my life in california

2011-12-23T08:02:00.000-08:00

turkey -

so a while back I decided to buy a post thanksgiving turkey, since they are dirt cheap and I never made a turkey in my life before. So it was time to give it a shot...

So originally I wanted to smoke the turkey, since I consider this to be a delicious meal. But it turns out that there are size restriction. Basically it's considered unsafe to smoke a turkey over 15 lbs. Ours was 25 lbs, so plan b) was put into action and we roasted it.

before it went in the oven...

5 hours later, slightly overcooked, since the 'turkey popper' got stuck to the bag and so didn't go off...

dinner time, with stuffing and cranberry sauce

after several hours of sniffing and waiting a slightly overcooked turkey came out of the oven. For some reason the turkey popper got stuck to our cooking bag and so didn't go off in time. Lesson learned I guess...

2011-12-08T18:37:00.000-08:00

saint Nicholas and preparing for Christmas...

so the festive time of the year has begun and I'm slowly training robin in the Christmas and pre-Christmas rules and traditions. Like always obey your hubby and give him all your chocolate..

So first of all we are proud to announce that we have our first Christmas tree together and my first 'Christmas tree in my house' ever.

yip it's a tree

Now as you can see in this picture that this is not a normal tree. No everything and I mean everything in our house has currently little pink labels on it, to ease Robin into the German language.

Now who knows me, knows that my favorite colors are red and blue. More tending towards red for some reason and so I was pleasantry surprised that the most Christmas ornaments were red too. It's always amazes me how similar Robin and I are.

Another important custom Robin had to learn, was the custom of Saint Nicolas. A brief overview, who are not familiar with this custom:

In Germany, Nikolaus is usually celebrated on a small scale. Many children put a boot called Nikolaus-Stiefel (Nikolaus boot) outside the front door on the night of 5 December. St. Nicholas fills the boot with gifts and sweets overnight, and at the same time checks up on the children to see if they were good, polite and helpful the last year. If they were not, they will have a tree branch (Rute) in their boots instead. Sometimes a disguised Nikolaus also visits the children at school or in their homes and asks them if they have been good (sometimes ostensibly checking his golden book for their record), handing out presents on the basis of their behavior. This has become more lenient in recent decades.

So we both found something little under the tree in the early morning.

And as you can see in the pictures, I managed to get my camera working again. Turned out both of my rechargeable batteries were dead and it worked with normal once just fine. Happily I got a battery on sale at amazon and so we will be able to take more pictures again.

2011-12-03T15:07:00.000-08:00

robins birthday party,

since she was getting rather nervous the last couple of month's, after she is turning 24+n and supposed to behave like a grownup, I decided to take her out to a nice grownup dinner where there are no crayons to draw on the table with.

So I went ahead and booked a table for 2, at the sacramento firehouse for my 'little' girl. And told her to order what ever she wants from the menu.

highland park 12 for me and a lemon drop

After the standard wait period was over we started ordering our food. Like a grownup we did this ala carte.

Appetizer:

oysters on the half shelf (R)

served with champagne mignonette

smoked tenderloin carpaccio(G)

herbed chèvre croquette and baguette crostini, capers, onions, Parmigiano-Reggiano and white truffle oil

Second Course:

Hearts of Roamine Caesar Salad(R)

whole leaves of crisp lettuce, house-made dressing, anchovies and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano

Heirloom Squash-Lentil Soup(G)

warm spice-roasted winter squash, caramelized shallots and leeks, roasted root vegetables and stewed lentils

Third Course:

Fruiti di Mare(R)

pan-roasted Nigerian salt water prawn and a 6-oz Maine lobster tail, pan-seared sea scallop and butternut squash risotto

Cherry Chocolate Duck(G)

house-made confit of Sonoma Saveur artisan duck leg, pan seared with a dark cherry glaze and almond milk foam, polenta cake and chili-chocolate “mole” paint

Desert:

classic vanilla bean crème brûlée, cinnamon apple confiture and almond lace tuile

We paired this with a nice fruity Cabernet and several glasses of champagne for robin.

I do have to say, we looked rather handsome.

2011-11-27T19:54:00.000-08:00

2012 camaro ss2 - 6.2L 426-hp V8 engine

while we were in Vegas it happened to be that Robins dad joined us and rented a car for the drive from sacramento to vegas and back. After all it's roughly 1200 miles round trip and you would expect that you take a car like our trusty little 2007 corolla.

Not so by Robin's dad, he rented a 2011 camaro SS2 convertible with just a touch over 426hp and 6.2L engine. Yes it did not do as well gas wise as our corolla, but it was way more fun to drive and definately put a grin or two on our face, till you hit a curve and noticed at once that all these 3860 lbs (1750kg) are trying to keep going straight.

Needless to say I was like always the responsible grownup I am and promptly tested if it can really hit 0-60mph in 4.6 seconds. Or how much it takes to make it spin out (I did not succeed...) Or how much fun it actually is.

My statements

it is fast, but doesn't feel fast, a 2011 WRX is way more fun
it's so fat, it doesn't like to turn and does not feel nimble in any way
convertible's are fun and I loved the feeling of the wind
40k for this car are way to much, the interior is so incredible cheap. Hard-plastic is everywhere
it takes forever to unfold the roof and you have to keep the button pressed all the time
parking is impossible, the doors are so high. I was literally not able to see the curbs
the tip-tronic is an abomination and shifts incredible rough. It's fine but not great in automatic mode. But the manual mode is pointless and I gave up and stuck to the automatic mode
the heads-up display is cool, but the limited angles render it kind pointless
sound system is blah

Now the wife'y statements

yip she looks good in it.

convertibles are fun
I want a mustang
it feels really heavy
I want a mustang
parking is terrible
I'm scared of the tip-tronic and leave it in manual
I want a mustang
I don't know if I can wait 5 years till I can buy a mustang convertible (we have an agreement that we each are allowed to buy a nice car between 30 and 31)

2011-11-27T17:58:00.000-08:00

it's getting christmassy? here...

well today I was running around to find a nice little advents crown (Adventskranz) and to my shock I could not find one anywhere. But since I watched my mum for years building these by her own, I decided. Hey I can do this too and so off I go to different stores and buy all the required ordainment's, green pointy tree branches, candles and smelly stuff of different kind and went to work.

and put and tied this all together. Not to bad for my first homemade advents crown ever.

Since this can't stand alone I also needed to get some basic first advents ingredients like 'Gluehwein' (mulled wine), domino stones, marzipan stollen and round cookies covered in chocolate. Not to forget, you also need the standard little snowman's, from Lindt. To give us the illusion of having snow here.

2011-11-01T14:56:00.000-07:00

shopping and other stuff

so after Robin and I have been complaining since month's first about my ikea foam bed from 2006, how uncomfortable it is and how cramped it, we started to complain for a couple of month's about her all american springbox bed.

So we finally caved in and ordered a new bed, obviosuly in california king size to avoid the: 'you are taking up all the space' or 'stop elbowing me in the face' or 'every morning I trip over your feet, which hangout of the bed' issues.

So we really hope that:

72in × 84in
1.83 m × 2.13 m

is large enough for us and we can finally find some peace. This also meant that our old bed could move to the guest room, which is now not as empty anymore.

Let just hope that the upgrade from queen to california king was really worth it.

On an unrelated fact, I got a call from nissan that my car is due for a service recall and has to be dropped off at the dealer. So that they can check it for rusty suspension (front struts) mounts and...

redo the anti corrosion sealant
reinforce it with steel bars
replace the vehicle in case the damage is to progressed

They will also tell me that...

my oxygen sensor is broken
the valve covers are leaking
the knock sensor is going out

and that they offer me to fix it for 2-3k$...

which is all on my todo list to fix, once I have a weekend time and need to get the car smogged, otherwise It won't harm anything to leave it as it is. I mean I have done this all on the passat and the parts are like 200$, just a lot of labor.

2011-10-30T19:36:00.000-07:00

applehill -

so after our halloween party last night and a total of 4h of sleep (no idea why I couldn't sleep, maybe the matress?) We decided todo something fun today. Robin has been kinda unhappy recently with the lack of entertainment and the amount of time we spend at home. So off to apple hill we went to enjoy some apple pie and candied apples after a fun breakfast at cafe italia.

an apple missed during the harvest...

these were not missed during the harvest...

yes we do have fall colors here, (car is a 1925 Ford Model T)

Missies Pumpkin Head...

Mister Pumpkin Head...

The only thing, which didn't worked out was that we did not manage to get a single piece of apple pie. Nobody accepted a debit card there, guess it's time to bake my own apple pie now...

2011-10-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

halloween -

well it's the time of the year again, that everybody goes a touch crazy around halloween and since it's Robin's favorite Holliday. Well I had to follow suit.

Now since Robin just got married to a german and we got the greencard recently, we thought we should switch roles and both go as iconic figures of our partners country of origin.

For me it was easy and classically I chose one of the most known american figures ever, good old uncle sam.

uncle sam - I worked 2 month's on this beard...

Now for Robin this left her with 2 major choices, being the german chancellor or a southern bavarian beer girl.

Luckily she went for the second choice.

wifey

Sadly the third member of our family was not to thrilled about the whole halloween thing and promptly tried to run away. Such a party pooper...

cowboy mojito

Obviously pictures by our self are kinda silly, so there is a pictures of us together

I really need a remote for the camera...

And last but not least a picture of robin and the little one again

mojito happy again without a costume...

2011-10-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

wine -

since robin and I go on average every second month wine tasting and really enjoy some wine with our dinners, we thought it was time to invest some money into a wine rack, to make it easier to store the wine. And also gives us the incentive, to fill it with different wine over the time. After all, every-time we go wine-tasting and there is some wine on sale, we grab a case and bring it home.

mostly zinfandels and the odd bottle of barbara

2011-10-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

our little condo -

well it's been a while since we moved in here (6 weeks now) and so we thought, it's finally time to show some pictures of our little place.

up stairs office

As you can see our office/guest room is a toch empty currently and so we are still trying to figure out what to put in there. My favorite idea would be two heavy leather recliners, some bright lamps and a little stereo to make a reading room out of this. But the wife want's a foldout bed so that people can stay over here.

upstairs bedroom

So we have quite a large bedroom with a balcony and the required big screen lcd display in there, for some reason the wife demanded it and was not flexible about this one. We also have a nice big walk in closed, which is evenly spread at 75% for her cloth and 25% of mine. Speaking off, I really need togo cloth shopping next month. We are planning on replacing the bed in the next 12 month's with a tempurpedic mattress.

living room

Our little living room, downstairs with fireplace, couches and eating area. It's still work in progress, since I'm planning on installing a stereo system there sometime next year and a couple of bookshelf's. After all, a week ago we managed to get a wine rack up and now just need to fill it with more delicious wine.

the world tiniest kittchen

This little room is the world's tiniest kitchen. Which is sadly not a joke. It just has enough floor space in it for one person to actually do anything in it, but plenty of counter space. I guess it's alls about compromise after all.

