Author: Mark

Mark works as a [REDACTED] for [REDACTED], currently residing in Iowa. CoffeeBear.net is a place for him to blather on about whatever strikes his fancy. He currently spends his "free" time working on a photography project, playing with his cat and attempting to keep his wife happy (not necessarily in that order).

For the first time since I became a registered voter, I attended my local caucus. I was registered as an independent prior to going out tonight, so when I arrived I got in line and changed my registration to the Democratic party. That was about 6 PM and for the next 2 hours I was standing around in a school gym chatting with some neighbors and some strangers. It was loud, hot and crowded.

I think the official count of registered voters attending the caucus for our district was 355, which according to the caucus chairman that’s a new record. Around the walls of the gym were posters for several of the candidates: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards and Obama. Once things got a bit more organized, they caucus workers had us all line up in groups for them to count the number of supporters for each candidate. The first count determined which candidates were viable, to do this each candidate needed to have at least 50 supporters. Biden and Dodd were both eliminated at this stage. It looked like those supporters both switched over to Edwards but with all the people crowded into the gym, I can’t be sure about that. There were multiple, repeated recounts and at the end Obama had 206 supporters from our district. Most people (including us) left at this point, as we were told all that was left to do at the caucus was to fill out some official paperwork and to elect the delegates to go to the county convention. We didn’t have any interested in going to the county convention, so we headed home at that point.

It was an interesting experience but not what I was expecting. I had thought each candidate would have a representative who’d have an opportunity to speak to try convincing people to switch to their candidate. That didn’t happen. In fact, the closest thing we had to that were supporters for the various candidates starting to chant for their candidate, e.g. I say “O”, you say “Bama”. “O”! “Bama”! “O”! “Bama”!

Having been home for a while now, I see Obama won the Iowa Democractic Caucus. I wish him good luck in the other states and hope he wins.

Inspired by 50 Things Men Wish You Knew.

  1. Talk to me and tell me what you think; your thoughts and ideas are important to me. But keep in mind there’s a time and place for everything. This means my bathroom has a closed door policy and when it’s closed I’m in no mood to listen.
  2. You look hot in (or out of anything) you want to wear. This can make it difficult for me to help you pick out an outfit. I can help you out, it’s just I will want to you be prepared to take it off. Repeatedly. Slowly.
  3. A random unexpected grope is always welcome, even in public. Especially when I’m the one doing the groping.
  4. Sometimes the crankier, old man inside of me gets the better of my cranky, old man exterior and I take my bad attitude out on you. I don’t intend for it to happen and so I’ll apologize for it here now. Sorry.
  5. When I screw up, go ahead and tell me right away. My poor memory is part of my coping mechanism for dealing with an imperfect world. I forget all my screw-ups as quickly as I can, so I won’t remember it when you bring it up six months later.
  6. Shopping is a mission where specific target(s) must be acquired as quickly as possible. We go in and we get out. If you only wish to perform reconnaissance and information gathering on the target(s), be sure that objective is made clear during the mission briefing.
  7. There are a variety of physical traits that I find attractive. What I find even more attractive is when I can tell you are feeling confident and sexy.

We here at CoffeeBear.net wish you and yours a happy & safe holiday season.

Also our good friends1 over at Aperature Science wish you a Happy <Holiday Name Here>.

The video currently playing over at Aperature Science is a nice holiday gesture and heavily loaded with easter eggs. The ones I noticed were:

  • The presents under the Christmas tree are all orange boxes.
  • The gnome on the fireplace is from Half-Life2.
  • There’s a crowbar leaning up against the fireplace.
  • There’s a turret from Portal lurking in the shadows.
  • The “boxes” on the right are all ammo boxes from Half-Life.
  • The stockings hanging from the fireplace all have logos from various games by Valve.
  • The ornaments on the tree are characters from Team Fortress 2.
  • The sign above the fireplace is a parody of the signs in Portal.

And that’s all I noticed, leave a comment if you find more. 🙂

1 No, I don’t personally know anybody who works for Valve Software. I just really enjoyed playing Portal.

Frozen in Amber | CoffeeBear.net (via Flickr)

11 Dec 2007. Iowa. Cedar Rapids. The weather did suck. Mightly. 12 Dec 2007 everything was coated in a beautiful1 layer of ice. Fortunately my employer allows me to work from home and I did so yesterday. I still went outside, cleared off the cars and moved them to the other side of the street. Just in case the plows decided to make another pass at cleaning up our street. It wasn’t too bad out but I had a blazing headache, plus work to do and all. I took my camera outside with me and snapped a few hurried photos before rushing back inside to the warmth. Then I spent the day fighting my headache and trying to get some work done. But you don’t care about my suffering, you want pretty pictures. So go look at them already!

1 Beautiful provided you didn’t have to clear it off your car and try heading into work.

This recipe is based on the Easy Chocolate Covered Cherries recipe from the National Cherry Growers & Industries Foundation. My wife and I spotted the recipe in the December 2007 issue of Everyday Food. We did go for an optional variant of the recipe that they mentioned and increased the size. We made this for a holiday get together with some friends and I have to say: “This was a triumph. I’m making a note here: huge success. It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.”1

Ingredients

  • 4 – 10oz bottles of maraschino cherries
  • 1 – 750 ml bottle of vanilla vodka2
  • 24 oz chocolate chips

Directions

  1. Drain all the juice from the jars of cherries.
  2. Pour in the vodka over the cherries.
  3. Allow cherries to soak overnight or up to a week3.
  4. Drain the vodka.
  5. Pat the cherries down with a paper towel to dry them completely.
  6. Melt the chocolate chips over low heat in a medium sauce pan. Take care not to burn the chocolate.
  7. Once the chocolate is fully melted, dip the cherries into the chocolate.
  8. Swirl the cherries in the chocolate to get a good coating.
  9. Place the covered cherries onto a wax-paper covered cookie sheet.
  10. Refrigerate until the chocolate sets.
  11. Share and enjoy!

1 Portal rocks!
2 We used Smirnoff’s Twisted Vanilla.
3 Our cherries soaked in the vodka for approximately 12 hours and had a nice zing to them when we ate them.