Wine and refine

Have you ever had the pleasure of watching people talk to their TV sets?  I have such enduring fond childhood memories of my father jumping up and down and yelling things like "WHOA - off-side!" and "Interception!" as he watched football games. 

It actually does talk back, at least in a sense.

Microsoft clip art. 

Well, I popped into the world as a female and I'm not interested in football, but I do have plenty of feedback to offer to my favorite TV genre, which is home improvement shows.  And so it was that I recently heard the mesmerizing Jonathan Scott advise one of his on-screen clients to refurbish rather than replace their existing kitchen cabinets.  Paraphrased: "Why would you want to get rid of these?  New cabinets are made out of cardboard!"

Upon hearing this, I jumped up and down and yelled at my TV, "WHOA - dude - off-side!!  Liability alert!!  What are you, from freakin' Canada or something where they don't have as many lawsuits?!" 

The mesmerizing Mr. Scott was bluntly referring to what many people believe but few have the guts to offer in the way of a personal opinion:  current day kitchen cabinet construction is arguably not as robust as it potentially could be, and not as robust as it generally had been at different times in the past.

Coincidentally, one year ago, I waded into that same treacherous territory when I published a post on the importance of installing drawer and cabinet pulls. 

Incidentally, I know that I read this quote online at some point within the past year, but today when I go looking for it, I can't find it.  Perhaps the guy who said it got sued and had to remove it from publication.   

So Jonathan's point was that it's arguably a better investment to rehab existing solid wood or plywood cabinets, instead of buying new ones that are constructed largely of particle board. 

Three years ago when we were building this house, I took a slightly different tact.  Given that ours was a new build, we had no choice but to accept what the market offered in the way of cabinets.  And given that it was intentionally toward the "starter home" end of the size spectrum (i.e., much smaller than many surrounding homes), I concluded that installing anything of custom quality would not be a good investment. 

For those reasons and with a nod toward European sensibilities where they often take their kitchens with them when they move, I decided to augment rather than upgrade the cabinets that the builder installed. 

I've claimed previously that nothing comes into our house without first being cut out of either paper or cardboard, so that we can evaluate the suitability of the piece in the space prior to purchasing it.  I lied.  Sometimes I do mock-ups using other materials - in this case, a scrap of carpet underlayment fits the footprint of the unusually-large sideboard that I purchased as our house was under construction.  I needed to confirm that it would be properly proportioned for this wall, which faces the house's sole dining area. 

The behemoth sideboard was intended to seriously augment storage for this "starter home" kitchen.  What you see is what we got - there is only this small amount of upper cabinetry, and given that the under-counter area must incorporate sink, dishwasher, and oven, there aren't many lower cabinets either. 

BEFORE:
I don't have a good full frontal pic of that massive sideboard at this point, but I got it from one of Houston's coolest import stores, which is Home Source, and it's made of reclaimed solid teak.  Not particle board. 

Anyway, it's not my purpose to talk about the sideboard itself, but rather, something we recently added to it.  I had been storing wine bottles in one of its open cubbies, but this uncontrolled stack had proven to be rather hazardous.  The problem is that, because the diameter decreases toward the cork ends of the bottles, they had a tendency to toboggan off the front of the shelf and come crashing down onto the ceramic tile floor.  Very bad situations involving broken glass were the result.  Yet simultaneously, I could not find a decent wine rack that I could insert into this cubby and have it look like it belonged there. 

Until now...

Enter the solution.  While watching yet another home improvement show, I learned about this product which is called Wine Hive. 

Especially given that we are a science and engineering household, we were suckers for this sales pitch.  Wine Hive is engineered as only one structural unit which builds out into any number of different configurations.  The structural members are made of heavy aluminum with amazingly tight tolerances.  This is a close-up pic of the joinery.  It's an expensive product but the high quality is clear to see. 

It's also an American design by an American micro-entrepreneur and manufactured in America, which appeals to me.  Apparently the designer launched with the help of Kickstarter.  I've funded a couple of Kickstarter projects in the past, but I hadn't heard of this one.   

It was modeled on honeycomb, which is one of the most efficient structures found in nature. 

Design-wise, when you have something old like reclaimed teak, it works best to balance it out with something hyper-new, like a high-tech wine rack. 

AFTER:
Definite improvement, eh?  No more sliding bottles.  And it looks cool. 

The one potential drawback of this design is the same limitation that affects many other wine racks: the holes are best suited to small-diameter bottles.  You can see that I've wedged an oversized bottle between the rack and the cubby wall to the right.  But if a partially-open configuration is constructed instead, some of those larger bottles can be accomodated by this product.  We needed a compact configuration here, obviously. 

