Monthly Archives: June 2005

Sheep Urine Futures Skyrocket

OK, so check this out. That is brilliant. I took an environmenalism class in college (wherein I was supposed to become outwardly upset by the fact that as humans we’re bad stewards of what we’ve been given – oh, and become an environmentalist. It kinda worked, but not completely) and at that point in time they were using water for this. As the title predicts we’re going to see sheep milked and ‘pee-ed’ and the byproducts of the latter will be valuable in a new way.

Reproducing Legalese

It is now an important American tradition to require labels to restate the obvious. Obvous things like the ingredients of food products and that gluttony is probably a bad choice. With that in mind, I give you the label of a health food product made in Boulder, Colorado:
[Click to see the Nutballz wrapper, by reducing the size of the image to fit on this site I lost clarity].

For those of you who won’t click on that link out of fear or laziness or the fact that the name sounds naughty I’ll pass this along:
There are two warnings on this wrapper:

  1. There are 9grams of xylitol in Nutballz(TM), a sweetener derived from plant cellulose. (It is generally recommended that you do not exceed 50 grams of xylitol a day unless you want to poop!)
  2. Alert! This product contains nuts (duh)!

I had to buy just one package to prove that this was real. They don’t taste great, but they don’t taste bad either. They’re a rather typical ‘health’ food flavor. Bland.

The Piano Movers are Coming

The Piano movers bring with them an old piano from the year 1372 and a half, predating all other pianos by several hundred years. Actually, it’s not that old. It is however the piano I composed quite a few original tunes on – none of which I can play any longer because its been so long since I had a piano in my possession. The piano was given to my parents by Christopher Columbus upon arriving in California. They traded it to him for some corn, wheat and fish. He said, “Though canst have mine pinano [SIC] if thine food doth sustaineth me.” Which, for a Italian was pretty good English. My parents, being 20th century metropolitan folks said to each other, “This guy must have been hanging out with all of the other hippies – I can’t understand most of what he is saying.”

And so the piano became a family heirloom.

I am looking forward to having this piano in my home until my parents get another dwelling that they can store such things in. It will give me a chance to polish up my chops so that I can sound like ‘Fats’ Waller, ‘Fats’ Domino and many other Adkins diet inspired piano players. I also hope to play a little Tchaikovski, as Victor Borge said, very little.

You see, I’m a lazy bum when it comes to playing sheet music. My sister-in-law Becca plays very well and is quite accomplished. I measure my accomplishments differently simply because if I look that far up in the piano world I get a kink in my neck and I have to go immediately to Boardwalk, pay $200.00 passing ‘Go’ and then head straight to the Chiropractor. So, I play, I have fun, and I mash up my favorite Beatles Piano hits with the mirriad Beasty Boy piano hits until no one recognizes it… then I call it Jazz.

I’ll try to record some of this ‘so called’ music some time.

Update: It’s hear, and in as sound a coundition as this piano can be. The movers were quick, courteous, and tried not to make fun of this shabby old ‘pinano’.

Post Script: Abby calls it a ‘pinano’.

To the White Honda Behind Me Last Night: Thank You!

Yes, you, Mr. Speedy Pants. Thanks for riding my bumper all the way across the Dam Road. Thank you for swerving as if you wanted to speed around me while I was carrying my pregnant wife and precious two year old. Thank you for endangering my life, the lives of my family members and the lives of others on the road. We appreciate it.

Signed,

Randy Peterman

Post Script: Please move to Florida where that sort of driving is the norm.

You Might Be a Web Developer If…

From an IM exchange I had with my buddy Tony:

TNuzzi: Hey what was the design web site. You have the book.
TNuzzi: Sorry to be vague
Randy: Pardon?
TNuzzi: Not stopdesign
Randy: The design web site?
Randy: Eric Meyers?
Randy: meyerweb.com
TNuzzi: Not
TNuzzi: no
Randy: Jeffrey Zeldman?
TNuzzi: His name was Jason somthing
Randy: Zeldman.com
Randy: Designing with Web Standards
TNuzzi: 38 design
TNuzzi: design
Randy: 37signals
TNuzzi: yeah
TNuzzi: LOL that is it

By the way, these are the books:


I recommend all of them heartily.

