Not shopping, just exploring a bit.

I got one of those fuckers this morning! He tried to run, but he could not escape from me! I have sentenced all house centipedes who have the audacity to enter our home to a death by squashing… and the sentence was carried out with extreme prejudiced.

I am judge, jury, and executioner for house centipedes!

Check out this page if you want to listen to some Break Even prior to our reunion tonight.

Back when I was playing regularly I would never feel the gig jitters 24 hours before a show. I’d feel excited and I’d be wanting it to get here so I could play. I wouldn’t get the jitters until just before show time. Probably the minute I walked into the bar.

This time it’s different though. It’s not a bar. It’s a party at Steve’s house. No one is going to care how we do. It’s just for fun. There is no pressure, we’re just going to enjoy it. That being said, the gig jitters have arrived. I’m honestly nervous and I still have a whole day.

I need to change the strings on my Les Paul, find the sound hole pick up, tune my 12-string down to Eb (yikes!), see if I can play Steve’s song “Turn Away” on the 12-string, grab the different pieces of my two guitar stand, get my haircut (unrelated, of course, but still necessary), start cleaning out the kid’s play room (also unrelated but necessary), and feed my wife some sushi.

It’s Gig Jitter Time!

Yes it worked, but no it didn’t work. I set it up to make a slide show of all of my photos on Flickr with the tag, “Honeymoon.” It made a slide show of 36 of my photos with the tag, “Honeymoon.”

Fail.

The Lowell Devils.

I won’t even consider another ticket package until they make the playoffs once. Even then, no promises.

The Lowell Lock Monsters

(I dug out a ton of old pictures from 2005 and 2006 and added them to my Flickr account)

I have no idea what they’re doing, but the end is funny.

When I was a kid I had a lot of trouble going to the Dentist. I wasn’t afraid really, the Dentist, Doctor Cleary, was a great guy and I didn’t have any problem with the sharp objects or the fear of drills or anything.

My problem was puke. No, really. I have a very sensitive gag reflex. Any time the Dentist would try to work on my back teeth I would hurl all over the place. Specifically I would hurl all over him.

It was not a pretty site. He was used to it though. He’d sit on his little rolling chair and be ready to wheel himself out of Dodge in an instant. I too got a little better at handling the situation in most cases. There were, of course, exceptions.

The two exceptions were fluoride treatments and x-rays. I think x-rays caused the most vomit over all, but I did I good job cleaning my teeth and never had any cavities as a kid, so the x-ray portion of the experience could often be skipped.

Fluoride, however, at the time wasn’t a big deal either. I never had any cavities, so why do I need fluoride?

Now I know why I needed it. Around the time I reached my late 20’s I started getting cavities. I also had a little issue of being an older career student and not having any health insurance. That meant the cost of actually fixing the bad teeth was extremely prohibitive, which means I’ve had a few teeth pulled.

Right now I have a cavity on the upper left side. It is killing me. It woke me up from a sound sleep at 2:30am this morning. I hate my teeth. I hate my stupid, stupid teeth.

So Google has finally done it. Chrome OS. The first (actually second) Google operating system. Here is the initial announcement from the Official Google Blog.

As with most things Google I will give it a shot when it comes out. I already have Windows 7 (beta) and Ubuntu running on my laptop. I’ll make it a triple boot and add Chrome OS too. (I should also update to the latest Ubuntu at the same time. We’ll see)

By the sound of it this really isn’t being seen as a replacement for Windows… yet. In the future it sure will be, but for now it looks like they are just pitching a tiny, bare bones operating system that you can use on a slow, low powered machine that will get you booted quickly and get you onto the web so you can use Google Apps for things you would normally use desktop applications for. I am all for that myself.I have Word at work, and Open Office at work, on my desktop at home, and on my laptop. I’m really not a fan of any of them. Google’s word processor and spreadsheet are sort of minimal, but they more than meet my meager office software needs. I like the sound of an OS that pushes everything onto the web.

Of course the argument then falls to where does my hardware go? Will it be able to handle unloading my cameras? Will I be able to play my own music and video files? Will I eventually have the means to record multi-track audio? Maybe… maybe not. If it’s as bare and simple as it sounds I would lean toward no. That means I remain a Windows/Linux, and possibly at some point in the future Apple guy (bring on GarageBand babie!).

There is also the little problem with the Chrome browser being, in my very limited experience, a real piece of shit. It is the crash happiest application I have ever seen. Granted, on my work machine every application is crash happy. Firefox crashes regularly, but Chrome crashes constantly. If I open more than one or two tabs I am guaranteed to crash. At home on my super suped up desktop that runs faster than light it still crashes pretty regularly. Chrome just seems to suck. Let’s hope they don’t have similar problems with Chrome OS, or we’ll be fondly reminiscing about the blue screen of death.

Still… bring it on. I’ll try it out. I’m looking forward to it. Chrome OS and Mac OS X will both be running on top of Linux. There’s nothing wrong with that. Besides, anyone who wants to take a shot at knocking that chip off of Microsoft’s shoulder (and in the process knocking off a chunk of the OS market share) is worthy of applause in my insignificant little book.

Go get ’em Google!

How is it possible that the Boston Globe is going under? Their website, boston.com, today published what may be the single greatest story in the history of news.

The recipe for homemade oreos.

Yeah, you read that correctly. Make your own oreos.

Click the link above to see the article, or read it in its entirety right here:

Homemade Oreos
July 8, 2009

To make Joanne Chang’s Oreos, allow 1 hour for the dough to firm before shaping, then several more hours for it to chill before slicing. You can refrigerate the dough for up to 1 week or freeze it for 1 month (defrost in the refrigerator). The log may settle as it chills, so reroll it every 15 minutes if you’re around during the initial chilling so the log stays round. The filling will keep in the refrigerator for up to 2 days. Let it come to room temperature before using.

COOKIES

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1. In a medium bowl, whisk the butter and the sugar until combined. Whisk in the vanilla and melted chocolate. Add the egg and stir until well blended.

2. In another bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir to blend them. Using a wooden spoon, stir the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture. The finished dough should feel like Play-Doh. Cover the dough with plastic, and set aside for 1 hour or until firm.

3. Place the dough on a long sheet of parchment paper. Use your hands to shape it into a rough log, about 10 inches long and 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Place the log at the edge of the parchment. Roll the parchment around the log. With your hands on the paper, roll the dough into a tighter log, keeping the diameter the same.

4. Refrigerate the dough for at least 2 hours, or until it is firm enough to slice without crumbling.

5. Set the oven at 325 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

6. Remove the dough from the paper. Cut the log into 32 slices, each a quarter-inch. Set them on the baking sheets 1 inch apart.

7. Bake the cookies for 20 to 25 minutes, checking them often after 15 minutes, or until they are firm when touched in the center.

8. Cool completely on the sheets.

FILLING

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon milk
Pinch salt
1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter on low speed for half a minute. Add the vanilla and confectioners sugar and beat until smooth.

2. Beat in the milk and salt. The filling will look and feel like spackle.

3. Place 1 tablespoon of filling on the flat side of 16 cookies. Press the remaining 16 cookies on the filling, flat sides against the cream, to evenly distribute the filling.

4. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Adapted from Flour Bakery + Cafe
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.