Last week was Dave Sanders’s bachelor party. I wanted to make something special that would look cool and get everybody really drunk at the same time…=) My solution? Skittle infused Vodka and Vodka infused Gummy Bears. A few months ago I stumbled upon the recipe for Skittle infused Vodka over here at Mixthatdrink.com. The instructions were very clear and I only had to change a few things based on my own observations while making my first few batches, some assumptions and a difference in materials used to make my own batch. As for the gummy bears my friend Gillian told me about them and while the instructions over at again mixthatdrink.com…it left out the fact that I would have to air out the gummy bears to let them firm up a bit…but more on that later.
Skittle infused vodka…I’m gonna assume that you all read through the recipe at Mix That Drink…so I won’t bore you with the details as to how to make it…but with what changes I had to make…=) First off the recipe stated that the quality of the vodka didn’t matter too much but to not use the really cheap vodka i.e. Vons brand vodka. My assumption there told me that I could use what I have deemed a C grade vodka (first mistake) which was Smirnoff Triple Distilled Vodka. I also picked up some plastic flasks (second mistake) as I couldn’t find the nice glass ones that they used in the short amount of time I had. I decided to start out with the red skittles (third mistake) and after I let the infusion sit in the freezer for 2 hours…I tried it. Yeah tasted like medicine. I tried a second shot and swirled it in my mouth a bit…yup medicine. Turns out that after a bit more research I found another site that said that I have to use a B or A grade vodka and that out of all the flavors…the red ones tasted the worst. Down the drain it went. After that failure I went out and bought some Kettle One Vodka which I decided would be a B grade vodka. The other site also stated that the purple skittles tasted the best so I infused the Kettle One with the purple, stuck it in the plastic flask, stuck it in the freezer and 2 hours later…medicine…although not as bad. I decided to keep this batch cause I didn’t want to waste anymore booze. Dejected I tried the yellow skittles but this time since I had used the last of the vodka I put it back in to the original glass bottle. Two hours later…it tasted like yellow skittles!!! I deduced from this that I need to use glass to store the vodka infusion and not plastic…cause I guess plastic will change the taste of the infusion. A few other things I learned was the recipe said to just stack 4 coffee filters together and use that to filter the infusion…bad idea…at least for the filters I used cause when I tried to use 4 eventually it just stopped flowing through. I figured that the white gunk was clogging the filters so I decided to just use one at a time….but even just using one at a time didn’t work so I used one till the flow stopped then switched to another filter. I stopped filtering when all I had to use was one filter. They also say you can use paper towels…but I found that they absorbed about a quarter shot per filter run…and that’s just unacceptable =)
What about the vodka infused gummy bears? Not much there really just that (I think) I have to air them out for a few hours to let them firm up and get less slimy and that I probably have to use again a B grade vodka…cause I used the rest of the C grade to make them. They turned out okay…but I’ll have to play around with them to figure out the best way to firm them up.
Quote of the day!
“Jesus turned water into wine…I turned a whole student loan into Vodka. Your move, Jesus…”
Here’s the scene…I’m chilling out at the start of Dave Sanders’s bachelor’s party…when my mom calls me in tears saying “Your dad is in he hospital.” Lucky I didn’t drink too much by this point and was able to drive over to the hospital 5 minutes away. So I get to the hospital and I find my mom and she tells me that they are preping my dad for open heart surgery! HOLY CRAP! is what I was thinking…but I wanted to keep a calm face for my mom…so I played it cool. I tried to keep her occupied by talking about random things…like…the weather…kids these days…blah blah blah…eventually though the need to know exactly what was going on got to me and I started to call people I knew in the medical field to get advice as to what to do next and perhaps what was going on. Eventually I was told I should ask the ER registration nurses and ask them what was up. They told me that my dad was in the cath room and that they were going to insert a tube in to the femoral artery…snake it up to his heart…inject a dye and watch the workings of his heart. So now I’m thinking oh thank God…he’s not in surgery! A few minutes later Dr. Lopez comes out and informs us that one of my dad’s arteries is indeed blocked…but my dad’s body formed it’s own bypass. Yes…my dad’s body is so freeking bad ass that it formed it’s own bypass. So now he’s resting well in a bed over at Torrance Memorial with my mom. They say that they’re going to put him on a treadmill and if he does okay here they’re going to send him home Sunday or Monday. Here’s to small miracles.
Quote of the day!
“My dad’s body is so bad ass…it formed it’s on bypass!”
