Snowshoe hike and video on Monday - 26 January 2022

Trapped for days in a ground-hugging fog, we sought escape on Monday, 24 January 2022.  The weather report had gotten monotonous: day after day of heavy fog warnings in "lowland areas" covered the entire Puget Sound area.  Fog filled the valleys of metropolitan Seattle all day and the Weather Service extended the warnings each day for yet another day.  We had some days of pretty steady rain before that, so we were getting stir-crazy.  Another case of COVID cabin fever struck.  The fog went up to about 3000 feet and there was rumored to be sun above, so we knew where we had to go - to the mountains.  But not just any "mountains".  Stevens Pass is only about 3000 feet, barely above the fog, so we decided to go for Mount Rainier.

We usually head for the Henry Jackson Visitor Center at the Paradise area in Mount Rainier National Park (MRNP).  We have been there many times over the years, usualy a couple times each year.  It is easy access, has plenty of parking (if you arrive early enough), and the Paradise area is open year-round.  We visit the Sunrise area during the summer and shoulder seasons, but it is a bit farther and, well, it closes in the winter so it is not open until June or so?  The route to Paradise takes us through Puyallup, Elbe, Longmire, and up the part road to Paradise.  Our travel was uneventful.  We left the house about 9am (against an 8:30am target departure) and arrived with plenty of room to be found.  Of course, the 24th of January was a Monday, so we were riding the benefits of a retired life.  On the weekend, the crowds are sure to be much larger.

We grabbed our snowshoes, poles, and packs, and headed for the trail to Camp Muir.  Normally, there are some broad stairs and asphalt trails to welcome visitors, but all that was buried under snow.   We rather followed the asphalt trails but they are hard to find under the snow - and irrelevant.  However, muscle memory in the legs from all those summer visits lead one to familiar routes.  A few people were out with hiking boots but we were glad to have snowshoes.  Very simply, we did not have to look where we were walking.  Postholing was not a concern and we did not have to choose compacted routes;  the area of the snowshoes spreads our weight.  With the claws and heals on the snowshoes, we could walk a straight line that took us straight up a slope or allowed us to wander without fear of sliding sideways.  The younger set may not need poles, but the older crew finds them helpful to pull or restrain on slopes and very handy for balance.  We walked to a point a bit above the Dancefloor, closer to the Nisqually canyon, appreciated the views, and then headed down by the Dancefloor.  

The views were grand.  We could see the whole area above the fog in the valleys.  Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens stood proud on the horizon to the south, the Tatoosh Range clearly visible, and, of course, Tahoma herself to the north.  There was the odd cloud or contrail across the sky, but bright blue burned all around and above.  The temperatures were astounding - hot.  We did not measure the temperature, but a fellow hiker told us it was in the upper-60F range.  He said 67F, and while I am reluctant to believe that exact number, I did have to stop twice to remove layers of insulation.  I ended up wearing a wicking t-shirt and a "fishing" shirt.  It did get chilly in the shade, but we spent most of the time above the tree-line, so the sun warmed us virtually the entire time.  It was quite comfortable when walking, but I did put on my puffy sweater when we stopped.  Most of the people around us were also hiking in various ways (mostly snowshoes but several boots), and one guy even had a sled that he was pulling.  I guess he was going to spend the night at Camp Muir.  And there were a handful of skiers.  The overall hike was 2.5 miles (round-trip) in 2:00 hours, and the vertical rise was 870 feet.  Paradise is right around 5000 feet altitude.  

I grabbed some photos, but I used this outing as a training ground for GoPro video.  In the past, I have done timelapse and even Time Warp to some degree of success, but with this trip I wanted to do some post-processing to produce a more structured video. I did skip the bit about preparing a story - my "story" was to be a snowshoe hike on Mount Rainier - so I planned for a series of clips.  To this end, I chose Video > Cinematic at 4K, 24fps, SuperView, and auto-steady (I think GoPro calls it hypersteady or similar).  I used handheld with no special adaptations (no external stabilizer, just the in-camera features).  On the route up, I started with shorter clips, a minute or so each and mostly panoramas, and on the return down, I took longer clips while in motion.  I ended up with about 20 minutes of video that I cut down to 14 minutes in DaVinci Resolve 17.  My first edit ran over the YouTube limit of 15 minutes, so my second version cut that down to almost exactly 14 minutes and I added some titles.  I did nothing with the audio and I only used fades on the title sections - no fancy crossfades.  

(Note - although I can adjust the placement of the photos, Blogger insists on centering the video.)

