Saw that while searching Matt Carpenter coverage.

A quick internet search revealed that someone else had encountered the same problem, but didn’t see a solution given.

What I did was install dvrcast_origin to the origin server per the instructions, but renamed it dvrcast. Then I rewrote the host.ini file in dvrcast_edge from this:

#name primaryIP;secondaryIP
server1 localhost;localhost dvrcast_origin

to this, using the correct name and IP address for the origin server, of course:

#servername primaryIP;(secondaryIP) app_name
origin.server.com 123.456.789.012 dvrcast

Works like a charm. The parents are going to be so happy at commencement…

As a side effect of getting this up and running, I also have multi-rate streaming ready to go. Pretty successful day one of programming week.

Way to hit the ground running, Jen.

(And apparently my cousin is their assistant coach, too. Give him some credit for no doubt running the women through football drills.)

They’re playing Lynchburg as I type this (Bracket) for the right to take on Ursinus in the second round. There’s free streaming video of the games at that link. Single camera—no graphics—with a play-by-play voiceover.

Later that night: Dammit. Lost 4-0. Still an outstanding first season.

Halved this big ol’ sweet yellow onion, minced one half and sliced the other. Cooked the onion down in a little olive oil with salt and pepper. Poured two cans of Beef stock into the slow-cooker and set it on high.

While softening the onions, I started trimming fat and connective tissue from a couple of pork steaks. The noble pig is the first animal whose muscles are in my chili. After trimming the pork steaks, I cubed them and rolled them around on a plate of flour seasoned with some black pepper, white pepper, salt, and some hot mexican chili powder.

Here are the other meats that are going into the chili, along with the aforementioned plate of seasoned flour. On the left is a london broil, about 1.5 pounds of lean cow round. In the middle is a pound of ground lamb. At the top left is the flour I use: Mochiko Sweet Rice Flour. Since I don’t bake, I only use flour to coat meat for browning or frying. Here’s a handy tip: I also put a fork in for every three eggs when making scrambled eggs. Makes them fluffy and outstanding.

Here I am finishing up the trimming work on the pork steaks while some olive oil heats up in the skillet.

GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN!

While the cubed pork steaks, coated in seasoned flour, brown in the oil, I start cubing up the beef. Here I hint at my technique for cutting down the meat. I cut it into thirds, then butterflied each piece as shown. Fold it back over, slice it crossways, then finish off the cubes. These guys rolled around in the flour as well, then jumped into the skillet with some hot olive oil for a sear once the pork cubes vacated the real estate.

Those pork cubes looked like this once I was done browning them. The pork and beef go into the slow cooker. The ground lamb goes straight into the dry, hot skillet to be browned and crumbled. I had to drain it twice during cooking. If you’re not a fan of the way sheep taste, you may try using uncased sausage or ground veal (thus reducing the number of critters in the chili by one) or ground turkey (which won’t be as tender).

After all the cooked meat was in, I threw in around a cup and a half of dry barley. In go the canned tomatoes. I used halved, stewed tomatoes; tomato paste (saving some to spread on crackers as a snack with some parmesan cheese); and two smaller cans of diced tomatoes with jalapenos and habaneros. I didn’t drain any of the cans; the barley would need the moisture to rehydrate and the liquid in the cans is basically tomato stock.

Also added a large can of black beans. This one I drained.

Real tasty chili. Fake smile. Just stirring it around.

Blistering the skin on a jalapeño. After it blackened, I sliced it up and de-ribbed and de-seeded it, then stirred it in. Added seasoning: salt, white and black pepper, chili powder, cumin, a few shakes of red pepper flakes, some minced garlic, and four bay leaves.

Here’s the chili. It’s gonna cook down on low for another four hours. Around 11 tonight, I’ll take a break from writing diligently to pour myself a bowl and snap some pictures.

I batted the weakest 3-4 you’ll ever see. The first pitch I saw was a ball that would’ve landed a few inches in front of the plate, but I chopped at it and hit a soft grounder to the firstbaseman, who picked up the ball a second after I ran past him to reach safely. The second pitch I saw a half-hour later was slapped under the first baseman’s glove and the second baseman couldn’t field it cleanly so I reached safely again on my second infield single. I took a pitch in my third plate appearance then lined softly in front of the right fielder for another single. In my fourth and final PA, I wanted to continue the incremental increase in distance I was hitting the ball and put a hard swing on a 3-2 pitch, but took my eyes off the ball and struck out. Shameful, man. I scored at least one run in there.

