Groundhog Day, 2011.
We got hammered

We feed a lot of wild critters in our backyard, and judging by the way they’ve recently been packing away the food, we’re in for a hard winter.

I bought our first snow blower last week – an attempt to stave off the brutal winter I see coming. (Like washing your car guarantees rain…reverse psychology.)

We’ll see what happens, but the threat of a hard winter made me think of 2011, when – on Groundhog’s Day – we got dumped on.

Look at that picture: Were it not for the antenna and wipers, it just looks like a weirdly-shaped snow drift. It was a powdery snow (thankfully), but it still took some time and effort to dig out of it all. (Why I never posted this pic but on da Facebook escapes me…fun pic)

Here’s to hoping this year does not bring a repeat of this snowpocalypse.

Old:

Newer – 2005:

GE Stove – 2014:

Back in 2005, we finally replaced the old, flesh-toned Caloric stove that came with the house with a fairly expensive stainless steel KitchenAid stove.

Should be the last stove we’ll even buy, right?

Not so much.

After nine years with the $1500 KitchenAid range – and $700+ in attempted repairs – it was time to cut our losses and get a new stove.

Bottom picture – a GE range that, so far, works.

We ditched the Caloric (top pic) for the simple reason that the oven wasn’t “as advertised” – Pizza in 12 minutes? Make it 15 and so on. Don’t know if was the age of the stove or design flaw, but the “having to guess oven cook times” was an issue. It came with the house, and since it was probably 20-30 years old, there were other issues, as well.

So we got a kick-ass, shiny KitchenAid stove.

Much good about it, but its basic flaw was simple: The oven (very) often would not start. Click click of the electronic starter and …. nothing. A week ago Saturday, I put a tray of enchiladas in the stove, fired it up, and all was good.

That’s the last time the stove started. We’ve tried literally dozens of times over the past week, and nothing. And this is, unfortunately, not unusual.

I mean, at the very base level, a stove should have burners and an oven that turn on (and then, unlike the Caloric, pass the other silly issues…). But. Burners start. Oven start. Base level.

The KitchenAid – after multiple “repairs” – never met this base level. (Burners: Good. Oven: Crapshoot.)

Hence new stove.

I don’t want to be writing about this stove in a few years/few repair visits….

I followed the run-up to the 2014 mid-term elections fairly closely (mainly on a national level), and – after last night’s election returns – I have two main take-aways from the whole process:

• Neither side really ran on what they would do in the future – ya know, if you elect me I’ll do this/that. Republicans ran – pretty successfully – on a “we’re not Obama” platform; Democrats – much less successfully – ran on “war on women” and so on. Both sides rooted in the past; what’cha going to do for me after I vote for you? __silence__
• The craploads of money – usually outside money poured into this election is: awesome, obscene, WTF? Take your pick. Just seems …. wrong …

I’ve been purchasing Dell Computers since before they were labeled “Dell” – they were PCs Unlimited, if I recall correctly.

I purchased a PC Unlimted 80286 (w/o math co-processor) with a then-girlfriend as our first computer around 1990(?).

It “just worked.” (Sound familiar?)

Since that time, I’ve personally purchased probably a dozen Dell-branded machines for personal use, and the same number for others for their personal/business use. And – with the occasional Gateway or Acer tossed in – have had Dell desktops at wherever I worked.

I’m a fan of the Dell desktops (for laptops, prefer ThinkPads or Macs).

That is, until recently.

Why?

Hard Drives.

Now, hard drive failure is a fact of life. That said, I’ve personally – on my home desktop units – have had only two disk failures over the dozen or so Dell desktops I’ve personally purchased – this goes back to the Pentium Pro model I purchased back in ~ 1998: More than a decade ago (hint: I recently put this machine offline not because of HD failure, but because the HD was too small [80G]). I’ve never personally had a HD failure on a work desktop.

Yet two of the three failures have been over the last three Dell’s purchased – going back only two years.

At work currently, the same has happened. New computers’ disks failing. (Not mine, but on others’ Dells.)

