John Wulff

Making cocktails is fun. Came up with this one last night when Courtney asked for an herbal beverage.

Ingredients

• 1 small sprig of rosemary, 2 or 3 inches long, for garnish
• leaves from 1 large sprig rosemary (dozens of leaves)
• leaves from 1 sprig parsley (4 or 5 leaves)
• 2 TB sugar
• juice from a quarter of a lime
• 4 oz Grey Goose Vodka

Directions

1. Put leaves, sugar, lime juice, and 1/2 oz vodka in mortar and pestle. Grind until sugar dissolves and rosemary looks well pulverized.
2. Pour mortar's contents into cocktail shaker filled with ice along with remaining vodka. Shake vigorously.
3. Strain into chilled martini glass and garnish with small rosemary sprig.

One of my favorite breakfasts: poached eggs in a nest. I've been ordering this for years at Roses. Recently my dad started making it at home. Inspired by him, I gave it a try. It went very well!

Recipe:

1. Grate potatoes
2. Squeeze the heck out of the shredded potato (make a ball with your hands, squeeze) to remove as much moisture as possible
3. Toss salt and pepper with shredded potato to taste, add green onions if you'd like
4. Heat skillet medium-low, add butter, heat should be well below smoke point, butter should NOT burn/brown
5. Evenly distribute shredded potato in hot skillet, lightly pack
6. Flip potatoes when nicely browned, add more butter for new side (To keep potatoes from breaking up cover pan with cookie sheet and flip skillet/cookie sheet so skillet ends up upside down on the cookie sheet. Slide the potatoes back into skillet.)
7. While potatoes finish browning poach egg(s)
8. Plate and enjoy!

Disappointed by the quality of store bought blue cheese stuffed olives I decided to make my own. It’s so much more enjoyable to have a stuffed olive with MY favorite blue cheese than the generic “blue cheese” pre-packaged olives use. I used Point Reyes Original Blue. It’s creamy texture blended well with the cream cheese. I’m also a big fan of St. Agur, I’ll try it next time. But, it’s a little thicker so it may not spread as well.

Ingredients

• 1 10oz Jar Pitted Green Olives
• 1oz Blue Cheese
• 1oz Cream Cheese
• ~10 Peppercorns (adjust to taste)

Directions

• Mix equal parts blue cheese and cream cheese until completely combined.
• Microwave mixture for about 20 seconds until just warm so it will spread easily.
• Spoon mixture into plastic bag, forcing into one corner of the bag.
• Using scissors, cut off the tip of the corner of the bag, making a peppercorn sized hole.

• Drain the olives, reserve their brine in original container.
• Squeeze cheese mixture into each olive and return to original container.

• Add a peppercorns to olive and brine mixture.
• Let sit for a few days (time for peppercorns to season olives and cheese to mellow).
• Enjoy in a martini.

Update on March 22, 2009: Made them again, this time used canned olives (not in a glass jar, canned in metal can). Turns out canned olives are much smaller than the fancy pitted green olives that come in a glass jar. They still turned out all right but they’re awfully small. I recommend springing for the larger, glass jar, pitted green olives.

I get a couple of these emails a day. Joan Young and Linkstar UK Limited, please stop hurting the Internet.

from: Joan Young joan@linkstar.co.uk
to: John
date: Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 3:02 AM
subject: Advertising on Johnwulff.com

Hiya,

Good day. It’s me again, just want to know if you are getting my mails because I haven’t received any reply from you. This is regarding our business project about link sponsorship. I am still interested in acquiring a link from your website(Johnwulff.com).

Cheers!

I look forward to hearing from you.

All the best, Joan Young Account Executive

This message was sent by Linkstar UK Limited, it is STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL and is solely for the individual or organisation to whom it is addressed. It may contain PRIVILEGED and CONFIDENTIAL information. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication and its contents is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication and its contents in error, please notify us at info@linkstar.co.uk and delete it and any copies from your computer.

This e-mail has been checked for viruses but it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that the opening use or onward transmission of the e-mail and any attachments will not adversely affect its systems or data and no responsibility is accepted by Linkstar UK Limited in this regard.

PS – I hear Joan loves receiving porn at work. If you know of any hardcore email lists please subscribe her to them. She and I thank you. joan@linkstar.co.uk

I started with two 1.5L jugs of apple cider. I poured half of each jug into a saucepan with 2 cups of white sugar and 2 cups of brown sugar. I simmered the mixture until the sugar completely dissolved. Then I let the sugar cider mixture cool to 105 degrees fahrenheit (the yeast I used operates best between 101 and 109). I added 1 packet of champagne yeast to the sugar cider mixture and gave the yeast fifteen minutes to “bloom”.

