I Am Bismark

2009-03

guilty pleasures: lazy mornings, hugh grants films, brownies.

just spend $.08 calling my brother on skype from my iphone. worked suprisingly well.

if my feet are sore from just walking back and forth to campus, i think that means its time for some new shoes.

byu curse of the day: “oh my land.” (overheard in the wilk) what does that even mean?!

just wrote 4 pages contrasting wagoto style and aragoto style kabuki. last non-technical paper of my college career. hurray!

just landed in salt lake city. such a long weekend… getting everything ready for tomorrow will make it a lot longer.

checking out the single adult ward here in Madison. small. if I couldn’t find a girl at byu in four years, chances are much slimmer here.

getting Mongolian barbeque with Aaron and my parents.

chilly morning here in Madison. probably gonna see some snow. currently walking from the institute building to the CS building.

eating pear ice cream. very tasty. that’s what you get at a university that has ice cream research groups..

just got my acceptance letter from cornell. crazy.

just talked to a professor doing operating system research that sounds awesome. if I do come here, his class will be first on my schedule.

operating systems group is doing some pretty cool stuff. almost fell asleep during the database presentation..

welcome weekend is about to start. nerd jokes are flying already. oh dear.

just paid $9 of my bus ticket in quarters. who doesn’t take cards these days?

just landed in Chicago. woke up mid-flight and realized I was drooling all over myself. gotta love sleep depravation.

united fail: cancelled my flight, claimed no open flights till Saturday. southwest once again saves the day. never again united airlines.

byu printers: this is the wrong time to crap out on me.

one midterm down. can’t sleep, nervous/excited for the U-Wisconsin grad school welcome weekend.still a bit surreal that I got accepted…

next 24 hours: 2 engineering midterms, 1 Japanese essay, packing, flight to Wisconsin. bring it on.

three in the afternoon and I’m taking excedrin. I need a vacation… starting a week ago.

I choose NOT to give until the outdated beard rule is abolished.

very tempted to join the cowboy/cowgirl/horse lovers singles website that facebook keeps advertising to me.

Alex Willden, Lin Skinner, Randal Graham, Nate Amsden:

better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

[referencing their earnest letters to the editor in the 2009-03-25 Daily Universe responding to a satirical letter in the 2009-03-23 edition]

shave of the day: taylors of old bond street original shaving cream, japanese feather blade, 4 passes, trumper extract of limes skin food :)

dear bed, please stop being so tempting in the mornings. you know i have way too much to do.

there are too many cookies in my life right now. i need a cookie detox (after I eat them all of course).

some real gems in today’s daily unifarce letters to the editor. a lot of righteous indignation over lying on the grass in the nice weather.

i have a feeling i am going to be dreaming about PID controllers and control theory.

gotta love the “pre-sabbath” mad rush at smiths starting at 11:30.

girl scout cookies for breakfast… i really need to go grocery shopping today.

wearing my rainbows to school for the first time. loving this weather, not going to love the blisters on my feet tonight.

staying up until 2:30 am just to do stuff for work sucks. waking up the next morning remember everything else i didn’t do sucks even more.

such a pretty day. ought to go running. but let’s be honest I’m probably going to take a nap instead.

giving up on this byu game. got my truck driving consistently around a simple pylon course though so thats nice.

only after 1.5 months of illegally driving around a car with expired plates, california DMV finally sent me my new sticker!!!!

not the worst team showing at the competition. next: work, apple interview, lab, hw, and hopefully some sleep.

