TANG - hold the press!

I got some tang from snob hill tonight. Says "Great NEW Flavor" on the front. Kraft hasn't updated their website to show the changes with this "Great NEW Flavor"s ingredients.

Ingredients:
Sugar, citric acid, <2% of natural and artificial flavor, ascorbic acid, maltodextrin, calcium phosphate, guar and xanthan gums, sodium acid pyrophosphate, artificial color, yellow 5, yellow 6, BHA

Yep. No artificial sweeteners. No extra vitamins. No Orange Juice Solids.

Old "New TANG" with Fruitrition(R):
Ingredients: SUGAR, FRUCTOSE, CITRIC ACID (PROVIDES TARTNESS), CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF ORANGE JUICE SOLIDS, NATURAL FLAVOR, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), VITAMIN E ACETATE, NIACINAMIDE, VITAMIN B6, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), BETA CAROTENE, MALTODEXTRIN, SUCRALOSE, ACESULFAME POTASSIUM AND NEOTAME (SWEETENERS), GUAR AND XANTHAN GUMS (PROVIDE BODY), ARTIFICIAL COLOR,YELLOW 5; YELLOW 6; BHA (TO HELP PROTECT FLAVOR)

I can't decide if this is going forwards or backwards. Maybe someone found out that Fruitrition causes cancer. Or that you can't actually absorb any of the vitamins that they try to add. Time will tell. The internets are abnormally silent at the moment about this turn of events.

I can finally name you..

Late summer and fresh meaty tomatoes makes me think of Spain. Manresa.
Large long loaves of bread sliced thick at a diagonal. Tomato smeared
on top, a bit of salt and a whisper of olive oil. I never learned your
name, I just called you tomato bread and share with anyone who will
listen. Now I can name you, although mispronouncing horribly.
Pa amb tomàquet.

Furlough Info

Here's some info from the Department of Labor:

According to this no furlough days or vacation should be applied for
on call coverage. You should be paid your regular full time wages for
the time period covering on-call duties.

According to the FLSA, if a salaried employee works for a single part
of a day, the employer must pay the salary for the entire work week.
Carrying his phone, staying in town and being the point person with
the responsibility of manning the bat-phone is WORKING in my opinion.

http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_541/29CFR541.602.htm

"Subject to the exceptions provided in paragraph (b) of this section, an
exempt employee must receive the full salary for any week in which the
employee performs any work without regard to the number of days or
hours worked. Exempt employees need not be paid for any workweek in
which they perform no work."

None of the exceptions cover when an employer shuts down a facility or
furloughs any staff.

I'm not a lawyer but this seems pretty clear. If the campus requires
anyone to on be on call during the campus closure then that person,
and from what I can tell, anyone called in during this time, should be
paid for the week.

Dear lord protect me...

I said a short prayer when mounting my bike today in the city for the
first time. After watching SF bike commuters for two days it seemed
appropriate. Maybe some holy water for tomorrow...

--
Sent from my mobile device

Bonny Doon wines... WTF?

I was looking at BD's website (found out that nothing is actually
grown in BD since 1994-or-so)...anyway. A big push on the site from
the owner that all vineyards practice biodynamic ag practices..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_wine

Because I am quoting wikipedia, I'll copy out the "What the Fuck"
version below that I read:

* Preparation 500 - Cow manure is buried in cow horns in the soil.
The manure is then spread over the fields.
* Preparation 501 - Ground quartz is buried in cow horns in the
soil. The quartz is sprayed over the vines.
* Preparation 502 - Yarrow flowers are fermented in a deer's
bladder, then applied to the compost.
* Preparation 503 - Chamomille flowers are fermented in the soil,
then applied to the compost.
* Preparation 504 - Stinging nettle tea is applied to the compost.
* Preparation 505 - Oak bark fermented in the skull of a domestic
animal is applied to the compost.
* Preparation 506 - Dandelion flowers fermented in cow mesentery
is applied to the compost.
* Preparation 507 - Valerian flower juice is applied to the compost.
* Preparation 508 - Horsetail tea is applied to the vines.

Slightly verified (not really read cuz it was starting to gross me out) here:
http://www.dionysianwrites.com/blog/1-wine-note/19-biodynamic-soil-.html

Crazy hodge-podge of sacrificial lambs to make better wine??? I'm
going to stay clear of "biodynamic" wines/ foods from now on unless
proven otherwise.

Oh god. I just looked up mestentery. What the fuck is wrong with
people???!!??!!?!?!@qq1!!11~@#$!

70 years and counting

DSC_1928.JPG
Originally uploaded by Mark Juliana

Dear Dojo,

Thank you so much for all your kind Birthday wishes. I am indeed blessed to have such support.

It has been delightful to reach this milestone. I am disappointed, however, that wisdom did not come along with the aging process. I will continue to work diligently on that.

With best wishes and many thanks,

--Glen (on the left who is harder to find a picture of than you might think)

Kimuchi Yoi

First off, sorry if you're computer can't handle the characters. This post is just silly anyway.

