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#116

Chasing Tail ale in my Squatters Mug Club mug :-)

Squatters Pub Brewery brewmaster Jennifer Talley wins another award

Jennifer Talley, the brewmaster at Squatters Pub Brewery in Salt Lake City, has won the prestigious Russell Schehrer Award for Innovation in Brewing. She is the first woman to receive the honor since it was first presented in 1997 by the national Brewers Association.

She recevied the award last week during the Craft Brewers Conference in Boulder, Colorado.

A native of Chicago, Talley has been the head brewer at Squatters since 1994. Utah beer lovers know she is always experimenting with new beer styles and ingredients creating award winners such as Alt & In The Way, a gold medal winner at the 2008 World Beer Cup.

via www.sltrib.com

Good news! Squatters is my fave brewpub, glad to see the recognition.

You can HEAR the anguished wringing of hands

It’s snowing in the Seattle area, which means two things.

1. Area school districts started announcing changes to their schedules, or outright closures, more than 24 hours ago, at the first hint of snow in the forecasts.
2. Drivers are freaked the hell out.

The snow is sticking to lawns, roofs, and trees, but it’s barely making the roads wet yet. However, the forecast calls for up to 3 inches of accumulation from Seattle southward by this afternoon.

I am of course in heaven. I was born and raised (and more importantly learned to drive) in Salt Lake City, where men are men and holy underwear is the norm, and where they get REAL snow. Where by “real” I mean in quantities of inches at a time, sometimes a foot or more, and as the license plates will confirm it’s the greatest snow on Earth.

Which means that anytime the Seattle weather forecasts mention snow or La Niña or “Arctic flow” or the other winter-weather flag phrases, I get a little giddy. I remember the years of walking to school uphill in the snow (but one way only) and the inevitable late-night sledding sessions down the block-long alley across the street, including that time Matt almost got crushed by the bus on 6th Avenue but only his sled bit the dust because of his expertly timed ninja dodge maneuver, and the look of utter horror on the bus driver’s face when he felt the bus’s front right tire go over SOMETHING (and probably felt the crunching of the sled’s wood deck) and he had seen a teenager waving wildly on the sidewalk just before that.

Ahh, the memories.

Anyway, back to now. Yesterday we had several brief periods of “snow”—really, it was the hardened version of Seattle’s famous misty rain. You had squint to see it—it made NOTHING wet, not roads, not cars, certainly not exposed skin. Immortalized in a conversation with Julie Anne as we had a late pre-Thanksgiving-shopping breakfast at Original Pancake House in Crown Hill:

Don: Oh look, it’s snowing again.

Julie Anne [squinting]: It is?

Don: You have to really want to see it.

Julie Anne [pause, still squinting]: Oooohh.

Laffs all ’round!

It certainly doesn’t help that the media here in Seattle buy into the frenzy wholeheartedly. KOMO News radio usually switches to their astoundingly lame “driver to driver coverage”: Joe Sixpack calls in on their news line and reports what he may or may have seen, or sometimes what he expects to see, or what his wife’s coworker’s neighbor said she once saw. And somehow the metro area hangs on his every word. Usually delivered all in a rush, because Joe Sixpack is not a professional radio personality and so has no clue about modulation and pace:

KOMO personality: We have Joe from Medina on the KOMO News Line. Joe, tell us what you see.

Joe: Yeah so I was driving on 520 toward I-5 and as I got to Montlake I saw a snowflake and I slammed on the brakes and a semi and a bus behind me almost crashed as they tried to avoid me and I spilled my Starbucks all over the dashboard and now I have to go to the detailer.

KOMO: O...kay, thanks, Joe. Now to Melinda in Shoreline, you have have something to tell us about the power up there?

Melinda: Well our schools are all closed and our power is on, it hasn’t even flickered. But we have about an inch of snow and my driveway is really icy.

KOMO: ...

And so on. It just never ends. I know (or at least I think) they think they’re providing a necessary civic service, but come on.

Really they’re just enabling the cold-weather-pansy mentality.

