Month: February 2013

Categories
Misc

Afterwards

As of now, I’ve cleared our driveway (most of it anyway- there’s only so much room to put that much snow) and front walk. It took me 3 hours to get that much done. Part of that is because are driveway is fairly long, part of it is because there was a lot of snow. And, frankly, part of it is because CONN DOT plowed the top of our driveway in and I had a very dense 3 foot tall, 30 foot wide wall of snow to push through. I wasn’t happy with that but I understand the plow guys have the same problem I do- there’s only so many places to put the snow.

There really aren’t words to adequately describe the scene here. I’ve seen a few references to the tried and true “Winter Wonderland” but that’s only true until the clearing starts, then it’s more like “Hell frozen over.”

As I type this, skies are clearing and the Sun is poking through a bit. The temps have warmed to the mid 20’s and the house is nice and warm with the fire running. My soaked clothes from my earlier snow-clearing are drying so that I can go out and clear our deck next.

Speaking of which, here’s what it looks like:

That’s our Weber Smokey Mountain on the left and our Weber gas grill on the right. The WSM stands about 4 feet tall, normally. It’s boosted up a bit by a large flat rock I have under it to protect the deck from the heat. For that matter, the top of the deck railing measures 42 inches from the deck surface.

Of all the pics in this post, this one probably gives the best idea for how much snow there is. That’s the path I kept clearing so I could take pictures for my Blizzard of 2013 page here on the site.

I mentioned our driveway up above. Here we go:

The before shot is snow that’s basically a foot deep or so for the main portion of the driveway. I’d already cleared it once last night to make today’s clearing a little easier. I’m glad I did. That ridge in the snow on the left of the first picture is the unplowed snow line. It matches up with the wall of snow on the left in the after picture.

Speaking of our driveway, it has a rather unique feature: a large rock set off to the side. It stands about 3 feet tall. Here’s a picture of it:

That’s the rock in the foreground, smack in the middle of the picture under the tree that’s bent over due to the weight of the snow on its branches. The covered portion of the rock is at about 3 feet. Not the biggest of drifts, but impressive none the less.

Here’s our front walk, before and after:

The piles on the right and left are probably 4 feet high.

If you look closely in the Before picture, there are some twiggy things sticking out of the snow. Here’s a slightly better shot of them:

See them? Those little twigs in the foreground? Those are the branches of a Japanese Maple. It’s a little over 2 feet tall.

Here’s a shot of the front of the house:

That lower roof over the front porch looks like I might need to do something about. The upper roof doesn’t look nearly as bad though. I assume that’s because it was exposed to the wind more and didn’t pile up to quite the same degree up there.

Finally, something fun. Here’s Dog2, our male German Shepherd. He’s leaping up at snow the boy has tossed into the air. As many times as someone will toss snow in the air, he’ll leap to snap at it. Just don’t stick your face in there.

We had similar conditions a couple of years ago, believe it or not. But in that case, we had 2 storms come through and dump on us on consecutive weekends. While both storms then were pretty impressive, they weren’t this one.

It’s not unusual for us to have rain come through that dumps 2 or three inches on us. I’ve often wondered what such a storm would be like if it fell in the form of snow. Now, I know.

Categories
Misc

That Pickpocket In Action

Awhile back I linked to an article profiling Apollo Robbins, “The Gentleman Thief.” He’s a professional pickpocket who plies his trade for entertainment purposed only. Here’s some video of him in action (thanks to John Gruber):

Having read the article, I knew what to look for and I picked up on a few things in action. But I can totally understand how if I was the actual mark, I’d have no idea what was happening. Pretty slick stuff.

Categories
Misc

It Has Begun…

The snow started falling about 8:30 this morning. I was headed out to the car to run some last minute errands and was just climbing in when I saw the first flakes. Driving around town, the roads had all been pre-salted so there wasn’t any accumulation on them. It also wasn’t coming down that hard, though that’s clearly supposed to change.

As far as prep goes, I’ve loaded up plenty of firewood, got fresh gas for the snowblower, went grocery shopping and picked up a power inverter. I’m not overly concerned about losing power, but in the event we do we need a way to run the fan on our wood stove. Using the car to power the inverter should work nicely. It can supply 500W continuously, though I should only need a fraction of that for the blower.

Accumulation predictions are for 2 feet plus, which is unprecedented in my memory for any storm I’ve gone through. I’ve seen predictions for 18-24 a few times, though none of them actually managed that. We’ll see how things go with this one.

