I was going to blog something

but I forgot what it was. It was about something I did today. hmm. used a $25 gift card for Applebee's. Oh yes, now I remember. I downloaded the free app for my iPhone that tells you the name of a song you let it sample, called Shazam. It works pretty good, it records for maybe 10 seconds, and then spits out the artist, song name, album name, cover art, if any, and record label. This is all from some giant database, and so far it seem pretty inclusive. It doesn't know the Thai artists Hubby has on the computer, but it did know all the Dance and Techno we plugged in. Oh! One cool thing is it links directly to a Youtube video of the song, if there is one. It also links to the song in iTunes, so that's probably why it's a FREE app. So at Applebee's I was testing the Christmas music they had playing. Even with people talking in the background, or the football game going, it could still pick it up. I was impressed, but then I am easily impressed. Hubby's got a godawful remix of "We Will Rock You" all done up rap-style, but it's bad rap (I mean worse than the usual stuff, I'm talking Rapture awful). So I hit record during the chorus, which is not sampled, but resung by the "artist", and Shazam! it came up with the right answer.

So anyway, that's what I did this weekend.


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cat blogging

I can't help it.

He's just so cute!

The vase on the table is my latest creation at the paint pottery place. It took lots of attempt to get a picture where Biscuit actually held still for the 1.6 sec exposure. That cat is a licking fiend. Also, he shouldn't be laying there. But he's so cute and I can cuddle up with him.

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I got rick rolled

And I'm not talking about the Thanksgiving Day Parade. I was looking for a Bioshock 2 trailer on Youtube. It was right after I found a crappy video of a kid videotaping his TV while the trailer rolled, and right before I found a good quality trailer. It started normal, and then HE popped up on the screen with his dumb ass little video. Well played, sir.

In other XBox news, I updated my Live account so that we can instantly watch Netflix through the internet. It is awesome!!! So far we've only watched the current season on NCIS. But when they say instant, they mean it. You go through the computer to put things on your instant watch queue (different from the send them by mail queue) and within a couple seconds the videos in your queue pop up on the menu in the Xbox. Awesome! There's not a whole lot of good movies in the watch instantly selection yet, but tonight we're going to watch Pirates At World's End.

The video quality of a watch instantly Netflix program is pretty good. If you hit "native resolution" on the TV, you'll see the video is actually quite low resolution, but it's HD (depending on program) so once it stretches out onto the TV it still is pretty good. Better than non-HD TV programming, less than HD programming.

Oh jeez. I just remembered the last part of my XBox rant. To get the Netflix functionality to work, you have to get the update called "new Xbox experience" or something. It changes the whole menu system of the interface and it is really really stupid. You have to pick an avatar for your profile, and it is so much like the Wii I can't believe Microsoft isn't getting sued. IF I WANTED WII CHARACTERS ON MY SCREEN I'D BUY A STUPID WII!!! Since I don't have a Wii, I must not want to look at those stupid little poorly drawn characters. It really pisses me off how childish and dumb looking they made the whole thing. It was just fine they way it was before, assholes. Click for full post and comments

Turkey Day 2008

So, I'm responsible for the turkey, cornbread, gravy and pies for dinner at a friends house today. It's my first turkey.

Last night: get turkey into brine:
- bought a brine kit from Crate and Barrel, because it had spicy goodies in with the salt. dunno if that makes a difference.
- washing the bird: I realized once I had that sucker unwrapped in the sick I have no effing clue what I'm doing. I washed it some, pulled some yellow gunk off, pulled out a few feather buds. eh, hope it's good enough.
- bird in the brine in the cooler, surrounded by ice, and totally covered in the brine.

Today: what the freak was I thinking:
- woke up at 9 (dinner at 2) got the cavity packet prepared: onions, carrots, celery, spices.
- got the veggies into the bottom of the pan, and washed off the bird.
- rubbed olive oil and herbs all over, and it was icky. most of it rubbed off whenever I turned it over.
- trussing the sonofabitch: I couldnotforthelifeofme get those motherf'ing wings to fold onto its back. And then all my goodies were falling out of the cavity.
- 10:15 finally got the f'ing thing trussed, I guess, and in the oven. This is only supposed to take a couple hours, since there's no stuffing, so we'll see.

- 10:30 starting the gravy. Giblets are gross.

-11:00 first rotation of the bird. It actually went better than I thought.

-11:20 second flip, no incidents

-11:40 last flip, burned my arm on the pan. dammit!


