WinterClassic 2011

The first batch of pictures from the WinterClassic in Pittsburgh.

We had a great time loved the move to the evening and of course the perfect start to the new year was a Caps victory after a good game of hockey.

Potomac Heritage 50K

I'm still going to write up my notes from MCM and Army 10 Miler but until I do I'm trying to not fall too far behind.

I got up early to head to the trail and get in a few hours of easy running to shake out my legs before the Turkey Run aid station opened. I was getting antsy to run after going from full on training to racing for three weeks to recovery from MCM.

After an exciting descent down the small cliff to the PHT via not the actual trail I got in another 8 miles and felt good. Shortly after 10 while I was changing my clothes the first runner came through shortly after that I started taking pictures. It was a good time and the after party was also very fun. I met a bunch of new people who's names I have mostly forgotten.

Photos Link to The Gallery

Caps vs Bruins Pre-Season

We enjoyed the first home game for the Caps this year. It doesn't hurt that it was a reasonably close game, a couple of our young talent scored, there was a fight and the home team won. Here for your viewing enjoyment are a few pictures from the game.

King and Thorton Fight in the 1st

Mathieu Perreault scores with a Snap Shot at 8:40 in the 1st

OpenSolaris at SmugMug

Don MacAskill has written about his experiences with Solaris and OpenSolaris at SmugMug. Most recently about his experiences using MySQL and OpenSolaris as a slave in one of SmugMug's production database clusters. Today Don published an update on MySQL, InnoDB and ZFS compression.

You may now be saying to yourself, yes but other people have posted about this already, and you would be correct. Aside from being interesting articles the second article uses a picture I took during the setup of network.com in Las Vegas :)

Seared Ahi Tuna

@Cdash is off in Sacramento in the middle of a cage migration and new hardware deployment. I decided that it was finally time to make some of the tuna that I bought a couple of months ago. I had planned to make it last night but didn't get the meat into the fridge to thaw with enough time to spare.

This is based on Seared Ahi Tuna Recipe, I deviated using the ingredients on hand. Starting with a very hot cast iron skillet (smoking the oil) I seared the tuna for 70s a side.

After it was removed from the heat I sliced it into ~1/4 inch pieces and plated it on a bit of spring mix for color.

Momma was sure that she would like some tuna please. nom nom nom

So I gave her a taste

I had some too

It was excellent and it is a shame that my wife couldn't be here to have any. I hope the migration is going well.

More pictures in the gallery

Chinposin for the Chinerati

What?!? A chinposin T-shirt as an external and ongoing display of authority.

 

Are YOU chinposin, take a look at the chinposin blog for some explanation of the chinposin movement straight from the mouth of the chinerati.

 

ThinGuy posted about chinposin yesterday, and Friday's are for chinposin! My latest avatar snapped by my wife (@cdash) this morning. Chinposin doesn't take a description of the avatar I call this one:

 

Authority at rest cannot be STOPPED!

It figures that I was not the only person to go with a chinposin at rest avatar today, but as far as I can tell I was the only one to actually do it from bed. This shows that my own natural authority shines through :)

Twitter Lock-In

During last night's Twitter "Timeline Oddity Update" I caught some interesting comments from @bhlackey and @thinguy in response to an update that appeared in my stream. I won't reproduce it here.

I experienced the following behavior while trying to logout so I could create the @smutr twitter account.

403 Forbidden: The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. I call it lock-in

Baked Chicken with Tomato and Olives

I slacked off and used canned tomato, it is easier. The original recipe calls for capers but we are out.

The chicken is baked from frozen from the costco bag-o-chicken.

• 4 chicken breast halves
• 1 small yellow onion, diced
• 1.5 tbps chopped garlic
• ~20 small Spanish pimento olives (didn't weigh them), diced
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cans diced tomato, drained

Chicken (from frozen):

1. Heat oven to 350 deg
2. Place chicken in baking dish, brush lightly with olive oil (or spray with cooking spray)
3. Bake ~25 min
4. Top with tomato olive mixture, bake additional 10min

Tomato, Olive topping (Start while heating oven):

1. Heat the oil, lightly brown the garlic. Take a moment to appreciate the smell of cooking garlic
2. Add the onion cook until slightly translucent
3. Turn up the heat to medium and add olives, heat until hot, stir a bit
4. Add tomato, simmer for ~10 min
5. With ~10min left on the chicken, top with tomato mixture

Enjoy with a salad and possibly a carb, Basic recipe from "How to Cook Anything"

This is a picture of me taking a picture of dinner (or really the food I pre-cooked for dinner some time next week).

Using a Joby Gorillapod SLR-ZOOM, Nikon D1x, Nikon 17-35/2.8 AF-S and MC30 cable release. The Joby has a little bit of vibration when I let go of the D1x so I wait for a moment and fire with the cable release

Breakfast pictures for ThinGuy

The effective (35mm) zoom for this picture is 52mm, shot in natural light and pulled up a stop from the raw. The f/2.8 aperture is what causes the shallow depth of field. The front of the lens was probably 3-4in from the edge of the waffle.

Toaster Waffles w/Blueberries and Maple Syrup

Lunar Eclipse

I am disappointed with the pictures I got from the eclipse. Low ISO for noise begets a longer exposure which proves that the universe isn't standing still. Oh well maybe next time I'll be home and take a bit more time to get it right.

Dinner and Dessert

C- and I made dinner and pie on Friday night. Dinner was good but the salad needed a better rinse it was a bit too salty. The pies are quite tasty although the strawberry rhubarb didn't thicken up enough. We like pie!





The Gallery

China: Great Wall at Mutianyu

While we were in China we spent some time on the Great Wall at Mutianyu. In the gallery there is a "You are Here" mark on the

map. We hiked (or more like climbed) from that point to the end (the 20) and back. You can see un-restored wall at the end.

(FYI: Courtney took the large picture above)

OLPC Pictures

I ordered/donated an OLPC XO-1 as part of the Give One Get One program
these are the pictures that ThinGuy scolded me for not posting a month ago.

These pictures are from un-boxing the OLPC and booting it for the first time. I have enjoyed using it. The keyboard is a little small for adult hands (this is not a surprise or a criticism). The trans-reflective screen is impressively clear, the backlit screen is a little hard to read for small text (at least for me).

The packaging is sparse but solid, my favorite part of the whole delivery presentation is the warnings page, particularly "Not for use by Infants."

All in all I am glad I donated.

The whole gallery