bogen.org

My cousin Judy Arisman recently launched a website for her graphic design firm. Have a look at www.arismandesign.com.

A few pictures from our trip to Mammoth Cave National Park can be found in the picture gallery.

Living and traveling in different parts of the US has driven home one point with which almost no one can argue:

Americans will drink just about anything labeled “coffee” no matter how god-awful it is.

The whole time we were traveling on our latest trip, we didn’t have one cup of coffee that was even half-way decent.

Here are some helpful tips for those who think it takes special skill or equipment to brew decent coffee:

1. Start with good grounds. Just as you can’t make a steak out of dung, you can’t make decent coffee from crappy grounds. Folgers, Maxwell House, Hills Brothers: these are the three Goblins of the Percolator. Most of the big companies use the cheapest, rottenest coffee beans they can get their grubby little hands on. Then, to increase profit, they cut the beans with sawdust and oil refinery byproducts to increase yield. This doesn’t mean you have to use unbelievably expensive gourmet or boutique coffee grounds. Chock Full o’ Nuts and Dunkin Donuts both sell ground coffee that is affordable, but decent.
2. Actually wash the coffee pot periodically. Just as we expect pots and pans to be washed after using them, coffee pots need to be washed as well.
3. Throw out old coffee. Ideally, coffee would be thrown out twenty minutes after it was brewed. Even more often would be better. However, if your coffee is older than one hour, chances are it is now bitter.
4. Don’t skimp on the grounds. If I wanted water with a hint of brown in it, I’d drop some vanilla flavoring into my cup. However, if I’m drinking coffee, I want actual coffee flavor, not hot water with a hint of coffee flavor and bouquet.
5. Don’t reuse filters or grounds. Both of these should be shooting offenses.

Decaf drinkers like myself have it especially bad. As soon as we leave the comfortable confines of our own home we’re immediately relegated to little decaf ghettos. Most people and companies that serve decaf seem to assume that we should be happy just to have the option to drink decaf and that we’ll gladly slurp down anything decaffienated.

If you’re serving us cheap-ass decaf coffee, chances are it was decaffienated in some third-world nation by running it through a pair of sweaty socks. Trust me, we can taste the difference between good decaf coffee and bulk-rate, third-world slavery produced coffee that was decaffienated with a blend of donkey droppings and nerve gas and then shipped to this country in the ballast tanks of rusty container ships.

Why would establishments like Hampton Inn or Clubhouse Inn and Suites, for instance, serve shitty coffee? They concentrate so hard on all other aspects of their customer-facing appearance and then they expect us to overlook the sorry excuse for coffee they serve for breakfast? Do they not realize that we put the coffee in our mouths? If I serve you something to put in your mouth, you can be damn sure I’m satisfied with it, because you will form an opinion about it (and me, by extension). They’ve got people out there fluffing the eggs and sausage every five minutes. Quick-brew industrial coffee pots are also in use. Would it be so hard to keep good coffee handy?

A pre-emptive response to those who would say that Starbucks is where I should be drinking coffee when I’m not at home:

Starbucks overroasts their beans. The coffee tastes burnt. And no, I’m not just sensitive to dark coffee. In fact, I drink French Roast coffee with chicory every morning. I actually like coffee much darker and richer than most folks. Starbucks coffee doesn’t taste dark and rich, it tastes burnt and awful. Why should I support Yet Another Chain Store by paying exhorbitant prices for bad coffee?

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan is an excellent sci-fi/cyberpunk novel. If you enjoy cyberpunk, you will enjoy this book.Takeshi Kovacs is a mercenary brought in from outsystem to solve a perplexing mystery on Earth. He inhabits a strange body, as just his mind (and soul) have been beemed across the cosmic miles.

Kovacs has to figure out why a particular man killed himself in six weeks. The man who apparently killed himself is, in fact, the man who hires Kovacs. From hotels run by mischevious AI’s to augmented bodies to weapons of the future, Altered Carbon has it all.

To pass time on our trip to Nashville, Sarah and I listened to Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler. We checked out the book on CD from our local library.

Neither of us was aware of the series’ particular features:

• Corny dialogue
• Characters that are caricatures
• Repeated miraculous escapes
• Character after character that is described as “retired special forces” or “former special forces” even if said characters are doing nothing more than acting as security guards without a thought in their heads or a tiny hint of autonomy

We just thought the book was going to be a standard issue thriller. So, we got plenty of laughs at the book, its plot, and its characters. When Cussler wrote himself into the book (as the wealthy owner of a stealthly private super yacht who is only too happy to engage in black ops with people he just pulled from the ocean just hours previously but with whom he had no previous acquiantance) the book jumped the proverbial shark.