And as a footnote...

...notice that I used the same contemporary knobs on both the kitchen cabinetry and on the drawers in the sideboard.  Cross-referencing is you-know-what.  This helps to unify the overall impression from kitchen to dining area, even though the wood species are different. 

Pic from this post on installing cabinet pulls. 

Space Cleaners fire

This will be all over the local news soon enough, but I thought I'd post a few pics just for the learning value.  I don't know how fire responses work, or why they do what they do (or why they do it when they do it).  But here are a few bystander observations on this one. 

4:19 p.m.
I walked out of the office supply store at NASA 1 and El Camino Real, only to note this in front of me.  Not something you see every day. 

4:20 p.m.
There appeared to be one small fire response vehicle on scene at this time (out of photo frame to the right).  The establishment was the Space Cleaners building.  No other structures appeared to be involved.  There's debate on the internet as to whether this address is located in Houston or Webster. 

4:22 p.m.
Forest Bend FD arrived on scene (times are approximate and per my cell phone).  I had never heard of these guys, but their website says they serve unincorporated south Harris County. 

4:28 p.m.
League City FD arrived on scene.  Your tax dollars at work.  Around this time, Seabrook also came in from the east side (out of photo frame).  Seabrook had a really cool boom truck with a room for a fireman at the top of its telescoping arm. 

4:33 p.m.
Into every emergency, a little randomness must fall:  a person pushing a shopping cart wandered through the traffic blockade and proceeded northward along El Camino Real, seemingly unimpressed by the goings-on. 

4:34 p.m.
Forest Bend FD got its boom stream up and running. 

Like I said, I have no idea how these things function.  I don't know why it took 12-ish minutes to get that overhead water stream going - perhaps they realized the building was a loss at that point, so no rush, perhaps the technology just takes that long to operate, or perhaps they were waiting for command orders.  Who knows?

Anyway, here's an embed.  The ads seem to spool according to a queue, but if you're lucky, you'll get the privilege of viewing a Mattress Mac ad ahead of this chopper footage.  Ma-ma-ma-mayo furniture!!
:-)


UPDATE 20130324: Bay Area Citizen seems to have published the most comprehensive coverage of this fire to date. 

Blogging ethics in an imperfect world

I said something incendiary in yesterday's blog post, but I bet it's not what you think it might have been.  It had nothing to do with the League City logo.  It was actually this:

"Of course, I'm not evaluating any of this logo situation in any professional capacity - I blog solely as a private citizen and taxpayer. But I do access general life lessons in my thought processes, as every private citizen does."

After subsequently getting into a lively off-post debate with a local journalist regarding the fact that I don't openly state my identity on this blog, I thought I'd explain the difference between personal contribution and professional contribution and the impossible position in which those of us who endeavor to make *both* types of social contributions currently find ourselves.

Simply put, society hasn't provided us with a reliable means of declaring the difference between professional representations for which we are fully liable, and personal opinions and perceptions that we hold as private citizen taxpayers.  The internet in particular furnishes absolutely no means of differentiating between these two.  For that reason, those of us who are professionals are put at substantial undeserved risk every time we utter a viewpoint in a public forum. 


Even more insidious is the fact that, the more advanced our educational and career statuses, the more we are assumed to be speaking with professional authority in every instance.  So to add insult to injury, there's a strong positive correlation between seniority and liability, which is exactly the opposite of how the situation should be when viewed through the lens of morality.  Those of us who have withstood the many trials of age and experience... should we not be at greater liberty to share those lessons learned?  And yet what happens is that we end up being the most extensively muzzled by the circumstances of our inferred liability.  Is this even remotely in the public interest?!

Do you doubt these interpretations?  Observe how the liability impacts extend even into the lowest rungs of the employment realm.  How many times have you heard about someone having their employment terminated because they made some after-hours brain-fart comment on Facebook? There's a blogsite devoted to tracking some of those cases.  This woman got fired simply for calling her job "a joke".  She was held to the extremity of liability simply for stating a personal opinion on her own time (the very same opinion that about 90% of the rest of us will also declare at some point in our careers).  Case law will eventually sort that kind of thing out, but right now, there isn't a robust legal precedent for defending ourselves against this kind of reprisal. 

Oh, but it gets even worse.  Case law suggests that bloggers aren't even entitled to claim established journalistic protections.  And then, of course, there's the issue of SLAPP suits.  I could go on and on. 

