2009
This is a good example of what a Big Green Egg looks like when it’s full blast, north of 700 °F. And it can get hotter!
Pork shoulder on the Big Green Egg.
After 10 hours.
Grilled artichokes!
Two pork shoulders to go on the Big Green Egg tomorrow at 7am!
Big Green Egg class!
Joining the Board of CaringBridge
I’m very late in sharing this news. Starting at the beginning of this year I was asked to join the board of directors at CaringBridge. I’ve been hoping to find a non-profit that fit well with my background, and CaringBridge was perfect. I’ve been very impressed learning more about CaringBridge and the amazing and wonderful relationships that they enable.
Unfamiliar with CaringBridge?
CaringBridge® offers free, personalized websites that allow people to stay in touch with family and friends during a health crisis, treatment and recovery. The goal of the service is to ease the burden of keeping friends and family updated, while also providing a way for them to send their love, support and encouragement.
I’ve found that an amazing number of my friends have used CaringBridge in one way or another. They have done amazing work thus far and I’m hoping I can help continue that! If you have a CaringBridge story or comment I’d love to hear it!
Fancy Email Signatures with hCard Microformat
I recently redid my email signature. I’ve been using an HTML signature for a while and my friend Kent complained to me one day that my emails always wrap odd on the iPhone. I figured out that I had an HTML element with a minimum width around 300 pixels. Fine for a computer, but it made the iPhone mail program scroll - in the worst way possible - horizontally.
I figured since I was going to redo it I would simplify, but also wanted to add some function. So, I decided to make use the hCard microformat in the signature. It wasn’t too hard to get right, and it looks normal when viewed but an hCard aware client would see the data markup.
<div style="width: 100%; margin: 14pt 0px; padding: 2px; border-top: 1px #dddddd dashed; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; color: black;" id="hcard-Jamie-Thingelstad-Personal" class="vcard">
<a style="white-space: nowrap; font-weight: bold;" href="/" class="url fn">Jamie Thingelstad</a>
<div><a href="mailto:jamie@thingelstad.com" class="email">jamie@thingelstad.com</a></div>
<div style="white-space: nowrap;" class="tel">mobile: <span class="value">612-810-3699</span></div>
<div>find me on <a href="aim:addbuddy?screenname=jthingelstad" class="url">AIM</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/thingles" class="url">Twitter</a> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/thingles" class="url">Facebook</a> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/jthingelstad" class="url">LinkedIn</a></div>
</div>
I found two tools that helped with this a lot. There is an hCard creator that helped with figuring out what the structure should look like, and very importantly an hCard validator that you can pass a code fragment into and it validates and decodes it.
With all that said, I don’t think there is a single email client that will honor hCard. But, if one comes along I’m ready.
Burger Jones First Impression
Tammy, Mazie and I joined my sister-in-law Angie, Mazie’s cousin Nora and Grandma Olson for lunch at Burger Jones today. We’d been meaning to try out Burger Jones since before it even opened and this was our first opportunity.
First impression was good, but unfortunately the whole experience just stayed there at just good. I got a burger because, hey, you’re at Burger Jones. I ordered the burger medium, but it came well without any pink at all. It was a pretty uninspiring burger and I would take a burger of my own off of the Big Green Egg most any day. We also tried the cheese curds as they were supposed to be very good. They were pretty good, when they had cheese in them. The way they were prepared made a lot of the cheese come out of the breading. Mazie and I decided to give the Nutella Malt a try and it was good, but how can you do a malt wrong. Lastly everyone split the stack of fries trying the regular fries, sweet potato fries (my absolute favorite) and waffle-cheese fry. The sweet potato fries seemed like they came right off of a Sysco truck and into a fryer. Another yawn.
For the cost, I would have expected something better. It was all fine, and everyone left happy, but there wasn’t anything about the food that left me wanting to return quickly.