Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/07/08/first-harvest/
The tomatoes are still green and I need a trellis for the beans . . . though, I am moving in a few weeks anyway. But, I picked the first beans from my garden. I look forward to the meal that will feature these!
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/07/03/tazo-caffeine/
So, a little while back, I got into dropping by the Barnes and Noble cafe and sipping on a Tazo tea whilst browsing / reading. Why tea? Well, coffee is best in the mornings, and a fruit drink, that’s nice for the afternoon or evening. Tazo’s the only stuff they have that’s made with sugar instead of corn syrup, so I figure, that’s righteous.
But I could not for the life of me divine the caffeine content from the labelling.
So, I asked the intarweb . . . . nada.
So, I e-mailed Tazo, and they wrote back:
We have 14 bottled tea flavors and four of them are caffeine-free:
Brambleberry
Lemon Ginger
Simply Red
Wild OrangeThese four will also have a caffeine-free stamp on the front of the label.
So, if you were asking the Internet, there’s your answer.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/06/27/muffin-lady-land/
My nostrils are enjoying the constant smell of somewhat-baked-Danny-plus-campfire-smoke that has been infused into my epidermis over the weekend. I love this smell! Makes me feel like a human hot dog! Sooo tasty! I need me a bun and some steak sauce! And vegetables!
Actually, that reminds me I need to get groceries. 
I ate out last night. Overpriced but ginormous gyros sandwich. I skipped out on my morning muffin from the muffin lady today. I love to start the day by buying my muffin from her, and then heading upstairs to eat her muffin, but I had no appetite this morning. (Yesterday we did the chit-chat and I complimented her on her looks, thus, officially “flirted” maybe.) Darn you, gyros! But, instead of joining the work crew who headed to Whole Foods I visited the muffin lady for lunch, and consumed a bowl of chili and a fruit thingus. And read my book, Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog” and while doing so, noticed that there were attractive women checking me out as I checked out them. One read her own book, but what book that was eludes my memory. Oh man, I gotta get growing beyond the comfort of the muffin lady and into flirting with strangers. It will come.
I also gotta resist the urge to compare myself to a hot dog and talk about my muffin munching on the blog.
Or do I?
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/06/04/wine-faith-yoga/
Well, things have been busy. Saturday Duncan took me out to a winery shindig in Mendocino. He had originally planned to go with a beautiful woman named Janey, but this beautiful woman had some personal sympathy for my present situation, and was happy to send me along instead. I have not yet retrieved my fedora from the city, I might do that tonight, and since Duncan’s ride is a Porsche Boxster, he grabbed me a hat at Long’s drugs. “Originally I was looking at the baseball caps, but then I remembered Danny’s style!” It was a good trip, tasting wines. I grabbed a couple at this one very off-the-track winery that Duncan loves, because the wines have such excitingly distinctive tastes!
Today, I walked down to church, wearing a new shirt I had bought at Target. The farewell sermon from the outgoing intern minister, Lisa Sargent, was off the hook and beautiful. The congregation gave her a standing ovation! It was about going “off the map” into uncharted territory, in life. This is something she has done in her life, something I have done in mine, and something a lot of us tend to do at the end of Spring. So, it was apropos for so many people. One of the important themes she described was faith, and what faith is. She said “belief clings, faith lets go.” And that is how I feel . . . I have faith in myself, in my world, in the people. I have faith in my own future, however unknown it has recently become. I have faith in Dad, and his recovery. And I have faith that Yayoi . . . she will live her life, and I hope in time she will better know herself. Too bad that one had to be let go. So, I can not cling to the life I had even a few months ago, but I have faith in the new life I am leading.
I stopped by the bookstore, and got what looks to be a very good cookbook “for two, or for one.” I look forward to trying it out and eating well, on my own and I hope, on occasion, with some company. I also grabbed a yoga video. Yoga? Well, I remembered reading on Hiromi‘s blog somewhere that she used to be like me: so inflexible she couldn’t touch her toes, but thanks to yoga, life’s a lot more “wow.” There’s a class at Heather Farm later in June I might go for, but I don’t know how long I’ll keep to living in the ‘Creek, so I figured a $15 in the DVD player is worth more than an $88 class in the uncertain future, let’s give it a shot.
