Head over to digtune.org to read my latest review.

Add the wonderful economic climate to this usual situation and you’ve got yourself the making for a salad of bitter greens and hot sauce.

Recently some of us met up for a usual lunch at one of our local watering holes.  It was a mix of former and current colleagues and of course, the vast amount of the discussion was around current employment situations, career choices, and what the hell any of us are doing about it.

One of us (that’s probably me) says too much and is edgy almost to the point of making others uncomfortable. Fuck it, he says.  We’re in a bar, swilling pints, eating artery-clenching foodstuffs, and inhaling a thousand other drunks’ second hand smoke.  According the health experts, we are on the edge of death anyway. The guy proceeds to talk trash about most everything.  It’s an American bar tradition.

The older gent in the party is as he usually is, taking everything is stride. No one is sure that he’s ever threatened by anything.  The young bucks in the group should probably take a page from his laid-back, almost Laissez-faire playbook, but they won’t.  At least not until they “get it.”

Another of the guys is a 30-something recently jettisoned from his long time employer and wondering what the hell is next.  He a dedicated guy who, in the time he has been known to the group, has never been known to be stressed or even the slightest bit bitter.  He has a plan and is confident, laughing, and comments on how being unemployed and worried about where he’s going to go is less stressful than the job he held a few weeks earlier.

The group still notes the slight tinge of worry and bitterness coming through in his story of not getting a single solid lead in the near month of holding the title “professional unemployment line squatter”.

In fact, from the laid back veteran to the bitter, loud barfly to the job seeker, it’s apparent that all these guys are deeply affected by the crumbling economy.  All have an uneasy demeanor that was absent even a few months earlier as they got together for lunch to discuss technology, beer, and make the occasional vulgar comment or three.

The conversation digresses into complaints about the new jukebox and the bitter dude splits the scene, leaving the other two to most likely discuss how much of a pain in the ass he is.

Over the past 24+ hours, I’ve thought long and hard about the conversation; probably more than any of the other participants. I keep looking at my demeanor and the things that fly out of my brain in fits of passion in the rear view mirror.  Most times, it looks like a train wreck, but I think there are things to learn.

I have a new mantra that goes something like this.  “I’m tired of waiting for things to happen to me.”  I think in order to act on that thought, I have to start paying a little more attention and maybe making a few less train wrecks. Figuring out how to direct my passion in a constructive direction is definitely my first priority.

Anybody know anyone who’s looking for a crazy, passionate, brilliant, well-written information technology professional to become a significant and active member of their organization?  If so, hit me up in any of the usual places.

I’m not one to do anything half-assed.  I don’t like fondue where the maker uses a not insignificant amount of cream or half and half with mostly milk chocolate and whips it up into something that only hopes to resemble melted chocolate.  No… that’s just NOT how I roll. And you shouldn’t either.

So first, get yourself about a pound of 70%+ dark chocolate, the higher quality, the better.  You’ll need about 12oz, but it’s easier to work if you’re not chopping the whole thing straight away.  Get about 3oz of good quality white chocolate (not that confectioners stuff, but real cocoa butter white). You’ll need 1/2 cup of milk and 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter; no margarine, no mix crap… REAL butter.  This stuff is not health food, so don’t even try.

Get some amaretto; you’ll need a good solid shot (2-3oz) so don’t drink the whole damned bottle before we get to that a little later on, ok?

Chop that chocolate with a good heavy ass knife and for god’s sake, be careful! Use a freaking cutting board, fool. Don’t you know that chopping chocolate is the second most dangerous activity in the kitchen next to the preparation of ice water?!?!

You’ll need a fondue pot, or a good heavy medium sized saucepan and everyone will have to do their thing around the stove.  That doesn’t sound too “dinner party”-like, so might I suggest the Cuisinart fondue pot?  It’s what we have and I absolutely love it.  I don’t think there is a better fondue pot on the market.  Serious berries, or however the kids say “cool” these days.

