Nik Martin

Bourbon BBQ Sauce

2014-08-31T21:09:00.002-05:00

Here's a nice easy BBQ sauce with Bourbon which gives a nice, rich bold flavor, with a hint of vanilla from the Kentucky Bourbon:

Ingredients:

1 small bottle (16 oz) ketchup
1/4 cup plain yellow mustard
1/4 cup Apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup Kentucky Bourbon (I used Evan Williams: not too expensive, but real sour mash bourbon)
1 small white onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 TBSP molasses
3 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
1 TBSP hot sauce ( I used Sriracha)
1 TBSP bacon grease
Ground black pepper to taste (1/2 - 1 tsp)
Kosher salt to taste (1-2 tsp)

Directions:

Add onion, garlic, and bacon grease to sauce pan, and saute until onion is clear.
Add bourbon, and simmer until reduced by half.
Add ALL the other ingredients and bring to low boil, then reduce to a very low simmer for 20 mins.
Stir frequently so the sugars don't scorch
Blend until smooth (optional)

BBQ Rub

2014-08-31T20:08:00.002-05:00

OK, I have been kicking around a new, simple rub, and this one is pretty good. As always, its published under the BBQOSL. This is for a small batch, say 1-2 slabs of ribs:

1 TBSP fresh ground black pepper
1 TBSP kosher salt (or to taste)
1-1/2 TSP garlic powder
1-1/2 TSP onion powder
1-1/2 TSP turbinado sugar (or brown if that's what you have)
1 TSP paprika

Mix with fingers and rub away! Its a great all-purpose rub.

The BBQ Open Sauce License (BBQOSL)

2014-04-25T00:50:00.001-05:00

The BBQ Open Sauce License (BBQOSL)
Copyright © 20xx
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy 
of this recipe and associated information (the "Sauce"), to deal in the 
Sauce without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, 
modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Sauce, 
and to permit persons to whom the Sauce is furnished to do so, subject to the 
following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all 
copies or substantial portions of the Sauce.

THE SAUCE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, 
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES 
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND 
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT 
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, 
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING 
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SAUCE OR THE USE OR 
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SAUCE.

Homebrew Finds: Putting Together a "Brew Day Box"

2013-08-18T13:39:00.001-05:00

Homebrew Finds: Putting Together a "Brew Day Box": Why a Brew Day Box? Over the years I've homebrewed, I've utilized a number of storage/organization strategies. Some could be de...

Simple static web server using Node.js and send

2013-07-09T21:02:00.004-05:00

So, you need to test your static web site. With ONE simple dependency, you can serve files from the directory the app is running from:

Loading ....

Secure Sessions in Node.js with NginX SSL Proxy

2013-07-01T11:16:00.000-05:00

Loading ....

My new Mockbook Air

2013-03-10T22:32:00.002-05:00

I got a new Ultrabook from Newegg the other day, and I am impressed. Avatar is a total unknown Chinese laptop and tablet maker, and they sell exclusively on Newegg. This thing is NICE! Very good quality, all metal body, nice sharp edges, just like a Macbook Air, hence my nickname of "Mockbook". It has very good specs, including:

Intel Core i5 3317U(1.70GHz)
8GB Memory 500GB HDD + 32GB SSD HDD (Sweet!)
Intel HD Graphics 4000
1366 x 768 display
Windows 8 64-bit (Ok, that one's not so great)

So, I immediately did a smoke test, then burned a Mint DVD and installed it. Everything works fine, except the touchpad. It's a never-seen-in-the-wild Elan touchpad with all kinds of swipey gestures and multi-touch features for Windows 8. Don't worry, I've already filed a bug report against the Linux kernel.

Also, Mint just felt too "heavy", and if there's anything I hate, it's a computer that feels bloated or mis-configured. So, I downloaded Debian Wheezy on my trusty 10 year old 1 GB USB Key and loaded up. Much better! Wheezy+Gnome is so clean and easy to use, it's the desktop OS I've looked for for years.

I still needed to tweak the kernel for the hardware and for laptop/battery use, so I fetched the latest stable kernel, which as of this post, is 3.8.2. I hacked on the config for two days, and can safely say I have a very nicely optimized kernel for this laptop now. I've linked it to this post if you decide to build a kernel for this Ultrabook.

