Easily Distracted

Eager to use some new kitchenware I bought over the weekend (a post in itself, perhaps), I made dinner last night. Along with the salmon, I stir-fried veggies & rice and attempted a simple white sauce using a white wine reduction. All things considered, it went pretty well. The biggest problem was that the salmon was too dry by the time we ate: I shouldn’t have fully cooked it, because it became a bit overcooked while staying “warm” in the oven waiting for me to finish the rest. I used a single sauté pan because I wanted the flavours of everything in the reduction/sauce – so I should have planned better. I also think I used a bit too much oil. I had never tried making a white sauce or a reduction before, but they turned out quite decent. The red onions used as garnish on top of the salmon were also sautéed in a little white wine, making them sweet. The sauce ended up compensating for the dry salmon. I had a decent lunch today. And it was pretty low carb, too!

I like my new pots. And knives. Cooking’s fun.

I try to make all my purchases on credit card. This lets me easily review all my expenses each month, or at any time using online banking. (wooh, technology). So for my last statement, I downloaded it as a spreadsheet, did some grouping, and made a chart. I had to pull in some data from my debit card statement, as well, which wasn’t so accommodating (no CSV download), but I managed.

Monthly expenses: mid-April - mid-May 2009

The three categories at the top with a bold line around them are pretty static and not going to change much in the immediate future: rent, bus, and phone. The three categories at the bottom with grey outlines were exceptional and help make this month a more expensive one: a trip to whistler (all expenses, including eating out, hotel, etc), some clothes (which I don’t buy often), and a new computer. These make up more than half of my month’s expenses. The rest of it is the interesting stuff. Eating out and liquor account for the greatest remaining expenses…. and eating out includes drinking out, whereas liquor is basically for drinking in – so already I could drastically reduce my expenses by drinking in more and drinking out less, right? (I don’t see drinking out decreasing drastically, any time soon, however….)

Food is miscellaneous groceries I’ve bought, and is very small because I live at home and don’t generally buy groceries. For that same reason, my rent should actually be half of what it is, but I plan on paying at least double, for the time being. I find it funny that coffee (when I buy a coffee and or any muffin or baked good) has its own slice of the pie – but not unexpected. Because I don’t have a car, gas is ridiculously small, but I like to replace what I use when I borrow my mom’s car.

For me, it will be interesting to see what changes next month. And who knows, at this rate, that might be the next time I blog! haha. ^_^;;

Oh, and I’ll be going to EAT!Vancouver, this weekend. I might even attend multiple days. I went last year and enjoyed it. It’s a barrage of samples and people trying to sell you stuff… and it’s where I tried and bought my RADA cutlery, which I like quite a bit. Thinking I might get a tomato knife or something. It’s only $12. If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, give me a shout.

We have a potluck lunch in the office, tomorrow, so I did something I never do: bake. I know, I know. Anyway, I decided on these things called Tuna Teasers – I remember enjoying when my mom had made them. Then I looked at the recipe. My god, was it simple! And quick! It’s from a recipe book called Fast and Fantastic, so I guess it holds true, in this case. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 c flour (I used whole wheat flour)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp onion salt (I substituted with onion flakes)
• 1/2 tsp curry powder
• dash of cayenne pepper
• 1/4 c butter
• 1/2 c milk
• 1 can flaked tuna fish, drained
• 1 c shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 tbsp finely minced green pepper (I substituted with green onion)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450F (230C). Combine first 5 ingredients. Cut in butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Add milk and stir until blended. Add last 3 ingredients. Mix well. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto lightly greased baking sheet. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 36 small puffs. About 15 medium sized.

I meant to go snowboarding at Cypress today, but I went to sleep at 4am (thanks to the time change and my laptop), so I’ll take a lazy Sunday to provide a few much needed updates. (If you’re reading this and also thinking about squeezing a little out of the remaining ski season, hit me up and lets see if we can go together!)

Work

At the beginning of April, I will be returning to the government office I worked at previously, but this time as a full-fledged civil servant! Exciting, I know. I worked there previously as a casual employee, and the person I primarily worked with will be going on maternity leave, so I’ll be filling her shoes while she’s gone. The work is not exactly what I’d like to be doing, but I’m hoping I can work on personal projects and keep my mind tuned to my other interests. (However, I know I have trouble doing this, as regardless of the job, I like to relax afterward.) This is also my proverbial foot-in-the-door, so I’ll definitely be keeping a lookout for other job postings of potential interest. Right now, the security and benefits that come with a government job are quite welcome.

Additionally, over the last few weeks, I’ve been working as an ESL tutor, and I will continue to do so until I start the new job. Actually, I really enjoy tutoring! It’s fun working with different people all the time. And if I decide to teach English abroad at some point (a very acceptable means of travel) this is great experience. It’s good to know I might actually enjoy the work, as well. It’s just not a job that can sustain much of a life, in Vancouver, at the moment.