I also grabbed an amplified radio antenna at Radio Shack, and after a bit of waving around, have found solid reception for KQED! So, I have some interesting human voices back in the house with me!
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/05/01/day-without/
My my what is in my Netflix queue today?
How topical! Honestly, I did not set this up: that’s just how the queue shook out!
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/04/21/ms-walk/
After seeing Jeff’s post, I decided I’d truck down to Los Gatos this weekend to take a little 10k walk. The big benefit should be getting to see Barry, who should be walking in his wheelchair.
I never got the point of raising money by asking people to give you money for walking–I walk for free. I mean. Well, so I’ll donate my own money, but if anyone wants to make a contribution, your generosity would be appreciated. Jeff notes that donations are acceptible after the walk has happened, if you are reading this after the fact.
If any of my 408 peeps want to get together Saturday afternoon / evening, gimme a shout!
-danny
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/02/27/lazy-weekend/
Wow. I was so lazy this weekend . . . sleeping in, napping, not doing nothing, eating out . . . last night? We went out and I ate meatloaf! How sloth is that?
I did pack a dozen boxes full of books, though. Yay me. But the laundry is left for this evening.
Anyway, this weekend was so fantastically lazy that when my stuff started going ringy ding this morning during the 0600+ I was actually kind of glad to get my ass outta bed and have stuff to do.
And there are things to do, oh yes . . . but I gotta keep my priorities straight and blah blah blah on the blog first.
Happy Monday, all!
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/01/13/sysadmin-brain-dump/
MAN!
I am not at all on my game today. I went to kick the tape robot, right? Then I check on the backups server to see if it can see everything, and it seems like it lost its SCSI capabilities. Huh? Reboot the server, and get kicked off IRC. Stupid Sysadmin brainfart! I was on the wrong server.
I hope maybe my brain comes back soon, I got work to do.
Yayoi’s been working at the cafe, which tends to mean she’s out for the evening. I love spending time with her but a little quiet time to myself is good for non-work geek productivity. I’m worried if maybe my brain has a finite capacity to function and I used it all up last night working on my WordPress Flickr plugin. You can see it taking shape. I am very excited about that. And, no, its not that my brain has finite capacity, its just that maybe its too busy being excited about other things. The least of those being PHP code. (more…)
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/29/i-am-lame/
So, I discovered yesterday, that if one goes to Google, and types i am lame, then my web site is the first hit. Don’t that make me feel special?
But I didn’t drag you here for my inverse ego thing, here’s some cool videos that I have seen recently:
Internet Musical — World of Warcraft Monsters praise the Internet, in song. Best. Video. Ever!
Climbing Russian Kids — Man, talk about making good use of a post-utopian wasteland. Hollywood should steal these kids for stuntmen.
Sushi Documentary — Everything you shouldn’t know about sushi.
Devil Dogs — Lucian Reed went to Iraq to take photographs. This video is a valuable glimpse at how our folks are doing over there.
I have decided that Google Video is mostly tolerable. It’s not standard CODECs in files . . . probably they have some decent reasons, but unlike RealVideo, or QuickTime, they don’t require you to install spyware on your computer and watch the video in a little 2″ window. So, well, okay, maybe forcing you to stream . . . why? Maybe that is somewhat evil, but it is definitely less evil than “Video on the Internet” that has come before, and easier for the masses than Bittorrent . . . though it’d be neat . . . give it time . . .
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/12/23/akita-sushi-buffet/
It would seem that the dinner sushi buffet is back for Walnut Creek, on weeknights, for a limited time only. When it first opened, the dinner sushi buffet was a wonder to behold! Giant servings of raw, delicious fish. It was too good to be true, and indeed when they realized how much money they were losing, they stopped it.