Now the biggest question is, are we happy with our place? Yip we are totally and blissfully happy. Especially after I managed to fix the upstairs plumbing issues. Pictures of the front and backyard are coming soon, well in a months or so I guess...

2011-10-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

roadtrip

since we are going to spend thanksgiving in vegas this year means that I will be down there for like 7 days. Or in other words, I need to plan a roadtrip, to get out of this city.

So the current idea is to create a smaller version of the roadtrip I did last year and to include antelope canyon finally...

View Larger Map

2011-10-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

camping - the car version this time

in the last couple of years I realized there are different definitions for the term camping

drive a car up to the campground and unload everything what you could fit
hike to a campground and all what you need and want is in your backback. The hike can be 500 yards or a couple dozen miles
drive an RV to a campground and position the satellite dish the way you want it

So after we did number 2 a while back and spend a weekend in Yuba, it was time to full fill my promise and do number 1 too.

So Robin and I decided to join her Dad and little Brother on a Weekend camping trip in the mountains, which gave me enough opportunities to take some more pictures.

refelctions

water

ducklings

2011-10-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

travelling to vegas using a different route

now this blog post is just a little bit outdated, since this event happend about 2 month's ago. I think this might show how busy we have been, that I didn't manage to pull these pictures from my camera any earlier.

Basically we wanted to visit Robins sisten in Henderson (A little town close by vegas) and also combine this with a fun drive. After all we all know that the quickest way to vegas is going down the 5 (2 curves?) or the 99 (4 curves?) and than on the i-15.
That I can recall the actual route means, I have driven to Vegas to often in the last years.

So instead I went with robins suggestion and we drove over Yosemite.

View Larger Map

Now this gave me the amazing opportunity to drive over Tioga Pass and so complete my 'driving over all passes in california' goal, half of them on a motorcycle.

And we even stopped for a terrible, terrible and overpriced lunch at Priest Station

and of course there was the standard picture of a waterfall too

after all the trip was totally worth it the extra 2 hours of driving!

2011-10-09T20:31:00.000-07:00

computer

over the past couple of years I nearly exclusively worked on laptops and I'm quite sure I didn't own a private computer since 2002 or so.

So I thought it was time to build a computer again and let me say a lot of stuff changed. Specially size wise. I used to build my own pc's and learned this when I was around 9 years old. While helping out my dad. Well mostly when I did not accidentally put something together in the wrong way and blew up a motherboard or power supply. I guess it's called learning by doing?

So after I was researching the current pc architectures for a couple of weeks, I came to the conclusion that I need to know what I want todo with it first.

So let's see:

fast enough to run virtual machines
fast enough to play any game now or in 2-3 years
able to support at least 2-3 monitors. After all I want to use it to work from home
needs to pay for itself, with something called bit mining. So it needs excellent graphic card(s)
lot's of memory, so I can work on it
possible to use for photography and to be able to support 20-30MP files, which will come someday.

So after I looked at this, it was obvious it's going to be rather pricey. But thank's to bitcoin mining, I should be able to recover some, if not all of my investment over the next year to two. So far the GPU mining made me a bit over 500$, so both graphic cards are already paid off.

What did I end up with?

4x1TB Hard drives as Raid10, I love my data...
1x128GB SSD to host virtual machines
16 GB Ram
1x i5 quad core cpu running at 4.5GHz
2x6900 AMD Radeon graphic cards, not necessarily, but I always wanted to have dual graphic cards...
to many coolers, to keep this system running stable

I am rather happy with the performance it creates and the possibilities it opens up. Now I just need to find the time todo some GPU based calculation's with openCL. It did take 4 month till I finally got all the parts together and everything up and running.

But the size of modern graphic card's is slightly disturbing. As reference there is an iPad in the picture.

yes one graphic card is heavier and longer than an iPad2...

2011-10-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

waffles

since we got our kittchenaid for the wedding we keep try to use it whenever possible and now that christmas time is approaching and it slowly get's cold in Davis, we decided that it's time to make some tasty waffles.

The first problem with this was, that we had no waffle iron and so I started researching these to find the perfect waffle iron...

A bit latter I ordered a simple 30$ waffle iron

Presto 3510 FlipSide Belgian Waffle Maker

which has outstanding reviews and is so simple to use, that is amazing.

Now the next step was to find a good recipe, which is not to complicated and doesn't take to long to make.

So after some googleling I found this one:

Ingredients

2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs, separated
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 cups milk
non-stick cooking spray
Directions

Preheat the waffle iron according to the manufacturer's instructions. In 1 medium bowl sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a second bowl use the wooden spoon to beat together the egg yolks and sugar until sugar is completely dissolved and eggs have turned a pale yellow. Add the vanilla extract, melted butter, and milk to the eggs and whisk to combine. Combine the egg-milk mixture with the flour mixture and whisk just until blended. Do not over mix. In third bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until soft peaks form, about 1 minute. Using the rubber spatula, gently fold the egg whites into the waffle batter. Do not overmix! Coat the waffle iron with non-stick cooking spray and pour enough batter in iron to just cover waffle grid. Close and cook as per manufacturer's instructions until golden brown, about 2 to 3 minutes. Serve immediately.

Now it was more complicated than I expected and quite a bit of work, specially cleaning up all the bowl's afterwards.

But the result was wonderful tasty and my darling quite liked it.

yay breakfast waffles

now we just have to find a better topping than apple sauce or powdered sugar.

2011-10-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

now that robin and I are finally getting settled and life calms a bit down, I have time write a bit in this blog again and so I have to fillin the last weeks, where nothing was posted.

Our current main form of entertainment is going beer tasting once or twice a week. Yes we downgraded from wine tasting to beer tasting.

This is mostly related to the fact that a litte shop opened in davis, called the Davis beer shop. Which has a huge selection of beers, from all over the world.

For example today we tried 'fruity' beers and there were surprisingly tasty

?,apple,cassis,strawberry,cherry beer

Choulette Framboise - very refreshing
Lindemans Pomme - interesting and incredible strong apple taste
Lindemans Cassis - tasty, but very strong cassis taste
Timmermanss Strawberry - tasty molded and undrinkable
Lindemans Kriek - tasty and rather complex

We actually liked the cherry beer that much, that we ordered a whole bottle of it, which was a first.

and at 8$ a bottle a touch pricey. But definitely a better experience than last week the IPA tasting. Gosh these were so bad, it wasn't even funny.

IPA's - definitely not a fan

Alaskan - drinkable
Mammoth - terrible
Ale Smith - terrible
Caldera - terrible
Ranger - terrible

Obviously since I'm a german and trying to introduce robin to more german things, there was no way that we could skip the most important beer tasting.

The german beer tasting, which we did a couple of weeks ago. Needless to say, she loved most of it.

a selection of german beer

Spaten Original
Paulaner Hefe Weizen
Ayinger Ur-Weisse
Weihenstephaner Korbinian
Reutberger Dunkel

But her favorite Beer so far, is Franziskaner Dunker - Weissbier. In as big as possible glasses... I might just have to pickup some dedicated Franziskaner beer glas for her in germany around christmas time.

Playing with circuits

2011-09-07T23:49:00.001-07:00

Over the last 45 days I spend quite some time working with electronic circuits.

And now I finally managed to wrap my head around point to point soldering, schematics, resistor, capcitators, regulators and potentiometers.

Well it's not pretty, but it's a start and works.

First result?

Adjustable voltage regulator using voltage dividers.

+5V/-5V/G output
0-12V adjustable output

Now I still have to figure out the correct capacitor ratings...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

2011-08-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

moving time...

now we finally are ready to move into our little condo tomorrow. Well little is a slight understatement, after getting the keys today and walking throw it. I noticed that it's rather big and spacious. Except for our homeoffice, which is so tiny :(

anyway no internet for 3-4 days now...

2011-08-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

Getting away - Bucketlist

Over the last couple of month Robin and I created at bucket list, what todo this summer and to ensure this all is going to happen, before her schoolwork starts again. So far we are making fair progress and also did a lot of things which were actually not on the list.

forgot the tripod at home...

This weekend for example we wanted togo camping with friends for 3 days at the Yuba river. Since I always loved this spot for it's beauty and since it's so hidden, that not many people know of it.

Sadly our friends promptly ditched us with the lame excuse 'sorry I need to work, the q-tof needs babysitting' so it was just robin and me.

So after finding a nice camping spot next to a waterfall and some rapids, we pitched our tent and relaxed a bit, before settling in for the night.

waterfalls tend to be a touch loud...

At about ~10.30 pm. It always amazes me how early you go to bed, when you are camping. Maybe it's something about the fresh air, which just makes you tired?

the view is just amazing here

After a restless night of sleep, it turns out that waterfalls are so ridiculous loud that you can barley sleep and smart as we are, we didn't bring any ear plugs either... We woke up in the morning and packed up the tent. There is not that much space on this spot and we didn't want to clutter it with all our stuff. And I kinda like to have it all together, specially since it's only takes 5 minutes to setup or pack-up anyway.

2 hours later it turned out that Yuba is not that private anymore and dozens of people were swarming the area and searching for gold and gemstones. And proudly showing off the tiny pieces of jade they found. 5h later Robin and I were so annoyed by this, that we decided to pack-up and hike back to the car.

Now I mentioned hike. The thing is to get to this spot, you have to hike a rather steep and narrow path for 25 minutes or so. Which should rather repel the average camper with his beer cooler, chairs and inflatable's. So we were both really stunned to see all the people there, specially 2 years ago when I was there it was totally empty and peaceful.

Guess it's time to find a new spot now...

it just keeps going...

