Me

Tapioca Pudding

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Tapioca Pudding.

Some people love it. Some people hate it.

I love it.

But not just any tapioca pudding. It has to have large pearl tapioca in it. Why? Because it’s fun… or at least, as a kid I sure thought so. I still do.

When my paternal grandmother died a few days ago, I couldn’t help but think of tapioca pudding. She made it for us all the time. For whatever reason, she refused to use the small little “grains” even though she could conveniently buy them at the local grocery store. No… she would drive all the way to the PX to get the large pearl ones. Just for us (me and my sisters).

Any visit to Grandma’s house had this implication of tapioca pudding. We looked forward to it. Sometimes she didn’t have it; maybe a bread pudding or a rice pudding, which were good too, but they weren’t tapioca. It’s those big tapioca pearls in your mouth.. the way it feels.. it’s just fun. I think that’s why Grandma made it for us — the fun.

So when Grandma died, I went online and found a place that sells large pearl tapioca. I ordered some for each of my sisters and some for myself. Younger Sister received hers first and immediately emailed me… she knew, and she thanked me. Older Sister received hers just a few hours ago; I haven’t heard from her yet, but I know she knows. It holds the same special place in each of us.

As soon as my shipment arrived (and I realized that 5# is a LOT of tapioca), I demanded some be made. Wife understood — it’s a memory, it’s a tribute, it’s a memorial. Half a cup of pearls started soaking….

I didn’t realize that they had to soak overnight.

I looked at them. Within 30 minutes they felt soft enough… did they really need to soak overnight? They’d be dissolved and useless, wouldn’t they? But OK… we’ll follow the recipe. And gosh, they are a little bigger from soaking up the water, but they still seem smaller than I remember. Hrm. Is this going to turn out right?

Sleep. Wake. “Come on, Wife… let’s make pudding!” In fact, I gave Wife a bit of a hard time about making the pudding; it had to be a the priority for the day! I didn’t want to miss it. Hanging on to Grandma, just a moment longer.

I leave for a doctor’s appointment and Wife has started cooking. Very involved process… not difficult, just time consuming. You have to tend to it and stir and such for at least 30 minutes.

I return. Pudding.

I dig into it.

It’s not exactly as I remember it… but honestly, I have a hard time remembering it. The last time Grandma made us tapioca pudding was very long ago (she wasn’t well for many of her last years). But the exact flavor and texture didn’t really matter… it was all about the large pearls. 🙂  I fall back to my childhood, to being at Grandma’s house. I see the spoon, the bowl, the pearls, Grandma smiling at us and us smiling back at her.

This is the first time I paid attention to what it takes to make tapioca pudding. No it’s not hard, but it is time consuming. It takes a lot of planning — you can’t just decide to do it and whip it up as some 30 minute meal. You have to think ahead, you have to plan ahead, you have to work ahead. It takes time to obtain the tapioca. It takes time to soak the pearls. It takes time to cook and prepare it. It takes time for it to chill. You have to be thinking of things… you must have these things on your mind, long before they’re in front of you.

I never knew.

But now I know. And I can see… just how much love Grandma had for us.

asdkjgahdgkjhalgs

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Feel like crap.

Whatever I’ve got, you don’t want.

That’s one downside to working from home… you can still work, even if you’re sick. It’s no big deal… if I’d be awake, I’d be wanting to do something anyways, so work is fine to pass the time. But don’t worry… if I feel the need to go lay down, I do. I don’t push myself to HAVE to be productive, work is merely a way to pass the time. Getting well is priority.

So with that, off to Walgreens. It’s a shame that only meth dealers have access to the good decongestants.

Feeling worse

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Sore throat still present, now with extra scratchiness!

To top it off… I screwed up my ankle last night.

I had just fallen asleep when I hear this sudden crash from the kitchen, Wife, and various Kiddo voices freaking out. It jolts me out of bed, I run towards the kitchen. Lots of “SASHA! SASHA!” and crashing going on, panicked sounding. I was wondering if the dog got one of the cats? the kids? Completely out of the question. No alarm going off, so no one broke into the house… but all this noise and freaking out! What could it be?

Well….

