The super hotdog and the stickbug (not at the same time)

I know that I've posted this before but... they are just too good! I give you the super hot dog.

Here is the recipe.

You need:
Hotdogs
coleslaw mix (just the vegetable mix, like the salad bags they sell)
yellow mustard
Mayo (the real stuff, not Miracle Whip)
Sugar
1 lb of ground beef
chili powder
salt
8 oz can of tomato sauce
buns
American cheese

Chili:

Fill a soup pan half way up with water and put in the ground beef. Use a fork to break up the beef... it'll look like soup. We want the beef to be really broken up.

Put it on the stove and boil it till the meat is brown. Strain out the meat and put it back in the pot.

Add the tomato sauce and the chili powder. How much chili powder is up to you but I'd start at a whole lot and work my way up. Seriously... get stupid with it.

Just cook and stir and you get hot dog chili. Note, this isn't real chili, it's for hot dogs so don't get all creative. It's meat, sauce and powder (and some salt if you want)

Coleslaw:

Get a food processor like the Tupperware one. This one is on sale from Stinkiepoo... not really a good name for someone selling food preparation products but... who am I to judge.


Add half a bag of coleslaw mix, yellow mustard and the mayo. I think I do two rings around the bowl of yellow mustard and a bunch of squirts of mayo... well I stop the mayo when it gets annoying to try and get it out of the squirt bottle... so do that much.

Add sugar too, I do like three good dumps of sugar. Not like an ice tea dump... more like a kool aide dump. Whatever, you know sugar... just stick it in there.

Mix that up with the stinkiepoo processor.

Hot dogs:

Either put them in a pan with water and liquid smoke or smoke them on your grill... either way.

Ok, then you just open the bun, put in a half of a piece of cheese, then the dog. Then do chili on one side and coleslaw on the other. It's awesome!

Also, we've been inundated with stick bugs at the house. Here's a picture of one. Since it is Texas, everything has to be bigger... and stupid. The stick bugs hang on my back porch ceiling and fall on me every so often. It's their survival strategy where they freak me out and I don't mush them. Like I said... stupid.

The stupid scanner

About a year ago, Joy bought a Kodak 5300 all-in-one that can print on photo paper as well. She found this awesome deal and the photo's it printed out were amazing! It came with a pretty sweet 8.2 megapixel camera that pretty much became our default travel camera (after I upped the memory to hold 5,200 pictures!) Anyway, we printed out some sweet 3x5's with it and I was actually really impressed. It can also do 4x6, 8x11 and 8.5x14 photos as well. It worked great for about 2 weeks and then shit the bed. I stuck in on a shelf and promised myself to check it out when I get a second. That second... was over a year later.

Long story short, I got it working again. Here is a scan of a 5 dollar bill... well Lincolns left eye on a 5 dollar bill to be exact. Pretty sweet, huh?


So, now I just have to get new toner and some photo paper and I'm good to go. I want to stick family pictures all over the house, so this is pretty fortuitous.

Oh, I pre-ordered borderlands for the PC and I'll tell you what I think when I get a chance. I also DL'd all the previous seasons of Hero's. I figure that I'd give it a chance. I cut out all the commercials and ripped them to .avi's... and to my phone. They're on the website if you want them. Enjoy!

Lego design kit

Guys, drop whatever it is you're doing (unless it's feeding one of your kids or sending me a Hexbug Crab for my birthday). There is a program that allows you to design your own legos and then ship it to you.

Maybe I didn't get your attention...

DESIGN AND BUILD YOUR OWN LEGO SET!

I can not express enough how I wish I was 8 years old right now. Luckily, I'm very immature!

To prove it I made a house that is on fire... PORK CHOP SANDWICHES!



I also put in an axe wielding maniac... you know, for Halloween!

Here's a better look at my creation.

Pumpkin Patch

We got to take Seri to the pumpkin patch today... well, it was more like a pumpkin park. Regardless, she had a good time.


She picked out a few good ones.


I think this year we are going to go with just painting them. Usually, it gets so hot before Halloween that the pumpkins are mush way before the trick or treating begins. Not like at home where they freeze and stay preserved!


Afterward, we went to Chapperel, which is a really good Mexican place in Boerne right near the pumpkin patch. We found out that we like the one in Helotes better. Seri had a blast though. She ate her weight in beans and rice!

Halloween is just around the corner! We're stoked! I'll get the camera out and show off my wicked cool decorations... which are three pumpkins.

