Isaac.Eiland-Hall.com

So recently they changed the dough, sauce, and cheese they’re using. As an ex-Domino’s Pizza employee (in the 1990s), I’ve always held a special place in my heart for the company. For a long time after working there, though, I couldn’t stand the pizza unless it was literally fresh out of the oven. Breadsticks, though, were always awesome. Loved them.

Well, when the recently introduced the option for the white garlic sauce instead of the pizza sauce, that was great – I LOVE that stuff. It felt like a friend coming back from a city far away… One of my favorite pizzas now is Domino’s regular crust with the garlic white sauce, diced tomatoes, feta, and sliced italian sausage. Good stuff!

So when I heard they were changing the recipes, I was a little excited. Certainly quite interested.

It came out, and I gave it a try – found a good coupon for two mediums with one topping; ordered a half pepperoni, half bacon; and half diced tomato and half sliced italian sausage (I love ordering halves for more variety!). What’s really odd is that I clearly got one pizza using the old dough, and one with the new. The sauce was new, and I’m pretty sure the cheese was. No complaints – it actually gave me at least a halfway old/new comparison.

I like the new crust.

I see a lot of people complaining on the Domino’s Pizza Facebook that the new pizza is horrible – like New Coke. Oy. Frankly, it’s not HUGELY different from the old recipes… I don’t understand the hate. So I posted my experience.

Well, full disclosure: I was offered a free large one-topping code, and I took it. No strings attached, but I will admit that it pushed me to actually write this entry, which I’d thought about doing anyway… So if you want to discount what I’m saying because of that, hey, at least it’s full disclosure, right?

So anyway… We ordered the pizza today. I snuck in a couple of extra toppings – half pepperoni/mushroom, half double-sliced-italian-sausage (yes, I’m addicted to the stuff!) and extra provolone on top of the whole thing. So I got a pizza for the price of delivery, tax, and two toppings. Well, and the tip – always tip your driver well, they remember you and take care of you when they can.

Result? Excellent. Now, since I added the provolone, I can’t speak to the new cheese on this pizza, but I can sure talk about the crust and sauce, both of which are excellent. The sauce has a tiny bit of spice bite to it – it’s very good. The crust has a little bit of garlic butter applied to the rim – which I think will be a little bit of a problem with time going forward, because it’s apparently hard to get it placed right. Or maybe they need practice. Either way, it’s very very tasty, and makes the crust a joy to eat (well, I always liked it anyway, but it’s even tastier now).

The changes Domino’s Pizza has made in the past couple of years have really made a difference. I remember when I worked there, I would sometimes sneak in cheddar cheese from my house because my favorite pizza was to take a little bit of the zesty breadstick/pan sauce instead of the tomato marinara, add beef, bacon, and cheddar cheese. Delicious!

But I can do that one better now: Order a pizza with the white garlic sauce, ditch the standard moz/prov cheese, and get diced tomato, bacon, and extra cheddar. MMmmmMMMM!!!

And I love that I can get feta, spinach, and diced tomato. Delicious!

My problem is now that I want to order at least three pizzas – one for each sauce – and so many delicious combinations that it’s so hard to decide.

So, to sum up: I really like the new Domino’s Pizza. It’s even better than before!

First of all, let me just say that The Boondock Saints is pretty much my favorite movie of all time. At least, I have this little set of movies that I consider to be freakin’ awesome; to be honest, I’m not sure which is my actual top favorite, but they’re collectively movies I adore.

So I was worried about this movie – I’d heard that maybe it wasn’t so good…

I just got home from seeing it (they FINALLY opened in Panama City…), and let me just say: It. Rocked.

Don’t expect there to be too much thinking here… this is just a hell of a lot of fun. It’s not a comedy, per se, but it is funny as hell.

It is worthy to be the second movie.

If you’ve seen the first one, go see this one. It is worthy.

If you haven’t seen the first one, GO SEE IT! Then go see this one!

What is Sriracha? It’s a spicy thick sauce. Primarily sun-ripened chile, with a bit of garlic (which is not consciously tastable, but is definitely there), a little vinegar and a touch of sugar. That’s the primary ingredients in order of import. It’s not sweet, but a bit less vinegar than Tabasco, for instance.

Here’s the distinctive bottle of Huy Fong brand Sriracha:

So far, the best use I’ve found – which is, by itself, brilliant, is to mix 1:4 ratio of Sriracha:Mayonnaise, and use as a dipping sauce.

I bought this stuff the other day, just because I wanted to try something new. I’m not a hot sauce aficionado, although I did grow up with Tabasco and Louisiana Hot Sauce, way before they were popular in the mainstream… heh. But I’ve never believed in hot overpowering flavour. I like to *taste* my food, and just give it a little kick to open up the taste buds.

So after buying it – without a clear picture of what I wanted to try – I went searching for recipes, and found the mayo idea – which sounded good. So I made up about 2oz (approximately four teaspoons of mayo and one teaspoon of sriracha), and tasted it to try and think of what to do with it. MmMMmmmMMM!!!

I had some potstickers on-hand, so I steamed them and used this sauce as a dip. Lemme revisit that “MMmmMMmMMMMM!!!” – very tasty!