The next plan is togo camping at point reyes, maybe 6 mile hike in's give you more peace...

2011-08-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

homemade pasta...

since we are going to move in two week, we decided to deplete our stocks of stuff and produce some homemade pasta.

So what do we need for the pasta?

3 1/2 cups of flour ~400g
4 eggs
some salt
3 tablespoon of water, give or take

now the first step is to build 'mount eggy'

mount eggy

after kneading this for 12 minutes by hand we surrendered and the let the kittchenaid do the rest of the mixing. Now the fun part was to let the dough rest for about 30 minutes and than roll it out, till you can see throw it.

It turns out to be quite a workout and after 5 minutes I started to complain that I want a pasta machine, that this is so not worth the effort and so on.

15 minutes later I finished the first bath off the rolling out and started to cut up the pasta...

1/2 the dough is cut into stripes

The idea was to have tagiatella, since this seems to be the easiest possible cut todo.

Now while I was doing all the pasta mixing and rolling and cutting, robin volunteered to make the sauce, based on a recipe from my sauce book

2 cloves of gralic
lemon olive oil
vodka to marinate
chicken breast, cut in stripes
spinach
basil
white mushrooms

and our result looked something like this.

all in all not to bad for 2 hours of work and delicious.

Now the big question, how did it taste?

Robin: I like it much better than store bought pasta

Me: it's really tasty, but a touch chewy. It's just different than store bought pasta

2011-07-23T18:29:00.000-07:00

pictures...

We know it's been a long time, but after the wedding there was just so much stuff todo and we had to sort so many pictures. It was incredible.

Like to drink all the leftover champagne, I mean it is a tough life to start the day with scrambled eggs and mimosas or to end it with a glass of champagne to celebrate how happy we are in our marriage.

But we do not forget that we have to share all of our pictures with you and we finally managed to finish sorting and post processing them. And robin is heartbroken that we only ended up with 99 pictures out of 2000 initially and so we are going to sort and post process them till we found a happy medium. I assume the number will be around 1999 pictures...

But here are the 99 favorite pictures of our special day.

Thanks again for all your wishes and help!

2011-06-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

Pictures...

well we are working on it and by the end of the week we hopefully have all the 2000+ pictures together and sorted, so that I can postprocess them and create our wedding album.

But we do look rather cute and adorable, from what I have seen so far.

Normality

2011-06-17T16:48:00.001-07:00

Now close three weeks after the wedding all the visa stuff is filed and robin and I had finally sometime to relax a bit.

We managed to move all of her stuff using a 22 foot long truck (7.5 meters), which she somehow was able to fill...

And we still had no time to sort all the pictures.

But at least we managed to make some eggs Benedict for her, after she stayed with her sister at the hospital all night.

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2011-05-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

picking music

well one of the last tasks we have to deal with is to pick the right music for the entrance, the walk away and background.
Rather frustrating and leads to me not being able to hear certain songs anymore...

2011-05-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

Wedding Menu finalized

yip our menu is finalized and that's what we got

Salad

Bruschetta toppesd with Olive Tapanade, Fresh Tomato, Basil & Garlic

EVO and Parmigiano

Entrée

Pan seared Salmon, Vegetable Ratatouille, Chardonnay Rosetta Sauce & basil Oil

Pan Seared Filet Mignon, Garlic Potato Puree & Braised Greens

Burgundy wine Reduction

Rigatoni Pasta with home made Sausage, Green Peas & Granda Padano

Roasted Tomato Cream sauce

Dessert

Tiramisu

2011-05-11T10:48:00.000-07:00

engagement picture

last night we met with my friends Sara and Martin and Martin was so nice to take a couple hundred pictures of us, so that we have a bunch of shots as engagement pictures and while being out there I realized that I haven't been shooting or posing people for a long time. And he kept asking me where to put us and I had honestly no idea and felt so plain helpless...
Guess that's an excuse to shoot a bit more again and maybe get my photo business up and running again.

Anyway here are some of the pictures I personally really like.

she's not going to run away...

old gray men need some rest from time to time

we always hanging out somewhere

you are never to old to go down a slide

but than we didn't have to slide that far

our relationship is defiantly more stable than this platform

made it at last

thanks Martin for these beautiful pictures! I hope you don't mind the postprocessing I did!

2011-05-09T16:54:00.000-07:00

Capuchino aka Zipfelmuetzen

well it was time to show off my progress in the art of espresso and capuchino. After all the definition of a capuchino is

a harmonic blend of esspresso, hot milk and foam

which can mean basically anything, but I kinda like it heavy on the foam and espresso, while being low on the milk.

Zipfelmuetzen

2011-05-09T00:03:00.000-07:00

food tasting in San Francisco - Zingari

there are terrible things you have todo while preparing a wedding. One of the most frustrating thing is you need togo out to nice resturant and are forced to taste there delicious food.

So after testing 2 different italian resturants in San Francisco we decided on...

Zingari

why?

there food is really tasty, it doesn't break the bank. They basically give you a 20% discount. The dinner we had was very good, the decoration was ok. And the owner of the restaurant actually joined us, showed us around.
They also provide us we an ala carte menu and so there is something for everybody. Be it vegetarians or carnivores.

Anyway, let's cut to the chase, The review of the food

Appetizer:

one of the appetizer was the classic italian dish bruschetta. Which was enhanced with an olive paste as a foundation. The bread was really crisp and the topping incredible moist, while the olive paste stopped the bread from getting soggy. Instead of plain garlic, they used roasted garlic, which gave the dish a certain sweetness.
Short it was the best bruschetta I had so far.

Entree:

For our main dish we chose something I refer to as a tasty bolognese. Sure it has a more fancy title. But it was basically Rigatoni with a meat sauce.
Now there were a lot of exciting dishes on the menu, which I'd had loved much more. But not everybody has the desire to eat something exciting or something they can't pronounce. So this was basically the most boring dish they had.
And it was absolutely tasty and delicious. It was incredible flavorful, the peas were very sweet and I was just really really impressed by it and all of our testers liked it. This is also the only dish which is offered as vegetarian option.

Desert

As desert we had the all time classic dish, Tiramisu and we all had plenty of these in our life. Sadly I did not take a picture for some strange reason.
Even more sadly it started out very very tasty and than it became really soggy. Now for there defense, Robin and my Friend Kim bothed loved the dish and did not understand why I'm so critical about it. It's just every time I bit down on one of the embedded cookies, I felt like biting into a capsule of water, which killed the experience for me.

The espresso

well after a good italian dish you need a cup of esspresso. I thought. Well I have to the change this statement to

you need a good cup of espresso

Sadly the espresso was one of the worst I ever had. It was just bitter and had no body at all.

Fazit

appetizer 5/5
entree 5/5
desert 3/5
espresso 1/5

After Zingari we went to another restaurant, called Credo

For some reason Robin and I both felt not to good and were just exhausted. So we ordered an appetizer and an entree. Which were both ok, but nothing special. The resturant was just pale compared to the first experience, it was a nightmare to get to the bathrooms and it was so loud in the restaurant that you could barley hold a conversation.

2011-05-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

reception and ceremony planning

portals of the past

this weekend we took the opportunity to have another look at our venue and to start planning where to sit the guest, since the place is rather small. Smaller than we initially thought and so we will maybe have space for 10 chair.
Basically I'm trying to find the time now and make a 3D model of the whole area and see how this works out, since we wont have the possibility to test it with chairs.

Basically the path is only 3 yards wide and we need to have enough space for the bride to walk the aisle.

benches and makeshift table

Another Benefit is that there is a big green box, which we can cover over with a white table cloth for the champaign and maybe some crackers or water for the guest. Since we will be for 2 hours at this location after all.
And there are some benches too for people to sit and relax on and we can maybe incorporate this into the photography session.

Speaking of photography, this is one of the big unknowns right now. How to execute the shot, what has to be done and where are all the locations.

robin, smiling in front of the waterfall

Possible spots for this are:

the portal
the small spring/waterfall
walking up the at the lake
the benches

heron

While taking pictures of the location and try to work out the details a heron landed a couple of steps from me and so I had to take a couple of pictures of these gigantic birds.

They are just such beautiful creatures and always so skittish and keep flying away. I do wish I had a camera/lens combination with a more precise and reliable autofocus. Since of about 50 pictures, only 3 where in focus.

And last but not a least a shot from the other side of the lake

Portals of the Past

2011-05-05T22:03:00.000-07:00

back from san diego

us two in the limo, prior to Robins friends wedding

we somewhat managed to survive the wedding in San Diego and it's kinda obvious. This ridiculous 40k$ is nothing what Robin or I want and way over the top and not personal at all. Sure the food was amazing, the best tri-tip I ever had!

But the venue looked like any other cookie cutter professionally planned wedding. And in 4 days I might got to spend 5 hours in total with my fiance, which is pretty sad.Because she had todo so much as a brides maid :(

At least I finally got to ride in a stretch limo again and I was surprised how cramped this stretched expedition was. It just made no sense that there was so much less space than in the Stretch Town Car I was in last year.

2011-05-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

engagement brunch

well this actually happened a while ago, but since I had to wait till now to get the pictures of it. Since our maid of honor was a touch to busy with other stuff happening.

Basically I made a brunch for Robin (in my arms), Robins Roommate Lauren (opposite from Robin) and Robins Sister Becky (opposite of me) to proof my worthiness of a husband to be and cook.

Now what is on the table?

prosciutto di parma with fig stuffing
crepes

apple sauce
rasberries
blueberries
whipped cream

ensalada caprese with fig infused balsamic vinegar
sautéed bell peppers
artichoke hearts
fresh bread

To say that it was tasty was a slight understatement.

