society are peddled here in no particular order. There is no target customer other than a cheap one. Nothing really made much sense.

A headline of a magazine announced "First photos! Jen's new nose". Good 80's music was playing.

Yes, I had to buy salt there. We depleted our 50 pound bag of salt.

the donut people, Paczki, and the judge.

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 01:13:36 GMT

There are a good many people in this neighborhood who like donuts. When they hear the word 'bakery', a magic pen edits the thought for them and they hear 'place to get cheap donuts'. This place is the 'South End' of Bay City, populated with (naturally) 'Sou'denders'. They like great quantities of food for little money. Most like fried food, they are friendly and are frank. The South End of Bay City was populated by Polish immigrants. There are people here who still speak the language. One customer was from Szczecin. I think that is neat, because that is the one city in Poland that I visited on my travels. The more recent immigrants and the older folk do appreciate the crunchy crusted bagettes bread that we do. One sweet little old man said he really wanted some before he died.

The donut people will come by and say "You got any donuts?" not looking for anything else. If we have them, they will buy them and comment on the price. If we don't have them, they will shake their heads and leave in a huff. Danish are too girly for them, but if you can convince them to try the ham and cheese whole wheat croissants, they will be back.

Along with the "got any donuts" question, the question that drives fenowyn and me most nuts is "gonna have any Paczki?" (pronounced poonchkies) question. These are a variety of fruit filled very deep fried donut that is traditionally served on Fat Tuesday. We are closed on Tuesday. Our deep fryer holds two tiny baskets. The other bakeries in the area produces hundreds of dozens of paczki every year before lent. We could produce maybe 5 or 6 dozen in a night. Or we could leave a little serving tray filled with crumbs and say "sold out". The second choice makes us about the same amount of money, costs nothing and will have the same effect because the first person through the door would buy them all and be upset that there are not more.

The judge would be a great customer. He came buy and bought a lot of stuff and liked it. He came back and bought a large coffee cake for a meeting with some other judges. We made a big boo-boo. We read the amount wrong and what he got was a coffee cake that was raw in the middle. He came back and we gave him his money back. He provided us the dissected cake and yes indeed, he was correct. He had bought some bread that was too dark. We now use a thermometer for every batch of bread.