Hokum Mashed Patate(s)

With the Thanksgiving holiday upon us in the US, our family is playing with new recipes to see if we can find that killer new recipe that makes the "Thanksgiving Day List". You see, we really enjoy Thanksgiving and, quite unfortunately, we can only eat so much in one day! So, we need to limit the number of dishes that we cook, and recipes are constantly fighting to get on "the list". This, of course, puts us humans in the fun spot of being the judges :)

This year, we have found a recipe that just might be the first rookie in quite a number of years...

Hokum Mashed Patate(s)
or "Nonsense Mashed Potatoes"

The first batch of this had absolutely NO leftovers, and was loved by ALL the kids AND adults; that says a lot in our, rather large family... Give them a try, we hope you enjoy them as much as we are :)

OVERVIEW

This makes a family sized batch - you can make it smaller using a 1:4 ratio of yams to potatoes, respectively

INGREDIENTS

• 5 medium sized potatoes, peeled
• 1 1/2 medium sized yams, peeled
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1/2 medium onion
• Salt
• Pepper
• All Spice
  

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Start water to boil
   
2. Chop the potatoes, yams and onion into medium sized pieces and put them into the water to boil


3. Crush and chop the garlic and put it in to boil


4. Drain everything when the potatoes and yams are soft for mashing


5. Warm up the EVOO in the pan on low-medium heat


6. Place everything back into the pan and mash them all together, adding additional EVOO for more creaminess (but carefully, not too much)


7. Add Salt, Pepper and All Spice and mix together to add flavor


8. Cook them a bit in the pan, mixing often


9. Serve warm

YAM! (just kidding) Enjoy!

(c) Copyright 2008 - Stephen Peront - All Rights Reserved

101 Reasons Why

Have you ever had your kids ask you a million questions? (okay, well, maybe 100's - but still!)

I have decided to explain the 101 reasons why you do NOT have to answer every question your kids ask:

• Reason 101 - It helps their memorization skills.
  (You know, because you have like already answered that question the last 50 times they asked it)
  
• Reason 100 - It helps them learn how to read/listen to directions.
  (For example, "Can we watch a TV program when you leave?" has already been answered by the instructions "You can sit quietly and read a book, but no games, talking or anything other than reading.")

Well, I am still working on the list, but I will update it as things come up!

(c) Copyright 2008 - Stephen Peront - All Rights Reserved

Flooding in Manchester

So, we had a bit of excitement at our house this past Saturday. It not only started to rain, but it rained 2 1/2 inches in just 1 hour! The whole city seemed to have trouble draining that much water. On our street the water was flowing like a river, the sidewalk was fully covered and waves were washing up our driveway.

We all packed up and walked the streets around our house (yes, while it was crazy pouring out) just to see what all was going on with the flooding. There were places where we were walking in water up to our mid-shins. Some of our "near proximity" neighbors literally had water flowing through thier backyard and were quite upset with the "city people" for not having fixed the drains to handle the water. However, from what I understand, this was a unique raining situation.

While the mini-streams of flowing h20 seemed to be the perfect adventure for Ralph S. Mouse; it was the talk of the town for the people of Manchester :). The pictures just don't express the magnitude of the event, so here is a quick video for your pleasure...

Click here to see this on You Tube

(c) Copyright 2008 - Stephen Peront - All Rights Reserved

Stephen Peront Links for 2008-08-22

Here are some kewl links for Stephen this week:

Speaking Engagements

• http://www.aditi.com/events_ArcLightsOnUx.aspx
• http://www.aditi.com/events_web2ocxolounge.html

Blog Posts

• http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2007/06/05/microsoft-sdk-for-open-xml.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/erikaehrli/archive/2007/06/26/techEd2007OpenXmlFileFormatsBoothPart1.aspx
• http://blogs.code-counsel.net/Wouter/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=71
• http://adjb.net/comments.php?y=08&m=07&entry=entry080709-160624

Publications

• http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ATH=Barry+S.+Wadman

Videos

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3ZLtOcuRm8

Industry Links

• http://www.xinn.com/
• http://www.xinn.com/site/AboutUs/ExecutiveBios/tabid/94/Default.aspx
• http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/A42/687
• http://openxmldeveloper.org/articles/EmbeddedObjectsDemo.aspx
• http://openxmldeveloper.org/forums/thread/112.aspx
• http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=26522644
• http://www.ibiblio.org/bosak/v1mail/200706/2007Jun25-052157.eml

