Merry Christmas Oliver

Aunt Sharon sent us a very nice house warming gift and Oliver really likes it. What's funny is that he almost immediatly claimed it as his space.

Oliver has been growing in a thicker coat for the winter and as a result has been shedding. I mused that instead of vacuuming all of his hair off the carpet and furniture we should just vacuum Oliver. After I said the joke a light bulb appeared over my head.

Oliver's face says it all...
We probably won't be trying that again.

No Knead Bread

I found this recipe about two years ago and always wanted to try it. Until two weeks ago I wasn't sure it was worth the price of admission. The bread must be baked at 450 degrees in a 6-8 Qt pot that had a lid.

I love bread, especially fresh bread. In college I found a bread machine at a garage sale for $5 and made quite a few loafs with it. The problem with the machine is that for one it's loud and annoying and second, the shape of the loaf was circular so all of your sandwiches, toast, etc... had to be circular. The shape also made it hard to cut without smashing it. To remedy the shape problem, I started taking the dough out before the baking cycle, shaping it myself and then baking it in the oven. This ended up being quite a bit more work and the luxury of machine automation was now gone. The one thing my bread machine kneaded, oven baked bread lacked was was an excellent, crispy crust. ( I tried spraying water in the oven every fifteen minutes but never had a noticeable effect.)

The recipe is extremely simple, mix water, flour, salt and yeast then 24 hours later bake it for 60 minutes. Time does the work for you. Indecently it actually takes less of my time to prepare than the bread machine bread. Here are two things I've learned after making a half dozen loafs. First, regular flour will work but bread flour rises much more and produces a loaf that is about 30% bigger. Second, don't use tap water. The chlorine in the water gives the bread a very slight chemical taste (I always had this taste in bread machine bread but didn't figure out it was the water.) I use distilled water from the grocery store.

The bread from the no knead recipe is nothing short of exquisite. The crust crackles to reveal a delicious crumb...

I also made a pie...

Helicopter

Megan and I live right next to Christmas tree farm. The farm, which has been bustling for the past few weeks, uses a helicopter to move trees from the field to the trucks. We've really enjoyed watching them work, the helicopter doesn't stop moving for a second. It puts the trees into the truck and heads back to the field in one fluid motion. In fact, the only time we saw it hovering at all is when they hook the cable up to a new bunch of trees.

Here is the view from our home...


The helicopter bringing in a bundle of trees...


Dropping the trees into the trucks...

Hiking, Backpacking and Moutain Biking

I love getting out in the fall, as the days get short and crisp they seem much more precious and energizing. The past few months we've done a pretty good job of getting outdoors once or twice a month. In September, I went mountain biking on the Mckensie River Trail with my friend Scott. This trail is legendary amoung mountain bikers across the country for a very good reason. It's 33 miles of dirt single track. No fire roads, no double track, no gravel, just dirt. The only downside to the trail is that it's one way. So we rode 15 miles one way, then turned around and rode back.








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Megan and I went for a hike on Cascade Head near Lincoln City, on the Oregon Coast. This is a short hike with very nice views of the beach. We took Oliver and Molly, my parents dog, with us.

Here is a picture of Molly and Oliver in the back seat of the car...


On the trail...


Looking south...


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We also went backpacking on 25 October. The weather was cool but we had the place to ourselves in the evening and morning. We chose Pamelia Lake since it was less that three miles to the campsite and very little elevation gain.

We took a side trip to the point where Milk Creek intersects the Pacific Crest Trail...


Here we are warming and stoking the fire...




As you can see Megan and I are wearing alot of clothing due to the colder temps. To keep warm, Oliver dug a shallow bed for himself and curled very tight...


He was scared of the fire.

Ultasound

Profile...

Aparently this baby thinks a little to highly of itself...

Preggy Meggy

Here she is at 23 weeks...


And here she is at 27 weeks...

It Snows on Mars?!

I was listening to NPR the other day, and this was really big news to me.

