I'm just standing in front of my car, waiting for Rachel to get me some foil before heading out to cook at Rob's. Hopefully I don't screw this up!

Steak (delicious)

Steak is the reason why I'll never be vegetarian. Today's steak: salt, pepper, paprika, dried chives, and chipotle mustard. Sear 1 minute/side, broil 2 minutes/side. Delish.

P.S.: I think I will make a steak tag from now on.

Today Is A Dead Zone

There will be no posts today, in respect of you-know-what. Good luck to all.

Please Let This Become Reality

The Microsoft Courier. . . this looks way better than what the Apple tablet is presumably going to be, and more in the line of what I want to do as a graphic designer. Click the link!

I will pay good money for this.

Steak and Potatoes

Perhaps one of the fundamentals that every good cook should have down pat, the humble steak and potatoes provides an ample canvas for people to paint with, using herbs, spices, sauces, and whatever tickles their fancy. However, my dad (and any chef worth his salt) stresses that making a good steak requires only salt, pepper, paprika and oil (in addition to a really super cut of beef). As for the potatoes, both he and I are generally roasters, but I decided to go a different route by semi-poaching my potatoes and carrots (yes, we do need vegetables sometimes) in butter, followed by white wine. Here's the simple recipe I had (thanks to Fred Meyer for their reduced value steak, since I'd never purchase steak loin at $15.99/lb).

Seared and Broiled Steak

(serves 2)

2 4 oz. loin steak.

Salt

Pepper

Paprika

Pre-heat your oven to broil. Let your cast-iron pan heat up on high heat until very hot, then add olive oil (it should not smoke, but you should see a few wisps). Season both sides of your steaks, then sear each side for one minute each. Then, place the pan in the oven, broiling for a total of four minutes, turning the steak every minute. Remove steak and wrap it in foil to cook with the residual heat for five minutes. Serve. Comes out medium, medium-rare.

Butter and White-White Poached Potatoes and Carrots

(serves 2)

2 small to medium sized russet potatoes, peeled

1 carrot

1 shallot, chopped

3-4 tablespoons butter

some leftover white wine

sage, chopped chiffonade

chives, chopped

Place your sauce pan on medium to medium low heat to melt two tablespoons of the butter. Add the shallot and sage first to saute. Then add your potatoes and carrots, making sure not to crisp or sear. Cook it at medium heat, adding the rest of the butter. Leave covered for about ten minutes. Afterwards, turn heat up to high and pour in your white wine, enough to leave a layer of liquid, but not even close to submerging the root vegetables. Cook off all the alcohol, then cover and cook again for another five to ten minutes, or until tender. Add chives at the end.

In addition to these dishes, I ended up making a pseudo-dessert, which started out as a meal for Nealon until I made too much. Basically, it's a mashed yam recipe, sweetened with raisins, brown sugar and maple syrup. I incorporated half-and-half into the yams. Top it off with some whipped cream and chocolate syrup:

Easy 250MB Dropbox Upgrade

For those of you who haven't noticed, if you log into your Dropbox account on the website and click on the "Getting Started" tab, there are a few easy instructions for you to do to become a "Dropbox Guru," which will net you an additional 250MB (which is not subject to the 3GB cap for referrals (or whatever your cap was, depending on when you maxed out your referrals). Anyways, I just logged in and hit the tab, and I got a notification that my account was upgraded, without having to do anything extra. I guess just using Dropbox as often as I do is enough to satisfy the requirements. To wit, they are:

(1) Take the Dropbox tour (which I actually didn't do, so I guess that's optional).
(2) Install Dropbox on your computer.
(3) Put files in the Dropbox folder.
(4) Install Dropbox on other computers you use.
(5) Share a folder with friends and colleagues.
(6) Invite some friends to join Dropbox.

I did steps 2-6, so that was enough to give me the bonus. I'm sure the only person who cares about this is Jon, since he's the other person I know who geeked out over this last time I posted.

Reading a NYT article on a coal plant's attempt at carbon sequestration. . .

and paused at this quote:

“It doesn’t matter to me if a scientist says it may or may not leak,” said Elisa Young, an anti-coal activist who lives nearby on the Ohio side of the river. “That’s not going to stop it from leaking when push comes to shove.” (emphasis mine)

I know what she's trying to say, but it still strikes me because the skepticism is so intense that I could easily see an equivalent situation where a hard-line conservative would have the same animosity toward a particular "liberal" issue.

Full disclosure: I am in favor of a large and diverse energy portfolio to drastically reduce our carbon output in the next few decades. We've dragged our feet so long on this issue that I'm not sure if we can even afford to have the same skittishness on issues such as nuclear or CCS. That is not to say that we should ignore the very real issues that nuclear and CCS raise, such as storage and disposal for the former and direct and indirect effects of carbon acidification.

