Felis Librarius

Geek Networking Group idea
There was an unmoderated Job Networking panel at Convergence this year. I've been to a few events like this lately and a moderator REALLY HELPS. It occurred to me that a geek networking group with a few people who are willing to moderate/assist all these introverts could be a useful thing in the Twin Cities.

I guess that means I've volunteered :) I created a new e-mail address for people to contact if interested TCgeeknetwork@gmail.com.

I put up a handful of signs at 'con and left some smaller versions on the freebie table. They all disappeared, but no bites yet. When I get responses I'm going to create a short survey to find out what people's interests are for a networking group.

Please send messages if you're interested or pass along the address to anyone you know who is job hunting, self-employed or just in need of a professional network.

I think I need to put up signs at book, comics and games stores... At some point I'll need to start contacting various con-coms and ask if they're willing to help me get the word out. Anywhere else that would work?

I'm also going to chat with the director of MN Women in Networking to see if she has advice for someone creating a networking group.

Oh yeah, anyone interested in helping me run this thing? ;)

Novels in translation
I started reading The Makioka Sisters by Tanizaki Juni'chiro, (translated to English by Edwin Seidensticker in 1957) this weekend. The book is set in the late 1930s in Osaka.

It took about 50 pages to figure out what seemed wrong to me. The characters are too direct. It doesn't read like other Japanese works I've read which translate at least some of the indirect communication style. It reads like an English or American novel with character and place names switched to Japanese.

Changing conventions for Japanese to English translations perhaps? I can't seem to find any other translations of this book so I can't compare directly.

Paperback book holders
As my wrists don't work as well as they used to, I'm trying to find ways to keep pressure off them when doing things like reading.

Has anyone tried one of these? Some other paperback holder that works great and costs (preferably) less than $20?

Web Startup Mad-libs
http://tractorlizard.com/

Refresh and you get different 'business models'. Funny in a 'this sounds distressingly like reality' sort of way.

Book Review - From Hire to Liar
So this month's book report (that seems to be all the more often I do these) is for From Hire to Liar - The role of deception in the workplace by David Shulman

( more behind the cut )

Darn socks
Since before Wiscon I've been looking for my summer socks. You know... the short ones that don't keep your knees warm in the winter. I'd already put away the long warm socks, and have been making due with a few pair that work summer or winter or just wearing sandals.

I began to fear that I'd accidentally given away my bag of summer clothes (socks and shorts mainly).

Monday I gave up and bought a week's worth of socks at Target.

Tuesday I found my socks. :P

Cooking Geekery and why I love estate sales
In an after Christmas sale, I got a pressure cooker, then it sat on a shelf for a few months until I got around to using it.

So far I've made a couple stellar recipes, a couple (one this evening) that were blander than I expected, and there has been much stock making (vegetable, beef, and chicken feet*).

For reasons I'm still unclear on, Rainbow refers to them as chicken paws.
--
My new rule for kitchen stuff is, look for it used first. Doesn't always work, but it lets me get my shopping fix without spending a lot. About a week ago, I was driving along 70th and saw an estate sale sign. I find estate sales fascinating even if I don't buy anything, so I headed into the wilds of Edina. (You didn't know it had any did you?)

I sadly bypassed the collection of old medical and dental instruments, wrinkled my nose at the house-wide smell of musty old books and ignored all the hunting and fishing gear. What made it worth the trip was the $5 food mill in good condition.

This year there will be two food mills for tomato soup making. And perhaps some of my jelly/jam making will go faster too.

Clash of the titans - webcomic style
Any other time I'd be talking about the latest Order of the Stick, but Monday's Sluggy Freelance is on a different level all together.

K-12 Education in the US and public health preparedness
Listening to MPR this evening, in relation to swine flu, there are several schools closing, including a couple in MN.

This is something that will probably happen more often over the next few decades and schools in the US really aren't prepared for any sort of long-term quarantine situation.

At a conference I attended in 2007, the speaker talked about how Singapore closes its school buildings for a week or two a year, but classes continue. Every teacher is expected to be able to continue class-as-usual online in case of emergency. The school closings are the annual drill.

There are reasons that this is less practical to achieve in the US right now. (That's probably 2 or 3 more posts sometime...) But it wouldn't be a bad thing to start striving for.

Maybe I need to write some congress critters a letter?

I <3 Eifman Ballet
Last time I saw them at Northrop was the performance of Anna Karenina. It was fabulous.

Last night they performed Onegin, based on Alexander Pushkin's novel Eugene Onegin but set in the early 90s. Again, they are superb, there is a great mix of classical and modern in both the dance and music. The number of costume changes was startling and impressive. The lighting and set were fantastic.

The unique bit of choreography that made me smile was a lift in which there was no question that what was really happening was that Onegin wanted to look up Tatanya's skirt.

Surfing around to find out more about the story and the ballet, I discovered that Minnesota is no longer in America. (The company performs next weekend at UC Berkeley, and the UCB site states that the performance is the "American Premier".)

Everything here is raspberry colored.
The raspberries that have been in my freezer for several months are now juice. Straining out all the seeds took three wire strainers, both of my big pots and two large bowls.

