Ploafmaster General

Warshaw. Easy to pronounce, right? I grew up learning it's pronunciation as "war'-shaw". No silent "h". I've fought against countless teachers, classmates, administrators, and strangers who don't even try to get it right and pronounce my name, instead, like the capital of Poland.

The surname is Ashkenazi Jewish. It's the tiniest part of my heritage, but it gave me my name. I remember my older brother telling me once that it was actually derived from "Warshawsky", which caught my attention. Warshawsky looks like so many names around the world that append a suffix to a place name, indicating that a family hails from a certain location. Knowing that this branch of my family came through Ellis Island, it's certain that the surname was modified and Anglicized. If Warshawsky looks like "from Warshaw", I could work from there.

As it happens, Warshawsky is the Anglicized spelling of Warszawski. See, in Polish, sz is pronnounced like sh in English (the leading and trailing w's are pronnounced like v and f respectively, but that's another story). And Warszawski indeed means, "from Warszawa", or in English, Warsaw.

You ever see a war movie where members of a platoon call each other by their place of origin? "Hey Houston!" "Hey Tennessee!" I suppose everybody has been saying my last name correctly all along without me realizing it. "Hey you, whose paternal bloodline stretches back to central Poland!"

Here in my little city of Richmond, VA, I’ve enjoyed watching (and tasting) the rise of a robust food scene. Nobody’s surprised anymore (though always grateful) to see our excellent restaurateurs, chefs, and bar programs written up in national publications. Fine food choices exist across a broad range of tastes, budgets, and cuisine, so finding a local option for your meal isn’t difficult.

But sometimes you’re out in the far, western exurbs visiting your mother-in-law, so you decide to try out a chain because it’s most of what’s out there. That’s how I recently ate at Chuy’s (ugh, site requires Flash…) in Short Pump. I had a steak burrito with a green chile sauce, and it blew my freaking mind. The beef was flavorful, perfectly medium rare skirt steak sliced the right way so it was tender. The chile sauce had a nice moderate heat. The tortilla, unbelievably, was delicious. Good enough that it held its own against steak. After talking to the waitress a bit, I found out they apparently make their tortillas fresh every day, and intentionally put some of the sauce on the ends of the burrito when they heat it up to keep the bunched ends from drying out. Worked like a tasty charm.

Chuy’s isn’t a chain on the scale of Chipotle, for sure. But 40 unremarkably-decorated theme restaurants around the country isn’t pretending to be local, either. But I can’t pretend that wasn’t a hell of a burrito.[1]

So I’m left with two questions:

1. For my local peeps - is there any Mexican/Central/South American/Tex-Mex place in RVA that makes fresh tortillas to serve with their food?
2. For anybody - are there any other chains that, despite a preference for local joints, are actually worth giving a shot?[2]

Christopher Nolan makes movies that I love to watch, though he's divisive to be sure. Some of my friends dislike his why-so-serious impact on comic book adaptations, and critics decry his occasionally heavy handed exposition. But I'm entertained by his exploration of the darker side of people - their motivations and ends-justify-the-means behavior. Thanks to frequent collaboration with cinematographer Wally Pfister, Nolan's movies look gorgeous (his obsession with the IMAX format doesn't hurt either). While Pfister was off shooting the (apparently) regrettable Transcendence, Hoyt van Hoytema (who shot Her, The Fighter, and the original Let the Right One In among others) took over the cameras for the incredible Interstellar.

I expect Nolan's movies to be visually appealing, but I don't expect to be struck so strongly by the complete beauty of his work. I don't expect to be emotionally overwhelmed by the relationships and struggles of various characters. I don't expect nearly three hours to pass so quickly, leaving me a sobbing mess in my theater seat as the credits roll.

I didn't think this movie was perfect. In fact, I was more than a little disappointed by the way some major plot elements were too-neatly explained. And I wish Nolan had made better use of silence instead of pervasive sound. Those disappointments faded to distant gripes in the face of outstanding performances by lead and supporting (and voice!) cast members, stunning visuals of both a broken Earth and magnificent cosmos, and one of Hans Zimmer's finest film scores. Seriously, what an incredible collection of music.

Go see this movie. See it in an IMAX theater if you can. Maybe keep some tissues in your pocket if you're easily weepy like me. This one goes on my insta-buy list as soon as it's available.