Defensively, I caught all two or three pop-ups to my zone and had two plays at the plate. Blue said the runner slid under the tag on the first one, but I got a quick tag on the runner for the second play. The first play shouldn’t have even happened, but I foolishly threw down to 2nd with runners on first and third to try to get a basestealer. The runner on 3rd stole home after the throw. The shortstop’s throw back to me was perfect, just didn’t make the play.

Had a ton of fun playing, though. Unfortunately, one of our players dislocated his shoulder sliding safely in to second. His pinch-runner scored and his shoulder was re-located at the hospital and he’ll be fine, so that worked out about as well as it could’ve.

Lately, the shed’s been falling apart since it’s rusted completely through. See:

As you can see, it’s got no doors, so I can’t lock my lawnmower up. It’s underneath that plastic tarp, chained to an old, broken lawnmower that I need to get rid of. The tarp, of course, is what keeps the mower dry since the shed’s roof fails completely in that purpose.

Today, I started to build a new shed. I based the design off of this plan, although I made mine shorter so that the rear of the shed is exactly six feet tall and won’t be visible over the 6′ privacy fence that I’m going to install this summer. (The new shed was a pre-requisite for the new fence.) Since mine is shorter, I also gave the roof a 1/4 slope instead of 1/2 to keep the front door from being knuckle-smashingly short. The lawnmower will fit in there beautifully and all my long-handled tools fit snugly against the back wall..

Here are two pictures of the shed taken after I finished the framing work.

After these pictures were taken, I installed plywood sheathing on the front and most of the rear, plus nailed in the roof sheathing and shingled it since it may rain tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll need to finish the sheathing, build and install the doors, and install the cedar trim. I’m not sure how I’m going to finish it, but I’m thinking of just painting the plywood yellow and staining the trim.

Once I get my fence in, my backyard’s going to be pretty boss. I’ll be keeping my grill on the slab where the old shed currently sits. (As you can see in those pictures, the new shed is in the side yard and will abut the fence and be completely out of the way.) My yards going to look a whole lot bigger, and I’ll be able to use the brick fireplace out there again. It’s going to be an excellent Summer and Fall. The sooner I get that fence in, the better.

Crap. Just found out it’s going to rain tomorrow and Tuesday. Stupid weather. Guess I won’t be able to get back on it until Wednesday. This is going to be a busy week.

The Next Day:

The weatherman was, thankfully, wrong. It sprinkled most of the morning and I worked in it, thinking that the heavy stuff would be coming later, using some plastic tarp to keep the saw and lumber dry. So I finished the sheathing and built the doors. Used some scrap material to build a little ramp that’s movable and usually stored inside the shed. All that’s left to do is slap on some paint:

You can see that my saw work on the left door wasn’t my finest moment, but it works great. I’m pleased with and proud of the work I did on that shed. I also tore down the old shed and cleaned off the concrete slab that it was sitting on. My backyard looks a whole lot better, aside from the pile of scrap metal and wood that I’ll need to take care of before the city cites me as a blight on the neighborhood.

As you can see, by the time I finished, the weather was spectacular. A little hot, even.

Let me point you to an excellent Memorial Day essay by Donald Sensing. (HT: Instapundit)

That sounded like a good enough excuse to cook up a kick-ass dinner. I’ve been meaning to give pot roast a try for a while now. Here’s my version:

I started with a mirepoix. Dice up a pile of carrots and celery, then dice up enough onions to make a pile the same size and soften them in a skillet with some butter. Although I’m a fan of the current French President and his hot, hot wife, I departed from the traditional mirepoix by including a bunch of ginger and garlic.

Cook that until it’s softened, then dump it in your slow cooker set on high.

Then I poured some flour on a plate and seasoned it with salt and pepper. I don’t bake, so I only keep a small container of rice flour handy. Trim off as much fat from the roast as you want—for aesthetic purposes, I sliced off a piece of fat that had some butcher’s ink on it—and dredge the roast on all sides.

Heat up some oil in the skillet you used for the mirepoix—olive oil would be good but I used wok oil for a little more flavor—and give the dredged roast a nice sear on all sides to give it a bit of a crust to hold its juices in.

Throw that sucker in the slow cooker with the fatty side up and get your liquid ready. I used a can of beef stock and the remainder of a bottle of Alto Vineyard’s Villard Blanc, about a cup and a half. I poured those into the skillet along with a package of dehydrated porcini mushrooms. I brought that to a boil, scraping up all the browns leftover from the earlier phases of prep-work, reduced it by about a third, then poured it into the slow cooker. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have exposed the ‘shrooms to that high heat and would have been wiser to let them rehydrate in the slow cooker, but what the hey.

