Columbus’ _true_ treasure

I’ve gotten addicted to coffee drinks again, so I’m blowing through money like I have it. This time it’s a drink that comes in a small 11oz can. I present to you: New World Vanilla.

This stuff is good. Like, really good. I’m not really sure if it’s a hybrid drink of sorts combining an espresso drink with something like coffee milk, cappuccino, iced coffee, etc., but the label on the can describes it as “an espresso coffee & milk discovery”. With it you get a very rich, creamy drink with a hint of that coffee taste but with a good kick of vanilla. Very decadent.

I’ve been getting them at a 7-Eleven near where I work where they have a “buy 1, get 1 half-off” deal. Needless to say that I’ve been taking advantage of the situation. For me, it’s great as a late morning snack that I have in combination with a banana. Keeps me focused with my work until my lunch break. Although, I don’t know how much longer I can go with these drinks as they are doing a great job at burning a hole in my pocket. Darn you, Columbus Coffee Roasters! Did you have to make such a tasty drink!

Japan’s pretty cool

I ordered something from Japan on eBay, and in addition to what I bought, I also got this neat little bonus.

Pretty cute ^_^

Trimming the bucket list

Took me long enough, but I’m finally making my way through Shenmue. So far I’m really enjoying it and love exploring every bit the town has to offer. In game time I’m only about a week and a half into the story, but I’ve already done so much in terms of a variety of things to do. Sometimes I follow clues to progress the story, but other times I may just screw around and play some games at the arcade, buy capsule toys from a variety of machines, or gamble a bit with slot machines. Other times I may help an orphan kitten get better or help a stranger out. And finally I may just kill a few hours and practice my fighting moves to improve on their impact. This game’s got it all!

I’m doing this to get myself ready for Shenmue 3 that’s slated to come out for the PS4 and PC sometime in the next year or so. I’m playing it on the Dreamcast and I already have Shenmue 2 for the original Xbox, so I’ll be playing that at some point after completing the original. Regarding the story, I really like the protagonist Ryo Hazuki. From what I’ve seen so far, he seems like the perfect hero where on one side is a courteous person, helping people out and speaking politely, while on the other side he’s a total badass by flexing his muscles, but does it with the upmost control with thanks to his years in learning martial arts.

If you’re a Sega fan then this game has to be on the top of the list as it’s covered with so many references to the company and its franchises. I’d love to do a write-up on it, but I’m wondering if I should do one on Yu Suzuki in general as he is the head credit for the game. In addition, I love Suzuki’s games and some of his greatest hits are in the game too. It’s like a chocolate, on chocolate, on chocolate cake!

Rice rice rice

So it’s been about a month since I bought this new device:

Tada! It’s a rice cooker, and with it a path to a, hopefully, healthier lifestyle. I’ve been eating a lot of salads lately, but what normally ends my trend in eating healthier foods is when meals become repetitive and dull, which eventually leads me back to eating junk like hot dogs and fast food in large quantities. So to deflect the temptation of going back to fattier and sugary foods, I needed a way to introduce more meals to the lineup, and what better way of adding dishes to the mix than to bring in a side dish to the menu like rice.

I love rice, but I’ve never liked cooking it as it requires you to babysit it the whole time, constantly stirring it to prevent the rice at the bottom of the pot from burning. I feel like I can make that time more productive by multitasking in the kitchen. So instead I normally buy the Uncle Ben's Ready Rice that come in microwavable pouches that you cook for 90 seconds and it’s ready. Those are really flavorful and easy to make, but geez are they expensive. So those are some of the reasons why I wanted to invest in a rice cooker: to have it cook the rice for me and to save money by buying rice in bulk.

On Amazon I bought the Zojirushi NS-VGC05 Electric Rice Cooker and Warmer. It’s compact so it doesn’t take too much countertop space and it cooks up to 3 cups of rice at a time. I love it because it has so many functions like a timer so I can prep everything before I go to bed and have warm rice ready to go when I want to eat something like natto for breakfast, and it has a “keep warm” mode that keeps the rice…well, warm until you are ready to serve it. It automatically flips to this mode after it’s done cooking. In addition it has something called “fuzzy logic” that makes setting what you want to cook as simple as pressing just one button. Meaning, you don’t have to worry about what kind of rice you’re using, or how much rice, or how much water you put in. It just works!

I’m lucky that I live just down the street from an Asian supermarket so I can buy rice in bulk there and have a variety from rice to select from. For the past month I’ve been cooking just plain old brown and white rice. For the white rice, I’ve been experimenting with making onigiri, but with minimal success for the look of it. Instead of softly shaped triangles, mine normally end up looking lumpy and deformed.

Another advantage of living near an Asian supermarket is so I can select ingredients to stuff the onigiri rice balls with. Mainly I’ve been using tuna with some Japanese mayonnaise labeled Kewpie. This tastes really good. I also bought a package of bonito flakes and mixed it with some soy sauce. And then I bought a small jar of akaume zuke, a pickled plum from Japan. I think it’s also named umeboshi, but I’m not 100% sure (I’m new at all of this). Then to top it off I wrap the onigiri with some nori, which is really tasty to where I like to cover the whole ball with it rather than just a small strip at the bottom.

I eat the onigiri either at lunch when at work or just for dinner. I like to think it’s healthier than consuming a cup of instant soup that’s crammed with a high amount of sodium or eating some big meal, because with rice it tends to act as filler and gives me a sense of feeling full without needing to eat a lot. In terms of quality I think this model of Zojirushi really fits the bill as it has a bunch of nifty features and comes in a compact size. And when it comes to adding rice to meals, it gives me a number of opportunities to create many dishes, so I’m planning to be looking online for some great meals in the coming months.