Ice Cream Blog

I am about this far away

One Inch

from starting an Ice Cream Blog. Yesterday, on Good Eats, my all time favorite cooking show of all time [yes, that was on purpose, grammar people], they dedicated the show to ice cream. Holy Cow [to borrow a Hindu phrase]! I didn’t know that much about Ice Cream, but I want to learn more. I’m determined to become an ice cream snob so that I may help the world understand that Generic Ice Cream is from the Devil and that good ice cream probably has only a few quality ingredients.

This weekend we shall attempt to make Coffee flavored ice cream with Craig Kaes‘ famous home roasted beans. Taking what I learned from Good Eats I’m going to do the following:

  1. Look Up a coffee ice cream recipe or seven
  2. Assuming it uses a base of Vanilla I’m going to try the Good Eats recipe for Vanilla
  3. I’m going to make the base on Saturday [not the ice cream, but the dairy mixture] and let it sit in my fridge over night
  4. Sunday afternoon we will hand crank the ice cream for as long as humanly possible, or longer, and then freeze the ice cream further in the Kaes’ freezer (which means I should really make sure they have room in said freezer) with plastic wrap on the surface of the ice cream to prevent the air on the surface ice crystals from going away tarnishing the otherwise delectible ‘scream’

Oh, and then I’m going to blog about how we all were silent out of awe for the flavor. Or I’ll write how lamentable this experiment was and see if gooder stuff can be made next time.

Wheat

As many readers of this blog know, I’ve dealt with allergies to wheat for some time and that it has limited my diet tomake me look like an Adkin’s fiend [I was “hold the bun” before Adkins was cool – Randy Parton]. This is now behind me… the wheat allergies are gone (for now, I must keep up my exercises to keep my body strong). This morning we did a muscle test and I’m now wheat tollerant. Corn will go next and I’m hoping that by my trip to Texas at the end of the month I’ll be able to eat like a man who’s not had a burrito in 7 years 🙂

I’ll have to have self control so that I don’t blow up like a balloon 🙂

Belly Buttons

I’ve heard various twists on the statement, “Like Belly Buttons, everyone’s got an opinion.” Some of them have been cleaner than others, but I digress. In short I want to throw something out in regards to the latest news that Apple will be switching to Intel Chips in about a years time. I haven’t read all of the articles on the subject, but there have been way too many, and most of them full of speculation. Here’s my thought in regards to Microsoft and Apple’s progress going forward.

First, Apple’s Intel chip orders are supposed to be x486 chips. That’s right, 486. Microsoft, I’d like to ask you why a Pentium 4 is required to keep your OS running smoothly without hicups while I will use a 486 on an Apple? This is rather frustrating because it shows either a superiority in design or that Apple’s picked the wrong chip. I’m not too worried though because the jump is not one that appears to have any performance issues. Steve Jobs would not be switching to 486 type chips if it was a problem.

Which leads me to my second point: Intel has already got Pentium 1, 2, 3 and 4 technology. Imagine what would happen if Apple made the (not so huge) leap to pentium chips? Imagine running OS X ‘Liger’ [the next version of OS X, poor Napoleon] on a Pentium 4. It would probably be an embarassment to Windows. Then imagine running OS X with a Pentium 4 with several gigabytes of RAM. This would cause Windows to cry and lament the power of 486s dissipated by its gluttonous OS.

Two Abby-isms

This morning Abby got the ‘unk.’ That is to say she used two words that had ‘unk’ in them. The first was that she wanted peanut butter on her toast, but without the ‘junks.’ That’s chunks for you readers who were concerned with junky peanut butter (read:partially hydrogenated vegetable oils).

Then, she listened to our discussion about paint in the kitchen and she said, “That’s a good color. It’s funky.”

I can feel the James Brown coming on my iTunes now.