Newegg's Real Time pricing can be a bit annoying. I had it in my cart at $659, woke up the next morning to order it, and it had jumped to $729! I ordered anyway, and when I shipped, I logged in to track it and it had dropped back to $659! That kind of ticked me off, so I went to Newegg Customer Service, and CSR Heidy had empathy for my plight and gave me a $25 credit to soften the blow a bit Newegg's still on top!

AT&T is a real champ, I tell you what!

2013-02-28T20:31:00.001-06:00

Taking advantage of a fairly large loophole where the FCC has determined they don't have jurisdiction on IP based networks, AT&T has announced they will convert their switched networks to all IP based networks, essentially de-regulating themselves. California de-regulated some telco stuff a few years ago, and AT&T tripled prices.

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/02/the-latest-sneaky-plan-to-rob-americans-of-a-public-telco-network

Pi for Christmas

2012-12-31T13:13:00.004-06:00

I got a new toy for Christmas: A Raspberry Pi. My plans are to get back into my old car audio hobby, by replacing my factory head unit with an Rπ with a Wireless Nano USB Dongle, a Lilliput 669GL HiBrightness Touch Screen Monitor mounted in the dash, and replacing the little back right jump seat in my tundra with a 10" or 12" subwoofer + amp, and new 6.5"s in the doors and tweeters in the stock tweeter locations.

BUMP BUMP BUMP

Process Control for dummies like me

2012-11-24T14:04:00.001-06:00

I'm not a controls engineer, or even an engineer. I'm just a guy. Anyway, process controls are like Tonka Trucks to me. I like to build them to do useless stuff that could probably be done with $40 worth of hardware, but what is fun about that? Here's a primer on the workhorse of the control world, the PID control algorithm. You can learn all you ever want to know about PIDs from this now famous article, but even it assumes a LOT of engineer-y smarts, which I don't have. So, here's an even more boiled down version of even that seminal article for the rest of us.

PID Basics

PID controls are used to control something. Vague, right? Let's define some things first, by using a super simple example (that actually has some very complex boundary issues, but for 90% of our scenarios is pretty straight forward).

The problem? We want to heat up something. Maybe a BBQ pit, or a kettle of water, or maybe a coop full of baby chickens or rabbits. Normal "bang-bang" thermostats are pretty horrible at temperature control, especially heating when the thing to be heated has mass, like water. They slam the temperature all over the place, like this:
Set an oven temp to 350F. The thermostat turns on the heater element until temp reaches 350, and turns off. This actually means the temp will shoot up to around 360, since the element is very hot, and the process of cooling down means the oven gets hotter. When the temperature hits 349, turn on, which takes a few minutes, so the oven temp hits 340 quickly, until the element gets hot again. That's a 20 degree swing in temp!

Now, lets see how a relatively simple PID does this. Lets define a few terms and look at a real world example first:

Definitions:

SP: Set Point - What we define as homeostasis (temp = 350F, speed = 20 RPM, etc)
PV: Process Value - What the actual value of what we are measuring is (330F, 18 RPM, etc)
PE: Process Error - How far away from SP is PV? So PE=SP-PV. Easy Peasy.
Pt, It, Dt - the Term, or each part of the PID controls contribution to the output.
ADC: Analog to Digital Converter - Converts analog measurements like temp and rpm to a digital number. A 10 bit ADC has 10 bits of resolution, or 1024 discrete "steps". For an ADC that reads 0-5 volts, 0v = 0, and 5v = 1023, and 2.5v = 512.

OK, lets look at the PID algorithm now:

P: Proportional - In many control systems, the process control isn't on or off, it has a range of states, like a valve that can be on a tiny bit, on half way, or on full blast. That's proportional control. In the PID world you need the machine to determine how much to open a valve (or for on/off things like heaters, how long to turn it on for). Boiled down even further, the farther away from SP that PV is, the higher P needs to be to get PV=SP. The calculation is very simple:

Pt = PE * pGain. pGain is described below. Back to the example of trying to get an oven to 350F:
SP = 350F
PV = 100F
PE = SP - PV : 350 - 100 = 250, so PE = 250

pGain, what? pGain is a constant that is chosen so as to scale the control output to a range usable by the ADCs and output controls by multiplying it with the PE. Two examples, both using a pGain of 2:

SP = 350
PV = 100
PE = 250
Pt = (350 - 100) * 2 = 500
Pt = 500 so we need a Proportional term of 500 of some type of control output to get our oven up to temp. Compare that to:
SP =350F
PV=340F
PE = 10,
Pt = (350 - 340) * 2 = 20, so we need a lot less output from our oven element to get PV=SP. The bigger the PE, the higher Pt needs to be to get SP = PV. The secret sauce is the pGain: too high, you overshoot the temp, too low, your heater takes too long and cakes don't rise, chickens freeze to death, and beer tastes skunky. pGain is adjusted by you to get the right amount of Pt for your application. Start with pGain of 1.

