I woke up this morning feeling very nostalgic for an apartment in which I used to live. It was a really small apartment. I lived there for awhile with eyelid and before that with _xis. I have very distinct memories of this place. All of these memories are very happy. This morning's memory was being there with eyelid.

This is the apartment layout.

As you can see, it is very small. As you can also see, there is a large grayed out area of the apartment. It is left blank since I have never seen that part of the apartment.

In all of my memories of this place, I am sitting at the table next to Scoot or eyelid or _xis, laughing and talking, while one of us is cooking at the stove. Now, it's fair to point out here that the last sentence probably wasn't interpreted as intended because of basic assumptions about how things work. At no time in these memories were there more than two people in the apartment, yet there were two people at the table. One of whom was also at the stove cooking. Simultaneously.

You see, this apartment does not exist. I have been dreaming these memories for more than fifteen years. Every time that I remember this place, I spend the next several waking hours trying to be sure there really was no such place. The memories are so happy and so real and so temporally impossible and so spatially paradoxical.

A recurring dream. Of happy memories. With dear friends.

There has been a substantial push by the Republicans in the Minnesota legislature to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage (which is already against Minnesota state law). Now, it's no secret that I am absolutely for marriage equality. But, this whole thing has gotten me thinking more about the legal status of being male or being female.

It is 2011. I have given up hope that anyone in my lifetime will invent a good way to package plastic wrap for home use. But, it has been illegal since 1920 to keep women from voting. It has been illegal since 1964 to discriminate in hiring on the basis of sex. It has been decades (not enough, but decades) since women needed their husband's permission to open a bank account. Since 1998, it has been illegal for me to sexually harrass people of either sex.

If I walked into the DMV today and told them that my driver's license has been wrong about my sex for all of these years, what would happen? They certainly wouldn't change it without my birth certificate. If I alleged that that was wrong or alleged that I could not find it, where would I be? Who gave the DMV the right to define what sex I am?

Why does it make any difference to the government (especially those espousing small government and personal freedom) that I am male?

The only answers I have are that if I am (legally) male:

1. I can be drafted into combat posts.
2. I can be penalized for entering women's restrooms (maybe?).
3. I am not allowed to marry a male.

I can see the political expedience of the first. I can see the convenience of the second. I've got nothing for the third.

Some time ago, I was looking to see what books might interest me on Google Books. I don't know who (or what pattern matcher) categorizes books for them. But, this is certainly not what I was expecting to find in Technology & Engineering.

So, I spent too much time today trying to figure out why this C++ code worked fine:

std::set::iterator found = m_transactionIDs.find(id);

if (found != m_transactionIDs.end())
{
    m_transactionIDs.erase(found);
}

if (someReallyComplexCondition)
{
    oneThing();
}
else if (someOtherComplexCondition)
{
    someOtherThing();
}

When changing it to this gave me a core dump with a stack trace of nothing but Ada:

std::set::iterator found = m_transactionIDs.find(id);

if (found != m_transactionIDs.end());
{
    m_transactionIDs.erase(found);

    if (someReallyComplexCondition)
    {
        oneThing();
    }
    else if (someOtherComplexCondition)
    {
        someOtherThing();
    }
}

Or, is there some legitimate reason for this to be legitimate?

I thought certainly either the large company for which I work or the large government agency that is our customer would have put out a press release about the news that prompted the following story. Alas, I can find no such news stories on either website or with Google. So, I'm going to be stupidly vague in the following.

Last Tuesday, our customer made it to the end of a multi-year, multi-faceted process that ended in a green-light for our software to be installed at all of the sites instead of just the key test sites. To celebrate this milestone, there was to be an after work, drinks and appetizers shindig at a nearby restaurant on Wednesday.

Knowing that there would be many people at this event that I have not properly met from my little corner of the cube farm, I dressed to impress. Thinking the red power-tie was a bit too formal (and not enough red), I consciously chose to wear a red dress shirt and tan pants.

Unbeknownst to me, the restaurant waitstaff uniform is a red dress shirt and tan pants.

When I arrived, my boss's boss (or my boss's boss's boss, depending on which direction you orient the matrix-management chart) started trying to order more appetizers from me.

Go first impressions!

Now, I am sure that he will never forget me, but he may always be uncomfortably embarrassed near me. Not the kind of impression I was hoping to make.

*shrug*

I am a pretty decent Facebook Scrabble player. Facebook Scrabble is slightly easier than tournament Scrabble in that it won't let you put in a word that isn't in the dictionary so there is no need to ever challenge (or doubt). Additionally, the time control is on the order of days rather than minutes.

In my current game, my opponent has pulled out words like marque, ringbark, xystoi, and tarzan. It's one of those games where I was feeling like I was playing against a person with a computer looking over her shoulder. But, I wrested the lead back by getting enameled to hit two triple word scores. Sadly, the m was a blank on a double letter spot, or it could have been worth 54 more points!

Anyhow, enough bragging. On to more philosophical matters.

I have a few guidelines/approaches that I try to stick to when playing that I feel really help my final score. I share them now with you.

