Dave Page

For her birthday, Bette wanted to go to the Green Zebra, a nouveau-vegetarian restaurant in River West Chicago. We heard about it, seen on Check Please, and talked about with friends, none of whom had anything bad to say. Sign me up!

Sara, Bette and I headed down on Wednesday afternoon on Metra, overstuffed heavy hanging bag in hand. Hanging bags are very hard to manage when overstufffed — bulky! Bette was attending the Delta Delta Delta convention at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, so we were staying overnight. Sara had to work the next day, so she was training back.

Since it was holiday weekend, the $5 passes were for sale. The train is so nice for going downtown. The Hyatt is a good 1.5 miles from the train, and there was no way I was carrying the bag that far without a shopping cart. So we hopped in a cab with a dour driver and were there in a few minutes.

We checked in, while I got over my feeling of deja-vu from being there the previous week for the Tufte seminar. We moved over to the assistant manager check-in desk since Bette’s Tri-Delta pals had only signed her up for one night, but things were settled, and we headed up to 2330. It overlooked the river and we could see the new Trump tower, Wrigley building, and other places. Nice room. I changed, Sara worked on her newly shorn locks for a few hours.

Plan A was to go to Chellie and Alberto’s new place, and check it out. Bette checked in with Chellie, and they were in the middle of finding a repair service to fix their A/C. So we would head over there after dinner. Plan B was the Big Bar downstairs.

Sara had been here before, and we pulled up to a table, noticing it was REAL hot there. I took off my sport coat and noticed the table was warm to the touch — maybe the sun was on it all morning, it was now cloudy. We ordered a large Cosmopolitan for $24. Well, it was large! It was a large martini glass about 1 foot tall and 8 inches in diameter with three straws. (No backwash!). Needless to say we were all a little tipsy leaving. And it was still early!

Had a little challenge getting a cab — waited too long, and the evening rush had started, soaking up most of the cabs that had been dawdling outside. We found one, called Chellie to warn her we were on the way, and called the restaurant to warn them we were late, and to expect Gemma, who is usually very punctual. As a matter of fact, she was already there!

We stopped at Chellie’s on Franklin to pick up her brother Brad who, a football player and big guy, would not fit into the back of Alberto’s Miata. 5 minutes later we were down Chicago Ave and at the Green Zebra.

We found these patents when Bette’s Dad died. He never told us, but had talked about working at Warwick back in the day. Pretty cool.

Automatic Television Channel Selector (Dec 15, 1964)

HingedlyJoined Television Cabinet That provides for front and rear exposure of components.

Working late on a Sunday. Pandora comes up with Dave Matthews Band’s “Ants Marching” from “Under the Table and Dreaming”. Amidst the air drumming, a revelation:

Just before we left for Sarah’s memorial service, we danced to that song. Sarah loved DMB. How fitting for Father’s Day.

Back to work.

Sara and Ryan gave us a gift certificate for $25 for the Rosebud Cinema Drafthouse last year. We finally got around to using it at the 4PM show of “Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull“. (The certificate had expired but Bette had called to confirm we could still use it). It looks like a small neighborhood theater, but in the lobby is a snack bar that sells *GASP* beer and wine. I ordered a Spotted Cow, Bette got some wine, Sara had some Mike’s concoction. We ordered the appetizer sampler plate with garlic cheese bread, fried mozz, onion rings and chicken fingers, took a plastic number ala Culver’s and headed into the theater.

We saw rows and rows of black velour loveseats, with nice side tables between each one to perch drinks and eats. We sat, set our number on the back of the sofa and waited. In 15 mins, our food came, delivered to the sofa. Way cool.

The movie was OK, typical Indiana Jones, he and Marion Ravenwood a bit older from when I first saw them, but with lots of crashing and smashing about. Bette liked the romantic angle. The ending was a bit bizarre, but on the whole it was fun. Especially on the sofa. With beer. I can deal with a much lower quality of movie in this environment.

We then headed out to find dinner. We started to head back to the expressway, but Sara mentioned the Chancery in Wauwatosa (or Tosa as those in the know call it), and we were driving right by. We parked, and walked across the street to check out the other restaurants along State Street. There was a brick oven pizza joint that looked good, but we walked to the corner and looked into Ristorante Bartolotta. Italian, nice bar, white linen tablecloths. Bette was all about this place. We went in, and found they were booked for dinner at a table, but we could get full service at the bar. I hesitated but Bette did not, and we joined up with Tim at the bar.

Tim set us up with white linen napkins (baby tablecloths) and knew good points and bad points of all the dishes. Bette and I got wine, me a Barbera “Le Orme” and Bette a Sauvignon Blanc. Sara wanted Riesling, but in Italy? Nein. Tim set her up with a rose colored “Bigaro”, a more dessert wine. She seemed to like it. Tim brought around the tongs and dug hunks of bread out of the bread bucket, and dished out the olive oil.

I had the Beef Filetto ($35) with nice garlic mashed and veges. Done medium rare, pricey, but good. Bette got the Pomodoro tomato/cheese salad (which we split, and Tim brought it out on two plates - nice touch) and the small order of Gnocchetti di Semola al Ragu di Crostacei ($16) for the main course. Mmm. Sara had Braciola di Maiale ($23), a huge pork chop on the bone. Nice. She had a heck of a doggy bag (for her dad). Tim answered some questions about Grappa I had from San Francisco, and let me sample one.

