the last weekend we decided to take a small trip to vegas which turned into an absolutely fun trip.


First of all we had a 2009 Toyota Avalon with close to 300HP as a rental car, which got an average of 30+mpg. Short plenty of power, plenty of space and affordable.

after driving for 8 hours or so we arrived in Vegas shortly before sunset and rented a room at the Excalibur for 99$ a night. Divided by 3 person = 33$ for staying in Vegas. Can't get much better.

After a couple of hours sightseeing and taking a lot of pictures.

we decided to grab some food. Well I decided since I really wanted to try some 'professional' brisket sandwich to compare it to mine.
For this we went to the supposedly best bbq place in town.

well, if this was the best place. I do not want to go to the worst place. Cause the food was over spiced and rather bad. That the waiter gave himself a 17.** % tip for lousy service didn't really help either.

At least I managed to take lot's of pictures of pretty motorcycles and some waitress posed on one of the harleys rather badly. Actually it was that bad that I did not even bother to keep the picture.

after this we tried to watch the water show at the bellagio, but sadly were to late and only got a quick shot of it

and decided to gamble instead a bit at the bellagio.

While we were there some random lady asked nico if he'd like to have a couple of show tickets and after a bit forth and back we figured out the tickets are for free and so we took them. It were 3 tickets, we were 3 people. Short perfect timing and combinaton.

The tickets turned out to be for Cirque du Solei - O and it was an amazing show. I actually ordered the CD afterward on my iphone.

 as you can see in the picture we were very close (4th row) and in the middle of the row. Short perfect tickets, which resale for 140-160 a piece normally.

After we spend the night in our fantastic hotel, we left and drove to the grand canyon.

We made a short stop at the Hoover Dam, fairly unimpressive.

and discovered some way more impressive chipmunks

yes our priorities were clear.But after all It was actually to see how low the water reserves are in Nevada/California.

normally the water covers the white area of the stone.

Anyway we continued to drive over the over Hoover Dam into Arizona. Another state done of my US map btwand arrived a couple of hours later at the Grand Canyon.

There we camped under an amazing sky full of stars

And like always we didn't plan very well and it turned out my sleeping bag was way to cold for these temperatures. Because originally we planned to camp at the Mohave Reserve, but it looked to boring that we decided todo something else instead. Short I was freezing all night and some animal kept pocking me non stop. I'm really shure it was a grizzly bear or mountain lion masked as this little fellow

he was actually so upset, that I didn't leave him into my tent, that he attempted to jump down the Grand Canyon the next day. For example his view was something like this....

No it's noy at an eagle, it's a raven in the picture...

Back to the topic. In the morning we made some breakfast on my sturdy little camp stove. Or in other words some tea and a tomato soup with pita bread. And continued to drive the last 5 miles to the grand canyon.
On our way there we discovered a bock (deer) who showed us that bathroom are optional...

I sadly did not manage to shoot him from the front, since a big bus came and kept honking at me to move my car off the road. I was also worried that he attacks us. Anne mentioned she can outrun him, but I was not to sure about this...

Once we finally arrived at the grand Canyon we took the opportunity to shoot hundreds of pictures. Since you never know when you are there again...

Afterward we drove back to Las Vegas, which was surprisingly quick. We only need like 4 hours or so. Afterall it was just one long straight road more or less...

One our way we discovered an old Airplane museum

And some strange looking houses....

 

When we finally arrived in vegas we managed find an even cheaper hotel. Called Hooters, which was not great. But 49$ for 3 People was a good price for this room and it looked ok. We even manged to watch the water show at the Bellagio this time

And loose even more money....

Also a tradition is, if you visit vegas you need to take a picture of fancy cars like...

a ferrari

a viper

and this was our weekend. 

As a final treat was that we had a nice Dinner at Buckhorns were an elderly gentleman gave us a 1994 Beringer Cabernet Reserve for free. It's a 140$ bottle of wine I could totally NOT appreciate...

