zen.org Communal Weblog

First of all, X11 on the Mac sucks. It crashes form time to time, unlike on Debian. Its full screen mode sometimes killed my entire system! I don’t use Mac’s X11 in full screen mode anymore.

My X11 applications include locally run xterm, remotely run GNU Emacs built from CVS, and a few remote programs running from Mac servers. They go on the left side of the screen. On the right goes Safari, FireFox, Mail, iTunes and any other Mac applications I need. As my fingers do act up from time to time I try not to use the keyboard when I can; it bugs the hell out of me that I seem to be forced to use the Copy and Paste keyboard bindings when in the Dashboard.

Most of the time I do stuff from within X11, it’s great! Left click to copy, center to paste, no menus or keyboard. I will admit that on the Mac it’s cool that you can highlight text you want to blow away without clobbering your clipboard. Then I have to copy something from a Mac application on the right side of the screen. Apple’s Edit menu is on the left. Miles roll off my mouse’s odometer going up to that edit menu.

So, I thought, lets switch. X11 or the right, Mac on the left. As I said, most of the time I’m in X11. When composing long SQL queries, or viewing the results, it’s quite nice to make the terminal wider. I don’t want to full screen this thing as that would cover up my Perl code in Emacs. With X11 on the left side of the screen things work great as Apple places the drag resize thingy on the lower right of the window. Now with X11 stuff on the right side of the screen I have to move the window between resizing it.

Several X11 window managers offer ways to maximize terminals horizontally or vertically, usually by using a different button on the maximize button. No matter which button I click the ⊕ icon with on the Mac, it fills upt the entire screen. I guess I should use another window Manager then Apple’s, but when tried that a few months ago for a different reason it kept crashing Apple’s X11 after a few hours. I would ask about installing GNU/Linux on it but I need same Mac for some applications including Office (shudder) at work. Perhaps there is a way to reverse what’s on the Menu bar, or to put the Menu bar on the application.

Last year’s Beaujolais Nouveau was better then this years Beaujolais Nouveau.

We have had freezing nights, but this mornings commute it was 30ºF, sunny and fluries. First time I saw ice patches too. Bam, winter is here. I see 50ºF days in the forcast too, so I guess autum is comming back again.

Dare I make a “The Accidental Cook” post? I’ll try it and see what pundits say.

As the autum starts to turn into winter, my CSA is starting to slow down. Like the first pickup, things are turning to mostly leafy greens, the first and last harvest of our farmer. I had too many leafy greens, extra lettuce, extra kale, extra mustard greens, and I think a few others, but not spinach. So, here is what I did…

I fried the mustard greens with some onions and green pepers. After a time, I added some water with a little vegetable broth. When that got to a boil I dumped in some potatoes, when they got soft in my my miscellaneous leafy greens. In goes a little salt and pepper, purée. After a bit of boiling I had 余艾蕾 try a bit. She thought it tasted, and looked a bit, like saag.

Now, when I started my blogging, one of my hopes was to be a food diary. This entry is for that, the very first step in the evolution of what might be a great recipe, what my online pages was first meant to prodce. The problem is I don’t think I will have to many leafy greens again until last next spring, when my CSA starts up again. Hopefully I will remember this post and add a followup.

I was going to try to change my leaf soup to Saag Seitan. When I put in the broth and water I was thinking soup, and put in the quantity for soup. I spent a half hour trying to boil it down but I got hungry and had Leaf Soup with Seitan, after adding some butter and corn starch. It was good, with a little more foresight it could of been great.

My ISDN line is still not up. The letter I sent Voicenet is officially lost. They probably got it, just in the middle of moving chaos. So they sent me a new form, I was about to go over to the FAX room and send it off, but I thought I should call and confirm the FAX number. Well, it was the old Ivyland FAX number. Thay gave me the correct number, and off to the FAX room I went, local calls only. So now I’m still stuck without even an order.

Does everybody have easy access to a FAX but me?

Yesterday’s local elections ousted the school board members that required intelligent-design in Dover, Pennsylvania school’s biology classes. Intelligent-design is not science and should not be tought in any science class, it was almost like passing a law that says π is exactly 3.