Why I will never be on the PGA tour

Matt: youve been working a hell of a lot lately
Don: Yuh.. I don’t have a carpool anymore, so it’s an easy way to avoid traffic, and I also want to bank up hours so I can travel a lot over the next few months w/o using my paid time
Matt: ohhh ok
Matt: where you going?
Don: San Diego in April, Salt Lake in May, Molokai in July, road trip in August/September
Don: Possibly India in there somewhere too
Don: Though the India thing would be for work, so no time off required for it.
Matt: holy crappers
Don: mmhmm
Don: All but the India trip are definite
Don: If the India travel plans had worked out as originally hoped, I’d be there now in fact
Don: Would’ve left on/about the 6th of this month
Matt: wow, why Salt Lake?
Don: See friends who still live there, and participate in a charity golf tournament
Don: Which by itself is amusing because I play golf like drunk people fuck
Matt: ROFL
Don: Hell of a thing, my golf game. I have a strong drive, I can get 150-200 yards sometimes, but I can’t aim to save my life.
Don: It’s worth your scalp to be within 20 feet of me when I swing off the tee ;x
Matt: lol I’ll keep that in mind

Happy birthday, Mom

Thank you for everything over the years.

Know that we love you and miss you.

Have a good day!

2008 in cities

List gets shorter each year, even though I’m spending about the same amount of time traveling. Fewer destinations, more trips to some of them.

Links lead to related posts; boldface indicates cities I visited more than once.

• Seattle, WA (home)
• Salt Lake City, UT: February, June
• Cannon Beach, OR
• Reno, NV
• Rosario, WA
• Telma, WA (actually a cabin on Lake Wenatchee)
• Corvallis, OR
• Sequim, WA
• San Francisco, CA

A bit different method this time. The list includes cities where I spent less than 24 hours if the city was the primary destination. Previously, I only included cities I where I had spent at least 24 consecutive hours, but this year I made a few day trips I wanted to include.

If this is at all like last year, family and friends will remind me of a couple of trips I took and didn’t have listed in my calendar, so I may add to this list over the next few days.

Previous “in cities” lists: 2005, 2006, 2007.

Also, Katharine’s list; our friend Julie Anne’s list.

On Vox: QotD: Broken Bones

I’ve only broken one bone in my life, my left pinky during a game of fly’s-up in grade school. 4th or 5th grade, I think, but I don’t remember exactly when.

I had a hell of a time convincing anyone it was actually broken—it was only a hairline fracture and didn’t really hurt, it was just this strange sensation of warmth and a slight numbness for a week or so after it happened.

Some months later my pinky had developed a misshapen lump over the knuckle. Turns out bone had grown over the break while it healed, so my left pinky is lopsided now.

Answering:

Have you ever broken a bone? If so, how?

Originally posted on donnunn.vox.com

Seven years already?

On this date in 2001, I made my first DVD rental from Netflix. Picked three movies, received all three two days later.

In alphabetical order:

Antz. I can’t remember exactly why I rented this. Only thing I can figure is it was a fairly new DVD release at the time, and probably I wanted to be able to compare it to A Bug’s Life, which was due for release in November of that year.

The Big Kahuna. Hated this movie. Hated, hated, HATED it. Rented it because I generally like Kevin Spacey and the trailers somehow made it look good to me.

Enemy of the State. Will Smith’s latest (at the time) blockbuster, and it held my attention from beginning to end despite the occasionally laughably obvious plot.

I was struck, as I looked over the rest of my rental history, by how strongly I remember some of the movies, or at least the circumstances of their rental or viewing, and by how utterly forgettable other movies have proved to be. The Ice Storm, for example, I still clearly remember watching on a November evening in 2001. The film itself didn’t register on me much, neither particularly good nor hideously awful, though I quite like both Kevin Kline and Joan Allen; but the circumstances of when and where I watched it, I remember well. Not so for Spider-Man 3, which my calendar and my Netflix history both tell me I watched less than a year ago on Nov 15, 2007, but which I have no memory of seeing—neither the movie itself nor the when/where of it apart from my calendar record.

