Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Oh, the joy!
Thursday, January 14th, 2010I know I have been mia lately and some of you might have wondered why. It’s not that I haven’t been working on my computer, it’s just that I have been having the joy of doing a complete reinstall of the operating system on my PC and all that that entails. Needless to say, I have been feeling pretty cranky lately and since my internet access was sporadic at best, I didn’t feel updating my blog was a high priority.
I am back now, and I have moved most of my internet activities to my new Ubuntu machine. We shall see how this works.
I have also been messing with my blog and have added Google ads in my right sidebar. Right now they are all looking like ads for Paris and French hotels. Hopefully in a few days, they will become more relavent. It doesn’t really matter, though. They are just an experiment to prove that I can create Google ads on a blog page.
I hope all is well with everyone out there. My next update should note take as long.
Adventures in fudge
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009For most people who do holiday cooking, the holiday season means that they will be making roast turkey/ham, some favorite side dishes, a pie or two, and maybe some Christmas cookies. For me, it’s fudge season. Specifically peanut butter fudge. I have made four batches of peanut butter fudge so far and I will be making another batch today (Mom has requested a batch for the New Year’s Eve party that she will be attending).
But this year, I decided that I needed to expand my horizons. What inspired me? On a recent trip down to Vincennes, my sister, my mother and I stopped at a roadside fruit stand/gas station that sold homemade fudge. I sampled their maple walnut fudge and was not impressed. My sister sampled their peanut butter fudge and said that it was pitiful, not anywhere near as good as mine (of course). My mother was happy with her chocolate fudge. I was looking over their offerings and got to thinking how I would go about making these fudges myself. And so, I decided to make 3 new kinds of fudge this year: chocolate, maple walnut and pumpkin.
For the chocolate fudge, I decided that the recipe that I use for peanut butter fudge would not be a good start, so I opened up my Betty Crocker Cookbook and used their recipe for chocolate fudge. It was a success, although it was a lot more work than peanut butter fudge. Mom really loved it. I think I had 3 or 4 pieces, I gave 4 pieces away, and Mom ate the rest.
My next experiment was maple walnut fudge. The maple walnut fudge had a great taste, but it turned out a little grainy. I think that is because I used a grinder to grind up the walnuts. I will use a blender next time and make sure I get it to a creamy texture. I will say, the flavor of this fudge was fabulous, so I will definitely do it again. I made it the same way as the peanut butter fudge, but I substituted walnut paste for the peanut butter and used maple flavoring.
The pumpkin fudge wasn’t quite as successful. The flavor was good, but the fudge never set properly. I made it the same way as the peanut butter fudge, but I used a can of pumpkin pie filling in place of peanut butter (I squeezed as much liquid out as I could beforehand by using a clean dish towel – I need to get cheese clothe). I also cooked it 10 degrees higher than I normally do (I had tried to make this fudge before and it did not set then either). It still turned out to be pumpkin sludge, not pumpkin fudge. The good news is, it makes a nice topping for ice cream and tastes great on toast. I am determined to succeed with this recipe, so next time I will cook it even longer. I will not stop until I succeed!
I also made a batch of cookies.
Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas
Thursday, December 24th, 2009I have not sent out Christmas cards this year, so I thought I would at least send out a Christmas greeting on my blog. It has been a very busy week since I have been working, dealing with a hacked email account, a virus infected computer, a new computer to set up and configure, and all the normal holiday preparations.
Christmas came early for me this year. I would like to thank my friend Paul for sending me a new computer. I am loving it. The computer is a Unix Ubuntu machine and I am looking forward to diving back into Unix.
I know most of you received a spam email from my email account, and I would just like to say I am sorry. I have sent a message to yahoo about this. Let’s see if they have any answers. In the meantime, I have changed passwords on a lot of my accounts. I am going to do a complete reinstall on my PC in case that is the root of my problems. But that is going to take a few days, so I will do that next week (or the week after).
As for holiday preparations, presents have been bought and wrapped and fudge and cookies have been made. Mom and I are going to have Christmas Eve dinner with my aunts and then have our own Christmas tomorrow.
However you plan on celebrating Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful holiday.