Another real world example is cruise control on your car - the cruise makes very slight adjustments when you are near SP, say 65 MPH, but when you are traveling at 35 MPH, the cruise control 'floors' the gas to get to SP as quickly as possible. Pt is the amount of artificial "foot" the controller adds to the gas pedal to get to speed.

Proportional control (PE * pGain) isn't enough to maintain stasis on systems like temperature control. Since Pt decreases the closer we get to SP, It will never actually get there on its own. To solve that, we need to add It, Integral, (and later maybe D, Derivative to stabilize).

I: Integral - It's a fancy term for cumulative error. It lets the PID loop "remember" previous errors, by summing the errors as the algorithm runs. That means the I will change less and less as PE approaches SP, which means the integrator's value increase will slow over time, meaning the control loop is getting stable. In the previous example of the oven, I is 250 on the first pass of the loop, then as the temp rises, the PE is added to I, so the next pass I = I + PE (10), or 260, and as the PV approaches SP, I stops growing as fast, so less and less It is added to the system, causing the system to "settle".
iGain: is another constant that is multiplied with I to get a control output (It), which is then added to P and sent to the control.

Now, just as quickly as Integral can stabilize a system, it can also cause Windup, which is when your error is very high at the beginning of the process loop, like when the kettle is cold, or the motors are off, etc. You can saturate your Integral such that it's outside the bounds of what you can push out as control (heat, speed, etc), so you have to have a safe upper and lower limit for I. The problem with I is it usually decreases no faster than it rose, because the growth and reduction of I is fixed at the sample rate of your PID loop. If it took 500 loops to get over saturated and overshoot SP by a wide margin, it's gonna take just as long to get it back down. I lowers because when you overshoot, your PE goes negative, so when added to each loop, I starts to decrease. i.e. if PE looks like: 10,9,8,7,6,5,2,-1,-2,-3, etc, you see how I grows and shrinks based on accumulated PE). The good part about controlling windup in your control algorithm is to just limit the output to the maximum output of the process that is driving SP. If it's a motor, it may be speed or current, just limit it to the max speed and current the motor is capable of. It's as easy as:

If It > cMAX, then It = cMAX

If It < cMIN, then It = cMIN.

If your system under control is inherently stable, you can raise/reduce cMin and cMax even inside the lower and upper control limits. iGain is usually a very small number, like .002

D: Derivative - if P deals with the current state of the system under control, and I deals with the past performance of the system, guess what D does? Yep, it tries to predict the future state of the system to prevent overshoot. Again, Derivative is a fancy term for a pretty simple calculation:

Dt=(Current PV - Previous PV) * dGain.

NOTE: There are two versions of D in controls. The one I'm using is better for systems like heaters, in that it subtracts control away from the system as the rate of PV change slows via Pt and It. The other method of deriving Dt involves the rate of change of PE, which can cause "derivative kick" since the PE is very high at the beginning of the control loop (when the PID loop is first started). Error is high, but PV change is relatively stable and slow. Subtle yet significant in the beginning of the process.
The amount of change of PV each loop gives you a bit of insight on what the next value of PV is going to be, or its slope/rate of change. For example, if our oven PV was 340 F last loop, and 341 F this loop, what do you think PV will be next loop? Again, easy peasy. The steeper the slope, the higher the delta, the higher probability of an overshoot, which Dt helps correct.

dGain: this is the value multiplied with D to do predictive control.

NOTE: I, P are summed, and then D is subtracted, which eliminates overshooting when PE and

is very high and as the rate of change slows, Dt subtracted from Pt+It will make the approach to SP even more stable.

And there you have your PID control output! That's it.

MSP430

2012-11-24T10:16:00.002-06:00

For $4.30, this MCPU is the bee's knees:

http://www.ti.com/product/msp430f4794

4 x 16 Bit Delta Sigma ADCs for < $5? Come on.

