Not-Work at Work

Work, the location, should be somewhere you enjoy going. I find working at home to be too distracting (or rather, distraction to be too accessible) but a dull workspace makes me depressed. You can't control your coworkers (for good or bad) but as long as you don't work for crazy dictators *coughcoughAcuituscoughcough* you can make your space into what you need it. And I need it to be "interesting".

One of my coworkers was super awesome and ordered a box of 36 mixed succulents from Amazon. He then distributed one to each member of the team and then other random awesome devs around the office. This made me happy. My friend Suko was awesome and used her Google-fu to sleuth out that the plant I got was a gasteria disticha.

It took me some time, but I eventually pulled together a teacup monster to house my new little green companion. I've named it Gretel after a book character I'm currently enjoying. Turns out Dremeling through cups is a bitch. Had to break it up over the course of several nights, so horrible was the sound and so tedious the grind/cooldown cycle. The legs didn't really turn out the way I wanted-- initially had hoped for a more realistic clay/resin type of leg... but I had to settle since I'm actually quite bad at sculpture. I'm not that dissatisfied with how these turned out. Adam pointed out they were rather elephant like, which makes me smile. I still have 2 more teacups so I might take another stab at it...eventually. Once my ears stop bleeding- ugh.

Another thing I do at work some times that makes me happy is bake. I think I've mentioned we have a fantastic oven there. Nice little well-stocked kitchen as well. The Friday before my vacation (you know, the day when it's near impossible to focus on work) I baked some bread at work that I made from scratch. In the office. Working somewhere that allows for such sillyness makes me extremely happy. I didn't waste *too* much time doing it and those who sampled the results seemed very pleased. It was one of the best loafs I've made in a long time.

I chopped up some strawberries and mixed them in with a normal batch of bread... which resulted in ridiculously wet dough. It was quite difficult to work with, I had to keep adding flour, and took over half an hour to work into a reasonable state. After its first rise (which went perfectly) I spread it out, laid down more slices of strawberries, honey, and M&Ms, then rolled it up. Pushed it into a bread tin, waited for the second rise (also nice), and then into the oven. So good. SO GOOD.

Coding with the aroma of baked goods filling the office is a good way to spend an afternoon.

Yay

Micro projects & things

I'm terrible at finishing things. The bigger the task, the less likely it is to get done. So lets focus on some of the tiny things I've managed to do recently : Having purchased a sweet Paderno World Cuisine Stainless-Steel Egg Topper , I now have a small collection of very usable shells for my planter projects. Tried my hand at soldering again-- am way out of practice. Also, I apparently have forgotten what is and is-not solderable in my collection of junk. Wasted a lot of time with the wrong type of wire.

Sadly both of these are a pinch too large to sit on the actual window frame edge- which was the initial intention. They're on the hallway sill for now... the tan shell holds sprouted basil seedlings at this point, but the white one's mint hasn't shown sign of life yet... Neither egg is fixed to its frame... am going to make some needle-legged hanging ones next.

Speaking of which... I haven't killed the Easter one yet... though frequently it wilts due to lack of water. Am using my flavor injector to water them all. Surprisingly useful device, that syringe.

Baking has decreased due to increase in tasty resturant visits. I did however make something for the 4th. America Bread! Click image for details about bread.

Managed to make it to both Dr. Sketchy's this month here in SF. First time in a long time. Also managed to place in the contest both times this month- first for the pregnant lady session [Theme : Fertility Goddess], and second for the Roller Derby Girl session [Theme : True Blood vs The Walking Dead]. Not sure if that says more about me or those attending... but it makes me happy! I think about sketching a lot. A lot. But I sketch oh-so very little these days... aside from Sketchy's I've only doodled a picture or two relating to my new table-top character... Young Rebecca would be ashamed of me if she could see me now... Sorry for the terrible photos- I've still not yet set up the scanner situation...

Life goes on. I've been having extreme difficulty sleeping lately due to new upstairs neighbors. My usual 8-9 has been reduced to fitful 6-8 every night and I've not been able to sleep in on a weekend for a month. That, combined with some stressful stuff at work, has made my moods erratic and it definitely has affected my ability to craft/make stuff. The bedroom and craftroom are going to get switched in attempt to address the sleeping situation... hopefully it helps. (we're also looking for a new really awesome place... if you know of a top-floor, 2 bedroom, pets ok, parking included apartment in the Mission, let me know!) It also means I get to re-decorate a new craft-room... so more on that soon.

In closing, am working on a new random monster... it's restful to just put hook to yarn and be like "whatevs". No idea how I'll finish him, but I'll get there eventually.

