The Final Post: Chili Peppers

I decided for my last post to share a random fact I learned yesterday about chili peppers.

Apparently, historically, peppers got noticeably hotter the further south you went (to a point); the hottest peppers flourished in Brazil, the Yucatan, and India. Biologists now believe that this was actually a defense mechanism developed by chilis in tropical climates to ward off predators, particularly aphids and cicadas (which are disgusting anyway).

Apparently, said predators have a nasty habit of munching on the peppers, and then flying off; the puncture marks they leave behind allow moulds to enter into the pepper and basically rot it from within.

As it turns out, capsaicin, the organic compound responsible for chili peppers' heat, is an antimicrobial agent that prevents the moulds from doing long-term damage to the pepper. It has the added benefit of warding off cicadas and other predatory insects, which are sensitive to capsaicin and can't stand the heat.

As you go further north, the older, indigenous species of peppers become milder, apparently due to the lack of a good reason to pump up the heat. 

Huh.

Well that's the end of that.

Take care, folks!

Death Valley

My Dad ended up coming out this week.

Background: my Dad still lives on the East Coast, where I grew up, and we hadn't seen each other in four years. Between the pandemic, and me moving back and forth across oceans, it just did not work out, on more than one occasion. Since things have settled, at least a little bit, this seemed like the best time.

We ended up going to Death Valley. We got to see the salt flats, and every other kind of desert scenery you can imagine.

On the way back, we stopped in Pahrump, where a friend of mine just moved out to.

To the surprise of everyone, it turns out that a group of folks from India bought one of the hotels in town, and decided to buy a bar down the road from it and turn it into an Indian restaurant. The end result is a sports bar that also serves amazing North Indian food.

Never in my life would I have thought that I would have great Indian food in Pahrump, but I did.

Good trip over all.

Coconut Water Is Nice

I like all things coconut.

I like coconut cream pie. I like curries made from coconut milk. I like Tom Kha Gai (I ate a local version of it almost every day when I was in Thailand), and all other Thai dishes involving coconut. I liked the myriad of coconut-infused desserts that my office ate all the time when I worked in Honolulu.

Lately, as it's been getting hotter out, I've started occasionally sucking down coconut water again.

Regular water is fine. I've got a pitcher that alkalizes it for me, and it tastes good; it tastes better with lemon. Sometimes, though, I just don't want to drink plain water anymore; after four or five glasses of it, I really just want something else. That's when I bust out the coconut water.

It's a refreshing alternative to a necessary, but sometimes boring beverage.

Bojack Horseman

I'm running out of topics here, so, I decided to briefly talk about my deep love for the Netflix series "Bojack Horseman." It's dark, but also insanely funny, and portrays celebrity culture in the worst light you could possibly imagine. 

It's also disturbingly real.

I think one of my favorite aspects of the show would be the real-life celebrities that they actually voice cast as themselves; Felicity Huffman, MC Hammer, and others all make appearances.

The best appearance though, in my opinion, is Jessica Biel's. They make her out to be a complete terror, and she was totally down for it; she played the literal worst version of herself perfectly. I kind of respected how cool she was with being just made to look completely deranged and unreasonable all the time.

There's an episode where she orders avocado toast, and then proceeds to throw a tantrum in the middle of the restaurant because she modified her order to the point where it wasn't even avocado toast anymore, and then they accidentally put avocado on it anyway (since the ticket still says "avocado toast"). It was completely relatable because, as a server, I had people basically do that all the time...they would order something, and mod it into a totally different order, and then fly into a rage when it didn't come out right.

She ends up losing the race for governor of California because somebody exposes her hatred of avocado to the media and, as it turns out, 65% of Californians just can't vote for someone who hates avocado.

Yeah...I really love that show.

Think I'm Going To Start Doing Muay Thai Again

I started doing Muay Thai when I still lived in Hawai'i. 

It was a good workout, both physically and emotionally; it felt great to punch and kick things after another day of hating my job!

I also liked the gym's location; it was in Honolulu proper, on Dillingham, so the ocean really wasn't far, and because of this, oftentimes, when we practiced outside, we got to do so under a rainbow. The people there were great, too.

When I moved back here, everything kind of fell apart, and I just didn't have time to start looking for a gym. I honestly think part of the reason I put it off for so long was that I was/am afraid whatever place I join here isn't going to be as good.

Having said that, I need an outlet ASAP, so I've been looking around a bit.

You can tell it's become ultra trendy now, looking at the number of gyms around here, compared to the number of gyms here the last time I lived here.

I'm guessing the gym membership fee will probably reflect the surge in popularity...oh well.