So after acknowledging the breadth and depth of these very real risks, bloggers and blog contributors are left with only two valid choices:

1. Don't blog at all.  Go through public life manifesting a professional identity only.  Don't share any insight or viewpoint or make any social contribution beyond working and paying taxes. 
2. Blog, but minimize the associated risks.  Find a means of preventing disparate professional and personal representations from becoming inappropriately associated. Stop those two unrelated facets of identity from contaminating each other, given that society is currently not equipped to reinforce any part of this distinction on our behalves.

The vast majority of educated people in our society choose Option 1, but I find it to be pretty boring and downright stultifying, actually.  Not to mention being about as far removed from the public interest as you can get. 

For that reason, I chose Option 2.  The task that then remained was to identify the mechanism through which cross-contamination could be prevented while still maintaining a verifiable authenticity and a supportable ethic. 

One of the best precedents I've identified to date figures prominently in the very popular Houston Chronicle blog SciGuy.  The blog author has one scientific cohort in particular who makes significant contributions without revealing his identity to the public.  The journalist knows who his contributor is, the newspaper has vetted his credentials, and he's known to blog-related third-party experts as well.  But as a contributor, he simply cannot run the risk of having either his well-known guest posts or his comments be construed as reflecting any views or positions of his employer.  His employer could retaliate against him for that just as easily and as swiftly as employers can people like tuna for farting on Facebook.   

In other words, he could lose his job simply by making honest and conscientious and well-informed contributions to the public dialog on his own time and for no compensation.  That's horrifying and an unacceptable risk, and so this lesser-of-evils approach of anonymity was adopted in the case of SciGuy. 

And what a tragedy it would be if instead that contributor's voice had to be silenced because of our regrettable social circumstances.  I'm grateful that those folks got together and formulated this workaround of qualified anonymity.  I've learned a great deal from SciGuy over the years, and my learning would have been profoundly diminished if that contributor had instead been silenced according to Option 1 above. 

And so I have deployed a similar tactic.  The commercial news media knows my identity.  Many of my neighbors know my identity. Key employees and elected representatives within League City know my identity.  I never initiate or respond to a serious email without volunteering information regarding my identity.  But I can't do it here, on this blog.  At least not until society begins granting folks like me reasonable protections that are in accordance with common sense and general decency. 

Sorry, folks.  It's not fair and it's not ideal, but the cards are simply stacked against us right now.
--Your friendly neighborhood blogger. 

Microsoft clip-art.   

Dancing with the devil: The League City logo, Part 2

Those of you who are astute readers of Galveston County Daily News may have noticed that the League City logo controversy has been gently but firmly kept alive for these past three weeks or so. 

The new city logos as screengrabbed from this original GCDN news article.  The city's own information site for these logos is available here. 

This whole thing started around February 27, 2013, when League City released its new logo to the public, GCDN covered the story, and I published this post which was quoted by GCDN shortly thereafter. 

Since that time, GCDN has conducted a feedback poll to solicit input from residents who were "for" or "against" the new logo, and there have been additional references. 

This morning, Aulds published this description of League City's current beautification efforts.  Once again, we see continued reference to the logo controversy. 

But perhaps the most telling statement published to date derives from the short but powerful editorial authored by one Pat Hoyland of League City. 

Let's not talk about what your friendly neighborhood blogger thinks about the logo - let us not even go there.  And please let's not shoot this messenger, either, as we focus solely on Hoyland's assessment, because what falls out of it is fairly fascinating.  If I get any negative comments on this post, I'm going to immediately refer back to the clause about not shooting this messenger. 

In Hoyland's personal editorialized opinion, the logo, "looks like the top of a devil’s head, with a Texas dunce hat on it".

OK, given that I am a visually-oriented person, let's parse that statement.


Would you like your dunce hat in white?

Man in dunce cap partial image from this Image Source site.  Fair Use:  Low-resolution partial screengrab for the purposes of commentary in a nonprofit context with source attribution. 

Or would you like your dunce hat in blue?

Dunce cap low-res partial screengrab from this site. 

Hoyland used the word "amusing" to describe this controversy, and the juxtaposed imagery above is indeed amusing. 

But that's not the fascinating part.  The fascinating part is Hoyland's use of the word devil.  The devil is evil.  The devil is not typically associated with dunce-hood.  If you review the history of the word dunce and the dunce cap concept, you'll find that it refers primarily to stupidity, social stupidity in particular.  It does encompass dumb and disrespectful interactive behavior, but not evil or sinister intention. 

I have worked in the consulting industry for more than twenty years.  As a consultant, it's a huge part of my job to meticulously interpret the mind states of people, so that I can deduce how best to communicate with them from their starting points of comprehension, so that we can work together to resolve whatever issue prompted them to seek a consultation in the first place.

