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December 21, 2006
Ethnic Foods
For at least the past year, I've had an on-going disagreement with a coworker of mine over what is a kolachi. Today, I believe I won the fight.
What we agree on, the bread. It's a more yeast styled, soft bread. Clearly not a pastry bread.
What we don't agree on, the shape and fillings. In my northeastern US world, the filling is a poppyseed roll, while his Texas roots claims it can be fruits as well.
Thanks to the US Postal service and my parents, a shipment of kolachi arrived last night. I brought in a bit of one roll for my coworker to try. He liked it, but claimed it wasn't kolachi. His look more like a donut/danish filled in the middle, while mine is more a long roll.
Our resident Russian coworker was brought in to mediate this battle today, and he agreed that what I brought in is in fact a kalachi (note he corrected my spelling of it). He even thought this was an excellent version of it, despite it being a grocery made.
The argument has now moved into the proper spelling while completely bringing productivity to a halt. Not that the holidays didn't already do that.
Posted by Dan at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)
December 17, 2006
Mountain Life
I spent Sat on Mt Hood enjoying the snow. The reason for mentioning this is of course the on going search for 3 climbers who seem to be lost. The huge amount of effort being put forth by the rescue teams is one that is hard to describe. The C-130 circling overhead, the Blackhawk helicopters, and the Chinnok mae quite a presence.
It's interesting how mis-information gets spread though. On the mountain the rumor was two of the climbers had been found alive. Getting down we discover one helo thought they saw two but it turned out not to be true. :-(
More later.
Posted by Dan at 09:04 AM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2006
Very very zune
I saw my first Zune in the wild today. It was on the train ride home, a black one. I talked to the owner and had a chance to check it out personally. Not too impressive. Felt rather clunky to me, and I own an iPod Photo.
I think the owner was slightly embarrassed about owning it too that or Microsoft really skimped on some features for it. He was using the trademark white earbuds from an iPod with the system, and I know that's not because they're comfortable.
I asked if he's "squirted" music to anyone yet to discover he's found a distinct lack of Zune-ige in the area. He's been a bit disappointed by the inability to utilize that feature. This seems to ring true with an article recently on news.com.
Posted by Dan at 09:21 PM | Comments (0)
December 11, 2006
Santa Con 2006
It's that time of year again; Santa Con. This year was another excellent year with a only minor amounts of chaos included. No firecrackers that I know of, and all bars were able to handle the entire crowd of Santa's (from what I could tell).
Highlights for the day's events included the reindeer games, the botched Santa takes a Christmas boat journey (only a few got on the boats), and the disorganized chaos that came later. A couple of infidels tried to subvert the route, creating splinter cells of Santas.
It was a long day of drinking and I had to leave before many of the really crazy antics started up. Ahh well. Good memories none the less. Can't wait for next year!
Update: Helps to include the image. Oh and here are a few more galleries...
http://scotist.com/caco/santacon/Site/santacon.html
http://leler.com/gallery/v/santa06/
Posted by Dan at 06:33 PM | Comments (0)