Making Christmas Toffee

Other possible titles:

Sugar and Steel - A Study in Adhesion

Directions and the Need for Both Completion and Comprehension

Spousal Advice - Not Just a Suggestion

and finally;

Candy Making - You Know You Can Just Go Buy It, Right?


Possible photos to follow, depending on taste and cost of kitchen utensil replacement.

Scenes from a mall

Last night we ventured out of the +15 and onto the streets of Calgary in search of dinner. There is an area of streets that are closed off in the evening to create an open mall of sorts where most of the bars and restaurants are. The lights here are fantastic and my photos don't really do them justice. In the above photo you can see towards the top that there are vertical silver fixtures that have blueish lights that start at the top and move down at intermittent times. I think this is supposed to appear to be snow.



I was not able to get a picture of it, but I can say with some certainty that drunk people and ice do not mix.

+15 in - 5

In Calgary you can get around town by using the "+15" which is a walkway above the streets that connects most of the larger buildings in the downtown area.

From Regina to Saskatoon

Let me apologize up front for all the really bad out the window airplane photos with a cell phone. I just have to work with what I got.



I spent about 32 minutes in Salt Lake City running from one gate to another and that's all I have to say about that.





It was -13 degrees Fahrenheit this evening, but I'm told it is a dry cold.

PS - Tim Horton's puts mushrooms in their chilli.

One month later

This weekend I flew out to Phoenix to attend a color management conference. Four days of geeks discussing GCR, gamuts and gray balance... sometimes after an open bar.



This is the view from my balcony. It does not do justice to the view. Very, very nice.

Further adventures in eating

Other that avoiding entire species, I like to think that I am gradually widening my palate. I forget exactly what this is called, but the beef was very thin and slightly seared and then served over cabbage with a ponzu sauce which is citrus based and kind of vinegar like in taste. Good stuff, and pretty too.

Carrot Sushi

Finally, somebody gets it.

There are people in the world who would like to enjoy the ceremony of eating sushi without the awful taste of fish. Pour the soy sauce into the little bowl, mix in some wasabi and eat with chopsticks - sans fins.

Begin again

So.

Last time I fired this thing up I was just back from Israel. No idea why I let this slip so long, but lets get caught up. Since then I have been to:

Wichita, Orlando, Valdosta, Dalton, Boston, Wichita, Wichita, Chicago, Detroit, Wichita, Boston, Dallas, Dallas, Dallas, Chicago and am on my way to Miami Beach as I write this. For some reason, I can't seem to get any further East...

While in Chicago I was staying at the Renaissance Blackstone Hotel. My room had a fantastic view of the high rise brick building next door and not much else. I was looking out the window and in the windows across the street and thought to myself how everyone in that apartment building seemed to have the same decorating taste.

It was probably half an hour later that I realized that it was another hotel.

My brain = awesome.

Jet Lag

Yesterday it finally hit me - I got back to the room at about 4:30pm and I crashed until almost 9pm. I spent the rest of the night either watching tv or sleeping. I feel much better this morning.

Random thoughts:

Just because you never thought about 1960's black & white Israeli military musical movies does not mean they didn't exist.

The Germans have a version of 'The Peoples Court'.

If you watch a Peanuts cartoon in a foreign country there are no subtitles for the teachers voice.

If you go to a Brazilian restaurant because they have 16 kinds of meat it is really only 15 because goose hearts shouldn't count. I have implemented a strict 'outside of the ribcage only' eating policy.

A general lack of bacon

Last night we went back to the Herzilea marina for dinner which is really a very nice area. The cab drivers tell us that Herzilea is where all the rich people live.

As you can see, this in no way looks anything like what I figured Israel looked like. When the cab drivers hear that this is our first time in the country, they say 'You thought we were in a war, yes?" and laugh. They also try to get us to figure out the cell phone that their uncle sent them from New York that does not display in Hebrew. Yes, I'm sure it is a nice phone. No, I don't want to buy it.



Dinner was good - a small steak with carrots and sweet potatoes in a sherry sauce. All the restaurants have great bread, but the main dishes are usually fish and vegetables. Easy enough to find chicken and veal, but no pork anywhere.



This is my big spacious bed, which is about knee high off the ground.



On closer inspection you will see that it is just two twin beds made up separately and then pushed together.

I am also amazed that while Israel is a fairly high tech country, they have not mastered the shower curtain. I can't remember the last time I stayed in a hotel where the shower curtain was not either glass or on a curved rod. I spent my whole shower trying to push the curtain away and getting no less than a gallon of water in the floor.

We should also dump American Idol in favor of the Eurovision contest. It is way more amusing.

