New Toys, New Pain

A few weeks ago, I decided to finally pick up a rifle and start shooting again. I may even break down and hunt this year. More importantly, it is vital to prepare for the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse.

Anyway, I picked up a nice Remington 700 SPS chambered for .308 Winchester rounds. I have to say that I absolutely love it. I added a nice scope and a bipod, and now I am ready for Zombies at distances around 500 yards which is about quarter mile. YES! Down go those Zombies before they even can see me.

A few weeks ago, I joined some friends to do some shooting at the range. What a blast! It makes loud noises and punches holes in things very nicely.

The picture to the right is a stock photo, but it is a good representation.

A couple of weeks ago, I realized that the rifle wasn’t enough when it comes to Zombies. So, I went ahead and got a nice .45 to handle short range requirements. I have to admit that it took me a good while to figure out which .45 to get. After weighing options and realizing that I can always buy more later. I went with a Springfield  XDm .45 with a 4.5” barrel.

I absolutely love this hand gun.

So, off to the range again, but this time with both the rifle and the XDm. The first couple of shots were a little all over the place. My first round was high. Then I had a couple of rounds go low. By the time that I finished the first magazine, I was pretty dialed-in and hitting everything nice and centered. The second magazine went really well, too. Damn, I love this gun.

The pain?

Well, that came on my very last shot for my rifle. I had one round left, and I wanted to end the day with a perfect shot. So, I did what many people do: I got nice and close to make sure I had a perfect view through the scope. The problem was that I got too close. Now many people that have been shooting for a few years have probably seen many people do the same thing that I did. I popped myself in the forehead with the recoil of the shot. The ring of the scope hit me nice and hard and split the skin nicely. The blood kind of spurted and dripped all over my shirt and started hitting the ground. I left a nice trail to the restroom. I felt like an idiot, but on the positive side, it was a perfect shot!

Tamale Recipe: Lots of Stuff That is BAD for You Goes In!

Today was tamale making day. It is a very stressful day in the amount of work that goes into the day, but it is one of my favorite days of the year. This family tradition has been going on for several decades, and I feel honored to be part of it.

Anyway, I started by making some healthier tamales using my previously posted recipe for the masa mixture, and I cooked up several pounds of ground turkey and spiced them pretty much by feel. I did up a few dozen of them while watching the Broncos get killed by the Bills. I steamed them up while waiting for the rest of the crew (Mother, Sister, Brother, Cousins, and several friends) to start arriving. My brother dubbed my tamales as not being really tamales, but still decent enough to eat. High praise! We decided that because of the olive oil and turkey that they were really Italian Thanksgiving tamales.

Anyway, back to the tamales that we normally make. This was a big batch, and as usual, I didn’t count the entire amount that were made. I am terrible at that. I would estimate that there were about 40-50 dozen made tonight. The total amount of pork was around 35-40 pounds, and we used four bags of masa. This picture is the mess of 11 dozen tamales when one or two basically explode and you get the mixture all over the inside of the pressure cooker.

We have a recipe of sorts. In fact, we made a concentrated effort a few years ago to write it down. So the recipe for the masa and pork mixtures are written on a couple of small note book pages and are kept with the pressure cooker in my garage until it is time to get back to work on Christmas Eve per our tradition.

This time, I decided to write down the recipe for the meat and for the masa mixture here on my blog just in case somebody breaks in and steals my pressure cooker or our house burns down. For the geeks out there, it is my disaster recovery plan for future Christmas Eves.

Anyway, here it is:

Meat Mixture (in multiples of 10 lbs)

10 lbs of Pork – Slow cooked and ground. I use the largest size when I grind it, but this year my Mom and Sister shredded it. Keep the pork drippings.

1.5 oz Gebharts Chili Powder

1 oz Molido Chili Powder

4-5 cloves of garlic, crushed and ground or extremely finely chopped in a food processor

2 Tbs of ground Cumin

1 cup fat from pork drippings

4 Tbs salt

Water as necessary to easily mix the ingredients and to cook the pork through with the spices

Masa Mixture

Two bags Masa – they are four pounds or 4.4 pounds in most cases

6 Tbs salt

2.5 Cups pork fat drippings

3 pounds of Lard

1.5 oz of Gebharts Chili Powder

.5 to .75 oz of Molido Chili Powder

Water as necessary, it should be about 10 cups

The challenge is much like the hot dog to hot dog bun ratio issue. It is almost impossible to get the ratio just right.

