cum grano salis — nobody likes a clever bastard

We had a bunch of fresh hot peppers from the Ministry of Peppers at the North Branch of our farm and decided to make some hot sauce. It’s probably the best way to preserve their fresh flavor. Plus, I am addicted to hot things. ;)

We used most of our habaneros for the base flavor and their pep; however, they are kind of a one trick pony when it comes to flavor. I find them a little boring after a while, so we added some arbols, jalapenos, and cayennes to fill it out.

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That more people talk about Sarah Palin’s legs, makeup, and inability to express a coherent thought, comparable to some of her peers, like, such as, Miss Teen USA South Cackalacky 2007, only shows that people are concentrating on her strengths as a “successful woman”. If she had any other strengths that were apparent, we would have a lot more to talk about.

Since she’s really just a model, I can’t see any of the sexism that she and her cabal have been assigning to this Newsweek cover. I figured that I would help them out.

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I handle my own network infrastructure and most of my PC and networking equipment is in a repurposed Ciprico RAID cabinet. It has a 240V fan tray on the top and I don’t really want it running all of the time because what’s in there right now doesn’t put out as much heat as a half ton of circa 1997 9GB disks would. I had a lot of options for purchasing something to do this, but being armed with the knowledge that most electronics equipment contains only a few bucks of parts and that the design of this would be a walk in the park, I just built my own.

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I have been migrating my old, dusty web page from its classy Apache mod_userdir site to WordPress. I’ve had this domain sitting around since 2000, so I figured I would finally put it to use. I’ve moved over most of the salvageable content such as the venerable Maki game and recipes. The rest will come as time allows.

The process has rekindled my hatred of PHP. This is not to say that it’s not a good language for its niche and that its libraries aren’t useful. Okay, strike what I said. What I really meant to say was that it has rekindled my hatred of other people’s PHP. [Read the rest of this entry...]

1 package bratwurst (about 8) (DO NOT USE VEAL BRATS OR KNACKWURST)
1 package brat buns
1 large jar Frank’s saurkraut
4 bell peppers (red, orange, yellow, purple, NOT green)
1 six pack of Beck’s or other cheapo German beer
some butter

1a. Fry brats until brown on both sides in a little butter in a deep skillet.
1b. Have a beer.
2. Drown brats with a bottle of beer and bring to a boil uncovered. Prick the brats all over the place with a fork while this is happening.
3a. While brats are trying to be boiled, clean out and slice up the peppers into narrow strips (I use red, purple, yellow, orange, but not green since they’re not very sweet and the colored ones are quite festive!)
3b. Have a beer.
4. When brats come to a boil, add peppers and saurkraut. Try to submerge the brats, kraut, and peppers in the beer.
5a. Return to a boil, simmer covered until peppers are soft and fall apart when forked. (Takes about 15-30 mins.)
5b. Have a beer.
6. Serve on a bun with kraut and peppers. Eat with last two bottles of beer.