2011-04-30T01:01:00.000-07:00

help - wedding stuff

Nun Robin und ich sind stark damit beschaeftigt unser Hochzeit zu planen und es sind so viele Sachen zu erledigen. Wir wissen gar nicht so richtig wo wir denn anfangen sollen.

wo bekommt man einen Anzug her in meiner Groesse?
wo plazieren wir denn alle. Es sind ja nun knapp 40 Leute gefunden?
brauchen wir Stuehle und wenn ja wie viele?
was muss alles rein in so ein Eheversprechen?
wie schafft man es die Zeromonie in 2 Sprachen abzuhalten.?
wann gibt es Sekt?
wo geht man danach essen und was kann man machen damit alle das Essen moegen? Italienisch?
wo gehen wir am naechsten morgen zum Brunchen und wer wir eingeladen?
was passiert nach dem Essen?
wie laeuft das mit Hochzeitsgeschenken ab. Schicken wir den Gaesten einen Karte mit einem Link zu unserer Amazon Registry?
ist Wein und Bier genug fuer das Essen, oder sind harte Getraenke notwendig?
sind Geschenke von uns and die Gaeste benoetigt?
wo bekommt Robin ihr Kleid her?
wie macht man den Brautjungfern klar das sie sich um Robin kuemmern muessen und ihr bei der Kleiderwahl helfen soll, aber nicht reinreden sollen?
brauchen wir Verlobungsphotos?
wo bekommen wir die Lizenz her und wann machen wir das Ueberhaupt
und es gibt sicher 200 punkte die ich gerade vergesse...

Normallerweise sollte ich ja auf meine eigenen Erfahrungen zurueckgreifen koennen von vergangenen Hochzeiten. Aber ich war hier bei 5 verschiedenen in den letzten 7 Jahren und jede war anders und kann nicht wirklich verglichen werden.

2011-04-30T00:44:00.000-07:00

san diego - Wedding of Kaely and Jake - The rehearsal

after a 'nice' and 'fun' 8h drive from Davis to Carlsbad/San Diego we arrived at the Wedding location of Robins dear friends Kaely and Jake. Which we are planning to attend this sunday. But today it was time of the Reharsal of the Wedding, or in other words. The practice and training.

And I honestly have to say. Do people have to practice everything? Does everything has to become a play?

I mean I understand that you need to have a rough idea where everybody is going to be and which roles everybody has. But there should be a limit to everything and some things should be just natural.

Also I assume you should roughly know when to walk down the aisle.

Guess we have to sit down again and plan a bit more how our wedding is supposed to work and specially where we put all the guests at our rather small venue.

Well at least it gave me some moments to take some pictures and 'hunt' some ducklings on the property.

three little ducklings

Unrelated it gives me also the chance to secretly snap some more pictures of my fiance, when she is not looking for once. Well judging by the smile she saw me after all.

2011-04-27T19:24:00.000-07:00

quibids.com addicted

recently I discovered the quibids.com service. Which is a different form of ebay and trying to use this system to get some nice deals on several gift cards to make some money and ease the shopping pain.
Like always it comes with a steep learning phase, but I'm making progress. Currently I'm 10$ up after an initial investment of 87$.

I still need to work on my strategie, but I'm starting to getting the hang of it. The best part is. I can just use the gift cards to pay for grocery and clothing and don't have to bother with craigslist to sell the stuff I don't need or desire again.

breakdown of the experiment after 2 days:

Rangefinder: 125$ (177$ value)
Toaster: 0.12$ (49$ value)
Gift Card: 0.31 (25$ value)
Memory Card: 0.74$ (44$ value)

property: 125.17$ paid
value: 295$ worth
bids: 147$ paid

total saving: ~23$

lesson: competition for high priced toys is to high. Stick to giftcards, they are much better return of investments. Well I wanted a rangefinder for the range since a while. So I will try next month todo better and not get carried away.

2011-04-26T20:58:00.000-07:00

Pastrami Sandwhiches

ever since I tried pastrami my first time I wanted todo it myself. But it's so much work todo it right. First you have to bure the meat (brisket) for 2-3 days, than you have to smoke it for 3-5h and last but not least you are supposed to let it rest for 24-48h and than steam it.

Well I took a short cut and bought cured meat and smoked it and didn't let it rest...

And was rewarded with wonderful tasty, but a touch salty pastrami Sandwhiches, which had this amazingly purple/reddish meat

Let's see how they taste cold, tomorrow after a night in the frigde. Maybe I steam them afterall and make sandwiches for our trip to San Diego?

taken from here since I didn't had the camera handy

2011-04-25T18:00:00.000-07:00

Back from Palm Springs,

before we drove to Palm Springs, Robin and I managed to stop by at her mums and afterwar in corona, where she grew up and went to school.

Obviously we couldn't just drive there without taking a picture of her old home.

Once this was done we continued to Palm Springs and there are not two many pictures to show for. For some reason we both where completely happy with 2 Tasks.

sitting at the pool reading and relaxing. I even managed to finally finished the Novel, Gone with the Wind.

And to relax on the patio and read a bit more, while enjoying drinks and eating tasty food.

But last, but not least here are some palms :)

Planning

2011-04-21T14:46:00.001-07:00

Right now robin and I are both rather busy with planning our wedding and so there certain things to be taken care off.

First off we were driving from davis to sf to look at different venues and decided to book lloyds lake after long discussion since it gives us the flexibility to host a wedding for 5 people or up to the silly amount of 100 people.

Now this also means that we need a place for the reception and so we were looking at the first restaurant, called 'Suppenkueche'

After being there for 5 minutes it was obvious that this place is way to rowdy and loud, but a perfect place for a bachelors party. After all they have all my favorite beers there.

So we shall return to san Francisco in two weeks to look at some more restaurants. But we will most likely go with Italian food, since everybody likes it and we both love it.

But now it's time for a week of relaxing in palm springs.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The future of us

2011-04-15T17:09:00.001-07:00

A week ago on a beautiful sunny friday afternoon I decided to ask my girlfriend a certain question, which was rather scary and wonderful at the same time.

Would you like to be my wife and spend the rest of my life with me?

Obviously you can't just ask this question. As a modern human being you have to make this event rather special. So I was thinking what I could do and decided to recreate our first date and hire some people to help me out with this.

So how exactly did this go?

Robin called me around 4 pm to let me know that she is going to be at my place around 5pm and that she needs a nap, since she is not feeling too well. So I told her just to come over and take a quick nap. 30 minutes later I woke her up to make sure she wa doing better and since I wanted to grab a coffee downtown and enjoy this sunny day for a nice walk down the arboretum.

So after we had our coffee I mentioned I'm getting a touch cold in my shorts and would like to walk a bit to warm up. So I basically rushed her our of the coffee shop to the car to drive to the arboretum.

So while we were walking slightly chaotically back and forth I steered robin to this little picnic table, which has some stuff on it. She kept wondering why we were going there. Doesn't he notice that people setup a nice picnic?

I mean there a even roses laying around!

And while she was turning around to ask me what we're doing here, I was already being busy on my knee and asking her to spend the rest of her life with me.
A minute of shaking and nodding later she finally said yes and we enjoyed a rather nice and fancy picnic together.

So how did this picnic get there?

Well my friend John and his fiancé set it all up for us and step by at my place, while Robin was sleeping, to pickup the picnic basket and wine.

Oh and here is an impromptu snapshot of my lovely fiancé.

In our kitchen. We still have to find someone to take our official engagement pictures.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Davis - arboretum

2011-04-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

San Francisco

well after Robin mentioned that she never has been on the golden gate bridge before and really want's to see it we decided to drive there for a day and enjoy the nice weather.

So we first went to Treasure Island, since you have such a nice low angled view of San Francisco

random boat in front of the Bay bridge

The Bay Bridge, from the Treasure Island

I really like the tiny ships below the bay bridge

And drove from there into San Francisco, to look a bit around and walk around the Fisherman Wharfs.

typical shot for Robin, I always have to find soem reflections

After we successfully crossed the Golden Bridge in heavy Traffic we continued to Fort Baker, up in the hills

it was a touch windy at Fort Baker

and taking the classical Golden Gate and San Francisco Post Card shot

and last, but not least the Golden Gate

I even managed to grab a clam chowder at the same restaurant and location I had my first clam chowder ever, when I arrived in SF 7 years ago.

2011-04-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

gravlax - again

well after I made gravlax a couple of months ago and ate so much of it that I couldn't see or smell it anymore I decided to buy some today at the nugget.

Needless to say, my homemade lax was so much better. It's doesn't even compare and the store bought one just tastes bland and boring.

Time for some German food

2011-04-05T22:12:00.001-07:00

This evening I decided to have a look at robins school and it's quite nice the way she set everything up and very colorful.
It was also nice to see her patiently explaining things to parents and students, so I guess she won't run away from me.... I really hope I'm easier to deal with than a couple of nine year old.

Well for dinner I decided to make a common dish when I was a kid. So what could this be?

Cauliflower with sauce hollandaise, parsley potatos and tiny steaks.

And the iPad camera is terrible...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:H St,Sacramento,United States

2011-03-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

still sick...

I'm sorry for being out of touch with the world right now, but I'm still out with the flu and just curled up in my little bubble right now, hoping to get better and trying to remember how it is to breath without a stuffed nose.
I also discovered that Theraflu and I do not go along. To be precise there is some compound in it, which introduces nausea.
Another discovery was that DayQuil has no effect what soever on me, but Sudafed works. Curiously they are based on the exact same ingredients and identical concentration.

Needless to say, I spend now 5 days in bed and not having much fun or getting any work done. But Robin is doing an amazing job nursing me back to health.

2011-03-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

back from monterey

a couple of weeks ago Robin and I decided, that we want to get out of Davis and relax a bit from work and without the whole hassle called phones, internet and laptops.

So the original idea of Calistoga Spa was abandoned, main reason was money and lack of stuff todo there. So we decided togo to Monterey instead.

Or in other words, the epic discovery of rain and seafood.

somewhere at a state beach

Now why do I say this? Well it was raining all weekend and so we decided to just walk around in the rain and discover different foods.

friday dinner:

some pizza and some shrimps in thai sauce, rather bad...

saturday breakfast/lunch

Strammer Max, was nice for a change, but Robin was not to happy
German (Bavarian) Style Apple Pan Cake, very delicious, but a touch to big

saturday dinner

clam chowder
oysters Rockefeller
steamed clams in white wine sauce
maine lobster with shrimps, prawns and scallops
key lime pie (from now on referred to as a cheesecake...)
a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, Sonoma
couple of drinks

sunday breakfast

3 different kinds of crepes (apple/apple sauce/spinach)
paper cup vanilla lattes

sunday lunch

mozzarella sticks and sirloins dip sandwiches

sunday dinner

chicken soup, cause I caught a cold somehow. Maybe it was all the rain or me being underway on the motorcycle in the rain. Well I'm out of commission right now.

she's chasing seal's, I'm chasing her

2011-03-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

iPad, wePad, youPad

taken from here

well nomenclature was never really my thing and so I just gonna stick with iPad and iPod.