Once the masa mixture is spread on the hoja leaf, meat mixture added, and they are all put into a pressure cooker, we cook them at 15 pounds of pressure for 45 minutes, it takes a good while to get up to 15 pounds of pressure, so it usually takes about 90 minutes to cook a batch. Of course, we have a huge pressure cooker/canner that allows us to put about 10-12 dozen in at a time. I have also steamed tamales a dozen at a time in a steamer for a little over an hour with good results.

Our Lives and Advanced Technology

I got  a wild hair yesterday, and decided to document my day when it comes to advanced electronics. That means that I didn’t take into account basic electricity and appliances like can openers and microwave ovens.

• I started my day by turning off the alarm on my smart phone. I then checked my email, and answered a couple of email messages.
• After a shower and breakfast, I logged onto my main home PC to join a Live Meeting for an online class.
• While in my online meeting, I started up my work laptop so that I could log in and check my emails at work and process some tickets during my breaks in class. It wouldn’t be fair to count the numerous servers that I used during my time connected to the office.
• My work cell phone rang, so I had to answer it. This is a separate phone from my personal phone.
• During lunch, I decided to catch up on a TV show that I watch, so I turned on my Xbox and TV in my bedroom and sat in the chair. The Xbox connects to a media server in the basement. TOTAL by lunch time = 7
• Before starting back with my online class, I took a picture of the snow using my favorite digital camera with a before and after of the sidewalk and driveway. I worked from home because of the snow. I have a great job!
• Once class finished up, I decided to make some dinner. I pulled up the recipe on the kitchen PC.
• While dinner was cooking, I grabbed my iPad and caught up on Facebook.
• I ate dinner while watching the football game on the living room TV.
• I got a page on my work phone (already counted it) and grabbed my personal laptop  which is usually next to the couch to lookup the correct syntax for the command that I wanted the operations guys to run.
• After the game was over, I was bored, so I fired up the Xbox in the living room and watched a movie.
• After the movie, I decided to read a little, so I grabbed my Kindle Fire and read a couple of chapters.

That was my day. Total advanced pieces of technology used during the day = 14. Granted, I could have used more if I went out of my way, but I found it interesting that I used so many different devices. I learned a really important thing yesterday: I am a technology addict.

Kindle Fire

I think I have mentioned before how much I loved my Kindle. If not, consider it done. I have had a Kindle for a couple of years. I know that I have had it well over a year because it recently died and it is no longer under warranty. I was seriously bummed.

So, I installed Kindle on my iPad. This worked fine for a bit, but I just didn’t like the size of the iPad for a reader.

So, I broke down and purchased a Kindle Fire. So far, I love it. I haven’t really used any of the Prime features that much, so I may not purchase Prime for it after my one month trial runs out. I did play some movies and some TV shows just to test the experience, and it was pretty nice. But, I would only want to watch movies and TV while on the road. That leads to the biggest negative: it doesn’t have a 3G or 4G connection so that I can Web browse while traveling. The browser, though, runs really well when on my home Wi-Fi. The Fire is extremely easy to use, and very intuitive. Well, one thing got to me that made me think for a bit. I was reading a book and couldn’t readily figure out how to get back to the home screen. Of course, it is simple, you just touch the middle of the screen. It took me a couple of minutes to figure that out, but I am sure it is part of the owner’s manual, which I didn’t read.

The one thing that jumped out at me was how much heavier the Fire is that the previous versions of the Kindle. Some of the guys that I know that have a Playbook (if I haven’t mentioned it, I hate Blackberry stuff) immediately thought that I also had a Playbook until I turned it on. The size and weight of the Playbook is very similar.

So, the question I get all the time now is: “Which do you prefer between the Kindle Fire and the iPad?” Well, to be perfectly honest, I use my Kindle way more than I use the iPad. If I could only have one, it would be the iPad. I just like the size of the Fire. A good friend of mine feels the opposite, though, and he has a great analogy: The Kindle Fire is methadone to iPad’s heroin. OK, that may be a bit harsh, but that was his take.

All in all, I really like the Fire. I just have to decide whether to continue my Prime account.

Caye Caulker, Belize

As some of my friends already know, I spent my Thanksgiving in Belize. Well, on an island off of the coast called Caye Caulker. It was, by far, the best family vacation we have ever had.

