Mice: 0
Technomage: 3

It's been three week since I've caught my last mouse. Although there do seems to be sign of action in the Chemistry Lab. At least now the little bastards are not pooping all over my desk.

So I come back form a long weekend and I see the Physics Students have sacraficed a small furry mammal to apease whatever dark gods watch over the college. It's always great to find dead animals on your desk. It just makes you feel loved and gives you a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart.
In reality, I go through this ever year. The weather starts getting cold and the field mouse start wandering inside looking for food and warmth. I've been seeing little present left over my desk and keyboards for about a week now. Last week I decides to do something about it.
Being a traditionalist I went for the plain wood trap. These little bastards just licked the peanut butter off and didn't spring any of the six trap I left scatter around the office. So it's was off to the hardware store to find a better mousetrap.

Theses black Rentokil mouse are great: easy baiting and a hair trigger. The only thing better would be mininuke land mines that would give a satisfying popping sound and vaporize the mouse body at the same time. I was so happy I bought a couple more just for spite. I use peanut butter because it spread easily and is aromatic so the mouse can find it. Although, I can't figure out why they like my desk. (I threw away that bag of chilli cheese fritos a long time ago.)


I was rewarded again with a dead animal on Tuesday as well. Looks like I caught the fat one first and his skinny brother next.

Last become hooked on this salad from the HyVee Deli. Last year it was the brocolli salad. Now, it's this tomato salad that does have a name. I was tried of buying it for $4 a pound, so I thought I'd tried it at home. It's even better when you do it yourself. It also gives me ideas for my garden next year. This makes a nice side for a steak dinner (ribeye with mushrooms, of course) in stead of the baked potatoe.

Tomato Italian Salad

4-8 Medium size tomatoes
4 oz. Feta Cheese (1 package)
1 Medium to small Red Onion
4 oz. Slice Black olives (1 can)
1/2 cup Italian salad dressing

Slice the tomatoes in bite size slices. Dice the onion. Throw everything into a bowl. Add the salad dressing. Stir. I'm fast and loose with the amounts here, so you can play with your own combinations. You can eat it right away, but I prefer to let in sit in the frig for awhile. This lets the flavors blended, and I swear it's better the day after. If it's too strong leave the onions out and use less salad dressing. I usually put a touch of salt on each serving but none in the recipe.

I hate it when salespeople lie. It makes me want to start kicking their ass.

I at the Verizon Store in the Coral Ridge Mall paying my bill. (Full disclosure: Yes, I've been a Verizon customer for many years now, and I'm happy with the coverage area and that's about it. In the past 18 months I've gone through 5 Blackberry curves, three of those in the last six months.)

I overhear this conversion between a Verizon Salesman and a Potential Customer.

Customer: "I have a Verizon account and I'd like the add my daughter to my service. She would daughter would like an iPhone. Do you have anything like that?"

VZ Salesman: "Yes we do, it's a Blackberry Curve!"

(Lie number 1: The Blackberry Curve is nothing like an Iphone. As much as Verizon wishes it were true, it's not even close.)

I choke at this point and say and tell the clerk helping me that's so not true. She shrugs.

Customer: "She has seen that (The Blackberry), but she really likes the Iphone and thinks it's cool."

VZ Salesman: "This does everything the iPhone does and more. It's has an Apps Store just like the iPhone. Beside the iPhone doesn't have a camera."

(Bullshit! I almost scream across the room. I really wish I could have gotten the woman's name because she needed truthful information right now. The last statement was full full of lies and half-truths it just pissed me off.)

(Lie #2 (not direct but implied) The iPhone and the Blackberry Curve both have a GPS unit. The verizon version of the Blackberry Curve have the GPS disabled. This makes the VZ customer purchase the VZ Maps app to get the same functionality the iPhone has. That's $10-$20 a month extra.)

(Lie #3 (Half-truth) The Blackberry World App store is nothing like Apple's iTune store, but it is a store. Apple apps run from free to $40, withthe average price being $1-$3 per applications. Blackberry's apps run from free - $70, with the average price being about $5-$6 per application. Blackberry most common apps start pricing at $4.99, where Apple's are at 99 cents. I have used the Blackberry store and It's a pain in the ass to navigate and not nearly as polished as the iTunes store.)

(Lie #4 (Half-truth) The 1st gen model of the iPhone lack a camera, however it is now standard on all current models. If this woman got an iPhone, it wouldn't be a used two year old model.)

I could go on, but the main point is the VZ Salesman was a Douchebag. I had to leave before I really blew my top.

