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It’s one of the little pleasures of life that happens too infrequently in our busy lives. It’s the random contact.
Once upon a time, it was the phone call that you answered from a wrong number and you ended up talking for a little while with a friendly stranger.
Today, it was an email that a father sent to his son, only to the wrong email address. Another Max Walker somewhere is finishing high school and trying to make that very stressful choice of which university to attend. The email thread involved several volleys, even to a family member named Wendy — my wife’s name!
One of my email addresses invites such mis-addressed emails. It’s usually fairly easy to tell them from spam. I’ve been invited to drinks at a pub in the UK — well, not me, really, another Max.
So today, I replied to this parent with a friendly email suggesting that he’d sent it to the wrong Max Walker, and I sent my good wishes to the young student. The father replied, cheerfully apologizing for the errant email, then commented that his son certainly wasn’t ready to get his MBA (my MBA was signaled in my signature block), and he’d happily pass on the good wishes.
It was a pleasant little exchange in cyberspace.
I mean, sure, you need to keep your wits about you whether it’s answering the door, the phone, or email. But a proper sense of safety should not preclude friendly engagements with neighbors near and far.
I have a friend in Salt Lake who teaches self defense classes for adults and for kids. One of the principles he teaches is that a “stranger” isn’t someone we don’t know; a “stranger” is someone doing something strange, something out of the ordinary, something that’s just not quite right or as expected.
If we can adopt that kind of thinking, then perhaps we’ll learn again to enjoy the “unknowns” around us while still guarding appropriately against “strangers.”
And we can smile a little more.
I promised more details on the Hillcrest Performing Arts Program and how you can sponsor, donate, or buy an ad. Details are now posted on a dedicated page on this site: http://www.maxwalker.name/hillcrest/.
I was very pleased to read today’s article in the Deseret News, “The Catholic perspective on film.” I was unaware of this long-standing service from the Catholic News Service (CNS).
According to the article, “Today, the Media Reviewing Office of Catholic News Service provides weekly reviews of new releases, an archived database of thousands of films and annual top 10 lists — all evaluated on spiritual, moral and artistic concerns.”
CNS includes both its own rating system — decisively more meaningful than the ubiquitous MPAA ratings — and substantive review information to help readers make their own decisions about whether a given film meets their personal standards for acceptability in these 3 categories.
“Its stated mission is to provide the public with an evaluation of mass media ‘based on the standards of faith and morals preserved and transmitted by the [Catholic] church’s teaching authority. Thus, the most basic principle used to calculate a film’s worth is the extent to which it affirms, challenges or rejects Judeo-Christian values.’”
One doesn’t need to get caught up in whether or not ones one standards match exactly those of the Catholic church’s standards and judgments. What’s meaningful here is that people of good will generally share a similar, common set of values, and input regarding a film’s content that reflects those values is helpful to us all. The CNS isn’t presumptuous enough to think that readers want to follow its rating system blindly, so they provide substantive review information so that readers can judge for themselves.
I approve. I applaud. And I look forward to the Deseret News’ inclusion of CNS review content in its publishing.
The longer I’m on Windows, the less I’m able to help my family, neighbors, and friends to fix slow and failing Windows machines.
One of my colleagues, Ken, clued me into a tool that may help me be more successful.
Rescue CDs.
Even the most established anti-virus software packages can’t cover it all. Sometimes, viruses get deep down in the system and can only be removed before Windows boots.
That’s where rescue CDs come in.
My buddy pointed me to two rescue CDs:
You download the ISO file and burn it to CD to make a bootable CD. (If you don’t understand that sentence, then you need to get someone to help you with this.) Both these tools are effective, says Ken, but I found the AVG tool more successful to get running on a Windows virtual machine I needed to test.
Boot the Windows machine with the Rescue CD. Follow the on screen instructions. Run the scans.
Ken also says you need to look at the output and pay attention to any system files that may have needed to be renamed. If that needed to happen, the you’ll need to boot to DOS from a Windows installation CD and replace the renamed files with clean original files. (Again, if you don’t understand that sentence, then you need to get someone to help you with this.)
Good luck!
I made some more bread today. I kept forgetting about the dough rising. And dang if it ain’t some of the best bread I’ve made!
Making bread is really simpler than we think. Some complain that making sourdough bread is harder, partly because the rise time is so much longer than with baker’s yeast. I’m compare my bread making to my sister’s: Julie’s recipe — from her BlendTek mixer book — puts so much baker’s yeast in that she only has to raise that bread for 10 minutes, then it goes in the oven! And it makes good bread, mind you, so don’t think that I’m dissin’ her!
My sourdough bread rises for hours and hours. And that’s the fast-rise recipe! But my sourdough starter is so strong and vibrant that it is also really forgiving. I can take really good advantage of that long rise time, and if I forget, it’s OK.
Today, for example, I made up my regular dough. I double Mike Avery’s 100% Whole Wheat Sourdough Sandwich Bread (see www.sourdoughhome.com). Here are some notes on how it went today.
- I double that recipe and it makes 2 regular size pan loaves.