The only sad part was that my wonderful Ashley was not with us on the Trip. Well maybe she makes it to the next trip. After all I'm going to San Diego in a week, afterward New Jersey and than Germany.

live is more fun with the right motivation and a couple of sweet deals:

a) 80$ instead of 400$, 2 weeks old - (Denon 1940ci) - nevermind seller backed out of it and can't even give him a bad review so I ended up paying 120$. Still a nice deal.
Second order got canceled too,  now I found one for 150$. I'm getting slightly frustrated...

b) 220$ instead of 699$, 200h used - (Denon AH-D5000)

c) 100$ no deal (Little Dot 1+, want to test a simple version before I go overboard again with the model I want)

d) Little Dot - Dac_I digital analog converter a bit to much money, but was recommended...

e) Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (SACD) - 10$ (I know I'm predictable), when will they release a SACD of 'The Wall' and 'Wish you were here' I wounder. Well I would be happy with the normal CD sometime.

and the best part is, If I don't like the headphones or the player and decide to sell them I can sell them without a loss and most likely make money out of it. Otherwise I would never had bought them.

Other SACD's order;

Norah Jones

Dire Straits - Brother In Arms

Elton John

Pink Floyed - Pulse

Now time to order tickets! for christmas :)

but the really annoying part is that the stuff need 1 - 3 weeks to get delivered :(

live is frustrating,

since I'm back from my wonderful vegas/grand canyon roadtrip, more about this in another upcomming post. I have nothing but issues with my software.

• I have to increase the performance of the export by factor 8 - 10, ok a nice challenge
• switch over the eclipse 3.5.* and nothing compiles anymore
• a deadline is coming up till everything has to work
• I have to perfect some features

and the stuff I actually really want to work on, just keeps piling up, like the quality and quantification module :(

just bought my TomTom Navigation System app for my iphone. Let's see if it works better than my trusted 4 year old hiking GPS...

I just picked up my rental car, a 2008 Toyota Avalon and while it's a nice and fun car to drive. I would rather have a passat. The Toyota is just so whisper quite and doesn't purr at all. But well it does has close to 300hp and accelerates quite nicely and I'm happy that I have cruise control set to limit my self at 80mph.

But otherwise, all plastic inside :(

And I wanted the promised nissan maxima....

last night was a slightly different night of going out dancing

 a friend of mine called me earlier that she is hosting a vip event

at the dream ultra lounge in sacramento and obviously I wanted togo

I did not expsect that this meant free alcohol of any kind and as much as you want

the vip party turned out to be only 8 people, including the head of security

and owner of the club and a couple of models.

short it was a fun night

this morning I started to research what this actually cost to host such a party. The smallest package is one bottle of alcohol, a couple of mixers and admission for 8 people. This fun cost 350$

now what did we have was:

2 different kinds of vodka

1 bottle of spiced rum

1 bottle of martini

couple of mixers

and we were between 8 and 15 people. Just coming and going. Which translates into  a custom package of 1100$ and 4 hours spend.

Way to rich for my blood...

it was the year 2001 and I was highly into HIFI and spend countless amount of money on this hobby. Now 8 years later I'm still missing one thing of my audio equiqument and thinking about buying it again over and over again. At least once a month.

My beautiful Sennheiser HD600 headphones which I used to own and had to sell in 2003 because I was short on cash.

Sure it was nut's to spend 600$ on a pair of headphones no question about it. But I'm still considering doing it again and buying a nice amplifier for them. The big question is just, are mp3 files good enough?

The funny thing is, I do not miss my Dolby surround system or my speakers, which are now glorious plant support...

well if I see the statistic of my saving account right I could assume that I can ditch my car in 4 month and buy a replacement.
Right now If somebody would offer me 2k for it, he can have it and I wouldn't loose sleep about it. It's just amazing what I spend on it in the last 6 month...

currently:

• blown ecu
• keeps killing crankshaft position sensors => see ecu
  
• flat tire
• still possible blown catalytic converter

I guess  I never ever buy a used german car again. The next car is an old jeep or mustang. At least they have no electronics which can die...

