Oh the Irony (pt3)

It seems like my Macbook read the previous post.

Yesterday I woke up and fired up the PC ready to get some work done, ie. Play WoW. The Girlfriend called me from upstairs and told me that WoW was giving an error, it was saying there was a trojan on the PC. After further research it was found that there was a keylogger on the PC which would probably steal my WoW password. Though they probably won't find anything of serious worth, at most an underpowered lvl 36 Human rogue.

What to do? Well, the Macbook had WoW installed on it...

So while I ran all sorts of malware removers and anti-virus programs on the PC which ran the entire day, we got our WoW fix on the Macbook.

Maybe Justin Long wasn't entirely wrong.

Screw you Justin Long! (pt2)

I wake up on Sunday morning, and power on my Macbook. Nothing. At this point all I could do was smile in frustration. Smile because I knew if I didn't I would've have probably thrown it out the window. Only 2 days after being "repaired" it stopped powering on again. And since I was going to be on Ortigas on Monday, I had to wait till today to bring it back to the repair shop. But just for shits and giggles, I pull it out of my bag and try to power it on. Wahey IT FUCKING LIGHTS UP. Ahh yes, because laptops that randomly choose when they will work ARE EXACTLY WHAT I WANT.

Now I know I don't speak for the entire consumer base, nor does this incident represent all of Apple's products. And this also doesn't mean that I suddenly love Vista and co. (The Vista campaign, and some may argue the OS itself, was horrendous. XP and even 2k are still my preferred Windows OS'.) Call me deluded and/or jaded, but when a product is advertised and tries to build its reputation as a stable product, unexpectedly fails for no reason, that's what pisses me off. When I build a Windows PC, I know what I'm getting into. BSOD's, spyware, IE7 (lol) and what have you, but I know it's expected and I can usually prevent it or find ways around it. With a Mac, according to Justin Long and co., "it just works". Well, for me, it did until a week ago. Then it became "It just works... sometimes".

Speaking of Justin Long, after being beat up by Apple ad's for so long, Microsoft answered with the "I'm a PC" ads, and I found these way better. Sure the "I'm a Mac" ads may have convinced me to buy a Mac, but the "I'm a PC" ads made me want to switch back, and that's a considerable feat. (Take that all you "once you go Mac, you'll never go back!" people. Fuck I hate that phrase. And I hate the people that use it. Yeah I went Mac, and it randomly won't fucking power on!)
That and Feng from Microsoft (@0:10 in the ad) is hot, she's like an Asian version of Sarah Chalke.



And again, every Apple pundit will probably bash me for the weak reasons I've presented, but what it all boils down to is a matter of personal preference. And for me, I prefer using a Windows PC. (except Vista. Ulgh. And fucking Biztalk Server. YEAH I'LL RANDOMLY NOT CONNECT TO THE DATABASE.)

Justin Long Was Wrong

So my mac broke down last week. I shut it down in the evening, woke up and tried to power it in, nothing. Went through all the secret button key presses, removed all the RAM and the HDD, did all the secret key presses again, still nothing. I eventually gave in and brought it to a repair shop, where after 5 days I got it back, the fucking tech gave me non-answers and and judging by his oh-so-friendly demeanor clearly I wasn't worth his time, and although the junior tech girl was friendlier she was clearly reading off the diagnostic report. But still, I was a happy chappy in the fact it wasn't the logic board that was broken.

The timing of the Mac breaking couldn't have been better; On Thursday we had a meeting where it was discussed that personal laptops would be banned from work (which I think is a rule that should have been enforced a long time ago). So, back to Windows it was for me. And to be honest, I actually liked it. (Holds up sheild from Apple fanboys).

I know you've probably read and read and read all the articles breaking down Windows and Apple, comparing the two apples to apples (hardy har har!) but these are some of my personal reasons. Strange and iffy as some of them may be.

