Video thought for the day

I was thinking of this monkey/dog combo this afternoon. Priceless.

Poor attempts at Internet advertising

Ridiculous...
Is that dude half-man, half-pig?
Hasn't imaging technology (compression, rendering and all that good business) progressed enough that we can get better images?
I guess not.

And what is this dude wearing? Somebody should have told him, "dude, you're going to be on the Internet, wear some cool threads." I think someone told him to sit still and hold a piece of rope. His response, "wha? you want me to hold a rope? Yeah, I can do that. And I'll get free checking? Okay I'll do it." However, note the meticulously styled bed head hair. I can only surmise that he's trying to appeal to the Jack 'RegularCollegeDude' Smith. What college student can't identify with the belle coiffe, poor attire, need for checking and...fear of strings? I'll never understand today's youth.

On a related topic, don't get me started on the bizarre antics portrayed in the LowerMyBills.com ads. This dude has that topic cornered, so I won't even go into any detail. I will note that his blog shows the progression of the ads and it's quite interesting.

slow days (for me) in the blogosphere

I was on a roll this week, eh? Post after post, non-stop baby! Then Thursday rolled around and a few pints with a co-worker and that record is lost. Thanks a lot to that guy.

I finally signed up for the trial membership at 24 Hour Fitness. I found out that the busiest time at the gym is noontime Monday through Friday, a time when I'm unlikely to be anywhere near that area. So this is probably a good thing; when I get off work I'll have no problem finding my favorite machine available. This would be the first time I actually joined a full tilt gym. Back in DC, the building where I worked had a gym but it was tiny and a few cardio machines sprinkled around. The positive to that was that it was cheap and right at work so there were no excuses--it did close at 7pm weekdays and was closed completely on the weekends. Now, I'll have access to a gym that's open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Will I know how to control myself???

A Bitter Melon Cooking Experience

I'm not exactly sure how it was revealed but I mentioned to my ohana at work that I ate bitter melons. I don't believe the word "cook" was ever mentioned (my experience with bittermelon aside from eating it was maybe choppiing it at the most), but somehow this tipped off one of my kuahine and she brought in what seemed like a couple of pounds of the bumby and bitter squash.

First, some background. I've been eating bitter melon for what seems like most of my life. As a young'un growing up in Texas, I dreaded having to eat it. I tried it again after a long haitus and somehow, someway thought it was delicious. My mom cooks it with her special mix of spices, which are basically turmeric, hot peppers and salt. Served with rice and a dollop of yogurt, this is probably one of the most basic dishes to prepare, but so complicated for the senses.

Perhaps it was during the time my father raised bitter melons as a cash crop that I began to appreciate the gourd. My dad would construct large trelises and grow the vines of the bitter melon across these structures. Even the pugent odor of the vines was so strong that you could pick it up some ways away from the vicinity of the actual plant. Just thinking about the smell recalls such fond memories such as hot oppressive Texas humidity, mosquitoes and other flying insects and my canine pal, Bosco. Enough of that for now.

So last weekend I decided to cook up a few bitter melons. I was actually spurred on to do this because I heard a cooking contest was coming up--the next day actually--I figured I could give it a shot. A few of my friends were gathering and everyone was preparing some international dish. Alas, the contest was cancelled, but still the cooking was a worthwhile experience.

So to detail the experience. FYI, I followed my mom's recipe. First, I cut the ends of the gourds off and chopped the rest of the vegetable into quarter-inch rounds, which you may be able to see in the photo to the right. One of the squashes literally "exploded" since it was too ripe; one end of it was curled wide open exposing it's red seeds, hence why the yellow pieces are not intact. I cut up some small Hawaiian hot peppers that I also received. I chopped up two thinking these little buggers ain't going to intimidate me...

I proceeded to "blanch" the bitter melon slices. However, I believe I put too much water in the pot so I probably created a mild stew of bitter melons in the process. When I attempt to cook these again, I will use way less water (maybe a 1/4 cup for each 1/2 pound) and will probably salt them at this point too. I should have also probably used a larger cooking vessel.