4.5/5

Because I'm materialistic and live on the internet, I check Uncrate everyday. Here is a website aimed at geeky dudes who think they're cooler than reality supports, but they tend to have some nice product photos (when not using PR shots) and the occasional stuff that I actually end up buying. I've been reading the site for a few years now, and one category cracks me up every time: tactical doodads.

Tactical, in this sense, seems to refer to practical war tools. A tactical flashlight, for example, may include a red lens cover so you can see what's in front of you without giving away your position. But what if you want to bring a pen to a gun fight? Turns out you have a number of options.

So maybe alpha geeks have redefined tactical to mean "may be used as a weapon". I mean, I've heard of "the dogs of war", but I don't think I care whether Fido's on a leash while I stroll through the battlefield that used to be a suburban park:

  <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/wp-content/149855/2014/11/74d6c-image-asset.jpeg" alt="" />

Taken to extremes (more extreme than the pens?), you find yourself looking at a tactical spork:

  <a href="http://www.survivalmetrics.com/store/Item/id_spork-military-mre-eating-utensil-spoon-fork-knife" target="_blank"><img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/wp-content/149855/2014/11/b59bd-41woptxyqrl.jpg" alt="" /></a>

And a tactical pillow:

  <a href="http://stores.octactical.com/red-tac-gear-tactical-pillow/" target="_blank"><img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/wp-content/149855/2014/11/1819c-a64738413dbd103d1b31d1_l__28765.1410272374.1280.1280.jpg" alt="" /></a>

With such a robust and varied industry of tactical products, you'd think we were living in a state of total war or something...

At least the makers of Tactical Bacon aren't taking themselves too seriously.

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqyeDr5WDBU&w=854&h=480]

Last night I cooked up a package of Sausage Craft's delicious San Miniato links. This way I could cut up some slices for my kid's lunches and also have some ready to eat (only needing to warm through) for other meals. This time, I decided to brown the sausage in a little olive oil on relatively high heat before finishing in the oven, more or less braising in about 3 cups of San Marzano tomatoes. Why? Not really sure.

When the sausages were cooked through, I was left with a sauté pan full of roasted tomatoes, juice, and salty, flavorful sausage grease. I wasn't going to cook up a pot of noodles after I'd already eaten dinner, so I decided to experiment. I cooked the contents of the pan to reduce a bit of the liquid and further break down the solids, but how do I keep all that meaty flavor without an oil slick where a sauce should be?

I let the tomato mixture cool enough to drop in to my blender, and added an egg. The yolk has an emulsifying agent that should keep it all together, but we'll see how it fares tonight when I warm it up for dinner.

Every job has its doldrums. But it's another matter entirely to have work - something to pass the time - that's so monumentally boring that you feel like you’re falling asleep with eyes wide open. This insidious class of work actually manages to feel slower than nothing at all.

Happy Wednesday, Internet.

One of the simple pleasures of my child growing up is that I can cook for her now. No more Gerber mush from a jar. I've always enjoyed cooking for myself, but cooking for others is a special joy; it's not just selfish indulgence, it's sharing nourishment.

I'm going out to a nice dinner for my birthay tonight, but I needed to cook food for my little 1 year old so she would have dinner before the babysitter arrived. So while I stood over the stovetop, frying an egg, I felt unadulterated happiness knowing that I was so directly providing for my daughter.

"I know just enough to be dangerous."

What a peculiar phrase. I most often hear this colloquialism used in a self-deprecating manor for folks that know enough to talk about a topic at a party, but not enough to make a career out of it. But the meat of the idea comes from people who know a little about a subject and use that tidbit to plunge recklessly into a situation that requires deeper understanding. Maybe you just learned how to build a doghouse and now you think it's time to build a deck. But you don't understand building code, so it's not structurally sound.

I use the phrase about my own understanding of Responsive Web Design or other technical topics, but I try not to charge in to project meetings swinging three or four facts over my head. Alexander Pope wrote that "a little learning is a dangerous thing", but I don't think he meant always. In the business and IT worlds, too many folks try to pass off their cursory Google research as expertise. But if you're willing to accept correction and have an open mind, you can at least use a little learning to be part of the right conversations. And that's not so dangerous, is it?

Ah, November! Here comes the tail end of the year. So much to anticipate, so much to celebrate, so much! My birthday (and birthday dinner). Then Valerie's birthday a mere 12 days later. Then thanksgiving 2.5 weeks after that! Family! Gluttony! Time off! But WAIT! THERE'S MORE! There's December!