Well, tonight I was thinking “spicy tuna roll” and found the buffet back in action. But it is a far cry from “too good to be true” . . . more like “dude, what do you expect from a sushi buffet? Fool!” Oh well. Maybe Gourmet Sushi will actually re-open soon. The sign says he will open before Christmas, but last I seen, the windows were still covered with newspapers and there was an envelope from the IRS sticking out of the mail slot. If he skips town . . . well, restaurants come and restaurants go, but that guy has this intense aura about him that kind of reminds me of Basil Fawly, except with inscrutable Asian powers. I’m going to miss that guy.
I’m not feeling too good . . . but if I survive the indigestion I get to fly to Chicago tomorrow, and see the fam.
Happy Solstice Holidays to you!
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/29/sysadmin-brain/
Well, the holidays were nifty but they are chased with half a week on the East Coast redoing the install I did last month that needs redoing for a variety of reasons you don’t want to be burdened with. So, move from the uber-chill four-day weekend without a lot going on beyong setting Grandma up with her new Mac (early Christmas present due to the death of her old Mac) and enjoying family time, especially wifey time . . . and we’re back in the data center demonstrating our mastery of the Linux operating system. Nyahh!!!
So, just an anecdote, I caught sight of a baby breast-feeding. How wholesome, I felt, hooray for breast feeding . . . that must feel intensely wonderfully intimate . . . hey, without my notice, baby is on the other breast, and I had my SysAdmin brain moment.
“Oh good, load balancing.”
Thank you, and goodnight.
-danny
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/19/you-might-think-i-am-lame/
. . . because I tend to post stuff on Friday evenings. Friday evenings!? I mean, sheesh, does this man have no life?
But Friday evening the wife is at class, so it is one of the few times I can get the place to myself to dork off.
That said, I kind of feel like kicking back and doing something passive, like read, or watch the next episode on my Netflixed Firefly DVD . . .
Though, UTC, I think it is almost Saturday Morning, so if you look at the timestamp you can just assume I am drunk.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/11/01/fear/
So, I spent last week in a hotel near Dulles Airport in Virginia setting up a new network. Most things went great, but we had a vendor, whom we are paying a lot of money, crash and burn on a support call. In a fantastical way. I mean, it was like dealing with a telco. We managed to complete everything on time, I even got to visit the Air and Space Museum before my flight back. But the bad experience shook our confidence in the vendor. Badly.
I spent a lot of time upset over this . . . actually lost sleep in my disillusionment. I wrote up a list of stuff I was upset about, and on Monday I took some time at my own office to re-write a more professional list of things that I want addressed. I sent this off to the responsible parties, and immediately got calls back, which I did not want to take. We have established that they have until Wednesday to answer my concerns and restore confidence.
But the thing that sticks in my mind was when I checked my voicemail last night, was that shortly after I had sent my list of concerns off, was that the guy who called back, his voice had fear in it. Like I’d caught him in the cross-hairs. Granted, he probably has the most riding on this . . . but I want him to succeed, and this is something I tried to convey in my message, though I made it clear that we were entirely prepared to cut our ties with the vendor if I were not impressed . . .
There is a little gratification to be had in the knowledge that you have scared someone, because fear is a powerful motivator. But, things happen . . . support and communications screw up from time to time . . . I don’t want to hear from someone who is working from a place of fear, I want people who have the confidence that they can see a way out of the problem . . . fear has its place, I suppose.
Well, I hope things work out. While giving the vendor time to get their story straight, I have also lined up some alternatives.
Fear?
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/11/pretty-tree/
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/10/11/weak/
My thought process this morning:
“Hrmmm, this coffee . . . not so great . . . hrmm, this coffee, tastes weak. I made the coffee, did I put enough grounds in . . ? Funny, I don’t remember scooping the grounds this morning. I didn’t scoop grounds this morning? I didn’t scoop grounds this morning! Oh . . . *check the trash* nope, no used filter from yesterday . . . hey, that looks like tan-tinted water!! Ewwwwwwwww!!”
Washed out my cup, re-started the process.
My mental effort has been on . . . well, work, I guess, except for this little diverting update to entertain the masses.
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