The eyes are filled in which does wonders for my return from zombie-hood. There’s also some highlights (shading?) of the skin.
The Eyes Have It

Christy has been excited to work on the martini glass, especially the bright blue (Magellan) martini. The concept of painting vibrant liquids with oil paints hurts my brain a little, but even her early “sketching” is looking great.
Fine Lookin' Drink

15. March 2007 · 2 comments · Categories: General

as in “Spring has…”

Here are some photos from USD’s campus, where I go to school. There are a ton of other flowering trees and plants around, it’s really quite amazing how it went from beautiful weather to beautiful weather with tons of blooming flowers almost overnight. Click to see the larger versions.

Groundcover on the hill Tri-color Spring Spiny Spring Kapow Red, White & Blue

My zombification! To get away from the red tint, Christy started working on the flesh color.

Zombification

The more she filled in, the creepier it became. The red eyes don’t help. You can start to see the effects of light she’s adding in, which I think is super cool. I tend to be somewhat astounded by the entire process.

Zombie Chris

07. March 2007 · 3 comments · Categories: Linky

I was writing an essay about how fundamentalist Christians seem to exist more in the suburbs and remembered an article about Ted Haggard and his church from pre-scandal days. It’s from Harper’s Magazine, and I thought it was a fascinating read.

Originally from May, 2005:
Soldiers of Christ – Inside America’s most powerful megachurch with Pastor Ted Haggard

06. March 2007 · Comments Off on Joel on lots of things · Categories: Business, Linky

Ok, some links I’ve been reading from Joel on Software. They’re all about developing software, not so much programming as managing the process. This is what I’m interested in, and it’s amazingly refreshing to read these. I’m getting an MBA at the University of San Diego, and I’m happy with the program for the most part. Lots of smart students, instructors, good coursework, too much work, etc. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t know technology if it rose up and bit them. I have remarked that it’s akin to being taught from the middle of a cornfield. Given that we’re in San Diego, perhaps it should be a beach. There is movement underway to change this, and certainly they’re doing great things for infrastructure including better wireless network (it’s in great shape now), having the Profs use WebCT, etc. Unfortunately, they are eliminating their MSIT program, so no classes on or from an IT prospective.

Here are some good articles that I should read again before I get back in the world of IT, assuming that’s where I end up next December:

  1. Painless Software Schedules – Software scheduling. Done poorly, it’s the bane of any software company. I could go off a big rant on why scheduling is so important, but Joel does a far better job here.
  2. Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service – I love customer service. Really. I come out of years of technical support, where I loved my job and excelled. I get a huge kick out of making sure the customer is delighted with our company. There wasn’t anything in this article I didn’t already do or know, but it’s good to be reminded of a lot of the basics. People in this country (world?) are trained that customer service is terrible, which is part of why good customer service is (in a lot of ways) so easy and so much fun! This is here because I have to explain all this to other folks sometimes, and it’s good it have another source.
  3. Fog Creek Software’s Software Management Training Program (also discussed here) – This seems like a cool opportunity. The Columbia program actually doesn’t have a ton of overlap with my MBA (one of the reasons I shied away from these instead of getting an MBA is that I think a broader knowledge of business is much harder for me to pick up on my own than knowledge of technology issues) so it’s kind of tempting. Move to New York and work with what has for years seemed a great software company and get experience and more training? More tempting than it should be. Apparently, I like pain. Of course, I also like the beach, so this seems unlikely.
  4. The Complete Archive – reverse chronological listing of Joel’s writing, starting with the bigger articles. I’m sure there’s lots more gold, but I need to do some homework.

