I saw this poster hanging on the wall in a Burger King next to the customer line.

Somehow, it comes off less as an endorsement of how great it is to work at Burger King than it does as a reminder of how unlikely it is you will ever find a job that makes you truly happy. And hey stupid, don't you think it's time you accept the fact that with your math grades, you should be happy that someone will hire you to flip burgers? Plus, you'll be able to ingest lots of high-fructose joy on your 10 minute breaks, fatso.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty sure the ad agency phoned this one in. Either that, or they are playing a game where they are trying to see if they can get stuff with double meanings past the folks at Burger King who approve the ads.

This video will show you how to install Ubuntu onto a USB drive, but in a "persistent" mode that will keep your changes, settings, documents, etc. It essentially allows your USB drive to act like a pocket workstation-- plug it into (almost*) any computer, boot up, and your Ubuntu USB installation will load instead of the (likely Windows) OS on that machine.

This is different from other videos in two respects:

1. The resulting Ubuntu installation is NOT a LiveCD installer; it's a fully functional installation, just like on a regular hard drive
2. You don't need to download or run any customization software; you just load the Ubuntu disk, put in your USB drive, and follow the instructions

Hope this helps somebody!

(*To the best of my knowledge, you can't boot to USB from an Intel Apple computer. Or at least, not easily enough that I'm going to explain it here. Just don't expect any USB drive created with this process to boot on your Mac.)

This spicy thai beef salad (also known as "naam tok", "yum neue" or "yam nua") is one of my favourite dishes ever, and I recently realized how careless it was of me to have the recipe scribbled out on a piece of scrap paper (pictured above in the salad), so I decided to blog it for permanence.
 
If you have a piece of leftover steak, get the rest of the ingredients and MAKE THIS SALAD. Prep time is about 10 minutes.
 
Sauce:
4 tbs lime juice
2 tbs fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 dash roasted chilis
 
Salad:
1 steak sliced thin
2 tbs chopped cilantro
2 tbs chopped mint
1 green onion chopped
1 red pepper cut in thin strips
1/2 red onion diced
 
Instructions:
1. Mix the sauce together until the sugar is dissolved.
2. Mix all the salad ingredients together (including the steak).
3. Pour the sauce over the salad and mix to coat completely.
4. Wait about 10 minutes if you can.
5. NOM NOM NOM!!!
 
It's even better the next day after marinating in the fridge. Enjoy!

EDIT: Thanks to Peter Harrison who pointed out that the Import/Export Appliance feature of VirtualBox will effectively clone a VM right in the VirtualBox GUI. This post/video is now officially obsolete!

ANOTHER EDIT: According to Victor Gilette, the open source edition (OSE) does not include the Import/Export features in the GUI, so these instructions may be of help to anybody using that version.

If you are not a geek, stop reading now.

Hello geeks, if you're into virtualization, you probably have heard about VirtualBox. I love it, but making copies of my existing virtual machines is not automated the way it is with Parallels or VMWare. It's not too hard once you get the hang of it, but the instructions I've read aren't too easy to follow, so I put together a screen capture of the process and posted the movie to YouTube.

Hopefully VirtualBox will automate and integrate this process into the UI soon, but until then, these instructions should help you get started.

(The video was captured on my MacBook with iShowU, and all editing and voiceover done in iMovie '09.)

I had to try this at least once. It may be that once is all you get: 14 slices of bacon will do that. Also, this will be topped with cheese and rolled like a burrito when it gets out of the broiler.
 
If nobody hears from me by Saturday, let's just call it swine flu.
 
In other news, this is my first mobile post from my iPhone. Hope it isn't too garbled.

It's good to do a little physical labour once in a while. I was amazed to find I could swap my winter and summer tires all by myself, and not have them fly off on the Deerfoot.

The last time I took my winter tires off, it was in May, and the guy at the shop asked me if I was sure. He asked me three times. It was May. The weather report was hot and sunny for the next week. I said yes three times.

It snowed in Calgary the very next day. Not a bit of snow; it hammered down many unpredicted centimetres worth.

On an unrelated note, my work gloves have a hole in one finger. Can you tell which finger? The hole was there when I bought them from Home Depot, but I when I finally used them, weeks later, it was too late to take them back. I have a special finger I'd like to give Home Depot. It's right there beside the one that proves I changed my tires.

