Jetta Love, 255992 miles, and Germs

I sold my jetta (mentioned here) on Sunday. As the purchaser was test driving the car up 24 and I was describing the various details that gave the car character, I realized how much I'm going to miss it. I love that car. I love that I was driving around with the cars behind me smelling french fries or potato chips. I love that you have to turn off the windshield wipers at the exact correct moment, otherwise they'll get stuck in the middle of the windshield. (This is because they don't have enough juice to make it to the bottom.) I love that there's no power steering (except when I'm trying to get out of a tight street parking spot.) I love that if you attempt to drive immediately after starting the car, the brakes don't really work. They work, they just don't work easily for about a minute or less. I think it's because the vacuum has to get vacuumie, or the compression has to get compressed, or some such thing. I love that it had 255,992 miles and I was the second owner! (I love that a lot.)

In other news we've been pretty sick around these parts. It all started with a crowd of people who showed up last weekend to celebrate our friend's birthday via webcam. The group had many children, several of which were sick. I remember Christy walking in and leaning to Heather and pointing to Marley's eye and saying "Do you think that's pink eye?" It's also quite possible that it wasn't that gathering that caused the illnesses considering how many of my coworkers have been stricken with similar things. My honeypot had been basically bedridden for enough days that I was starting to get worried about him (He fell ill last Wednesday.) Today, when I got home from work, he was out of bed and looking pretty spunky. I, on the other hand, went to work today and came out feeling like crap. I was sick at the end of last week, and was doing better, and now I feel like a truck ran me over. Yuck!

Here's to the Jetta, and being sick.

Banana Corn Meal Muffins - 4.5 Stars

Several months ago I purchased this cookbook called Veganomicon. It's pretty special and has quite a few new ideas for creating good vegan food to eat.

Today I made my first recipe out of it. Well, sort of. I didn't have some of the ingredients, so I improvised and my mini muffins came out pretty good. The recipe, as I made it, is on the bottom of this post.

Also, last night I made my first Indian meal using the variety of spices that I bought while I was there. It had a tomato base with orange lentils, pine nuts, coconut milk, and a bunch of other stuff. I had some Aloo Paratha in the freezer so I made that too.

Banana Corn Meal Muffins
1 cup rice dream
1 tsp distilled white vinegar
1.5 bananas
1/3 cup canola oil
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
1/4 cup garbanzo flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

mix the wet ingredients together after mashing the bananas on their own, mix the dry ingredients together separately, then mix them all together. Bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Anti Ergonomics

It's friday now and I've been working here in India for a week. My goal is to teach the two developers here enough that they could manage a particular code base on their own. They've been "working" for the past several months on this project, but have been unable to successfully make any changes. Admittedly, the code is very complicated and I think it was unreasonable to expect them to figure it out on their own, without much real-time assistance.

I spent the early part of this week going through examples of our template system, and giving them all the information they need to do work.

It's been very interesting to be doing this because of the bizarre dynamics I've experienced. One of the employees is very engaged and seems to be very excited about learning how to work on this code base. I think he's going to work out great. The other one, who happens to be senior to the first one, hasn't done anything except pretty much ask unrelated questions and request that meetings get pushed back (which I finally stopped doing). Supposedly he's a good developer, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. My judgment is that he likes to waste time and not work, if he can help it. If it were up to me, I think I'd get rid of him.

Everyday, after work, my co-worker and I have done some sightseeing or shopping.

Tuesday we went to Dilli Haat Market - which is this very cool market where each state in India is represented in terms of what's for sale. The variety was really impressive to see.

Wednesday we went to Karol Bagh Market (image on right) - another crazy market with less variety, but lots of interesting things to look at. I ate Puri Chaat from a street vendor here (picture below). I'm fine, I've had no problems.

Thursday we went to Akshardham, a swarinarayam temple that was built recently. (That's the picture above). It opened a year ago! It's amazing.

Tonight we have plans to go to this other market near our hotel and hang out with one of my co-worker's friends formerly from Cupertino, CA.

Tomorrow we're leaving at 5am (!) to make the trek to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.

