Thursday, April 28, 2005

Holy Crap!

I am way to busy for a blog! What the heck was I thinking?

Well, although my last true update was the 23rd I will really make up for it on May 2nd.

Huge youth event this weekend, the 30 Hour Famine. And I ahve some major prep work to do!

Friday, April 22, 2005

We, Gratis Networks, consider this Blog blasphemy and defamation of character.

Good golly! People other than my chums are reading my rants!!!

And if this turns out to be from one of my buds won't I be bummed. What am I rambling about? Read this.

Unfortunately the CEO of Gratis Networks is not Joe Martin but Peter Martin.

It was a really nice try. Really.

No seriously, I mean it.

Nuts, I would've bronzed that post.

Ah Anime!

I generally don't think too highly of anime. Don't get me wrong, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed, anything by Hayao Miyazaki, are all great. But the vast amount of anime is dreck. Completely worthless, even more so because I have to read small poorly focused text that allows me to follow even worse dialogue. The storylines are sad, characters are just flat, and they bury you in an avalanche of cliche. And if I seriously have to sit through another one of those end credit songs that lyrically make as much sense as a...goodness a proper comparison eludes me they're that bad. They're always sung by a chick, all lilting and sad and lame. Vampire Hunter D's theme is a good example of anime lyrical lameness.

I could go on for pages but let's make this rant quick. Dragonball Z is the worst, but I found an anime that is not only watchable but enjoyable. Fullmetal Alchemist. About two brothers who in an attempt to bring back their dead mum, traps one boy's spirit in a sweet looking suit of armor and severs the other brother's arm and leg. The missing limbs are replaced with what they call Automail. Basically robotic limbs. The story line is cool, the abilities involving alchemy are really neat. I recommend it.


The end theme...still very very lame and sung by a sad lame chick.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Too many choices...

I was the lucky beneficiary of $30 from my sister the other day. T'was my birthday present, Precious.

But now I have the monumental task of choosing what to buy with this fresh influx of cash. The item will be frivolous and something my wife would immediately disdain. I have decided, and rather quickly I might add, that it will not be spent on a videogame. This present will be used to increase my boardgame collection. But what game?

Well, Ursuppe also called Primordial Soup is top on my list, the downfall is that it is for 3-4 players. We rarely have fewer than 5 on Game Nights.

The card game Dungeoneer looks interesting but I spent $25.00 on a used copy of Heroquest on E-bay. If we play any dungeon crawls at Game Night it's gonna be that.

I thought about purchasing some Star Wars Miniatures to add to my Heroscape collection. But the guys never play Heroscape, even though it is the greatest miniatures game in existence. But they do love Epic Duels.


Well heck, if you have any suggestions just leave a comment. Not that anyone actually reads this.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Free iPod my butt!

I've been surfing the net since it's inception. Heck I was dialing onto BBS's with my parents 300 baud modem on our Tandy 1000 . Man, that thing had Tandy 16 color graphics, not EGA not VGA, but Tandy 16 color graphics. And the sound!! I'm not sure how many instruments that mono speaker was belting out, but King's Quest never sounded so good.

Anyway, so I've been around and seen a lot of things. Advertisments and enticements for almost anything. But now...the simple act of clicking on a banner will give you a $300-400 dollar electronic device. It sounds to good to be true! Which of course it is.

But today, today I got snookered by the same thing. This time they were offering free Diplomacy boardgames if I clicked on the banner. (This truely shows how dorky I am)


I did it...and I am so ashamed.

It is now nearly 1 hour later and I have just gotten of the phone with AOL canceling my membership.

I feel dirty just having called them. Like I give a rats fart about their keyword search. They're like, but with our search you can find anything on the web. I told them, "What do you think google is?".

Well, I'm not being charged the outlandish $23.95 for this whole fiasco so I guess it's okay.

$23.95!!! You have to be seriously disturbed to be paying that much money just for a pretty front-end.

Although I liked how the menus scrolled down. They were kind of nifty.

But not as nifty as playing Defender of the Crown in glorious 16 color!!

How I long for the days of swapping out 16 different floppy diskettes. Thank goodness that Tandy had dual diskette drives.

You heard me right..dual.

as in double duece. Speaking of which Strong Bad has advanced quite beyond the IBM PC Jr. stage right into 42 lb laptop stage running some esoteric version of Windows 3.0.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

A Second and Twenty-eighth Birthday Party

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Celebrated my daughters 2nd birthday yesterday. Well, pretty much all weekend...we still haven't kicked everyone out. Interestingly enough her birthday was on the 7th, mine was on the 16th...Saturday, the day of the party. And it was my birthday that was tacked on.

But I still got some sweet action figures.

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Lovely General Grievous and lackies.

Which of course brings me to movies of note...Star Wars III, THHGTTG,
and Kingdom Of Heaven.

It's been said that Star Wars fans are like battered wives. They keep coming back hoping that he won't do it again. Episode 1 and 2 were abusive, but yet here I am, frothing at the mouth to suffer under Lucas's heavy hand. But perhaps this will be the culmination of 28 years of Sci-fi history.

We'll see in a few weeks.

Friday, April 15, 2005

It's a Liger...pretty much my favorite animal...

...well, actually it's a wholphin. Yeah. believe it or not but whales and dolphins, specifically a False Killer Whale and a Bottlenose Dolphin can reproduce. Their offspring is a Wholphin. I don't know if it's sterile, ala mules, but it's still pretty cool. Check out the news site.

A news article about aquatic mammal love.



Come to think of it I believe elephants and kangaroos do that too.

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Boy I loved those Wuzzles.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Just one more turn...

