Ravings of an Intermittent Fool

An entry by Dave Winer turned me onto The Connection which is a brillant long form radio program produced out of Boston by WBUR. It covers a wide range of topics from current events, to technology, politics, culture and more. To keep up with the show and as more python practice for me, I am now generating RSS feeds for The Connection. Signup and you'll enjoy...I'm sure.

I have to hand it to Alton Brown, his recipe for homemade Cashew Butter and Cashew Sauce was wonderful. It was incrediblely easy to make and they tasted so incredible. I had butter left over from the sauce making so my dinner tonight consisted of the best testing Peanut Butter (errr I mean Cashew) Sandwich I have ever eaten. The texture was this nice combination of creamy with a bit of crunch and the flavor is out of this world. You must try it.

I'm now wearing size 40 pants (have been wearing 42s and 44s) and I find I have a need for a new brown belt. With the bigger pants the largeness of the belt is somewhat hidden, but with these it just looks ridiculous. Has anyone had some experience taking a drill to a leather belt to add holes? I'm itching to try out a Christmas present ;-)

Cory Bergman of Lost Remote fame, has some ideas and rants on how to make the tv media better. One of his suggestions is to remove all the bloated coverage of weather and reduce it to just the forecast. Here here!

Angela and I hosted an engagement party for her sister Sheri and her fiancee Jason several weeks ago. Here are the photos.

Continuing my plan to use peer pressure to keep me on track to loose weight, I am offering two new sources of information: my current weight as an RSS feed and a graph of my weight history. Since I try to weigh myself daily, these pages should change (hopefully for the better) for the forseeable future.

I just got finished watching the third season premiere of The Shield. Wow, I was blown away. It was a very intense hour. So many plot lines to follow, so much action. There clearly has been some time that has passed between the end of season two and this episode. I expect we will see more and more of those details provided in the coming weeks. It didn't stop there. So many more details were giving about how the Strike Team is coping after their secret heist. You can already start to see some of the potential issues that are going to trip them up this season. It was also good to see some conflict and tenson between Claudette and Captain Acevada. I suspect that relationship is going to be far more interesting than the past two season.

All in all, this feels like a wild, out of control roller coaster ride where you suspect that the cars are going fly off the track at any moment. It leaves you out of breath and anxious for next week. I personally can't wait.

Oh, and if you haven't seen seasons oneand two, the DVDs are excellent and addictive. Season one is espacially nice since there is commentary tracks for each and every episode. Check it out, I know you will enjoy it.

Just discovered two Cincinnati area groups that I didn't expect existed:

CORA - Cincinnati Off-Road Alliance - a local mountain biking group

Scriptnein - a local improv comedy troupe

I'd like to check out both of these groups in coming months.

Crypto-Gram is a monthly security newsletter by Bruce Schneier. (I've written before about his latest book, Beyond Fear). Now the monthly newsletter features a RSS feed. Run, don't walk, to your aggregator and add this feed.

Our server had a power supply failure. Billy was kind enough to get it replaced. Thanks! (and sorry about the inconvience to all those subscribed to The Connection RSS Feeds.

Tonight I tried out Good Eats' Baked Macaroni and Cheese. Completely delicious. The only thing I would do differently would be to sweat the onions a bit before adding them to the liquid.

Much fun was had by all at this years festivities at the Dubliner. Much Smithwicks was consumed. Now that it is available in the US, you owe it to yourself to give this beer a try.

Of course more photos are available.

Last week, Jennifer, James and I had a chance to eat lunch at the newest high end resturant in downtown Cincinnati, JeanRo. It is by the chef of Jean-Robert at Pigalle's, Jean-Robert de Cavel.

The resturant is located on Vine Street between 4th and 5th streets in the location formally occupied by Schlotsky's Deli. The space is very bright with a small bar off to the right. The decor is mostly vintage French posters and other memorabilia. They open at 11:30 for lunch and take reservations for the first seating. I'd recommend you do that for the forseeable future if you want a table. We didn't have reservations but there were spots at the bar.

All three of us started with the French Onion Soup. Quite tasty and rich (far superior than what I made at home). For our main meal, I had the Croque Monsieur, a hot grilled ham and swiss with fresh cut french fries and small, mixed green salad dressed lightly with a simple vinaigrette. Jennifer had a chicken salad sandwhich that had olives in it. It came with a larger portion of the aforementioned salad. James has the Ground Beef Steak a Cheval, on toast with sunny side up egg. The steak was dressed with tender red onions (so soft and delicious!) and tomatos and it came with the salad and the fries. All three of us completely enjoyed our food. I can't wait to try other parts of the menu.

I didn't get a chance to try it but the bar features an extensive selection of German and Belgian beers along with the expected wine list. My only disappointment is that the waitress/bartender didn't ask us how we wanted our bill arranged. (Its my personal pet peeve when waitstaff don't ask how bills should be arranged ahead of time).

In short, this isn't an everyday kind of place for me, but definitely worth it when you want to live it up a bit. Its great food and a not too pricey. Its very accessible, reasonable French food, and definitely not avant garde haute cuisine. I'm already looking forward to my next visit.

Yesterday, I had the ocassion to sub for Jeff on a Broomball team. For the unitiatied, Broomball is game very much like ice hockey, except the players wear special spongey rubber shoes instead of skates, they carry short staffs with a hard rubber triangle "broom" at the end instead of a stick and a large ball replaces the puck. Its a bit awkward at first, but you quickly get the hang of it. A real key is to have the proper broomball shoes. Any attempts to play this with street shoes of any variety will cause you much frustration and pain (as you will frequently slip and fall). Its nearing the end of the season but if you get a chance you should check it out. It is tremendous exercise (you will feel muscle aches in places you didn't realize you had muscles the next day).

Of course there are more pictures, but I have to warn you most are of poor quality since its hard to take good pictures in an arena with a short lens and weak flash. Oh and I was wearing a helmet and facemask during most of these shots too..it hampered the composition quite a bit.