If the Blackberry is so good, why is Verizon desperate to get their hands on an agreement with Apple? Rumor has it that Verizon will get the iPhone late 2010 or early 2011. I just hope they don't fucked the iPhone with all the hamstring cutting they did to the Blackberry Curve.

If it weren't for Verizon better coverage in Eastern Iowa, I would so drop my plan and get something with an iPhone!

WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU SEVRE CHEESECAKE WARM?

The High Priestess and I, are coming back from a play at Old Creamery Threater. It's a cool summer night and I think a little coffee and dessert would be please. We stop by the Okaboji Grill. Normally I don't do reviews on chain restaurants, but I will complain.

I order the cheesecake and coffee. I know most dessert are made someplace else, mostly by little gnomes. The dessert are frozen then shipped all over creation. I would expect some dessert should be left in a cooler to thaw. I would guess a store should be able to go through at least one cake a day. At five bucks a pop, selling even three pieces pays for the cake and the cost to ship it.

I get my cheesecake and it's warm, not room temperature but warm, hot even. The top of the cake is cool but the bottom is warm even to flow like melted wax. WTF! I ask the waitress, she finally admit she put it in the microwave for 30 seconds. She quickly explains that she does that with everything. It's standard policy. Whoever runs this place is a moron and probably has never had cheesecake in their life.

Cheesecake should be served at room temperature. Period. Even fresh from the oven it should be allowed to cool before being served. Chilled cheesecake is an OK second. End of story.

AnimeIowa 2009
I've gone through many goals this summer and this last month has been quite something. I finally went to the Twin Cites. I now have a trailer hitch in the back of the van, and cool bike rack for the recumbent I own. Finished taking down the swingset of doom that was going to kill the kids. I took a couple of road trips to usual places. I watched a bunch of movies and anime. Which brings me to three main revelations about myself.
1. I'm still a kid and I still see myself as a kids even though no one else does. The HP spend her time constantly rolling her eyes at me while watching anime, or the way my eyes light up for electronic toys. I feel somewhere around the age of 17, but my body tells me otherwise everyday.

2. I'm a bit of an ass. I don't get my friends name right. I spend a lot of time wool gathering instead of paying attention. I almost seem to spend my time mubbling not because being angry, but because the thoughts are running through my head so fast my mouth can't keep up. My patience has grown short, and I have no time for fools.

3. I'm getting old. I can longer tell the ages of people (especially women) anymore. That annoying near point of my eyes seems to kept moving further away from my nose. This makes me stare at stuff more. Sometimes it is to focus on things. Other times it is just my mind wanders off into the past and my eyes just focus on the last thing that had my attention


4. I'm turning Into a Dirty Old Man. Mainly because of 1, 2, and 3.

Bluebird Diner
330 E Market St
Iowa City, IA 52245-2171
(319) 351-1470
Normally, I don't trust a dinner that doesn't a fat guy cooking, but when a friend suggested this place I had to go. The other item that intrigued me was this place once was the Pittsburgh Paint store. The location is Gilbert and Market across from the Iowa City landmark John's Grocery.

I have had lunch, dinner and breakfast at the Bluebird so it's no time to write my review. First up the appearance.

As the name implies there is alot of blue: Blue chairs, Blue Booth, Blue awning, Blue floor tile, Blue T-shirt, and you get the picture. Even the main mirror has faint hint of blue. A word of warning, don't go into the male bathroom during a sunny morning without sunglasses, preferably some "Blu-Blocker". It all nice as a diner should be. The twenty-something staff gives the place a beatnik feeling, especially when the stand on the counter to change the chalkboard menu-of-day.

(Aside: How come I never get the cute waitress?) Enough about me and my personal issues, back to the Food.

Lunch
I had the Classic Reuben. This is almost always my first choice in any diner or theme restaurant. It's a good gauge of what staff in the kitchen are doing and the wait staff as well. It was a nice start especially during the lunch crowd. The sandwich had a generous amount of corn beef served with two thick piece of toasted rye. It came warm and juicy with the bread still crisp. A lot of places will not drain the sauerkraut enough to keep the bread from getting soggy. Other places grill the Reuben to hide this fact, but not here. The sandwich came quickly enough so the wait time didn't make the bread soggy either. Kudos for the staff. The taste was fine, but I found myself really wanting a kosher pickle with Reuben was well. Instead I got fruit, an interesting choice but not need. Stick with the pickle, if I'm order the Reuben I'm not thinking about my heart at the time. The Reuben was served with a nice portion of fries. This were crisp, yet a little cool. Which could mean the fries were probably put on the plate first and left to wait on the sandwich. This could be a timing problem in the kitchen. Normally I expect the sandwich, burger, fish or whatever to be under the fries slightly. That let's you know the order how things were put on the plate: Sandwich, fries, then garnish (Pickles). Then BOOM! to the table. The garnish may come before the fries depending on what it is: tomatoes, lettuce, or onion. Not sure with the fruit maybe after if it is cold, and before if warm. ( Aside: There's an idea, baked apples slices served warm. Maybe not for summer, but it might be a good winter choice. What do you think, guys?)

