Applied Indifference

Having not eaten much in the way of sandwiches for a few years (the reason Atkins will ultimately fail you, by the way), I’d forgotten just how good a sandwich I had in the Mad Cow.

Any deviation from this recipe will result in a less than optimal Mad Cow experience.

You’ll need:

• 1/4 pound of moderately thinly sliced rare roast beef (5-6 slices). If it doesn’t go “moo” when you put the knife to it, it’s not rare enough.
• 2 -3 slices of Cooper Sharp American cheese. If that’s not available, a decent slicing cheddar will do. None of those bland pansy cheeses will work for this sandwich.
• tomato slices.
• Romaine lettuce
• Horseradish Sauce
• 1 Portuguese roll

Assembly:

• Slice the roll in half. The direction of the slice should be obvious. If it isn’t find someone smarter than you to build you a proper sandwich.
• Apply a thin layer of horseradish sauce to the bottom half of the roll.
• One layer of cheese, to cover.
• Apply the meat, folding it over so that each slice ultimately covers about one third of the roll. If you do this right with all the meat, you’l have two levels, each about three or four layers thick.
• Tomato Slices. Add salt and pepper if you like (not required)
• Lettuce.
• Layer of cheese, to cover
• top of the roll.

DO NOT cut the sandwich. Serve with chips (a good Jalapeño works well) and a beverage.

Serves one.

Tags: Food by Brian Corbino
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How does rain make a bike dirty? I mean, seriously. The paint, it has spots. The saddlebags are hazy. The chrome, it is gray. The bike, it is sad.

If I didn’t have so damn much work to do, I’d spend the next 8 hours cleaning it. It deserves that much.

Tags: Motorcycle by Brian Corbino
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The shit I gottta go through to get a connection. For whatever reason, the VPN client for my customer won’t work on the wireless connection at the hotel. BUT, the connection to my house does.

And the connection from home to customer works.

So, I’m sitting in a hotel lobby with my laptop, connected to my workstation at home, running a Virtual PC session to connect to a system at customer.

Eh, it’s a living.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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Monday. St. John to Portland - the longest leg of our trip. This time, it rained for about half of it. On the good side, the rain gear worked as advertised. But the rain seems to take even more out of you than the wind. Just tiring.

In any event, we’re here, and we’re alive.

and Rachel foolishly challenged us to the 80’s edition of Trivial Pursuit. The game is half done. She’s not winning. Some folks never learn.

Tags: Motorcycle by Brian Corbino
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Yeah, it was a good week. Internet? We don’t need no stinkin’ Internet! Hell, cell phone was spotty at the house.

Which was beautiful. I want it. One of these years, I’ll post pictures.

Saturday - travelling to the Canada. There was wind, rain, cold, hot. finding the Hilton in St. John in the dark was interesting. Oh, and the ride from Portland to St. John? Not recommended. That’s a lot of miles to cover in one day.

Sunday - Confederation Bridge. 9 miles of bridge across the Northumberland Strait. Interesting, that. You can see the island when you get on the bridge. but on either side? Nothing but wet.

Tuesday - drove to Charlottetown to wander about and see ODP (with genuine Harp). Off to Peake’s Wharf to wander before the show. Rachel was introduced to the wonder that is Cow’s.

Wednesday - back to Charlottetown. Gordon Belsher was performing. He was joined by his lovely daughter Savannah (what a voice), and Todd MacLean on sax. Completely different fare than I was expecting, which was wonderful.

On Thursday, Joe and I rode pretty much all the way across P.E.I. and back. That is one windy island, I’ll tell ya. 300 miles round trip, fighting to keep the bike going where it was aimed.

Friday - East Point Lighthouse. Harry lives next door - he’s the last remaining lighthouse keeper. After him, there will be no more. Now, they just have young people tending them as they are really nothing more than tourist attractions and historical footnotes. Still worth a visit, if for no other reason than to see how we got here in the first place.

Saturday - winding down, packing, cleaning. Gotta be out by 10 on Sunday. Rachel challenged Joe and I to a game of Trivial Pursuit. She lost twice. I am the master of useless information!

Sunday - Departure. One last lunch at Peake’s Wharf, and a final visit to Cow’s before going over that bridge again.

Tags: Motorcycle, Randomness by Brian Corbino
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Bristol to Portland.

Because I am perpetually late, we got underway at about 10:30 (instead of the 9 we were aiming for). Made it into Westfield around 12:30 and stopped for lunch. We decided to take the Mass Pike to 495 instead of follwing 10/202 all the way through New Hampshire.

Pulled in to Portland at about the planned time (6ish). Overall not bad. Frequent breaks are a must though, since we went pretty much solid from Westfield all the way to Portsmouth (about 150 miles, all highway). My butt was not amused.

But I don’t think I’m too terribly interested in travelling on highways any more. People are either stupid, blind, or deliberately inconsiderate. I cannot count the number of times that cars cut in between the bikes for no good reason (I’m not going to fault someone for merging, but if you’re in the middle lane, and there’s nobody in front of you, and no exits in sight, let me have my zarking lane, OK?