Why? Mainly because the quality of hard drives Dell is putting into computers is declining. At work, most (NEW!) desktops have 2.5″ heights (mobile device height) vs. 3.5″ heights. So there might be heat issues – in laptops, they account for heat in HDs; in desktops, not so much.

And the drives – even when full-height (3.5″) – are Seagates.

Seagate drives, even the low-end models – used to be good. Not so much now.

The “two drives in last thee computers” have been Seagate drives. I’ve put in WD Blue drives; no issues to date.

Doing the same at work.

Hey – I’m and my fellow workers are dorks. What happens when some poor schmuck buys a Dell with a crap HD, and – when that HD dies?

Yeah, he buys another Dell….

Well, we spent the last business week (M-F) in Oregon.

Below is an overview of what we saw/ate/drank there.

NOTE: Filling in the blanks; updates as needed.

Beginning to fill out the Oregon 2014 gallery, slow process….

Update: 11/16/2014: Last the Oregon 2014 gallery picture posted. Whew! That only took a couple of months..more may be added, but I’ve finished the first “hard” pass.

Paramount Hotel

Rogue Brewery, Shakespeare Oatmeal Ale

Powell’s – a book-lovers love

Best breakfast in the Pearl District.

Portland, OR: Drive a Prius. It’s the law.

Keep Oregon/Portland Weird. Done.

Food trucks, Pearl District, Portland, OR.

Portland, OR

Yes, we used Portland as our launching pad for day trips around Portland.

And we spent a fair amount of time walking around Portland (esp. north of Taylor).

• Our hotel – the Paramount (on Taylor between 9th and 10th) seemed blah at first, but – ultimately – a good choice. Suicide balcony (only a couple of feet deep) enuf to view stuff. No Mt. Hoot view, but a good view to the (newish) park across the street.
• The unofficial motto of Portland is “Keep Portland Weird.” Portland has succeeded. City that is very hipster, brew-pubed, bike-laned and so on.
• Portland = Prius. I’m sorry, but it must be a law: Live/drive in Portland, you must have a Toyota Prius. Yes, I’m being factitious, but I’ve never seen so many Prius vehicles – taxi, delivery, personal – in such a small place. Not a complaint; just an observation (Prius vehicles were everywhere).
• In the Pearl District (north of Burnside?), lots of brew pubs. Not a bad thing.
• Powell’s Book Store – Best bookstore ever??? Book lover’s delight; trust me. And it seemed to be a fair mix of locals and tourists.
• While the seafood was excellent – especially compared to Chicago – it wasn’t as plentiful as I expected. I.e. I expected a broader range of seafood. Seattle, in my mind, had much more seafood to chose from: steamer clams, fish, crab, and so on.
• That said (re: seafood), I ate quite of bit of the meats of the waters out in Portland and on daily trips. Had oysters twice – once fried in a breakfast, and a half-dozen raw. Probably the first time I’ve had oysters since we were in DC, in 2010.
• Speaking of food, Portland has a plethora of food trucks/trailers, at least in the Pearl District (older part of town, near Powell’s). One empty half-block was completely surrounded on its perimeter by food trucks, and they grouped in other areas, as well. And the variety! Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern…you name it, they pretty much had it (I don’t think I saw a hot dog truck…hmm…). The one downside – for me – is that they all sold meals, not snacks. In Seattle’s Pike Place Market, there were small food stalls where you just get an oyster or two, one chicken satay, a couple of steamed pot-stickers or what-have-you. That was nice. In Portland, it was all meals as best as I could tell. Good for the workers there, however: You could eat lunch and/or dinner for months without repeating a meal.
• Overall, I liked Portland a lot – Romy, not as much. So your mileage may vary….
• Speaking of “mileage” – one of the reasons I liked Portland better than Romy was that she did the driving. And Portland is a bad city to drive/get out of. Narrow streets (reminiscent of Boston – North Side [Italian] and Southie [Irish]), a cluster of one-way streets, and – mainly – virtually no signage. Getting OUT of Portland was a challenge. Yes, river city, but – not until you’re on the bridge (point of no return) is there a sign that says “yeah, you’re on 5/405…”. Yikes.
• From the little we observed, Portland seems like a pretty tolerant city, at least in the parts of the city we walked. Gay couples holding hand, goths with half-shaved heads (hair blue), older 1960-refuguees, bike riders, Prius drivers, recyclers…all seem welcome in Portland. That’s a good thing. We ran across few African-Americans or Hispanics, but – again – it may be the part of the city we we in. Kinda striking, however. Not a family area, either – the young kids we saw appeared to be, for the most part, tourists.