Next, I actually had to run to the grocery store since I found out that I didn't have ground turmeric. After returning from the store, I fired up the stove again and proceeded to sautee the sliced bitter melon and hot peppers.

At this point the details get a little fuzzy. For some reason, I decided that the dish needed a whole lot of turmeric, I added a little salt but not enough to complement the bitterness of the squash. As you can see, the consistency of the squash and spices is rather wet. This should not be the case; it's most likely a result of the poor blancing I performed. Also, the non-stick pan that I used probably required less oil than I added. I don't like using these types of pans, but that's all that was available. In hindsight, I probably should have done everything in the stainless steel pot I used in the previous step.

Well, it was a fine experience like I said. It was good and pretty hot thanks to those hot peppers; they may be small but they carry quite the punch. Combined with the monster portion of turmeric, the dish probably could have cured someone of the cold in a matter of seconds. When cooking with bitter melon, don't underestimate the need for salt...I didn't have any rice (doh! I was suppossed to buy some when I went to the store) so I ate it with bread. There was brown rice available, but I didn't have time to cook rice for 50 minutes. Next time, I'll do it up right with rice and yogurt.

An abode of one's own

I'm deep into my first house hunt. Deep as in almost a month into it and hardly anything has come up. The problem is that house prices here haven't really backed off from the huge spike the market experienced awhile back. Compounding that is the fact that there's a slight décalage between when economic events strike the mainland and when those events are felt in Hawaii; almost as if the news travels by boat across the Pacific to get here (actually that might be too speedy a timeframe), but for some reason it takes forever.

When I first set out for Hawaii, I was set on buying a house. I found a few on the Internet and figured finding a home would be easy. Unfortunately, when I came to the island the first time to check out said houses, I found that they were in the worst parts of Honolulu--information not quite conveyed in the ad. So I've settled on buying a condominium.

What is a condominium? Even the word sounds strange. Apparently it's a hodge podge of Latin meaning joint ownership and the word was not widely used until 1962 to mean "a privately owned apartment."

Aside from price, location is the most important decision to make when buying. In Hawaii, and depending on your budget, you have the choice of living in downtown or out in the hills far from bus routes and other signs of civilization. Since I'm trying to avoid buying a car, I'm trying to live in town, near bus routes, grocery stores and work. That means Chinatown, Kakaako, Punchbowl (stretching it) or Makiki. That's a large swath of area that has many condos, but few in my price range.

So, I'll keep looking and keep hoping something good turns up.

The Land of Aloha

What is Aloha? Is it the spirit of the world percieved by an individual or an outward reflection of one's own nature? In the short time that I have already been here I have learned that it can be both of these.

It's true that Hawaii, like any other place has its faults. Ticketing for jaywalking, poorly-skilled drivers, homelessness and urban sprawl are found everywhere in our modern world. Why should Hawaii be immune to these things just because its a) the most remote chain of islands from any other significant landmass b) has the nickname of the "Aloha State" or c) has its own time zone.

The fact of the matter is is that I've met some great people since I've been here. Not everyone has been friendly, but like I said why should Hawaii be some utopian state where everyone gets along? It might have been like that decades ago before real estate entrepreneurs ransacked the area, but that's the road of capitalism.

In my time here, I've found that true Aloha starts in you and it's up to you maintain that spirit. I have my charge and I know the challenge that lays before me. I didn't come here just for the surf and sun, I came here to learn. That's what I'm doing and that's where I'm going.

A successful upgrade...

So last night I made the upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1 aka WinMo 6.1. It was successful overall but was it worth the effort? Yes.

However, I'm still pissed that Microsoft will only let ActiveSync sync with Outlook and not any other program, like Windows Mail or Thunderbird. So to save my phonebook, I had to save it all to the SIM card, which loses information like snail mail and email addresses. I know I should have used RescoBackup (which I think came with the phone), but I don't have that damn CD with me. I also used Funambol and Seven to backup my contacts, but all that did was make multiple entries for the same contact. Seven by the way is an awesome program, when it's working. If you ever need to check any email inbox on the planet (almost) you can use Seven's service to sync your inbox with your phone. It took some time to update my Gmail inbox with Seven but it worked by the morning. I think Funambol provides the same service, but I don't think it's quite the same.