The seven years in my Netflix history since, by the numbers:

• 435: Number of movies I’ve rented.
• 165: Longest time (in days) I held a movie. I’d lost a Netflix envelope among a stack of papers and needed several months to find it. And then returned it UNWATCHED.
• 50: Discs returned unwatched due to lost interest. Some of these I knew I wouldn’t watch and forgot to remove them from my queue.
• 14: Times I changed my membership level, as high as 4-at-at-time/unlimited and as low as 1-out/2-monthly depending on how I was using the service at any given time.
• 12: Number of movies I’ve rented twice.
• 9: Discs returned for replacement due to unplayability. Scratches mostly, my DVD player is VERY sensitive to that; but in one case, the DVD arrived snapped into four pieces inside its mailer.
• 2: Times I put my account on hold while I was moving from one state to another.
• 1.2: Average number of movies per week over the entire 7-year run.
• 1: Shortest time (in days) I held a movie (actually 30 different titles) and number of movies I rented 3 times.
• 0: Discs I’ve lost and Times I’ve entered movie-rental stores.

Hell of a ride. I wonder how much my late fees would have been on those films I kept longer than the brick-and-mortar stores’ policies allowed back in 2001? I should figure that out sometime, but I think this is enough stats geekery for now.

QotD: There’s a Monster in My Closet

The title and default tag of this QotD are appropriate, because when I was a kid I had an almost paralyzing fear of my walk-in closet. It was big and dark and full of clothing on hangers and it had these large drawers full of bedding and linens. The drawers were easily large enough for me to climb inside until I was about 5 or 6 years old, so the idea that I might be playing hide-and-seek and never get found was just horrifying.

But worst of all was the hole in the closet wall at the edge of those drawers. It was a ragged hole, knocked into the wall to allow access to the crawlspace between the eaves and the house’s brick walls. But I had seen the 1980 version of The Fog, and I recalled a scene where an eerie light was emanating from the walls of an old house and a young woman reached through a hole in the wall to grab something she had lost (or possibly left behind, or whatever), and as she reached in, THE MONSTERS GRABBED HER AND PULLED HER THROUGH TO HER DEATH.

I would NOT go near that part of the closet at night, and in daylight only with every nearby light source turned on. Scared the SHIT out of me.

Answering:

What were you afraid of when you were younger that seems silly to you now?
Submitted by wandie

A few things, a few times over

Went to Salt Lake City and Reno for a (combined) week starting Thu 05/01. I remember the Salt Lake portion of the trip very well, the Reno part not so much. This is because I caught what seemed to be a mild cold at the beginning of the trip, but by Sun 05/04, the day we drove from SLC to Reno, the cold had exploded into a lovely sinus pressure / fever / coughing / woe-is-me thing that left me reeling that day and the next, and stumbling in a fog the third day.

Fog. In the desert.

Go figure.

The SLC trip was for the hell of it—I loves me a road trip, who needs a reason?—but also to help with, and by extension attend, Julie Anne’s brother Jimmy’s 30th-birthday party. The party was scheduled for Sat 05/03, so we drove down Thu 05/01 and ran errands Fri 05/02 and most of Sat and enjoyed the party by working our asses off in the kitchen all night. Lasagna, Caesar salad, and garlic bread for 60 people, coming right up!

Julie Anne had also prepared a 10-minute slide show of photos scanned from Jimmy’s entire life, childhood all the way to 19:30 three weeks ago Tuesday. Show was a big hit, particularly the lingering shot of Jimmy astride an absurdly large cannon barrel, total “Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud, please call the hospital operator” moment—Big Laffs!, and the other photo depicting Jimmy in drag that vaguely resembled the Wendy’s logo if she were a hamburger-slingin’ ballet dancer.

The party ended about 22:00 and we finished cleaning up a week later. Good thing my car knew the way back to the hotel because I sure as hell don’t remember actually making that drive, and even better it knew the way Sunday morning to Squatters where we met my mom for brunch before our drive to Reno.

I should actually say “Julie Anne’s drive and my ride to Reno,” because that’s the segment where my brain started to forget things like how to make me breathe correctly, and how to regulate my body’s temperature. Short version: I coughed our way across Nevada in between spates of almost death-like sleep while my temperature bounced gaily up and down like those little dots that track the song lyrics in karaoke bars.

Julie Anne was ever the trooper, however, and got us to Nevada in record time, despite her deep-seated need to follow rules which manifests itself most regularly by scrupulous observance of speed limits. This day, she threw caution to the wind. Our trip through Wendover, Elko, Winnemucca, and into Reno happened mostly at 85 mph or better, and I may be imagining this but I’m pretty sure she threw the finger to several large truckers (and their big trucks) and possibly a cop or two along the way.

