Entries from December 2008 ↓

I’m a train commuter.  I walk to a station, board a car with a bunch of other people I don’t talk to*, exit at a station in a stream of hundreds or thousands of others and then walk from the station to my office through artificial canyons, the result of 100 years of cool Chicago architecture.  It’s fairly rare that I run into someone I know.

This is the anonymous urban commute.  And it sometimes, not always, requires a soundtrack.  These albums** make a nice addition.

Bauhaus’s “Swing the Heartache” is probably my favorite for this.  I didn’t start listening to these guys until my junior year in college, when I was in Japan.  I would crank these to 11 on a (really tiny) Walkman, the tape made from a rented CD (yes, they rented CD’s like video tapes), and then board one of those trains they cram people in.  It seemed fitting.  Anyway, Swing the Heartache is ideal when your commute requires a little mild psychosis to go with it.

Madonna’s “Music” — aka The Last Good Madonna album — is actually a pretty good listen.  The Lovely J introduced me to this early on in our relationship.  I’ve never before admitted publicly how much I like the whole album, but I do.  It’s got feeling and a reasonably good beat.  Cheerier than Bauhaus.

Q-Tip’s “The Renaissance” is actually the whole reason I’m writing this post.  It’s new and it’s awesome.   The whole album is good.  Parts cheery, thought provoking, and lyrically complex.  It gets more interesting the more you listen to it in it’s entirety.

Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”.  Yeah, I know, who doesn’t love Wilco?  I hadn’t listened to these guys for a while but they came up at lunch yesterday.  They’re good.  And the album, as a whole, is a pleasant journey.  It reminds me that I’m not always anonymous.  Love it for the commute.

Jethro Tull, “Aqualung”.  Yeah that’s right — I went there.  I love this album but I don’t know why.  I could also throw it on a list of top five albums to code to.  It’s just one of those things, sitting in the background, that is always a good choice.  Even if it makes me think on Ron Burgundy.

BONUS ALBUM: Horowitz playing Scarlatti.  I love Scarlatti.  The first time I ever heard of him was while reading the Illuminatis! trilogy.  There’s some passage in it where he’s mentioned.  So when I saw a CD of someone playing Scarlatti I said sure — I’ll give this a listen.  And it was  good.  Anyway, I found this one a year or so ago and love it, more for the commute home and the one in.  I find it calming.***

OK, so that’s it.  Now I really need to get those expense reports done.

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* There are a few whom I’ve met and I talk to.  It’s actually a pretty nice addition to the whole thing.

**A quick note on the word “album”.  I have no idea what anyone calls these collections of songs an artist or band will release together under a group title — these things I used to call “albums” — so I’m going to still call them albums.

*** I can just picture The Calm Reid Down Conspiracy now piping Scarlatti into every environment I walk through.  There could be worse things.

Word Twist is a great game on Facebook that my wife and I have spent too much time playing. While playing it in “ladder mode” today, where the irritatingly high scores of your so called friends are displayed for you as motivation or something, I stumbled on a cheat that let’s you see the answers and then play the exact same board again.

Spoiler alert: if you do this, the game will become slightly less interesting than before.  And yes, I included a picture of the results below.  Hey Word Twist people: this is a bug.  You should fix it.

1. Log in to Facebook.
2. Go to Word Twist.  If you don’t play it regularly, simply go the search box in the upper right and enter “Word Twist”.
3. Click on “Ladder Mode” on the menu.
4. Select either 6 or 7 letter, your choice, and start the round.
5. When time runs out, or when you click “I’m done”, you’ll see all the words and a dialog that says “Challenge Friends” or “Play Again”.  Record all the words so you can use them in your cheat.  Then, click on Challenge Friends.
6. Here’s the run part: click you back button.
7. Select the same 6 or 7 letter game.
8. and BAM! you should have the same board you did just a second ago.

This worked for me on Firefox 3.0.5 on Mac OS X 10.5.6.

The challenge is now finding a board with enough potential words for you to make a good score.  In some extremely unscientific testing, six letter games tended to come up with more six letter words for me.  Each maximum length word is worth 25 bonus points, so those are where you can really rack up the points. As you can see on the image below, mine had four of these and a total for 45 words.  Nice!

Yes, this certainly does take some of the amusement out of the game, or ladder mode at least.  Incidentally, my “natural” high score before this was 93.

P1030038, originally uploaded by ReidCarlberg.

Rolled rib roast from the Christmas Eve dinner the other night. Tasty.

Recipe from Cooking for Engineers.

My last of three big meals for this holiday season (here’s the first and the second) is done and it generally turned out fine.*  I wanted to share a very important less I’ve learned: when it comes to Big Fancy Meals, if it’s all possible,

make your own salad dressing and croutons.

It’s not that hard.  In fact, it’s probably the easiest thing I did for any of the meals.  But it makes an unreasonably large impression.**

The Salad Dressing that has been a hit for the last two meals*** is a Caesar that I found on Cooks.com.  It’s easy.  The original version is here.  I’ve included it below (with notes) for your convenience and because even in this Web 2.0 or higher world, I can’t add comments or ratings over there.

