July 2006


Food/Recipes27 Jul 2006 01:31 pm

It seems like we haven’t had much food content lately here at ITF, so it’s high time to remedy the situation!

These pics are from a year ago (almost exactly), but I’m making this stuff right now. It’s fantastic. I learned it from my Mom.

What you need:

Zuchini (small ones, don’t let them get too big)
An onion
A tomato
1 lb. sausage or ground beef
Grated cheese
Sour cream
1 can any cream-of soup
Mushrooms (optional, but recommended)

Slice up the zuchini. You can also use that yellow squarsh they grow a lot of in Hoosierville.

You also will need the onion diced up in largish dices. I usually start the zuchini frying a little bit before I add the onion though.

Fry the zuchini. Fry it hard. Fry it long. Cook those vitamins out of it! A little Mark Lowry reference there for you. But you want it cooked to death, you want it shriveled and mushy. It takes a while, but don’t try to shortcut here.

I’ve kinda quit frying it for awhile covered, I think I like it better fried uncovered the whole time.

Fry the meat too. I usually fry the meat beforehand, set it aside, and add it back in later. Saves an extra frying pan to wash.

And don’t forget to salt the meat. I like to salt the zuchini too. They don’t use much salt here in Hoosierville, but I do.

Dice up your tomato, set aside. Add the onion to the zuchini in the frying pan somewhere in here though. The reason I add it later is because I want the zuchini fried harder than the onion.

You are happy, because you’re soon going to consume an ITF delicacy!

Dump in a small can of mushrooms.

When the zuchini is nearly done, add the dices of tomato and the meat. Fry for a few more minutes.

Once it’s getting good and cooked, add the can of soup. Cook long enough for the soup to be hot, then throw in a handful of grated cheese and a dollop of sour cream.

Stir and eat. Try not to eat the whole pan yourself, it’s nice if there’s enough for someone else to try too.

Tech25 Jul 2006 07:03 pm

It recently became apparent to me that I’ve got a hard drive expiring. My very quiet Antec Sonata tower has been emitting a whine, and I finally gave it the due attention it was demanding.

I opened the case, uplugged the secondary hard drive, and restarted the machine. Blessed peace and quietness.

I’m glad it’s the secondary drive that is having the problems. That’s certainly less of a pain to deal with than the primary, where Windows is installed.

I’ve also been having some Windows problems lately, and I realize now that they’re very possibly related to this drive starting to act up. It will be nice to have that resolved.

And of course I have technical requirements in the near future that necessitate a fully operable computer! That’s what made me finally check into the problem. Now I need to fix it ASAP.

So after a few words of consultation with the ITF Official Technical Advisor, Hans, I selected this WD 320GB drive from NewEgg. This will actually be my first SATA drive, when I built my new machine I just re-used my existing IDE drives.

May all the UPS men have wings on their feet!

Personal&Philosophy24 Jul 2006 10:14 am

Glenn Beck has become my favorite talk show host of all time, and I’ll tell you why.

The other day he was ranting about air conditioning, and it was fabulous. How it’s been so hot you know, and his wife keeps wanting to go outside but all he wants to do is stay in the air conditioned indoors! And that how mankind inventing air conditioning is basically the reason that we rule the world instead of lions or squirrels.

You know, he said, if squirrels had invented AC then maybe I’d be running on their porch rail instead of the other way around.

He’s extremely funny. He’s excellent at taking a slightly ridiculous notion and bringing out the male truth in it and turning it into a brilliant rant.

And when he is addressing a serious issue, he’s a man of logic and reason and common sense. Good for him, and good for me now that I can listen.

Update: Now that was an error! I forgot to link to GlennBeck.com. Thank you Kaitlyn.

Misc&Personal18 Jul 2006 09:21 pm

The rain here in Hoosierville is just unbelievable. It will be scorching hot and suddenly we’ll have torrential downpours and flash floods and inches of rain. Seriously, there’s been some damaging flooding in a few areas. What a mess.

We don’t have much of a place to park, and so I park my car in the drain area next to our driveway (I let my wife park hers in the driveway). We’re at the bottom of the hill. During one of these recent little floods my car interior was moistened by the rising floodwaters!!

This made me grievous. On Monday I rolled the windows down, hoping that the scorching noonday sun and stout breeze would reduce the sodden environment inside my car.

Which is all fine and good, except that I forgot about it that night and went to bed without rolling the windows up.

And was awakened around 2 in the morning by some exceedingly loud thunder and retina-searing flashes of lightning right in the backyard.

And I mean right in the backyard. Man it was loud. And if you’re oblivious to hints and foreshadowing, by this time it was raining buckets. My heart sank.

I like my car. It is an amazing machine. It is a Ford. It deserves to be treated better than I have been treating it.

I strode purposefully out into the deluge to see if I could rescue my car. The lightning lit up the neighborhood, revealing a forlorn Taurus poking up like a maroon island in the middle of a swirling sea. An island with windows, windows that were lowered all the way down. The water was not only backed up in the drain area, it was clear out on the road, covering most of the corner we live on.