Stella Bulbs

2012-10-28T20:47:00.000-05:00

This is not just a blog, I also use it as a brain dump, so in that regard, I always forget the type of light bulbs my 2009 Genuine Stella scooter has. To do a proper LED conversion, you need LEDs that are the color of the lenses you are installing the bulbs in:

Tail Lights

Running: BA15s Base 5W Clear (OEM:Osram 5007 R5W)

32.5mm H x 18mm W
4 Lumens, .32 CP
LED Replacement:

Stop: BA15s 10w Clear (OEM: Osram 5008 R10W)

32.5mm H x 18mm W
10 Lumens, .8 CP
LED Replacement: SMT Tower: http://www.autolumination.com/1156_1157.htm

Turn Lights: 7507L BAU15s Base, Amber Bulb 21W (OEM: Osram 7507L)

Dimensions: 47mm H x 25mm W
PY21W-21W-12V-BAU15S ECE
22 Lumens, 1.8 CP
LED Replacement:

jlinq for Node.js

2012-10-21T02:11:00.004-05:00

I ported Hugo Bonacci's jLINQ to work with Node.js: http://npmjs.org/package/jlinq . Source is on Github

I have a Cloudstack VHD template I want to modify - now what?

2012-10-04T16:25:00.000-05:00

vdfuse -f virtdisk.vhd /somedir
losetup /dev/loop0 /somedir/Partition2

file Partition2
Partition2: LVM2 PV (Linux Logical Volume Manager), UUID: 20dMth-jvua-lFfN-j1a9-4iar-acFF-xoI3Pa, size: 20949499904

pvscan

lvm vgchange -ay

2 logical volume(s) in volume group "VolGroup" now active

lvs

LV VG Attr LSize Origin Snap% Move Log Copy% Convert

lv_root VolGroup -wi-a- 11.80g

lv_swap VolGroup -wi-a- 7.70g

mount /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root /mount/lv_root

when done:

vgchange -an

losetup -d /dev/loop0

DONE!

MySQL Pager Trick

2012-10-01T18:02:00.002-05:00

I got tired of always having to set the pager (\P) in mysql cli, so I set up an alias in my bash profile:

alias mysql="mysql --pager='less -niS'"

Now, I get nice tabular formatted output in my queries.

Centos 6.x VMs on CloudStack

2012-10-01T16:16:00.001-05:00

If you want to create a template for deploying Centos 6 VMs, you need to do a few things to the VM before snapshotting the root volume and converting it into a template:

yum -y update (of course)
set the root password to a well known one ("password" comes to mind)
delete the SSH keys in /etc/ssh/ so on first boot sshd will generate new keys
rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
yum -y install vim :)
edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to look like:

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet

That should get you going.

Dynamic Dns on an Edgewater Edgemarc device

2012-09-15T14:02:00.001-05:00

Edgewater Networks makes some decent VOIP routers. I've used then for some time now in various situations, and always when configuring a network that uses hosted VOIP. One thing that all router manufacturers seem to do (rather poorly) is supply a Dynamic DNS feature. Edgewater is no exception, since they hard code a few providers, and almost none of them work or are now paid. I needed to use Name Cheap's excellent Dynamic DNS service. Well it's no secret that Edgewater's VOS is Linux with Busybox providing all the standard shell apps and utilities. It also has a crontab and wget, so problem 99.9% solved!

First, know that you have to have SSH console access to the Edgemarc. Once you get logged in, you are in a very minimal BusyBox shell, so vi will be stripped of almost all usefulness, so we'll just cat what we need. First, copy this block into your favorite editor, and edit to format it to the values you need, or another DDNS provider's format altogether. Then let's create a shell script that we'll call via a cron job once an hour to update our IP address. Note that the filesytem is read only except for a few directories. /etc/config is one of them.

1:  # cd /etc/config   
2:  cat > /etc/config/dyndns.sh << EOF  
3:  #! /bin/sh  
4:  #namecheap dynamic dns:  
5:  wget --no-check-certificate -O /tmp/dyndns \  
6:  "https://dynamicdns.park-your-domain.com/update?host=[YOUR-HOST]&domain=[YOUR-DOMAIN]&password=[YOUR-DDNS-PASSWORD]"  
7:  EOF

Now, let's test it:

chmod a+x /etc/config/dyndsn.sh
/etc/config/dyndns.sh
cat /tmp/dyndns

Does it work? If so, let's schedule it via cron. Let's do some more cat magic:

cp /etc/config/crontab /etc/config/crontab.sav
cat >> /etc/config/crontab << EOF
* */1 * * * root /etc/config/dyndns.sh
EOF

Now you should have a crontab that runs this script once an hour, and grabs the output of the POST and writes it to /tmp/dyndns. You can check that file every once in a while to see that everything is working.

