my life, as far as i know.

tonight i joined friends at bistro la moone, a restaurant that’s existed in two locations for nearly a decade. tonight tami, the woman who runs the restaurant, held an oscars party featuring champagne and hors’derves. the last meal of the restaurant as it existed. tami will be starting a new catering business and everbody wished her good luck.

what to see something crazy? how about an eight-foot-long custom workbench that allows me to work with four 16×20 darkroom trays at standing height without splashing chemicals onto the hardwood floor of my loft?

crazyiness. the best thing? it’s on wheels and practically glides over the floor. it’s so awesome. boman and i have been working on it for some time.

ok, so today i made an embarassing discovery. the image above shows cayenne pepper. notice the difference in color.

the pepper on the left is the cayenne pepper i’ve had for years now. i inherited the spice ages ago from an old housemate — it’s been so long i’m not even sure who it was.

the pepper on the right side is cayenne pepper from safeway. it didn’t look right to me. i checked other brands, and sure enough all cayenne pepper is bright red/orange.

when i got home i checked my bottle.

“its orange to bright red color well represents its fiery character.”

this description destroys my experience with both the color and taste of the steaks i’ve been cooking. my recipe has been based on old and completely inert cayenne pepper. it’s good that ryan looked up the spice online and warned that i don’t completely cover steaks in cayenne. our tongues would burn.

i entertained the idea of asking my friends who seldom cook — do you have any cayenne pepper around? what color is it, brown? want to upgrade?

i need to get a new cell phone. there are two reasons i need to do so.

the first, i have an old nokia phone, which has been great. it’s a decent phone and does what i need. but it’s old and doesn’t use GSM/GPRS. in fact, when i hit certain cell towers, like the one near where i live, the voice quality gets so bad the phone is worthless and i have to hang up and call people back. the second reason is that my current plan is under my dad’s name. we established the account eight some odd years ago, back before cingular even existed here. it was cellular one — which was bought by at&t wireless — which was bought by cingular.

what i hate about cell companies is how they treat their customers. they give new phones for free to new customers, but make their existing customers pay full^H^H^H^Hrediculous prices on phones.

what makes this worse is that i generally hate phones, and am increasingly hateful of technology. i’ve ranted on my blog before about cell phones and how much i hate them, so i won’t elaborate this time.

i looked at current offerings from cingular. v551, z500a, razrv3, mpx220, n6820, lg1400, e317. they’re either small but sucky, or bulky but decent. with no exception that i can find. but i need to switch soon so i can get a less-than-rapey price.

in order by cubic volume, the v551 is the 3rd largest phone on my list, and has most of the best ratings. it has an external antenna, which sucks, and is chunky since it’s a flip-phone. and it may be mine soon. amazon ships quickly. oh, and i’m dumping my 650 number since i’m getting tired even thinking about dealing with the cell company.

“I am looking to go digital,but I just read somewhere a new Nikon digital is expected in march with the same price as D70 with 8mp res.”

seeing posts like this is what fuels filmheads like myself. we use cameras of designs that haven’t changed for decades, even a century or more. the only area for improvement is our own ability in creating images.

today i made my first two lens boards. i used poplar and learned it was much quicker to chisel the edge down for a bevel than use a rasp. i also learned i should move the packard shutter down the board a bit (or to the side) to make room for the hose going out the front.

i wish i had a router now, for doing the edge. i should look at other tools, to see what i can use in the absense of a real woodworking bench.

been thinking about online communities a lot lately. it started when someone invited me to provide feedback on a new dating site he was starting up.

i think the ‘net is oversaturated with communities. blogs sites. community sites. community sites with blogs. DIY blogs.

i think it’s way too late to be starting anything like this now. the community sites are bulging at the seams and riddled with embedded with music and video which destroy any design put into the place. and blogs inside larger sites? forget it. people are already blogging if they want to, i dont think people need more places to post things.

i’m waiting for the next clever idea to come along.

spinning my wheels today.

i feel the weight of several issues bearaing dowon on me, and my stress level is pretty high.

i may have to take time off from work tomorrow to get my dsl line fixed. i’ve been waking up past my alarm, not remembering having turned it off. i have some financial changes i’m on the cusp of making but things are moving slow.

so today is mostly listening to music in itunes and trying to ignore work as best i can.

on the continuing quest to find the best steaks, ryan and i found a good combination.

we started with grass fed, angus ridbeye steaks. when whole foods has meat on sale, we get them for $9.99/lb and worth every penny.

first, we wet the steaks on both sides with peanut oil. i then smashed/chopped fresh garlic (3 cloves) and sliced a jalapeno pepper very thinly. i ground sea salt onto the steaks, then rubbed half the garlic and some of the jalapeno all over the steak. i flipped them and gave the other side the same treatment. i tried to get some of the pepper’s juices onto the steak, plus the seeds. the seeds stick to the steak — this turned out to be a good idea. then i coated all sides of the steak liberally with cayenne pepper and rubbed it in, giving the steak a good massage.

then i turned the steaks over to ryan, where he holds the expertise in cooking them.

preheat the oven to 500F, with your cast iron skillet inside. once at temperature, bring the skillet out and sear the steaks on it, about 30 seconds per side. this will cook any sticking pieces of pepper. then you put the steaks in the oven for 3-4 minutes, flip them over, then another 3-4 minutes (depending on the thickness and desired doneness).

i’m not sure if it was the particular pair of steaks we got, or the rub, or the peppers.. but they came out awesome. probably the best steaks we’ve done to date.

chili and garlic rubbed steaks, rosemary potatoes, and fried green peppers. served with a 2000 la grange clinet bordeaux. cooking at home rocks.

this is one of my negative scans, a photo of boman and myself taken with the burke and james 8×10. this was during the housewarming party.

boman is helping me build custom workbenches for my darkroom, so hopefully soon i’ll be back in the printing business.

i feel like a robot sometimes. especially when i take the train to work. i board at the same time, i depart at the same time. walking to the train, the train moves me to the next location, i walk to work. it’s so very consistent. i see the same people on the train. i see the same conductors. i’m starting to memorize the stops, all but one i don’t need to know.

i’ve been reading isaac asimov’s bicentennial man. the story of the same name is fantastic, a full circle of the life of a particular robot. a robot whose imperfections themselves steered the evolution of robots in opposing directions.

sir said, “i don’t want your damned money, andrew. i’ll take it only because you won’t feel free otherwise. from now on, you can select your own jobs and do them as you please. i will give you no orders, except this one — that you do as you please. but i am still responsible for you; that’s part of the court order. i hope you understand that.”

sir said, “i’m not going to argue.” he left, and andrew saw him only infrequently after that.

tonight i cooked lomo saltado, a classic peruvian dish. it came out well. sirloin, garlic, onion, tomato, red pepper, potato. it was served with rice and wine, a bv 1999 merlot. man, that was good wine!