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Author: Bryant

Laying Plans

January 18, 2013
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Susan and I will be hitting LoneStarCon 3, aka Worldcon 2013. It’s in San Antonio, so we can take the whole week and spend a few days in Austin first. Mmm, barbecue. Mmm, breakfast tacos. Mmm.

I have now poked my nose back into Worldcon site selection politics and am delighted to note that it’s still Worldcon site selection politics. By which I mean I’m relieved that I moved to California just when I would have gotten sucked into convention organizing in Boston. I dunno, Orlando looks good to me for 2015.

I am of course voting for that L. Ron Hubbard biopic in all Hugo categories.

Quest for LTE

October 16, 2012
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Did you remember that Ron Perlman was in Quest for Fire? Me either, but he was. This post is not about cavemen, though. It is a note on an AT&T LTE provisioning problem in the interests of helping other people get the problem solved.

I upgraded from my iPhone 4 to a spiffy new iPhone 5 on AT&T. It was great except LTE wasn’t working; I just got 4G and nothing better. The first week I had it, I went to Austin and Las Vegas which kept me a bit too busy to bug AT&T. I did call AT&T tech support from Vegas a couple of times, but neither time was very successful. (Do not foist me off on Apple, dude! Uncool.) My research said that a number of things could be wrong: my sim card might not be provisioned for LTE; I might not be on an LTE data plan; or the sim card itself could be hosed.

In all these cases except the broken sim card, it’s reportedly possible to get a phone support person who can fix it. I believe this is true because ultimately it was a phone support guy who solved the problem, but none of the ones I talked to in Vegas were clued in. So I finally went down to the AT&T store in Palo Alto today and chatted with this awesome guy named Chris Dubon. He swapped out my sim card and double-checked my data plan with no luck. I offered to hit the Apple Store, since at this point I was suspecting hardware, but he was all “nope, let’s eliminate anything we can eliminate before you leave.”

So he called tech support and they said “hm, we don’t see that sim as provisioned for LTE.” He swapped in another one, and they reset the whole profile. Bam: LTE.

The key thing here is not to go bug your AT&T guys with the magic words I’m not even sure I got right; what I’m saying is just hit the AT&T store directly and let them be smart about fixing the problem. They can pull out a replacement sim card on the spot, they’ll get through to the right tech support people, and so on. It took like 45 minutes but it was time well spent.

Cerebus Digital

October 13, 2012
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The first two issues of High Society showed up on Comixology this week. The first one was free, so I bought it. It’s really gorgeous: high-def, quality scans for the most part. There are one or two pages where the white on black text fills in a bit much, but given the unfortunate house fire which destroyed a bunch of the negatives recently, I am not unhappy about that.

It’s gorgeous and funny and an amazing achievement and this is even before Gerhard came on board. Plus there are 30 or so pages of notebooks and historical stuff at the end. Issue two is only 99 cents, which is a bargain — at the rate of a couple of issues a week, I would have no financial qualms about buying all the Cerebus this way.

Then I happened to read this stuff about his current negotiations with Fantagraphics. So. Plus the misogyny.

Like any number of others, I will spend some vague amount of time wrestling with the problem of great art created by someone not so great, with very not great messages embedded therein.

First of the Last

October 1, 2012
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After a really jam-packed first episode of Last Resort, I wound up with a multitude of questions filed into two slots.

First: is the plot in any way believable? You have to buy into the captain of a nuclear sub refusing orders, plus he’s gotta have enough charisma to make his crew more or less stick with him. Also there’s a huge conspiracy in the background. Said conspiracy does some pretty outrageous things even if the Reagan quote at the beginning is taken as good foreign policy. What I’m saying here is that I’m not entirely certain that we’re watching actual humans making sane decisions.

Second, though: is the situation as presented at all stable? And the trick here is that I don’t think it is, but I also don’t think Shawn Ryan necessarily thinks it is. If I’m looking for a showrunner who’s willing to mess with the status quo in a big bad way on his shows, I’m looking for Jeff Pinkner and J. H. Wyman of Fringe. But Shawn Ryan is my number two choice; The Shield went all in on actions with consequences, and Terriers had no qualms about major alterations to the show’s world.

That’s the hook for me. If Last Resort digs into the consequences of all the messed up things that happened in the first episode, it’s gonna be awesome and I will forgive the implausibilities. We’ll see.

Speaking of Kindness

September 16, 2012
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Every year, if at all possible, I walk to raise money for suicide prevention. It’s an important cause for me because four years ago, my friend and housemate Wyatt Parkinson killed himself in the house we (and Susan) lived in. Susan found him. It’s a really horrible thing to have happen.