Honestly, though, I am just so happy that we're finally on the cusp of some very real measures to reduce our impact on climate, even if we have to wade through a lot of political BS and anti-intellectual arguments by lay people who believe they have caught some detail debunking global warming, despite the fact that thousands upon thousands of scientists have researched this for decades. It has been insulting to say the least, having studied climate science and knowing full well about peer-reviewed science and the politicization of climate change. It's why I went to law school and what I hope to work on after I have officially passed the bar.

Upgraded my Clear account, totally worth it.

So, I totally just upgraded my Clear account after Rachel's persistent complaining about speed on her Mac. I was averaging about 1.6-2 Mbps on my 3 Mbps plan, but now I upgraded my service to an uncapped plan. "Clear" change in speed: (ROFLcopter)

I am so bad... and in love.

I almost thought I was watching SNL last night. . .

when I saw Wolf Blitzer on Celebrity Jeopardy with Alex Trebek. To think that there was even a grain of truth to the whole Sean Connery Celebrity Jeopardy skits that SNL used to do with Will Ferrell. Just watch:

I mean... Trebek had to loan him some money to participate in Final Jeopardy, cause he had -$4,100!!! C'mon man! You're on CNN. At least PRETEND like you're a relatively intelligent human being.

In other news, props to Andy Richter, who I really like as a comedian and apparently now as a Jeopardy juggernaut. (although the questions were admittedly easy)

Late Night Updates in the House of Ling

I'm in the middle of working on some volunteer research, learning about the scope of Measure 66 in Oregon, and realized that I should probably do a quick little update on life in the House of Ling:

• Nealon has had his first haircut, courtesy of me.
• Nealon now likes to mimic my phone calls by babbling on the phone.
• I have no job (not really an update).
• I bought some video games/computer games and pre-ordered Windows 7 (on the cheap).
• I am now a member of the ECA, the Entertainment Consumers Association for one-year, for free.
• I have renewed my membership with the MIT Coop for ten years, for $10.

Like most of my friends, I'm still waiting on bar results, so I can't really say how marketable I am right now as a J.D. with no license. Hopefully that situation will change next week, but until then, I have to keep myself busy on the daddy and research volunteer fronts.

Seriously?

Reading this article in the NYT about how banks make a killing each ear from overdraft fees, especially by prioritizing charges in a way to maximize the number of overdrafts one can have in a single day. It's pretty obvious that the banks are against new regs to either opt-in for overdraft protection (rather than forcing us to opt-out) or to notify the consumer prior to a potential overdraft so that he or she may decide. However, I thought that this excuse was just laughable:

“If you think about when you swipe your card at, let’s say, Starbucks or at the Safeway or the Giant, there is no real sort of interaction there,” said Mr. Talbott. “It’s just approved or disapproved. So how logically would that work? Would a screen come up? Would someone at the bank call the checkout clerk and say, ‘That customer is overdrawn?’ Logistically that would be very difficult to implement.” (emphasis mine)

I mean, are you SERIOUS? When I'm at the Freddy's, I go through about 3-4 confirmation screens to use my debit card. I'm sure it is not THAT logistically difficult to add an additional prompt, especially since the card sliders are hooked up to a phone network (and thus possibly to the internet, so that the machine could get a firmware update from its maker). I mean, I may be assuming a lot of things about this technology, but that quote just drums up an image of a lazy, corpulent banker complaining about getting up as he struggles through another mouthful of mashed potatoes and roast. Seriously, just read this.

Blind Man's Bluff: McCafe Latte v. Starbucks Latte

Today, Rachel and I, in a preview of our upcoming blind taste-testing party, decided to compare lattes served at McDonalds v. Starbucks. After talking about how a ConsumerReports.org article claimed that McDonald's coffee tastes better than Starbucks, we decided to see if the same results would hold true for lattes. Here's the Tale of the Tape for these two competitors:

	McDonald's	Starbucks'
Size	12 oz. (TIE)	12 oz. (TIE)
Price	$2.29 (WIN)	$2.50 (LOSE)
Barista	Overweight, unattractive male (LOSE)	Skinny, passably attractive female (WIN)

Now, from just the stats, you can see that we're kind of running at a tie, with each coffee holding a stats record of 1-1-1. However, in regard to taste, we both found that Starbucks' clearly delivered a knockout punch to McDonald's because of it smoother, more milky taste. There was an almost burnt taste coming from McDonald's, by contrast. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

G.I. JOE!