25 March 2008
Didn't even think about it
When I posted a blog the other day talking about spring break here at UNF, I didn't even think about the tie in between the title of the post and the subject of the video at the end. One might think that I'm just very clever, but it was completely accidental. Anyway, the title of the post was deja vu and the video was a performance of Crosby, Still, Nash & Young from Woodstock. Well, Crosby, Stills and Nash & Young just happened to have an album titled, you guessed it, Deja Vu. So there you go.
No, I'm not talking Ricky Martin
If you know me you are well aware that I'm pretty adventurous when it comes to food. I'll try just about anything at least once and there aren't a lot of foods that I can say that I hate. Sure, there are some foods that aren't my favorite, but I wouldn't really have any trouble eating them. Today I decided to try something that I'd never had before, menudo. Menudo is basically a Mexican tripe and hominy soup. Now I am all about ethnic soups and I usually even get tripe in my all time favorite soup, pho. Anyway, I was at the store and saw the can of menudo and thought that today was the day to try it. I brought it home, opened it up, dumped the contents on the can (they came out kind of in one piece. Not unlike canned cranberry sauce complete with the ridges from said can.) into a pan and cranked up the heat. When it was heated through I gave it a taste. Not too bad, but the can mentioned adding some fresh lime juice so I did that. Time to eat. I don't know if I didn't like it or if it was just not what I was in the mood for today, but I didn't have a whole lot. The flavor of the broth was ok, but it wasn't quite what I was wanting. I'm a fan of the crunchiness that the hominy brings to the party, but the tripe just wasn't doing it for me today. The tripe I'm used to in my pho is kind of rubbery and almost crunchy. My menudo tripe was squishy with a slide off the spoon feel that kind of reminded me of a wet napkin. I bet you're hungry now! I'm not going to write this soup off just yet though. This was just the canned version and it was the less expensive of the two brands that I found. Maybe I just got what I paid for. So I'm sure there will be more menudo in my future. Maybe I could even try cooking it!
What's the strangest thing you've eaten?
24 March 2008
Not too much to say.
Spring break has come and gone for the students of UNF and they're back on campus. Woohoo. I'm sure that they all spent their breaks studying and good wholesome stuff like that. Right. At least they didn't do whatever they were doing here!
Easter was pretty good. The girls seemed to have a good time. I guess most kids have a good time any time they get a bunch of candy. All of that candy seems like such a waste to me. Just like Halloween, people spend so much money on it and half of it just gets tossed. At least that's the way it goes in my house. Anyway, Ansley has really enjoyed hunting for eggs. I dropped her off at my parents' today before I went to work and that was the first thing she wanted to do. I think that our house is currently covered from wall to wall with little plastic eggs.
I haven't gotten to cook nearly as much as I'd like to lately. It's a combination of not being home at dinner, being worn out and wanting to do something other than eat at home when I actually am home with the family. I need to make time to do more of it. It relaxes me to cook. The dishes that come along with the cooking not so much, but the cooking itself does. I did get a chance to make dinner on Saturday. It was pretty good. We had a steakhouse dinner consisting of an iceberg wedge salad with homemade blue cheese dressing, prime rib, creamed spinach and a gratin of cubed potatoes. I didn't really prepare a dessert, but I fixed myself a Coke float later on in the evening. I'll be off on weekdays instead of the weekend in April so maybe I'll get some more cooking done then. I sure hope so.
Until we meet again...
Easter was pretty good. The girls seemed to have a good time. I guess most kids have a good time any time they get a bunch of candy. All of that candy seems like such a waste to me. Just like Halloween, people spend so much money on it and half of it just gets tossed. At least that's the way it goes in my house. Anyway, Ansley has really enjoyed hunting for eggs. I dropped her off at my parents' today before I went to work and that was the first thing she wanted to do. I think that our house is currently covered from wall to wall with little plastic eggs.
I haven't gotten to cook nearly as much as I'd like to lately. It's a combination of not being home at dinner, being worn out and wanting to do something other than eat at home when I actually am home with the family. I need to make time to do more of it. It relaxes me to cook. The dishes that come along with the cooking not so much, but the cooking itself does. I did get a chance to make dinner on Saturday. It was pretty good. We had a steakhouse dinner consisting of an iceberg wedge salad with homemade blue cheese dressing, prime rib, creamed spinach and a gratin of cubed potatoes. I didn't really prepare a dessert, but I fixed myself a Coke float later on in the evening. I'll be off on weekdays instead of the weekend in April so maybe I'll get some more cooking done then. I sure hope so.