On whatever medium low is on your pot, melt the butter into the milk (you’re using a non-stick whisk right?). Bring the temp up (if you have to) to start the milk/butter mixture just to the bubbling point.  Don’t let it foam up.  Dump your chocolate in.  You can either do it in a couple of batches or just dump the whole thing in and stir like hell until it’s melted real-good-like.

Yes… put that white chocolate stuff in too. You want it mixed in, though if you’re talented, you can try to marble it for that “I’m better than the rest of you” look.  If you’re gonna try to “be that guy”, then add the amaretto (you didn’t drink it all, did you?) before the white junk.  If you’re fully integrating, then it doesn’t matter, just dump the liquor in whenever, so long as it’s toward the end of this process.

Lower the temp to just below the temperature at which the human tongue melts to the roof of the mouth, present the pot along with a plethora of good things to dip.  We suggest pretzels, cheesecake bites, marshmallows, graham crackers, sugar wafer cookies, pound cake and fruits like strawberry and banana.

Dip away until everyone around the pot is fully engulfed in choco-coma.  Enjoy the smell of your place for the next couple of hours.  There’s no better air freshener.

Shopping list recap :

• 12oz of chocolate (though cutting 12oz from a 1lb block is easier) chopped
• 3-4oz of white chocolate (NOT confectioners)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter (and ONLY butter)
• 2-3oz (fluid) amaretto
• Various junk food that you like to dip in chocolate

This is the PB Granola in it's glory

2 1/2 cups rolled oats (do not use instant. get the large flake rolled oats from the health food store)
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup flax seed meal (not whole flax seed)
1/8 cup unsweetened flake coconut
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
2 1/2 tablespoons butter
3/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp kosher salt

Note : spices/salt are to taste.  Feel free to experiment

Pre-heat oven to 275 degrees F.  Prepare cookie sheet by covering in parchment or tin foil.  Use a cookie sheet with raised edges (no “air bake”) as you need to turn the granola over while it cooks.

First, in a large pot melt together the honey, butter, and peanut butter over low heat.  Mix well and add vanilla, spices, and salt.  Mix well.  Mix grains and coconut together lightly in a separate bowl. Add grains to the wet mixture and quickly mix well to coat.

Spread mixture evenly on a cookie sheet and press together into a solid sheet.  Keep the mixture away from the edges of the pan or it will burn easily. Bake for 20 minutes, turn over and press back into a solid sheet.  Bake another 20 minutes or until the oats start to slightly brown. Remove from the oven, press the sheet together again and allow to completely cool before transferring to the storage vessel of your choice.

I look nothing like the advertising material Apple has so ubiquitously spread around the airwaves.  I am neither a hip and cool twenty-something with no responsibilities and a distaste for everything “business” nor am I a fourty-something stodgy business type.  I am an overweight, not particularly stylish thirty-something who works all day holding down a desk in a manufacturing and engineering company.

I have growing distaste for Microsoft’s OS business, but I am particularly fond of products like Office 2007 and OneNote from them.  I have no particular love for Apple, but I’ve come to respect their OS, and now that I own one of their flagship products, their really slick and useful hardware.

I work in IT and I work with Windows machines all day long.  In fact, I’ve worked with what amounts to pretty much the same GUI since 1995 and Microsoft has asked me to spend what precious free time I have doing exactly the same thing into the foreseeable future.

Microsoft expects that I will continue to do my blogging, music production, social networking, and very little else on an OS that constantly gets in my way, is difficult to customize, lacks modern window management that even free software has managed to implement pretty well, and generally has the look and feel of that radical departure that Windows took with Windows 95.

Everything else has been evolution in design; great for business which relies on not having to re-educate user bases of the barely computer literate on new paradigms.  Hey… I can dig that.  I face these issues every day in my day job.

The problem for me is exhibited in a simple activity that I participate in at least once every couple of weeks.