• 2-3 garlic cloves — I used more, about 1/2 a dozen
• 1/2 c. oil — use Olive Oil
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice — use a Fresh lemon — they’re cheap and it makes a difference.  Watch out for seeds.  A little extra never hurts.
• 1 egg — Room Temperature!
• 1 tsp. dry mustard
• 1/4 c. Parmesan cheese — I used a little more than this, makes the result thicker
• 1/4 tsp. black pepper

Blend garlic and oil in blender. Add remaining ingredients, blend well. Pour over lettuce and add croutons just prior to serving. Note: this recipe comes out looking creamy even though the only dairy is the Parmesan cheese.

This recipe makes enough for 12 small salads.  You should plan on four heads of decent romaine, washed and spun.  And it’s kinda heresy, but I like tomatoes on the side of my Caesar.

Because of the raw egg, you have to be concerned about food safety.  Others might disagree with me but I saw refrigerate immediate and discard after a day.

The Croutons — those are my own. And I’m embarrassed to admin that they’re dead easy and so much better than the ones you can buy in a store.

• 8 slices of decent bread — the more grains, the better and a little stale is fine
• a stick of butter — use real butter — seriously
• garlic powder
• oregano

Chop the slices of bread into small cubes.  Put half the stick of butter in a skillet.  As it melts add the garlic and oregano and other spices if you like.  Add the bread.  As it gets coated, add the second half of the butter.  Keep the croutons moving.  They should be crisp but not burnt.  Cook until you’re satisfied.  It’s about 10 minutes over medium heat for me.  Set aside so they can cool before putting them on the salad.  People tend to snack on these as they go by.  Be sure to make enough to account for that.  This recipe makes enough for the salads listed above.

That’s it.  Hope you have a chance to try these some time.  You’ll be glad you did and I’d love the hear about it.

Merry Christmas!

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*There was an issue with the creme brulee not setting properly but, let’s face it, by then everyone was too stuffed to notice.

**And if you’re a single guy making dinner for That Someone Special, go the extra mile here.  Seriously.

*** I don’t do salad at the party.

We have a few people coming over tonight.  At least nine, might end up being 10.  And of course it’s Christmas Eve, so there’s a little bit of expectation, right?  Here’s the menu:

• Stuffed mushrooms for an appetizer.  Stuffed with basil, sun dried tomato and garlic.
• Standing rib roast for the omnivores among us.  It’s been aging in the fridge for a couple of days.  I actually woke up thinking about this the other night — completely paranoid that it was going to screw up.
• Wild rice.
• The spicy potato / cauliflower thing I started the other day — it’s crazy good.
• Rolls.  Need to start making those soon or they won’t be done in time.  There’s a fair chance my sister in law will throw one just to be funny.
• Salad.  Gotta figure out a decent dressing. The Cesar from the other day — fantastic.  Not even close to low cal but pretty freaking good.
• Creme Brulee.  A recipe close to the one I did the other day.  Pretty darn good, all things considered.  Nothing close to healthy.

Merry Christmas!

As we’re going through some last minute gift ideas for my soon to be three year old niece, The Lovely J and I came across this gem:

Tempting. Very tempting.

Having a couple of folks over for dinner tonight.  This the second of three holiday-ish meals we’re hosting.  (The party was the first, Christmas Eve will be the third.)

The Menu:

• Cornish game hens
• Cesar salad with home made dressing
• Roasted asparagus with balsamic browned butter
• Cauliflower, breaded with chili sauce
• Garlic mashed potatoes
• Creme Brulee – my first time making it (be afraid)

I’ll post some pictures when all is said and done (but hopefully before it’s all eaten).

For the record, this is from Denise and I’m posting it here for Kris.

• One Duncan Heinz Butter Recipe Fudge cake mix (if you can find it; if not, any chocolate cake mix will work)
• 1/3 cup oil — you might try Walnut oil.  A little expensive but pretty freaking good.
• 2 eggs
• 1 bag Kraft caramels
• 12 oz. Chocolate chips
• 12 oz Heath Bar chips
• 14 oz Eagle Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 1 stick butter

Use a 9 x 14 pan, spray it with Pam or something similar.

Start by  melting together the caramels, butter and condensed milk.  You might want a double boiler but if you don’t have one any pan over low heat will do.  Stir frequently & DO NOT burn.

Mix together the cake mix, oil, eggs, chocolate chips & toffee.  This will be VERY thick and will take some effort.  I have occassionally mixed in an extra egg — tastes fine.

Take 1/2 of the cake mix, and bake at 350 for 10 minutes.  Remove.  Pour the caramel mixture on.  Take the remaining cake mix and crumble it on top of the caramel.  Bake for another 25 minutes.  Remove and let cool.

I like to let it cool and then either freeze it or put it someplace cold — our three season room in winter, for example — and let it get nice and cool before cutting.  Cut into small sqaures and serve.  You should think twice before making a double batch.

OK so yeah I realize times are tough even at the 24 hour news channels but COME ON.  Your advice for small businesses now is to “Get Online”?  Really?  REALLY?  They might as well add “Put your sock puppet on the superbowl!”

IMHO, these businesses that aren’t online, these should be the first fat cut out of the economy.  If this story had been something more like “Why did you business fail?” I would be pretty happy with the saying, “Because you ignored this new fangled thing, the Internet.”

Of course, if by Get Online, they mean using some of the software as a service offerings that are behind my gig, that’s another story and I take back this entire rant.

Other fascinating pieces on CNN this AM: the guy who is literally selling his right testicle on eBay (he doesn’t expect it to sell) and a story about 15 city workers who are splitting a $207 million lottery.  One guys says, “It just goes to show, if you play, you might win.” Makes me want to find a site for people who lost.