I am so affluent...

...that I can afford to feed prisoners better than students. (Listen toward the end of the presentation.)

RetroSoGood

Food Fantasy: Stuffed Mushrooms

1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
1 teaspoon olive oil

Sweat the garlic and onions until just translucent

Add 5 chicken livers chopped

In a separate pan brown 2 ounces (1 patty) spicy pork sausage
crumble the sausage as it browns, turn it out on a piece of paper towel to remove any excess fat

Combine the sausage and chicken livers and continue over very low heat - let them become acquainted. Add small amounts of liquid (2 tablespoons of chicken stock or water) so that the mixture does not become too dry.

Add a 1/4 cup of sour cream to the mixture and continue. Add a little more liquid to maintain a thick creamy consistency. Continue to reduce.

Prepare 8 (or so) large mushrooms, washing then patting dry.

To each mushroom add a couple of drops of olive oil and one or two drops of balsamic vinegar.

Just prior to stuffing the mushrooms add two tablespoons of fine bread crumbs. This is not so much filler as it is a binder to soak up the sauce.

Stuff the mushrooms firmly with the mixture and mound as high as possible. (Usually I don't endorse such abuse of mushrooms but in this case go ahead and stuff.)

Prepare a shallow chaffing dish with a thin layer of marinara sauce (last night's lovely spaghetti sauce, thanks to The Saint). Gently float each stuffed mushroom in the dish, careful that they don't touch one another.

Place the chaffing dish in a preheated (325F) oven for 25 to 35 minutes.

Sprinkle the stuffed mushrooms with fresh grated Parmesan cheese and place under the broiler until the cheese is toasted (just begins to show color).

Enjoy.

Marcel Marceau

... a moment of silence ...

Good fun!

Up to my ankles...

...in alligators!

This is my tongue-in-cheek version of the old maxim, "It is hard to drain the swamp when..."

So I thought I would investigate 'anklegators' to see if I was onto something. Turns out that there are such things as ankle gators for both sking and skin diving. But there are/were no Google hits for 'anklegator' so I guess I get to claim the critter for my very own.

Gee mom, it just followed me home. Do you think I can keep it?

One Peace, One Day... Soon!

Peace Day

Foreboding sense of Linux

I don't want Linux to be desktop friendly.

There, I said it.

I believe that all of the efforts to make Linux friendly for Joe Sixpack have had a very destructive effect. In order to accommodate the mainstream user Linux is being cheapened. Soon it will be as distant from the user as Windows are now. To make Linux acceptable it will be encapsulated, buffered and then sugar coated. All for what? Why should Joe Sixpack swallow the blue Linux pill when they already have a belly full of the red-mond pill?

Shogun by James Clavell

I just finished the luxuriously long and sensual read, Shogun by James Clavell. This was the umpteenth time I have read it. I manage to wind my way through it about every other year. It is a comfort read for me. I can celebrate the story and the characters. Like any really accessible work of fiction I can see myself in it. I can slip into its second skin and for a few minutes drift in another time and place.

Born under a bad sign...

You know we are all in lot of trouble, Linux-wise, when we need explicit instructions ...

Howto Boot debian in text mode instead of graphical mode (GUI)

I just got a bit harrumphish when I realized that Linux is old enough so that the young'ins don't remember a time before the GUI. The same argument that shied folks away from early Linux is being raised in the face of the latest distros.

I cannot use a PC unless it has pictures and a mouse pointer. That is why I am sticking with Windows er, uh, Gnome or KDE.

- Papa, Slackware: what was old is GNU, again

Curious Clock

...tells unsettling time.

Calculating your "Life-Time": the current time when your life is scaled down to 1 day

LifeTime – What time are you?

My LifeTime

5:24pm

Slackware: Don't take my word for it...

Slackware: There's something totally sane about it

Slackware hard? You set up networking by typing netconfig at a prompt and filling in the blanks. What could be easier? Installing software with pkgtool? Except for the dependency problems, which at least make you more aware of what your system is all about, it's easy and intuitive.

...more aware... (emphasis not mine) IMHO this is the very heart of the matter. Pretty much any OS will let you use your computer but how many allow you to be in control?

I owe, I owe, its off to work I go...

This past weekend I lazed. Actually, that isn't exactly accurate. It suggests that I actively and aggressively engaged in lazing. More to the point I practiced the fine art of being lazy. In the oppressive heat of western Kentucky I laid low. I enjoyed the rigors of horizontal meditation while being bathed in near continuous air conditioning. We all know it is not the heat, it is the humanity.

In between near exhaustive bouts of napping I managed to consume some comfort-pulp-fiction. Now I do understand that there is a new title by William Gibson, Spook Country that is being met with rave reviews. (Why am I not surprised that Frank Paynter knows about the MacGuffin.) But that is not the sort of fiction that floats my boat when I am engaged in the fine art of loafing. Give me Robert B. Parker. Oh yeah.

Reading Parker is like watching television without the commercials and not having to learn how to use the remote.

