Ok, that title sounds a lot dirtier than it really should.
A little back story first: I love pistachios. Like seriously love them. If there's nuts in my mouth, they'd better be wrinkled and green or someone's got some explaining to do!
But there's one thing I don't love about pistachios: the shells. For some completely inexplicable reason, someone at some point decided that pistachios, unlike virtually every other nut on the planet, must only be sold in-shell. Now these days they're thankfully no longer dyed neon red, but pre-shelled pistachios are still as rare as chicken teeth.
So it was with great joy that I discovered that Trader Joe's sells pre-shelled pistachios. Hurray! I bought a bag, brought it home, and further discovered that they're unsalted pre-shelled pistachios. Slightly less hurray.
Now the trouble with unsalted nuts is that if you try to just add salt you end up with a bowl full of unsalted nuts with a pile of salt at the bottom. Similarly if you follow the internet's advice and coat the nuts with oil before salting, you'll just end up with salty, greasy fingers.
The answer is that we need the salt to crystallize on the nuts themselves. To do that, it's really just a simple matter of making an over saturated solution of saltwater by mixing a good heaping tablespoon of salt with just enough water to make it liquidy, then tossing that with the nuts.
Of course now we have well salted but entirely too soggy nuts, and one must never tolerate having soggy nuts. So it's onto a baking sheet and into the oven on the lowest setting for an hour or three, stirring occasionally to keep things drying evenly.
And at the end of this long, arduous journey, we have a nice pile of well salted, pre-shelled pistachios. Mmm.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Flexing my green thumb
(Post is backdated because I'm a lazy mofo)
Today I finally got around to doing something about my barren, desolate patio. (Pretend the pots in the corner aren't there yet)
I started pretty early in the day to avoid the heat, and set out to a garden center in search of bamboo. The first place I tried had some, but none of it was suitable for the planting I had planned. It was either too wide, too tall, or too invasive. The story was much the same at the second place, but they off hand mentioned that there's a bamboo specialty grower over the hills in Aptos, so after mulling it over a bit I decided to take the plunge and head on over.
I initially made my way over to 17 to get across the hills to Santa Cruz, but given it was the 4th of July weekend, the traffic was backed up all the way past 85, so I quickly ducked off again and took highway 9 instead. I have to say that 9 is a very, very pleasant road, and for future reference looks to be quite bikeable.
It didn't take me too long to get through Santa Cruz and over to Aptos, and just after lunch I arrived at Bamboo Giant. After discussing the various options with the staff there, I settled on getting 3 small pots of Alphonse Karr bamboo, and loaded up to head home.
On the way back, highway 1 was a bit clogged up heading towards Santa Cruz, but 17 was basically clear sailing all the way back into the valley, so that was nice.
Finally arriving home sometime mid-afternoon (around 3:30 according to the timestamp on the first picture), after a quick stop off at Home Despot for some appropriate tools, I set to work getting the bamboo into the ground. It would be a simple matter of turning the soil, dividing the 3 bamboo into 6, and then planting them.
Simple.
Turns out that the dirt along the fence where I was planning to plant the bamboo hadn't been dug up since sometime in the 60s or 70s when this apartment complex was first built, and was additionally used as a bit of a construction dump for the plasterers to dump their excess materials. Lovely. Digging up that 20 cubic feet of dirt took a solid 2 hours of work, but once it was done I was only left with the relatively simple task of dividing and planting the bamboo.
I say relatively simple, since this bamboo grows a rather tightly bound wad of rhizomes that was a hell of a challenge to cut through. I did manage, though, and the results can be seen here below.
If the label on the side of the pots is to be believed, these will eventually grow into a lovely 10 foot wall of green, giving me a nice bit of screening that the low fence rather lacks. Hurray! Provided, of course, that it doesn't object to growing in a bunch of barely organic construction debris. Oh well, if it dies I'll go get some compost to turn into the now much looser dirt and try again.