8:00pm, after dinner:
-Turkey came out really well. I cooked it for 2:15, and the pop-up did not pop, but the juices were clear and the real thermometer read over 170F. My cornbread was delicious as always.
-gravy from the turkey didn't actually come up to much volume, and I added not very much flour so it wasn't very thick. I used all* the drippings, and then didn't add any salt. I though it tasted pretty good, if thin.
-The meal consisted of: turkey, ham, scalloped corn, corn bread, sweat potato casserole, mashed potato, baked bread, stuffing with sweet sausage (yum!), pumpkin pies, apple pie. There may have been one or two more items, but I don't remember. I do know I didn't see and cranberry sauce.

whew! I'm tired. Time for a third piece of pie and some TV.

Happy Thanksgiving!


*no I didn't, apparently. I found another half a cup of drippings in the freezer that had been separating, and I forgot all about it! Click for full post and comments

who knew?

Apparently Target is the place where all the young skanks hang out. It's freakin 40 out. Put on a damn jacket!


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Foxy

There was a fox in my yard yesterday. In broad daylight. Carrying something grey and furry in its mouth. And it was trotting around the yard, I think looking for a place to hide and eat. It came to maybe ten feet from the back door, so I got a pretty good look at him. No, there are no pictures of something so cool, of course. I was on the phone.


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I'm as mad as Elaine with her sponge problem

I think my deodorant is discontinued. I've been using Secret since forever, because I sweat like a pig, and it's the only one that worked. I use the soft solid one, where you squeeze the white goop through the holes (it's not the gel). Also, I use unscented. So at first when I couldn't find what I wanted I chalked it up to the commissary sucking, whoch is does, regularly. But now I can't find it at the regular grocery store either. Not only is it hard to find unscented anymore, but today I finally sucked it up and got regular solid. Poop! I'm mad!


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whoa

It's snowing right now. Just a little, but the flakes are bigger than yesterday's. Isn't it a little early for snow? Al Gore must be in town.


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Yay satellite radio

I like satellite radio just so I can see the artist name and song title as the song is playing, rather than hoping the DJ remembers to say the name sometime during the day. So, imagine my surprise when a song comes on from GnR's new album. The first little bit of it sounds exactly like Collective Soul, so here I am thinking I've got a new album to buy. But a glance at the title set me straight. It's a pretty good song, can't remember the name though. Not good for taking 17 years to make, but still.

Also, the regular radio around here kinda blows. There's not a lot of choice for one thing, and also the stations themselves aren't very good. I guess Seattle knows music better than Bal'more and DC. So, because of the suckage, I haven't heard any Tool except from my iPod. Satellite radio to the rescue! I've been listening to a station I guessed to be the best bet, and sure 'nuff, Tool was on today. Yay!


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More drinkin' and paintin'

Just a small bit of what my friend is painting.


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Drinkin' and paintin'

I'm here right now. Notice the top of the bottle.


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Cat blogging

is good for you.
Every once in a while Biscuit gets tired of laying on the floor or our chairs, so he'll get up on our laps without me even having to hunt him down and hold him against his will.

I found a flea on him (the cat, not the Hubby) the other day, so I went out and got the goop you squirt on the back of the neck. So now I've got a greasy little booger running around. But I did learn that that goop stuff actually kills fleas and ticks. I guess I just thought it repelled them like old fashioned flea collars. So that got me thinking about what an ingenious killing method that is: apply to skin, skin absorbs and body possibly metabolizes the goop, creating a compound that kills the things that will eat the blood! Awesome!

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Boring lizard post

I feed the Beardies superworms (big meals worms). The worms go in mealworm bedding (chopped up wheat), and somehow through some miracle of life that I don't understand, the worms never reach their pupal stage until I, say, try to feed a gecko who just lets it sit in its cage forever. Anyway, I had a problem with the last batch of mealworm bedding: it had been on the shelf too long before I bought it (online, otherwise I would have found a different bag) and had moths living in it. So, being the cheapskate that I am I thought I would salvage the two bags. I sifted through both bags and removed any moth larvae I found. I thought I was in the clear until a few weeks later when there were some moths flying around the house, and I saw the little larvae crawling out of the bucket I have the superworms in. Also, my spare bag has a new batch of moths in it. Oh! and the best part was when the larvae I missed chewed their way out of the ziplock bag the extra bedding was in. And it's been a couple months now, but I still have stray moths every once in a while. But I won't change my ways even after this situation: $30 for 1000 superworms is nothing to sneeze at, so I'll stay with this method.