Oh, and another thing. If you’re going to change lanes in front of a motorcycle, could you consider staying a bit more than two feet off our front tire? We’re kinda exposed out there, and the last thing we need to see is your bumper where the road used to be.

And I cannot stress how important this is: do not tailgate a motorcycle. If we have to make a sudden move or a sudden stop, we can do so in a far shorter distance than you can. In which case you’re going to hit us, and that’s not going to be pretty. I’ll let you try to explain to my mother why there’s little bits of me embedded in your grille, because you were in too much of a hurry to actually DRIVE NICE.

Tags: Motorcycle by Brian Corbino
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George Bush is an idiot. He must be, since 50% of the people in this country believe it to be so, and 150 million people can’t be wrong, right?

Then can you tell me why these same people seem to believe that the recent arrests in England of men accused of plotting to explode airplanes over the Atlantic are a hoax? A cock-up, designed by George Bush to prop up the Republican party in an election year?

No, I’m not joking. These tools actually believe that George and Tony got together and came up with this whole plot because Ned Lamont won the Democratic primary in Connecticut.

Connecticut. A pissant northeastern state with a population of around 3 million (that’s one per cent of the US) is of such concern to the President that he’s going to go to all this trouble to deflect attention off of which Democrat won the Democratic primary in a state that hasn’t had a Republican Senator in 30 odd years?

Right.

I suppose that if there’s a hurricane on November 1 they’ll question its timing as well.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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This surprises me. All the news reports I read say that Ned Lamont (C) is getting his biggest support from the wealthy towns in CT. The blue-collar working stiffs are going for Joe.

Although, it shouldn’t surprise me. “Troubles” is probably a better word. I thought that I was a raging classist - I can’t stand people who intentionally live down to stereotypes crafted for them by power-hustlers, nor can I tolerate people who yearn for victim status in the hopes of a hand-out. But this support for Lamont reeks of classism of a far nastier sort.

Lamont is anti a whole lot of shit. Big business, national defense, free markets. He’s for an immediate pullout of Iraq, and probably wouldn’t be too interested in defending the homeland either. He’s in favor of a nationalized (universal, he calls it) health-care system - financed by business taxes (especially against Wal-Mart).

The people who support him in the whole anti-war thing are the same ones that Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was targetting in his disingenuous attempt to revive the draft. He said point blank that if rich white suburbanites were in danger of having their kids sent off to fight “Bush’s war” that they’d rise up and stop him. It would appear that Rangel was right, at least as far as it concerns the Volvo and Brie set.

The people who support his whole anti-business agenda are, in my opinion, looking to transfer whatever meager wealth that the poor have to themselves (through subsidized health care) or at least prevent them getting any more. I mean, who do they think is going to be hurt by increasing the tax burden on Wal-Mart? They don’t shop there. They don’t work there. Their kids certainly won’t work there. But someone’s gonna have to make up for the money that Lamont wants to hoover out of Wal-Mart’s wallet.

And that someone is the lower and middle class. The ones that shop at Wal-Mart because everything’s cheap. The ones that work at Wal-Mart because they’ll accomodate odd work schedules.

Isn’t it bad enough that these limousine liberals have chased almost all industry from Connecticut because they didn’t like the dirt and the noise? Now they want to chase small businesses and retail from the state too?

If Lamont ends up being our Senator, I’ll be ashamed to say I’m from this pathetic state.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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OK, Outsourcing has finally hit me in the ass. Literally.

Pants. I can’t even buy pants right, apparently. I venture forth to my local retailer of pants to acquire two pairs of Levi’s 550 (for the large-assed) jeans. For the record, I take my pants in a 38/30 size. I have a pair of Levi’s 550s on right now in that size. Needless to say, they fit. Which leads me to believe that if I purchase another pair of them in the same size, they ought to fit, right?

Not on your life.

The pair on my butt now were “Made in Haiti, finished in Dominican Republic”.

Pair one (pre-faded) were made in India. I can put them on, but my thighs feel like sausages. These are “relaxed fit” jeans, not “skin tight”. So, 38 in India doesn’t mean the same as 38 in Dominican Republic.

Pair two was worse. These were made in a country I have never heard of: Lesotho. Apparently in this suburb of South Africa 38 means 34, or maybe 32. Because I couldn’t get those pants above mid-thigh.

So, I now have to return two pairs of pants (I am now happy that I Billyed out and forgot to put them in the wash with everything else last night without first trying them) and try to find ones that actually fit.

This is ridiculous.

Tags: Randomness by Brian Corbino
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That’s about how I’d sum up the single-player experience of Worms Open Warfare on the Nintendo DS. This game features the stupidest AI on planet Earth. There were smarter games on the Atari 2600 with it’s 128 bytes of RAM.

Other than that, and a few quibbles, it’s a fine game. Don’t get me wrong - I like it. Blowing up worms is always a satisfying way to pass the time. But don’t expect a real challenge from the single-player experience, as there isn’t one to be had.

On to the specifics. I’ll even try to make this look like a real review.
[Read more →]

Tags: Video Games by Brian Corbino
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