- I grind my own flour in my Vita-Mix. I grind 3 batches for the double recipe, and that leaves me some extra flour to use in other things or to use to feed the starter through the next week. (Today, I ground up wheat, kamut, and barley grains.)
- I put olive oil in a large plastic bowl, then take the kneaded dough, roll it around in the oiled bowl, then set it in the bowl to rise. I cover it with a really wet flour sac dish towel. (My climate is dry, and the top of the dough dries out unless I keep it moist that way.)
Now, normally, I put that bowl in the oven with the oven light on (no other heat). That temperature is nice for rising dough. Today, however, I needed it to rise more slowly so that I could deal with it after church and not worry about it. I put the dough in the fridge for a couple of hours to really slow it down. Then, I put it on the counter top. It had begun rising before church, but none too quickly.
After church, the dough had tripled. I folded it over itself and left it on the counter top to rise. I forgot about it until it had tripled again! I wasn’t sure it had enough rise left in it to rise again in the loaf pans, but I tried anyway. I greased the loaf pans, formed the loaves, then set the pans in the oven, covered with that wet dish towel and with the light on, to let it rise. At 8:30 tonight, Wendy asked me if I was going to bake that bread tonight. I’d forgotten again! And sure enough, that dough had tripled again! I pulled the towel off it and it relaxed a little — it really was over-risen, eh. I didn’t even pre-heat the oven, for fear that moving those pans would make that over-risen dough collapse some more! I turned in on about 385F and it baked for a while until it was done.
(No, I didn’t time it, but at least I didnt’ forget it! I forgot the loaves in the oven last week and they over-baked.)
Since I can’t sleep tonight, I came downstairs and cut me a good slice of the first loaf. Very light, very soft, very good bread! I’m thinking that perhaps I’ve not been letting the bread rise quite enough, because this bread is a lot lighter tha normal. It’s great stuff!
Want to try making sourdough bread? Get instructions from baker Mike Avery at www.sourdoughhome.com. Get a good, strong, vibrant starter for free from www.carlsfriends.net, but toss ‘em a few bucks donation if you feel like it. It’s worth it!
I should have been resting today, but instead, I’ve upgraded 2 of our machines to openSUSE 11.3 from 11.2. I’m also converting the family over to Gnome instead of KDE; KDE4 has just been too problematic since 11.2. I’m sure it’ll catch up, but Gnome is still a bit more solid and smooth, I think.
During this round of upgrades, I found a good reference site, http://www.opensuse-guide.org, which provides good info for new users and good reference info for experienced users. For example, I used it to get the list of multimedia changes I needed to make. (You have to tweak openSUSE a bit for multimedia.)
The upgrades have gone very smoothly, with the exception of a Chromium browser dependency failure that I’m seeing only on 1 machine; the other was fine. Confused.
Update: I’ve put up a page here on the site with details about how to buy an ad, sponsor the program, or make a donation. Click here to see those details.
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It’s time for the annual Hillcrest High School Performing Arts Fundraising Event! There are two great ways to support the program:
- Consider buying an ad in HHS Performing Arts programs. Ads are good for the full school year. Business-card size ads, and quarter-, half- and full-age ads. Good both for local businesses and online businesses!
- Consider a donation to the program, especially if you’re out of the area.
And why would you participate?
- Got a local business? Cool! Hillcrest High has a great reputation for its performing arts. The events are very well attended by the community, not just parents of the performers! You’ll get plenty of local exposure in the program for each performance this school year.
- Got an online business? Awesome! Target the Midvale/Sandy/Murry area in Utah with your ad in Hillcrest Hight’s programs!
- Out of the area? No problem. Make a donation or buy an ad for your online business or service.
And what’s in it for me? My daughter performs in the program and is the 2010-11 President of the student Productions company. Fundraising offsets her considerable participation fees for events, competitions, and tours.
And what’s in it for you? Business exposure and contentment for supporting high school arts.
I’ll post more details here soon — prices, donation levels, etc. In the mean time, email me with questions or to buy your ad!
I finished up yet another “Odessa” hat. I had bought this pink yarn over a year ago — silk, merino, cashmere blend — but never did anything with it. There was enough yardage to make a child-size hat, so I decided to do it and try it with the beads. It turned out rather nicely!
I discovered while working the hat that I really don’t like working with pink yarn. That surprised me, since I enjoy knitting things for my daughters, but I’ve never knitted with anything so starkly pink, and I discovered that I find it unpleasant. It’s odd that color would elicit such a response, but there you are. So, this may be the last pink thing to come off my needles! Pink notwithstanding, I was very happy with the resulting hat.
I gave the hat to Greg, my friend and chiropractor, whose little one is around a year old. He said that when they put it on her, she didn’t take it off. She was pleased, and Greg says she looks darling in it. I’m still waiting on that picture, Greg!
Justina asked me for a set of leg warmers. Gasp! I went to school in the 80′s, and, well, yuck! But let warmers are making a comeback, and if anyone can carry them off, it’s my Justina. Here they are! I started one on vacation in NC at my folks’ house, and finished the second one on the plane on the way back from a business trip to France. The pattern is by Judy Sumner in her book, “Knitted Socks East and West: 30 Designs Inspired by Japanese Stitch Patterns.”
 
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