Core Dump

While working in the yard, we discovered a new pet:



I think she's a western spotted orbweaver.  Note that in this photo, the nail head is about 1/3 of an inch.  The spider's abdomen is more than twice that in width.  She's big, and apparently quite content to guard the corner of the garage.

Went downstairs to grab my shoes this morning and discovered Colon, one of the newts, slogging down the hallway towards to garage. She was tossed unceremoniously back into the tank then I went fishing for dog hair (as I'd forgotten to rinse her first and drying newts are sticky).

Tuesday:
• More laundry
• General puttering and tidying

 

Wednesday:
• Emptied all of the garbage and recycling out of my car
• Took the rubber curry comb to the car's carpeting and de-furred it. Removed nearly an entire dog's worth of fur.

Saturday:
• Washed both cars. It'd been more than a year for mine - ick! Moved then onto the lawn to waste less water. Still need to do the interior, but it was too warm to continue.
• Folded yet more laundry. It just never ends.
• Pruned the kitchen drawers of unnecessary gadgets. It's amazing! They close now!
• Went through the tea and coffee cupboard. Pulled out the teas we don't like (which will go to work so my coworkers will use them up). Also decided that we're not going to replace the nearly dead Keurig. Rob will take the "fill your own" insert to work and use it there along with finishing off the k-cups we currently have. We'll get a French press instead (less waste, more coffee and easier to store).

Rob called me at 8:30 this morning.  (I’m staying with my folks since I had a final to give Monday and one tomorrow at 8am.)  Apparently the lovely storm that came through last night sent the top 20 feet of the neighbors’ cedar tree through the roof of the attached garage and onto Rob’s car.  He posted pictures on Picasa.  I’m thankful that the wind wasn’t stronger (or gravity weaker) as the tree might have gone through the master bedroom ceiling or wall.

The insurance company has been called.  Rob’s dad and brother are headed north with the chainsaw.  It’s not raining too much.  Could be worse.

Now back to grading… ugh.

I feed Max a raw diet - meat with edible bones, some veggies and fruit, some organ.  If I were to go to the store and pick up everything at normal prices, I wouldn't be able to afford it, so I buy in bulk, go through co-op purchases, watch for sales, etc.  I keep my costs to about $1.25 per pound, which means raw costs less than quality kibble would.  Last month I bought a freezer.  24.9 cubic feet of glorious meat freezing capacity!  And I ordered 200lbs of beef, 50 lbs of pork, 125 lbs llama, 30 lbs goat,  20 lbs tripe, 12 lbs rabbit, 14 lbs liver, 24 lbs lung and feet (4 cow, 4 llama).  I have another 120 lbs of tripe coming in within the next two weeks.  Oh, and another 120 lbs rabbit.

On any given day, Max eats between 1.5 and 2 pounds.  I aim for balance over time, so that on average, he eats 10% bone, 10% organ, 70% meat, and 10% other stuff (cottage cheese, pizza crusts, eggs, etc).  One of the dietary staples here is rabbit - the bones are soft like chicken bones and Max likes the taste better.  The rabbits that I have right now were frozen immediately after they were killed, so they still have fur and the guts are still there.  Max hasn't yet figured out that furry rabbit is food, so I need to skin them for the time being.  This is easier said than done.  Apparently, once the body cools, the connective tissue stiffens, making it harder to remove the hide.  Last Saturday I spent 30 minutes skinning a rabbit for Max.  I had just finished, we'd played a couple rounds of chase the rabbit hide, and I needed to put the knives away and answer the phone.  In the few minutes I was gone, Max managed to snatch the carcass and the hide, slip off to bury them in the field somewhere and return.  I know he didn't eat it.  He's not fast enough.  It took nearly two hours to search the field and the rest of the acreage.  No sign of rabbit.  Damn dog!