For dessert we had coffees and a Sundae di Gelato ($7), which was vanilla bean gelato and caramel sauce. Simple but wonderful.

Tim got a great tip, sitting at the bar was more fun than a table, and I could not think of one thing wrong. Great place, and worth the trip. Highly recommended.

Rosebud Drafthouse 6823 W. North Ave Wauwatosa, WI 414.607.9446
Wauwatosa Chancery 7615 West State Street Wauwatosa, WI 414.453.2300
Bartolotta Ristorante 7616 West State Street Wauwatosa, WI 53213 414.771.7910

So when I try to use the latest Gallery Remote 1.5 I get an error message:

Error: http post failed (http 404 not found)

Using Wireshark to sniff the request from GR:

POST /gallery_remote2.php HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Gallery Remote 1.5
Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip, x-gzip, compress, x-compress
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-length: 59

cmd=login&protocol_version=2.3&uname=XXX&password=XX


The response:
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found

So it seems to be looking for a file called gallery_remote2.php. I don’t have it.

JavaOne is the big Java technology show at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. FSC sent me there with two guys from work, John and Joe to scope things out. We caught a limo from work at 9:30A and had an uneventful ride to SF. A gentleman and his (adopted??) son were next to me in the aisle seats, and the 2-year-old boy was fun. He crawled, pulled everything out of the seat pockets, fell asleep on me a couple times, and was a doll. His big sister in the row ahead would poke her head up occasionally to say hi to Daddy.

We arrived about 3:00, cabbed in, chatting with the driver, and checked in at the InterContinental Hotel. Nice place. Expensive. Rooms with the discounted rate were $260/nite. It is very close to the Moscone Center (a short 5 minute walk down Howard St.) The good thing about staying here is we just stayed at the Buckhead IC — so I knew where to go for boarding passes, and a few other details. The bad thing — a draft beer is $10.

I was in 819, a great room just above the fitness center balcony. Big windows, lots of light. At night too, but there are sheet and dark drapes. I kind of like the light at night — you feel like you are in a big city.

We hopped the F train, an old-time electric light rail cars to Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 47 to Scoma’s, which both George at the office and the concierge recommended. I like to eat at places George recommends in case we get grief for prices on the expense account.

Yum. We had some local brews to start off at the bar while we were waiting, and the personable bartender let John try a sample of one before buying. I had the Dunkle Weiss.

We sat, and waited a while for the waitress to show up. It was just starting to get busy.

Calamari A
ppetizer $15
PETRALE DORE $29
Prawn Annuzzi $28
I had the Seared Ahi ($31) which was nicely rare and very good, with wasabi and a nice vegetable.

We decided to eat out coming back from the rainy yet fascinating WPPC Wildflower Walk and hit our new old favorite Mixteca Grill on Rt 47 just south of Lake Ave. in Woodstock. We entered close to 8PM and it was busy, but a table soon opened up and we were seated at a booth. We dove into the fresh chips and 4 different salsas, of which the hot lime green one is my favorite. Clean out that nose! Add two nice margaritas, rocks, salt. Mmmmm.

The special board had two items I never heard of, both containing PXXXXX. I asked one of the tag-team servers (actually, I think she is one of the owners — could it be Claudia of Claudia and Mike Kriesemint) about it. She said the PXXXXX was grilled pulled chicken with the sauce, with black beans and rice. The Burrito Suizo PXXXXX was a chicken burrito with the PXXXXX sauce (instead of the typical red sauce). We ordered.

Wonderful. Thick sauce. Peanut flavor. Like Chicken Satay on a grand scale. Chicken done well. Brilliant.

Mixteca Tequila Bar & Grill, 1390 S. Eastwood Drive, Woodstock, IL

Mom, Dad, Bette and I went to Bull Valley Golf Club for dinner, and then were off to see “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” at the Woodstock Opera House.

The play was good. It is a bawdy farce, and some of the door slamming etc. seemed to go on too long, but the cast was great. Standouts were Kyle McCoy as Pseudolus, who mugged to the audience and Jim Crow as Hysterium. Without players for these roles of this caliber, I can see the 2:30 running time as a huge snoozefest. They engaged the audience and each other with insane energy. After seeing these two drive the show, I don’t feel like I need to see it again. I think I saw it once in high school.

Went to see Katherine as a bird girl in Seussical at Wheeling High School. The show was good, the costumes were great, and it was fun to see Kat up there. I am constantly amazed at how talented high school kids are.

Note: see the “Horton Hears a Who” movie or read it and “Horton Hatches an Egg” or you won’t know what is going on. We saw Horton in FL on vacation…good thing.

OK so they warned me. They moved to a new Linux platform, and Subversion stopped working.

I used my own instructions to rebuild. No good. Errors.

After some Googling I found an article by Nick Sergeant and he basically had the same routine. But he dumped 1&1. I can’t afford to now.

So I tried the latest subversion 1.4.6. Looks like it built. Will it update WordPress and Gallery?

WordPress: yes. Gallery: probably. Looks like we are in business.

Why can’t 1&1 at least provide a subversion client?