Greg

Memorial Day and more dental goodness

Just back in from a few days away in Idaho at Suzanna's lake house...  It's amazing how nice it is to get away where there's not really any schedule or required things to do or places to be.  Unfortunately I realized too late that I had forgotten my camera, so no pics from me.  Fun facts from the trip:

• Lake Pend Oreille really seems to be missing some punctuation.
• The lake is so deep apparently submarines are tested at the lake.
• Lake water in the end of May is COLD.  And I can say this not having actually jumped into the lake - only just stepped a few feet in and then watched  Hal, Aaron, Suzanna and Joelle shivering in the water.  With Aaron repeating “it's cold it's cold it's cold“ the entire time he was in the water. :)
• There's a castle for sale nearby!  check out: http://www.castlemagic.com/castlesalecolor.html  How cool is that?!?!?!? 
• Around dusk, gnats and other small bugs get an incredibly suicidal tendency.  At one point I seriously thought it was raining due to the sound and number of bugs hitting the windshield.
• Memorial Day traffic sucks.  About 90 miles from Seattle on the way back I90 turned into rush hour and slowed to stop-and-go for about 10-15 miles.  It could have been worse though - there was a 3-person fatality wreck on I-5 south during the same timespan...

And first day back, what do I do but celebrate the return to work by going to the dentist... I had a regular cleaning a week or so ago and they saw a couple cavities that needed fillings.  It wasn't a huge suprise because the last cleaning they mentioned that a couple cavities were starting up and when I got the wisdom teeth pulled a little while back, the dentist mentioned them as well.  But a 8:20am appointment to get your teeth drilled isn't really a nice way to step back from a holiday.  One thing I used for the first time during the appointment was the “movie googles” - basically it's hooked up to some headphones and has little screens so that only you see and hear the movie that's playing.  This is really cool, but doesn't quite work if you're tilted back so that someone can do some work in your mouth.  Probably for something like an airplane ride it'd work much better since you'd have your head up... 

The important safety/health tip of the day is to brush and floss regularly.

SPAM!

I'm not really sure what happened.  Probably, I bought something online from a less-than-reputable dealer and they resold my email address or something along those lines.  I now regularly get spam.

The mystery of it is that for years people would tell me about their hotmail accounts getting hit with lots of spam and I wouldn't understand it.  I would get  maybe one or two pieces a week.  Now, I'm finding five or six pieces in my 'junk mail' folder in hotmail three days a week.

Which leads to some questions:

• Why now?  I've had the email account for roughly four years.  Is there a new harvesting technique that just found me, or has a merchant I've done business with just sold out?  I've been using a trick for a while where whatever I sign up for I use a kinasewitz.net email address specific to it (it has that site's name encoded in the address).  So far, the spam isn't coming from one of those, so no way to track it back :(
• Why in clumps?  I've read that hotmail does some tricks with delaying delivery and send times of what it thinks might be spam to deter folks, but I doubt that means that they would deliver such in a clump.  Is it more likely it's all coming from one sender who just dumps a bunch of spam into the world every few days?

In other news, I've been contacted by Lowe's and the prodigal sink has returned.  So I'm basically all set to proceed on the kitchen starting Monday!

[Edit below]:
Times on this have gone weird lately.  No, I didn't really post this 5/19 @ 4:41 am, I posted it at 7:42am PDT.  Have to track down where it's taking the date/time settings from...

Best Ribs in Seattle

Back to the 'best of seattle' for restaurants list that I was compiling.  This time it's time to talk about ribs.  A few ground rules and prejudices to clarify from the get go:

• It's a myth that you can't get good ribs outside of the south.  i'm not claiming the ones in seattle would rank as the best in, say, Austin, OKC, or KC, but they're certainly good enough that you shouldn't avoid eating BBQ in the region...
• For those not familiar with the different styles of bbq, I recommend checking out this overview for some background reading: http://encyclopedia.lockergnome.com/s/b/Barbecue
• I prefer something closer to the memphis style 'dry' ribs.  They can be cooked/basted in a sauce, but I don't want to eat something that's absolutely slathered in sauce when it's on the table.  Also, unless there's a good reason to steer to the beef ribs - such as there's no pork available - pork ribs are the thing.
• If you're in a new town and looking for good ribs or good bbq in general, find the dodgiest looking place that you can.  In the cosmic balance of bbq, the more rundown the place looks the better the quality of bbq.

