My So Called Life

The Potato Olympics

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Here we see our two contenders, ready to once again revive that age-old Thanksgiving day test of skill and determination: the potato olympics.

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Tools are selected and the competitors are ready to begin.

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What’s this? A paparazzo has actually climbed a ladder outside to get a sneak peak at the peeling event in progress!

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Despite an extremely serious wound, this competitor soldiers on. Not even blood loss can prevent him from completing the event.

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After multiple bandages are applied to various parts of the hand, and the sobbing children have been escorted from the room, the competitors prepare for the third and final round; the cutting event. No more accidents please!

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After a laborious and scientific judging system is enacted, the score is all tied up! Who will win the coveted bragging rights?

Based on a last minute steal of an opponents potato, swift cut, and subsequent taunting dance, a style point is awarded to Rachael! It’s all over folks! It’s all over! In a surprising finish, Rachael has taken the victory for the 2013 potato olympics!

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Favorite Thanksgiving Foods

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Thanksgiving is a holiday centered entirely around gluttony. I used to think it was THE holiday centered around gluttony, but I think if you extend gluttony to the full sense of the word, then Christmas takes the cake (no pun intended). Thanksgiving is more relaxed. Thanksgiving is kind of a simpler, gentler form of gluttony, giving you a nice, warm tryptophan haze through which to view football, rather than a manic, anxiety ridden, grin-plastered-to-your-face-bolt-it-down-so-we-can-get-to-the-next-hedonistic-present-fest, Christmas-style gluttony. Thanksgiving lets you push all that rampant consumerism to another day (specifically the next day, on Black Friday).

As you most likely know, I have a very large extended family. Both sides. And in either case, no one person could ever possibly feed them all. Because of this, all major functions tend to be potlucks.

I’m a big fan of potlucks. They simply cannot be improved upon. I would much rather have a lot of little bits of many dishes, and get a chance to try out everything, than one big helping of even my favorite foods. However, because of this, I’m not sure I’ve really developed certain dishes that are a “must have” for Thanksgiving.

Turkey, of course, and I always like mashed potatoes when I can get them. Stuffing is kind of hit or miss; when it’s good, I really like it, but there’s a good chance I won’t. I usually try for a piece of pumpkin pie because I don’t often have it, but honestly, I prefer apple. Other than that, I have three family-specific dishes that come to mind: grandma’s pickles, grandma’s buns, and Aunt Kris’ brown sugar bacon wrapped weenies. However, I do get those last three at multiple family events throughout the year, so I’m not sure they count.

How about you, gentle reader? Anything in particular that says, “Thanksgiving” to you? What’s your favorite dish?

The TI-83 Graphing Calculator

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Ah, the old graphing calculator. Remember this beauty?

Is there anybody who didn’t use one of these in math class? I don’t remember how it came up, but I was feeling nostalgic for calculators. It’s kind of funny to think that these pillars of our childhood are a thing of the past. Who bothers with a dedicated calculator anymore? I mean, your average phone can do everything this big clunky beast could do and then some, while also providing a million other, more complicated functionality (even just the ability to make phone calls, to name the most basic).

I started wondering if they still had graphing calculators, since probably everybody in high school has smartphones by now anyway. What version number are they up to? How ridiculously cheap are they now?

Imagine my shock when I discovered that, not only is the TI-83 still the graphing calculator of choice, it actually costs MORE now than when I was in school ($150, on sale for $90!). How in god’s name can they get away with charging roughly the same as for an iPhone? The calculator has 32 kb of Ram and a 6 mhz processor. No phone, no wifi, no camera. No color touch screen for that matter. They actually use this picture in their sales brochure:

So what gives? They’ve been churning these things out for 20 years; they can’t cost more than a couple of bucks to make at this point. How can they get away with this?

Apparently I’m not the first one to notice. Just scanning the first few comments:

Where does TI even find suppliers that make components this out of date? Actually, maybe that’s why this thing is so expensive. The components are so old that scarcity is a big problem.

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So then I downloaded a FREE graphing calculator app on my outdated Android phone. And it’s friggin marvelous: instantaneous, intuitive, will do a 3d graph of x=sin(y) (3x faster than the ti does sin(x)) that rotates in full color with ability to pan and zoom on the touchscreen.

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This makes my (dated!) phone exactly 88 times as fast with 6000 times the memory. … Then I could zoom out 10 times, take a screenshot, and email it to you, just because I can (in 30 seconds).

Come on, school districts. This is ridiculous. Wake up and don’t put up with this extortion. They weren’t that great back when I was in school (although you could play some wicked head-to-head Tetris in class if you had the little cord).

Belgium

/ Shane / 2 Comments

I spent last week in the charming city of Leuven, Belgium. I must admit that I didn’t know anything about Leuven before going there, but I was pleasantly surprised at what a nice, walkable, European university town it was. There was lots of shopping, cobblestone streets, good food, and surprisingly good architecture.

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The trip certainly started off well. The plane was as close to empty as I’ve seen in years. An overnight flight is never great, but this was about as great as it can get, and I had a row to myself. I was able to lay down across 3 seats and get almost 3 hours of sleep.

Belgium is not a place that I ever really aspired to visit. I really couldn’t list anything that I’ve “always wanted to do” in Belgium. Whenever I’m in a place, I always like to eat the food of that place, but I wasn’t even sure what the food of Belgium was. However, four things kept coming up: Beer, french fries (or “Belgian fries” as they call them in France), chocolate, and mussels (as opposed to the Muscles from Brussels, which is something else entirely).

Well, check, check, check, and check (alas, no JCVD sightings).

November 003

I want to specifically address beer.

We all have a friend who is “that guy”: he’s always up on the latest micro-brews, always talking about beer, trying to get you to try this beer or that beer, even brews his own beer. Probably you know quite a few of those guys. I’m telling you now, that guy has nothing on Belgians.

Beer is absolutely a way of life over there. A bar with less than 30 beers is wasting everybody’s time. Each beer is served in a different specialty glass specific to that beer, designed to highlight its unique qualities. They literally make pilgrimages to remote monasteries for a chance to buy a case of rare, Monk-produced beer.

In other words, they take it pretty serious.

I, on the other hand, hate beer. Hate it. Yet every time I searched for variations on “what to do in Belgium”, beer was always at the top of the list (Stella Artois is specifically brewed in Leuven). Even when I started searching for “what to do in Belgium if you don’t like beer”, it mostly returned results that basically said, “Well, come on, there’s thousands of beers, how can you say you don’t like beer?” or “10 best beers for people who don’t like beer!”

So, as they say, when in Rome. I do like to try the food of the place.

I never would have believed it if I hadn’t tasted it with my own mouth, but damn if they don’t have tasty beer over there! I really enjoyed Leffe Brune (much better from the tap than from a bottle).

November 004The work meetings went great, and overall it was a really nice little trip. Unfortunately, with the travel and time change, etc., 2 days of work necessitate a 5 day trip. And even then, I essentially had no time to really explore the city, much less Brussels or any of the other surrounding areas. It certainly would have been a lot more fun to have Sara and the kids with me (probably more fun for them too, especially Sara), but we managed to get by with a couple of one-way video chats (I had a camera, they didn’t). Maybe we’ll have another chance sometime!