This one looks good..

Well I'm back from Cambridge.

And I can only say if you ever have the chance to visit it. Definately do it. Sadly I had not much spare time between meetings, preparing my talk, practicing and catching up on sleep.

But at least I spend 4 hours on Friday running around and making a personal tour on the Kings College Chapel Roof, which gave you an amazing view over the city.

Short I want to go there again sometime and see more off it.

in the last 62 month I've been on more airplanes than I ever though possible or wanted to be. Which included me staying at a lot of different airports and so I write down which ones are great, good or to be avoided at all costs.

The scale:

awesome - I was completely blown away
good - nothing really to complain about
indefferent - I don't really care
acceptable - minor issues, but ok
awful - never ever again

let's see

sacramento = acceptable

• diners/bars close to early
• check in is extremely slow
• free wifi
  

san francisco = good

• best airport food
• if you don't fly united, than great and quick check ins
• some more signs would be great
• lot's of bars to choose from
• slow customs/immigrations
  

chicago = indifferent

• great architecture
• slow customs/immigrations
• food is ok

portland = awesome

• extremely quick customs and immigrations, all done under 5 minutes
• good bars
• enough signs
  

los angeles = awful, avoid at all cost

• directions are awful
• extremely long in immigrations
• friendly personal
• impossible layout
• bars close before 9pm
• good clothing stores
  

ontario = indifferent

• it's been so long since I've been there, can't even recal good or bad things
  

charles de gaule, paris = indifferent

• slightly chaotic
• frustrating layout

frankfurt am main = indifferent

• frustrating layout
• fast customs
• quickish immigration
  

helsinki = acceptable

• slightly chaotic

kopenhagen = good

• great food
• pricey
• lot's of light
• decent layout

berlin, tegel = acceptable

• long checkin times
• confusing layout

washington, dc = indifferent
amsterdam = indifferent
london heathrow = good

• very good directions
• lots of walking
• nice shops and food
• friendly personal
  

so the last 2 days I ended up spending in cambridge at the 10/2009 metacancer meeting.

Review sofar:

The meetings had some interresting talks, specially the impact of food and cancer. Like the risk to get some kinds of cancer is 75% if you eat 100g or more meat a day. Now the risk is reduced by 75% if you eat 100g or more fish a day.
But most of the meetings were a bit to abstract for me, since they are really not my field and I had the only talk about computer science.

Cambridge it self is a little wonderful town and it would be great to live here. The flair of the city is just amaizing and I really love the old architecture. That the local rugby team helped me at a pub to order food an drinks was just amazing.
Short the people are very friendly here and helped me countless times when I got lost...

I was only nearly run over twice. Thanks to people driving on the wrong side of the road. Well you could call it other side. But I did not exspect the way people turn into streets...


Picture wise, well I try to take some pictures today after the meeting is over. Because my flight is already at 4pm on saturday, which translates in me leaving Cambridge by 9am latest.

this morning I got a ride from Ashley to the airport at 4am and after an uneventful flight of 1.15 minutes I managed to arrive in Los Angeles. Which is the worst airport I have ever been too. It has barley signs, it's complicated. The service unfriendly and the food is just plain awful.

And the worst is that I got to spend 9h here reading/working/watching movies and people are coming and going and I just keep staying. I can't even find people to talk to, since my gate is completely empty.

Short I'm bored out of my mind and pondering since 2 hours the idea to just get a beer or two. I also bought my first time ever internet access pass at an airport.

We shall see...

But I can't leave my spot, since I occupy the only working powerplug in this area...

Picture on the side is me after only 2-3h of sleep in the last 24 hours and being proud owner of a new fedora and haircut...

well after a pleasant breakfast with my visiting friend Kim I decided to spend the rest of the day relax downtown or so.

