Links - Gaming Wii Safari Without-the-risk-of-losing Pluto

Semi-weekly misc links I found interesting

First, links to my own content... ;-)

• Agile Management? Lots of little bosses jumping around, never getting hit by your sword.
• My computer might have a cold, or a flu, or a W32.Welchia.

And those by others...

• I wonder what we could have accomplished in the time we spent playing DDR, IceWind Dale, DAOC, etc ... Probably dancing wizards who love to boss people around.
• My mom did this, bless her heart. It is nice to be able to turn off the Wii without walking over to it, but thats kinda lazy, and against the whole idea of a console that gets you up and moving isn't it? A better label would have been nice.
• I forgot to try this at home last night, but if it actually works, its fairly funny.
• Static? That is soooo 1990's. I have thought about this before and its funny how many sites "could" be made static given some good tools to update/regen them and a public that was less needy of having all information all the time. While I didn't end up using it, I always thought JAlbum's approach seemed smart for most users.
• No Risk? Sounds too good to be true. But something to look into at least.
• I love this T-Shirt! It might even be better than my NFJS and ACM shirts :-p
  

New Cell Phone Numbers (phones coming)

As of today, Em and I have new cell phone numbers. I will try and send out emails/calls to everyone with the new number, but in case I don't and you read this, let me know.

Its annoying how hard it is to maintain correct addresses, email, phone, etc for people over the years.

Anyway, we got new numbers today in preparation for new phones later in the week. My client has contracts with all of the major carriers for discounts which they graciously extend to contractors. We were planning on switching from Verizon Wireless to ATT since thas what Em's family has, but Verizon had a rep assigned to my client so I didn't have to deal with the stores at all, and this way we didn't have to switch or pay new activation fees.

When it is all said and done we should still have our old plan (yay for not having to get a new more expensive one when we don't use all of our minutes now) minus a 17% discount, 2 new phones, a 25% discounted car charger and no extra fees. Not too shabby. :-)

Misc Links

Just a few links I recently found and thought others might enjoy...

• Secret to career happiness? So very true. Its amazing how far you can go in life on the confidence (or at least pretending to be confident, which is pretty much the same thing)
• Em loves to watch home buying/selling/fixing shows and its amazing how many people feel they need to spend a small fortune on a home .... and how entittled they feel to getting one the exact way they want. Last night the couple blew right through their "ceiling" and assumed they could make the payments .....
• Its Tetris, in your living room!
• Some very creative ways to save money. I had a large ceramic crayon.
  
• Could this be the perfect solution to my hanging pictures problems I previously wrote about?
• Is nothing constant? I remember reading long ago that during the New Madrid Earthquake back in 1812, the Mississippi actually changed directions in some areas and shifted its cours miles. Pretty crazy to think about.
  

Trusted Trio

Lifehacker consistently has interesting articles and life tips.

A while back I saw this article which caught my attention and am in the midst of trying to implement it in my life. I often have trouble staying in touch with people (be it via email or any other method). Its not that I don't care, or don't want to talk .... its a bigger problem. I procrastinate replying and within a short amount of time some combination of the following happens: I find that I have a large amount of things to say and never feel like I have adaquate time to say them and/or enough time passes that I am unsure on how to respond. Its completely of my own doing and I am trying to deal with it.

To help me, I am going to try and follow LH's method of dealing with email (and used in other areas) by separeating all of my incoming communication into three bins (archive, hold, and followup) and returning all emails that just require a quick response as soon as I read them. No excuses.

You can read more about their suggestions (especially about keeping your to-do list out of your inbox) here ... but be warned. If I start sending you way more emails than I used to, its b/c of this. :-)

Sooo Full

Tons of time with the family +
Thanksgiving +
second Thanksgiving +
leftovers +
lunch at the new Original Pancake house in town +
Em's grandparent's anniversary dinner =
lots of food.

Granted, there are worse things in life than having too much food ;-)

I was able to cross a number of my to-do list items off this week: adding window insulation things, errands, Christmas and birthday shopping, looking at a few more houses, etc.