Have fun hacking your Edgemarc!

2012-02-05T22:46:00.002-06:00

UPDATE 8/01/2012: Zen Cart is total and utter garbage! The internationalization is terrible, and the configurability is pitiful.

I've been playing around with a mail order business idea, and went looking for a free shopping cart site package. I settled on Zen Cart after reading several reviews. I'll have to say it's quite impressive once you grok the template override system. I started working on it this morning, and by 3pm had a working site. I'll post a link to the store if I decide to actually launch it. Also props to Nearly Free Speech for building such a simple and functional hosting business. It's really nice to be able to actually build a website at a web host that cares about web hosting.

MySQL Backup+email bash script

2012-01-15T12:51:00.000-06:00

EDIT: January 11 2013 - I tried this on a newer Centos server and it appears the syntax to mutt has changed - you need to add "--" between the attachment and the destination email to have the command processed properly.

There are TONS of MySQL backup scripts around, but none on the first two pages of a Google search that did just what I wanted: backup each MySQL database on a server separately, then email them to me, one at a time. I found a few that were close, and modified them to do what I needed. Credit is given to the original author when known.

Credit to jamesmcdonald.id.au for the bulk of the main script

#!/bin/bash


# Add to cron to make it a scheduled backup

#MySQL Backup User Info 
DBHOST=localhost
DBUSER=backup
DBPASS=mybakupuserpass

#a backup user needs select, lock tables, and reload privileges in MySQL:
#GRANT SHOW DATABASES, SELECT, LOCK TABLES, RELOAD ON *.* to backup@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'readonly';
#FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

#where to send backed up file 
TO=you@yourdomain.com
#mutt has to read body of email from file, not stdin
MUTTXT=/tmp/myback.txt 

# format is YYYYMMDD
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`

# This command runs the `show databases' query against the mysql server
# it then pipes that result to awk which prints out the dbnames
# finally use grep -v to strip out any db's that shouldn't be backed up
# to skip multiple databases use grep -E -v "dbname1|dbname2|dname3"

#get list of databases on server 
DBS=`mysql --host=$DBHOST -p$DBPASS -u $DBUSER --skip-column-names

\-e "show databases;" | awk  '{ print $1 }' | grep -v "information_schema"`

#now loop through, dumping each database to a gzip
for i in $DBS
do
 
        # format is dbname-YYYYMMDD.gz

        DBOUT=$i-$DATE.sql.gz 
        echo Backing up $i to $DBOUT

        #set umask to protect file
        umask 006       

        mysqldump -u $DBUSER -h $DBHOST -p$DBPASS --add-drop-table $i | gzip -9 - > $DBOUT

        echo "Backup successfully done. Please see attached file." > $MUTTXT
        echo "" >> $MUTTXT
        echo "Backup file: $DBOUT" >> $MUTTXT
        echo "" >> $MUTTXT 
 
        echo Sending $DBOUT to $TO
 
        which mutt > /dev/null
        if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
                # now mail backup file with this attachment
                mutt -s "$DBOUT Backup" -a "$DBOUT" $TO < $MUTTXT
        else
                echo "Command mutt not found, cannot send an email with attachment"
        fi
        
        if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
                echo Removing $DBOUT
                rm $DBOUT
        else
                echo Error sending $DBOUT
        fi
 
done

Pizza

2012-01-07T18:20:00.000-06:00

Made a few pizzas last weekend. Worked with a slightly drier dough, and a very simple sauce of San Marzano tomatoes and 2 tbsp butter. Also tried a new cheese from Sam's Club that is claimed to be nearly as good as Grande, which sets the standard for block pizza mozzarella. Fresh mozzarella is always welcomed, but not always available or affordable.