A Wreck Not the Edmund Fitzgerald - 23 January 2022

In Vancouver BC there is a barge.  Washed up in a storm, it has come to rest in a park.  The analysis seems to conclude that it has found a final resting place; it will not move under natural causes.  So someone wrote a song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnqFpswfquI

Seeding for Spring - 21 January 2022

Early, I know, but I have put down some grass seed.  We have had a period of dry weather (meaning 24-36 hours without rain), so it remains relatively cold, but I am optimistic that the seed will germinate given a chance.  The bag officially says 60-80 degrees, and we are in the 40's, so consider this an experiment.

The daffodils are peeking abovve the ground, a good six inches up, and the hellebores have been showing for a couple weeks, so life is active.  At the worst, I am feeding the birds.  I admit that I did apply it far more thickly than advised.

Most of the delivery trucks are fine, but a couple of them are challenged by the long, narrow driveway.  The occasional driver will leave the drive and plow through the grass.  One would think that the cement curbs could serve as a hint, but they seem insufficient in practice.  I try to ignore the stripes, but they eventually get to me and I head out with yet more seed.  Further, there are a couple areas that get limited sun, so I reseed often.  I am starting to think that I need a couple patches of shade garden.

I am also looking into pruning.  The apple tree will need to be pruned and the raspberries will be helped by a good pruning.  I did prune the apple tree last year at this time, but evidence suggests I did precisely the wrong things.  We ended up with about four (4) apples even though the tree appears healthy.  Clearly, I cut all the wrong bits.

  

Forest Forensics - Figuring out what happened here - 19 January 2022

Interesting things happen in the forest all the time.  Whether we hear the tree fall or not, we can look around to deduce what has happened.  I know a little bit about this, for example, stumps that indicate logging or root-dishes from a tree that has fallen over, but (professor) Tom Wessels goes far beyond my poor abilities to extract key events from subtle clues.  He includes obvious clues such as stone fences running through the woods to more subtle clues such as the flatness of the area in the forest (or not).  Fires, farming, hurricanes, logging, disease, snowstorms - each leaves different imprints on the land and on the trees that survive the event. With careful observations and deductions, he can even give rough time estimates for the event, some of which can correlate back to recorded history (e.g., "the hurricane of 1857" and such).   I am going to read his book and see what I can deduce about the forests in this area.  His work seems to be primarily on the forests of New England, so I will have to do some adaptations for the forests of the Pacific Northwest.  Should be fun.

Forest Forensics, or Reading the Forest: Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3

He has books, too.

Recruiting and hiring - 13 January 2022

Recruiting to hire is the hardest task that any manager has. There are other tasks that require more emotional energy, but recruiting has the largest single impact over the longest time.  If a manager hires the wrong people, the team will go to crap, productivity will sour, and the whole team will be eliminated.  Yes, this is a worst-case scenario, but no manager wants to have 20% or even 10% of their team to be misfits or unproductive.  The way to build up the team to prevent bad endings is through recruiting and hiring.

So why do managers encourage the use of trick questions and simple coding tests to evaluate candidates?  Entire companies are proud to tell you that they hire based on these criteria.  Stupid.  They should know better.

How many utility covers are there in Seattle?  How many gas stations are there in LA?  why are utility covers round?  What is the volume of water flowing in the Mississippi as it passes New Orleans?  What is the length of a catenary chain hanging under the following conditions?  Do you really have a job that requires the skills needed to answer these questions?  If so, you must work in a library.  

Write code to reverse a linked list in-place.  Write code for itoa() (returns a character string given an integer).  Give me ways to detect loops in linked lists.  These are useful questions for an aspiring programmer, but the hiring manager needs far more information to make a good hiring decision.  Unless the hiring manager runs a coding sweatshop, in which case, carry on.

None of these questions reveals sufficient substance about the candidate or their skills.  There are many, better ways to get information about the candidate so that the hiring manager can make an informed choice.  Consider.

0. Start with the job description and the resume (CV).

Work from the information on the candidate's resume (CV) and in the job description.  (You do not have a job description?  Go back and start again.  You are not ready to hire.)  Ask questions about what the candidate did regarding an entry on the resume, what problems they solved, and how they achieved success.  Many candidates will respond with answers about the team or the project - repeat the question and emphasize that you want to know what the candidate personally did.

1. Read the resume in advance.  Make notes.  Plan  your interview strategy.  Be consistent.

2. Read the job description in advance.  Understand what skills and experience are required for the role.  If there is flexibility, understand the dimensions and the limits. If you are not sure, contact the hiring manager for clarification.

3. Understand the skill levels required for the position.  The skill mastery for an entry-level position is not the same as for a senior-level position.

Give the candidate a chance to breathe and to think if they do not answer immediately.  Or if their answer is terse.  Just listen in silence, and the candidate should respond.  If the silence goes on for too long, prompt the candidate with something benign such as "tell me more" or "please expand on that".  Often the candidate will be reluctant to speculate, so you can invite speculation ("if you need to speculate, you can tell me your thoughts").  

