King’s Dominion and Manly Cherubs

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Amy and I spent Saturday at King’s Dominion in VA, with Jeff and Stacey from church.

This was kind of a momentous theme park visit for me, because before last Saturday I could count the number of times I’d been on roller coasters in my life on one hand: starting with Great America’s Tidal Wave in 1982 (yeah, a bit too intense for a kid of six) and ending with the Matterhorn in Disneyland in 1990. I then decided that roller coasters terrified me, and abstained from any rides more intense than a ferris wheel for the rest of my puberty and young adult life.

So yesterday was my first time back on the wood and steel rails in over a decade, and after riding rides like Rebel Yell, Hurler, Ricochet, Avalanche, Scooby Doo’s Ghoster Coaster, Ricochet, and Shenandoah Log Flume (links to rides here), I’ve concluded that I’m over my initial dislike, and I now enjoy roller coasters, though Ricochet and some of the bumpier wood ones were a bit rough on the neck; I’ll have to brace harder next time to avoid whiplash. We’ll try the more intense rides next time we’re there — hopefully when lines are a bit shorter.

Here’s the full King’s Dominion photoset.

Oh, and here’s a bit of weirdness from the carousel:

Amy was trying to figure out if it was a cherub head stuck on a muscular man’s body or if the cherub had just been working out.

Affordablehost Going Down the Drain

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Over the weekend, Affordablehost lost data to a hard disk crash on the server which hosts my site. There were backups, but they were three days old, so not only weblog entries from Thursday onward were lost, but also a weekend’s worth of forum entries on TheBereans.net, and possibly email on two other clients’ sites as well.

Affordablehost’s service has gone completely downhill since they were bought by dotCanada: slow access, slow support, constant downtime, and now this hard disk crash. Once upon a time, Tina Peters’ old Affordablehost would have expressed regret for the loss of data, and perhaps thrown in a free month of hosting for the trouble — or they would at least have emailed an apology to customers. The new Affordablehost has extended no such courtesies to me.

I was able to restore my site from my own cache in Offline Mode, but it’s definitely time to get out of here before Affordablehost does any further damage. I’m browsing WebHostingTalk for feedback, and I currently have an eye on Site5. Anyone else have recommendations for a good managed reseller hosting package with unlimited addon domains for under $25/month?

Update: Special Axishost deal for Affordablehost refugees! Axishost is Tina Peters’ new web hosting venture.

Flickr and Yahoo Logins Merging

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Flickr is merging logins with Yahoo. That makes me quite sad and dejected, not because of the convenience of having one less login and password to deal with, but because someone else got “brownpau” on Yahoo long before me, and whoever it is has not answered my polite requests and offers of financial recompense for the name. For now, I will refrain from merging the accounts — unless someone at Flickr or Yahoo with some clout can negotiate a favorable transfer? (Wink, wink.)

Update: An update from the Flickr Blog makes it clear that Flickr screen names will not be changed, which is some relief, but my point is that I want the account “brownpau” on Yahoo! :(

Update: Related discussion in the “Flick Off!” group. Looks like Yahoo is adamant about those usernames. :(

Google Earth Updates, Unblurs

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Looks like Google Earth has updated a few locations. The US Capitol and White House are now unblurred, and Mount Everest looks exquisite!


(google-earth-capitol uploaded by brownpau.)


(google-earth-whitehouse uploaded by brownpau.)


(google-earth-everest uploaded by brownpau.)

Also check out this fun “Cliffs of Insanity” effect, which happens when you scroll across the terrain faster than the Google Earth server can update the bump map:


(THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY! uploaded by brownpau.)

Recent Reading: The Time Quartet

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The Time Quartet, by Madeleine L’Engle. It’s supposed to be kid’s literature, but I was fascinated enough by the last time I read Wrinkle several years ago, that I decided to see what the rest of the series was like.

  1. A Wrinkle In Time. The first and best of the series. Still, I had to scratch my head at the manner in which L’Engle lumps Jesus in with artists and intellectuals like Michelangelo and Shakespeare and Euclid, all warriors in a cosmic battle of love and creativity against the spreading darkness of cold, hateful, unthinking conformism. But at its core, within the context of a mixed new-age science-fiction mythos, the story is a battle between good and evil, with good winning, so that’s got to be, um, good.
  2. A Wind in the Door. Mitochondria? Kything? An entire climactic scene set in the dark, mystical insides of a character’s cellular world? Okay, something about this one rubbed me in weird directions. It chafed my endoplasmic reticulum, so to speak.
  3. A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Time travel, and more characters than I could count across generations. It was like Star Trek: Enterprise meets Russka. The awkward handling of world events and hippie-flavored political moralizing didn’t help, either. I had to skim this one. Maybe I’ll give it another try after I’ve recovered from Star Trek-driven time travel plot fatigue.
  4. Many Waters. A much more “immersive” (haha, get it?) read than the last two; the biblical-historical fiction approach of placing the Murray twins in the days of Noah drew me right into their struggles with a depraved society and concupiscent Nephilim, and their love for petite young topless prehistoric babes. It was like an episode of Superbook or Flying House — but with a lot more quasi-erotic polyamorous innuendo. And I’ve heard of Enoch, and Yalith is no Enoch. Still, good storytelling with heart-pounding conflicts, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it for the younger ones.

So, all in all, the series is about half-good (one could say it isn’t half-bad, perhaps), but I humbly opine that Wrinkle was still the best of the four, and stands quite well alone without its sequels, carrying the clearest and deepest lessons on hope, faith, love, courage, and adventure.

Pickles the Parakeet is Back

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(IMG_3388.jpg uploaded by brownpau.)

Pickles was last seen here, and I’m birdsitting him again while his owner is away. Shortly after I took this photo, Pickles pooped on the back of my shirt. I don’t know how pirates deal with this.

Chicken Adobo with Ginger

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Here’s my chicken adobo + ginger recipe, as requested by a few of you out there. It’s based on how my mom makes adobo, with lots and lots of soupy sauce so that the dish is more of a stew than a flaky meat dish. I got the idea of adding potatoes from Myra’s Chicken Adobo on Pinoycook.net, and I added ginger completely out of whimsy. Quantities are purely discretionary.

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken, sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 head of garlic, peeled and crushed/chopped
1 onion, chopped (optional)
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup vinegar
3 potatoes, sliced (or 1 can)
1 tbsp sliced ginger (optional)
1 tbsp sugar (optional)
6-8 peppercorns
1 bay leaf

Directions:

  1. Sautee garlic in olive oil till brown.
  2. Add chicken.
  3. Pour soy sauce and vinegar over chicken.
  4. Add peppercorns, ginger, onion, sugar, and bay leaf.
  5. Stir carefully to ensure even distribution.
  6. Add potatoes.
  7. Simmer for 45-60 minutes till chicken is cooked through to bone.
  8. Serve with rice and kamatis at bagoong. (In the absence of bagoong, pico de gallo salsa is an acceptable substitute.)

(I toyed with titling this “Brownpadobo” or “Adobordoveza” or something cute like that, but none of those names worked too well.)