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This is a recipe I am shamelessly stealing from Paleo Grubs because it is fucking delicious AND healthy.  I modified it a bit because I thought it would be delicious with just a little bit of shredded cheddar added on.  Turns out I was right.  It does add about 90 calories and 7 grams of fat per serving, so feel free to omit it if you want.  It’s worth it in my book.

Ingredients:

  • 4 Bell Peppers (about 24oz total; any color, the supermarket had a pack of 4 multi-color which was perfect for me!)
  • 8 Large, Grade-A Eggs
  • 2 Cups of Chopped, White Mushrooms (size after chopping, weight after chopping was approximately 6 oz)
  • 2 Cups of Chopped Broccoli Florets (size after chopping, weight after chopping was approximately 6 oz)
  • 1/2 Tsp Cayenne Pepper
  • Salt and Pepper, To Taste
  • 3/4 Cup of Shredded White Cheddar (I used Nature’s Promise Organic)

Directions:

  1. Preheat Oven to 375 F.
  2. Dice up your mushrooms and broccoli into small chunks.
    2013-10-06 09.32.20
  3. Crack eggs into a bowl.  Sprinkle cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper onto eggs.  Beat together with a whisk until consistent.
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  4. Mix the eggs and chopped veggies together into a big bowl.
  5. Slice the peppers in half.  Try to ensure a flat side.  Green and Red Peppers seemed to be mostly symmetrical which allowed flat bottoms.  I had problems with the Orange and Yellow Peppers.
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  6. Fill the peppers with the mixture of broccoli, mushrooms, and cheese.   I used a 2/3 cup measure and it seemed to fill each pepper pretty well!
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  7. Place the peppers on a baking sheet and bake for approximately 35 minutes.
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  8. After 35 minutes, pull the peppers out and top them with the shredded cheese.
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  9. Bake for an additional 5 minutes, until the cheese has melted and is just starting to brown.
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  10. Let cool for approximately 5 minutes.
  11. Slice in half, top with hot sauce (optional but delicious). Enjoy. 🙂
    2013-10-06 10.44.58

Serves approximately 4 (1 pepper each).

Nutrition Info:

296 Calories, 18 grams of fat, 22 grams of protein, 16 grams of carbohydrates, 6 grams of fiber, 8 grams of sugar.

Peppers Nutrition

Enjoy folks!  This one is pretty damn tasty!

 

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This is a recipe I adapted from From Fries to Fit because it sounded all sorts of delicious and it is fall and I love pumpkin.  With no further ado, here’s my adaptation of it.

  • 8 Large Egg Whites
  • 2 Cups Canned Pumpkin (I used Libby’s because it always tasted the best to me)
  • 1 Cup Oat Flour (I took Quaker Oats and put them in a food processor.  It took about 3 cups of Oats to make the 1 cup of Oat Flour)
  • 2 Tsp Vanilla Extract (I used McCormick’s because it’s available and plentiful.   Any kind should suffice)
  • 4 Tbsp Honey (any kind, even the kind in a bear :P)
  • 4 Scoops Vanilla Protein Powder (I used the Stop & Shop brand at 110 Calories a scoop with 20 grams of protein!)
  • 1 Tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice
  • 1/2 Tsp Cinnamon
  • 1 Tsp Baking Powder
  • 1/2 Cup Crushed Walnuts (optional)
  • 2 Tbsp Butter (for allowing the muffins to slide out of the tin)

And here’s the recipe instructions, with pictures!

