To Assange or not to Assange

I love Ecuador!  They are making for some very interesting silliness to help me recover from London Olympics overload and annoying US Election craziness.

As I type this blog, Mr. Assange is hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy, hoping that the Bobbies are not going to storm the place and send him back to Sweden.  Harboring suspected criminals is great drama!

I don't know if he did what he is accused of doing in Sweden, but I am fairly certain that Mr. Assange is at least partially responsible for USCG computer security policies that prohibit me from using thumb drives in my unclassified computer.  There are many reasons that you should not freely share thumb drives, safe computing and scary viruses that can destroy all your important junk on your exterior brain devices......  but the things are darn convenient!

And very cute, which is quite tempting to a tchatchke lover like myself.  [ upon entering my office in Juneau, a colleague blurted out, "it's like a Chinese curio shop in here!"  Japanese might have been more accurate, as I LOVE little anime inspired doo dads like those produced by the German Sanrio company]

[borrowed from http://www.geekiegadgets.com/tag/hello-kitty/]

And since I tend to follow the rules which, if broken, could result in my spending many years in a lovely military location in Kansas learning how to make big rocks into smaller ones (at least that is the common joke), I refrain from using thumb drives in my work computer which is attached to "the network".  Many times, I think it should be called "the net won't", but that is a topic for another blog at a later date.

Back to our Australian friend.  Due to his prowess in getting people to share info which they should really keep in classified spaces, I cannot use useful items like the cute one pictured above to quickly transfer data from one computer to another.  I can, however, burn the data on to a CD or DVD, then put that large easily scratchable item into a computer which is NOT connected to "the network", and then, finally, put it on the illegal thumb drive.

I have attended many international meetings with multiple copies of my presentation on several different types of media.  I have even given some of those copies (usually CDs) to colleagues, so that if one person's luggage was lost, we still might be able to share the information electronically.

But back to our friend hiding out in the embassy.  I hope he is all settled in, because someone will surely grab him if he ever leaves the place.

I personally am hoping that the Brits revoke the diplomatic status of the building and send him back to Sweden.  He needs to pay for at least some of his transgressions!!

Hunting and gathering

In our modern existence, some individuals tend to be more closely related to much older traditions of providing sustenance for themselves and their families.  When I lived in Juneau, I had a dislike for the practice of "snagging" fish.  It just seemed so unsportsmanlike.

You have these huge heavily weighted treble hooks (some jokers call them grey flies) that you are trying to embed in the flesh of the salmon so that you can quickly haul them to shore and dispatch them.  There is no subtlety in this method of fishing, there is very little chance that the fish will not be maimed once it is hit.  Of course this method is only allowed in terminal fisheries where the fish is going to die anyway.

The place in Juneau where you see this method used most often is near the hatchery.  The fish are heading back there because they can smell and remember the water where they were born.  These guys are not truly wild fish, but they try and act like their completely wild cousins.  They think if they get as close to the fish ladder into the hatchery, they will be able to spawn and have their progeny continue the tradition of salmon migrations and the circle of life.  The ones who make it up the fish ladder just get milked for sperm or have their eggs harvested, which is probably about as painful as getting gobbled up by a hungry bear, but at least your kids have a better chance of making it back out to the ocean one day.

Bears are very picky about the fish they eat (when those fish are abundant).  They will generally not take the nearly dead spawned out fish, they want the firmer flesh of the ones who have not yet spawned.  You often just see most of the carcass lying on the ground, because the bear has taken the tasty morsels and left the rest of the body there to rot and attract flies.

But back to human fishing, "snagging" is very efficient.  All the fish are crowded in the area near the entrance to the fish ladder, so at the height of the return, you are assured of getting a fish if you can find a space to cast your line.  If you are fishing to feed your family, you want to get your fish as quickly as possible, so you can get back to other pursuits.

borrowed from http://www.headwatersoutfitters.com/fly-fishing.html

Given that I spent my entire childhood living in the suburbs (except the summers which we spent fishing, clamming and sunning ourselves on the beach at my grandparents' house on an island), and my psyche is dominated by some crazy notion that everything must be FAIR, I am drawn to a more relaxed manner of fishing.  [The picture above is a lovely brown trout from North Carolina.]

As a kid I spent a lot of time in the row boat with my brother and grandpa jigging for flounder, or at the state pier trying to get a striper (a.k.a. striped bass) but normally ending up with a squawking sea robin, but as an adult with too much disposable income for my own good, I have gotten into fly fishing.  There is something very primal about getting in tune with the tides and getting up early in the morning, sometimes even before the sun is up, so that you can be at the mouth of the creek at just the right time to try and entice a beautiful dolly varden to gulp the fly you have provided for their consideration.

I have had some very calming zen like experiences up to my waist in chilly water, rhythmically swaying my rod back and forth in an attempt to get the fly in just the right location to encourage the fish to strike.  If they are already at the point where they are no longer eating, you are most likely out of luck, as they will probably only attack the fly if they are annoyed.

That reminds me, I have some mostly dead canadian night crawlers in the fridge that need to get wet later today!  You don't always have to get out the fly fishing gear, but you do have to use your resources wisely (and get your fishing license, or my wildlife cop friends will come and find you......)

Attack of the killer cukes!

Because my hubby was going to be away in AK for most of the summer, he kindly built me a small raised bed in the backyard so I could try my hand at a vegetable garden.

Last time we had an official garden was in MA, two moves ago.  That one started out as a rock garden with ornamental plants, then some of the compost we were generating had acorn squash seeds in it, so we had all sorts of volunteer squashlings one year.  That encouraged me to put a few more fruits/veggies in the next year, so the rocks had to share space with cantaloupes and the like.  That house also had a small herb garden off the back porch.

The engineer I live with was disturbed by having flowers and food sharing the same space, so he made a rule about having only veggies or fruit in this new garden.  (he made a rule about weeding while he was gone as well, but I don't remember signing any paperwork, so ......)

Given the cars in the driveways of the current neighborhood we live in (let's just say that our two nearly 10 year old japanese cars make us look like bumpkins who do not belong), I do not believe that many of our immediate neighbors have veggie gardens.  The folks across the street are an exception.  The houses are so big that you cannot easily look into people's backyards, so I have no easy way to confirm this by walking around the neighborhood and not getting to meet some of the local police officers.....

I learned some lessons about some things growing faster than others, overcapacity, and what the local varmints like to eat.  The biggest lesson has been not to plant so many cucumbers!!!

Either the soil/compost was incredibly rich, or the gardner was incredibly skilled, or the combination of really hot temps and a reliable sprinkler system did the trick with these behemoths, I am not sure which.

The hubster had the great idea of making the bed almost 2 feet high instead of just 8 inches or so, and the topsoil he got was incredibly rich.  This, and some other kind of rookie veggie-only gardner magic has resulted in the monster cucumbers pictured above.

I will be eating cucumber sandwiches until November!