Wednesday, April 04, 2012

D is also for dropbox referrals

So if you haven't lived under a rock you have likely heard of dropbox.  It's kind of sweet, but the free version starts at a rather piddly 2.5gb of space.  I've worked my way up to 3.5 with various connect a social media this and do some other task for that but I'm at a wall.  I like that dropbox lets you put huge (unlimited as near as I can tell) files in your box for transferring so I thought I'd beg a few of the following faithful if they would be so very kind...  The following link is my referral link, sign up an account and I get 500mb of free sweet space.

http://db.tt/5hHOeR24

Your help is greatly appreciated, and if you do let me know!

D is for drunken grapefruit

So technically this is probably brandied grapefruit, but Gizmodo has a video post (with no way to embed sorry) for how to make a sweet brandied baked grapefruit.  Short story is below


-Cut grapefruit in half, and segment the... uh... segments, with a grapefruit knife (awesome gadget).
-Cover with 1 ounce (two tablespoons) of brown sugar.
-Pour some brandy on top until it's full and let it sit for 30 minutes.
-Put the grapefruit in a pre-heated 350-degree (F) oven for 20 minutes.
-Remove them and add enough sugar to cover.
-Turn your oven to Broil and put the pan in the broiler for about 5 minutes or until the sugar caramelizes.
-Remove from oven. Let it cool a little, and enjoy.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

C is for Centerboard cooler




This comes by way of there I fixed it (white trash repairs), but I find this to be awesome and perfect for summer.  When I own a farm (notice not if but when) we will do outdoor feeds on tables with these in them.  Whites paired with farm fresh fair, fuck yes.

Monday, April 02, 2012

B is for Beer

You didn't think this could slip by right?

So over the weekend we celebrated my birthday (a touch late but who's counting anyway).  I had people over and was going to make Cougar gold Mac and Cheese.  If you don't know what Cougar Gold is, you're probably not from Washington State and never heard of WSU (the cougars).  They are the butt of most Jokes in Seattle (see Ryan Leaf), with the phrase "don't coug it" a colloquialism for don't screw up.  Thing is the school also runs a creamery, and they make damn fine cheese, like $30 for a can of it (it's weird, but they sell it in cans whatever it's change your life cheese).  So I had joked about making Lobster Mac n Cheese, but at 3 for the damn cheese and another $12 for the gruyere it was already getting to be spendy Mac n Cheese.  Well I went to the store to get the gruyere and they had fresh from the sound lobster for $10.99/lb cooked.  So yeah I bought a sea bug and made $70 mac and cheese for 7 people.  Why do I tell that story to get to the beer part of this story?  So I decided to spring for myself a $12 bottle of 22ozs of chocolate gold.  Full Sail Bourbon Barrel aged Imperial Porter, 9.5%abv of roasty perfection.  If you see this beer in your local store I know $12 seems steep for a 22oz, and it is but I vouch for the experience.  Don't just take my word for it, check it out on ratebeer.

Bottom line no apologies, this is the best beer I have payed someone else to make for me ever.

A is for Anime

So I don't make many bones about it, but I don't watch much on tv.  By in large its fluff, filler and wasted human existence.  The stories are driven forward by drama, but never compelled to complete themselves, make the experience complete or really even make sense in and of itself.  The stuff I do tend to watch is Fan-subbed anime.  I watch it with the original narration, and subtitles for a few reasons.

First, the voice actors chosen for America are typically terrible.  Not always, but most often voice acting and particularly voice acting for import animation is done at cut rate and leaves a lot to desired in expressiveness and overall interpretation.  Second, Fan-Subbing is typically very informative on Japanese culture and belief systems which can help you to appreciate the significance of the characters actions as well as get some of the wordplay jokes that are often present in Japanese culture.  You would miss these in dubbed versions because the wordplay would likely not make sense in a another language.  Third and this is key, it forces engagement.  I literally cannot do anything else if I want to watch the anime, because I have to read the whole story line.  I cannot read facebook while "watching" the show and I need for single tasking in my life.

