Weeds Season 6 just hit iTunes. Yeah!
Just spent two hours cleaning vandalism off of one of my websites. (mediawiki, not WordPress). Nasty Internet out there.
The Black Keys: Brothers
I heard an interview with The Black Keys on Fresh Air on MPR. That is probably the least hip way I could describe discovering a cool band like The Black Keys. I picked up their new album Brothers and am loving it. I highly recommend it! Make sure to turn up the volume, especially on “Black Mud”.
Michael Birawer Prints
The hallways of the 8thBridge office just got classed up! The building added a number of Michael Birawer prints. It makes the space feel a lot better.
368MB of Ads
It has been a really long time since I used the Wired application on my iPad, but I recently fired it up and bought an issue to peruse. The experience could not have been more frustrating!
First, after I paid for the content, I wasn’t able to download it because my iPad’s storage was full. I use the option in iTunes to fill empty space with music. I had to go delete a movie to make room for a magazine. Somehow a magazine is as big as a movie?
After deleting, the download starts. 368 MB of data. This takes forever. Even on a good, fast Internet connection. About 15 minutes later I still see the bar filling up.
Still waiting. Finally it finishes, and I think I can now finally take a look at what I bought. Oh wait, I guess we have to “Install” this too?
About 20 minutes after I started I could browse through far too many advertisements. Don’t think I’ll be repeating this process any time soon.
Driveway Avalanche
Our driveway provides almost no opportunity for me to get snow out of the way. I blow a lot of it over the fence into the backyard, but also blow a lot of it against my neighbors garage. There is a limit to how high you can go though.
I’ve debated next fall creating a series of wood shelves to set next to the neighbors garage. I could then blow the snow vertically into the shelves and I could get it 10 or 12 feet in the air. It would work as a form of snow fence.
We got snowed in again. The weather says we got 14 inches of snow on Sunday. Happily it was a long weekend so we just stayed inside and let it come down.
New Standards Pano at Lantern Festival Gala
Here is a shot of the scene while the New Standards performed at the Lantern Festival.
This was taken with You Gotta See This! on my iPhone 4.
New Standards at Lantern Festival Gala
One of our favorite bands, The New Standards, announced they were playing at the Lantern Festival Gala for Yinghua Academy.
Yinghua is a Chinese immersion school in Minneapolis and we have a few friends that send their kids to the school. We’ve heard nothing but good things. Tammy picked up tickets so we could support a good school and get to see a relatively small and intimate performance by The New Standards.
It was a really good show.
I 💚 Unix
Maybe this should be titled “I [Heart] Shell”, but it seems more fitting to lay praise at Unix. Sometimes you do something on the prompt and you just look and think “Wow, that would be crazy hard on any other platform!”.
while true; do
(date; netstat -n | grep 1.2.3.4 | awk '{print $6}' | sort | uniq -c; sleep 300;);
done
I was debugging a problem with leaking network connections to a host and needed to see what was going on, checking in every 5 minutes.
I was at Ambrosia Espresso for a coffee yesterday. I got my typical macchiato. They got it right on the demitasse, but what is with the giant plate?
Tammy surprised me with a Chemex Coffeemaker for Valentine’s Day. I brewed a batch of coffee with it for the first time today and it was great. So smooth, nearly no acidity. This is a great option for occasions where I want a cup of coffee instead of an espresso.
Minnehaha Creek caught my attention this morning, and it did again this evening on the way home.
Minnehaha Creek was picturesque this morning coming through Minnehaha Creek West Park with a light fog from the snow melt. The creek appears thawed when still frozen. An entire stream of ice melt is flowing on top of the frozen creek.
Heart Shaped Pancakes
Valentines Day dinner. This was Mazie’s special request. Of course she was so full of chocolate she hardly ate any.
Happy Valentines Day 2011
Mazie made me this awesome and sweet Valentine. Happy Valentines to everyone!
Double Big Green Egg Table
When I got my Big Green Egg I got the large table to go with it. It seemed okay, not great. I knew I wanted to have a good work surface for my Egg and I didn’t think the simple fold out “wing” tables would work at all. I know a lot of Eggheads make their own tables. There are some wonderful plans online that help out. But I don’t have even the basic woodworking skills, or patience, to do that. So I just went with the table from the store.
It was okay but pretty quickly I was disappointed with it. The build quality wasn’t great. It was stapled together instead of using screws. But it worked so that is what I used for the first year.
I’m glad I did because it allowed me to really figure out what I wanted in a custom table for my Egg. After a lot of searching I found a carpenter to work with and after a design session with some sketches I now have my dream Egg table.
It’s a double Egg table to house both the Large Big Green Egg as well as the small. I also have a second prep table. There were a number of specific things that I wanted in the setup.
Space
If your just grilling some burgers you really don’t need much prep space around your grill. But when you’re doing full day smokes and preparing entire meals on the grill I found that I wanted ample space. I wanted my table deeper than the stock table by about 4 inches.
I thought for a long time about how I wanted to accommodate two Eggs. I considered having them in two separate tables, which would be convenient for times when I wanted to just use one or maybe even take it somewhere with me. After consulting my friend and kitchen expert Mike he suggested that I consider a hot/cold setup, like a professional kitchen. I decided I liked that and put both Eggs in one large table and then have a completely separate prep table. More on the prep table later.
Hot Rack
One of the issues I have found when using my Egg is dealing with hot tools or grill parts, as well as dirty grids and such. I asked the carpenter if he could design something that slid out on the bottom of the table that could deal with this. He hit it out of the park!
This shelf is just great. It’s all metal, so I can put a hot plate setter on it and not worry. Since it slides underneath I can then store those things out-of-the-way and not worry about kids bumping into a 500 degree ceramic piece.
You may notice in the picture above one other minor thing that I did around the bottom vents of the Eggs. I found that you inevitably spill ash when cleaning it out, and that ash if left on the wood caused staining. I mentioned this to the guy that build the table and he just got a couple of squares of metal and mounted them under the vents. Now the ash just falls on the metal and can be cleaned up easily.
Granite Inserts
I copied (stole) the idea of the granite inserts from a friend who bought an Egg and built his own table. I thought it was a brilliant idea and had to do it as well. In the center of both the hot and cold (prep) tables I have a removable slab of granite.
I found that my Egg table got pretty dirty over time. You have various sauces and rubs out there and it makes a mess. The granite gives me a place to not worry about grease, sauces or even hot items that might burn the wood.
I can pop the granite out and pressure wash it easily enough. I have also found these to be great places to put a single portable burner when I want to simmer some sauce or cook something that way outside as well. I have a nice induction burner for this purpose. It works great!
Prep Table
The prep table was an indulgence. It serves a lot of purposes. First, I get a bunch of shelves to put my tools in. I now even have room to house a spice bin outside so there is less running around. I have another bin just with fire starting stuff. The room is nice.
I also like that the table is very mobile. If you need to shuck some corn, or prep food for the grill and have someone helping they can take the table wherever it is convenient for them. I also made the table “double-sided” so two people can work on either side easily. I also slapped some hooks on it so I can keep tools there, as well as hang a trash bag on the side if you have a lot of prep work to do.
Finish
The entire table is covered in outdoor varnish. It should last a very long time with basic upkeep. I’ve grilled with this setup now for about six months and have yet to find anything I would change.
Feel free to riff off of any of these ideas. If you live in Minnesota and would like to reach out to the carpenter that built this amazing table just contact me and I can send his info along. He doesn’t have a website to link to.
Listen to “Calamity Song” off of the new Decemberists, and then listen to “South Central Rain” on R.E.M. Reckoning. First 30 seconds.