Weather or not...

If you're not a geography fan you might not know that the part of the country I live in has been on the receiving end of many of the last century's worst storms. While Florida has been rocked hard by many storms, and Katrina did a horrifying job on New Orleans, the Cape Fear region of North Carolina has seen multiple devastating hurricanes.

The pictures above and below are both from a particularly nasty one, Hazel. The one above is from Carolina Beach, where my wife and I lived for a few years. I had my first hurricane experiences there with Isabel and Ophelia.
By the time Ernesto rolled in we were living in Hampstead, NC, which is about a 20 minute ride NE of Wilmington.

We haven't had one yet since buying the place in Leland, NC.

After the first storm I began to get a bit more serious about preparedness. Just a few weeks prior to Isabel I got my Amateur Radio Operator, or HAM, license. It sure was reassuring being in radio contact with the county emergency operation center (EOC) throughout the storm. When that first one was over Melanie had somewhat changed her opinion of how geeky HAM radio was. I say somewhat because she still thinks it's silly most of the time, but as soon as the weather starts turning nasty she's looking to see if I've got the radios working.

I also invested in a few nice to have items:

• A 5KW portable generator
• A 16" gas chainsaw
• A couple different fuel type lanterns, one propane and one oil.
• Keeping at least 3-5 days supply of easily cooked canned or dried food on hand.
• Keeping a stock of bottled water on hand.
• A ceramic hand pump type water filter.

And there's other stuff too, I just can't think of at the moment. When it was just me and Mel it wasn't a super big concern, but now with two kids in the house too, I've got more on my mind to be concerned with.

Honestly though, if it looks like we're going to have a scary big storm I just plan on packing up the bunch into the minivan and headin' inland. The home's covered for wind and flood, so it's not like we'd lose our investment.

But still, there's a part of me that gets a bit of pleasure from a good storm. Don't take this wrong; I hate for anyone to be injured or killed, I just get a kick out of riding out a storm somewhat like it's a competition. I think most people get a kick out of coming through something like even a real nasty downpour on the highway in their car, and smiling a bit after they reach the end, as if to say "See, I handled that fine!"

Then there's the Boy Scout syndrome I get a bit of, in that I kind of like the thought of "roughing it" with camping style food and mood lighting provided by the oil lantern, if the power goes out.

Melanie thinks I'm nuts.

She may be right.

Anyways, I'm adding some hurricane type resource links to the right hand side of this journal, just in case anyone isn't already aware of these things.

Maybe it's the late hour...

Or maybe it's tonight's culinary creation, for which I have to imagine is already on a diner menu somewhere: The fried egg and leftover spaghetti sandwich. I'd post pictures, but I know it was way better tasting than it was looking.

Whatever the reason, I'm scared.

I'm scared because I'm watching ABC's coverage of the DNC, and I'm enjoying it.

I'm scared because some of these dems are making a bit of sense.

No one's going to change my stance on abortion.

No one's going to change my stance on the Second Amendment.

No one's going to change my stance on...., well, that's about the only two things that I absolutely stand firm on. I think nationalized health care would be a boondoggle at best. Tampering with the minimum wage much more isn't going to do anyone any favors down the line, once the cost to employers is passed on to the customer.

But...

I have to say that I am already sold on alternative energy, just don't cram it down my throat by taxing the crap out of current fuels and tech. Make new forms of energy production cheaper, and by all means independent of foreign interests, and I'm in.

Let me keep my Ducati, and the wife's minivan, and I'll be happy to buy a subcompact in a couple years. Heck I'd love to have one of the Aptera Hybrids, if they ever actually make one and get them on the road. I'll even consider a plug-in electric, as long as it's still got A/C and decent stereo. The heat here in the South is ridiculous in the summer.

Now that I think about it, this has to be the sandwich talkin'...

It's 3:09 PM (EST). I'm hungry.

I skipped lunch today.