Astoria

Breakfast in Astoria
Astoria Coffeehouse & Bistro

Astoria Column
From the base, looking up

Haystack Rock
Cannon Beach, OR

Lighthouse, Cape Meares, OR

NW Coast, OR
For our first full day in Oregon, we headed west to the town of Astoria – ostensibly an artsy tourist town on the mouth of the Columbia River – and then to the Pacific Coast. Our longest day on the road mileage-wise.

• Astoria, our first stop, was kind of a bust. Maybe we missed something, but it was not what we were expecting. While it had some interesting old structures – and is perched on the confluence of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean – it just seemed like a tired, sad town. We were expecting Saugatuck or St. Joseph, MI. Weird. Had a great breakfast there at what appeared to be somewhat of a locals’ hangout (we always aim for these for breakfasts): eggs benedict with fried oysters. Yum.
• The one bright point of Astoria the the Astoria Column. Perched on the top of a hill overlooking Astoria is the 125-ft-tall column. It was build in 1926, and the exterior frieze, covering the entire height of the column (minus base and top) depicts historical Oregon events. We were able to climb up the tower, and the view was great. A little early in the morning, so the hills to the east were indistinct, but very pretty. Recommended.
• After Astoria, we headed out to Pacific coast. We saw Haystack Rocks – pretty, but not all that was advertised (“one of the most photographed areas on the Pacific coast” or something like that) – and a little further south down the coast, toured a small, decommissioned lighthouse – the Cape Meares Lighthouse. That was interesting. The views around the lighthouse were impressive, as the area is not beach-coastal, it’s a cliff area. Lots of birds around, but they are too far away to see with a normal camera.
• We drove back to Portland by cutting through Tillamook State Forest (along the Wilson River). Went through a couple of tunnels, which for us Midwesterners, was different, but nothing remarkable otherwise.

Columbia River Gorge

East up the Columbia

Bridal Falls

Triple Falls

Bonneville Dam

Vista House
Overlooking Columbia Gorge

On Day Two (Wednesday, 9/10), we headed east along the Columbia River into the Columbia River Gorge.

Now, don’t get me wrong – it’s a beautiful area, and the Columbia River is a muscular band of water snaking through hills, cliffs and past multitudes of waterfalls.

But it’s just not striking in the way Mount Rainier, Glacier National Park or the Badlands were. Nothing about it really takes you breath away like the Going Into the Sun Road in Glacier, or any of the hundreds of just unworldly formations in the Badlands. Even the buttes and weathered sandstone hills in Santa Fe were, to me, more interesting than the Columbia River Gorge, overall.

That said….

• On the east side of the river – the path we took – there are heavily forested hills that rapidly rise to almost 1,000 feet above the Columbia. Waterfalls abound. Many are quite close to the riverside drive (Rt. 30) – Horsetail, Multnomah – and some are quite a hike into the hills (see Triple Falls, below).
• Triple Falls – The sign said 1.8 miles to Triple Falls. I don’t know. It took us an hour to descend from the falls back to the trail head. It was, in places, a fairly rough trail, but still, it seemed like a lot further than 1.8 miles. Ah, we are just lazy suburbanites… The fall was nice, but not worth that much effort. Oh well, we climbed, we saw, we descended. And we never have to to to that again.
• Vista House – On the top of a bluff overlooking the river/gorge is a odd structure called Vista House, replete with stained glass, marble interior and brass rails. Completed in 1918, the building is basically just an empty shell that affords view in every direction. Actually, the more impressive view is when you head a little further west, and – in the town of Corbett – you look back and view the Vista House on its rocky bluff, with the mighty river and hills behind it. That would be a nice shot at sunrise or sunset.
• We drove as far east as Hood River (the town, approximately 60 miles east of Portland), and we tried out a brew-pub there, Full Sail Brewing Company. Good beer and good burgers on an outdoor deck. Oregon seems serious about their beer! Nothing else exceptional about the town.
• On our way back to Portland, we stopped at the Bonneville Dam, because, why not? Kind of a letdown, in that we couldn’t really get close to the dam, much less on it. (Hungry Horse Dam in Montana was fun for that reason – we couldn’t go into the dam, but we could walk across it.) There were fish ladders for the salmon, however, and inside the visitor center there was a wall of windows looking at the submerged fish working their way upstream. Kind of fun. But that was about it.