Today I finally got around to doing something about my barren, desolate patio. (Pretend the pots in the corner aren't there yet)
I started pretty early in the day to avoid the heat, and set out to a garden center in search of bamboo. The first place I tried had some, but none of it was suitable for the planting I had planned. It was either too wide, too tall, or too invasive. The story was much the same at the second place, but they off hand mentioned that there's a bamboo specialty grower over the hills in Aptos, so after mulling it over a bit I decided to take the plunge and head on over.
I initially made my way over to 17 to get across the hills to Santa Cruz, but given it was the 4th of July weekend, the traffic was backed up all the way past 85, so I quickly ducked off again and took highway 9 instead. I have to say that 9 is a very, very pleasant road, and for future reference looks to be quite bikeable.
It didn't take me too long to get through Santa Cruz and over to Aptos, and just after lunch I arrived at Bamboo Giant. After discussing the various options with the staff there, I settled on getting 3 small pots of Alphonse Karr bamboo, and loaded up to head home.
On the way back, highway 1 was a bit clogged up heading towards Santa Cruz, but 17 was basically clear sailing all the way back into the valley, so that was nice.
Finally arriving home sometime mid-afternoon (around 3:30 according to the timestamp on the first picture), after a quick stop off at Home Despot for some appropriate tools, I set to work getting the bamboo into the ground. It would be a simple matter of turning the soil, dividing the 3 bamboo into 6, and then planting them.
Simple.
Turns out that the dirt along the fence where I was planning to plant the bamboo hadn't been dug up since sometime in the 60s or 70s when this apartment complex was first built, and was additionally used as a bit of a construction dump for the plasterers to dump their excess materials. Lovely. Digging up that 20 cubic feet of dirt took a solid 2 hours of work, but once it was done I was only left with the relatively simple task of dividing and planting the bamboo.
I say relatively simple, since this bamboo grows a rather tightly bound wad of rhizomes that was a hell of a challenge to cut through. I did manage, though, and the results can be seen here below.
If the label on the side of the pots is to be believed, these will eventually grow into a lovely 10 foot wall of green, giving me a nice bit of screening that the low fence rather lacks. Hurray! Provided, of course, that it doesn't object to growing in a bunch of barely organic construction debris. Oh well, if it dies I'll go get some compost to turn into the now much looser dirt and try again.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Do, or do not.
Over time I've come to terms with the fact that I kind of don't look at the world the same way most people do. Back in grade school, there was a question on a test that asked "What do you need to bake a cake?", and I answered "A Birthday". The answer was sadly marked incorrect.
People make strange remarks towards me, from time to time. They're not strange in the sense that they're remarks normal people wouldn't ordinarily make, but more in the sense that they don't make any particular sense given the way my brain works.
Like, someone might say "You biked up a 4000 foot climb? That must have been very difficult." or "I don't get how you can understand all that math, it's really hard".
The fundamental problem is that I let go of the whole concept of "hard" or "difficult" a long time ago. When people say something is hard, all they're really doing is giving themselves an excuse to fail without feeling too bad about it. "It's OK if I give up, because it's hard".
That shit doesn't fly with me.
I don't put tasks into buckets labeled "hard" and "easy". For me, there is only "things I've already demonstrated, either directly or indirectly, that I'm capable of" and "things I have not yet successfully managed to do".
Much like what the title of this post alludes to, when Yoda told Luke "do, or do not, there is no try", he wasn't trying to be deep and metaphorical. He was trying to tell Luke that he was being a whiny shit and just making excuses for not wanting to succeed at doing what he was fully capable of doing.
I think it probably makes the most sense in hindsight. When you look back on a "hard" task, after having completed it, what are you left with? You are still intact as a person, essentially the same as before you started, and you have gained a completed task. What sense does it then make to categorize it as "hard"?
In short: stop giving yourself excuses to fail.
People make strange remarks towards me, from time to time. They're not strange in the sense that they're remarks normal people wouldn't ordinarily make, but more in the sense that they don't make any particular sense given the way my brain works.
