Today we went to the Bonefish Grill with some friends. We are technically flush with the Obama mandated money from Social Security that is a bribe for my non-citizen wife to vote for him, but that is another story. My friends got things such as a pad thai dish, lobster tails, scallops and shrimps (my wife's), and a sirloin. Overall the place actually did fairly poorly on the meal. The waiter was decent, but the food was eh.
Mine was a rather good Sir Will's Fish & Chips. Three pieces of fish and an adequate number of fries for $10. The good thing was that once I asked for Malt Vinegar twice I got a full bottle that was liberally applied. I probably used three ounces for my meal astounding my friends, and revolting those that could not stand the Malty goodness.
The reason for the CASTLE FALKENSTEIN tag is that I put a decent amount of work into the food that I use for the game especially during banquets and other fancy meals. One thing I have not done is put much work into street food. Fish and chips took of with the working class of London during the middle 18th century. Joseph Malin opened the first opened an official Fish and Chips Shop in 1860 that was a version of fast food. This is quite a ways before the start of most Castle Falkenstein games so should fit well. The first higher class restaurant, meaning they had carpet, was opened in 1896 at the tail of the Castle Falkenstein era.
There is the claim that the chipped potatoes were given away with the fish since they used them to maintain the frying oil at a good temperature. I find this unlikely as the price of the chips would have been included in the overhead cost of maintaining the shop. Anything else would have been taken directly out of profit and cause the shop to go under. But economics is not studied by even collage students now a days with communists being more important than capitalists. And capitalits will actually help people such as in the Victorian era.
Edinburgh is considered the location for a the increased popularity of Malt Vinegar!!! This is perhaps the greatest thing of fish and chips, and I would just drink the Malt Vinegar but people look at me weird. I probably go through two to three ounces of Malt Vinegar in a single F&C meal. It will make sense that Malt Vinegar is used quite heavily there as Malt Whiskey is also popular. The malt not used in the distilling process would of course be perfectly good for making a vinegar.
Edinburgh's preferred condiment for the meal is a chippy sauce made from a fruity brown sauce, salt, and Malt Vinegar. In 1896 the HP Foods company started to produce the HP Sauce that is used throughout the country. It is now owned by Heinz and their UK website does not even mention the sauce. At the very same time as HP Foods, the "Fish Restaurant" was introduced by Samuel Isaacs in London. His "Fish Restaurant" changed the ways many of the middle class looked at the extravagant ellegance of eating out.
This was a very nice restaurant that was several steps up from a C.M.O.T. Dibbler style street vendor and even had waited service, table clothes, flowers, china, and cutlery. This made a take the wife and kids out on Friday a possibility that was previously only available to the rich upper class of England. It was the Applebee's of the time (only good) allowing the working class to experience a higher class of eating without a massive increase in price beyond their station.I have been looking for possibilities of "Fast Food" to use in Falkenstein, but have only found Sushi and Fish and Chips as official fast food. Others I found here at Fast Food in Victorian London.
And for those who wish to try making it yourself:
Chippy Sauce:
First you make something called an HP Brown Sauce:
Ingredients
Apples - 1.8 kg (4 lb), peeled, cored and sliced
Prunes - 450g (1 lb) stoned and sliced
Onions - 2 large, peeled and diced
Malt vinegar - 1.7 litres (3 pints)
Ground ginger - 2 tsp
Grated nutmeg - 1 tsp
Ground allspice - 1 tsp
Cayenne pepper - 1 tsp
Salt - 8 tbsp
Sugar - 900g (2 lb)
Preparation:
Put the fruit and onions into a large pan and cover with water.
Cook until tender. Liquidise or sieve into a large saucepan.
Add the malt vinegar, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cayenne pepper, salt, and sugar. Cook on a low heat until reduced and thick.
To make “chippie” sauce - add about a third of the total volume of white vinegar. (after cooking - add to existing stock)
This sauce can be filled into sterilised jars or kept in fridge indefinitely.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Way To Much Anime ... Or Maybe Not Enough!!!
Today I did nothing major but did a whole lot of little stuff. Writing down
This was a surprise for me as I thought that the hard drive was dead, but found that it may have been the SATA channel on the PC I tested it on. I began watching some of it today - Ranma 1/2 & Gun Frontier. I really liked Ranma 1/2 even into the 7th season and the movies that many people disliked for the rehashed plots. So what if all they did was fight things, they did it in funny ways and frankly some of the times boobies were involved. They, like bacon, make almost anything better.
I did think to go to www.anime-planet.com to update some of the new stuff I have watched. I had not done this in quite some time so I ended up adding both a dozen anime that I have watched since then and ones that I had forgotten about. Then I went oh yeah I have seen up to episode 68 in Gash Bell so I shall add that as well. I wonder how much anime I have watched now.