Still Alive and Well

I started off my trip to Israel by getting to the airport way too early. I wanted to try a new off site parking lot and it was raining, so I left earlier than I should have. To kill time and prepare myself for the 11+ hour flight I sat at the beer & wine bar in the E terminal and had 3 glasses of wine figuring if that was not enough to get me sleepy the Tylenol PM surely would.

I got to the gate a half hour before the flight was supposed to leave figuring that I would be there right as they started boarding, only to find out that they were already at zone 7. Being a Delta Medallion traveler, I was able to pass up all the riff raff and go to the head of the line - and then had to take my shoes off again. And take my laptop out again. And show my passport again.

I sat next to a brother and sister in their 20's who were traveling with their parents to Israel. They were quite and polite which made the trip a bit easier. I decided to watch the movie 'Juno' on the headset screen as it was free and then I dozed on and off with the cabin lights out and all the window shades closed it was hard to tell how much time had passed. When I woke up long enough to give it some thought, I figured that we were probably about 2 hours away from landing. After I checked the flight information screen I saw that we had only been flying for about 6 hours, and still had 5 to go. I went back to sleep for a while and the next time I woke up we were over Greece, which looked very nice from the air. I watched most of 'No Country for Old Men' and then it was time to land. For the record, I never got up the whole flight.

Anywhoo...

Security was easy as was customs (getting out is supposed to be another story). I converted $200 to NIS (New Israel Sheckles) which is way better looking than our money and was good to go. Anthony, a fellow HP tech from Virginia, had flown in a couple of hours before I did and was waiting for me outside the airport and we took a cab to Herzelia and the Daniel Hotel.

After checking in and relaxing for a few minutes I went to the lobby to meet with two of the guys from R&D; Matty and Eli. They took me to the Marina for dinner which was very nice. We talked about the color management product until after 11pm and then back to the hotel where I crashed for the night.

A couple of observations:

#1 - Israel is nothing like I expected. At first glance it seems like Las Vegas, but without the casinos. After going to the marina and the shopping mall where the restaurants are the resemblance was even more striking.

#2 - If you had asked me a week ago what one word jumped into my mind when I thought of Israel, I would have said 'Camel'. Now I would probably say 'Jet Ski'.

#3 - They have Ace Hardware and Toys 'R Us here. Who knew?

Today we started the classes. There are four of us; Anthony and me, Alessandro from Italy, and a guy who's name I can't even spell phonetically from Dubai. Our teacher is originally from Chile, and our teacher tomorrow is from Scotland. It was 8 fun filled hours of standing on concrete. The rest of the week promises to be the same. Hopefully we will be going into Jerusalem one evening.

More tomorrow.

- Update. The guy from Dubai is named Anand. I think I just heard him wrong the first time.

like a fritter

I forgot to upload this photo from the Tampa airport. This food kiosk had fresh fruit smoothies on the left, and chilli dogs on the right. A tasty dichotomy.



And one more from Chicago.

Double dutch disco

Today Tampa, tomorrow Wichita.

I'm hanging out in the Tampa airport waiting to fly home just long enough to kiss my wife and grab a coat, and I wanted to pass along 2 things that I am currently enjoying;

First and foremost, Ninja Warrior. If it was not on I don't think I would bother watching TV until Weeds or Dexter came back on. If you have not seen it, do yourself a favor and give it a try. The Womens challenge is on G4 right now and it is every bit as good as the mens.

Secondly, the soundtrack from Juno. Especially the song "Loose Lips" by Kimya Dawson. This is the kind of song that I love and Debbie hates. Go figure...

Apparently this is March

The lack of blog updates is due to a lack in interesting things. I have been in Tennessee, Texas, and am currently in Illinois. Had anything worth noting happened, you would have known about it - I promise.

I did see some movies;

Be kind, rewind.

I'm a big JB fan, and I am all in favor of just putting him in front of a camera to see what will happen. That is pretty much what I expected of this movie and in some places that is exactly what you got which was good. But it also tried to have a bigger message about saving a building... Fats Waller... I don't know. It was pretty muddy and in the end people showed up without explanation carrying things that didn't make sense and you never got to find out what happened to the building. I enjoyed the movie remakes quite a bit, but I'm guessing that most viewers are going to come away with the same feeling that I did - namely that there should have been more movie remakes and less story. Not a waste of time, but a bit confusing overall.

No country for old men.

I really liked this movie. It is very violent in places and it does have Woody Harrelson who I don't usually care for. Woody did a great job in his later scenes and I was pretty impressed with his acting. I enjoyed the dialog overall even though it was somewhat sparse. Just like in 'Be kind, rewind' there were people who just showed up from time to time without a valid explanation of how they got there and the ending was far from any kind of closure. Still and all, it was a great way to spend an evening in a hotel away from family and friends.