Dinner
I had the Classic Caesar Salad with grilled chicken. This was very nice. The Chicken was warm and the lettuce was crisp, not the easiest thing to do. This shows good timing in the kitchen and low wait time with the staff. The HP order the Vegetable Lasagna so kudos for the staff getting it to the table at the same time. (Aside: I tried my wife's Lasagna. It was good, but in the back of my head I kept saying to myself this needs more meat. Go figure. I just order a salad with meat.) The salad a a nice amount of dressing. I might have asked for a bit more if I wasn't in a good mood. The kalamata olives were another interesting choice. To me they taste like a cross between a old dishrag and a used diapers. I suspect the olives themselves were off, but I that could be just me. I will have to try this salad again. Then, I had pie.

Want to keep a fat guy happy? Offer him pie. The pie of the day was an Apple Pie with raisins and walnuts. The desserts are made everyday so there is something different each time I've been there. This pie was perfect, serve warm it held together nicely. The crust was flaky and moist. I thought the walnut and raisins would throw the taste, but they made a pleasant surprise. I was expecting something like currant or something dark, but this was light. The was served with two small scoops of vanilla ice cream. I wanted more. Once again, if I'm ordering pie with ice cream I pretty much killed my diet or already worshiped the StairMaster for an extra hour, just give me the ice cream! I going to come back for this pie.

Breakfast
I spent all morning chopping wood and doing yard work, so earned a big breakfast. I dragged the HP with me and order my two breakfast standards: Eggs Benedict and Pancakes. Once again this is sort of a standard benchmark with me. The Eggs Benedict was very good. The eggs were truly poached and not fried a short cut sometimes used in diners. The Hollandaise sauce was mild in flavor but very creamy. The ham was deli style shaved thin, and then cooked, a pleasant change compared with the Canadian bacon some places prefer to use. The ham does dry out faster when cut thin and cook. The sauce and eggs cover the ham slight dryness very well. The English muffin was nicely toasted. I couldn't quite place the brand, but it was tasty.

The hash brown were close to being perfect as I have ever got in a restaurant. Most place just fry brown one side of a mound of shredded potatoes, then flip the other side over. What you get is a raw mess of potatoes in a burnt brown layer. I hate that. The Bluebird's hash brown were cooked throughout and crunchy outside with a hint of butter. I had promised myself not to eat them all, but I did.

I order three buttermilk pancakes on the side. For $2.50, I received three sauce plate size pancake. This is a deal. I may just have to go back for just the pancake. They were light, but not too light as to be a sponge soaking up the maple syrup. I buttered the hell out of these, and wolfed down most of the cakes before they had time to cool. You can get these pancakes with whipped cream and fruit (grilled bananas, strawberries, or blueberry). Which just makes these pancakes evil and more time on the StairMaster for me.

Overall, a 7.5 out of 10 for me. The food will bring me back, but the staff sort of annoyed me.

If it's Saturday, it must be St. Paul.

I've finally got back to the twin cities, after finding half the world has moved here. The exception is my brother who just left a couple of years back. So on to the ramble.

The Drive was better than I thought, since I thought I would fall asleep behind the wheel after 2 hours to anywhere. However, I've found out some very nasty things.

One, it is possible to overdose on Sorbitol. One if my routines when driving is chewing Orbit Bubblemint and downing Eclipse Winterfrost mints like there is no tomorrow. Both have Sorbitol a sugar alcohol substitute. One of the reason I do this is to keep my mouth happy, thus causing me to stay awake and not run into the minivan filled with Nuns and orphan kids. (There's an express ticket to hell.) Since I'm diabetic I try to avoid sugar when I can, hence the need for the Sorbitol. However, soon after arriving in the Twin Cities part of my body feel like they have gone to another country and started drinking the pond water. The Odd thing is this happen the week before, and the week before that. Almost like clockwork.

Last time, this happen was in College when I would get a headache at 2 PM every Sunday and would clear up by dinnertime. Turns out that my body was going through Caffeine withdrawal. Hmmmmmmmm.....

