Here’s an article on an experimental program to provide price insurance for real estate:Business 2.0 – Magazine Article – Preserving Your Home’s Value.
This is currently only in Syracuse, NY, though there is research to create real estate price puts for other markets. The main problems have to do with creating pricing models for these puts, and to find people who would be willing to write them.
Found on Recipe Source:
Serving Size: 8
Preparation Time: 1:00
Categories: Desserts, Fruit
8 medium apples — peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup butter
Place apple slices in two quart baking dish. Sprinkle with lemon juice.
Combine flour, sugar, oats, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Cut butter into one-inch chunks. Blend into dry ingredients, using a pastry blender two forks or your hands. When crumbly, sprinkle over apples. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. Turn oven down to 350 degrees and bake for 30 minutes more.
Per serving: 312 Calories; 13g Fat (35% calories from fat); 3g Protein; 50g Carbohydrate; 31mg Cholesterol; 123mg Sodium
I fell on my butt.
Well, not quite, since falling on my butt isn’t particularly good ukemi.
This happened while walking around early this afternoon in the freezing weather. It was slightly less freezing the previous day, or the day before, and very slick ice had formed on a storm drain grating on the corner. I stepped on it, and my tractionless sneakers went one way and my body went the other.
This resulted in a side fall. I didn’t slap because I was carrying a bundle of newspapers in the arm that was supposed to slap. My feet did kick out and weren’t under me in a weird way, so that was good. I did tuck my chin, so my head was out of the way. No damage from the fall: there were points of minor impact soreness on my back, spaced like the grating, but they faded in a minute. My elbow bumped a bit in a similar way. Grace was very concerned before I assured her I was fine.
As I’ve tended to think, the ukemi we’re taught probably will get more of a work out, since we’re not going out looking for bar fights.
My breakfall/free fall is all twisty. Here’s a video of it: 
(As a side note, this video was recorded off the Sony digital still camera. It was held sideways to better capture the, uh, verticality of the breakfall. The problem is that you can’t twist the monitor sideways to get a proper view of the video clip. I used information from this page to figure out how to do the rotation, and this page was convenient for RPMs of the necessary tools.)
A bigger image would help, but I’m clearly stepping on the outside of my foot when going into the jump, sort of like a pigeon-toe on the stepping side. Not sure how to fix this, except to do this off the lines on the mat more often. I probably also be stepping inside rather than straight ahead, which will also put a twist into the fall.
One other issue is that my legs crumple up on landing, intead of remaining straight out. My waist is probably bent a bit, also. This might be a side effect of the twisting, but probably not. As usual, I have posture issues.
And, probably not lastly, I’m travelling too far, putting too much energy into a forward direction, rather than straight up.
Some issues with the most recent Tomcat and mod_jk:
1. The oldish app we’re using requires Tomcat to have the following set in the web.xml: enablePooling false. I’m told the app was written to the old specification, and pooling is one of the new things being done with Tomcat 4.1. This took some time to figure out, since I don’t know much about the subtleties of JSPs.
2. The mod_jk upgrade failed badly. The new mod_jk 1.2.2 didn’t work, and dropping back to 1.2.1 and 1.2.0 didn’t fix the problem. I’m getting an error in mod_jk.out that looks like: “wc_get_worker_for_name, done did not found a worker”. Google searches didn’t show anything useful, and I suspect that the problem isn’t talking to Tomcat — tcpdump against the worker port didn’t show traffic — but starting the worker in the first place.
I used a mod_proxy trick to get around this, basically using Proxy statements in place of what would be jkMount ones. This works well enough, and Tomcat isn’t serving static content anyway. I believe this isn’t used more often because mod_proxy doesn’t support persistent connections and SSL environmental information, and so on. This shouldn’t matter for the application we’re running, though, since it doesn’t do anything fancier than HTTP/1.1. Here’s a document on using various connectors from Apache to Jetty, including mod_proxy.
Crap. TurboTax 2002 includes spyware. I’ve already pre-ordered it, having used it for the past four years. Next year, I’ll wait until January before buying tax software, to see what the product landscape looks like. The issue with the TT2002 activiation key is neither here nor there for me, since I’m not going to load it up on a different computer, anyway.
I’m wondering how to handle this. There’s a report that Intuit had to release an uninstaller, though the C-Dilla software will have to remain in place while taxes are prepared. I’m thinking of using VMware to set up a temporary install of Win98 or something just to do taxes. I have a couple of months to figure out what to do, though, so hopefully there will be more positive developments.