Top of the class:
Home cooked though this largely depends on how good you are at BBQ'ing and what style of ribs you prefer...  In my humble opinion, I can smoke a mean rib - and there's something nice about sitting back and having a beer or two while your dinner slowly prepares itself!

That said, my ribs lost in the only head-to-head comparison that has occured.  I blame the difference in cooking methods!  ;-)  In fairness, Jeremy makes a really nice, bit spicier/peppery-ier rib.  Has a much stronger smokey flavor than my ribs.  Also, his cooking methods handle travel much better - the last stage after smoking is a slow bake in the oven with the sauce on the ribs...  Doesn't really matter if that happens at his place or whereever they're being served.  The second bake with my ribs just dries them out :( Even I will admit that that night, his ribs beat my ribs hands down.

Best you can buy:
Milt's (citysearch review): Actually, his ribs aren't as good as the bbq sandwich (shredded pork or beef), but the feel of the place is right and Milt's a friendly guy who runs the place.  The sauce varies from a bit sweet to smokin' hot depending on what you ask for and how much of a smartass you are.  Carl once kept egging Milt on until he finally went into the back and whipped up a special version....  The tears and sweat flowing from Carl showed how well he could compete with The Man if Milt wanted.

I'm not ashamed to be seen eating them:
Dixie's (citysearch review):  Home of “The Man” - an incredibly hot sauce that you're insane if you eat.  While nothing too terrifically special, it does get a lot of ambience points for being started out of an auto repair place and still being located in the converted building.  The line puts you off though, so it's really only worth going to it if you're subjecting a new person to “the man.“

Frontier Room (citysearch review): It seems wrong to include anywhere in Belltown as having good bbq.  Frontier room is a bit prententious, so I was a little bit suprised at how good the ribs were.  The meat was a little bit overwhelmed by too strong of a smoke flavor but if you're trying to get good ribs and not wanting to leave the downtown area, this may be the best choice...  Try not to be too annoyed at the over-the-top decor and how packed the place is.

Tony Roma's (citysearch review): You probably have one in your town or a town nearby.  There are 8 within 20 miles of downtown seattle - and no I didn't know that until I just counted on the citysearch page. :)  The baby-back ribs are a little bit sweet but suprisingly good given that it's a chain and so widespread.  The sides are of marginal quality though...  You're definitely there for the ribs.  Probably the only place I've seen offer three sizes/options (half/middle/full rack).  The mid-size is just right if you also have someone who is going to “sample“ a few ribs from your plate (Clodagh!).

Rock Bottom: One of the main problems with Rock Bottom's ribs is the inconsistent quality.  I've gotten them and they've been close to perfect, and I've also gotten them and they've been charred on large parts of them.  Have a stout with the ribs though, since the sauce is made from the same.

I know the commercial is catchy, but please please do not considering haveing ribs here:
Chili's: Yes we all know the tune.  Sing it with me.  “I want my Chiiiiiiiiili's baby back ribs...  BBQ sauce.“  Now that you've sung the song, STAY AWAY FROM THE RIBS.  Order something else instead.  Try the magarita grilled chicken, it's actually quite nice.  If you really must have ribs that day, you should strongly consider going elsewhere.  Even if you have to leave the rest of your party behind.  The ribs are a rubbery and the sauce is nothing to speak of.  I made the mistake of trying them twice, which is 1.5 times too many.  You may consider Applebee's and others equivelent

Historical (and honorable) mention:
Cheesecake Factory:  The cheesecake factory HAD a plate of baby-back ribs on the menu up until a year or so ago.  Unexpectedly, these were really really nicely done and until they stopped serving them they were the best baby-back ribs that I had had in seattle.

Modern day correspondence, or "how I suck at email"

Hi, my name is Greg and I am a bad emailer.  See - I even just make up verbs when working in a purley electronic form of communication.  Actually, my vocabulary has been declining at an insane pace over the last few years.  It's like dealing with computer people for the majority of the day five days a week isn't actually a good way to get better at English and proper grammar.  Go figure.