Mhm but my car did not joined me into this and stopped working again. For some reason the speed sensor died yet again. So it's going to be parked for the rest of the month on the ramps till I find more money to put into. But what can kill a speed sensor in 60 miles. I'm running out of ideas and so does Dr. Google...
I mean last night the car was working fine without any flaws. Starting and stopping and over night it stops. I swear somebody is sabotaging me...
I'm so close to put the car in INOP and sell it as is for 1500-2000 as project.

The only thing which makes me happy if, is there is something blowing the speedsensors. It would had done the same if I brought it to a garage...

I was kinda undecided to go clubbing tonight, but it actually turned into a lot of fun and was nice to get out of dancing tonight and leave davis/troubles behind for a night.

Actually it was really fun, to begin it was Kim, Laure, Steven and me. Later we got joined by Kitty. Kitty is a glamor model I met last Thursday and can maybe introduce me to some people for possible shots. We sadly didn't make an even six as we planned, since she left her boyfriend at home. She said he doesn't really like togo out much.

club one: Social

it's more or less my favorite club in sacramento rigth now and was a lot of fun. Specially since we accidentally crashed a wedding and were happily dancing till we noticed that the average age was around 40 and people had smokings on, there were pictures of a couple displayed at every wall and the women had just stunning dresses. One in white...

club two: Dream Lounge

this was not so much fun since the DJ was rather bad and it was a touch to crowded. The highlight of this club was me chatting with a couple of Russian girls which thought it would had been funny to ask me in Russian for my name and that I was actually able to answer in Russian and politely asked them to speak English or German to me. Yes my first real world application of the 3 sentences of Russian I know.

club three: The Park

I'm not a huge fan of this club, since it's always to crowded. Because the dance floor is a touch small, but at least the DJ was good and we danced there for 2 hours or so. Well at least it was fun till some idiot decided it's cool to punch me in the ribs, because he felt like I'm invaded the space of him and his girlfriend.
I still don't know why I just walked away instead of doing something about it. Guess I have my smart moments and don't see the point of fighting in bars. Or maybe I just don't hit shorter people?

Conclusions

the best part of the evening was defiantly crushing the wedding. Which was a total accident. At least we were nice and didn't take advantage of the open bar.

Once we came back to Davis we had a couple of panninis at my place and called it a night. Now getting up in 5 hours is going to be a pain. Since I'm supposed to have with Kim, my former neighbor, some breakfast.

well since my car is finally running again I decided to go shopping and buy some casual clothes for events, conferences and going out again. Since my wardrobe was not perfect anymore... Well it's never been.

So after driving 60 miles it looks like

• no starting issues or funny noises
• no leaking oil anymore
• no burned oil smell

So seems it paid off that I worked on it a bit.

The big question left over is just, why can I fix this oil leak issue and diagnose it right, when a VW mechanic who works on VWs and Audis since 20 years is not able to find the cause for it? I mean I never touched a car prior to 4 month and still don't know what I'm doing. I just type the symptons into google and find possible causes.
Yes he fixed the leaking gasket, but he did not fix the actual reason for the gasket leaking. So frustrating...

About me and clothes,

Now why is it not possible to get 36 length pants at calvin klein anymore. They had gorgeous needle striped pants, which were 2 inches to short.

Well guess I have now a new pair of dress shoes, 2 new dress shirts and some normal shirts more. But I still need pants...

because my spare part finally arrived last night I could attempt fixing my car again this morning and it took....

12 minutes in total, slight an improvement to the last time, when it took 5+ hours.

What did I do different?

• I knew where the part was located, 4 hours saved
• I cut the old sensor in the middle instead of fideling with it for an hour, 59 minutes saved
• I did not remove the coolant reservoir this time, 10 minutes saved

now the bill in total come out to:

• wrong part 80$ - thanks ECS for providing this, you send me the part for a 1.8T...
  
• comfirming diagnostic 90$
• right part 40$
• so 230$ total

compared to the quoted 360$ of the shop

Tonight I was kinda wondering what todo and so a friend invited me to join him playing settlers of catan, with the knights extension.

