March 31 2008

No special subject today.

Shoulder hurt worse this morning. Butchie doing well. Cough kept me awake a lot, but still got up at 8:30. Got some work on meeppp done, should be seeing that and other code up here within the next couple of days.

Since the shoulder is still bothering me and the health isn’t the greatest, I restricted myself to a short bike ride with Butchie. Todays image is from that ride. As you can see Switzerland’s georgeous, but the weather often leaves a lot to be desired. At least it isn’t still snowing.

Butchie by a nearby creek.  He's happier than he looks

Cooking with chilis

Man, yknow, ya’d think I’d have learned this already, but somehow I just haven’t gotten it programmed into a habit yet. If you’re cooking with chili’s — chopping, pulling out seeds, even just moving the damn things from one place to another– wash your hands with soap afterwards.

Today I made a Thai soup. I pulled the seeds out of a couple of chilies with my thumbnail, and thought ‘I need to pee’. This sequence of events has happened before (I like hot food), so I knew I needed to wash my hands before grabbing my dick. I rinsed them off pretty well, and dried them on a towel, went to the toilet, peed, washed my hands again and got back to the kitchen. A minute or so passed, and I thought ‘hmm my genitals feel a bit warm’, but I figured I’d washed my hands so it wouldn’t get any worse. I was wrong. A few minutes passed, and I yelled to Bettini ‘argh, chili dick!’, and rushed to bathroom. First I tried washing them with a wet, cold, soapy washcloth, but as soon as the cloth was removed the burning sensation returned. So I had to take off my pants and jump in shower and let cold water run over the equipment for a few minutes, massaging gently with cleaning products. The creamy stuff seems to work better than the soap, probably because the active ingredient in chilies is oil soluble.

I’m really glad none of the restaurants I ever worked in cooked spicy food. I can’t imagine telling my boss in the middle of the dinner rush that I had to go and stick my balls in the sink… I have to find the best way to get rid of chili residue on my hands. Maybe wash them with oil. Or just scrub really thoroughly before doing anything else.

On an interesting side note, Bettina found the soup too spicy, and had to pick some of the chilies out. Me I didn’t even find it sharp. But my balls and thumbs (which I used to scrape the seeds, you remember) still burn a little. I guess I’ve just burned out the receptors in my mouth.

Back again

Well, after years of silence, I thought I’d get my website running again. I wanted to create a personal subversion repository (not through work) for myself and Bettina, and I wanted a webhost for a few other projects, which will be appearing soon. I’m also going to be looking for a job soon, so I figure it’s time I got some of code back on the web for people to see. Old friends with good memories might realize that the domain name has changed from .org to .net… I should look into getting my old domain name back…

As for this page, maybe I’ll be able to get in touch with some lost friends, and vent some of my political rage. Who knows. The message here is, I guess, expect rapid changes to this site. Said changes could include me never logging in to, or looking at this site. Thus, even a lack of change is a change…

For this site, I’m trying the wordpress software. Normally I like to do things locally on my linux box, using text editors, but it seems web applications are the wave of the future. It would probably behoove me to keep apace with modern technologies and trends, giving them a fair shake before discarding them in curmudgeonly disgust.

Regarding me, I’m doing okay. I’m a bit frustrated. Bettina and I have been training pretty diligently for the Winterthur Marathon the last few months, and last week I injured my shoulder/neck (yeah, I injured my shoulder/neck running, go figure). I’m in physiotherapy, and the damn thing still hurts, so I’ve missed about a week of training. This pretty much means I have to reset my goals to the Winterthur half-marathon and support Bettina for the main event. Maybe in December we can do the theNeujahrsmarathon if Bettina is still interested. But that means another round of running all winter. Blech.

Okay, well today’s image is Bettina and Butchie on our 8k loop. I rode my bike and took a few photos…
Bettina and Butchie on the 8k loop