So I had an entire write up for this…but firefox decided to give me the middle finger and crash on me…and for some reason wordpress didn’t autosave a draft for me…go fig…anyhoo…here’s my attempt to rewrite my already written post…=)
My buddy David Dukellis posted a video on his facebook page done by Corey Vidal and I must say that it really impressed me. The video above however is not the one done by Corey Vidal. The above video is done by the original performers Moosebutter. Corey however did produce and promote the above video…=) Basically Corey contacted Moosebutter and asked if he could make a video of their song Star Wars….they wisely said yes. There was no reason to deny Corey permission really…it’s free advertising. A few months later Corey helped Moosebutter produce and promote their own video of Star Wars using the same style as Corey’s original video. (Man…the first post looked and sounded way better…grrrr…ah well)
I have no words for this…I went over to look to see what Frazz was up too and what do I see? I see Frazz asleep holding a seed…yes folks…she fell asleep WHILE eating.
Anyhoo…quote of the day!
“I don’t believe in reincarnation, and I didn’t believe in it when I was a hamster.”
Since the last incarnation of Punch-Out!! that came out for the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) I’ve been (we all have been) waiting for the next version of this game to come out. The last two consoles (N64 and Game Cube) had some great franchises on them and even launched a few of them…but they never saw Punch-Out!!. Why would Nintendo do this? Even though I would say this game is probably one of the most entertaining games I have ever played…there is one small problem. Replayability. Once you go through the game and figure out the patterns and the way the boxers telegraph their punches the game becomes very easy. So yeah it may take a week or a month or whatever to figure it out…but once you do…there’s no incentive to play it again. Nintendo has (it seems) to have addressed this particular issue.
After you fight each boxer it opens up an exhibition mode for that particular boxer. So say you fight Glass Joe and you whomp his ass and you’re feeling good about your self cause you beat the snot out of a boxer that has a 1-99 record (that’s 1 win and 99 losses) what do you do now? Move on to Von Kaiser? Nope you go to the exibition mode and you will find three challenges for Glass Joe. One is you have to knock him down three times…then let him win by Decision. The second one is to find his one punch knockdown. The last one is you have to beat Glass Joe with out ducking, dodging or blocking (a lot harder than it seems). So yeah…each boxer has this mode…so it adds another thing to do once you beat the game the first time around.
Another thing that Nintendo did for Punch-Out!! is that once you do win the first time around you get to defend your title! You fight all the same boxers but they are different somehow. I have yet to beat the game so I cannot say as to what or how they are different…this is just what the Nintendo site says. Once you beat the title defense mode…there is yet another mode called Last Stand. No clue what that is…but…you do get to fight Donkey Kong. =) I assume that you once again get to fight all the boxers again and based on the name I’m gonna guess you start at half health and you have already been knocked down twice. We’ll see.
The actual game play however is pretty cool. I love how they did the boxers and how they kept with the theme of Punch-Outs!! of the past. The one thing they did change is in the past as you progressed the boxers basically got faster and had cool gimmicks. With the Wii version yes the boxers get faster but they also don’t throw all their punches at the same speed. What does this mean? Well take Super Macho Man for instance…he has 5 punches. Two upper cuts, one hook and two different spin moves. The two uppercuts (depending on which side they come from) will come at you at different speeds so if you’re used to just dodging as soon as they move…you’re in for a big surprise when you go up against Super Macho Man and some other boxers that do the same thing. As for the controls…man I was totally excited about being able to actually box with the wiimote and nunchuk in hand. When I tried it it seemed clumsy and awkward. The only other option (unfortunatlly) is to turn the wiimote sideways and use it like a controller. While this method is much more accurate…the wiimote wasn’t designed to be used like this. The direction controler isn’t flat…it sorta curves up at the ends and after an hour of ducking, dodging and jabbing your thumb gets a bit raw. It’s also a bit on the small side so I found myself ducking when I should be punching or dodging when I should be ducking. The last thing about the wiimote is that it was designe to be held vertically not horizontally so it’s just awakward in that sense. All in all though it’s not TOO bad…but I wish I could use the classic controller or even the wavebird.
Even with the short comings with the controller…I am still having a lot of fun playing it and I look forward to the other two fight modes…they sound pretty challenging.
Quote of the day!
“There are many ways to climb a mountian Mac but there’s only one way to swim across a river.”
Here is a very well done time lapse video clip done by William Castleman of the Galactic core of the Milky Way. The pictures were taken over a 9 hour period with 20 second exposures that were taken every minute. That’s 540 pictures! This is the kinda stuff I’d like to do one day…=) But I sorta like landscapes more atm….hmmm…maybe I can do a time lapse of a city scape…anyway…enjoy the vid!
Quote of the day!
