Monday, July 26, 2004

My post from a few days ago regarding that woman's trip on a passenger plane that was fraught with danger is apparently a complete overreaction on her part.  I feel pretty foolish for just accepting a report like that as fact.  Snopes has more on the truth of the matter.   And check out this article with a great composite photo.

Want a Gmail account?  I have 3 invites for the first 3 comments of this post.

Saturday, July 24, 2004

I finished Far Cry!  Yea!  I'd say I had a good 60 hours into this game.  Probably because I like to kill everything on each level instead of just running through it as fast as possible.  This is quite easily the best game I've played in the last year and I'd put it right up there with the original Half-Life, if not better.  Blasphemy: I know.

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

It appears that terrorists have been staging "dry runs" on various flights in the United States.  Unfortunately, our focus on political correctness is going to get us in trouble again.  Here's an article from a journalist who experienced what must have been the longest flight of her life. 
 


The photograph referenced in the second article.

The writer follows up with another article that discusses the communications she has had with the airline industry and TSA.
 
A unnerving quote is provided by Gary Boettcher, Member, Board of Directors, Allied Pilots Association.  "Folks, I am a Captain with a major airline. I was very involved with the Arming Pilots effort. Your reprint of this airborne event is not a singular nor isolated experience. The terrorists are probing us all the time."
 
Sobering.

Monday, July 19, 2004

This weekend I achieved the next level in culinary creation.  Um, not.  But I did manage to make a souffle, which I've always thought of as a near impossible task.
 
Again, my hats off to Alton Brown of Good Eats.  The man quite simply is a genious.  I could sit here and yammer until I'm blue in the face about how good a cook I am.  The fact of the matter is:  I'm not.  I am however good at following instructions, and Alton gives you plenty of them to create a souffle that can withstand my best attempts at destroying it.
 
What do I mean?  Well, Mr. Brown understands the chemical reactions of cooking, so he understands the "why's" better than any other television chef I've seen.  More importantly, he does his best to impart his knowledge in a creative and entertaining fashion that fits within my 5 minute attention span.
 
Voila! My masterpiece!
 
For example, he recommends using just a bid of an acidic compount (Cream of Tartar) when whipping all that air into the egg whites.  Why?  Because it helps the proteins hold together while they are stretching to their limits, which makes it easier to achieve our cooking goals for those of us with less than stellar talent for this task.  Talent may be on Wolfgang Puck's side, but chemistry is on mine!
 
Lessons learned for the next souffle:
 
1.  Must acquire a big ole giant spatula.  I'm talking huge.  When folding the base with the whipped egg whites, the bigger the spatula the better.  I could see that I was losing more bubbles than I wanted to in the egg whites because I had to mix more because of the smaller spatula I used (and it wasn't all that small).  I actually think this is the key to making this souffle perfectly.
 
2.  I should have left the souffle in the oven a couple of minutes longer.  Just a bit longer.  It was a bit too runny in the middle.  I think that this was a direct result of not having a big enough spatula and losing some of the bubble in the mixing process, which resulted in a runny middle (not by much though).
 
 

Excuse me while I trip over myself to get as many photos as I can entered into the new Disneyland Family Album.  Oh my!

Disney Family Album

Friday, July 16, 2004

Those that know me know that I'm far from a fan of California.  The State has many problems, most of which, in my humble opinion, are brought on from our extremely liberal politicians and appellete courts.  While I'm all for helping my fellow man, our leaders have simply lost touch.
 
One of the problems that plagues the State is illegal immigration.  While I've heard people comment that "they work jobs that Americans won't work," or "they're not hurting anyone."  The fact of the matter is that the influx of people into California has caused a serious strain on the infrastructure.  Everything from health care to housing to traffic has been affected.  While every State can see a population surge, seeing a population surge without the associated increase in the tax base ends up compounding our problems with no monies for a solution.
 
That's why it's fun to read a memo like this from our State Assembly.  Our elected officials enjoy celebrating Cinco de Mayo but then won't celebrate the 4th of July.  Whatever.
 
Please register to vote.  We need to stop focusing on the Presential election and start focusing on these bozos that are placed in the State Legislature who backed another clown like Gray Davis.  I guarantee that your vote is very important when it comes to choosing your local politicians.
 

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Two really neat optical illusions for you! Here and here.

Friday, July 09, 2004

Here's a red light camera that caught a terrible accident. I'm actually surprised at just how good of quality the footage is from one of those cameras. Read the story and there's a link to the video at the bottom.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

I was going to create a series of pet peeves and list one every day, however, I think I'll just write about them as they happen.



I'm driving a lot lately and so I listen to the radio. One station I listen to frequently is KFI 640 AM. They have good shows, but their news and traffic staff has a habit of annoying me.

