Double Tall Iced Mocha, Lite on the Chocolate

September 25, 2004

Broadway and Pike QFC Redux

Filed under: /seattle — @ 5:41 pm

Since moving to the Central District again, I have not been frequenting the Capitol Hill grocers as much as I used to. After my dogs case of the runs, I needed to get some meat to boil for her post fast, diarrhea recovery meal. I decided to visit the Broadway and Pike Quality Food Centers.

Having not been there since they started the remodel and everything was extremely hard to find, I was quite surprised to see a newly remodeled QFC that resembles the one in U-Village. I decided to begin my investigation into the underpinnings this remodel and see what exactly has changed other than the lighting and wood trim.

The first major change I noticed is that the bakery no longer makes SBC espresso, because there is a Starbucks kiddie corner to the bakery. This could be a disappointment, because QFC was the only place you could reliably get espresso at 5am, I doubt that the Starbucks will be open 24/7 but honestly I didnt find out.

Next on the road to change was the produce section, which has been moved from west side of the store to the east. This is kind of refreshing because I really do like hitting the produce isle first.

After mingling through the fresh vegetables and misting I stumbled upon a Sushi Chef by the name of Leo who was preparing some rolls, and some cuts of Sashimi for lonely fishless beds of rice he had on the counter. After talking to Leo for a few minutes, I found out that QFC does not have my favorite Sashimi, Toro (fatty tuna). Leo informed me that Toro can cost up to $25 a pound, and that they probably would not sell enough of it to make it worth there while. Leo did assure me though that if QFC sold Toro he would purchase it. By then end of our conversation he had down sold me a to $7.49 package of un-fatty Tuna and Salmon sushi which he promised I would enjoy. Leo if you read my blog, please examine this survey, apparently 40% of women and 50% of men share my love of Toro, you might sell more than you think.

The whole purpose of going to the store was to get some meat to boil for Sadie’s liberation from diarrhea feast, so I moved on to the meat department. I was rather disappointed to find out that the entire meat department was lacking in plastic bags to put your raw animal parts in. I definitely dont want my packages of raw animal parts sweating on things like vegetables, raw animal parts have bacteria and that is one of the causes of diarrhea which was got me here in the first place.

On decent from the meat department I overhead an elderly man talking to a Quality Food Centers clerk “I think I took wrong turn, can you tell me where the toilet paper is?”, luckily he was looking to purchase some and did not come wandering out of bathroom stall.

To wrap up my investigation I headed to the checkout line, where there is now 8 (count’em!) Fujitsu U-Scans. I love the U-Scan not because of their efficiency but there in-efficiency. It took me about 7 minutes to check my self out with the U-Scan, plus I needed “cashier assistance” multiple times, I didnt know what the code for eggplant was, the U-Scan didnt think I had “Placed the Item in the Bag” and when paying I only had a 50 dollar bill (left my debit card at home), well the U-scan only takes up to a twenty so I had to go to the U-Scan cashier to get my change. Ah but to get change at the U-Scan we need to find someone with the right key. So after about 10 minutes I had checked myself out at the U-Scan and wasted 2 clerk’s time in the process. All in the name of efficiency.

What to do when your dog has diarrhea…

Filed under: /LifeWithDog — @ 3:46 pm

So I came home last night to find that Sadie who has never had an accident in the house before, had a case of the runs. Having been there many times myself I can only imagine what it must be like for a dog.

Having never really thought about the cause of diahrrhea before I did some googling and found that it usually caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites or drug use. I am pretty sure she doesnt have parasites, since she is up to date on all her de-worming, she doesnt seem to be acting sick or upset so I dont think its a virus, and I havent seen any of the traditional signs of drug use (she hasnt stolen any money from me, her grades arent dropping, and she doesnt have slurred speech). So that leaves bacteria, I thought it might have been related to a one day change in diet from her normal dining choice of Nutro Natural Choice to Purina Dog Chow due to the fact that she ran out of food and Mud Bay Granary was already closed. But that is looking more unlikely, regardless I did stock up on her normal kibble to avoid future episodes.