I did have a decent enough breakfast. I grabbed a banana and a toasted almond granola bar out of the pantry, which I enjoyed with a fresh hot cup of green tea at my desk while reading email this morning. I followed that up later with a pack of ranch flavored sunflower seeds. Not so good, because of the sodium, but not all that bad either. I used to eat tons of sunflower seeds years ago, but once I quit smoking last year I needed something to keep my mouth busy, and I'm hooked on the sunflower seeds again.

So my hunger right now has me planning a rib-sticker of a meal. I made a beef stew last Friday night that I wasn't all that pleased with. The basic problem with the stew being that I really should have had that as a dinner for Saturday night, and made it in the slow cooker all day Saturday, rather than trying to make it homestyle in a shorter amount of time on Friday night.

I wonder what other people make as their fallback, ol' reliable, never fail, "this is what I make when I want to feel good" dish?

I'm thinking spaghetti and meatballs for tonight. I'm going to cheat, by using store bought pasta. I'm going to cheat, by using store bought meatballs. I'll make my own marinara for the sauce base, and I'll enjoy a glass of my own homemade Shiraz. I'll have a salad, which I will clean the lettuce for myself, but I haven't decided if I'll make a nice oil & vinegar dressing, or toss something on there from a bottle. Is this still a homemade meal? Yeah, I think so. Would I take more pride in it if I made the pasta myself? Definitely. How far is too far? For me, I'd love to be taking tomatoes out of my own garden and crushing them in a hand-cranked food mill for my sauce. I'd like to be grinding the meat for my meatballs myself, and seasoning with herbs out of a windowbox next to my kitchen. I'd like to do these things just because I could. Alas, I don't have a windowbox, let alone an herb garden. I also don't have the luxury of time to do all theses things right. Nope, I'm not going to be getting quite that involved in my dinner tonight, but I feel it's still going to be homemade just the same.

Now I think if I were to take out a can of Pilsbury garlic breadsticks and call that homemade I might be kidding myself. I like those once in a while, but really, that's not home cooked.

New world curry...

So I made a curry tonight and I didn't use anyone else's recipe.

I was going through the supermarket and I couldn't decide what I wanted for dinner tonight. The original plan, as a friend from work and I schemed about, was to make something like Sloppy Joes that the kids would eat. As a side dish I was going to do some mashed sweet potatoes. I figured if I could add a bit of marshmallow and cinnamon/brown sugar on top the kids wouldn't know they were eating a healthy veggie.

The supermarket foiled my devious plan. They didn't have any sweet potatoes.

What they did have was a rippin' deal on boneless/skinless chicken thighs. I'm a fan of the dark meat. First thing that always pops into my mind for thigh meat is curry. Breast meat just doesn't hold up to the spices and sauce as well.

I'm also a fan of the old standby S&B Curry from Japan for a quick weeknight Indian fix. But this is a Monday night, and I didn't have to work the night job, so I had a bit more time on my hands for dinner. I also had an abundant supply of curry powder in the pantry. I winged it from there...

Ingredients:

• 1.8 lbs boneless skinless chiken thigh meat, cubed into medium pieces
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
  
• 3 Tbls curry powder, I used hot, but you can use regular
• 1 8oz can tomato sauce, which is a Vindaloo carry over which I like in my curry these days
• 2 chicken bullion cubes. ( I know, bullion is sacreligous, but I keep it on hand when I don't have homemade stock in the freezer.)
• 4 cups water
• olive oil
• 1 tsp ground red cayenne pepper (optional, but I like the heat these days)
  

Directions:

In a Med-HI preheated pot, pour in a couple tablespoons olive oil and brown the chicken in it. Remove the browned chicken to a plate and reserve any juices. Toss the onion in the pot and lightly brown. Add the chicken back in the pot followed by the water and tomato sauce. Give it a good stir, and add the curry powder, bullion and cayenne pepper. Lower the heat to a simmer and let it alone for at least an hour. If you find it needs anything like salt toss some in. I like a lot of sauce, but it was just a bit runny for me, so I added a tsp of corn starch mixed with about a third cup of water to thicken it up just a tad.

