Doug's Sounding Board

The bathrooms where I work are shared among a several offices. The 30-foot journey to relief brings with it a large charge differential so that when you touch the bathroom door handle you get a large shock. Going out the rear entrance has similar issues. Strangely, the reverse trips don’t have the same issue. Over […]

This morning I planned to bake some things for work as a parting gift to my co-workers. I decided on this “Death by Chocolate” recipe (it’s not really deadly, but it is very good) and what some people call Sugar-Crack cookies (I should write that recipe up). I surveyed the ingredients, went to the store […]

I’m leaving VeriSign (last day is next Friday, Feb 1), and while I’m sad I’ll be leaving my co-workers, I am excited to be moving on to a new job at Full Power (starting Monday, Feb 18). That gives me two weeks off before I start. It’s still local and in fact my commute will […]

It seems like an eternity in coming but there’s only one more year to the Bush administration!

It was a mellow stay at home NYE watching movies and comforting the dogs as the explosions sounded. Unlike previous years where there are a few fireworks, this year there were a lot of explosions. Deeper and louded booms than you normally get on the 4th of July. The dogs weren’t freaking out but they […]

It took only one day to start feeling like autumn/winter. One day after the time change and the fog came and it was overcast all day and it got dark early to go with it. Finally!

On October 12 we saw Weird Al at the Golden State Theater in Monterey. Now that he’s become somewhat popular he plays bigger venues and they also tend to be seated which allows for better control of the stage production but it’s not quite as fun as being in a free-form audience. Highlights for me: […]

We got a chance to see George Carlin on Sunday and it made for the perfect end to the weekend. Previous times I had seen him albums had been recently released, but this show was leading up to an upcoming HBO special so the material was all new. Enough so that he had his notes […]

That was a great finale and I made something that won me a steeping teacup! (spoilers at the end) I made a  dessert appetizer composed of graham cracker, semi-sweet chocolate, and boysenberry butter. It ended up being a lot less sweet than I thought it would be which was a good thing since I was worried about it […]

The past weekend was great! Nicole came back from the UK Thursday night and the Friday day we drove to LA for a family reunion on my dad’s side. Nicole held up amazingly well despite the jet lag. Our family met at the Laguna Sawdust Art Festival and wandered before going to the main Laguna […]