I’m walking again this year, in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am looking for donations, that being the point of the walk. We’re also happy to have company. The first walk we did was right after it happened, and it was tremendously important to see hundreds of other people mourning the same kind of violent occurrence.

If you can’t give, or if you’re one of the generous people who’ve given already, a link to this post or to my fundraising page is also appreciated.

Suicide is one of the top ten causes of death in the United States. The suicide rate in the US Army is at an all time high. (I write that most years, because it keeps going up.)

The number to call if you’re feeling suicidal, by the by: 1-800-273-TALK.

Thank you for reading.

Twice-Baked Potatoes

September 14, 2012
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It’s really easy to do twice-baked potatoes on the Egg, especially if you have like three hours to kill. Which, sure, sometimes.

Take your nice big russets. Put some olive oil on the outside, and whatever spice you want. I used some hickory garlic rub and that was nice. Wrap them in foil, and kick ’em into the Egg at 400 degrees for an hour. Turn them every 20 or 30 minutes. I did a WoW instance during that hour and I didn’t worry about the temperature once and it all worked out okay.

Then take the potatoes off and let them cool. While that’s happening, fry up some bacon. Then fry some onions and whatever else in the bacon grease; I used some old smoked chiles that Gretchen gave me, and some spinach. I would have used garlic but we were out, which is sad. You need to let the potatoes cool for like 20 minutes so you have time.

Mix up: a cup or so of sour cream or Greek yogurt. We used yogurt. Another cup or so of butter. Chop up the bacon and the spinach and so on. Salt and pepper if you want. Then hollow out the potatoes, leaving like a quarter inch of potato on all sides, and throw that in. Mash it all together. Oh, and some cheese!

Then put that glop back in the potatoes, and sprinkle some cheese on top, and let it go back in the Egg at like 350 or so for another 20 minutes. If you hurry it, like I did, it won’t totally set up and bake but it’ll still taste good.

I am pretty sure this is not healthy.

August 6, 2012
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(Green is the meat temperature, purple is the grill temp.)

Our second run at pulled pork was wildly successful. We used a different rub (hickory garlic, very tasty) but I think the big differences were in cooking technique. First off, I foiled the pork butt at around 150 degrees. This is where you wrap the thing in foil with a half a cup of water or apple juice in it. As the chart below shows, this more or less eliminated the stall while the moisture from the meat evaporates.

Second, I didn’t let it get quite up to 200. 195 degrees and she came off.

Third, I let it sit in the cooler for a full hour, not just 30 minutes, so the moisture distributed better.

End result was awesome.

Big Green Salmon & Burgers

July 29, 2012
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Quick notes:

Planked wild salmon from Schaub’s, which is not an everyday kind of treat but man it’s good stuff: soak the cedar planks, let them heat up for 4-5 minutes at 400 degrees, put the salmon in skin down for 20 minutes. You cook these longer than salmon right on the grill because it’s effectively indirect heat.

Burgers: 500 degrees, 2 minutes on either side, close the dome and bottom vent, let them sit for 4-5 minutes to finish up. First time out I put the cast iron half moon in when I put the burgers on, which sucked away a lot of heat, so they were a tad rare. Next time we’ll skip that bit.

Egg Notes

July 19, 2012
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The EggWe got a Big Green Egg. (Darry Smith, Eggs By The Bay, sold it to us. Great guy, highly recommended.) Pricy, but cheaper than an iPad and we’ll be using it longer, so no qualms about the purchase.

Neither Susan or I have any grilling experience. We’ve done three meals, all of which turned out perfectly from a cooking perspective. I am not great at marinades yet but that’s a different question. The Egg is stupid easy to use. This weekend we embark on a pork butt as our first smoking attempt.

Notes for posterity:

Chicken from an EggThe chicken was at 350ish direct heat, 15 minutes on one side then flipped and around 10 more minutes. The last ten minutes we dumped in leeks and potato wedges on the cast iron half-pan, which came out perfect. The wedges were parboiled first. I think next time we’d want to do the wedges a bit hotter for more of a crust.

The pork chops were an inch or so thick. We gave ’em ten minutes on each side at 375. Also direct heat.

The salmon got ten minutes skin side down, two minutes skin side up, again 375 degrees, again direct heat.

After the pork butt smoking, the gasket adhesive should be well and truly cured and we’ll be able to experiment with higher heats.