Portraits

While Joy's mom was here we got some portraits done. It was kind of an after thought and we wound up in Wal-mart. I have to admit that the picture taking part was way better than JC Penny, but when we went to pay it was pretty hilarious. First of all the lady would not do any touch up work at all, no lighting changes... nothing. Also, she would only sell the electronic copies for $100! We started looking through the packages and she kept pushing us to this $350 one that included the CD for just $20... still with no touch ups. Instead, we bought only the CD, I went home and fed the pictures to photoshop and we went back to Kodak and printed out what we wanted right there. We got all the pictures in the $350 package for $40! The only problem we had was we needed this release document that came with the CD in order to print... but that wasn't a really big deal. I posted the pictures and the release document on the webpage so if anyone wants to print them out they can. Here are my favorites from the group.






It's just funny because I can now print out 3 8 by 5's of any picture I want for $3.oo a print and that lady wanted about $50 a print. What a rip off!

Joy's mom visits... I have an alergic reaction

Joy's mom came down for a visit this week. We decided to go down to Corpus for the weekend. Because of Joy's awesome benefits we got a great room at the Marriott for almost nothing. Hayden had a blast with the two beds!


We started out the day by going to the Texas State Aquarium which was really fun. Here's Hayden with some alligators.


They had a dolphin show there as well. It was crazy how high these dolphins could jump! Serenity really got a kick out of them.


After that we chartered a boat to take us out on the Gulf to see some more dolphins. We had a ton of fun and I got a nose rub out of it!


We found a great seafood place to eat and I found out that while I'm a little allergic to frozen shrimp... I am crazy allergic to fresh shrimp! We got to make this mad dash to the drug store for benadryl.

So, Joy's mom wasn't the root cause of my allergies... but I'm still holding her suspect! All in all it was an awesome trip. We made great memories! I'll get the Facebook thing started again and post all the pictures as soon as I get a second.

The stupid truck

So my stupid truck is paid off... that means it's time for it to break down. The central... cpu thing is broken. So, the speedometer doesn't work and the windshield wipers won't turn off. I bypassed the fuse on the wipers and hung some wires from the fusebox. Now I just twist the wires and I get my wipers back. I'll put in a switch next weekend when I have time. For now though, it works.

Sometimes, I really hate that truck!

I got to grill some shrimp kebabs on Friday. Joy got them from the Shwans guy. They were friggin awesome and I recommend them to anyone.


Just put them on direct heat to sear and then off center to till the shrimp looks done. They have all sorts of different kinds so we'll try them out next month.

I played poker with the guys this Saturday. I actually won! So, that was a nice $100 bonus. I have to admit that it was a little weird to win. I always thought that it was more skill than luck in hold-em poker but, I honestly think that if anyone was getting my cards then they couldn't have helped but win either. In 5 hands I had 2 straights and 3 full houses. The straight were on the flop and the full houses were 2 pair on the flop each time. How could I lose?

All in all, it was a good weekend. I have a ton of homework and finals are next week. Joy's mom is coming here on Tuesday and staying for a week. That means some good food for Ben!

Hayden is doing awesome in school. He's one of the best students, which is a 180 degree turnaround from last year. I guess his old school really was that crappy. Well, he's doing great now and that's what's important.

Enigma Machine

Have you ever played Resident Evil? Well, in that game... and all it's sequels... there's puzzles. The best ones are in RE2, well the weirdest ones at least.

In RE2 there was this police station where it was explained to the player that the police chief was this eccentric art collector. Because of this, for some reason, he had all these puzzles and traps all around the precinct. If you wanted to go to the roof, you didn't just go to the roof. You would turn the bust of Athena clockwise to open a drawer with a lighter in it, then light a fire in the fireplace which burned a hole in this painting above it, which held a jewel that you placed in another bust which opened a door to an office with a cipher key which opened the roof. I think you get the picture. Well, as stupid as the premise was, it made for a really fun game. It also got me into puzzles and mind games.

It was in that interest that I found this site. It's a flash version of the WWII Enigma Machine.

Check it out here.

You can create a code and decipher one as well. This gives you the easy ability to send a coded message to a friend who's in on the game.

So if you used rotors I,II and III and set the start position to B,E,N... you could decipher this message.

SGARLERLFPSOSMWIHBRDXOASYQQWEVMUQBVAYPBIISGTLSYLLYXXCMUCQYIQLEOCFKDDSHNJKHVX

Good stuff!