Brett and Debbie

Brett Hall Seal of Approval

Gmail has been given the offical Brett Hall seal of approval! See
below to view the official stamp for verification of authenticity.

Seriously.. let me know if you want a gmail account.. I've got a few
invites to give away to this pretty darn cool email system.

Spooky

I found a couple of interesting (but creepy) webpages today I thought you might want to look at if you have a minute and feel like being spooked. Ted's Caving Page and A camera found in the woods

Hiking on Mt. Jefferson

A group of 6 friends (including Deb and I) camped around Mt. Jefferson
this weekend and had a nice time, although conditions got pretty tough
Saturday night and Sunday. The views were unbelievable on Saturday
after we climbed to the 7010ft Park Ridge pass, and we met a number of
Pacific Coast Trail (PCT for the locals) thru hikers which provided
some interesting conversation. Saturday night and Sunday morning ~ 2"
of rain came down, ~20mph winds, and dropping temperatures were
fighting us on the way back out across the pass making the trip back
to the car rather dangerous. Our stuff is still drying out and the
tent is still absolutely drenched. The trip was worthwhile, but
certainly had a dramatic end to it...

I'll post some pictures when I get them!

Palak Paneer Recipe (sort of)

I was sending my palak paneer recipe to a friend and figure I'd post
it on here for fun. (I wonder what the difference between Saag Paneer
and Palak Paneer is?)

When I make palak paneer I just kind of go by feel and mostly ignored the recipes I had... but for explanations sake it is easier to compare to a recipe and then describe how I changed it... so here goes. I'm referring to the scan attached to this post.. which is from "Meatless Indian Cooking" by Pat Chapman.

(The cookbook is very british, I'm not a huge fan of their technique but they are pretty clear with the directions and roughly correct overall. Basically they way overboil everything.)

Ingredient changes: I added a chopped tomato or two. I did use the cubed paneer than you can find in indian stores (India-4-U at 33rd & Hawthorne has it). I also didn't use cloves or cardamom (that is your taste) - but I did use fenugreek seeds (roasted & powdered) which you could also find at the Indian store - fenugreek leaves are unusual in my experience. I probably used signifcantly more coriander and cumin (you can use powered and not grind it yourself) and some garam masala too.

Cooking changes: I definately didn't boil the spinach for 15 minutes.. I probably cooked it with just a little extra water for a few minutes (never draining it) and added it as-is to the spices later. I added the tomato when the spinach is added to the spices. According to the recipe I probably didn't fry the spice & oil paste for 6 minutes either.. 3 minutes should be plenty and you don't want to burn it.

Maybe one day I'll write something down and try it to get it more clear, but this is pretty much how I do most of my Indian cooking - seat of the pants!

Bridgepedal

On Sunday (Aug. 8th) we rode in the Portland Bridgepedal which was a
beautiful 24mile bike ride which took us over most of the bridges in
the area. It was great fun, this year we had Jackie, Kathryn, and Gary
with us! Check out the pictures:

Pictures from our Maine Trip

We had a great time on our trip to Maine (to Boothbay Harbor) with the
family this year, I ate more lobster than I have in the past few years
combined! These are some pictures of: (most) of the Gruber Family
messing around in a boat, a nice picture of Becca at the water, a
cremember at the authentic clambake, and me eating a lobster dinner.
Unfortunately I don't have a picture of everyone all together, but it
was quite a crowd. We had the run of the place at the Sur La Mer Inn
B&B which was nice to have a family area where we could visit in the
evening, and Maureen stayed at the Spruce Point Inn which was really a
nice spot.

Girl Scouts Lego Robotics

Who said a blog had to be in chronological order? Here's one from a
few months ago that I don't think I ever recorded...

Earlier this year I was a mentor for a group of young girl scouts who
participated in a FIRST where they used Lego Mindstorms robot kit to design a robot and solve a simulated "Misson to Mars" task. It was rewarding and a lot of fun, I was amazed at how creative and capable they were. The girls did as well or better than a group of undergraduate engineering students I lead in a similar robot project as a TA. There was even an article about our team in Portland
Parent magazine!

Road Rally (Scavenger Hunt)

We had a "road rally" at work the other afternoon, which is basically
a scavenger hunt with cars involved. It was pretty neat, we had to
solve (hard) clues to follow the path and try to finish the course
quickly. I was the "runner" where at one point I followed some clues
on my own path to meet up again with the vehicle and be picked up
again by my team from another place. It was a blast! Here's a picture
of our team before the race: "Son of Poseidon". (This is also my first
real post using the blog-email setup with a picture attachment, woot!)

Pop2blog works

After a couple of days of fiddling the automatic email script (pop2blog) works!. It turns out most of the problem was just getting things properly installed, which my hosting company was nice enough do for me!

Also, thanks to all the helpful people in the forums: (here, here, and for Shelia's helpful info that pointed me to the script in the first place. Pseudocron
was also very useful since I don't have shell access to my hosting service
to start a cron job, it seems to work to automatically check things based on
hits to the webpage. Also, thanks to Robert who made some enhancements to the script, I will be looking into trying this version of the script soon!

Rebecca got a House!

My sister beat me to buying her first house in Greensboro, NC. So far
she's really happy there, I'm looking forward to seeing it when I can
get out there!

comment spam

I've been getting a lot of rude comments in the "comment" sections of the blog. If you see something rude in the comments section please ignore it. I'm trying to set up something to help control it.. but it may still occasionally pop up. Apparently I'm not the only one having this problem...

Trip to San Diego

I made another nice trip down to San Diego with Rebecca who was in Palm Desert for a conference and stayed there for the weekend. We had a great time, and I had a chance to catch up with Sadahiro, Andrew, and Rachel!

Portland sure is nice this time of year, but wow San Diego is fabulous.