Social studies, sure.

Zoë, 余艾蕾, two very close friends from 余艾蕾’s work, and I went to Terhune Orchards yesterday. Now, I’m going to say something bad about it, but before I do I want to say the good things about it so you don’t think I don’t like this place. It was great seeing local farmers doing good business. Zoë saw broccoli, Swiss chard, and tomatillos plants growing for the very first time. She saw a horse, chickens, and other farm animals in a humane environment. She went wild saying “apple” over and over walking through the orchard. In the store they had many locally grown vegetables for sale, the diesel fule saved from getting these rather then most of what is in a mega-mart’s produce section makes it worth shopping there alone.

Around the corner from this place is my organic CSA, Cherry Grove Organic Farm. Not to be confused with Cherry Grove Farm for your locally raised meats, right around another corner. At Terhune Orchards, I thought it was a little eerie, the broccoli and chard rows didn’t have a single weed, nor a bug. It was just a streach of packed dirt with nothing but the crop growing in it. Two and a half miles away, at the Cherry Grove Organic Farm, I’m impressed by the incect and flora biodiversity. Sure, when I’m there picking vegetable the weeds get in the way, but it’s nice to know that other things will grow in the ground. Apart from a yellow jacket or two, the bugs at my CSA don’t bother me, I see them, I also see them eating each other. My CSA does not have any apple trees, so I got same apples, I just have to give them a really good washing before Zoë and I eat them.

Soon harvest will be over. I have some tomato sauce in the freezer and some pototes in a cool place, apart from that I have nothing for the winter. It will be vegetables from the mega-mart until late spring. I hope to preserve some more items next year.

Two weeks ago I sent in my order, via the US Postal Service, to Voicenet to get my ISDN line going. I picked them a few years ago because they are local, there building is, er was, even on a farm one of my relatives used to own. This week they moved from Ivyland to Philadelphia, not much further away. The pain is that I sent my order form to Ivyland at about the same time they moved to Philadelphia, so now I have to wait for the US Postal Service to resend my letter. I hope this paper with my credit card number on it gets some place I know some time.

I’ve been thinking about saying screw it and getting Verizon FiOS. I don’t think Verizon lets you run a web server, though they do offer a static IP number. Plus they run one wire in your house to where you computer is, and as we are going to switch the computer room and the kitchen soon I’d probably have to pay them to move it later.

In the mean time I’ve read H. G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, and several Edgar Allan Poe short stories. Any other suggestions for public domain stories to read before cable and Internet sucks my free time again?

I’m spending two nights at Cold Spring Harbor Labs for a gmod meeting. While I left my Pentium II in my room, most people took there laptop to the meeting and it’s very interesting. Of the twenty or so laptops there about half of them where Apple, and of the half that was x86, several of those where running GNU/Linux. While presentations where all using power point, Windows is on the down and out for this crowd.

Zoë was sitting in her high chair eating bananas and Zōe’s O’s, Mom was upstaris getting ready for work. It comes Marvin, up from the cellar, holding a full grown squirrel in his mouth. Like all of us, Marvin has been away from the house since July first, plus this year has been a bumper crop for acorns and walnuts. No predators, abundant food, my squirrels have become fat and torpid during our sabbatical. I pick up Marvin, still holding the squirrel, and took him down to the back door. Whent back up to close the bacement door, and back down to open the back door. Marvin was still sitting by the door, but no squirrel. I propped the door open and found the squirrel hiding under the bacement stairs. I went for a broom to sweep it out, again he was gone. Ten minutes or so later I closed the door and went to work, I hope the squirrel got out.

For the day Marvin in stuck to the bacement, where his door to the outside is. Hopefully Marvin will be the only mammal larger then a mouse in the bacement when I get home.

UPDATE: When I came home last night the squirrel was still in the bacement, now freely roaming the woods. Ok, he was pretty sick, probably infected by Marvin’s bite. Poor squirrel. Sorry PeTA, I tried to make Marvin an indoor cat, but he got mean and started biting people. I tried all of the hints you gave on that page, he hated it. Marvin is just a mean, impatient cat.