Green things

We finally had our first solid "good" weekend weather of the Spring. It was pretty sweet.

Last year I goofed around on the deck trying to grow crazy things in little bottles... all from seed. This year I've no such ridiculous restrictions. Given my flirtations with cooking, I actually want results this time around. Wish I hadn't accidentally killed that rosemary bush... damn...

The growing of things isn't entirely without silliness however. For Easter this year I was seized with a overwhelming ferver to make little planters out of Easter eggs. I emptied a number of them (via Dremel and syringe), dyed them, and then filled them with a pinch of gravel and dirt. And seeds. Made approx. 6 of those bad boys.... and then 1-2 days after Easter, right after I had hung them up outside, it poured down rain so viciously the dye was washed off and the seeds basically killed. Oops. Luckily 2 remained indoors and both have sprouted- the basil fairing much better then the mint (of which so far there is exactly 1 sprout-ling)

In other green-things, I finally took a stab at avocado bread. It started off *so* nice... smoothest, nicest dough I've worked with so far. Fun to touch! But then when pfffffffth in the second rising and just sorta' spread out rather then rising up. Boo. Should have put it into a bread tin....

Also made a tiny bit of fresh blackberry bread. Soooo oozy and wet and terrible to start with! But surprisingly it turned out pretty tasty. It's not so much that you could taste the blackberries... but you could taste something! Also, the color was pretty sweet! While the avocado bread had a lovely green thing going on to start with, baking it really muted it.

Fact: it was a pretty sweet weekend. Week, even.

• On Tuesday Adam and I went to see Justice. We showed up waaaay too early (lame) which meant we were able to claim space against the railing on the 2nd tier of the Fox's GA section (super awesome).
• On Wednesday Adam and I went to see Godspeed You! Black Emporor. Claimed near-optimal seating on balcony to the left of the band. Did you know the Great American Music Hall serves up wicked awesome brownie sundays for only $8?
• On Thursday Adam got me a ticket to the opening movie/event for the SFIFF. Pretty posh!
• On Friday I hurt... allergies started to kick in and my body taxed me for the week's joy
• On Saturday I was tipped off that the Lost Horizon Night Market was happening! Among many other things, I attended the Prom truck.
• On Sunday the GWS house had the first BBQ of the year! Friends + Meat + Fire + Sunshine + Sugar + Game of Thrones = Happiness. Did you know smoking a hookah while laying in a hammock is an even more fantastic experience then just smoking a hookah?
• On Monday Adam and I went to the SFIFF showing of Buster Keton shorts with live music from Merrill Garbus (of Tune-Yards) & crew. How have I not seen Buster Keaton before?? He's like a fey crossed with a clown- it hurts my head.

Sigh... it's 11:35pm and my bread has now just finished it's 1st rise... I really need to work on this...

Making things more awesome

I have a craft room. This is an awesome fact. The best part of the craft room is that I can do things in there to organize my crafting process. I love to pour over decorating blogs, especially ones geared towards people with craft rooms. There's something divine in a well put together room that has been especially tailored to optimizing the crafting experience.

My room however has far to go. But today! Today I take one step forward in the "This is going to be awesome" direction. I've always had an idea about how my "current" fabric should be organized and dude! It totally looked something like this in my head:

Except, get this- it's not in my head any more! It's there! In the room! Bam!

Walking home from Dr. Sketchy's tonight (which was aaaaaawesome) I spotted the halves of a futon frame next to the public trash bit on our street corner. This half the frame was perfect and I didn't feel that bad about taking only part of it because the legs were no-where in sight. So it was trash. But I made (part of it) into something sweet and useful! How indy craft girl of me!

Along the topic of making things more awesome- I totally took some seeds a while ago and put them in the dirt. Then I managed to not neglect what came out of the dirt too much. Now I've got this!

I'm not certain you can see it so let me point it out to you. There's a god damn cherry tomato growing on that (root bound, very sad) tomato plan! I've not picked it yet... not actually, you know, sure when too... but soon! And there are more on the other plants coming along (no other one actually red yet though). Also note the actually-kinda'-healthy catnip next to it. That's growing (from seed!) too and continues to meet Duck's approval every time I give him a fresh leaf from it.

Minor addition to last post...

Trying to remember how to draw better... hence the lack of exciting craft posts. (The weather is too nice to code- that's a winter sport) Am super psyched for the Wacom Inkling pen...