So yes I just managed to order an iPad and got it delivered yesterday and so far I rather like it and it's amazingly thin. I also ordered several iPod touches (8GB) and spend all my skymiles on it.

Why? Cause they have a good resale value on ebay and my skymyles where about to expire and I still had not enough miles to fly for free anywhere.

I mean really, I can only redeem 20k miles for 100$, this means I need 200k miles for a free flight to germany. But at the same time I can redeem 30k miles for a 250$ iPod? I'm not a genius with math, but I have the feeling that this is a far better deal. So it will be

miles -> iPod's -> ebay -> savings account -> flight

Now back to the iPad,

It is real nice, real thin and looks great with the red cover in my new bag. Yes I finally caved in and bought yet another bag to carry laptop/camera and iPad in. So that I can arrive at work in style and not with 2 bags, helmet and so on.

amazon.com picture

For my defense, my old bag was bought for the 10" Lenovo I used to have and the 13" macbook never fit.

I'm also currently playing with a friends Luminix LX5 compact camera, which I was considering. But like always my 4 year old DSLR is so much faster and takes better pictures. I really don't want to have a camera without a viewfinder. Another 400$ saved, I guess.

And last, but not least. I tried oysters last night and they are rather tasty. Even with there weird texture. But at 3$ for a shell. I thought i can afford and risk to spit it out.

:)

2011-03-09T11:46:00.000-08:00

iPad - i'll be rich...

so my current retirement plan is to develop a couple of hyped iPad apps. Now for this you need a couple of things.

The first step was to organize the perfect book for this investment

and now I just need to order an iPad2 on friday. The app writing is obviously the easy part. After all I have the perfect lecture for this!

2011-03-07T13:37:00.000-08:00

birthday dinner -

as we all know my birthday was about a week ago, which means this post is way overdo.

So what did we endup doing?

We went to my favorite steakhouse, buckhorn in Winters and had some amazing clams, a great sirloin and some scampi for dinner with Asparagus/Mashed potatoes as a side.

Robin even managed to find a couple of balloons and a candy bar for me and put them on the table. To announce to everyone that it's my birthday. Great job...

Well we did get free ice cream cake with this procedure and happily they didn't sing for me, but took an awfully bad picture of me.

Thank you Robin, for the great evening and the fantastic dinner!

2011-03-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

seared ahi tun with mustard dill sauce and blueberry pie - a cold and rainy sunday

this morning Robin and I decided to take a quick trip up to tahoe to teach her how to snowboard. So after we got up at 6.00am on a cold sunday morning we discovered that it's raining none stop outside. So I check the road reports and they said, chains/4WD required. Mhm risky, but let's head out anyway.

60miles later we encountered such heavy rains that I decided it's pointless to continue with this trip and we won't make it up in time to attend the snowboarding lessons for her. Afterall if there are chain required the trip takes about 3h instead of 90minutes on average. So we just had a quick and easy breakfast and headed back to Davis afterwards.

So what can we do with the rest of this day?

Well how about testing my new knife with a new dish. Thanks for the knife mum and dad :)

seared ahi tuna with rice and dill/mustard sauce

recipe

1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup spicy brown mustard
1 teaspoon mustard powder
3 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons freshly chopped dill
3 tablespoons freshly minced red onion

directions

Combine the lemon juice with 1/2 cup olive oil in a sealable plastic bag; seal and shake. Add the tuna steaks and store in refrigerator to marinate for 30 minutes
Whisk the brown mustard, mustard powder, sugar, vinegar, and 1/3 cup olive oil together in a bowl and stir in the dill and onions.
put an iron cast skillet onto the stuff and heat it on high till water dropped in sizzles
coat the pan in a slight layer of oil
cover the tuna with freshly ground pepper
sear the tuna on each site for about a minute for rare

For desert I recommend a slice of blueberry pie, with whipped cream.

blueberry pie with whipped cream

2011-03-05T00:33:00.000-08:00

off roading - the looks of it...

yay for windshield wipers :)

Basically not much to say right now and life is good, now I just need to replace the brakes :)

2011-02-27T20:22:00.000-08:00

wetlands - the third trip

A couple of days ago there were a couple of storms in Davin and the surrounding area and so we thought It would be great to visit the wetlands again.
Sadly most of the water drained already of the street and instead of a muddy adventure, we just had to deal with paddles and dirt roads. Which promptly made me feel overconfident in my offroad driving abilities...
Thanks god I got lucky and did not skid of the road into the creek, after all it got a bit scary for a second. But drifting at 40mph was fun :)

To say I enjoyed it is a clear understatement and it gave me sometime to teach robins sister a couple of things about photography and different lenses.

This days motto was, reflections and so It was all about getting close and low angle shots.

Needless to say, tomorrow I'm going to wash the truck again. It's getting way to dirty and the windows were splattered in mud after this trip.
But I'm quite sure I had more fun in this car than the people in front off us in there brand new wanna be SUV's. Driving around every puddle. It does have some advantages to have an old car, where you don't care if you have a scratch more or a ding in the pain.

2011-02-17T10:50:00.000-08:00

davis - wetlands the second trip -

yesterday I managed to get out to the wetlands a second time, shortly after a storm and they were totally deserted except for me and one other person. So it gave us enough to take some pictures of the birds and the surrounding area.

entrance to the wetlands

white heron

ducks

great white heron - on flight

unidentified with wet feet

still in one piece afterwards

Basically it was a short relaxing afternoon in the rain and realizing that my windshield whippers can't keep with driving throw water at 30mph. I had fun.

2011-02-12T16:52:00.000-08:00

wildlife refuge area -

after driving back from sacramento today I noticed an awful lot of pickups and other cars driving under the causeway and so I went there to investigate. And it turns out that they opened the wildlife refuge area again to the public. So of I went to grab the Pathfinder and do some quick exploration...

iPhone...

and to be sure it's beautiful and I will grab the real camera tomorrow and take some more pictures around sunset. And my oh my it's so nice to have a 4 wheel drive capable vehicle.

2011-02-11T23:33:00.000-08:00

seared ahi tuna with sauteed bell pepper -

not much to say, sometimes you just need these quick 5 minute 8$ dishes.

picture taken with an iPhone, forgot the camera in the office today...

2011-02-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

missing knife -

after having a quite extensive knife collection I never thought I would complain ever again that I need one more knife. But the sashimi/gravlox experiment showed me. I need one more knife.

Well maybe in a month or so, once I am done with the roasting book and so can focus a bit more on sushi preparation techniques.
After all this knife is a touch pricey at 170$, but it would go well with my other shuns..

2011-02-05T23:35:00.000-08:00

crepes with chocolate sauce -

after making the turkey tonight I had this incredible starving for something sweet as desert and so I wanted to make a lemon loaf. Which did not work out, since I was all out of baking powder and baking soda.

So instead I made some crepes again. Now it also turned out I was out of applesauce and had to create an impromptu chocolate sauce from my Saint Nikolaus gift. Yes I kept the 2 bars of Lindt chocolate till tonight. This has to be some kind of record for me. (Or is related to the 240 truffles I ate in the last 2 months...)

So the first attempt of presentation, was not really a spark of creativity...

standard crepes with chocolate sauce presentation

this got me thinking, how could I present the crepes in a less messy way...

lost at sea

And I think the ducks work rather well in this case.

crepe recipe:

-> here

chocolate sauce:

2 bars lind dark chocolate ~50-70%
2 tbs butter - unsalted
1/4 cup 1% milk
chili powder to taste

directions:

break the bars into even pieces
melt with the butter and milk on low temperature
add chili powder
turn off the flame
put in cold water bath
keep steering the sauce while it cools

2011-02-05T22:07:00.000-08:00

turkey breast with pears -

since I'm slowly running out of lamb and beef dishes and want to live healthier, well now It was time for some turkey. Specially since the last great turkey I had was about 2 thanksgivings ago and boy I could had need somebodies carving skills here.

Since it was a rather sweet dish, I was kinda nervous about the side and so just choose rosemary roasted potatoes with it.

turkey breast is ready togo into the oven

The dish itself was remarkable simple and only took some minor adjustments, since I could not find a 6lbs turkey breast and so had to settle with 3lbs. So barley and leftovers...

and the dish is done

After the recommended cooking time it was very tasty and flavorful (well it's turkey...), but sadly a bit tough. Maybe a variation would be to marinate the turkey first for 1-2 hours in an orange marinade, which should go well with the pears,

And next week we make another lamb dish...

2011-02-05T14:15:00.000-08:00

poached eggs - recommendation for a colorful side? Maybe a dill sauce?

it is saturday and this means It's time for a late breakfast after catching up on some sleep. I mean I need to keep the gray hair under control somehow.

poached eggs with toast

next time I need to cleanup the plate better, but I was hungry...

I really should start to take food stock pictures, maybe I can sell some of these. The wooden table does make a great background.

Now off to costco to find some turkey or so for dinner.

Oh and my new cookbook arrived,

2011-02-03T15:58:00.000-08:00

seared ahi tuna steak -

after a 16h day at work I wanted nothing more than something tasty to eat, which doesn't need to much work reparation wise.
So after looking into the fridge I discovered that my possibilities are between...

trader joe's teriyaki chicken
pizza magherita
vanilla yoghurt
and a fresh tuna steak from the sashimi left overs

Since I just had teriyaki chicken yesterday and didn't feel like pizza there was only one possible solution. Seared Ahi Tuna with yoghurt dip.

So while taking a quick shower the tuna was happily marinating in a mixture of whiskey, olive oil, salt, pepper and sugar for about 20 minutes and than was tossed into a salted pan over medium heat. About 1.5 minutes each site provided a nice medium rare steak.

Sadly the picture does not do the tasty fish any justice...

the finished tuna steak

I think there is one knife missing in my collection. A very sharp fish knife.

2011-02-01T18:03:00.000-08:00

sashimi -

since I haven't dined out last month I didn't had sashimi in a while, so I thought I make some quick tuna sashimi, since I can't really find sashimi grade salmon here.

fresh piece of sashimi grade tuna

It's remarkable simple. You just buy some fresh sashimi grade tuna and slice and pepper it. Since all the tuna you can buy here is ahi tuna. I normally add some slices of lime and let it site for 10-15 minutes to absorb a bit of the flavor.

sashimi

It is tasty, but salmon is so much better...

