Posts
6 Cakes That Fail Hilariously At Looking Like The Things They're Supposed
To Look Like, Vol 101
-
*Let's hope these bakers are never on your Pictionary team.*
*A Barbie Princess Tiara:*
All I see is a giant cat's paw. Does Barbie have a cat? Is thi...
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
NerdFun: Basic internals for a Tricorder?
I read this article on an "electronic nose" in the Mountain View voice today with glee! This is basically the essential building block to an actual tricorder. C'mon, admit it, you're a Star Trek fan, too. How awesome will it be, when we can all carry around a device to see if the air is fit for human respiration? Check ourselves for toxins? Very neat!
Meeting PCIDSS Compliance Using Oracle Solaris 11
There's a great new whitepaper, by Matt Getzelman of Coalfire, up on Oracle.com today on how Oracle Solaris 11 can be used to comply with Payment Card Industry regulations. These types of regulations and guidance can be difficult to parse. This whitepaper takes you through the various Solaris 11 features that you can leverage to make sure you are in compliance with PCI DSS.
- Oracle Solaris 11 and PCI DSS:Meeting PCI DSS Compliance with Oracle Solaris 11, by Matt Getzelman.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Solaris 11.1: Extended Policy and application containment on Solaris
Some interesting blog entries from Glenn Faden on these topics:
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Flash Mob: My walk for Multiple Myeloma
Cancer sucks. Period. The older I get, the more people I know personally that are battling this horrible disease. It comes in some many forms. Last weekend I walked for my friend Laura, who had just lost her seven year battle with Multiple Myeloma, a rare blood cancer, on March 25, 2013. She was just 57 years old.
Laura, though, never lost her joy of living and her appreciation of dance. She asked for one thing as the end approached: she wanted a flash mob to greet her in Heaven. Her daughter, Jillian, arranged for just that. Here's the dance we did just before the walk - growing to over 100 dancers!
Thanks to everyone's incredibly generous support of my walk, I raised over $3500 towards Multiple Myeloma research.
Laura, though, never lost her joy of living and her appreciation of dance. She asked for one thing as the end approached: she wanted a flash mob to greet her in Heaven. Her daughter, Jillian, arranged for just that. Here's the dance we did just before the walk - growing to over 100 dancers!
Thanks to everyone's incredibly generous support of my walk, I raised over $3500 towards Multiple Myeloma research.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Stein's Beer Garden: Mountain View Gastro Pub
We dined at this new gastro pub, Stein's Beer Garden, last night, very excited to see them finally open! Those of you that follow me on twitter will remember when I went to bat for the owners at the Mountain View City Council meeting last July.
It's a good start, but there's still room for improvement.
When we arrived and checked in with the hostess, we were told it would be a 10-15 minute wait. No problem. Another party of 2 came in about 5 minutes after us... and were seated before us. Then another hostess asked if we'd been helped, yet (10 minutes into our wait). Apparently my name wasn't on the wait list. Thus, we restarted our wait of 10-15 minutes. I wish they would just take reservations, or hand out pagers or something. Some places in SF (21st Amendment comes to mind) take your mobile number and page you. That would work, too.
There is an extensive beer menu, which is awesome, but too heavy a lean on some great breweries like the Bruery who only specialize in strong beers. If you're an IPA, amber or lager fan, you'll be hard pressed to find anything under 7.5% ABV (many more over 8 or 9% and even 11%!). The fruit beers were closer to 5%, but if you don't like fruit flavor in your beer you'll be at a loss. There were also a few porter and stouts at the lower ABV, but not much overall choice (and there are 31 taps, so there should be a wider range of styles/ABV). I had the Saison Extra, and it was excellent. The menu described it as the saisoniest saison - and they were right. Delicious. As it was a strong beer, I didn't have a second.
I ordered the grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup - very yummy, though the bread was a bit greasy. I can manage to make non greasy grilled cheese at home, so this should be possible to do here, too. The bread itself was wonderful (made in house) so should be left to shine!
My husband got the homemade pastrami. The pastrami itself was very fatty, so it probably didn't need the cheese. The menu also said the sandwich would be served on toasted rye bread, but for unknown reasons, this sandwich was also grilled. The last thing you need on a sandwich with fatty meat is butter! It was too greasy for my husband to finish.
