I like sausages. So, I was excited that Niman Ranch has a line of sausages that are uncured and have no added nitrates or nitrites. I picked up a pack of the Apple & Gouda sausage and tried it out. I found the flavor to be quite good, but the gouda cheese didn't taste like gouda to me. When the sausage is warm, the gouda (at least I think it's gouda) is completely melted and flows and tastes like pure pork fat. It's pockets of the creamy fatlike cheese are distributed throughout the sausage and biting into it really reminded me of the effect of biting into a custard or cream filled Krispy Kreme donut. I think I'll have to try one of the other flavors next time.

During the last couple weeks, I watched Dreamgirls (3.75/5), Perfume (4/5), Pursuit of Happyness (4/5), Letters from Iwo Jima (4.75/5), 3:10 to Yuma [1957] (3/5), The Time Machine [2002] (2/5), Life or Something Like It (2.5/5), The Marine (1.5/5), and Snakes on a Plane (2.5/5).
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Movies This Week (8/24)

I've been to Santana Row quite a bit but have never dined at Left Bank (one of five Left Banks, owned by the owner of La Folie in San Francisco (where Roland Passot is executive chef) and Tanglewood (also in Santana Row). The dining was pleasant and the food pretty good.
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Left Bank (San Jose, California)

Last night I dined with twelve other food bloggers (including significant others) at Oliveto in Oakland, California. I had never met any of the other bloggers, but it was a lot of fun to eat good food and chat with other foodies.

When Food Bloggers Dine

I just realized that although I can watch television (more or less) while writing, I can't do it while reading. If I start reading, I completely tune out the TV and have to go back (that goodness for DVRs), but I can follow a plot and everything if I'm just writing. Weird, huh?

I don't know why I read and listen to Dan Brown books. I think part of it is the fomulaic nature of the books (starts with a death written in an odd and mysterious fashion, middle is a protagonist caught outside of his or her element but is incredibly brilliant in their new awkward role, and ends with a grand conspiracy being exposed) and the other part is how utterly ridiculous his props are. I say "props" because that's what they are - it's usually some object or device in the book that is designed to make the reader feel like the story is told by a technothriller author (as if Dan Brown were Tom Clancy) but end up fanciful and childish. He starts off his stories with "these things are true" to make you assume that the fake stuff is too… but come on! He always dives into what sounds like a technical description of what a theory is or how something works and then manages to get it slightly (or sometimes totally) wrong. It's like reading an article written by some guy who only read the Cliff's Notes to Popular Science who is trying to pass it off as having decent source material.

Why do I keep reading his books? Probably for the same reason why people pick at scabs and squeeze pimples… I just can't help it (and there's part of me that takes enjoyment out of being annoyed by some part of his stories).

So a couple months ago I built a new computer around a video card I bought, but I did it with the vision that it would eventually replace my current desktop setup. That meant eventually I'd have to build a new RAID set. For data redundancy reasons, I run a RAID 5 for my primary data storage partition. (Right out of college, I lost a massive amount of data - maybe 60 GB - due to striping two disks for increased performance (RAID 0) for the purposes of video editing. After that, I have been running a RAID 5 of some form or other.) My current (until yesterday) solution is one that I have had for over six years now - the Adaptec ATA-RAID 2400A. A full size card that supports four Parallel ATA (we just called them IDE back then since there wasn't two types of IDE drives) drives and was known for reliability and cost-effectiveness (I bought it in 2000 or 2001 for $350). The reliability of the board has certainly been proven over the last six or seven years of continuous usage and three sets of drives. Unfortunately, the board also known for it's relatively low performance in RAID 5 mode. I figured since I had just built a brand new computer and I was running out of storage space (and would have to upgrade my drive set soon), it was time to upgrade from last generation's technology to a modern RAID controller.
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RAIDs and Drive Remapping in Vista

Back in May, I got tired of not being able to enjoy the variety of modern computer games available for Windows, so I went out and bought a PCI Express nVidia GeForce 8800GTS 640MB from eVGA ($380 after mail-in rebate). It wasn't the best video card out there (it was second best) but it was going to be a real jump up from my desktop, a Pentium 4 1.7 GHz with a GeForce 6200 (purchased only because my GeForce3 Ti 500 died after 4 years of continuous uptime - the FAN kept dying! These moving parts - you can't trust them…). I ended up spending an additional 2x on other components to provide a system powerful enough to support the video card! (I couldn't help it.)
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What my 8800GTS made me do

During the last two weeks, I watched I Know Who Killed Me (3/5), The Simpsons (4/5), My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2.5/5).
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Movies This Week (8/9)

So, last month I took my Volkswagen Jetta TDI into the dealer for its 40,000 mile service. As recommended by the manufacturer, the fuel filter should be replaced every 20,000 miles. The last week, I noticed a hesitancy during acceleration which meant to me that I had a clogged fuel filter. This was odd because I have the filter changed every 10,000 miles. I called the dealership to double check that they did in fact replace the filter and found out that they removed fuel filter replacement from the list of things they do on during service. My invoice clearly states that they fuel filter was part of the work order, but the adviser kept repeating that policy had changed but the computers hadn't been updated. I think it's pretty stupid to remove a required service, but they do it all the time. Brake service and coolant service used to be part of the service packages, but no longer. I do think they should have done the fuel filter replacement for free (they didn't, they gave me a token 10% off) for two reasons: 1) They put it on the invoice and I agreed to and paid a price with an expected amount of service and 2) having been told that it had been replaced, if I didn't know what it felt like to drive on a clogged fuel filter, I might not have ever found out that they didn't replace it.

I also noticed that they put in some fuel cleanser without asking (not shown on the invoice or work order at all). I found out because it was checked off on a maintenance checklist that I got with the 40K service (first time I ever recieved a checklist). Since I run on biodiesel, this isn't something I want added to my tank.