I forgot! I had taken pictures at the start of the month of my one cucumber and never posted them... I cut up and ate a portion (though sadly not the whole thing) of this poor little cucumber after it showed no sign of change for several days... There was almost a seed inside it... almost... very tough little bugger... it did *not* give me a tummy ache, luckly


Also, not everything from my garden was a complete failure. The peas did quite fine and the basil was actually used several times in cooking.


I would also like to note that we are now in the awesome period of San Francisco. Remember- if you ever wish to visit, only do so in the spring or fall. This last weekend was icky, but during the week the days have been absolutely fabulous. Here's the Adam lounging on our sweet deck chair. Note the awesome vintage parasal he's using to protect himself from the sun- his mother got that for me last Christmas- haven't had a chance to use it yet, but will find one soon!

General bland update

Too many projects all plodding along at the same time, with nothing finishing... Also, distracted with work and life and travel. All good things.

In the good news, progress was made at last weekend's very pleasant craft day. Settlers of Catan quilt base is finished binding. Most the hex titles are done. Now for the tedious task for snap sewing... the results so far are very promising!


Played Starcraft 2 this last weekend. Placed into Gold league with Vince and Adam, which is pleasing. Instantly turned around and started making a zergling plush... having never finished the hydralisk one of course. Am taking good photo-documentation notes however, and making progress. Am about... halfway done? Am "skinning" it currently... will post pictures next week. Main take away from that project though: Dude! Coins make perfect weights!!

I was hoping to finish it in one weekend, but was distracted by Adam and his continuing quest to make our front room awesome. Previous weekends it was shuffling around furniture and rotating shelves. This weekend it was hooking up the record player and sound system.

Was also distracted by going to see the movie Drive. A touch too graphically violent for my tastes. Adam and I both agreed we couldn't quite tell... what the director was trying to say with the film. Why was it made? The first half was pretty great though. No complaints about anything (acting, dialog, cinematography, music)... just... why? Best thing from it though? The soundtrack! Purchased from Amazon for $8, which seems very reasonable. Suggested tracks : Nightcall, Tick of the Clock, Wrong Floor, and After the Chase.

In closing, sad, news... the garden experiment is coming to an end. Lessons have been learned. Notes have been taken. I haven't given up entirely- there's still the catnip and the plants in the front room, and a couple tomatoe plans outside. I hope to put out some snow peas, but that's probably it. Next year- no lettuce! More pruning! More climbing! Watering.... still confuses me. To wrap up the garden experiment, may I present the tiny rewards I have reaped...

The background processes

I would just like to publicly state that I am still working on the quilt. Yay persistance! Boo lack of new content. It's hard to spiral out and do fantastical new projects when I've got the constant grind of hand sewing holding me down. Which isn't a *bad* thing-- stable "creative" work. It just means I'm limited in some acceptable ways.


(you can see the backing fabric to the left, the black binding on the hex tiles, and the blue binding for the quilt)

Have 10 of 19 hexes sewn up, though none of snaps on them yet. I've just now finished tying each quilt top hex to it's stuffing/backing with some basic floss. This means I can at least throw it around like a retarded (pin free) blanket. Need to either machine quilt it or hand sew the binding to the back now... am... not clear on which one to do... will I ever machine quilt it? Can I do it after the binding? I continue to learn a number of things from this... Have I mentioned that the next time I will be THROWING MONEY AT THE PROBLEM and hiring someone else to quilt the damn thing? (making the top is fun! this part... not so much... there's a place in Fremont I randomly stumbled into which I might use...)

Also, the plants are still sort of growing. I'm realizing that I have not yet found the balance of when/how much to water them yet. Many of my dear sweet green babies have yellowing/sad/dead lower leaves/branches. I think that means I'm wantering them too much... but they get so wilty so fast! I can't help but give them more water! It makes me think of a small child who throws a temper tantrum to get candy, always gets what they want, and is slowly becoming obese. I need to be more strict!

That hasn't stopped some of them from thriving though! Cucumber progress!

Also a number of smaller jars/experiments are... continouing to not die. The middle jar here is carrots. Hee hee! (on the left young mint and on the right older parsley)


Am enjoying myself. Already have ideas of how to do it better next year...

Smart people learning to program...

This post is about taking on challenges. Here is a photo of my cucumber plant ready to take on any challenges. See that? He's holding a fucking hat pin. Don't mess with him or he'll fuck you up. Take that, challenge!

My sister (the middle one) has embarked down the respectable path of acquiring a PhD in the field of... bio-chem-ish-something... She's over out at U of Madison which is nice because that means she's living near our father's side of the family. Nice people, them.