On my uncle's suggestion, I went to an local IBD user group meeting which was very interesting even if it was way over my head. Its funny .... go sit in a room of people who track the stock market everyday, probable work(ed) in a field related to it, are heavily invested themselves and you find that despite all of there ideas, they still have no idea what the next big thing will be or can keep from losing some money. Granted, they seem to do much better than the average Joe, but not as much as you might think. Its also crazy to think about how despite how much faster a computer can track and analyze pieces of information, they still can't outdo there human counterparts by much when it comes to picking stocks.

Other than doing family stuff and errands I found out some very interesting news. You may remember that a while back I took the SCEA exam offered by Sun b/c they were beta testing a new test and it was free. I knew at the time that I would fail b/c I hadn't studdied and while the material was not very tricky, it involved knowing how and where all of the Sun sanctioned Java technologies fit together. Well, as it turns out, I passed! Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. To make a long story short (which will hopefully be the prompt for a longer discussion of technical certifications on my other blog) I now have the privelage of trying to pass the second and third parts of the certification. Without going into too much detail, the second part is a architecture assignment while the third is an essay regarding your design choices in part 2. Wish me luck! So far, I have even less hope for part deux. :-/

This week I have a ton of work to do while my boss is around trying to get things tied up before the holidays really hit and everyone is gone for weeks at a time. I am also waiting for a shipment from Amazon.com. I while back I asked for suggestions on how to use a $25 gift card I had received. Well, in the end I threw caution to the wind and purchased something on none of my lists. I ordered an immersion blender which I saw had been given high praises on America's Test Kitchen. Some of the other choices were more practical, but I love creamy soups and going back and forth between the pot and the blender is a pain. Not much other than that besides gearing up to watch more Mizzou football next weekend. Last night's game was great (I don't pretend to be anything more than a bandwagon jumper, but hey, its fun to watch teams with a hometown feel do well).

Happy Thanksgiving

My Content, Other Sites

I just posted a lengthy post on my tech blog here,
an evidently interesting thread post here,
and finally a new puzzle/question here.

Finally, I cleared out my del.ico.us account
and am starting fresh in case anyone cares

Park Photos

Harry in fall colors


Here's looking at you, kid!


This one was titled "Cubed Squared"


Babe, I got you some new pearls!


The biggest one there, some HUGE red things :-p


Really tall numbered guy (artists numbered each work)

Parties and Parks

This past weekend was packed full of stuff.

Friday night Em and I went out to dinner and the Funnybone w/ my cousin and his wife. We saw Tim Northern who was decent (although not great). The people in the audience were actually funnier than the comedian for some of the show. This reminded me of when Em and I saw Ian Bagg in Cinci with Sark (b/c we saw him at the Funnybone there, not b/c he was bad, he was Hillarious!). I wonder if he has any CDs ... not sure if they would be the same compared to seeing him live.

Saturday we ran errands, helped move some furniture, put our bikes into winter storage and spent some time enjoying the mild November weather at Laurmier Sculpture Park. Its a nice park here in town where they have large outside art exhibits and sculptures along with a couple short trails and a lot of green space. I will post pictures once they get uploaded to the computer.

Sunday my Mom and I put together a surprise birthday party for my dad. Yes, his birthday was last weekend but some scheduling problems resulted in it being this weekend (which made it all the more surprising!). Mom was able to get a fair number of his friends, family and coworkers to show up. We had it at a nearby bowling alley that had a separate lounge area you could reserve. Fun, food, and pie were had by all.

....

This week is a short one. I would normally get Thursday and Friday off from my company, but since my client also gets off Wednesday and our office is closed, its forced vacation time for your's truly. Not that paid time off is the worst thing in the world. :-) So the rest of today and tomorrow will be the extent of my week. I have a fairly large list of to-do items I want to check off this week so wish me luck with that. Also, I have to start my shopping for the upcoming holidays and Em's bday.

I will probably either post a ton or not at all over the next few days depending on what I end up doing. If you crave more to read, check out the puzzle blog myself and a few of my college roommates are contributing to. I will probably get rid of my "food blog" in the next few days and try to resurrect the never quite alive professional/tech blog I started. I am envious of how Kev can find the time/energy to post his thoughts in an interesting manor. I have a ton of ideas I would like to talk about but can never seem to actually write them up.