NB - some candidates will be limited by NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, or other confidentiality requirements.  Ask if that is limiting their answer.

If you ask a challenging question beyond that required in the role or the level of the position, that can give you insight as to the growth potential of the candidate.  A person willing to speculate may or may not succeed in your environment.

Some candidates will reply that a topic was so long ago that they do not recall details.  While this is a valid response, I have found that people with long memories are often better able to apply a wide range of skills - skills that they have retained over time.

4. Divide the questions across the interview team.

5. Include an outlier on the interview team to help assess breadth of the candidate.

Everyone on the interview team should have a primary area on which to focus their questions.  These areas can be defined based on the resume (demonstrated skills and training) and from the job description (required skills and training).  The interviewer is not bound to precisely their primary area, but they should explore that primary assigned area in depth before they ask questions outside the primary area.  This avoids the problem of everyone asking about the most recent job (or school) assignment.  That only gives the hiring manager multiple copies of the same snapshot of the candidate;  distributing the areas allows the hiring manager to see a broader picture of the candidate.

The hiring manager can defend the ultimate hiring decision by referring to the primary areas that were explored in the interview and relate those to the requirements in the job description.  Some will argue that "fit with the team" is important, and we will cover that shortly.

6. The candidate should do most of the talking during the interview.

7. Beware of hiring for "fit".  This can lead to unconscious bias.

simply, if the interviewer is doing too much talking,  the interview is evaluating the wrong person.  The interview is to evaluate the candidate, therefore the candidate should talk the most.  That said, the interviewer is responsible to cover the topic areas of interest, so the interviewer must control or drive the interview.  A talkative candidate may give insights to areas not of interest, and the interviewer must drive the conversation back to the important topics.  

In the wrap-up meetings, interviewers will casually say things like "I liked the candidate".  This is not a dating site; the hiring manager is not choosing a sports team.  It is easy for human beings to like others who are most like them, people who have had shared experiences or who have common likes.  this can lead quickly down a path to EEO hell (equal employment opportunity).  Hiring for "fit" is interesting, but it must be relegated to a low priority in the hiring decision.  It may break a tie between candidates who are similar on many other criteria - and, even then, should be used carefully and as a last resort.  Now, some people are hard to deal with or are unclear in their communications.  A candidate who has left seven prior positions after 12-18 months with a story about "stupid management" will probably leave your position after 12-18 months with a new story about the hiring manager's stupidity, but there may be critical skills or environment differences that would allow that person to succeed in your organization.  Do not hire such a candidate blindly, but neither should the hiring manager shun them.  If the team consistently hires for "fit", not only can the hiring manager run afoul of EEO requirements, but the hiring manager can end up with group-think and a shortage of creativity across the team, leading to a fatal lack of diverse ideas. 

8. When the interviewer finds themselves leaning toward a decision, shift the questions to try to disprove the emerging decision.  

9. Stretch the candidate.

As mentioned earlier, include someone outside the nominal boundaries of the job description and the resume.  The hiring manager may be surprised to find that the candidate has broader skills than represented on paper.  this breadth may be a valuable addition to the team.

10.  There is no such thing as an "OK" candidate or an interviewer being "on the fence" (undecided).  The hiring manager must treat "OK" and "undecided" as no-hire.

All candidates should receive equal and fair treatment.  To support a hiring recommendation, each interviewer owns their decision and they should each test that decision.  If I start to "like" a candidate, I may start asking easy questions, which makes it easy to hire them.  To increase confidence in your hiring recommendation, challenge yourself when you start to lean toward a decision.  

Interviewers are human and will tend toward "good news" - or, at least, will avoid bad news.  It is tempting to say "OK" or "on the fence" rather than to say "no".  A "no" could harm someone's career or deny them a job that they need.  No one wants to be the bad guy.  

11. Hold an debrief meeting shortly after the interview (same day is ideal but next-day is more common).  

12. Each interviewer must state clearly their results and recommendation.

Thus, each interviewer must state a clear hire/no-hire recommendation and back it up with particulars.  The interviewers do not need to agree and they The hiring manager is responsible to collect the input and use it to determine a hiring decision.  The hiring manager may disagree with the collective recommendation, sometimes for reasons that must be kept private, but all interviewers should speak and each must make a clear recommendation.  there should be no silent interviewers.  If someone is silent, you did not need to include them and you wasted the time of the interviewer and the candidate.

