spicybrains.org

Last night, I went to a restaurant I've been meaning to go to for quite some time -- Kingfisher Grill. I meant to go last year, during the Road Trip extravaganza, but never did. I completely forgot about it when I returned, until it was mentioned on LJ as being a place that's open late at night.

For my west-side livin' self, Kingfisher's quite the haul away - almost 8 miles away. (In the scheme of things in good local restaurants in Tucson, it's fairly centrally located at the Tucson and Grant intersection.)

An unpleasant surprise for me, as I had been told it was a casual place - think more nice jeans and polo rather than slacks and a button down, basically, the kind of clothes we wear at work - is that it's much more dressy. Or at least, last night's crowd was. It's bad enough eating as one, but being underdressed to boot? Oy.

Suffice it to say, I did NOT get the best of service, aside from the water/coffee girl. (She got a cash tip separately because she rocked hard core -- it's a fine line between coming too often and not often enough, especially when you're interrupting someone who is either contemplatively eating, or reading a novel. She managed to toe it perfectly and hit me JUST as my glasses were getting almost empty, but not so empty it was an issue.)

In all fairness, the manager recognized the crap service without me having to say anything -- he saw me reading with the menu down and came over and asked if my order'd been taken, and took it and said my wine and dessert (should I opt for one) would be free, which was a nice touch. My waitress was a little bit more attentive after that ... but not much that I forgive the long delay. As I said: the water girl got it right, service-wise. (Had I not been alone, it would have been ... better.)

Atmosphere, service aside, was pretty relaxed. Soft music playing, muted (but not neutral) colors on the wall, interesting art. Nobody was rushing. Like most restaurants, they brought out some bread - a rosemary bread, with a compound butter. The butter was too hard for a good spread, so I ate my bread without it, and it was tasty.

The wine list was fairly good for by-the-glass. I ended up with a Gewürztraminer (Ash Hallow, which is out of Columbia Valley), because I wasn't feeling the reds, and Fumé Blanc and Chardonnay just didn't seem right. It was a mellow white - something I'd recommend to someone who doesn't normally drink wine. It paired acceptably well with my entree - got a little spicier and a little crisper, but it wasn't out of whack or anything. (It's something I can see myself drinking regularly - it wasn't too dry or too sweet.)

My entree was one of the road trip specials. This week's road trip is California/Hawaii. I had the coconut crusted mahi mahi, which came with a slightly spicy mango barbecue sauce, an ogonari salad, some purple potato hash, and plantain home fries. (That's right - two starches!) I think if I was plating it, I would have found another vegetable than the plantains, because it was too starchy - maybe go with some more greens. In any case, it was all very delicious. The salad was plated on top of the fish, so when I ate the fish, I had some seaweed, some fish, and a swish of barbecue sauce, and it was ... divine. While the plantains may be somewhat traditional, they were boring and bland on their own, but acceptable with the fish. The purple potato hash? Was awesome. Yum!

For dessert, I had the triple lemon gateau - a lemon cake, brushed with a limoncello-based syrup, filled with lemon curd, and frosted with a white chocolate buttercream. There was a berry swish on the plate, and mine came with a berry compote to the side, though that was not on the menu. (No complaints here - I LOVE berries with lemon curd and the cake was no exception!) I also had a giant mug of the house coffee, which was flavored with Bailey's, and came with a cookie. Yum!

Price wise - if I had paid for all of it, it would have been just under $50 before the tip, which isn't terribly bad for a meal with wine and dessert and coffee at this sort of restaurant. With tip, I think it hit right around $50, but - yum! I'm definitely going to go back next year before I leave for the summer, even with the so-so service. Everyone needs the occasional treat.

One of my favorite desserts in the summer is lemon cream pie. It's bright and cheery, and nothing goes better with the plethora of fresh berries than the tangy flavor of lemon. Sometimes, I like to mix things up and rather than serve berries on the side, smear some berry puree on the bottom of the pie crust, before pouring in the filling.

My stomach is growling just thinking about it!

A side note: this isn't a last-minute kind of pie. With all the resting and setting time, there's about 9 hours of resting time, and probably an hour or so of baking time (though you could bake the pie shell while working on the lemon curd).

Monsoon is an interesting little season here in Tucson. It's not a proper season, like summer -- it's only about six to eight weeks long, so it's considered a "mini-season" by climatologists (or at least wikipedia).