For sides I went for something different than I normally would. Instead of rice I made roasted potatoes.

I also made naan again.

It was a great meal, but a bit spicy for the boys. They had chicken nuggets instead.

I have to give another plug to PortableApps!

I'm sitting here logged into Blogspot.com at the moment using Firefox on my thumbdrive. I've been using this setup for a couple months now, and I am getting to the point where I'm more likely to forget my cell phone than my thumbdrive on the way out the door each morning.

For those of you a little weak on the Google-fu, here's the link: http://portableapps.com/. Start there if you don't need me to make a sales pitch any further. For the rest of you, follow along while I ramble on...

I guess the first thing I need to explain is what the heck I'm talking about, and why I'm so excited about PortableApps. You probably don't need to be a genius to see that almost no one you know these days doesn't use a computer regularly. I can't think of anyone I know who doesn't own at least one computer. It's getting to the point where it's assumed that we will have access to email and the web wherever we go these days, even if it's visiting friends and family. We say that we'll send you a link like we used to say we'd call you later. Our reservations are made online, as are a number of purchases and banking chores. We read news, gather opinions and share ideas from the sites we're interested in, not being force fed from a select few formula based sources.

All the hyperbole about the internet changing our lives was true, we just don't see it all for what it has become. It has become so absolutely taken for granted that the quest for knowledge is only a couple mouse clicks away that we figure something didn't happen if it can't be found with Google or Wikipedia.

I have a growing list of bookmarks that I check daily, sometimes hourly, and I hate it when I go hop on a computer at someone else's place and I can't recall where it was that I need to go to get something done. I use Yahoo!'s toolbar for Firefox and I always have my bookmarks. This solution is great, and as long as I use someone else's browser I'm always good to go, unless they don't have that toolbar installed, then I'm out of luck. I could install it for them, but not everyone out there cares to have visitors loading software on their PC. My solution is PortableApps.

By having my web browser on my thumbdrive I have all the addons and plugins I need with me. I plug it in the USB port, wait a couple seconds for it to load, and I'm up and running with my personalized copy of Firefox with all my preferences configured how I like them, except for screen resolution but that's a whole other issue that needs to be rambled on about endlessly at some other time. Anyways, there's quite a bit more to be concerned about than just your bookmarks these days. Between key loggers, spyware, viruses, and simple nosy interlopers, you have a number of things to be concerned about when surfing the web and making any kind of personal transaction. Data for most websites gets stored locally when you visit a website, in the form of cookies and cache. When you use someone else's PC you leave a trace of where you were and what you did on that computer. You also leave the door open for someone to do something malicious with that info, either by the person the PC belongs to, or more likely by someone who has compromised that PC. By using my own browser, on my own drive, with my own password and cache, I unplug my thumbdrive from the USB port and my data follows me instead of getting left behind. The same goes for a number of other things as well. How about documents? Microsoft has a feature that makes a ghost copy of any thing you're workin on, so that it may be retrieved if the power fails, or some other misfortune befalls you and your PC while you work. Problem here is that this copy can be saved and recalled later when you're not around. There's ways around this as well.

Not only does PortableApps have a web browser, there's also a full suite of office products from Open Office, as well as PDF viewers and alternate simple word processors. There's much more than even that productivity stuff, as in a couple games too. The Texas Hold 'em Poker is a good one.

I would like to list everything available, but I think if you've read up to this point and are interested you really need to click on over to http://portableapps.com/.

I'm currently running PortableApps on a Sandisk Cruzer 4GB drive. This was a U3 drive when I got it, and if you prefer U3 more power to you, but it ain't open source and there's way too many things that you get free with PortableApps that cost $$$ in U3. These drives are just too cheap and plentiful (I see thumbdrives at the supermarket now, next to the register) to not have one.

The one major thing I haven't mentioned yet is that this is all Windows PC only. I'm a Mac user. That said, I use PCs at work all day long. With U3 your drive isn't even accessible with a Mac. With PortableApps I can't run the application on my Mac, but I can still browse the drive and retrieve things I've worked on while on a PC, as well as share files between the Mac and PC.