But I digress. 

We get an insane amount of email at work.  Probably related to that, I suck at email at work and I suck at personal email.  What do I mean by that?  Basically, any email gets skimmed quickly when it arrives so I can figure out how critical it is to respond immediately.  Things like “answer this or get fired” have a pretty rapid turnaround.  Everything else eventually gets a response that day or week unless Outlook tricks me into thinking I've already responded^*.  Periodically I completely clean up my inbox and reach a state of virtual nirvana and am immediately punished by the email gods by recieving a deluge of new email. 

What does this mean for personal emails?  Basically, the same thing as above only the response times are exponentially worse!  I use another account for most personal mails and read everything fairly quickly (same day).  When I get an email from someone I haven't spoken to in a long time I have great intentions of crafting an in-depth meaningful email back.  Which waits...  and waits... and sometime MONTHS later gets written and sent.  And sometimes just never get finished, written and sent at all.

Why bring this up?  I've just spent part of the evening catching up on long-lost personal correspondence!  I didn't get very far down the list and I wouldn't call any of the mails particularly earthshattering, incredibly deep or detailed.  But it is a first step.  Now if I can just write the rest of the people I've been meaning to, and do so on a quasi-regular basis then I'll be doing quite well indeed.

Oh, and if you happen to be reading this and have sent me personal email that I haven't responded to, please don't be offended.  I'm not ignoring you on purpose.  Send me another email with how you're doing.  I'll reply.  I swear.

^*There's a feature in Outlook where if you start to respond to something and leave it open too long, it marks the email with a 'responded' icon.  It has no actual relation to whether you ever SENT the response or not.  Which, since I open stuff to respond all the time and sometimes close them without saving a draft, there's a percentage of things that just never get a response until I get an angry follow-up mail :(

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Updates:
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5/14/05 - Edit to clean up grammar and punctuation a little bit.  I think I was right in saying my English is going to crap.  Not claiming that the text is hugely perfect but it should be a bit more readable.  I might actually be addicted to commas. :|

End of April/beginning of May rewind...

After the torrid posting of April, things have cooled off here...  I've been doing various things and stuff.  What does that mean?  Well, I haven't played golf in a while because I cut open my palm a couple weeks ago (actually the day before the I was scheduled to play).  That's what I get for doing the dishes :(.  Clodagh's back from Ireland, and it sounds like it was a very good trip.  There's even some progress that was made on wedding preperations!  While she was gone, it did take a bit of getting used her not being here, and suprisingly again to having her here after she returned - 10-11 days is a lot longer than it sounds...  Strange.

I'm still partially on my quest to acquire a lake-worthy vessel but am being harried by the lack of a place to put said boat when not in use.  Moorage, it turns out, is QUITE expensive.  Likely, this one will wait for another year or two.  In the meanwhile, there's a place that we've rented a boat once before (http://www.theelectricboatco.com/) that likely we'll do a time or two again this summer.  A nice way to get on the water occasionally without having to feel obligated to do so every free moment of your life.

Other than that, I've had another birthday - celebrated it by taking the day off from work (I do that every year).  It's really nice to be able to not work on your birthday :) Didn't do much on my birthday itself (the weather was a bit crappy), but on Sunday we went down to the Boeing Museam of Flight - I'll put up the pictures and more on that later this month.

Lastly, the kitchen remodel.  I'll be posting pictures as this progresses [Edit: pictures so far are here]. The cabinets have now arrived and after a bit of an adventure are even inside the condo!  Apparently Lowe's hadn't informed the installation people of the time the cabinets would arrive so there's a slight delay before they actually get installed - but as of Monday (May 16) we should resume progress.  After that it's just a matter of getting the countertops measured, fabricated, and installed.  Why do I have a feeling that some of the things aren't going to fit quite right and there's going to be more delay?  This initial delay is actually a bit OK since UPS has apparently lost one of our sinks - we had two (a bar and regular kitchen sink) on order that should have been in last week.  Instead I got a call saying that one is lost and there's little hope that UPS will actually find it.  How does a company as technologically advanced lose track of packages?  It's not like someone stole it and is giving a 'fell off the truck' discount to a friend - it's a bloody sink, not a computer or mink coat or something!