Thursday, October 18, 2012

Warmth for the Inside

As the weather gets colder, it's time to move to hot beverages. I feel like a cup, no, make that a mug, of tea. After posting this blog, I'm going downstairs to boil some water for a mug of Genmaicha (Brown Rice Green Tea) :)

My Genmaicha are tea bags from Ten Ren Tea. I'm lucky my local asian market carries them. Otherwise, I'm sure you can order it online. Ten Ren Tea makes it with Sencha Green Tea blended with roasted brown rice. It gives me almost the same taste I get from having toasted rice soup after all the rice is scraped out of the rice pot :)

You can make your own Genmaicha by toasting rice grains and adding it to your favorite green tea (1:1). If you are unsure as to how to toast rice, just use your favorite search engine. There are many recipes out there; even ones for making your own Genmaicha.

Try it! You may enjoy it! I do :)

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Behind the Wheel, Not Today

Someone is telling me I should not be behind the wheel today. Really.

Our zoo had free admission today. I was going to go and take my sister and her kid.

I headed out to go get them. As I was backing out of their driveway, I did not see the car that was coming towards my right. I got a honked, I stopped and watch the car drive around me. I guess I was distracted by my convo with my sister.

We almost got to the zoo. I was in the left turning lane waiting for the light to turn green and watching all the traffic that the free zoo admission was causing. BOOM! I got hit from behind. I think the kid who was sitting in the back felt most of the impact. My back bumper got more scratched than damaged. I guess it adds to all the dings and scratches it has accumulated through its 10 years. The car that ran into me got majority of the damage -- mangled license plate, left headlight hanging out and black plastic pieces on the ground.

As the County Sheriff was on hand to direct all the traffic that the zoo was causing, one of them drove right over without us calling anyone. The Sheriff shoved the hanging headlight back into her car. Bad thing, I got to head into Newark to pick up the police report versus our local police department. I don't like driving to cities where I'm unsure of whether there is parking. I'm not a fan of parallel parking.

As this is the first major accident I was involved in, I didn't do what the insurance company says you need to do. I only took the other person's name and phone number and a couple of pictures (handy to have camera on phone). I guess I'm counting on the Sheriff to have taken everything (insurance and driver info) for the police report. I'll see what my insurance agency says. I can always call the driver. Poor thing was distracted by the zoo traffic and thinking about the wedding she had to go to. Plus, it was her third accident.

We decided not to go to the zoo. It most likely will be crowded as cars were backing up the traffic. I drove sis and the kid home and headed back to my house. As I was waiting at major intersection for the car in front of me to complete his left turn, a car from my left zoom pass me. It ran the red light!

After seeing that, it's safer for me to stay home today. Yep, no more driving for me today.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Introducing My HD to My PS3

Well, my PS3 snubbed my new 1TB hard drive. I really wanted them to play nice with each other after I loaded many movies onto the hard drive.

Once I discovered I could turn my laptop into a Media Server my PS3 recognized, I jumped for joy. However, this would have been too much for Pointy to navigate. Start up the software on my laptop. Turn on PS3. Go find the laptop media server. Go find the correct directories/folders. Plus, I later discovered that sometimes there is a delay in transmission since I relocated the laptop to another floor.

There had to be a simpler solution for her as I no longer wanted to burned DVDs.

A harddrive!!!

The PS3 has a USB port that would accept an external harddrive. After some digging, my PS3 will only play nice with drives that are FAT32. PC hard drives out of a box are NTSC.

DISCRIMINATION I say!

Yes, your computer will format a drive to FAT32 but only up to 32 gigs. I did not want to put any partitions on my HD. I needed mine to be the whole 1 TB. We all know Google is our friend. I searched and searched many sites until I finally found what I was looking for -- Formatting to FAT32 Tool. Yeah!!!

I downloaded the tool. Re-formatted my 1TB hard drive (stoopid PS3) and reloaded all the videos.

Now, Pointy is a happy camper as I've now become her VCR/TiVO. I find the programs she watches and make sure I put it onto the HD for her.

I did teach her something new but don't think it's made a permanent home in her brain yet. If the PS3 does not want to play nice with the HD (yes, sometimes the PS3 doesn't like the video formats), she can hook her laptop to the telly via 9-foot HDMI cable and plug the HD into her laptop. I've only shown this to her once. Let's see if she remembers or will she suffer quietly when she can't watch her programs ;) Or, even think of just watching the stuff on the HD on her laptop.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Jusy, You Slacker!

Wow! It's been over five months since my last post. I guess I did not have anything I wanted to say. Okay, I did, but procrastination reared its pretty head :) I'll try to catch you up.

I've got some photos I need to upload so you can see my latest trips. Yeah, I'll get to that soon.

Last month, I succumbed to "Pin It"-itis. I have 20 boards and 413 pins in my Pinterest account. Some of the boards have things I've tried or am going to try. So, I know two that I need to blog about. I'm feeling good about those.

Stay tune :) but not too close as they'll appear... ummm... sometime this year ;)