No, I don't work for PortableApps, I'm just a huge fan, and cheerleader for their product. I have no financial interest in their product whatsoever.

Giddyup!

(That's an older pic, taken with a cell phone which did not get the color right at all)

Fat (being myself) Duc (being my Ducati) rides again!

I took the bike out for a 50+ mile ride today. It's pretty pathetic that someone who loves riding and motorcycles so much gets to ride so little these day, but that's parenthood with a pair of toddler boys in the house... Or is it because I'm a homeowner now? Maybe it's the having to work two jobs to pay for the kids, the house, the new minivan, health insurance and the wife's new crown (it was a lovely coronation!).

One of the other issues that can be a hindrance, particularly to this CA native, is the heat. Riding through the Salinas Valley, or commuting in Sacramento during the summer on a bike is something I had no problem with on the old Sportster or the GPz1100. For some reason, possibly because of the previously mentioned heft I'm bearing these days on my no-longer-a-smoker body, the heat and humidity really gets to me when riding these days. It could also be the attire I wear these days when I ride. While I've been a proponent of helmet for as long as I've been riding, I used to really not wear any more protective clothing than the helmet and a pair of cinch down type leather garden gloves. I wore denim pants frequently, but they don't offer much in the way of abrasion resistance. T-shirts and tennis shoes were fine. I would have padded a plastic surgeon's wallet pretty well in the event of a lowside...

Today I still wore denim. I haven't invested in a good pair of riding pants, yet. I did don my trusty, but in need of replacement (Wish List Item, red and black "Burst" pattern in XL if you need to get me an early Christmas present!) Shoei RF700, my Fieldsheer Kevlar and CE armored mesh jacket, MY Icon motorcycle specific gloves and finally my Tour Master WP Solution boots. At any less than 15 mph there's insufficient airflow to penetrate the mesh of the jacket or the vents in the helmet, and it gets downright hot in the saddle. This really contributes to rider fatigue but some discomfort is greatly preferred to skin grafts and bones held together with exotic metal hardware! I'd rather keep the SS and Titanium on the bike.

Besides, I think the kids would appreciate having me around for bit longer, regardless of the fact that I'm worth more dead than alive at them moment. Funny how insurance, SSI and pension plans work like that.

I need to ride more.

Completely tastless and...

Pretty juvenile to boot.

Don't press play if you're easily offended by flatulent humor, or if you're overly sensitive about televised evangelism.




I am sorry about this one, but I have to say I was laughing out loud at my desk when I first viewed this over on Boing Boing.

Tortilla Soup

Wil's 2nd birthday party was today. He turned two this last week, but we had the party for him and his friends today. While a great time was had by all, we had a couple cancellations, which is normal for any kids events when they're this young. Kids are just walking petri dishes, and sicknesses come up pretty fast. Well, so there were some leftovers. We had a pizza from a nearby place, and the leftovers from that will go pretty quick. It was the veggie tray that I was concerned about. There was a bunch of celery, carrots and a pretty nice couple dozen grape tomatoes. I just couldn't help think about soup when I looked at the stuff.

So, combined with some other goodies I had in the pantry and fridge I was off and cookin...

Ingredients:

• one big onion, peeled and chopped
• about 2 oz. diced country ham, but you're welcome to use pancetta or some other nice cured bacon or ham
• 2-3 tbls olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• about 1-1.5 cups diced celery
• about 1 cup diced carrot
• around 2 dozen grape tomatoes, stemmed and halved
• 1 can black beans, drained but not rinsed
• 8-9 cups water
• 2 packets Goya Sazón, (has MSG, so you may do your own seasoning if you can't do MSG)
• 1 tbls Goya Sofrito
• 1 tbls Goya Recaito
• 1 tbls kosher salt
• 1 tsp ground cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 6-8 corn tortillas, dry or toasted and sliced into 1/3-1/2 inch strips

Put the first 7 ingredients in a good sized stockpot and sauté until tender. Add everything else and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and let it settle into a nice simmer. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Stir in the tortillas and let it simmer another 20 minutes. Adjust seasoning as needed. Serve in nice wide bowls with a healthy garnish of grated cheese on top.

