I made 4 predictions of things we might hear at the WWDC this year and so far I’ve got one right: new Mac Pro desktops. That one was a ‘gimmie’ but there’s still some of the keynote left.
Update at 1:14PM Central: Now I’m two for four with the announcement of Dashcode, the widget developement environment. That one was easy, too.
Tonight was a random food night. I went in the kitchen with the idea that I was going to make some type of pasta salad and instead made a simple tomato sauce and thawed some smoked chicken. The sauce was fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped, with sweet basil, salt and peppers.
The title of the post is a bit misleading; I have no idea what Smoked Tuscan Chicken might be like. In this case it was hickory-smoked chicken from last week that simmered for about 30 minutes in the sauce before we served it. It was fantastic, with the sauce picking up some of the smoke flavor from the chicken.
> It’s then that it hits me: This is so much bigger than Francis. In a culture where cheap and portable video technology lets everyone play at stardom, and where America’s voyeuristic appetite for reality television seems insatiable, teenagers, like the ones in this club, see cameras as validation. ‘Most guys want to have sex with me and maybe I could meet one new guy, but if I get filmed everyone could see me,’ Bultema says. ‘If you do this, you might get noticed by somebody—to be an actress or a model.’
> I ask her why she wants to get noticed. ‘You want people to say, ‘Hey, I saw you.’ Everybody wants to be famous in some way. Getting famous will get me anything I want. If I walk into somebody’s house and said, ‘Give me this,’ I could have it.’
Pitiful that people so young don’t realize that they are already giving up something very precious: their privacy and dignity.
So I came up with an idea (amplified by Matt) to open a barbecue stand on the sidewalks of downtown Springfield. It would be open during lunches and during weekend nights, selling smoked spareribs like it was fair food.
Imagine in my best carney barker voice:
“2 for 3! 4 for 6! Bucket O’ Ribs!”
I’m pushing a cart with a smoker on the front and a warmer/cooler on the back. Matt says it should be shaped like a pig but I’m not sure I could push that around and keep a straight face.
Here’s the plan:
Smoke racks of pork ribs. Cut the ribs into single pieces with the bone like a stick on a corn dog. Sell 2 ribs for $3.00 and 4 ribs for $6.00 tax included, cash only. Partner up with Hickok’s Steakhouse to get the ribs and have a backup smoker. If you figure 14 ribs per rack and smoke 8 racks at once, that gives you 132 ribs–maybe 125 after “waste” or such.
Money? A rack of ribs might be $15 each, $4 in charcoal for each batch and maybe $2 a batch in spices. A full load would be $125. That means my cost is a buck a rib. Can you make any money when you get 50 cents a rib? So a full load of smoked ribs might net $62.50 in profit for say 5 hours of real work selling and tending the ribs.
A weeks worth of lunch–$50 x 5 lunch days = $250 + 2 nights (Fri, Sat) at $65 each so $300 net profit each week. Seems like a lot of work for very little gain.
Pump up the profit with soda? Maybe. You could make 50 cents a soda just like the profit on each rib with a lot less work.
More about this later. Time to think it through more.
Another craiglist classic, but this one is NSFW.
Update: Here’s one to sure to anger fundamentalist Christians.
From the best of craigslist:
First, be sure that you are prepared. Do you have The Card? What do you Need?
Next, consider the day and time. This is simply an exercise. There is no time that you can go to Costco when it will not be crowded. Accept this.
Stage one of your journey is the parking lot. The people are not looking. Do not hit them. Drive very very slowly. First gear. Slow, deep breaths. This will prepare you for the deeper stages. Patience is key in finding a parking spot. And if you are willing to back up an entire row length at 2 mph, a spot near the door can be yours.
I took the final step in my journey away from UserLand products: I unsubscribed from Dave Winer’s Scripting News weblog. It had certainly degraded over the last two years from being about software and programming to a focus on Dave’s life and his senior years. That’s fine with me. Reading it was no longer interesting to me and I found very little that I couldn’t find somewhere else.
Friends and bloggers I read told me I should have done this months ago but I wasn’t ready to do it. After the switch to WordPress, it’s been much easier, mainly because I could stop thinking about how to tinker with my weblog software and instead think about writing.
No, I don’t have any interest in knitting anything. I find things that friends and family would like and post them here–Zarah’s a knitter…
MAKE Magazine: “Flickr user tofuttibreak scanned in an old out of print knitting booklet that has more clear and concise knitting instructions. The simple illustrations are great. It’s a handy reference to bookmark when you just can’t remember how to cast on or do a slip stitch.”
Kerner on Food: “My favorite feature so far has been the telnet interface. I’m hoping that it’s possible to control every function via telnet. There’s also a web interface that lets you monitor temperatures, set alarms, and targets. My setup right now is that I’ve got an alarm on my meat for 150° and the target for the smoker is 230° at the bottom grate.”
bbum’s weblog-o-mat: “It is tomato season here and I’m starting to reap the rewards of a couple of wonderful heirloom tomato plants. Likewise, our local farmer’s market has a cheese vendor [again — she went missing for a while] who sells the tastiest cheddars and parmesan-esque cheeses.”
Steve Kirks 