This was sort of prompted by this techcruch article on engagement and he is lamenting twitter and facebook integration and interactive viewing as preventing you from escaping.  I find in particular when my wife tries to watch tv she cannot stop multi-tasking and misses plot queues, and subtle humor.  It could be that distracted viewers are really the reason tv has to be dumbed down, just so those only paying partial attention can get the jokes.

Just an idea.  I'm trying Satirical blogs idea and doing the alphabet challenge for April so there is my A post for yesterday....or whatever.  By counting June would have really been a better month to do it (30-4) instead of 30-5 with a Sunday as a soft start.  Whatever this is blogging not rocket science.  Just blog b-z Monday - Saturday for the rest of the month and take Sundays off.

Right?

Right so we should do this again in June just for the sake of it makes more sense.

Some filler so that last post isn't at the top

That last bit was some depressing shit show here is a trailer for a movie that I actually have some hope for.  I don't love Colin or anything, but I think that Total Recall would be better with updated special effects.  Most sci-fi movies need the slick visuals CGI can give now.


Rage inside my cage

That was the lest productive weekend I fairly sure ever.  My dad and I managed to get my tv mounted onto the wall, and after a few hours of looking at Ikea's website and measuring and remeasuring the living room we managed to get a decent idea of how the room should/will be laid out when it comes time for the living room upgrade.  No CNC work however.

I also got windows 7 onto my mom's computer and transferred all of her docs and pictures plus the nearly 4 gigs of legacy pictures that I recovered from the last time her computer died.  I've given her these pictures on cd's or a dvd to load into her computer several times and she has failed to remember to do it so she finally has an uninterrupted chain of digital photos since she started taking digital photos.  I also new have a snapshot on hand of all of her data as of yesterday.  I keep bare drives dedicated to keeping my family and in-laws data alive in the event of, well whatever.  I recovered from crashed laptops and failed desktops enough that it sits in folders on a external 500gb disk, each family has a folder.  I should setup a dedicated crashplan server for my family so I don't have to worry about it in the future.

The rest of the weekend was spent helping my brother and his wife get ready for their new house.  They bought a new construction (that I'm not a huge fan of either the location or the layout of the neighborhood) and are excited and nervous for the outcome.  My parents have built and sold more houses than any sane individuals should have (gotta love middle class upward mobility).  That is to say, they are good people to tell you about how the whole process works, and what you need and don't need in the process of buying a house.  My Sister-in-law is a little bit of a know it all (in her head) and was very nasty to my mother all weekend as she tried to give them some wisdom on various things about the process.  My mother also has a really good eye for design, and decorating (honestly not just because she is my mother) so I tend to listen to her about color palettes and pairing.  Her catching shit from her daughter-in-law is the back drop for this next bit of story.  Mom tolerates bullshit poorly and is not shy about an argument, but has really made an effort to not be on bad terms with my brothers wife who has a tendency to be a bit of a bitch.  Contrast S-I-L with my wife how goes the extra mile to make my mother feel welcome and included, and tries hard to not let mother's pushy nature get the best of her.  That is the dynamic we are working with here.

Mix in a lot of tired from all parties last night, and while the parents where waiting for me to finish the computer mother says to father some kind of snarky bs about having to be up early otherwise their Daughter-in-law won't let them see their grandchild and my wife lost it.  It was a minor snipe and really petty of my mother, but not out of line her general nature.  It just happened to be the last straw for my wife, she walked out of the room and wouldn't speak with my mother which unleashed some fucking tidal wave of crazy from mother about everyone is so mean to her and all she wants to do is steal some baby so she can see it whenever she wants and not have to see her (my Mother-in-law aka the other grandma that is doing the heavy lifting of childcare 5 out of the 6 week rotation we are on right now).  Followed by some incomprehensible sobbing about wanting her boys back and threatening to drive home (like 6 hours that night it was 9pm or so).  

So yeah, I went to bed angry and still apparently am.