Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Pork It With Ham

    I had a great birthday. We had gourmet pizza from Emilio’s, a fantastic cake made by mom and lots of fun. Work has been really busy, which hopefully explains my lack of content here the past few days. Not that you need an explanation, right?

    Today, I decided to make Jen a nice dinner for our “date” (mom’s got Max; we’ve got the house). We got a pork roast on sale, and I decided to try out another Molto Mario idea and braise it. Thankfully, Jen got me Mario’s book for my birthday, so I didn’t have to make it all up. Here’s the menu:

    • Bruschetta: fresh roma tomatoes, fresh mozarella cut into small cubes, shredded fresh basil and grated parmesan on toasted baguette slices.

    • Prosciutto-wrapped Asparagus: I got the prosciutto thick-sliced at the deli (too thick, but I asked for it that way). I wrapped the asparagus up in the slices and sauteed them in a little olive oil. The ham got a little hard. If I do this again, I’m using thinner meat.

    • Fresh linquine covered in the braising liquid with vegetables. I used the carrots, mushrooms, onions (Spanish and Red), and celery in the tomato-based braising liquid. I reduced it a little in a sauce pan and then threw in the cooked noodles.

    • Braised Pork Roast: We don’t drink, so I used pureed and diced tomatoes and olive oil as the braising liquid. I used too much; the roasting pan overflowed; the house filled with smoke; I opened windows. Other than that, the pork came out really tender, and the sauce that came out of the pan is heavenly (because pork is gooooo-oood).

    Other than the too-thick prosciutto and the smoke, it was really yummy. I have a couple other recipes I want to post, I just haven’t found the time. I made a really yummy salmon filet with red onions and fresh orange juice that I came up with off the top of my head. It was great (if I do say so myself). I also made homemade meatballs that blew me away. They were unbelievable, and I’ll share the recipe when I can get around to getting it down on paper. I’ve still got some in the freezer for subs later… mmmmm, meatball sub.

  • It’s My Birthday, Get Your War On

    Yeah, it’s my birthday and I’m sitting here on the couch surfing and watching Rummy on CNN. It’s a great day to be 28, I tell you. Mom came and picked Max up at eight for their regular Thursday playdate. I swear I was going to sleep in, but our trip to Matsutake for lunch yesterday has given me a little case of Yokohama’s Revenge and I woke up with some wicked stomach cramps. I’ll spare you the details past the fact that there’s no way I could get back to sleep.

    In completely non-war-or-birthday-related news, can I tell you how great NetNewsWire is? Since switching to OS X, I’ve been curiously watching my computer slow down as the afternoons drag on. This morning, I decided to play with top (it’s a unix command that shows you what’s running, and how much of the processor, memory and virtual memory it’s using). Everything grows in memory usage. AOL, Camino, Mozilla, etc. Camino uses a lot more memory than I thought it would. AOL and Mozilla are pretty memory hungry, but I knew that already. The one that really shocks me is NetNewsWire. Even after loading a bunch of posts, its memory doesn’t grow much. It holds nice and steady even after all those connections and posts. It’s so worth paying for it if you haven’t already.

  • Gone Birthday-ing

    I’m apparently important at work again, which explains the lack of posting the past couple days. I’ve been buried in requirements docs, urgent requests and educational material. My birthday is tomorrow, and we’re trekking to IKEA to shop for fun Scandanavian furniture and knick-knacks sans the monkey. I plan on sleeping in, taking a leisurely drive to IKEA, walking slowly and taking in all the shiny pine. I will then eat a leisurely lunch while I stare at my lovely wife. We may go see a leisurely movie. Then, we’ll take a somnambulent drive back home, where I’ll pick up gourmet pizza and tasty blue collar wings. We’ll have a party, eat cake and laugh.

    Then, on Friday, I’ll come go to the doctor and then come back to work ready to wade through more of this… stuff.

  • Who Needs It?

    Who needs war talk when you can read about Mike ‘s climbing trip instead? I love Mike’s climb reports. Any text that starts with the premise “I did everything right. I did.” is alright by me… and it gets better from there.

    My wife, being the amazing wife that she is, recorded the President’s speech last night so I could watch it after bowling (which is a story for another time). You know, I expected to be into the speech and try to find all the problems with it. Instead, I zoned out and barely even listened. I’d heard it all before, and I’m past caring what his rationale is. I’m past caring what names he can call him, and other reasons he can drum up. Nothing I say or do is going to change his mind, or stop the him from taking us down the path he’s chosen.

    Does it sound like I’ve given up? Yeah, I thought so. Oh, and if you don’t live in the DC area, and want to understand why we all look like we can’t sleep, go read this and you’ll understand.

  • OS X Blogging Tools Roundup

    After my full-time switch to OS X, I’m finding all kinds of great tools to make blogging easier and happier. This here is my incomplete list of things that make blog writing/reading life easier:

    • A Local Copy of Movable Type: I knew it made life easier, but when you use the same computer all the time, it makes having a goof-uppable version of everyone’s favorite personal CMS that much nicer.