Well for some reason I was not really focused on the game and lost with having a total of...

3 Points

and we started with 3 points.


Short it was the worst game I ever played in my live.  Afterward we went to a local bar and played a couple of rounds of pool. Didn't do much better there.

Well at least I got out and relaxed a bit.

last night I went the second time to the davis firedance and took the camera with me this time.

And have to say I got some awesome pictures which were incredible hard to take. Why? Well you want to have the motion of the fire without it blowing out the picture and to have the body sharp and not blurry of the fire dances.

Ok let's think about it.

We have fast moving people - fast shutter speed
It is pitch black - low shutter speed
we have a an extremely bright fire - fast shutter speed
we don't know where the dances is going to move - small aperture
we want to capture the motion of the dancer moving the fire around him - slow shutter speed

short It's an impossible combination to take a picture off...

Is it?

well we can roughly predict where the dancer is going, so we can shoot at F5 - F8 and get him somewhat in focus

we can us an exposure which puts the flames nicely into the picture and don't overexpose it. And to capture the motion.

So after some test I ended up with 1s at F/5 to get a nice pictures of the flames, but the dancer was totally underexposed. So I fired a flash at him, next time bring a grid so it's only on him. But now we have a ghost, since the flash fires to early. At this point I remembered something about rear sync flash. So we capture the motion of the fire and the dance is underexposed. Now before the shutter closes we fire a quick burst of the flash and tada, we expose the dancer now.

result?

this!

now why are all these pictures black and white?

cause they look great like this!

the bright side is that my hands are finally ok enough that I can climb a bit and workout again.
But without my favorite rock climbing partner there is just not much fun in it, since nobody is there who motivates you or shares your accomplishes.

well today my new scale arrived, since I wanted to start to monitor my weight and live healthier. Including eating less meat, working out more and keeping balanced diet.

So first thing I noticed that I finally hit a BMI of 20, so I'm officially not longer underweight.
The second is that I'm getting fat in an unhealthy way. 19% Body fat content is way to much for me and I want to get it down to about 10%, without loosing mass.

I also listened to my best friend about my eating habits and will take my daily Dosis 'ensure' even if it taste awfully and is disgusting, but I can keep it in the office for a quick snack.

This stuff if basically a replacement meal and should help me to get the required amount of calories without taking to much fat to me, as I did lately.

since the first speed sensor blew up, thanks for being the wrong part, I order now the hopefully right part and got it even on sale for 35$
Sometimes it's worth to shop around.

Disadvantage is that it needs a week to be delivered. But at least I can now write my first how to fix the internal of your car tutorial, if you have 2 left hands!

And it's never wrong to spend more time learning to write or to use your hands. Who knows maybe I learn enough, that I can sometimes even fix cars, if all other backup jobs fail.


Now I just need to borrow a car to get some new stylish clothes.

another uneventful sunday spend with trying the fix the car and watching the second rain in the year.

This time I only needed 45 minutes to replace the suction pump and the only hassle was to figure out how to cut the brass connectors without a tin clip. Turned out massive tree cutter do this rather well...

In total I saved around 400$ this weekend doing all the work my self. Which is nice and I start to get more confident with fixing my car. The big question is, does it fix the oil leak? The suction pump i took out was completely stuck and so responsible for the overpressure in the pvc system, which blew my gaskets. Now I just hope that the gaskets are not that shot that I really have to replace them. We will see in 1000 miles...

Last night I decided to grab some frozen yogurt with a new friend and were joined by a couple of other friends for a rock climbing session afterward. Which turned into a lot of fun and hope to repeat this soon.

Well besides the part that my car refused to start and we walked afterward to a bar for a refreshing beer. The rest of the night I ended up watching a very strange movie, but happily I don't remember much of it. What shall I say, some kind of early Tarrantino.

Now the 'fun' project was to get my car going again and a job which was supposed to take 50-60 minutes turned into a 6 hour project. Five hours of this were spend with actually locating the damn speed sensor. Which is located at the bell housing of the transmission at not at engine block as it was written down in the manual.