Pop Around the Clock
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009It takes awhile after you move to a new place before you find what is available in your new area. You find the chain stores right away, but it takes a little time, and usually luck, to find the fun places. I have lived in Indiana for over three years now, and I am finally feeling like I have found the necessary places. You know, the right shoe store (I’m picky), a place to buy used cds and dvds, a good bookstore, etc. Those special places that you like to go to when you are out and about that make your trip fun.
I recently found one of those stores, it is unique to this area, although I’m sure that there are similar places elsewhere. The name of the shop is Pop Around the Clock and it is a popcorn shop in Vincennes, Indiana. They make all sorts of flavored popcorn. Some of my favorite flavors are grape, cherry (and I don’t like cherry), carmel, butter pecan toffee, and cheese. I think my favorite flavor right now is root beer. I know, most of you are not in this area, however, the good news is that they are on line and they will ship anywhere in the country. Their website doesn’t list all of their flavors, but if you give them a call ((812) 882-0882), I’m sure you could get any flavor you want.
Mom and I stop by this shop every time we go to Vincennes now. This last trip we decided to try the Mexican restaurant in the same strip mall. And finally! We found a good Mexican restaurant! As you might suspect, Indiana is not the place you want to go to find Mexican food mecca. We have tried several Mexican restaurants since moving here, and although we have found some okay places, none of them were the kind you can’t wait to go back to. This place, on the other hand, had me planning my next trip to Vincennes before I even left the restaurant. So, I am doubly thankful to Pop Around the Clock, not only for their wonderful popcorn, but for helping me locate some delicious Mexican food.
Wish List 2: Spellbinder
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009I thought I would review another series that is not yet on DVD, at least not in the US: Spellbinder. I am sure that not many of you have heard of this series. I believe I saw it on the Disney Channel in the 90s. I watched quite a bit of childrens programming back then, including Ocean Girl, Space Cases, and the Secret World of Alex Mack. But my favorite was Spellbinder.
Spellbinder was a tale of alternate worlds. It starts in our world, where teenager Paul Reynolds is playing a prank and accidently stumbles through a gateway to a parallel world. This world has an agricultural society that is ruled by ‘Spellbinders’. Spellbinders are people who use powersuits to manipulate electricity. Paul is befriended by Riana in the Spellbinder world and together with his friends in our world, they work on a way to get Paul back.
I really enjoyed this series, but unfortunately, I did not tape it when it was on. This series was only shown once in the US to my knowledge, so I have never had the opportunity to see it all the way through, since I missed several episodes while it was being shown. There was a second series, Spellbinder 2: Land of the Dragon Lord, but it was not as well written and it had little to do with the first series so I soon lost interest in it.
If you would like to get more info about this series, check out these pages on Amazon, iMDb and Wikipedia.
Wish List
Sunday, November 29th, 2009Do you have a wish list of old TV series or movies that are not available on DVD that you wish were? I know I do. I though I might post about them from time to time. So here is the first post and the series that I thought I would highlight is Star Cops.
I know some of my friends from the San Francisco Bay area have seen this series, but most other Americans will be unfamiliar with it, which is just a shame. This series was made in the late 1980s by BBC, and it was a very well done and intriguing show. Unfortunately, it only ran for one series of about 9 episodes. The premise of the show is that it is set in the near future where there are many national space stations orbiting the earth and a multinational moon base. And one of the things people have brought with them as they have moved into space is crime. So there is a multinational police force set up to handle this. In the first episode, a reluctant detective is sent up to as a possible candidate for the commander of the Starcops and is very disturbed when a spacewalk turns deadly apparently because of suit malfunction. Turns out there have been several suit malfunctions over the years, and the question is, is this normal, have the suits been sabotaged, or has the Russian company who makes them deliberately overlooked suit safety for some reason. The opening scene will give you the answer, but it will take a determined detective to come up with the truth.
I loved this series, for several reasons. This series was made during the Cold War and it has that era’s tensions between countries. No nationality was portrayed in a rosy light – each one had its own faults. And although the setting was futurist, the crimes were what could come with the advancement of men in science and space. Even though this series was made in the 80s, it still has a futuristic feel to it.
