When Harpel attacks: Tom Harpel had some issues with the Capitol Hill Block Party set-up crew this year.
Chinese
Spanish and Russian, however, were the languages I heard while eating my potstickers and moo shoo pork. Broadway bubbles over with activity as the summer sun sets.
Vici Video et Vino
My parents are back from a global jaunt, and so we’ve returned too near-daily IM and video chat. I’m very happy about this, as for a spate of years I had simply come to accept infrequent contact with them as the natural state of affairs. Thanks to iChat and AIM, I can see and talk to them every day that they are home. Of course, it’s not the same as living where your parents live, but it’s a good first step.
My dad has made wine since before I was born, and his long term interest in wine has translated to something similar – but smaller scale – in me. While they were here this year (or last) I took them to Esquin, the region’s leading wine retailer, and Dad was as happy as a prize sow in soft mud.
Sometime since then, Dad was asking me if I’d heard of a wine dealer with the word “garage” in the name, something I certainly had not. I just don’t read the Weekly enough, I guess.
Since he inquired, new facts have emerged:
1. I walk by the place on my way to work.
2. It’s called ‘Garagiste‘
3. Amusingly, it’s to the east of a group of temporary buildings which have a big sign, “garage rehearsal studios,” making ‘garagiste’, in fact, garage east.
4. it’s less than two blocks from Esquin!
Pizza – or Chinese?
The Piecora’s pie was lovely. Today, I will be tapping another fine institution. But which?
The Wok on B’Way, or Annapurna, or else?
Also, the heat has done broke.
the evidence mounts
Lance in France, explained
Ask MetaFilter: user chicobangs provides some fascinating color commentary on the Tour.
Tant Pis
So.
It’s hot.
Minimal posting shall ensue.
Pi
Viv’s in Kullyfornya until Tuesday and so I intend to uphold the ancient directives of bachelorhood and pursue the disciplines of shirking household chores, eating cold pizza in the morning, and beginning at least one absurd home-improvement (or computing) project that will eat up forty-eight hours with no discernible issue. Said project, of course, must take place while steadily, but not hastily, consuming massive quantities of beer.
You can play along at home, by helping determine part of my diet. What’s your fave delivery pizza in Seattle?
Pisser
MAL conduit has stopped working, so gracefully that it believes it is working. AvantGo shows no record of attempted syncs after the failure, so I suspect either a local permissions problem or an AG-side server settings change.
Troubleshooting to date reveals naught. As far as I can tell, I can’t even set up a verbose capture of the server-comm dialog, which means I’ll have to figure out how to do it manually in order to rule out that problem. What a giant pain in the ass. Is it even worth doing? Do I really care if I can’t read the Times in teeny bite-size chunks as I ride the bus?
I guess I do care, because I’m so angry and frustrated. But that seems to be more from aggravation surrounding change than a specific need to have a tiny version of the newspaper. I’m mad because the light switch suddenly stopped working, not because it’s dark and I need a light.
That's three forward, nine down
Apollo 11 materials at Nasa include an annotated transcript of the landing and the LM’s flight paths.
The actual first steps are documented in a similar transcript, peppered liberally with video, audio, and photo links.
Elsewhere, we find evidence of a Soviet attempt to reach the moon with cosmonauts, and my obligatory cardmodel links to the LEM and Delta 7’s in-progress Apollo project.
IMAX is producing a film, with some sort of assistance from Tom Hanks, that will take archival lunar surface footage, enlarge and de-grain it, and be offered up in 3-D.
Finally, it’s always important to note those who voyaged to Luna before Armstrong and company, such as the justly-celebrated Cyrano de Bergerac.