• Play for the bingo
  • Unless it's worth more than 35pts to do otherwise, never end a turn with more than one of any letter in your hand. If you've got three 'E's and you play your 'Z', 'A', 'P', you will undoubtedly draw at least one more 'E'. It is always a pain to try to bingo with three or more of a given letter and much easier without any repeats. If the doubled letter is 'I', then be sure you're getting at least 50pts to keep them.
  • Unless it's worth more than 45pts to do otherwise, hang on to the blank.
  • If you have both blanks, take the time to find the best bingo. The odds of there being multiple available bingos when you've got two blanks are almost absurdly high (unless the board is super crowded or bunched together).
• If your tiles suck, exchange them
  • It's taken me quite some time to feel comfortable scoring a zero on a round to exchange some tiles. Now, I do it almost every game, sometimes three or four times. I definitely exchange tiles more than five times as often as my opponents do.
  • Never hand in a blank. Keep one 'S' if you have some. Keep one 'E' if you have it. Keep a 'D' if you have an 'E'. Keep an 'I', an 'N', and a 'G' if you have all three.
  • If you're thinking about making a six point word and you'll still have too many vowels when you're done, it's high time to exchange. (Note: unless the reason you're only playing two of your tiles is what I am talking about in the very next point.)
  • Know your dosages. I've occasionally exchanged a single tile in an effort to get a particular letter when I knew there were still two of them unplayed and only ten tiles left in the bag. (xref: play for the bingo)
• Score horizontally and vertically at the same time
  • If you play 'WOW' through a letter, it is only 9pts. But, if you can lay it down against an 'ORE', then you've got 21pts instead.
  • Look to put your 'J', 'X', 'Q', or 'Z' down where it can play in two directions. So, know these words cold: 'JO', 'AX', 'EX', 'OX', 'XI', 'QI', 'ZA' and look for other places to place one of those letters like: '(J)OUST', 'FA(X)', '(Q)AT', 'FE(Z)', '(Z)AG', etc. so you can build perpendicularly scoring the high letter in two directions.
  • And, of course, if you can get a double or triple word score to play in both directions, all the better.
• Play your side of the board
  • Lots of people work hard to avoid giving their opponents a shot at a triple word score or an easy place to add an 'S'. Feh.
    • First, let's see them triple word score their way back from the two bingos we just played.
    • Second, playing adjacent to other words naturally makes it tougher for your opponent to spring something weighty on a triple word score.
    • Third, it's just more fun to play all out than to sit trying not to let anything happen. There's a saying to the effect: When you gamble, you cannot control how much you win, only how much you lose. In Scrabble, it would be: you cannot control how much your opponent scores, only how much you score. (Of course, at various points, you may know your opponent's tiles with a high degree of confidence. Usually though, this is toward the end of the game when the winner is also pretty clear with a high degree of confidence regardless of your opponent's triple 'X'.)

It was interesting. Some people really liked it. Others, not so much. Me, I liked the way the spicy lingered way longer on your tongue than the creamy, but I didn't care for the texture of the beans.

For the custard (on day one):

• 1 jalapeno pepper, halved (no need to remove seeds or stem)
• 1 Poblano pepper, cut into wide strips (no need to remove seeds or stem)
• 3T olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, sliced into rough slices
• 1/3c chili powder
• 2T ground cumin
• 4oz tomato paste
• 1/2T baking soda
• 1t salt
• 2c heavy cream
• 1/4c sugar
• 2 or 3 cardamom pods
• 4 egg yolks

In a heavy bottom pan, sear the pepper pieces skin-side down for a three or four minutes. Add olive oil and flip the pepper pieces to skin-side up. Sautee for a five minutes. Add the onion. Sautee for until onions are slightly softened.

Meanwhile, in a heavy sauce pan, slowly heat the cream with the sugar and cardamom pods, stirring occasionally. Do not let it boil!

Add chili powder and cumin to pepper & onion mix. Sautee for two more minutes. Add tomato paste to pepper & onion mix. Sautee for three or four minutes, stirring roughly until tomato paste is very worked into the spices. Mix in the baking soda and salt. Remove from heat.

If the tomato paste still tastes really acidic, add a touch more baking soda. We don’t want to curdle the cream.

Once the cream & sugar are getting close to simmering, lightly beat the egg yolks in a bowl. Temper the yolks by stirring in a touch of the warm cream. Stir in warm cream until you’ve got about twice as much milk mixed in as there were egg yolks at the start. Then, stir the egg yolks & cream into the pot of cream.

Scrape all of the pepper, onion, tomato paste, & spice mixture into the pot of cream.

Continue heating lightly and stirring constantly until it starts to thicken, being careful not to let it boil. It should coat the back of a spoon in a way where you can wipe out a stripe with your finger and not have the nearby custard seep back into the stripe.

Strain the custard into a bowl and refrigerate overnight.

For the beans (on day two):

• 15oz can of black beans
• 2T finely minced onion
• salt to taste
• 1/4c heavy cream

Cook the beans, onion, and salt in as little liquid as needed to get them to break down.

Once the beans have broken down quite a bit, smash them with a spoon and let cool to room temperature.

Stir in heavy cream. Beans should be thicker than pancake batter, but thinner than mashed potatoes. Add more cream if needed to achieve this.

Then, start running the custard through the ice cream machine as directed by the ice cream. Once it gets really close to good ice cream texture, add the beans. This will slightly melt the ice cream again, so let it get back to good ice cream texture again before stopping the ice cream maker.

Place in freezer for a few hours to get more solid.

This Sunday, I will likely only run the coax and phone cords that I need to run. The network and A/V wiring will be a week from Sunday (and maybe a week from Saturday, too, if I feel like the phone wiring was really slow).