Overloaded with Pollution

I don't know what happend. Maybe it's something to do with the weather. The pollution is so bad right now that you can't even see half a mile. It's thick and I might even be able to feel the particulates in the air. It's like grimy soup. It's very bad. Yuck!

Today was day one of work at the India office. My driver showed up at 7:30AM to take me to work and so I rushed out of here and skipped breakfast. I had been informed that he would show up at 9am. I'm slowly learning that it's okay to keep a driver waiting. I still think it's rude. But those are my American standards, not those here.

I ended up showing up so early at the office that they didn't know what to do with me, and they hadn't turned the lights on. They put me in a small, dark conference room for about an hour and a half. It was fine, I just worked on my slides and agenda for the work I'm doing here.

The rest of the day was uneventful, except for lunch. The president of the company took us out, and it was another delightful meal. I ordered tandoori potatoes. Yum!

Yesterday was a long day of exploring the tourist areas. I hired a driver and had an intense and long day of sight seeing. There were some really amazing places like:

• The Bahai House of Worship (a.k.a The Lotus Temple) I got to see part of a service there. It was very peaceful.
• The ISKON Temple (Hare Krishne Temple) The architecture is pretty amazing. Really.
• India Gate - A 42m-high stone memorial arch paying tribute to 90,000 Indian soldiers in WWI and other conflicts of that era.
  
• Gandhi Smriti - A huge park and monument to where Gandhi was assassinated. It's a nice reprieve from the urban jungle.
• Jama Masjid - This was easily the most impressive place, in terms of architecture, I saw all day. The courtyard of this Mosque can hold 25,000 people. It's supposed to be the largest in India. Unfortunately I couldn't go up the minaret because I was an unaccompanied female.
• Chowri Bazaar - This dense market was as active as an agitated bee hive.
• Humayan's Tomb - Built in the mid 16th century, it was the Taj Mahal before the Taj came about. Except that this was built by the wife for the husband.
  

That's my adventures so far. I hope you're enjoying them.

A Whole New World

After finally settling into my originally planned hotel, I took a walk about in this neighborhood. The poverty was appalling. I've traveled a fair amount and I've never seen anything like it. It's overwhelming and chilling.

Crossing a street here is quite a bit like being the frog in frogger with a blind fold on. The space you consume is open space, as far as drivers are concerned. I am getting a slight thrill in frogging across these huge highways, but only when I'm in the mood. There were a couple times where I wished there was a traffic obeyed crosswalk. It takes a lot of energy to cross these major streets.

I just got back from Connaught Place. It's the center of New Delhi and also the main shopping area. It's a big circle with radial streets, quite a bit like Burning Man's street layout. Under part of the center park is the Palika Bazaar. I had thought the vendors were aggressive on the street (they were, the worst I've ever experienced), but the vendors in the Bazaar were 10 fold more aggressive. I only lasted about 20 minutes down there.

I'm glad I'm back at the hotel. I have this awful headache right now. I think between the pollution, the noise, and the amount of energy it takes to politely handle the obscenely aggressive vendors and everybody else who apparently wants to be my friend desperately, my head is unhappy. You wouldn't believe how loud it is everywhere. Everybody has gone out and purchased a custom loud horn for their rickshaw, car, or bike, and they are not hesitant to use it. It's so loud as a pedestrian, especially when you're trying to cross the street.

On a plus note I ate lunch at the shopping area and had saag paneer, and it was freakin amazing. Yum! I'd say currently my favorite part of India is the food and architecture. It's amazing so far.

Snow, Travel and More Crafts

We were up at Squaw Valley this weekend playing in the snow. My company had its yearly planning session up there during the week and then we got to stay up there through the weekend. What an excellent fringe benefit! My honeypot came up on Thursday night and we skied on Saturday. It was the most perfect conditions because it basically snowed the entire time I was up there, but amazingly enough, it stopped snowing for the entire day of Saturday and was relatively warm. Perfect!

Something I realized on our way home from there is that I leave for India on Thursday. Whoa, I haven't even begun to plan for this trip at all. Besides not having prepared my materials for what I'm teaching while I'm there, I haven't even begun to research where I'll be going and what I'll be doing with my 5 days off at the end. I'll be back on Feb 19th.