This makes me think that in general, the cooks should be trained to use less butter/grease. Reading other reviews, I see other similar comments. Great menu ideas, but not quite executed correctly.
Service was great, though like some other Yelp! reviews, we noted that the acoustics were terrible. The ambiance is simply gorgeous, but something needs to be done about the noise. In Paris, we saw a few restaurants and bars that put acoustic foam on the ceilings to deaden the noise. I'd highly recommend something similar.
I will be back. I hope the beer menu gets more balance soon - yes, do stock some "heavy hitters", but have some more 4-6% ABV beers for those of us that like to have more than one beer with dinner.
Update: I went again on Friday night. The beer list had changed quite a bit in those 5 days, and there were quite a few lower ABV beers than on Sunday, and a better mix - though I loved that Saison Extra so much, I had it again. This time, the hostess took my cell phone number and name when we checked it in and wrote it on a clipboard. Still an outrageous wait (1 hour 45 minutes), but good to know we were on the list.
My husband and I both ordered the "Pork and Beans" dinner, and it was just delicious. Our other 3 friends ordered burgers. One ordered his rare with blue cheese. Another ordered his plain and well done. The well done burger had the blue cheese on it. We also had to ask multiple people for cutlery after our food was delivered so that we could actually eat it. Ketchup for the fries was slow coming as well. So, still some service glitches but I'm happy to report improvements all around.
It's a good start, but there's still room for improvement.
When we arrived and checked in with the hostess, we were told it would be a 10-15 minute wait. No problem. Another party of 2 came in about 5 minutes after us... and were seated before us. Then another hostess asked if we'd been helped, yet (10 minutes into our wait). Apparently my name wasn't on the wait list. Thus, we restarted our wait of 10-15 minutes. I wish they would just take reservations, or hand out pagers or something. Some places in SF (21st Amendment comes to mind) take your mobile number and page you. That would work, too.
There is an extensive beer menu, which is awesome, but too heavy a lean on some great breweries like the Bruery who only specialize in strong beers. If you're an IPA, amber or lager fan, you'll be hard pressed to find anything under 7.5% ABV (many more over 8 or 9% and even 11%!). The fruit beers were closer to 5%, but if you don't like fruit flavor in your beer you'll be at a loss. There were also a few porter and stouts at the lower ABV, but not much overall choice (and there are 31 taps, so there should be a wider range of styles/ABV). I had the Saison Extra, and it was excellent. The menu described it as the saisoniest saison - and they were right. Delicious. As it was a strong beer, I didn't have a second.
I ordered the grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup - very yummy, though the bread was a bit greasy. I can manage to make non greasy grilled cheese at home, so this should be possible to do here, too. The bread itself was wonderful (made in house) so should be left to shine!
My husband got the homemade pastrami. The pastrami itself was very fatty, so it probably didn't need the cheese. The menu also said the sandwich would be served on toasted rye bread, but for unknown reasons, this sandwich was also grilled. The last thing you need on a sandwich with fatty meat is butter! It was too greasy for my husband to finish.
This makes me think that in general, the cooks should be trained to use less butter/grease. Reading other reviews, I see other similar comments. Great menu ideas, but not quite executed correctly.
Service was great, though like some other Yelp! reviews, we noted that the acoustics were terrible. The ambiance is simply gorgeous, but something needs to be done about the noise. In Paris, we saw a few restaurants and bars that put acoustic foam on the ceilings to deaden the noise. I'd highly recommend something similar.
I will be back. I hope the beer menu gets more balance soon - yes, do stock some "heavy hitters", but have some more 4-6% ABV beers for those of us that like to have more than one beer with dinner.
Update: I went again on Friday night. The beer list had changed quite a bit in those 5 days, and there were quite a few lower ABV beers than on Sunday, and a better mix - though I loved that Saison Extra so much, I had it again. This time, the hostess took my cell phone number and name when we checked it in and wrote it on a clipboard. Still an outrageous wait (1 hour 45 minutes), but good to know we were on the list.
