I had to submit a form via email to get reimbursed for my flex spending account and had to include scanned copies of my receipts.  I wanted to send this as one file, but couldn’t remember how to combine the tiff files that my scanner software generated into one file.  If you do a google search, you end up finding little utilities for windows or a tutorial of how to use Adobe Acrobat to accomplish this.  Using a mac or linux machine, this is pretty straightforward with some free software.

You need ImageMagick and ghostscript installed.  For the mac, the easiest thing is to use the wonderful Darwin ports to do this.  To do this with ports is easy:

$ sudo port install ImageMagick ghostscript

Then, if you have tiff files (or other formats) from your scanner you want to convert them to pdf.  This is easy using the ImageMagick convert tool.  For example:

$ convert filename.tiff filename.pdf

The convert command determines the format based on the file suffix, so this will convert the tiff file to a pdf.  It really is a swiss army knife of tools and this is just one of the most basic things you can do with it.

Then, take the multiple pdfs and combine them into one using ghostscript:

$ gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=combined.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf

Tada!

The usual meat share has several cuts of beef or pork, hamburger, 1 1/2 to 2 chickens, some pork products, and a dozen eggs. All the meat is delivered frozen, and is in a freezer bag that is returned in the next month. The local pickup is in downtown Evanston and is a quick and easy errand for us on a Saturday around noon.

We have received two shares so far, and the quality has been excellent. In February, we received 1/2 dozen eggs (the chickens were cold!), 1 1/2 chickens, two filet mignons, one large sirloin steak, 4 bratwursts, and a pound of ground beef. This seemed to be a light share, but the two cuts of grass fed beef were excellent and were a good size. We especially enjoyed the sirloin steak.

The January Meat Share

In February, we received a 1 1/2 dozen eggs this time, 2 1/2 chickens that were smaller than the previous month, 1 pound of italian sausage, 1 pound of ground beef, a package of beef patties, and a pork loin.

The February Meat Share

The eggs from Cedar Valley are quite different from what I’m used to. Their yolks are a bright orange, and the yolks are very round and firm. You can’t see this in the picture below, but the yolk in the Cedar Valley egg is probably twice as high as the Phil’s Fresh egg. I’ve had them scrambled and fried and they are very good.

A Cedar Valley egg (top) vs. a Phil's Fresh egg (bottom)

I especially enjoy getting a variety of cuts of meat and trying new recipes. We have been stuck in a ‘boneless skinless chicken breast’ rut for some time, and making meals with chicken parts or whole chickens is kind of fun. So far we have only had to supplement a pound or two of ground beef, eggs, and chicken breasts for a few larger meals we have made for larger groups.

I highly recommend Cedar Valley, and hope that Community Supported Agriculture continues to catch on and become available for more people. It feels good to support a local family farm and be more connected to our food and where it comes from.

We are agnostics living deep in the heart of Texas and our family fakes Christianity for social reasons. It’s not so much for the sake of my husband or myself but for our young children. We found by experience that if we were truthful about not being regular church attenders, the play dates suddenly ended.

This type of behavior coming from people claiming to be followers of Jesus is just so contrary to how he lived his own life. Reading comments on various blogs seems to show that this is probably more common than most Christians would like to think. People are pressured into ‘acting religious’ in order to fit into their community or families or to keep a job or other position where someone in power is forcing religion on them. What is so sad about this is that the people who are pressuring this family to behave this way are missing out on some great conversations and friendships.

If we really cared about them and wanted them to see true Christianity in action, then we’d seek them out for play dates and social interactions before those who were regular church attenders. Compare the behavior this family encountered with the way Jesus interacted with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, or his interaction with Zacchaeus, an outcast of Jewish society in Luke 19:1-10.

The app has had two main problems problems for me: (a) performance and (b) losing my offline translations after every upgrade. The performance can really suffer on Sunday morning when I’m sure there are thousands of people using the app during church services. It does appear that YouVersion is building out their infrastructure to handle the load. It’s great to see so many people taking advantage of a tremendous resource. The app also has had trouble after upgrades of losing my offline translations or even failing to start without deleting the app and reinstalling. The quality has been better recently, and with the release of 2.2 near the end of 2009 I was happy to see them come out with a version that included a number of reading plans. Every year I try to complete a different Bible reading plan, and I have done a number of different plans over the years. By mixing it up, I find that getting through those long stretches of Deuteronomy is not so difficult. With any reading plan it’s important to be able to track your progress against the plan and to be able to eliminate any excuses for not keeping up. Once you are behind by more than a few days it can be tough to catch up.