Anyway, dear sister K and I don't talk much, which is fine. We're rather different folks... but just last week (or so) ago I got an email out of the blue notifying me that sister dearest has signed up for a class on Perl! Oh joy! Never before has she shown the slightest interest in programming and now she is (rather unprompted) elected to take a class on it. Unfortunately it's an intense summer course with classes every day and it failed to notify her of several pre-reqs that are kinda' required. Or at least suggested... and oh my how she should have taken them. I've been talking her through a couple subjects... it's been a while since I've "taught" programming and it's... different with A) a sibling B) someone who isn't a child/dumb AND isn't really into it. It means she's bright enough to get it but doesn't quite... go out there and try to learn. No- she is trying to learn. But she's not trying to.. really dig in and grasp everything?

Subjects that have confused her so far :

• Hashes. Somehow her professor phrased something in such a way that she basically thought hashes were a collection of key & value pairs where *every* pair you gave it was stored. She thought she could add several sets of pairs all with the same key and then request the set of pairs that matched a given key and iterate over them. I feel bad because I can totally see how that could make sense... and yet she really, really had to struggle to get back onto the right track. You know, the whole "keys are unique" idea...
  
• Debugging. She gets stuck and then... I don't know what... I told her that she really should be printing out the values of things to "check" them but it just... it doesn't seem to click with her. She prints some now but without additional comments (so the spew is a really confusing jumbled mess) and not all the information. Also, walking through the code. I can't tell if it doesn't occur to her or she can't do it herself. When we do it together she can quickly spot the problems...
  
• Initializing values. Several times now when discussing a problem with her I realize she's initializing some value inside a while loop and over-writing the existing data she was hoping to collect. We had a long conversation about the idea of conditionally initializing something and it... didn't go well. This is the most fascinating problem of them all to me because I cannot figure out what her brain is thinking...
  

Anyway... have been having several (of my first!) video conferences with her. Talking about programming is fun but I'm severely out of practice. And an even worse word-garbler then before. In the theme of things over-coming obstacles, here is a photo of my cucumber plant from last week. Notice that it has a baby cucumber on it. Fuck yeah! Take that you tiny-container doubters!! (to be fair I've no reason to believe it will actually make it to maturity yet...) Also- all 3 of my edamame plants of popped out pods... even the severely retarded/bonsi one. All pods scaled to the appropriate size so far.

Generics Suck

Never before have I experienced such rage and failure with Java as I did this week at work. Blah.

Not only did I find finding documentation about it difficult but talking to someone about it proved almost too much. I suck more at knowing the vocabulary then I normally do.

I'm having difficulty articulating what exactly one of the problems was... It had to do with the fact that :
List<subclass> extends List<superclass>
doesn't really work, you need:
List<subclass> extends List<? extends superclass>

All my method and class signatures got super bloated and became obnoxious to read.

Also, while this didn't really factor into how I was fixing the problem, I was boggled to learn something new about the Java language. I may not be great at a lot of things, but to find something totally new after a couple years working with it is... surprising. And perhaps sad.

Anyway, did you know that you can pass type parameters to a method? Like:
fooObject.<X,Y>barMethod();
Woaaaah! Crazy! I'm used to only seeing instance variables and constructors use the <>s when declaring something...

In other news, in other areas where I suck less, I still haven't killed any of my bottled plants. In fact, several seem to be thriving.

Sadly the lettuce (not pictured) is getting rather wilty... so that'll probably be my second failure-- the first being that the catnip NEVER SPROUTED. Everything else I've grown from seed just fine, but the catnip refuses to wake up. Damn.

Sickness & Sanding

Alas. I've been sick all week, which hindered my attempt for regular blog posts... I should have stayed home longer on Tuesday because of it (my going into work this week has lead to my saddest, most incoherent series of SVN checkins ever). But because I forged (floundered) ahead through work on Tuesday I deemed myself healthy enough to attend the very first TechShop class I had ever signed up for.

I am now certified for the vacuum forming machine in the SF location. Woot. Now I just have to shell out the rediculous $$ required for a membership in order to get into the building (day passes are $50! Month passes are $125!) It was an interesting class, and fun. Pricey, but whatever. I was the only one who was A: a total noob B: a girl C: brought their own parts to test vacuum forming. I brought several of my clay and resin pieces from the Portal 2 project to mold- got to use 2 sheets and now I have just enough parts to assemble 1 Frankenturret from the plastic bits... need to paint & cut them out however... blah

My sickness-clouded brain really isn't up for anything complicated... but I have been able to attempt casting and sanding of results... so it's not like I've *just* been laying on the couch with a vacant gaze and drooling... although there has definitely been a lot of that. And tissues... I've gone through, like, 3 boxes of tissues...