At the beginning of monsoon, it's so arid that there will be "rainless" thunderstorms. From the ground, it looks like it's just a lightning storm, but from air, a proper thunderstorm -- the rain drops evaporate before hitting the ground. This, of course, is not a problem this time of year as the monsoon is usually in its third or fourth week, and it's humid enough that the rivers are flowing above ground once more. Lucky me, both this year and last year, I left before the start of monsoon to go travelling, and returned to a turbulent rainless thunderstorm. (I hardly ever get airsick, but monsoon storms are so much worse than normal rain storms with the turbulence that I very nearly lost my lunch both times.)

I somewhat dislike the smell of the rain here. It smells dirty -- but not the clean, fresh dirty of the midwest (or, for that matter, every place else I've lived), where it usually smells like freshly turned dirt and a bit green. It's a dustier scent, almost chokingly so. (For that matter: the tap water also tastes like dust! So I tend to use my water filter way more often than back home, where the water is delicious and non-dusty.) It was great to be outside in the rain in Boston, even though I had no umbrella, because it smelled so nice and clean.

Another interesting monsoon thing is that the clouds have a tendency to just sit in one place and build and build and darken right before a storm -- not at all like the midwest, where you can see them moving around before the rains. (Incidentally, I haven't experienced many cloudy days here.) It's actually kind of cool how quickly and greatly the clouds will grow and darken, as you can see in this four minute video - and not much rain in it!

Yesterday, we had one righteous storm - power was out in parts of the city, there was hail, and it rained so hard that some places had water flowing uphill. That's right, uphill.



Anyway, when I went hiking again this morning (waking up at dark o'thirty so I could be parking my car at 6am, when the trail opened), there was still some standing water on the roads where they dipped a bit, on both of the access roads I have for leaving my apartment complex. The trail was pretty moist too -- not enough to be really muddy, but enough that it was a little squishy in places. The clouds were amazing (the photo up by where I was talking about them was from my morning hike, as is this one, though the first one shows the clouds better; this one is right around the time I was leaving, and it started sprinkling again not too long after I returned to my car), and it was nice and cool. I was surprised by the number of people that were out and about, given that it was 6am that I was hiking. Then again: 6am is probably the best time TO hike out here in the summer - it'll be fairly cool (low-to-mid 70s), unlike the afternoon (where it may be in the upper 90s to low 100s).

Yesterday at work, we had a little field trip to Sierra Vista to do some flight tests. Because we don't want to haul the really heavy (and thus gas guzzling) trailer, we take two SUVs, packed full of equipment and people.

It was pretty interesting. We set up a tent, tables, and what not. Do pre-flight checks, fly, come down, do some analysis of the telemetry, and decide what the next action will be. Sometimes it goes great, sometimes it goes like crap. We had planned on 2-3 sets of tests, and only managed to finish one successfully (and then, the controls were not as nice as we would have preferred). It's not a total loss, though - we knew the new hardware configuration would likely have problems, and now we've got an idea of what they are (but not necessarily the causes). First flights are usually pretty ... twitchy.


Anyway, the most interesting thing is that on the way home, my car (my manager's Suburban) got to talking about fuel efficiency and hypermiling. And of course, being a bunch of engineers, we had to analyze and test some of their methods, and other proposed methods of increasing efficiency.

The Suburban got over 50mpg for a significant portion of the trip, at just under 70mph. It was pretty amazing what shifting into neutral going downhill and following a staggered pair of semis does for your efficiency.

I just wish I had had my camera out when it hit over 100mpg.

I've never made socks before, let alone itty bitty baby booties, but since a million of my friends are currently pregnant (or, at least, three of them!), I've decided to go and try to make some booties.

For B, who's due to give birth in to a baby girl next month, I've picked a cutesy little pattern called 'tulip toes', which folds up to look somewhat like tulip buds. awwwww

The soles are done - I finished them when I was in Boston. My goal for the weekend is to finish them and mail them off.

As an engineer, there are fewer things that rock my world quite like getting something to work (even if it's something someone else designed and I'm trying to get it up and running).

There's a high to it - a feeling that I'm on top of the world.

I've been high on it all week, as I've been in the lab at work. Lab time usually means I run into more problems (and not just software bugs), and thus must fix them. But normally, they're smallish problems, such as "the motor's a little loose" or "the elevons need to be recalibrated" or what have you.

