We went to Shabbat services this morning at Shir Hadash, as usual. The Rabbi said she was surprised to see us — she thought we’d be reading the new Harry Potter instead. I told her we didn’t even have a copy yet, and were still trying to decide between the US and UK editions — and I have to admit I was a little surprised by her comment.

But when services ended, I found out the rest of the story — her son had had his copy since 8am and had only put it down for services. As soon as services ended (while the rest of us were having some challah and schmoozing), he dashed back into the library to continue reading his copy — when we left, he was up to page 125 or so.

So we decided that the US edition would be just fine and stopped by the local Crown Books right after lunch. The cashier said that two of their stores had already run out of their allotment! This store, in Los Gatos, had ordered 1000 copies and still had quite a few, but expects to sell them all this week.

I don’t know when I’m going to start Harry Potter — I have to finish Kaaterskill Falls first so that Diane can read it before the book group discussion next Sunday. And we also have to finish editing the August issue of the Shir Hadash Notes, too. But at least I don’t have to worry about being unable to get a copy when I’m ready — well, not unless Diane or Jeffrey start our copy first (perhaps I should order a UK edition anyway, just to be on the safe side).

Not Harry Potter

I like the new multi-day discussion page feature in Manila. Thanks!

And it’s interesting to discover that I can get the Most-Read-Messages report for any ETP site, not just my own, just by adding /stats/mostreadmessages to the site’s name.

Baked Chicken With Cashews

• 1 large chicken thigh or 1/2
  boneless chicken breast,
  skinned

• 1 1/2 teaspoons butter or or
  margarine, melted

• 1/8 teaspoon paprika
• 1/8 teaspoon curry powder
• 1/8 teaspoon oregano
• Dash garlic powder
• Dash cayenne popper
• Salt, if desired
• 1 tablespoon cashew pieces
  or slivered almonds

• 1 small yam or sweet potato

Place chicken in individual
casserole. Combine butter,
paprika, curry powder, oregano, garlic powder and pepper,
mixing well. Spoon over
chicken. Bake, uncovered, in
350 degree toaster oven* along
with yam, for 45 to 60 minutes,
or until chicken and yam are
tender. About 10 minutes before chicken is done, baste
chicken with butter mixture in
casserole and sprinkle cashews
over top. Makes 1 serving, approximately 364 calories, 17
grams protein, 14 grams fat
and 24 grams carbohydrates,
including yam.

*Or bake in an electric skillet.
Put casserole and potato on
trivet in skillet. Place lid on
skillet, vent closed. Bake at
420 degrees for 60 to 75
minutes, or until chicken and
potato are tender. Sprinkle
cashews on chicken 10 minutes
before chicken and potato are
tender.

David’s interpretation of Diane’s notes

We usually have the chicken with steamed rice (made separately) rather than potato or yam. Cooking for 30 minutes in our toaster oven seems to be more than sufficient (we normally make two breast halves and double the sauce). We usually use almonds (purchased already slivered). There’s usually not enough sauce to baste, but the chicken comes out tasty anyway.

Shipped:
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie
  Star Trek Original Serie


On Order:
  Star Trek Original Serie

They get full marks for effort, but lose a few points on execution. Of course, they do make all the information available on the website, and that was only one click away (hmmm, wonder if there’s a patentable idea there?), and so I know that the missing disk (which is now “shipping soon”) is Volume 3.

Frontier, The Final Space…

I spent the day at home so I could work on my Frontier server, and after much grunting and groaning, I figured out how to adapt the “list sites” script from the control panel to become a macro so that others could also list all the sites on my server (with only 8 sites, this is probably reasonable; I don’t think it’d be such a good idea on EditThisPage). The task wasn’t hard (basically, all I had to do was copy the script to another place in the database and declare it “legal”), but it was my first actual attempt to work in the Frontier environment, and there were a few things which weren’t obvious to me (such as how I could copy the script from one place to another!). The online documentation helped a lot — so did having two machines, so I could keep the documentation on one screen and hack at Frontier on the other.

And now I’ve even managed to hack the script to show the number of messages on each of the sites. Someday, I’ll figure out how to right-justify the number so I can read it, but that’s not a project for tonight — instead, I shall declare victory for the evening and move on.

Spacing out on the home frontier…

I called a couple of drywall contractors Wednesday evening to get estimates on texturing the ceilings in the rooms which we weren’t able to have done during the kitchen remodelling project. Much to my amazement, one of them actually answered the phone on the first try (he’s supposed to be here tomorrow to give us an estimate), and the other one called back early the next morning and agreed to come out today at 2pm to take a look. The doorbell rang at 2:05 — that’s the first time I’ve had a contractor show up on time (the FAA considers 15 minutes to be “on time”; why should I worry about 5 minutes?) in a very long time. I guess the economy must be slowing down. Maybe I’ll be able get an electrician here someday, too.

Wine of the Day

1998 Firestone Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc (Santa Barbara County). Diane says it was “cheap”; we got it at Lunardi’s. I thought it had a bit of a metallic aftertaste, but it was otherwise OK; we had it with PG&E Chicken, which we all enjoy. Jeffrey, of course, had caffeine-free Coke with his chicken rather than the wine.