13. Collect and keep records. 

Candidates will return.  sometimes a candidate will find a position that does not fit and they will return quickly to the hiring pool.  the hiring manager can review the records to determine how aggressively to pursue the candidate - or let them continue to look elsewhere.  NB - some interview process, perhaps abbreviated, is always appropriate, so a prior interview is not to be treated as a sure-hire ticket.  Situations change and requirements change, so a refresh interview is necessary unless the interval since the last interview is extremely short.

finally, we live in a litigious world.  Keep critical records for a reasonable time.  The hiring manager does not need to keep all records for all time, but a summary document should be retained for a few years.  It is not sufficient to keep the records with "HR".  To protect themselves, the hiring managers should keep a confidential file for their own use.  In the worst case, the hiring manager may be sued as an individual (e.g., the corporation will simply say "here is a list of all the training we gave the hiring manager and we let the hiring manager have the final decision - go sue the hiring manager and leave us out of it").  when sued as an individual, the corporation may not provide access to all the files; the corporation may routinely delete the necessary files.  In the end, the hiring manager must protect themselves.

Hiring can be great.  Although the process may be onerous, the hiring manager will find talented people to add to the team for every more success.  Just be sure to interview wisely.

Photo: sourdough bread takes time and effort to make, but the results are worth it.

 

Seals and Chops - 11 January 2022

In 1215, King John applied the royal seal to the Magna Carta, indicating his assent to the terms therein.  We in the West think of a physical seal or signet ring largely as an historical practice, one long since replaced with a signature or modern cryptographic "signatures".  The idea of a physical Great Seal struck into a blob of hot wax that might represent us in a legal sense is a complete anachronism.  The seal was also somewhat of a security device in terms of protecting the contents of a letter.  Recent articles reinforce this.  Among them ,the New York Times was so struck by a recent discovery that they ran an article, saying:

To safeguard the most important royal correspondence against snoops and spies in the 16th century, writers employed a complicated means of security. They’d fold the letter, then cut a dangling strip, using that as an improvised thread to sew stitches that locked the letter and turned the flat writing paper into its own envelope. To get inside, a spy would have to snip the lock open, an act impossible to go undetected.

Catherine de’ Medici used the method in 1570 — a time she governed France while her ill son, King Charles IX, sat on its throne. Queen Elizabeth did so in 1573 as the sovereign ruler of England and Ireland. And Mary Queen of Scots used it in 1587 just hours before her long effort to unite Britain ended in her beheading.

The "dangling strip" was extended the identification stamp to seal a letter for security purposes.  Presumably the combined task of recreating the wax seal and the folding of the strip was beyond the ability of craftspeople to counterfeit. The idea of a seal is long gone in the West.  But it remains significant in some Asian cultures, especially in PRC-China.

As reported in The Register:

Crucially, Wu [the CEO of ARM-China] retains Arm China's company chop — an item akin to a company's official seal. Under Chinese law, possessing the chop gives Wu authority over the company regardless of its board's intentions. Transferring possession of a chop is not straightforward so even though he's not wanted by Arm, Wu remains in charge. Lawsuits battling over the future of the outfit are percolating through the courts.

Arm is not happy Wu remains in charge, and continues to engage with China's government to explore a resolution.

Ref. Arm says it has 'successful working relationship' with Chinese joint venture run by CEO who refuses to leave

In the West, if a CEO is deposed, their signature is no longer legally binding.  The signature of John Doe, CEO, is superseded by the signature of Jane Smith, CEO.  Done.  None of John's pens or pencils can validate a check or conclude a contract once Jane is declared CEO.  In contrast, Mr. Wu retains the chop of AMD-China and therefore remains in control.  Mr. Wu can conclude contracts, validate large payments through checks, and conclude other legal business.  The parent company of ARM can only look on.

About five years ago, I was in PRC-China and a colleague there had a chop carved for me.  I was thinking about posting an image of the stamp face here, but it occurred to me that would make forgery trivial.  I may not view the chop as a legal commitment, but others may.  So here is the chop with the associated ink pad.

Powers of Ten, Submicroscopically - 9 January 2022

Scales can be fascinating.  In this use, I am not referring to fishy bits but to computing bits, physical and computational.