The good part is that the car is starting now and the bad part is that it sounds really strange and the noise seems to come from the serpentine belt, which is really tight. I didn't even work in this area of the car... Guess I do this tomorrow and replacing also the suction pump. Which I have laying around since a while.

just a pretty area we passed while driving back to davis from twain harte

Thanks to the labor day weekend we had enough time todo three day long, nothing but climbing (saturday), hiking (sunday,monday) and barbequing in twain harte. At the cabin. Short it was great to have enough time read some books again and to not have any forms of communications nearby.
Since there were several request to provide a picture of the cabin, here it is.

I was this time at the 17 mile drive during a beautiful day with not a cloud in the sky so I decide to take some pictures which are not that common. I mean every one has a picture of the lone cypress these days...

The first picture is off a beautiful young artist who tries to show off the USA with big cowboy boots, sitting in the back of a truck and painting. Hell dog was running around somewhere and refused to get in the picture...

The second picture is just a couple of waves breaking on the shore

now since I'm back from germany since a week and even got a new visa (just another year, grummel) it's time to update this little blog.

So I arrived after a 'fun' 18h flight in san francisco and got picked up by Ashley and continue driving to Carmel. Where we spend the weekend with her family barbecuing, hitting balls on the driving range and driving down the 17 miles drive and next time I will take the bike with me.

Yes I was playing golf in carmel and It's impressive how bad I am at this sport. Just as a teaser here is a picture taken from her grandmothers patio.

The rest of this week I spend with working, studying some development techniques and rock climbing. Currently I basically go every day during lunch to the gym and climb for 40-50 minutes one and the same route in the hope to able to master it sometime soon. Now I'm only missing 10 inches till I reach the top, damn slanted walls and gravity.

Tomorrow morning we will go to twain hart and spend the weekend there reading and maybe hiking a bit. Not sure yet. I just want to relax.

Food...

So I decided to have a nice dinner the night before I fly to germany in san francisco for me and my girlfriend.
But since I had no reliable car which she could take back to davis the next morning. Well we canceled it.

Instead I surprised her with a nice dinner on friday night. My exact works were something like

get the hell out of my kitchen and don't come in before I call you

And spend 5 hours cooking, steaming and so. Ok the sauce was cooking 5 hours, the actual preparation was only 45 minutes.

Result?

• steamed lobster and a dill bed
• gravlax
• sauteed duck with tarragon sauce, my signature dish
• sauteed bell peppers with a balsamic reduction
  
• mozarella and cheevre as appetizer
• different kinds of breads
• some riesling
• vanilla ice cream with flambeed pears, my signature desert

I even managed to get everything done in time and it was the first time my planning kinda worked out. Ok it was 25 minutes late, but at perfect temperature.

recipes:

duck breast:

• rub in salt and pepper
• let rest in frigde for 2 hours
• pat dry
• heat a bit of canola oil
• reduce heat to medium
• put duck fat side up in the pan for 15 minutes
• turn duck over and cook on low for 5 - 6 minutes to medium done

tarragon sauce:

• put half a stick of butter in pot
• melt it gently
• add a cup of flour and heat it till it's brown and smells toasty
• add a cup of chicken stock and mix it in
• add another cup of chicken stock and keep mixing
• add 2 cups of chicken stock
• keep simmering for 4 -5 hours, depending how salty you like the sauce
• remove skin from time to time
• let the sauce cool down, it should be now only 2 cups left
• add a cup of whipping cream
• add fresh crushed tarragon leaves
• cook for 2 minutes
• keep warm till serving

lobster

• pick a lobster
• lay it on aluminium foil
• add a bit of butter
• add 2 - 3 stems of dill
• add salt
• add pepper
• add a bit of water or wine
• make a tight pouch of the aluminium foil and keep everything in it
• preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit
• leave the lobster in the overn for 15 minutes

cheeses, gravlax

• put in bowl
• sprinkle basil over
• done

sauteed bell pepper

• heat a pan as high as possible
• add salt and pepper
• toss very thinly cut bell pepper into it
• add 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• keep tossing till the vinegar is mostly evaporated
• serve warm or cold, depending on taste
  

flambe pears

• get canned pear and slice them thinly
• add 2 shots barcadi 152
• add 1 shot cointreau
  
