Ramblings

I have to say this was one of the best meals my wife and I cooked up EVER!!!!

As a kid, I can remember anytime my parents took us out to a restaurant I would order chicken fried steak. It’s been one of my favorites ever since.

Several month ago, I wanted to try to make chicken fried steak. As I do any time I want to make the perfect “enter food item” I looked to the web in search of the best recipe.

I settled on a combination of a couple of recipes based on the ingredients I had on hand, and my first attempt was amazing.

The breaded mixture had saltine crackers in it, something that hadn’t been a part of the steaks I had eaten in my youth, but it sounded like a good mix.

Each time I made this favorite meal I got better, except for the time when I wanted to cook for my Mother-In-Law. Let’s just say I wish I had a do over button that night. Despite practically burning the steak, and ruining the gravy, my wife helped me salvage what we could and the dinner wasn’t a total loss.

Tonight was the redemption I wish I could have displayed for my Mother-In-Law. My wife and I teamed up to make sure the dinner went smooth. Not only did it turn out smooth, but we got it done in record time. We make a great team!!!

The best addition to the recipe was the baked asparagus. A recipe my wife found on PioneerWoman.com which has resulted in our decision to NEVER eat asparagus from a can again.

So … enjoy the pics of our ultimate dinner treat.

Enjoy … Scott

I absolutely love the Disqus commenting system for my blogs, but I have been noticing an increased number of emails from spammers leaving messages on my blogs.

I didn’t understand how these creeps were bypassing Disqus, and today I finaly noticed that all my older posts were still set up to allow comments and trackbacks through the Wordpress system. The spam messages would never see the light of day on my blogs but the moderation has been a nightmare.

If you’re going to add Disqus to your blog (I highly recommend it) then you need to make sure you turn off commenting in your settings. I would also recommend updating the setting to turn off commenting on any post older then 14 days (or any duration you want to set).

Don’t worry about turning this off because Disqus is set up to take over. Doing this will ensure your peace of mind when t comes to moderating your site.

… Scott

Before closing down TPRweb.com I had a plan to start a new site that would allow me to write about auctions at my own pace and write unrestricted.

There seems to be a freedom that comes when you write because you want to and not because you feel obligated.

The new site is http://www.myauctionlife.com and my goal is to create a place that fills some major voids in the online auction industry. One of those being a podcast that isn’t controled by eBay. I’m going to take the best ideas from TPRweb and introduce them in a better light with MyAuctionLife.com .

For those who remember TPRweb I hope you will find MyAuctionLife a refreshing change.

Let me know what you think …

One of the things I was looking forward to with the new administration at the Whitehouse.gov website was the integration of a blog. With all the promises and buzz about how President Obama has been the most tech savvy I though it would be interesting to follow the progress of our newly appointed President.

Unfortunately, the Whitehouse.gov blog’s RSS feed hasn’t changed since the inauguration. I thought it was odd that there were no updates, so I clicked through to the site and it appears the RSS feed isn’t working because there have been plenty of updates.

I thought perhaps it was due to there being three different feeds available on the site, but that’s not it either. I know some people could care less about the RSS feed, the same people would just visit the site. The major problem I see is they’re missing an opportunity in spreading the news. One of the powers of an RSS feed is in the syndication of the feed and sending any updates to all the RSS directories that help to spread the news.

I’m just dumbfounded that the RSS functionality has been overlooked … Is it just me, or does anyone else think they missed a vital step in the update when they changed the site over to the Obama camp?

I saw this cool little app being talked about on Twitter, so I thought I would give it a whirl.

The service lets you create a 30 second video greeting that is placed over your Twitter profile page. How do they do it, you ask? If you take a look at the URL for the BubbleTweet I just created - http://www.bubbletweet.com/id/2ee5s – you will notice that the URL is pointing to BubbleTweet. It appears BubbleTweet is pulling in your Twitter page (possibly in an I-frame) then overlaying the video, and after the video is played the visitor is redirected to your actual Twitter page.

This all happens pretty seemlessly, and if someone isn’t watching the URL box when it’s loading they would never notice.

Despite the way they get it done, I think it’s pretty slick.

Let me know what you think … Scott

It’s already something well known in our home … I’m not the biggest fan of the Boise Zoo. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great Zoo for Boise and I think they do an awesome job, but growing up in Portland kinda spoiled me when it comes to trips to the Zoo. I’ve also been to the Oklahoma City Zoo which took 2 days to see everything. So when ever a trip to the Boise Zoo is brought up, I have to be honest, it’s not exactly on my top list of things to do. I know the kids absolutely love it, so I go for them.

So now I must admit the last trip (mid Jan ‘09) wasn’t too bad. Not being to the Boise Zoo in over 2 years probably helped and the fact that it was in the middle of the Winter. (far less people, not at all crowded)

Two things made the trip to the Boise Zoo more memorable. One was when the kids were interviewed on Fox’s channel 12 news. There was a baby red panda born at the Zoo and the kids just happened to be in the right place when Channel 9 came. It’s too bad they botched the footage when it aired on the news. We were told by a friend they fixed the interview for the following morning broadcast, but they still didn’t update the online video. The kids were so excited too.

The other highlight was they had three Azureus Dart frogs on display in the small animal exhibit. As a huge fan of frogs, the Azureus is our favorite. I could have stayed at that exhibit all day snapping pictures but we realized we had already been at the zoo for over 3 hours. 

Here are the best pics I got of Azureus …

This is a cool little service from the folks over at Squidoo, just set up a question and it’s sent off to your Twitter followers. Then the page will track the answers. Kind of like a web 2.0 version of polls.

Take a look at the page I created for my upcoming WoW experiment.

http://www.squidoo.com/addicted2wow

Enjoy … Scott

“Dragostea din tei” or as my kids call it … “The numa numa song” has long been popular in our house since it hit the Internet several years ago. So when I saw a WoW Machinema video done to it I had to watch it.

I laughed so hard … especially once I realized the creator has added their own words of interpretation to the song.

Check it out …

Here are some pics of the kids.

Link to the kids pics

I totally forgot I had taken these pics.

On October 10th Boise had the first snow of the season, in October no doubt.

The pics are from our apartment in the Idanha where I recently became the new manager.

We love the downtown area and thought I would share the view.

Enjoy … Scott