Christmas Thoughts

One item worth sharing tonight...  Not sure what made me think of it, but after listening to it again, hit me like a ton of bricks, just like the first time.

A Soldier's Silent Night (warning - auto-plays some audio)

I've probably not heard this reading in a good four years or so... but man it's so powerful.  As I try to write this entry after listening again, I'm a hot mess. 

Merry Christmas to all... and to all a good night.

We still miss ya' Billy.

Well, I do, at least. Today is the one-year anniversary of the death of Billy Mays, possibly the world's greatest pitchman.

Hooray for Creative Commons!

Without BoingBoing's link to Rudy Rucker & The Ware Tetralogy this past week, I probably never would have read the whole series of books.

I downloaded the free PDF of the whole series (866 pages!) and couldn't stop reading once I started. It's a trippy journey - found the first two books to be the 'better' of the set, for my enjoyment.

It slightly reminds me of another e-book I read a few years back - The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Another one of those that I couldn't stop reading until I was done.

Guess I'm a sci-fi nerd at heart.

Double-E BBQ Sauce - homemade!

The wife slow-cooked some boneless pork ribs all afternoon today - only to discover that we were out of Cattlemens sauce! The horror!

Not wanting to venture out in the cold just for sauce, we decided to do a little research to see if we can make our own sauce.

After combining parts of two different sauces - we settled on the following recipe, which has a sweet & tangy flavor. The kid loves it!

Double-E BBQ Sauce
1 C catsup
1/3 C vinegar
1/2 C water
2 T butter
1/2 C brown sugar
1 T liquid smoke
2 T Worchestershire sauce
Dash onion powder
1 tsp Cayenne - optional
Salt/Pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in saucepan. Bring to boil, lower heat to fast simmer, then simmer for about 15 minutes.

We're calling it Double-E since myself (Eric) and my daughter (Ellie) created the final product.

Welcome to the 90's!

Yours truly has discovered audio books! Nothing like staying current, eh? Anyways, I'm currently listening to "A Brief History Of Time" by Stephen Hawking. I loaded it up onto my iPod, and plugged it into the car on the way to work this morning.

As I exited my vehicle to walk into the building, I started laughing out loud as I had a realization... I felt a bit like Kal-El - hurling down the freeway, listening to a kind & gentle voice explain special relativity and general relativity, Newton, and so on. Just like he did as he hurtled toward Earth. His crystal of knowledge is my iPod shuffle.

Hilarious.

LOLQuote

Said to me this morning in the office: "If {man's name} was a girl, he'd be pregnant all the time. Sheesh."

Will anyone notice?

Abruptly and without much fanfare, I've abandoned Twitter. The honeymoon is over... And as a friend once said "I don't need another stale social-networking presence." Only, in my case, replace "another" with "a".

For me, Twitter was fun and novel for a time... longer than I was expecting, actually. Made a few friends - really enjoyed reading many updates. But... I found it hard to maintain in the face of everything else going on my life at present.

I think it boils down to what I want in life - and as I get older my preference is to organize and simplify. Do more with less. Unfortunately, less means cutting out things that aren't productive for me. The return on my time investment in Twitter was in rapid decline.

On to The Next Big Thing...