Since it’s supposed to be such a hum-dinger of a storm, I decided to create a page to document it’s progress here at the house. That page can be found here. I’ll get around to putting up an appropriate main page link. Look for updates about the storm’s progress on that page as well. I’ll try to do so hourly. One of the pictures is of a yardstick, which I’ve lashed to one of the posts on our deck. With all the project wind to come, I don’t know how accurate it will be, but it might be fun to watch it get covered. At least, the boy thought it was a good idea.

Now I have to get to the other things I haven’t got to yet. Back later.

Categories
Football

Joe Flacco: The Bad and the Amusing

According to this from PFT, Joe Flacco basically advocated cheating to supposedly ensure their Super Bowl victory.  He was telling his teammates on the sidelines they should just tackle the ball carrier on the free kick that ended the game.  He figured the refs couldn’t just award a touchdown, so it was better than letting the 49’ers score.

He’s actually wrong about that last point.  The refs can award a score under the circumstances Flacco was advocating, so his efforts would have been doubly defeating:  he would have been revealed as a world class sore loser and he still would have lost the game.

I know it’s a quaint notion in today’s NFL and will barely register on the outrage meter.  Flacco is, after all, the SB MVP and will get a huge pay day after his accomplishments.  Be that as it may, this kind of thing should cost Flacco in some respect.  He shouldn’t be advocating cheating in the event of the miraculous happening.  It’s cheap and illegitimate.  I think his nose should be rubbed raw in it. Personally, I’ll be routing against him until the day he retires. (I know, huge penalty there…)

But it’s not all bad in the article.  There’s a nugget at the end revealing the humorous side of the NFL.  Here’s the line from the linked post:

Though the response isn’t audible, a teammate apparently said something along the lines of, “Lead the way, Bert.” (That’s my half-joking guess at what was said, not a quote.)

Look at a picture of Flacco and then a picture of Bert from Bert & Ernie fame.  Really, can there be any doubt his teammates call him “Bert”?  Hilarious.

Categories
Family

The Boy’s World- Shattered

With age comes responsibility and, sometimes, privilege.

The lass learned that today. In our home state, there is no law specifying exactly when a child may ride in the front seat. Both of our kids are above average in height and weight, so they’ve been out of booster seats from the earliest that could happen. But we age limited them for riding in the front seat. Prior to today, only the boy was deemed old enough to ride in the front seat for rides around town and the like.

Actually, that last statement isn’t entirely true. The lass was deemed old enough at her most recent birthday. But it wasn’t until today that I took a moment to make her aware of the new privilege.

Thus ended the boy’s nearly 2-year, uncontested reign as the only qualified proprietor of the car’s shotgun position. Well, aside from the Wife or myself that is. All things considered, he took it like I expected him to- about the same as if I’d told him we’d be removing one of his arms.

Time wise, his world ended about 5:05PM EST. His martial arts lesson had just concluded and we were headed out to the car. The lass did exactly what I expected her to do- she made sure to be the first one to the car. The boy was still unawares as to the change in the family power structure so was completely unsuspecting of what she was doing, but not for much longer.

I had barely unlocked and opened the car door on my side and the lass was already in the passenger seat. The boy was temporarily taken aback at her seeming brazenness. He tried to tell her she wasn’t allowed in the passenger seat. I had to step in and correct and remind him. He still didn’t want to believe it and tried to argue with me that he had to wait much longer than his sister had and it wasn’t fair. I was temporarily sucked into the argument, then caught myself. Defeated, he huffily climbed into the back seat.

The boy had come to view the passenger seat as his privilege as opposed to a privilege. He even stated that because he was older he should be allowed to sit there. I mainly opted to allow him to vent his frustrations, rather than arguing or trying to impart some kind of understanding. I knew from experience he wouldn’t listen anyway.

I’m fully aware of the headaches that await me- the contests and races to come to be the first to the car. The whining and crying from the “loser” of those races. The sneaky, underhanded doings to claim the throne- like one of them going out to the car 15 minutes ahead of time to claim the seat (my money is on the lass pulling this one first). Then they’ll learn the “shotgun” game and that will breed arguments about how long before the ride “shotgun” can be claimed ; how long it remains in effect afterward; whether it has to be called again if we get out of the car.

They also get a chance to learn that a privilege can be revoked, temporarily or permanently. The ride into school tomorrow should be interesting.

Categories
Misc

The Gluten-Free Fad?

Interesting read here on gluten free diets and the like. My first reaction was to lump it in with other food studies of the past like salt. First, it was bad for you. Then it was good. Then it was sort-of-OK-but-not-too-much. I think that’s still where we’re at with salt.