And for me, at least, the smaller the problem, the smaller the high.

Yesterday (or, rather, two days ago as it's technically Thursday), I came upon a major problem -- one that would stop our flight tests entirely (not that the thunderstorms might not do it for us). It took some persuasion to convince the senior engineer I work with in the lab that even though we're flight controls people, we could fix the navigation code that was not properly working. And I rocked it.

Since I diagnosed and fixed it, I got to be the one to tell the other group that works with that hardware configuration (a new one - we're the first to fly with it) what the problem was.

Interestingly enough, I got scolded later for making the email "we" instead of "I" - the whole "you found it, you fixed it, you take credit for it" thing. I try to come from the more Japanese school of thought that it doesn't matter who broke it or fixed it, what's important is that it works now, especially since as an intern, my impact tends to be fairly limited. I have my initials in code that will be doing some really cool things one day, if this hardware gets used by anyone other than us (and others are looking at it), and I got to get a geeky natural high that I still haven't come down off of, and that's enough for me.

This summer has sped by -- I can't believe it's already July 9th! I'm flying to Minneapolis in exactly one month, to visit with some college friends, and renting a car and driving through Ames (to visit more college friends!) before ending up at home. I should arrive right around the time my car does.


My new favorite piece of software: WinMerge, for easy comparisons between two files. It helped me become a rock star yesterday.


Reminder to myself: tonight, I have to fax some paperwork to school -- funding related muckity muck. They need a new copy of my resume, a form, and for some reason, they want my statement of purpose again. It's school stuff, so I can't use the company fax (but there's a Kinko's on the way home, so it's all good). Also, set your alarm for dark o'thirty, because your butt needs to be at work at 3:30a. Yay flight tests!

I nearly forgot what it was like to meditate.

I used to do it every day, before going to bed.

I don't know why I stopped. Too busy, no doubt. Life has a bad habit of doing that to you -- piling more and more obligations, things to do, and something gives, because you're just too tired to do it. I've given in many areas of my life - trading in a social life for a second shot at a career, trading 20-30 minutes to "be girly" (go all-out with hair/make up/actually considering what I wear) for that extra sleep time, and trading in 15 minutes of meditation for that much more sleep.

I decided to sit today.

It felt weird and uncomfortable, as I shifted from position to position. Nothing felt right. I ended up using an old stretching position instead of the half lotus I used to use -- feet together, pulled in as far as comfortable, knees down. I started out with my back straight, but bent so my head was on my feet, more because I wanted to stretch than because I wanted to sit like this. But I was able to breathe, and to concentrate.

As time went on, I straightened myself - more like a marionette than of conscious desire to sit straight.

Out of practice.

I never did manage to get to that quiet, mind off state. But it slowed down, and concentrated on how my body was feeling and what it was doing.

I could feel my pulse in my thumb, the stretching of my hamstring, each slow inhalation, the rush of air over my tongue as I exhaled, and it was good.

I came out of it when my pager went off at 4:05 -- 7:05 east coast time.

It was most disconcerting to be jerked out.

I'm currently working my way through reading How To Eat. So far, I really enjoy her chatty style of writing -- it's not unlike her tv show, which I adore -- as well as her general approach. It's not like ye olde BH&G checkbook standard, where they cram as many recipes as they can into the binder -- instead, she talks about the food itself, and some background on it (including the little confessionals, like how she'll pick bones off of plates for making stock, or talking about her own failures with it).

I haven't yet tried any of these recipes -- I'm reading the 'basics', and most of the recipes are close to things I make already.

When I go home, I'm planning on subjecting everyone to Nigella recipes. It'll be fun!

Last March, my web host broke my FTP and was unable to fix it. Somehow, when I moved to my new host, my foodie blog was completely unable to deal with the transition and broke, and nothing I did fixed it.

I ultimately decided to just integrate it in with here, and keep it separated by categories. I'm in the middle of an online presence transition -- moving my "professional" life from my rather silly domain to one that is, well, professional, and consolidating my personal blogs here. The transition is still incomplete -- I'm going to have to manually reset some things, and re-upload all of the images -- but more or less, we're finally reunited.

I'm going to set up the domain, thefoodiewithin.us, to redirect here, and likely, let it expire in 2010.


As far as cookery since December...

