Can't Scare 'em All

...Road Worth, Hungry And Mean

Did you know I've never made cornbread before? You'd think being from the south that I'd come out of the womb with a seasoned iron skillet in tow and two stone tablets on how to use it. Although this isn't the case, the shock of the aforementioned realization while at Cracker Barrel (Seeing Double) gave me a challenge of 1) finding a good recipe and 2) making it. I figured meat loaf and mashed red potatoes a perfect candidate for testing cornbread, especially since Kristy (Kelly's sister) was coming over. Kelly made the meat loaf and I handled the rest. I can honestly say, with all due humility, it was a fantastic meal. For desert we had apple turnovers Kelly bought from work topped with ice cream Kristy brought. As you can tell, the cornbread came out wonderfully, receiving pleasing smiles from all involved.

After sifting through a few recipes, here's the one I used:

1 cup (160 g) yellow corn meal	combine	stir	bake 400°F 20 min.
1 cup (125 g) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
1 Tbs. (14 g) baking powder
1 tsp. (6 g) salt
1 cup (240 mL) whole milk	whisk
1/3 cup (80 mL) vegetable oil
1 large egg

Another important piece of this recipe is to use a 10" iron skillet. Warm the skillet over medium heat and melt butter or mist a small amount of oil to coat the bottom. Pour in your batter and send to the oven.

Seeing Double

Let me start with yesterday. We had breakfast with a few friends of ours at Cracker Barrel. We haven't seen Scott and Beth in awhile, so it was good to catch up. We touched on all kinds of topics such as houses, school children, a little bit about work, the stock market and financing in general, and old tv/movies. After leaving there, we got our usual errands done: store, lowes, etc. After spending some time at home, we braved 81N and went for Hagerstown. There, we met with Kelly's grandmother at, take a guess...Cracker Barrel! In all, everything I ate on Saturday came from Cracker Barrel. She originally had picked Moutain Gate, but changed her mind. So after battling my way through many plates of Cracker Barrel, we wished Grandma B a happy birthday and came home. I spent most of the evening afterward installing some small shelves in the garage and some general maintenance. Check out the stunning pictures of The Garage, Round 2:

I spent some time today doing the last of my research and preparation for dd-wrt. After talking to Dom about a similar piece of 3rd party router software (Tomato), I did some digging and learned about my router. I found out it's a newer generation Linksys WRT54G. Oh, newer generation, I'm thinking great this should be able to handle anything. Tomato should go on no problem.

Wrong.

As it turns out, newer generation just means 'what are the absolute basic features we can cram onto 2 MB of flash memory?' See, the older models came with 4 MB and some even with 8. Perhaps they process data at a faster rate and while that's fantastic, it's still no reason to stiff your customers and give them only the bare necessities. So, needless to say, Tomato wouldn't work for me. That's when I learned about dd-wrt. It comes in many flavours, one of which being the micro version, which fits on 2 MB flash memory. So after successfully flashing the thing, I couldn't get on the internets. I thought...wtf!? So after screwing around and connecting to other wireless networks in the area it dawned on me that I needed to do a hard reset of the cable modem. I cycled the power on it, but that was no help. What makes me feel stupid is I KNEW that a hard reset is required but somehow I let it escape my steel trap mind. Nevertheless, I'm now running a solid install of dd-wrt micro.

Tall Tales

So this is a picture of Ryan and me. It was the 2nd time we ate a whole box of cereal as our dinner. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the picture from the first time. It was an equally glorious victory picture of a large accomplishment.
"But Wayne," you may ask, "eating a whole box of cereal isn't a big deal." Yes it's true, many people can survive this intestinal onslaught. However, we had a set of rules that make the Average Joe unable to perform such a feat. Rule 1 - The cereal had to be 1 lb. That's right. 1 whole pound. If it was over such as my first cereal, Cheerios, we used highly advanced mathematics to bring it down to a pound. Rule 2 - It had to be eaten in one sitting. No bathroom breaks, no getting up to stretch out. The only allowed movement was going from the couch to the floor. Rule 3 - No eating dry cereal. God created cereal and milk to go together. The only exception to this rule is when you're snacking, which we weren't doing.

My Scorecard

1st time: Honey Nut Cheerios

2nd time: Trail Mix Crunch

3rd time: Shredded Mini Wheats - Maple & Brown Sugar

Ryan if you're reading this, send me the first picture and your scorecard. You should definitely put it up as a comment to this post.

