Author: Susan

Or, Why I Was at Kinko’s at 2AM on Wednesday.

The class I’m taking at UW had a group work assignment due today, in which we had to develop an instruction manual for something unrelated to computers, cars, food, or weapons. After the other two members of my group roundly rejected my expertise in knitting and fish-keeping, and after spending the better part of two days attempting to come up with a topic that didn’t involve the internet, we finally settled on writing instructions for polar-aligning a telescope. This suited me, since I had a long astronomy phase, and one of our members grew up in Montana glued to his telescope, so we seemed set. He would write the instructions out from memory, I would illustrate, and the third kid, who showed up to class spottily, would do layout. Stage One went off without a hitch. Stage Two (ie. me vs. paint) was a bit slower in coming. By 3am on Tuesday I had beautiful graphics based on illustrations I’d found on the web, and sent them off to Mr. Layout, only to hear back from Mr. Owns-A-Telescope when I got to work at 10 that I’d illustrated the wrong kind of telescope( which can’t perform the task we were describing. Oops.). So, after getting home from work, and receiving Mr. Layout’s part with the instructions to “just brush it up however you want to” — never a good sign, I had another 5 or so hours of re-Painting and re-Layouting before I could head to the 24 hour Kinko’s. The guys there seemed, to put it mildly, surprised to see someone pull up. They were working on multi-thousand copy jobs, and I don’t think they get that many requests for single prints, let alone at 1:45 in the morning. Ah, to be the spice-it-up girl.

That said, I *love* card stock and spiral bindings. It makes me want to do this with every aspect of my life (the shopping list?).

We’d decided that since our instruction manual would theoretically accompany a many-thousand dollar purchase, we could go for presentation over economy. Combined with other fun touches (big font for reading at night with a flashlight, card stock to withstand being stuffed in a pocket, spiral binding to make it easy to hold, sidebars to explain technical terms, etc.), it was SO pretty when done.

But seriously, what else could I use this on? Recipes? Knitting patterns? The mind boggles.

Just a quick post to show my creeeeping progress on the back on the cable sweater. I made it nearly up to the next set of cables, and then realized that I hadn’t double checked my math and completely stalled. I even have the chart ready! It’s a mere matter of counting stitches, dividing by the repeat and adding two, and yet I’m stuck.

I’m hoping that by posting a picture I can shame myself into restarting… I want to have this finished in time for my trip home to Boston for Thanksgiving. Go, go!

I spent the weekend at Microsoft’s Puzzlehunt, with a group derived from the new Brown dinner crowd. 🙂 This was my second Puzzle Hunt, and added to one Intern Puzzle Day and one Puzzle Safari to round out my total lifetime microsoft-puzzling experience. The idea behind the event is that the winners from last year (the awesome “Everyday Heroes”) earn the “honour” of creating two days worth of puzzles, and roughly 50 teams spend the weekend proving their mental muscle. Lemon of Troy finished a mighty 36th, thereby leaving a safe margin from being forced to write next year’s fun. Despite the reality of sitting in a conference room surrounded by computers eating takeout on a weekend, I had a lot of fun. 🙂

The puzzles are multipart and usually require recognizing lots of different overlaying patterns. This year, there were a few on Semaphore and Braille, plays on the fifty states, ciphers, songs from soundtracks, ingredients from beverages from the Microsoft fridge, word games, scrabble scores, quasi-famous dates, etc, etc. My favourite was a huge 5×5 logic grid based on a map that took me two hours to solve, and then required spelling out the solutions to each to find a location on a another made-up map, then translating that to a real campus location, then bringing the first map to that room and looking at it under the black light to get the answer (“blue screen” :-P).

I know there’s a share of previous years’ puzzles somewhere, but all I could find was year 2.

People on my team were impressed by my pencil crayon skills in solving the following puzzle (they even tacked it to the wall!), so I figured I’d post my acheivement:

The puzzle had three edges with sequences of numbers in colored circles and the center was initially a blank grid of hexagons. The trick was to figure out the pattern represented by the numbers, color it in on the grid, and then realize that they were nautical flags that spelled the answer: “TIROS”. Not bad for 4:30 in the morning. 🙂

Somehow I managed to make it all the way through October and only post once. Thus, it’s time for new resolutions, namely:

1. Post more frequently.

As a sign of good faith, I’ve retroactively posted to update you on a month’s worth of fish&knitting status.