Again – very pretty area, but just not as impressive as other geography/structures we’ve seen. I guess we’re getting picky….

Willamette Valley

Eats

Grapes – Willamette Valley, OR

Grape vines/hiles – Willamette Valley, OR

Erath Winery tasting room- Willamette Valley, OR

On Day Three, we headed south to Dundee, OR – the heart of the Willamette Valley wine country. It’s amazingly close to Portland, less than 30 miles.

It was a bit different than I expected. I expected rolling hill covered by grapevines as far as the eye could see, but it was a little different than that. It seems like the valley is more agriculturally oriented, and the vineyards are on the hills. It was actually a kinda run-down looking town: Something you’d see tooling down the blue highways (secondary roads) in the Midwest, not the hub of one of the country’s premier wine centers. Huh.

• We headed out to Dundee early in the morning, and even after having breakfast at a local eatery, we still had time to kill before the tasting rooms opened (11am). On our way down, Romy had noticed a sign for something called the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge. So we backtracked a dozen or so miles to check it out. Now, the west has had a real drought recently, and while I’m sure the refuge would be flush with wildlife in wetter weather (see this Google Map view), the wetlands and river in it were almost bone dry. We did see a couple of blue herors (one it a puddle; one in flight) and some muskrats, but not much else. Couldn’t even see any turtles in the river, and I would expect them there. Was nice to wander around in, but – given the drought – nothing special. Oh well, at least we didn’t pass it up and then later kick ourselves for that choice.
• Erath Winery – We decided on visiting this winery for three reasons: 1) The Willamette Valley is famous for their Pinot Noirs; 2) We’ve had one of their Pinot Noirs, and it was quite good; 3) A review online made it sound like a good fit. So we headed there. We got a “wine flight” – a $10 tasting of four or five wines (which we split), one white (Pinot grigio). Very good stuff. We purchased a half case of assorted wines ($5 delivery!), and I had a full glass of the best-of-the-bunch pinot noirs. The winery was nice – I had expected it to more rustic, but at least here, up in the hills, surrounded by grape arbors, it was more like what I was expecting from wine country.
• After Erath, we headed back into town (Dundee) to hit the Argyle Winery’s tasting room – it was recommended by an Erath “barista” (what do you call the person who pours the wine for taste tests??). We had another flight there, including a great sparkling wine (a white). Argyle has one of the best labels – in a graphics sense – out there, simple but elegant.

We could have hit more wineries, but still have to drive back and all that, so after Argyle we called it a day.

We drove back to Portland and just walked around – hitting by the river and bridges and so on.

Taylor
Taylor

Pensive Cat
Taylor attempting to look thoughtful

One Happy Kitty
Taylor, lounging in her bed

Cat Napping (trying to)
Taylor finding the sun

Taylor
Taylor checking out the camera…

Taylor Yawns
Big cat yawn!

Shy Taylor
Taylor all racked out

Just file under “c” for cat/crazy
Taylor just climbs in empty file cabinet.

Taylor Controls the Window
Taylor in bed

Taylor and Mouse
Ah, her current hot toy…

Taylor – happy kitty
We survived the blizzard of 2/2011 – Happy Kat!

You lookin’ at me?
Taylor chilling in her bed; rough being a cat

Sure, “only the good die young.”