I received a business card today with the above japanese kanji calligraphy and the romanji translation below it: "Kimuchi Yoi". Curious as I am with kanji, I see ki that I'm familiar with, only it looks like it's missing a stroke. No idea what the other ones mean. So I go to google and try to look up kimuchi yoi. Nothing. Kimuchi? Ah, this is the Japanese version of Kimchi, a spicy fermented cabbage sort of dish. Yoi? Good. So...good...Kimuchi?

So I inquire back to the owner of the card and get back that he doesn't know exactly what it is, but he was told:
"It expresses a feeling of contentment and well being".

THAT I can work with. Here's what I got.
気 持
kimochi: feeling / sensation / mood / physiological feelings

That's MOchi, not MUchi.

気持ちよい
kimochi yoi: good feeling / feeling good

気持ちいい
kimochi ii: good feeling / feeling good

Stolen from http://shopnoun.com/grammargirl/?p=100:
For those of you who don’t know much Japanese, “kimochi ii” roughly translates as “good feeling” or “feels good”. But to us, it’s one of those translations that doesn’t really do justice to the true meaning of the original phrase. “Good feeling” sounds kind of dorky and just feels uncomfortable. But if you can imagine warm fuzzies, comfort and both emotional and physical satisfaction you may come close to our understanding of “kimochi ii”.

ち
place

So we're still missing the last two characters and it looks like the two "feeling good" translations above might only be first person singular. "I'm at a place of physiological contentment" might be my long-winded translation.

Ah, so this is Japanese, right? You is probably different than I. So I asked google for "good" and received 19 results. One of them is:
良い

What's 良?
Good. Also corresponds to the grading letter "B"

So google, what is 気持良い ? Why "good feeling" of course.
What is "good feeling"?
いい感じ
好感
気持ちいい

Thanks for clearing that up.

Because 氣 is used instead of 気, I thought that the 良 (with slightly different strokes) in the picture is a kyūjitai (old school) form of 良 but I'm not sure on this one. Maybe that's the lost stroke from 氣 ? ;)

So, although having a stomach full of kimuchi might put you in a good mood, the kanji would like to wish you physiological contentment.

Jacks Peak Monterey County Park Map

I don't how the intarwebs gets away with having shitty park maps. Going to the official site or a quick google search comes back with the blurry Official blue crayon map, or this multi-jpeg obnoxious one. As luck would have it, I came across this brochure that looks like it still has the psd extension in the name and does not contain the word "MAP" as one might assume it would. It's also not linked into the current version of the website so no way to get to it easily. Bah. Linked here is a pdf version of just the map hosted by me.

Are we here again? Really?

As an unhappy Part II to CA State Park closures, we have this lovely
list of possible closures this year due to state budget cuts.
http://www.calparks.org/takeaction/closurelist.html

Now please...comeon. Really?

More company profiles

Probar (LLC): Calorie dense not raw meal bars. Tasty.
Probar looks to be a private company, probably outsourcing the
production of their bars. Based primarily in Utah. So other than
possibly giving money to mormons, I approve. I actually have the
current Prez as a 3rd connection via LinkedIn.

Organic food bar / organic active greens (Bio International):
Powerbar-ish mostly raw good for you bars.
Organic Food Bar is currently private, outsourcing production,
worldwide. On the market to sell:
http://www.mergernetwork.com/businesses-sale/business-sale-167401.htm
I'm not totally sure what the name of the parent company is. Looking
up Bio International brings up a Rx company. A little sketchy. If
they're half-price I'll buy them again, otherwise skipping.

And now for something completely different

You knew it was true. Tim Curry is the voice of God.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166990/

Old Dell hardware fluke

raises it's ugly head. Updating the PERC controller on a 2850 makes
the local vmfs volume inaccessible, even on 3.5 u3. Luckily the
commands for the workaround from 3.0 are still valid. KB Article
1001577 : http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1001577

Now I thought I updated to the latest PERC firmware..back to the
software update repos...

stupid easy PS vm disk info

There are lots of fancy ways to get esx disk info from powershell.
Some that I found gave "interestin" results so this is my KISS
version:
Get-VM | Get-Harddisk | export-csv c:\temp\disk.csv

I take out the junk I don't need and then do a data -> text to columns
to parse out the [datastore] vm_name\vmdiskname.vmdk

raw data good.

larabars pwned

I missed the announced global takeover of larabar last June to General
Mills. Now guess what? They change the supplier to some mega
conglomerate and need to recall because of possible salmonella.
I for one welcome our "<blank> corporation of america" overlords.
Homemade larabars from now on... not because of the peanuts but the
general mills.

Must ... Stop ... Coveting

Soho 2009 in March
http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/story/urban/
I do not need a new bike, I do not need a new bike, I do not need a
new bike, I do not need a new bike, I do not need a new bike
...

The beauty of real estate ads

I went to scope out a piece of property, address unlisted, that I
found online. I give you the rainbow-tinged view (straight from the
realtor's website) and real version of a small un-permitted cabin in
the wilderness.