Until we meet again...
19 March 2008
deja vu?
I was about to start typing something here and had a strange feeling that I'd put it down in pixels before. Something told me that it had been in the short lived blog that Mel and I started last year and sure enough, there it was! I actually started that almost exactly a year ago. Anyway, it's spring break time again at UNF. This year finds me in a different job, but the slow down over the break is just the same. Fortunately, I only have to work the rest of tonight and tomorrow and then only come in Friday for training. It's nice to have a weeknight off with the girls every now and then.
I came up to campus today before work to bring Melody some soup since she can't eat any solid foods today. I don't really get up on the main part of campus anymore. I usually just see in on the cameras in my office. There is always construction going on here. UNF has changed so much even since I started working here. I wonder if it will ever slow down. It seemed for a while that there would be no more room to grow, but that's ben proven wrong. The next big project they're working on is a huge housing development. The thing looks like it could be a Disney resort. University or theme park? You decide.
Well, I guess I'll try to find something else to do now to occupy my time. I'll leave you with this video that I've been playing to listen to the song. Enjoy!
I came up to campus today before work to bring Melody some soup since she can't eat any solid foods today. I don't really get up on the main part of campus anymore. I usually just see in on the cameras in my office. There is always construction going on here. UNF has changed so much even since I started working here. I wonder if it will ever slow down. It seemed for a while that there would be no more room to grow, but that's ben proven wrong. The next big project they're working on is a huge housing development. The thing looks like it could be a Disney resort. University or theme park? You decide.
Well, I guess I'll try to find something else to do now to occupy my time. I'll leave you with this video that I've been playing to listen to the song. Enjoy!
18 March 2008
Number One
Well, I told Melody that she should start a blog so I guess that maybe I should do the same. I don't know that I'll have a whole lot to say here or how often I'll say it, but I thought I'd do it anyway.
I thought that I'd start off by talking about some of the things I use on my computer. Now, let me tell you that I'm really picky about what's on a pc that I'm using. To the point that I tend to insist that people at least try using the same things I like solely because, well, I like them so they must be good. Makes sense, right? Anyway, these are some little things that I do or use for a happy computing experience.
PortableApps Suite - Since I spend most of my computer time on a work pc I can't always install everything that I like to use. My solution to this is PortableApps run from my thumb drive. I run my browser, my IM client and all kinds of other random stuff off of here. It also comes with a little dashboard deal to make it all easy to access.
Mozilla Firefox - My browser of choice. Because I run this off of my thumb drive, I'm able to have the same settings no matter where I'm signed on. This is great since I'm so picky about stuff as I mentioned before. I sport a nice brown theme on my Fox. I've got a few add ons and extension that I consider essential that I'll mention in a bit.
Pidgin - For IMs, I use a multi-client application called Pidgin. It basically lets you use several different IM services from the same program. I run AIM, Yahoo, GTalk, MSN and MySpace IM pretty much seamlessly. You just log on to the different services as you would normally and it brings up all of your buddy lists. One problem that I do have with this is that you miss out on some of the features offered by a few clients. Overall I think it's great, especially if you're talking to people who use different clients.
That's about it for actual software I use on a regular basis. Everything else is pretty much web based or a plug in for something I'm already running. Here's a rundown of that stuff:
Gmail - Google email. Plain and simple. If you aren't using it then you should be. So many different options for sorting, filtering, storage...Just do yourself a favor and check it out. There's no reason not to.
Google Reader - An RSS feed aggregator, or feed reader. If you aren't using RSS feeds yet then you really should be. In my opinion, they will drastically streamline your web perusing. There are several out there to be had. Web based, stand alone, add ons for existing software like Outlook.
Google Calendar - Pretty self explanatory. It's a calendar utility. The plus to it is that it's web based. If you're already using something like Outlook it is easy to move all of your stuff to GCal and I'm pretty sure that you can even have the two programs sync up. Another fun feature is the ability to add appointments to GCal via text message. Great for little on the fly things that you don't want to forget.
Google Toolbar - If you haven't caught on yet, I am a big fan of all things Google. This toolbar brings that all together. You customize what buttons you want to show on your toolbar in tons of ways. I usually have buttons for Gmail, Google Maps, GCal, Google Reader and a couple of other things. It also allows you to have bookmarks across any computer that has the toolbar. Simply log on to the toolbar with your Google credentials and you've got your bookmarks. A great little tool.
