Monday, April 30, 2007

Home for the Weekend

I made a quick trip back to Indiana for the weekend. An old friend of mine from like fourth grade through college got married on Saturday, so I got to make the trip in on Friday night, hang out with a few friends then and drive up to Pine Village, Indiana for the wedding on Saturday. Then I found my way back down to Indy to make the flight back to Wichita on Sunday morning. The wedding was nice. It was actually the first time I'd met his wife. Didn't get to talk to her a lot, but I'm sure she's cool. Anyway, made it back to Hutch and got to work on time this morning. Pretty solid trip.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Rib Night

Isn't it funny that I'm the one who grew up on bacon grease and my cholesterol is juuuuust fine?

Anyway, we had our ribs and potatoes and green beans slathered in grease, and it was pretty tasty. DFW has nothing on me. We spent the evening cooking and partaking of beverages and had a pretty good time. The weather has been mid-70s and it's so nice to get outside and grill something up.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Grease...and not the musical

Ok, yes, I have resisted having grease in my food and taking up space in my fridge. Like Scott I did not grow up in the South. My family is all from the midwest. In addition to being raised in the wonderful heartland, my mother is a cardiac rehab nurse. We just didn't eat much bacon...or red meat for that matter. We ate a lot of chicken and rice, as one would expect when the person doing the cooking watches people die from clogged arteries. On top of that, my family has a history of high cholesteral. Some of you don't know me, but I am 5'6 and 115 pounds. I'm in fairly good shape, though don't work out as much as I should and I have high cholesteral. Am I worried about eating foods cooking in pork fat? Hell ya! I'd like to live. I'm too young for lipitore.

As I am sure Scott will post later, I have conceded and there is pork fat in the fridge as I type. Tonight we are having ribs with green beans (cooked in pork fat) and potatoes (cooked in pork fat). What can I say, baby? You're the one that I want...

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Bacon Grease

OK, I know that some of you have been waiting for the fighting to begin so that we can take our arguments public and you can watch everything fall apart, before I come running back to Indiana a lonely and broken man. So here's the beginning. There is an enormous bruhaha over bacon grease. How can bacon grease lead to a broken relationship, you ask?

My family by no means grew up in the south. In fact, even counting every living member of my extended family, there are only about 5 or 6 people who have lived outside Indiana, and that was in the west. However, my family cooks using bacon grease. Yes, the remains sitting in the pan after you cook up some bacon for breakfast. As far back as I can remember, my mom had a dish in the fridge with some grease in it, and she added to potatoes and green beans regularly, among other things. It just adds some flavor that you can't recreate with spices or anything else.

Katie is not fond of this. She doesn't like the idea of cooking with it, and she definitely doesn't like the idea of keeping it sitting around. I'm not going to try to quote her, because that will only make things worse. Maybe she'll post her side of the argument, but it doesn't seem likely. Regardless, we fight day and night.

Last night I cooked up some burgers and threw some bacon the griddle - partly to accompany the burgers, but mostly to start up the grease stockpile. So now there's a tub of grease in the fridge. We'll see how long it is before it "disappears."

Anyway, where do you all stand? To grease or not to grease...

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Home Alone

Katie's working late, so I'm sitting here watching TV alone. There's not much on, so I'm watching the Twins and Mariners. The Cubs already lost today in 14 innings... which is always nice. I am a proud subscriber to the Extra Innings package, so there's pretty much some baseball on at all times.

Other than that, I've been watching every channel run stories about this Virginia Tech thing. I'm sure it would have been a bigger deal if it happened while I was in school, but I dunno. Honestly tho, think about all the people that were in your classes... how does this not happen all the time? I always had people in my classes that seemed like they could lose it at any time. People probably thought that of me in some of them.

Anyway, Katie just got home, so that's all you get from me.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Friday the 13th. Of April.