I also find it interesting that the doctors admit that, aside from celiac disease, they don’t really know what they’re talking about. But they still insist that changing diets is bad. Or the fellow at the end who states “No more than 1 percent” of people have “gluten sensitivity. But then admits all numbers are speculative. So he doesn’t know, but he does know. Whatever.

Anyway, here ’bouts we’ve drastically reduced our gluten intake, but as part of a broader plan of carb reduction. Bread and pasta are the two major foods that provide carbs, well, along with sugars of course, so we’ve all but eliminated them from our diet. The kids still enjoy certain pasta dishes, so we do occasionally partake, but without nearly the same frequency.

Interestingly, as reported by those “sensitive” to gluten, I can also report that I feel better without all the carbs in the diet. Not that I felt bad per say, but I noticed feeling like I had more energy. So maybe there’s more to the whole gluten thing than meets the eye.

(hattip: Instapundit)

Categories
BBQ

Pulled Pork

One thing I forgot to mention in my prep post for the pulled pork is that I left the pork butt in the brine for about 24 hours.

Today, I cooked it.

I fired up the WSM around 7:30 or so this morning. Since we burn wood to heat the house, I cheat. Or you could say I’m resourceful. After loading the bottom with Kingsford charcoal, I simply placed a big chunk of hot coals from our fireplace in the middle of the charcoal. I filled up the bowl with hot water and then assembled the unit. About half an hour later, it had come up to temp.

So around 8:00AM, the pork started cooking. I stuck a digital temperature probe into the butt and strung it up through the top vent in the WSM lid.

Today was hardly an ideal day for barbeque. It never got above 30 today, and even then it didn’t get that warm until the late afternoon. Thus, I had a little trouble maintaining a good temp. I was concerned it might affect the outcome.

After about 6 hours, I opened things up to take my first look at the meat. I didn’t take any pictures, but I can say it looked delicious. I felt better about the temperature issues- apparently there were none. The bark had developed beautifully. I’d come prepared with a couple of lengths of aluminum foil to wrap it up the pork with for the final cooking stage. I did so and then took a moment to top off the water in the WSM bowl. I place the meat back on the grill and closed everything up, taking time to put the temperature probe in the meat again. I took my first temp reading and it was at 140- so I had about 40 degrees to go. I wouldn’t need to open things up again until it was done cooking.

I continued to monitor the grill temp and the meat temp through the remainder of the afternoon. Finally, about 6 o’clock, the meat had come up to temp at 181. I could smell it as soon as I took it off the grill and put it onto the platter.

When I took the foil off, there was a nice layer of juices sitting on the bottom and the bone in the center of the meat pulled out without any effort. It took me about 5 minutes to pulled it apart with a couple of forks- during which time the Wife and I sampled the results liberally. The interior meat was super tender and the outer layer had a nice pink color where the smoke had penetrated. There was no need for sauce, as it had plenty of flavor between the smoke and the pieces of the bark distributed throughout.

Easily the best results I’ve attained for pulled pork.

Categories
Misc

Bill Simmons on PED’s and Sports

I just read this article by Bill Simmons. It is, bar none, the best article Simmons has ever written. Or at least, it’s the best one of his I’ve ever read.

Here are the concluding paragraphs (lightly edited):

I believe that Ray Lewis cheated. I believe that to be true based on circumstantial evidence, his age, his overcompetitiveness, the history of that specific injury, and the fact that his “recovery” made my s**t detector start vibrating like a chainsaw.

I believe in my right to write the previous paragraph because athletes pushed us to this point. We need better drug testing. We need blood testing. We need biological passports. We need that stuff now. Not in three years. Not in two years. Now. I don’t even know what I am watching anymore.

I believe we need to fix this disconnect between our private conversations and our public ones. Cheating in professional sports is an epidemic. Wondering about the reasons behind a dramatically improved performance, or a dramatically fast recovery time, shouldn’t be considered off-limits for media members. We shouldn’t feel like scumbags bringing this stuff up. It’s part of sports.

I believe that, if I played sports for a living, I would steer clear of performance enhancers no matter how many millions were at stake, no matter how famous they might make me, no matter how many titles I might win. I like to believe that, anyway. The truth is … I don’t really know what I would do. And neither do you.

As far as I’m concerned, this article is directed more at the sports media- ESPN, Sports Illustrated and so forth- than non-media people. As he says, non-media people think of this all the time, but we never see sports media figures say “You know what, I’m not buying it- prove it.”

Something to consider- it’s possible that it’s impossible to play professional sports without drug enhancement. Think about it- 160+ games in baseball; 80+ games in basketball and hockey; 16 games in football which is more physically taxing than the others. It may be that even the best-of-the-best can’t make it through their sport’s season without drugs simply because it’s not possible for their body to recover and heal from game to game.

