my life, as far as i know.

life has been crazy. it’s all this housing crap. now i understand quite fully how emotional buying a home can be. i’ve learned so much about it, and so many things have happened over the past two months, that i created a blog just to record everything.

haven’t really had much me-time. i have exposed film collecting dust. my graduated cylinders are getting crusty from dried chemistry. my awesome print washer is getting dust to match its waterspots.

i should get myself set up with a project and do it. whatever it is, i think i’ll need more polaroid 54 film. you know, i really want to do it in 8×10.

meanwhile, i’m coming up to the 300 mark for cell phone camera pics. i’m that bored and that desparate to record photons.

at this rate i won’t be doing any photography for the rest of the year. that, or shooting film but leaving it in the camera!

someone posting links to 30-60mb videos got me interested in mod_bandwidth.
getting 300+ emails a day quickly broke the default mailbox limit in postfix.
getting a DMCA legal threat for hosting copyrighted MP3 files got me to implement a “one warning” policy.

at one time or another, nearly two hundred accounts have existed on the servers i run. there are about 30 active users. you’d think problems like i list above would come from having lots of users. guess again. it’s only one. one person is causing lots of problems. today i’ve sent one last threat (after i deleted nearly 300mb of mp3 files.. last time was nearly 2gb from the same user) and cc:’d his friend who referred him to me.

other than that, things are peachy at offramp.org. i have Big Plans for the domain, including hardware upgrades and a network move this year. we’ll see.

i won’t let this bad seed ruin it for the rest of everybody.

today i got burned. it was out work department’s annual tailgate party at sbc park. the same as last year, i got badly sun burned. tomorrow you’ll be able to tell who’s in our department by looking for the red faces.

we had dinner with the most excellent ted and emery at a nice restaurant i’ve been to once before, absinthe. it’s an american-french restaurant in hayes valley, with an impressive wine list (it includes bordeaux from as early as 1812!).

the somelier recommended an excellend zin, a venge 2002 scout’s honor (family reserve). i’ll be looking for this wine in the usual places, it was pretty good! good zin fruity taste but had smokey undertones.

today after work boman and i worked on his roof. a few months back we started re-shingling the roof of the back part of his house. today we were able to chip away at all the gunk around the pipes coming out of the roof, put in new metal flanges, and brought the new shingles all the way up to the pipes. tomorrow we’ll finish the roof and then celebrate! it’s been very educational and fun.

for dinner, ryan joined us for angkor borei, a cool little cambodian restaurant in bernal heights. the citysearch reviewer is completely correct: friendly, cheap, spicy. i will definitely be going back!

ok, ryan and i made steaks tonight. im fact, i’m still full from dinner.

this time i decided to be more scientific about that. i mean, i actually measured the ingredients. the other new facet tonight was making a sauce that exceeded my expectations.

first, the rub (measured for two steaks)*.
- 2 dashes cayenne pepper
- 1 tablespoon paprika
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 sprig fresh rosemary, finely chopped
- 2 teapsoons whole cumin seed, crushed using your fingers
- freshly ground pepper

tonight, we used grass-fed angus rib-eye steaks. the pair we got tonight measured 1.75 pounds. and they were: so. damned. tender.

i did the usual prep (mentioned in previous blog entries). ryan did his usual execution (again, mentioned previously). oh man, they were so juicy.

this time, i also decided to try a sauce! while the steaks were finishing up in the oven, i started 2 tablespoons of butter and some wine (didn’t actually measure this.. maybe 1/8 cup or more?). as soon as the steaks were done and ryan moved them to their resting perches, i scraped everything off the iron skilled and put it in the wine/butter mixture. i low-boiled it while the steaks rested. just before serving, i did a standard starch treatement (you know, mixing a little sauce with about one plus teaspoons of corn starch in a glass, mixing it, then adding the rest of the sauce and mixing more.

oh lord, it was awesome. whatever i did, it was the right thing to do.

this plus super salty rosemary fries. and a few glasses of this really good felsina chianti.

once i tweak the rub recipe, i think we have the best recipe we have for steaks.