As for the reasons for not posting to begin with, it basically boils down to the three days a week I’m been getting up at 6:45 for my technical writing class at UW and the related work (weak, I know, but my workday before this started at ten and ended at 6:30. It’s an adjustment.). Add in a lovely vacation to Florida (and narrow escape from Wilma. Yay for my parents, who finally have their power back and tarps on their roof.), and that’s all the excuses I have to offer. Other than the bits posted, October consisted of watching a cloudy-topped Rainier over Lake Washington on the 7:30 am bus ride to class, reveling in the leaves changing color, way too many enormous spiders, much pondering over the “right” future career decision (technical writer? fiction editor? teacher? mostly leaning toward the former, but all opinions welcome.), appreciating Weston and Brown, carpooling home with Kevin, reading Les Miserables and John Adams, missing knitting, and the beginning of group dinners with the Brown gang. If it makes any of you feel better, I didn’t buy gas once in October, so you’ve all received more attention than my car has.

(And for those who read this far and expected that the list of resolutions would contain a “2.”, I will simply smile indulgently and leave you with a picture of the shrimp:

and all three fish on the left side of the tank:

No need to overdo these things. 🙂 )

I finally got a step closer to the vision of two 55 gallon tanks, the top one being a fish and corals display tank, and the bottom being a refugium. In one marathon session on Sunday, I moved everything (including 2/3 of the original tank’s water) over to the new sandy-bottomed tank. I am so happy with the result. I flipped a few rocks, and so now we have more space for corals, and with the new tank’s placement in the room, we can now see the view fully from three side, and about a third of the way across the back of the tank. We’ve discovered new clams, new crabs, and an enormous new stinging worm (the source of my endless rash?) since making the switch. (Pictures below, and with my pinky finger for reference. It was about an inch behind the glass, so the comparison is pretty accurate. How does something that enormous go undetected for eight months??)

For those, like me, who find clams much more benign, here’s a photo of one of our four-and-counting new ones:

The yellow encircles the clam, and the green arrow points to one of our SPS guys, who I’m delitghted to say is growing again now that we’ve restarted the kalkwasser drip (for calcium/alkalinity). Also visible are the orange zoos, and Clack who came over to see what the previous flash was about.

I plucked nearly all of the xenia off of the back glass, so now we’re back down to a “small” colony of three trees, plus the pom-pom xenia. The sand looks great, especially with the additional T5 light that Kevin picked up. I need to figure out some sort of veil or sheild to make for our top lights — now that the tank is higher and the tank is more in the center of the room, it’s quite blinding to glance at the tank when you’re sitting on the couch. I’m thinking some fabric and velcro ought to do the trick.

Now that the original tank is cleaned out and dry, I’ll start siliconing plexiglass baffles into the tank to create three sections: one chamber for water to enter from above and run through the protein skimmer, a second to pump it back up to the main tank, and a large space between them for a deep sand bed and plenty of algae.

I’ve been working on the Multi-Directional scarf pattern that I got (for free! whee!) for joining the Multi-Directional Yahoo group. I’m using Ritratto, which I love, but have been having trouble finding good projects for. It was originally intended to be a Tie One On, but the pattern really didn’t work out. Then, I was going to make a waved scarf, much like the amazing one that Jessica had on her blog ages ago. After a valiant effort, it became clear that the color blocks are way too short for that sort of a pattern. Instead of a pretty, lively blue, it looked like a blue fuzzy mess with screaming patches of orange. I should have known better — I’m never a fan of variegated yarn and lace.

So, I switched to the multidirectional scarf, and now it’s flying along (woot, knitting on the diagonal). It’s an extremely satisfying way to knit, though it definitely violates my general rule of never knitting something that I wouldn’t buy in a store.

The abnormally long blog absence is due (at least recently) to me being in Florida, visiting my parents’ new-ish home for the first time. A brief recap:

The flights were uneventful, I slept through everything and got in on Saturday morning. We went to an amazing brunch on Sunday, then to the Miami Seaquarium and South Beach yesterday. The seaquarium was fun, though the tropical fish tank was closed and more information would have been nice about the animals they did have. I did get to see my first manatee! And baby (they have a release program there)!

And we went to a fun little restaurant for a late lunch that offered boat drinks in a coconut carved as a monkey head (also a coin bank!!) that we could take home. We opted for the more sedate fluorescent orange plasticware.

In between the big events were some deck time (I’ve semi-lost that Seattle pallor), pool time, beach time, and serious wildlife viewing. My parents now live on a canal off of the intercoastal, and (possibly due to the full moon?) we’ve had major fish action. There are massive schools of bait fish that have been circling about, and then larger fish trying to eat them. Every so often you can hear either a cascade of little splashes due to the smaller fish jumping to flee (think the krill in Finding Nemo: “Run away!!”) or else one huge one that must be the jacks jumping. It’s quite cool. And then, to cap it all, they had an iguana (about 3.5 feet?) at the end of the dock:

Kevin gets in tomorrow, at which point we can start focusing all of our energy on wishing that Wilma would glide away from southern Florida without causing any hoopla. 🙂

The leaves have become spectacular in the last week or so. For my mom, who doesn’t get to see the color turn this year, and for anyone who thinks (as I used to) that New England has a claim on brilliant colors, some pictures:

