Geek Cooks: Easy Desserts for Everybody...

I am rather (in-) famous for my culinary skills. So when I volunteered to prepare desserts for guests this weekend, it was rather challenging for me. To meet the challenge, I had to look into to pri-mate instincts...

[Snip! Black & White Documentary style]
Homo-sapeian aka us humans are most disabled species on earth... Physically i.e. We lack the furriness of a polar bear which would saves us from the withering cold. Yet, the human species survived the ice age.

The human species lacks sharp teeth or claws of now extinict Sabre-tooth, yet the primitive man managed to hunt and eat meat.

Luck? Somewhat. But the real thing, we innovate...:D

That is the reason for survival from ice age to today.

[Snip! Back to life today... present day modern kitchen. Credit for of this stuff above : NPR program on WABE 90.1 FM - Infinite Mind]

Anyway, I needed to innovate, with the "limited" resource in my hand. I choose to assemble. (Henry Ford would have turned in his grave, if heard this). Here is what I came up with...

Pineapple-Banana Split with grape topping
(Test-tasted using Eddie's Hand churned Chocolate ice-cream and Reena's Mango Ice-cream)

Ingredients

1. Churned Chocolate Ice cream (I did not make it, it just happened to be at home)
   or Mango Ice cream (Another ice cream variety that was in hand)
2. Banana (half)
3. Pine apple slices (Canned from any store)
4. Red Grape (1 piece)

Steps

1. Cut the banana into half and split the banana in the middle.
2. Place it in the serving dish, usually would be desert bowl as a V-shape.
   (V as in victory and that is what we plan for with our dessert lovers)
3. Drop in couple of scoops of ice-cream in the space between the V - banana split.
4. Take the pineapple slice and cut into half.
5. Drop the slices around the scoop.
6. Place the red grape on the top of scoop.

And there....:)

An fully assembled geeky banana-pineapple split with grape topping and ice cream of your choice.

My fellow humans... and beyond... ENJOY!!!

~~~ Cooking Unknowingly....now...

Hurricanes, World energy crisis and my outlandish ideas..

Before my blog meets the same fate as my website (death by lack of updates), here are some thoughts after hearing lot of coverage on hurriances in the US (North America, Gulf of Mexico really), world energy crisis....

In my limited knowledge of hurricanes are naturally occuring phenomena. Usually form over a oceans, thanks to a low pressure area, feeds on the warm ocean currents and becomes an monster at times with maximum sustained winds on which it gets its category.

Now, in one of the TV coverages, one hurricane "expert" mentioned that the energy from the storms could power the entire United States for a year.

That sparked a brain wave (in my brain of course) !!!

Now what if there was a way to "harness" the energy of the storm?

Only if you could throw energy acquistion devices (I fondly call them - "power goblets") into the storm and they would collect the energy from the powerful wind forces within the storm. The goblets would be intelligent and self powered enough, to navigate themselves outside the storm areas once fully charged and just float out in the calm waters. Thanks to nano-eletronics, I would not concive a power goblet to no more larger than a couple of tennis balls put together.

The power goblets would be configured with GPS and beacons. A goblet collection vechicle (sea fairing /airborne) would collect the goblets and bring them to mainland.

The energy from these goblets would be emptied into an energy distribution device and send around the globe to cities, village and maybe even cars.

Howzzat to solve the energy crisis of the world?

I even found the name for the venture or the new occupation/industry - STORM POWER HARVESTING.

I originally thought of Storm Harverters, but that gives an incorrect connation that storm harverters actually create storms...:)

Coming next, some closer to land idea to harness the same power. Umm... it's all in head, need to visualize it more before putting it in words.

Why Developers dislike Project Managers?

It is a legendary war. In same breath as the daughter in laws and mother in laws, there is a feeling that other side just does not get it. Both sides of course thinks that they have the best interest of the project/organization etc. in their minds. (Of course they do, but just don't seem to see it in the same angle).

Where would I stand on this is difficult to state because my current role is that off a part developer and part project manager. And then you also have account for the fact I am really leading an remote team and am a front face of that team at a client site.

So that really makes it - Down the creek without - the paddle, lifejacket, helmet and the canoe.

Of course, when I was a developer, of course had no love for my project manager. The one I had 6 years back, though she may had been good at heart, she was a nightmare when it came to setting unrealistic deadlines. Of course, back then, I was fresh from college and too cocky to realize the bigger picture and her pressures.

Then couple of years ago, I had a project manager far too liberal, excerised little too less control and hardly had any focus. The project was a disaster, never really got off the ground. Ultimately lead to loss of job, including mine, sadly.

My First Blog Entry

Generally speaking, I am usually the jump on to new technology stuff especially if it is free.

I was the first one in my class (in college) to have a personal website in 1998. Of course, it was nothing great, just my experiment with Microsoft FrontPage and throwing in some personal stuff and pictures of my fantasy girl (not too naughty pictures just a good looking babe in two piece swimsuits!)

But since then, very little has changed on that website (in past 4 years).

My more successful endeavors have been to set up a mailing list (through e-groups, now Yahoo! Groups) for my college class. Umm... the class website of which I am the webmaster, has met the same fate as my personal website, though there were lot many contributors than me.

So when this blogging and now Wiki phenomena rolled along, I really waited to jump into the bandwagon till today. So here I am with my first entry to a Blog.

What prompted me to do so? That's a story (umm... blog entry for another day).

To set the tone for my Blog, I would be usually writing about computer technology and some off beat experience, when I have applied logic into real life like - X-box game play, saving money, lawn mowing, managing relatives etc. Things in which I have failed miserably or have been reasonably successful.

So readers, learn from my success and failures... in field of computer technology and beyond.