Whatever.

We had to put down our 15-year-old cat today. (14 years old? Hard to say, we adopted her – and our other cat – when they were no longer kittens.) Not an easy decision, not made any easier when her last day was “a good day.”

Sparing the details, it got to the point where Taylor was not herself – and not like an average cat. Something serious was amiss. Hate doing it, but it had to be done.

For a cat, 14-15 years – that’s a long existence – and we can spin all the good but still…

Sucks. We do and will miss Taylor. She had a plethora of, well, idiosyncrasies – good and bad – that gave her quite the personality.

Our other cat – Koko – is more your typical “Kat”: Yeah, leave a message and I’ll get back to you whenever. Or mebbe never…

But Taylor was more social, more in-your-face, more demanding of attention/food/treats. Again, good and bad – but after she’s gone, even the “bad” (mainly “annoying”) are remembered fondly. That’s human nature.

And, for your viewing pleasure, some pics of Taylor over the years (the one on the top is the oldest, shortly after we got her). Click for larger images.

WATCHING:
American Hustle
Starring: Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner

Synopsis: Two small-time grifters run afoul of an aggressive FBI agent. To minimize their potential penalty, they agree to help the FBI pull down bigger fish.

And then everyone gets in over their heads…

Oh – and Jennifer Lawrence is the crazy estranged wife who believes she is controlling everything…while she is blowing everything up.

Great 70’s style (explosion at the wig factory!!), slow start but amazing ending.

Not what I was expecting, but totally worth a watch. Great performances by all, but Lawrence and Bale (Lawrence is Bale’s estranged wife) really shine.

All movies

We finally saw a “new” movie this past weekend, and the more I reflect back on it, the better it gets.

Not great cinema, but a weird (which is good) story line with actors really nailing it.

The ending was a nice twist – not Sixth Sense twist, but, well, appropriate.

What do I mean by “False Equivalencies”? (In this post.)

I live in the Chicago area, so let’s use a sports metaphor (baseball teams): If I like/love the Cubs, I must hate the White Sox.

Which may be true for some, but not for me. That’s a false equivalency.

Stuff (yeah, nice bucket) has gotten so partisan lately; here’s my off-the-to-of-my-head list of stuff where false equivalency is implied (not for me, but in media reports/political spin):

• Criticise anything Israel does that you disagree with – You’re an anti-Semite
• Not riled up about the so-called Ground Zero Mosque – You’re with the terrorists
• Agree with any gun-control issues – You’re against the 2nd Amendment
• For Gay Marriage – You’re against the institution of marriage … which is???
• For anything the Democrats are pushing – You’re a libtard
• For anything the Republicans are pushing – Tea Party loon!

It’s sad, really.

Silo issues – lack of seamless interoperability between computer platforms/devices/services – will undoubtedly remain in the near- (possibly medium-) future, but that’s not a good thing.

In a 2011 post, I basically broke down the issue at that time into two buckets:

• Devices: One eReader can’t support the other’s format; and why do I have to buy a game twice for my two devices – an iPhone and Android tablet? (Just an example)
• Data: Why so hard to move MY data around? Export from one service to another is painful to impossible?

The wildcard – The Cloud

Both these problems still exist, and I’d argue that Point 2 (data portability) is getting worse, simply because more and more people are putting everything into The Cloud: “Blog posts” and pictures at Facebook or Tumblr; pictures at Instagram or Flickr.

Remember, Google just shuttered a social network – Orkut. Who’s to say another (former) heavyweight won’t be around forever? (Orkut was huge in South America, particularly Brazil, before succumbing to Facebook.)

We first put words (blogs, emails, forums, social networks) into the cloud that we expected to always be there.

Now we’re putting pictures and videos in the cloud, and we’re getting closer to putting a lot of date- and location-based info in the cloud: Think of doing an entire wedding on the web/via an app. Invites, RSVP list, registries etc all through one site. It probably exists; if not, it will.

But what happens when that wedding site/app shuts down a few months before your wedding? Is there a standard “eEvent” export “eEvent -wedding” that you can use to move your guest/church/restaurant/band/registries from the shuttered site to a new one?