Like, someone might say "You biked up a 4000 foot climb? That must have been very difficult." or "I don't get how you can understand all that math, it's really hard".
The fundamental problem is that I let go of the whole concept of "hard" or "difficult" a long time ago. When people say something is hard, all they're really doing is giving themselves an excuse to fail without feeling too bad about it. "It's OK if I give up, because it's hard".
That shit doesn't fly with me.
I don't put tasks into buckets labeled "hard" and "easy". For me, there is only "things I've already demonstrated, either directly or indirectly, that I'm capable of" and "things I have not yet successfully managed to do".
Much like what the title of this post alludes to, when Yoda told Luke "do, or do not, there is no try", he wasn't trying to be deep and metaphorical. He was trying to tell Luke that he was being a whiny shit and just making excuses for not wanting to succeed at doing what he was fully capable of doing.
I think it probably makes the most sense in hindsight. When you look back on a "hard" task, after having completed it, what are you left with? You are still intact as a person, essentially the same as before you started, and you have gained a completed task. What sense does it then make to categorize it as "hard"?
In short: stop giving yourself excuses to fail.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Life with a German, Turbocharged Two-Seater
So, let's start clearing out a backlog of news.
My beloved Jellybean, the green 1997 Hyundai Elantra wagon that has been passed around the family got passed around again. It didn't really make sense for me to import it with me to the US given it was starting to get a bit on the rusty side, so I needed to come up with a plan.
At first I had considered having all my crap shipped down by movers, and then renting a sports car to barrel across the US with, but there were logistical considerations with that plan that didn't really work out well, like what the hell I'd do to get around once I got to California and returned the rental car.
I also considered driving the Elantra down and having my sister fly down to pick it up (seeing as I was passing it on to her for free), but I wasn't completely thrilled with that idea either.
Finally I came on the idea of just buying myself a van. I'd be able to pack it full to the gills with all my crap, thus eliminating the need to hire movers; plus I'd be able to use it once I got down here for carting furniture and misc large items to my new apartment, since I'd be going on a bit of a buying spree so I'd have something to actually sit on. (this part has yet to happen, but the van will come in handy when the time comes)
The Mercedes(/Dodge/Freightliner) Sprinter was the first choice on my list. While it's much more expensive up-front than a Ford E-series or Chevy Express, it's got much more cargo space for a given footprint, is full standing height inside, comes standard with a sliding side door, and the diesel engine is much more efficient than the gas engines you're limited to with the lighter duty Ford/Chevys. It's really just generally a much nicer vehicle, and I like nice things.
I had a bit of a tough time tracking one down, given that the Fords and Chevys are much more popular due to their lower price, but eventually found one in Steinbach. I honestly wasn't very impressed with how the dealership treated me, so if you're ever in the market I'd suggest avoiding Steinbach Dodge, but in the end I managed to get my shiny white 2007 Dodge-branded Sprinter 2500 144 high-roof cargo, so all's well that ends well I guess.
The best part about driving a Sprinter, I think, is that when people ask me what I drive, I can just say "Well, I don't want to brag, but let's just say it's German, turbocharged two-seater".
In related news, I'm thinking of sticking this on the rear door.
My beloved Jellybean, the green 1997 Hyundai Elantra wagon that has been passed around the family got passed around again. It didn't really make sense for me to import it with me to the US given it was starting to get a bit on the rusty side, so I needed to come up with a plan.
At first I had considered having all my crap shipped down by movers, and then renting a sports car to barrel across the US with, but there were logistical considerations with that plan that didn't really work out well, like what the hell I'd do to get around once I got to California and returned the rental car.
I also considered driving the Elantra down and having my sister fly down to pick it up (seeing as I was passing it on to her for free), but I wasn't completely thrilled with that idea either.