Musical Chicken

5K

4:30 AM came and I gave serious thought to letting it go, too. Before the sun, we got up and hit the road. We ran into Stacey and Travis on the road, got called slow because of that, and soldiered on. We missed the turn for the Park & Ride, but ended up getting a better place that we were able to walk to when the race was over. So we started the run a couple minutes after 8 AM and the sun had barely been out for 30 minutes. Kelly and I were together for the first two miles, then I decided I wanted to get the race over with. In all, I huffed my way to a 28 minute 5K. Not bad I suppose and it was under the 30 minute absolute max I set for myself. The race itself was cool. One thing I gotta say, DON'T START WALKING WHEN SOMEONE IS RUNNING RIGHT BEHIND YOU. I swear this happened to me twice. First of all, their pace wasn't enough to keep up with inflation. Secondly, YOU'RE IN A RACE. Once it was over, I snapped a few shots (not of us).

The following were taken on the way back home. They were taken while we were still in Maryland. Unfortunately, time in Virginia felt like 15 seconds so I wasn't able to work the camera fast enough.

Could've Been a Gull in a Clipper's Wake

As updates go, this one is par for the course with a few exceptions. Part I is all about work. Work is roughly the same. Our deadline sits with dark clouds looming as all our plans show completion time being long long after it's supposedly due. I can't tell you how I feel when I'm on a support call and I get to say, "oh that issue...yeah all of a sudden it's not a big deal with our customer. Why you ask?..." The call goes on from there, but I've uttered those words on more than one occasion.
Part II is about home. As home goes, things are changing in the garage. I finally bought a toolbox so we can get stuff together and organized. My need to have a space to do my tinkering/listen to music/maybe start playing music again made the reorganization an inevitable endeavor.
So I've got my old PC speakers out there with my laptop, tools, and archery equipment. The dogs usually run in and out of the laundry room and perform pest control (no rats yet!). Even though I've got no pictures, I'm currently trying to figure out why my old disc changer stopped working. I'm not sure how far I'll get, but I've got the space to work on it now. Hopefully I don't fry it (or myself) trying to work with AC -> DC power. I'll get to that after hooking it back up in the truck and listening to it in operation, or a lack thereof. Let this be the first of many projects. It's a work in progress. Maybe I'll have a place to start making wax bullets of my own.
Part III is music. I got Clutch's live recordings album Full Fathom 5. It's definitely an enjoyable piece of auditory literature. The album features music all the way from 1995 to their latest release, From Beale Street to Oblivion. Unfortunately, there's nothing new on the album like we heard at the concert in Richmond. I'm sure the DVD does, but I doubt I'll get that anytime soon.
Part IV is where the computer nerd in me comes out. After talking to the Dominator and doing some research, I'm going to flash our wireless router with DD-WRT. It's a 3rd party utility that should provide more features than the Linksys default. Unfortunately, I can only use their micro- version since our router only has 2 MB of flash memory. I'll post the outcome of this little venture in an upcoming post.
Part V is the future. Tomorrow, we're trekking to Hunt Valley, MD to run the 2008 Race for the Cure. Good ol' 5K at 8 AM and it'll take almost 2 hours to get there. Anyone else fail to see the logic in driving 2 hours to run a race that takes less than 30 minutes? The donations are for a great cause and I must say we always have fun running with all those other people. So come the next few days, I'll have a post for that.

Don't Worry, Everything's Clean...

I decided to jump on an opportunity and buy a used bow. I know what you're thinking...what's wrong with it? was it dry fired? did somebody drop it from a tree stand? As far as I know, no. My goal on Saturday was to get it sighted in at 20 yards. During that time, Dom and I played tic-tac-toe. No, we didn't sit out in the grass for a picnic with pencil and paper. We took an archery block and taped off a section that matches a tic-tac-toe board and played from 20 and 25 yards. We were using a tree and a fake deer for a backstop. We managed to get a few pictures and a video in the process.
The bow is a Reflex Buckskin. It's set to a 28" draw length and currently set to 55 lbs of draw weight. I love the bow. It fits me very well and was a great deal. My losses to date are: two arrows (including field tips) and another 100 grain field tip. I'm still learning the particulars of archery, but I think I have a good grasp of the basics. I doubt I'll get much hunting in this season (except in Crimora should something wonder into the yard), but I hope to next year.
Thanks be to the Dominator for getting me six more arrows, a kisser button which we will install, and some bow string wax.

The Last Hurrah

For more on the whole weekend, don't forget to check out Will's blog. You'll find more pictures and stories on our adventuers.
And that's it. All the days of burritos, walking miles & miles, waiting for the train and/or bus, gettin' lots of coffee, finally making it to haight-ashbury, and a few other things we don't have pictures from made for a great trip out to San Fran. The pictures of the giant statue and room were all in the atrium level of a local hotel.

Good Thing I Packed A Lunch...

Saturday was probably the busiest day. We had to get up, eat, and head to the pier for Alcatraz. If you view the last two entries, you'll see a handful of pictures from that day. The above picture was from the next day, when we spent some time on the cable cars. The cables actually run underground and the cars attach to it to go uphill. Prior to all that however, we went to the gym and went to a Japanese Tea Garden.

Pier 39 & More Alcatraz