Rob Drimmie's blog

I am coming late to the Question of the Day again, but in response to the question of Over or Under (regarding toilet paper rolls) I am firmly in the Over camp.

I missed the actual question of the day.  Which was yesterday's question, but tough nads, I'm answering it today.  It asked what the nerdiest thing about me was.

I don't know that I have anything especially nerdly about me.  I mean, I'm a reasonably nerdy guy.  I read books on neuropsychology and brain damage because they fascinate me, I'm a computer programmer, I know there's a difference between Sauroman and Sauron, I can wax reminiscent about time spent on BBSes and discuss episodes of Star Trek.  But I not by title, you need to remind me that that was the one where Kirk and Spock fight or which time it was that Wesley saved the ship.  I was never like, on the Well or known on FIDONET.  I'm pretty sure I didn't spell Sauroman right and I never read the Silmillarion (which I am also sure I spelled wrong).  I've never written a compiler and seriously I couldn't tell you what that B-region (Brock's?) a) actually is named, b) does, or c) is located. 

I know Pythagoras' theorem, but nothing about the greek cult that share his name.  I know that pi is pretty cool, but I only know 3.141 and then I start guessing.  Cryptic crosswords confuse the shit out of me.  I spent countless adolescent weekend roleplaying with friends, but it was Palladium, not GURPS.

What's your cell phone's ringtone? What made you pick it?

My cell phone's ring is 'vibrate'.  I picked it because I am a hateful and mean bastard who doesn't want to hear bad noises coming from other peoples' phones, and I do them the same favour.

If you could open any sort of restaurant, what would it be like?

If I could open any sort of restaurant, it would of course be Rob's Dream Restaurant (a notional eatery) which doesn't actually need to make money, is only open from 11am until 2pm, is an odd combination of teppanyaki and incubation and features a table-top touchscreen menu system.

What's one thing that you hope to do or accomplish before the end of this year?

Launch CHORE.tl, a web application that is very early in development, intended to help manage household chores by assigning them to the different members of the household in fair and automatic ways.

In fact, if you have a few minutes, I've put together a quick survey to collect a little bit of information about who might be interested in such a thing.  It won't take long, and any information you're willing to share would really help me out.

Who is your favorite Muppet? Why?
QotD submitted by knitwitology.vox.com.

I sort of hate favorite character questions, because they are almost universally personality-test-in-a-can type things.  But I also like talking about it, so I guess I shouldn't bitch.

Assuming that we aren't restricting ourselves just to the show and are discussing the entire Muppetverse, my tops would have to include Oscar, Big Bird, Beaker and Gonzo, and if pressed to pick just one I'd waffle a whole lot then settle with Gonzo. 

Why?  I don't know really, probably because of shared personality traits which makes those annoying tests so fun.  I like Oscar because he's a big grouch, and so am I.  I like Big Bird because he's curious and naive and optimistic and so am I.  I like Beaker because he's funny and curiously loyal, and I like Gonzo because he's crazy.  Not Animal-crazy, just frantic and funny and sort of who knows what will happen next.  He's a super hero and afraid of monsters that end up being himself and one second he's near and the next he's far.

This weekend was the first of several increasingly busy ones that will take us into Harvey's birth. 

Saturday was spent in Toronto with my dad's family, in celebration of my cousin's first birthday.  Aside from the family fun, I think I finally managed to get the camera working in Aperture priority mode to get those portrait type pictures with the blurry backgrounds that are so nice.  We haven't gotten around to getting the pictures off the camera yet so I don't really know how well it at worked, but they looked pretty good in preview on the camera itself.

On Sunday we moved some furniture around, enlisting the aid of my friend Mike for the biggish stuff.  Mostly things in the office, moving the desks into an arrangement that, I had thought, would allow enough room for the spare bed.  As it turns out, my measurements were off by just a few inches in the wrong direction and the layout we'd imagined won't quite work.  There is enough room for a mattress, but we are just shy of having the room for the bed frame itself.

In the short term, we've just propped the bed pieces up against the wall, at least that way they're out of Harvey's room so we can paint, which is the important thing. 

