entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

While my wife's away, i get to satisfy my vulgar unhealthful urges.  I rode to Safeway this morning just for this.

Two weeks, i hit LISA for the first time in 12 years.  I can't really explain why it took me so long to return, other than the typical excuse of indolence (and, really, from a professional standpoint, that is simply bad form).  It was good to see _nicolai_, pir, gothgeekgrrl, and gallifreyan, as well as Steve VanDevender, ex-coworkers Grant Talarico and Aaron Fraser, and talk.bizarre's own George William Herbert (pure chance encounter), and i indulged in the opportunity to show them around downtown San José for lunch at Morocco's, Hanuman, and Mezcal.

One thing i learned at LISA was from ARIN regarding the imminence of IPv4 address space exhaustion; if everything breaks right, the last available /8s will be handed out by IANA to the regional internet registries sometime in the second quarter of 2012.  So, adding IPv6 is moving out of the "hardcore early adopter" stage into the "prudent proactive user" stage (but feel free to disagree and call me names).  I also picked up some good tips regarding interviewing, résumé writing, and becoming a better senior sysadmin.

As of this week, i've been working during the day, filling in for someone else in the group who's out (the group is running rather lean as of late).  It's been nice to see people and actually get to have questions answered without having to wake someone up (although i get the impression today that far too many people have checked out early for Thanksgiving).  I hope that i'll be on days permanently soon.

A simple invocation of lynx -dump http://ronebofh.livejournal.com/tag/ | grep ' use' | sort -nr -t - -k 2 | head' yields my 10 most used tags:

• music - 192 uses
• friends - 136 uses
• politics - 131 uses
• soccer report - 128 uses
• fuckheads - 122 uses
• random stuff - 69 uses
• wine - 67 uses
• meme - 66 uses
• food porn - 65 uses
• pop culture - 64 uses

butterflygenius

The task will be to coalesce actual writing out of the inchoate sputtering i inflict upon Facebook and Twitter.

My brother-in-law has been raising chickens for about a year now (starting with some neighborhood strays, if i recall correctly), and my mother-in-law had wondered for some time how we'd end up having the ones who weren't laying eggs turned into food.  So i volunteered to learn how to process chickens, because i've felt for some time that, as a meat-eater, i should be able to look at my prey in the eye and lick my lips.  Or something.

The result was that my MiL signed me up for a slaughtering class at TLC Ranch last Sunday, and 2wanda was able to join me at the last minute due to a cancellation.  There were about 10 of us there, ready to get with the cuttin' and the guttin'.  It's a fairly straightforward procedure: catch the chicken; put it upside down into a metal cone with no point, so that its head sticks out; grab the head, and sever the jugular below the jawline; let it bleed out; throw the body into the scalder; when it's ready, throw the body into the plucker; pull the body out and clean it.

Of course, there's nothing straightforward about any of those individual steps, but that's where the actual learning comes in: grab the chickens low by the legs; keep it upside down for a while so it doesn't thrash while you put it in the cone; sometimes the head refuses to be within fingers' reach, so you have to raise and lower it again; you want to make the cut just right to avoid various complications; the chickens will sometimes manage to climb themselves right side up in the slick metal cone, somehow, so you have to grab them and turn them over; don't scald them too long or too hot, or the plucker will break the skin; do not cut into the intestines or you will get chicken crap everywhere and nobody wants that.

One guy couldn't handle giving a good swift cut so he instead ended up slicing the chicken's neck like he was trying to get it to confess to a crime, and one woman insisted on naming her chickens.  She also had one of her chickens killed by having its head severed (by boltcutters) so that its body, well, ran around like a chicken with its head cut off.  It was weird to see how accurate the cliché is, but i don't think i want to see that particularly barbaric act again (besides, the chicken might break its wings while thrashing about).

Then we came home and Kim made coq au vin and it was delicious the end.

I love the Visa Debit commercial with the guy tossing the pizza dough.  But what's his story?  Turns out the dude is on the United States Pizza Team (and the commercial is behind the link, in case you haven't seen it, plus there's more of him on YouTube).  They'll make a team out of anything these days, it seems... but watching him work is pretty damn cool.

The menu says, PROPER ATTIRE ENCOURAGED.  I wish the dude in the frayed jeans and the "I LOVE MY GIRLFRIEND" T-shirt had read it.

We considered the omakase, but i really didn't see myself eating that much.  I went in with the firm idea that, given the high level of culinary art on display, i would try everything i was served, even if it's not to my normal taste.  So i tried the blue cheese dressing with my iceberg wedges salad and enjoyed it; i got the beef and reef, and ate all the mushrooms, which went well with the filet mignon; and for dessert, i ordered the Ooh!, and ate the black olive ice cream.  I generally abhor olives, but the waiter explained that the saltiness of the ice cream was there to cut the richness of the various chocolates; i figured i had nothing to lose.  I don't know if i would have liked it on its own, but the ice cream fulfilled its duty as a richness buffer with flying colors, uh, flavors.