A few months ago, I bought an Axiom 61 MIDI controller so that I could start practicing piano again and so that I’d have a keyboard to adding parts to tunes and building percussion loops.  To do this in Windows took me no less than an hour of prep to get the keyboard working and then a $100-$300 piece of software to get a convincing enough piano to want to practice with it.

On Friday, I got the Macbook Pro.  On Saturday, I took it downstairs and hooked up the Axiom and turned it on. Nothing happened; no pop-up, no “I need to install a driver for this”, nothing.  I figured what the hell and started GarageBand, an app that is bundled with the Mac.  Within seconds, I was playing a reasonable sounding piano sound through the headphones.

So what does this mean?  To me, it’s that OSX is purpose built for folks exactly like me; folks who want to be able to get their creative job done with as little trouble as possible in a convienent and stylish package that actually works.

And work, it definitely does.

The touchpad and new “chiclet” style keyboard are worth the cost of admission alone.  The new Macbook has what would say is the single best keyboard and “mouse” input hardware of any laptop ever.  The unibody build is very solid, the laptop is unbelievably thin, light, and powerful compared to the Dells that I previously used.   The screen is really bright with excellent contrast compared to other laptops I’ve owned and used.  The headphone circuitry is excellent.

As I work more with the Mac, I’ll probably write more with my experiences in the realms of computing that mean the most to me.

Please share any thoughts you have on alternative operating systems to Windows and what effects they’ve had on your work process.

I’m the type of person who finds many things that the critics dislike on my list of more enjoyable. Typically, because of this, I find myself not bothering with others’ opinions except to set a baseline or to compare notes to afterwards. I still like to make my own opinion. This is one of those situations.

When I arrived, my party hadn’t shown up yet, so I made my way to bar after locating the requisite chalkboard with the current offerings. After flagging down a barkeep, the evening was started with a well-drawn Fuller’s London Porter. The beer was as is to be expected but served a little too cold; a problem that soon rectifies itself. Beer served too cold is an American thing. It’s hard to find a place that doesn’t.

The room is nice; the interior design is contemporary with alcohol advertisements on raised board on the ceiling, providing both decoration and acoustic management for the high-ceiling narrow room. The bar is beautiful, seating is comfortable and there is room for large parties. There is a typical beer hall table near the front door.

It was the middle of the week, but there were still a fair number of people there, showing that it is a rather popular hang-out. Situated along a row of other bars and clubs, they have the advantage of being one of a number of drinking holes in a very small area.

Hopcat has glass wash stations underneath each tap and give their glasses a good rinse before the beer hits them. This is a nice touch as it ensures there no dust in the glass. Not many bars have this attention to detail.

The beer selection was global, showing a huge number of styles, types, and breweries ranging from local Michigan brew to the UK selections to German beverages. The board was organized by type, which helps with picking from the nearly 50 beers that they have on tap. If for some reason you can’t find something in this crop, they also feature a number of bottles. On this trip, I did not even peruse the bottle selection.

After our party arrived, we ordered dinner. Everyone was impressed with their dish, and it seems the Macaroni and Cheese was a large hit. I didn’t have it, but rather had a cup of tomato bisque with a veggie burrito.

The tomato bisque was extremely tasty, but could have used a run in the blender for a little longer to make it smoother. It was served with bleu cheese, which was something wonderfully different. I really don’t want to have tomato bisque without it now. It -was- that good.

The veggie burrito was your run-of-the-mill “wet” burrito, with what was likely a canned burrito sauce. It was only remarkable by the plethora of veggies and the beans which were cooked in some kind of chipotle sauce. This made the burrito something a little different, and it was tasty. I would order it again… eventually, but there are a number of other selections on the menu to try first.

What is most impressive to me is the knowledge that the barkeeps and waitstaff have on the beer. I usually don’t take suggestions from people I don’t know on beer, but on one of the beers I tried, I took a barkeeps suggestion; Stone 12 year Anniversary brew. It was one of the best beers I’ve had in a while. The barkeep’s “nom nom” eyes-rolling-back suggestion was correct. It was a very good beer.

