Vajrabot Error Log

Hypothesis: The Keurig pod-based coffee maker (which we just got for the break room at my day job) is capable of melting chocolate to make a really good cup of hot chocolate.

Background Research: I found that there are Hot Cocoa pods for the Keurig, but research shows that Hot Cocoa is made with cocoa powder (chocolate with the fats removed). Hot Chocolate, as opposed to Hot Cocoa, is made from actual melted chocolate and makes a much richer drink.

Attempt One: I retrieved a used coffee pod and cut it open. I removed the coffee grounds and filter that was inside and put slivers of chocolate inside (dark chocolate bars from Trader Joes), as well as a bit of sugar and cinnamon. I served it with some half-and-half.

Results: The chocolate didn't melt very well, the hole at the bottom of the pod got clogged, hot water overflowed and it made a big mess.

Attempt Two: Hoping for a lower melting-point chocolate, I got a box of fancy chocolate truffles at grocery outlet. I reused another coffee pod. I poked several holes in the bottom of the pod to make it easier for the melted chocolate to exit the pod. I filled it with slivers of chocolate truffle, some sugar, cinnamon and cocoa powder.

Results: Better, but there was still some clogging and overflow.

Attempt Three: Same as attempt two, but I found a slightly larger pod that held more chocolate, and I poked many more and larger holes in it.





Results: The chocolate melted and drained well. The hot chocolate was rich and tasty. However, all three attempts left melted chocolate in the Keurig apparatus that was hard to clean. Since few will be willing to do a difficult cleaning of their Keurig machine after making hot chocolate, I can only conclude that Keurig-based hot chocolate will never be a commercially viable product.

This weekend, Tenzin and I finished building the last of the three Doctor Who Lego-compatible sets I won on eBay. To celebrate, I finished putting display lights on a bookcase in the library (a project I had been meaning to finish since we put in the bookshelves more than 2 years ago!).

( pics behind the cut )

Charlotte is getting really good at drawing faces. I love the expression on this snake she drew:

We went to the Faire in the Grove!

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We went to the rock museum!

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We went to the pink street near our house and took some pictures:

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Last night I dreamed we were visiting Diamond C. Subeom, who was working as a pyrotechnic artist in Alaska, and I found this great place to sit and write: someone's garage, with a comfy couch and good music. And then someone (the garage's owner, I presume) came along to tell me I had to leave, and before I had to leave I wrote: "astrologers, scarred by the vast distances between worlds."

The weekend before last we went to Bellingham, Washington (I had a work conference). On the way back I found, behind a gas station, an old cigarette display case filled with dead leaves and women's underwear:
( that and much more, under the cut )

The kids invented a new game, the vice versa game. Part one is to make up sentences that are silly if you add a vice versa at the end, e.g. "I want to go to the zoo, and vice versa: the zoo wants to go to me." Part two is to try to make up sentences that sound normal, but the vice versa is scary, e.g. "I'm going to break a stick in half, and vice versa: a stick wants to break me in half." Part three is to just wait until people say things that would be funny switched around and to shout "and vice versa!"

One thing I like when reading about history is unintended consequences. Here's one of my favorites:
In Victorian London they had a lot of poor people crammed into slums, and so (naturally) a large criminal class emerged, with a lot of sneak thieves and pickpockets nimbly snatching wealthier people's property. There was a lot of crime and the Protestant middle and upper classes decided the problem was that the criminals weren't being punished hard enough. So they instituted a system of heavy labor in prisons, forcing prisoners to do back-breaking work all day long. The result is that nimble sneak-thieves went into prison and came out clumsy and musclebound. Too big and clumsy to be good sneak thieves or pickpockets, they became muggers. There was a huge rash of garroting in London, where nobody could walk down the street without fear of someone leaping from an alley and pulling a cord around their necks. Many died from garroting and people were so scared that anti-garroting societies (vigilante groups, basically, formed). So, in trying to suppress crime by punishing criminals more, the Victorians essentially traded non-violent crime for scary violent crime.

Last night I asked Charlotte to go into the dining room and start saying "waaa!" Then I said "This is the Dining Room, not the Whining Room!" which she thought was totally funny. This inadvertently started a game where we were running all over the house, telling each other to do silly things, and shouting "this is the ____, not the ____." E.g. "this is the hallway, not the crawl-way" or "this is the library, not the die-brary." We played this for at least half an hour.

And that's why being a parent is great.

Some pics from this last weekend.