Nah.

And let’s say there was some sorta such export.

But – for directions to, say church and reception, the shuttered app only supported Google Maps. But the import tool only supports Bing or Yahoo! maps (and so on…..).

Lot of chaos going on re: silos right now.

Not getting a lot of attention, for two reasons:

• There are – everyday – new ways to push/create new/existing data into the cloud via desktop or mobile apps. Remarkable. Let’s see even more!
• Exporting data out of the cloud and/or re-importing it somewhere…not so sexy. (So few efforts [relatively], and little press).

This is a problem that’s going to get bigger still before it gets smaller, in my opinion.

The Art Institute Of Chicago

Last Thursday (7/3/2014), Romy and I took a day off of work to:

1. Make the July 4th weekend a day longer, and
2. Go into Chicago, where we haven’t been yet this year.

The weather prediction – up to the day before – had the weather, at best, as overcast. We ended up with a nice sunny day, light breeze, about 70°.

Yeah, we got lucky.

The plan was to hit the Art Institute to see the Magritte exhibition (and other stuff), hit my old neighborhood (Lakeview) and noodle around there, and then check out a place Romy’s been jonesing to go to, The Fish Bar.

We pretty much followed that script, and here’s how the day went….

Magritte exhibition

Magritte was, to both of us, kind of a yawner. The show contained only a few of Magritte’s well-known paintings, and was – to me – somewhat pretentious. I keep forgetting how artists fall into their own world, to a certain degree – where the change of a yellow is, to them, a significant commentary on [whatever]. That’s how the descriptions of Magritte’s works struck me. Something beyond what it was.

NOTE: This may have been the fault of the museum’s preparator, but the text quoted a lot of Magritte’s writings.

That said, we hit the photography room where there was a great exhibit of Edward Steichen’s commercial work for Conde Nast. I’d seen some of same, but it interesting to see more of his commercial work. His non-commercial work is way better than his Conde Nast work, but it was fun to see his pictures of the famous (Gretta Garbo) and the not-so-famous (who the hell is this that they have an article about them?) who graced the pages of Vanity Fair and Vogue.

Hopper – Nighthawks at the Diner

We noodled around a bit in the Art Institute, just hitting this or that (Hopper’s “Nighthawks at the Diner,” hand-held 1/3 second!) until we had our fill of art.

We went over to Millennium Park, where a band/chorus was practicing for what was obviously a homage to George M. Cohen (probably for the 4th). Fun to listen to.

We then hit my old neighborhood (Lakeview; lived there all of two years) and we just couldn’t get into just wandering around there. When I lived there, it was different: We didn’t have to worry about when the parking meters expired, when we have to get back home in the suburbs. We’re just not shoppers, so what else is there to do?

This neighborhood – to me – has changed quite a bit recently. We usually hit there at least every other year, if for no reason other than to hit The Coffee & Tea Exchange (awesome bean coffee – like bacon, the smell of roasted beans is intoxicating).

Lakeview currently has way more girls women than I remembered (yay!), fewer bookstores (boo!), and is – overall – both cleaner and more antiseptic than in the past, if you understand. Berlin is still there (is it still raunchy? I dunno), but other fringe places are gone, replaced by H&R Block or what have you. It’s a different neighborhood. More gentrified. Lots of nail spas.

The Fish Bar

That said, there are still some interesting discoveries to make in the Lakeview area.

Romy stumbled across The Fish Bar some time ago, and we set our sights on having lunch there.

It wasn’t what I was expecting – I was expecting fish & chips, brass rails, kind of a dark low-ceiling bar/restaurant and all. But The Fish Bar is more open, more casual and the food more tapas-like.

For us, that’s perfect. We don’t need a 10-lbs bass with fourteen side dishes. We got food, it was good, we were full (I had blackened red fish tacos. AWE-some). Not overfilled.

As a bonus, when we got home, our sidewalk had been fixed. Long story, but let’s just say it’s been a decade of pain and crooked concrete, and it appears that our long local nightmare may well be over. Yippee.