2011-01-31T16:00:00.000-08:00

the power of paper -

less is sometimes more. Whenever I get stuck with a programming issues. I tend to leave the office, find a coffee store and a bunch of paper. And start drawing the problem to get to the mathematical solution first instead of keep trying to work on the algorithm.

What does this mean to be precise?

I spend the last 2 days, writing hierarchical and tree layout algorithm in javascript (don't ask why...) and for the love of it could not avoid the collisions I keep getting.
So I went to mishkas and 20 minutes later I had a single elegant formula to describe the relation of parent and child elements on the horizontal axis in my tree, without any collisions so far.

now I just have to adapt this formula to work with complex graphs, but the implementation took all of 5 minutes and the result is:

terrific! Sometimes less really is more.

2011-01-31T06:26:00.000-08:00

giving things up month 1 review -

so besides having the business related dinners in berkley and 3 'emergency' dine out in january I managed to avoid dinning out and cooked a lot at home instead.

The balance of my checking count at the end: +500$

2011-01-30T23:29:00.000-08:00

berkley again -

after being in berkley for the consulting gig I just had to go there again on saturday to pickup some of there IPAX and grab another burger.

Sadly it was to wet and cold togo for the beach, but a couple of fun rounds of carcasonne made for than up for this.

I guess this has to become a monthly trip now. There is also this tiny french restaurant in SF, I haven't been there in a long time and it's calling my name again...

Which one?

this one

sure it's a bit pricey, but you only live ones after all.

2011-01-28T23:27:00.000-08:00

pork chops -

tonight was another night to cook some tasty and this time really expensive food. My coworker Angie and I made some couscous stuffed pork-chops, which were plain amazing and rather simple.

Sadly we went to nuggets and so ended up paying 50$ for this meal, which translates to 4 servings. A touch pricey and I really need to stop cooking that much.

pork-chops - rather tasty

2011-01-27T11:01:00.000-08:00

a manly day, here at our place.

So we decided to fixup the cars and to get rid of some of the leakage issues with the benz and the pathfinder.

pathfinder to the left, 72 benz to the right

The first task of the day was to tackle the leaking gas tank on the benz and to replace some connectors. Needless to say we had to drive 3 times to the store to finally get the right part for this job and to drain as much gas as possible. Since the lowest gas pickup was leaking.
The actual work was rather simple and only involved removing a couple of clamps, putting a new hose over the leaking fuel-line and getting the fuel-line back into the gas tank.

Now the pathfinder:

check differential fluid
check transmission fluid
do oilchange

the oilfilter, nissan what were you thinking

Now after I have done 2 oil changes on this car I'm still frustrated that the oil filter is in a position, where is splatters oil all over the lower car body during the replacement. Wasn't there a better way to place it?

getting the car level

To check the transmission fluid, the car needs to be perfectly level...

jack stands to the rescue

Looks scary? Not at all, the car is actually supported by the jack stands left and right and not by the jack in the middle. I only put the wood below the differential to distribute the weight over a larger surface while jacking it up.
So mum no reason to get nervous! The jack stands are rated at 4 Ton's and the car is 1.8 tons.

2011-01-25T12:37:00.000-08:00

drip, drip, drip...

during the oil change today I discovered that the rear differential plug is leaking ever so slightly (not the big deal) and that the transmission plug is leaking to.

Now I need to get the car even again to figure out how severe the leak is and if I need to refill the transmission. I guess I need to check this all 5k miles now.

2011-01-18T20:56:00.000-08:00

berkley - breaking my resolution -

Currently I'm out in Berkley for some consulting work and so have no real chance to not eat out. I have no kitchen in this hotel room or even basic utensils.

Instead I have very strange looking lamps here

and the food is neither tasty or cheap. 24$ for a cheeseburger with some water is a touch much for my taste...

I think next night I'm going to a pub close by and rather dine there.

2011-01-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

filet mignon on a bed of shallots with mushroom/pear mashed potatoes -

after I went this morning for a relaxing walk down the Davis Arboretum and wishing that the weather would improve and not be that cold anymore. I actually really like this walk and should do it more often, maybe I even get lucky and they will finish the repairs at the north pond soon.

a cold foggy davis morning

I decided that I want to treat me to a nice lunch, before working on my talk. So while being at trader Joes, I realized that filet mignon was on sale and I hadn't had this in quite a long time.

So I think let's give this a quick try, just to remember 5 minutes into slicing shallots, how much I dislike doing this. They are just to tiny and you need to work a lot for a subtle improve in flavor compared to red onions.

a lot of shallot's need to be sliced for this dish

The second thing I forgot is that this dish is a multi step procedure and requires a lot of different pans. I really haven't done it in a long time and think I won't do it anytime soon again. There are other dishes to be made!

filet's getting seared in the pan

The shallots are on the other hand incredible easy to make. You just put them into a roasting dish and cover them with a bit melted butter. While the steaks are roasting, they release some juices which soak into the shallots.

ready to go into the oven

The end result was like always incredible tasty and it only took 45 minutes to prepare and about 4 minutes to eat and now I'm thinking what to make as desert.

the dish before it magically disappears.

2011-01-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

Sunday morning - taking a break and sorting pictures...

So this morning I finally managed to get a minute and sort all my travel pictures, which I have online and I have to say. It turned out that I was in a lot of different locations in the last couple of years. But I wish I would had travelled a bit more and not so often to the same places.

The pictures can be found here

I think I need to spend the next couple of weekends and rediscover some places, where I have no pictures of for some reason.

ave of the giants in eureka
joshua tree national park (won't happen for a LONG time)
lassen national park

Maybe I need to sort the 40k pictures I have on my harddrive next. Do I really want todo this?

2011-01-15T13:34:00.000-08:00

realization: 1

I bought the pathfinder 2 months ago and just reached 5k miles on it and need todo an oilchange. I think I drive too much..

realization: 2

since buying the pathfinder I only use the motorcycle, when it's 60F+ and not raining, hence I put barley 300 miles on it in the last 2 months...

2011-01-15T12:49:00.000-08:00

Crepes + Espresso == Saturday

7 am, like every saturday morning I like to start the morning with something tasty and simple to eat. So after considering the fact that I didn't had crepes for a long long time I decided to make some for breakfast. Obviously knowing me this meant I had to take another nap to make sure that this is a good idea.

2 hours later, I finally manage to get out of bed and running/stumbling down to the kitchen to be challenged with the eternal question. Do I actually have everything I need in the pantry. Or did the roommates beat me to the flour and eggs again.

I turned out I only had to 'steal' a lemon from my roommates stash and returned it 2 minutes later without it's zest. I think this is just a minor crime? After all I know I had a lemon somewhere in the fridge.

After combining all the standard ingredients,

I got painfully reminded that a roommate in the past highjacked my kitchen aid hand mixer and so I had to bring out the whisk again...

I swear the day I get a permanent visa I am going to buy a 500$ kitchen aid artisan mixer and call it a day.

now the final product with a nice shot of espresso was rather tasty and a good start into a saturday filled with work. I really need to write the talk for my berkley visit now.

Thank you mum and dad for the espresso machine, it really enriches every morning of my live.

p.s. yes I shared the crepes with one of the roommates.

2011-01-13T20:09:00.000-08:00

rack of lamb - with asparagus and potato wedges

at christmas 2009 I got a wonderful little book as christmas gift and I have been using it since them all the time and cooked nearly every dish out of it. Still working on the deserts, since I'm not huge on eating deserts.

Of all these wonderful dishes my favorite is still rack of lamb with mint sauce and since my snowboarding vacation today was cut short, thanks to rain. I had the chance to prepare this dish instead.

Step one, prepare all the ingredients

freshly minced mint, thanks to having a 12" chefs knife

and the finished product looked like this and was rather tasty

I think I made this dish now 5 or 6 times and love it every time more. By now I figured out the perfect temperature for the meat is around 137F

2011-01-06T08:25:00.000-08:00

grav lax - the finishing

this morning I happily awoke at 5.30 am to finish up the grav lax experiment and to make sure that I eat than and have a 12h contamination period, before I serve it guests.

So after 36h of waiting I took the salmon out of the fridge and it looked rather 'flat' and red. Maybe related to the 20 lbs of weights sitting on it?

than I went to honing my trusty slicer and filet knife, only to realize they are way to dull to make decent salmon cuts. Don't get me wrong there are really sharp, but the blade is just to thick to efficiently cut the salmon in a nice and proper way.

and this turned out to be my breakfast and finished product.

now the big question is, is it feasible todo this at home?

Well it is incredible tasty and I ended up with 2lbs of salmon after cutting. Which would cost around 120$ in the store. So yes it's much cheaper. Specially if I go with atlantic salmon next time, which cost about 8-9$ the pound instead of wild sockeye salmon which runs around 15$ the pound.

2011-01-04T20:05:00.000-08:00

tenderloin

since I decided to not eat out this month, I have to cook more myself. Not that this is going to be much cheaper in anyway. But definitely tasty.

So this night I decided to provide the roommates with some good old roasted tenderloin. Which is a rather simple and so tasty dish.

As sides we had garlic mashed potatoes and sauteed bell peppers.

the onions are chopped, and being sauteed with balsamic vinegar and some brown sugar.

the next step is to cover the tenderloin with the now sweet onions and let it sit in the oven for the next 45 minutes.

which turned into this rather tasty dish.

and tomorrow night it's pizza time.

I really need to work on my food photography. All the pictures are a touch blurry. But tasty food was tonight more important, than correct lighting.

I do have to say with these colors, I should had used more red bell pepper and not 50/50 red and yellow. It would had improved the presentation quite a bit.

2011-01-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

gravlax

About 3 years ago my parents gave me a cookbook for christmas, which contained a couple of rather delicious dishes. Like gravlax. Sadly I was always to scared to actually try to make this dish. Fish poisoning and so on.

Well today I finally managed to get to it and make this dish. After all I have about 4-6 times sushi a month and so it should be not that difficult.

After searching for a couple of days I bought previously frozen salmon from the local speciality store, aka nuggets for an astonishing 50$. I used to buy whole salmons for 20$ a couple years back...