On the physical side, I recently discovered a Powers of Ten redux video located on YouTube, Powers of Ten 2.  The video starts from a couple having a picnic lunch on a beach near Sicily and expands through the planets and galaxies to reach the cosmic microwave background.  In a similar spirit, there is an interactive website called Scale of the Universe 2 that allows a user to find things of a very small scale, from people and dinosaurs down to atoms, neutrinos, quarks, and the Plank limit.  In this spectrum, the website shows a "transistor gate" at 25 nanometers (25nm).  I cannot find a date on the site to know when it was prepared, but the information is now long stale.  As I write in January 2022, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is shipping products in large volume using 6nm technology from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).  The next AMD products will be in 5nm technology and Apple is already using that (TSMC 5nm) for their chips.  TSMC has already announced plans for 3nm and 2nm technology.  Intel, although having troubles for the last several years, is projecting products that will be built using 5nm and smaller.  When I started my engineering schooling (Purdue University and UC-Berkeley), we were grappling with the emerging opportunities of 1 micron technology, that is 1000nm, and we are now close to 1nm.  It is becoming inconvenient to talk about these sizes - no one wants to talk about 1/4nm or 0.25nm, so Intel has recently switched to Angstroms as the unit of measure.  Therefore, Intel talks about 20A (2nm) and 5A (0.5nm) as future technologies.  In the past, engineers would compare transistor sizes to the thickness of a human hair, but we must now compare to the size of atoms.  In a silicon crystal (used to manufacture chips), the interatom spacing is about 3A or 1/3rd of a nanometer.  Therefore, speaking loosely, a 3nm transistor is about 10 atoms across. 

On the computing side, we used to build supercomputers as very large single computers.  Somewhere in the 1990s, the "wolfpack" approach to cluster smaller computers took over the supercomputer world.  Instead of building a single computer that ran faster and faster, we would partition the computational work across  "clusters" of small computers.  Working together, communicating, the many small computers would solve problems faster than the biggest single computer.  Today, thousands of small computers (each more powerful than the single supercomputers of old) solve enormous problems.  The race for the fastest computer in the world is described by the "Top 500" list maintained out of a research group at the University of Tennessee.  As I write, the current fastest computer in the world in is Japan and is measured at about 400-some petaflops; that is 400 x 10^15 floating point operations (FLOPS) per second.  A new supercomputer is being built in Tennessee called Frontier, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL.  It will run at 1.5 Exaflops, or 1.5 x 10^18 FLOPS/second -- over three times faster than the current record-holder.  There are rumors of similar supercomputers in China (PRC), but no one has published data to confirm this.  When I started engineering school, the fast computers were measured in MIPS, approximately millions of operations per second, or megaflops (10^6).  In another year of so, the El Capitan supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) will turn on and deliver even more exaflops, probably more than 2 exaflops. (If the step from 1.5 to 2 sounds unimpressive, recall that the fastest documented supercomputer today is about 0.5 exaflops).

The fastest computer in the world in 1975 was the Cray-1, pictured below.  It achieved about 160 megaflops.  I took this photo at the Supercomputing Conference in 2018.

Pointers, A Look Back - 8 January 2022

Programming languages for computers come in many varieties and styles, each trying to solve a particular problem.  Although I started substantial programming in Dartmouth BASIC, then FORTRAN, and then MUMPS & assembler, I quickly latched on to the C programming language as a favorite when it became available to me.  This was about 1974 or 1975 at Purdue University using Kernighan & Ritchie C on a VAX running UNIX BSD.  Coming from BASIC, FORTRAN, & MUMPS, I was new when it came to the pointer data type, but I leveraged my assembler knowledge to get a working understanding.  Although I may have mastered the syntactical aspects of pointers and most of the operational aspects, there was a key concept that confused me.  (For those that like to jump ahead, "char *foo" is not the same as "char foo[]".)

I was working at Bell Labs on the AT&T 3B2 computer system that was still under development.  In fact, I had architected the first IO card and then started working on the development of software for the first smart IO card.  The smart IO card had an Intel 80186 on it; that is about it, because it was a prototype.  The intent was to design a test card that would accept commands and return results.  To this end, I wrote a small "IO application" that would run on the smart IO card.  I have forgotten quite what "work" the IO card was to do, but the on-card firmware needed to allocate an array and to some kind of work on it.  The style at the time was that one should have short files and short functions, on the order of a printed page (60 lines or so), so I wrote the firmware in two files.  One file to set up the programming environment and interface with the CPU, and a second file that contained the "worker" code that would be invoked by the main file.  As I recall, I wrote the main file to declare

    char    work[1000];

I was trying to be super-clever, so the worker file had a matching declaration of

    char    *work;

To be charitable to myself, I thought this bit of cleverness would get me around the problem of the size of the array - the data types and names aligned, and the programmer needed to set the right size in the main file.  My intentions were pure.

Unfortunately, this code did not run.  I thought I found a hardware bug in that the interrupt table that was so carefully constructed in the main file was coming up as all zeros as soon as the first IO command was dispatched.  Pat Walsh and a gentleman whose name I forget were the hardware guys for the IO bus.  I took my bug to them.  Aha, guys!  Your hardware is busted!  They accepted my analysis and started work to find the hardware bug.  After two days of careful work, they came back to me with a question: why did I have code that was writing zero to 1000 bytes starting with the interrupt vector table?  As I recall, the 80186 had important control tables starting at physical address zero, tables such as the interrupt vector table.  A little research reveals this is correct - "[addresses] 0000h - 03FFh are reserved for interrupt vectors."  My code was writing over the interrupt table.  When the next interrupt came in - crash!