I want to forget about my senior project fiasco and just nerd out to the iPhone OS event liveblogs.

what’s with putting suede on shoes? it looks pretty cool… if you live in a sterile dry environment! never again…

kinda depressed about last night. I was really close to having a functioning racecar and then my distance encoders died. had to give up :(

free pizza. good way to start another all nighter in the lab.

programming project ideas

they say that a lot of good indie software starts of as an itch that someone finally decides to scratch. here are a few itches i’ve been mulling over what it would take to tackle lately:

  1. iphone app for tracking expenses
  2. a graphical diff app with functionality winmerge
  3. a scripture highlighting and annotating app

i’ve decided it’s been too long: i need a blond woman in my life.

haven’t shaved in a week. I’m a senior engineering student with a month to go. get off my back.

if you think riots over Mohammed cartoons are silly or angels and demons looks like an interesting movie, then shut up about big love.

#@%!@%!$%@ sat on hold with the california dmv for 40 minutes, finally got a person, tell her my license plate info, and the call drops. !!!

ah weekend. gonna be busy but hopefully will have some relax time. need to buy some new dress pants. maybe a haircut??

japanese class discussion: mormon popular art and media is generally crap because the artists are always sober.

sleepy. sometimes I wonder if it’s worth going to class if I know I’m just going to fall asleep.

heading home. much less progress than hoped was made tonight. the race car is completely out of control.

late night in the lab… just about to get my race car driving around pylons though. excitement.

just ordered my cap and gown for graduation. weird.

iPhone 3.0: please open up the camera api so I can upload full res photos w/ exif data to flickr from the phone!!

my hair is getting long. question: can I get away with wearing a winter hat to the testing center in the middle of april?

just dropped my jar of peanut butter. i hope i didn’t get any glass shards in the peanut butter i salvaged.

ok, apparently the other guys in the lab have the entire discography of dave mathews band on their computer. i can only stand so much.

some dude just bel-aired campus with his ghettoblaster.

facebook ad of the day: Meet Singles With Horses. Join the best, largest and most effective dating site for single horse lovers and friends.

interview went well. he told me to be expecting follow up interviews soon. gosh too many good options!

seriously, whats the point of even trying anymore with the CS servers/labs. i can’t remember the last time they worked correctly.

interview with one of the apple OS X teams in two hours. no matter how many interviews i do i am still always nervous.

reading the 100 hour board is much more enjoyable with the new iphone app. BJ has done a great job. everyone get it when its ready.

every dinner for single college aged men should be made in servings of two: one for that evening and one take for lunch the next day.

finished up my essay. who thought that the topic of “farting” could lead to a four page essay about censorship, art, and the media.

starting my essay on gennai’s “the theory of farting.” this one is going to get deep.

slept in. ugh. like i said, sleep cycle is off!

made two large plates of snickerdoodles. the small container to the left is what I burnt. good success rate.

baking snickerdoodles. first time for everything I guess.

gosh i love the obvious loss of the spirit in a sacrament meeting as soon as politics starts being preached over the pulpit.

I don’t get upset at poor drivers cuz I’m impatient, I get upset because they are endangering those around them.

at a (not anymore) surprise birthday party for BJ. made monkey bread.

heading up to park city with michelle and ariel for the afternoon.

after all of these years, i am quite certain this is still my best blog post ever.

at red lobster for shrimp night with kenji, laura, michelle, and ariel.

just got im+ for my iPhone. on sale $.99. ugly interface but doesn’t make me sign up for some new account like other apps.

dear limbaugh-blicans, remember when and why this entire economic mess started. it definitely was not just in the last two months.

demae restaurant charged my card $2 more than the total on the receipt. wouldn’t be as big of a deal if the service hadn’t sucked. calling.

heading in to the lab after a nice nap and dinner. late night of math and coding ahead.

wait why did i go to this recitation again? completely worthless.

at the college lecture being presented by Ramiro Calvo of Apple.

i need to keep waking up early. i got in a run, news reading, coding, and a full breakfast. much better than waking up right before class.

just got accepted into the computer science masters program at the university of wisconsin.

avoiding byusa election people. byusa never did me any good for the past 4 years, don’t care who gets the bragging rights next year.

3/3/09 doesn’t make much sense as square root day to me. seems backwards maybe 9/3/03… or why not square day?

dear apple recruiters, these emails letting me know that you want to interview me for my dream job would have be nice a month ago!!!