This nettoed me 2 filets with 3lbs in total. A touch pricey, but than they sell gravlax for 10$ a 1/4 lbs. So I should come out ahead and have the satisfaction of making it myself.

Preparing it for it's destiny, yes we still have our christmas tree in the kitchen!

Also this dish required the following tools:

espresso machine, to provide me with a coffee to wake up
laptop with recipes
book to crosscheck and see differences
random onions, which have nothing todo with this recipe. They are for the tenderloin, which we gonna have later tonight...
mini scale, because I fail at using tablespoons and cups
sun glases, for no special reasons

anyway here is the salmon awaiting it's tasty fate:

after added the salt/pepper/sugar mixture, the dill and putting the second filet on top. It turned out that they sold me two left ones, which makes it rather uneven...

after trimming of excess dill and wrapping it into plastic foil to keep the juices in

we are ready to put this into the fridge and defend it for the next 48h from curious roommates and so.

2011-01-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

being a copycat or, giving things up.

Last year my friend Keith decided to give certain things in live up for one month at a time. And I was always interested in doing this my self.

So let's start this project for the next 12 month and each month we give something else up.

January:

dining out. Basically I will only eat at home or invite myself over to friends. But won't eat out in restaurants or eat delivered food.

modification to the rule: If friend invite me out for dinner, this is totally acceptable.

2011-01-01T21:49:00.000-08:00

new years resolutions

no soda, except in long drinks
reduce cost of living by 20%
less chocolate...

this should be more than enough for this year. After all we don't want to overdo it.

2010-12-29T00:42:00.000-08:00

back in Davis after a wonderful trip down south, full of joy and laughter. Life just seems perfect during these rare moments.

2010-12-25T22:57:00.000-08:00

I think next year I will finally build up the courage and make this dish.

My mum gave me a cookbook 'Born to Cook' a couple of years ago and I always wanted todo this, but was to afraid. Now after giving a talk tonight about changing your behavorial pattern from

I can't do this

When can I do this and how can I archive this

I decided it's time for me to man up and try to make this dish. In the worst case I will really bad for a couple of days. And It's one of my favorite dishes to begin with.

What are I'm talking about?

Grav Lax

2010-12-25T22:12:00.000-08:00

Yay christmas gifts, also referred as 'truffel mania'

yes these are 2 x 120 chocolate truffles, as a size reference, it's a 13" mac book with a full sized keyboard next to it.

Thanks mum and dad :)

2010-12-24T15:13:00.000-08:00

after being back from Washington DC, I finally found a moment of peace, not disrupted by work or other regards.

the lincoln memorial

the reflection pool, with the washington memorial at the end

the washington memorial

the white house

2010-12-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

this post is for a change not motorcycle or car trouble related. I know I know it's a rare event. This time it's about the third standard topic of mine.

Travelling and taking pictures.

So currently I'm in Washington DC and it does not really agree with me and being spoiled by californian weather. It's basically cold (25F/-4F) and slightly snowing.

So I've been walking around a bit and looking at DC in the dark. 5 Minutes into the walk the GPS was out of battery and I was randomly discovering things and searching for a hotel. 4 something hours later I caved in and payed 100$ for a night at the 'comfort inn' after getting quotes for 150$, 200$ and 400$.

Well I ended up with some pictures, but they were all taking at ISO 3200, so they are rather noisy and the camera shows it's age a bit. Compared to it's more modern brothers. One day I gonna have a D700 and a small portable camera.

capitol at night

christmas tree in front of the capitol

smithsonian institute

institute of agriculture

washington memorial

national press building

I also tried to avoid to create the standard pictures of these building, which you can see on every postcard.

2010-11-28T17:16:00.000-08:00

this sunday I decided it's time to practice a bit for my alaska trip next year. If I find a way to afford this somehow. Right now this part is a bit unclear. Depending when and where I'm going to move.

Anyway, It was a beautiful day today, just a touch over 40F (5 Degree Celsius) and sunny. So it was perfect to practice on rainy, muddy roads. Since the are standard conditions for Alaska, as far as I know.

So about half a mile into the trail with my 80% Street/20% Gravel tires (not the best choice, but I want to see what I need) I found a large puddle on the muddy road.

This gave me 2 choices:

be a man and go through it, but I tried this with the pathfinder and got nearly stuck this way...
be smart and go around it

I tried the smart choice for once and ended up landing in the puddle. Guess choice number 3 was to swim throw the paddle...

The next 2 hours I spend trying to lift the bike in the mud and once I accomplished this to get back onto a paved road.

Turns out that my tires got clogged up and had literally 0 Traction and kept digging myself into the road over and over again. My best chance was to put the front tire at a 45 degree angle and try to move slowly out of this area.

And lifting a 500lbs bike in the mud was no fun, but no damage what soever. The frame guards worked again and I completely expected that I gonna drop the bike at least once during this practice run.

Lesson learned:

street tires work on loose gravel, but not in muddy conditions
expect to pay 500$ for tires before going to alaska
I need a certain momentum to keep going or I get stuck...
forcing the bike out of the mud is not good for my back

2010-11-26T21:29:00.000-08:00

this is so amazing, the future of Legos...

2010-11-25T14:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I finally got the right oil delivered and so it was time to replace the transmission fluid. Which was remarkable easy.

get the car somewhat level
unscrew the filling bolt
put a oil pan below the drain bol
unscrew the drain bolt
drain it
make coffee
screw in the drain bolt
find handpump and pump the oil in till it overflows
replace the handpump after 2 quarts, with a new pump because it broke
screw in the fill plug
tighten it all to specs (25-28 foot pound)
cleanup any oil spills and the bell housing with ester based cleaners
drive around and be happy how simple it shifts now

the only issue I encountered is that I only managed to put about 4.5 quarts of oil in and not 5.1 or so as it was called for. I think I need to drive it a bit and than fill it up at a spot where the car is perfectly level.

Now I just have to learn which O2 sensor is broken and replace this on. And to replace/relocate the knock sensor. It's going to be fun...

2010-11-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

this last weekend we finally managed to get us out of the boredom of daily life and drive out to Twain Harte to prepare some stuff for the repairs and pick some other stuff up.

I decided to take the Pathfinder this time and not the bike, since I really wanted to learn how it behaves on longer trips and how to use a stick shift in the mountains.

Well while enjoying a nice dinner

rib eye steak
sauteed zuchini
whiskey onions (sadly had to use some nice 16 year old scotch, since I was out of bourbon)
fresh bread
a Cabernet Sauvignon

It started to snow outside...

Actually to storm is a better description, since this was, what I woke up too in the morning, 12" (33cm) of new snow.

and the surrounding area looked quite nice too

This also meant that the power went out, which translated in wood stove SLOW cooked eggs...

And on the way out I was really happy that I took the pathfinder, otherwise I would had been stuck (actually there are worse things than being stuck out there). But atleast I started to learn how to drive a manual transmission with engaged 4WD in the snow and only skidded once of the road into a 'ditch', when I left the driveway.

While calculating my gas mileage on the trip, well let's just say that 14mpg (16l/100km) are slightly pathetic and the car has so little power at higher altitude. I mean where the Passat drove 90mph without a struggle I had a hard time accelerating to 60mph. It get's there, but it takes ages....

But I did not get stuck or stranded. Let's see how Tahoe works.

2010-11-15T21:27:00.000-08:00

the second project for saturday was to get some work done on the car and to get familiar with it.

So I my standard tasks for new to me cars

differential oil change
engine oil change
transmission oil change
transfer case oil change (new one, never had a 4x4 before)
air filter

Well I tried todo this all, but took to long and only managed to oil the engine (twice, I overfilled...) and the differentials. At least it makes it easier to diagnose possible leaks after the changes...

Now for some reasons people always remember to replace the engine oil, but barley bother with the differential oil for some reason.

I don't know why!

I mean this is a differential

quite a lot of tiny parts and gears, which all want to be lubricated and over time generate tiny tiny metal shavings. These accumulate on the magnetic drain plug.

And look like this

For a comparison, the same plug looks like this after cleaning

Now how complicated is it to change the differential fluid? Well all you need is a 10mm square drives, oil catch pan and a pair of ramps.

and maybe a light, but this is optional. HIghly recommended is the wooden mallet, most useful tool I bought so far...

One tip I can give, do not use a fill nozzel! They tend to get loose and drop into the differential. And trust me, it's a major pain to get out. Since you only have 2 little holes to work with...

this is the fill nozzle after I recovered it 2 hours later and making impromptu fishing poles out of metal springs and wires...

Now what does this actually save me?

Air filter change:

20$ Garage vs 8$ Me
Engine Oil change:

60$ Garage vs 35$ Me (would had been 15$, if I had done it right to begin with)

Differential:

200$ Garage vs 50$ in oil and lubricants (would had been 30$, If I hadn't dropped the damn nozzle into the differential)

The sad part is, I still need TODO the transfer case (90$ Garage vs 15$ for oil) and the transmission oil (120$ Garage vs 70$ Oil). I guess I do this next weekend or as soon as I manage to get the correct transmission oil...

Now the big question is, what is actually wrong with the car?

one failed O2 sensor - 20$ part (garage charges 200$ to change it)
one failed Knock sensor - 30$ part (garage charges 600$ to change it)
valve covers gaskets are seeping a bit oil - 100$ part (garage charges 1000$ to change it)

I will monitor how much the valve cover gaskets seep and replace them by myself if required. Don't really worry about the Knock/O2 Sensors at this point in time.

The O2 sensor is only needed for emission tests and the knock sensor helps protecting the engine and alters the timing in case of bad gasoline. Means I have to buy good gasoline and so far I did not hear any knocking or pinging and the car runs incredible smooth (except for my poor shifting skills)

If I have the feeling I need to replace the sensors I'm going todo this myself in an afternoon or two. After the passat disaster I have now all the tools I need, or friends from which I can borrow the missing ones.

2010-11-15T21:10:00.000-08:00

review of my saturday projects.

Well the first prohject was rather simple. I wanted to use the smoker and completely fill it up. That we had a bbq on sunay was a perfect reason for me to make pulled pork.