Anyway, Simmons’ article is well worth the time to read it.

Categories
BBQ

Pulled Pork in Our Future

In anticipation of the game tomorrow, the Wife suggested cooking up some pulled pork. I haven’t cooked anything on our WSM since the ribs from back around Christmas, so I was more than happy to oblige.

Fortunately, cooking pulled pork is nothing new to me. I’ve tried several different techniques and my favorite involves prepping it in a brine followed by applying a rub. The brine is nothing more than salt and some brown sugar, about a half-cup of each. I use enough warm water to completely submerge a 9-lb butt. I do start with hot water to help dissolve the salt and sugar, then ,because the butt was frozen, I add the butt and then top everything off with cold water.

As for the rub, here’s what I’m trying this time:

  • 2 tbsp brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp onion powder
  • 1 tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tbsp chili powder
  • 1 tsp orange peel
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 1 tsp ground thyme (I used a mortar a pestle for grind up thyme leaves)
  • 1/4 tsp paprika
  • 1/4 tsp cayenne
  • 1/4 tsp chipotle chili powder

I’ve applied the rub and have wrapped it well using plastic wrap. For the now, I’ve got it sitting outside on the deck, since it’s about 20 degrees out. I’ll move it inside tonight (I don’t want it to refreeze) and then get things started nice and early tomorrow morning with the WSM. Probably around 7, if not earlier. I’m planning a nice, long, slow cook.

Tune in tomorrow to find out how it turns out.

Categories
Politics

Scouts Should Include Gays

My brother asked me what I thought about the recent rumblings from the BSA. Even with my involvement in Scouting for now, I really hadn’t thought much about it. When I did, it seemed obvious that it’s the right thing to do and there wasn’t much more to it.

Then I figured, eh, why not write something up and put it here for all to see. To quickly summarize, I think the reasons to exclude gays are thin, and the reason for inclusion have mostly upside.

To start, one of the core values for Cub Scouts is respect, which has as one of its meanings “deference to a right, privilege, privileged position, or someone or something considered to have certain rights or privileges; proper acceptance or courtesy; acknowledgment.” For that matter, the BSA’s own site reads “showing regard for the worth of something or someone.” It’s hard to square this core value with the current policy.

Shifting gears a bit, the fear that’s brought up by defenders of the status quo is the possibility of pedophilia and child molestation. But studies and time have revealed that both are a separate and unrelated thing from homosexuality. Thus, this reason has faded to the point of oblivion- if the fear still exists, it exists out of ignorance.

If looking for arguments for the change, I’d say look no further than a story like this. A Boy Scout, denied the rank of Eagle he had earned for the sole reason that he was gay, received his Eagle pin from another Eagle Scout who came out as gay when he heard of the boy’s plight. Now, some might miss the forest for the trees and focus on the “dishonesty” of the older Scout never having revealed he was gay and earning something he “didn’t deserve.”

And that would be a great shame. The fact is these two men had done everything required of them by Scouting to attain that rank. That means they had proven themselves “morally straight.” Are we really supposed to believe that by announcing a truth about themselves, they suddenly were not? By what reasoning could that possibly be true?

I’d say there are also pragmatic reasons. There are areas of the country where the current policy likely works to depress membership. I had one parent explain to me that she almost kept her son out of Cub Scouts because of disagreement with the policy. Ultimately, she stuck with it because of her son’s friendships within the Pack and that it didn’t make sense to punish him for something he knew nothing about. If she was thinking like that, how many other parents use similar lines of thought and keep prevent their sons from getting involved? The Constitution certainly protects the rights of the BSA to run the organization as they see fit, but they can’t protect it from the consequences of those decisions.

Another pragmatic aspect to consider is one of leadership. In this area, Scouting hangs on by the skin of its teeth. Part of the reason is it takes a lot of effort and time to organize all the different activities and meetings involved. The idea of casting good people away simply because of sexual orientation seems like a bad way to address that problem. While I know Scouting is robust in other areas of the country, I’m sure there are other locations where it’s similar to here. The bottom line here is that help is needed and tossing it aside because of sexuality is self-defeating.

The bottom line is Scouting is a worthwhile endeavor for young boys. It promotes all of the sorts of qualities that we might want in our kids: resourcefulness, independence, grace under fire and a willingness to lead and be responsible. There is no reason those qualities can’t apply to gay Scouts and there is no reason gay men can’t help to foster those qualities in Scouts they lead.