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Tenzin got this reading prompt at school:

"I am going to snap my fingers and suddenly I'll be in a warm place! I'm going to ____ and then I get there, ____."

So Tenzin wrote "I'm going to the sun, and when I get there, I'm going to say 'ah, this is the life,' but wait, I'm going to burn to a crisp right now."

Charlotte's first day at day care, the kids at a birthday party (including some pics of Tenzin's buddy Josh), a new building-block Tardis, a cello thing at McMenamins, and a skeletal spider covered with fungus I found when changing the pool liner.
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Doctor Who minifigs:


Batman Arkham City (pretty good game so far!)

Blu Rays: Complete Harry Potter, Tron, Nigh Watch, Complete Matrix, Re-Cycle, Nigh Watch, Terminator 2, Inception, V for Vendetta, Doctor Who Complete 6th Series, Logan's Run.

The other night, as I was walking to the library with my 4-year old daughter (who, I should mention, was wearing a pink princess dress), she started talking about the qualities of an imaginary superhero team with us as members. She mentioned that this team killed supervillains, and that sparked a debate between me and her. My argument was that superheroes should put supervillains in jail when they can. Her argument was that supervillains might "bend the metal sticks" and escape from jail, and so therefor superheroes should kill them. It seemed an odd debate to be having with a 4 year old in a princess dress, but that's kids for you, ain't it?

I was reading Charlotte a book that had a picture of a vampire in it, and she said "hey, that looks just like that vampire from New York. He's my friend." I asked her for more details. The vampire's name is Sack Richmond. He lives in New York. He only bites other vampires who are bad (and that's why she's friends with him).

I got the video game Zeno Clash as part of one of those "pay-what-you-want" Indie video game bundles. I opened it up because Tenzin said "play that one" without having any idea what it was about. It's a First-Person fighting game, which I typically don't enjoy, but for some reason I've found it addicting and have been playing it for an hour or so each night (up from my normal average of around 0.1 hours of video games per evening).

I'm redrawing some mental venn diagrams because I find the game is creepy, but without being scary, if that makes any sense. The game tries really hard to make you feel like it would make sense if you understood the context, but then they refuse to give you any of that context. The result is a sort of uncanny valley for themes and aesthetics.

Little Charlotte was playing ring-around-the-rosie with Tenzin and when she got to the all-fall-down part she fell poorly and broke her collar bone. She got a sling. She was in quite a bit of pain at first but is doing okay now. The doctor said it should heal up in about 6 weeks or so.

The funny thing is that she's taken way worse spills, done much more dangerous things, but she breaks a bone playing ring-around-the-rosie in the library.

"All of the universes are haunted. That's a problem, daddy." -Charlotte while watching a Doctor Who episode

Vajra Enterprises now has an official Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vajra-Enterprises/276615079071080

Now that we have a TV capable off HD and a Blu Ray player (an can see how nice it looks compared to DVD), I find that I'd like to have some movies on Blu Ray. I'm pretty good at getting stuff cheap on eBay (if I'm patient enough). So here's my list of what I want and how much I'm going to bid for it on eBay. It ends up being a nice list of movies that I find visually appealing such that I would want to watch them in full HD.

$40
Harry Potter Complete Collection

$12-$20
X-Men Trilogy
Doctor Who Series 5
Doctor Who Series 6
Life on Mars Series 1
Life on Mars Series 2
Matrix Collection
Alien Anthology
V for Vendetta/Watchmen/Constantine 3-pack
Blade Runner - Complete Collector's Edition

$7
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship
Lord of the Rings: Two Towers
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Tron Legacy
Night Watch

$5
Pirates of the Caribbean: Black Pearl
Pirates of the Caribbean: World's End
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Dark City
Fight Club
Terminator 2
I Am Legend
Kick Ass
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Gattaca
Robocop
Escape from New York
The Warriors
Underworld
Gattaca
The Ring
The Crow

We went to the Modest Medusa book release party, we went to the JRR Tolkein birthday party at the McMenamins Kennedy School, there was snow, there was fog, there was rain, and Lucy killed a rat.

( here are some pictures )

Charlotte made up this song while she was sitting on the naughty spot. (I think it was for making a mess with food - that's what she usually sits on the naughty spot for.)

I think it's because we played the first episode of the Doctor Who Adventure Games the other night.

Right now, Tenzin is playing "guess which Doctor I am."

As Tenzin and I were looking at Sonic Screwdriver toys, we discovered that there is a whole line of Lego-compatible Doctor Who toys.











And in our family they say
that Brian's Amazon wishlist
Grew three sizes that day