My honeypot lost the last hat I made him, so I've been working on this new hat design. I've never crocheted a hat from the center out radially before. I'm following the pattern in this new book my mother-in-law gave me for xmas. It's been a pretty great gift. I'll let you know how it comes out.

And What a Week it's Been

Wow, what a crazy week it's been. I felt like I was constantly running just to keep up with everything that came my way.
There were so many extra errands and so many more social events than normal for me. It was extremely fun, and also draining.
Last week I went to get the visa for my India trip and that took hours of standing in line.
There was this fantastic Girlz Night that I attended on Tuesday night. That was such a blast. It was a new group of friends and we hit it off really well. I hope I get to hang out with them again. An intriguing sounding movie called "The business of being born" came out of our discussions there.
Then on Wed morning we had an apt with our friend, who happens to be the real estate agent that sold us our Oakland house. There's a recently fixed up 4 unit place a couple doors down from us that we were interested in looking at. Slightly for investment purposes, and more for a couple friends that are looking to buy. This place was perfect. It's a reasonably priced spacious 2bd, has a huge yard and the entire building was recently overhauled. New foundation, new roof, new everything. It had been a rental previously. (If you're reading this Yar - what are you waiting for? We would be the perfect neighbors.)
I had two friends from out of town visiting this weekend. My Chicago friend arrived while I was at work on Friday and I didn't get to see him until Sat morning! I had dinner plans after work and a pretty large group of us went to Happy Shabu Shabu. The experience was interesting - the service not so great. Basically each person had a hot pot of boiling water in front of them and then you get served veggies and you make your own food! Sorta like Korean BBQ, except with boiling water instead of a grill. We had a 20 person group which might explain the bad service. The rest of the gang went on to the Cornelius show, and I went home. Before that my co-workers and I went out for drinks at 5pm to celebrate our success. we have about 1/3 of the staff, but we recently beat Zillow in unique visitors per week. It's a huge milestone and really demonstrates our growth, and our potential. Woo Hoo!
Saturday my Chicago friend, my honeypot, and I walked up to Rockridge for a lovely breakfast. Then we all went our own way and I bought supplies for the party we threw that night. It was a lot of fun with hours of gaming. The games went on until 5am! (I thought I was too old to stay up that late. he he he)
Sunday I finally got to see my other friend in town from DC. She was at the shabu dinner on Friday, but she was so far away I didn't really get to talk to her much. We had plans to hike but were both so worn out from our previous nights (she wasn't able to attend the party due to another show she went to) that we chose to walk around 4th ave and browse. It was a lot of fun. I don't really browse anymore. I probably didn't much before either, but I never do it now. Except yesterday. There's quite a bit of unique/weird stuff down there so it was good times. After our shopping experience, we went to Jupiter and had pizza to fulfill my friend's craving and some other friends met up with us. Then we went home, hung out and played some more games. It was fun.
Today I got up and went out to breakfast with my friend from Chicago and finally got some more time to hang out with him. Then I went to work and he prepared for his travels back.
Tonight I had dinner plans, but everybody was just too tired, so it pretty much fell apart. But that's ok. I'm tired. I'm really happy to be home and just relax a bit because I'm leaving for another adventure on Wed afternoon.

Our company has an off site planning week at the start of every year to figure out which projects are most importnat and make a tentative schedule for the year. This year we're all (60 people plus significant others and families) are going up to Tahoe on Wed through Sunday. My honeypot is coming up Thurs night and it sounds like it might get a little crazy. I expect good times!

The trip to India is official - I leave on the 31st and arrive back on the 17th and I'll get 5 days at the end when I'm not working. Also, I have a plane ticket into New Delhi and out of Mumbai.

Latest Craft Project - 4 Color Crochet Hat

My mother-in-law gave me this fantastic crochet book and some yarn for my birthday. The yarn is really nice and the book is awesome. I chose a pattern and made this hat this past weekend. I'm really happy how it came out. I've historically avoided patterns because they can be too restrictive. With this project it really helped me learn the correct name for various stitches and the end result is something much nicer than I might have come up with on my own. (It's hard to see the difference between the orange and red in this picture - but you can see the difference in person.)

Stormy Weather

Storm details here.