My husband and I both ordered the "Pork and Beans" dinner, and it was just delicious. Our other 3 friends ordered burgers. One ordered his rare with blue cheese. Another ordered his plain and well done. The well done burger had the blue cheese on it. We also had to ask multiple people for cutlery after our food was delivered so that we could actually eat it. Ketchup for the fries was slow coming as well. So, still some service glitches but I'm happy to report improvements all around.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Great ZFS Encryption numbers on T5!
Some great mentions of the Cryptographic Technology Team's technologies in this T5 benchmark from SAE .
ZFS Encryption is faster on T5 SPARC than on Solaris on Intel - with marginal overhead compared to clear text on SPARC. All while using a fraction of the CPU used by Intel!
Keep your eyes on BestPerf Blog , as I expect to see some more great results out in the next few days.
ZFS Encryption is faster on T5 SPARC than on Solaris on Intel - with marginal overhead compared to clear text on SPARC. All while using a fraction of the CPU used by Intel!
Keep your eyes on BestPerf Blog , as I expect to see some more great results out in the next few days.
Disclosure Statement
Copyright 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 3/26/2013.Sunday, February 3, 2013
Beer Tasting with Friends: Picks and Pans
This weekend, a few of us were staying at a friend's cabin near Bear Valley, and we all brought some unusual beers around for a tasting. The scores were interesting - see what you think. The beers were scored from 1 (Yuck) to 5 (Superb), with some things pulling voters in opposite directions.
We whet our whistles with local Snowshoe Brewing Co.'s Lodgepole IPA from a growler - too hop forward for me, but still a very drinkable beer. Mark, an admitted IPA nut, loved it.
The first beer in our tasting line up was the collaboration between Sierra Nevada Brewing and the monks at Abbey of New Clairvaux, Ovila. This was a delightful saison (one of my favorite types of beer), with hints of cardamom and other spices. A bit too strong and the cloudiness threatens a nasty hangover if you drink too much, but I was a huge fan all the same. Others really liked it, or just felt it was average.
Next we went to La Chouffe's Golden Ale. Coming in at 8%, it was not going to be our strongest beer of the evening. It had a bit of a tinny, lager taste to me and CB, though everyone else found it nice and refreshing. This round introduced our first, but not last, decimal vote, with G giving it a 3.9.
The Double Barrel Aged IPA from Firestone Walker was just too strong (9.5% ABV) and too hoppy. I don't like my beers to bite me, and this one did. Only Mark rated this one highly, but he cannot get enough hops in his brews. I love their Double Barrel Ale (DBA), so was disappointed that I just didn't like this beer.
I was excited to try AleSmith Brewing Company's Nut Brown Ale, as I love brown beers. Alas, it had the malt that I love, but was much too tangy for me. I've never encountered such tang in a non-fruit related beer. Two in our group, it turns out, hate malty beers, so the Nut Brown did not fair well overall. In my opinion, it was a decent beer. I did like that it was only 5% ABV, so it won't knock you on your butt unexpectedly.
One of my favorite breweries, The Bruery, popped up with two beers in a row! First up was Rugbrød, a rye beer that also had a lot of delightful malty flavors. This one would go down very easily, though at 8% ABV, you'd best be careful with it. Then we moved onto Mischief. It was a very active pour, very fizzy (though we'd probably over chilled it), but once it calmed down I found a nice beer. Again, too strong (8% ABV).
The only bad thing I can say, in general, about the Bruery beers - they are nigh impossible to ask for in beer stores and restaurants. Everyone thinks you're making a dumb joke.
After dinner of home made buffalo meat sliders with just backed buns, we moved onto more mellow flavors. Beers that went really well with dessert (crepes with Nutella).
One of my all time favorites, Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, came up first - a bottle brought back from a friend who recently visited Kentucky. As always, this has the perfect balance of malt and caramel, you can taste the bourbon but it does not overpower. This was the favorite beer of the night. (8.1% ABV).
Our next dessert beer, Black Xantos by Nectar Ales (a Firestone Walker company), had wonderful overtones of chocolate and coffee, a perfect pairing with my crepe. BUT, at a whopping 11% ABV, the only way to drink this bottle is shared with a large group of friends. I would've rated this beer a 5, but the outrageously high ABV brought it down a full point.
