As expected!

You Are An INFP

The Idealist You are a creative person with a great imagination. You enjoy living in your own inner world. Open minded and accepting, you strive for harmony in your important relationships. It takes a long time for people to get to know you. You are hesitant to let people get close to you. But once you care for someone, you do everything you can to help them grow and develop. In love, you tend to have high (and often unrealistic) standards. You are very sensitive. You tend to have intense feelings. At work, you need to do something that expresses your personal values. You would make an excellent writer, psychologist, or artist. How you see yourself: Unselfish, empathetic, and spiritual When other people don't get you, they see you as: Unrealistic, naive, and weak

We consume a lot of rice - I like cooking with it, well, because it's easy and pretty versatile.

I've been doing a method I derived from a cook's illustrated, which is to boil rice in a pot with 1.5 water to rice ratio, then tossing in the oven at ~375 for 30 minutes, stirring half-way through. This works, but I think this sounds even easier.

From Lynne Rosetta Casper's newsletter today, http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,e7gr,dv,bow2,32of,afjh,ruq&MLM_MID=662859&MLM_MLID=499&MLM_SITEID=20130&MLM_UNIQUEID=76d2d08d02 :

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Dumbed-Down Rice

Serves 3 to 4
15 to 20 minutes stove time

Cook to Cook: All rices work here; only the cooking times vary from one rice to another. You could skip the 10 minutes rest for the rice by cooking it to tender in the boiling water, draining, and serving.

Fragrant rices like basmati and jasmine should be rinsed several times before cooking to remove the extra starch and ensure that the grains cook up separate and fluffy.

If you can boil water, you can make great rice. Treat it like pasta - boil it in lots of water, drain it just before it's done, and let it stand, covered, for a few minutes. Perfect fluff.

3 quarts salted water in a 5- to 6-quart pot
1 cup long-grain white rice
1. Bring the salted water to a boil.

2. Drop the rice into the water and boil for 8 to 10 minutes, or until it is slightly undercooked. Drain it in a sieve, return it to the pot, and let it rest, covered, for 5 to 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork and serve.

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And yes, I know there are devices out there that can cook rice for you easily. I like to avoid unneccesary cooking gadgets if I have a decent, easy equivilent with pots and pans and whatnot.

Call me old, or sensitive, or whatever, but this BOTHERS ME - this constant use of "That's so gay". I encounter this online in my gaming constantly, and when I was responsible for running the current game's group, I corrected people all the time telling them to find a new term to equate to crap they didn't like. It got to the point that every time a new person joined the group, I just mentally counted the days until they'd say on our Voice-over-IP program or typed it into our group's chat.

It's SO REFRESHING to see this. I was forwarded the above link by a friend who saw it on TV, even!

It's about damn time.

As requested, this is the photo that the will be included in the newest Shmap Glasgow guide (http://www.schmap.com/). It's the City center marker for Glasgow. The tour guide on the tour bus said that they used to conduct mercantile business in the surrounding area, and that minor criminals (theft, etc) were placed here by making them stand on their tip-toes and NAILING them to the marker (somehow? It's stone...) with a nail through their ear. As they got tired and sagged, the nail would rip through their ear thus "earmarking" them as a criminal.

Had an idea when at Wholepaycheck grabbing lunch. Going to try it tonight and see.

- Apple Chicken sausage (4 small links)
- 2 chicken breasts
- 3 honeycrisp apples (might use 2 to start with, though)
- 3 strips bacon
- 3 small squash (1 acorn, 2 delicata, from the Thanksgiving Farm share)
- 1 onion
Spices: might try sage, thyme, rosemary nutmeg (basically "Poultry Seasoning") and mostly because I have fresh sage and thyme left over from Thanksgiving. Might dash in there some Marash pepper (from Zingermans) or some paprika for some smokey-spicyness.

The plan is: fry the bacon in a deep pot. Remove and crumble into a bowl, set aside. Saute the chicken until outer edge is browned in bacon grease, remove. Saute sausage until brown, remove. Saute onion, apple and squash in the remaining grease, adding a small amount of olive oil if neccesary.

Combine all ingredients in a baking dish and bake for 30-45 mins (until the chicken is 165-170 degrees). Add some white cheddar and crumbled bacon at the end.

We'll see how it goes!

more music charts

Getting ready to host the Big Day Meal on Thursday.