We arrived in the late afternoon on the Friday, the week before Thanksgiving. For somebody from Colorado, in the late fall, it was a huge shock when it came to the weather. High humidity and moderate temps (mid 80’s most of the time in the day) can be stifling when you are used to 40-60 degrees during the day and almost no humidity in the Denver area.

We made our plans months ago. We rented a house on the island of Cay Caulker, called the Reef House. It is a nice place with two bedrooms that have AC and a third bedroom on the upper level that had some great breezes passing through it. It also has a nice kitchen and family area along with great decks. As a geek, I was glad to hear that it had WiFi as well. Broadband is far from broad. From my understanding, Internet access on the island is provided via a cellular system to the mainland. Speed tests gave me about .9 mb down and .09 mb up. It was pathetically slow, but what can you expect from a small island?

Friday:

We flew into Houston and then from Houston to Belize City, Belize. Kim Laursen, the guy from Caye Caulker Rentals, set up a driver to meet us at the airport that took us to the water taxi port. The water taxi then took us to the island. An option would have been to fly from the Belize City airport to the small airstrip on Caye Caulker, but it was $60-75 USD/person. The water taxi was less than $20 BZE per person. Once we arrived on the island, Kim met us at the dock and got us a taxi (they are all golf carts) that took us to a hotel, the Caye Caulker Plaza, for the night because the Reef House wasn’t available until Saturday.

Once we got settled in, we went for a walk around and found several interesting places to eat. We selected Rose’s, which had some great options for dinner, including extremely large lobsters for $60 BZE with all the fixings, too. Our first meal was a fantastic one with our toes in the sand while seated in the bar. After dinner, we walked around town a bit more.

By the way, the conversion rate was $2 BZE to $1 USD. That HUGE lobster was $30 USD, and I have never had such a big lobster before.

Recommendation – Sara Warner is a local Realtor from Austin Texas and is a great person to show you homes and condos if you are interested. What is really nice is that Sara has started a business that will provision houses and condos with all of the food items and such that you will want when you first get to the island and also provide cell phone rentals. You can see her site, Caye Living for details. While there are many convenience and grocery stores, finding simple things like fresh milk can be a huge challenge. I recommend contacting Sara.

Saturday:

We met Kim at his office and made arrangements to get over to the Reef House. Kim recommended getting some bikes and had them dropped off at the house. The bikes are absolutely horrible junk. However, all of the bikes on the island are the same junk. OK, they aren’t really junk, they are just very basic and simple bikes. You know the kind, single gear, back pedal brakes, and just not what you would get for a rental in the US. Of course, this is the norm for the island as anything nicer would probably be stolen (although crime on the island is extremely low) or would rust away in the high heat and humidity. I keep forgetting how hard it can be to maintain things like bikes with so much humidity.

Once we were all set in the house, we tried to ride the bikes to the local convenience store. Well, we succeeded, but it was at a major cost. I was exhausted, sweaty, and my knees were killing me. It took several attempts to find the closest convenience store, and then we found that it really wasn’t convenient as it didn’t have much selection at all. We discovered that the better stores were all down at the other end of the island.

While Kim said that it wasn’t worth renting a golf cart, I decided that the heat had gotten to Kim’s brain, and I promptly went and got a golf cart. It was expensive, but it was just what we needed to fully explore the island and to go back and forth between the beach front areas and the house. It was vacation, after all, and it was meant to be enjoyed. I decided that it was more important to have fun, and I didn’t find it fun to sweat like crazy trying to get around on those bikes. I admit that part of the problem is that I am in terrible shape. After all, it is a small island, and we could have easily walked everyone we wanted to see.

The golf cart was fun as we could get back and forth anywhere on the island in 10 minutes or less. Since it was an electric golf cart, we just dropped by every couple of days and swapped it out for another cart that was fully charged.

Sunday through Thursday:

The days were all a blur as we would visit stores, visit the Split, and just drive around exploring the island. I had a great time with the family, and we really just played it all by ear. Each day, we tried to take advantage of a different place for dinner, but we tried to always get some nice slices of cake or brownies from the cake lady and her cart after each dinner. When it came to lunch, we always tried to get lunch from Charles, the self titled Budget Man. Charles always had something different each day, and his meals usually included a nice portion of different rice dishes each day (ginger one day, coconut milk flavored another, and curry yet another), a chicken dish and a lobster or whole fish (wonderful whole Red Snapper) dish, some stewed vegetables, and some plantains for $12 BZE/$6 USD.  His food was fabulous and reasonably priced. We made sure to thank him each day as we really enjoyed his meals. Not only is he a great cook, he is a great guy. His lobster dishes were just amazing, and I loved his jerk chicken that he had one of the days we were there. He constantly mixes up his dishes each day.