You have to admit that that is the very depth of decadence. So I reread Cold Service just because I started it while killing time at our local Books-A-Million - one of the few decent places to get a real cup of coffee in this two-bit town. A swing through the new library landed me two more new titles that I hadn't seen - mostly 'cause I don't get out much. Hundred-Dollar Baby has Spenser back in the humanitarian saddle dealing with 'good-girl-gone-bad' April Kyle as she whines and deigns through the high and low life of Boston's upscale back alleys.

Those occupied most of Saturday and Sunday. Then the real work of Labor day began on Monday. A Jesse Stone tale called High Profile. No details to follow 'cause you will just have to read it for yourself. I will say that Parker has done an interesting thing by intertwining some of his more memorable characters into each other's lives.

Love's labors, not lost.

AFCAQTWCA

Any Fool Can Ask Questions the Wise Can't Answer

...and shouldn't have to. We have all had bosses, significant others and or teachers that insisted on asking questions. Questions that were not formulated to be answered but rather for the asking. So that the interrogator can feel empowered.

How often I have heard, "I was just asking..."

Little does it matter that a question asked demands an answer. Seldom is consideration given on the part of the interrogator how disruptive the demand might be.

"I was just asking. Sheeesh, you don't have to be so grumpy."

Little does it matter that a question can be asked without being responsible for the answer. How happy I would be if the interrogator had to pay in some fashion for every rhetorical or self-centered question asked.

The selfish and self-centered formulate questions to gain attention. It takes very little effort to formulate an interrogative sentence. Then when confronted with this antisocial behavior they claim that they were only trying to make conversation. That is like a bank robber suggesting that they are only trying to bolster the local economy by making a mandatory withdraw. I suggest that stealing is stealing.

Anyone have any questions?

Quechup Stains?

Quoth the Head Lemur

Quechup is the Clap of Social Networking. You get it from letting Quechup touch your address book.

Faceless in Kentucky

On the advice of sage council I cut my ties with Facebook. Since then I have felt just a slight tug to find out what my peers are doing. I assume that this 'tug' is the same feeling that keeps others coming back time and again. Undoubtedly it is the same feeling that serves as the adhesive in our larger social orders. I have to wonder if it is the same glue that binds Lemmings as they take their inexorable journey to the edge of the precipice?

All we are saying is ....

---

3D Stereogram generator

Thanks Pen-Elayne

Don't trust... who?

John says, "Don't trust the servers."

To analyze the illogic of certain trends, I like to employ a trick I call the "reverse timeline." I ask myself, "What happens if the timeline goes the other way?" In this instance, you'd start with server-based online applications, and then suddenly a new technology—the desktop computer with a quad-core processor and huge hard drive—appears. Now, you do not need to do all your computing online. The timeline is reversed.

Why is it that pundits like this fellow above just insist on purveying an all or nothing perspective? Could it be ... the media? Could it be the fact that we as a society desperately want to see things in black or white? Could it be that 'journalism' panders to this bi-polar disorder?

This polarity is laughable. Individuals who report on it run the very great risk of becoming a casualty of their own rhetoric. "Since the majority of Dvorak's articles deal with absurd and contrived polar extremes he should be completely discounted."

Hmmmmm, that has a curious ring to it.

Quantity vs. Quality

This should be a 'no-brainer'...

Knowledge Retention vs. Critical Thinking

Why do the many and varied Education systems seem to test for Knowledge Retention?

"They respect what you inspect not what you expect."

Heartbroken

.:dydimustk:.

speaks of a journey. He said...

...I have been trying to figure out what might be a better framework for the next generation of Christ followers. I have been involved in this whole Emerg[ing|ent] line of questioning and exploration, and yet it seems many of our attempts to reengage the culture get hung up in christendom models. No matter how cool we are, or how welcoming we make our services, or how politically sensitive we try to be–if our goal is to get people in our doors, I think we have lost sight of the gospel. Jesus asked his disciples to follow him out into the world. He never asked them to bring anyone back anywhere.

...My heart is broken for all my friends and all the people I see every day for whom the church has no value, no purpose. At best, they’ve just never encountered Jesus because the idiots on TV turn them off. At worst, they been judged and condemned by the church–hurt physically and emotionally. That breaks my heart.

...I have written The Broken Heart Manifesto. I have tried to write it in such a way that anyone can take it up, hopefully without any barriers (other than the English language), and allow it to re-form their lives. I an anxious to see what it does to mine. I will be journaling the process, and invite you to do the same.

I am not a biblical scholar. Some would suggest that I am not even a "good" Christian.

The The Broken Heart Manifesto resonates with me because it speaks to reverence for the human condition without all of the trappings of a given religion or "Church" order. In this way it clears away the noise of society and popular culture. This Manifesto speaks to the central value, love, that I as one person must have for all of my brothers and sisters.

This Manifesto is not an imposition of my views on others but rather a view that I choose to accept for myself. What follows are observations about myself. By engaging in this conversation I hope to illuminate my often unspoken feelings and thoughts. By engaging in this conversation I hope that feelings and thoughts of others might be revealed.

---

Love hurts

To love is to endure emotional pain
With great investment of personal caring and affection
comes the potential of disregard and detachment

Inherent in the belief of love is the desire to be loved;
we should be loved equally by those that we love

In choosing to love we accept in equal measure the pain
of being unloved

Unconditional love is the act of endless giving.

bhmt01