Please, please, please do not waste your life reading or listening to this trash. I’ve got nothing against trashy novels of all types. However, this book is a bad trashy novel. For those, there is no excuse.

Sarah and I traveled south of the Mason-Dixon Line last weekend on a little vacation.We left Madison on Thursday morning, bound for Mammoth Cave National Park. Our route took us through Illinois and Indiana on our way to Kentucky. Conventional wisdom says that Kansas is flat and borning to drive through. Having now driven through both Kansas (east to west) and Illinois (west to east and north to south), I can safely say that Kansas has nothing on Illinois. Illinois ought to bill itself as the natural remedy for insomnia. If mile after mind-numbing mile of flat, treeless, agricultural sameness sounds good to you, I’m sure that the state of Illinois would love to make your acquaintance.

About half-way through the state, we bailed, and headed east towards Indiana. Just across the border from Illinois, Indiana State Highway 63 and US Highway 41 offer a pleasant alternative to interstate travel. Four lane highways, with a grass median (but not controlled access), both IN-63 and US-41 offer a much more interesting and less crowded path south to Kentucky. Along the way, you can view such interesting sights as the Newport Chemical Depot (where almost 1300 tons of the nerve agent VX are sitting in storage), and the Vigo County Courthouse in Terre Haute, IN (which is very impressive, but unfortunately located–next to a busy highway).

We arrived in Evansville, IN about dinnertime. We ate dinner at the (unfortunately named) Little Cheers Restaurant and Bar. If you find yourself in Evansville, IN for lunch or dinner, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Red Beans and Rice at Little Cheers. It’s everything you might expect from a Cajun-inspired, homemade red beans and rice dish.

Running on all cylinders after a good meal, we headed south into Kentucky. About 11 PM we arrived at the Mammoth Cave Hotel in Kentucky. After setting our alarms, we crashed.

Friday morning saw us up early to eat breakfast before our 09:30 Historic Tour of Mammoth Cave.

Before I talk about the cave, I need to reveal that once you’ve been on a spelunking tour of a cave, everything else is just so-much Disney. Crawling around the cave on your hands and knees, inching through spaces just ten inches tall, dangling over pits, all while using only the light from headlamps–this is good stuff. Walking around a cave with electric lights, walkways, bridges, railings, and the like–this is boring.

Having said that, we found ourselves on exactly the sort of tour that makes the whole experience seem so canned. My knees have been acting up of late, and I didn’t want to find myself one hour into a three-six hour crawling tour with cranky knees. So, even as I started on the Historic tour, with an entertaining and informed guide, I was feeling ripped off.

Anyway, after the tour, we checked out of the hotel, took the Green River Ferry, and drove a bit deeper into the park. Our mountain bikes were on top of the car because we were planning on riding some of the trails in the park. Once we got to the trailhead, we unloaded the bikes, and took off down the trail.

We couldn’t have asked for a better day to mountain bike. The trails were completely deserted. We didn’t see another soul on the trails the whole time we were out. The weather was mid-sixties and sunny. The trails were a bit wet in some locations, but otherwise in really good shape. We had to carry the bikes over or around some fallen lumber, but otherwise, we were able to ride the whole way. The riding we did on Friday was probably our favorite part of the whole trip.

Once we got the bikes loaded back on the car, we took off for Nashville, TN. On the way, we stopped in Bowling Green to eat at that quintessential Southern institution, Waffle House.

We finally arrived in Nashville about 20:00. Before I write anything else about Nashville, let me issue a warning to anyone thinking about visiting the city in the relatively near future (i.e., the next five thousand years). Every road in the metro area is under construction, all simultaneously. Numerous signs asking people to turn off two-way radios and cell phones dot the highways as blasting zones abound. Helpful navigational signs have been removed and replaced with Nothing. As such, almost any time we went anywhere in or around Nashville, we left ourselves plenty of time to both get lost and get found again. Of course, this is all because Nashville has real traffic issues. The city is so car oriented, many (most?) roads do not have sidewalks. I didn’t see a bus the whole time we were in the metro area, though I did see one token bus shelter.