I’ve decided I’m over girls wearing boots. At first it was kinda hot but now it’s just yawn.

i think i need one last haircut to get me through graduation.

what better way is there to start the week than a breakfast burrito, a good shave, and rocking out to journey on the walk to class?

lentil stew turned out quite good. also made breakfast burritos. good start of the week. now in bed reading.

ryan the chef

while i was doing my taxes, i took a look at how much money i supposedly made last year and then how much money i have in the bank. yeah, for some reason there was a huge discrepancy there. looking over my last years spending reports, i am quite certain that a huge hunk of that money went towards eating out (compounded by the fact that for a good majority of the year i was paying for two people each time), so i decided to greatly cut down the number of meals i buy at a restaurant. honestly this is pretty tough for me, because i always feel like i’m too busy to cook and i rarely feel like the things i make taste all that good. but at the encouragement of my mother, i made the commitment. right now my goal is to only eat out on fridays and saturdays. thats four days and thus 8-12 meals eaten out fewer than before. this going to save me a ton of money and hopefully help me shed a few of those soft spots that tend to pop up throughout the semester. i don’t have some great plan on how this is all going to work, but yesterday i went on a big $75 grocery trip. for pretty much the first time ever, i actually made a shopping list, which is a first for me. i got a lot of good food that i am actually excited about eating. so today was day one with my filled cupboards. this morning i decided to use a bag of lentils that i first purchased back towards the beginning of my internship. yes, i carried these lentils with me for the last year and across two states (just some proof as to how little i actually cooked). i got some tips from my mom and i threw together a lentil stew in the crock pot my mom sent me last year (which i’ve never used before today). i put in a can of diced tomatoes, a can of chicken broth, the bag of lentils, some sauteed carrots and onions, spicy turkey sausage, and some spices i borrowed from my roommate. i let it cook for about 7 hours, and i’m proud to say it tasted quite excellent.

Lentil Stew

the finished product (like i said, the crock pot is from my mom.. ignore the flower pattern). after dinner, i decided to try out this recipe for breakfast burritos that my mom sent me a few days ago. here is how it went:

Burrito ingredients

here are all of the ingredients i got together. i decided to cut the recipe by 3/4 just to give it a shot for the week.

Chopped peppers

first i chopped up half of the green pepper.

Frying peppers

second i friend them a bit in some butter.

Eggs

then i broke the eggs and mixed in some pepper and milk.

Beated eggs

i beat the eggs.

Rinsed beans

next i drained and rinsed the can of black beans.

Fried eggs

i scrambled the eggs with the peppers and butter already in the pan.

*ryan’s tip for scrambled eggs: the less you stir the eggs, the fluffier and more moist they will be. if you just stir the constantly, they get all dry and crumbly. i lift up one side, tilt the pan so the raw egg flows underneath, rotate the pan, and repeat until done. learned this on my mission.

Eggs and beans

once the eggs were done i added the beans and mixed them all together.

Tortilla

then i laid out a burrito tortilla on a piece of plastic wrap.

Filled tortilla

i filled it with the egg mix, salsa, and some cheese. then i rolled it up and wrapped the plastic around it. my first one messed up pretty bad because the tortilla broke, and i realized it was because the tortillas were cold. i stuck them in the microwave for a bit, and the rest went quite smoothly.

Finished product

i ended up with six burritos (not quite the eight that should have come from a fourth of the recipe). the sizes varied a bit, so i will find out what’s too big and what’s too little. all of the burritos are now stacked in my freezer, and i will let you all know how good they end up being for breakfast!

lentils, tomatoes, onion, sausage, carrots, chicken broth, and spices all simmering away. i’m excited for dinner tonight.

going to try putting together some lentil stew in the crock pot for dinner tonight.

toilet overflowed upstairs, water is leaking down into our apartment. brought up all of our spare towels and put out pots to catch water.

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