Rainy Day on Friday

Since the car wouldn't start again, I got a ride into work again. The weather this morning didn't allow me to walk home, so a coworker gave me a ride home.

On the way home, we stopped at Country Kitchen and had a great time. After that, I arrived home. I set my portable computer back up for mining bitcoins. The dishes were cleaned. Now it's time for bed. Later, world.

Making a Choice: Walking to and From Work

Last night, my car refused to start.  It's one of those strange things where if I waited long enough, the engine would have received the spark and the engine would have turned.  Thanks to the current room mate, I was able to get a ride to work.  I found out that it took me 48 minutes to walk home.  So I need to leave about an hour and a half for now in order to be able to walk to work.  Yes, I have decided to give walking to work a go.  Not only will I be in better shape, but I'll save some gas as well.

In the meantime, I'm going to have to wait to show all of you the cheap way to make ramen.  I'll give you a hint.  It involves a hot pot, a big enough bowl, and something to cover the bowl with.  My method of cooking ramen is more convenient and will save you more electricity.  I also did another round of laundry, so I should be good until next Wednesday.  While doing laundry, I worked on the main publication from my website a bit more.

Well, that's all for now.  I hope you all have a great afternoon.  See you later, world.  ;)

Weekend's Over Wednesdays: A Kitchen Experiment.

Instead of using hamburger, I used three cans of salmon.

 I spent all day Monday sleeping.  Then I spent all Tuesday with my girlfriend.  One of the things I cooked was a Great Value Cheeseburger Skillet Meal.  I had to go buy some milk and one pound of ground beef.  I decided today that I wanted some more, but I didn't have any more burger to cook with.  I did have cans of salmon though, so I decided to perform a bit of an experiment.

Since the recipe calls for one pound of ground beef, that means I need as close to 16 ounces as possible.  Each can of salmon is five ounces, so three would be close enough.  I simply skipped the browning burger portion of the cooking and went straight to mixing everything in.

Yum!  :)

After bringing it to a boil and simmering, I let it set while stirring on occasion as the directions called for.  I went about my business while waiting 14 minutes for the thing to cook.  After that, I let it sit for a little while so the sauce could thicken and the mixture could cool down.

The taste was decent.  It's obvious that the salmon had a significant influence on the flavor of this particular cuisine.  I still think it was a worthy experiment anyway.  Over the next several days, I plan on showing everyone how to make meals on the cheap as well.  Tomorrow's topic of choice will involve ramen noodles.  Yes, there is a cheaper, better alternative to stove top cooking that doesn't involve a microwave.

Seeing as how it's the end of the weekend for me, I get to go back to work tonight.  It will be interesting to see how I manage to pull off doing laundry seeing as how I'm getting low on funds at the moment.  If you have friends with washers and dryers, negotiate with them.  It will be much cheaper than using a laundry mat.  ;)

That's all I have for today.  I know I skipped a couple of days of blogging, but I was too tired, busy, etc.  I do try to make up for it though with multiple postings in one day.  Feel free to share this recipe modification and other posts everywhere you can.  Have a blog you want me to read?  Let me know in the comments below, and I'll give it a look see.  Talk to you later, world.  :)

Updating the Portable

I have an HP Pavilion dv7 notebook. It has a triple core AMD Phenom, a Radeon 4200 series GPU (battery saving), a Mobility Radeon HD 5400 series with 512 MB of its own RAM, two 320 GB hard drives, a nice big screen, a Blu Ray drive, and other goodies. This system is quite the power house. I will admit that on Linux Mint 12, I can't switch to the higher powered graphics, but that's ok. Now off to Facebook to fulfill a request or two. Later world!

Mission Accomplished: Dishes Are Done!

Ever have that feeling of accomplishment?  Man, it feels so good finishing something that should have been done days ago.  I need to quit slacking off when it comes to doing the dishes.

Take that, dishes!

Terrific Tuesday: March 20, 2012

I slept all day yesterday.  I guess I had to recover from work, which can get stressful at times, especially with changes coming down the line that make no sense.  We'll see what happens.  Ideally, I'll build up enough in my 401k to be able to find another job, cash out of said 401k, and pay off a massive amount of debt in the process.  Again we'll see what happens in the next 12-18 months.  Speaking of people needing money (i.e. more than I do at the moment)....

Ken Starks is one who I consider a friend.  He is the infamous HeliOS, the same person who has been giving computers with Linux preinstalled to children in need (and on occasion, to exceptionally bright students).  He is now having to battle cancer yet again, and as we all know, that isn't cheap.  Diane, his partner, cares so deeply about his well being.  She is now asking for help whether he wants her to or not.  I think she made the right call, and she could very well be the next miracle that happens to him.  You might want to visit his website as well so you know what he does for a living.