The sanding never stops... it's starting to get at me. Blah. See, I made a mold of the full (collapsed) turret form and now I've got to cast it several times and cut the shapes out from the whole. Loooots of dremel work. Kicken' up a looot of dust. Maybe that's why I'm sick? Will probably pull together my Frankenturret v3 this weekend from the new molds. I've been thinking for some crazy reason that I want to turn it into a planter... I've yet to have anything die on me... I've got a Edamame seedling in a tiny bottle, so I guess that's a good test of how long it'll take to die... It's so cute! The bottle is maybe 3" high?

Gardening && !Zen

First off-- Gardening. I mentioned that I had started trying to grow things.... well, originally I was doing it wrong. I was using a spray bottle and misting my pots... and nothing was growing... once I switch to actually, you know, pouring water on the plants some of them started to grow! Wow! My first round of Edamame and Cucumbers have been growing for a couple days now (despite planting them, like, 3 weeks ago)

In the mean time, I've been distracted / mutated my interest into terrariums... but I don't have any moss or small plants... so I've bastardized the thought by trying to grow my vegetable seeds in glass bottles*...

The basil has started poking out already (5 days in) and I can see the cucumber seed turning green just below the surface (yay glass walls?) Adam points out that this wont work in the end... I'm fine if the plants just don't die... I doubt they'll seed/produce (it'd be SO cool if they did!) but I don't think they'll fall over, wilt, and die just because they're in bottles... but maybe they will...

Current vegetable selection is : Cucumber, Edamame, Basil, Parsley, Pole Beans, and Snow Peas. So far the parsley is the only one that flat out failed to grow... Edamame is AWESOME** and the best grower and the cucumber will desperately need to be transplanted to a larger container soon...

Trying to make the most of this happy 3 day weekend. Golly I like my weekends... There's some good and some bad so far though (and it's not even over yet!)

The Bad : I'm trying to do another rev of my frankenturret project. Going to Maker Faire inspired me to try and "finish" stuff better... so I made another set of corners and head and made a mold out of them (requiring an $$ batch of new supplies... ) but it hasn't gone anywhere... realizing I wasted a good portion of a day making shitty molds and casting pieces I can't use really took the wind out of my sails.... Overall my real negative take-away from this is that I don't like trying polish/finish a piece. It just takes too much work! I tried to find the piece/zen in really focusing on something and... it just made me frustrated. Blah.

The Good : Throwing money at craft supplies makes me happy! I got some white pigment and not only does it make the resin super awesome white, it also thins the resin and extends the workable time and makes it *much* easier to cast! Yay! I also got new bits for the dremel a co-worker is lending me and it's super fun! Also, I spent a good portion of Saturday at Coffee Bar warming up my Python again and working on the Tichu game. I really like the idea I've got right now on how to handle game flow... still a long way off from completion...

There was a parade that went right in front of our house! (well, okay, the staging area did) and Adam has been super nice and making me/bringing me delicious foods. Even Duck, the cat, has been somewhat tolerable this weekend. We've been bonding over our love of the deck while I work with the plants and he watches birds.



...and now I'm off to a memorial day B.B.Q.! Maybe I'll swim in the ocean?!?


* side note 1 : OMG! I've started drinking vanilla flavored frappuccinos at work! They are insanely delicious!! How did I not know about this before? Also, the plastic label peels off super easily and the bottle left behind is rather cute... I'd drink several a day if Adam didn't point out how ridiculously unhealthy/sugared they are... sigh... limiting myself to one every other day now...

** side note 2 : no, really, Edamame is AWESOME! It just SHOOTS up out of the dirt! Pow! The packet said growing inside wasn't recommended but that's how I started it anyway. The poor thing definitely didn't have enough light, hence the sideways growing. I moved it out to the porch the other day and I think it's already starting to zig bad upwards...

Trying to make things... that live!

Have taken it into my head that I should start a garden. Really really possessed by this idea... Never grown anything from scratch before... my parents did have quite an impressive garden when I was growing up (and still do!) so in theory I might know some things....

So far I picked up parsley, basil, cucumbers (spacemaster variety! How neat!), and edamame.

Hope to get carrots, lettuce, and peas soon. Also a planters for the back porch... right now I'm using a couple clay pots but... they seem so tiny! Planters!


(also- I picked up a fucking fantastic glass orb from Paxton's Gate that has three holes in it... am trying to keep alive a plant that I shoved in there.... it looks so pretty though it hasn't really had a chance to die yet... )