I can hear constant sirens as various spontaneous accidents occur. My favorite is the 18 wheel truck that got "blown over."

The California Highway Patrol closed the eastbound Richmond-San Rafael Bridge after a gust of wind blew over an 18-wheel truck around 8:30 a.m. Story here.

I suppose I should have known something was up when Stella began insistently meowing at around 6am. She wouldn't stop for hours. I tried to comfort her, but she wasn't having any of that. I think that she was thoroughly freaked out by the storm. Our house is shaking and twisting with the force of the wind and rain.

I drove to work across the bay bridge because there were some important meetings today, but when I got there (after thoroughly getting wet after walking the two blocks from the car parking lot) there was no power. There were several blocks where huge trees had come down, and most stop lights that I drove near were out. I stayed at work about an hour and finally came home.

The wind on the bridge was so strong that it was a struggle to stay in my lane. There is so much water everywhere (and accidents too). I hydroplaned a couple times while driving. Thankfully most people are driving really slow.

I'm glad to be home!

In other news I recently bought a new laptop battery on ebay. It arrived in a couple days and it's so amazing to have my laptop work without being plugged in! I love it. (Previously it couldn't last even a couple minutes without wall power.) I've had this laptop for 3 or 4 years now, so it's not so surprising that the battery lost it's ability to hold a charge. I wish I had bought a new one earlier.

Well, enjoy the stormy weather.

Christmas Corpses

I went on my usual walk again this morning and started noticing the corpses of this annual holiday lying lifeless beside the road. Why is it necessary for so much of the world to annually cut down trees, torture them by bringing them inside, and then throw them out? It's really insane (and very weird too.)

My honeypot and I will have to think of some other equally weird, but less harmful tradition, for future years. I'm quite confident that we won't ever be having a formerly live tree in our house. And the survival rate of using live trees isn't very good because they come out of hibernation whilst in a warm house during the winter holiday.

Do you have any ideas of a tradition to start for this holiday? Let me know.

Happy New Year!

Projects and Grand Theft Auto

Have you seen this game? It's been out a while and it got quite a bit of attention when it did come out. My honeypot was playing it for a long time tonight. It's so bizarre.

There was one time when we couldn't tell if there was really a couple screaming at each other outside or it was part of the game. (Yes, these things happen more than you would think around our neighborhood.) Truthfully, I think certain cultures are just louder than others. But beyond that, we do have our moments here in the neighborhood.

We've had this extremely long wonderful vacation! I love it. It's been so mellow and amazingly relaxing.

It's given me time to do a bunch of projects; like buying a bed frame, setting it up, and swapping our yoga room with our bedroom. I also wrote a script to automate some of the organization of my digital images. It's pretty cool. I also cleaned out part of our basement. It's still a little chaotic down there but I made some room and progress.

My honeypot built some juggle club holders for the wall and a skateboard holder.

Eternity and Mission Successful

My Dad is here! He arrived a day late due to the crazy weather that's hitting the east coast. There's been some schedule changes as a result and it's all working out with time off work and such.

In other news, I've been working on getting my wedding ring finished. (Either the cool one my honeypot was working on or just by buying one.) The cool one that my honeypot made mostly works, but sometimes doesn't. For those who don't know about it here's a description: Basically imagine a Tibetan prayer ring. You know the kind - they have a part in the middle that you can spin. Usually that spin part just rubs on the other part of the ring, but my super star engineer thought it would be much better if it had bearings. And not just any bearings, but sapphire ones. They're these tiny balls. They're pretty cool.

I while ago I spoke with one of his friends who has the skills to get the project successfully done (as my honeypot is worn out from working on it). He seemed pretty reluctant to get involved - even though I was offering to pay him like a normal customer. His reluctance is understandable given his relationship to my honeypot, but he sure would beat some random person found through craigslist. I pretty much gave up after trolling craigslist trying to find somebody to hire. I just want a wedding band that I can actually wear. Is that too much to ask for? I didn't think so.

While we were out walking around Burlingame I ran across this ring in a consignment shop and I like it a lot. The only problem is that it was just a little bit too large. So the purveyor walked over to a jewelry shop with me and I talked to them about fixing it. They did it right then and there by putting these two little beads in it. They also cleaned it and it looks so much better than when I bought it.