Personal

• http://www.speronts.com/
• http://chilco.textdrive.com/~dmahugh/2006/03/22/open-xml-and-open-microsoft/
• http://chilco.textdrive.com/~dmahugh/2006/03/21/openxmldeveloperorg-goes-live/
• http://agilemanifesto.org/sign/display.cgi?ms=000000040

(c) Copyright 2008 - Stephen Peront - All Rights Reserved

Picture Personality

I did the following based on recommendation from Beth. I call it Picture Personality. The concept here is that you answer 12 questions, and use the answers to find 12 photos on Flickr to create a mosaic that is personalized to you. Here's how you do it!

1. Answer each of the questions below; making sure to write the answers down somewhere (it is much easier if you take the time to answer all the questions first; it isn't as easy as it looks)
   


2. Open both the Flickr and Mosaic Maker websites
   


3. On the Mosaic Maker website, change the rows/columns to be 3x4 or 4x3 (since there will be 12 pictures that make your mosaic - do ya get it - 12 questions, 12 pictures)
   


4. Now for each answer (to the 12 questions) a) type your answer (only) into the Flickr search box, b) look through the pictures on the first page (only) and select the picture that you like the best (copy the URL to the picture), then c) paste the URL to that picture into the mosaic URL text boxes
   


5. When you are finished, click the Create Mosaic button, and walla!

Here are the twelve questions; with my answers added :)

1. What is your first name? Stephen
   
2. What is your favorite food? Lobster


3. What high school did you go to? Fellowship Bible School


4. What is your favorite color? Black


5. Who is your celebrity crush? Zooey Deschanel


6. Favorite drink? Chocolate Milk


7. Dream vacation? House on Snowy Mountain Side


8. Favorite dessert? Cherry Pie


9. What you want to be when you grow up? Missions Investor


10. Favorite morning past time? Reading Bible


11. One Word to describe you? Eclectic


12. Your flickr name? Stephen Peront

This was a *very* kewl way to waste an hour :). Thanks, Beth!

(c) Copyright 2008 - Stephen Peront - All Rights Reserved

Social Networking

I work in the technology field, and social networking is a very hot topic. The impact to marketing, advertising and the sales of new products. The introduction of user driven content within gaming systems and social site. So, I have been doing some research...

Have you signed up for Facebook yet? They have a unique way of connecting you with people from your past by suggesting that you connect with people from your graduating class at high school and college. I signed up the other day, and immediately started growing my friends list (23 in the first day).

As you start to connect with friends, you can (usually) see their list of friends. After browsing through some of my friends, friends lists (not sure how to say that correctly - friends lists of my friends, friends of friends list - well NEway, back to the story). Another wave of friends were added... omg, people I haven't talked to in over 10-15 years ... crazy!!!

Probably the kewlest (just get used to me spelling it this way) and most interesting features of facebook, is that you can forward your messages to you phone as text messages. I am a huge texter (over 4,000 texts a month - and that is before facebook); and so this naturally appealed to me. Facebook sends new friend requests, and I can just reply "add" and it automatically takes care of adding the person to my friends list. I can reply to wall posts, personal messages, and much more. It is really awesome! (great job facebook)

Soooo, one interesting dilemma! My life is basically broken into three different major parts - there were the early years (childhood through high school), the past business years (post high-school to present business) and the now business years (current business). Well, I know different people and different types of people from each of these, shall we call them era's; and these worlds are colliding. Beth appropriately termed this a merging of the Stephen time continuum (heh heh).

Now this wouldn't be such an issue, if it weren't for the fact that these worlds are quite diverse, from Christianity to agnosticism, from professional to hookah(ing)...

I am not quite sure yet what the effect of merging these worlds (err... time continuums) will have; but I can't help but have a bit of an uneasy feeling about it...

Day 2 and 47 friends later, I am anxiously awaiting the mushroom cloud...

(c) Copyright 2008 - Stephen Peront - All Rights Reserved