Someone reading carefully will notice that the main declaration allocates 1000 bytes of memory named "work", while the worker file declared two bytes of space named "work" as a pointer type.  Oops.  As I learned, compilers at the time would set the initial value of "work" to zero, so when the code dereferenced "work" (*work=0 or work[0]=0), the code would write over the interrupt table at location zero, exactly like the code instructed.  The solution was simple: the code simply should to declare the array "work" consistentlly in both files.  After changing everything to "char work[WORK_SIZE]", the code worked.

I found out today that Patrick M. Walsh, 57, of Wheaton IL, passed away July 12, 2016 after a battle with cancer.  Rest in peace, Pat.

COVID-19 Omicron Thoughts - 7 January 2022

This is not a happy prediction, but I see no other likely path.

We will all get COVID-19 before this is over.

The Omicron variant has overtaken the Delta variant in the last couple of weeks.  The exact charts vary, but in December 2021, Delta was fading as Omicron took dominance.  By January 2022, Omicron has all but replaced Delta in the US for new infections.  

People being careful and taking precautions are being tested as COVID-positive.  Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, two prominent talk-show hosts who have responded intelligently throughout the COVID pandemic have tested positive and cancelled their shows.  As a reference, here is an NPR article on Fallon and Meyers, dated 4 January 2022.  

Finally, we have known for over a year that the virus spreads by air.  Some fraction of the US population, some estimates are in the 30-40% range, are resisting vaccination.  Even if it is only 20%, this leaves a vibrant pool in which the COVID virus can live, mutate, and spread because we all need to breathe.  Wearing masks can help, self-isolation can help, and postponing interactions can help, but we must ultimately visit grocery stores and perform other tasks that will put is in exposure to people who either do not care or will lie about their vaxx status.  

When I add these together, there is simply no way to avoid exposure.  If you run this over a month or so, that is a handful of visits, and the probabilities add up to certainty.

The only protection is the vaccination protocol - (usually) two vaccinations plus a booster.  To extend protection, another booster is very possible, perhaps in the mid-year of 2022.

Happy New Year!

New rising - 1 January 2022

Back in January 2020, I started baking sourdough bread.  I had no specific reason beyond resuming a hobby from the 1990's in Westford, a suburb of Boston.  We had returned from a trip to France where the bread is universally excellent.  It is so good that bread is not some mere addition to a meal but an element of the meal just like the meat, the spices, and the vegetables.  I thought I would try to recreate the crusty, chewy, holey bread of France.  A lofty goal, but maybe I could get close enough for daily use.  This was before the Time of COVID.  We heard odd snippets of reports out of Wuhan, but surely we would be protected by modern medicine.  

By the end of February 2020, it was clear that COVID was coming and the first deaths were reported in nearby Kirkland WA.  By the first days of March 2020, I knew that one of those first deaths was Doug Lambrecht, a friend from BSA Scouting.  By 4 March 2020, the risk of COVID was clear and immediate, so I closed the AMD Bellevue office and directed people to work from home.  We all thought it would blow over by June or July 2020, and we started looking for hobbies.  Some people started knitting while others turned to bread.  The store shelves quickly ran out of flour (as well as toilet paper - not correlated!).  I had already resumed bread-making, so I was all set to become stereotypical.

In resuming my bread-making, I used a simple method to start the sourdough starter using cultured yeast and then let it go wild on the kitchen counter.  Many recipes are available and I started with a simple one.  A cup of flour, a cup of water, a tablespoon of sugar, a packet or two of dry yeast, and some vigorous stiring.  Put the mixture in a Tupperware pitcher and let it sit, open-topped, on the kitchen counter for a few days.  Stir periodically, maybe twice a day.  The flour is unbleached and organic; in Westford, I used King Arthur's all-purpose but the Redmond Costco provides a flour sourced from Utah that works well.  Let the culture bubble and rise a bit as the yeast devours the sugar and starts to work on the flour.  Microbes in the kitchen air will join the mix.  We hope that these will provide the "sour" portions of the flavor profile while the yeast remains the worker to lift and stretch the gluten formed in the flour.  Eventually, the starter will settle down and the morning will bring a layered product at rest.  This happens more quickly in warm climates and in the summer, more slowly in cooler climates and in the winter - anything from one to three days.  My Tupperware pitcher is translucent, so I can clearly see a white (lightly tan-colored) layer on the bottom and a darker but clear "liquor" on the top with a slightly sourish aroma.  Note that my food has an aroma rather than a "smell".  I feed the sourdough culture with a cup of flour and a cup of fresh water, then let it sit overnight one more time.  The pitcher comes with a close-fitting lid.  It is not air- or water-tight, but it protects the starter by limiting evaporation.  And it prevents against odd things that might otherwise fall in.