This was no big deal to me really it is mostly just a way of keeping score , but I set up the signature for a list of what I have watched and was actually somewhat surprised. Over 3 MONTHS of anime!!! I wonder how I made it out of school with a 3.94 GPA especially since it was a private school.
I guess I shall have to work harder at this. And by harder work my way up to 4 months. Have fun my whole whopping follower, as I sit to watch anime tonight and tomorrow.
- Picking up and dropping wife off to and from work.
- Two doctor appointments one for me and one for my wife.
- Paying credit card and medical bills.
- Cleaning the house some.
- Taking out garbage.
- Dealing with medical insurance with my wife.
- Dealing with online credit card access, USAA is such a good company.
- Finding out why Citibank sucks a lot when my wife's credit card is denied. (P.S. the citi may never sleep except when it comes to Firefox their site does not work with it.)
- Lunch and insulin pump difficulties.
- Pulling old information from hard drives and finding 194GB of anime on them.
This was a surprise for me as I thought that the hard drive was dead, but found that it may have been the SATA channel on the PC I tested it on. I began watching some of it today - Ranma 1/2 & Gun Frontier. I really liked Ranma 1/2 even into the 7th season and the movies that many people disliked for the rehashed plots. So what if all they did was fight things, they did it in funny ways and frankly some of the times boobies were involved. They, like bacon, make almost anything better.I did think to go to www.anime-planet.com to update some of the new stuff I have watched. I had not done this in quite some time so I ended up adding both a dozen anime that I have watched since then and ones that I had forgotten about. Then I went oh yeah I have seen up to episode 68 in Gash Bell so I shall add that as well. I wonder how much anime I have watched now.
This was no big deal to me really it is mostly just a way of keeping score , but I set up the signature for a list of what I have watched and was actually somewhat surprised. Over 3 MONTHS of anime!!! I wonder how I made it out of school with a 3.94 GPA especially since it was a private school.
I guess I shall have to work harder at this. And by harder work my way up to 4 months. Have fun my whole whopping follower, as I sit to watch anime tonight and tomorrow.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Insulin Pump No Delivery Problems
I have been on a Medtronic insulin pump for a bit over 9 months now, and things have gone fairly well. Over the past week I have gotten 7 no delivery errors that are indicative of air getting in the line forming an occlusion. It is unknown that is causing it, but the main cause seems to be the infusion set getting crimped in some manner.
I pulled two out with both having a slight bend in the catheter. Both had different placement location but were the same type of set. The no delivery error has occurred four other times and I was able to rewind and try the same infusion set again. All the times my blood sugar was in the range of 300-450 at the time of error with it falling to 80-110 the next morning. This has caused me to go through 4 infusion sets in 5.5 days time. I am going to assume that it is something with my infusion set placement on the body and not the equipment itself.
The problem was resolved by replacing the line and the insulin reservoir itself. The past times it had always been the site itself. While this is only the fourth time it has happened the past three were all due to kicks in the catheter of the infusion set itself. I will be checking the reservoir every time to ensure a good fit of the cap.
The only problem that I will be having is with the State provided insurance. My wife works for The State where we get our insurance from. We have had our insurance canceled because the state only checks the mail box once every two weeks. This may seem bad, but five years ago they only checked it once a month. I mailed it on the last day possible after having problems, the post office took 8 days each way, and it looks like it got there on the last possible day for them to check the mail. And rather than check the mail in the afternoon they check it in the morning. This means that just the time the government took to work with it was 31 days.
The next thing to happen with the insurance is that when my wife went back to work they needed to process a large amount of paperwork. The insurance we had was for disability and we were paying it every month by sending a check ... no electronic payments of course it would cause people to lose jobs. You have to have someone to walk to the PO box twice a month. When she got back to work someone canceled the disability portion of the insurance system, but did not put in that the deductions from payroll needed to continue. This caused to insurance to cancel at the end of the month. They said they would get the new insurance to go through the payroll group as soon as possible.
Then we tried again to get a prescription to be paid for, but the person we talked to did not set up the paper work to go to one more person who made sure that the payroll deductions were actually made. There was three people involved in setting up a single thing. Each of them had multiple steps to do and did not do all of them causing a simple mistake on their part to extend for three months. This is why I am glad the entire country is not on State Run (Socialist) Health Care.
I pulled two out with both having a slight bend in the catheter. Both had different placement location but were the same type of set. The no delivery error has occurred four other times and I was able to rewind and try the same infusion set again. All the times my blood sugar was in the range of 300-450 at the time of error with it falling to 80-110 the next morning. This has caused me to go through 4 infusion sets in 5.5 days time. I am going to assume that it is something with my infusion set placement on the body and not the equipment itself.