The person who waited our table was also very knowledgeable about all sorts of beer, even things they didn’t have. It’s always good to talk to someone else who is passionate about beer, and I can’t say I was any kind of disappointed with the evening.

Overall, if Ashley’s in Ann Arbor were used as the 5 star reference, Hopcat would easily walk away with 3 ½ stars, if not 4 (this remains to be seen on another visit though). Prices are typical for a downtown “trendy” watering hole; a bit more than you will pay at your neighborhood bar.  I didn’t feel an instant “this is home” vibe from the place because of its distinctly upscale atmosphere, but the selection of beers is good, the waitstaff is nice and knowledgeable, and the food is good enough for a night out with friends.

We will be returning on the Friday after Thanksgiving for an acoustic show with some of the guys from Domestic Problems.

Yesterday I blogged about our amazing community experience with Twitter.  Everyday I go outside and see those pumpkins sitting on my porch; I am reminded of the kindness and sense of community we’ve found.  Let me elaborate a little more on why I love the ability this program has given me to find people in my own town as well as accross the country.

I’ve blogged about Twitter before; it’s an awesome way for people to communicate with others around the world and in their own communities talking about daily things in 140 characters or less.  We’ve had many conversations with this group of people, and have been unsuccessful at being able to join them at what are known as GR Tweet-ups.  The group usually meets at a public venue for drinks, conversation, and face to face meetings where we don’t have to limit talk to small posts.  They figured that since we’ve had so much bad luck as of late, and since we hadn’t been able to make it to a tweet-up, they’d bring the tweet up to us…along with some pumpkins for Clare.  I was so overjoyed, and words couldn’t describe how it made me feel to have random people in our community reach out to us like that.  I know Brad has already blogged about this, but I felt I needed to elaborate on how much it has meant to me.  I had no words that night, and am still struggling to find them 3 days later.

All my life I’ve always had friends, and family around me.  Whenever we needed something there was always someone there.  As I grew away from my family by going to college on the other side of the state I didn’t have that.  I’ve always had lots of friends to count on for emotional support, so I didn’t think much of it when we moved up to Grand Rapids, but then the friends we had moved onto their own lives and careers around the country leaving us kind of on our own.  We’ve struggled through life making friends along the way maintaining some of those relationships, but it’s never been the same as having them in the same town and community.  For the most part I figured that if I had Brad it was all I needed, and while he is definitely a good friend & partner in life I’m finding we needed to find a community to live in.

I thought that we had that when we bought our house, but people come and go, the neighborhood changes, and we still didn’t find the community we were looking for.  While neighbors still stopped and talked, it just wasn’t what I had thought it might be.  Everyone comes home, parks in their driveway, goes inside, and stays inside until the next morning when they leave for work.  What happened to the days of going over to “Sam’s house” for a play date and dinner without a second thought?  Today’s time and age has everyone freaked out about “Stranger Danger”, and people are afraid to become a part of a community.  I know that we still need to be aware of our surroundings and not take things for granted, but we also need to have faith in people we know in our community.

Today I think people, at least most people in this town, are finding this in their churches rather than their neighborhoods.  As most of you know Brad and I are not exactly the church-type, so we haven’t found our community yet in this town, at least we hadn’t until Twitter.  This tiny program that allows me to talk to people throughout my day has instilled my sense of community once again.   I now have a group of local people that I can talk to throughout the day about our fine community, and it has helped me realize that there is a sense of community here after all…it just took me 6 years to find it!