On the menu, so far (all by me, except where indicated...):

Appetizers: 
Assorted goodie platter with Manchego cheese, crackers, fig spread, feta stuffed green olives, kalamata olives, smoked salmon with dill and goat cream cheese.

Main Course:
Turkey & Turkey Gravy
Stuffing (the in-laws)
Cranberry sauce (starting with whole cranberries!)
Saurkraut and Kielbasa (Sister)
Roasted carrots and parsnips (matthew)
Buttermilk Mashed potatoes

Dessert:
Pumpkin-rum pie

Still need to: 
- ask the sweetie if there's anything he wants specifically;
- talk to John about what he'd like to bring;
- fill in the gaps

Via cherydactyl and prestorjohn .

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

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Ugh. I missed the Roosevelt one, the Aristotle one and practically all the financial/economic questions. The financial ones are what hosed me.

Rules:
*Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find the fifth sentence.
*Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal.
*Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Top 10 Los Angeles

"The exquisite 14 screen Arclight is the shiny new neighbor of the futuristic Cinerama Dome (see p96)."

And now you know ;)

I ran out to lunch with a coworker today and he was talking about Kabsa. We got to chatting about it, and he located a recipe that reminded him of the Kabsa that a Saudi friend of his used to make for their group.

http://www.recipezaar.com/252557

He pointed me at the recipe - it looks yummy!  I think I might try this for one of the two party events this weekend.

WHOA! 

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12104581&page=0&vc=&PHPSESSID=#Post12104581

Toggle Powers

One important additional piece of development to mention, that is especially relevant to Kheldians and their toggle powers is: in Issue 13, Toggles are no longer shut off due to Hold, Sleep or Disorient effects. This is a major gameplay change, and it is not restricted to Kheldians, but instead applies to all non-offensive player toggles. As part of changes in Issue 13, when a player is affected by a hold, sleep or stun, any toggle power they are running will continue and will still draw endurance from the character. However, some or all of its effects may be suppressed until such time as the hold, sleep or stun is removed. For example, if you are held while in Black Dwarf form, all of your Damage Resistance values, your recovery bonus and knockback protection are suppressed, while your hold, stun, sleep, immobilize and confuse protections remain in effect. Monitoring your stats with the "Real Numbers" tool is a good way to check which aspects of a toggle are suppressed and which are not.

_____________________________

As someone who plays characters with many toggles .. this is MOST excellent. :)

Work just hooked me up with a new Dell laptop and TWO -- count em, TWO - 22 inch widescreen monitors.  It's like I'm staring out a cockpit or something -- huge expanse of desk. Still have to figure out how I want them to sit on my desk ... have to factor in usability and reduce neck strain.

It's ... a lot ... of space. Oi. ;)

I also figured out how to set up multi-display WITH separate desktop pictures on each! Hadn't been able to do that at home yet, which was irking me. Will do that when I get home. Work now has North England on the secondary monitor, and my favorite Scotland pic (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aular/2832155092/) on the other.

And for colomon, since I just found out he's a Scotch hound ;)

Scotland photos are up on Flickr now. Link here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aular/sets/72157607097243182/

Read this article this morning:   http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

Download here:  http://www.google.com/chrome

It looks interesting enough that I'll download it at home and see what it's about and if it's really better than Firefox. I assume, already, that it's better than IE7 or IE8.

Time will tell, though, if Google can cut it in the browser market.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/business/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210102283

"American Airlines Launches In-Flight Internet Service ...

This has been a while coming. If NWA had offered this on our flights this past few weeks, I would have been taking my laptop.

Now they just need to be able to provide power so we can run our laptops for more than an hour or so and I could totally play a game while flying ;)

Back from the vacationing, finally. Just a day shy of three weeks ... and I'm actually ready for the routine of work and home.

Scotland was ...amazing. The people are humbly proud of thier country, despite the repeated subjugations by 'foreign' monarchs in England. There is a neat dichotomy of old and new present in the major cities, and there is stark beauty in the landscape of the mostly unsettled highlands.

And sheep. There are, in truth, more sheep in Scotland than Scots! In the wilder places, where the road LITERALLY narrows to one lane with occasionally bump-outs for you to pull over to let opposing traffic by, sheep just roam the countryside free of confining fences. We've many pictures of sheep in the road blocking our way, sheep at the road lazilly watching the cars go by and sheep dotting the mountainside amidst the heather and green.

Pictures will be forthcoming, of course.