Phillip's Random Thoughts

My Beef Stew

2008-11-11T05:32:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, I started making a very simple beef stew. It really caught on with my wife's family and my sister-in-law requested the recipe. The only issue with that is that I never write down the recipes of what I cook, I just go into the kitchen and make it.

So yesterday evening, my sister-in-law calls me and asks how to make the beef stew. It had been a _long_ day and a while since I made it, so I couldn't remember -- not to mention that I wasn't actually making it, which makes it even more difficult. At any rate, she emailed me last night (or rather early this morning) and tells me that apparently I *did* at one point write the recipe down. It was a couple of years ago when she first requested. I will now blog it so it will be forever living on the internet.

Phillip Beef Stew

1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tbsp salt (I use sea salt, but whatever)
1 Bay Leaf
2 tbsp butter (real butter please!)
2 onion (sweet onions are best, but if you can't find them, the white onions turn out nicely)
1½ tsp. minced garlic
1-2 lbs. top sirlion, cubed
3-4 potatoes, cubed
6-8 carrots, sliced
1 stalk of celery, sliced

Season your beef! First things first, once you have cubed your beef, season it with the garlic powder, salt and pepper.

Begin cooking by caramelizing 1 whole onion and at least 1 clove of garlic in 1 or 2 tbsp of butter.

Once the onions & garlic are golden brown -- onions should be slightly translucent, add the bay leaf, cubed beef and brown. While the meat is browning, make about 1.5 cups of beef broth using the Wyler's Beef Broth cubes or granules. Once the broth is boiling and the meat is browned sufficiently, add the broth and boil the browned beef for 15 - 20 minutes. Add the potatoes & carrots and cook for 15-20 more minutes. Finally, add the celery and cook 10 more minutes.

NOTE: I also change things up depending on what I have in the cabinet or what herbs are growing fresh in the garden.

I think I am going to start blogging all the recipes that I just throw together, if I remember. Also to note, we generally have wheat rolls with the above meal.

be bold

2008-11-07T06:20:00.001-08:00

got my new blackberry this week... so far, it rocks. :)

quick update

2008-11-07T05:59:00.000-08:00

been awhile again it would seem... quick update for all.

October really flew by, I managed to stay busy with work and family games for pretty much the whole month. I did manage to take the last week of the month off, which was nice.

On the subject of Crappy Things That Happen to People (tm), our water heater decided to fail. A real problem since it is in the attic above the second story of our house. We caught it fairly early, but it still managed to ruin several walls, carpeting etc. Still waiting for the insurance scumbags to pay us. Now seriously, they couldn't manage to put the water heater in the attic over the GARAGE?!?!

I do have a funny story about how the water heater replacement went down. I set out to get 4 quotes from various places to replace the unit and perform the 1 code upgrade required. The first bid came back from a place called "RotoRooter", they are known for being expensive, so I knew that I would take it in the shorts if I went with them. At any rate, here is how the quotes worked out:

RotoRooter: $1431

ARS Plumbing/Rooter: $1250

Lowes: $848

Home Depot: $825

I already had an issue with Lowes several months ago when I had my dishwasher replaced and they sent some heroin addict (srsly, not kidding) to do the replacement. By the time I had Home Depot talked down and negoitated, the final price was around $728 (plus $55 for the code upgrade). I knew I was running a risk going with them, but then again, I didn't want the herion addicts back.

The funny part is that when the folks arrived (the next morning) to do the install, it was the same dudes from RotoRooter that had given me the quote. So there you go...

I love food.

2008-09-24T04:04:00.000-07:00

I don't think it's a secret, but I don't talk about it much.

I LOVE FOOD.

Eating the local food is one of my favorite things to do when I travel, especially internationally (caveat: P. R. China). Here is a picture of a pizza I ordered in one of the small cities we stopped in while in Czech.

I actually ended up eating the whole thing, I just happened to forget to snap the photo before I started :(

here's the damn picture

2008-09-24T03:57:00.000-07:00

fyi, I'm still annoyed at flickr.

here is one of the many Borat-style joints I saw while on my most recent trip to Eastern Europe:

apparently the cats that own this particular joint live in a small section of this _massive_ house and rent the rest out to small companies for retreats. I found the business intriguing and after speaking with one of the folks with whom I was traveling that happened to be from the region, I came to find out that it's not an uncommon practice. In the post-Communist times, people had to go from being supported by complete social welfare to supporting themselves almost overnight (litteraly folks).