You see, Sasha likes to help out when someone is doing dishes. Put a dish in the dishwasher rack and puppydog likes to lick off anything she can find. Seems last night when she was done helping she turned to leave but her collar or tags got stuck in the bottom rack and she pulled the rack along with her… which freaked her out, then of course dishes and silverware clinking and crashing, which freaked her out more, but being it was all attached to her she couldn’t get away and so it just continued to be a horrible situation for the poor dog. Wife was able to intercept her, stop her, and free her, but oh the poor dog…. she was so freaked out. 😦

I screwed up my ankle because as I tore around through the hallway I slipped and came crashing to the ground. I was basically crawling into the kitchen last night… the kids said it was quite a sight.

What a mess. 🙂

I’m still all sore this morning, can’t speak well, can’t walk well… but I’m just hoping that Sasha isn’t scarred for life now, afraid of the kitchen, afraid of dishes clinking. Wife did a little “rehab” work with her last night before bed, coaxing her with some treats back into the kitchen. I hear puppy awake now, so I’m going to go see how she’s doing.

2011-05-16 workout

/ hsoi

No workout.

I woke up this morning feeling less than optimal. My throat is very sore, and I’m just overall not feeling it. Not sure what gives. If I am coming down with something, I need rest more than I need a workout… workout will just break my body down more, and if I’m already down, a workout really won’t help.

If I’m feeling better tomorrow, I’ll work out tomorrow. Else I’ll save it until Thursday.

Awareness FAIL

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I was at the grocery store picking up a few things. Since it was only a few things, I used one of the self-checkout kiosks. There are 4 of them, and I was the only person using one.

While in the midst of checking out my basket of goods, a man walks right up to my kiosk and starts to try to use it.

“Excuse me… I’m using this.”

“Oh… sorry.”

I was stunned. How unaware could you be? Not the basket of groceries already there, the bagged goods, the kiosk screen showing a checkout in progress, not to mention me standing there checking out my groceries.

I finish up, head out, get home… and realize I forgot the ice cream.

I go back and pick it up… left it at the checkout stand.

I was so preoccupied and stunned by this person’s lack of awareness that I myself went unaware of my own groceries.

Kicked myself for my slip-up, but also served as a reminder to not be so harsh on others. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. We all go “code white”. I have no idea what he may have been preoccupied with or that was otherwise causing him to be so unaware; there may have been good reason. I certainly didn’t have a good reason for zoning out.

A good lesson for me, in a couple of ways.

Lazarus A.D. – May 13, 2011, Austin, Texas

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I became a fan of Lazarus A.D. a couple years ago. They were the opening act for Testament, and while we weren’t able to catch their whole set, they impressed me and buddy W enough that we bought their CD there at the show. Been a big fan ever since.

A few months ago their new album, “Black Rivers Flow” came out. Finally! Unfortunately they came through Austin on Valentine’s Day so there was no way I could make the show. 🙂  But Lazarus has established themselves as a touring band, constantly on the road. I knew they’d be back and sure enough they were… Friday May 13, 2011, Emo’s. The bill was HeadCrusher, Lazarus A.D., and headliners Cavalera Conspiracy.

I went to the show, because I wanted to see Lazarus A.D.. That’s all I cared about. 🙂

Doors opened, I head in. I see Jeff Paulick behind the merch counter. I head over, buy a shirt, talk with him a bit. That’s one thing about this band: they are a band for the fans. Throughout the night I was able to speak with Jeff, Dan, and Alex (missed Ryan). Approachable, friendly, and just nice and humble guys. Asked for pictures, no refusal. Of course, they’re not millionaires, so they’re doing their own merch, their own load in and load out… no roadies here. And I figure they had to do their own tire change when it blew out on their way to Austin. You just want to support these guys because they’re working hard and having a good time while doing it.

When they finally hit the stage, they knew they had 45 minutes to tear the house down. I could tell all that time on the road the past couple years had really sunk in and paid off. They weren’t just up on stage, they owned the stage. They put on a good show, despite the cramped stage there at Emo’s. I was right up front, which as a fan is where I wanted to be, but unfortunately the way Emo’s p.a. is set up I heard more from off the stage than the p.a., so I couldn’t hear much for vocals and I wasn’t getting the full house mix. However, being right in front of Dan and Ryan’s drum set, hearing the drums 3 yards in front of me off the stage instead of through the p.a. I could hear every nuance of Ryan’s drumming and damn he’s good.

