All the restaurants have been adding tilapia to their menus and I’ve tried a few. It’s a nice, firm white fleshed fish. The O’Charley’s menu item was lightly seasoned and grilled on a cedar plank. That was nice. I am going to look for a few recipes and try my hand with it at home one of these next few days.
Wow! Twenty-five years.
AOL launched on this day in 1985. I remember their first headwuarters building in Reston and how several of our technical support guys and engineering guys abandoned ship at C3 and took jobs with this exciting new internet service provider. They encouraged me to come with them – and I did go walk through the building, talk to their people and decided against it.
They are not even close to the big company they used to be, but they still have some loyal subscribers. Happy Birthday, AOL.
I happened across an interesting recipe for an Italian dish and thought I would give it a try tonight. There were a lot of ingredients that I don’t normally keep on hand, so I made a shopping list and went to the grocery store on my lunch break. The main thing I needed was fresh Basil and Panko bread crumbs. The recipe called for fresh parsley, but the store did not have any and I have some dried parsley in my spice rack, so I used that.
The recipe called for chicken breasts and a fresh tomato basil sauce. It was a little bit more effort than I like for a week night dinner, but it turned out great! I was surprised at the intensity of some of the flavors from using fresh herbs and vegetables as opposed to canned or dried ingredients. It would be worth making again, with some nice side dishes and a glass of red wine.
This morning I was reading Jeremy Herndon‘s blog and he had posted about vanity license plates. He mentioned that some vanity plates are a way for charities to raise money. I had not thought of that and it seems a relatively painless way to support a worthy cause by buying a decorated tag for your vehicle.
My car needs to have the tags renewed next month, so I think I will head down to the Clerk’s office and see what choices they have for a vanity plate that I can order and help out an organization that could use my support.
When you suddenly need an attorney, that is not a good time to have to learn about the different kinds of attorneys. The legal field has been narrowed down over the years into some very distinct specialties. For the best legal representation, you need to search out the best lawyer in the right specialty field.
If you have been in an automobile accident, you need a personal injury attorney. These are people who specialize in fighting with insurance companies and medical people.
If you have a problem with divorce, child support or adoption issues, you need an attorney who specializes in domestic issues. These people know the legal system and the government agencies who work in related fields.
If you have been arrested and charged with a crime for anything like DUI or assault, you need a criminal attorney and you need the best one you can find.
Los Angeles Criminal Defense Lawyer | Criminal Attorneys Los Angeles
Part of growing up is realizing your own vulnerability in a violent or threatening situation. Most first instances of this happen at school or because of school. When I was a kid, one of the most dangerous places for weak or younger children was at the corner bus stop. Back in those days, children were dispatched to school with no thought of escorting them to the bus stop or driving them to school in rainy weather. You headed out for school at 7:05 am and your parents expected you to get safely to school and back again around 3:30 each day.
The bus stop was the perfect haunt for bullies. The victims were required to show up each day and the bully was guaranteed to have an audience. The weak took a beating until they either grew bigger or learned to defend themselves.
That is why I insisted on my children taking at least one self defense course in karate. There are private studios all over town and it was not hard to find a class that fit our busy schedules. The first thing I had to do was buy the kids their uniform. The school sold uniforms, but you were allowed to buy used uniforms from other students. I found an even better way to buy uniforms – on the internet.
If the kids stuck with the lessons, you eventually had to buy additional Karate Gear, such as chest protectors and weapons. Some kids stay with the classes throughout their childhood and go to competitions.
When I got tired of bumping my head on the glass ceiling at the computer company I gave a direct sales a try. At the time it seemed all my friends were in sales and they were all very convincing that I should be in that line of work, too. But to be honest, I don’t like face to face sales. Not because of the rejection and objections and the daily frustrations of a dozen unfruitful sales calls. I don’t like the dishonesty in the face to face and phone to phone conversations. But I do like the marketing side of sales.
Isn’t it amazing how phone to phone is such a vital part of doing business? You have to wonder how anyone got things done before the advent of the telephone and sometimes I wonder how we managed without having cell phones.
Now the forward thinkers in the business world are realizing the advantages of business voip for telephone service. It is a concept that you have to introduce to old timers very slowly and deliberately. Unless the boss is an early adapter by nature, the idea of switching from traditional land lines and Ma Bell type of phone service to using the internet – even for PBX functions now! – is hard for some people to grasp.
I like to educate people on the possibilities of the internet and the different ways to send, receive and use data over the internet. VOIP is becoming more accepted as stable and reliable, and now it is proving to be more economical, too.
Every couple of years I find a way to attend a local indian PowWow. This one was at the Long Hunter State Park, which is only about 20 minutes from my house. The Pow Wow was not as big as some of the previous ones, but it was an interesting afternoon.
The photo is of the drumming competition. The drumming and chanting are almost hypnotic, and it is very hard to just sit still while they play their music.
Have you ever wandered into a convenience store and found all the shelves tagged with a yellow strip of paper? that’s how the store management handles inventory audits. They usually hire an independent auditing company to send in a team of workers who count everything in the store and enter the data into these cool handheld data terminals.
Other companies handle inventory issues with handheld scanners or small computers that look like a Blackberry, but they are used for point of sale or inventory data collection in stores.
My friend Jenna showed me the web site where she buys the MC75 handhelds for her company, www.barcodeplanet.com. They have models that work with all the major cell phone carrier networks.
Cooler weather means I will be spending more time in my yard. Not only will I be raking a lot of leaves, I need to prune back a lot of the shrubbery and spread more mulch around their rootbases.
Last year when I wanted to buy some mulch, I had a crash course in the different kinds of mulch and the different colors that can be used. In this area I see a lot of red mulch and a lot of very black mulch. In other parts of the country, browner mulch and pine is more popular. the Seaside Mulch web site has some nice photos of the different kinds of mulch and descriptions of the best application for each type.