Once we get settled in to our hotel, we headed out to find the legendary Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. Anyone who knows me will testify that I love hot food and Prince’s is supposedly as hot as chicken comes. There are four flavors mild (eat somewhere else, you’ll feel like a wimp ordering mild here), medium (probably as hot as most people would enjoy), hot (for the adventurous soul), and extra hot (for the heat elite). Sarah ordered medium; I went for the extra hot. Before I describe the food, let me explain that Prince’s is not necessarily located in the upscale portion of Nashville. All sorts of used car lots, adult bookstores, and discount liquor stores rub shoulders with the nondescript strip mall housing Prince’s. So, if you want that white tablecloth, linen napkin experience, go somewhere else. The chicken is served in quarters, halves, and wholes. We each ordered a quarter. The chicken is fried in pans of grease (lard?) on a stove top until it is cooked, slapped on top of two slices of bread (to absorb the grease), wrapped in one piece of wax paper, and dropped in a paper sack. Fancy presentation is not included in the price, obviously.

Buy the time we got back to the hotel (after buying a bottle of wine at one of the discount liquor stores), the grease had soaked through the paper bag and left a grease and spice stain on the floor mat of our car. We called that spot “Revenge of Chicken Shack” for the rest of the trip because nothing we tried could take the grease and spice stain out of the mat and anything set on the stain quickly obtained a patina of spicy chicken grease.

Back at the hotel we unwrapped our chicken grease bombs and set to work. Sarah’s chicken looked like standard fried chicken, but with a slightly reddish tinge. My chicken looked like it had been dipped in honey, set outside during a viscious sand storm, and then painted red. The chicken’s skin was completely obscured by the 1/8″ thick coating of cayenne pepper that was deep fried to the skin. Sarah declared her chicken very good and mine completely inedible. I thought mine was really good. I can see why hot chicken is such a popular food.

Saturday morning, we headed out to ride part of the Natchez Trace Parkway on our bikes. About four miles in to the ride, Sarah’s handlebars came loose. I tried to tighten them with a hex wrench, but no amount of tightening seemed to do much good. So, I had to ride back to the car and drive it to where she was waiting to pick her up. We drove down the parkway for a while longer, visiting Franklin, Leiper’s Fork, Fly, and Shady Grove before heading back to Nashville in a pouring rain.

Tennesee gets very rural, very quickly. Fly and Shady Grove appear as towns on the map, but to call them towns is generous. Fly consisted of one general store, with plenty of Confederate flags flying out front. Shady Grove was a bit more metropolitan, but only because made-to-order pizza was available at the general store in addition to beer and bait.

Saturday night we ate at Bound’ry on Nashville’s west side. We chose to eat off the tapas menu, and had an interesting and filling meal.

Sunday, we decided to head back towards Madison because we were at least twelve hours away from home and we wanted to break the drive up over two days. On the way out of Nashville, we stopped at the Opryland Hotel to see their indoor gardens. They have several acres of gardens inside the hotel with waterfalls, boat rides, little islands, and the like. It is all very pleasant and relaxing, but it is clear that the gardeners there aren’t trying too hard. It seems they found ten-fifteen species of hardy tropical plants to grow and just kept planting them over and over with a few annuals sprinkled in for color.

Sunday night we stopped in Chicago. We stayed at a hotel downtown, and ate dinner at the Chicago branch of Sushi Samba Rio. The atmosphere was cool, the drinks were good, and the food was alright. However, for the price, the sushi at Sapporo Sushi Boat in Alameda was much better.

After dinner, we took a cab to The Backroom to catch some live jazz. The band playing that night was alright, but nothing special. The 2004 Housewares trade show was in Chicago, and the bar was filled with all sorts of folks from around the world who were all Housewares show attendees. There were people from Britain, South Africa, Belgium, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the like all present. It was a fun scene.

Monday morning saw us getting back in to the car and heading back to Madison. We got home Monday afternoon tired, but happy with the trip.

The dishwasher that was installed when we bought our house left a fair amount to be desired. It was almond colored, while everything else in the kitchen was either white or stainless steel. The diswasher was loud; so loud I could hear it from any room in the house. It didn’t get the dishes very clean. Many times, our glasses were left with particulate matter in them, so we were washing our glasses by hand. Sometimes, the detergent dispenser on the door failed to open during the wash cycle.So, it was not necessarily a fine piece of dishwashing engineering that occupied a space in our kitchen. Two weeks before we left on vacation, Sarah and I threw up our hands in frustration, and visited a local appliance dealer to purchase a new unit.

As with all things, the new unit arrived two days before we left on vacation. So, this morning, we wrestled the old beast out from under the counter, and wrestled the new beast in.

