Grilled Turkey and a Gold Rush

My Mom found some comments online about grilling a turkey. I followed those for Thanksgiving and it worked out well.

As described online, the cooking uses indirect heat. Part of the grill is turned on, but the turkey is placed over the other part with no heat underneath it. The top is kept closed so the heat can cook the turkey like an oven. It took around 4 hours to cook our 18 lb. bird.


I did have one problem. The big barbecue fork I used to rotate the turkey could not handle the job without bending. What good are barbecue tools if they can't handle an 18 lb. turkey?

As with any turkey cooking method, seasoning the bird is very important. The grilling turned out OK, but was lacking a lot because very little seasoning was done.

This is Mom at the table before everyone ate.


I also enjoyed a drink I recently read about in the Wall Street Journal. There is a video that explains how to make a Gold Rush that I recommend. The recipe is transcribed below. While there are several different recipes online, I can only attest to trying this version from the Lambs Club in New York City.

Gold Rush

2 oz Bourbon
3/4 oz Honey mixture (in a 3 parts honey to 1 part water ratio to lower its viscosity)
3/4 oz Lemon juice

Since this is the first drink I have made that involves honey, I skipped the dilution and put in slightly less than 3/4 oz honey. I had trouble mixing the honey with the rest of the drink. My solution was to mix the honey with the bourbon first before adding the chilled lemon juice and ice. I served this and it was well received.

The Problem of Complacency

I will keep this short, lest I dilute the point.

I have a problem. I am too comfortable where I am. There is no pressure or encouragement for me to get a job, move into my own apartment, or advance my life.

I have settled into contentedness at the expense of happiness. I am not meeting new people, making friends, or pushing my life forward as I want to. I am not living up to my full potential.

I can do better.

I will lay out a few things

First, I like using puns in my post titles.

Second, if you are one of those people reading this on the RSS feed, you need to migrate to the blog itself. There is a visual part to this.

Third, I am making some changes to the layout of the blog. Blogger rolled out some new design options recently. After I saw the visual impact of one of these new designs on Aden Dreams of Pavement, I decided to update some things.

I was the Online Editor for the Patriot, so I know how to do a few things with code online. While Blogger's design editor makes some things easy, the 1,924 line template was intent upon making my life difficult.

Incremental changes will be made over the next few days until I am pleased with everything.

If you have any comments about the layout, I will accept them in the aptly named comments section below.

Two Library Cards, One Day

A few Fridays ago I went on a trip around Orange County.

The first stop took me to UC Irvine. I went to the UCI library because they have many engineering books. Before I could check anything out, I needed a library card. Since I am a member of the Cal Alumni Association, I can get a library card at any UC campus for free.

I was in need of engineering books for a paper and project due in a couple of weeks for my digital signal processing class. I need to talk about a use of digital signal processing and write code that does DSP.

Drive down MacArthur
After my time among the anteaters, I drove down MacArthur Blvd. to Newport Beach. I went to their public library and obtained a library card. At the Newport Beach Library cards are free for people from other cities. However, if an out of town person went to the Huntington Beach Library and wanted a card it would cost $25 annually.

The first time I went to the Newport Beach Public Library my Associate took me and extolled its excellence. It looks like a nice place. I do not have an easy metric for determining the quality of books a library holds, so I can only judge the library by its building.

These are the cards I got and the books I checked out. The friendly anteater is from UCI, but he did not come with the books.

Weird Things and Thinking

I recently finished the book Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of our Time by Michael Shermer. The book talks about unusual beliefs and some of the reasons people hold them.

Several topics including psychics, alien abduction stories, and fire walking are examined. They are shown to have simple explanations and not otherworldly causes. Two big parts of the book are case studies in the creationism verses evolution fight and Holocaust deniers. Shermer details some of the techniques both sides use and their advantages or shortcomings. He explains why some leaders in those areas can so easily outflank other people. During these two sections are the only places the book was boring; they were detailed summaries and refutations.

The Personal Side
My favorite part of the book is how Shermer brings his personal experiences into the discussions. Shermer is a well known skeptic and has been part of numerous debates and television programs. He represents a skeptical counterpoint to people who hold fringe views.

Once he went to Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment where he was part of an experiment in extrasensory perception (ESP). When the results were tabulated the leader declared they were proof of ESP. Shermer explained how statistics indicated the results were random chance and not evidence of ESP. The experiment leader did not take kindly to his comments, asking "Are you an engineer or one of those statisticians or something?"