So I was stirring a martini this evening, and it occurred to me that I should really just go ahead and see if shaking or stirring a cocktail adds more ice melt. Ice melt is the amount of water added due to ice cubes melting during the mixing process. People often think that shaking will add less due to the fact that stirring takes so much longer. However, that’s theoretically not the case, at least according to bar tenders I’ve talked to and read posts from. I tend to think the bartenders are right, and certainly the texture is reason enough to make your martini stirred, but I decided to do a quick and dirty experiment to see if I could really see a difference. Here’s what I did:

  1. Made a martini. I’d been wanting to go back to the Junipero gin I picked up a few months ago, so I did. Still not a favorite of mine, but it makes a fun martini that certainly lives up to the “juniper” part of the name.
  2. Poured some water in a mixing bowl. The water was approximately room temperature, and then I let it sit for a while. I didn’t want the temperature to change between the two mixings.
    Bowl & Measuring Cup
  3. Ensured my shaker was dry from previous use…
    Shaker
  4. Carefully measured out 1/3 a cup of the room temperature water. This picture is a little blurry as it’s somewhat difficult to get a good shot of a clear liquid in a glass container.
    Water Pre-Shaken
  5. Added 4 ice cubes. For both the shaken and stirred I tried to use similar sized cubes, which meant a bit of eyeballing as well as removing areas where the water had sat over the dividing section and froze. Not particularly exact science here, but hopefully close enough.
    Ice
  6. Shook the mixture. I tend to want my drinks cold, so I shook it about 70 times. That’s more than normal, but I was exaggerating things a bit to hopefully produce a visible result.
  7. Dried the measure cup and poured the water back in. You can see that a fair amount of water was added:
    Photo 1: Shaken 1
    Photo 2: Shaken 2
  8. Then I dumped out everything, rinsed and let it sit for a while to return to room temperature. While this was going on, I dried the shaker.
  9. Repeat the process, but stirred 70 times. This took considerably longer, and I took my time since stirring should take longer. Here is the water before I added it to the ice in the shaker:
    Water Pre-Stirred
    It looked like possibly a hair more than what I used for shaken, but very close.
  10. When I measured the results, they were similar, but the stirred does seem to have less ice melt.
    Photo 1: Stirred 1
    Photo 2: Stirred 2

Conclusion
The main conclusion is that I need more precise measure instruments. That being said, it does look to me like stirring the drink adds less ice melt. This backs up the general consensus by those wiser and more experienced than I. Still, it’s nice to have confirmation. Even if it’s not terribly dramatic, the results are enough to satisfy my curiosity. In the end, the Junipero martini was tasty, so I consider the experiment a success!

04. March 2007 · Comments Off on Weekly Painting by Christy #4 · Categories: Art · Tags: , , , , ,

Christy has been working on smaller paintings for a while, this is the first larger one she’s done since we’ve come to San Diego. It’s amazing how fast the first layer of colors goes on. Here’s the result of the second session of painting:

First Colors

This is the cocktail I most associate with internet drinks, mainly because cocktail bloggers and devotees seem to have revived it in the past few years. While I like an Aviation, it tends towards being a little too sweet or tart to be one of my favorites. Still, the drink is intriguing, so I find myself returning to it. I’ve heard that Maraska instead of Luxardo might alter it more to my liking, but for now I’ve only had Luxardo maraschino liqueur.

Which brings us to maraschino liqueur. If you haven’t before, it’s worth trying but it really doesn’t taste anything like those bright red “cherries” in a jar. There is some cherry flavor, but it’s subtle, and the liqueur is a clear syrup. It’s powerful stuff, which is why I tend to recommend it in moderation.

Aviation

2 oz gin
1/2 oz maraschino liqueur
1/4 oz lemon juice

Shake over ice, garnish with a cherry.

Now, a couple of notes:

  1. use a dry gin. Sapphire works just fine, and I actually like it better than Plymouth in this case. Save the aromatic gins for a martini, the maraschino is just going to fight with them.
  2. Go easy on the maraschino and lemon juice. I see both of those increased in some recipes, and I think they just take over at that point. The lemon juice should be softening and complementing the maraschino liqueur, but not a huge presence on its own. The maraschino liqueur, at least the Luxardo that I have, is powerful stuff. It can easily take over your drink, which really isn’t the point.

Aviation

Note that the above is me breaking a few rules. For one thing, that’s Magellan gin, which looks pretty cool but doesn’t work very well here. Since it works so fabulously in a martini, save it for that. Also, I added a lemon twist, which again isn’t as good as the original recipe’s call for a cherry.