So, the moral of the story is to just throw that crap out if it's gone bad and don't try to save it. It was nothing but trouble.


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ugh

1) Don Johnson is a horrible singer. And I use the term singer loosely. Real loose. About as loose as it gets.

2) The last trees in my yard are letting go of their leaves, and I'm watching my leaf pick-up job grow and grow.


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This took four weeks to get

It's big black and beautiful. It's a 550, and there were none in Maryland, so this came from NC, and it took the trucking company a couple weeks to pick it up and make their way up the I-95 corridor to here. I've been wanting a new car for at least a year, and I couldn't turn down 0.9% financing. It's like free money! No. Seriously. It's free money.

As for the buying experience: This is the third car for me to buy, and this group of people really were the best at their jobs. After buying the Jetta I felt like I had been raped and I just needed a hot shower. I felt disgusting (not because of buyer's remorse, just because those guys were total creeps). Buying the Wrangler was easy, since it was cash during Chrysler's employee price event on 2005. Those guys were cool, because we spent a solid two hours just shooting the breeze while I was trying to decide if I was buying a car or not. The main manager guy had a pimped out Wrangler that was lifted, big nubby tires, painted an awesome lime green (sounds bad, but Wranglers can pull off the weird colors) and had strip lighting all around the inside I think. They were just cool guys. And those two dealerships were in the same town in WA, so it's not a regional attitude thing. But BMW. Man. I mean, you still have the main manager guy who's a slick talker, but there's just a different atmosphere all around. I shall record my happiness in my survey, whenever it comes.


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Boring fish post

I changed the CO2 tank on the discus tank today. So I'll have to look back to see how long that lasted. I also need to subtract a couple weeks from the total because I added too much peat extract and the pH stayed low without the CO2 turned on at all.

Also, it should be noted that discus are more robust than some would have you think. My two canister filters sat rotting for weeks (because I forgot to plug them in when I last cleaned them!) so without thinking I just plugged them in. Well, there was some anaerobic processes going on in those weeks, so some foul smelling water came out of them. Anaerobic bacteria produces H2S I think. Anyway, this is a poison to fish, and I have no carbon filtration. So I did exactly what you are not supposed to do and yanked the Magnum Hang On Tank filter off the other tank, put the wet micron filter away in a plastic bag, and gave the whole thing a quick rinse. I still had the carbon filter module that came with it, so filled it up, rinsed it out, and hooked it up to the front of the discus tank. Everyone is still alive, so I must not have messed up too bad.


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Biscuit doesn't feel good

I took the little dude to the vet yesterday finally for his shots. Got him tested for some nasties. He's healthy (and neutered already). They scanned him for a microchip, and he didn't have one, thank god. How could I tell his owners that I've keeping their cat for two months and didn't even think to scan him for a chip? So thankfully I don't have to go through that. He got rabies vaccine, along with two other ones I don't remember, and they were all shots under the skin or into muscle in various places on his body. He was poked and prodded and he didn't like it, but he wasn't too bad to handle. He was fine once we got back home (via the BMW dealer to pick up my new car! yay!)

So now today he's very sore in at least one area of injection, but I don't feel any swelling. He's moving very slowly and hisses if you touch him in the wrong spot, but he did eat, so that's something. I'll give him a couple days to recuperate, then I'll start worrying.

UPDATE: this morning he is much better.


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More eagles

My pictorial representation of Freedom; thank you veterans:



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Pretty tree in my own backyard

It's pretty, but I'm not looking forward to all that raking. (the clean break in the leaves on the grass is from the lawn mower. It's very good at sucking up leaves, but you have to empty the bag every freaking 5 minutes.)

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Confirmed: cats are assholes

Turns out Rachl Lukis is right.

This morning before my very eyes:

Then later:

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Eagle goodness

Uploading videos to Blogger is pretty slow, and it cuts the quality WAY down. The weirdness at the end is something I can't fix because after uploading it twice they both came out the same way.


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I got close to an eagle

Look what I did today:

This was with the 300mm telephoto, right at the base of his tree. He was probably 50 feet away maybe? f/8; 1/100 sec.

So instead of spending ten thousand freaking dollars on a big lens, I'll just have to get right up close to him. And there were maybe 10 other photogs there, all with bigger lenses than mine. So they probably were getting shots of his freaking eyeball or something.

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