I think it would also work well for chicken, or sushi.

I also found a suggestion to mix 1:1 honey:sriracha, which I did, but found to be a bit too hot for my taste, so I will later try diluting that to maybe a 3:1 honey:sriracha and see if it works better. I’ll try it as a dip for sweet and sour pork/chicken, or as a dip for eggrolls.

I did also cook a batch of green beans (from raw frozen) that I added some ham, garlic, salt, and sriracha – it was a little bit different flavour from the Tabasco I normally use, but it was quite pleasant.

Sriracha has a little bit of… I don’t want to say “gritty” texture, that’s much too strong a word – but you can feel the chile just like with chili powder. It’s not unpleasant; in fact, just the opposite.

I like the flavour it adds – not just hot, but the garlic is nice. And it’s not too much vinegar, which means I can use this stuff in places where that would be detrimental.

Also, it’s a brilliantly strong red color, which is really nice. That’s natural, too – not artificial. Of course it turned pink in the mayo, but it wasn’t an ugly pink.

So, overall, I really like this stuff. I heartily recommend it.

YouTube – The Passenger.

Pretty freakin’ sweet.

Omnomicon makes » how to make a rainbow cake!.

I so want this now! It’s really spiffy.

Cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

Lobbyists Furiously Lobby White House to Preserve Lobbyist Power: Having a few select lobbyists from big corporations telling the senate and congress what laws to pass, laws that only benefit those corporations. via reddit.com.

Favorite sentence I can remember in recent times from a news article:

Lobbyists have been furiously lobbying the Obama White House to oppose restrictions on their ability to lobby.

Seems logical to me.

Great, funny movie. Some reviews here.

On the extreme, inescapable limitation of human mind: Uganda proposes death penalty for HIV positive gays via reddit.com.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 is going through Uganda’s Parliament after receiving its first reading last month.

According to Clause 2 of the Bill, a person who is convicted of gay sex is liable to life imprisonment. But if that person is also HIV positive the penalty — under the heading “aggravated homosexuality” — is death.

This is *bullshit*.

LiveLeak.com – RARE: San Francisco Trolley Dash Cam Footage – 1909 Cool 1st Person Perspective.

This is my young cat, Pepper, who has gotten in the habit of asking me to play with the letter opener with her. And it’s gotten to the point where if I have this shirt on my desk, she will claw at it, trying to get me to play with her – and she especially like tunneling. Strange cat. hehe.

Forgot to mention… at the end – I was concentrating more on taking the video, and she got my finger – drew blood! And I instinctively hit the button to stop recording. heh. Silly cats.

It’s ugly. I don’t have the tools I need. Didn’t realize I needed a piece of wood for the bottom. Had to get it up because the old one was broken and it had to be put up.

So I’ll be fixing this in a few days when I can… Meanwhile, here. Laugh at me. *whimper*

Slideshow:

If that didn’t work, here’s the gallery:

Mailbox Kludge

Handy:

Summary

When you double click a file containing no extension, the Open With dialog opens. In the Open With dialog box, you can click the program where you want the file to open, or click Browse to locate the program that you want.

However, the Open With dialog may not allow a permanent association for files with no extension, as the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file check box may be grayed out. This article tells you how to associate Notepad to open files with no extension.

Link here:

http://www.winhelponline.com/articles/67/1/How-to-associate-Notepad-to-open-files-with-no-extension.html

2009110906z-NHC-TropWindProbs – View capture

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So I was fighting a particular legal battle – I’m not mentioning the subject here so I don’t bother those that don’t care…

We won!

This is a work in progress. It’s listenable, if a bit repetitive. I think I have a decent groove going on, but I’ve got to figure out what to *do* with it now.

Listen now: IEH-033 – Beautiful Day (working).ogg

Walked again today – 1.7 miles in 37 minutes = 2.75mph

Back in town from HACU internship orientation in Washington, D.C. What a trip!

And now I have to get to work. I’m working full-time and going to school… Oh, and I got talked into doing a play…

0.9 miles in 18 minutes == 3mph

So I downloaded a little applet today that may help me track my time better — that’s something I’ve had trouble with. I have to log my time working for AirFire, if nothing else, since that’s a 40hr/wk internship… I’d written down my hours from a couple of weeks ago, but I can’t find that paper right now. So… that’s not good.

Meanwhile, I found an Adobe Air applet that will help me keep track, so I’ve been using it today. Well, when I remembered to. But at least it tells me a minimum time I’ve spent… heh.

I’ve spent more than two hours on math this morning (in fact, I know it’s more like three hours), along with some tasks I haven’t yet started to track (walking, eating, cooking, cleaning)…

I just finished my math quizzes I have to turn in when I go take my test today… so I think I’m going to grab some beef jerky and do my walking, then come back, gather everything, and go take my math test while everything is as fresh as possible… When I get back, check English to see if I can put that off until tomorrow, then get some programming time in…

I’m basically back to 100% health (relatively speaking, of course… heh)

And now I’ve got to catch up on math and take last Tuesday’s test by tomorrow; get my English essay written by tomorrow night; and get some hours in on Loopy (my current internship project) before I leave for Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

So I could use a lot more time than I have. Ugh.