A blog
Tonight my yoga instructor read a poem about living in the moment, and then shared this quote from Kung-Fu Panda:
The Past is history; the Future’s a mystery, but Today is a Gift, that’s why it is called the Present.
Sure, it’s cheesy, but I thought it was cute. Made me want to see the movie.
One of the ads on my Facebook page today:
The ad links to a LinkedIn profile with a detailed resume. I wonder if this ad was targeted specifically at Microsoft employees?
Kenny and I had a few friends over for dinner on Saturday evening, and we decided that coconut ice cream would make a nice complement to the fresh mangoes that our friend DeAnn had offered to bring for dessert. There were several choices of coconut products at the store, including cans of coconut milk, dehydrated shredded coconut, and fresh coconuts in the produce section. We opted to try a combination of fresh coconuts and canned milk for our ice cream.
There was just one problem once we arrived home from the store: we had no idea how to actually crack open the coconut’s hard shell to get at the goodness inside. We looked at our array of knives, and couldn’t imagine that any of them would be particularly effective. After a short aborted attempt with our bread knife (I don’t recommend this, we actually bent one of the teeth), I suggested getting out our saw:
Kenny made some progress with this approach, but it was slow going, and we worried that it was unsanitary. So he asked me to consult the web. A search for “how to open a coconut” took me to howtoopenacoconut.com, naturally.
Following those instructions, Kenny made quick work of the coconut:
Using a hammer and nail to punch a hole in the coconut
Letting the juice drain out through the hole
Now, the fun part – smashing the coconut to bits with the hammer
Et, voila!
Unfortunately, once we finally got the coconut open it just didn’t taste quite right. We ended up throwing it out and opting for a bag of shredded coconut from the grocery store. But at least we learned something; I suspect that our newly-acquired coconut opening skills will come in quite handy on our next trip to visit Kenny’s parents in Florida.
We used this recipe for the ice cream. It was delicious.
A commenter pointed out (not politely, but accurately) that I have not posted any new content about WPF in some time, which reminded me that I never actually wrote about the job transition that I made over two years ago. I apologize for that, in particular to those who had been subscribed to this blog hoping to see new WPF tidbits.
In late 2006 (after .Net Framework 3.0 shipped), I transitioned over to the Exchange Server team, where I’ve been immersed in the humble task of making email more reliable, accessible, and easier to manage for hundreds of millions of users. In the process, I’ve learned a good deal about building large-scale server applications and how to ship software as a service.
But unfortunately for this blog, up until very recently, the details of my work had been confidential. Now that we’ve shipped Beta 1 of Exchange Server 2010 (to much cheering, woohoo!), I’m at liberty to share. However, I expect that if I decide to use blogging as the medium to do so, I’ll start a separate blog for that purpose. This blog started out as a personal blog, made some forays into the work space, and has come full circle back to the personal realm. To avoid any further confusion, I think it’ll stay there. If you’re interested in hearing about my various experiments with cooking, photography, various arts and crafts projects, international travel, happenings around the Seattle area, and my occasional ramblings about local and national political issues, then stay tuned. If you were here for the WPF content, I promise that I won’t be offended if you unsubscribe (assuming you haven’t already).
Of course, many in the WPF community have found the old WPF posts helpful (and from some of the comments that still crop up, I know that many still do), so I absolutely plan to keep them here for posterity. But I don’t expect that I’ll begin posting about WPF again anytime soon (here or elsewhere), as I just haven’t been spending time with that technology. To those of you who are using it – best of luck, and please leverage the current WPF team and the vibrant WPF/Silverlight community! Although I’ve moved on, I still look back on my WPF days fondly and I’m always excited to hear about interesting applications of the technology.
My best friend Anjali (aka the Alternative Homemaker) and I taught ourselves the basics of knitting one summer when we were home from college, using a “Knitting for Dummies” book, but we never had enough motivation to actually knit beyond a few rows of anything. A few months ago, she had the brilliant idea of sending me a couple of extremely fat knitting needles and a ball of thick yarn, to make the process go faster. I had a bit of time on my hands last night and decided to give it another go.
A quick YouTube search on the phrase “how to knit” revealed this extremely useful video, and I was off and running:
I got through a few rows, and noticed that it definitely goes faster once you get the hang of it. I have a flight this evening, so will try to get some more done on the plane (I’m pretty sure TSA allows knitting needles through airport security). At this rate, I should have a pretty new green scarf just in time for summer…
I seem to have lost my favorite baba ghanoush recipe, but this one worked great in a pinch. I didn’t have any cilantro, so I skipped it, and I only used half the quantity of olive oil (1/4 cup rather than 1/2). Yum.
Half-eaten baba ghanoush
I’ve been meaning to write up some thoughts on the ridiculous spectacle that was yesterday’s nationwide “Tea Party” protest. But I just came across this post from Kos that quite accurately sums up my feelings on the matter, the following paragraph in particular:
What was the message? Too much taxes? I didn’t see many bank executives and Wall Street types out on the streets. And coming on the heels of the biggest tax cut in American history, almost entirely directed at the middle class, this message didn’t have much salience. Furthermore, the theme of these protests “taxation without representation”, was pretty silly considering that these people did have representation. It’s just that they lost the elections, which sort of happens in a democracy. “Representation” doesn’t mean you always get your way, it means that you have a vote. So it was an indefensible frame to base the protests around.
Andrew Sullivan on the brouhaha over Michael Phelps taking a bong hit:
…the only conceivable news is that a 23 year-old had a good time at a party, breaking no professional rules since he was not competing when he was goofing off.
And, seriously, does anyone think that smoking pot would give him an unfair advantage in the pool? Please. When on earth are we going to grow up as a culture?
I love spicy food. So does Kenny, and I believe his tolerance for spice has risen since he started hanging out with me. And I think that the couple of Seattle Thai restaurants that we frequent are actually quite good about preparing their food to the requested level of spice – a good 4-star curry from Jamjuree or Thai Tom is really wonderful. We had a difficult time imagining that the Thai food in Thailand could actually be better.
Everyone warned us that the Thai food would be spicier in Thailand, and we were excited to see just what that meant. But so far, we’ve been disappointed – all the food we’ve eaten has been delicious, but it seems that everywhere we go, the spice has been toned down to cater to tourists. We’ve gotten into the habit of ordering anything on the menu that has “spicy” in its title, and pleading with the restaurant staff to add extra chilis, but to no avail. Fortunately we can always ask for extra chili flakes and chili oil to spice up the food ourselves after it arrives, but it’s not the same. And I know that the locals like their food spicy, we just need a way to communicate that we do too!
Obviously the answer is that we need to get off the tourist track a little more. In Phuket and Phi Phi that hasn’t been so easy, as we’ve been staying in the tourist towns near the beach. But now we’re on the lookout for side streets with food stalls where we can hopefully find some non-tourist food.
Delicious whole fish at Garden House Restaurant on Ko Phi Phi