They think it snows on Mars! Now gravitational force there is about 38% of ours, so this could make for some really boring (slow) or exciting skiing (how many back flips can you do?!). Now that would be a ski resort you could brag about having visited.

Not very many posts lately - work and no regular internet at home! All is well. Baby Boes is growing just fine, and feels like he/she's doing skiing back flips in my tummy.

Smartphone Apps

I've been toying around with the idea of making a program for either the iPhone or Gphone (Android) or both. Every time I come up with an idea though I always think that nobody would use it or find that someone has already built a similar app, usually far superior to my idea. Developing on this platform is interesting to me because a smartphone is the convergence of nearly every electronic gadget that you own. Computer, MP3 player, GPS, TV, calculator, watch,... all of these functions can be performed by one device. The main problem being that it is a jack of all trades master of none (I guess it is master of mobility). For example, your not going to write your dissertation on an iPhone and the calculator on the Gphone isn't going to graph 3D equations like your TI-89 but the you could in fact perform both of these on a smartphone.

Mobile applications are by far the most interesting market to me. Sometimes they seem like magic. Take for example Wikitude. This app uses the phones gps and Wikipedia to find interesting things around you. Using the phones camera you can create an augmented reality that points at the location. Have you ever been looking for a museum or store only to find out you were right next to it all along? Wikitude to the rescue! From the website...

The truly compelling feature is the augmented reality cam view, users may hold the phone’s camera against a spectacular mountain range and see the names and heights displayed as overlay mapped with the mountains in the camera. Users may look out of an airplane window to see what is down there. Users may walk through a city like Seville, Spain, holding the phone’s camera against a building and Wikitude tells what it is.

Click here to look at the demo.

The question I have is will people buy these types of applications and how much will they pay for them.

Assuming your phone does the basic things like calling, calender, email, etc... If you could have any application on a phone what would it be? What do want that nobody is making?

Settling In

We got the keys to our new house on 3 October and spent our first night here the next evening. Getting to know our new house has been fun for us. The previous owners left us a house in emaculate shape. The left window coverings for windows in all of the rooms and everything seems to be in really good shape. One bonus we've found is that our house gets alot of heat from the sun. In the living room there are five large windows and one sliding glass doors. These windows face East, West and South so the room always has direct sunlight. All of this sunlight warms the room up to ten degrees warmer than outside. Hopefully the drapes and blinds will deflect that heat next July. 

One thing we've found is that while it's a long and expensive process to buy a house it's an even longer and arguably more expensive process to fill it. Luckily we've had some good luck at garage sales. With the help of my mother, the expert garage saler and West Salem navigator, we've managed to take up some of the room in our house with various furnishings. We spent $20 on a really nice dining room table with four chairs. And got two La-Z-boy recliners for $80. Our mattress was a different story. My expectations was to spend around $300 on a "decent" mattress/box spring set. Having never purchased one before I was shocked to find that "decent" mattresses start at $600 and those are really more bottom line. We looked on craigslist and at garage sales but didn't have any luck finding one so we bit the bullet and got a really comfortable one for $850. We also spent retail on a nice washer/dryer set. Well, it actually wasn't a set. The dryer that matched our washer was $700. I asked the salesperson what the difference between the matching one and one for $300 was and he said "This one matches". Due to some generous gift cards from our wedding and a Sears card that got us 15% off and no payments or interest for a year this wasn't quite as big of a blow as the mattress set. Next month we'll probably start shopping for a couch and a TV. For now, the saying "Shop till you drop" applies to us, only it's our checking account that is doing the dropping.

Oliver enjoying the "new" La-Z-boy...

Megan viewing a rainbow from our back deck...

The rainbow in it's vivid glory...

(Note: there is a perched humming bird on a branch of the tree on the right)

Welcome Connor!

Monday morning (11:22am East Coast) my sister, Kate, gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Connor. Kate was really tired, so I think she'll appreciate my not posting her picture just yet. Here's one with a proud grandma, and one with the relieved dad.