Book of the Day

No, it’s not Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — it’s not midnight here yet and so it’s not yet available. I am, however, trying to decide if I want to stay up until midnight and pick up a copy tonight, or wait till tomorrow — I won’t read it for a while in either case, since I have to finish Kaaterskill Falls for the Shir Hadash Book Group next weekend. We’d actually rather have a UK edition to match the first three volumes in the set — I picked up the first two on a trip to the UK because I’d read how Americans were buying them from Amazon.co.uk and I was curious. I enjoyed them so much, I made a special trip last summer to pick up the third volume.

Well, it wasn’t a special trip to the UK — it was a special trip to the WHSmith’s at Heathrow’s Terminal 1; we were changing planes there en route to Israel a week after the book had been published in the UK, and so it was pretty easy to get a copy right there, without having to wait for the US publication date. And we read the book before we got back to the US, anyway.

But I wasn’t going to talk about Harry Potter — I guess I got caught up in the excitement. Instead,
the Book of the Day is A Conspiracy of Paper, by David Liss. This book is set in London in 1719 (during the South Sea Bubble); the protagonist, Benjamin Weaver, is a Jewish ex-pugilist turned detective, who is trying to find out who killed his father, and, in the process, is drawn into the South Sea Company’s orbit. It’s a historical mystery with religious and business overtones; I found it fascinating (though I didn’t guess whodunnit), and highly recommend it.

Shabbat Shalom!

I lied slightly yesterday and brought my phone to Great America after all. I even used it to let Diane know about when we’d be coming back. But that was it; otherwise, I had a nice, non-technological, low-brain-drain day with rollercoasters.

When Jeffrey was in kindergarden and first grade, I was able to spend time in his classroom fairly often; I’d come in and read stories or talk about travelling, and the kids seemed to enjoy it (and the teachers appreciated it, too). But after that, the classes change and the kids seemed to be less interested (and they could read for themselves, anyway!), and I pretty much stopped going to class except for organized events. And the YMCA Child Care and Day Camp is, by its nature, at times when I’m at work, so I’ve never been particularly involved.

But Jeffrey really wanted me to come along to Great America, so I did. And I’m glad I did — even though I passed on some of the rides (someone had to keep the kids who didn’t want to ride the scary rollercoasters company, after all), I had a blast. It was fun being around the littler kids, and especially fun being with Jeffrey and seeing how competent he was, and how some of the other kids wanted to be with him. We drove to Great America on our own (the idea of spending an hour on a school bus for a 15-minute trip didn’t appeal), and so we were able to spend some time in the park after the others left, and hit two of the rides I’d had to miss — twice each (there are advantages to going on a Thursday). I plan to make another chance to go there with Jeffrey again this summer. But next time, I think I’ll bring aspirin — it’s not clear that I really should have ridden the Grizzly twice after bashing my head a month ago (though Jeffrey comforted me by telling me that he had a headache, too, and he hadn’t fallen down ice-skating!). And I won’t ride Orleans Orbit right after lunch again, either.

Pictures? Maybe in a couple of weeks; I decided to go lo-tech and brought the single-use camera (sounds better than “disposable”, doesn’t it?) they’d given me in Montréal instead of the digital camera — I worried a lot less about getting it wet, that’s for sure! We didn’t use up the entire roll of film, so it’ll be a while before I develop what I shot.

That work stuff…

I’ll probably work from home tomorrow; that should give me a chance to play with my test Frontier server some more, and perhaps start writing some code on it. I have gotten a couple of notes at work asking when I’ll have the real server up — I hope it’ll be next week. And if there’s anyone wondering which David Singer at IBM I am, I’m the one at Almaden — feel free to drop me a line (I’m not giving my work e-mail address here in the interest of spam reduction; I’ve noticed quite a bit coming to my Hotmail address since I started this weblog. *sigh*) and I’ll let you know when the server is ready to go.

Back to work — getting moving this morning was as bad as I was afraid it would be (it’s so much nicer to wake up naturally instead of when the radio turns on). But I’d been keeping up on my e-mail during the weekend, so I didn’t have a huge pile to deal with when I got to the office. For that matter, most people were smart and took the holiday off, so there wouldn’t have been that much anyway. But my pager started going off as I was pulling into a parking place, hinting that it was going to be a busy day after all.

Had a nice chat with Dave Winer about Manila and Frontier; he seems intrigued by my plans to set up a server inside IBM to help people inside the firewall connect.

And I should have a Frontier server here in the building in the next day or so, working with colleagues on the
Extreme Blue team. I’m still having fun playing with Frontier on the machine at my house, but it’s not a good long-term strategy to have the server there.

Last night’s wine seemed to go better with the salmon we had for dinner than it had with spaghetti. The VacuVin is a wonderful invention for those of us who only sip our wine.

Tomorrow, I hope to spend the day at Paramount’s Great America with my son and his day camp friends. No e-mail, no pager, no phone…sounds like a good time to me, despite the thrill rides.