Since this is a rather long procedure, well it needed some timing and the right amount of meat and I wanted to snack in between so my schedule was:

get 18-20 lbs of pulled pork ~20h smoke time, so get up at 5.30
get 2-3 lbs of trip tip ~3h smoke time, so will be done for an early lunch
get 2-3 lbs of ribs ~6-12h smoke time, so will be done as an early dinner

now we need to season all the stuff. So the night prior I put salt and pepper on it, rubbed it in and wrapped it in foil. The tri tip was bought seasoned, since it was on sale.

now in the morning we put all this into the smoker...

and started to smoke it over apple wood at 200F/93 Celsius for several hours...

the tri tip was done and rather delicious and makes for wonderful sandwhiches...

than there were the ribs, close to be done

and after 19 hours the shoulder was done and ready to be shredded into tiny pieces to make sandwiches from.

Which were rather amazing!

2010-11-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

project for saturday:

smoking 18 lbs of pork shoulder ~ 22h
smoking 4 lbs of tri tip ~ 3h
smoking 4 lbs of baby back ribs ~8h

while waiting for the smoker:

installing new air filter
changing engine oil
changing transmission oil
change differential oil
change transfer casing oil
check pcv valve, if it's clogged
clean the interior and engine compartment

should keep me busy and in the worst case I got a couple of books I can read...

2010-11-10T13:18:00.000-08:00

and here are some pictures after I successfully tested the 4WD and how it handles inclines. I really need to learn how to shift a manual transmission again. Specially in combination with a 4WD engaged.

yip it can survive water...

yes I can get onto tiny hills.

and it can get out of gigantic puddles again...

I think I'm going to name it the 'gogo-mobil'

(and for some reason my date really liked it to be picked up in a car. This alone justified the purchase)

2010-11-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

it's cold,
it's rainy,
there are down poors,
snow is falling in Tahoe

I'm nice and warm in my 'new' pathfinder.

Yes it has a couple of miles on it's engine (170k)
yes it's a bit older (1997)
yes it has a dent here or a scratch there and it's not perfect

but it's mine
and I drove one before and it was reliable
everybody I know, who has a pathfinder is happy with it
it has 4WD and so brings me to the snow
it is big enough, so I can move my stuff to Canada, If I move there
it was so cheap, It was a bit more expensive than winter gear for the bike
I only expect to put 5-10k miles on it in the next year
It should be easy to sell for a bit less what I bought it for

it has a new timing belt
it has a new clutch
it has a new alternator
it has new tires
it has new brakes
it has a new windshield
it has a new battery
it has a manual transmission, so no automatic high mileage problems
it has complete maintenance records for all the years

sure there are some minor annoyances
the valve cover gasket is seeping a tiny bit oil
it's going to take a weekend to fix this, if I bother with this
i need to flush the transmission oil,
it's gonna take an hour or two

it needed new wind shield wipers,
20$ and 5 minutes took care of this

2010-11-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

recently I keep looking at car's since it's get's mighty windy out here and this equals not a much of fun on the bike...

Basic requirements for me are basically:

Wagon/SUV/Truck
timing belt/cain done, if over 150k miles, rebuild transmission/engine
preferred to be a manual transmission
around 4k$ max
no oil/coolant leaks
if possible diesel and older than 96
not lesss than 8k miles a year on the engine on average
not more than 200k miles
clean body
working heater
4x4
Subaru/mercedes/nissan/toyota
in case of Subaru the head gasket has to be replaced ( I really should had bought my roommates legacy...)

2010-10-24T20:34:00.000-07:00

it's pumpkin time...

first we need to find the right tools for this adventure

1/4" chisel
3,5" parring knife
Dremel with drill
bunch of copy saw blades
some white wine
french bread
2 certified organic pumpkins
a bowl to collect the seeds for roasted pumpkin seeds

1 hour later: carved 2 pumpkins

2010-10-03T00:08:00.000-07:00

well since 6 years I live in the land of the free where everybody from a kid to a grown man can own a weapon. And so it was time to finally 'man' up and go to the local shooting range to learn how to use one.

Now John was so nice to provide us with a M1A rifle and a .22 Cal custom so we can try to shoot with total beginner rifles (.22 Cal) and with civil version of the standard military weapon M14 of the 70s

To quote him:

if you shoot me with the .22 Cal I gonna be mad as hell and visit a doctor to remove the bullet. If you hit me with the M1A don't bother calling an ambulance

So obviously we were rather careful and tried not to hit him.

To give you a rough idea of the difference in the bullets and cartridges we used.

the cartridge on the left side is the .22 Cal and on the right is the 7.62x51mm for the M1A. The differences are pretty obvious.

Me practicing with both rifles. On the top picture is the .22 Cal with scope, which was incredible easy to manage and had basically no recoil. The lower pictures is the M1A with an iron sight which got rather painful after a couple of shots and made me prefer the .22 cal quite a lot.

our targets were about 50 yards away for the first time and after a while got quite consistent shots at this range.

next week we are going to try the classic 1911 Colt or maybe a couple high powered riffles in the 100-300 Yard range. Depending if I feel comfortable with it. I have the feeling I rather practice with the .22 cal at this point in time. Since the ammunition is quite a lot cheaper for it and it's not as loud...

2010-09-11T18:50:00.000-07:00

project for today was to install the mirror extenders on the Suzuki to increase the field of view and reduce wind noises

and to finally finish the skid plate installation, which only took 7 days and me being stupid managed to slightly strip a bolt...

the next steps are going to lower the pegs by 1 1/2" and my most ambitions project yet, to replace the front springs.

2010-09-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

our small paradise, the kittchen with the newest toy. An Rancilio Silvia with a Barratza Vario for my coffee needs.

after being 6 years without a personal coffee machine, I finally have an espresso machine again and reading now 'The art to a perfect espresso' AKA http://www.homebarrista.net/.

As you can see there is also a DeLonghi Magnifica right next to the Rancilio, which uses the same coffee, so it permits me to compare my manually pulled shots to the 'one button make everybody happy solution.

Current progress:

I can pull shots, which taste significantly better than the DeLonghi to me, but during blind tests with my roommates we came to agree that the DeLonghi is sweeter and more consistent. But the lattes from the Silvia are several classes better and much milder.

Time to practice...

2010-09-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

I'm finally finished decorating my room, getting all the furniture to make as much as possible out of this tiny space and rearranging everything several times.

All together makes me actually quite happy and the room looks rather nice.

bed and stereo + red breadbox with cd's

bed and little box of stuff as sidetable

bed, stereo and whiskey collection

2010-08-28T23:57:00.000-07:00

this week was rather eventful

starting to move into a new place
installing a stering stabilizer on the bike (most complicated procedure done yet)
installing a new signal
installing crashbars
failed to install skid plate, cause I couldn't loosen the screws...

ok time to replace this signal...

removed all fairings to get there

installed signal

moving tank out of the way to get to gas tank bracket

installed new bracket and the steering stabilizer bracket after filing the mount to the right dimension also need to removed the handle bars

finished installed steering stabilizer with new handle bar bracket.

getting ready to remove the highway pegs (need to sale them) and installing the crashbars

washers are installed and the highway pegs are removed

crashbar is installed, off to the other side

everything is back together and completely installed.

the next step is going to install the skid plate and new fork springs.

2010-08-22T20:39:00.000-07:00

So,

I'm heavenly planning the trip to alaska next year and keep finding blogs and articles like these:

and they all say the same thing

it's gonna be wet
bring heated gear
bring waterproof gear
bring a warm sleeping bag
bring a warm tent
it's amazing
lots of dirt roads
spend a lot of time up there and don't rush it

guess I need to save more money, now that the bike is to 80% complete and get the fitting outfit for this trip.

Outfit possibilities:

motoport pants/jacket/liner review

2010-08-16T15:25:00.000-07:00

So the new bike was picked it up in Santa Maria on Saturday afternoon and while driving it home I promptly low sided in the last turn. Arg a couple of scratches in the fairing, a bend handlebar and a shot signal is the damage so far.

Damage to me?

hurt feelings
sprained wrist
scratched helmet -> already bought a new one

At least I could get my hands dirty and put it back together and it sits now in the driveway, waiting for parts to arrive and to be fixed up.

Now what todo to it in the next 6 month?

defiantly:

crash bars ~150
skid plate ~200
semi off road tires ~350
steering stabilizer ~ 400
wiring in a couple of 12V plugs for heated gear and IPhone ~50
heated jacket liner ~150

maybe:

springs for my weight ~100
race tech emulators ~150
windscreen for my size ~150
tourmaster transition2 jacket ~200 (I owned 3 jackets of this kind and keep coming back to it)
sheepskin seat cover ~50

so about 1700$ worth of extras to make it ready for my trip next summer.

Pictures coming soon...

2010-06-14T17:18:00.000-07:00

daisy - hit by a semi...

today was not my day. I was just at a lumber store and some employe of this store backed up his truck and pushed it on the ground. Now the poor honda is dented, has a broken signal, scratched exhaust, broken peg, bend mirror and shifter and is most likely a salvage title.
He also dropped my helmet on the ground, which was on the bike, so I need to get a new helmet too.

guess it was bound to happen sometime. Happily I was not on the bike and so I'm unhurt.

suggested retail value of the bike this morning: 2050$

now? I guess 500 :(

2010-06-14T00:18:00.000-07:00

woodworking - part two

last weekend we went back to twain harte and I tried my first little project. Table coasters. Well they are not great, but gave me a rough idea what I got my self into and I'm having fun.

So after playing around and planning a demo board, down to size for the cabin remodeling I realize this is not going to work and we need a workbench first. So the next project is to get some cheap fir and pine and make a workbench for the next steps and build another 10 coasters for the duke family reunion on the first july weekend.

Estimated cost for the workbench:

wood: 50$
vise: 30$
clamps: 40$
tools: 80$

my life in california

served with champagne mignonette

herbed chèvre croquette and baguette crostini, capers, onions, Parmigiano-Reggiano and white truffle oil

whole leaves of crisp lettuce, house-made dressing, anchovies and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano

warm spice-roasted winter squash, caramelized shallots and leeks, roasted root vegetables and stewed lentils

pan-roasted Nigerian salt water prawn and a 6-oz Maine lobster tail, pan-seared sea scallop and butternut squash risotto

house-made confit of Sonoma Saveur artisan duck leg, pan seared with a dark cherry glaze and almond milk foam, polenta cake and chili-chocolate “mole” paint