If I remember the set list:

  1. The Ultimate Sacrifice
  2. Thou Shall Not Fear
  3. Absolute Power
  4. Last Breath
  5. Black Rivers Flow
  6. Light a City (Up in Smoke)
  7. Revolution
  8. Rebirth
  9. Who I Really Am

If I messed that up and you were at the show, please correct me. 🙂  I thought it was a good setlist. I admit I thought it would have been cool if they played something like “Up On Stage” since it was their last night on the tour, but no worries. You have 45 minutes and you make the best of it.

After the show was done and the stage cleared, I spoke with Dan and Alex, and then had to head out. Yes, I left before CC ever took the stage. Nothing against Max and Igor, I love (old) Sepultura, but I came for one reason and one reason only: to see Lazarus A.D.. I came, I saw, they kicked ass. Can’t wait for them to come through Austin again, hopefully as headliners… or at least on a stage with more room.

And hopefully they’ll van will hold together long enough for them to make it home. 🙂

Good-bye, Grandma

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I woke up early this morning (as you might tell from the timestamp).

I check my email and this came from my Dad:

Just a message to let you know that [my brother] and I are at our Mother’s bedside in the certain last moments of her 93 years of life. She is in hospice care and not expected to live through the night. At the moment the good Lord calls her home we will have a brief family prayer at the funeral home the next day and a prayer graveside that same day. None of you should worry or make any arrangements to be here. You can pay your respects the next time you are in Omaha. She had an indomitable spirit and strong will to live and gave her two boys great support and encouragement each and every day of our lives.  We revere her and hold her up for your prayers. I will keep you posted. No flowers or worries. I love you all. Dad.

I sit here not knowing what I write. It’s not really a surprise given her health, but she did have such a strong will to live that I guess if she lived for another 10 years I wouldn’t have been surprised at that either.

I remember the big white house on Ruggles Street. Picking crab apples. Curiously picking through the barn when we shouldn’t have. I remember walking down the hallway and stepping on a thumbtack with my big toe. The games we’d play with the blocks and that big steel dumptruck (which my Dad still has)… or games like Waterworks, Sorry, Pit… and our favorite, Rummikub. I spent a lot of time at Grandma and Grandpa’s house as a small child, and there were so many things there that fascinated me. A rush of that is coming back to me now, like the old letter scale, her desk of many drawers, the hurricane lamp, those old green couches that were always scratchy on our legs, the old radios and electric fans, the floor-model TV, the little candy dishes full of those Brach’s mixed bin candies (never liked those coconut neapolitan things, and that’s all that was left in the dish by the time we left… and then the next time we came over if she hadn’t been to the store yet).

Of course, how could I forget… it was Grandma Eleanor that gave us kids black licorice. Every time we’d visit, we’d so look forward to that as we only got it at her house. Technically it was Grandpa’s, but she always slipped us a piece if we were good. 🙂

I can see her face… heck, I remember when we’d act up and she would warn us “Don’t make me cross with you!” and boy you shaped up. How she would make us breakfast. It was the first time I had Shredded Wheat… no, not the frosted mini-ones, but that one big biscuit. Or the first time I had Grape Nuts and poured a big bowl (how’s a kid supposed to know!!), and while Grandpa forced me to eat it, she saved me from it. Heck, even little things like how there was always a tub of margarine on the dinner table.

Little things a boy remembers, eh?

Oh… and then there was how she would cook for us. When she knew we were coming to visit, she would travel all the way down to the PX, no matter how far out of the way it was, to buy tapioca for us. Not the little grains, but the big tapioca balls (the size of large peas) and make pudding for us. That was my favorite. Or her bread pudding… oh so good. Heck, as I write this, I can see her in the kitchen of the later house off Pacific Street, in the kitchen there cooking… putting the prep scraps into old plastic bread bags as she went along.