I don't like the chiclet keyboard. I want to be able to feel each button press as it clicks, the satisfication of finally coming up with the correct parameters or the correct sequence can only be punctuated with the noisy clack of hammering down on the Enter button. To me the chiclet keyboard seems, I dunno, too chic? When I type my fingers do feel like they're typing on air, and I do seem to be less hindered and it may take less effort, but... I still find myself looking for the touch of the old keyboard.

I hear the scoffs of people thinking "Pfft! He doesn't like Mac's because of their keyboard??" Well, functionality. A majority of the applications and tools I use for work and home are built for Windows. And although I can find other programs that can work around or make do, the Windows versions always seem to be the better choice. For example, TOAD. Even though I try to limit it's use as I want to get the hang of doing things through the command line, I do sometimes have to use TOAD. So everytime I have to use it, I have to open VirtualBox to open up my Windows virtual machine. Same thing for DameWare.

The stigma of what it represents. I remember a few years ago, we would joke around about getting a Mac, because it was more expensive, we thought what we were getting was a premium item. All that time we held it in high regard, a purple item so to speak. But when I did finally get it, sure I was impressed, but at the same time, in some ways disappointed. Sometimes it's hard for me to pin exactly what it is, but I definitely feel more at home on a Windows machine.

It's late, I need to play WoW, and that last paragraph was an incoherent waste of space. Btw this post was written on a Macbook.

Pan seared?

A couple of months ago I had purchased a cast-iron skillet in the hopes of making the kind of steak you see in cookbooks and menus; done on the outside with a pink center. Being raised under a textbook Filipino roof, whenever steak was on the menu it was always well done. Any shade of pink or red and we were suddenly at risk of salmonella. To make a long story short, I did get to try it once, but it was a failure in the fact that the meat was done all the way through, and I placed the blame mostly on the fact that the steak was too thin (roughly 1.5cm. And as I was about to find out, that was only part of the reason for the failure).

Browsing through some cookbooks the past week, I was inspired to try the same thing but with tuna. Tuna being a) healthier and b) cheaper (!) what did I have to lose? Since it was me and The Girlfriend's anniversary I wanted to make it for Saturday, but the stupid grocery (Damn you Makati Supermarket Alabang! Screw you and your retarded (non) refund policies!) didn't sell any tuna slices. Just as well, as I was able to get "fresh" slices from the market the next day. After looking up several pan-seared tuna recipes online, I decided to go with this one. Being the cheapskate that I was, I skimped out on the mirin and the rice vinegar, and substituted the honey with sugar.

Now what to go with the tuna. Don't know why, but I suddenly thought of rice pilaf. Not that I've ever cooked or had pilaf on a regular basis or even knew exactly what it was, now seemed like a good time to try it. So again, after scouring the internet (or picking the first link that shows up in Google) I chose to follow this recipe. I substituted the celery with spring onions, did away with the seasoned salt, and we didn't have any cayenne either. Also I didn't have any chicken stock or bones on hand, so I made some bootleg stock with some onions, carrots and a cube Knorr chicken stock. Crap, I just realized now that I had put away some chicken neck and bones in the freezer for situations just like this. Oh well.

Our menu: Pan-seared Tuna covered in sesame seeds with rice pilaf, and a garden salad with thousand island dressing.

My plan of attack was to get the pilaf going, and then cook the tuna while it was cooking. So I started my bootleg broth, and then browned the rice. Never in my life have I thrown uncooked rice into a frying pan, so I was completely clueless on it's color or how to tell if it was done. And I think I may have overdone it with the spring onions, because it looked like more than half of what was in the pan was green. Nevertheless, once it looked like the grains were slightly browned, I threw it in my bootleg broth, and it smelled pilafy, so I assumed everything was good so far.

