It wouldn’t be true to form if the White Whale were “finished”. Am I right? It has traveled to California (2015) and back to Washington (2021) with me, a bit worse for wear. The white spray paint was never a durable finish. What it needed was some sort of enamal. What it needed was powder…

After too many years riding the same K2 board and clickers, it was time for something new. Boot and binding technology has improved greatly, and my wife may or may not have bribed me to “hit the mountain” more frequently by giving me a set of Burton Step On® bindings and boots for Christmas. Rather…

My early experiences with electronics was at the very end of the tube era. Five & Dime stores still sold replacement vacuum tubes for television sets and radios. Did anyone actually buy them, though? Not sure. Apple II and Commodore computers were already commonplace. Tubes still fascinated me, and in the past several years I…

Being a bit OCD and having far too many interests, I’ve found myself suffering the “White Whale” on more than one occasion. “Call me Ishmeal…,” and all that. More appropriately, “Call me Ahab.” I become fixated, but I’m also lucky enough to recognize that character flaw trait. 😉 This led to an art project I…

Another of my many hobbies is artistic metalwork. Back in 2015, after years of Melissa asking for cafe lights in our backyard, I designed and fabricated three light poles in an Art Nouveau style. My goal was to bridge both the cafe lights common in French cafes with the famous Art Nouveau styles of Paris…

One of my hobbies and passions is letterpress printing: both the product (e.g., cards, stationary, art) and the activity. Since this is a new version of my blog, it does not have the years of prior posts — including those documenting my letterpress work. To attempt a remedy for that shortcoming, I’ve put together a…

One of the many, many projects on my home project list was to run wired network connectivity between our house and the garage (which is a physically separate building). The existing WiFi extension to the garage proved widely variable and generally unreliable. It’s no fun to be in the middle of a Peloton class and…

Since I’ve got this sourdough starter sharing the kitchen, why not throw together a sourdough sandwich loaf? Unlike the bread I made in a previous post, the loaf was exceptionally simple and fast. Dangerously fast. As in: I have to stop making bread before it does bad things for my health.

Baking is not something that comes natural for me. (Cooking is where I tend to shine.) This never stopped me from trying to make something fantastic, and I’ve always wanted to try my hand at a natural sourdough bread. Being homebound for the past several weeks has given me the perfect opportunity to do so….

Tapas turns fourteen this month. Fourteen is definitely getting up there in the life expectancy for a chihuahua. However, Tapas has been a very healthy dog his entire life. Because of that, it came as quite a shock when he became deathly ill last week and had to spend several days at the pet hospital…

On Sunday, January 12, 2020 I ran my first Hot Chocolate 15k. For years I’ve seen people sport the high-quality swag from that race and thought to myself that I should sign up. The San Francisco race was a convenient opportunity to finally get some of that swag for myself. Unfortunately, the race has moved…

As of this post, my new Udoo X86 cluster is fully functional and running Kubernetes. One Udoo is a master; three other Udoos are workers. Each of the three workers has a SATA connected 512GB SSD for storage. There is a fifth Udoo in the cluster that I have yet to put into service. This…

This post is not going to have wide appeal. I get that. I’m posting it because I was unable to find the solution online myself, and I hope it will help someone else spend far less time than I did getting to the solution. Here’s the problem: The Udoo X86 that I am using in…

Back in 2015, I created my first SBC cluster. It was based on the Raspberry PI 2 Model B with added 1TB spinning disks and a custom designed stacking case. Hadoop YARN, HDFS, and Spark all successfully ran on it. However, the limits of 1GB RAM and the 100mbps Ethernet NICs meant that Spark was…

Finally, the garage was ready for the epoxy coatings of the floor and foundation. Epoxy coating a garage floor is one of the best things you can do to a garage in my opinion. It’s something I did when we moved into our Seattle house, and I couldn’t wait to have this floor coated too….

With the foundation finished, it was time to cover up the walls. This was not a task for drywall or plywood. I wanted a material that would tolerate the potential for moisture and insects. I also wanted it to look good. With that criteria, it’s difficult to find a better option than tongue and groove…

Following the mold remediation and ventilation addition described in my Garage Renovation – Part 1 post, the concrete foundation needed to be repaired. As I am not a mason and have limited experience with concrete work, the Internet had to be my expert. After hours of online research, the best course of action appeared to…

Before any real renovation work could begin, the mold and ventilation had to be addressed. As mentioned in my Garage Renovation – Overview post, once the garage door was closed, there was no way for air to circulate. There were no vents in the garage door or ceiling. That created a perfect world for black…

When we moved into our San Francisco house, its 91 years of age weighed on us. I’m convinced that I vacuumed 30lbs to 40lbs of spider webs from the garage alone. Cardboard boxes we had stored there as we unpacked would be damp from the cavelike environs. Once the door was shut, there was no…

Melissa has been in Paris all week for work.  Tapas and I have been stuck at home.  That also means that there is nobody here to tell me not to do stupid things.  😉  So, Tapas now has a tiny beret.

Over the past decade, and since falling off the vegetarian wagon, I’ve home cured bacon a couple times. If you eat bacon and have never tried home curing, I recommend you indulge.  Although you might find store-bought artisanal bacon that compares, my home cured bacon has always been the best bacon I’ve ever had.  It’s…

A week into learning the etiquette involved in charging my car at work, and I can tell that this is going to get interesting.  First, my commute is longer than most (which means that my required charge time is long).  Second, my office is at a building where there is more competition for the chargers…

For the second time — while on Maui — we have spent an entire day at Chez Klio learning to cook beyond our comfort zone.  Highlights this time around were: the correct way to prepare Ahi, the secret to homemade wasabi mayo, the best seafood curry I’ve ever tasted, and a variation on pani puri…

We’re in our last day of this trip to Maui.  It’s hard to leave such a nice environment.  Alas, we are but visitors.  Until next time…

Continuing my birthday month celebrations, we headed to Napa for the weekend and attended the August 26th winemaker dinner at Darioush.  It was one of their new Estate Dinner Series evenings, this one “Featuring Duel” (a cabernet sauvignon / shiraz blend that we enjoy immensely).  If wineries received Michelin Stars, Darioush would have at least…

A week after running last year’s Healdsburg Wine Country Half Marathon, I had the opportunity to run one of my bucket list races.  It’s not the particular race that was on my bucket list — it could have been any race that crossed the Golden Gate.  It just so happened that I saw the Golden…