Greasemonkey - An add on for Firefox that lets you change all kinds of stuff about the content you're viewing. You add scripts for Greasemonkey to run that will do all manner of things from turning plain text into links to showing full size images in MySpace and Facebook by rolling over small images with your cursor. The scripts can be found here.
IE Tab - Ok, I love Firefox, but sometimes websites just don't feel like playing along with the Fox. That's when this little beauty comes in handy. IE tab is a Firefox add on that allows you to open sites with Internet Explorer inside of Firefox. You can set it up so that certain sites will always open with IE or change the rendering engine on the fly by clicking the IE Tab button at the bottom of the browser.
There are tons of other things you can download for Firefox to make it just the way you like it. Play around with some and see what you like. Download some themes and dress up your Fox to your liking. Drop me a comment and tell me some things that you can't get by without on the computer. I'm always up for trying new things!
I thought that I'd start off by talking about some of the things I use on my computer. Now, let me tell you that I'm really picky about what's on a pc that I'm using. To the point that I tend to insist that people at least try using the same things I like solely because, well, I like them so they must be good. Makes sense, right? Anyway, these are some little things that I do or use for a happy computing experience.
PortableApps Suite - Since I spend most of my computer time on a work pc I can't always install everything that I like to use. My solution to this is PortableApps run from my thumb drive. I run my browser, my IM client and all kinds of other random stuff off of here. It also comes with a little dashboard deal to make it all easy to access.
Mozilla Firefox - My browser of choice. Because I run this off of my thumb drive, I'm able to have the same settings no matter where I'm signed on. This is great since I'm so picky about stuff as I mentioned before. I sport a nice brown theme on my Fox. I've got a few add ons and extension that I consider essential that I'll mention in a bit.
Pidgin - For IMs, I use a multi-client application called Pidgin. It basically lets you use several different IM services from the same program. I run AIM, Yahoo, GTalk, MSN and MySpace IM pretty much seamlessly. You just log on to the different services as you would normally and it brings up all of your buddy lists. One problem that I do have with this is that you miss out on some of the features offered by a few clients. Overall I think it's great, especially if you're talking to people who use different clients.
That's about it for actual software I use on a regular basis. Everything else is pretty much web based or a plug in for something I'm already running. Here's a rundown of that stuff:
Gmail - Google email. Plain and simple. If you aren't using it then you should be. So many different options for sorting, filtering, storage...Just do yourself a favor and check it out. There's no reason not to.
Google Reader - An RSS feed aggregator, or feed reader. If you aren't using RSS feeds yet then you really should be. In my opinion, they will drastically streamline your web perusing. There are several out there to be had. Web based, stand alone, add ons for existing software like Outlook.
Google Calendar - Pretty self explanatory. It's a calendar utility. The plus to it is that it's web based. If you're already using something like Outlook it is easy to move all of your stuff to GCal and I'm pretty sure that you can even have the two programs sync up. Another fun feature is the ability to add appointments to GCal via text message. Great for little on the fly things that you don't want to forget.
Google Toolbar - If you haven't caught on yet, I am a big fan of all things Google. This toolbar brings that all together. You customize what buttons you want to show on your toolbar in tons of ways. I usually have buttons for Gmail, Google Maps, GCal, Google Reader and a couple of other things. It also allows you to have bookmarks across any computer that has the toolbar. Simply log on to the toolbar with your Google credentials and you've got your bookmarks. A great little tool.
Greasemonkey - An add on for Firefox that lets you change all kinds of stuff about the content you're viewing. You add scripts for Greasemonkey to run that will do all manner of things from turning plain text into links to showing full size images in MySpace and Facebook by rolling over small images with your cursor. The scripts can be found here.
IE Tab - Ok, I love Firefox, but sometimes websites just don't feel like playing along with the Fox. That's when this little beauty comes in handy. IE tab is a Firefox add on that allows you to open sites with Internet Explorer inside of Firefox. You can set it up so that certain sites will always open with IE or change the rendering engine on the fly by clicking the IE Tab button at the bottom of the browser.
There are tons of other things you can download for Firefox to make it just the way you like it. Play around with some and see what you like. Download some themes and dress up your Fox to your liking. Drop me a comment and tell me some things that you can't get by without on the computer. I'm always up for trying new things!
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