Here's the two things that annoy me:

1. They use the word "guy" all the time. "The guy was arrested," or "The guy was chased by police." As a news outlet, you'd think they'd try to at least sound intelligent. An aside, I'm also annoyed at waiters/waitresses that use the "how are you guys doing?" greeting. Can you just change that to "how are you two doing?" or "Good evening"?

2. If this happened only once, then I don't think I'd think twice about it, but the traffic reporter always reports a fatality as: "This is a fatal accident. Someone died." Hey, Sherlock, I know what fatal means. So does everyone else in Los Angeles. Pick one or the other, but don't use both.

Okay, I'm done bitching about completely stupid things now. I guess that's why they're called pet peeves!

As we approach the All-Star break, it's time to check in with my fantasy baseball league. As you may recall, this is my first year playing fantasy baseball and it's been quite a learning experience.

Somethings I've learned:

1. You have to manage your team every day. Every day. Even on weekends. Somtimes this isn't very fun.

2. Outstanding defensive players are of zero use. There's no category that is tracked that gives you points for great defense. I'm not sure how they would implement such a system, but it's a major drawback to the game.

3. As the season progresses, you really need to stay on top of the categories that you earn points in. In my case, I'm doing very well with stolen bases but my relief pitching is abysmal. It's not that I don't have good relievers, I just don't have as many as the other players which has lowered the amount of saves my team has.

4. The major upside of the game is you become a fan of individual players in both leagues on a variety of teams.

5. I have been scolded several times when I'm at an Angels game with my girlfriend and I mention that the opposing player at bat is on my team. "You cannot root for him. That's not allowed." Hey, as long as the Angels win, and my guy on the other team does well, then I do not care. :)


Go Knockers!


In any case, I think I'm doing fairly well for a newbie. For the first couple of months, the standings would swing wildly about. I remember being in 1st place for a few days and then immediately dropping to 9th place. Now that the season is fairly far along, the standings have firmed up a bit, and I've been in 2nd or 3rd place for the last month. However, the 1st place L-ville Sluggers had a commanding lead of over 100 points at one point, but now has fallen off that pace and is now within my reach. *insert menacing laugh here*

I'm just as excited as I was at the beginning of the season to have Vladimir Guerrero on my team (.347 AVG, leads the league in home runs (20) and RBI's (72)). The man is just wrong. He'll swing at pitches that are 5 inches outside the strike zone and put them over the fence. Where in the hell are you supposed to pitch to this guy?

I'm looking forward to the rest of the season because I believe I have a solid team. The one sorely lacking area of my team (saves) has hopefully been fixed with a trade that was finalized yesterday. I picked up Octavio Dotel of the A's and Troy Percival of the Angels in exchange for Texas 3rd baseman Hank Blalock (who's had a tremendous year).

And yes, I know that I had O. Dotel at the beginning of the year. I traded him away early in the season to obtain Francisco "K-Rod" Rodriguez of the Angels and Matt Clement of the Cubs. I made that trade because all of my pitching was poor. Now that the starting pitching is forming up well, I'm getting O. Dotel back to help with the saves.

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Here's an interesting open source project called MythTV. It's basically a DVR but with expanded functionality beyond Tivo and Windows XP Media Center.



Hopefully I can make some time to play around with this in the near future.

Friday, July 02, 2004

Interesting concept over at eSnipe. It's an automated server that allows you to place bids on eBay items, however, it waits until the last possible moment to actually place the bid.

What a great idea! I've wasted plenty of time refreshing my eBay screen at some ridiculous hour in the morning to make sure I won an auction. No more late nights or being annoyed when someone schedules a meeting that overlaps an auction end.

Thursday, July 01, 2004

I can't decide how I feel about this site: Japander. It's a website that shows all of the Japanese commercials that American celebrities have pimped themselves for. I have conflicting emotions between highly disturbed and highly amused.


D'oh!


For example, these advertisements using The Simpsons are, well, what the hell are they?
Now that we’re in the new house, it’s time to start breaking in the huge kitchen!



Burger of the Gods. Oh my, this certainly does live up to its namesake.

The downside of this recipe is that you need to grind your own meat, and that requires a good food processor. Good food processors are not cheap, but after eating these hamburgers, the cost of one is certainly a value. Of course, there’s a myriad of other things to do with a food processor, but grinding up your own beef easily is a task that it excels at.

The other downside is that the meat will be more expensive than the traditional ground beef that is in the supermarket. But I really don’t see how I could ever make a hamburger again out of that stuff. There’s really no comparison.

After seeing the Good Eats episode where Alton Brown makes these hamburgers, he suggests that the first time you try them, to only use mayonnaise and some pepper on the toasted bun. Okay, I’ll give it a shot.

Wow. The juices from the hamburger mix in with the mayonnaise and make a sauce of its own. I assume from now on that I’ll be using the regular hamburger trappings because they will make the burger that much better, but it certainly doesn’t need any help!

And now to figure out what to make next!