I have found the iPhone to be an excellent tool for regular Bible reading. It is always with me and thus allows me to get some reading done when I normally might not. For the last three years, I have used the ESV web site to complete the Through the Bible and Book of Common Prayer Daily Office reading plans, both year A and B. Their mobile site works well on the iPhone, but the only drawback is that it doesn’t provide you with tracking against your goal.

With the YouVersion app, you create an account and they will track your progress on a reading plan. You can then catch up if you get a few days behind. The interaction with the daily reading plan is pretty straightforward when you use it for the first time. I quickly found and started the Project 345+ plan and started reading it on January 1. Now that I have been using it for a solid 6 weeks my only real problem with the application is the complicated flow it takes every single day to get to my daily reading. I think they got the flow right for the first time user, but once a user has setup a reading plan there should be at most two taps to the daily reading. Also, the application does not restore your reading plan if you exit and return, so you have to traverse the six steps every time you open the app. I really hope they have plans to fix this soon.

Here’s what the process looks like. First, you are told about the new feature.

Then, you are presented with the list of reading plans that you are currently reading, plus a sepate list of available plans.

Once you select your plan, you see the plan overview.

Tapping on “VIEW TODAY’S READING” finally takes you to the list of passages for the day.

Then you tap on a specific passage to read it and mark it completed. You can tap the arrows at the bottom of the page to go to the next passage in your daily reading.

So here’s my technique – derived from many others I’ve read about out on the net and lots of experimentation and discussion with others. I think I’ve probably made at least 1500 drinks with my machine, and have constantly fine tuned my technique over the years.

Along with a Silvia, you need a coffee grinder. I have a Rancilio Rocky doserless model. The doserless model allows you to just grind the coffee you need for the shots you are making so you have very fresh grounds. You will also need a steam pitcher, a latte sized coffee cup (probably about 6-8 ounces), and a tamp. And of course, get some really good coffee. I’ve been drinking Coffee Ambassador’s Guatemalan Huehuetenango for the last few years. This year’s crop is quite good.

A Silvia has a power switch and three action switches – one for activating the pump for brewing, one for activating the pump for water out the steam wand, and one for steam. It has one light that indicates when the heat element is turned on.

A Latte Art Rosetta

1. Turn on the machine. Warmup is essential, and I usually try to give it at least a 1/2 hour before making coffee.
2. When the machine is warmed up and the heater light is off, place the empty portafilter in the machine and place your cup under the portafilter and turn on the brew switch. Your cup will fill with hot water. When the heater light turns on, immediately turn off the brew switch and leave the water in the cup.
3. Remove the portafilter from the machine, pour out any excess water in the cup and immediately grind your coffee into the portafilter.
4. When your portafilter is full of grounds, run your finger along the portafilter even with the top. Do this in two swipes, perpendicular to one another, ensuring the coffee is as level as possible in the portafilter. It should come up to the top.
5. Now, you need to tamp it. I usually tamp once with about 30 pounds of pressure, turn the tamp over and use the handle to gently knock the side of the portafilter to knock any grounds off the side. Then, I tamp once more and do a quick spin or two lightly to knock any grounds off the tamp.
6. While grinding and tamping the coffee, the Silvia is heating up. If you time it just right, you will be ready to put the portafilter in just as the heat light goes off. Now, turn on the steam switch, insert the portfilter into the brew head, place the cup under the portafilter and then turn on the brew switch. It is important to turn on the steam switch first – this causes your machine to immediately turn on the heater and keeps the water temperature high while the shot is being pulled. It also ensures you have the quickest turnaround possible when you steam milk. The longer your shot sits there waiting for you to steam milk, the more flavor it loses. From the time the pump is turned on to the time your shot is complete should be about 25 seconds. Getting this right is really a fine art, and there is a lot of information available, such as the CoffeeKid mini FAQ.
7. Once the shot is complete, you should turn off the pump, remove the portafilter, eject your espresso puck (great for your compost pile!), and run the water switch for a few seconds to clean the brewhead. Then open the steam valve for a few seconds to clear the water from the boiler and allow some steam to build up for about 20-30 seconds. I let the hot water go into my steam pitcher, then rinse it in cold water so it doesn’t warm the milk in the next step.
8. While the machine is building steam, pour your milk in the cold frothing pitcher and let a tiny bit of steam escape from the steam wand before inserting it into the milk. Frothing is also a fine art, and takes much practice. You want the foam to be as fine as possible, with no big bubbles. I used to use a thermometer, but now just use my hand to measure temperature. When I can no longer tolerate holding a finger to the bottom of the pitcher, then I know it’s done. I alternate two fingers touching the bottom and when I can’t hold one for a full second it’s hot enough. I start with the wand all the way in the pitcher, then move it to the top until it just slurps, then move it just a bit below the surface. The key is to get very good rotation of the milk in the pitcher, so it is best to aim the wand so the steam pushes the milk along the side of the pitcher. If the Silvia has enough steam built up, this will take about 20-30 seconds.
9. Last comes the pour. Swirl the milk in the pitcher to help release any larger bubbles. It also is good to tap the pitcher on the counter a few times between swirls. Now pour the milk out into the mug. This is where you can do some latte art, which is another entire subject. Sit down and enjoy!

