JohnA lifeBlog

Tonight, I received word from California that my my friend Chris’ father passed away from complications of his 4th stroke earlier this evening.

Please keep Chris, who is only 25 years old, his wife Ryann, and their son Landon in your prayers.

So, thanks to more than a few scheduling errors, I have to wake up at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow.

I own an alarm clock, which is set, but I don’t trust me. Enter WakerUpper.com…

These champions have taken Asterisk and a literally $11/mo Voice over IP account and created a brilliant, automated wake-up call service.

See, I LOVE these kind of innovations. They do things on the cheap, but use robust and sound open-source technologies.

I have to wake up at 5 am tomorrow, and WakerUpper will be there… calling me at 5am, 5:15, 5:30, 5:40, 5:45, and 5:50… If I don’t get up, it is definately not WakerUpper’s fault.

Thanks, WakerUpper, and thanks to you, Asterisk Open Source.

So, I upgraded Wordpress to the latest version so that I could post remotely from my iPod. Naturally, the crack open-source developers demonstrated their epic fail at QA, and I lost all of my categories. I’ve tried to restore most of them, but I lost a bunch of the smaller ones.

Anyway, this is a familiar reminder of why open source software will never replace properly QA’ed commercial software. And it means that I get to spend hours fixing bugs from my “free” software.

So, as I write this, I am watching The Hunt for Red October [Blu-ray]. Nothing too crazy about that, except that this was the first movie I ever purchased on LaserDisc. See, even when I was 11 years old, I was a videophile. I actually purchased this for the full retail of $34.95 at American Fare. And I watched it over and over and over. Until I could quote every single line. And amazingly, I still can.

Watching the film in Blu-Ray is a lot like watching it on LaserDisc the first time. The only thing that is disappointing is that while they remastered the video, they didn’t do much to the audio… so far, my subwoofer hasn’t fired once. Compared to the LaserDisc version, it is disappointing. But to the producer’s credit, the main soundtrack is MUCH more defined among the 7.1 speakers than the LaserDisc’s lonely 2 channel digital track.

So, while not the best Blu-Ray disc ever, it does a great job competing with my childhood memories.

So, I’m currently reading The Last Lecture, a book written by a terminally ill CS professor with an amazing amount of insight.

When I read of his passing last week, I purchased the book on my Kindle. And it is brilliant, but it has raised some questions in my mind.

First, what is better? To have experienced the joy of having a wife and children, then having to know that you would have to abandon them, or to have never experienced any of that at all?

Personally, well, personally, you don’t know what I think. But it is an interesting question.

Buy the book. It’ll make you smile, cry, and re-think your priorities.

I decided not to close my blog.
But I still feel like I should.
But the fact than almost 12 of you e-mailed me made me feel special.
Thanks.

What would you do if you lost everything? How would you react?

Darcy Burner, a congressional candidate from Washington, shows her true colors in the face of adversity.

As was stated on another site, every $5,000 she receives is a day long reprieve from the necessary fundraising against her opponent who doesn’t have this magnitude of tragedy to face. I gave her campaign $50 today. You should help, too.

Oh, and I totally want to know where she got the </war> t-shirt she’s wearing.

June 25, 2008

Sen. Barak Obama
c/o Obama for America
PO Box 8102
Chicago, IL 60680

Dear Sen. Obama:

We’ve not met, but I’ve been a fan for a while. In fact, as a life-long Republican, my second-ever donation to a Democrat was to your campaign after you delivered a truly amazing speech about your relationship with Rev. Wright. It was the speech that one would expect from a true straight shooter.

My first every donation to a Democrat was to Chris Dodd, actually, when he announced that he would filibuster any attempts to pass retroactive immunity for the telecom companies who spied on innocent American citizens without a warrant.

Back when Sen. Dodd made that pledge, you supported him, and agreed to follow suit. Thanks to that kind of leadership, the measure was defeated.

I gave you $100, Mr. Obama. And I was looking forward to giving you $2,200 more by November. But your recent comments and actions are not those of a leader looking to defend the Constitution. Instead, your words and actions are actually quite difficult to discern from the same messages being offered by the McCain team. Actually, your recent comments about the “Protect AT&T Act” are so similar to McCain’s comments that there is no way to tell you two apart.

As the now de-facto leader of the Democratic Party, you have failed, sir. You have abandoned our precious Bill of Rights in a vain attempt to curry favor from a sliver of voters who are already pre-disposed to avoid you.

Obviously, I cannot vote for McCain this November. I am trying to decide if I should vote for you, or simply leave my selection blank. At this point, I have become jaded, and see you as simply another in a long line of candidates who abandon their core values once the polls start to roll in.

In any circumstance, you have lost a supporter who loved to talk about your honesty and integrity. You lost $2,200. And you made me cynical, seeing that this election is politics as usual.

Sen. Obama, you can still correct this. Refuse to support any bill that includes Telecom immunity. Sadly, though, I’m sure your council of advisors has already made up your mind for you.

Respectfully,
John Anderson

Ok, as most of my long time readers know, I am a total steak addict. Steak has always been my favorite food, and my favorite cut of steak is the Ribeye.

Previously, the only place I could get a USDA Prime Ribeye was from Stoney River, the most awesome steakhouse in Atlanta. Actually, in recent years, they have stopped advertising that they serve only USDA Prime beef, which means that we should defer to Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Sadly, none of these steakhouses show their prices. By visiting a industry trade site, I did find this recipe for a steakhouse in Atlanta that only serves USDA Prime. Since I have never been there, I cannot vouch for the quality. But at least they show their prices online. However, using my incredibly awesome Kindle, I asked what the average price per pound for a prepared USDA Prime Ribeye steak is. From my research, it is about $30.54. We’ll see what the Kindle researchers say. Recently, though, my local Costco featured USDA Prime Bone-In Ribeye steaks for only $8.99/lb.

Let’s compare. This is a crappy picture of the USDA Prime Bone-In Ribeye I am about to prepare:

I actually chose this picture because it shows that this steak is, hands down, the most well marbled steak I have ever prepared.

The steak was prepared and cooked using Alton Brown’s techniques for ribeye steak as demonstrated in the Good Eats pilot episode “Steak your claim“.

Bottom line is that the AB approved, home prepared Ribeye was by far the most delicious steak I have ever enjoyed.

Tomorrow’s blog will discuss the details of this test, as well as what I did to make it more enjoyable.

So, my friend Anne took this picture the other day

I love that photo, mainly because it reminds me that unique life experiences don’t come from our expected day-to-day behavior, but from a candid response to real-world situations. I don’t know how that equine feels about Anne’s trip, but I do know that he or she is better for having demonstrated some real-world feelings in a place where most of us just calmly submit.