This was a hit at my house.

For other variations, you can leave out the ham and use chicken stock for the base. I also have no hard feelings towards the vegetarians, so you can skip the chicken stock or ham altogether, but you'll have to come up with a good seasoning blend to make up for the little bit of meat. I'd be happy to hear about what works on your table.

I also have to add that my beer choice for this dish was a pint of my Belgian Style Witbier, which I made myself with both lemon and orange zest, a bit of coriander, and some chamomile. The citrus in that beer came through nicely without being overbearing and is a fantastic compliment to Latino dishes.

OK, I'm sold...

These guys have reformed Journey for real.

I guess it's also time to admit to another guilty pleasure of mine, being a closet Journey fan. Driving around with any of my friends in the 80s would have involved listening to any of a number of either punk, ska or new wave acts, but if I was driving solo and "Open Arms" or "Seperate Ways" came on while I was tuning the FM I'd stop and sing along. When I was overseas for an extended stay on Uncle Sam's dime I would stop and sing along with any home related tunes, and "Lights" was right up there with "Sittin' on a Dock of the Bay". Sadly there's really no decent songs about Sacramento, my actual native soil, and it wasn't for a number of years afterwards that I got to claim Cake as a hometown band.

But I digress. I've been listening to Arnel Pineda singing lead on Journey's new album Revelation today. This guy from The Phillipines is for real, and while it's amazing enough that the 11 classic Journey hits they re-recorded with Arnel are just as good as, if not better than, the originals, it's almost more amazing that the new stuff is really great too! It's just what you would imagine Journey would have made 25 years ago, and it still sounds good today.

That video posted above is from a concert in Chile from February '08. Arnel was signed to the band just two month earlier, in December of '07. How crazy that these guys took a guy from a PI bar band and put him on stage in front of thousands of people who all new the songs by heart, and who expected a distinct sound that pivoted around a distinct lead vocalist? Crazier yet was to follow that up with a top ten Billboard album just months later.

Even if you have no interest in purchasing this band's stuff, you probably are going to have to indulge yourself and go over to YouTube an listen to everything that comes up on a search for "Journey 2008". Go ahead, only your browser's history and you will know, and you can wipe out the history file.

Where was I when the memo on...

Juno Reactor went out?

A friend of mine from work turned me on to this group/act, and I'm hooked. I've been into "Ambient" before this, back when it was simply dance-experimental electronica. I have a bunch of Cabaret Voltaire on vinyl, and I love Deep Forest, as well as earlier stuff from bands like Telex with their single Peanuts. This isn't really a new sound, but it's really been solidified. It's disco meets industrial and I like it.

Back to the normal experience here: FOOD!

I took a pound of dried black beans and soaked them overnight Saturday.

Sunday I got out a nice stockpot and browned a big ol' Vidalia onion in it with olive oil. I then added the beans, and 8 cups of fresh water, which I then brought to a light boil and reduced the heat. This was simmered for about 2 hours, and then I removed everything to a large bowl where I separated the beans from the cooking liquid. The beans were placed back in the pot.

Then the magic began:

I added 2 packets Goya Sazón (without Annato), about a tblsp of Goya Adobo with cumin, and another couple teaspoons of ground cumin. In addition I stirred in 3 tblsp of Goya Recaito. For a touch of heat I put in about a teaspoon of hot Indian crushed red pepper. I poured in 3-4 tblsp of olive oil. I added about .5-1 cup of the cooking liquid back and got things simmering nicely. This mixture spent another hour or two on the stovetop on low just soaking up flavor and tenderizing.

We're on our second day of super tasty beans and I'm packing more for lunch tomorrow. Add a couple tortillas and rice and you've got a super meal. Trust me, this is a rib-sticker!