It's a really nice ring. That's not to say that I wouldn't love for the original project to be completed. Because really, how cool is a wedding band that moves freely that has bearings? Pretty freakin sweet! But I'm content with my completion of my "wedding band project."

For those who are interested: the new ring is an antique eternity band with blue sapphires made out of 14k white gold mixed with platinum. It's similar to this, but lose the diamonds and the metal is a different color.

Houston and Dad

This past weekend my honeypot and I went to Houston to visit some of his high school friends. They have a 14 month old boy who was really cute and mellow. We were lucky enough to be there long enough for him to be confortable around us. It was nice.

The best part of Houston, besides the super cheap house prices and the warm weather, was that where they lived there were bike paths everywhere. Where they live was clearly at one time a development - as demonstrated by the windy roads and lack of grid streets. I guess it still is a development. However, it was great there. They clearly did not clear cut the land before building because there were lost of nice trees.

The other cool thing about them is that he's a pilot and so he works for blocks of time and then is home for larger blocks of time. She's a stay at home Mom. So they get these larger blocks of time when they don't have to do anything. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I'm jealous. It sure would be nice to not be limited to my weekends - the same time I have to do all my errands that have to be completed during "regular business hours." They deserve to have such a great setup.

In other news, my Dad is coming to visit! He'll be here Thurs night through really early Monday morning. We have plans to go Kart race on Friday at the fun one. And we might go to Maverick's during the weekend. If anybody else has a good idea for something fun to do while he's here, I'm all ears.

Roomba Love!

Today's my birthday. For all practical purposes, I was going to ignore today as a birthday day and instead just play it like any other day.
Last night my honeypot, and I'll say this correctly, got dragged to Gary Danko. I like good food. But my frugality or miserly ways prevents me from eating out at places like these very often. My guilt or bad feelings about the cost destroy the fun. But I decided it was my birthday, and I haven't really treated this day appropriately for a couple years. Today's my birthday!
The restaurant was amazing, and worth every freakin dollar. But, I probably won't ever go there again. I just don't need to. Once was enough fantasticness for me.
A couple days ago I spontantiously, but with much subconsciously thought, bought a roomba. Or maybe that was more like a week ago. Anyway, the roomba arrived, and right now it's vacuuming our living room. I can't believe how much dirt it's collected from the kitchen, which it finished a little while ago. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to live without the roomba again. And I'm simply not kidding.

Flying the Sierra (aka Flying the Dog)

We just got back from a family get together at my honeypot's Mom's house. The weather was pretty nice, and the weekend was mellow and fun. We hung out and played with the horses, the dog, some games and each other. It was a nice change of scene.

My honeypot and his sister are into Acroyoga. They have various interesting looking postures that they can do where one person is "flying" the other. Like this. He thought it would be fun to "fly" the dog. She was remarkably tolerant of this behavior. (It's amazing what some animals or even humans will tolerate for a little bit of attention.)

All in all it was a good weekend.

My Favorite Pictures from New Zealand

Waitomo Caves, Waikato, NZ
This was one of the highlights of this adventure. We had a group of 8 friends traveling around the North Island, and on one of our last days we spent about 6 hours or so cruising through this cave on a private tour. It was amazing. There were glowworms that looked like stars when it was dark. (Their poop glows to catch bugs. Ingenious!)

At the end of it was a sump. This was where the water complete went under the rock for a couple meters and you had to just trust that there would be a room after swimming through this tunnel. Very scary. (I didn't do it.)

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Wellington, NZ
This mustache party was in honor of our friend, Lance. Lance and Erika moved to Wellington for the year. They will thankfully be moving back home soon. They've been missed.

We were out wandering about and we saw these adhesive mustaches and thought "Why not have a mustache party?" And so it was.

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Ferry between Picton and Wellington through Cook Strait and the Marlborough Sounds
This is an example of how scenic it is here. This was taken from the ferry on my way down to the South Island while traveling on my own.

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Kaikoura, NZ (East Coast of S. Island)
We went on a three or four hour hike that went around the coast of this peninsula and cut across. It was breath taking beauty every where you look, and I spotted this different cloud formation.