I chopped three small Yukon gold potatoes and added them to the slow cooker and seasoned with black pepper, parsley, thyme, basil, and a few bay leaves. It’ll be cooking for about four hours, until the internal roast temperature gets to 165 for a solid medium-doneness. About halfway through the cooking time, I added some more liquid, about a and a half cup of hot water with some worchestershire sauce added in it to cover the potatoes. Whenever I felt like smelling something tasty, I’d take the lid off and spoon some of the liquid and mirepoix over the roast.

One more picture on the way once it’s ready to be eaten. In the meantime, I’ll be shoveling the sidewalks, working on my research, and laughing at this video of a reporter getting pooped on.

Update: Turned out pretty good.

The Lost season premiere was good, too.

The section of my roof that needed repairs is over the oldest part of the house—construction that’s over 100 years old. The roof is shake-shingle with asphalt over that, so instead of plywood sheathing, there are 1X4′s running the length of the slope with shakes nailed to them, and modern shingles nailed into the shakes. While crawling around in the attic, I discovered a few repairs, where the shakes had been torn off and plywood nailed to the 1X4′s. That was a happy discovery—I hadn’t known that was kosher and thought I’d need to tear down to the rafters if serious repairs were needed.

So here’s what I did. I pre-drilled and screwed in two sisters apiece (or scabs, just lumber the same size as the existing, broken rafters) on both sides of the damaged rafters with the halfway point at the point of damage, so about four feet on each side of the break to make a rafter sandwich. Since the rafter was bent, I only screwed in on the upper halves and so the lower halves of the sisters were sticking out from the roof’s interior face.

I couldn’t find a good description of how to jack up a roof in this situation, so I kind of improvised. I screwed together two pieces of lumber perpendicularly lengthwise, so that I had a long piece shaped like an L on the ends and sawed another piece in half and did the same thing to make a short piece shaped like an L on each end. These are apparently called stiffbacks or troughs by people who know what they’re doing. I screwed the short piece into the sister rafters by where the original rafters had broken and screwed the long piece into the attic joists underneath the stiffback on the rafters and a little towards the outside of the house (fortunately close enough to a load-bearing wall that I wasn’t too concerned that I’d collapse the ceiling below). I eyeballed it so that the two were on a very slight angle towards the broken rafter in the middle of the sagged region. Then I angled in a piece of 2X4 so that it was resting between the two stiffbacks and pounded the bejeesus out of it with a sledgehammer until it was in straight, then pounded it down the two strongbacks. Since I’d angled them a little bit, the distance between them decreased as you move down the troughs, and so when I’d hammer the vertical piece of lumber along them, it would lift up the roof a little bit, with the weight dispersed from the sister rafters down into all the joists and into the load-bearing walls supporting them. Once I got it hammered down the stiffbacks a little ways, I angled in another 2X4 that my assistant had cut a bit longer than the first and did the same thing, hammering the two supports down the trough a little bit at a time. When I could, I angled in another 2X4 that was a bit longer still and kept going. After four of those supports where run down into the troughs (and the first one had fallen out) I had the roof jacked up perfectly straight since the sister rafters made contact with the 1X4 roof sheathing. I went outside to take a look and was extremely pleased to see that the roof was now perfectly straight.

After admiring the fruit of my labor, I climbed back into the attic to drill and screw the sisters to the old rafters below the break. Figured there’s no harm in leaving the supports where they are through the winter. Come Spring, I’ll have to carefully hammer them out and let the sisters start carry the full weight of the roof.

Now I’ll watch some Mizzou v. Oklahoma and get all the black boogers out of my nose.

I mentioned to my friend that I’ve been looking for a print of that picture for a long, long time. It’s the famous, “Rick Monday Saves the Flag” picture. The story is told well at the wikipedia page. Rick Monday is a Marine who had a 19 year Major League career as an outfielder. On April 25, 1976 while he was playing for the Cubs, visiting the Dodgers, a coupla hippies went onto the field to burn an American flag. Just before they put match to lighter fluid sogged flag, he snatched it up and a cameraman caught the moment.