Shermer details his own alien abduction memory and how it was caused by more pedestrian events.

Some books consistently belittle anyone who holds a contrary position to the author, but Shermer does not do that. He takes a nicer tone. However, I did not hold any of the ideas he dismantles in the book so my view could be skewed.

The main message of the book is the scientific method should be applied to claims people make. To help ferret out false conclusions, a list of 25 ways thinking goes wrong is included. These range from scientific thinking mistakes like letting theory influence observations to logical mistakes like an either-or approach where problems are assumed to have only two possible answers.

If you are willing to admit things you know could be wrong, check this book out.

Samuel Adams Cupcakes

It is time to make some cupcakes with a fine beer, Samuel Adams.

I originally saw this recipe in the Orange County Register on April 22nd. However, a quick search will turn this up in many places online. All the recipes are the same. This is a problem because they all turn out terrible. I left the cupcakes in for twice as long as the recipe states and they still looked questionable and unbaked. Whoever wrote the recipe must have been drinking a few Sam Adams.

The original recipe has all the ingredients below, except with 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup Samuel Adams Boston Lager, and 3/4 cup flour. For my changes I left out the water, increased the Samuel Adams to 3/4 cup, and pushed the flour to 1 cup. With my new recipe I baked a dozen which turned out better. I bumped the temperature up to 350 from the originally mandated 325 for the second batch and they baked even better. The original recipe also neglects to tell you to add the flour, baking soda, and baking powder to the mix. As I said, someone must have been drinking when writing the recipe.

Now my new and improved recipe.

Boston Lager 25th Anniversary Cupcakes

1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup Samuel Adams Boston Lager
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place butter, sugar, and cocoa powder in a large mixing bowl. Add in eggs and mix until thoroughly combined. Mix in flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Pour in Boston Lager, then salt. Mix until mixture is smooth and there are no lumps.

Line muffin tin with muffin liners. Pour approximately 3 – 4 oz into each cup. Bake in oven at 350 degrees for approximately 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. The recipe's official yield is 2 dozen, but I ended up with 20 or 22 using my "that looks good" method of filling the cups.


For these I used some Pillsbury frosting I wanted to finish up at home. Consequently, I did not test this frosting recipe. However, with a cup of butter it has to be good!

Boston Lager Butter Cream Frosting
3 cups confectioners' sugar
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon whipping cream
2 tablespoons Samuel Adams Boston Lager

In a standing mixer with a whisk, mix together sugar and butter. Mix on low speed until well blended, then increase speed to medium and beat for another 3 minutes. Add vanilla extract, Boston Lager, and whipping cream and continue to beat on medium speed for 1 minute more, adding more cream if needed.

A Parish Priest and some Knights

I just finished the book Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism by Douglas Brinkley and Julie M. Fenster. The book is a biography of Fr. McGivney and a look at the Catholic Church in New England in the late 1800s. It also covers the Knights of Columbus, a group Fr. McGivney founded.

Father Michael McGivney was born in 1852 in Waterburry, Connecticut. The book tracks his life, how he became a priest, and how he worked in his parish. Fr. McGiveny was always visiting the sick, planning activities, and comforting people in need. Aside from his normal spiritual duties, he kept young people out of trouble by organizing baseball games and directing amateur plays. As the book's title indicates, he was a dedicated parish priest who served his congregation.

The need for Knights
The 1870s and 1880s were a dangerous time. Diseases like tuberculous were rampant and since antibiotics were not understood, simple injuries could easily become infected and led to serious complications. When the father of a family became gravely sick or died, that family lost all certainty and security. Any children old enough would be sent to earn money for the family, while the rest were in danger of being taken into custody by the state to be provided for. Fr. McGivney was distressed by this destruction of families.

Some groups tried to address this problem. Benevolent societies existed and Connecticut was the home of the emerging insurance business. There were dozens of different clubs and secret societies men could join. However, they varied in their membership, aims, and activities. Some were openly anti-Catholic, while others were social clubs that did not promote moral living. Fr. McGivney wanted a group that could provide for the families of its members in case of tragedy and allow its members to bring their Catholic faith into all of the group's actions.