This past week was quite interesting -- I participated in the NA-MIC summer projects workshop at MIT. I know I didn't get a third as much out of it as I would have if I had been more familiar with our code and how it utilizes their tools (entirely my fault for focusing on the NIREP website goals - which looks like they may have had a large shift if we move our data to a local XNAT server).

I am going to talk with people about the possibility of delaying the interpretive/comparative web interface until we've got a decision on the data storage, as XNAT would give a mechanism for uploading/downloading the data (and associating names with access) and then, I would just need to write something to ping the XNAT server to access the data and compare the results. Since the XNAT API has built in methods of push/pull data from the server, our executable code can be adapted to push the results to our XNAT server, and the web code can be adapted to pull it - which is simpler than me having to write both mechanisms and then wrap it into typo3. Worst case scenarios with XNAT, I think, are that I may need direct access to the database instead of using the more graceful API, or I'll need to write a PHP wrapper for the API.

Anyway, the most mind-blowing part about the week (aside from the after workshop bonding with some of my coworkers) were the revelations on CMake and its close friends, CPack, CTest, and CDash. I think they've changed my life forever. I'm going to talk to my section head at RMS about them, because I think they fit into things we are trying to do and things we should be doing. In any case, I may start to molest the CDash code, as I think there are many changes that need to be made to it (mostly for security, some for sanity). It's highly regulated, so the best I can do is make changes on a test install, and submit them to the repository since our main is synchronized via SVN to their nightly build. That said: I was pleased that my first fix to the code (fixing how they generate CTestConfig when the project name involves special characters such as spaces) made it into the nightly build already.

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As far as this website goes, I'm undecided what I shall do with it. I am integrating into it my foodie blog, because its blogging software died when I moved here, and once I do that, I think I may do start using the front page as a proper blog, instead of a vague State Of The Site thing.

The semester has ended, and I'm back to Tucson - just finished my first week back at RMS by day, and continuing working for Gary at night (or attempting to, as the internet in my apartment is not that great). It feels good (though, wow, the heat!) to be back, but whoa: did my project do a 180 while I was gone.

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The semester turned out just about as I thought it would. Semiconductors (55:072), CIE (57:017), and linear systems (55:040) all had As, and embedded systems (55:036) had a B. So, 3.75, and the Dean's List it is. I had hoped that I could squeak an A- in 36, but alas: 3.88 is my UI GPA now.

I know Gary was frustrated at my apathy towards his class (CIE) and my lack of studying for the exams, because he wanted to give me an A+ instead of an A, but what can I say? It's very hard to motivate myself to read about creating structs in C when I spent last summer working on designing a polymorphic class in C++. Don't get me wrong, the course wasn't useless - it really solidified the abstractions in my mind, and after years of OOP coding, I think I truly understand pointers (rather than vaguely getting them). I should let my old digital logic prof know how useful the end of the class was for that, because really, it was abstraction of memory addressing that smacked me in the head when Gary started covering pointers.

I ended up with a B in embedded system (55:036). I think it's because I missed so many classes in February with the weather that there became a big disconnect between the abstraction of how it works (which I didn't really understand that well) and the practical implementation (which, judging by the number of functions I wrote throughout the semester that we ultimately used, I did). Though, the fact that our project was fairly simple might have had something to do with it, even though we met the requirements of the project (to use a new module on the PIC).

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It's interesting how it all worked itself out. I mentioned before that I was in the land of undergrads again. It turned out that my circuits professor was unable to find the funding to hire me... but Gary, my CIE professor, was blown away by my comments and arguments and offered me a position with his medical imaging group. I'm one of his many code monkeys, and thus far, have mostly been working on the web side of the NIREP project. I'll be going to NA-MIC's summer workshop next month.

I have skipped away from my old webhost (site5) after they broke FTP and couldn't or weren't willing to fix it. FTP at my new place (downtown hosting) works perfectly!

Due to technical difficulties, I've moved from hosting at site5 to hosting with Downtown Host. They have been very good at working with me - even before I had decided to go with them. Two big thumbs up for their excellent customer service (even at 4 am)!

After much procrastination, I've finally finished off Wisp!

Overall, it was a fairly pleasing pattern to work with - a very simple lace ( k4 [yo/k2tog] k4 x9, [k] x6 ). It was the first time I've really done lace, or worked with such a small, fuzzy yarn, which is the real reason it took so long to complete. It's currently blocking (as seen in the image). It's really too late to wear it, with as cold as it already is, but it'll be good next year, in early fall.