Things I learned last weekend:

• Wear an apron when processing meat.
• Always wear gloves when working with green tripe.
• 35 lb bricks of llama take 48+ hours to defrost enough to separate and repackage the pieces.
• Always take your rabbit with you - never walk away from it.
• To break up a 25 lb brick of frozen beef, toss it 6-7ft into the air and let it fall onto the cement.
• The top of a chest freezer makes a great workspace.
• Buy freezer paper in bulk.  Tape too.
• Tripe should be processed outside, not in the kitchen.
• Llama smells funny.

What can I say?  I'm easily entertained:

I'm currently sitting in the shared computer lab in Sloan and it occurs to me that I haven't written in my journal for months.  I'm proctoring a lab exam, so I have nothing but time on my hands at the moment and, seeing as there have been some major developments in my life, I figure I ought to say something about them.  Here goes...

In December my advisor, Sirisha, and her husband, Murali, informed us that they were moving to Boise.  They left in January.  Murali has a new position as Chair of the Computer Science Department and Sirisha is there as an associate professor.  This makes it rather difficult to talk to her, seeing as I have a hard time understanding her on the phone (too fast, too high pitched, too much mumbling, too much accent).  Combine this with the fact that she won't answer my emails, and life is wonderful.  I'm beginning to doubt whether I'll ever get finished.  However, I need to get finished soon because...

(drum roll please)

I have a job!  Wahoo!  (Don't get too excited, there's a caviat with this.) So far this year I've had interviews with Barco, Google, HP, Atlas and Microsoft.  Barco decided to interview me at 7pm (I'm not awake then).  I didn't want to work for Google, so I didn't try on that interview.  HP wanted me, but instituted a hiring freeze the day before my interview.  Microsoft was hell.  Have you ever walked into a place and it just felt wrong?  As in walking onto the set of Gattaca type wrong?  Big brother watching you all the time, skin crawling, no trust at all, kind of creepiness.  Combine this with a five part interview that went from 8:15 until 4:00 during which time I was grilled, forgotten, shuttled to and fro, and mildly insulted, and you've got my Microsoft experience. 

Atlas however was wonderful.  Nice people, cool projects and problem spaces, pleasant environment.  Both Microsoft and Atlas wanted me and I'm going to work for Atlas (obviously).  Here's the catch.  Atlas is now a Microsoft subsidiary, since it's parent company, aQuantive, was purchased last fall.  Microsoft recruiting is pissed at Atlas recruiting because the folks that interview with both of them invariably choose Atlas over Microsoft.  My start date with Atlas is after the two companies merge, so my offer has to come through Microsoft recruiting, not Atlas, and they won't return emails and phone calls from the Atlas recruiter.  Lovely, eh?  Top it off with the fact that Microsoft's recruiter wasn't going to tell me that Atlas wanted me - he left that out to try and force me into choosing Microsoft proper - and I'm pissed at Microsoft.

The two recruiting branches were getting into bidding wars against each other, so now the policy is to have the candidate decide which group he wants, then give him his offer (an offer that has been settled on by both atlas and microsoft).  I'm apparently the first person to be affected by all of the new policies, which is making life wonderful.  I know I have a job, and a start date of July 28, but I don't know what my benefits are or what I'm going to be paid.  I've been waiting on my offer letter for a week.

I'll end my bitch-fest here.  On a happier note, my friends Nathan and Katie got married last weekend.  I've never seen a happier, more confident bride and groom than the two of them.  Rob was the best man and didn't loose the rings.  Also, he remembered to bring my wedding ring on the trip so that he could put it in the safety deposit box for the next year.  The dog survived the trip, despite the huge panic attacks he had on the car trip over and back and I managed to keep Rob's parent's from killing each other while deciding on paint colors for the house.  All in all, it was a good weekend.

Lab's done.  I'll write more later.

From NPR:

The U.S. and France have national mottos: "In God We Trust" and "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." After reports that Britain's Prime Minister was looking into something similar, BBC Web site readers offered suggestions: "Mustn't grumble;" "With honor, with justice, with chips;" "God save the baked bean;" and "We came, we saw, we conquered, then we gave it back. Frightfully sorry."

