video from our friends Jen & Abby after the houseparty/mini concert can be found here.

well our weekly gamenight turned out to be something special this week.
This time we got:

• fantastic food, like always
• a fun group of people, like always
• a new game
  

and,

here it comes,

live music from the touring band "Jen & Abby", which promptly let to an improved photo shoot, while they were performing for us, since they needed some pictures.

Now this put me into a challenging position, how the hell are I'm supposed to take pictures...

• awe full location, a cluttered living room is just plain bad
• not able to move anyone around, since I don't want to interrupt there beautiful music
• no subject/background seperation

well since the girls where young and had great skin, the solution was simple. Just drop a couple of spotlights on them and let the rest of the world go black. I also tried some high keys, but they did not work at all.

Note for later, I could had used a 85mm F/1.4 so badly...

So they are not my best work, but for the circumstances they turned out pretty well.

Saturday we decided to make a 'short' trip to pine lake nearby. The idea was to hike and swim abit.

But for some reason it turned out to be a 10mile+ hike, since we walked around the lake. Which has 10 miles shore and our side trips and shortcut's did not really help. So to judge how I felt the next day, we walked roughly 2500 miles. Which translates into 12 - 15 miles, after some careful consideration.

Anyway it was a beautiful day and I had the chance to take some pictures.

how to describe twain harte, I guess wikipedia gives it a try, but can't say much about it.

My best guess is to look at this picture to the left. I think it tells you all in a very simple story.

Basically it's a small very relaxed and down to earth community. Celebrating the American way of live. Beginning with the old trucks and proud flags to small American dinners with deer heads on the wall and a waitress running around with a classic coffee pot, serving gigantic amount of breakfast for decent prices.
Everything closes by 9.30-10.00 pm and skunks are running around at night, trying (successfully) to escape me an my camera...

after we arrived at twain hart and got the cabin ready, which included hunting down several kinds of different spiders.

Yes gigantic monstrous spiders, the kind which I hate! They decided to move in since the last time the cabin was used. Ok it's been a year, but still they are not supposed to be there.

Anyway we both ended up (Ashley and I, not the spiders and I) relaxing in the cabin and reading a bit.

so this weekend started a bit unexspected with somebody trying to prove he can park. Resulting in hitting my car in the most unfortunate way. Causing no damage what soever, besides a cracked license plate.

Couldn't he hit my rear bumper? I need a new rear bumper...

well last night was fun, we just ended up going for a concert in the park and playing uno with friends.

The concert was, well different. It was supposed to be latin music, so I expected something like Santana style and instead we got some very strange and unexciting acoustic guitar player singing English songs.

Well at least we had fun with friends.

The picture on the left was only taken, because the light was so pretty...

since people starting to complain that this blog is to much about work and coding and so, well there is now a new blog, only about coding.

Coding and More

SetupX Installation under Ubuntu

moved to: Coding and More

Creating Minimum and Maximum date in Java

move to Coding and More

playing a bit with my friend ashleigh and the camera.

But somehow nothing worked as planned, but we got some nice shots of her.

Grails and some annoying default CSS

moved to Coding and More

well after years of grilling tri-tip and pan fried tri-tip we tried something new and involves the smoker (what a surprise)

We made an amazing smoked tri-tip and I think this is the way togo. Well the guest's seemed to be pretty happy too and we ended up making so much food, that I have a whole smoked tri-tip left to my self :)

Anyway the recipe:

• get yourself a good looking tri-tip with some nice marbling and about 1.5 - 2lbs trimmed, or 2.5 - 3 lbs untrimmed (and trim it a bit)
  
• make a dry rub out of salt and pepper and rub it onto the meat. You need roughly a cup of dry rub
• toss in a zip lock bag and leave it in the fridge for 5 - 6 hours
• remove it from the fridge when you are setting up the smoker, ca 45 minutes prior
• fire up the smoker with some hickory wood and let it settle at a temperature of 220-250 Fahrenheit
• toss in the meat, add the remote meat thermometer and enjoy a couple of hefeweizen (roughly 1 hour a pound, so about 90 minutes or 3 -5 hefeweizen)
• do NOT open the smoker and look all the time, that's what's the remote thermometer is for
  
• once the meat reaches 145 Fahrenheit, take it off the smoker and let it rest for 10 - 20 minutes so it's as juicy as possible
• slice it into thins slices, alone in the kitchen (everybody else is outside...) and serve to the hungry pack

the dip

since I like to keep things simple and quick I just made a spicy (for germans) yogurt based dip.