Into this Fr. McGivney decided to start a new group for Catholic men: the Knights of Columbus. Since there were prejudices against Catholics and talk of them being more loyal to the Pope than the United States, the Knights took the name of Christopher Columbus; an acknowledged national hero.

128 years later
Today the Knights of Columbus have over 1.8 million members. They volunteer their time and money to charitable causes in their communities. Fr. McGivney's vision of protecting widows and orphaned children is realized by a strong insurance program.

In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI declared Fr. McGivney to be of "heroic virtue." He is referred to as a "Venerable servant of God" because his life exemplified great virtue. These are early steps on the path to sainthood.

A Retreat and a Subpar Weekend

Several weeks ago I went on a retreat at church.

For those of you who do not know, I have been on many religious retreats. I started counting and came up with over a dozen that lasted more than one day and more than I can remember that were day events. I was also involved with planning a couple of them.

Now back to the most recent retreat titled Christ Renews His Parish. It is an established retreat program that started in 1969 and has been used by Catholic parishes across the country.

Evaluating, not experiencing
As the retreat started, I evaluated everything in it from an administrative point of view. I was thinking how I would change things to make it better. I compared every part of the retreat to experiences I had on other retreats. This was bad because I lost some focus on experiencing the programing myself. However, in almost every area I came up with a suggestion for improvement. The small groups were sized too small, the group leaders did not facilitate effectively, the talks were not properly connected to the activities, the activities were unexciting and repetitive, and the list goes on.

At the end of the weekend many people said it was one of the best retreats they had ever been on or even one of the best weekends of their lives. It ranked near the bottom of retreats I have been on. Now a few points about the good and bad.

There was a gap between me and the other people. On the other retreats I have been on the leaders and other participants were my own age. During this one most people had children and I could not relate to anyone's comments about their relationships with their wives or children. One of the three other people in my group went to Cal; he was a student when Pappy Waldorf coached the Golden Bears. While that is awesome, that makes him at least 50 years older than me.

This age gap leads into one of the strengths of this retreat; the talks from the team were great. Compared to other retreats I have been on, these people had a lot more time to mess up their lives and draw meaning from their mistakes.

I went to the sacrament of Reconciliation also known as confession. It was the oddest Reconciliation I have ever been to, but also the best. My sinning has been reduced in measurable ways (at least so far). In another context I wrote a few comments on the Reconciliation if you are not familiar with it.

Continuing on
The retreat experience did not end on Sunday. On the following Wednesday and every Wednesday night for the next few months the retreat participants are invited to participate in a sharing and discussion focused on the readings that will be used at mass on Sunday.

While the retreat weekend was less than average for me, it had a good effect on me for the following weeks. I am being nicer and more considerate of people. They gave all the participants a Bible and we had to use it for a few of the activities. I was inspired to open it up and read almost everyday for a couple of weeks afterward.

The other participants were positively affected in the days after the retreat as well. When things became difficult at work or home, many people said they remembered the retreat and did not lose their temper.

This entire retreat process has some good ideas in it. However, they need to be expanded and executed better. They are looking for people to help plan the next retreat. I want to be involved, but I have to find the right balance between conflicting impulses. I want to rewrite the book for the retreat, but I also want to be humble and learn more about how they do retreats before suggesting big changes.

Hamming Windows, Halloween, and Inspiration

This starts last Sunday when I was working on an assignment for my DSP class. My problems started when I got the Hamming and Hanning (or Hann) windows confused. Look at the equations for both of the windows and you can see how close they are. At first I thought I had to explicitly code each equation to magically create the windows. Even though I had an example for another kind of window, I had no idea how to do this.

The notes gave an example of a Hanning window complete with the equation and then asked me to use a Hamming window and gave me its equation. When I read this I thought both of them were Hanning windows with the second one being implemented with a slightly different equation. I tried many things, but I could not create the window or even reproduce the example in the notes.

Then around 5:45 Sunday afternoon inspiration hit. I realized the example and the exercise were two different functions, I did not have to code them directly, the earlier example in the notes was unnecessarily long and drawn out, and MATLAB has built in functions for Hanning, Hamming, Tukey, Kaiser, and Rectangular windows. I was very pleased I figured this out.

