12/14-12/21 MakingFoodEatingFood.wordpress.com

I’ve never been a big fan of making food. I think it’s a pain and a time waster.

When I do cook though, I find  the process enjoyable.. but I need to plan ahead of time. I’m constantly on-the-go or knee-deep in work, so I’m always looking for a quick food fix that will get me through the day. I have to dive right into it all and not think about how much time it will take from my schedule. I usually brush off attempts to indulge in a tasty self-satisfying culinary creation and end up half-sated when I choose quick food I can eat at my desk or in the car - if I’m not on the way to a dinner.

What has potential to turn my cooking habits around is this delightfully delicious blog I discovered. This site has a refreshingly unique approach to inspire photography and/or cooking with just a passing glance. It is Chanelle’s blog, MakingFoodEatingFood.

I’ll be honest, the best part is the photography. The writing style and recipes are great too, but the photos captured by Chanelle will wrap your taste buds around each word and bring the images to life to where you feel like you can taste the photos. Reminder: don’t eat your screen.

What will surprise you is the entries aren’t always about food. I believe all blogs need a personal flavor and she adds just a touch of seasoning from her personal life every so often, creating a unique and entertaining experience for the visitor. Just by reading a few minutes you’ll get the feeling you were friends in high school or grew up in the same neighborhood.

I have been passionate about food since I was born. The first thought in my head upon waking? “What’s mom making for dinner tonight?” I spent much of my youth poring over cookbooks and time-worn recipe cards, envisioning each creation as made by my own hands, with my own additions, changes and flair.

You really have to look over the 23 pages Chanelle has offered up to the internet gods and take some deliciousness home for yourself.

Set the table and preheat to awesome.

I don’t know if you are aware or “in the know”, but I just received a very important email from Mr. Patchin Tromble that Gmail labeled, of all things, spam.

After examining the contents of said message, I therefore determined that this could be the most revolutionary miracle breakthrough in technology to date and that I needed to do my part to forward this to everyone I know and share it with everyone on the intarwebs.

The fact that “the steamer continued on young man that raphael had all but knocked down” inspires me to click whatever links there are in the email and hope that I get a large fund transfer from a Nigerian prince slinging penis enlarge patches like ninja stars really really soon. I’ll update you on my success as soon as I have my own island with free wifi and 72 virgins.

Last night, Twitter came in very useful.

I was doing some home freelance work and editing/recording for my band’s new record when I experienced my internet connection go in and out over the course of a couple hours. Finally at about 11pm it completely crapped out. After 30 minutes or so, I was a little concerned that this problem might continue into the next day where I would get the bat signal and be forced to transform into Techman to fend off technical problems for my wife and home business. I do realize that not everything is 100% stable and perfect with services like cable/dsl or phone lines, but my thoughts gravitate towards the old Seinfeld joke about the man on the moon:

We never should have landed a man on the moon. It’s a mistake. Now everything is compared to that one accomplishment. I can’t believe they could land a man on the moon . . . and taste my coffee! I think we all would have been a lot happier if they hadn’t landed a man on the moon. Then we’d go, They can’t make a prescription bottle top that’s easy to open? I’m not surprised they couldn’t land a man on the moon. Things make perfect sense to me now. Neil Armstrong should have said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for every, complaining, sob on the face of the earth.”

I have Time Warner Los Angeles, and you’d think I would have the same amount of problems I hear people and friends complain about, but I don’t. My service has been relatively pain-free and uninterrupted, until last night, which concerned and aggravated me a little more than usual after about an hour of no connection.

So what’s the first thing you do to find out exactly why there’s no internet. You pick up the phone to complain to your service provider, right? Yes! EVERYONE does. That ends up flooding their phone lines with technical problem calls where 1/4 of their daytime staff is left trying to figure out what went wrong and play host to a bunch of pissed off customers. Oh but your home phone doesn’t work because Time Warner are geniuses and tied your landline phone service to your modem… okay now you’re on your cell phone bugging your friends for answers.

So what ARE you supposed to do if the internet goes out? Get on Twitter. If you don’t have a cell phone with internet or text messaging capabilities, do yourself a favor and join everyone else in 2008. It’s the lifeline you never knew you had. You can update your status and/or receive updates, private messages, and replies on your phone through text messages which is toggled on/off in your account settings. The iPhone has an app called Twitterrific which allows access to your account and personal or public timeline.

So what exactly is this Twitter?

It’s a micro-blogging tool where each entry or update you send is limited to 140 characters, like a text message you would send on your phone. Much like your Facebook status, it is capable of broadcasting your words and injecting them into to a searchable public database where what you type has potential to attract others of similar Twitter tags and interests. If you have a Twitter account and a Facebook profile, you can link the two so your friends on both networks are linked to your online updates. Find out other reasons why you should start Twittering.

In addition to all the entertainment and self-indulging niceties it has potential to offer, it’s probably the greatest portable information tool you don’t know about. Last October, L.A.F.D. put the technology to use in the midst of the 2007 wildfires in California. On September 15th, Twitter broke news first about the Chatsworth Metrolink crash. From Wikipedia: Many people covered the unfolding event (November 2008 Mumbai attacks) on websites like Twitter and Flickr, which are largely clustered under search tags such as “mumbai” and “attack” (to which Twitter adds hashtags). The day after the attacks, the Indian government asked Mumbai citizens to cease updating Twitter with live coverage of police activity.

search.twitter.com

A lot of information can be gained by searching for ‘tags’ at http://search.twitter.com. I ended up picking up my iPhone to use Twitterrific and vent about how I’m left with not one scrap of internet after remaining on Time Warner’s tech support line for 20 minutes. Which is where an unmasked tech hero came to my aid after I sent out:

I refreshed my feed to find this pop up 2 minutes later:

Check out how many people are pissed off at Time Warner right now.

Thanks to @dewelch who was searching for “Time Warner” tags (which were trending) and sending out @replies to me and others in the area who were having problems last night. Public tech support and/or mass gripe session you won’t find anywhere else.

12/07-12/13 JustToiletPaper.com

Everyone needs toilet paper. But not everyone is into the same boring plain white roll where you’re left deciding how many ply’s you can afford this week. The only widely available option is the soft floral pattern that makes your bathroom time seem less like a job and more like a fresh romantic experience. That’s right. Throw on some smooth jazz, light a few candles. You just might want to have that special someone over for dinner now, and tell them how you really feel. Sure you’ve only been on a few dates, but who cares! You’re young and in love! Let the toilet paper do the talking!

Okay so you’re not a romantic. What if, I told you there was a whole site dedicated to JUST toilet paper. Oh yeah! Sounds great doesn’t it? Don’t let the the title of the site fool you though, I’ve found other products on their site clearly illustrating that they DO NOT in fact sell JUST toilet paper. I’d check the BBB if I were you and keep a mindful eye on that shipping status.

So you’re on the site, now what. Search and shop for that statement you can only express in the bathroom. Economy in a recession? Stocks got you down? Sit there and think while you stare at that roll of Currency Tissue. Nothing warms the heart better during the holidays than flushing money down the toilet with crap you can’t afford.

I was going through some old files on my computer when I found this chat log from last year. Basically I was having a conversation with my friend/bassist, James, on an instant message last November. We were talking about some band stuff when I just went off on the Pirates of the Caribbean song for a solid 5 minutes worth of typing.