There’s nowhere I know of to get a print of that picture and I’ve looked for a while. My good friend heard of my search and tracked down the photographer (Dead End: He’s dead), the newspaper that printed the picture (Dead End: Bankruptcy), and searched and searched until she found the negative of the picture in the Los Angeles County archives. They blew it up and mailed it to her. She framed it for me and gave me the most thoughtful present I’ve ever gotten. She had to sign releases that it wouldn’t be publicly displayed—if not, I’d include in this post a picture of where it’s hanging in my living room, right below the 2006 Cardinals WS picture.

It’s a treasured thing for me now. It’s funny… My dad, who volunteered for service in the Army during the Vietnam conflict has no problem with people burning flags. I’ve never served anyone but myself but it pisses me off when I see people protesting in that way. Hell, I get pissed off when I see people flying the flag the wrong way. Monday says: “If you’re going to burn the flag, don’t do it around me. I’ve been to too many veterans’ hospitals and seen too many broken bodies of guys who tried to protect it.”

In any case, I had a great birthday and had a blast hanging out with good friends. And tonight, I sang some hilarious songs at karaoke. While on the way to get a new driver’s license, I heard a terrible song that I needed to sing tonight, Last Christmas, by Wham!. Also brought back a classic from the Cutting Crew.

I started off with Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads, then absolutely nailed a spooky rendition of Bobby Pickett’s Monster Mash. Later on, I performed my gravelly Louis Armstrong impression of La Vie en Rose. By request, I closed with Radar Love from Golden Earring. It was a pretty packed house, so I didn’t manage to get “Used to Love Her” in there. Just a great time.

My costume was pretty funny but hard to wash off. I’ll see if I can get a picture.

A non-me highlight: a bunch of undergrad regulars dressed up as Abe Lincoln in his underwear and performed a group rendition of Gay Bar by the Electric Six. I hadn’t seen the video linked there until today (yipes), but it was still a funny sight.

Best new show this week is definitely Return of Supermans, which takes the basic joke from Superhawk and the Whipmaster to the next level. Well, it’s a little different—making fun of crappy Turkish Knockoff flicks. (If anyone can tell me for certain if they’re doing to the buried alive lady in this one is what I think they’re doing, a tip of the cap to you…)

I bought new shoes yesterday for the first time in probably five years. My faithful Dr. Marten’s finally wore out on me. I’d planned on going to the mall here to get another pair for the $130 or so I’d wisely invested in them lo those many years ago, but my pal told me about a website called Zappos. They were selling my shoes for $94, no sales tax added, and overnight shipping is free—plus if they don’t fit, you can return the shoes within 365 days of getting them with a pre-paid UPS slip. That’s a hell of a deal. I put my order in at 4:43pm yesterday and hoped they’d come tomorrow sometime. They were delivered to the office before noon today, about seventeen hours after I clicked “submit” on the website. That’s impressive. And so are my stylin’, ultra-durable new kicks.

Research is going well. I took most of last week off, but hit the ground running this weekend and am off to the races. I plan to get a shit-ton done over the next week. And will make an effort to post something at least mildly entertaining daily.

That’s a really bad move for Houston, barring some already-agreed-to favorable contract extension and he’s already turned down a 3yr/$24.5m offer from Colorado. I’d bet dollars-to-donuts that Hirsh has a better 2007 than Jennings. The Rox couldn’t have come up with much better a center fielder than Willy Taveras. Competing with the likes of Juan Pierre, Dave Roberts, and Eric Byrnes, he could be the second best offensive CF in the division after Cameron.
Colorado fans must be awfully happy today.

That was a terrible trade for the Astros. Jenning’s made only 14 starts this season and hasn’t signed an extension with the Astros. He’s dealt with various injuries over the season and managed to get two Padres out while giving up 11 runs in a horror-show start today. Jason Hirsh hasn’t been the pitcher I thought he’d be just yet, but I don’t think many people doubt his future’s brightness.

Jennings: 5.99 ERA – 13 GS – 76.2 IP – 29:56 BB:K – 75:95 G:F – 8 HR
Hirsh: 4.90 ERA – 17 GS – 101 IP – 42:66 BB:K – 99:136 G:F – 16 HR!

Hirsh has been a better pitcher than Jennings this year, but not dramatically so. As for how Willy Taveras stacks up against other NL West center fielders:

Young: .244/.295/.453 – 15:16 SB:Att – 22:69 BB:K – 18 HR
Cameron: .245/.314/.424 – 10:14 SB:Att – 34:100 BB:K – 13 HR
Taveras: .309/.358/.371 – 24:32 SB:Att – 18:45 BB:K – 2 HR
Roberts: .262/.330/.355 – 21:24 SB:Att – 25:46 BB:K – 2 HR
Pierre: .282/.314/.335 – 42:51 SB:Att – 18:25 BB:K – 0 HR

I was pretty close, failing to predict Chris Young’s power production out of center field for the Snakes. Taveras was considered an all-glove/no-bat outfielder before the trade, so it was a pretty bold prediction, I’d say. That he’s managed to contribute so consistently at the plate for the Rockies is impressive. The Astros got royally screwed in that trade. It didn’t take much to see that at the time.

