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I just want to make note of 3 cool things from yesterday.
First, I made some kick ass yakisoba noodles for dinner last night. They're cheap and easy, and really good. Ingredients (you can use any stir fry-able veggies, and/or real meat, but this is what I used): 1 bunch broccollini (which is like regular broccoli only greener and not so tense); 8-10 crimini mushrooms; 1 shallot; 1 pkg. tempeh; 2 pkg. yakisoba noodles (I got the fresh ones from the produce cooler--the kind that come as a kit with a flavoring packet, which I discarded); garlic to taste (I used powder because we didn't have any fresh); olive or vegetable oil for stir frying; sesame oil and soy sauce to taste. So I chopped and steamed the broccollini in the microwave, sliced the mushrooms, chopped the shallot, and cut the tempeh into chunks. Then I put the noodles into boiling water just until they softened up and separated from each other, drained them, and rinsed them with cold water so they wouldn't get mushy. Next, I heated the pan, put some oil into it (I read somewhere that it's better to put the oil into a hot pan rather than a cold one), and stir fried the tempeh, shallot, and mushrooms until the tempeh started to brown and the mushrooms were cooked (next time I do this, I will probably add the shallot after stir frying the other stuff for a couple of minutes). Then I added the broccolini, sprinkled some garlic powder into the pan, put in some soy sauce, and cooked for a minute or two before adding the noodles. I stir fried everything together for another couple of minutes, doused with some more soy sauce, and added maybe a tablespoon of sesame oil for flavor. That's it! It serves around 4 people, I'd say, though I was really hungry and ate an extra helping. It was soooo good!
Second, I went through the painful (long!) process of upgrading my OS to OSX.5.5 (Leopard). I also installed Office 2008 and Endnote X-2. (In case you're wondering how I afforded this...academic pricing, baby!) So far I really like the "new" OS. It's new to me, anyway, even though it's been out for what, a year now? I see that they're upgrading it again in about a year, too, to "Snow Leopard." I guess it'll be stone cold? Or something... I haven't explored the Office programs too much yet, but I will later today because I plan to do some writing. I have had Word open, and I have to say the interface is pretty slick and seems nicely intuitive, though...I'm so used to the old layout that it will take some getting used to. Interestingly, Word 2008 for Mac looks almost nothing like Word 2007 for PC, which is what's on my office computer at UWB. I think they're fully compatible, though.
Third...I watched 2 (count 'em!) DVD's last night. The first one was The Savages, which I have been meaning to watch for awhile, but have avoided because I knew the story line would hit pretty close to home. I was right, it did. It's about these two 40-ish people, a brother and sister (Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney), who suddenly have to deal with their estranged father's dementia when his girlfriend dies. I found the film to be pretty realistic, although the father's dementia storyline seems quite truncated to me. The sense of weird detachment and emotional uncertainty that marks how the kids act and feel is both strange and realistic. It's strange, because usually end-of-life movies are so sentimentalized and filled with poignant moment after poignant moment; but realistic because...yeah, the progression of dementia illnesses, and the accessory narratives associated with them (shopping for long-term care, trying to decide whether or how to decorate your loved-one's living space, the stark reality of moving them out of their own home, dealing with the aftermath, etc.)...it seems like these will be momentous things, but they're actually frighteningly mundane. You just do it, and suddenly everything is different, but it all just feels so normal. Unremarkable.
Anyway, the other DVD I watched was Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, which is a sobering and somewhat depressing look at the massive irregularities of the 2000, 2004, and 2006 elections. I knew that electronic voting machines had problems, but I didn't realize how widespread the irregularities are, how easy the machines are to hack, and how hard it is to audit election results reported from them (impossible, actually, unless they print paper ballots that can be hand verified by the voter and, if necessary, by election officials). Crazy shit, man. The film is somewhat alarmist, but on balance it presents a convincing case that the use of these electronic voting machines has to be more tightly regulated. We can expect many, many polling shenanigans during this years presidential election, because the problems this film reports have not yet been solved.