This entire process might seem a bit crazy. But once you have some practice and a good rhythm, you can do this (minus warmup time) in less than five minutes. In fact, I have used this method to make a nice latte every morning for years. When you consider that a Starbucks latte would cost me about 4 clams each plus time standing in line downtown, I’m sure doing this myself is thousands of dollars cheaper and I think the quality is far better. Finally, I think the ritual of making the drink adds to the experience, and it’s even better when you can share drinks with others.

They just don’t make restaurants like this anymore.

The girls at the Choo Choo

• Dada (of course)
• Mama
• Baby
• Bye-bye
• Kitty
• Audrey (pronounced adi, her sister)
• Woof-woof
• Night-night
• Cookie
• Bubbles
• Nana (banana)
• Elmo (Sometimes pronounced Elmot)
• Shoes
• Apple
• Moo
• Bobby (Belly)
• Bott (belly button)
• Cow
• Ducky
• No no no
• Doggy
• Poopoo
• Pumpkin
• Fish
• Grandpa
• Nose
• Owl
• Ernie
• Bath
• Blanket
• Yes
• Nice
• Butterfly
• Meat
• Applesauce
• Coffee
• All done, all gone
• Coat
• Toast
• Potty
• Bag
• Airplane
• Oval
• Heart
• Tractor
• Diaper

And now this: I saw the bad news this morning, Mint.com was selling out to Intuit. You have to read the comments, it seems like half of the people are really upset.  I really hope this ends well, but it’s hard to say.  I think it will be very hard for the Mint team to move over to Intuit and keep innovating.   Quicken has their own online version,  but obviously it must suck or they wouldn’t spend $170M to buy another company.  I imagine this experience will be a little bit like the past 15 bank mergers I have had the privilege of living through.

Some Mint users are deleting their accounts immediately.   I think I might want to stick things out for a while and hope for the best.

John Hodgman Autograph

I have always enjoyed John’s appearances on “The Daily Show”, and as PC in the Apple commercials.  After reading this book, I can say he is quite a strange man with a very good imagination.  The book is a rambling continuation of his first book, “The Areas Of My Expertise”, which I haven’t read, but from what I can tell from the many references in “More Information Than You Require”  is very similar. This book is quite funny.  I read part of it on the train, and more than once cracked up laughing, probably causing my fellow passengers to wonder about me.

The book is broken down into several sections, such as “The Presidents of the United States: Are they the new hoboes?”, and “How to be famous”.  He also has a section where he offers advice on a number of issues, including technology and protecting yourself from identity theft that is hilarious.

The book is laid out in a reference book format.  Each page, including the title page, contains a little fact from a date in history, starting with October 21 – the date the book is published.  The facts have no relation to the rest of the content, so you end up having to switch contexts on every page, which can be quite annoying, but some of them are pretty funny.  There are also a number of tables, sidebars, and strange pictures to support the content.  Hodgman has managed to do many other creative things with the book.  For example, the page numbering starts at 237, a continuation from his previous book.

After a few hundred pages of random “facts” and humor, there is a large section of the book devoted to describing mole-men (some sort of human that lives underground) and their interactions with humans throughout recent history.  In this section, Hodgman lists 700 mole-man names (ex. 611. Mr Drew Danglemites, a gem swallower).   I think the mole-men chapter was about the time when I just wanted to finish the book.

If you’re a John Hodgman fan, I highly recommend this book.  It’s filled with his unique sense of humor, and is a good change of pace for you to add to your reading list.