Moments later I was struck by an unrelated inspiration. I remembered how much I enjoyed Halloween when I was a child. At some of the houses I went to the adults distributing candy were very into Halloween. In Ohio, my neighbor across the street made a witch head and answered the door with it scaring the children, while some people just handed out candy in normal attire. I thought it would be great if I dressed up when I answered the door. Since I had 15 minutes and had not worn a Halloween costume for a few years, my options were limited. However, I remembered a mask I had in the garage, a coat I had never worn before, and a hat and gloves from when I was a magician. After finding all of this in a few minutes, this was the result.



The children were scared. Many of them commented on my costume. A couple of people thought I had a gorilla mask, while I think it looked more like a skeleton mask with the bones colored black and the teeth white.

In the large groups of trick or treaters, some of the really little kids saw me and were scared to walk from the sidewalk up to the door to get candy. I had to get as low as possible and hold the candy in front of me so the four year olds would not be intimidated. My costume was an overwhelming success.

On a class related comment, now might be a good time to start looking at the lecture notes, reading the textbook, or working on the assignment due at 11 tonight. If inspiration is going to strike again, I better be ready for it.

A Merely Interesting Book

Yesterday I finished the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

It is an introductory book to Christianity and recounts some of Lewis's arguments and reasoning that brought him to Jesus. It was originally a series of talks Lewis gave over the radio in England during World War II. The talks were later edited and expanded into a book.

Lewis is advocating for Christianity in general and not one denomination or another. In the title, the adjective mere refers to Christianity in the general sense, not a specific type like Anglican or Presbyterian Christianity.

My knowledge of Christianity is well beyond the introductory stages, so a book that explains basic ideas is boring. While there were a few interesting analogies and arguments, they not worth going through the entire book to find.

The book was not excessively interesting to me. It took me over two months to read it. The book was not difficult or hard to understand, but it was not as interesting as any of the other books I was reading or wanted to start during that time. It might have kept my attention better if I skipped some sections and read the book in a few days' time.

If you want to understand the reasoning an atheist took to become a Christian and read explanations of the tenets of Christianity, this book might be for you. If you are like me and already know about Jesus and the Christian world view, I would suggest picking up one of Lewis's other books like The Screwtape Letters or The Great Divorce.

Read about the Ragtime

I just finished the novel Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow. It was great and you should read it too.

It is historical fiction that takes place in and around New York City at the start of the Twentieth Century. Much of the story follows three families and what they do to fulfill their dreams in America. In the book over half a dozen historical figures interact with the main characters without eclipsing them. The famous real people drive the thematic development without diverting the plot.

I was first exposed to the story in high school when I was involved with our school's musical production based upon the work in May 2003 (Oh no! the Unnamed Geniuses made a mistake). When the story was adapted for the stage a lot of material had to be cut out or reduced. However, this meant when I read the book a bunch of it was new to me.

I came to know the plot of Ragtime the same roundabout way I learned the plot of all the plays I worked on. I will explain.

Learning plot through play
Whenever I was on stage crew, I pieced the story of the play together slowly. Since my job was to build things and move stuff around, I was not given a script. As rehearsal started, I would hear about individual scenes. The stage manager would say we needed to make a graveyard scene or the director would talk about benches we needed for a classroom. This gave me an idea of the setting. When the cast appeared on stage to practice lines I learned more about the action. As the days advanced, I would see a couple of new scenes and some of the old ones incessantly repeated. I knew a few isolated parts very well, but lacked the context they were in. If it was a musical, the songs would haunt my waking and resting hours.

As I learned more about the characters, I still had no idea what the correct sequence of events was. More plot details would emerge from what I was told to do. Once the stage manager told me to build a window seat with an opening top so bodies could be hidden inside it. I had no idea why people died, only that they were hidden. Every time I pieced together a narrative that made sense to me, something would throw it into chaos. The stage manager would say we needed to bring a barrel in for the jail scene or the technical director said we needed to simulate a fire offstage. Since the storyline I had constructed had nothing to do with a jail and no room for a character to go to jail, these revelations would bring my understanding of the play back to square one. It was not until the first dress rehearsal that I saw all the scenes and figured out the correct order. After seeing the complete play I would realize I made a big mistake, like thinking the villain of the story was actually the hero.

Now back to the book. When I recently heard the novel was supposed to be a good work of literature I decided to pick it up. I was not disappointed; the book was great. Unlike some of my recent reading, every time I put the book down I looked forward to when I would continue it the next day.