The problem was resolved by replacing the line and the insulin reservoir itself. The past times it had always been the site itself. While this is only the fourth time it has happened the past three were all due to kicks in the catheter of the infusion set itself. I will be checking the reservoir every time to ensure a good fit of the cap.
The only problem that I will be having is with the State provided insurance. My wife works for The State where we get our insurance from. We have had our insurance canceled because the state only checks the mail box once every two weeks. This may seem bad, but five years ago they only checked it once a month. I mailed it on the last day possible after having problems, the post office took 8 days each way, and it looks like it got there on the last possible day for them to check the mail. And rather than check the mail in the afternoon they check it in the morning. This means that just the time the government took to work with it was 31 days.
The next thing to happen with the insurance is that when my wife went back to work they needed to process a large amount of paperwork. The insurance we had was for disability and we were paying it every month by sending a check ... no electronic payments of course it would cause people to lose jobs. You have to have someone to walk to the PO box twice a month. When she got back to work someone canceled the disability portion of the insurance system, but did not put in that the deductions from payroll needed to continue. This caused to insurance to cancel at the end of the month. They said they would get the new insurance to go through the payroll group as soon as possible.
Then we tried again to get a prescription to be paid for, but the person we talked to did not set up the paper work to go to one more person who made sure that the payroll deductions were actually made. There was three people involved in setting up a single thing. Each of them had multiple steps to do and did not do all of them causing a simple mistake on their part to extend for three months. This is why I am glad the entire country is not on State Run (Socialist) Health Care.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Crisis on Infinate Kirks
We went to see the new Star Trek movie this Sunday. It was during a wild day of moving friends and visiting my mother for Mother's Day. My friend offered to pay for my ticket to the movie as a thank you for my assistance with the move. That spoke greatly of his desperation on needing people to help with the move.
I had read a little on the movie so I was not going into it completely blind. I was however very worried about the differences displayed in the characters and the comments on continuity with the main story line. All of this is there, but there is very good reason. The reason may actually lie in comic books.
In the past DC and Marvel comics would spawn new series with a plethora of characters in them. Most are promptly forgotten in the shadow of prime heroes such as The Batman or Spider-Man. I mean really who remembers the Gibbon or the Mathemanic. Oooh the powers of Math and a Monkey ... hey if they combined the two it's Math Monkey. There would be so many characters that they would need to take up valuable space in the comic mentioning a little about the character to let the readers know why this monkey is talking to Spider-Man. However they could not just kill off characters willy nilly through a vast number of comics. There would be fan complaints and the fear of American Congressional action that spawned the comic killing Comics Code Authority. To solve this the comic companies tried a number of things
Marvel is always one for spawning a completely new universe at the drop of the hat. The latest Ultimates series (that is really good) is one example of this. You just drop everything every character has been doing and recreate them for the current times in a series that has nothing to do with the events of the past. The X-Men had multiple time lines that at times I was not sure which one I was reading and just went for the action rather than the higher level plots.
DC always used multiple universes (multiverse) that could be linked by the Flash being able to vibrate between them. This way you could ignore that Lois Lane married Superman in one comic in Universe 2 (even if the explanation is magic stole is memory) and still have the Man of Steel in Universe 1 do his normal things. This was brilliant as it gave writers the ability to ignore the continuity forced on them by past writers. Any mistakes could be given off to "Oh it happened in universe 785 rather than Universe 1." This sort if freedom was often taken to an extreme in Earths where Batman begins his career in 1889 (Earth-1889) fighting Jack the Ripper (Joker) or one where all humans are actually weres (Earth-387). To stop the growth of these universes DC introduced Crisis on Infinate Earths.
All this did was merge all of the historys of the Earths that they wanted to keep, kill of any Earths they did not want, and alter the historys of any character they wanted to clean up. This is why it is related to Star Trek. Paramount has now cleansed the Star Trek universe with a reset.
!!!SPOILER ALERT!!! IF YOU CONTINUE READING AFTER THIS LINE THERE IS A VERY GOOD CHANCE THINGS MAY BE RUINED FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT LIKE KNOWING THINGS ABOUT THE MOVIE AHEAD OF TIME!!! YOU HAVE BEEN FOREWARNED!!!
The movie's villain is a time traveling Romulan that makes his way back with a ship and crew on the day of Kirk's birth just in time to kill his father. Once the bad guys were here all of history as we knew it went out the window. There were a dozen of things where I was going well this happened like this, that never happened, and this was just funked up just in the first few minutes. After the time travel explanation I just went "Oh its like the mirror universe episode!!!"