Misc things from the past few days

• This past weekend Em and I were invited to a coworker's son's 2nd birthday party. Besides being honored by the invite and the pleasure of getting to spend time in Toys-R-Us and Target's toy isles like a little kid (we got him a Sponge Bob ball set) .... it was a very interesting and fun experience. The coworker is on my team at Monsanto and he and his wife are from India. Getting to spend time with people from a culture completely foreign to you, but in a low stress and calm setting is nice (I will admit I was a bit nervous about the whole thing prior). We did all the normal American stuff (cake, baloons, etc), had some DELICIOUS homecooked Indian food, chatted about schools, kids and sports (having conversations about football and American football can get confusing). All in all it was a really cool time.
  
• We got my dad a "bike computer" for his birthday. Its pretty sweet. It gives you current speed, average speed, max speed, trip distance, total distance ..... all in a small thing about the the size of a watch. The best part about this model was that it had no parts to rub on the bike (other simple odometers rub against the wheel to determine speed/distance). This one comes with a small magnet you clip onto a wheel spoke and a sensor you clip onto your front fork. When the magnet goes by, the sensor detects it as a revolution and walla! no rubbing.
  
• This past weekend we went out looking at houses closer to the area we currently live in. Most of the developments are out of our price range, but there were a number of good ones around (a few with some very unique layouts/exteriors).
  
• Yesterday, somehow a recruiter got my work phone number and called me about a job in Nashville. I didn't recognize the company he said he worked for and was too surprised to think about asking him how he got my number. Very strange.
  
• Two different times this weekend, we came home at night to find 1 or 2 possoums sitting on a neighbor's front porch. Funny little guys didn't even move when we walked by. One night I snapped this shop without the neighbors or animals finding out. (Its been cropped and adjusted so that you can actually see the possom. I didn't want to get too close or point the flash right at the window of the guy downstairs...)

Customer Service

Its been a great 24 hours for customer service.

Last night we went out for dinner with my parents and some other parts of my family to a great restaurant here in town to celebrate my Dad's birthday and had an exceptional meal, time and service. The Piccolo Fritto had some type of pumpkin in it as one of the vegtables which was amazing. I had a bite of my dad's terrine which was pretty good, Em loved her goat cheese and beet salad. She had the gnocchi which melted in your mouth, and I had the amazing New Zealand rack of lamb. mmmm mmm good. Em had a great mini chocolate cake for desert and I had Affogato (espresso over ice cream). Soooo good.

Today I called USAA (hands down the best phone customer service of any company I have ever dealt with) and was able to close my old checking account, transfer funds, and find out some other info in just a couple minutes. Example of above average service ... the first guy who answered couldn't cancel my account and let me know I would have to talk to someone else. Instead of transfering me, or giving me some other number or whatever, he put me on hold for about 30 seconds, got someone else on the line who could do what I needed, explained the whole situation and then asked me if I had any other questions for him and let the girl take it form there.

Finally, I called Charter Communications (cable) to cancel our digital service. Currently we have digital + showtime (freebie for 3 months) for ~$50. We don't watch too much cable and would rather do other things than sit in front of the TV all night so I wanted to cancel. Well the lady I got wanted to try and keep me as a customer and offered me several deals. I wasn't trying to get a better deal, just cancel it after our current bill was up, but she was determined and very nice about it so I let her talk for a couple minutes. In the end I got december free via a credit and if I don't cancel I get the digital - showtime for $39.99 garaunteed for 12 months. Not bad for a 10 minute call.

Now its time to run errands. Tonight is a coworker's son's birthday party. Gotta go get a toy!

Happy Birthday Dad

Happy Bday. Mmmmm dinner at Atlas. That is all for now.

Wallach Family Apple Butter Extravaganza

This weekend was all about the Apple Butter.

My wife's family has a tradition of making this wonderful nectar of life each fall over the course of a hard work/good food/fun stories weekend.

I will recount the major events and steps below. Some of our pictures from this weekend can be found here.