Thanksgiving is late enough that returning to work after the break is a jump right into the Christmas season. Carols, holiday specials on TV, buying a tree, work winding down, and a nice big vacation to wrap up 2014.

I know the skies are gray and there's a chill in the air, but gimmie dat end of year awesome sauce at firehose pressure, 'cause I'm enthusiastic!

I was cleaning out my armoire when I ran across the key for the first car I ever loved. It wasn't my first car, mind you. I parked that '85 Buick Electra wagon in a cedar tree not one month after passing my driving test.

The car that made me love to drive was a 1985 Honda Prelude. I was the third owner and it already had over 200,000 miles on the odometer. I added many thousand more before it died on Hancock Street just as I finished parking one vernal afternoon in 2002. The '85s used some one-off dual carburetor jobbie, so there was no fixing it.

Even though it was nearly as old as me, that Prelude had tight suspension and steering that made me aware of the road. It wasn't a supercar, but it was quick. Putting my friends in the back seats was pretty close to abuse, but the driver's seat was comfortable on long trips with all important controls in easy reach.

And it was the first car to don the proud PLOAF license plates. Those plates were strange enough around campus that I even overheard a classmate talking about them. I had a very Seinfeld-esque “You’re the Ploaf guy!” moment when I revealed it was my car.

For a brief time after graduation I considered getting another one but practicality won. I still miss the ol' beast, but PLOAF has graced both ends of my Jetta for ten years.

We should be more careful how we frame discussions about opting-out of/abandoning technology. Leaving social networks or avoiding certain consumer goods is not always Luddism, but it sure sounds that way when we're constantly referencing "the days before [x]". We should point to examples that don't make us sound like hermits-in-the-making, hiding from the inexorable march of technology under foil blankets.

I didn't go to school to be a software developer. In fact, I started my undergrad degree as a mechanical engineering major with grand plans to work on the fuselages of tomorrow's aircraft. When I fell out of love with the major, I was two years deep into school and didn't want another four. I'd grown up around computers and loved using them, so I figured I'd work with computers in some capacity. My (mis)conception of computer science was having my ankle chained to a desk while I wrote lines of code for long hours and never saw another person during daylight. So I chose "information systems" for my plan B.

Somehow, because of one semester's database class, I landed an internship as a PL/SQL developer at a state agency during my last year of school. The internship led to my first job as, again, a PL/SQL developer. Now this was hardly real software development. Writing and fixing a few stored procedures and performing a schload of ad hoc queries doesn't really count, in my book. I learned a lot, and worked with a bunch of good folks, and I even tried to see if software was something I could get in to recreationally. After the 3rd try at Ruby on Rails, I was done. Zero motivation.

A few years ago I switched jobs because I realized that I couldn't take being even a watered-down software developer. It's not because I couldn't handle the work. But my apathy for that side of software certainly affected the quality of my work. I changed gears and took a job as a "business analyst" - a vague, super-business-y term that means "I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS".

You see, I still love software. I love finding and learning to use new programs. I don't have automatic updates enabled on any of my platforms because I like to read the release notes and manually manage the installation process. I always RTFM because I like to know what an app can do. Even working for a software consultancy, I often find my self helping my coworkers with keyboard shortcuts and obscure menu items.

I don't want to assemble the software, but because I love it and use it all the time, I sure do want to help make it better, and help make it easier for everybody else to use.

Years ago I wrote a pissy little blog post about my disappointment with the movie Little Miss Sunshine. I still feel the same way about the movie today, but there's a peripheral target of my ire.

Two years before Little Miss Sunshine hit theaters I saw the trailer for Everything Is Illuminated. The last minute of the trailer includes a clip from a song I now know as DeVotchKa's "How it Ends". It's about 7 minutes long, but please - listen to the whole thing:

How it Ends by DeVotchKa

The song is beautiful; lyrics of trial and fulfillment sung with anguish over melancholy instrumentation that still manages to convey a sense of loss and emptiness. I was pretty bitter that the song wasn't actually in the film. I didn't yet know the name of the song in the trailer and, lacking my current Google-fu, didn't find out for a while.

Back to Little Miss Sunshine. The movie opens with what I thought - back then - to be a cover of "How it Ends". I was appalled. It felt a bit sappy, lacked the lovely/sad vocals, and played over a tonally inconsistent introductory prelude. Of course, it turns out DeVotchKa was responsible for much of the soundtrack, which means "The Winner Is" represents the band's own retooling of an existing song.

