Mildly Hurtful Sarcasm

Meaningless ranting, just like everybody else.

Monday, September 28, 2009

My new menu item VII - College years nostalgia II

I started liking Mountain Dew when I was in college. Remember those do-the-dew-dude commercials? One even sported Jackie Chan with the Hong Kong skyline as backdrop.

Back in school I used to sneak in those recruiting information sessions that served food no matter I was looking to get hired or not. Pizzas and sodas only mostly but I liked pizzas anyway and that saved me food money. One night all the Cokes and Pepsis were gone. Growing up I had always stuck with the mainstreams: Pepsi, Sprite, etc, but this time it was between Dr Pepper and Mountain Dew.

I did the Dew, and became the dude.

I don't know if it is the green or the sugar but it stands out from other sodas, it tastes a little different, a more delightful.

Since then whenever Mountain Dew is served, it would be my choice. My company's break room used to have free Mountain Dew's too so for the last X years I would have it regularly during the day. Blood sugar level is just about the only thing that keeps from having more.

A week ago while grocery shopping, I came across the Mountain Dew Voltage. I didn't even know it comes in blue now (haven't been soda shopping for a while). Wacky, couldn't resist.



Somehow it reminds me of the many nights sitting on that cushy couch in that little condo I stayed in my last year in college, chowing Lay's KC Masterpiece and pouring down a can of ice cold Dew.

Verdict on the Voltage: smells like Wisk, tastes like Listerine, I don't understand how could have won the competition. I regret not voting.

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Thursday, September 24, 2009

My new menu item VI - College years nostalgia I

My second year in graduate school I lived in a 400 sq ft condo, top floor corner with a balcony. It wasn't the finest accommodation in the world but it was a very quiet homey little place. About a couple weeks after I moved in, there was a mini explosion, a short circuit of some sort I guess, that burnt a hole on the electric range. For the next 9 months, I was stuck with a little plug in electric range from Walgreens, limiting my cooking abilities... who am I kidding, I made dinner every night just the same.

As a college student, cooking for oneself, I had a strategy. Simplicity was the key, ingredients had to be versatile (so I could stock up when they were on sale), and quick to fix up. One quintessential Chinese dish I made so often that year was black beans green pepper chicken au rice.

Tonight I revisited this dish that I haven't made in a long time. The ingredients are very simple: salted black beans, green bell peppers, and chicken cubes seasoned with soy sauce and pepper.



Just pour everything into a fry pan heated with cooking oil and stir. Served with rice, and hot tea.

The chicken can be breasts, or when drumlets are on sale I'll boil them up a bit to make them easier to debone, but that's an extra step. Green bell peppers can be substituted with onions, but that's trickier: they need to be added half way at the right moment, you don't want your onion over or under cooked in this dish. And, resist garlic temptation.

Brought back a lot of memories.

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Monday, September 21, 2009

The Emmy Awards 2009

Well, I guess contacts are out, glasses are in. There has been an unusual number of people wearing theirs tonight: Simon Baker, Keifer Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, Dana Delany, and more; and they are real reading glasses too... oh my.

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Thursday, September 17, 2009

Windows 7 test drive

Since March I have been working on porting software to Windows 7. Verification tasks mostly though something broke with Internet Explorer 8. And I had refreshed my main desktop at work to a Windows 7 as well, (along side my 10.5.6 OS X), so I have a good 6+ months of experience to comment on it.

It's over hyped. Period.

There have been a few (major) blunders in Windows Vista but Service Pack 1 had pretty much fixed them all. Personally I just think it's human nature overdo everything. They've definitely over-bashed Windows Vista as a major OS update to the code base. For people who had used Windows Vista with SP2 on a regular basis, other than the occasional sluggishness in file copy, there has not been any noticeable difference in performance between it and Windows 7. All those praises about the new OS on the web, it's just pumping people's expectation to a grand disappointment I expect.

For those who have been using Microsoft's product for a while (that is, every one of us), you should know the window docking feature is not new. What is new is the shake gesture, nice, but I don't find myself using that that often. Preview from the task bar is OK, but it's certain nothing you can't live without.

What I can't live without? Docking Windows Media Player to the task bar. What were they thinking!! Windows Media Player 11, like iTunes, minimizes nicely to the task bar so you can view info of currently playing, rewind/forward, control volume, etc all without a window floating around.



In Windows Media Player 12 (the default in Windows 7), you just can't. And it doesn't even have the transparent frame anymore. WMP 12 sucks.


Windows Media Player 11 with its translucent frame



Windows Media Player 12 doesn't look nearly as good

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