The writers ignored current character development but seemed to pull more form the books than the last original cast movies did. Spock and Kirk not caring for each other had been mentioned a few times, but never on the screen. They were able to use that decently and most likely used it to play up the more emotional portrayal or Spock. Since they used Leonard Nimoy as Old Spock they can play the differences significantly more than if the actor had died and was replaced by CG or a different actor entirely.
While the character personalities are a bit different the core of the characters is still there. Scottie is still Scottie, Sulu is now much more Sulu, and Spock is more realistic portrayed in his youth. The only ones I found disappointing were Chekov and Uhura.
Chekov they did OK with, but they played on the Nuclear Wessles line to much. The accent worked, but the hair cut and look just seemed off. I simply did not like it terribly and hope that future sequels and spin offs due him better justice.
Uhura was actually very well done personality wise, but I still think that Nichelle Nichols was far more attractive especially Mirror Universe Uhura:
I had read a little on the movie so I was not going into it completely blind. I was however very worried about the differences displayed in the characters and the comments on continuity with the main story line. All of this is there, but there is very good reason. The reason may actually lie in comic books.
In the past DC and Marvel comics would spawn new series with a plethora of characters in them. Most are promptly forgotten in the shadow of prime heroes such as The Batman or Spider-Man. I mean really who remembers the Gibbon or the Mathemanic. Oooh the powers of Math and a Monkey ... hey if they combined the two it's Math Monkey. There would be so many characters that they would need to take up valuable space in the comic mentioning a little about the character to let the readers know why this monkey is talking to Spider-Man. However they could not just kill off characters willy nilly through a vast number of comics. There would be fan complaints and the fear of American Congressional action that spawned the comic killing Comics Code Authority. To solve this the comic companies tried a number of thingsMarvel is always one for spawning a completely new universe at the drop of the hat. The latest Ultimates series (that is really good) is one example of this. You just drop everything every character has been doing and recreate them for the current times in a series that has nothing to do with the events of the past. The X-Men had multiple time lines that at times I was not sure which one I was reading and just went for the action rather than the higher level plots.
DC always used multiple universes (multiverse) that could be linked by the Flash being able to vibrate between them. This way you could ignore that Lois Lane married Superman in one comic in Universe 2 (even if the explanation is magic stole is memory) and still have the Man of Steel in Universe 1 do his normal things. This was brilliant as it gave writers the ability to ignore the continuity forced on them by past writers. Any mistakes could be given off to "Oh it happened in universe 785 rather than Universe 1." This sort if freedom was often taken to an extreme in Earths where Batman begins his career in 1889 (Earth-1889) fighting Jack the Ripper (Joker) or one where all humans are actually weres (Earth-387). To stop the growth of these universes DC introduced Crisis on Infinate Earths.
All this did was merge all of the historys of the Earths that they wanted to keep, kill of any Earths they did not want, and alter the historys of any character they wanted to clean up. This is why it is related to Star Trek. Paramount has now cleansed the Star Trek universe with a reset.
!!!SPOILER ALERT!!! IF YOU CONTINUE READING AFTER THIS LINE THERE IS A VERY GOOD CHANCE THINGS MAY BE RUINED FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT LIKE KNOWING THINGS ABOUT THE MOVIE AHEAD OF TIME!!! YOU HAVE BEEN FOREWARNED!!!
The movie's villain is a time traveling Romulan that makes his way back with a ship and crew on the day of Kirk's birth just in time to kill his father. Once the bad guys were here all of history as we knew it went out the window. There were a dozen of things where I was going well this happened like this, that never happened, and this was just funked up just in the first few minutes. After the time travel explanation I just went "Oh its like the mirror universe episode!!!"
The writers ignored current character development but seemed to pull more form the books than the last original cast movies did. Spock and Kirk not caring for each other had been mentioned a few times, but never on the screen. They were able to use that decently and most likely used it to play up the more emotional portrayal or Spock. Since they used Leonard Nimoy as Old Spock they can play the differences significantly more than if the actor had died and was replaced by CG or a different actor entirely.
While the character personalities are a bit different the core of the characters is still there. Scottie is still Scottie, Sulu is now much more Sulu, and Spock is more realistic portrayed in his youth. The only ones I found disappointing were Chekov and Uhura.
Chekov they did OK with, but they played on the Nuclear Wessles line to much. The accent worked, but the hair cut and look just seemed off. I simply did not like it terribly and hope that future sequels and spin offs due him better justice.
Uhura was actually very well done personality wise, but I still think that Nichelle Nichols was far more attractive especially Mirror Universe Uhura:
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