Bright leaves on the UW campus, on the way to my morning class:

And, on the microsoft campus in the evening:

This picture was taken on the walk to the bus. You can see the major line of traffic at the light — the first of many on the ride home. I’m always happy to get to knit instead of fuming at the idiots in front of me. 🙂

Microsoft’s trees were the first to turn, and have been holding their leaves well. They’ve just started to drop this week, but much to my chagrin, the campus is kept immaculate and so there’s been no chance to go stomping through the color. Getting off the bus has been incredibly disappointing, since I keep hoping that somewhere in the fifteen minutes walk from the stop to my building, there will be some chance to tromp through the leaves. Instead, I’m usually waved at by the cheerful, but excessively efficient, leaf blower people.

However, this morning, I was delighted to come across an as-yet-untouched 20 yards of sidewalk.

You can see the strict line that they’d blown up to, but for some reason, they’d left a lovely patch. 🙂 Yay, fall.

The tang seems to be adjusting. He’s still not entirely comfortable around people, but he’s frequently coming up to the glass when we’re nearby instead of darting away and hyperventilating. He’s been eating everything in sight, and you can see a green belly full of Nori at the end of the day. He also eats the formula one (frozen meaty food) and the cyclop-eeze (wee red creatures, also technically meat) with gusto, so clearly he doesn’t realize that he’s supposed to be a strict herbivore. We’ve had to be careful when we feed the yellow polyp to keep our hand in for an extra moment until the polyp has a good grip on it, because the tang keeps snatching his food away. I’m a bit worried about overfeeding, but he seems so desperate to eat that it seems like it would be cruel to deprive him. I’ve also read that tangs are constant grazers, so not having food available could do more harm than good.

He still has a few weeks to go in the quarantine tank, since he got black spot after about a week and that reset the clock. We had to do two freshwater dips (temp and pH adjusted) about three days apart, but he seems to have beaten it.

Kevin just ordered a new computer, and the excitement at our apartment is palpable. 😛

Rather than order something prefabricated, he just bought a zillion little pieces off of newegg.com. He’s delighted because of the advancements in how cleverly they fit together and how well-made his case was. We spent the evening upstairs — he unpacked all of the components, and I knit and oohed.

For those who want documentation (and agree with my view that it’s fascinating to see all the innards, even if you like ordering your computers whole), here goes:

Case: CoolerMaster WaveMaster TAC-T01-EB Blue Aluminum
Power Supply: Antec NeoPower 480
Motherboard: Abit AN8-Ultra
CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 4400+
RAM: 2GB OCZ Titanium PC3200 (2-3-2-5 timing)
Hard Drives: 2 x 250 GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 SATA (in a RAID-0 array)
Video: ATI All-In-Wonder X800XL 256MB
Sound: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
Speakers: Logitech THX Z-5300E
DVD Burner: Lite-On
Floppy Drive: NEC
Monitor: Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW
Tablet: Wacom Graphire4 4″x5″
Mouse: Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse Explorer
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

(Plus, it’s worth noting that many of these didn’t come with the requisite cables. Kevin’s been collecting such occasionally-useful things since the early-nineties, and thus was able to fill in the gaps without a trip to the store or a wait for shipping, but those who find they have better things to do with their closets ought to order the cables at the same time as the pieces.)

And a play-by-play with pictures:

The motherboard is pretty. I would feel excessively girly for saying that, except that the colors were clearly designed to go in a case with clear sides. So, pretty it is:

The gold fuzz is actually my camera’s rendition of the zillion little pins sticking out of it which plug into the motherboard. On the opposite side goes the special heat-conducting clay. It needs to be pressed on well — if there are any air bubbles between the clay and the CPU, it can create dangerously hot surfaces temperatures that then render that part of the CPU permanently unusable. After the clay is attached, the CPU goes on the motherboard and is covered by a huge fan, also for heat-reduction. Here’s Kevin pointing to the CPU (clay side up) on the motherboard before he attached the fan: Next, a bright and shiny photo of the RAM: Kevin actually has two of these, which attach onto the long, blue, horizontal parts of the motherboard. The hard drive had some new slender wires instead of the massive flat ones — we were both impressed. The dvd drive came with interchangeable faceplates. (“ooh”) And here are the sound card and video card. Note the semi-nude woman on the video card — and we wonder who they are marketing to… 😛 While I still prefer (CS degree and relatively dorky work environment not withstanding), to buy a computer in one piece and selectively upgrade the hardware as needed, it’s fun to see someone who enjoys such things pull together all of the pieces into, as described by the boy in an email to a friend, an “AMD X2 4400+ (dual-core) with 2GB of wicked fast RAM, SATA RAID-0, and an ATI AiW X800 XL.” Ahh, dork-speak.