    • NetNewsWire: It’s open all day long and grabs the latest blogging headlines hourly. It makes the day go by quicker and keeps me up-to-date on the latest gossip. It’s even better when used with…

    • Camino: I use Camino as my default browser. Why? Because you can set it to open sites opened by other applications in new tabs, and in the backgroud, which makes using NetNewsWire almost a religious experience, and also reduces desktop clutter.

    • Kung-Log: Manage your Movable Type blogs through this super-friendly little app. It’s got a great little editor built-in and other sweet tools for managing your blog.

    • Tyrantula: How quickly does your page load over dial-up? What’s actually on your page? Use this handy little app to find out. A great quick-and-painless page analyzer for OS X. Good, good stuff.

    • jEdit: This app runs a lot better now that Apple’s decided to give us Java 1.4.1. It has great tag completion and markup coloring. A solid text editor for those of us who can’t afford BBEdit.

    • Transmit: The best FTP program I’ve ever used on the Mac, OS 9 or X. The best part, it supports SFTP, and reads symlinks correctly!

  • Yeah! Crunch Them CD’s!

    Protesters destroy Dixie Chicks CDs. Yeah! Burn those cd’s!! Oh wait, it’s because the lead singer said something about the President you didn’t like? Well, that’s just plain stupid. Now, if this is just a referendum on bad music, go cats go! I’ve got a list of music you can start on when you’re done with the Dixie Chicks. You can start with almost the rest of contempory country music, which should take you a while. When you’re done with that, come back and I’ll give you a list of meaningless pop that should keep your bulldozer busy until the war is over.

  • Here It Comes

    U.S. urges U.N. inspectors to leave Iraq. I’m resigned to it at this point. Protesting, yelling, getting red in the face or swearing won’t change it. No one’s listening. So, let’s go, get this over with and move on. Nothing I do or say is going to change it. Oh, happy St. Patrick’s Day. Three days still my birthday and the official arrival of Spring. I can’t wait. We’ll probably be bombing stuff by then.

  • Unstarted Projects

    I want to build another CMS. Why? I’ve built two already (for work, a loo-ooong time ago), and there are already so many good ones out there. For blogging alone, there are several that people should look into. I know you know what they are. But, I’ve got some ideas for one that could include not only a web interface, but I think provide some features not available in the other personal publishing tools.

    I’m not sure when I’ll have time to start it, but thinking about it kept me up all night. I want to create something easier to use than the ones out there now, and more flexible. It’s a tall order, especially with Movable Type doing it so well already. As good as Movable Type is, it’s a little beyond the typical Blogger user. The features lacking from Blogger are legion, but it is the easiest to get started with (at least that I’ve seen – if someone has one that’s easier to get started with, please let me know). How do you combine Trackback, Comments, flexible templates including the ability to make “other” pages, more flexible archiving formats, a WYSIWYG editor, etc and make it easy? It’s a huge problem, and it’s keeping me up at night.

    I’m not even sure why it’s keeping me up, but it is. Maybe I just need to start drinking. Or take TylenolPM. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

  • Naps, Gender and Too Much Information

    I just woke up. Well, OK, a little less than an hour ago. I ate leftovers and they did not agree with me. So, I went to bed and ::poof:: fell asleep at about 6:30. At 9:45, I woke up with a start and well, here I am. I will be up all night.

    I just found out my medical school brother and his wife are having a girl!! We’re so happy. Now mom has someone to dress in frilly things, and can stop giving Max that measuring look. I know she wants to put him in cute little dresses and make him courtsey. Now, that twisted desire can move to a new grandbaby, and we can breathe a little easier. Way to go little bro!

    I dreamed last night that I got laid off. It woke me up, with a list of things I need to do to prepare for that eventuality. It was scarier than any other dream I’ve had in a long long time. For some reason, it was scarier than my “losing Max” series from last year. I blame Mike and our conversation the other day on the way out of the elevator. It wasn’t long, but we were joking about getting laid off, and he turned serious for a second and said, “You know, it happens to everyone sometime.” Mike, of course, could spend more time with his music and writing funny trip reports for his climbing excursions. Me? I think I’d be totally lost. I’ve worked there so long, my whole professional life, that I’m not sure what I’d do. Ok, that’s too much information… I’m going to stop now and watch Iron Chef.

  • Glory Gas

    I went to Glory Days for lunch and I have the gas to prove it. I can not stop burping. I tried Tums to no avail. It’s been almost four hours, and I’m still stifling gigantic man-sized burps sitting here in my office at work. Of course, if I were at home, I’d let them fly because they make Max giggle. I’ll do almost anything to make Max giggle.

    I’m going to try to stay away from the political for a while. I’m feeling a fit of zealotry coming on and that bothers me. I’m not a zealot. I’m trying to be reasoned and logical in my thinking, taking in both sides and deciding after weighing the facts. Unfortunately, the anger has taken over a bit and I’m losing sight of that a little. Time to take a break, watch a movie and remember there’s more to life than screaming at the hurricane.