• carefully heat it
• ignite and let it burn
• keep steering with a spoon to make sure all the alcohol burns down
• server over vanilla ice cream
  

bag addicted,

after cleaning out my closet I realized that I have a lot of bags and nearly everything:

• shoulder bag for small stuff and camera - used more or less daily
  
• 30l day pack for camera stuff - when doing day hikes
  
• 90l travel backpack, which I also use as extra heavy hiking backpack
  
• 115l duffel bag for traveling - whenever I fly
• think tank airport, special backpack where all my camera stuff is in and for business travel
  

and added to the list will be

• 60l light hiking backpack for the upcoming trips to grand/bryce/antelope canyon

my choice so far is this, since it's really the only one which is really comfortable and you can get on sale for 100-130$ lately, since they released the new model

brisket recipe

meat:

• brisket: 6 - 8lbs, fresh or frozen

let it come to room temperature and slightly cut the fat layer into 1/2" x 1/2" squares

dry rub:

• salt - 3parts
  
• pepper - 2 part
  
• mustard seeds - 1 part
  
• garlic - 2 part
  

mix it all together and rub deep into the brisket from all 4 sides. Wrap the brisket in serano wrap or fail and lets rest for 12 - 24h in the fridge.

mop:

• 3 cups pear cider
• 5 TS of lime juice
• pepper
• garlic
• oregano
• 5 TS of honey (use to much and the sugar burns off!)
• some pickled ginger
  

combine everything, seal it and store in fridge for at least 5 hours, better over night.

smoking:

I prefer to use hickory wood (since it's the only I can find in chunks...) and the minion method. The advantage is you fill up the smoker in the morning with coal, light enough depending on conditions and let it slowly burn down. On average I use 1 chunk of hikory for 2 pounds of meat, so you need 3 - 4 chunks. If you have a water pan fill it with water, to keep it easy.

Let the smoker settle at 225 - 230 degrees Fahrenheit and put the meat on the grate, fat layer on top. The reason for this is that the fat drops throw the meat for the first couple of hours and keeps the meet moist.

After 2 hours mop once an hour and adjust the temperature so it stays in the desired range. Once you reach for hours, flip the brisket once an hour and mop it on the flipped side.

Temperature to reach

sliced meat:

if you want to slice the meat, let it reach an internal temperature of 185 Fahrenheit and wrap it afterward in aluminum full. Once it's wrapped let it rest of an hour or two. Best would be in a cooler, so it keeps the temperature.

pulled meat:

let the meat reach an internal temperature of 200-205 Fahrenheit and take it off the smoker. Let it rest for like 30 minutes, put it into a large dish and use 2 forks to pull it apart.

How long does it take

it needs ca 1 hour a pound at 220 Fahrenheit. But can take up to 2 hours a pound, depending how long the smoke plateau is. This depends on the meat quality.

Why do you have to smoke brisket for such a long time and not just boil it in the pan quick or smoke it at high temperature for an hour or two?

brisket is a very tough cut of meet with a lot of tendons and so collagen. If you just smoke/cook it at higher temperature for 1 - 2 hours you have a very chewy texture with a smokey flavor. A standard mistake.
You want to smoke it for a long time (even if the smoke does not really go into the meat after 2 - 3 hours anymore) to give the collagen time to break down. Your meat plateau is basically the most important phase, because during this time the collagen breaks down and makes the meat nice and tender.
The good thing is that this long smoke time is also the reason that brisket is cheap at 2$ a pound. Since not many people are willing to put up with this.

the last couple of days I spend on REI and configuring my new backpacking equipment list. It all started with YUBA. Why did nobody mentioned to me in 2005 how well contact's work in the middle of nowhere. Guess I have to thank Ashley for making me jump over my own shadow.