There is (of course) more story to this place, maybe someday I'll write it all up.

Now I am just annoyed

2008-09-24T03:36:00.000-07:00

This all started about 32.8 minutes ago.

I headed over to Flickr where I have recently uploaded a few pictures to my photostream that I snapped while on my most recent trip to Eastern Europe. I'm not much of a shutterbug, but I do occasionally take photos when I travel just to jog my memory at a later date.

Anyway, as I was saying, I went to Flickr to grab some URLs for some images that I want to use in my blog and I notice the well-placed "Blog This" link over one of the photos. Instinctively, I click it to see what happens. I then proceed to spend the next 11-13 minutes configuring Flickr to be able to post directly to this blog. Not a big deal, I just had to go in and remove a couple of other blogs that I had started on my blogger account and never did anything with. I finally get the "congratulations" message and get on to selecting the picture and writing my blog post; which, like a complete dummy, I did not copy into my buffer. I hit submit and get some ugly error about how it didn't work and there might have been some sort of web services error and I get two choices from here: Try Again -or- Cancel

I hit "try again" repeatedly grasping at any straw to get this long-drawn out explanation of the piicture to somehow post to my blog, all the while in my head is processing Einstein's definition of insanity:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. --Albert Einstein

It didn't work. Sucks to be me. I'll just go old-school and do it the traditional way I guess.

"Honey, did I just run over somethin?"

2008-09-10T04:17:00.000-07:00

Andrea and I went to the movie theatre a couple of weeks ago...

saw this:

Woohoo!

2008-08-28T06:40:00.001-07:00

Today is my two-year anniversary with Novell. It's hard to believe that I have been gone from Rackspace that long....

Anyway, I thought I would share with the world my congrats email:

Dear Phillip,

Congratulations on your 2 year anniversary with Novell! We would like to take this opportunity to recognize your contributions since your service date of Aug 28, 2006

Sincerely,

The team at Novell

pidgin.im

2008-08-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

Like a lot of people in this industry, I have like 4 or 5 instant message accounts and each with friends or past & current colleagues associated. A quick run-down:

AIM
ICQ
Gtalk (google talk)
Yahoo
Groupwise (corporate IM)

Over the years, and through my many operating platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, back to Linux, etc.), I've used many different clients to connect to these instant messenger accounts with one interface (Adium, Gaim, etc.).

A while back, Gaim became Pidgin. Right now, I primarily use two operating systems (MS Vista (yes i know i'm a sellout) and SLED). I recently upgraded Pidgin on my Vista machine to 2.5.0 and immediately began experiencing "issues". The main, and most annoying one, was a crash whenever I would scroll my buddy list. I found this post and by replacing a DLL, was able to fix the crashing issue. Yay!

Now if only there was some way to make the buddies in my list small like you can with Adium...

I had no idea....

2008-08-25T16:30:00.000-07:00

... that JFK International Airport was such a craphole.

I would take pictures but I don't know if that's against the rules or not.

Empire State Building

2008-08-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

A hazy view of the Empire State Building taken from my BlackBerry...

Quick trip to the Big Apple(tm)

2008-08-25T04:26:00.000-07:00

I'm heading up to New York City today for a quick trip. I'll be back in my own bed tonight! Maybe I'll snap a photo with my BlackBerry since I forgot my camera.

Me at the Great Wall

2008-08-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

I have a bunch of pictures from when I was in the People's Republic of China in June. They are all posted up at my Flickr Photostream. Here is one of me at the Great Wall of China:

Amusing

2008-08-22T08:23:00.000-07:00

Recently, the Americas leadership team of the Linux Sales Business Unit at Novell made a committment to shave their heads if the team finished the quarter at a certain percentage. The results are in:

I'm going to be perfectly honest here... ok I'm not. I will say though, it's not a huge change for the guy in the middle (hi Joe!).

Go Honda!

2008-08-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

I took my wife's Honda Odyssey into the Honda dealership (Classic Honda - Round Rock, TX) this morning. We recently noticed a grinding noise when we applied the brakes. My appointment was for 8:00am and I arrived right on time. By 8:15 they had the issue diagnosed along with a couple of other things that I had not even noticed yet (I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong - just wait, you'll see).

So at about 8:20ish, they had me in a loaner vehicle and I was on my way to my barrage of morning meetings.

At 11:40am, I get the call. The Service Representative takes me through all of the work. Here is a high-level:

* Rear Brake Pads
* Front Brake Pads
* Resurface Rear Rotors
* Resurface Front Rotors

In addition, they upgraded the firmware on the computer in the vehicle.