Well, the phone still works and it's in better shape than before.

Papayas are awesome

I decided today that I’ll eat a papaya everyday for lunch along with sprouted grain bread. This is way healthier than my previous diet of plate lunches of minute chicken (what in the world is that you ask, even though I ate it, don’t ask me, just avoid it if at all possible) and other mysterious deep fried meats.

Not sure if it’s the strawberry variety of papaya that I picked up a Down to Earth or if it’s papayas in general, but they are delicious. The only problem is that I have yet to really learn how to eat one. The first time I tried a papaya here I peeled it, cut it open and scooped out the seeds. I also kept the seeds thinking I could grow them in my soon-to-be backyard/lanai, but that’s another story. I then proceeded to chop it like any other fruit. This weekend I tried to handle it like a melon, where I chopped it in half, scooped out the seeds and then used a knife to slice the skin off; leaving just wedges of fruit. This method didn’t work so well since the fruit was rather ripe. Today for lunch I took the other half and just used a spoon to scoop out the fruit and this worked out quite well. I think this will be the preferred method to eat papayas from now on.

I found out last night that my Alliance Française membership doesn’t transfer from chapter to chapter. Not so bad I guess, at least there is a AF chapter out here. I’ve practically lost all my French, so it’ll be tough trying to pick it up again. I still read the news digests and alerts from France 24 in French, and those alerts are pretty awesome since those are sent in real-time as in hot off the presses; this is really helpful since out here in HI, news may take a while to get here.

Mission Control, we are GO for launch

This is a post nearly 6 months in the making. Yes, I've decided to restart this blogging thing again and commit to posting an entry at least every week.

A lot has happened since the last post. They Tytn II has died about once, lost it's phonebook several times (thanks to my fumbling ways), returned me to civilization many times and guided me around far flung parts of the world including such riparian destinations as Portland, OR.

It has accompanied me on my worldwide travels including to my new home in Honolulu. Honolulu you ask? Yes, I decided to leave the comforts of the Beltway and jump over to Paradise. Maybe when people refer to Hawaii as Paradise they really mean Pair of Dice...it's no doubt a gamble on my part to start a new life here, far from family and friends, starting a new job that I found on the Internet and learning to eat new foods (and paying prices that are eff-ing expensive). But I'm here and I've survived the last two months of my time at the job. Ahh yes, the job.

The mind has a strange way of reasoning out its current station in life. I left my Texas job to start my dreamjob in DC at a certain energy regulatory commission. Having met my goals of working on certain projects, another opportunity opened up this time in a job far more technical, exactly the sort of job I was looking for at the time. So I should be happy, right? Well, why is it that whenever I see newsreleases from my old job I sort of cringe, thinking to myself, damn I wish I was part of that or I'd know exatcly what the issues were if I was still there? Perhaps this is just a phase. But it was fun over there, getting my grubby hands into all sorts of matters, people asking me technical questions that were intriguiging for their engineering as well as legal matters.

However, to be a respectable person in power systems (yes, I'm a power systems engineer), you need to have a technical background. I just wasn't getting it there. Here, it's all I do, albeit the system is much smaller than anything you'd find on the mainland. The advantage: I can get my grubby hands into all sorts of different engineering projects.

Won't be quite the same, but that's the whole reason why I left DC in the first place. The folks at work are different too, but the camaraderie I had with folks at the last job was unbelievable. Like the other phase that I need to pass through, I need to adjust to these new co-workers or at least adjust them to me...Still, for the "land of Aloha," I don't think people are that friendly (a post for another time).

But one thing's for sure, my Tytn II will be at my side, well at least until the Sony Ericsson Experia X1 is released...