Here’s an article from The New Republic by Gregg Easterbrook about the Axel of Evil, i.e., the perverse public policy that favors SUVs and “light trucks” at the expense of the general good (these big vehicles aren’t safer, kill people in other cars, and consume more fuel while expelling more pollutants, all well known issues), and the “existential fiasco” caused by SUVs in terms of aggressive driving. One interesting thing from the world of unintended consequences that I hadn’t heard before: because SUVs aren’t constrained by pollution requirements, engineers have focused on improving the power and acceleration performance of SUV engines, resulting in stunning 0-60 times. Quick acceleration, however, leads to aggressive driving, made worse by poor SUV handling. There is also the social pathology of selling cars that subtract from the safety of others in a crash, regardless of whether SUVs are or are not safer for their occupants.
I made this last night, using a variation of the various hoppin’ john recipes the New York Times put out earlier this month.
I could have used dried beans if I had them on hand, and if I had enough extra time to cook them. This, however, was a Monday night meal, cooked relatively quickly after work. The canned beans saved me about an hour’s time, as well as simplifying water management — I only had to measure out the water to cook the rice, as opposed to cooking both rice and beans, a water quantity which is not additive from the requirements for each. I used Asian short-grain white rice; the water quantity will differ with the variety of rice. Anyway, I used stock instead of water.
Also, I steamed some broccoli on top of the mixture, while the hoppin’ john was in it’s final cooking phase. Total prep time was about 40 minutes.
Rice/Beans
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1 package of turkey bacon (regular bacon can of course be used), chopped
1 teaspoon cheyenne pepper
2 cups uncooked rice
2 cups chicken stock
16oz can kidney beans
1 bunch broccoli chopped (optional)
Chop onion and bacon to equal size. Saute garlic, onion and bacon on med-high heat with olive oil until onions start to brown. Add rice and pepper. Saute for a few minutes more, until rice starts to turn golden. Stir in chicken stock and liquid from the can of beans. Stir in beans.
When the mixture begins to boil, reduce heat to simmer. Cover for 10 minutes. Stir rice and beans, and add chopped broccoli if using. Cover for 10 more minutes, then turn off heat. Let the rice and beans rest for about 10 minutes, then serve.
This was what was made last night (found at http://www.mycookbook.net/Recipe_Search_Detail.asp?SearchID=267. I was using Basa/White Roughy (hmm, here’s a “fish thesaurus“), which has an interesting commercial history.
Yes, I had almonds lying around, and did a google search for “fish and almonds”. I also realized that I need a saute pan that won’t be eaten alive by tomato-based sauces, since my fry pan was on the edge of usability for the quantity of food being cooked. Time to look for stainless steel at the kitchen supply store.
This was served with rice and steamed broccoli.
Fish in Almond Sauce
Description:
This simple taberna dish features the classic Catalan nut sauce known as picada. With its heady mixture of nuts, bread and garlic, picada is evidence of the Arabic influence in Spanish cooking. Merluza (hake) is traditionally used in this dish, but you may substitute cod, sea bass, flounder or other firm white fish.
Ingredients:
Almond Sauce
1/2 cup (2 1/2 oz/75 g) slivered blanched almonds
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon paprika
1 tablespoon finely minced garlic
1/4 cup (1/2 oz/15 g) fresh bread crumbs
Pinch of saffron threads, crushed (optional)
1 1/2 cups (9 oz/280 g) peeled, seeded and diced tomatoes (fresh or canned)
1 cup (8 fl oz/250 ml) fish stock or dry white wine
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 cup (5 oz/155 g) shelled peas, optional
4 firm white fish fillets, each about 5 oz (155 g) (see note above)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup (1/3 oz/10 g) chopped fresh flat-leaf (Italian) parsley or mint
Directions:
To make the almond sauce, preheat an oven to 350°F (180°C). Spread the almonds on a baking sheet and place in the oven until toasted and fragrant, 8-10 minutes. Let cool.
Place 1/4 cup (1 1/4 oz/37 g) of the almonds aside to use for garnish. Using a food processor fitted with the metal blade or a nut grinder, finely grind the remaining almonds, being careful not to overgrind to a paste. Set the ground nuts aside.
In a sauté pan over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the onion and sauté until tender but not browned, about 8 minutes. Add the paprika, garlic, ground almonds, bread crumbs and the saffron, if using, and sauté for 3 minutes longer. Add the tomatoes and stock or wine and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, 5-8 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat and set aside.
If using the peas, bring a saucepan three-fourths full of water to a boil. Add the peas and boil until barely tender, 3-6 minutes.
Raise the oven temperature to 450°F (230°C). Sprinkle the fillets on both sides with salt and pepper and place in a single layer in a baking dish. Spoon the sauce over the fish, add the peas, if using, and bake in the oven until the fish is opaque throughout, 10-12 minutes. Garnish with the reserved toasted almonds and the parsley or mint. Serve at once.