Improv Broccoli Salad

Last night I needed a side dish, so I would be eating something other than just meat for dinner.

I've had some pretty good broccoli salads in the past, and that seemed like it would go well with barbeque beef brisket, but I had never made it before. But since I had just bought a head of broccoli, I thought I'd give it a go.

And ya know what? It turned out great! Not bad for four ingredients.

1 head of broccoli, cut up into smallish, bite-size pieces

(as small as you have patience for)

1 apple, cut up into small pieces

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup poppy seed salad dressing (I'm sure it would work with pretty much whatever type you want to try)

Combine everything in a bowl, stir together, and consume. Makes about four good size servings and is darn tasty.

23:59:60?!

The concept of the leap second is fascinating to me. Since our definition of a second isn't actually based on the length of a day (the time it takes for the Earth to rotate on its axis one time), rather the vibrations of a cesium atom, and since the gravitational energy transferred to the moon through tidal forces are slowly slowing the earth down, they've gotta throw a leap second in every once in a while. Most recently on June 30th, which apparently causes some computer servers to pee themselves a little.

It would be totally weird to see your clock go from 59 seconds to 60 seconds, then back to zero seconds instead of the usual 59 to 0 pattern. I might pee myself a little if I wasn't expecting it.

Kinda sad the moon is drifting away though. :(

Read about it at Accuweather.

Doodle a Drive-in or D-Day?

I love Google's occasional doodles on their homepage, and I love the evolution from the early, simple ones to the latest HTML5 craziness.  But I've never really understood how they have chosen which historical occasions and figures to represent.

For example, today, June 6, is the anniversary of D-Day, the day in 1944 that Allied troops stormed the Nazi held beaches of southern France and began the eventual push towards victory in World War II.  9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded.  It was kind of a big deal.

But on the Google homepage today there is an homage to the first drive-in movie theater, which opened on the same date in 1933.  Really neat presentation and very well done, but the gravity of the events aren't the same.



That being said, while D-Day 1944 was a great victory for our side, a bunch of people lost their lives and I'm sure it wasn't a pretty picture.  The opening of the first drive-in movie theater, on the other hand, is a shoe-in for awesome, lite-hearted remembering for those old enough and exploration for those too young to have ever been.

And I love drive-in movies and the culture that they represent, so I'm definitely not unhappy with their selection.  But maybe Google will do something D-Day related to the 80th anniversary in 2014.  I hope they do.

CyanogenMod 7.2 on LG G2x

I've been using my first Android smartphone, the T-Mobile G2x (LG Optimus P999) - the first dual core smartphone out there - for about a year now and I'm still pretty happy with it.  Of course, I can't ever leave well enough alone, so after dealing with the random rebooting issues for the first few months and imaptiently waiting to see if LG or T-Mobile was going to do an over the air update to fix it, I went the Root and ROM route with CyanogenMod 7 last August (see this post for more info).

All has been well, and the usability and reliability gains over the stock ROM have been astounding.  My battery life is literally 50% better than stock, I get the notification lights that I so desperately missed, my phone only shuts off when I tell it to, and I get to have a slight smug superiority over those with stock phones.  ;)

But since Android 4.0 / Ice Cream Sandwich launched, oh, seven months ago now, I've been hoping it would trickle down to my, now old, phone in the form of CyanogenMod 9.  There seems to be a pretty good enthusiast base for my phone still, and there has been good progress mentioned in some of the forums, but no stable builds for my phone yet.

Since I needed to do something with my phone, and since CyanogenMod 7.2 RC2 had been released earlier this month, I decided to flash that to my phone and see what the differences were.  As always, I got nervous and searched for instructions (the most clear were here), but everything went extremely smoothly.  (Here's a good place to start get started modding your T-Mobile G2x.)

And the verdict is... there's no obvious difference.  But as least I can rest easy knowing that my phone is as up to date as it can be at the moment.

I Think I'll Reflect On The Federal Reserve...

If you've got an extra 75 minutes on your hands and want to learn about the origins and mission of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank (and who doesn't?), then you should definitely tune in to the Fed Chairman's four-part lecture series at George Washington University.

Ben Bernanke delivered his first lecture to a business class called "Reflections of the Federal Reserve and its Place in Today's Economy" today (March 20) and the Chairman is scheduled to lecture again on March 22, 27 and 29 from 12:45 - 2pm Eastern time (10:45am to 12:00pm for us in the Mountain zone).

I watched today's live stream and was definitely not bored, nor did it feel totally over my head.  Having just heard about it this morning on the radio, I obviously didn't do the assigned reading - and I'm not sure that I will - but Mr Bernanke did a great job of covering the "Fundamentals, History, and Principles of Central Banking" in a way that even someone in a flyover state like me could understand.  ;)  He was a university professor for several years, after all.  A pdf of his PowerPoint presentation and the recorded video of his lecture (when it's posted) is available on the Federal Reserve's website, here.

The Fed Chairman's lectures make up the first four sessions of a spring term course at GWU that is being professionally recorded, probably at taxpayer expense.  All ten sessions will be taped and should be posted to YouTube, but the final six will not be steamed.  I am definitely going to try to watch at least the first four with Mr Bernanke, and maybe even try to keep up with the reading.  The Federal Reserve and its role are something that I think most people, myself included, don't know much about, and I would certainly like to understand better.  Also, this course could serve as a little reminder of what being in school is like, in the event that I do eventually decide to go back.

[Okay, so I wrote this post on Tuesday afternoon, but then the computer peed all over itself and I couldn't actually publish.  Today (Wednesday) I did the aforementioned reading, and I think I have decided to try to stick with the course.  This is going to cut into my new-found "pleasure reading" time, but the more you read, the better you get at it, right?]

Also, The Evolution of Bernanke’s Beard is awesome.

Side note... I highly doubt that the links to these videos and resources will be any good after this class session (in the case of GWU) or Mr Bernanke's time as Chairman (in the Fed's case) are over.  All of the videos should end up on YouTube, and with any luck will stay there, but the class syllabus will probably be replaced with next year's version.  I've uploaded the basic html of the syllabus page to my public Dropbox folder, so it should be available for a little longer if anyone needs to find it.