At my first Calgary Demo Camp a while back, I discovered a web site service called WineCollective.ca. The idea is simple: for a monthly fee, they select and deliver their favourite wines directly to you. The amount (and bottle price) depends on the package you select: two bottles in the $17 range will run you $42.50, and four bottles in the $72 range is $295. There is no extra cost for shipping.

I was very excited about this service. Being a wine ignoramous, I have spent many hours wandering up and down the aisles of wine stores, hoping for some kind of insight to strike, like lightning, to help me differentiate the good bottles from the bad. Now, for what works out to be a couple extra dollars per bottle, I can get expert-approved bottles, and spend my time enjoying (rather than selecting) my wine.

I signed up for their most inexpensive offering (the "Jacques Cartier"), and thought I should share my experience.

The package arrived in a sturdy, discrete cardboard box. I had the box delivered to my place of work, and the person who signed for it had to first prove they were of legal age. I opened my package to find two elegant bottles-- one red, one white-- and a well-designed set of cardstock-printed inserts; one of the inserts was a welcome message, while each of the remaining two contained a description of one of the wines, and a section to record your tasting experience. The WineCollective.ca web site features a "My Wines" section where you can review your wines, record your ratings, and see the "community" rating.

Of course, what we all really care about is, "how is the wine?"

The white bottle was Man Vintners Chardonnay, and I paired it with a bag of salty potato chips (as recommended by Man Vintners). It was crisp and tasty; I had difficulty distinguishing any subtle fruit or nut flavours through the acidity, but remember I have the palate of a gorilla.

The red bottle was Jip Jip Rocks Shiraz Cabernet, and I saved this to enjoy with my pepper steak. I made the mistake of storing this red in the fridge before I opened it, and so my first glass did not have a chance to develop its full flavour: it was acidic and a bit flat. I left the bottle to breathe and warm up, and the second tasting was much richer, with a full body, earthy texture, lots of spice and slight hint of berry flavours.

Overall, I highly recommend this service to folks who enjoy wine, but don't have the time, interest, or expertise to find engaging, quality bottles. WineCollective.ca has overcome several challenging hurdles, including legal and logistic issues with the procurement and delivery of their product, and I have confidence in their creative abilities to continue to grow and improve their service.

What WineCollective.ca Are Doing Right

• Quality product
• Reliable delivery and packaging
• Creative solutions to tricky legal issues
  

What WineCollective.ca Should Improve

• The writing on the inserts needs serious improvement (you can read my pedantic editing suggestions on my writing blog).
• Let me track my comments on the web site along with my rating (EDIT: You can add comments to your bottles if you scroll down the bottle profile page)
  
• Expand the community to allow users to publicly suggest successful food pairings, and any other comments (such as similar wines)

I've cooked lots of time-consuming dishes-- Nana's apple pie (from scratch), roast chicken with stuffing, pad thai-- but I've never had the feeling I had when I looked down at the six full seafood skewers I made recently: adulthood. I am officially a grown up.

Only grown-ups make shishkebabs. Teenagers bake pies, university students roast meats, but only adults cut foods into small chunks, run those chunks through with skewers, and then sear them on a barbecue.

I'm going to go edit the Wikipedia entry for shishkebab to include this undeniable fact.

There's a saying in tech departments around the world: "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft."

I was reminded of this gem recently when I was depositing a cheque at a local bank machine after hours. Immediately after I finished the button pushing, and the envelope disappeared into the little slot, the screen went black, and the ATM rebooted. My jaw dropped. I looked up at the security camera and pointed accusingly at the darkened cash machine display.

Then I grabbed my camera phone.

Some interesting things I gleaned from the boot sequence information: the ATM was running a Pentium 3 processor (now over a decade old), and used the Microsoft Windows XP Professional operating system (released in October of 2001, last updated just over a year ago). Now you know why Y2K happened.

The ATM never completed its reboot; after several minutes of entertaining load screens, it went completely black. I was concerned, as I had just left several thousand dollars sitting inside its cold, dead belly. I called the bank the next day, and a couple weeks later, the money found its way safely into my account.