And after 5 years my old traveling/hiking backpack is tearing/ripping at a lot of different places and I doubt it survives a lot more trips and I got a good deal of use out of it.

• 10+ plane trips
• 4 seasons of snowboarding
• driving with it all over CA
• some day hikes
• snowshoeing
  

So I think it was worth it to spend the money and the best gear I could afford and will do the same again.

By this standards I put a list of stuff together which I might need. Top of the list is

• bear proof food canister (except for NY bears...) - 80$
  
• 2 x anti bear spray + Holster - 120$
• good shoes, 250$ I'm kind of sick of wearing out 1-2 pairs of Keen's (125$ a pair) a year
  
• ultra light backpack, 200$

Now I need to figure out the clothing and cooking part. So far I'm dead set on titanium for cookware/stoves (Expensive, but light and supposed to last forever).
The final goal is to have a 3 - 5 days back setup of 15-20lbs. Which means only the D80 + 35mm F/2 lens and maybe the 90mm F/2.8

Good news is that I already have the tent, mattress pad and sleeping back for this. (8lb's all combined, maybe I do exchange the tend for a lighter version in september which is 3lbs and not 6lbs)

I guess in total I will end up at 1500$ depending on the end of season deals in October.

The one thing I'm unsure about is, If I should do it right and get the best waterfilter on the market or not. Is it worse it to risk an infection/illness to save 150$?

mhm after I posted my car for sale last night and fixed the vibrations in the skid plate. Well it turns out it wont start anymore and had to get towed from sacramento to davis today.

Otherwise it was a fun day,

- rock climbing
- farmers market
- fancy dinner

while my passat was in the shop for an oil change and an unpleasant surprise I thought what can you do in the 3 hours (oil change 30 minutes, and 150 minutes for them to figure out how to disable my alarm system, after they managed to lock the car...)

So I went to the RockGnasium and took my frst official rock climbing lesson and I have to say it's a lot of fun and a really nice workout.

For dinner we are now making some tuna sashimi and some leftover trout from last night.

today I managed to sell my nikon D200 for 600$ including battery grip, which is an ok price for this camera and I didn't actually loose money on it. I think that's the first time that I bought a camera, used it 10 month and sold it without loosing money. I did the same with the Nikon 17-55mm F/2.8 2 month ago and didn't loose money on it either.

Thanks to the microsoft live.com cash back promotion from the last year. I just wished I would had bought the 85mm F/1.4 at this time. Since I would had made so much money on it :( Well live and learn I guess.

Now my savings account approaches 2000$ which get's me this much closer to a D700 (once they release the D700s) or a jeep wrangler, once I get a visa and save enough money up.

Why a wrangler? I need a car which I can take to Utah and death valley and it get's me everywhere, which has cheap parts and is reliable. The passat can't do it. And when you rent a 4x4 Vehicle they always make you sign the form 'You are not going to take this vehicle offroad and are not insured when offroading', which defeats the purpose.

Now I just need to figure out if I want to sell the Passat or keep it. Since you can't really use the jeep as a daily driver.

After I resisted buying the sigma DP-1, because of it's speed issues and slow autofocus, I really hoped that the Olympus digital pen provides what I want.

It sounded perfect:

- interchangeable lenses
- comes with a 17mm lens F/2.8 (equals 35mm) (my preferred focal length)
- fits in a pocket
- clean iso 1600+

but like always it works with contrast based focus system which means I'm not going to buy it, since the focus system is to slow.

Why couldn't they use a phase detection system, everything else was perfect...

I will never get a smallish camera which fits into my pocket. I could just go out and buy a 40mm manual focus pan cake, and the D80 fit's in my jacket pocket. But I already got a 35mm F/2 lens I love and don't need another one.

while being on the roadtrip I also had the chance to snap some quick shots of friends and got some shots of me.

Nothing great, but some are nice.