Bruce's Blog

Coca-Cola Cake

Bruce — Tue, 22 May 2007 05:17:11 +0000

I’ve been making this cake for years. It’s baked from scratch, it’s super-easy to make, it’s really moist, and is really tasty. Use a standard 10 x 13 inch cake pan. I’ve also successfully baked this in a bundt pan too.

cool cakes

Note: I’m still trying to figure out the optimal configuration of the blog. I’ve decided that the chronological nature of blogs doesn’t really suit a non-chronological type entry. I’ve moved it to a new location within the site. The new home of the Coca-Cola Cake Recipe is here.

Cinco-de-Mayo Smoked Turkey

Bruce — Sun, 20 May 2007 05:40:46 +0000

On 5 May 2007, I finally got to baptize my Big Green Egg! I’d been after one of these things for a few years and finally decided I’d had enough looking and wanted to start doing. I bought it the previous weekend, but school and work commitments kept me from firing up the smoker. On Cinco de Mayo, that all changed.

My initial baptism by fire was a Smoked Turkey Breast that was going to be used for a party my mom was having for my sister’s kids the following day. No pressure, fire up the BGE, do my thing, cool the meat, slice it up the next day–it actually went exactly like that!

The link for the recipe is here.

The pecan gave it a nice flavor and the burnt skin wasn’t an issue as the breast had been refrigerated overnight, rendering the skin soft. My first time in the BGE, first time smoking, first time cooking indirect, and first turkey breast! It was a complete success!

Overall, the party guests were impressed with the turkey breast, complimenting me on both the flavor and how juicy it was. A definite hit!

Bruce Buys a Kayak

Bruce — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 03:05:14 +0000

I finally broke down and bought a kayak. I know the guys on the Hobie Pro Staff and they have been trying to get me into a kayak for a couple of years now. Their persistance finally paid off Saturday.
After seeing the pedal-drive in the Hobie kayaks three years ago, and lusting after them ever since, I finally got one over the weekend–a Hobie Outback Mirage. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to pick it up right then or have to wait, but I was pleasantly surprised to take the exact model and color home with me. I bought the kayak from Dana Point Jet Ski. Tim Boyer, the owner, took care of me and also allowed me to take a test paddle out a couple of weeks prior to buying it. Fortunately, his dealership is located right on the water in Dana Point Harbor, so trying out each model was simply asking to try each one.

Since I got there so late in the day, I wasn’t able to get the boat wet, but I did drive down to the baby beach at the other end of the marina to check out the parking and launching area. I plan to go out next Saturday for my maiden voyage.

The only difficulty I ran into was trying to load the kayak onto a Thule Hull-A-Port carrier that I had purchased from REI using my dividend and 20% off coupon earlier in the day. Getting the kayak up on the CR-V and into the holders wasn’t a problem, it was trying to get it leaned over against the back of the J-brackets. For a normal passenger vehicle, this shouldn’t be a problem because the overall vehicle height is lower, but for a SUV, I couldn’t hold it kayak in-place AND push it over onto the carrier. It was promptly returned and I got straps and pads and layed the kayak over upsidedown onto the bars. It works perfectly! I’m going to be interested to see how this affects my mileage on a long drive like up to Crowley Lake.
The other thing that I ended up getting was the outrigger for the Thule rack. Basically, it’s a bar that extends out from the bar so that you only have to lift half of the kayak into the rack at one time. The big mistake I made was to install the bar on the front bar. This manages to scrape up your brand new rudder mechanism as you lift the front of the kayak into the bar. Bottom line, install the outrigger on the REAR bar!

Mounting a ISO9660 CD-Rom on HP-UX 10.20 and 11

Bruce — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 03:37:14 +0000

I haven’t had to use this since I worked at Access360, but for some strange reason, HP-UX cannot mount a CDROM natively. They have this strange NFS mount from within the machine. I’ve been dragging this around in my email archives for years and decided to post it where I can find it if I EVER need it again.

1) Start the mount daemon in the background
> pfs_mountd& 2) Start the pfs daemon in the background
> pfsd& 3) Check /etc/pfs_fstab to see if “/dev/dsk/c0t0d0 /cdrom pfs-iso9660 xlat=unix 0 0″ exists.
Then, edit or add the above command inside the pfs_fstab file.

4) Mount the CDROM.
> pfs_mount /cdrom

What a messed up system!