  1. Preheat Oven to 350 F.
  2. In a bowl or large measuring cup, mix pumpkin, egg whites, honey, and vanilla extract.
    2013-10-05 18.12.33
  3. In another bowl, whisk together protein powder, oat flour, spices, and baking powder.  Get it as consistent as you can.
    2013-10-05 18.14.04
  4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredient and whisk until smooth and consistent.  If you used my method for the oat flour this will take some time and may not look 100%.  It will be ok though! Just avoid clumps and pockets.
    2013-10-05 18.17.34
  5. Apply some butter to the inside of each tin in your muffin tin.
  6. Pour the mixture into your baking tins.  I used about 1/3 cup per tin.  You want it to fill the tin about 2/3 of the way to the top.
    2013-10-05 18.22.48
  7. Top with nuts if desired (as seen in the above picture)
  8. Bake for about 8 minutes, and rotate the baking tin in the oven 180 degrees.
  9. Bake additional 8 minutes, and test by poking the top with a tooth pick.  If it comes out clean, you’re done!  If not, bake an additional 2-3 minutes.
    2013-10-05 18.43.39
  10. Use a knife to get the edges clean of the tin, and the rest should just pop out!  I learned the hard way about using the butter, I nearly ruined my first batch of muffins because they wouldn’t come out of the pan.

Enjoy these tasty, low-calorie, protein and pumpkin packed muffins!

160 Calories, 8 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein, 20 grams of carbs (3 grams of fiber, 7 grams of sugar) ~ 5 points.

Pumpkin Protein Muffins

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So, at our district we have a LOT of projectors.  1 per class room, to be specific.  1 projector and 1 smart board per class room in most class rooms.  It’s an amazing sight.

However, as a direct result of the large number of projectors, we also have a lot of projectors that kick the bucket.

The Dell 2400mp projectors are rock solid.  They last for years and years and years.  When they do kick the bucket, it’s because they have a bad color wheel.  This is an $80 to $100 part, easy to replace and easy to acquire.

The other projectors we have are Dell 42×0 projectors.  They are the worst pieces of junk we have ever worked with.  When they kick the bucket (and boy howdy do they do it often) it’s because of a bad DMD.  If you don’t know what a DMD is let me explain.  DMD stands for Digital Mirror Display.  It is an array of thousands of tiny mirrors.  Each mirror is controlled separately. As a result, individual failures result in pixelation and spotting on the projector.  This ruins the projector image.  The replacement part is $250 to $300.  It is also not easy to replace.  This makes us sad.

What makes us smile though is just how damn pretty the damn thing is.  Pictures:

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You can actually see the pixelation on the screen.  You can also see the Dell logo in the center of it, from when we turned off the power while it was still displaying the image.

It’s an awesome little device.  You can see each individual mirror.  The image might not do it justice (phone cam) but trust me.  It’s cool.

 

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N9pnMbOw0I

So… I just installed my new dashboard mount for my cell phone so I can use it as GPS & Dashboard Camera while driving!  It’s pretty sweet and simple.  It was installed 2 days ago by me and of course Dan because I am an idiot sometimes and break cables. ^_^;

So I’m driving back from a markout at work and BAM what do I see but an idiot run a red light to make an illegal left turn.  He made a left turn while he had a red light, in a no turn on red zone. More traffic follows past him afterwards.

Yeah.

NJ drivers.

CHATHAM drivers, specifically.  Entitled and asshatish.

What a day.

Edit 1: For those who are curious: I am using the DailyRoads Voyager app on my HTC One to record 1080p video.  It records 5 minute video clips (adjustable) whenever I connect it to my car dashboard mount.  It will reach a max file size of ~3 gb before deleting the oldest video file.  You can tell it to keep the video files for an entire trip or delete them all at the end of the trip.  It’s pretty sweet.

-M, out

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Lately we’ve been encountering some rather frustrating issues at work.  These issues have been piling up as we’ve been otherwise unable to find a solution to them.  It was beginning to get maddening.

Let’s start from the top:

SPLWoW64 crash with error message: “The program cam’t start because x2utilHL.dll is missing from your computer.  Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.”  This happened exclusively in 32-bit applications on a 64-bit operating system.  This was a little difficult to figure out, but we think we finally got it.  In our environment users get printers added through a login script that maps printers based on location and user.  That is to say, if I login at building A on device 1a, I get printers X (and if I login on device 2b, I get printers Z) but if I login at building B on device 1b, I get printers C.  At one building we have recently swapped to 64-bit Windows 7.  The problem seemed to start when we got new Xerox multifunction printers.  In looking at the queues on the print server, we see that the 32-bit print driver was not installed.  So we installed it.  The problems have slowly been trickling away.  Of note: we had to completely remove the printers from machines, and then remove any printer ports, and then remove any installed printer drivers.  The next time they logged in the problem went away.  Fingers crossed.

