Fungi

Lydia has a close friend at school whose mum is a mycologist at Cambridge University (how cool is that! mycology is right up there with rocket science or archeology). This past week she organized a big session with the kids in Lydia's year to teach them about fungi. In addition to a day full of fungi-related activities, the kids were each given a mushroom growing kit to bring home.



The kit is basically a big cylinder made of compost and sawdust; they must have been "cooking" already for a while, since when Lydia took possession, it was already starting to sprout (NB: I think I set a record for "Most Heavily Loaded Bike Ride of 2009" while carrying it home-- I had Lydia's games bag and Ethan's games bag in addition to the mushroom stuff).





Lydia has been very enthused about growing mushrooms-- she diligently "watered" the mushrooms every day (you are supposed to mist them with a spray bottle) and fussed over them from time to time, and before long, we had our first crop. She insisted on helping with the preparations, including the picking, washing, and slicing, which she did very carefully. I stir-fried them and served them for dinner this evening-- they were superb. Lydia had a taste of one from the pan, but then at the table declared that "Mushroom growers aren't supposed to eat their own crops, it's against the rules". Hmm. Ethan was overjoyed, since this meant more for him (he is a big mushroom fan).

Cup Runneth

Here is a shot of the trophy that Ethan received for winning the school 800 meter race in his age group a while back:



Very elegant, but somewhat fleeting-- we were able to put it on the mantle for a couple of weeks, then we had to turn it back over to the school. What's more, we had to pay to have his name engraved on the back (which turned out to be ridiculously expensive). Maybe an el-cheapo plastic trophy that he could hold onto would have been better...

Works of Art

Here are some of Lydia's latest creations. First: a duck habitat. The pink container began life as a gift box, then was repurposed as a puppet theater, and now it seems to have taken on a new existence as a sort of diorama.



Next, here is a collaboration by Lydia and Ethan-- she started it, then asked him for help on parts of the face. This is a copy of a D'Aulaire drawing of Helen of Troy, done in pencil:



Finally, here is an oil painting that Lydia did a while back at one of her arts & crafts workshops. She got it out to display to everyone while her grandparents were visiting in May.



Lydia's latest craze is knitting-- she has decided she wants to learn how to knit (this endeavor may be doomed to failure, since neither of her parents have the slightest idea how to start a knitting project).

Twenty First Century Thumb Twiddling

Our hapless system administrator (we are now down to a single person to support our entire lab) has been given the task of moving all of our files from the "old" network-attached storage device (basically just a big file server) to the "new" (and theoretically improved) network-attached storage device. This has not gone especially smoothly. This morning I logged into the machines at work and was able to get about 20 minutes of programming done before everything locked up completely. Those of you out there in the high tech world will (I am sure) be familiar with the dreaded message "NFS server not responding, still trying".

Accordingly, I have: surfed the web (extensively), read a bunch of research papers, read the blogs I follow, done a load of laundry, put away all the laundry from previous loads, gone to the grocery store to buy food for dinner, cleaned up the kitchen, ... and now I am (of course) writing this post.

This is actually one of the distinct drawbacks of my current work existence-- if things go wrong with the machines at work, there is really not a whole lot I can do about it, since the start of my work day is at midnight California time (not a whole lot of people in the machine room around then).

Perils of Password Protection

Ethan, alas, has forgotten the password for his gmail account, which means that he is currently locked out of both his email and his blogs. He made the mistake of changing his password shortly before we went on our vacation, then couldn't remember the new one when he got back (having done the same thing a couple of times with my computer password at work, I can certainly sympathize).

The prospects for recovering his account look somewhat dim at this point; there are lots of nice things to say about Google mail, but one thing that they definitely don't do especially well is provide effective help for people who are locked out of their accounts.

To certain degree, you have to sympathize with the Googlers (Googlites? Googlians?). When they receive an email from some unknown person Fred Smith saying "I have forgotten the password for my account flortzblatch@gmail.com, please change it so that I can log back in", it puts them in a difficult position. There is no way for the Googlers to figure out whether Fred is really the owner of the account, as opposed to someone who simply wants to break in or co-opt the account in some way. I have heard stories about people to try to send in copies of their drivers licenses, but even there it doesn't always help (proving that you are indeed Fred Smith doesn't mean that you are the true owner of a given account).

On the other hand, it's not much fun for Ethan-- this may turn out to be one of those unpleasant "learning experiences". I also bear some of the blame, since when I created the account for him, I didn't set up an alternate email. Oops. Sounds like I have some learning to do as well.

[Update: Ethan was able to finally get back into his account-- his special "security" question eventually bailed him out. -NM]