I made a recording of this show on VHS when it played on the local PBS station and I have since transferred it to DVD. In fact this is one of the few recordings that I bothered to transfer to DVD. If you want your own copy, you are going to have a hard time finding it. This series was apparently put out on DVD in the UK, but there was never a region one encoding made. So most of us in the US are out of luck. But even those in the UK will have a hard time finding it since it is, to my knowledge, no longer being sold. I would love it if they put this series out on DVD here so that I could replace my poor quality recording, but I am still glad that I have my recording so I can revisit this show every once in a while.
If you want to look into this series more, check it out at Amazon, on Wikipedia, and at this BBC site.
One more note, although I would love this series no matter what the theme song was, this is one of those shows that I find myself rewinding just to listen to the haunting theme song. It was written by Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues and I wish I had a recording of it. I think I have just inspired myself. I am going to go to YouTube and search for it. It has to be out there.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thursday, November 26th, 2009Hello, all!
I hope you are all enjoying your Thanksgiving. We are currently in the prep phase of our meal and I have the easy part. I only have to make the mashed potatoes. I have already peeled and cut them and I am about to put them on to boil. Very soon the mashing will commence.
Wherever you are in your Thanksgiving, I hope all is going well.
Thanksgiving preparations are not the only thing that I have done today, although that has gone the smoothest. I have also tried to install a plugin that will help me twitt from this blog. So far, no go. But I will keep trying, but probably not until Sunday, since I will be working tomorrow and Saturday.
Anyway, go, enjoy your turkey or tofurkey or whatever else you are having today.
Fudge, Anyone?
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009As many of you know I make the world’s best peanut butter fudge (I didn’t win the Golden Spoon Award for Candy and Fudge by bribery.) So when I decided that I wanted to experiment with building a shopping cart, one of the first things that I thought I might sell was my fudge.
For those of you that have not had my fudge, it is sweet (it is fudge) but not as sweet as most fudge since I use a lot of peanut butter in it. It has a stronger peanut butter taste than most peanut butter fudge. Even people who do not like peanut butter have said that they like my fudge. If you are a fan of peanuts or peanut butter in candy, this is the fudge for you.
I am going to try to get my shopping cart up and running by the end of next week. I will be charging $10 a pound for my fudge to cover my costs and give me a little bit of profit. If anyone wants to buy some, you can buy as little as a quarter pound of fudge. Postage will be:
- $2.25 for a quarter pound
- $3.00 for a half pound
- $3.75 for three quarters of a pound
- $5.75 for a pound or more
If you are interested, let me know. Once I get my shopping cart up, I will send out orders within a business day or two of getting them. If you want your fudge by Christmas, I will need to get your order by Dec 10th. I do not know how long I will keep selling fudge. I will probably only do it until mid-December.
It’s a great day for America, Everybody
Friday, November 20th, 2009As most of you know, I prefer watching science fiction and I rarely if ever watch talk shows. However, about a month ago I was up late and I had exhausted the offerings on my DVR. I happened to catch the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. I fell in love with it almost immediately. I do not watch much comedy because I just don’t have the time to watch them, so this show was a refreshing change. Also, when it comes to comedy, I prefer stand-up to sitcoms. Since the opening monologues of talk shows are basically stand-up routines, I usually do like the opening of these types of talk shows. For those of you who have not seen the Craig Ferguson show, the first half of the show is usually just him doing his monologue and reading and responding to viewer emails. So I have gotten into the habit of recording this show and watching it the next day. I usually watch the first half of the show and stop viewing once the guest stars come on. So, if you like stand-up/improv comedy, I highly recommend that you give The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson a try. You might figure out why I gave this blog entry this title.
Among the employed
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009Good news! I am among the employed again. Some of you might know that I was fired from my last job for missing a meeting. Well, as of yesterday, I became one of the oodles of people who have found employment at McDonalds. I decided when I went back on the job hunt that I just wanted a part time job that will let me pay my bills so that I can spend the rest of my time brushing up on my programming skills. I plan on eventually getting some freelance programming jobs on elance, guru, and ifreelance, etc. But in the meantime, I need some way to pay my portion of the bills. Getting this job has really taken a load off of my mind as well as also getting me health/dental/vision benefits which I really need.
Anyway, I hope this note also finds you among those able to pay their bills. Unfortunately, that is not a given these days.