Important Note

In the last couple of hours, a few people searching for the name of the "Italian" gentleman (MR DON FABIANO JUTOLIO CHICHI) who sent one of my baiting characters a threat the other day.

If you are coming here as a result of looking for this, please do not reply to them. There is nobody coming for you, and the only purpose for the letter is to take your money from you, in the name of supposedly stopping this threat. If you need more assistance, please contact me by leaving a comment or sending me an email by using the button on the right.

Summer's coming

Seeing that it's almost the end of May, that can only mean one thing - Summer's on its way. Something that is new this summer is the availability full-time of an air conditioning unit. We got it last summer after it was so hot in the latter part of July and basically we reached the breaking point; and now it's just been re-installed today after sitting in the garage over the winter.

The one thing that I had forgotten about the unit was that (as it sits in the window right next to me) it really blocks a lot of the light. It's not a lot, but it is enough to be noticeable. Look at it this way - it's better to have a little light taken away for being able to survive a hot summer day without a fan blowing full blast on your face. :)

Also, the US Blogs community on BumpZee is growing quite nicely - we're up to 16 members now, and I think know that it'll be on the first page of communities within a couple of days. Not too shabby if I say so myself. :)

And to close, a musical interlude -

Attention DVR/PVR Users!

In the light of the news that some people missed the announcement of the winner of this year's American Idol, I would like to make the following suggestion:

Your DVR/PVR has a thing called "flexible scheduling" - that means that you can tell it to record the program and then to record, say, 15 extra minutes at the end of the show. You do not have to record the complete next program, as some people insist. The same thing applies for the beginning of a show - you can tell it to start recording a couple of minutes early.

Just because you can tell it to record a show doesn't mean you lose total control over your scheduling. In fact, there are computer programs out there (WebScheduler, which I know is used by many Aussies) that will by default extend the recording time of a show.

Then again, maybe we've let technology take over some good old common sense...I know that when I used a VCR, I'd always stick an extra minute or two on either side of a program to ensure that I got the whole show, didn't you? The same applies for folks using a DVD recorder, they're smart enough to know to extend recording...

I see you watching me watching you

This story in the SMH caught my eye yesterday; you wouldn't really know what it was about from the title, though it is a hint - "Obese, gun-happy and violent; but that's half the story". The point is that Fairfax sent Michael Gawenda over here a couple of years ago to be their Washington Correspondent, and in that time, he's seen both the stereotypical America along with the country that most of us know.

It's items like this that make me glad for being able to access newspapers and news from around the world, as one point that he makes is very prescient -

It is not surprising that so many Americans consider America to be a world unto itself, which partly at least, explains American provincialism and why many Americans are so apparently incurious about the rest of the world.

If I have failed to convey the complexity of America, I am not alone. Much of the reporting of the place by most foreign correspondents - British, European and Australian - fails the complexity test.

The truth of the matter is that most of the my fellow citizens really only pay attention to what is happening in their area, along with the areas that get coverage from the major news programs and channels. I will disagree with his point about the homelands of the journos who cover this country being complex. If I were sent to, say Australia, with just basic information, or maybe info that I'd culled from a travel guide, there would be a lot of nuance that I'd miss - for example, the split in football codes - Rugby League in NSW, the ACT and QLD, Aussie rules in the other states and territories; Rugby a quiet third, soccer lurking there, and gridiron completely nonexistant.

Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see someone who comes to the country go around and visit the parts of our vast land that don't get media coverage (read: anywhere other than the Northeast Corridor (that's Boston to Washington and down into Northern Virginia), Los Angeles, and to a very very much lesser extent, Chicago) to find what I guess you would call the quintessential American.

I have to say that I'd be very interested if they did decide to market his upcoming book here, but I do know that the chances of this happening are likely very small, but you never know.

Strange that he was on TV...

Important! If you have come here searching for things found in this letter, or if you have received a letter similar to this, do not reply to it - there is no hired assassin coming for you. The purpose of this is to get money from you in order to "save" yourself. If you need more assistance about this, feel free to contact me by leaving a comment or by sending me an email by using the button at the right.

---

Something that I don't mention too often here are the scammers who I bait into believing any amount of stories. Naturally, they try to get *you* to believe their stories as well. So, I was quite surprised to see this email in the inbox of one of my baiting characters (it was dated May 12th and I just noticed it this morning; I don't check that account too often, eh? :)). Anyway, this is what the message said:

HELLOW Famous person's name,

I NORMALLY INTRODUCE MY SELF BEFORE I EXECUTE MY JOB,AM MR DON FABIANO JUTOLIO CHICHI,AN ITALIAN CITIZEN,YOU CAN SEE THAT BY MY NAME AND AT THE SAME TIME A HIRED ASSASSINE (AN ASSASINATOR) THAT IS MY JOB.

I LIKE TO GO STARIGHT TO THE POINT,SOME BODY PAID ME US $350,000.00 (THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND UNITED STATES OF AMERICAN DOLLAR) FOR ME TO KILL YOU WHILE THE REMAINING BALANCE OF 150,000.00 (ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND) WILL BE PAID AFTER THE JOB IS COMPLETED.

BUT BEFORE I CARRY ON MY DUTY,I NORMALLY LIKE TO HER FROM THE PERSON BEFORE HE OR SHE WILL MEET HIS SUDDEN DEATH,I WILL LIKE YOU TO BRIEF ME THE REASON WHY YOU ARE INVOLVED/ABOUT TO BE ASSASSINATE.

MY BOYS ARE NOW AFTER YOU,THAT IS TO SAY,THEY ARE NOW MONITORING YOUR MOVEMENTS,8 OF THEM HAVE ARRIVED YOUR COUNTRY (THE SPIES TEAM) WHILE THE REMAINING 7 WILL BE ARRIVED NEXT WEEK WHICH IS (THE EXECUTION TEAM)
AS SOON AS THE EXECUTION TEAM ARRIVED,CONSIDER YOUR SELF AS A DEAD PERSON BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT ACCEPT ANY OFFER OR WHAT EVER FROM YOU.I WANT TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS MAY BE INVOLVED ONLY IF YOU MAKE THE REPROT TO THE POLICE OR ANY ENFORMENT AGENCIES,THAT IS TO SAY,IF YOU TAKE THE MATTER TO THE POLICE,ALL,I SAID ALL YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS WILL BE DEAD WITHIN A SHORT TIME BECAUSE I NEVER MISS A TRAGET,I HAVE BEEN IN THE FIELD FOR GOOD 34 YEARS AND SINCE THEN,I HAVE NEVER FAILED/DISAPPOINT ANY OF MY CUSTOMERS.

SO,BE WARNED TILL I HEAR FROM YOU IF YOU LIKE.

DON CHICHI.

It sounds quite scary, but there are a couple of things to note - 1) Take a look at the language - I'll tell you that in Firefox, there's a lot of red lines, so a lot of misspelt words ;) and 2) This guy isn't Italian at all; he's in Nigeria, based on his IP address in the mail's headers.

Lastly, this guy isn't terribly efficient. If his "SPIES TEAM" were really smart, they'd have known where my character was today (hint: think of small tax havens in Europe). Not only that, this guy should have done the job last week, so why did my character appear on live TV around the world three times today? ;)

Speaking of TV, here's a real question from one of those late night quiz shows -
What tool is used to drive screws into place?
A. Pliers
B. Screwdriver

This is pretty cool...

I've been discovering some new blogs since joining up with BumpZee, and one that I found is Interesting Perspectives, written by pearl, who posted an item today about a site that is giving you, me and anyone else who is up for putting a few links here and there an opportunity to make money online.

The premise is that you put up some links to her site, and also put a link to the post about the contest, you can have the chance to get $100 in your PayPal account.

Pretty cool, no? ;)

Also, if you do have a US-based blog, don't forget to submit it to the US Blogs community on BumpZee. :)

The joy of it all...

Recently, I was given a small task to do that involved a bit of work. I have to say that I really enjoyed it and the result turned out quite well, even if I was a little tired after doing it. Then again, the lawn does need to be cut every once in a while.

However, I'm not talking about lawn maintenance today. Rather, I'm going to produce the result of a small challenge that I was set the other day. Now, normally I wouldn't have done this so quickly, but it just so happened that we had some chicken in the fridge that was supposed to go to stir-fry, but that hadn't happened just yet. So, I made the decision to reroute the chicken to this recipe.

Usually we buy boneless, skinless chicken breast (proof of that is the 6 pounds that are sitting in the freezer after buying three bags of it when it was on sale for $4.99 per 3-pound bag). However, the chicken that was supposed to go to the stir-fry still had the skin and bones on it. I'll spare the full details, but suffice it to say, in the process of boning it, I managed to cut through a latex glove and nicked my left index finger while trying to sharpen a knife. But a Band-Aid and a new glove later, I was back in business. Fortunately, I only had to do this to two of the breasts; I had a couple left from the first bag of chicken breasts we had gotten.

Here's a tip to y'all - if you don't have a juicer available (I could have sworn that we did have one, but I'll be buggered if I know where it is, either the manual or the electric one), save yourself some hassle and buy a bit of ReaLime juice or the generic equivalent. I certainly didn't mind having to squeeze all 8 halves of lime, but ya know, it does get tiring after a while. However, I'm not totally sure what the price of the juice is, but for the four limes, we paid a total of $3.16, so it wasn't too bad of a price (79¢ each) to pay. I also decided to pick up some ginger - that wound up being something like 68¢ or so (a couple of pieces, at $3.79 per pound).

After I had gotten done with the chicken, I had put it into the bag and intended to pour the marinade over it; well, actually, it's supposed to be the other way around, so I wound up using a bowl and fork anyways. :)

While the chicken was sitting in the fridge marinating, I started in on chopping up the vegies for the Greek salad that I had decided on making. Another very straightforward recipe, and one that you can add or subtract ingredients to at will, I would think. I had decided to use cucumbers, roma tomatoes, red onion, and celery in the main salad mix, and also chopped up an avocado (that's been sitting in the fridge for almost three weeks now, but as you'll see, is still good enough to eat - not a single brown spot on it) and got some feta cheese for myself because I'm the only one who likes those items here. (Interesting side story about the avocados - when we were stocking up on them 3 weeks back, the checker at the store we got them from said that she didn't get avocados; my response was that I tried it and liked it; she should consider doing the same, they were on sale for 98¢ each at the time.)

While the chicken was cooking in the frying pan, you could really smell the fresh ginger in it, and it was a great smell I must say. I put together the vinaigrette using red wine vinegar and the trusty extra virgin olive oil, and put it on the side so that it could be added at will.

Overall, I'd have to say that it was a great meal - dead simple to make too, even though it took me about an hour and a half to do it all (most of that was the prep for the chicken though, along with slicing and squeezing the limes). The only thing I wasn't totally keen on was how sharp of a taste the vinaigrette had. Then again, I'd never really had something like that before.

The good thing was that we had enough left over for me to have it again for lunch, just needing a bit of microwaving (that's why the post is timestamped 11:23 but not appearing until now; I took a break for lunch ;)). I also did some adjustment to the vinaigrette by adding a little bit more olive oil and using apple cider vinegar. I also added a bit of lemon juice and that really helped to make the taste less sharp.

Of course, what would it be if I didn't include pictures? ;)

First off, the marinade mixed up, along with the limes


Here are the vegies, cut up and ready to go.


The chicken, just about ready to be taken out of the pan


Here's the spread, ready to serve up (and yes, I did do some editing on the photo)


The salad, as I had it for lunch today


It's my lunchtime routine now. :)

Calling all US-based bloggers!

The other day, I mentioned that I joined a site called BumpZee, and I'm getting used to how things work over there. Snøskred mentioned to me that I should start up a community for US bloggers. I kinda actually figured that such a community would be one of the first created. Well, I was wrong; there was no group for US bloggers.

However, this oversight has now been fixed with the creation of the US Blogs community. If you're in the States, and would like to add your blog, click here, and if you're a member of BumpZee, you'll be able to add it to the community. I'll then check out your site, and it'll be part of the community.

Warning: This video is addictive

You don't have to listen to the whole video, but make sure you listen to the first part - it's not in English, but I dare you to not get it stuck into your head. And that backing track, it's something else :)

I think that the name of Palito Ortega started to be known in Spain first as a writer. I want to remember now the first song Palito Ortega song that was recorded here in Spain. It was recorded by a friend, a singer of the time named Ricard E. And this first song, from 17 or 18 years ago already, said:

Al lado
Al lado
Justo al lado
Justo al lado
Vive
Vive
La que me tiene un amorado
ilusionado, trastornado
yo la tengo de vecina por desgracia
está viviendo justo al lado
bien el lado
justo al lado

Or, to say in English (very roughly):

At the side
Alongside
Lives
That I have a lover,
I'm disillusioned, upset that
I have an unfortunate neighbor alongside
well the side
alongside (and it repeats)

So, without further ado, Al Lado written by Palito Ortega and performed by some random Spanish guy on TV -

200th post

Well, this is something that I should have hit a long time ago, but like I had said a while ago, I've been busy with a few other things, so the blog's been on the back burner for a while. Actually, if I had kept myself to the one post a day theme, I would have hit this mark in March, but it's May and I've made it! :)

I'd like to take a look back for the benefit of those of you who haven't been reading since the beginning, with some of my favourite posts over the last few months.

When I started, the main posts on here were my Tuesday & Wednesday posts about Rockstar Supernova, with my unique insights into the performances of the show. One such post that sticks out is my commentary on the 10th week's results show, where I got, shall we say, a little annoyed at the constant plugs:

And we see the rockers coming into Television City in a bunch of H***a E*****t S*s, surrounded by throngs of people there for the show, including one person who had their hands in the shape of a heart. I guess I missed that memo ;) Back in the studio and Brooke announces that the encore performer gets the car they came in! Whoa! Free pub baby!

Of those people, how many do you think were there for this show, and how many were there for The Price is Right?

3 mentions of the name of the car so far before the break, then we see the adboard for it, then we see the AD for it

After Rockstar was over, I had to search for stuff to post about. So I discussed some of the more interesting things that I have been doing. I also discussed some of the things that I've discovered in my continuing quest to make it down under.

Something that I haven't done for a while is watch some movies. I'd intended on actually getting a list of the movies I haven't watched but need to watch, but that's gone to the far back burner, especially since I've discovered The West Wing. ;) I would definitely encourage you to go through my posts labeled movies for some reviews I did in the past. I think you'll like them :)

You'll also notice that I've changed the look of some things here, including adding a widget for BUMPzee, which I joined a little while ago, and don't really have much of an idea of how to get things going there. I'm also thinking of putting a thing for MyBlogLog on here as well.



This is my current settings for my site feed. I used to have it as a full feed, but after discovering that there may be sites out there (aside from legitimate feed readers such as Bloglines and Google Reader) which take your content without your permission and make money off of it, I switched to a partial feed.

The other day, I read in a list of tips to become a better blogger that you should have a full site feed to become better. They don't exactly explain why it's better to have a full feed, though there are some good arguements towards publishing a full feed, and I'm inclined to agree with their viewpoint - I know that I prefer to have a full post in my Google Reader - it makes things easier for me because I'm not juggling tabs to view different posts with it all there for me to see. I've turned the full feeds back on for the blog now and restored the little message I had on the bottom of my posts (you'll see it only if you subscribe via RSS).

So, here's to the next 200 posts coming quite a bit faster than the first 200, and for those that keep looking, here's a picture of Dilana's nude face