Finally I came on the idea of just buying myself a van. I'd be able to pack it full to the gills with all my crap, thus eliminating the need to hire movers; plus I'd be able to use it once I got down here for carting furniture and misc large items to my new apartment, since I'd be going on a bit of a buying spree so I'd have something to actually sit on. (this part has yet to happen, but the van will come in handy when the time comes)
The Mercedes(/Dodge/Freightliner) Sprinter was the first choice on my list. While it's much more expensive up-front than a Ford E-series or Chevy Express, it's got much more cargo space for a given footprint, is full standing height inside, comes standard with a sliding side door, and the diesel engine is much more efficient than the gas engines you're limited to with the lighter duty Ford/Chevys. It's really just generally a much nicer vehicle, and I like nice things.
I had a bit of a tough time tracking one down, given that the Fords and Chevys are much more popular due to their lower price, but eventually found one in Steinbach. I honestly wasn't very impressed with how the dealership treated me, so if you're ever in the market I'd suggest avoiding Steinbach Dodge, but in the end I managed to get my shiny white 2007 Dodge-branded Sprinter 2500 144 high-roof cargo, so all's well that ends well I guess.
The best part about driving a Sprinter, I think, is that when people ask me what I drive, I can just say "Well, I don't want to brag, but let's just say it's German, turbocharged two-seater".
In related news, I'm thinking of sticking this on the rear door.
So, that happened
I've officially moved to California. I actually got here almost a month ago, but was keeping things secret so I could surprise some of my friends here when I randomly appeared out of nowhere. The surprise happened, bricks were shat, and much fun was had by all.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Thanks, Windows. Thindows.
So the main drive in my wintendo decided to puke on me. I managed to catch it pretty quickly, so data recovery thankfully wasn't much of an issue.
I ordered up a new drive (twice the size, no less) on newegg and it arrived this afternoon. I popped the drive in and booted up the existing linux install, using ntfsclone to copy the windows data from old to new, and xfsdump/xfsrestore for the linux side of things.
A few blocks on the windows side didn't copy, so hopefully they weren't anything critical.
Next up was fixing the booting. Unlike MacOS X, PC operating systems can't find their own ass with both hands and a GPS.
On linux, updating things is relatively straightforward: install grub, mess around with the config a bit, rebuild the initrd, fix the fstab and you're good to go. A few manual steps, but sensible ones all the same.
On windows... Well, we try to boot windows and all we get is a black screen of ambiguity. This is as unfortunate as it is unhelpful. A little googling reveals these instructions for helping windows unfuck itself. Now, I know you're not all as tech-minded as I am, so I'll try to break things down fairly simply:
Basically, if the position of the windows partition on the disk changes at all, Windows won't be able to find the partition to boot from it. Even though the partition's new location is clearly listed in the partition table.
To solve this issue, you must hex edit the partition and tell windows where it starts. Think about this carefully a moment: you have to tell windows where the start of the partition is, and this information is recorded a fixed number of bytes away from... the start of the partition.
Sweet mother of christmas, if I were a windows OS programmer I would have had to seppuku myself 12 times over to try to erase the shame of my own blinding stupidity.
I ordered up a new drive (twice the size, no less) on newegg and it arrived this afternoon. I popped the drive in and booted up the existing linux install, using ntfsclone to copy the windows data from old to new, and xfsdump/xfsrestore for the linux side of things.
A few blocks on the windows side didn't copy, so hopefully they weren't anything critical.
Next up was fixing the booting. Unlike MacOS X, PC operating systems can't find their own ass with both hands and a GPS.
On linux, updating things is relatively straightforward: install grub, mess around with the config a bit, rebuild the initrd, fix the fstab and you're good to go. A few manual steps, but sensible ones all the same.
On windows... Well, we try to boot windows and all we get is a black screen of ambiguity. This is as unfortunate as it is unhelpful. A little googling reveals these instructions for helping windows unfuck itself. Now, I know you're not all as tech-minded as I am, so I'll try to break things down fairly simply:
Basically, if the position of the windows partition on the disk changes at all, Windows won't be able to find the partition to boot from it. Even though the partition's new location is clearly listed in the partition table.
