The Raging Tech

Sunday, Yummy Sunday

I’ve been pretty busy here at home in the kitchen over the weekend. Friday I fell asleep (more or less passed out) on Marq and Melissa’s couch down the road, and woke up Saturday morning and came home. I realized I needed to take advantage of the weekend to get some pre-cooking done. Now that I’ve got a house payment, the money doesn’t stretch as far. I had (hopefully) gotten out of the grocery store with a month’s worth of food for about $100.

Yesterday I made some lasagne hamburger helper type stuff, and made plenty so that I’d have leftovers for lunch or dinner later. Then, I baked up 24 biscuits (3 cans worth) and two pounds of sausage (patties), and put together 11 days worth of sausage biscuits for me to take to work. Total cost was way less than buying those Jimmy Dean microwavable biscuits. I have them frozen in sandwich bags in pairs of two, so I just have to grab a bag in the morning and take it with me to work. Work actually gave us a t-shirt and a purple thermal lunch bag for Employee Appreciation Day, so now I have something to keep my lunch in when I pack it.

Today I ate my free Quaker Oats cereal bar that I got in the mail, and one of my Verve energy drinks. That is what substaniated for my breakfast this morning, unless you count my communion at church. Oh, that’s right - I forgot to mention - I went to the Methodist church this morning around the corner from my house (gas is killing me right now) and it was pretty cool. It was apparently World Communion Day or something like that. I went up to the front of the church with about 1/4 of the people and kneeled along side of this rail thing. They gave me bread and handed me one of those communion shot glasses. Then we stayed kneeling while the leader prayed, and then went back to our seats. They also had a greeting time, where they said “Extend peace to those around you,” and people came around and some said “Good Morning, nice to meet you, etc.” and some said “Peace be with you,” so I thought of Dane Cook and I said “And also with you.”

I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows, and trying to find the simplest and easiest recipes. I realize now in retrospect there’s a lot of things I wish I’d bothered to ask my Mom to teach me to cook before I left the house. She taught me a lot still, but occasionally I come up with things I want to know. For example, yesterday I realized hey, I have eggs, bread, milk, vanilla extract, ground cinnamon, flour, sugar, and salt. I think that’s all I need to make French Toast. I looked up some recipes and realized I could use some Hawaiian Sweet Bread to make it even more awesome and thick.

The French Toast I made was amazing. Especially amazing for the first time I’ve ever made them. I cut them really thick, used the recipe to get the ingredients in proper proportions, and then I drowned the sweet bread in the custard (egg mixture) and threw it in a hot pan long enough to brown both sides. Here’s how they turned out (Click Photo to view Full Size):

Get Off Your Butt and Register to Vote

Tuesday is it for many of you. You have to have your voter registration in the mail and to the board of elections by your registration deadline, or you don’t get a say in America’s future. My friend posted this video on MySpace, and I thought about several of my friends who I’ve heard say “this election is bull****, both candidates are going to ruin this country.” They are pretty sure they’re not going to vote. Watch this video, and please, please, please, go register to vote and then ACTUALLY VOTE.

“Caribou Barbie” Sarah Palin Loses VP Debate

I said a while back I wouldn’t put forth any clearly political blog posts… well, I’ve turned hypocrite (or maybe liar, at least) and have decided to renig on that promise. Today I sent an emailed Letter to the Editor at the newspaper in the town where my job is, because the town where I live really doesn’t have much in the way of newspapers. So here’s the letter I sent:

Dear Editor,

Joe Biden clearly won the debate on Thursday against Sarah Palin. Palin did a great job giving her canned and well-rehearsed answers, but she was ridiculously condescending in the way she refused to answer questions asked by the moderator. While it may seem cavalier and bold to do so, she showed complete disrespect for the moderator and the purpose of the debate.

Palin’s talking points all seem like a retro-rewind of the same-old same-old we’ve had from the Bush administration for eight long, insufferable years. Calling pulling our troops out of Iraq “a white flag of surrender” is not only a mud-slinging scare tactic, she’s basically puppeting John McCain from last week. We heard nothing new here, and getting our boys out of harm’s way is in no way a failure, especially if we do it correctly, turning power over to the Iraqi people.

I’m sick of all the talk about huge tax cuts on corporations. It’s not punishing them for being successful, as many will claim. It is also not, as John McCain would have us believe, to keep them from moving business over seas. Taxes alone are not what makes doing business in America a great thing. It would be exponentially expensive for major corporations to move their entire operations off-shore to save on taxes.

What’s important is what Biden said about the middle-class driving America. We are the ones who make America go. We drive trucks, we sweep floors, we serve your food, we answer your calls for help, we defend this country and it’s freedoms. It’s not a Robin Hood take from the rich and give to the poor situation. It’s not being foolish and giving the wealthy a break but leaving Joe Blue-Collar to struggle.

People complain Obama doesn’t have enough experience to be President. I say, he doesn’t have the years of corruption and indebtedness to lobbyists and PACs to influence his decisions. Yes, he’s got big ideas and not all of them will be able to be done with the budget he’ll be working with. But now, more than ever, people need to vote with their heads and not just their hearts, and not just for whoever’s the most popular in the news. Check your facts, know what’s real about the issues. Don’t vote for Obama just because he’s about “Change you can believe in” and don’t vote for John McCain just because he’s not Obama.