But I was feverish, who knows.

We were in Reno because Julie Anne was attending a trade show there, and I had to be deathly ill. She was In Charge of the show, by which I mean she handled the show arrangements for her company’s product display there, and she kicked ass and took names and generally owned the world for the four hours of the show’s existence Tuesday morning. I know this to be true because she told me so; I was lying in bed squirming and moaning and coughing and trying to take a single full breath but my brain was still forgetting how to do that, though by then it had a fine command for inducing cramps in all 10 toes and one side of my jaw, I think from all the writhing I had done Sunday night and all day Monday and into Tuesday morning.

It’s an odd thing when you’ve slept for 43 of the previous 48 hours but you’re utterly EXHAUSTED and all you want to do is sleep more, except you can’t get comfortable because every time you move, every time an air molecule even TOUCHES you, some part of you cramps up. And trust me, you can feel EVERY FUCKING MOLECULE touching you.

Damned physiology.

By Tuesday midday I was (wobblingly) back among the living, and it was time to wrap things up in Reno and drive back to Seattle, which we did over two days. We drove from Reno through Susanville, CA, and around the south face of Mt. Shasta on CA-89 to I-5 northbound, where we had to watch for cops because the damned road is PAVED with CHP cars, Jesus!, and stopped in Medford, OR. We got a blisteringly early start Wednesday, shaking out of our hotel room for breakfast at about ten minutes before 10:00 sharp, and we were home by about 18:30.

The rest of the week involved unpacking my suitcase, which actually took about 20 minutes Wednesday night but somehow feels like it will NEVER be finished, and then going to work for the two remaining days of the week. This morning was laundry, the usual routine of getting up and meeting Julie Anne at 07:15 to be at the laundromat at 07:30 sharp so we can beat the attendant to her job, but today we were half an hour early because it turns out while we were gone, they changed their hours to 08:00 daily. Bastards. I could’ve slept another 30 minutes, got up at 6:45 instead of 06:15, but they didn’t bother to tell US they’d changed their hours.

So we got coffee and bagels while we waited, and we still finished our laundry faster than in weeks previous. MOUNTAINS of laundry, I swear we summited Mount Purex a dozen times over, which would be funnier if either of us used that brand but I needed something with two syllables.

And tonight I’m going to the Seattle Mariners game versus the Chicago White Sox (it was important to say “Chicago” there, to differentiate them from the famed Bristol White Sox) at Safeco Field, where I fully expect the Mariners to get trounced in their usual fashion, thereby maintaining their place at or near the bottom of the AL West. Only San Diego is doing worse than the Mariners right now, so let’s go, Seattle! You can do better!

Have a good weekend. :-)

Casino orb

Casino orb
Flickr: Don NunnLooms above the casino floor at the Silver Legacy Resort.

They project info about convention groups and upcoming shows and such on the inside surface.

Totally reminds me of the Core Ships from the first three Star Wars movies.

Liquor-store hours

Liquor-store hours
Flickr: Don NunnNo imbibin’ on election day.

Welcome to Utah!

Major milestone

Major milestone
Flickr: Don NunnCement plant near Plano, OR. I see this and I know Oregon is halfway done.

Cloud ceiling

Cloud ceiling
Flickr: Don NunnI like how the clouds have such a distinct lower limit.

Mt. Adams with light pole

Mt. Adams with light pole
Flickr: Don NunnAt the Selah Creek Rest Area near Yakima.

Monday’s Charlie casualty

Monday's Charlie casualty
Flickr: Don NunnFormer Salt Lake Tribune.

Charlie was barricaded in the kitchen all day, we thought with nothing chewing-worthy nearby.

Silly humans!

Easter Bunny Brigade

Easter Bunny Brigade
Flickr: Don NunnSeasonal items march onto the gift-shop shelves.

Hurricane Charlie

It didn’t occur to me until about, oh, 30 seconds ago that I could have photographed this for posterity, but the description will have to do because I already cleaned up the debris.