* what i will change next time, is using more paprika and less brown sugar.

on the way to dinner ryan and i witnessed a multi-car injury accident tonight.

we were stopped at a light watching the cross traffic. there was a man and a woman crossing the road in front of us, walking from our left to right. he stopped and started waving his arms and yelling. it caught my attention. in this city, it’s not too out of the ordinary. but this man grabbed the woman and ran off.

not a moment later, a car comes up from behind me in the lane just to my left. it careens into the intersection (thankfully the lane to my left was empty for him to pass through) and he smashed into the side of a taxi. the two vehicles move diagonally and the car that was behind the cab swerves and travells towards the same corner.

our light was still red and immediately there were people all around. there was a lot of debris in the road. i lowered the window so i could hear what was going on. someone claimed to have already dialed 911.

our light turned green and i slowly crossed the intersection and pulled over to the right. we got out to make sure we weren’t needed. we decided to stick around and wait for the police, since we had front-row seats to the accident.

a policeman on a motorcycle was soon at the accident on the radio and maybe two or three minutes later there were emergency vehicles on the scene. we gave our contact information and story to an officer.

the third car’s driver was an asian woman, she didn’t seem too badly injured. soon after the accident, someone had pulled the driver of the assulting car out and onto the sidewalk. he was hardly moving, but at least he was breathing. he was probably in shock. ryan later recalled seeing what he suspected was a puddle of urine under him. he was the type of guy who sags his pants way low; he was wearing boxers and his jeans were nearly to his knees. his neck was in a brace and he was strapped down to a stretcher and lifted into an ambulance by the time we left.

after we told our story and watched the scene for a little while, we made our way back to the car. the car wasn’t damaged.. nothing had flown off in our direction.

we were glad the pedestrian and his companion were out of the way of the car. we’re glad for many things tonight.

the other day i was talking to a real estate agent (a listing agent at a property) about photography. he asked if i had a website. i’d almost forgotten about it. tonight i decided to use my recently learned and rudimentary css skills to rework the formatting a bit. i also simplified the site took down the self portrait. i’m getting better at recreating what i imagine and want on the internets! link>> righthere.org.

ended the week going to a houseparty with a half dozen person entourage. there were maybe sixty plus people, none of which we knew. it was fun, and everybody met new people. at the tail end of the party it got pretty scandalous, but we’re all young and healthy.. we’ll live :)

this weekend ryan and i did more housing search with ann. updated the housing blog.

today there was a typekey-registered spammer posting on my blog. that’s so not cool. i reported it right away.

ribeyes were on sale last night. they’re so good. we bought two, nearly a pound each. we were browsing the spice isle when i decided to try something new. we looked at the pre-made spice mixes. one caught our eye. basically: paprika, brown sugar, kosher salt, cumin. we had all that, so we grabbed some other items and brought our two pounds of meat home.

i didn’t have any ground cumin, so i used whole cumin seeds. i broke them up as best i could. i added a dash of cayenne, plenty of kosher salt, ground black pepper, brown sugar. i prepped as usual - light coating of oil, fresh garlic, then applied the rub.

i’m not sure why, but the steaks were so juicy a lot of the rub came off after their flipping. probably the juiciest steaks we’ve ever made! the flavour was a little spicy (not as much as i’d hoped) and sweet. the pan drippings were awesome. they would have made a super sauce. i need to learn how to make quick sauce with them.

of course, we made fries as well (salt and rosemary). they came out very crispy.

we coupled the meal with a bottle of one of my favourite wines: 1997 graser cabernet.

we have this meal nailed hardcore. nothing beats it. i was nearly afraid to mess with it. but this new rub has really got me thinking of ways to improve it. it’s difficult to imagine going out to dinner when you can make something you love so much at home.