Gimpysoft

Dasepo Naughty Girls

The Show Must Go On

I’m A Cyborg But That’s OK

I wish I had the time or the skills to organize a Kansas City rally for Adam Kokesh of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who apparently has made enough headlines that he’s about to get a dishonorable discharge, presumably for the protesting. He’ll be in Kansas City this weekend for a hearing on Monday, and I wish somebody with more time on their hands would organize a reception for him. I suggest Dave’s Stagecoach.

Please let me know what you come up with, Rally Organizer.

So we were trying to decide what to eat for dinner last night, and Bex mentioned the Corned Beef Brisket we’ve had in the freezer since St. Patrick’s Day. She suggests that I put it in the smoker. I do some quick interline searches and it turns out that when you smoke Corned Beef, you get Pastrami. Well, I certainly couldn’t turn down homemade pastrami, so I fired up the weber.

I started with a nice crust of coarsely ground black pepper, then threw it on the weber set up for indirect cooking. The temperature was too high at first , but finally I got the vents set right and got it down to a nice 250°. I spent some time away from the smoker and when I returned the temperature had dropped quite a bit, so I added more coals and unfortunately finished the cooking too quickly. As a result, the pastrami was a bit more tough than I would have liked, and was very salty. Still, it definitely tasted like pastrami, and we’ve already decided to cure some brisket ourselves to try this again.

I think that if I had kept the temperature better under control at the beginning and the end this would have been great, so I’m looking forward to doing this with my own cured brisked. I think we’re going to cure two, smoking one into pastrami and boiling one for traditional corned beef.

One other fun thing I got to try out was my remote thermometer that I received as a Christmas present this year. It was nice, and I’m looking forward to a two-line graph for my next smoking attempt, one for grill air temperature, and one for internal meat temperature. The only drawback to using one of these is that it makes it a bit difficult to deal with the grill’s lid. I think that I might want to drill a hole in the base of the weber that I can snake the temperature probe’s wire through. Also, I think I’m going to upgrade to one with two temperature sensors or get a second one that I can actually install in the grill lid. The the only step left is getting the sensor data into my computer so I can capture real time sensor information.

Hmmmm….

I’ve walked on Main Street below Harling’s Upstairs a few times and heard some nice Big Band sounds coming from up there. Come to find out that those sounds come from the Kansas City Boulevard Big Band, and they have a standing gig Tuesday nights at Harling’s.

Anybody interested in catching some Big Band music sometime? I normally play bridge on Tuesday nights, but I’d love to see these guys sometime. I think I’m going to head out the Tuesday after next. (Too poor to go next Tuesday.)

When I originally watched this live, I thought it was more than just Senator Brownback (My home state senator!), Governor Huckabee (My former home state governor!), and Representative Tancredo (Racist crank!). Still, the fact that about a third of the candidates here raised their hands is pretty sad.

So yesterday afternoon Bex asked me what we should do about the Andrew Bird show. He was playing last night in Columbia, then he’ll be in Omaha tomorrow night. The original plan was to take a half-day off of work tomorrow and head up to Omaha tonight to catch the show, but with a wedding to attend this weekend and a big project about to roll out at work today, more time off just wasn’t in the cards.

I did a quick check at Ticketmaster’s website half hoping that I’d find last night’s Columbia show sold out so I would have an excuse not to go, but I found not only was it not sold out, but it was an early show and Apostle of Hustle was opening. Well, I’ve had My Sword Hand’s Anger stuck in my head for the last month or so, and Andrew Bird is one of the few acts I would actively feel bad about missing if I did miss him (see also: MC Frontalot/Optimus Rhyme last week, Explosions In The Sky a while back), so we decided to head out.

Bex’s parents agreed to watch the dog for the night, so we headed out. Dinner at Shakespeare’s Pizza and we made it in to The Blue Note just in time for Apostle of Hustle to come on. They played a quick and fun set, then made way for Andrew. Great show, and I’m very happy I didn’t decide to wuss out and go to sleep early. It’s very cool to see him build the songs on stage, starting with a simple violin phrase which gets looped, followed by a bit of pizzicato violin looped over that, some of his whistling looped over that, then in comes everybody with the rest of the instrumentation and the song really gets underway.

He played a good mix of stuff from the new album and stuff from The Mysterious Production of Eggs (although he completely lost his place during Fake Palindromes). He closed the encore with Tables and Chairs and it was back in the car for the 2 1/2 hour drive back to Shawnee. At 31 years old it’s rough getting home at 1:30, but I’m glad I didn’t miss that show. Hey Andrew, next time around do you think you can come to Kansas City and spare me the drive?

So yes, Bex and I have gotten engaged. I proposed on a trip to St. Louis a few weeks ago. Since then we’ve been in hardcore wedding planning mode. I think we’re going to have fun wedding, and I’m enjoying the planning more than I thought I would.

In other news, our house was egged last Friday. Weird thing is that it was our back deck that was egged, not the front of the house like I would expect in a random egging. It makes it seem so much more personal. Next time I see any of the neighborhood kids, I’m going to tell them to stay the hell off of my lawn. Also, I need to train the dog only to bark when there are people on the lawn, as opposed to, say, whenever anybody walks anywhere on Quivira, whenever there is a rabbit in the back yard, whenever the neighbors on either side come home… Maybe this is why our house was egged. I am just saying that the two things could be related.

Hey, a cool new utility that I didn’t know existed… At Podbop the instructions are simple:

1. Enter your city

2. Listen to bands playing in your city.

3. Go see them in concert.

Very cool. So you can subscribe to the Lawrence or the Kansas City podcast, and you’ll get either full songs or clips from artists that are soon to be playing gigs in town. Cool! The date on the podcast is the date they’ll be in town.

Ain’t technology grand?

As expected, I got knocked out of the poker tournament nice and early last night. Called Knuckleheads only to find out that Big Smith never made it over from Springfield. Damn those damn ice storms. Guys, please come back soon.

Yeah, the weather convinced me to stay in last night. Luckily Big Smith is playing a show tonight too, over at Knuckleheads. Unfortunately, I’m playing poker tonight. If I get knocked out of the tournament early enough, I’ll probably head out. See you there?