Backing up a bit, though:

This morning I went out to the hospital to upgrade the gift shop’s cash registers to the latest version of their point-of-sale software. I was hoping to solve a problem whereby manually entered credit-card transactions are declined because the register software we had wasn’t sending a “card is present” flag to our credit-card processing software, which then assumed the card was NOT present and in turn passed that on to our card processor. Our card processor does not accept such transactions without an explicit declaration of the card’s physical presence, even if you provide the CVV2, which the register software is not providing and does not have a setting I can change to ensure the declaration is made. So the transactions are denied with the helpful message:

INVALID DATA

We thought an upgrade to the latest version of the register software might resolve this. The upgrade proceeded smoothly and the register program launched just fine, a few visual tweaks to the interface but nothing momentous, and then I tried a manual credit-card transaction and—

(wait for it)

I got:

INVALID DATA

The shop doesn’t open until 12:30 today, which is good, because only the stuffed animals and Easter bunnies and candy bars heard the string of curses I emitted after that response code appeared on the screen.

And apropos of nothing whatever, it’s wildly appropriate that the abbreviation for “point of sale” is POS.

And it’s Sunday, so no sales or technical support available, which means this now will be what I do Monday. Oh joy.

But perspective counts for a lot on a day like today, and when I got back to the house I found out that the register silliness wasn’t actually so bad. Because Charlie, adorable little almost-14-week-old Charlie, had romped about the house in a spectacular imitation of an M1 Abrams tank in a china shop.

Charlie had managed to knock a plant entirely off its stand, somehow not spilling much dirt and not cracking the pot in the process, but the plant knocked over Mom’s CD storage tower, sending CD cases all over the living room. The flying CDs in turn knocked over and broke a glass hurricane lamp that contained a wad of small lights as a decorative accent.

And then Charlie found the potpourri bowl on the coffee table, and the scents of cinnamon and dried oranges and other nice things proved irresistible, and now that potpourri rests mainly in the Shop-Vac.

But Chuckles wasn’t done yet. From the dining room, he grabbed a quilted bag that held several catalogs and stapled sets of papers and managed somehow to scatter the papers about (most of them were in the entry hall) without chewing them up. And the bag shows no damage either; I have a feeling that was because I returned right as he was starting with the bag.

Scarves and coats scattered about too, because they dangle from hooks on the wall by the stairs just inside the front door, and oooh! swinging things!

Needless to say, Charlie’s a bit on my shit list, which is difficult because of the cute. He does seem to get the badness, I suppose, though I think most of the teaching-him-not-to-eat-potpourri is going to be achieved by removing the potpourri from areas he can reach until he’s past the nibbles stage with the new teefs.

Time for a walk, I think. He can chew up the trees as we wander the neighborhood in the wind!

This is an ex-pinecone

This is an ex-pinecone
Flickr: Don NunnCharlie’s handiwork on a decorative accent in Mom’s living room.

2006 in cities

Rehashing the same idea from last year, the list of cities I spent at least one day (a contiguous 24-hour period) in 2006, in roughly chronological order. Asterisks indicate multiple visits; links lead to Google Maps:

• Mill Creek, WA (home)
• Seattle, WA *
• Denver, CO
• Vancouver, BC, Canada
• Salt Lake City, UT *
• Corvallis, OR
• Santa Rosa, CA
• Napa, CA
• Monterey, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Mill Valley, CA
• Victoria, BC, Canada

I was going to list the cities where I spent at least a few hours as well, but that would number into the dozens—maybe even a hundred or more with the several road trips I took this year. I might do that later if I decide to scrape the info directly out of my Palm database.

Mark Hacking sentenced for murdering his wife

He was sentenced to 6 years to life in prison for shooting Lori Soares to death while she slept and then dumping her body in a trash bin.

Stories and links below the cut from CNN.com, The Salt Lake Tribune, and Deseret Morning News; also the Soares family statement from the Trib.

Mark Hacking pleads guilty to Lori Soares' murder

Entire CNN.com story below the cut.

See also Salt Lake Tribune story; no Deseret Morning News story yet.

UPDATE Sat 04/16/05: Deseret Morning News story now available.

Salt Lake Tribune: Hacking deal looks likely

Occurred to me I hadn't followed any news on this case for quite a while. I was hoping there'd be a trial so we might get some insight into the workings of the mind that decides killing a person is better than divorcing her, but I see that's unlikely now.

