Friday, November 03, 2006

This is harder than I thought

I'm starting to realize that coming up with something meaningful to say every day (or two or three) is tough. Of course, you could look at my past posts and say, "When are you going to come up with something meaningful, period!" Well, it's Friday, November 3 and the builder MAY be getting the final inspection of our new house today. That would mean we MIGHT be able to start moving our stuff in this week-end. Now, that's meaningful. If we do start moving in this week-end, I'll post a message and a picture. Maybe I'll even bring out another one of those analogies between designing electronics and/or software and designing a house. Especially since our house is a modular house and is actually manufactured - similar to electronic hardware - which is similar to programming with software components.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Pizza on a research vessel

I spent many years working for the US Geological Survey in the Marine Geology group and we spent a lot of time at sea on research vessels. For a few years, we were using a British ship, the RV Starella, in the Caribbean Sea and off the west coast of Africa. My father was Welsh and my mother's family had a lot of Welsh blood, too, so I was used to British style food but many of the scientists had a hard time getting used to some of the stuff so the ship's cook decided to try to make some things we were used to. He tried his had at making donuts but they came out more like donut-shaped bread. Then he tried his hand at pizza.

He didn't have the right sauce so he used ketchup. He didn't have the right cheese so he used cheddar cheese. The crust was more like bread (again). Then he got to the toppings. No mushrooms, pepperoni or green peppers. He had peas and carrots. What could we say? He'd tried his best. We ate it without complaining.