I took off my shoes and waded out into the roiling tide. I opened the door and sat in the soaked driver’s seat. The entire interior was wet, the whole dash, every seat, the whole kit and kaboodle. I inserted the ignition key and started the powerful racing engine. I had to wait a few seconds before the transmission would engage into reverse (it’s part of my car’s personality), then when it finally took hold I eased it out of the lake into the river, then up onto the driveway behind my wife’s car.

Just for anyhow, I rolled up the windows.

I couldn’t go back to sleep after that, I was too emotionally disquieted. I tried reading for awhile, but my book was too exciting (Clancy’s Teeth of the Tiger). I finally put it down, still couldn’t go to sleep. At 5 a.m. I gave up, got up, and started working.

It’s a good thing I’m self unemployed.

Later in the morning I went out to inspect the damage. There was a lot of water in there.

I took a bucket and bailed and bailed. I sopped and mopped and water kept seeping and oozing. I finally went to the farm shop and used the wet/dry vac (I was interested in the “wet” mode obviously), that seemed to do the trick. So now I need to keep the car in the hot sun with the windows down for the next few days.

This being about 9 in the evening, however, you’ll need to excuse me. I have to go roll up the windows in my car for the night before I forget and Hoosierville hammers me with another monsoon.

Food/Recipes17 Jul 2006 07:23 am

My wife got my Mom’s rhubarb pie recipe from her, and she’d been making it a lot!

She has worked and worked on it and gotten it down to perfection. It’s a wonderful pie, tastes great and looks great too.

If Brother Doug was a little closer I’d share with him!

Misc15 Jul 2006 07:49 am

So, over last weekend I did a few things. Went to a wedding. Saw my buddy Rob there!

There was some really good party mix at the reception, Shelley and I ate a LOT of it. Didn’t we Shelley.

Went to the Gospel Echoes concert Sunday afternoon to hear my sister sing with the Crossroads team.

Speaking of which, they stayed at our (tiny) house over the weekend too.

My wife and I did some babysitting!

Cody kept me hopping. I think I can suspend my rigorous exercise regimen for about a week after trying to keep up with him for a few days.

Sean is checking out Nate the Intern.
Misc&Music13 Jul 2006 03:51 pm

I told you about my buddy Gabe competing last week at the International Barbershop competition. Gabe and Late Show did great, they made the first cut and ended up placing 20th (if I’m reading the scoresheet right)! That’s twentieth in the world, out of 47 competitors. And they only got together last November!

It was a great hearing them on the webcast, and of course it warmed my heart to hear Gabe make a few wisecracks in the interview with the webcast hosts after their set! I miss singing with you buddy.

It was quite a contest. Vocal Spectrum ended up winning, beating out Max Q (who took their 3rd silver in a row) by the thinnest of margins. Both quartets passed the 8,000 mark for total points, and Vocal Spectrum won by only six points! Statistically astounding.

In the meantime, I need to start another quartet.

Misc11 Jul 2006 07:06 pm

There are a few blog people I follow who are the photographer types. Like deepbrew and Benji Mast, for example. They’re always taking artsy photos and posting them on their blogs.

I look at them and think “I can do that.”

So here I am.

I saw the Lima Lima Flight Team recently at the air show in Goshen. I caught their night show this time, I had seen their daytime show several years ago. Pretty sweet outfit.

Got these first three pictures from their website, I didn’t take them myself. I’m posting them so you can tell what the Lima Lima Flight Team really looks like!

Some really tight formation flying.

A nice shot of their night show.

Anyway, I thought I would try to take some pics. As you can see, I’m an astounding photographer! These next three are mine.

Actually, I thought they turned out kind of cool. Completely unrecognizable, but cool.

ITF Business08 Jul 2006 05:10 am

Quite a while ago, Morgan made me curious, so I checked into the domain iceteaforever.com (as opposed to iceDteaforever.com). A squatter had it. The turkey! What in the world!

So I submitted the following, along with a lot of personal information:

How did you happen to acquire this domain? Is it for sale?

Never heard anything back, then not long ago I checked on it again. Available! Should I get it just for fun? I would just forward it to iceDteaforever, so it would only be for less confusion when telling someone “iced tea forever dot com!”

Nah, I thought, that’s not necessary. This is just a hobby site and that would cost money.

Then I check it right now and it’s gone again.

I guess I’m not the only one who’d like to have it! But evidently there is no shortage of people who, unlike me, are willing to pay for it.

At any rate, godaddy gave me a good bit of amusement in offering alternatives to iceteaforever.com. Check these out:

ICETEAETERNAL.COM
HAILTEAFOREVER.COM
ICETEAEVERMORE.COM
HAILTEAETERNAL.COM
ICEGREENTEAFOREVER.COM
ICETEAEVERLASTINGLY.COM
ICECAMOMILFOREVER.COM
FROZENWATERTEAFOREVER.COM
ICEBEVERAGEFOREVER.COM

Excellent suggestions all!

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