Bartender Geek

I tried a new-to-me CSA this year, Who Cooks For You Farm. The summer share (which we got biweekly) was great, so I signed up for fall (weekly) which started this week. Their produce is very good, the prices are fair, and the people are very helpful and friendly. When we suddenly needed to leave town the day before a pickup (out-of-town funeral), they changed it for me. They don't do a winter share, alas, but maybe someday? Anyway, if you're in Pittsburgh and looking for a CSA, I recommend this one.

Related to this, any suggestions for ways to use watermelon radish other than raw in salads and roasted? It turns out that if you pickle it, while it tastes fine, the colors run and it no longer looks like little slices of watermelon.

In principle, the Internet is built on open, decentralized protocols. But in reality, an awful lot of the modern Internet depends on some key chokepoints. I found Cloudflare's post-mortem of Tuesday's outage fascinating and very well-done; most companies either don't publish reports like these or skimp on the details, but this one explains what happened and how red herrings made recovery harder. (Their service and the off-site status page went down at the same time; it was reasonable to suspect a coordinated attack, though it turned out to be a coincidence.) I feel for the team.

Today we got a notification from our local water utility about replacing lead pipes. They need our permission to replace the pipe connecting the main to our house, because part of it is on our property. They'll fix the sidewalk, but if they damage anything else, that's on us. Technically we can say no -- but if we do, they shut off our water. Um, great. We actually tested our water several years ago and the lead levels are well within acceptable parameters; left alone, we wouldn't do anything. But they're forcing the issue and I'm not sure why. (If there were bad test results, that would be different.) So, somebody will come by the week after next to look at our meter and plumbing and tell us what's going to happen. Joy.

I am now studying talmud, weekly and separately, with two different rabbis, neither of them my new rabbi. Earlier this year I also got connected to a Chabad Rosh Chodesh group (women only), which has been very nice. I love how interconnected the local community is. :-)

My new congregation continues to be a great fit.

I backed the Kickstarter for Kavango, a board game that we play a lot. The Kickstarter for an expansion is ending soon; I'm usually not a fan of game expansions, but this one looks solid, enhancing the game without making it more complicated or adding to the play length, so I backed it. (You can get the original game as a backer, too.)

We've been playing a lot of other games too. Terraforming Mars continues to be a favorite, including with one expansion (Preludes). Other expansions we've seen are not so appealing, though I'm interested in the alternate maps (other side of the planet).

A recently-published master's thesis on Stack Exchange's alienation of their core community and community responses was fascinating reading. I might have more to say about that later.

I am appalled by some of the shenanigans coming from the federal government of late, and that is about all I have the energy to say about it for now.