Learned Topics from LabSim Sixth Chapter (A Response to Threaded Discussion 08)

I know I had seen SmartArt utilized in presentations before, but I did not realize it was an actual "feature" of the PowerPoint application. I guess I thought somebody built those displays manually, using different shapes and text boxes.

Completing the LabSim section pertaining to SmartArt really opened my eyes to the number of ways you can illustrate processes for people who may not have a whole lot of context, or background, with regards to the topic. Since I'm actively constructing a presentation that illustrates a couple of different processes right now, I'm putting SmartArt to use, helping to more concisely illustrate these processes to folks whose knowledge base is, up to this point, not very deep.

It provides a nice, succinct way to walk people through the steps of a process or cycle, and I look forward to using it more in the future.

Truffle-infused Hot Sauce?

I really have nothing to shout out this evening, but it's time for a post, so...I'm going to talk about hot sauce for a minute.

I use a lot of hot sauce(s), especially on eggs. It's not so much the heat I like, but the flavor; they're all different. I'm not a connoisseur or anything, but I've tried a lot of them over the years.

I decided to try something different when I went to Whole Foods the other day. There were a few that looked kind of interesting, but my eye settled on one in an elegant bottle that included truffle. I was intrigued, and began to reach for it when I saw the price: $33.

My hand froze, and then slowly began to retract from the bottle.

After a lengthy pause, I gave up and just went with Cholula instead. The chili garlic flavor, like always.

I'm not paying thirty-three dollars for hot sauce; I don't care what they put in it. 

Not happening.

Yardhouse Is Still...Actually Pretty Good

Originally, I had made plans with some people I used to work with to go to Blue Ribbon Sushi, at Red Rock; one of us is now working over there. He said to come in at 1:30.

As it turns out, Blue Ribbon doesn't open until 3. 

One question that immediately came up was "how does he not know this if he works here?" The more important question, though, was "where do we eat?" Izumi looked across the casino for somewhere else; there sat Yardhouse. Yardhouse it was.

I like Yardhouse. I don't drink anymore, so I don't care about all the beers, but I really like their chicken tortilla soup, and they have surprisingly good ahi. I was okay with this.

I was shocked; I don't think I had been since I came back to the mainland, and their prices were actually about the same, no major hikes. We ended up with buffalo chicken pizza, tacos with carnitas and goat cheese, and something else, for about fifty dollars.

Like I said, their ahi is actually pretty good so, after seeing the reasonable bill for everything, I'm going back for ahi in the near future.

Moqueca: A Brazilian Culinary Experiment

I tried my hand at cooking Brazilian food for the first time this evening. I have several friends from Brazil, so I've eaten plenty of Brazilian food, but I'd never actually made it before. Until now.

It turned out well. It doesn't look spectacular because it's a one-pot meal, but it's got an amazing flavor to it.

Honestly, I've never actually had Moqueca; I just happened to have most of what I needed on hand, so I threw it together. It's mainly salted cod in a broth of coconut milk, tomatoes, cilantro, garlic, and Indian chilis. I did a quick side of garlic rice to soak up the leftover broth.

I will definitely make this again, probably with an extra chili next time...

Learned Topics from LabSim Fifth Chapter (A Response to Threaded Discussion 07)

The use of conditional formatting to highlight cells containing particular values, text sequences, or falling within a range of values was something new to me; I had seen this done many times before, but until completing LabSim 5.9, was unsure of how to employ this technique myself. I intuitively guessed that there had to be some way of automating the whole process of color-coding cells given specific conditions, rather than doing so manually, but I had never actually employed conditional formatting like that before, for spreadsheets I was actively working with.

I've already made use of this new skill in my own life. 

Recently, I started building a spreadsheet that would allow me to compare all the pros/cons of multiple options for a program I have been looking at enrolling in. One of the obvious things you look at when comparing options is cost. Having learned how to conditionally format cells, I designed a scheme where Excel would color-code cells in the "Program Cost" column of the spreadsheet, based on what percentile of the cost distribution a particular program's cost fell into. The end result was a nice, stoplight-themed color code that allows me to compare program costs more effectively, by more or less immediately disqualifying program options whose total costs' fall in the "red."

I look forward to further exploring conditional cell formatting using percentages, highs/lows, etc. in future projects.

The Joys of Tax Season

With about a month before the filing deadline, I officially started attempting to file my taxes yesterday.

I often hate being right about things, because normally when I make a prediction, it's unabashedly negative. And bitter. 

Unfortunately, tax season thus far pretty much has played out exactly how I expected it to.