And then, the organ. You know, it was always us kids that messed around on the organ, but I swear I recall her playing it a time or two. The song “Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes” comes to mind, not sure if she played it but I know it was in one of those songbooks she had and I recall thinking it had a funny name.

One thing she liked to do with us was take us to the Humane Society. We’d go there with her, pet all the animals there, especially the cats. Maybe that’s where my love of cats started. She always had pet dogs (Puddin’!), and we didn’t have cats in my house growing up until later… so maybe it was from Grandma and all those visits that made me into a cat person. 🙂

She always took care of us. She never defied her husband, but she was always the foil/counter to a lot of his gruffness.

As I reflect back while I write this set of disjointed memories, one thing I realize is how much of my memories are from me as a young boy. I think that’s because the majority of my interaction with her was then. As she got older, eventually Alzheimer’s set in… heck, I remember after my Grandfather died she turned in the old station wagon (in which the A/C was always on “bi-level” and low fan speed, even in the worst summer heat… ugh!) and she got a bright red Chevy Blazer, eventually she realized that it wasn’t best for her to be on the road any more and she gave the keys up. She was able to come for my wedding, but then I’d recall when we’d visit we might talk but you could see her struggle with her memories… looking through a photo album and swearing she knew the people in there, but there was no way she could. It just broke my heart. But once things really set in, she just became happy. We’d visit her and while she likely didn’t know who we were, she was so happy and happy to see us. I recall the last time we saw her how much she just watched Youngest and was just drawn to him. Even tho she never could know my children, I’m glad they got to meet her, even if it was only a fraction of who she was.

Update: I just got off the phone with my younger sister. She called me, crying a bit, which of course is understandable. But we quickly turned the sadness into a great celebration of rememberance and she reminded me of so much more: the bingo set (we LOVED that little cage to roll around the balls); the stuffed koala bear; the Wooly Willy; the tea cups with the faces; those old perfume “vaporizer” with the little squeeze bulbs. I forgot how she called Kool-Aid “bug juice”. As I was talking to Younger Sister about riding in the car with Grandma (she too remembered the bi-level A/C), I found myself sitting in the front seat of the station wagon sitting next to Grandma and remembering all her purses… they were so neat. How we’d all be out in the backyard catching fireflies. How when we’d come over for an extended stay, she’d have towels and washclothes set out for us… but the neatest thing was always her Neutrogena soap… the clear/amber stuff.  And of course, how she would say “Well!” with this cute little twisted smiling face. I could never convey that here and do it any justice, but I see it clearly in my mind’s eye. Thank you, Sis, for the updated memories. 🙂

And I just remembered something she used to say every time she saw a ladybug: “Ladybug, Ladybug fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children will burn!”.  When we were kids that was just cute… looking back upon it in later years, it sounds terrible! But it was just our Grandma being funny.

She was tough. She was tenacious. She was firm and strict, but fair. While she may not have been the most lovey-dovey, you could see in every action the love and care she put into things. Always carried herself as a lady.

Thank you for everything, Grandma. I love you. I’ll miss you. Enjoy freedom.

2011-05-12 workout

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Today’s workout was different.

Last workout, owner/trainer saw I was leaning a little too far forward when doing squats. I worked to correct that then, but even more so this workout. In fact, I dropped the weight slightly so I could be stricter. The thing is, when I squat without anything on my shoulders, I still lean forward; it’s just how my body structure is to maintain balance. That said, I can still improve my form and did. I “pushed back” so my weight was more on my heels than my toes. I felt my quads working a LOT more. One side-effect was that I worked slower. My reps weren’t powering through, but going slower, probably from 1 second to 2 seconds per rep. There was much more focus on feeling the main muscles contract. I focused harder on just letting that muscle do the work. That is, say on bench press instead of just moving the weight up, I was really intensely focused on just letting my pecs contract and the weight moved up because the contraction pulled my upper arm in. It’s a different mode of thought and movement. I try doing this all the time, but today the focus on that was much more intense than any past workout, and held throughout the workout.

So squats started it off, but it just carried into the entire workout. So yeah, some reps or weight might have dropped compared to the previous workout, but the intensity level was higher and THAT is more important.