• 1 lbs of yoghurt, not the fat free kind!
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• Salt, Pepper, Basil, Oregano to taste
  
• half a red onion, minced
  

mix everything together and let it rest in the fridge for an hour. It works really well with meat, since it enhances the taste of it, by adding a slight sour and fresh note.

well today I took of the day to move to my new place for this year and I hope to stay longer here. Depending how everything goes with the roommate and my wonderful girlfriend.

So here are some pictures of the front and backyard and I post pictures of the rest of this house as soon as possible.

My room basically has barley any stuff in it so far, since i need to remodel my bed and so. But once it's done it's going to be beautiful.

The backyard and frontyard are nice and I smoked my first tritip tonight, which was just amaizing and pretty cheap at 20$ for 4 lbs.

I guess I have this kind of sandwiches for the next 4 - 5 days.

Anyway it's late and time for bed.

well this is something new, a very strange behavior in one of my tests cases:


List result = this.getEntityManager().createQuery("from " + LoggingEntityBean.class.getName() + " b").getResultList();
assertTrue(result.isEmpty() == false);

int size = result.size();
int exspected = testSize * addres.length;

logger.info(size);
logger.info(exspected);
assertTrue(size == exspected);


now why do I get this error message...

[17:37:02,007] [INFO ] [main] [LoggingServiceTest] [400]
[17:37:02,008] [INFO ] [main] [LoggingServiceTest] [200]

junit.framework.AssertionFailedError: null
at edu.ucdavis.genomics.metabolomics.binbase.logging.server.LoggingServiceTest.setUp(LoggingServiceTest.java:73)
at org.jmock.core.VerifyingTestCase.runBare(Unknown Source)
at org.junit.internal.runners.JUnit38ClassRunner.run(JUnit38ClassRunner.java:81)
at com.intellij.rt.junit4.Junit4ClassSuite.run(Junit4ClassSuite.java:99)
at com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.JUnitStarter.main(JUnitStarter.java:40)



error in this line:

assertTrue(size == exspected);

ok it's supposed to fail because 200 isn't 400, but not with a NullPointer exception...

now I have been working with intellij for a bit over a week and it have to say it has it's highs and it's lows.

• refactoring is just great
• override/implment function works good
• I hate the code completion, it's just strange behavior wise
• the junit plugin is nice, but a bit strange
• the grails/groovy support is exceptional good
• the performance is good if I work on a single project, if I work on my average 40 projects at once it's impossible to work with
• nice support for for python, works quite well
• uml support is great
• ant based build are a nightmare, but we want to use maven anyway whenever, where ever
• maven plugin is great in therorie, but with complex pom's it's extremely slow.

conclusions:

• python development will be in intellij
• groovy development will be in intellij
• scala development will be in intellij
• java development will be in eclipse
• pom writing will be in intillij and I generate the project directly via 'mvn idea:idea eclipse:eclipse' instead of using the pom as project file
  

ok it's not hot in davis,

it's ridiculous hot, 47 Degree Celsius....

I mean seriously...

lesson:

• do not buy a car with black leather seats...
• do not buy a car with black leather...
• do not buy a car with black...
• do not buy a car with...
• do not buy a car...
• do not buy a...
• do not buy...
• do not...
• do...
• ...
• ..
• .

translation I hid in the office, enjoyed the AC and got some stuff done (Die hard, Die hard with a vengeance,...)

Also no smoked meat today, I will not sit for 12 hours next to this thing fighting with the heat during the day or the roaches at night.

Now time to run for a restaurant and get some tasty food. I'm in no mood to cook tonight.

mocking spring,

moved to Coding and More

ajax and grails

moved to Coding and More

to cancel flight's is fun...

Flight cost summary

Flight cost - 6/16/09

Airfare #XXXXXXXXXXXXX	$679.25
Flight cost	$679.25
Exchange cost - 6/25/09
Airfare #XXXXXXXXXXXXX	$688.78
Previous airfare	-$679.25
Airfare difference	$9.53
Orbitz exchange fee	$30.00
Airline change fee	$200.00
Total exchange cost	$239.53	USD

Grand total itinerary cost to-date	$918.78 USD

boy my checking account truly hates me right now...