Of course, I'm not evaluating any of this logo situation in any professional capacity - I blog solely as a private citizen and taxpayer.  But I do access general life lessons in my thought processes, as every private citizen does.  And very often when I see people swiftly mixing concepts that are not otherwise typically associated, it means that there's something else going on at depth.  It often means that there's an additional idea brewing in their subconscious minds, an idea that hasn't yet broken through to the surface to become a formal, speakable thought. 

That's the immediate sense I got when I read Hoyland's statement.  Hoyland probably doesn't know what subconscious awareness might have triggered that particular pairing of words.  I have never met Pat Hoyland, I don't know Pat Hoyland, and perhaps there are no additional concepts lurking behind Pat Hoyland's statement.  But if I had to put money on it, I would guess that there's more going on with this logo controversy than currently meets the eye. 

Annual Clear Lake Gem and Mineral Society show

This is a placeholder post in part, because the event it describes has already occurred for this year, but I'll refer back to this summary when future annual events roll around.

The Clear Lake Gem and Mineral Society show took place the weekend of February 23, 2013.  I'm mentioning this because it's really a nice event but it receives virtually no publicity.  Of those internet sites that do mention it, there are no photos and little to indicate what the show comprises.  For instance, here's the official show page, a recent Galveston Chamber announcement, and an Ultimate Clear Lake blurb from three years ago, but there's not that much in the way of additional info on the net at this point. 

It's held every third or fourth weekend in February at the Pasadena Convention Center.  For many years now, my family has referred to this as "rock show weekend". 

The Pasadena Convention Center is an older, smaller facility but it's really a neat place and immaculately maintained, almost as if it were frozen in time. 

  The participants run the gamut from rock and mineral dealers...

...to jewelry-makers, both suppliers and finished product purveyors, to fossil dealers...

Regardless of your lifestyle, there's always room for ammonites. 

...to special artistic displays...

The "rock food table" created by a couple from Robstown. 

...to interactive opportunities...

Breaking open a geode - what's behind this ancient door #1?

...to activities for the kids...

There is usually also a Scout table. 

...and also collecting opportunities for kids.

Three for two bucks... that can't even cover the dealer's costs.  Try finding the likes of that on eBay. 

Of course, I can never resist the kids' tables.  Here's what I picked up at this most recent show so that I can give them away to neighborhood kids (my perpetual ulterior motive:  the promotion natural sciences education).  It's good to take a picture like this so that the kids will have something to refer to as they learn to match the name to the specimen.

I don't have access to a typical annual dealers list, and there doesn't seem to be one on the internet.  I was only able to grab a small number of cards during the show this year.  The exhibitors are mostly from Texas and here are those represented by the very few cards I grabbed:

• Bitterroot Rocks and Minerals (no website found)
• Galveston Bay Mining Company (eBay store)
• Xquizit Minerals
• Lone Star Meteorites (eBay store)

One regular exhibitor who was conspicuous by his absence this year was independent jewelry artist Walter Cooling of Uvalde.  His booth was set up, but he was not present on Sunday when we attended.  Dealers adjacent to his table reported to me that they had no information on where he was.

I can't find a webpage for Mr. Cooling, but here's a screengrab of some of his designs from this site.  There's an Etsy reference for WC Designs but nothing active. 

I had acquired a couple of Mr. Cooling's works over the years (always a fan of local independent micro-enterprises).  Mrs. Cooling and I had several long chats at previous shows about their husband-wife artisan business model.  She would hunt for rare mineral specimens on the internet and procure them, and she would also handle much of the selling, thus allowing her husband to concentrate on developing and executing his high-end but reasonably-priced designs.  I now see from internet announcements that Mrs. Cooling passed away a few years ago. 

Anyway, there's some info on yet another great local recurring event.  Even if you're not into rocks, minerals, fossils, and jewelry yourself, it's a great place to stock up for future gift-giving to either free-ranging neighborhood children or for more formal events such as holidays and birthdays. 

Urban hike Houston

Yesterday was a typical gorgeous Houston spring day, and so the husband and I went on a three-mile ramble from the Children's Museum by Houston Garden Center (not the retail outlet of similar name) and then through Hermann Park, past the Houston Zoo, alongside Texas Medical Center, and then we wound our way through the Rice University campus before looping back and having lunch at Za Za's outdoor patio  (service was slow but the food was worth waiting for... I had the "One Hot Chick" sandwich).   Here are a few pics from that pedestrian patter.

This is on my list of the six thousand or so local attractions that I have not yet seen despite living in greater Houston for about twenty years now. 