This is why I don’t want to rush into a new workout routine yet, because I know I’ll focus more on that routine than these sorts of minute details. The details matter more.

Good source management

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Troy Hunt writes on The 10 commandments of good source control management. They are:

  1. Stop right now if you’re using VSS – just stop it!
  2. If it’s not in source control, it doesn’t exist
  3. Commit early, commit often and don’t spare the horses
  4. Always inspect your changes before committing
  5. Remember the axe-murderer when writing commit messages
  6. You must commit your own changes – you can’t delegate it
  7. Versioning your database isn’t optional
  8. Compilation output does not belong in source control
  9. Nobody else cares about your personal user settings
  10. Dependencies need a home too

Read Troy’s article for all the details. I’d like to elaborate on a few.

VSS – stop using it. Totally. “Back in the day” I worked at Metrowerks and they made the Mac version of Visual SourceSafe… or as it was jokingly called, SourceSuck. There were a lot of cool things about it, and sometimes I still think the ability to lock can be useful. But the main repository was constantly down, constantly being rebuilt. It was terrible. Thankfully tools have progressed since then. Subversion is great. I haven’t had the opportunity to try git yet, but that it’s maturing is a good sign.

Commit early and often. Very true. It always gives you a rollback point. A lot of people are afraid of this for whatever reason, especially fearing the merge. Understandable, but it’s just part of life and certainly using version control will help ease the pain — if you use it right. So put your work into a branch, every so often merge in changes from the trunk to keep you building and current, but still doing your thing. When it’s time for you to go back into the trunk, the merge won’t be so painful. If you must reconcile, you must. It happens, but it’s not the end of the world. Maintain that history, give yourself the protection that version control is for.

Going with this, #10. Over time I’ve changed how I lay out my Subversion repository. The basic recommended layout is:

/trunk
/branches
/tags

and while that’s a good start, I expanded upon it:

/branches
/sandbox
/tags
    /builds
    /candidates
    /development
    /releases
/trunk
/vendor
    /archives
    /src

Branches hold branches, labeled in a manner that describes what the branch is about. There’s no need to get too formal about the branch name, so long as it along with the commit message adequately describe what’s going on. Sandbox provides a place to play, perhaps you wanted to write a little testbed application that is relevant to the project, this is where to put it. Why put it into the repository? See #2, along with just all the good reasons for versioning source. Tags is broken down into a little more organization. Development tags are tags defined to ease development, like you’re about to make some big change and want to demarcate a clear rollback point. Build tags are tags made during your build cycle, perhaps by the automated build server, to of course denote a particular build. Candidate tags are tags to say “this is a release candidate”, and these tags are made from a build tag (e.g. “svn copy tags/builds/1.0.0.005 tags/candidates/1.0.0FC1”). Release tags then are the actual public releases, made from the candidate tags (e.g. “svn copy tags/candidates/1.0.0FC2 tags/releases/1.0.0”). This hierarchy of tagging allows a tracking of history. Trunk of course is the main development trunk. The vendor area is for any sort of third party product that is relevant to go in. I like to put the archive, as downloaded, into the vendor/archives/ area (e.g. the .gz or .zip or .dmg or whatever), so the archive as received is maintained. Into vendor/src I then like to put the expanded/opened distribution, but with minor modifications. For instance, they didn’t make a clean distribution and included .svn folders, or build products or other things that are irrelevant or dirty things up, or renaming the top-level folder to something more descriptive (e.g. from “distro” to “boost-1.46.1”) ; it should be as close to the original distribution as possible, just cleaned up. From there, the /vendor/src/whatever/ is svn copied into the /trunk. This allows the original distro to remain clean, but if say it’s necessary to make changes to the local version we can do that without risking dirtying the original distribution.

Of course, this setup may not work for you and your projects, but over the years it’s what has evolved to work for me and my needs.

#8 and especially #9 – yes. Please stop checking in your cruft.

Remember, version control is there to help us write better code. Not directly, but once code is written it will always have to be maintained. History is a part of that maintenance cycle. The more relevant history we can preserve, the better off we can be in the long run.