Before I left Hawai'i, I made sure to place the information packets for my health insurance/retirement plan  in a *special folder* that, of course, is now missing. I really thought I left Oahu with it; it was a cheap folder provided by the state, and it was this really...headache-inducing gauche shade of pink. I would've noticed if it were missing. So where did it go?

The thing that's most aggravating is that I didn't even want the retirement account to begin with because, for a nice, big segment of people under the age of seventy in the United States, retirement is never going to become a reality anyway; we're too poor. And all the "wealth management" tips and "investment hacks" in the world are not going to change that simple fact. It's not going to happen.

I called the retirement board and, apparently, it's going to take weeks to get the information, and the information request must be faxed.

We're off to a real great start.

Thoughts on an App That Saves Me Money

I'm not a mobile app person. I download as few of them as I can get away with, I don't like how the icons clutter up my display, and I hate the incessant notifications I get from them all day, even when I disable them. The word "disable" must have a different meaning to most app designers than it does to me...the hits keep coming.

I did, however, download an app a couple months back that has legitimately been worth it, and has already saved me some cash on my biggest expense (groceries): Ibotta.

Right now, I probably spend about four hundred a month on grocery items; it's without question my biggest recurring expense. There are a couple reasons for this, one of which being my refusal to cook with low-grade vegetable oils, due to their general toxicity. Instead, I rely mainly on coconut oil and ghee, and neither of those, barring the occasional sale at La Bonita, are cheap. This is where Ibotta comes in.

Ibotta allows you to take pictures of your receipts, and submit the receipts to them. Prior to doing so, you scroll through their current offers at a particular market, like Sprouts, and select what you intend to pick up. Then, when you submit your receipt, it compares your items to the pre-selected goods, for which there are manufacturer refunds offered, and you get money back on those purchases. Simple.

Ibotta doesn't help much with some of my big ticket items, like Ora King salmon, or heritage eggs, but it saves me a ton on those cooking oils, as well as other items, like the shredded coconut and bitter chocolate I use in my yogurt parfaits in the morning. In fact, when I hit the store the other night, I ended up getting 15% of my bill back in refunds.

I know there are other apps like Ibotta out there, but I haven't tried them yet. A lot of these things just straight up do not apply if you live in Hawai'i, so there was a long period where I just gave up on that kind of thing. Returning to the mainland, though, now I can save again...so that's something.

Huzzah for saving money.

Learned Topics from LabSim Fourth Chapter (A Response to Threaded Discussion 06)

Learning about how to properly employ section and page breaks has been enlightening. I knew what page breaks and section breaks were, but I didn't really understand how to distinguish between their uses (i.e. purpose) in more complex documents. The way LabSim combined their usage in some of the testing documents really helped to delineate the differences between the two.

A big part of a previous job I held involved preparing contracts for state business; many of these contracts were actually extensions, and so we had templates that we had to update and fill-in with new information as the renewal deadline began to approach. Not really understanding the difference between these two types of breaks created enough of a headache on its own, but when combined with the fact that oftentimes, in retrospect, the breaks seemed really poorly planned to begin with, it became a nightmare for any other than the shortest of renewals.

In all honesty, I don't ever want a job like that again, so I don't intend to be able to directly apply this knowledge to a similar situation in the future. Having said that, I still use Word frequently, and finally understanding how to organize multilayered lists, and utilizing breaks in a clear way to ensure the numbering for different lists is correct, will still be helpful.

Introspection

Reflecting on the last several weeks, it's clear already that my general knowledge of information systems has grown quite a bit. It wasn't so much that I was a complete novice coming in (I wasn't), but more of an issue of having knowledge gaps. I think that, largely, this was because most of what general computer knowledge I had, I picked up specifically for a job, and due to the pace and the stress level of said job, I really had to focus on learning only what I needed to use routinely. IS101 has definitely helped to bridge some of those gaps.

My skill level with respect to Word is a good example of this. Starting IS101, there were some concepts I was very familiar with, and some functionalities I had used regularly before. Nevertheless, there was still some basic foundational knowledge that I was missing, because it wasn't central to doing my job, and due to time constraints, I had to forego learning more about it. I can definitely say that this has changed and, after completing the LabSim units devoted to Word, I have a good solid grounding in all the basics of the word processing software.

LabSim has also done something else, arguably more important in the long run, in that it's made me question how I learn best.

At my previous job, there was no real "hands-on" training; training basically consisted of watching a set of long, horrendously boring seminar videos that took hours. After a week of this, I was on my own, still not having had any practice whatsoever with things I was actually going to be doing on a daily basis. LabSim has really driven home my current boss's philosophy of "You learn by doing," and I've really taken that to heart these last weeks. Having an environment where I have the consistency of being able to do the same tasks again, and again, and again has been enormously helpful, if not always stimulating. Being able to take quizzes over and over, too, has helped, allowing me to refresh my memory in a more hands-on way as often as needed. As a result, most of the topics we've covered, I feel like I now have really strong foundations in. I couldn't say that with honesty before.