Next week I'm off to Tampa again, and then who knows...

GPestimate

It is common knowledge in my family that I can't get from hither to yon without electronic intervention and a host of satellites. I have lived in the same general area for the last 25 years and I still have to ask my wife the best way to go into town.

So this morning I left home armed with a Google map and a vague idea of how to get there based on previous trips in the same general direction. I managed to go about 30 miles out of my way and was saved from a late arrival at the customer only by the grace of the Central time zone. I would have been fine if I had read the directions and not trusted my internal (infernal?) compass.

I did have time to come up with this though;

"We need to find a place to stay the night" Tom said logically.

If you have to ask, it is probably best not to. It's a family thing.

Speaking of family, any spelling errors above are not my fault. The Blogger spell check failed 'with response 500 Internal Server Error after 936 ms'

...I have to assume that '936 ms' is a count of my misspellings and I melted something.

Back to the North

This week I'm in Grand Rapids MI to take a class which I have been looking forward to for weeks. It is so nice to work for a company that is willing to invest in their staff.



The day before I arrived they had 'blizzard like' conditions. It has been snowing since I got here and I hope I can make it back out on Friday night.



Driving is not too fun - my rental car is a Toyota Ashtray. It comes pre-scented and with onions. Super nice.



Here is your second installment of color management training. As usual, please feel free to ask questions. It should be pretty self explanatory.

Tallahassle

Its a little known fact that if you cover a cow's feet in wood chips they can't move.



I flew from Altanta to Tampa (again)with the intent to then go to Ft. Lauderdale. As it turns out, you can't really get there from here. I was left with having to fly Tampa to Tallahassee, and then Tallahassee to Ft. Lauderdale.

Or so I thought.

On check-in at the Tampa airport the helpful kiosk told me that an illegal proceedure had occured and I would need to speak to an agent. The helpful agent told me that my flight was delayed and I would miss my connection, so she was going to put me on another flight. They had to put me on a Continental flight, which required a lot of typing and special airline code words ("you need to XO his flight and set the Q tab...") So many code words and so much typing that I missed that flight too. The end result was a flight from Tampa to Atlanta, and Atlanta to Ft. Lauderdale - all first class.

Flying in the big boy seats is really nice, and I had a good conversation with a guy who turned out to be a long time employee of the same company I work for. On the last leg I was reading and noticed that the man next to me was watching 'Balls of Fury'. He didn't so much as crack a smile, but as the movies are free in first class I decided to give it a try. I spent the next hour giggling and covering my mouth while my neighbor just looked at me like I was 12.



I'm about halfway through The Book of Other People and it is an enjoyable read. Each chapter is written by a different author, and the assignment was for the authors to just make somebody up and write about them. I'm impressed by the depth of the characters and the amount of detail they are able to put into such a short space. I also really like the cover art - I recognize the style and am hoping that jondernethica will poke me to remind me why.

Tampaline

Tampa is not Iowa and that is all kinds of good.



When I arrived, I plugged in all the addresses into the GPS so I wouldn't get lost and the GPS promptly told me that I would arrive at the customer at 8:38am the following morning.

Huh?

I checked the map and it said that the customer was over 1100 miles away. Then the GPS popped up a window that said:

"Are you currently in Vermont?"

Um... no, no I am not.

I may write a children's book about the GPS that told you where it wanted to be, not where you were.



After spending an hour explaining to the customer about input profiles, rendering intents, and all other sorts of color managment goodness I looked down and this is what I had. So there you go, free color managment lesson. Email me with any questions.



My GPS also thinks the water in Tampa is far bluer than it really is.

Back again

Back in Iowa.



Yep.



Yessir... Iowa.

Scorn

So yeah, um... Iowa.

NYC - to the right

First day back at work and I'm in NYC. I really like being in the city and that always suprises me a little bit as I never spent all that much time in a big city.



My sense of direction is really not to good. Unless the sun is rising or setting I have no idea which way is North, South, East or West. My general rule of thumb in a big city is to go in one direction and then just keep turning one way until I get back to where I started. My Dad can navigate across the ocean by the stars and my wife can find her way to and from anywhere, but I have to have a GPS or breadcrumbs.



When I'm in a town with a rental car, I will go out from the hotel and turn right or left and then just drive until I get bored. Even with a GPS I don't make too many turns without a specific destination in mind. It's just that bad.



I'm staying in the SoHo area very near Chinatown. I was walking around as best I could in the freezing cold and looking at the street vendors. One vendor told me; 'Unless you want Rolex we closed!' I'm not exactly sure of his business model.



(Sorry Mom, but I found that amusing)



I think you had to be there for this photo. The things hanging in the window were almost enough to put me off meat.