The best part of this sunny day was we had finally headed to the East Coast after traveling along the West Coast for days in the rain. This sunny day was a delight.

On a different note, have you guys checked out the geotagged photos - yahoo map mashup? It's a little slow, but you can go anywhere and if you're patient enough, see some really cool pictures taken exactly there. You may find it here: http://flickr.com/map/

0 Days and No More Counting

In a few short hours I leave for New Zealand. I'm really looking forward to the adventure, differences in culture and general way of live.

Lucky for me, I'm already packed and I'm basically blowing time until I need to leave for the airport.

My trip will begin in Wellington where I'll be for a couple days and then I head across Cook Straight via ferry to the Picton and Nelson areas. I'll be here on my own until the 16th at which point I fly to Queenstown to catch up with the crew (Erika, Lance, Davey). We're going out to Milford Sound and then back to Queenstown to catch up with Jeff. With the group of five, we'll make our way up the west side of the southern island and take the ferry back to Wellington. Here we'll catch up with more friends who are arriving (Cindy and Joe) on the 21st and 23rd.

From this point we'll be heading through the north island arriving in Auckland by the 29th, at which point most of us come back to the states.

I'm going to miss my honeypot.

This past weekend was fun! The third annual Berkeley Juggling & Unicycle Festival happened here in Berkeley. There were tons of people around and lots of activities. We also had a bunch of people staying with us. I think all in all everything went pretty smoothly and was a lot of fun.

Eleven Days and Counting

I'm so ready for a vacation. I can't even begin to describe how badly I need this.

I was at work until 1 am on Tues, rewriting a part of a project that went live on Wed. It's a little crazy, but it was the right thing to do. The code was crap, and every time I tried to fix one bug, it would cause other bugs in this part of the project. So on Tues afternoon, knowing full well that we were launching on Wed afternoon, I got permission to rip it up and re-code it. In the end this feature was relatively bug free and it will be so much easier to use that class in other projects.

The crazy thing about it, beyond that it was so close to launch, is that I was sick. I worked from home on Monday because of it, and ended up taking a sick day on Thursday. But I worked 16 hours on Tues. (I'm feeling much better now)

I leave for my trip in 11 days! I'm so excited.

The trip planning is pretty insane with our group. There's very few of us arriving at the same time, at the same place. And there's currently 7 of us.

I have a good idea of what I want to do, but we'll see what works with the schedule.

In other news, I finally bought a new hard drive and have enough space to get all the music I have in one space, organized. I have over 141gb, thanks to yar (He has really good music, lost of hip hop too!). And I installed this program called SimplifyMedia so that we can play those files on other computers, even if they're not stored in iTunes. My honeypot dislikes iTunes and instead uses winamp. But I can still see, and play his music through my iTunes, and he can play mine using iTunes on his computer (without putting his music in iTunes). It's pretty sweet.

And the Bull is Born.

A while ago a friend of mine suggested using Picasa. I downloaded it and played with it a little bit and moved on. But I never solved the problem of a good tool to manage my digital pictures. Now, many months later, I'm using Picasa. The more I use it the more I like it. It's actually a really useful program. My favorite feature about it is that it will 'monitor' particular folders and automatically add any new pictures from those folders into your photo storage spot. It's useful when there are two people shooting pictures and storing them in different places, like my honeypot and me. To those of you out there who don't have a good way of looking at your digital images, go check out Picasa.

This weekend was pretty fun and mellow. I went to a friend's baby shower, had a poker night with lots of Sherry, figured out the list of activities I want to do in New Zealand, finally fixed my super slow desktop computer, and got lots of other errands done too.
(New Zealand is 16 days and counting!)

Loyalty and Terpitude

What causes family loyalty? What I'm asking is this: Why do we put up with behaviors from our family members we wouldn't put up with from a friend?

Every so often I repeat a similar situation, by deliberate act of will, and during and after the event I think about the above question. It brings me to this quote:

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results. -Albert Einstein

Here I am, in the same depressing, miserable situation wondering why I even bother. And as I've gotten older, I've bothered less. Perhaps, someday I'll stop bothering at all.

Terpitude is defined as:

Inherent baseness or vileness of principle, words, or actions; depravity.