If you’re truly interested in seeing levels of filth that you wouldn’t otherwise believe could be possible in your home, pull out your dishwasher.

After unhooking the old one and carting it outdoors, we got down to the serious business of getting the new system installed. Fitting, shimming, fitting, shimming, cursing, leveling, testing, swearing, leveling, testing, attaching, and the like took up the next hour or so. Finally, the new, functional dishwasher was installed. It will be great to not only have clean dishes again, but be able listen to the radio while the dishwasher is running.

While we were gone on vacation, Daemonnews.org published an article I wrote about an application in the FreeBSD ports collection. The article is not necessarily an in depth treatment, but rather an overview. If you are not familiar with FreeBSD and/or RFC’s from the Internet’s point of view, the article may not be one of your favorites.

On Thursday morning, I was installing some new electrical fixtures in the bathroom, when the telephone rang. Sarah had just left for school on her bike, and I didn’t really like talking to a telemarketer, so I let the phone ring. The answering machine picked up, and Sarah left a message asking me to call her as soon as I got the message. She sounded very upset.I dropped what I was doing, grabbed my cell phone, and called her back. She asked me to come pick her up because she had been hit by a car.

My first question, obviously, was if she was OK. She responded that she was a bit bruised, but other than that, she seemed to be healthy.

So, I grabbed my keys, got in the car, and headed to the corner of Kendall and Grand, where she was waiting.

Sarah had been biking to school, when an [expletive deleted] driving an 80′s vintage station wagon turned left directly in front of her. She did not have a stop sign, nor was traffic in her direction of travel required to yield to traffic from the moron automobile driver’s direction of travel.

Fortunately, I’d recently tuned up the brakes on her bike. New brake cables, housing, pads, and correct alignment of the same were all part of the tune-up. So, when she grabbed the brakes and pulled, the wheels on her bike grabbed hold of the pavement and held on tight. Unfortunately, the distance between her and the car was not great enough for her to stop and she crashed into the car’s right rear quarter panel. The impact threw her off the bike, broke the rim of her front wheel, shattered most of the lights on her bike, shattered the covering on her bike lock, sheared off her front brake cable, and forced the handlebar/fork alignment way out of whack.

The [expletive deleted] driving the car immediately got out of the car and accosted Sarah verbally. He blamed her completely for the accident. He started telling her how she had better have automobile insurance and how she was going to pay for the damage to his [expletive deleted] car.

Unfortunately, neither of them called the police, so now we have to fill out an accident report form to get the police to assign blame for the accident. Simultaneously, we have to start persuing a claim through American Family Insurance (the [expletive deleted]‘s insurance company).

Sarah escaped the accident with a few bruises and some bumps. Doctors checked her out and found no major injuries, so she is just watching what she is doing, and taking plenty of extra-strength tylenol.

Having said all of that, it is important to note that being loud does not make you right. The [expletive deleted] who hit her, essentially assumed that if he got out of his car and made a big scene, everyone would just assume that he was right. Fortunately, the world doesn’t always work that way. If it takes hitting this [expletive deleted] in the wallet to get his attention, and make him start looking for bicyclists on the road, I’ll make sure that hit is large.

There are exactly two reasons that I occasionally fire up Windoze at home:

1. TurboTax
2. Quicken

I really enjoy how Quicken allows me to easily track where and how I spend my money. For instance, in the last twelve months, I spent just over $568.00 on bicycles and accessories.That figure includes the purchase of two new bikes (a combined $42), but is mostly comprised of parts for bikes. New cables, housing, saddles, brakes, chains, fendors, racks, tires, handlebar grips and the like all add up over time.

Unlike most people who replace bicycling gear because it has been sitting around for too long, I do actually wear out bicycling gear. My bike saddles wear out, my brake pads get worn down, the tread on my tires disappears due to wear, and my chains get stretched.

However, even spending $568.00 per annum on bicycles and accessories is cheap compared to owning and operating a vehicle. Heck, one monthly payment on a new GMC Yukon would total more than I spent all last year on bicycling. Forget, making twelve of those payments, in addition to insurance and licensing costs.

Sarah and I were commenting this morning over breakfast how people will complain, and loudly, when gasoline prices spike this summer. We both said, laughingly, that we’ll just have to bike more.

For a variety of reasons, I’ve been digging through various pieces of Madison and Wisconsin history of late. From histories written by others to the original source materials held by the State Historical Society Archives, I’ve learned quite a bit about my current city and state of residence.