Meanwhile, I've been running Linux Mint 12 for quite some time now.  I like what it has to offer thus far, and kudos to Clem and crew for offering the myriad of choices as well.  For those who have been sleeping under a rock, Ubuntu is trying to use Unity as a unifying interface for both stationary and mobile systems.  The problem is that old habits die hard, and quite a few people don't want anything to do with that or GNOME Shell from GNOME 3.  There's MATE for those used to traditional GNOME 2.  The Linux Mint team has also put out Cinnamon, which is a different shell for GNOME 3.  I have mainly ran MATE (the release that comes with 12, not the updated ones from the other repository), GNOME Shell with Mint's extensions, and as of late... LXDE on my ZaReason Breeze 3110.  I like LXDE so far as it fits my needs while being lightweight.

Speaking of which, I'm also thinking about doing a custom spin of a distro of my choice to run bitcoin mining software on.  It would consist of a light interface like LXDE or plain OpenBox along with a Java virtual machine and the BitMinter client.  That's right.  I mine bitcoins for the fun of it at the moment, especially since it's trading at around $5 USD at the moment.  ;)

If the weather cooperates, I may spend some more time with my girl Heather in Sheppard Park.  Otherwise, we'll have to come up with an alternative.  I better be productive and do dishes or something.  Talk to you later, world.  XD

Quick Laundry Before Work

The best part about being full time at night where I'm at is that I have consistent nights off. The challenge comes is in transitioning back to nights. It would be easier to just be a night owl all seven days of the week, but what's the fun in that? ;)

Right now, I'm thinking about what I'm going to do for lunch (1 or 2 am depending). I'm also going to have to do some more laundry in the morning as well as pay some bills. Money talks, and mine keeps saying goodbye as of late. One thing's for sure; after doing a massive ton of laundry tomorrow, I'm gonna have to do some negotiating with my friends. After all, doing laundry at a friend's place is much cheaper than going to the laundry mat all the time.

I'm also going to have to be more frugal too. After all, how am I suppose to build wealth if I'm spending money all the time? I have plenty of ramen and chicken vienna sausages. All I really need is a few other things, and I'll be set. I might also resort to selling a few things as well. After all, spring is sneaking up on us. Why not get some cleaning done?

I better get going. The caffeine I've consumed is not enough. I need some more. Good night, world.

Weekend's Over Wednesday: Well Wishes to HeliOS

The toughest part about working the graveyard shift anywhere is the transition in sleep patterns from the weekend to the work week.  My work week starts Wednesday night and ends on Monday morning.  Monday and Tuesday nights are my nights off.  When I'm off, I tend to enjoy as much of the day as possible.  That means staying up as long as possible on Monday and sleeping that night so I can enjoy Tuesday as much as possible.  Then I get to sleep most of Wednesday away.  It's a vicious cycle, but it pays the bills.

The industry I work in at the moment: retail.  So I get to interact with a number of people throughout the night and into the morning.  At least I get paid this Thursday, so it can't be all bad.  Luckily, I'm getting a bonus on top of what I normally make, so the extra bit of money will help.

Before I go back to bed for a while longer, I would like to give my well wishes to Ken Starks.  He has been a tireless proponent of free and open source software.  His charity has given away computers to kids whose parents could not afford them otherwise.  He is currently down, but knowing him, not out.  May you have a speedy recovery.  Talk to you later, world.  :)

Playing the Part of the Sheppard

So here we are at Sheppard Park in Warrensburg. We're expecting a few others to join us in a few minutes.

Tuesdays Are Teriffic. Sometimes.

Good afternoon world. I'm currently sitting in a chair waking up. I decided to experiment with mixing some protein powder with some coffee. So far it tastes pretty decent. I'm actually going to hang out witg my girlfriend to do some window shopping and possibly taje some pictures. I'll hopefully get some more stuff done later today as well. Tata for now. ;)

A Good Day

My walk went pretty well. I got to hang out with Miriam and Jake, two friends of mine. Even better news is that Miriam now has plenty of yarn to make all sorts of things. I was hoping to work on my site some more, but alas. I am tired and need to go to bed. I'm just glad that I'm able to blog from my phone. I do miss general purpose blogging. Anyway, time for bed. Good night world.

Personal Blog is Back Up and Running. Yay!

I gotta say.  I like Blogger's new layout.  It's like I"m writing a document, which is how this blogging thing should work.  I still have my website, but I think I'll keep that separate in a sense.  It's here that I can get more personal with all of you.  So tune in to find out the day to day goings on of my life.  I might post later today, but my overall goal is to post at least once a day.  So have a great day everybody.  I think I'll lift my dumb bell, snack a little, shower, then go out for a great big walk.  Laterz!  ;)