My office

My office:

 


 

Object Reservoir purchased

The company I have been working for over the past 18 months has been purchased by Landmark Graphics Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton Corp.

Back in January, we sold our services group to Weatherford.

Both deals were very good for all companies. You frequently hear about win-win deals. This was really a win-win-win deal. WFT got a great group of engineers, and we got some money to try and expand some oft he software we were working on.

HAL got some wonderful software that they would not have been able to develop for what they paid, and our investors got a little of their money back.

We would have preferred a bigger sale or more time to move the needle, but you have to play the cards you are dealt.

Now on to another adventure.

Radishes from our garden

These are radishes from our garden.



Isn't this a great photo?

Doreen took it. That is my hand.

More later. I will be posting more soon.

I have news!

The Transit of Venus

In 1768 Captain James Cook left London in the Endeavour  Bark heading to Tahiti to record the Transit of Venus.

I left my office today at 4:30 to get to Hermann Park, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science to do the same.

We both had problems.

Capt Cook had cannibals.

I had traffic.

Capt Cook ran out of water.

I ran into crowds:


Capt Cook ran into violent indigenous populations.

I ran into lines:
 

Capt Cook had to chart the unknown coastline of the Southern Continent.

I had to find a place to park.
 

But we both saw the Transit of Venus.

Like this:
 

and this:
 

Then I had to go and have a beer, leaving behind these lines. Just like Capt Cook had to head back to London to drop off his findings, before he let Captain Bligh head back to Tahiti to pick up some breadfruit.

Break, break, break,

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

(thanks Mark)

Stones and Stent

I had my stent removed this afternoon.

I will save you the gory details.

But let me say that lidocaine is not the best pain killer in the world.

Or at least when you are trying to push a golf ball through a garden hose it is not the best pain killer in the world.

The penny is for scale. They did not push a penny into me. But they did pull that green coil (that is the stent) out of me.

The stones came out about a week ago. They did not hurt.

Here is the whole stent. You can see it in the CT scan in the previous post.


I am glad that is over.

Kidney Stones

Yes, this is me. You can see the stent here. That is my right side:
 

Here is a stone:
 

And another in the other kidney:
 

You can see the stent in cross section (red arrow) and another stone (blue arrow):

The highlights are mine.

With any luck, the stent will be out next week.

Wonderful World

I heard this on the plane coming home. A great version of this song.

Flying into Oslo

It was a beautiful day to fly between Frankfurt and Oslo. I woke up just in time to see us cross the coast.

The camera phone really does not do this justice. The islands were popping out as if they had a spotlight on them:


Then the landscape is dotted with small lakes:
 

and an occasional mine:
 

There was a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner at the Oslo Airport!
 

Then I got to my hotel, The Continental, and this is my view:

Nice!

Home Saturday.

Slow posting for a while

But you can read about why here.

Best kraut I have ever made, or eaten.

On February 26th, I started a batch of sauerkraut. This must be my eight or ninth batch of kraut.

This one was significantly better than any other I have made.

I started out with salt a cabbage, just as usual:


But after I chopped and salted the cabbage, I put it in my crock and then started pounding it with a large wooden spoon. I pounded it with the spoon end, and I pounded it with the handle end. I pounded and pounded, as this was the advice from my mother in law:

From Trouta's Birthday Party

who is from Germany.

I was also meticulous with the cleanliness of the crock. I used some iodine based brewing disinfectant generously given me my Dr John, the chairman of my board. 

I think those two things made quite a difference.

This weekend, I shared the kraut with family.




It reinforced my love of fermentation!

Happy krauting to all of you!

Kidney Stones

I won't make this long.

 Earlier this week I was doubled over in pain with the same feeling that I had back in 2001 when Doreen and I went to Spain. This time, we had medical help.

 It was Kidney Stones.

 (I had a picture from the CT, but I gave it to my doctor! So, no visuals)

 There is nothing so painful. Vicodin helps. A lot.

 I went to our Dr on Wednesday, had a CT scan Wednesday afternoon, arranged with a urologist (I had to find one) to have a stent put in today (Friday)

 I am home, and so far, so good!

Motor Sports Ranch, Tracking the M3

One of the great things about driving a car like the BMW M3 (mine is a 2011 E90, which means it is a four door sedan) is that while it is a great, street legal, easy to drive car for commuting, (a good Daily Driver in gear head lingo) it is also a fairly high performance machine that can be put on a racetrack (called, in the way of the verbification of the world, "tracking") and you can push it closer to the limits of the car's technical specs.

Well, "you" if you have the training and experience to know how to wring those last few mile per hour out of the car before the tires lose their cohesion to the track.

That is not me.

Not that I don't want it to be me.

So last week I asked some friends about what it would take to get my M3 on the track. It may surprise you, but there is a very active sports car culture in this country.

So after just two inquiries, a friend of mine, who is a member of the Motor Sports Ranch, sort of a club for racing said he would be happy to do a little training with me.