Regardless of the cause though, I really didnt know what I should do. So after some reasearch here is what I found:

  • Make sure they have plenty of water, since dyhdration usually occurs
  • It is usually a good idea to fast them for 6-12 hours to give thier digestive system time to sort stuff out.
  • When you are ready to feed them again, start of with some boiled meat and rice for a meal or two before going back to dog food

  • Of course if it persists for more than 24 hours, take them to the vet

  • September 22, 2004

    Thanks Amazon! I mean John Udell

    Filed under: /geek — @ 12:25 pm

    This has already been covered in alot of blogs, however I am going to mention it anyways since I work for a company that is an ASP for libraries. I originally read about this gem on Jim’s link to 43 Folders. But basically its a javascript bookmarklet generator called LibraryLookup where you can specify the base url of your favorite public library and their OPAC type (online public access catalog) take the javascript it generates and drag into your to bookmark bar. Now go to an amazon page say for Linux Server Hacks click on the boomarklet in your browser and it will open this page. Basically it does a regexp for the ISBN and then constructs the url for your public libraries OPAC. Of course Rob would rather your purchase his book than go to the library and get it.

    The one stumbling block I came across (not knowing much about library science) is that books must have multiple ISBNs in some case. Becuase going to Amazon and searching for say War and Peace (clicking on the link for a penquin classic paperback edition), then clicking on the trusty bookmarlet returns this. To the non-library savy that might read “The Seattle Public Library does not have War and Peace”. But I am pretty sure that is not the case :)

    September 20, 2004

    whore.cgi

    Filed under: /StupidShellTricks — @ 5:18 am

    In my spare time I help sysadmin the box this site is on.
    This generally means getting vhosts setup for people and showing them how to setup their mail client etc… Recently Jason moved his site and mail over so I have been setting up the webserver for him and what not. He sends me an email asking to make sure that his cgi-bin has execute permissions. So I go ahead and make sure the permissions are set properly and then as a good sysdamin, I decide to whip out a little one line bash cgi to test his cgi-bin and make sure my work there is done.

    So it basically started out as:

    #!/bin/bash

    echo Content-type: text/plain

    echo “”

    echo “<html&gt<head><title>whore</title></head><body>whore</body></html>”

    A simple little cgi that produces a lame web page that says “whore”. Whore is a term of endearment for us, we call each other whores all the time, so it I figured it would be kind of funny.

    Then I thought, a cgi that produces a static page is really no fun. I need something dynamic about the page, I know I will change the format of the word “whore” every time the cgi gets executed. By this time I have invested about 15 minutes of time into this and I can see it progressively getting worse.

    I decide that I will construct about 5 different formats of the word whore, and randomly select one each time the page is loaded. So then I think to myself, “Oh crap, how do you generate a random number in bash?”. Well that led to my next time suck:

    Articles about random number generation in Bash

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3

    So know I am into this about 40 minutes, I have read some different ways to do what I want to do. I need to get this done so I can move on with my life.

    Here is the result: whore.cgi

    And the resulting code, becuase you really need to be able to do this.

    So to answer your question Jason, yes it looks your cgi-bin working… like a whore!

  • September 17, 2004

    Married to Art

    Filed under: /seattle — @ 11:16 am

    My roomates friend known to some as FLATCHESTEDMAMA will be marrying her creative self this weekend at Golden Gardens in Ballard, including the legal change of her middle name to her moniker. For details check out her site.
    Update:It might be worth noting that event is open to the public!

    September 16, 2004

    Matt and Brenna’s 2004 Europe Tour

    Filed under: /friends — @ 1:24 pm

    It’s probably worth mentioning that my friend Matt has been in europe for the past two weeks and will be there for another two weeks, he has been updating his blog pretty regularly and there is some interesting stuff to read.