Seafood Penne

Ingredients
2/3 lb. Whole Wheat Penne Pasta
One bag Trader Joe's Frozen Scallops
12 Frozen Raw Tiger Prawns 21-25 ct
1/2 Yellow Onion
1/2 cup EVOO
1/2 cup Sherry Wine
1 Tbs Butter
Garlic Powder
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 cups Spinach Leaves (washed and dried)

Thaw out 12 shrimp s and the bag of scallops.  Hydrate 12 shiitake mushrooms.  Slice the mushrooms into 12" slices.  Cut the yellow onion into strips. Boil 2 quarts of water in a large pot.  When the water is boiling, add the pasta.  Heat 1/2 cup of oil in a 14" skillet over medium-low heat.  When pan is hot, lay out the scallops and cook till done (3 minutes on each side).  Set the scallops aside.  Pour the wine into the pan and heat until boiling to deglaze the scallop residue.  When the pan is finished deglazing, turn the heat to medium-high and add the onions and mushrooms.  Add garlic powder, salt and black pepper.  Cook until the onions are soft.  Sprinkle raw peeled shrimp with garlic powder and a little salt and pepper.  Saute in butter until cooked through (3 minutes each side).  Add the scallops and the shrimp to the mushroom mixture.  Add the rest of the oil to the sauce and toss.  Add the cooked pasta and toss.  Add spinach and toss until the greens are wilted.  Serve while hot.

Reception: Emily thought the recipe was too dry.  I told her that in the next rendition, I will add a chicken stock base.  Corn starch could be added, if thickening was needed.

When she reheated it for leftovers, she added oyster sauce and more spinach.  It was pretty good.

Sili Valley Car Show

Every Thanksgiving, my wife and I would go to the big San Francisco Auto Show. It's been a tradition for many years, but this past year, I was a little under the weather and we had relatives flying in from all over the US, so we had to take a skip on it. Luckily, not far behind is always the car show in San Jose, put on by Motor Trend magazine.

We were able to find some tickets online for $4 each (what a deal!!). It's nice that there's a venue where we can check out the new cars, but it doesn't hold a candle to the SF show. However, they did have a nice display of Corvettes and Camaros showcasing some of the local talent from the nearby clubs.

I'm Back with a Vengence

Well, I decided that I've got so many blogs that I never tend to, mostly because I have so many and they're so specific, that I should just pick one and make it my catch all. A journal of sorts, if you will. It's been a long while, since I've done any entries, so here it goes.

For some reason, I have been struck down ill by something that, so far, my doctor can't diagnose. It's been with me now for about eight weeks. And it's entirely possible that it's just a string of illnesses, in succession, keeping me down. It started out seeming like a mild flu, but it dragged out for three weeks or so, complete with exhaustion, mild fevers and body aches. Later, it moved into total exhaustion, uncontrolled coughing (the kind that keeps you from sleeping) and dizziness. My doctor thought it might have been mononucleosis, but the blood cultures came back negative. As I am nearing the end of my eighth week, I am left mostly with mild dizziness and disorientation. Headaches assist. And the constant physical exhaustion is killing me.

I can describe the light-headedness somewhat akin to as if you were seated and you suddenly stood up- blood would rush to your head and your orientation would swirl for an instant. That is how I feel much of the time. It's just bad enough that it's not safe for me to drive for any real extent of time. I regularly kick and bump into things. I often find myself stumbling, checking my balance. My concentration is only around 90%, as I am often distracted and forgetful.

Since the doctor diagnosed me with mono, I was sent home from work to get rest. Now that we know it's not mono, I'm in somewhat of a conundrum- my dizziness and lack of concentration is still with me, but if I don't get back to work, I'm in danger of losing my job. Since my job is so physically demanding, it's something I'm ready to return to. They could try and work me into a less physical position until I get "better", but who knows? Since I'm one of two required engineers in order to get our company partnership status with one of our vendors, they might try and keep me on somehow. On the other hand, they might just find a suitable replacement and be done with me. I will probably have to lie and say that I'm okay to work again, just to ensure my employment. If I get terminated, I'll just have to find another job.

The next step in diagnosing my malady is a brain MRI. The good doctor has already ordered one for me. I'm just waiting for Imaging to set up a date for me.

The one nice thing about staying home so much is that I get to cook! Tonight on the menu is barbecued beef brisket. Actually, it's not real barbecue- I'm cooking it in a crock pot. I've got some a great barbecue sauce I made a while back. Paired with an Emil Villa styled coleslaw and some baked beans, it's going to be a winner tonight!

Apple iPhone...My Way

I just happened to have an unused iPhone 3G sitting around in my office closet. It was once my work phone, back when my VP thought it would be really cool if we ordered a whole bunch of iPhones for the office. But the plans eventually proved too costly, so my employer asked all the users to either ditch their current [work] AT&T plans (where my company would just suffer the buyout costs) or take over the contracts. The end result was a bunch of unused iPhones sitting around. In most cases, when employees terminated their AT&T contracts, they were told to just keep the phones.

There it sat in the back of my closet for months. Lately I've had some extra time on my hands, so I thought I would explore the iPhone's capabilities as a stand-alone wifi gadget, playing games on it, basically using it as an iTouch. First I did the jailbreak thing and began installing all sorts of third-party applications that were banned from the iTunes Store, for whatever bureaucratic reasons Apple could drum up. And there are some cool apps out there!

Then I started reading about the compatibility of iPhones on the T-Mobile networks...and I got intrigued. All I had to do is "unlock" the iPhone and get a new sim card. But what about the phone rates for a non-T-Mobile phone, especially in the data plan area?

I called T-Mobile twice over the phone and got two different responses. One gal quoted me some ridiculously astronomical rates that didn't coincide with what I had gathered on the net. The other rep quoted me a rate that was cheaper than I was expecting! So I headed down to my local T-Mobile store.

Chrissy, at T-Mobile, had no idea how I got quoted such a low plan. It was $10 cheaper than she could calculate, no matter how she cut it up. I told her that I already spoke to two T-Mobile reps earlier that morning. She checked my account and there were no new notes posted to my account. (Funny how that happens.) I convinced her to call up Customer Service- they should have my account timestamped proving that I made contact with the reps. No new timestamps! Unbelievable!!

But Chrissy was determined to get to the bottom of things. She must've spoke to four supervisors before figuring out how I got that quote. With all the new year's rate changes, information wasn't available to store employees on how much micro-management could be done to the plans. She gave me a new sim card, I popped it in the phone and right away, the phone told me that it was activated on T-Mobile!

Apparently, the phone was registered to activate three weeks later, so she had to have someone back that out and get it activated that day, and that took FOREVER! All in all, I was at the store for over two hours! and Chrissy had a phone stuck to her ear for almost the entire time! In the end, I got my 1500 minute Family Plan and it only cost me about $30 to add the iPhone with phone and Internet, but no texting.

Although the iPhone isn't compatible with T-Mobile's 3G network, the Edge network is very functional. It's almost as fast as AT&T's 3G. I got it done, just in time to beat the release of Google's new Nexus One. We'll see how that fares.