Every Day Life – Work (Browsers | Web) – Ironman Training
birthday meal saving for posterity, pretty good steak – Penrose Oakland
Whole Mt. Lassen trout from Penrose Instagram page*
*we usually don't take photos of our own food
Two elements that the French Laundry in Yountville strives for 1) creating and working with a sense of urgency, and 2) doing things with finesse. Baby steps.
The new BMW X3 looks nice, definitely much more aggressive looking and less soccer mom. Can't wait to see this as an all electric vehicle with 270-300+ miles of range.
Apparently this thing has more ground clearance too. Not sure what's going on with the quasi-M branding but too bad a true M version with a manual isn't available. Otherwise, yea!
Pizzaiolo's fish stew (via Instagram)
Ingredients/Instructions
– saute until translucent
3-4 tablespoons of olive oil
2/3 cup finely chopped shallots
3 cloves garlic
1 small fennel bulb thinly sliced
– add and bring to boil
1 1/2 cup of sauvignon blanc
– add and simmer covered for 25-30 minutes
1 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
3 8 oz bottles of clam juice
1/2 cup of water
2 pinches of red pepper flakes
5-6 fresh sprigs of thyme
1 bay leaf
– finish broth
1 tsp fresh chopped thyme leaves
2 tablespoons of butter
– saute separately and add
1 1/2 lbs of fish, monkfish or halibut (or 1lb of U-10 scallops)
– finish/garnish
1 lb littleneck clams 5 minutes
1 lb of shrimp 2 minutes
1 lb of PEI mussels 1 minute
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley
serve w/ toast and aioli
I love the non-touchbar version of the MacBook Pro. Looking down at a keyboard to find buttons doesn't make sense to me so went with the non-touchbar model. I could also complain about the price and battery life (which you can do every time) but the specs and design are solid. There seems to be quite a few lukewarm reviews out there but that's mostly because people are in need of ad/page views.
The MacBook Pro is still the best laptop in the market by a wide margin from a quality, design, and spec perspective. The Dell XPS laptops and Razer Blade laptops (stealth version) are also ones I'd consider.
Specs:
The sad thing about the MacBook Pro is that it's pretty close to complete as a product (which is what you would expect after 25 years!). You can certainly improve on the internals but this thing can't really get any thinner, lighter, louder, or brighter and no more ports to remove.
Of course a laptop can always get faster but this thing is already pretty fast and the bottleneck is on the connectivity and the server side. The real innovation is happening w/ the iPad and iPhone, still quite a few things that can be done there.
So yet again, this particular MacBook Pro defines laptop because there's really very little left to do to make this an even better product. However, I'm curious to see how Chromebooks continue to evolve (especially versus tablet improvements) since a browser based OS or just a web based experience is what most folks use and need, and a significantly cheaper price point gets the Web out there to more people.
A couple of nice, pretty mid-life crisis things to possibly purchase at age 40 or 50 but mostly to look at and pine for considering it ain't ever gonna happen :-) These two things and that boat (ok, yacht) I posted last time.
I want a boat — Beneteau Oceanis 38.1. I don't really want one but since we already have a waffle maker…
Specific varietals of fruits and vegetables to seek out especially in good grocery stores and farmer's markets in the Bay Area/Northern California:
Several years back, I got really tired of buying way too expensive Gillette razor blades, $35 for 8 cartridges or $4.38 per blade. The actual razor that you can buy from Gillette is cheap, $11.50 or less. This is of course the razor, razor blade model of pricing.
I got really sick of it so I flipped the model and I went and bought a $30 razor (the one pictured above) and nice razor blades that cost $0.32 each or 30 blades for $9.00. Yup, $0.32 per old school razor blade versus $4.38 per Gillette blade. That's kind of a big difference.
There is slightly more work since I need to use shave soap, 3 for $14. You can get away with not using shaving cream/soap with a Gillette razor/cartridge. Shaving cream or gel are fine too but shave soap is cheaper and lasts a really long time. With shave soap, I can rock out with a $12 badger shave brush to lather up the soap which is kind of a pleasant experience making it and applying the lather to my face. There's some cost savings down the road here but it's negligible.
I finish up my shave with a splash of Osage Rub, it's inexpensive and makes our bathroom smell like a barbershop for a hot second. I do get nicked sometimes and I'll use a styptic pencil to fix it when that happens.
So finally tally:
All those commercials for Dollar Shave Club had been bugging me. I don't get why you need to join a club to buy expensive razor blades at a slight discount. Get a decent razor and buy the old school razor blades for $0.32 and you won't need to join a club to shave your face. I've already been priced gouged by Gillette for over 20 years, I don't need to be slightly less gouged by some startup.
End rant.
The new MacBook is nice but it's not the upgrade for my current setup. At this rate, I won't be upgrading from a MacBook Pro until 2016, darn. I'm hoping the next MacBook Pro has at least:
I'm still rocking a MacBook Pro from mid-2009 and it still feels more than fast enough. There isn't an OS upgrade or any specific apps that makes me feel like I'm slogging in mud. Minor nits are the effective 4 hour battery life and its weight of ~4.5lbs. That's about it though, can't really complain.
The new 13" Dell XPS also looks pretty good. Too bad it runs Windows and it would still be better to wait for a Skylake version of it.