For dinner, we hit a different place each night. One night, we had pork from a whole roasted pig that they had slow roasted over an open pit for several hours. Each night, we drove around and found the cake lady after dinner. We also stopped at the bakery on the rare nights when we couldn’t find the cake lady to get a nice treat.

We spent a couple of hours during a couple of days and looked at some houses and condos. Sara showed us around and explained the features of the different places, and we even looked at some lots to get an idea of all of our options. It was nice to see what the options are for the future if we decide to buy a place on the island. I have to say that there are some great options, and I can certainly see myself enjoying spending time on the island on a regular basis.

The only drawback to the trip were the sand flea bites that I suffered. Damn, they itched, and it took a few days after we got back for them to heal up. The natives, and those that had moved there from the United States, all said that after a week or so, you develop an immunity to the bites. The sand fleas still bite, but after you build up immunity to their bites (like mosquitos, which I never saw there), then their bites don’t get inflamed and don’t itch.

Technology and This Trip:

As I previously mentioned, the island’s Internet connectivity was horrible, but it was still possible to keep in touch with the rest of the world. I tried to not go online, but I did every day to keep up on email and to post a couple of pictures to Facebook. I took lots of great pictures, and I used Microsoft’s ICE to generate some great panoramic shots like the ones below. Click on each pic to see a larger version. I hope you like them.

Inside the Reef House

The view of the Split from the Bar

The view from one of the Condos that we are considering as a vacation/retirement home

The view from the bank, the only bank, on the island

View from the dock while waiting for the water taxi

Dual Monitors–Fell off the Horse

One of my favorite sayings is, “This isn’t my first rodeo!”

Well, I definitely fell off the horse today, and I am not too ashamed to admit it.

I have set up dual monitors on many computers over the years. Today, I just set up dual monitors with my laptop docking station. It didn’t go very well. So, here are the simple steps.

Unpack and place monitors on desk. Easy so far, eh?

1. Plug monitors into wall. Whew!
2. Hook up cables to docking station. OK, this is the hard part. Knowing which port is the primary and which one is the secondary is a 50/50 deal if you really don’t know for sure which is which.
3. Fire up turn on docking station and laptop.
4. Start up Windows, and… yep, they are backwards. Well, that is easy to fix.
5. Shut down Windows.
6. Unplug monitors from the docking station, switch the cables, and plug them back in.
7. Start up Windows, and… WTF? They are still backwards. It must have been that I am too tired and made a mistake switching the cables. No problem.
8. Shut down Windows.
9. Unplug monitors from the docking station, switch the cables (paying extra close attention), and plug them back in.
10. Start up Windows, and… WHAT? Are you kidding me?
11. Move left monitor to the right side of the desk.
12. Move right monitor to the left side of the desk.
13. Yep… that worked.

Of course, many of my geek friends are saying, “Geez, Russ, you are a moron. Why didn’t you just move them in the display properties so that left is right and right is left?”

I can’t answer that one, but all that matters to me is that the primary monitor is on the left and the secondary monitor is on the right.

SodaStream

After several trips to the mother ship for resupplies (also known as CostCo), I bought a SodaStream machine.

The idea is simple: You can carbonate your own water and add flavoring, and thus have your own soda ready made when you want it.

The benefits are:

• No lugging around large bottles or cases of canned soda
• No storing large bottles or cases of soda
• Reduced packaging and less trash
• Cost savings per liter

However, what convinced me is that I can control the amount of syrup that is used and the level of carbonation. I really like my soda extra carbonated.

Anyway, I bought the kit that has the samples and started experimenting that day. While the flavors are not an exact match for the brand name sodas out there, it is very comparable. I also love that extra shot of carbonation that I can add to my soda. Right now, my favorite flavor is the diet root beer. The teenagers really like the energy drink.

Whether this move will result in cost savings is yet to be determined, but I am really liking the convenience. I can see this would be a great solution for many people, and it is certainly a greener solution when it comes to the environment.