The only issue I see going forward is that, starting my next job, there won't be a "LabSim" to give me unlimited experience performing the basic functionalities of my job. I dread returning to an environment like before, where it's a week of videos and then you're off. Maybe I'll be more fortunate this time around, but most workplaces don't often invest in good training, so I'm not optimistic about it.

In summary, this course has illustrated how successful to me personally the repetitive, learn-by-doing method of learning is. This course has also helped me reflect on just how woefully unprepared most employers are with respect to training new employees. I have no doubt that retention rates and general workplace culture would improve if more institutions started offering hands-on, repetition-based training platforms like LabSim.

Unveiling the Chemex...

 I recently took the plunge, despite the rising price of coffee, and invested in a Chemex; it arrived this evening. Despite the late hour, I was too curious not to immediately put it to use. The results have been...lackluster.

I've been a devoted drinker of light-roasted coffees since living in Hawai'i, and being that the Chemex is widely reported to brew excellent light roast, it seemed like a worthwhile purchase. Now I'm not so sure.

The Chemex requires a certain level of skill, so that could be part of the problem. Being a first-time user, I don't have a feel for it yet. I ground my beans fine, and rather than letting the water cool ten degrees, did a pour straight off the boil.

The brew is clean, I'll admit. But it lacks the punchy endnotes that I get when brewing light roast in the French press. All in all, I'm disappointed thus far. I've had good coffee out of a Chemex before, but I wasn't the one making it. This attempt came out tasting clean, but flat.

Hopefully, with more research, and a little trial and error, I can improve the quality. So far the only thing my pour over game has going for it is texture.

Bamboo Forest in a Rain Storm

There were a lot of things I loved about living in Hawai'i, but having the jungle in my backyard (a real jungle, instead of one fashioned out of concrete) was what I loved the most. 

Any time I felt stressed (90% of the time; you're always broke in Hawai'i), I'd throw my gym bag in the car, and drive H1 across the island to Manoa, where the Na Ala Hele trail system has a whole grouping of different trailheads across the Ko'olau Range. Driving up the side of Mt. Tantalus was an experience in and of itself. Dozens and dozens of hairpin turns, folding back on themselves, shaded by these gigantic trees with flowering vines hanging down practically into the old road that zigzags up the mountainside. 

There are mansions dotting the mountainside, too. Some of them have some really interesting history associated with them. I found out after coming back to the mainland that one of the palatial Spanish-style houses near the Makiki Valley trailhead actually belonged to Ferdinand Marcos. He purchased it with money he stole after he was exiled from the Philippines. I walked by it probably a dozen times, and didn't know...

Not being able to climb mountains and wander aimlessly through bamboo forests has definitely had a less than stellar impact on my mental health; going to Red Rock or Lone Mountain isn't really the same, although I try to go fairly often. 

I actually got caught in a miniature cyclone while in one of those bamboo forests, witnessed a minor mudslide. Kinda thought I might die, but I didn't (obviously). I took some pictures before all hell broke loose.

I'm still not really sure I made the right choice moving back to the mainland, but...I'm stuck with it, so...you just try and make the best of it. 

Some days I'm more okay with it than others.

Learned Topics From LabSims Second Chapter (A Response to Threaded Discussion 04)

Learning the basics of ports and connectors, covered in the Computer Hardware section, is something I can see being useful in the future, largely because it's knowledge that I could have sincerely made use of in the past. It's a topic I had virtually no experience with beforehand, found confusing at the outset, but definitely feel more comfortable with having worked through the section.

This information really would have helped me when I started working in a state office. I had taken a job with the DOE, and showed up my first day, bright and early, to discover I needed to assemble my desktop before I could get started. As it turns out, where our office was located in Waipahu, was dangerous at night. At some point, after some folks tried to ram a truck through the front gate, following two previous (successful) break-ins, the DOE started mandating that we disassemble and lock up our hardware every day when we left. Which of course meant having to reassemble it the next morning.

It took me a good fifteen or twenty minutes to get the computer set up, because I'd worked on a laptop for years, and hadn't actually had to assemble a desktop in a long time, maybe ever. I looked foolish, and it really wasn't an ideal way to start things, with my boss impatiently waiting down the hall for me to finish setting ups so that we could start.