This coming weekend, we're going to celebrate Jen's father's birthday at her aunt's house in the Niagara Falls region, then the following day we'll be attending the Craft Beer and BBQ Cook Off thing happening in Victoria park. 

Well, as most in this neighbourhood know, Jen and I spent our honeymoon visiting a series of people who we knew online only. The details are too long to repeat here, but were blogged starting with our wedding day here: http://jenandrob.drimmie.net/2004/09/its-official.html.  This was neither the first nor the last time I met with people I'd uh, met online.

The first time I met anyone I'd known online though took back way in the rainy and grey days of the early 1990s, when I was a regular on a number of BBSes in the area.  Role-playing featured a large role in conversation (amongst a bunch of teenage geeks?  Why, I'd have never thought...) and as a result a small group of us got together to play a game or three.

I don't think that particular group lasted very long, but shortly after that one of the larger boards in town started organizing a weekly softball game which drew a suprisingly large (more than enough for two teams) and varied group of people together on a regular basis for a fun afternoon out.

This far in the future I can look back and say that it wasn't all that weird, but I've met people I've only known through a modem so many times now that I've mostly dulled myself to how weird it actually was.  My parents were superstars and didn't really even question the fact that I might have been offering myself up to an axe murder or serial rapist or whatever.

Probably the best thing I ever made was the ribs I made when our friend Binkin came to visit, they were the shining example of one of my favorite foods.

The most important element in ribs is the meat itself.  We're lucky enough to have easy access to a butcher with absolutely tremendous back ribs.  They are giant masses of tasty pig flesh that I would recommend to anyone.  Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the place.  They have a booth at the Kitchener Market, and I recognize them more by position than I do name.

I let the ribs soak overnight in apple juice and apple cider vinegar with a bunch of garlic and onion tossed in for good measure.

Then I boiled the ribs (yes boiled, I know: Travesty! But remind me one day to tell you about the pea soup I made later) in what was mostly vegetable stock, but also more onions and garlic.  They boiled for about two hours or so.

Jen made her barbecue sauce, which is a simple mixture of ketchup, mustard, worcestershire sauce, lemon juice and brown sugar.  It's devestatingly delicious, and I fuck it up every time I do it because I keep adding in other stuff or get the balance wrong, or something.  I also made a smaller batch of some whiskey-based  sauce, so I could get my over-complicated fucking-things-up desires out of the way.

I fired up the (%propane%, yes yes, I'm a horrible person) grill and cooked the ribs over a proper flame for a while so they got some good caramelising then sauced them up.  When I sauce my ribs, I do it over a very light heat.  I do a number of layers, one very thin to get a good base, and then at least one more, thicker to be goopy.  I like to let them cook for a good long time so that the sauce warms up properly and reduces and thickens and, well, goopens.

Ribs are probably my signature recipe, and that was definitely the best batch of ribs I've ever made. 

I just submitted the following as feedback.  If I got these wishes my heart would explode with total vox greatness.

robdrimmie.vox.com

A myriad of gripes and such.  The short version of everything past item 1 is:  More RSS lovin', please!

1) If the vox url is important to feedback, why not have a spot for it?  Better yet, why not figure out who I'm logged in as and do it automagically? 

2) Authors appear to no longer be in the RSS feed, which means I have to guess who in my neighbourhood has written what.  I know most of my neighbourhood pretty well, so I am often right, but still.

3) Speaking of RSS feeds, it would be amazingly great if the rss feed were actually my vox neighbourhood.  It is a hearty pain in the ass following comment threads by having to subscribe to each one for each post in my neighbourhood.  I would lovelovelove it if it were possible to subscribe to a feed that included every post and comment in my neighbourhood.  And the comments shouldn't be attached to the posts, just "Comment by someone to someone else's post title blah." 

Threads typically don't last long enough to lose context, and those that might would be memorable enough that I can remember what's being talked about.

4) It would be nice if the question of the day were in the rss feed too, so I could see when it was updated without having to hit the site.

5) I know vox is ad-supported, and right now the RSS feed isn't, which is very much awesome, but I would completely understand if the full-on mega vox rss splendtacular hard charger feed-o-rama had ads in it.