I biked to the pool today. Swung by the barber, but he was just closing so I carried on my merry way. I remember hearing a popping sound at some point, but disregarded it. Spent a nice, long time at the pool relaxing. I didn’t really want to bike home because I was tired, but I eventually left.

I unlock my bike, get my bag on, and routinely check my tires. Front? Good. Back? ….what’s this? Uh oh. I didn’t expect a completely flat tire. It was dark out, but I rotated the tire and found a thin metal rod lodged into it. Aah… At least they weren’t slashed.

I set off on foot… walking it would take me over an hour to get back home. After 30 minutes or so, as I was walking my bike on the sidewalk, a bus pulled up and dropped off a passenger right in front of me. This surprised me because I had looked a schedule on one of the bus stops earlier, and I wasn’t expecting any buses (plus, I had my headphones on and didn’t hear it). And… there was a bike rack on it! I skipped over to the bus driver, explained my situation (I had no bus fare), and he told me to get in. Sweet!! The bus driver was super nice, which really helped my night from being bad. Hey Mr Bus driver, you stopped to pick me up.

Thank you, kind Bus man.

Life

This year has been pretty big. Naturally following up with lots of events from last year, these are some quick memories. My nephew, Rayden, was born on Feb 12th, six weeks early! This caused the father (my brother) to be indisposed for my dad’s (2nd) marriage on Feb 14th. I got bumped up to best man (but didn’t have to do much) and had a rather empty hotel room to myself in Vegas. I attended the Open Web Vancouver conference. I went to Whistler mountain for the first time in years and plan on going again soon. I went on a fantastic road trip down the west coast of the United States, something I will never forget. I slacked off most of the summer but managed to do quite a bit of rollerblading and outdoor activity hanging out with Kurt (visiting from Brazil). My brother, now a father, married the mother of his child on August 3rd. I was best man at this wedding, as well – with more responsibilities, but they were well received and totally worth it. Our beloved cat, Sky, met an early and terribly unfortunate end. We had our first encounter with bed bugs who are now the sworn enemy of our household. Vancouver, a city that sometimes doesn’t get snow all year, had its whitest Christmas ever with 60cm (2 ft) of snow! Perhaps we should have seen snow in April as a sign….?

That reminds me: Happy Holidays for 2008! Guess I was a little late on that… Here are some pictures of our insane weather in Vancouver.

Geekery

With my free time, I think I was able to really exercise my geekiness in 2008. I released a couple updates to the Rhythmbox Jump-to-Playing plugin, which led me to submit my first patch to an upstream project! Said patch was accepted and will be in the next version of Rhythmbox! Yay. It was just for some XML UI description, but it feels nice to have helped improve (even a tiny bit) a project that will be installed on thousands of computers in the next cycle. I also released a usable proof-of-concept GNOME Panel File List Applet which has stayed on my panel and I find quite useful. And I’ve done a couple little scripts and how-to’s that fall under the “nerd” category quite nicely. Oh yeah, and significant website updates. Next website todo item is to customize the attachment page for my theme, I think…. Also, I joined Twitter. And Identi.ca. And LinkedIn….

Art

Not many artsy things done this year. But with the significant improvements of tablet handling in Linux, I did some random doodles and a birthday card. I may not do it very often, but I still enjoy drawing, thank goodness.

Blog Stats for 2008

My Blog is by no means high traffic, but stats are fun! (These stats were obtained using the wordpress.com Stats plugin, and exclude the Feed stats, because I use Feedburner for that… although, I’m thinking I should revert that, now that I mostly use wordpress.com Stats.)

Top 3 Referrers:

1. http://live.gnome.org/RhythmboxPlugins/ThirdParty (402)
2. live.gnome.org/Boston2008/GUIHackfest (209)
3. siuyee.com (126)

Top 3 Posts and Pages:

1. Pidgin 2.1 UI Ideas (1,053)
2. 2D Game Art and the Virtual Console (580)
3. Rhythmbox Plugin: Jump to Playing 0.2 (455)

Top 3 Search Engine Terms:

1. rhythmbox (327)
2. bug (174)
3. pidgin (165)

Top 3 Clicks:

1. Pidgin UI screenshot attached to a bug (57)
2. Pidgin UI mockup (50) by Hylke Bons
3. SF2 HD Ken (42)

The fourth was launchpad.net/desktopdrawers with 38 clicks, so it’s kinda cool I helped advertise a small project a little. (A project I’ve submitted patches to, no less. )

Thanks

Thank you, everyone, for a wonderful 2008. It’s been interesting, and despite a failing economy, I’m looking positively toward 2009.

Happy New Year! (あけましておめでとうございます！)