At work, a few of us were talking about the Canadian National Debt vs. the American National Debt, and I found this website that shows how much we owe:

$800 Billion seems like a lot of money, but compared to the $8 Trillion that the US owes, we’re looking pretty good. And our debt is decreasing unlike our neighbours’ to the south. They’re spending over $1 Billion each and every day on the Iraq Invasion Conflict.

Makes you feel a bit better about your mortgage payment, doesn’t it?

I stopped using Gmail as a host for my domain email today. I decided to install RoundCube Webmail on my web server instead. This way I could use IMAP and have may mail synced in both Apple Mail and webmail.

This only took a few minutes to do because there isn’t much setup required in RoundCube Webmail. The thing I had trouble with was spam. I have my email forwarded to my blackberry, and there is no way for me to forward only legitimate mail. I either get all mail, or no mail.

The solution I came up with is to use Gmail as a spam filter. It’s a pretty simple idea really. I just forward all of my mail to Gmail, and have Gmail forward all of that mail to my Blackberry. Gmail doesn’t forward any spam email, so all I get is the good stuff.

Hopefully some of you out there will find this useful.

What is it with Fredericton drivers? I know that drivers are drivers, no matter where they are, but in Fredericton, people have trouble driving if someone even mentions the word “snow”.

Last night it snowed in Frederiction, and there was still some evidence of that when we got here at about 7:30 this morning. It’s not like the ground was covered, but there was a light dusting here and there along the side of the highway.

Beyond the inability of people to drive even 80% of the speed limit at times like this, we saw two cars off the road not long before the Regent Street intersection. One car had spun out and was sitting in the ditch along the median, and the other was on top of a guard rail. Not into the guard rail, but on top of it. All 4 wheels were off the ground. I don’t even know how this happens.

I was trucking along at about 110 km/h, and I didn’t see any snow or slush on the ground until the intersection at Regent Street. I can’t imagine how these people lost control of their cars, but every time it snows, I see somebody off the road up here.

As I said, drivers are drivers wherever you go, but it just seems as if Fredericton drivers are that much more stunned than the rest of us when it comes to a bit of weather. I’ll have to be extra careful next winter since I’ll be living up here.

So, it’s a nice day outside today, and I’m itching for a nice rib eye steak, except I’m looking for a different taste than usual. I like to stay away from barbecue sauce on my steaks, and I’m kind of tired of Montreal steak spice, so I go looking for a marinade or a dry rub that’s a little different than I’m used to making.

Do you know what I find on the interweb? People can’t cook. They think Italian salad dressing is an ingredient. Tell me that isn’t lazy. That super secret recipe of Italian dressing is just oil, vinegar, and spices you can buy right off the shelf…plus all the sodium and preservatives (definite cooking essentials).

I’m no gourmet, but I can’t stand looking at recipes that are based around prepackaged foods and condiments. Try looking for a recipe for pot roast. I’d bet that if you read 5 recipes, you’d see one that calls for cream of mushroom soup and a packet of dried onion soup mix. That’s some good old-fashioned home cookin’.

Granted, there are some off-the-shelf products that just take too much time to make, so it’s easier to use them. Dijon mustard, for example, is used in all kinds of salad dressings and marinades. It’s just mustard seed, vinegar, white wine, and spices, but it takes a long time to make because it has to refrigerate overnight. I use it myself in marinades, but it’s definitely low on the list of ingredients. It’s always there to compliment something else.

Now, I’m not against condiments. I use them all the time…as condiments. As I mentioned earlier, I use Montreal steak spice on my steaks sometimes. But that’s the dry rub. I don’t try to use it as an ingredient in a new concoction. If you insist on using prepackaged condiments as the main ingredient in a marinade, you might as well just buy a bottle of marinade off the shelf instead.

Rant complete.

Here are a few of the pictures we took in Florida. There are some from our resort in Palm Coast, some from St. Augustine which is the oldest continuously inhabited city in North America, and some from MGM Studios in Orlando.

There are lots more, but I just need to find the time to upload them all!