Digression on history.  The western pioneers (often seeking gold) carried their sourdough starter in a doughier, drier form.  They simply used less water so that the sourdough starter was more like a ball of dough than a liquid.  This ball of dough went in the flour barrel and rested on top.  Closing the barrel protected the contents from animals.  These pioneers took the name "sourdoughs" from the bread that formed a major part of their diets.

Digression on flour measurements.  I have always used measuring cups to measure flour in my recipes.  I have seen the videos and read the articles about how important it is to weigh flour.  I have received all the lectures on packing flour and how the volumetric measurements can vary while weight measurements stay true. I even started to believe this so I bought a scale.  I argue that bread is a product of feel, and so weight or volume are simply a starting point that does not require accuracy.  Let me repeat that:  a scale is not necessary for home baking.  As the dough develops, an observant baker will add a little water or or a little flour to adjust the texture to obtain the desired results. Consistency is important, so if you, as a baker, cannot measure flour consistently, you might want to consider a different hobby.  So please do not whine at me about grams or weight.  Measure your ingredients carefully, volume or weight, and adjust. 

To make my bread, I started with the King Arthur Flour recipe and adapted it.  I put a cup of my sourdough starter, well stirred, in a mixing bowl and add three cups of flour and 1-1/2 cups of water.  I mix this up and loosely cover it to rest overnight.  I feed my starter with one cup of flour and one cup of water.  When the starter starts to bubble again, I put the lid on the pitcher and return it to the refrigerator after a good stir.

A note on maintaining the starter.  When I pull the starter out the refrigerator where it is stored, the starter has settled into two layers.  The bottom layer is pretty solid, almost like a potter's clay, and the upper layer is a dark liquid.  After pulling the starter from the refrigerator, I stir it to mix the two layers.  It takes a minute or two to stir the layers together, but keep mixing until the starter is uniform.  Then I feed the starter as noted above.  This regular feeding makes more volune than the one cup of starter that I withdrew for the bread, so I periodically skip a feeding or go to half-and-half on the flour and water so that the level of the starter does not overflow the container.  After feeding, I let the starter sit overnight, then store it in the refrigerator for up to three weeks before feeding again.  If you need to go longer than three weeks between feedings, either dry out some starter or freeze some.  I think the starter can go months in the refrigerator between feedings, but having a backup is prudent.

Let the starter-flour-water mix sit overnight, covered loosely, to develop.  By the next day, the "slack" dough should be showing a lot of bubbles.  This is the risk of sourdough - sometimes the yeast just does not want to work, but this is extremely rare and often indicates some mishandling (e.g., a too cold kitchen).  A "slack" dough is simply a dough that has a lot of water in it, it is very pourable.  To the dough, add a cup of flour.  On the flour, sprinkle a tablespoon of sugar and a half tablespoon of salt.  The sugar is to feed the yeast and the salt is mainly for flavor.  Common advice is that you do not want the sugar or salt to touch the dough directly, thus the comment about "on the flour".  (I made a salt-free bread, but the flavor is not right.  That said, if no-salt is required, leave it out.)  Add a second cup of flour on top of the sugar and salt.  Start mixing.  I like to use a rubber spatula (probably one made from silicone, but I still call it a rubber spatula).  You want a generally uniform mix, but you do not have to be a perfectionist.  It is too easy to leave unmixed flour on the bottom, so keep mixing and turning the dough until it is broadly uniform, especially at the bottom.  In times of low humidity, the flour will be dry and need some help.  I add anyting from a tablespoon to a quarter-cup of water to smooth out the dough, either at this point or after the first kneading.

I combine my dough in a mixer bowl because I use a breadhook to knead.  I used to do it by hand, but the slacker (wetter) doughs are hard to handle and a mixer makes it easier.

So take that dough and knead by hand or mount the bowl on the mixer stand.  I knead for 4-5 minutes, in either mode, then let the dough rest for 4-5 minutes and knead again for a final 4-5 minutes.  The goal is to get smooth, elastic dough that is well mixed.  I let this rise in the mixer bowl for 1-2 hours.  I set a timer for one hour and check how the rise is going.  To control the temperature, I put the dough in an unheated oven and turn on the oven light; the oven light keeps the temperatures around 90F, which works well for me.  Some ovens have a "warm" or "rise" temperature setting, but I find this is too warm and it encourages the bread dough to rise too quickly.  After the first hour, check the dough, looking for a doubled volume.  If not yet doubled, add 30-60 minutes and check again.  If it has doubled, "knock down" or "punch down" the dough.  the phrase "punch down" captures the spirit - make a fist and stick it in the middle of the dough, collapsing the air out. 