Then I poured the remaining cider out of jugs into an empty pitcher. I poured half the sugar, cider, and yeast mixture into each jug. Then I topped off each jug with the cider in the pitcher. (I had about two cups cider left over. Courtney mixed it with some cinnamon tea, it didn’t go well.)

Finally, I topped each jug with a balloon and pricked each balloon with a needle. (The balloons act as a poor man’s airlock to keep bacteria out while allowing gases to escape.)

I’ve read it can take anywhere from 3 weeks to 9 months for optimal fermentation. I’ll test one jug in three weeks. Depending on how it tastes the other jug will either be opened in 3 weeks and one day or in 9 months.

I recently told a friend I thought mass transit expansion should be funded by increasing the gas tax. She responded, “could it actually cover all the costs?” I didn’t know, so I did some number crunching. Here’s what I came up with:

The Sound Transit 2008 ballot measure’s expansion plans will cost $13,500,000,000. (source)

To be conservative, let’s say 2,000,000,000¹ gallons of gasoline are consumed in Washington State each year. This means that for each penny per gallon the gas tax increases an additional $20,000,000 (2,000,000,000 gallons * $0.01) in state revenue is generated.

To generate $13,500,000,000 from the state gas tax in one year would require raising the gas tax by $6.75 ($13,500,000,000 / $20,000,000 / 100 cents/$). This would effectively raise the current price of gasoline to $10.75 ($4 + $6.75).

If the tax were diluted over 11 (2020 – 2009) years (the current proposal’s construction wouldn’t be complete until 2020 (source)) the gas tax would only need to increase by $0.61 ($6.75 / 11 years). This assumes an average gas consumption of 2,000,000,000 gallons per year over the next 11 years. This would effectively raise the current price of gasoline to $4.61 ($4 + $0.61).

If an average of only 1,500,000,000 gallons per year of gasoline is consumed over the next 11 years then the gas tax would need to increase by $0.82 ($13,500,000,000 / (1,500,000,000 gallons * $0.01) / 11 years) to generate $13,500,000,000. This would effectively raise the current price of gasoline to $4.82 ($4 + $0.82).

Based on my imprecise methodology, an assumption that the entire state would be willing to pay for puget sound’s transit expansion, and a highly conservative estimate of our future gas consumption the gas tax would need to increase by $0.82 a gallon to pay for this fall’s transit measure.

That’s a lot.

Now that I understand the numbers a little better I’m not sure how I feel about funding mass transit by increasing the gas tax. I’d personally be willing to pay the increased tax but I fear the impact it would have on our economy.

Really unhappy with this bug. I hope the Rails team agrees that this is a bug unlike my last “bug” report.

If you’re unfarmiliar with “changed?” attribute updating I recommend reading Living on the edge (of Rails) #14 before continuing.

Here it is, the nasty:

class Node < ActiveRecord::Base
  serialize :data
end

>> n = Node.create! :data => { :a => 1 }
=> #<Node id: 417950, data: {:a=>1}>
>> n.id
=> 417950
>> m = Node.find 417950
=> #<Node id: 417950, data: {:a=>1}>
>> m.data[:b] = 2
=> 2
>> m
=> #<Node id: 417950, data: {:b=>2, :a=>1}>
>> m.changed?
=> false
>> m.save!
=> true
>> m = Node.find 417950
=> #<Node id: 417950, data: {:a=>1}>

Changes to the hash are never saved and that makes me really, really sad.

I’ve opened a ticket.

My burger at Shultzy’s is no longer on the menu. It’s gone. I hope you had a chance to try it.

It was a sweet ride while it lasted. I guess I’m just not cut out to be a gastronomical rock star.

Thanks Bruce, Don, and everyone else at Shultzy’s.

Give this a look:

>> :"5".to_i
=> 148447
>> :"5".to_s.to_i
=> 5

Ruby-Doc.org: sym.to_i returns an integer that is unique for each symbol within a particular execution of a program.

Makes sense, sure. But damn was it painful to figure that one out the hard way.

For more fun with Symbols I suggest What is a ruby symbol? – symbols explained.

My first attempt at a time-lapse. I’ll pick a more interesting subject next time.