The grand total: $0.00

All of the work was covered by Honda's AWESOME warranty program. Great Service, great warranty. Honda has made me a satisfied customer.

Go Honda!

AT&T FAIL!

2008-08-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

Like many of my colleagues, I use a wireless aircard for my daily internet access when I am away from my home office. For the past couple of months, I've noticed some significant issues when trying go about my daily research and whatnot. One example is that I have found that I can't get to Google.

Seriously, no Google! How on earth am I supposed to function when I can't go google something? This also means that I can't get to my mail (which I host with Google) and just about anything else that is attached to Google (blogger.com, youtube, etc.). As you can imagine, this is *really* annoying.

Today I was so frustrated that I decided to do the unthinkable - I called AT&T Technical Support to see if they were experiencing an outage. Since my wireless account is paid for through my employer, I call the Business class tech support number, give them the corporate account number and password and begin to explain the issues. I make special effort to underscore the fact that several of my co-workers are experiencing the _EXACT SAME_ behaviour. After I give my 3 - 5 minute disertation on what steps I have taken to troubleshoot the issue (pings, traceroutes, etc.) the "technical support engineer" assisting me starts asking about which version of the software I am using. I decide to humor him and give him some details... After I, once again, explain that others are seeing the same issue and how I *really* don't think that changing anything on my computer will fix the network issues they are having, he tries to convince me to uninstall the device from my computer and update my device driver. Somewhere along the way here I become convinced that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about and I let it slip that his ideas are retarded. That's when he hangs up on me. (I can't say I blame him).

Anyway... My friend/co-worker and I start digging around online and find the following:

AT&T DNS Servers Broken

-and-

AT&T DNS Server Hacked in Texas

So why didn't the dude on the phone just tell me (or know for that matter) that there was some ongoing DNS issue? I specifically asked him if they were experiencing an outage and he told me that everything was "fine".

I've ended up just using OpenDNS for my resolvers now. Guess I'll stick with that for a while.

i lol'd

2008-08-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

I took my oldest son to McDonald's today. I go to the drive through to order his "Happy Meal" and was greeted with this sign:

This was one of those McDonald's with two order stations, so natuarally, there were two identically incorrect signs.

When I finally went to the window, I tried to explain how the sign was written incorrectly, they didn't comprehend my message. Oh well at least we all had a laugh at their expense.

Plaxo, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, AHHHHHH!!

2008-08-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

I quit, seriously.

Today I am announcing my social network resignation. At first I found social networks a very handy way to manage my contacts and I still think of LinkedIn that way, for the most part. The problem is that every time I turn around, someone is trying to get me to join a New Shiny (TM) social network.

One could literally spend all of their time keeping their social networks up to date. Not me. I quit, remember?

Flickr!

2008-08-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

about 11 months ago, on my old blog. I posted something about how cool I thought flickr was and how, since I had recently purchased a year's worth of unlimited uploads, I would be posting pictures frequently.

needless to say, i have not done so. however, I am uploading a crapload of pictures right now! :)

heading to Czech in September

2008-08-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

my tickets are finalized!!

in a nutshell -

5 sept: austin -> chicago -> london -> prague
12 sept: prauge -> london -> chicago -> austin

should be a great trip. going to attend SuSE Labs.

insomnia

2008-08-11T22:21:00.001-07:00

12:21... meeting at 7:30am. can't sleep :-(

btw, i'm 3o min into my ambien and still no luck.

here's to hoping i face dive into my keyboard in a couple of minutesakdl;fjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

first post! (on this blog)

2008-08-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

so i'm sitting here at my office (SBUX in Round Rock) and I start getting emails. I get 300 emails on my BlackBerry from one dude before I start asking myself "wtf is going on here". then it happens, I get 3 instant messages from other people who also have recieved a metric crapload of emails.

so naturally, i call the offender to see what the heck is going on (by this time my blackberry has rebooted twice!). apparently, it was a vacation rule gone south.... I saved a bit from my instant message session for your viewing pleasure:

offender name withheld to protect the... well, guilty.

(11:40:31 AM) Phillip: call helpdesk yet?
(11:40:41 AM) [name withheld]: on now
(11:42:13 AM) Phillip: btw, all the retracts that you requested for people that aren't on our corp mail will get a second email saying that you requested a retraction
(11:42:37 AM) [name withheld]: omg!!!!