“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another”
So Bonnie’s wedding was a first for me…not because I’ve never been to a wedding…but because it was a Pagan ceremony. Don’t get me wrong…there is nothing wrong with it…I’ve just never been to one before. It seemed very familar though…there was a wedding party (though all guys and all but one were in Kilts), there was the person who married Nick and Bonnie (cept she was 9 months pregnant and had a ton of white face makeup on), There was a wedding cake but instead of a cute bride and groom figurine…there was a figure dressed in a teddy and a Dread Pirate Roberts…=) Basically there were lots of similarities to the other weddings I’ve been too but with twists. I liked it. Not sure if I’d get married like it myself…but it was a fun ceremony…=) Not much else to say…and no..you don’t get another quote of the day…=)
As I said earlier…Washington is a beautiful state…and Bellingham is a great city. Trees everywhere, the ghettos not really being ghettos, getting a two bedroom apartment for 600 bucks, Cuban cigars are just an hour’s drive away, Gerbils can be bought and owned…the list goes on. But being a native of California I really didn’t like the weather up there. Out of the 5 days I was up there…it rained 2 of them. That’s about 1/3 of the rainy days we get down here in California. =) It’s also a bit too cold for my tastes…I like my cold being 60 and my hot being 90….but that’s just me being a spoiled Californian…=) Would I live in Washington? Maybe if I got a really good job…but it would take a lot for me to leave my home town. I love it here too much.
Quote of the Day!
” There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.”
Last year I went up to Piratefest up for some drunken pirate fun. I had two choices…the 5 which would save me an hour but be a really boring drive visually or drive up the 101 and have see some truly beautiful scenery. I choose the 101 =) . On my way up I saw many things golden fileds, cows, trees (lots of trees), ocean, hills and a picture of a Grandma on a hill (pictured to the right). I got the feeling that she represents some grandma that died and this is a monument to her…but I didn’t see any signs that said “In Loving Memory of…” So I’m not so sure as to why there is a giant picture of this old lady on a hill along the 101 freeway.
When I asked my buddy Kyung about it (because he drives up and down the 101 atleast 10 times a year) if he has ever seen this picture…he said no. I was then wondering if I was halucinating and that burger I had back at McDonalds was laced with something. But then as he’s driving back up the 101 he sees her! But due to his own shock and awe…he didn’t get a picture or an exact location. I was excited and saddened by this. With this new knowledge I was determined to somehow get a picture of her and get the exact cordinates so I can always find her. When I treid to google her I found nothing. Kyung had a vauge idea as to where she was…so I tried street view to find her…but after 30 mins of searching I gave up and decided to just to look for her when I head up for Pratefest in a few months. Then Kyung came to my rescue and took the picture there to the right and gave me a much better idea as to where she was. Armed with this knowledge and what I remember of where she was I went back to google maps and used their terrain function and looked for a hilly area near San Ardo, CA. After about 30 mins of searching I found her! Here’s a link to her on google maps. Just click on street view…look east and you will see this bilboard like object on the hill. It’s really fuzzy but it’s her…trust me. =) If you don’t want to use google maps…here are the exact cordinates 36.157402777777776, -121.04736944444444 or 36° 9′26.65″N, 121° 2′50.53″W. Enjoy!
Quote of the day!
Lon: What was the score of the Rockets vs. Lakers game?
Me: 100, 92 Rockets.
Lon: What was the score?
Me: 100, 92…Rockets won.
Lon: Yes I understand Rockets got 192…what did the Lakers score?
My first impressions of Washington are good. I’m not sure about other parts of Washington…but here in Bellingham what they call the “ghetto” looks like a sligtly beaten down version of a subrub in California. The roads are well pavedl, grass is fairly well maintained, no bars on the windows and I didn’t feel like I was gonna get shot…=) I also love how there are so many trees up here…everywhere I look I see trees. Even driving through downtown Seattle I saw a ton of trees. I can see why people live up here. The only few bad points I can see so far is…it’s a bit cold and from what my buddy Dave tells me…it’s usually cloudy all year long (not grey coulds but those white fuffy ones)…which would be a huge downer for me because I love blue skys. Anyway…I’ll probably post more when I can get some good pictures and what not. Till then…toodles!
Quote of the day
“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepair to die!”
Since the last incarnation of Punch-Out!! that came out for the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) I’ve been (we all have been) waiting for the next version of this game to come out. The last two consoles (N64 and Game Cube) had some great franchises on them and even launched a few of them…but they never saw Punch-Out!!. Why would Nintendo do this? Even though I would say this game is probably one of the most entertaining games I have ever played…there is one small problem. Replayability. Once you go through the game and figure out the patterns and the way the boxers telegraph their punches the game becomes very easy. So yeah it may take a week or a month or whatever to figure it out…but once you do…there’s no incentive to play it again. Nintendo has (it seems) to have addressed this particular issue.
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