Some bakers will recommend a light kneading or "folding" process at this point.  This is "to build the structure" of the dough.  I find this is not necessary.  Handle the dough enough to collapse the air bubbles and you are good.  Handling a slack dough is hard, the dough is sticky, so I try to handle it as little as possible.  

Do a general folding (repeated folding of the dough will squeeze out the bubbles) and shaping.  I like a boule, a ball-shaped loaf, so I drop the defalted dough into a dutch oven pot.  You can cut the dough into long loaves to get baguette shapes, or cut pieces of dough to fit into rectangular bread loaf pans - up to your preference.  The boule gives an artistic sense of "peasant" and "rustic" that I like, so that is my usual choice. 

If you leave it too long, the dough will rise and collapse, leaving you with a dished top.  All is not lost, just do the folding and be more attentive during the second rise.  The dough is robust and will usually recover in the second rise.

I usually do a second rise in the dutch oven pot.  This second rise is said to develop the flavor of the bread but you can skip the second rise if you are busy.  I line the dutch oven with a piece of parchment paper to minimize any sticking.  You can also grease the dutch oven, but I find the parchment paper to be more reliable.  I just let the excess paper stick out the top and will later use the "ears" to pull the bread from the dutch oven when baking is done.

After much experimentation, I find the dutch oven to be an important tool.  It helps maintain and control the shape of the loaf, and it seems to help the crunchy crust develop.  Alternatively, I used to put the parchment paper on a baking sheet and plop the boule in the middle of the sheet.  This works well, but the slack dough tends to spread out while the dutch oven will hold the circle and encourage the dough to rise.  The baking sheet bread tends to be shorter and the dutch oven encourages taller bread.  I prefer the later.  Furthermore, the lid of the dutch oven helps to keep in moisture while baking, and that seems to help the crust develop.  Professional bakeries have ovens that will inject steam during baking and the dutch oven will do something similar with the moisture already in the dough.  There is nothing special about the dutch oven - you can use the steel dutch oven that came with your cookset, get a fancy French enamelled dutch oven, or use a camping-style cast iron dutch oven.  Just choose one that is large enough for your loaf (about 5-6 quarts) and has an oven-safe lit and handles.

For the second rise, put the lid on the dutch oven and return it (containing the dough) to the warm oven.  Again, I use the oven light and do not turn on the oven.  Be careful to watch the second rise for that doubling in size.  Unlike the first rise, it is difficult to recover an over-risen dough on the second rise; you will either need a third rise or will need to make do with a concave loaf (tastes fine but looks funny).

You can skip the second rise if you are in a hurry.  I also skip the slashing of the dough and let it crack naturally as the bread bakes.

When the rising is done, it is time to bake the bread.  I start from a cold oven.  In fact, I have the bread rising in the oven, sitting in the dutch oven, and just turn on the oven to bake.  I do not recall what source suggested it, but it works fine to start baking in a cold oven wiht the lid on the dutch oven.  Set the oven to 450F and set a timer for 25 minutes.  The oven temperature will rise to 450F during the 25 minutes and the bread will continue to rise a bit within the dutch oven, eventually starting to form that crust in the steamy environment within.  After 25 minutes, remove the lid from the dutch oven and reset the timer for another 25 minutes.  

After 50 minutes overall, your bread is done when you decide the top is suitable brown.  Pull the lidless dutch oven from the oven.  I remove the bread from the dutch oven using the "ears" of the parchment paper.  Leaving the bread in the dutch oven too long will allow escaping moisture to make the loaf soggy.

After cooling for an hour or so, I slice boule in half.  Although the slices will vary in size, it is easy to slice slices from the demiloaf.  

Variations.  When the dough is slack, the air bubbles in the final bread will tend to be larger and the texture will be closer to rustic bread.  A dry dough is easier to handle in the baking process and produces finer bubbles, producing a texture closer to commercial bread.  You can experiment to find your favorite texture.  And instead of a boule, you can shape the bread to regular loafs or baguettes as noted before.  You can also use the dough to make pizza or focaccia on a baking sheet.  Finally, you can make dinner rolls.  I suppose one can make hamburger buns but I have never tried it.  The sourdough flavor and texture improve all these forms.

The original King Arthur Flour recipe has one add baking soda to the dough with the sugar and salt.  I just started leaving it out and have not gone back.  You do not need the baking soda.