Tomorrow there will be jelly.

Papers papers everywhere...
As part of my what-to-do-while-not-working list, I've been going through many, many papers and magazines and such that have collected, mostly in my bedroom, in the last few years.

Part of the problem is that it is nearly impossible for me to discard anything that I might be interested in reading sometime. This is probably related to my parents' inability to discard anything that might be useful sometime. Unfortunately, this tendency also affects my RSS feeds; I probably spend as much time triaging what I will actually read as I spend reading articles.

I've recycled 5 grocery bags full of papers and magazines. I hope to add a couple more to that tally in the next week.
--
Some of the stuff I've found surprised me. For example, (this will only be meaningful to about 3 readers) I found my notes from Inquiry which was taught by Dr Peter Whelan, who was the coolest professor ever. He was also my advisor at UMM, in spite of the fact that he taught Geology and I was a Chemistry and Theatre double major.

I also found all my papers from my 11th grade Creative Writing class. Not just the finished assignments, I appear to have kept all of my drafts as well. (?!) Sorting through these could be interesting, amusing, and truly embarrassing.

The Bayport Cookery has closed
Damn.

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_11981644

We thought about going last weekend and then didn't. It had been one of our favorite restaurants for years.

Proust was a Neuroscientist
It's a book and a fairly good one. It was written by Jonah Lehrer after an epiphany he had working in a neuroscience lab and reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time. He recognized some of what he was studying in some of what he was reading. He has chapters about George Eliot, Cezanne, Stravinsky, and a few others.

I think it works best as a friendly way to introduce folks without a lot of science background to some of what's been happening in neuroscience lately.

Caveats - The message that scientists shouldn't ignore the humanities come across a bit heavy-handed and he tends to focus on a particular artist and then mention all the other artists/scientists who they relied upon/were inspired by, so it seems he cherry picked the famous.

Double book report
Having seen an intriguing title at a bookstore, I decided to order it from the library, but there were two books with the same title.

A Mind of Its Own
My sub-title choices were:
How your Brain Distorts and Deceives
or
A Natural History of the Penis (FYI - This is the one I saw and planned to read)

Naturally I ordered both.

The first was a good, if somewhat predictable survey of cognitive psychology. It was a fast and reasonably entertaining read, though I kept being irked when the cognitive errors I've studied in various psych classes weren't given their usual names. (I know that's the Fundamental Attribution error, why don't you call it that!?)

Predictably, I kept trying to think of reasons why I was an exception to the examples given, but that, of course, is the point of the book. Everyone does that. But it doesn't sound like a good mantra does it? "I am no less vain, bigoted, or deluded than the next person."

The second book, despite the promising title and amusing cover, I didn't actually read. The bits I attempted seemed dry and scholarly, as if the authors had missed how humorous and/or interesting the subject matter ought to be. Since I did not read it, there may be humorous anecdotes just a few pages in, I doubt I shall miss them.

Catching up
I haven't posted in a while. I have this thing about being caught up with everyone else's LJ posts before posting my own. This probably has something to do with the BBSs I've read.

But today I'm still 100 messages back and haven't posted in weeks, so I'll try and say something about life.

Work is going OK, my current contract ends in about 2 weeks and I don't yet know what will happen next.

I need to get off my butt and do my taxes.

France 44 is doing an event at the Bakken museum on Tuesday the 10th that sounds nifty. See details here: http://www.thebakken.org/

Also, France 44 has a sale this month on "Signature Chevre" (Chevre with dried fruit, honey, herbs and pine nuts) it is very very tasty and I recommend everyone buy some if they can.

Tai Chi classes are going well, though my knees still tend to give out about 15-20 minutes before class ends and I have to sit down.

The washing machine incident
I was working from home Wednesday and heard what I thought might be the water softener starting to cycle. It wasn't, it was much more exciting than that!

( The )

Wow, so true
From Jon Carroll's column at SFGate yesterday:
"That brought a note from Justin Tenuto: 'You got me thinking about sci-fi this morning and it hit me: Whatever Bluetooth is to the Borg, the iPhone is to 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.' I mean, when you get right down to it, all 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' is is a pocket-size device that holds the sum of human knowledge, written by sarcastic misanthropes - in other words, the Internet...'"

Cooking classes, almost like being in O chem again...
I've taken three cooking classes this month, 'cause I'd been intending to for years and finally decided I might as well do it now.

I now know how to make sweet and savory souffles, brioche, and I've perfected my scone technique, and tonight there were many, many dumplings.

Pot stickers, pierogi, kropkakor (potato dumplings stuffed with ham and bacon which are poached and then fried and served with more bacon) gnocchi, apple dumplings and a dutch dessert dumpling made of cheese, sugar and bread crumbs that I can't remember the name of just now.

But! And here's the cool thing, I taught the teacher the trick for peeling ginger... put away the peeler and use the side of a teaspoon, the skin just flakes off like paper.

The teacher? He's a pastry chef, teaches ~20 cooking classes a month, speaks Chinese, and he's currently working on an engineering degree in his spare time. It makes me feel like less of a dilettante...

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