MSPaint images of

“bad things to juggle”

are due Thursday at noon. e-mail your entry to:
mikedidonato AT gmail D0T com

English dudes jousting on cars.

Thanks to AnitaClue

UPDATE:

This is also good.

Mike D: I figured out an extremely efficient way to make gradients in MSPaint
Jesse: oh?
Mike D: Normally, I choose a color that I want to blend and double click the pallet. This brings up the color edit menu. By clicking on “Define Custom Colors” I can then adjust the color by a small amount, return to my picture, and by repeating this process over and over I slowly work my way to the new color.
Jesse: and the new way?
Mike D: I open up a new MSPaint document and make my way to the same “define custom colors” screen. Then I just take a screen shot, paste the image of the color gradient into the second document, select and copy my ideal gradient, paste it into the new piece, and then use the eyedropper to select the color I want. Once the setup is done, I can zoom into my workpiece and never have to return to the edit colors screen. It’s probably ten times faster.
Jesse: Wow! I’m surprised you don’t get more women.

Last week while I was in Texas I had a most amazing tomato basil soup. This got me inspired and I decided to try to make my own version on Sunday.

But, I couldn’t just have Tomato Basil soup, so I talked to my mom and the two of us found a great recipe for Apricot Almond Chicken Salad.

This lunch was A+
I highly recommend it.

The soup came from this recipe. I did add the full portions of cream and butter and it actually did make a difference. I was hoping to be able to get away with half the butter and 3/4 of the cream. No dice.

The chicken salad recipe was excellent, healthy, and extremely easy.

Dried Apricots
Toasted Almonds
Celery
Cooked Diced Chicken
Some light mayo mixed with nonfat milk
Rosemary
Scallions

And that’s it! Blend it, chill it, and serve on a bed of lettuce with fresh grapes, or on a slab of wheat bread. Either way, it’s amazing.

Mike D’s Rockclimbing food ratings:

Tomato Soup:
Difficulty: 5.9-
Deliciousness: 5.10

Chicekn Salad:
Difficulty: 5.7
Deliciousness: 5.10

How to bathe a cat.

For the last few nights Jesse and I have played a few board games before the end of the day. Sunday was Backgammon, last night was Mancala. It’s a great non-electronic way to relax at the end of a day.

If you have any good shorter (can be played in under 20 min) board game suggestions please leave them in the comments.

I’ll start us off with Gobblet

Shaun McQuaid introduced me to this particular game. Each player starts off with three sets of four pieces. The pieces are small cylinders and are stackable (as you can see in the picture above). Each player tries to make a row of four of his color, but your opponent can place his larger pieces over your pieces… both blocking you and advancing his own progress. Once all the pieces are on the board players move them from one location to the next until someone eventually wins. There’s some serious strategy as you are forced to remember up to four levels deep within a single board.

I’m going to have to purchase this game. It was extremely fun.

What other fun short-play board games do you know?

A week ago Saturday, Jesse and I dug a bit deeper into the ‘Essential Asian’ cookbook. This time we went to the Thailand chapter and tried a green curry.

It came out Awesome.

Basics:

Green curry paste
Coconut milk
Chicken
Onion
Green beans
Brown sugar
Fish sauce
Lime Juice
Oil

I don’t think I’m missing any big ingredients up there. We served it on a bed of rice.

I used some Indian Saag (spinach) curry because I couldn’t find any Thai curry at the food store. It worked well though. That is certain.

Here’s a photo of the final product.

This will be made again.

Difficulty: 5.6 R (r means gear placement is tough to find. This fits perfectly because some of the ingredients were not easily accessible)
Deliciousness: 5.10c

www.ninja.com

I have had few submissions to the MSPaint contest so the deadline has been extended to Thursday at noon EST.

This challenge is:

“Bad things to Juggle.”

you are only allowed to use MSPaint (or a mac equivalent)

Congrats to Irene who was first to successfully identify the skyline as Zermatt, Switzerland. And also Congrats to Aaron whose Tony Hawk Pro-skater 4 culture led him to identify Trafalgar Square as the satellite image.

This next series might be tough, especially the skyline. We shall see.

SKYLINE!

SATELLITE!

Good luck!

Once the shirts were silk screened, the photo shoot commenced.

I’m back in CT.

posts to continue as normal Monday.

I got a B+ on my Accounting midterm.

I think this may be the first time I’ve ever been disappointed with a B+.

The world’s largest parking lot is Texas at the Dallas Forth Worth Airport.