Friday the 13th happens once or twice a year or so and everyone kinda makes a small deal about it, but nothing ever goes wrong. Well, this year, it falls in April, and you'd think it would just be another uneventful day. But it's not. And here's why:

So this is pretty fun. These photos are from about an hour ago; it's still coming down. And on my way home from work, I actually saw the whole sky light up and there was a thundercrack that lasted about 10 seconds. Anyway, pretty sure this qualifies as bad luck.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Cuban Reply

Sorry, didn't realize anyone would be so interested in that one. I expected to get made fun of and asked to fill you in on what I had for dinner. Here's the email:

everyone said the same thing about PCs. that older people would never buy them. Same with DVDs and cellphones.

when all the extras come included in the tv and they can click on the remote, it will be natural, not something extra the y have to do

thanks,

M

Regardless, I'm right.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

TV and Mark Cuban

This morning I read an interesting article about the future of TV, Web 2.0, and PCs on Mark Cuban's Blog. I have kinda been following him lately hoping that he would write about how he's going to buy the Cubs and get them to the World Series as soon as possible, but he hasn't. Anyway, I read the article and was compelled to comment, partly because I had an opinion and partly because no one else had yet.

His basic theory is that the web and internet video are both fairly mature and have nowhere to go. Thus, new products like the Apple TV are pushing the wrong direction by taking video from your computer to your TV, rather than connecting your TV to the internet. Even Mr. Cuban would agree that he has a vested interest in HDTV, but I'm sure he wouldn't have this interest if he didn't think he was right.

Cuban says he expects everyone to upgrade their TVs as regularly as they upgraded their computers in the past decade, because computers haven't been making advances and TVs have. I'll give him that. If I need a computer to check the my email and browse the internet, like probably 75% of people in the world, the computer I have will work for quite a while (minus Microsoft and Apple creating new OSs with features I don't need and requiring me to upgrade to them, but that's another story).

However, where I disagree is the idea that the average Joe Schmo is going to be interested in interactive TV. I really don't believe that regular people are going to be interested in applications and development platforms on their televisions. TV is passive. People like to veg out in front of it, not deal with it or play against it. That's what video games are for. I wrote a paper in college about this actually, I'll have to see if I can find it. (Edit: found it)

Cuban closes by saying, "If the question is "Whats Next ", the answer begins with "Watch TV"," but I don't think 'watch' is the word he meant.

Anyway, he replied to my comment via email, so I am the proud owner of an email from a billionaire. Needless to say, I didn't convince him, but I didn't really expect to. Anyway, I know no one cares, so that's it for that one.

Monday, April 9, 2007

Easter

Happy belated Easter to everyone. We spent the weekend in Iowa with Katie's family. It was about a 6 hour drive up there, straight into the wind... which sucked the gas like you couldn't believe. We got there Friday night in time for dinner, and then spent Saturday morning doing some shopping in Sioux City.

Later that evening, I attended my first Catholic mass, which was pretty interesting. That's a pretty good way to make yourself feel uncomfortable. But now, I've banked a couple hours of church, and I've been soaked with flying holy water, so I'm feeling pretty good about myself. Let's just hope I didn't inadvertently get myself kicked out of my own church. Not that they'd miss me I'm sure.

Sunday we drove to Katie's aunt's house and I got to meet lots of her mom's family and have a great lunch. I also got to watch her cousins wrestle and do gymnastics, and I got to watch a little bit of the Cubs game. Then we embarked on the drive home, getting back to Hutch at about 10pm, just in time to go to bed and get up for work. Pretty solid weekend. Maybe you'll get her side of the story if you beg or something.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Bored

I've been sick with a cold or allergies or something and working on a side project for the whole weekend, and I've reached the point where I'm finding anything I can to do in procrastination. So that sounds like a good time to write a blog entry! I went out around 3:00 and ran for an hour, ending up at about 6½ miles. Needless to say a new record. I'm pretty sure I got sunburnt, which is a new concern for me in the running world.

This seems like a good time to mention that Nike+ is a heck of a motivator. Warrants its own post, maybe I'll do that next.

Right now Katie is baking cookies, which I am pretty fond of. She makes the best chocolate chip cookies ever. If you ask really nicely, she might give you the recipe.Not bad, eh? Think she'll find this?

Other than that, the weekend consisted of (for Katie) working, grocery shopping, and homework, and (for Scott) cleaning, "working," laundry, and trying to stay alive. The upcoming week is going to be a struggle; I have a site at work that needs to be done by Friday, and a lot of other things to take care of before next weekend. We're going to Iowa for Easter, so next weekend will be non-existent.

Anyway, enough procrastinating (at least with this method).