We didn't go inside (and I don't know if it was possible to do so yesterday), but we checked out the associated rose garden. 

Hermann Park, heading toward the zoo.  This is what properly-maintained live oaks are supposed to look like.  Compare to a few of League City's neglected examples here. 

Lovett Hall, Rice University.  Hard to believe anything in Houston is one hundred years old. 

Rice can be absolutely stunning during azalea season, but we are having such horrible dry weather (again, grrr) that this year's display seemed a bit underwhelming to me.  Here's a close-up of some well-formed blooms, but most of the azalea vistas were not up to the calibre of what I've seen at times in the past. 

Speaking of this interminably dry weather, some of Rice's younger trees were wearing these creative diaper-like devices, where water could be added to then slowly seep into the root zones. 

I want one of those!!  I particularly like that the "roots" of the sculpture are poking up through the pavers.  It has removeable stainless steel dishes set into it, which presumably are bird feeders and waterers.  Alice's Garden, Rice campus. 

After hiking this Hermann loop, we did stop by the 2013 Sustainable Living Festival at Market Square Park in downtown Houston, which I mentioned in this previous post.  We were generally underwhelmed by the festival - it was more hype than happenin' - but we saw a few neat things in the process of visiting that area of town.

This is the Courthouse district.  What a stunning building (and also one hundred years old).  And those live oaks!

This is one of those older areas of Houston that offers a juxtaposed experience of disorder and order, crime and prosperity, wealth and poverty.  A very expensive stainless steel art-inspired city bike rack is home to a frame picked clean. 

A short distance away and in rather sharp contrast, here's one of the new Houston bikeshare B-stations.  I wonder how this effort will pan out?  We did notice that these bikes have been rigged to minimize the chances of stripping.  Good thing. 



Generally we found SusFest to be too loud, too crowded, and too de-focussed, with not enough emphasis on the nuts and bolts of sustainable or innovative living.  

In other words, it was more a party than a presentation.  It's nice that they had vendors selling clothing, jewelry, and skin care products, but what's that stuff really got to do with sustainability on the scale of a lifestyle?  Maybe I'm just spoiled by the high quality of the outreach at 1002 Washington, but I'd love to see these guys set up a real show with cohesive and organized sourcing displays and vendor participation in a facility properly designed to handle the flow of visitors to such an event. 

I did enjoy these artistic interpretations of trash cans which a number of high school teams had entered into a city contest. 

But the real show-stealer at Market Square Park yesterday was actually this playful pooch whose owner indulged him in a game of water spray.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present The Incredible Levitating Dog!!

He was intent on catching that water stream in his jaws...

...and was willing to engage in whatever contortion was required to achieve his goal!

Get outdoors and enjoy the hospitable Houston spring weather.  You have to carpe diem while you can around here, because summer will be bludgeoning us soon enough. 

Milkweed mystery

Some of you Centerpointe folk are receiving little gifts with tags stuck in your doors that look like this:

That's happening because I'm in the process of excavating volunteers from my yard.

I'll be re-mulching my wretched-looking weedy beds soon, but before I do, I need to remove all of the valuable volunteers, like this these milkweed starts.  Three years after we first began terraforming our back yard, a lot of stuff has become prolific, including these. 

I dug up this batch and went door to door, sometimes talking with folks, but some were not home and others I knew were putting small children to bed, so I did not knock.  I just left the plants on their front stoops with the tags wedged in their doors.   

This kind of milkweed grows quickly and will attract Monarch butterflies as soon as it gets to be a decent size.  I've blogged about our backyard Monarchs previously. 

The caterpillars feed on milkweed species exclusively.  We had a lot of fun last year watching them complete their life cycle.  This guy is about one hour old.

Two days ago, NYT published this piece describing how Monarch habitat is almost gone.  That was part of my inspiration for saving our current batch of volunteer plants. 

Milkweed is fairly easy to grow - just place in fertile soil and water frequently.  We keep ours in two large flower pots.

Once they get large, you have to prune them back or they'll look scruffy.  But they flower without encouragement.  I took this pic of the parent plant this evening.  It's been outside all winter - they also stand up well to cold weather.  If frost kills them, they often come back from the roots. 

Anyway, if you happen to receive one of these from me and don't have room for it, feel free to pass it to one of your neighbors. 

They don't take long to grow to a good size. 

I'm going to be distributing tomato starts in much the same way pretty soon.  Because I compost my own garden wastes, I end up with volunteer tomatoes everywhere in my yard.  Based on my past experience with them, they seem to be pretty productive in the second generation, so they're worth planting.  Or at least they have been, so far.