Step 0: Coordinate many family members schedules, the procurement of the proper apple butter making tools (100+ year old copper kettle, cast iron stand, fire wood, apple peelers, mason jars, huge old wooden paddle for stiring ...), and the purchasing and storage of the perishables (3 bushels of apples, 10lb sugar/bushel, secret blend of spices ...)

Saturday:

Step 1: Gather at great-aunt's house to peel apples. 3 bushels of apples needed to be peeled, chopped, and cored. Luckily, two good apple peelers and two tired arms made short work of most of the work and two more people skilled with pearing knives finished it off. It didn't take nearly as long as I would have expected to go through the the boxes of apples (one box = one bushel)

Step 2: Em's mom was kind enough to take home the some of our mountains of apple peels to be boiled down to pull out the remaining juice an color from the peels. The result? A couple gallons of bright red apple juice which was added back to the process later.

Step 3: Prepare fire and rest of tools for tomorrow.



Sunday:



Step 4: Around 7am, a few members started the fire, got it going good, and put the huge and very old copper kettle on filled with the apples and enough water to make them start to float.

Step 5: Cook. Stir. Cook. Stir. Repeat - For the next 8 hours we joked around, told stories, ate some good food, and stirred the pot constantly. The pot needs to be stirred constantly so that the apple mixture doesn't burn or begin to stick to anything as the fire maintains a good rolling boil. It doesn't take long for the apple pieces to quickly break down and go from pieces of apple in water, to tiny specs of apple in apple juice, to apple sauce......

Step 6: After the apple mixture had lost several inches of water due to evaporation we added back the apple peel-juice and cooked it some more



Step 7: When the mixture had once again lost the water, we added in the 30 lbs of sugar and stired virgorously.

Step 8: 8 hours after we started cooking, the mixture was a beautiful redish-brown color and had reduced in size almost a good foot down the sides of the kettle. When spooned onto a dish, no ring of liquid could be found around the plop (meaning it was done and good and thick) and the apple butter was finished.

Step 9: After carying the kettle over to near the garage, we setup a packaging line which consisted of scooping the sweet nectar from the kettle, filling mason jars, putting on the lids and screwing them down as tight as possible ... all the while trying not to burn ourselves on the moltan apple butter.

Step 10: EAT. I love food. I love all kinds of food. But I have found few food in life that compared to fresh hot apple butter spooned onto a hot biscuit. Mmmm Mmmm Good.

This was my first experience with the making of the apple butter (I have had the joy of sampling this lovely food for several years, it makes a great chistmas gift) and it was a blast.



Now I just need to find some more biscuits ... :-D

Flaming Coyotes

Today I attended a fire safety class at Monsanto (partially b/c it was Friday and allowed me to spend time outside and partially b/c we had the kitchen fire the other day and I thought it might be interesting).

They gave a talk on fire safety and how to use fire extinguishers (and info on how we can order them at Monsanto's discounted rate ;-) ) and then we went outside for a live demonstration and examples.

As we were walking outside to an old parking lot on campus that is no longer used, one of the teachers joked that they had seen a coyote when they had arrived that morning. Well there it was still, in a small field between us and the parking lot, laying down. The thing was small/medium in size (think decent sized dog but very lean). When we got closer it got up and trotted off a bit watching us and eventually jogged away toward some wooded areas.

Now, I have seen foxes and such on several occasions (mostly up at our cabin) and have seen various wildlife in urban and semi-urban areas numerous times (seeing a deer with Josh in Oakwood and one walking around our apt. in Cinci come to mind) but I can't say I was expecting to see a decent sized predator in the middle of St. Louis. Even considering some of the nearby semi-wooded areas.

After that we got to put out a 3'x3' pan of gasoline fire. All in all it was an interesting morning. :)

Senior Consultant

As of today, I am officially a "Senior Consultant". :)

Which means doesn't really change much for the time being, but as of Jan 1st I should be getting a decent raise (TBD end of November...), I have some more responsibilities, and I am generally WAY COOLER!

I am also taking over the role of "Activities Coordinator" for the unit in a official capacity. First event, a November bowling outing :)