It is time for a change, America. We don’t need four more years of the same old song. Let’s be the America we were meant to be, the best country in the World, the *United* States of America.

see Sarah Palin pictures

Eat, Drink, or Die: Thomas McMuffin

Today while surfing around the intertubes at work, I found this awesome web site - it’s like Food Network meets Video Blogging. They have regular chefs and shows, just like any other cooking network, but the hosts are awesome and the food they make isn’t always something fancy.

Case in point: my favorite simple recipe I saw today is Jon and Vinny’s “Thomas McMuffin” - their take on the famous breakfast food, the McMuffin, using Thomas English Muffins. It’s dead simple, and you probably have some form of the ingredients available at your house (unless you’re me, and you don’t really eat English Muffins all that much).

The best part of Eat, Drink, or Die is that the community can vote on each video - “Delicious” or “Die.” They have recipes for vegetarians and vegans, as well as meatatarians like me. Check out Jon & Vinny’s “Two Dudes,” “Tastes Like Home Cooking,” and Chris Wilson’s “Comfort Food” series.

Save Money Buying Your Glasses Online

It’s a pretty big stereotype that a lot of geeks wear glasses. Well, count me in - I usually don’t wear mine during the day, I have contact lenses that suit me just fine. But my glasses were chosen on purpose: they are cheap, plastic crappy frames and cheap, plastic, crappy lenses with no add-ons because I honestly don’t wear them enough to spend a lot on them.

If you’re a frugal shopper and reading this blog, you probably already know how to use the internet to find the best deals. I’ve heard of this site before, but had only recently actually seen it - Zenni Optical sells frames and lenses at dirt cheap prices! They’re able to sell you the lowest price eyeglasses available because they skip the middleman and sell you only the glasses they manufacture themselves, and they rely heavily on customer satisfaction and word of mouth because they have almost no advertising budget.

This company was mentioned on the Clark Howard show: apparently the basic pair of prescription glasses costs around $8. The shipping time may vary and some of the commenters on the show’s page talk about how they couldn’t access the site, it appears to timeout a lot even for me now. The commenters also say that the quality for the price is outstanding. I’m tempted to make this where I buy my next pair of prescription glasses, and maybe a pair of sunglasses, too!

Vampire Mode: Activate

It’s that time of year again - it’s starting to get chillier during the day and freezing cold at night. The leaves are turning colors, and the jerks from Florida are up in the mountains driving 10 under so they can look at the foliage. Shorts are becoming more and more inappropriate apparel for the temperature, but I’ll keep on wearing them till December anyway.

I’ll stack together my sleeveless t-shirts, shorts and sandals and put them in a box for the back of the closet and say goodbye to them for at least four-to-six weeks. Now that there’s global warming, the winters aren’t freezing cold for quite as long as they used to be. We get less snow, and even less often do we get snow that sticks to the ground.

It’s long been a puzzle in my brain as to whether or not I have that weird mental disorder where you’re in different moods based on whether or not it’s summer/spring or fall/winter time, and whether or not it’s day or night time. I think I have the opposite version though. Instead of being happy in bright warm weather, I’m happier in the middle of a cold winter night. Nothing feels better than knocking off the chill in a heated room, and then getting a little too hot and opening the door or cracking a window to cool off a little. Night time snowball fights are awesome. The only other thing I like as much is walking along the beach on a breezy spring night from dusk till the sky is pitch black and you can’t see the horizon between the sky and the black waters.

I love the night time. When the sun is up, it feels oppresive and reminds me of those annoying people who are super happy all the time and enthusiastic to the point of nausea, you just want to punch them in the eye. I’m definitely a night owl. I find that I force myself to go to sleep at night now around 1am, because I know I’ll regret it more in the morning if I don’t. My sleep schedule is off, and I think if I slept when it felt right I’d be asleep from 3am - 2pm, and then would want to go to work and then come home to chill around 11pm. Unfortunately, that’s not how society works unless you have one of those glorious second or third-shift jobs. My sister works third shift, but that makes it hard for her to interact with people who don’t.

If I ever hit the big time with internet business, I’m just going to conduct my business at night and do things ahead of time or get up just for conference calls and the like. Maybe I could be an online writer for an overseas publication in a time-zone that matches my sleep schedule. That would be awesome.

A final thought: I may have sleep apnea. My mom has it, and they say it is genetic. It can cause, among other things, insomnia and fatigue, diabetes, heart problems, and more. So, if I go get tested and they get me one of those masks with the machine that makes you sound like Darth Vader breathing, that might fix some things.

Truth in Advertising: Signs Placed at Gas Stations by Artists

I found this video on Digg today, about artists as part of a project posted signs up at gas stations that appear to be from the corporation that owns each chain. I thought it was hilarious and inciteful. But it’s another reason we don’t need the next president giving tax cuts to big business, even if they say it’s to prevent them from going overseas.

Gas Signs Truth in Advertising. from Donny Miller on Vimeo.