Having known what was covered in the LabSims hardware section would have made the whole process much easier, and spared me some embarrassment. I can absolutely see this information, and the practice the I got from the simulations in particular, being very helpful in the future.

Tacos (Again!)

Working and taking classes has the tendency to make a person both really boring and also broke, and so...I don't have super interesting things to say at the moment. However, I must complete my weekly post and, since I meal prepped today, I guess that, once again, I'll post about tacos. Different tacos, but still tacos.

My boss recently gifted me with a mix of dried chili peppers; guajillo, and a couple others. I picked up a large chuck roast and simmered it for about five hours on the stove in broth with some of the chilis. They gave the beef just enough heat to make my lips tingle a bit.

After simmering, I shredded it up, and placed it into cassava tortillas. Then I topped them with pico, shredded cilantro, and feta. 

They were probably the best I've made up to this point, although that's pretty much meaningless, because I know so little about traditional Mexican cooking anyway. They were, however, really easy to do, and there's plenty left for one day, maybe even two.

I'm going to attempt making mole here soon, too. It's time consuming, but I love it, and hopefully, it'll be worth the effort.

Learned Topics from LabSims First Chapter (A Response To Threaded Discussion 03)

One topic that I can definitely say I learned more about, and that is useful to me on a regular basis, is the formal way in which we define different types of malicious emails (this is discussed in the Online Safety and Security section). Up until this point, I assumed that the terms phishing / spearphishing / Nigerian scam were basically interchangeable; in actuality, this isn't the case. The section went on to show how these formal definitions can be used to identify and classify malicious content in a more precise way.

While it's oftentimes fairly easy to identify spam, the "Concept Questions" assessment at the section's end brought up an interesting situation wherein I might've made a mistake. There's an email response from a coworker whom you asked to get lunch, featuring an attachment. Without thinking, and just seeing who it appeared to be from, and the chain it was a part of, I might have gone and just opened the attachment.

However, the test points out that the title of the attachment appears to have nothing to do with the original query, indicating that something may be amiss. That particular case was more subtle than the others, and serves as a good general reminder that you should inspect an attachment outwardly as much as possible before opening it, even if it's from a recognized sender or source.

This is something that I can always remember to practice.

Improv Dinner : Fish Tacos w/ Alaskan Cod

I was at Sprouts on Saturday night, and discovered that they had wild-caught Alaskan cod at a low price. I don't cook a lot of cod; I prefer black cod (which apparently is actually not cod at all) and salmon, but decided that I could use some whitefish. I bought a pound.

I thought about what to do with it since I don't make it often, and decided the easiest option, for whitefish generally, was to make fish tacos.

I ended up throwing together a blackening rub, using garlic, paprika, oregano, cayenne, and plenty of salt, and then pan-charred the cod until it was flaky. I shredded cilantro up, and threw some on top, along with kimchi in place of slaw, since I didn't have any.

I actually don't eat a lot of grains, but I always keep a bag of Foods For Life sprouted corn tortillas in the fridge for emergencies such as this. I heated a couple in the pan, then spooned the blackened cod and assorted toppings into them. Lastly, I threw together a little sriracha cream, and drizzled it over the top.

The whole thing worked out really well, and I have enough for another two nights on top of it all.

Bon appetite.

Encountering My First Stumbling Block

This week, I started working on the first part of the second LabSims unit.  I have to admit that I found some of the simulations really difficult to complete at first. While I watched the tutorial on how to work with the interface, it still took some getting used to, moving different devices to and from the shelf, into the workspace, back and forth. I had to try one of the exercises several times before I was able to get it right. I definitely did not have this experience with the first unit.

I think part of why I struggled so much has to do with just a general lack of knowledge as far as hardware goes for these things. I knew some of the basics already, like what the AC power cord looks like, or what a USB cable is, but my knowledge beyond that was basically nonexistent. All the different types of ports and connectors were just very alien to me. New territory for sure.

This isn't a bad thing, though. I'm going to be working with electronics quite a bit, and I'm sure that will entail working with some of these elements at some point. Any familiarity with those beforehand can only help.

Initial Impressions of IS101

I've been chipping away at the first set of assignments for a couple days now and, having worked through a fair amount of tasks already, my initial impression of the course would be that it serves to cover all the bases. The Microsoft Office suite seems to be the central focus overall, but I've also branched into other areas that are very helpful, like establishing rules to organize one's inbox, the basics of working on the cloud, etc. The course seems to give folks an introduction to all aspects of information systems used these days.

After having worked for a state agency for a little while, I can definitely tell my command of Microsoft Office products (Word in particular) could be stronger. Hopefully, I can pick up some useful tips for formatting, document organization, things like that.