I want to thank the Pumpkin Ninja’s for all that they did, even though it may seem like a small gesture to most, it really brightened my mood, and for those that were not involved in the ninja experience I am still greatful to have you in my little Twitter Community.  I can’t wait to figure out a way to show my appreciation for all of you, other than finally being able to put it into words.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve last posted, but things have been a little crazy around the Eastowners’ house. About 3 weeks ago I went back to work. It was a huge step for me, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. So far it’s been a good thing, and I love the people I work with. I’m working a seasonal job in a Christmas tree distribution office. Apparently I can’t stay away from Christmas trees, as if you know me in real life you’d know that I worked on a small tree farm after high school for a few years. Now, I’m dealing with truck drivers and their companies mostly on the distribution side of things. It’s taken me away from keeping up the house a bit and doing the things I had been doing during the day when Clare was gone, but the extra money will come in handy to help pay down some credit card debt and do some projects around the house.

If you read Brad’s portion of the blog you’ll know that we’ve had some things happen to us as of late…both good and bad. About 2 weeks ago Brad’s cruddy Nissan Altima was stolen off the street from in front of our house. It made life for us a little difficult, as I am Clare’s transportation to school and we leave around the same time as Brad usually does for work, so it wasn’t like I could take Brad to work. Brad walked a few times, rode his bike, and once in a while if we were ready fast enough I drove him to work on our way to school. Well, it wasn’t really on our way, but I made it on the way. It really put some strain on our lives, but in the end Brad got some exercise and actually found that he enjoyed his bike ride.

Then something odd happened 2 weeks to the day the car went missing. I had a voicemail on our phone from a guy named “Josh” who said that there was a Nissan in his driveway, and was wondering if it was ours. It was in an alley about 3 blocks from our house behind a house that looks like it was split-up into apartments with a large parking area where our car was. After calling the cops we went down to identify the car, a squad car came by, took some prints, and sent us on our way with a caved in roof and hood as it looks like whomever took it had a dance party on it. After closer inspection it looks like they may have danced on the roof after not being able to steal the radio out of it.

Things began to look brighter until I went to leave to take Clare to school on Thursday when I noticed all but one of our pumpkins were stolen. I know they were just $20 worth of pumpkins, but the one that really mattered was one that Clare had already carved. She had planted pumpkin seeds at my parent’s house, the pumpkins grew, and my parents took them with them on their Halloween campout with Clare for her to carve. She put lots of time, energy, and creative thought into this pumpkin, and it sucked to have her cry in the backseat of the car on the way to school and later on that afternoon when we found it smashed in the street around the corner from our house. I felt defeated as both a mom and as a human being. What’s next to steal, my porch furniture or my valuables inside my house?!?!?! After school we came home to pack up the remaining things we had outside, so they couldn’t be stolen.

We did have a nice evening despite our morning. Clare played outside, the VW was towed away to be fixed up, and we went out to Moe’s for some dinner. We came home, Clare was sent to get ready for bed, and I curled up on the couch with a blanket, and my laptop to settle down for the night with a drink, and some TV. I had just logged onto Facebook when I heard voices outside. I threw the laptop on the ottoman, and flung open the shade to see people outside with pumpkins. My first thought was now what is someone trying to steal? I opened the door to see about 10 people on my steps, and they all had pumpkins in their arms. They told me that I wasn’t seeing anything and that I needed to go inside, my response was “Shut up, No WAY, stay right there!” “It’s a present from Twitter they said.” I went inside to call for Brad, as he was upstairs tucking Clare in. He came downstairs to see what I was so excited about (although he thought something went wrong). Apparently we had been Pumpkined by some Pumpkin Ninjas, also known as a great group of people we’ve been talking with on an online app called Twitter for about the past 6 months.

More to come tomorrow on our attack…so stay tuned!

]]> http://www.eastowners.com/char/10/26/attack-of-the-pumpkin-ninja-pt1/feed http://www.eastowners.com/admin/10/24/site-moved http://www.eastowners.com/admin/10/24/site-moved#comments Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:20:22 +0000 the management http://www.eastowners.com/?p=630 We’ve moved eastowners to new hosting (hiphiphorray), but nost of the theme and the Gallery is broken.  I have to figure out how to get it working again, which will happen this weekend.  Please stay tuned.