To solve this issue, you must hex edit the partition and tell windows where it starts. Think about this carefully a moment: you have to tell windows where the start of the partition is, and this information is recorded a fixed number of bytes away from... the start of the partition.
Sweet mother of christmas, if I were a windows OS programmer I would have had to seppuku myself 12 times over to try to erase the shame of my own blinding stupidity.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Fun with spam bots
I had a spam-bot IM me this afternoon, and figured I'd have fun with it to kill some time.
AIM IM with [DELETED] Today 4:29 PM
Bot: heya.
Me: hello spam bot. are you here to sell me herbal viagra?
Bot: Im not a freaking bot
Me: sure you aren't
Bot: Hey whats up. 23 female here. You?
Me: 350 years old, clockwork
Bot: Hmmm. Have we talked before?
Me: my punch cards do not have any record of a previous conversation
Bot: Oh ok. Sorry I wasnt sure. Anyways... Whats up?
Me: sorry if I'm a bit slow to respond, my boiler is a bit low on coal
Bot: Im like sooo bored. There is nothing to do.
Bot: Ohhh wait! I have GREAT idea. Have you ever watched a sexy girl like me strip live on a cam before?
Me: I'm sorry, my mechanism was not engineered with a visual input device
Bot: Well.... Would you like to watch me strip?
Me: I would only be able to record a textual description thereof. do you have a live teletype feed?
Bot: Ok well my cam is linked through this website so I cant be recorded so you will have to sign up there
Bot: But dont worry it only takes a minute and it is free. kk?
Me: I would like to know more about you first. are you a brass-cogged mechanism or are you a more modern steel design?
Bot: [URL removed] Mmk go there then click on the gold Join Free button at the top
Ok?
Me: I wouldn't like to look at a steel design. I'm not a pedophile, they're too young for me
Bot: Also it will ask for a credit card when you sign up but its just to keep the kids out. It dosent charge the card.
Me: I only have punch cards, not credit cards. do you accept paper tape perhaps?
Bot: I do have some toys i can play with but you will have to tip me some gold or join me in private to see those
Bot: Lets talk on that site babe my messenger is messing up. Ok?
Me: I'm afraid gold is too soft for my mechanism, it fouls my geartrain
And that's pretty much when I got bored and closed the chat.
AIM IM with [DELETED] Today 4:29 PM
Bot: heya.
Me: hello spam bot. are you here to sell me herbal viagra?
Bot: Im not a freaking bot
Me: sure you aren't
Bot: Hey whats up. 23 female here. You?
Me: 350 years old, clockwork
Bot: Hmmm. Have we talked before?
Me: my punch cards do not have any record of a previous conversation
Bot: Oh ok. Sorry I wasnt sure. Anyways... Whats up?
Me: sorry if I'm a bit slow to respond, my boiler is a bit low on coal
Bot: Im like sooo bored. There is nothing to do.
Bot: Ohhh wait! I have GREAT idea. Have you ever watched a sexy girl like me strip live on a cam before?
Me: I'm sorry, my mechanism was not engineered with a visual input device
Bot: Well.... Would you like to watch me strip?
Me: I would only be able to record a textual description thereof. do you have a live teletype feed?
Bot: Ok well my cam is linked through this website so I cant be recorded so you will have to sign up there
Bot: But dont worry it only takes a minute and it is free. kk?
Me: I would like to know more about you first. are you a brass-cogged mechanism or are you a more modern steel design?
Bot: [URL removed] Mmk go there then click on the gold Join Free button at the top
Ok?
Me: I wouldn't like to look at a steel design. I'm not a pedophile, they're too young for me
Bot: Also it will ask for a credit card when you sign up but its just to keep the kids out. It dosent charge the card.
Me: I only have punch cards, not credit cards. do you accept paper tape perhaps?
Bot: I do have some toys i can play with but you will have to tip me some gold or join me in private to see those
Bot: Lets talk on that site babe my messenger is messing up. Ok?
Me: I'm afraid gold is too soft for my mechanism, it fouls my geartrain
And that's pretty much when I got bored and closed the chat.
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