hey [five, six syllables]! I'm [number] stories high! The other day I was listening to gabber.fm and got curious about the source of a staple sample, which turns out to be the song Brain Crack by minor "post-grunge" artist Tracy Bonham. (Without looking, my guess was pre-grunge, but whatever.) Bonham's hit single was Mother Mother. The album copped the 1996 nomination for Best Alternative Album, but who remembers any song besides Mother Mother from that album? Not me. Can you even name the album? Though... (...more)

Yep, that "pizza" and p'zolo sampler burned my stomach for days. Even the lentil-barley porridge was abrasive after that. A couple pints of SR surely didn't help. Also, enough sodium to provoke a bit of swelling characteristic of hypertension. So tonight I'm revisiting whole-grain pasta and chickpeas dressed with olive oil as a troubed-tummy-safe meal. Smilk has also been helpful to soothe without sweetness or sodium. Totally unrelated, I re-assembled my nice office chair Friday. It's not really so nice... (...more)

Someday I'll remember that Pizza the Hutt is a digestive challenge. Had to run out for antacids even after a long drink of smilk and a muffin to soothe my stomach this morning. I was distinctly underwhelmed with my attempt at barley last time, but I had ~3/4 cup dry left and couldn't see just throwing it away - so that's getting finished off today. And what did the directions say? simmer LOW until "tender but still chewy"? maybe I didn't let it get tender. Then mid-cook, I happened to be shuffling st... (...more)

My first lappy was an Inspiron 9200 with a massive 17" screen. Unfortunately it was also prone to display hardware failure. Dell did the right thing even though it first crapped out after it was out of warranty: had it picked up at their own expense and repaired it with very fast turn-around. I think I got the smaller but faster Vostro 1510 in 2008. I know I sprang for the shock-resistant HDD option after the miserable experience of hard drive failure and expensive data recovery. Eventually I retired fr... (...more)

Nearly breaking my lappy was as scary as it should be. So I got re-acquainted with TrueCrypt and Cobian, now at v11 ("Gravity"). I'd been kind of concerned about running down my thumbdrive capacity life with overwriting the whole volume each backup, but judging by the 11-minute backup time for about 1.5GB of data to a 60GB drive, apparently TrueCrypt doesn't work that way. So, that's good. I also ironed out automation for backup to a file volume on another external drive. That ran even faster, like, in ... (...more)