Not that much more likely with a trial, sure, but the chance is a bit greater I think.

I hope if Mark Hacking pleads out that it provides the Soares family with some comfort.

Entire Tribune story below the cut.

Lori Soares’ family removes married name from headstone

Salt Lake Tribune: Name ‘Hacking’ struck from headstone
Her mother: Donates decorative angels sent to her to a shelter for abused and neglected children

by Jason Bergreen

image not available
The Soares family has replaced the name ‘Hacking’ on their slain daughter’s gravestone with ‘Filhinha,’ which is Portuguese for ‘little daughter’
Rick Egan, The Salt Lake TribuneLori Hacking’s family has changed her headstone at the Orem City Cemetery to remove “Hacking” from her name. It now reads “Lori Kay Soares.”

Police found Lori Hacking’s body on Oct. 1 at a landfill they had been searching since mid-July, shortly after Mark Hacking reported his 27-year-old wife failed to return from an early morning jog in City Creek Canyon. He later allegedly admitted he shot her in the head as she slept and disposed of her body in a trash bin.

“We just felt that Mark obviously didn’t want her anymore,” Lori’s mother, Thelma Soares, said during a phone interview. Where Lori’s married name once was on the headstone is now engraved the Portuguese word “Filhinha,” which translates to “little daughter.”

Mark Hacking’s parents were notified of the change, made more than a month ago, and understood, Soares said. Saturday, Soares donated decorative angels sent to her from all over the United States to be used as Christmas ornaments at the Christmas Box House, a temporary shelter for abused and neglected children.

“I tried to think of an appropriate way to share them and the love they represent,” she said.

Children at the Christmas Box House decorated a 12-foot tree, Soares said. A picture of Lori was also placed in the branches. Creating the angel tree memorial for Lori seemed appropriate because Soares’ nickname for her daughter was “Angel Baby,” she said.

“It’s gorgeous,” she said of the tree.

Mark Hacking pleads 'not guilty'

Somehow it doesn't surprise me that Mark Hacking didn't have the balls to plead guilty and be done with it.

I'm sorry for Lori Hacking's family. If there can be any good from this, perhaps it'll be that Mark Hacking eventually feels impelled to disclose the full story of Lori's death, which might help put the Soares' minds at ease.

Entire story below, exactly as it appeared on the Trib's site.

Lori Hacking autopsy yields little

Entire story below the cut.

Deseret Morning News: Lori laid to rest as the tears flow

Entire story and photos below the cut.

Utah brewers get a taste of success at beer festival

Entire Salt Lake Tribune story quoted below. I’ve added links to the breweries and restaurants in question, since the Trib doesn’t provide them in its stories.

Salt Lake Tribune: Lori Hacking's body released to her family

The state Office of the Medical Examiner has released the body of Lori Hacking to her family, which is planning a private burial.

Family members took custody of the body on Tuesday, police said.

"They're very pleased and relieved to have received Lori's body back," said family spokesman David Gehris.

Gehris said the the woman's mother, Thelma Soares, of Orem, and her father, Eraldo Soares, of Fullerton, Calif., are planning a private burial ceremony at Orem City Cemetery, where a headstone has already been erected.

Lori Hacking's body was found Friday at the Salt Lake County landfill following a 10-week search.

Although the office of the medical examiner has completed its autopsy, it has not delivered its written report to police and prosecutors, who this week refused to disclose the manner and cause of Lori Hacking's death.

Authorities believe she was shot to death July 19 by her husband, Mark Hacking, and her body was placed in a Dumpster near the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Unit, where he worked.

Prosecutors say Mark Hacking killed his wife to prevent disclosure of his deceptions about his college career and medical school.

After Lori was reported missing, family members learned Hacking had not been accepted to medical school at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, as he had claimed, and had not graduated from the University of Utah. The couple were planning to move to North Carolina within days of Lori's disappearance.

Mark Hacking is charged with murder and obstruction of justice in Lori's death. He is scheduled for an arraignment Oct. 29 before 3rd District Judge Denise Lindberg.

Salt Lake Tribune 10/02/04 stories on discovery of Lori Hacking’s remains

Full content of both stories below.