Getcha Popcorn Ready

Well, it's finally football training camp time. The mandatory mini-camp is underway & I can hardly wait for the season to start.

Getcha Popcorn Ready - we'll have to add popcorn to our usual football menu of pizza, wings & beer.

Vintage Computer Sites Of Interest

Here are some sites that I visit whenever I feel like reading about old vintage computers. Not that I have much time to devote to the subject, but I just love reading about how computers were back "in the day".

http://www.old-computers.com/

http://www.1000bit.net or also http://www.1000bit.it - NOTE: 1000 is the binary number 8. In other words, if I have 1000 in base 2 numbers, it equals 8. Pretty clever huh? So it's really 8bit.com. Many of the computers on this site are also later 16-bit models, but hey, who's counting?

http://www.digibarn.com/

http://www.cpu-museum.com/

http://www.computercloset.org/

Good stuff. Oh, and follow your dreams.

Labbatt's Porter, And Federal Meats Bacon/Cheddar Patties

We've all heard of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Combining peanut butter with chocolate, makes for a good candy.

http://www.hersheys.com/reeses/

Well, I found 2 other great tastes that go great together: Labbatt's Porter beer, and Bacon/Cheddar hamburger patties from Federal Meats. And of course, the hamburgers are grilled, with mesquite smoking chips.




There was recently a sale on the Labbatt's Porter at the local beverage center. Buy one 6-pack, get one free. This made it a tempting offer.










Federal Meats has lots of cool little specialties, and these bacon & cheddar hamburgers are great. The only thing I don't like is they only come frozen, so I'm going to try my own recipe made from fresh ingredients someday soon.

















I used Kingford Mesquite chips. I also grilled up some sausages at the time.

The only thing wrong with this taste combo is when you switch back to regular burgers & beer. You take a taste and say "What the hell is this? I gotta get the good stuff again."

Marinated Chicken Breast Cutlets

It's been awhile since I've done a BBQ post, so here's one of marinated chicken breast cutlets, marinated in a lemon/pepper marinade. This really dresses up an otherwise bland piece of meat.

I cooked them using the indirect method, with the hot lump charcoal on one side of my Weber Kettle Grill, and the meat on the other side. With the cover on, and with some maple chucks burning along with the charcoal, and with some oak smoking chips made from genuine Jack Daniels oak aging barrels, the smoke flavor was a great combo with the lemon/pepper marinade.

Mmmmmm MMMMMM ! ! !

DEEEELISH.

Plus, when I was lighting the charcoal, I threw in some leftover grease from the kitchen, from bacon and so on. This helped to get the coals sizzling away a bit faster I would guess. Plus it had a nice bacon smell. As Homer Simpson would say: "Mmmmm, bacon."

Smokin'.

BASIC Program

This is my 80th post. YEAH! To celebrate, I decided to post about a recent endeavor, trying to type BASIC programs into my old Atari 800 computer. I realize this is very geeky. Oh well.

This is a little test program. It is a looping program that prints a number, starting with 1, then that number to the 2nd power, then that number to the 3rd power, then the number to the 4th power. To calculate these exponential numbers, the little microprocessor of the Atari 800 is really maxing itself out, at least with the 4th power.

Here we go:

10 FOR INDEX = 1 TO 10000
20 PRINT "=================="
30 PRINT INDEX
40 PRINT INDEX^2
50 PRINT INDEX^3
60 PRINT INDEX^4
70 PRINT
80 PRINT CHR$(128), CHR$(164), CHR$(123)
90 NEXT INDEX
100 END


Now give yourself 1,000 Geek Points if you can actually understand this code. HINT: it's known as BASIC. Personally, I have never encountered anything basic about writing a computer program. It's all hard to figure out.

Mark Martin - Wins Another RACE!!!!!!

Mark Martin wins another NASCAR Sprint Cup Race - WOOO HOOO!!!

Hendrick Motorsports is my favorite NASCAR racing team, and Mark Martin has 4 wins so far this year.

He is now in 11th place in the Sprint Cup Standings.

Chicagoland Speedway is where it all happened. Keep up the great racing Mark.

Keeping Track Of Gas Mileage

And now for something different...

Here's how I keep track of my vehicle's gas mileage. This procedure works well for me. I get all kinds of useful information about my vehicle from knowing how good it's gas mileage is.

For those of you who do not know what gas mileage means: it's how many miles the vehicle can drive while consuming one gallon of gasoline. You see, gasoline is a fuel, and it makes the vehicle move through the wonders of physics, chemistry, and electricity.

Since I have to buy gasoline before I can drive the vehicle, it's useful to know how much I'm going to need.

So I start with a full tank of fuel. I reset my trip odometer on the dashboard to zero. I drive wherever I have to go, then when it's time to get gas again based on the gas guage, I plan for a full tank. If I know how many miles I drove, then the number of gallons it takes to re-fill the gas tank can be used to check miles per gallon. Take the number of miles driven, then divide it by the number of gallons to refill the tank. That's the gas mileage, AKA miles per gallon.

EXAMPLE: I drove 200 miles according to my trip odometer. I refill the tank and it takes 10 gallons. That's 200 miles per 10 gallons - and through the wizardry of mathematics (or, using a calculator), I determine that I just got 20 miles per gallon on that last tankfull of gas.

Resetting the trip odometer to zero again, and leaving the gas station with a full tank, I'm ready to embark on my next journey, knowing I'm keeping track of how much gas I'll need over the long run.

I've recently been using my Garmin GPS device to keep track of what my average speed is each tankfull of gas. I've learned over the years that gas mileage is significantly influenced by 2 things outside of the vehicle itself: 1) overall temperature outside, and 2) average speed driven.

The warmer the temps outside, the more efficiently the engine burns fuel, and the better the miles per gallon rating becomes. Also, higher average speeds usually will improve gas mileage. Slower speeds caused by a lot of stop-n-go driving will lower overall gas mileage. Driving more miles on a highway will usually improve gas mileage.

SRV - One Great Guitarist

This post is a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughn. One great guitarist and bluesman, may he rest in peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GSpbuFSr2o

Happy 4th Of July !!!

Today is July 4th. Happy 4th to all Americans!!!

Then again, people in Britain are probably not celebrating this day. In London, I'll bet there are thousands of people sitting around at their favorite pubs going " OI!! Those f#ck!n& Yankees are all bloody worked up about their victorious rebellion agai-eenst the King!

Here's a video of an American flag made of dominoes - also made with the wrong number of stars in the blue field. Must be some outsourced video, oh well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acyfaAd1LV8

I can imagine the Al Quaida bastards might not be too happy about this day, nor Iran's recently elected president, and maybe not even that nutball in North Korea, but hey, you can't please everyone.

One reason I like to say "Oh, and follow your dreams" at the end of my posts is that I have the freedom to do so as I please. I can do what I want, when I want, and I don't need to get special permission from the government. I wouldn't be able to do this in many other countries.

Also check out this Muppets tribute to the 4th.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDA9NbPAK8o

Oh, and FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS!