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Father’s Day Gift Suggestions

( #JoeKnit, #FathersDay )

Image Credit: Somebody in my family

A few weeks ago I came across this post about great father’s day gifts and I read through to see if there were any good suggestions for my old man. If you are a frequent reader you know my father is a popular topic due to his unique personality. If you are not into Mean Joe stories—move on to another post. If you enjoy them or have a father that is a total pain in the ass to buy gifts for—keep reading.

I am not going to overly complicate things, I am just going to list Mike’s (the author) suggestions and state why they won’t work for my dad:
1. Omaha Steaks: My dad is butcher, thats not happening.
2. Golf Accessories: My dad doesn’t like to play golf, although for a short period he did like to sneak onto courses to take walks and nap.
3. Sports Tickets: He could care less about any form of sports or team cooperation.
4. Remote Control: This is not a bad idea on paper, but any of the new remotes that have LCD screens will piss him off and be relegated to a drawer before he even tries it.
5. Fishing Equipment: I have never seen the man take an interest in fish in my entire life (besides eating them).
6. Camcorder: Technology = No.
7. Pocket Watch: He doesn’t care what time it is. He is where he needs to be until he doesn’t want to be there.
8. Restaurant Gift Cards: He’d rather cook for himself.
9. Magazine Subscription: No interest in reading anything outside of a very few select topics (mostly health related, but not the Men’s Health kind of articles).
10. Movie Gift Cards (Netflix, Blockbuster, AMC Theaters): Has lost the attention and desire to sit through an entire movie.
11. Camping Trip: Depends on what you mean by camping. If you suggest a hotel room, jacuzzi, and quality steaks – he might go assuming the right company is involved (not his family).
12. Custom T-Shirt/Polo Shirt: It would have to be the right material and proper color blue or it will sit in his closet for all of eternity.
13. Swim Trunks: This is a man who mows the lawn in meat-stained white t-shirts, old jeans that are held up by string. STRING. He would look at the netting inside the trunks and punch them so hard the little Chinese kid that made them would feel it.
14. Anything from Sharper Image or Brookstone: See #6.
15. Accessories for the Barbecue Grill: Besides his bare hands on the open flame? No.
16. Massage: This actually could be feasible if there was no spa music. Actually, he has an acute hatred for perfumes and sweet smells so he probably would not step foot inside a massage parlor.
17. Shaving Accessories: See #13 – this is a man that does not care about appearances (unless he wants to prove how pretty he is).
18. Wine/Beer of the Month: Does not drink fermented alcohol anymore.
19. A Tie: No

20. A Home Cooked Meal: See #8.

As you can see, he is a pretty difficult person to shop for. Do you have a father or relative like this? Or do you have a suggestion for my old man? Share your stories here. Good luck finding your dad a good gift!

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Book Review: Deadline

( #MiraGrant, #Deadline )


Image Credit: Jayme Rose

Last year I reviewed the book “Feed” by Mira Grant. The story is set 30 years in the future and zombies are an every day part of life (although still deadly), the main protagonists are a brother and sister duo who are bloggers that get involved in a conspiracy way over their heads (think adult-ish Scooby-Doo without the dog and with real monsters instead of dudes in masks). I liked the book although it had flaws and was glad to see the newest chapter of the trilogy, “Deadline” was released this week… until I actually read it.

Before I start, take note of two things:
1. There are going to massive spoilers in this review, so DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW if you don’t want to know what happens.
2. Generally, I have lost my taste for writing negative reviews. People who go through the effort to produce creative work and build a fan base should be admired. With that said, I feel like this book was a money grab and ties into my rants about every freaking book being a trilogy when there is not enough meat to the story, I am going to touch on that in this review.

Again – massive spoilers to follow.

Grant impressed me in the last book: her take on the zombie virus was interesting because she took an extremely scientific view of how the zombies propagated and that shaped the overall tone and setting of the book. She also impressed the hell out of me by having the guts to kill of her main character (Georgia Mason). Grant lost my respect in the first chapter of Deadline by having the other lead (Shaun Mason) immediately talking to his dead sister. This persists the entire book. Grant spends the entire book explaining how odd it is for Shaun to talk to his dead sister in his head, after two chapters I was yelling at the book saying “we get it, he talks to his dead sister, people think it is odd but accept it – ENOUGH!”

The plot of the second book involves Shaun trying to identify people in the government who were involved in his sister’s murder and the plot holes start appearing quickly. Instead of being proactive, Grant has a minor character from the first book (an junior scientist named Kelly from the Center for Disease Control) appear at their doorstep bringing all kinds of trouble. Kelly’s appearance in the 2nd chapter established that cloning technology exists in Grant’s world. I immediately put the book down and said “they are going to clone George, this is a total cop out”. Shortly after Kelly appears, the characters are attacked and it is also established that Shaun had a “black box” full of writings, videos, and personal notes from George – essentially all of her memories. MacGuffin!!!

For the entire book, the characters run around to different CDC offices saying the same exact thing over and over again: there could be potential cures to the zombie virus but the CDC is suppressing research. Grant establishes the CDC as the bad guys early and the rest of the book forces a series of ridiculous plot twists (why would the Government kill millions of people when the last outbreak almost wiped humans off the Earth – no logic!) By the end of the story, the CDC manages to introduce the virus to insects that essentially causes all hell to break loose (because it can spread so easily). The last few pages reveal the George clone and the book ends.

Deadline could have been a fifth of the size and integrated into the other two books, but instead (I am guessing) the publishers pushed Grant to add a lot of filling and pump out an extra book. It was a bad decision because the quality of the second book was not near the first and it felt like a massive holding pattern. I don’t know if I will pick up the third book, but I am honestly hoping Grant redeems herself on the third and final outing for these characters.

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Reviewing Music Cloud and Backup Services

( #Amazon, #GoogleMusic, #Cloud )

Over the last few months, mobile music lovers have been treated to a few new innovations in accessing their personal music collections. I am going to spend a few minutes reviewing those new services.

Amazon Cloud Service

The first music cloud service that I could access (officially) on my phone was Amazon’s Music Cloud service. Amazon starts off by giving you 5 GB of free online space, but with the purchase of a cheap album, your cloud drive will be increased to 20 GB. Another good feature is any music you purchase from the service does not count against your space restriction (translation: if you buy music from Amazon they host it for free).

When I first got the service, it was snappy and worked well in my dead zone house with just the phone signal. Over the last few weeks I have experienced the service getting stuck even in good reception areas. That said, the streaming service, doesn’t seem to drain the battery too bad which is a plus. Overall Amazon’s service works well. Although I have one more minor gripe: the “download files to your computer” feature asks me to download the download app every time I want files, even though I have it installed already. Annoying. Glitches aside, I have been buying most of my music through them (screw apple!).

Google Music Service

A few weeks ago Google announced it would be offering a cloud music storage system. The difference between Amazon and Google is that you can’t buy music from Google, but you can upload up to 20,000 songs. It took about a week, but I uploaded 50 GB of music to the system which was just under 8000 songs.

The service is slick and works well on my phone. Since I have both Amazon and Google stream apps on my phone, I have found Google’s service more responsive and less buggy – which makes sense since it is their operating system. The web interface is very similar to Amazon’s but has album pictures which is nice.

The upload app that runs on your computer is a little buggy and gets stuck after a while, but I guess processing 8000 files can be excessive.

Learn more about Google’s music service here. One bad thing about the service is you have to request and invite and is not open to all Google users to start with, but it is honestly worth the wait.

Apple iCloud

Reports are coming in this morning that Appple is about to announce a cloud service as well. I could care less. I hate their draconian DRM policy and never purchase music from iTunes.

Personal Cloud: Western Digital My Book Live

The last option I am going to discuss is a personal NAS drive that you can open up on your firewall for a personal cloud. I purchased a 2 TB Western Digital My Drive for $140 bucks. I plugged it into my router and it immediately worked.

The nice thing about this little device is that is has a built in DLNA server which can feed your music and files to all of your computers, gaming systems, and phones. It would VERY well with my android phone (something I could not figure out using Windows Media Player media sharing services).

Adventurous people can cut open firewall rules so they can access their music from their phones anywhere they are. Personally, I don’t have much desire to do that since I have the other services, but the My Book drive is a really cool device to have in the house, especially if you have streaming media devices – it just works well.

Conclusion

Right now the Google service is impressing me the most since it can host all of my music and isn’t giving me much trouble. That said, I really like this NAS system I have set up and the combination of the two allowing me to finally sell my insane CD collection to the used stores to free up space.

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DME: Bloody Marys

( @DrinkingMadeEasy, #BloodyMary )

Drinking Made Easy FINALLY posted my article about bloody marys! I am pretty proud of this post because I inserted a little more of my personality than my previous efforts. Please give it a read:

Drinking Made Easy: Bloody Marys

Update: DME’s likes are broken, here is the whole story…

Bloody Mary recipes are like assholes…everybody has one (except for a kid I knew in 4th grade, but that is a whole other story). The tomato and vodka based drink is universally recognized, yet encourages massive variation. Last month I read a short story about the American Chemical Society (ACS) publishing guidelines on making the perfect bloody mary. I was going to do a simple article and call it a day. When I started mentioning the idea to friends and family, everyone chimed in. Suddenly I was caught in a deluge of suggestions and my head started spinning.

Where did the bloody mary even come from? The drink seems to have an unlikely origin: actor George Jessel is credited with inventing an early form of the cocktail in the 1920s. He basically mixed equal parts tomato juice and vodka. Jessel befriended a French bartender named Fernand Petoit who added salt, pepper, spices, and Worcestershire sauce. The drink caught on and people started putting their own spin on it. The origin of the name is cloudy to say the least, but could also have roots in Hollywood (named after actress Mary Pickford). Eventually the New York School of Bartending published the “definitive” recipe as:

1 oz. to 1½ oz. (30-45 ml) vodka in a highball glass filled with ice.
Fill glass with tomato juice
1 dash celery salt
1 dash ground black pepper
1 dash Tabasco sauce
2-4 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1/8 tsp. horseradish (pure, never creamed)
Dash of lemon or lime juice
Garnish with celery stalk.

While the ACS doesn’t refute any of the ingredients, from a scientific standpoint they suggest using fresh ingredients stating that the concoction deteriorates quickly. They suggest using cheaper vodka since the other ingredients will mask the alcohol’s flavor. Finally, the ACS recommends spending money on superior tomato juice since it makes up the bulk of the flavor in the drink.

I decided to test out the recommendations and invited a few respected drinking buddies over to sample. One of my guests threw a curveball by bring a pre-made bloody mary mix (sans vodka) called Zing Zang. Of course there is a backstory to this mix: it is not available in the East Coast and he had to have his brother-in-law ship him a case from Chicago. I pushed my pitcher of homemade bloody mary aside and made myself a drink using the Zing Zang. It was good and not for those with weak hearts. The mix is spicy and features huge chunks of salt and pepper floating around. It tasted fresh and was very good.

I then shifted over to my own mix. All the ingredients were highlighted: the spice of the Tabasco, the sweetness of the Worcestershire, and the sinus clearing of the horseradish. Basically, the homemade drink was really good too, and it probably helped that I knew what was in it. The question remains, which one was better?

There isn’t a right answer and there never will be.

If you grew up tossing sea salt and jumbo shrimp in your Bloody Mary, who am I to judge? If you prefer a salad in your glass over excessive amounts of vodka, that is your prerogative. If you want a drink so spicy that it melts the glass, you do what you got to do. The important thing to remember is the bloody mary allows for drinking to be socially acceptable on Sunday mornings which I am sure everyone can get behind. The next time someone hands you this delicious cocktail, don’t think about how you would have made it or what is missing. Just appreciate the fact that if an old Hollywood drunk had not shared the recipe with a French bartender, you would probably be drinking fruit punch.

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CBS Covers My Dad’s 100 Foot Sausage…

( #JoeKnit, #CBS3 )


Image Credit: CBS Philly

CBS Philly covered the Italian Market’s weekend festival and did an “interview” with my father. I put interview in quotes because we know my old man does really talk. Either way, it amuses me greatly that the focus was on his sausage. The best part is, I think the girl who wrote the article is kind of making the same joke.

Anyway… here is the article:
CBS Philly: Philadelphia Meat Shop Celebrates 100 Years With 100 Foot Sausage

PS: Mean Joe goes by Joe Knit at the Italian Market. I have heard a few reasons why and I will save them all for another day and another post.

Click Here to read more about Mean Joe.

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Computer Joey: Easy Video Conferencing

( #Skype, #GoogleTalk )

I have been meaning to do a post about video conferencing for the last 2 months but school and work have gotten in the way. With the news about Microsoft buying Skype for $8.5 billion, people are talking about the service and video conferencing in general, so I thought it would be a good time to do a tutorial.

I tried Skype a few years ago and didn’t like it. I was not into the software and I always had problems with the video; but I will accept that things have probably changed a great deal over the last three years (and I suspect Microsoft will add many new features including Xbox functionality). Video conferencing never held much appeal to me until recently: I have a few friends who don’t live close and we video conference a few times a month (or we will let the cameras run while we are watching the same movies so we can see each others reactions).

Since I don’t use Skype, the service I have been using is Google Talk. Besides a small plugin, you don’t have to install any software and works on almost any computer. Additionally, if you have a gmail account, there is no need for additional logins. While this is a really simple set up, I will still walk you through it.

Before we get started, you obviously need a gmail account, if you don’t have one, go sign up and come back.

1. In order to video conference, you need a camera. Most laptops have built in cameras, but if you don’t have one, logitech seems to be the go-to brand for all things web-conferencing. I am currently using the C510, but the C310 is a little cheaper and will work well.

2. Once your camera is sorted out, you need to download the Google Talk Video Chat Plug-In. Click on the “Install Video Chat Plugin” button. Follow the directions based on your operating system (should only take a minute).

3. Once the plugin is loaded, go to gmail and log in. On the left side of the screen you will see the chat section. If you don’t have friends in your chat list, you can invite them by putting in their gmail address (in the text box shown below). If you do have friends in the chat list, look for a video camera icon next to their name – that means they have a computer that can video conference.

4. Click on the person’s name and a new window will pop up (usually in the bottom right corner of gmail). If the person is available for video chat, a button with a video camera will appear in the upper left corner, click on it.

5. You can now video chat:

Skype’s purchase is going to bring attention and improvements to all of the services—this is good news to consumers. I hope this tutorial was helpful and you find excellent ways to video conference. Try to stay off of Chat Roulette!