Thanks to the magic of subscription-based streaming audio services and their assorted discovery algorithms, I eventually re-encountered "How it Ends". The problem, however, is that because of the huge musical overlap between versions and their common composer, you always end up hearing both. So that helped me figure out why the soundtrack tune rubs me the wrong way. Aside from the aforementioned lack of vocals, the extended intro is axed in favor of a quick arrival of the cutesy accordion. But really, there are two things that bug me the most.

First, there's the jaunty pizzicato strings, completely absent from "How it Ends":

And then we get the glockenspiel which, while probably attempting to connect with the childish element of the film, robs the original of its gravity:

I understand this is exceedingly nitpicky, but when you love a piece of art, it can really stink when it's altered, even by the artist. I'm sure it doesn't help to have "The Winner Is" at the start of what I found to be a predictably and disappointing movie.

I've had a photo series idea for quite some time now wherein I photograph a bunch of poeple wearing, and reacting to, a huge dog cone collar. The problem is finding subjects who don't mind being silly on camera with the potential for these goofy shots to be shared in public.

So - do you live in RVA (or will be around sometime in the next few months) and want to be part of this? I realize (and expect) that most folks who'd be willing to do this already know me and wouldn't have a problem being photographed in my house. I need to be able to set up my backdrop and lighting to do this the way I want, so I can't exactly "take this show on the road".

Get in touch if you think this would be fun. If you don't know how, use the contact form. I'll schedule some stuff, we'll take pictures, and we'll laugh about how ridiculous this is.

So I'm lying in bed during the last week of October and I'm already planning for my Thanksgiving turkey. Over the past decade I’ve done a fairly standard whole bird roast, typically following Alton Brown’s brined method. But this year, for both expediency and more even cooking, I'm gonna spatchcock that mutha. What's that mean? I'll leave the explanation to Martha Stewart. Though I'll still probably brine the bird. Juicy is as juicy does.

Now that I've picked apples and procured some fresh cider, it's the right time of year to trot out my own cocktail recipe that I call the Orchard Warmer.

Get this stuff:

• 2 oz bourbon
• 1 oz fresh cider
• 0.75 oz fresh lemon juice (seriously, must be fresh)
• 0.5 oz grade B maple syrup (grade B is darker, more viscous, more complexly flavored)
• 1 dash/dropper of Angostura or similar bitters
• Put all of that in a shaker, add ice, shake the everliving crap out of it until the sides of the shaker start to frost, and then double strain into a cocktail glass. We don't want any ice chips floating around in this thing.

If you wanna get REALLY fancy, take a slicing tool like a mandoline or one of those incredible Japanese jobbies and make a paper-thin circular slice of fresh apple to float in the drink as a garnish.

Be careful, these are dangerous.

Yesterday we visited Carter Mountain Orchard for some autumnal fun. I've enjoyed apple picking since I was a kid, and I'll take my pommes over your "pumpkin spice" as a seasonal signifier any day. Well, cliché alert: I enjoyed it so much more now that I could bring a kid of my own. Maddie loved playing with the fallen, rotting apples, and (with occasional frustration) figured out how to walk along the steep, uneven grounds of the hilly orchard. Totally a tradition in the making.

  <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/wp-content/149855/2014/10/e30c1-image-asset.jpeg" alt="" />




  <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/wp-content/149855/2014/10/d9758-image-asset.jpeg" alt="" />

Last night was my church's third annual harvest party, and it was a blast. Perfect weather to be outside with a great community, tasty beer brewed by a few friends, and delicious smoked meats.

I'm one of those whiney dorks that laments Weezer's change in musical direction after the release of Pinkerton. There have been a handful of tracks that caught my attention since then, and tons of great non-album experiments from the years leading up to The Green Album. But by and large, this band is off my radar and I've said my piece about them multiple times.

Then Everything Will Be Alright In The End released. People whose opinions I trust about music started to say weird things, like, "hey, it's not horrible"or "some of these tracks are as good as the old stuff". I have an Rdio account, so it was trivial to give it a listen. And you know what? It's not horrible, and some of the tracks really are as good as the old stuff. But as I listened I was struck not by how much it sounded like "classic" Weezer, but by how much I was thinking of Ozma.