For the tuna, I took of the skin and the darker areas (Not sure what the part is called, but I'm pretty sure my parents would disagree vehemently from the apparent wastage) and then put them in the marinade of soy sauce and sesame oil. Sesame oil is one of, if not the best smell that can come from a kitchen. Just getting a hint of it's smell and you know good food is to follow.
Anyway, I decided not to follow the recipe and followed the user comments, ie. dipping the cooked tuna into sesame seeds instead of having the sesame seeds mixed in with the marinade.

So after heating the skillet and putting a drop of olive oil, away we went. Since The Girlfriend has trouble with even slightly raw fish, I cooked the thinner slices for her, and left the 2 thicker slices for my pinkish test. For the thinner slices, I left them at 2 mins on each side, and for the 2 thick slices, I left it at about 1 minute.

When I dipped the cook slices in sesame seeds, it looked nothing like the pictures depicted it. In the picture you see a nice tuna steak garnished with a few sesame seeds. In reality, my tuna steaks were completely overwhelmed with sesame seeds, like you see in cartoons where the antagonist gets covered in honey and is then engulfed with bees.

So how did it all turn out? well, the pilaf was ok, I mean I don't have enough pilaf experience to make a proper judgement, but it was maybe lacking in taste. I mean, if you compare it to just plain cooked rice the flavor difference could've been more. As for the tuna, yep, it was a failure, still overcooked. But if you look at the next picture, you can see this slice did have a slight smidgen of pink tinge to the center part, but not the pronounced color difference I was looking for.


The marinade slightly worked too well, as both The Girlfriend and I commented that it was a bit too salty, this owing to the fact that I skimped on both the mirin and the vinager, and I had probably used too little sugar.

Lessons learnt: Skillet wasn't hot enough, fish left in the pan too long. I really should be more diligent about the cooking times. I was thinking about 30 seconds per side but in the middle I was like "meh, a few more seconds won't hurt" and so the cooking times were a bit inconsistent. And as far as the heat, I was pretty sure that it wasn't hot enough, but since it started sizzling a few seconds after putting in the pan, I thought it was good enough. Well, apparently not. As for the pilaf, well, I have to eat more pilaf I guess :P That and using proper chicken stock and salt.
Oh well, all in all it didn't turn out too bad, but I will definitely be trying this one again.

Pinakbet: Let the Kalabasa Jokes Begin

On Friday evenings when me and The Girlfriend are too tired to cook (and the wallet allows) we sometimes go to the nearby Kanin Club. This past Friday being one of those occasions, off we went hankering for their BBQ and pinakbet, even though I had my suspicions if it was still open or not due to the late hour. When we arried, my suspicions were confirmed and it was indeed closed.

Following this, the entire next day was spent thinking about pinakbet. Finally, I had to declare "Magluluto ako ng pinakbet bukas". (Tomorrow I'm going to cook pinakbet.) Just a note, because we come home late on weeknights, and Saturdays we're mostly not at home, Sunday is our day for cooking/experimenting.

Armed with the blood of my Ilocano forefathers, and (probably more helpful) my new Kulinarya book, (naks!) I embarked on making this "family favorite." (Double quotes because I know there are some family members will dispute this being a 'favorite'.)

When it was decided that pinakbet was on the menu, The Girlfriend and I immediately debated whether to use bagoong isda or bagoong alamang. Her family kitchen used alamang, while we traditionally used isda. Since I would be at thelm of this recipe, bagoong isda it was. But it didn't stop there. The Girlfriend dismissed the bagoong we had, saying that it didn't taste that good. So, I went out to the nearby spermarket, but lo and behold, they didn't have any bagoong isda. So I was forced/destined to use the one we had, and I had admit that even I had suspicions about it. I mean, it was in a non-labelled jar, covered in black specs that could be either rat droppings or mold. I hope it was mold.

The way pinakbet is usually cooked in our house is that we usually have little tidbits of pork, a very minimal addition, like diamonds in the rough. Of course one of the things we liked about the Kanin Club pinakbet was that it had lechon/cripsy pata-esque pieces of pork, so that was I had planned to use. Luckily we had some slightly large pork cubes that were cut for sinigang/adobo, but it would do for our purposes.