Rob, Liz, Morgan and I went rafting this weekend (Liz and Mo are my roommates). We left Max with the neighbor girl who was quite happy to earn a few bucks and spend a whole night playing on the Wii. We left Pullman around 4:15 (PST) and arrived in Riggins, ID around 7:30 (mountain time) to find no one at the campsite - a little freaky! So we drove down to the next campground and found about 100 people camped out there. They were frat guys (Delta Tau Delta) and their weekend conquests. Seeing them, we decided to head back to Short's Bar (sand bar, no booze) and camp there. It was raining which made setting up tents quite a lovely experience. After dinner of spaghetti and s'mores, we turned in. The wind picked up during the night. Rob's tent was fine, but Lizard had to go out and stake down one of the storm lines to keep hers from blowing over.

Around 5am, I woke to hear Liz and Mo whispering to each other. I heard Mo say "there's something rummaging around my ass!" and I promptly broke into fits of giggles. Apparently some critter was trying to dig under the tent right near his butt. After a short while (they had calmed down some), I started hearing more whispering, much more urgent this time. Asking what was wrong, I received the following answer from a rather panicked Liz: "There's a skunk in my vestibule and he's sleeping on my poncho!" Once again, cue fits of laughter from me, and Rob this time too. (The vestibule is the covered area outside of the main tent created by the rain fly to put shoes and stuff under.) Liz demanded that we get up and deal with it so her brand new tent wouldn't get sprayed. Since skunks have better night vision than I do and prescribe to the "spray first, investigate later" state of mind, I hollered at them both to shut up and go back to sleep, promising that Rob and I would get up when it was light out and lure the skunk away with some food. Liz, however, was not satisfied with this and was curled up, practically on top of Morgan, since the skunk had decided to take up residence on her side of the tent, near where her head would have been.

After a while, something started snuffling around Rob's tent near our heads, and nearly stepped on me. It sounded rather like a dog, so Rob and I guessed it was a coyote. I mentioned it to the others and Mo started worrying that the coyote was going to go after the skunk in the tent. (Insert more hysterics from Rob and Lynsey, as the comments from the other tent were priceless.)

Finally when it was starting to get to be light out, Rob and I started collecting clothes and warming them up to put on. Meanwhile, Mo had gathered up enough courage to turn on Liz's headlamp to see if the skunk was still there. By the time I had my shirt on, we learned that there was no skunk sleeping on the poncho - he'd walked in, sniffed and found no food, and moved on. Liz, in her panic, had not wanted to turn on a light to confirm her suspicions about the poncho for fear that she might get sprayed.

Once it was fully light, I grabbed my camera and went to take pictures of the evidence. Since they did see its white stripe, we know it was a skunk and the footprints I followed were the right shape and size for it. Apparently, the skunk had started at some other group's tent, wandered over and scratched at Mo's tush, climbed into the vestibule and wandered out the other side, walked back to the brush, made his way to our tent and snuffled around a bit, then headed to the brush again before departing. Liz's hyperactive imagination lost us all a solid two hours of sleep. Oh well. At least it was good entertainment.

As far as the actual rafting goes, we had a great time. There were seven of us in total - one boat full - and we were the only boat to go out today. Probably the last of the season. The stretch of the salmon river we rafted has five or six class 3 rapids and one class 4. Class definitions according to Wikipedia:

Class 3: Whitewater, small waves, maybe a small drop, but no considerable danger. May require significant maneuvering.(Skill Level: Experienced paddling skills)
Class 4: Whitewater, medium waves, maybe rocks, maybe a considerable drop, sharp maneuvers may be needed. (Skill Level: Whitewater Experience)

All in all we had a great time. Even the skunk episode was worth it, if only to have something to tease Liz and Mo about for the next year. I'd love to go rafting again, although next time I want neoprene boots and a wool hat. It was a bit chilly, even with the wet-suit and rain slicker.

Now it's time to go tease Liz some more. What a great weekend!