Today was mostly uneventful. I solved a few minor problems that the customer was having and did some general maintenance. Then I headed back to the Hotel, cleaned up, watched a movie (The Stepford Wives - it was deece. Nicole Kidman is, indeed, attractive), and finally got some eats at a local place.

I probably could have taken better advantage of the free evening and driven to Shreveport or investigated some sort of wild Texan thing, but it was kind of nice to just surrender to the luxury of the hotel. I check out tomorrow, meet with some people in the morning and early afternoon and then drive into Dallas for the night.

I depart out of D. Fort Worth Friday morning.

Two Texans built a Stonehenge copy 60% of real size 60 miles west of San Antonio.

This will be brief because it’s late and I am super tired.

Texas: 1
Mike D: 0

My equipment failed with a small flash, bang, and fire.

Also: Texas is PRO-indigestions
But Texas really really really knows food. HOLY delicious.

In Texas, apparently, it’s illegal to vandalize another person’s car with graffiti.

Rage Against the Machine will reunite?!?!!?

YES! YES! YES!

So day one in Texas has been extremely annoying. I walked into my terminal just after 8am this morning. Things were looking up. My navigation through security was flawless and the plane was sitting outside the gate. I was to fly first to Philadelphia and then, after a short layover, to Dallas.

Turns out Philadelphia was not feeling the forecast. A one hour delay was in effect.

They asked anyone with a layover to approach. So, I strolled to the counter.

“I’m going to Dallas.”
“not today you aren’t.”

That wasn’t entirely true. It turns out that the earliest flight in which seats were available was a 5:45pm flight with a different airline.

I had to take it. It was imperative that I be at my destination Tuesday morning.

This was especially uncool because a 5:45pm flight would pull into Dallas around 8:45. But my final destination was not Dallas, it was 3 hours east of Dallas. I wouldn’t arrive until about 12:30am (provided smooth baggage claim) and I’d have to get up a mere 4.5 hours later.

Texas is big.
Texas: 1
Mike D: 0

So I zipped over to the other terminal to see if I could get a standby on an earlier flight.
Sure enough, I got on standby for an 11:45 departure. And despite being overbooked and asking for volunteers to switch to a later flight… I miraculously scored a seat! Badda bing!

Mid air I realized there was no way that my bag was going to arrive with me.

When you lose luggage in Texas… it’s as good as gone.
Texas: 2
Mike D: 0

Sure enough, upon arriving at the baggage claim I found zero hint of my luggage. I had a discussion with the lost bag lady and then hit the road. I’d get a phone call when they found my stuff.

Finally I arrive in Texas. I get to my hotel and then take a trip to Target. I bought some steel toed boots and a few other necessities for getting through tomorrow. Then I headed over to the Texas Roadhouse.

Two women were at the main counter.

“how many sir?”
“actually, can I just get carry out!”
“YOU HAVE AN AWESOME ACCENT!”

The women can’t resist the sweet melodies of my voice
Mike D: 1
Texas: 2

And so here I am. Eating steak, veggies, rolls, and a sweet potato before bed. If I hit the hay now, I’ll even get about 8 hours of sleep.

Whew.

There were a handful of people who successfully identified Disney as the satellite image. Jesse was the only one to submit a guess for the skyline. And he was correct. The answer was indeed Riomaggiore which is a small city in Italy one of the five cities of Cinque Terre. Special thanks to UUIG for providing that skyline.

Let’s proceed to this week’s challenge.

Skyline!

Satellite!

Your goal is to identify both.

Good luck!

For $150 you can become a licensed dead animal hauler in Texas.

Good morning readers! On this fine Monday morning I depart to Texas for another week of southern adventure and engineering mayhem. This trip should actually be pretty enjoyable. Today my schedule consists of traveling. I’ll probably get to my final destination around 5pm at which point I will relax, read, and get to bed early. Tuesday will be absolutely nuts. But Wednesday and Thursday will consist largely of tours and meetings. I will return on Friday in time for my accounting class.

My original personal goal for this Texas trip was to see a Rodeo. I want to see a Rodeo. I have been to Texas probably 8-10 times. It is alarming that I still haven’t been to a Rodeo, which is, in fact, the official state sport of Texas. Unfortunately, the Rodeo season is from April to October (who knew!?!) I’ve checked calendars of events and unfortunately I can’t seem to find any other wild events. Do we have any Dallas fort worth natives out there with great entertainment suggestions?

The patriots lost.