Let's run it down. Two weeks, I drove to Des Monies for a conferences, then last week the HP and I took the kids to Adventureland. Both road trip with my usual routine, and a couple of days afterwards of me finishing off my supply of Eclipse mints. All followed by spending more time in the bathroom than a ten dollar hooker on payday. A little research and you guess it: Sorbitol! One more thing to scratch off the list. Other side effects: Gas. (Yeah, like I need that!), High Blood Sugar readings (Oh Shit, why don't you just say my head could explode.)
Truth to be told, the blood sugar reading are a result of my biochemistry and the sorbitol working together in interesting ways. Which leads me to my next point.

300 mg/dL! You gotta be Shitting Me! I admitt I have not been as diligent about watch what I eat, but I haven't had a donut in weeks and only one funnel cake in the past week. Some of this maybe the Sorbitol, but I hope it's not my pancreas giving up the ghost. I though I had this under control, before my lancet device failed. Which brings me to my next point. I'm sure all of you have seen those diabetic ads for all kinds of stuff. (Aside: I'm always tickled by the TV shows that have diabetic and ED ads in the same break time. Makes me think of old fat guys in wheelchairs with boners.) One of the ads is for the OneTouch Ultra Mini.

Sure, it's cute and small, but it's a pain in the ass. The unit is sold as being hip, small and convenient. I picked up one of these units for free at the local Hy-Vee store from the local rep pitching the product to the pharmacy customers. What they don't tell you is you have to dragging all the other crap with you: test strips, lancets, lancet device, and the case to carry it all. The picture makes it seem the unit carries the strips, HA! You load one test strip for each time you test. My old Accu-check Compact has all the test strips loaded into a drum so it's one less thing to carry. It's about three times the volume, but the case size for all the accessories is only 50% larger than the OneTouch. So I'm sticking with the Accu-check

I spent last week at a conference in Des Moines with my trusty Refurbished iBook G4. I got this from Apple about 3 years ago and it has worked well on this little trips. However, I started getting Netbook envy sitting around my fellow teachers. Everything in the laptop world is a compromise. Those 17 inch widescreen laptop are cool, but the are a beast sitting on the tabletop elbow to elbow with several other overweight 8-10 pound laptop. I like the netbooks. The cute little screen and keyboards are a pain to view and type on. So I'm a stuck in a muddle, with wanting something light and big. I could get a Mac Air, but but I think the High priestess would freak over $2000 on a whim. Beside I spent far too much this summer.

So I'm typing away on the iBook G4. (No, she doesn't have a name. But I guess she should have. Something like Candy, Bubbles, or something in the lap dancer category since she spend most of her time on my lap anyway. I should think about that.) Anyway, she has been a little sluggish because her 60GB drive is almost full. I wanted to play a couple of hours of World of Warcraft, and since I haven't updated the patches in awhile I spent those extra hours downloading the patch. At the last patch window, the program says I only have 2.5 Gigs left on my hard drive and I need 3.5 Gigs. I dumps my Itunes Library and some other crap. I get 4 GB free. I download the patch. Then I get a message that the install will take another 6 GIGS! I find the space somehow and get everything install. This event just makes me say, "Fuck IT". I hop on Other World Computing and start looking for upgrades. YEAH! I can get a new drive for $50 and another 1 GIG of RAM for another $50. This is perfect. Prices for this model are just at that sweet spot. Low demand parts because my iBook is an older model, but not so old that the part are consider rare and expensive. I order the parts and they arrive back home awhile I'm still at the conference. Yippie, there is something to be said for ordering stuff at 5 AM.

I spend Friday night work on the old girl. The memory goes in place in about 5 minutes. I guess Apple wants you to do this upgrade. The Hard Drive is another story. I have to first backup the old drive. This is similar to the PS3 upgrade I did awhile back. Fortunately, OWC has a hard drive enclosure and drive package deal for $130. OK... more than I wanted to spend but I get a bigger drive in the deal. I put the new drive in the enclosure and "Clone" the laptop drive onto the new drive. After 3 hours of backing up, I'm ready to swap out the hard drives. I can tell Apple does NOT want me to do this.

There are more than 30 little screws that need to be removed and their locations noted. The whole laptop pretty much has to be disassembled, not a Pretty Sight. Thankfully I found some step by step instructions with pictures on the web. I get the drive installed and start closing up. I notice I got more screws than holes left and I forgotten a few parts still on the workbench. I take the iBook apart for the second time to get everything back inside. I close her up again and cross my fingers. I press the power button, and get a heartbeat "Bong". She LIVES!

Stacy..(hmmmmm Do I like Stacy?) has a new 250Gb Hard Drive (over the 60GB is had from Apple) and 1.5 Gigs of Ram. She works fine and she is a lot peppy too.

(Aside: I forgot to take pictures while doing this, so I swapped this picture from somewhere else.)