We finished up with an unrated Snowshoe Brewing Company's Pitch Black Porter. I loved the beer, but again, it was too strong. I do wish more brewers would make a tasty, malty beer that was in the 5-6% ABV. I cannot wait for this stupid trend of super strong beers to end. Speaking of which ... it's strong beer month in SF. Who's going?
We whet our whistles with local Snowshoe Brewing Co.'s Lodgepole IPA from a growler - too hop forward for me, but still a very drinkable beer. Mark, an admitted IPA nut, loved it.
The first beer in our tasting line up was the collaboration between Sierra Nevada Brewing and the monks at Abbey of New Clairvaux, Ovila. This was a delightful saison (one of my favorite types of beer), with hints of cardamom and other spices. A bit too strong and the cloudiness threatens a nasty hangover if you drink too much, but I was a huge fan all the same. Others really liked it, or just felt it was average.
Next we went to La Chouffe's Golden Ale. Coming in at 8%, it was not going to be our strongest beer of the evening. It had a bit of a tinny, lager taste to me and CB, though everyone else found it nice and refreshing. This round introduced our first, but not last, decimal vote, with G giving it a 3.9.
The Double Barrel Aged IPA from Firestone Walker was just too strong (9.5% ABV) and too hoppy. I don't like my beers to bite me, and this one did. Only Mark rated this one highly, but he cannot get enough hops in his brews. I love their Double Barrel Ale (DBA), so was disappointed that I just didn't like this beer.
I was excited to try AleSmith Brewing Company's Nut Brown Ale, as I love brown beers. Alas, it had the malt that I love, but was much too tangy for me. I've never encountered such tang in a non-fruit related beer. Two in our group, it turns out, hate malty beers, so the Nut Brown did not fair well overall. In my opinion, it was a decent beer. I did like that it was only 5% ABV, so it won't knock you on your butt unexpectedly.
One of my favorite breweries, The Bruery, popped up with two beers in a row! First up was Rugbrød, a rye beer that also had a lot of delightful malty flavors. This one would go down very easily, though at 8% ABV, you'd best be careful with it. Then we moved onto Mischief. It was a very active pour, very fizzy (though we'd probably over chilled it), but once it calmed down I found a nice beer. Again, too strong (8% ABV).
The only bad thing I can say, in general, about the Bruery beers - they are nigh impossible to ask for in beer stores and restaurants. Everyone thinks you're making a dumb joke.
After dinner of home made buffalo meat sliders with just backed buns, we moved onto more mellow flavors. Beers that went really well with dessert (crepes with Nutella).
One of my all time favorites, Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, came up first - a bottle brought back from a friend who recently visited Kentucky. As always, this has the perfect balance of malt and caramel, you can taste the bourbon but it does not overpower. This was the favorite beer of the night. (8.1% ABV).
Our next dessert beer, Black Xantos by Nectar Ales (a Firestone Walker company), had wonderful overtones of chocolate and coffee, a perfect pairing with my crepe. BUT, at a whopping 11% ABV, the only way to drink this bottle is shared with a large group of friends. I would've rated this beer a 5, but the outrageously high ABV brought it down a full point.
| Beer | CB | K | G | CV | P | Val | M | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sierra Nevada's Ovila | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 25 |
| La Chouffe | 2 | 3 | 3.9 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 21.9 |
| Firestone Walker's Double Barrel Aged IPA | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 21 |
| AleSmith's Nut Brown | 1 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 4.5 | 3 | 4 | 20.5 |
| Bruery's Rugbrød | 2 | 2.5 | 4 | 4 | 4.5 | 5 | 4.5 | 26.5 |
| Bruery's Mischief | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 22 |
| Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 31 |
| Nectar Ales' Black Xantos | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 27 |
We finished up with an unrated Snowshoe Brewing Company's Pitch Black Porter. I loved the beer, but again, it was too strong. I do wish more brewers would make a tasty, malty beer that was in the 5-6% ABV. I cannot wait for this stupid trend of super strong beers to end. Speaking of which ... it's strong beer month in SF. Who's going?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