Dell Latitude 2110 not getting WiFi access no matter what.  It was weird.  It had been working for 3 years with no problem, but all of a sudden this morning it wouldn’t connect to any of our secure networks (using a certificate).  We reset winsock, we uninstalled and reinstalled the hardware, we updated the drivers, we did gpupdates, everything we could think of.  We even cleared out DHCP entries on the DCs and white-listed it in the Aruba Wireless Controller to make sure it wasn’t getting black-listed for failed authentication attempts (which we were seeing).  In the error logs we were seeing details about DHCP failed (DHCPNACK).  None of the related google searches seemed to help.  It’s been very frustrating and slow-going.  We restore an image to the netbook and it works 100% fine.  So weird.  There must have been some deep-seated change to the OS that we just weren’t aware of.  Maybe corruption somewhere, since users can’t make system-wide changes.  Very frustrating.  It takes about 2 hours to image and deploy packages to a netbook.  2 hours for what should be a simple fix.  Go figure.  I’m sure there’s an easier method but I’m just missing it.

These were fun challenges to try and figure out.  I love a good challenge.  I even love a good challenge that I can actually complete and figure out.  It’s very rewarding to me.  Helping people as a general rule makes me feel all warm n’ fuzzy inside.

This week has been a good week.  People have been thanking us for our hard work.  That’s a rare treat, and I think I will savor it for the weekend.

It is nice to be appreciated for the effort we put in to our jobs.

I hope you all get the same courtesy at yours.  Enjoy your weekend folks.

-M

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So I have finally gotten around to changing the front brakes on my 2008 Ford Escape.

Let me just say: How do places get away with charging ~$125 for this?  I bought high-end brake pads for $60 and installed them with a little guidance AT NIGHT in less than an hour.

… That’s seriously almost $65 an hour for labor, assuming they’re using the same pads I was.  Hint: they won’t be.

But seriously.  I’m not saying I’m pro at this, but I am saying: sometimes it’s better to get your hands dirty and do the job yourself.  You’ll save money, learn something, and maybe have a little bit of fun while you’re at it.

Anyways, here’s the meat and potatoes: pictures!

Thanks again Dan!

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Microsoft won’t make Office editing free on iOS/Android, so Google does | Ars Technica.

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In what I can only describe as the continuing downfall of Microsoft, we bring you more news from the mobile frontlines.  Microsoft has decided that in order to use the Office app on Android and iOS devices you must have an Office 365 subscription.  All I can say to this is: “Are you insane?”

People have been using Office since … well since it came out basically.  The idea that you’re going to force people to get Office 365 subscriptions (let’s not get started on the whole applications as subscriptions nonsense, because I can rave and rant about that for hours on end) is largely absurd.  That you’re requiring it to use the mobile app can only be described as moronic.

On the flip side of that coin, we now have Google and Apple, with what I will describe as a Nelson Muntz “Ha ha!”  (Image) attack on Microsoft.  QuickOffice is now a free application for iOS and Android devices.  Apple follows suit by making iWorks free with new iOS devices.  Great job guys!  This is what the open market is for.

Frankly, I am a little annoyed with how you add multiple accounts to QuickOffice on Android (tap the box where your picture would be, select  “Change Account”, sign in again, etc)and that lack of Dropbox/Box/Other File Host is very frustrating.  With those two gripes in mind, having access to any file on any of your Google Drive accounts is a great thing.  Having the ability to edit them on the fly (with minor loss of fidelity, as often happens with mobile editing of Office-created documents) is a great move.

Why Microsoft exec’s didn’t see this coming is beyond me.

Just another missed opportunity.  How unfortunate.