New Year's Resolutions

Well, here we are at another New Year's Eve. Time to celebrate the beginning of a new year. I always wondered, if we're celebrating a new year, does that mean the old year sucked totally? Think about it. If this year is great, we would not celebrate the end of it. On the other hand, if the old year sucked, then we'd celebrate a new year since we can't wait to get rid of the old one. Substitute 'car' for 'year'. You would celebrate a new car if your old one was such a piece of crap that you had to get rid of it. If you have a new car but your old one is still pretty cool, then you get a new car that sucks, who celebrates that? But nooooooo, we just celebrate the new year without any idea of whether the new one will really be better. Oh well.


Here are my New Year's Resolutions:

1) Clean out the garage so I can actually park my truck in it.

2) Barbeque more. Much more. You may see many more food and BBQ posts on my blog soon.

3) Work on more electronics and computer projects. I have not put any posts up yet about my interests in electronics and computers. This will probably change.

4) Work on recording some of my original music I have written. This is something I've done in the past but never really finished.

5) Limit my resolutions to 4, then stop.



Whew, that sounds like a lot of work. Good thing I have one year to do it.

Christmas

Cristmas time with family - 2008.

Here are some pictures of the food and trees from our gatherings. Again, family members were shy about having their pictures on my blog, but I'm trying to wear them down.

Oh, and I got a Garmin. Yeay! I tried it out last night and it seems to work pretty well so far. I'm just glad it came with it's own battery.

Joys Of Owning Your Own Home - Part 2 - Snowstorms

Oh how I love my home. Normally I am quite proud of being able to do yardwork and landscaping on my own without having to hire a landscaper. Unfortunately, this also means I have to shovel snow myself. Here's a nice little video I took of our latest snowstorm here in Amherst, NY. I took this video AFTER I had already shoveled out the driveway. Looks like I'll being doing it again soon...

Are We There Yet?????

Here's a link to some info on when meat is done:

http://www.grillingcompanion.com/meat-doneness-temperatures/

The site has some good stuff on it.

http://www.grillingcompanion.com/

A good digital meat thermometer is a good investment for getting meat cooked enough to be safe, but not too much so you don't dry it out.

Time For Some Beer

OK People - Time For Some Beer!!!

The last few weeks I have sampled some good beer. I took a chance on something called Shipyard beer. I was hoping it would not taste like a shipwreck. I was not disappointed! Good beer.

The beer was good.
I sampled some during a recent Buffalo Bills football game.
The beer was good. The Bills were bad. The Bills looked like a SHIPWRECK! The beer was quite tasty.
The Bills are in business making lots of money. I hope the company that makes Shipyard beer is doing at least as good.
Well, there's always the Sabres...

The Toronto Bills?

I saw an interesting article in the Buffalo News about the Buffalo Bills playing in Toronto.

http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/519766.html

On the one hand, how obvious can it be that some people want to buy the Bills and move the team to T O? On the other hand, who in Toronto would want to go and watch a pro sports team that can't win a big game when it needs to? All those people are already Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fans. What if they don't have enough money left over after rooting for the Leafs? Maybe there would be enough, T O is a big city.

Tonight I Eat Steak

On this night - I eat STEAK!

I got a couple NY Strip steaks from Federal Meats. They looked good.

I decided to try one steak with Emeril's SouthWest rub, and the other one with a rub from Wegman's.

375 degrees for probably about 45 minutes. Flipped 'em over once after about 20 minutes and added some more rub to the side that was on the bottom.

Delicious. Emeril's rub - could have had some heat. I thought SouthWest style stuff was supposed to be hot. The Wegman's Rub - a nice hint of celery.

The verdict: Excellent steaks. Flavor. Texture. Aroma. I decided to leave veggies and bread off the menu so I had more room for steak.

Formula1 Racing - Goodbye Honda

So Honda is quitting Formula1 racing.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/motor/formula1/2008-12-05-honda_N.htm

This really sucks. Not that I love Honda or anything, but does this mean other car makers are in the same situation? Probably.

Honda makes the engines in the Indycar racing league also. I wonder if this means they are next on the chopping block.

F1 is saying they may start the season with only 18 cars.

$300 million bucks to compete - wow. I guess auto racing just has huge costs. Makes sense when you think about all the cars, parts, skilled techs & mechanics, all the tools you need, etc. Then travel expenses on top of that to visit racetracks around the world. And to add insult to injury, you finish second-last place out of what, 10 teams? Constructors they call them.

That's too bad.

Joys Of Owning Your Own Home - Part 1 - Patching Concrete

Oh how I love my home. Recently I worked on a project to patch some concrete sidewalks in the front yard by the road. The town sent me a letter saying I was a bad boy by not taking care of my sidewalks. I had to "repair" them by a certain deadline. They did not specify the exact nature of the repairs, except to say I could not allow any cracks to exist that were more than 1/2" wide, and I could not allow any part to be 1/2" taller than the next part. I guess this is to keep people who have trouble walking from getting injured or killed by the sidewalk's cracks. At first I said "I'll get right on it - yeah, really" but then I kept reading the letter and found something about getting fined if I did not comply. So naturally, I concluded I could patch the cracks rather than replace the whole section. Why pay someone else to do something you can do yourself? Especially today with the internet. I found all kinds of websites with info on how to patch concrete. The concept of what to do is fairly easy. The work needed to do it is not terribly physical unless you have to move conrete around in a wheel barrow. I did have aching muscles though.

Here are some "before" pictures. I thought it was very nice of the paint can operator to mark where the repairs were needed by the letter R.

First I had to get a hammer & chisel, and chop out the areas in the cracks. For the largest cracks I also had to get the weed-wacker out and carve out the mud, grass and roots from between the cracks. Dirty work. I wore goggles. I felt good about doing dirty work that requires a little muscle.

Here's a section with the biggest cracks in it.

Nice.

Here are some shots of the patched concrete.

Well I have to admit I actually had a good time doing this project. Ever since, when I see some freshly poured concrete as I drive around town, I feel like I'm part of a brotherhood. Huah!