New Sourdough

2008-10-04T19:41:00.000-05:00

I've been getting into baking bread from scratch, including growing my own yeast. Fresh, all natural sourdough bread is one of the simplest, yet most wonderful things that can come out of a kitchen. All bread that is made from wild yeast is considered sourdough, but he flavor is not necessarily sour. The sourness comes from extended proofing the dough in the refrigerator, also called retarding.

Nik's Modified King Arthur Whole Wheat Bread

2008-09-22T08:28:00.001-05:00

2 cups whole wheat King Arthur flour
1 cup King Arthur bread flour
1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
4 tbs butter
1/4 cup honey
1 tbs vital wheat gluten
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast
1 1/4 cups water

add all liquid to bread machine, then dry ingredients, then yeast. set machine to
1.5 lb whole wheat, and let 'er rip.

Chicken and Rice for a Big Group

2008-09-06T16:55:00.002-05:00

On Tuesday nights, I feed the homeless and less fortunate in our city at a place called 15 Place. I created a recipe that's simple, uses ONLY fresh ingredients, is healthy, can be made by volunteers, and most of all, is delicious. I buy all the ingredients at the local SuperMega Shopper's club on Sunday afternoon, and cook on Tuesday afternoon, after work. It only takes 1 & 1/2 hours start to finish to make enough to feed about 60-70 people, with seconds for as many that want them. The recipe:

4 Chickens, whole fryers
5 lbs onions
5 lbs carrots
3 bunches of celery
12 cups of rice (parboiled works best)
1 tub chicken base (for extra chickeny goodness)
salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste

The key to the recipe is there's never any waiting around if you do it in the order I list it in. This means you are very productive and can do this after work for a local soup kitchen in your area!

In a BIIIG pot with a basket liner (60 qts) , on an outdoor gas burner, start 5 gallons of water boiling very vigorously. Unwrap the chickens, rinse, and cut slits into the breasts, all the way to the bone. This ensures they get cooked thoroughly. Add the chickens to the pot. Set a timer for 30 minutes, and start it as soon as the water starts to boil. Clean carrots and celery by using a kitchen veggie brush; don't bother peeling! Slice/chop all veggies and set aside. This can be done by a team of about 3-4 people, 1 scrubbing, and 3 cutting. By this time, the chickens should be nearing done. Once the timer goes off, pull the basket up from the water allow to drain, then remove the chickens and lay them out to cool. Set the basket aside, you dont need it anymore. Add all the veggies to the pot, along with the chicken base, and return to a vigorous boil for 15 minutes. Start pulling the chicken. Get the bones as clean as you can get it, try not to waste anything. Chop all the big pieces, and as soon as the timer goes off again, add all the chicken to the pot, along with the rice. Return to a boil. Boil until the liquid starts to thicken with rice starch, then cut the fire WAAAY back, or else you will burn the bottom of the pot. Cook until the rice starts to get tender, then cut the fire. Add salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste, and then use small sauce pots or other big dippers to move the chicken and rice into an ice chest to keep hot. The rice will continue to cook, and absorb water for another 15 minutes. This gives you time to transport it to the soup kitchen, or public park, or wherever you serve it. I serve it in a foam bowl with a yeast roll from the SuperMega Club. The price ends up being < $.75 per person, which is a super deal on such a fresh, delicious meal. It's a real comfort food for those whe are in need of comfort.

Feel free to share this recipe with anyone interested in helping out a brother or sister in need.

Apple - MacBook Pro

2008-09-05T11:05:00.001-05:00

Working at a startup is a blast. One thing I made everyone promise is to be open minded about the technology I adopt. Once I got buy-in from everyone on this, I bought Apple MacBook Pros. Now this may not seem like a big deal, but the startup I'm at is a DOD (Department of Defense) contractor. These guys have only ever seen a Windows machine. There was resistance, but everyone went along. After unboxing and walking through the setup, everyone is in love with their MacBooks. The next thing I did was create a Google Apps For Your Domain account for our company. Our entire business runs on Google Apps. We DID cave and buy Office for Mac for a few guys, cause they just couldn't live without a few things that they missed in Office, but by and large we are running things off of Google Apps, and I HIGHLY recommend it for people starting up a company with little or no overhead budget.

Mustard Pulled Pork Sauce

2007-10-21T17:59:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of Roxy in Ontario, BC Canada

Mustard Vinegar Sauce

1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup Yellow mustard
1/4 cup onion finely minced
2 cloves garlic pureed
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce

Combine ingredients and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.