Yup, these are simply the best.
My Favorite Snack
Category Archives: Stuff I Like
Hot Sauces
I’ve gone full circle on hot sauces in the last ten years. While my friend Andrew Berns has always been an aficionado, the web series Hot Ones definitely ignited a passion to try tons of different hot sauces. The Copeland house used to have an entire shelf with hot sauces.
Now-a-days, I just keep going back to Cry Baby Craig’s. It’s my favorite.
It’s primary spice comes from habaneros, but they’ve been pickled, which dials back the heat while enhancing the flavor. It is a general purpose hot sauce that works across a ton of foods, but it’s especially good on avocado toast from Standish Cafe. While some hot sauces are exceptional in specific foods (like Cholula on fish tacos), Cry Baby Craig’s wins my all-around prize.
There’s lots of good spice out there, though. The Reaper hot sauce above was from the Minnesota State Fair and I’ve never found it since. The Last Dab (from Hot Ones) is really superior at an immediate tongue burn, as is the Scorpion pepper powder.
Any sauces I should give a shot? I’ll open up comments on this post, send me a suggestion!
Bonus: Here’s a video of me eating a ghost pepper at the Minnesota State Fair in 2018.
Meh Dot Com
One theme over the last twenty years or so has been One-Deal-A-Day sites. In the past, I’ve blogged about Woot. Woot.com was bought out by Amazon in 2010 and slowly turned into Amazon’s clearance machine. The previous owner of Woot (Matt Rutledge) left and started a new version of the same concept – meh.com – in 2014.
I’ve always liked saying “meh”, which I’d guess I picked up from Futurama in the early 2000’s. When meh.com launched, I was hooked. In the decade since, I’ve made 298 purchases, a large majority of which are “meh.” branded merchandise. I’ve certainly worn their shirts a lot.
I think what’s fun about the website is they’ve done a bunch of novel things. During the pandemic, they started a website called PastaDrop.com. For $20, you’d send someone 20lbs of pasta. The trick, however, was that some people got significantly more pasta. Everyone was randomly given either 20lbs, 40lbs, 60lbs, 80lbs, even up to 100lbs.
Another concept is the IRK, or Instant Regret Kit. It’s how meh.com cleans out it’s warehouse – an IRK is just a box of random junk. The concept originates from Japan where it’s known as a fukubukuro. I’ve actually stopped ordering them, since I’m sick of throwing stupid stuff away.
The company itself is pretty cool. They’re based out of Dallas and never given me a problem. When the George Floyd protests ended up burning down my post office in 2020, meh.com gave me a full refund for my purchases. Having two houses has slowed down my purchasing, but there’s been some gems. As for my favorite purchase? It’s gotta be Party Bot!
My Favorite Photo
This photo was taken by Andrew Berns in New York (on the Brooklyn side) in about September of 2008. It’s easily my favorite photo of all time.
There’s not much story behind it: Alicia and I were posing for a photo with Manhattan behind us and I leaned back to grab the rail behind us. Whoops, I grabbed bird poo. With no bathrooms or hand wipes near by, I did what anyone engaged to marry would do – I threatened touching Alicia with it. I guess she didn’t like it.
Thus, this magical photo was born.
It’s been posted to Facebook ever since and usually accompanies any “about me” slides I present at work.
I Won a Chili Cookoff
Back in November 2021, Sister’s Sludge hosted a chili cook-off. About twelve people entered it, each bringing in a crock-pot of chili for tasting. The judges were three of the cooks/staff from Northbound Smokehouse.
I’ve been pretty proud of my chili, it’s Alton Brown’s Pressure Cooker Chili, but in a pot on the stove for 6 hours (since I don’t own a pressure cooker). It’s pretty unique for a chili:
- There’s three different animals (cow, pig, sheep).
- It uses cubed meat that maintains its fibers (instead of ground meat).
- It usually comes out a pretty dark brown, if not black.
- It’s beanless.
- ….in fact, there aren’t other discernible ingredients, it’s very meat forward.
- It’s rich as hell.
The competition was two types of chicken chili, a veggie Verdi chili, at least three classic ground beef chilis, and a few interesting ones (with one going really heavy on cocoa).
The contest was judged without toppings (to the detriment of a few of the chilis that counted on sour cream or tortillas) and was judged separately by the judges and the crowd.
I’m proud to say I won both contests handedly! Woo!
“What are the odds?”
My favorite drinking game is called “What are the odds?” It features a 20-sided die. Players say a number aloud between 1 and 20, then roll the die. If a player rolls the number they called, they take a shot. Simple!
It’s also dangerous. So many people see the 5% odds of hitting and throw caution to the wind and give it a roll. I’ve seen a table roll the die 50+ times without hitting, but also seen the same person hit three times in five rolls.
Everyone just gets captivated with how 5% plays out in real time. “I just took a shot last round, what are the odds it’ll happen again?!?”
My 20-sided die currently lives at Sister’s Sludge, tempting bar patrons with it’s mystery.
COVID-19 Hot Tub
Early summer of 2020, it became pretty clear no one was doing much. So I went on walmart.com and found an inflatable hot tub for about $400 (Intex brand if you’re curious). It was so great.