Ozma was always a band heavily influenced by Weezer's sound, but they managed to transcend their origin through ever maturing power-pop over subsequent albums. It's almost as if Ozma beat Weezer to their own future sound. Years ago.

It feels like every time I go outside over the past month, I'm struck by the gorgeous, autumnal weather. My Yankee family turned south in 1994, and while we love our adopted home state, we've always missed what seems like clearer seasonal changes above the Mason-Dixon line. So it is that, following what seemed to be a mild summer, I've really appreciated a rare, proper autumn in Richmond, Virginia.

But is it really that rare or different? What is it about this weather that brings me back to cool autumn days walking through Delicious Orchards in New Jersey, picking apples? I decided to waste some time number-hunting to see whether data backed up my subjectivity (all of which came from Wolfram Alpha). And I made a chart:

  <img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/wp-content/149855/2014/10/58cff-image-asset.png" alt="" />

Why October? That's the month where we really start to feel the transition out of summer into milder weather. I was able to pull the average high and low temperatures in Richmond for each October since my family moved to Virginia. Rather than the overall average, I went with the high and low so I could include the range. Basically, could I wear a hoodie in the morning? Was it t-shirt-and-shorts weather later in the day? Then I started thinking about how, in these temperature ranges, humidity starts to behave differently, contributing to a perceived chill in those cool mornings where it might have felt stifling on warm afternoons. I stuck with the average low humidity because I figured that would give a sense of how dry the month felt.

As I collected and examined these data points, two problems came into focus. First, my memory must be pretty bad and more subjective than I already suspected because, really, look at the chart. October hasn't changed dramatically in Richmond over two decades, at least for these metrics. And that leads me to the biggest problem - trying to fit my subjective experience of fall to collection of metrics.

The more I thought about these numbers, the more I wondered what other factors might explain how I felt about the weather. Did I need to look at the preceding few months for each year to see whether there was a dramatic relative difference? What about cloud cover? Wind? Precipitation (and storms vs. drizzle)? How much time did I spend outside, and did those days happen to be when the weather was pleasant?

I suppose what I'm really saying here is that I should be outside enjoying the autumn sunshine instead of staring at a screen researching tenuously connected data points :-)

I don't remember who said it. Maybe Alton Brown? Somebody suggested that a great (albeit slow) way to clean excess junk out of the kitchen. Take every kitchen utensil and put them in a box (or boxes). Label appropriately, and place in a separate room apart from the kitchen. Somewhere inconvenient. If you really need something in that box, you'll walk out of the kitchen, find it, and use it - after which, keep it in the kitchen. After six months, take whatever's left to Goodwill.

I'm kind of miserly with following people on Twitter (or most any social network, for that matter). I'm a Twitter completionist (yes, I really try to read everything), but even while keeping my Following list to around 100 people, I noticed a substantial amount of noise over the past year in my Twitter stream. I use Twitterrific (my fave), which allows me to "muffle" accounts, hashtags, and such, so that helped a bit. But some users just tweet too high a ratio of irrelevant stuff for my taste. Fear of missing out kept me from unfollowing these folks for a long time, but I eventually thought of a solution. This has been working well for me, but your mileage may vary.

Rather than completely stop paying attention to certain accounts, I created a couple of Twitter lists. One for entertainers that I admired but tweeted/retweeted way. Too. Much. Another to keep track of what's going on in the Richmond food scene. I unfollowed every account in these lists knowing that I could simply add the lists to Twitterrific or view on the web.

What I've found was that, over a period of several months, I went from checking those lists multiple times a day to barely at all. The "box of utensils" is aaaaaaaaall the way over on another tab. So I may only check my Richmond food list, for example, when I want to see the buzz around a new restaurant. Ultimately, I spend less time catching up on Twitter because I've shifted most of the noise to a place that feels more comfortably optional.

I was introduced to Tony Zhou's excellent "Every Frame a Painting" series when Jason Kottke posted about his Edgar Wright/visual comedy video. Since then I've watched every part of the series multiple times. If you want a fun, approachable intro to some filmmaking concepts, this is your guy.

Hay ride driver taking a break at Chesterfield Berry Farm.

Just read a pretty great story from a woman who travelled from Athens to Hong Kong as a guest on a container ship. I've known this was possible for quite some time, but it was nice to get a sense of the details. Maybe when Valerie and I are empty nesters... (via Peter Dumont)