Kimmy had the baby lettuce salad and the filet mignon, and the Pearadise for dessert; we also ordered the haricot verts, and a couple of hamachi shots, which were simply delicious.  The amuse-bouche were also very good.

As for the wine, i opened with a glass of the aged riesling (not the one listed; it was a 1989 Dr. Heyden Oppenheimer Kruez Auslese from Germany), which was a highlight for me; it was quite complex for a white wine, it showed its age very well, and it adapted well to everything i had before my entrée.  We then ordered the Barbaresco half-bottle to go with our filets, which did an admirable job despite my initial skepticism (it tasted like a pinot noir trying to impersonate a merlot).  For dessert, Kimmy got a glass of their muscat, which was excellent, not too sweet, and paired perfectly with the Pearadise, and i asked for a glass of 1968 madeira.  Sadly, they were out, so the server upsold me to a glass of 1983 vintage port and one of the 10-year madeiras (the latter came at no charge).

I have to showcase my dessert.

It is as described in the dessert menu, except that the bits you see surrounding the black olive ice cream on the right are minced cacao nibs.  The chocolate sphere was not precisely filled with fudge; rather, it was a dollop of fudge about the same size as the ice cream.

When the dish was brought out, the sphere was complete; hot melted chocolate was poured upon it until it melted through and fell upon the fudge within the sphere, leaving the jagged edges you see above.

They brought this out as their gift, purportedly some sort of apple crème brûlée, but Kimmy thought it tasted more like pumpkin.  It tasted more like apple pie to me, with a definite cinnamon flavor which i did not care for.  The other freebies we got were two flutes of Cristalino Brut, which were the first things to arrive at the table.

When our server pulled the cork from our bottle of Barbaresco, he put it in this weird contraption, clearly intending to display the cork, but the next time he came by our table, he took it away.

Our meal, overall, was fantastic.  But i have some complaints:

• Their online menu wasn't updated, so a few dishes we wanted were missing.  The omission i found most puzzling was the Divinity, the chocolate soufflé, which was inexplicably replaced by the Rise ‘n’ Shine, a banana soufflé.
• We were amused by patrons receiving cotton candy as the sweet that comes with the bill; we were looking forward to ours, but the blasted machine broke just before we received our bill.  We received some odd ultra-French toast-like squares instead, which weren't all that and really were too sweet for that point in the evening.
• There's no other way to put this: the men's room smelled like tinkle.  If i'm going to a ballgame, fine.  If i'm going to a fancy restaurant, unacceptable.
• Kimmy found the chairs almost too uncomfortable.  Again, not what you'd expect at a high-end restaurant.

The missus and i will be eating here (PELIGRO: Flash).  I am pondering how much i'll let myself spend on wine.

On Thursday, many talk_bizarre members converged upon haineux's house due to the visit of justjenine and torkington and their two little Torklets.  Alas, 2wanda couldn't come because she was stuck at work.

On Friday, i took my wife out on a dinner date and enjoyed entirely too much German food, washed down with a liter of beer.

On Saturday, Kimmy and i split our time between two parties: racerxmachina's birthday party, and a gathering of Centavo (my Thursday soccer team) for BBQ at Dino's place.  Both events featured somewhat athletic activities; racerxmachina had piñatas and balloon batting, whereas Dino had a bocce court (Dino mentioned that his dad laid down the oystershell bocce courts at the Campo di Bocce in Los Gatos, which i've been meaning to patronize almost since i first noticed it about a dozen years ago).

On Sunday, after community garden duty, we had lunch with sandollar17, her mom, and her Spanish friend Ana, who's been visiting for the last three weeks.  Then we took Ana shopping at the mall... the goddamn mall.  After that harrowing experience, we had to go to Rock Bottom for some beer (BJ's is too damn full of yuppies and other pretty people).

All these damn friends and relatives making demands on our time... it's ridiculous and exhausting.  Life was easier when we were hermits.

Mom and Aunt Martha flew in last week to visit, and Kim and i brought them along on our 10th anniversary trip to the Santa Ynez Valley, which we've been wanting to visit ever since we saw Sideways.  It's absolutely beautiful down here, and so is Santa Barbara, which we visited today.  Today we also had tasty æbleskiver for breakfast (i also had medisterpølse and eggs).

Yesterday in Los Olivos, we went to taste at this one room that collects wine from vineyards that don't have their own tasting room.  It was run by a man whom i dubbed the Pinot Noir Nazi, perhaps like Sideways's Miles but gruffer and without the somehow charming dysfunction.  He declared that cabernet franc was a blending grape and was wasted when vinified on its own, and the same went for merlot, dolcetto, and tempranillo.  I just nodded and said, "I see."  He did pour us an absolutely fabulous pinot noir from Fiddlehead Cellars, and i passed his snob test by correctly pronouncing Meritage and Lompoc.

... unless it's a really handsome salad, such as the above, which 2wanda whipped up for me some time ago.