Having said that, nothing compares with the annecdote that follows for sheer amusement.The following excerpt was taken from the book “The Badger State” edited by Barbara and Justus Paul. It describes the condition of Assembly Hall for the fourth meeting of the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature in Madison.

To this point, the Legislature had met once in Belmont, WI, and twice in Burlington, WI. Even when it finally convened in Madison, the Legislature initially had to convene in the basement of a meeting hall because the Assembly Hall was not yet completed.

However, in the winter of 1838, the Assembly Hall finally reached a state of completion that allowed the Legislature to assemble within its walls.

At length we took possession of the new Assembly Hall. The floors were laid with green oak boards, full of ice; the walls of the room were iced over; green oak seats, and desks made of rough boards; one fire-place and one small stove. In a few days the flooring near the stove and fire-place so shrunk on account of the heat, that a person could run his hands between the boards. The basement story was all open, and James Morrison’s large drove of hogs had taken possession; they were awfully poor, and it would have taken two of them, standing side by side, to have made a decent shadow on a bright day. We had a great many smart members in the House, and sometimes they spoke for Buncombe. When members of this ilk would become too tedious, I would take a long pole, go at the hogs, and stir them up; when they would raise a young pandemonium for noise and confusion. The speaker’s voice would become completely drowned, and he would be compelled to stop, not, however, without giving his squealing disturbers a sample of his swearing ability.

Wouldn’t it be nice to drown out and inconvenience many modern politicians in such an amusing fashion?

It’s all well and good that the Federal Government is going after Bernard Ebbers, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow and others for criminal conduct including securities fraud. Some of these people, including Martha Stewart, have even been found guilty.

The Bush administration will, no doubtedly, point to these convictions as evidence that they are vigorously persuing corporate malfeasance.However, until I see Ken Lay facing a judge and jury after being walked into the courthouse wearing handcuffs, the Bush administration deserves no credit.

Perhaps you remember Ken Lay. He’s the guy at Enron who gave Andrew Fastow and Jeffrey Skilling their marching orders. He’s the guy who has been sitting comfortably at home while his two former employees face prison terms and turn on each other in the courtroom.

Yes, that Ken Lay.

Perhaps you also remember that Ken Lay and Enron contributed millions of dollars to president Bush’s 2000 Presidential election campaign. Bush also flew around the country to various campaign stops on the Enron corporate jet.

Enron collapsed years ago and, strangely enough, Ken Lay is still in the clear. Why? Could it be the millions of dollars Kenny Boy (Dubya’s nickname for Lay) sent Bush’s way? Now there’s an interesting thought.

If you needed yet another example of how money really does buy freedom from the law, you need look no further than Kenny Boy.

Memo to people with “Share the Road With Bicycles” bumper stickers:

If you run a bicyclist off the road in a car bearing said bumper stickers, I will think the following about you:

• You are a hypocrite.
• You can’t read the (very simple) sentences you affix to your car.

The weather in Madison over the weekend was a delightful 50°F this weekend. Everywhere you looked, people were breaking out their bicycles. Bikes that hadn’t been outside for months (generally, really nice bikes or bikes owned by fair weather bicyclists) were on the streets again.On Sunday, Sarah and I decided to hit the trail ourselves. Our original thought was to head out on the Military Ridge Trail. However, word came back through the grapevine that the trail was all but unridable muck, so we turned our attention to the (paved)Capital City Trail. We rode the Southwest bike trail in Madison to where it joins with the Capital City trail just outside of town. Fifty yards later, we discovered that the Cap City trail was still very much snowy and icy in all the forested areas.

Of course, the state doesn’t plow the Capital City Trail, even though bicyclists must pay a user fee to ride the trail. And, of course, that fee was ramrodded through as a disguised maintenance fee, for things like mowing the sides of the trail (which they don’t do either).

Since the trail is never plowed, commuters can’t use it in the winter (even though the state supposedly believes strongly in alternative transportation). And, because the trail is not plowed, the snow and ice sticks around on it longer than on the streets and sidewalks.

Right now, biking is one of the few good outside activities to engage in around Madison. The lawns and gardens are not ready to be worked, and even if they were, we’ll get at least one more snow storm. The lakes are still covered in ice which prevents people from boating, but the ice is too thin to support people walking on it. Most of the hiking trails are mud pits with another name.

So, here’s this wonderful paved trail, and no one can use it because the money we’re spending on it:

• can’t be traced;
• isn’t used to benefit trail users;
• is most assuredly going to fund something else.