First, I made some kick ass yakisoba noodles for dinner last night. They're cheap and easy, and really good. Ingredients (you can use any stir fry-able veggies, and/or real meat, but this is what I used): 1 bunch broccollini (which is like regular broccoli only greener and not so tense); 8-10 crimini mushrooms; 1 shallot; 1 pkg. tempeh; 2 pkg. yakisoba noodles (I got the fresh ones from the produce cooler--the kind that come as a kit with a flavoring packet, which I discarded); garlic to taste (I used powder because we didn't have any fresh); olive or vegetable oil for stir frying; sesame oil and soy sauce to taste. So I chopped and steamed the broccollini in the microwave, sliced the mushrooms, chopped the shallot, and cut the tempeh into chunks. Then I put the noodles into boiling water just until they softened up and separated from each other, drained them, and rinsed them with cold water so they wouldn't get mushy. Next, I heated the pan, put some oil into it (I read somewhere that it's better to put the oil into a hot pan rather than a cold one), and stir fried the tempeh, shallot, and mushrooms until the tempeh started to brown and the mushrooms were cooked (next time I do this, I will probably add the shallot after stir frying the other stuff for a couple of minutes). Then I added the broccolini, sprinkled some garlic powder into the pan, put in some soy sauce, and cooked for a minute or two before adding the noodles. I stir fried everything together for another couple of minutes, doused with some more soy sauce, and added maybe a tablespoon of sesame oil for flavor. That's it! It serves around 4 people, I'd say, though I was really hungry and ate an extra helping. It was soooo good!
Second, I went through the painful (long!) process of upgrading my OS to OSX.5.5 (Leopard). I also installed Office 2008 and Endnote X-2. (In case you're wondering how I afforded this...academic pricing, baby!) So far I really like the "new" OS. It's new to me, anyway, even though it's been out for what, a year now? I see that they're upgrading it again in about a year, too, to "Snow Leopard." I guess it'll be stone cold? Or something... I haven't explored the Office programs too much yet, but I will later today because I plan to do some writing. I have had Word open, and I have to say the interface is pretty slick and seems nicely intuitive, though...I'm so used to the old layout that it will take some getting used to. Interestingly, Word 2008 for Mac looks almost nothing like Word 2007 for PC, which is what's on my office computer at UWB. I think they're fully compatible, though.
Third...I watched 2 (count 'em!) DVD's last night. The first one was The Savages, which I have been meaning to watch for awhile, but have avoided because I knew the story line would hit pretty close to home. I was right, it did. It's about these two 40-ish people, a brother and sister (Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney), who suddenly have to deal with their estranged father's dementia when his girlfriend dies. I found the film to be pretty realistic, although the father's dementia storyline seems quite truncated to me. The sense of weird detachment and emotional uncertainty that marks how the kids act and feel is both strange and realistic. It's strange, because usually end-of-life movies are so sentimentalized and filled with poignant moment after poignant moment; but realistic because...yeah, the progression of dementia illnesses, and the accessory narratives associated with them (shopping for long-term care, trying to decide whether or how to decorate your loved-one's living space, the stark reality of moving them out of their own home, dealing with the aftermath, etc.)...it seems like these will be momentous things, but they're actually frighteningly mundane. You just do it, and suddenly everything is different, but it all just feels so normal. Unremarkable.
Anyway, the other DVD I watched was Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, which is a sobering and somewhat depressing look at the massive irregularities of the 2000, 2004, and 2006 elections. I knew that electronic voting machines had problems, but I didn't realize how widespread the irregularities are, how easy the machines are to hack, and how hard it is to audit election results reported from them (impossible, actually, unless they print paper ballots that can be hand verified by the voter and, if necessary, by election officials). Crazy shit, man. The film is somewhat alarmist, but on balance it presents a convincing case that the use of these electronic voting machines has to be more tightly regulated. We can expect many, many polling shenanigans during this years presidential election, because the problems this film reports have not yet been solved.
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