If you want to know more about rice cookers and the kinds of things you can do with one, I highly recommend checking out this episode of Japanology. That lady that cooks stuff with it like an oven is nuts!

Showing some respect

My last post knocked a guy who interviewed Tim Schafer. Now even though it was bad, I do have to give the interviewer some respect as I didn’t know how influential of a person he was for the tech industry back in the day.

Stewart Cheifet, the man who conducted the interview, also did a previous show called Computer Chronicles that aired between 1981 and 2002. It was during the mid '90s when he did Net Cafe after the World Wide Web began to explode in popularity. In contrast, Computer Chronicles main focus was on the personal computer and all related hardware and software from the industry.

A few years ago, Stewart was a guest on Leo Laporte’s show Triangulation. It was fascinating to hear some of his stories, meeting with pioneers from the tech biz, and getting a bit of inside baseball on how it was like to create a television show for an industry hobbyist of it would only know about. In addition, he was the one who sent all of his shows of Computer Chronicles and Net Cafe to the Internet Archive and that’s why those copies are so good looking (as opposed to someone recording an episode from a VCR).

So in closing, Stewart Cheifet is a pretty good dude. Even though that one interview was pretty bad.

Just sayin'

TVIP?

Wow. I just unearthed this blast from the past from the depths of the Internet Archive. This show, The Internet Cafe – later named Net Cafe, was a show that aired on television that talked about the web and all that you can do with it. It ran throughout the latter half of the ‘90s and bled into the early 2000s. I watched it on a local PBS affiliate and tried to watch this show as much as I could, which is weird because I already had the Internet at home, so I don’t know what benefit I got from it. Maybe I was just a tech nerd and had an obligation to watch anything and everything tech related on TV.

Looking back, even though the subjects they talked about were interesting and they got great guests for the show, I just realized just how bad at interviewers the hosts were! More specifically, this one with an interview with Tim Schafer was especially cringeworthy. He kept interrupting Tim, asked him questions that might make him look bad, and was just all over the place without any sort of direction. Even so, this show is still a neat treasure of information of how things were back then.

ooh-eh-p

Shredding, Shooting, and Slicing with UEP Systems

Yeah, the late 1990s saw a ton of snowboarding games with most of them being mediocre at best. But one company almost exclusively made nothing but them, and over the course of a few years ironed out the wrinkles to make some of the best boarding games to date. This feature will follow the development studio UEP Systems and all of its games in abundant details. So you better buckle up, pork chop as this is going to be a long read.

Resistance (may be futile)

I never gave a second thought about Tom Clancy's The Division until just a few days ago when I saw a quick look for it and now I wanna play it so badly. But as temping as it may be, I need to resist playing it as I know this game will suck me in and kill months and months of precious evenings when I can be doing something more constructive…like, say…this website for example.

It actually looks more daunting than Peace Walker, and that took month to complete last year. I don’t want a repeat of that again in 2016.

True val-vue

I noticed earlier this week that Vue is now 10 dollars cheaper than it used to be. Before I was paying 50 bucks for the basic plan, but now I’m paying 40. Crap! That’s 20% off! On top of that they recently added seven new channels to the lineup which includes all of the Disney owned/partnered networks like ABC, Freeform (formally ABC Family), ESPN, EPSN 2, Disney Channel, Disney Jr, and Disney XD. I’m now paying less for more! Who’d of thought cutting cable would be so rewarding?

The most important one is the addition of ABC, which was the missing link from the major networks. But it’s also cool to hear that Vue is now available nationwide. For those who live outside the major metropolitan regions, you’ll be getting a better deal with their newly released “slim” tiers that are cheaper than the primary ones. The reason being they don’t include live broadcasts of the major networks, but on demand services will be available for them as an alternative.

In a time where I’m on my own, this new pricing plan and newly added channels really help with stretching the dollar out for my monthly bills.

Beginner’s attempt

Last night I made a basic platter of burritos and Spanish rice. The verdict: delicious.

The odds were stacked against me, though, as the stove top pilots in my apartment only have one setting which is max. I didn’t know there were ovens with a setting like this one as you should be able to adjust the flame anywhere between hi and low heat. A week earlier I had someone from maintenance check it out but they said it was operating as intended. Although I wasn’t there at the time because I was at work, so I didn’t have the opportunity to criticize about it not having the ability to adjust the flame. Later I noticed the knobs didn’t have a marking for low heat, meaning they only do have just one setting. Man, that’s dumb. Oh well, this just gives me another reason to buy that NuWave cooktop I’ve been eyeing for over a year now. But in the meantime I already bought the taco meat and I wasn’t going to let it spoil.

With a high flame I was able to cook it successfully. I used the Jennie-O Lean Ground Turkey with Taco Season. With it you get less fat and a great mild spicy taste of flavor already mixed into the meat. I kept things simple by adding just some cheese to the burritos and wrapping them in Romero’s tortillas (a family favorite). As a side dish I bought one of those Uncle Ben’s rice pouches where it’s already made so you just have to microwave it for 90 seconds. The flavor for the evening was Spanish Style. Yum.

Not too bad for a first attempt, but next time I’ll dress the burritos with the usuals like diced tomatoes, refried beans, onions, and the such. In the end I’m just glad the smoke detectors didn’t go off, which is my calling card when cooking with the oven.