I had a post of Pre-season Predictions that don’t look so great now.

The first was that T.J. Nall would make the Nationals opening day roster and turn out to be their best setup man by the all-star break. T.J. is a pitcher from the Dodgers system who absolutely dominated AA batters with a 9.19 K/9 rate, but for whatever reason couldn’t make the transition to AAA. He was caught up in the Great Gnats Minor League FA Dragnet of 2007 but failed to make the team out of Spring Training and was released before the All-Star Break to be picked up by the Red Sox. I was wrong, but not as badly as the next prediction.

This one was so laughably wrong in every respect, I’ll cut-n-paste the whole thing:

Brian Lawrence signs a split contract with the Rockies and has an exceptional spring, joining a rotation of Cook/Francis/Hirsh/Fogg. He contends with Kip Wells and Mark Mulder for the 2007 NL Comeback Player of the Year award, but loses to Mike Hampton. (Gagne wins it in the AL.)

Lawrence was DFA’d by the Rockies after failing to impress in his rehab stint. He was picked up by the Mets, where he has been a very good flyball pitcher at AAA. Mike Hampton re-injured himself AGAIN before pitches were thrown in anger, Mulder hasn’t begun a rehab stint yet, and Kip Wells hasn’t had the season he or I had hoped for him.

The third prediction:

Taylor Buchholz struggles with home runs and with finding a role in Colorado and, after he fails to clear waivers, is traded to the Cardinals, when we suddenly find ourselves with three of the game’s better curveballers in our rotation.

Taylor’s made a few starts with the Rockies and pitched mostly in long/mop-up duty. He hasn’t been particularly home run prone. I don’t see where he’ll fit in with the Rockies long-term plans and have to think that they asked for him in the Jennings trade more for a trading piece later on than someone their organization can succeed with. Noted curveballers don’t quite fit in up in the Mile High City. I’d be very pleased if we swing a trade for Buchholz at some point before opening day 2008. His value isn’t at all high right now. Maybe they’ll claim Brian Falkenborg, who we DFA’d after he’d pitched so well in Game 1 of yesterday’s double-header. He certainly fits the profile of a good Rockies reliever. Good strikeout rate and keeps the ball on the ground. It’d take more to pry away Buchholz, but it’d be worth pursuing.

The fourth one dealt with Chris Narveson, who I thought would get claimed off waivers by the Nationals. Few players moved on waivers and some that could have been claimed ended up being traded, notably the St. Pierre for Hendrickson trade. Narveson cleared waivers and has had a disappointing, injury-plagued season.

Another prediction was too silly to mention although half of it has turned out true. The true part had to do with some of the bigger team blogs getting more access to minor leaguers and front office types. That has happened and I think we as fans have benefited greatly from it.

The last prediction dealt with Larry Bigbie, who I was happy to have picked up along with Aaron Miles in the Ray King dump trade. Larry had a huge Spring with the Dodgers, didn’t make the club, was released, and eventually signed with Atlanta to play for their AAA affiliate, where he has struggled.

I haven’t read the book and don’t remember why I wanted to do with these, but I got a kick out of the wikipedia link. Reminded me of this and this, naturally.

On another note, I contributed a follow-up post at Fungoes, this time estimating how well the pitching staff will need to perform in order to reach certain win-loss targets. How Good Must the Pitching Be? should be published sometime Friday morning. It was fun writing that sort of thing for a change instead of my usual mixture of bullshit and fart jokes.

You may feel free to leave me complimentary remarks here if you aren’t registered to comment at Fungoes.

The data I use is online here if anyone wants to know how many stolen bases Yadier Molina is projected to attempt. (One, and he’ll be caught.)

I made fun of that almost two months ago, yo. And my jokes were better.

Speaking of jokes, let’s get a poll on whether my friend Hansen’s favorite joke is any good:

What’s E.T. short for?

Because he’s got eeeety beeeety legs.

I think it’s pretty good. It covers arguably three features in Scott Adams’ 2-of-6 rule: cute, bizarre, and clever.