Downsides:
- It only heated to 104 degrees.
- It was constantly getting new holes in the lining and subsequently deflating.
- The latches that held the lid on broke at a rate of one per 3 months.
- It fit four people, but I wouldn’t say comfortably.
- It cost about $1 a day for the filter/heater combo.
Upsides:
- About two months after I purchased it, prices rose at least $200.
- It only required a 120 volt outlet!
- It was WONDERFUL in the morning with coffee.
- The replacement liner was only $150.
- It was a destination during the pandemic, friends would come over just for the hot tub.
No regrets. Reviews on the internet said we’d get 3 years, which was exactly right. The heater was leaking heavily and not getting the water to 104 anymore by late summer 2023.
Hopefully, it’s not the last hot tub in my lifetime, I love a hot tub!
My Go-To Satchel
About eight years ago, I stumbled upon an N64 carrying bag at a garage sale in South Minneapolis. I remember when this bag was sold in the mid to late 90’s, specifically that it was bizarrely impractical. This bag is the size of a single N64 console, not including the cables, controllers, or any games.
That said, I love this thing. It is the first bag I grab to go out the door all the time. It holds sunglasses, sunscreen, a backup battery for my phone, and a few more small things. Or it holds my USB keyboard, a stand for my phone, and a journal.
I haven’t really gotten sentimental for video games yet. Around the time I turned 28, I sorta stopped being a “gamer.” Which is weird, video games were a large part of my life from as early as I remember through grad school. I still have all my original NES + SNES + N64 games, as well as PlayStation + Sega + others. I lugged those systems to New York City and back because they were a core part of my identity.
…now-a-days, not so much! But carrying this bag around is a fun little nod to my older self. If you see me out walking around, there’s a good chance this’ll be on my shoulder.
The Reverse Geocache Puzzle
You’ve heard of geocaching, right? Go to a location specified by GPS coordinates and find a hidden cache?
Mikal Hart created a box with a GPS inside that only opens when the box is at a set of GPS coordinates.
…a puzzle box that won’t open until it is taken to a certain location.
Quoted from http://arduiniana.org/projects/the-reverse-geo-cache-puzzle/
It’s such a cool idea, I really want to be the kind of person that makes something like this. I especially love the end of his writeup:
This little box is a novel way of combining a GPS, a servo, a button and a display. How many more marvelous combinations lurk out there, if only someone has the imagination to put them together the right way?
Quoted from http://arduiniana.org/projects/the-reverse-geo-cache-puzzle/
Fizz Buzz Enterprise Edition
This one’s hard to explain unless you’re a programmer, so bear with me…
The first thing you learn when programming is how to print “Hello, world!”. Very shortly afterwards, they teach you to do something slightly more complicated, the “fizz buzz” problem, meant to teach children about division:
[Children] generally sit in a circle. The player designated to go first says the number “1”, and each player thenceforth counts one number in turn. However, any number divisible by three is replaced by the word fizz and any number divisible by five by the word buzz. Numbers divisible by 15 become fizz buzz. A player who hesitates or makes a mistake is eliminated from the game.
quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizz_buzz
It’s not meant to be hard, just a toy problem to program. The code you write should output something like:
1 2 fizz 4 buzz fizz 7 ...
Working in Corporate America™, you code differently. Clear, concise code doesn’t get you ahead: “scalable”, jargon-filled code does. You’re supposed to write code that can run on computers around the world and serve billions of users. If one’s code is too simple and straight forward, the bosses will think one’s work is too easy.
Enter one of my favorite coding projects: Fizz Buzz Enterprise Edition.
FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition is a no-nonsense implementation of FizzBuzz made by serious businessmen for serious business purposes.
Project description from Fizz Buzz Enterprise Edition
Normally, fizz buzz can be written in a few lines:
for number in range(1, 100):
if number % 3 == 0 and not number % 5 == 0:
print("fizz")
elif not number % 3 == 0 and number % 5 == 0:
print("buzz")
elif number % 3 == 0 and number % 5 == 0:
print("fizzbuzz")
else:
print(number)
Fizz Buzz Enterprise Edition (FBEE) spreads this same logic across dozens of files. It’s really a work of art.
Now, explaining a joke sorta kills it, but here’s a few bullet points to help you get the joke. FBEE:
- …is configurable to print on numbers other than 3 and 5
- …can alter what “division” means
- …has a rigorous testing package to ensure it performs accurately
- …features a Contributor Code of Conduct
Not being a java programmer, my eyes sorta glaze over reading it. But I really appreciate the effort put into it. It’s also an open source project, which means anyone can contribute. This leads to a ton of issues raised by the community, such as #429:
It is apparent that people are pirating FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition at an alarming rate, which the Accounting and Finance Team says is having a dramatic effect on our bottom line.
Issue #429 submitted by drelephant
We need to look into options to protect our investment and our IP. I suggest some kind of Enterprise license manager with a USB dongle and quarterly subscription model.
There’s a special place in my heart for a joke being taken as far as possible.