I agreed eagerly, and though the weather has been terrible in Houston this week, we made an appointment to meet at MSR at 9:00 AM Saturday. It was raining almost the whole drive down to the track, but that didn't really bother me. If Tim said we can run in the wet, we can run in the wet. I got to the track just shy before 9:00 (no, I didn't speed on the way there) and Tim was there shortly.

We picked up some helmets (and head socks!), went to his garage (he has a nice little Mazda Miata MX-5 track car as well as his own M3 coupe - that is an E92 for the gear heads) and we went through some off the track training.

 Keep your arms a little crooked.

Hands at 3:15 and 9:45.

Brake only in the straits, accelerate gently.

Do everything gently.

There are three points to think about in a corner - the turn in point, the apex, the exit point.

Don't brake as you turn, accelerate gently (if at all!) until you hit the apex, then gently pull into the next part of the track. It seems to take a lot of thinking.

So we get out on the track, with Tim at the wheel of my car.

Here is the track:

 

We make three or four runs (counterclockwise) Tim explaining each turn and little chicane in the track as we go through it.

I try to absorb as much as possible, but sometimes it just goes in one ear and out the other.

Then we pull into the pit area and I take the wheel.

I am both nervous and exited.

There was one very good result of the rain - we had the track to ourselves. This meant that there was nobody (other than Tim, and he was too gracious to do so) to laugh at me. I didn't have to worry about getting in anyone's way, and I could just concentrate on the car and the track.

We ran about an hour, with Tim sometimes taking the wheel from the passenger seat. That help, though was scary at times.

It would have been interesting to have a recording of the conversation - it was often something like this:

"Brake now.

Accelerate. That's right, more. more. more.

Slow a bit, now brake - harder. Turn in, look for the apex, Good!"

I was trying to listen, watch, brake accelerate, and turn all at the same time.

It was a blast!

I am indebted to Tim and his patience, and I will have to try this whole thing again.

Driving on a track is a lot of work, and takes an enormous amount of concentration. It is nothing like driving on city streets, but I think it will make you a better driver.

I am looking forward to doing this again.

Smells like spring in Houston

I have lived in Houston (more or less) since July 1980 (5 of those 32 years were elsewhere) and nothing makes me think of spring more than the smell of Carolina Jasmine:



When I first moved down here I lived in some apartments just outside the northwest corner of the loop. (3700 Watonga, if you must know) I was on the second story, and the apartment had Carolina Jasmine climbing up the stairs. When spring broke in 1981, the scent of this yellow flower was overpowering, new to me, and wonderful.

In subsequent places in Houston where I have lived, there was always Carolina Jasmine nearby. (I also like Confederate Jasmine, but it is not nearly as evocative to me.) Every whiff of the sweet scent sends me back in time.

At our place here in The Montrose we have planted several citrus trees:

This is a lemon tree, and indeed the lemon flower is sweet. You can't walk past these without feeling good.


These are lime trees. These, too, make you happy.

I love springtime here. The things to can smell as you walk down the street are always interesting.

Pork Rib Roast

Doreen gave me a copy of Thomas Keller's new cookbook Bouchon for Christmas. One of the recipes we had been wanting to try was a Pork Rib Roast. It looked delicious and realtively simple, so we had some friends coming over for dinner last night and decided that we might as well experiment on them.

I have never seen a pork rib roast in the butcher case, so I was not sure what to expect. Doreen, though, promised to get the food. I was, gladly, off the hook!

But, as fate would have it, and as you all know, sometimes people get tied up. As Doreen got tied up Friday night. SO she called me up and asked me to get the pork.

Luckily, there is a Whole Foods on my way home, and so I (ahem) gladly stopped by to see if I could find the meat.

I got to the meat counter and asked the first butcher about a pork rib roast. He didn't know anything about it, but the head butcher did. I had to wait a couple of minutes for him to help someone else (by the way, French kids can be bad, too), but then he quickly came to me.

I explained what I needed (a four pound pork rib roast) and he went into the back, and returned with a half a hog! Yipes. But I was able to watch him cut, carve, clean, and french this side of pork into a beautifully presented pork roast:


Man does not live by pork alone, of course, so we started with Tuscan White Bean soup from Cook's Illustrated. Here is Doreen, waiting for the pot to boil:


That is really a great recipe. A little fussy, but worth it. (Some of the Cook's recipe's are fussy, and not worth it)

Along with the soup and pork, we made boiled new potatoes and hashed Brussels Sprouts with Lemon Zest. Oh yes, very nice.



The pork had to be brined with salt water, garlic, parsely, thyme, pepper, honey, bay leaves overnight. The next day you bring it up to room temperature, brown it, and then roast it at 325 for about 40 minutes (Keller says 30 minutes, but the meat was only up to about 100 degrees at that point. Another tem minutes or so took care of that)

Here is what the pork looked like after it was cooked:


And of course, we had to have Dan's Famous Apple Pie for dessert:


We had a bottle of Champagne to start, and some Ayres' Ribbon Hill Oregon Pinot Noir with the meat.

We had a great meal, and of course, great conversation.