IP SchmyPee

[susandennis]

I am a network noob. If you had me a problem that has an IP address as even a small part of it, I turn into Gone with the Wind... I don't know nuthin' bout freakin networks!!!.

After the latest Windows update, my computers got separation papers. The desktop could see the Lenovo and the Eeepc but not the netbook. The netbook could see only the Eeepc. The Lenovo could only see the desktop. What a freakin' nightmare!!!

Plus, I didn't want to reboot anything again unnecessarily until I figured out how to assign an IP addresss to the computer that houses the radio server or reserve one on the router. I've been trying to figure out for days how to reserve one without success.

Looking online for that kind of info nets you the 2005 how to or the complete compendium of networks since the beginning of time. Nothing quick, dirty and useful.

Finally when I got back from swimming today, I went through the router menus one more time and BAM!!! There it is! Reserved it. Rebooted the router and now most of all the computers now mostly see all of each others. At least I have the critical pieces back together. And the radio server still works.

Whew.

One of my errands was a grocery trip - I needed butter and they had Land o' Lakes on sale. I didn't think a thing about it until I got home and discovered I had bought East Coast Butter!! How funny.

All my growing up years, butter (and margarine, actually) came in long skinny sticks. And butter dishes were long and skinny.

Then I got to the west coast and all the butter is short and fat. And butter dishes are short and fat. I've been on the west coast now for nearly 25 years. I'm good with short and fat.

But now I've got skinny! It's so weird. The remote is just for sizing.

howeird pointed out that that once the buds on these trees turn into leaves, I will likely never see the train station again. I actually won't see most of what is in the background here. By the time The Tree That I Hate loses its leaves again, the building will have grown far beyond my terrace.

The landscape out my terrace has changed many times over in the 20 years I've lived here. And now it will again.

My brother sent me a Charles Manson photo of himself from the hospital. Holy crap, somebody at least gather that hair up and hide it. At least he's alive.

Comments

[qnetter]

You're looking at my office through the tree.

[susandennis]

Yep. But, soon... you will be safe from my prying eyes...

[howeird]

networking
You're no noob - you always figure it out. Once you get past the initial panic of multiple spastic computers and take each problem one by one, you're fine.

butter
What you have there is west coast butter (Darigold) and Minnesota butter (Land 'o' Lakes). As any native Seattlite will tell you, Minnesota is part of Back East™. Most of Ballard in the 1960's came from Minnesota on their calistoga wagons.

The Tree
I still don't know why you aren't watering it regularly with saline solution.

Your Bro
Yay for still alive! May he thrive.

[susandennis]

I do appreciate your vote of confidence in my networking forerays. I always feel like when I get to a fix it was by luck. So when the next thing crops up, I feel no more educated. lather, rinse, repeat. I do mostly always get it figured out. I need to remember that.

BUT all butter out here Darigold, and everything else is short and squat. I was trying to remember the shape butter was when I lived in Minnesota. I'm pretty sure that ALL the butter I ever knew before I got to California was long and lean.

I just showed Ann (neighbor) my new butter and she instantly exclaimed "New York butter!!!!" She was raised in So. Cal.

I think everyone in Seattle thinks anything on the other side of the eastern Washington boarder (and some believe the marking point is North Bend) is Back East.

The tree didn't even sneeze when I emptied a gallon bleach on the roots every Sunday for a month. I have not tried saline.

but why?

[henare.livejournal.com]

why is east coast butter slim and west coast butter short and squat?

Re: but why?

[susandennis]

That is a great great question and I have no idea. I've never even heard anyone else ever mention it. It's my own personal weird. I'd love to know why.

Re: but why?

[howeird]

From the butter wikipedia entry:
In the United States, butter is usually produced in 4-ounce sticks, wrapped in waxed or foiled paper and sold four to a one-pound carton. This practice is believed to have originated in 1907, when Swift and Company began packaging butter in this manner for mass distribution.[33]

Due to historical differences in butter printers (the machines which cut and package butter),[34] these sticks are commonly produced in two different shapes:

The dominant shape east of the Rocky Mountains is the Elgin, or Eastern-pack shape, named for a dairy in Elgin, Illinois. The sticks are 121 millimetres (4.8 in) long and 32 millimetres (1.3 in) wide and are typically sold stacked two by two in elongated cube-shaped boxes.[34]

West of the Rocky Mountains, butter printers standardized on a different shape that is now referred to as the Western-pack shape. These butter sticks are 80 millimetres (3.1 in) long and 38 millimetres (1.5 in) wide and are usually sold with four sticks packed side-by-side in a flat, rectangular box.[34]

Both sticks contain the same amount of butter, although most butter dishes are designed for Elgin-style butter sticks.[34]

The stick's wrapper is usually marked off as eight tablespoons (120 ml/4.2 imp fl oz; 4.1 US fl oz); the actual volume of one stick is approximately nine tablespoons (130 ml/4.6 imp fl oz; 4.4 US fl oz).