In this regard, I followed their instructions to boil, then fry each side about 20 mins, remove from oil and then fry again for 10 minutes before serving. The boiling, that didn't work out bad, I mean, even in my current cooking level I could still boil a mean pot of water. The first frying, again wasn't so bad, it still looked golden brown, but I could still see that it needed more frying before it could look like how it was in the picture (aha). And here was it all went wrong.

The book said 10 minutes, but it was dealing with a bigger piece of pork. Around the 4 minute mark, I could start to see some of the edges were turning a darker shade of brown, and decided to pull the plug on it, which turned out to be too late. I planned to cut the fried cubes into slices, imagining a crispy skin and tender inside. Then reality reared its ugly head, and my dream cubes turned into tough burnt blocks that crumbled when I tried to slice them. I could imagine cooks around the country shaking and clicking their tongues. Sigh, as unuseable as they were, I still went ahead and threw them in.

The other part in which I had screwed up on was the pumpkin. And again it was a mistake on following the book too closely. It said to blanch for 5 minutes, but I forgot to adjust to the fact that a) I was using thinner slices, and b) I was using a lot less than what was specified in the recipe. The only result was that the pumpkin was overcooked, and each piece slightly disintegrated with each stir.

But apart from those two major details (ha) it wasn't a total failure. The rest of the vegetables weren't overcooked, the bagoong wasn't overpowering and had the right amount of saltiness. According to The Girlfriend, there wasn't anything major to complain about, and my meal was rated 2 nods, a raised eyebrow and a polite smile. But then again, she also had a blocked nose.

The Relationship is Obvious

This is my attempt at keeping track of two things I want/need to improve on: Databases (Oracle specifically) and ...cooking.

So far, for 2 years I've been a "DBA". In double quotes, because compared to what I've read from other people's experience, what I do/I've done has barely scratched the surface of what a DBA really does. This is my attempt to track my learning, a place to dump all the notes floating around my laptop, and just maybe help out others who encounter obscure error messages whose solution may not yet be found in the deep sea of sites on Google.

Sure a whole lot of things here are going to be noobish, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if everything here will turn out noobish, but I guess that's what this first post/disclaimer is for. And if you do stumble upon this humble haven and feel the need to correct/educate me, you are more than welcome, in fact encouraged, to do so.


I remember as a kid we had a cookbook at home, the Woman's Weekly Chinese Cooking Class Cookbook. We still have it, but it's with the Ottawa Chapter of the family though. I would always be enticed by the bright colorful pictures of food, getting hungry just looking at them and would always want to try them out. I would ask my parents if we could cook it, but like most parents, would always give me a "parent" answer. I remember I asked if we could make some siopao (steam pork buns) and they said no because it was the rainy season. Makes perfect sense.

Most of my attempts at cooking were I guess thwarted by the then-current rulers of the kitchen, I was however able to sneak in a meal or two to cook, but the opportunities were scant.

When I was on the foothills of college and on the precipice of choosing my path of the future, I wanted to/considered entering the world of culinary arts. An idea however which was almost immediately shot down by my parents who said "Ang tali-talino mo tapos mag iihaw-ihaw ka lang?" Which when translated into English roughly means that why would I waste my "intelligence" just to become a sidewalk bbq vendor. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that a high percentage of sidewalk bbq vendors didn't graduate from a culinary institute.

It was only till now, where by force of necessity that we had to fend for our gastronomic selves, ie. no one their to cook for us, that I am able to take the helm of the kitchen.

Now that I can realize the possibilities, this will be a chronicle of my foolhardy attempts. And like I mentioned above, everything about this part will be noobish. So please feel free to put me in my place if anything is amiss, any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Now that that tl;dr piece is finished, off we go! Time to procrastinate!