The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

Elliott: “Can’t we just go home, put on our PJs, and watch Grey’s Anatomy?”

JD: “I love that show. It’s like they’ve been watching our lives, and then put them on TV.”

*they stare off, dreamily*

• Mac Geekery - Remote Destruction of Data
  How to make your Mac/*nix laptop destroy its own data if it gets stolen. Brilliant. I’m sure there’s a way to do it on Windows, too, but if your Windows laptop gets stolen, it’s an excellent opportunity to get a mac.
  (tags: stealthisidea security data theft)
• Resumania!
  resume gaffes from RHI
  (tags: mpoj resume jobsearch jobs)
• The 1040 Line Items You’re Most Likely To Screw Up
  Why we ought to have a flat tax, dammit!
  (tags: taxes money)

I cemented a reputation last night as the girl who can throw dinner together from duct tape and a jar of garlic.

I had volunteered to help Steph pack last night as she’s moving out of her boyfriend’s house. Her friend Emma had come up from Richmond for the weekend to be both moving and moral support. By the time we had arrived at Steph’s new place with a couple of carloads of stuff, we were pretty hungry.

“There’s some stuff in the pantry, see what you can make from that,” Steph said, referring to the stray pantry staples left by the friend she’s subletting from.

The cupboard was pretty bare, but Emma found a box of whole-wheat spaghetti and a can of diced tomatoes. It was a start. Now we needed seasonings. Apparently most of the spices had been moved out, but there was salt, pepper, and a jar of garlic.

I set water to boil for the pasta and started sautéing some garlic in butter while I poked around some more. Steph had some hamburger patties from our Omaha Steaks adventure, so I crumbled those and then remembered that Emma had pulled out the last of a bottle of white wine that was in the fridge. Hm, don’t know how long that’s been in there, but it’s probably still okay to cook with.

So dinner was under way. I browned the meat, added tomatoes and wine, some salt and pepper, but the sauce still needed something. I was about to resign myself to a flat-tasting, unseasoned sauce, when I remembered the envelope of onion soup mix on the counter behind me. I did think the sauce would benefit from some oniony-ness, and hey, soup mix has seasonings in it…

So I stirred a couple of tablespoons of soup mix into the sauce, not the whole envelope, because that would be just too salty. As it was, I thought the sauce was on the salty side, but by then Steph and Emma had come back from retrieving things from the cars and thought it smelled great.

The hot pasta soaked up most of the extra saltiness, and we had found some “Parmesan-style grated topping” in the fridge, so on the whole, it was actually pretty tasty.

This morning, when I went back to help with The Big Move, they were still talking about it. Righteous.

• MC Hammer
  Via Tom- oh yes, it’s Hammertime. I’m so entertained
  (tags: mchammer)
• I Hired Jeff Clark! Jeff Clark is looking for a marketing job…
  I would totally hire him if he were in DC
  (tags: resume hire employment mpoj)

Watermelon Radish

Originally uploaded by tjbax.

I got a FlickrMail from Schmap the other day, telling me that four of my San Francisco photos (including this one) had been shortlisted for possible inclusion into their upcoming San Francisco city guide.

It surprised me, because the photos in question weren’t my best, but I suppose my better SF photos were of locations that get photographed a lot.

Their process is pretty cool- in addition to user-submitted photos, they search Flickr’s Creative Commons pool for CC-licensed photos, and then send FlickrMail to all the users whose photos are shortlisted. The message contains a link to a page where the photographer can grant or deny permission on an individual photo basis, view a sample page that explains how the photo credit will appear, and download a preview version of the city guide.

Unfortunately, their guide viewer only works on Windows, which is annoying. But nonetheless, the whole enterprise strikes me as a cool way to take advantage of Flickr’s service as well as all the interesting content out there that people are just giving away.

I’m a bad blogger.  My nightly del.icio.us auto-posts have been the only updates three days in a row.  I suck.

I spent yesterday evening with a friend who is in the process of moving into a new place after her boyfriend unexpectedly broke up with her.  Did I say “unexpectedly?”  I meant “blindsided.”  So there’s the emotional trauma of the breakup, combined with the practical lifestyle trauma of having to move out of the house they shared.  She needed a break, so I had her over for dinner and Katamari.  Dinner was Alton Brown’s mac’n'cheese recipe, which I had made once before to moderate success- this time it ROCKED.  Don’t worry, while the M&C was being prepared, we had veggies and hummus, so that there would indeed be something healthful about the meal (dessert was Ben & Jerry’s, the two men who will never let you down).

Quote of the evening:

“Oh, I don’t mind hanging out and gorging myself on celery while you cook.”

“When it’s celery, I don’t think ‘gorge’ is really the appropriate word.

• 9 tips for running more productive meetings | 43 Folders
  Merlin hates meetings as much as I do
  (tags: meetings mpoj)
• ThinkGeek :: L33T Tiles
  Hah. 1337 replacement tiles for Scrabble.
  (tags: geek scrabble game)

• The Pain that is changing a name in the us
  Clearly, I’m going to need a GANTT chart to take Tom’s name…
  (tags: wedding)
• Safe Sex Rules for the Office
  …there’s no such thing
  (tags: mpoj office workplace sex)
• MONEY Magazine: The “Oh, s#$%!” moment
  ….and how to overcome it
  (tags: mpoj interview jobsearch)
• Blogged Out of a Job
  (tags: mpoj blogs jobs)

• Authentic Italian Limoncello Recipe
  (tags: recipe limoncello)
• Recipe - Quaker’s Best Oatmeal Cookies
  These cookies totally rocked
  (tags: recipe cookie oatmeal)
• Skechers Rhythms
  When I have a spare $62 for shoes…
  (tags: shoes clothing)

I’m skeptical when new candy bars are introduced.  I mean, I don’t mind when there’s a Snickers with almonds instead of peanuts, because that seems like a reasonable sort of change, but new candy bars are often disappointing. 

As Exhibit A, I present the M-Azing bar, or whatever it is that M&M-Mars calls that abomination of a chocolate bar with the mini M&M’s embedded in it.  They use horrible, over-sweetened, waxy chocolate and it’s just revolting.  Exhibit B is the inside-out Reese’s Cup.  That peanut butter coating they use is, as my friend Stephanie would say, narsty.  Exhibit C is the version of the Kit-Kat that’s shaped more like a typical candy bar rather than the four sticks.  Too hard to bite into, and there was nothing wrong with the classic Kit-Kat form factor.  Made it easy to save some for later.

So I generally stick to the classics.  After all, they’ve withstood the test of time and there are only so many ways to rearrange chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, nuts, and nougat.  You can use dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate, and that generally works pretty well, and you can play around with the types of nuts or substitute crispy rice, and that’s okay too.  But on the whole, there is very little you can do to really innovate and create something new and wonderful.

Except.

Some genius at Hershey decided in 2004 to shove pretzels into a candy bar, creating the Take 5.  Eureka!  Pretzels, peanut butter, peanuts, caramel, chocolate.  Does it get better?  Actually, yes.  They divide it into two halves, so that like Mounds, Almond Joy, Reese’s Cups, Kit-Kat, or Twix, you can easily share with a friend without having to get caramel all over everything, or save the second half for later.

Finally, I have found a new snack.