HOMM5

Ah yes. The venerable Hereos of Might and Magic series. Returned once again to faciliate the time wasting process that I am so well known for. For those of you not in the know, Heroes of Might and Magic (called HOMM from now on) is a turn based strategy game based in a fantasy world. Addictive is an understatement. There have been four additions with this as the fifth. The third addition was hailed as the greatest while the fourth, the worst.

Graphically this one is looking very pretty, hopefully they can pull the gameplay together. HOMM was never known for it's good looks but for it's amazing multiplayer interaction. Playing hotseat, multiple players on one computer, is truely the only way to play this game. 3am rolls past real quick.

http://www.mightandmagic.com/teaser/us/

Not much to see yet but here's hoping those French get something right.

Speaking of French, it's interesting to see them running around trying to save their precious EU. Seems no one likes that constitution. Not even the French. The Socialist are probably afraid it will destroy their regime. But if Brussels backs out. What will happen?

Ah..who cares? Let me build my Portal of Glory and then watch out Erathia!!

...I'll go to bed in just a few more turns.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Her First Haircut

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First Haircut

Ah yes. Although 50% my genetic material, her phenotype seems completely dictated by my wifes 23 chromosomes. What a beauty.

She sat through this haircut like it was a day at the beach.

We're havnig small party for our friends this Saturday. All sorts of chores for me to accomplish today. Like dust the upstairs guest rooms. I know life is so tough.

RIAA is now going after college students working on the Internet2. One internet wasn't good enough for them it seems. They need to sue more. Drudge linked MSNBC on it.

Well hey I got the uploading pictures bit down.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

30 Hour Famine

I've been working hard today trying to get my youth group's 30 Hour Famine off the ground. For those of you unfamiliar the kids starve themselves for 30 hours in a fund raising event to feed starving kids in Kenya. Last year we fed 20 children at a cost of $7,200. Fortunately that was due to the government quadrupling our funds. No such grant this year but I want to feed more than 6 this year. And we should!

Busy cleaning my office. Trimming down the stacks of mail and forms that have piled to dizzying heights on either side of me. It's more a safty thing than a clean thing. I could be smothered if these things ever toppled.

My wife was watching the Today Show. Katie Kouric (is that how you spell it?) was asking Bill Clinton what he thought of the Catholic Church's prohibition of contraceptives in the country Africa. Last I checked it was a continent. Blows my mind how many people do that. "Oh ya we traveled the world, we went to France and Germany, Africa and then flew over to India." umm..Where in Africa? You toured the entire landmass?

Just a nitpick but it's annoying.

Back to cleaning.

I'm live!

Well it worked!

Man I feel like a million bucks. Sorry bro about stealing your name..it's ok I'm just giving it some free air time. Not that anyone will ever traipse down this musty corridor of the web ever. And if you are, and you don't know me personally, then why and how did you get here?

Did you know the word chaise which of course is French for chair was actually spelled chaire in the 1500's? But due to the many Italians that hung out with Catherine de Medicis it became popular to pronounce r's like s's. So the French word for chair, chaire, was turned into chaise.

Ah so now I'm imparting knowledge...how this blog is evolving. That little tidbit actual comes from Jacques Barzun, his book "From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present"

Do I underline that or boldface that? What would my 5th grade teacher say? Well I'll bold it for the visual effect.

Anyway, it's a good read. Especially for those who like their information to be esoteric. Like the font garamond is actually named after the printer who designed it in the 1500's. How insane is that? And that italics are actually, according to tradition, based on Petrarch's own handwriting?

Well Long Beach Lady here is that Pork Scaloppini recipe I promised.

Pork Scaloppini with mushrooms

4 (6 oz) boneless pork loin chops
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 lb white mushrooms, thinly sliced
1/4 cup Marsala wine
1 1/2 cups low sodium chicken stock
2 tablespoons sour cream
2 tablespoons fresh chives

Sprinkle a small amount of water on a large sheet of plastic wrap. Place 2 of the chops on top of the plastic and sprinkle with some more water. Cover with another sheet of plastic wrap and pound until about 1/4 inch thick. Repeat with all chops.

Mix the flour witht he salt and pepper in a shallow plate. Heat half the oil in a large skillet over medium heat until almost smoking. Workin in 2 batches, place half the pork in the flour mixture and turn to coat all sides. Shake off excess and add to skillet. Cook until lightly browned and cooked through (1 1/2 minutes per side) . Don't overcook. Transfer to a plate or platter and cover loosely with foil. Repeat with remaining oil and pork.

Add the butter to the skillet and heat until foamy. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring often, until almost all the liquid that the mushrooms give off has evaporated, about 5 minutes. Pour in the Marsala, increase heat to high or medium/high, and cook, stirring, until almost al the liquid has evaporated. This is crucial. The more liquid that evaporates the stranger the flavor. You want a good strong flavor or it is bland. So really cook it down, don't let it burn but evaportate almost all the liquid. Add the chicken stock and simmer 5 minutes. Return pork to the skillet and simmer, turning often, until the pork is warmed through and the sauce has thickened. You want it nice and thick, not sludge but not soup. it should be about 3-4 minutes. Transfer the scaloppini to warm serving plates. Stir the sour cream and chives into the sauce. Season with salt and pepper to taste and spoon sauce over pork.

I'd place the pork on a a nice bed of noodles, egg preferably, but to each his own.

Well so that wraps up my first true blog. Pay no attention to the first frail bloggish thing that appeared before you.

Do I sign off? Sure.

Proteinstar

Monday, April 11, 2005

Hello World

um. Hi. I'm not sure this is working and if it is what a lame way to start a blog.

Well...I did this to share recipes with my sis out in Long Beach. Hey Sis!
Kind of a mundane and base use of the World Wide Web but I don't do much else so there.

Maybe Mom and Dad up in the Ocean State can check out my offspring. Hey Mom Hey Dad.

Well lets see if this thing works shall we?