Re: but why?

[susandennis]

Nailed it!!! Great find. Thank you!

Mystery solved.

Re: but why?

[howeird]

And of course the amount of time it takes to ship butter from Back East means a higher price and a shorter shelf life, which means stores will order fewer units at a time, which raises the price even more. Since WA, OR and CA are mega-dairy states, most of the butter you will see in SEA is stubby.

[ljtourist.livejournal.com]

Wow. I had noticed that butter stopped looking how I remembered it, but I never attributed it to an East versus West thing. Neat! I do love Land 'o Lakes, but finding their products out here is a PITA sometimes. Mmm. Now I'm craving some delicious white American cheese! Maybe later I'll do a green bean casserole with "fried onions". :P

[susandennis]

Yeah!!! someone else on the butter team!!!

Grocery Outlet now has L o' L btw.

I've never ever seen white American cheese out here.

[ljtourist.livejournal.com]

The QFC which used to be on LQA had while Land 'o Lakes, but it was in the deli case, never in with the rest of the pre-packaged stuff. It wasn't advertised as L-o-L, but the wrapper said it was. I might have to check out the new, much more expensive, fancy ugly monstrosity that is its replacement over on Mercer to see if they have it.

[howeird]

Bleach? This is kind of amusing, because salt (saline) is NaCl and bleach is NaClO, so at first you might think it would do some damage. But the sodium is not bound to the chlorine as strongly as the Oxygen is, and ClO is a great fertilizer. What you probably did was kill off some harmful - to the tree - surface bacteria and after the ground had filtered out the sodium, you fed the tree a lovely meal.

It's also possible the bleach never was absorbed by the roots, since dirt is a real good filter.

Unfortunately, anything I can think of which would be effective would also be easy to be caught doing. "I was just learning to juggle three chainsaws..." "All I did was light my cigarette and throw the match on the ground next to that gas can."

[susandennis]

I do like the way you are thinking... Neighbor Ann told me the other day, however, that even if that damn tree dies any time soon of natural causes, they will come after me. I think I probably have bitched too loud and too long.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Back East here in Philadelphia we have both shapes, depending on brand. We generally shop at Trader Joe's, and I was very happy to find the shorter, thicker sticks there. We keep butter on the table in a butter dish (with the lid held on by rubber bands, against the Resident Feline Marauder). The dish is long enough for a long stick of butter and wide enough for a wide one... which means I can put in a new stick *before* the old one is used up, if it's short and wide, but not if it's long and skinny.

Trader Joe's, BTW, is based in Monrovia, California.

[susandennis]

I'm really surprised to hear you have a Trader Joe"s way out there. Cool to know. When I got here to the west coast, I had to toss my butter dish cause it was too long and skinny for the butter here.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

There are Trader Joe's even all the way here (there is, in fact, one in Cambridge).

Some of the brands of butter at the local Whole Foods (I haven't noticed which) are short and fat. Fortunately our butter dish, like thnidu's, can accommodate both shapes.

[machupicchu.livejournal.com]

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Shobhit shopped regularly at two different Trader Joe's stores in Manhattan. I took a picture of the empty bread shelves in one of them the weekend he moved away, just ahead of the hurricane whose name I am for some reason forgetting at the moment.
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[susandennis]

you are totally right. how could I forget? we even discussed it.

beauty over brains. i suffer.

[machupicchu.livejournal.com]

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We discussed it? That I don't remember at all. Beauty over brains indeed!

Incidentally, this post immediately made me go and look at my own butter, which has been the same shape at least for the past ten years I've been working for PCC -- as that's where I get my butter.



But . . . I went to the Organic Valley website, and they are a cooperative group of farms . . . in Wisconsin. And last time I checked, Wisconsin was east of the Rockies! So I guess that explains it. In any event, this shape certainly doesn't come across as unusual to me; it's what I'm used to.

Also, I'm finding myself amused by anyone who might randomly see that shot in my Flickr photo stream, at least as long as I have no caption on it. Ha! Maybe I should caption it "Date Night."

EDIT: Jesus Christ. I looked it up online? Maybe that shape of the State of Wisconsin on the stick of butter itself could have been my first clue!
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[susandennis]

we discussed it in the U District Trader Joe's after the movie about that woman who goes to Egypt? to look for her husband and has an affair. Ok so some details I remember and some I don't.

Love the TiVo butter meme

[susandennis]

well, you are seriously pretty so no worries.

[machupicchu.livejournal.com]

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:)

The movie was Cairo Time, which I do remember seeing with you. I remember really liking it (A-). It had Patricia Clarkson. And I have only the haziest memory of going into Trader Joe's after the movie.
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[susandennis]

Between the two of us we share some serious random access memory.