Matt Kemp Kills Baseballs!

Hey!  It’s Dan of the Garion clan.  How about that Matt Kemp?  He’s been killing the ball.  So my wife Kelly said my blog has been boring since all I post nowadays are links…  Is that true?  Are my links boring, would you rather hear me talk about the Next Great Dancing Crew?  I mean I know I can be funny when I don’t try at all, but can I be entertaining, especially in a world where people watch crap like Pregnant in Heels, Glamour Bells, and Playdates (yes these are all really TV shows, on REAL TV).  WHO THE HELL WATCHES THIS STUFF.  I mean it’s one thing to make fun of it, which is why I religiously watch The Soup (well and that Joel McHale is awesome), but really who watches this type of shit? This will be the only blog that someone says the word shit and then starts talking about Easter.

It’s Easter this Sunday, and I for one welcome our Zombie Jesus overlords.  I’m happy I can get back to swigging soda and chowing down on chocolate now that Kelly no longer has the obligation to give up something she likes for Lent.  Other than that there really isn’t much going on.  The onions in the back yard are just about ready to get cured, we got a citrus tree that seems to be doing well, I fixed the grout in the master bathroom and Kelly is just about done with painting the shelf that our awesome neighbor made for us in the spare bedroom.  Next up we are getting the HUGE birds of paradise plants in the front yard removed and we might be getting sprinklers installed in the front yard as well.

Lastly for those that really know us, be on the lookout for information about our 3rd Annual Fourth of July Party!  Now it’s time for! DUN DUN DUN!

These are the cool things I found around the web for April 20th through April 22nd:

• The Geek Zodiak [PIC] Geek Zodiak – Geeks are Sexy Technology News -
• Owners, union discuss playoff expansion options – ESPN – NO NO NO! Please no, do not expand the MLB playoffs! Don’t dilute the playoffs to shit.
• Bristol riot over new Tesco store leaves eight police officers injured | UK news | guardian.co.uk – Peaceful… huh? What idiots.
  
  For those that don’t know Tesco is a like a grocery story… Way to get worked up about something completely unimportant Brits.

• AT&T: Filing Admits Network Wasn’t Ready For The iPhone – HAHA!
• petewarden/iPhoneTracker @ GitHub – Little did you know, Apple has been tracking you all along. This can’t be, Apple is not at all evil…
• SEX! « OkCupid – More research from OkCupid, this time about SEX!

My new bike.

We celebrated Christmas at home, having two family Christmas parties, you might have seen the pictures from my previous post.  For Christmas Kelly got me and awesome bag for me to use for work, along with some cooking books I really wanted, a circular saw, and some clothing.  It was a really awesome Christmas.  For my birthday I got a new bike.

Raised vegetable bed.

Kelly and I used my new saw and build two raised beds for our vegetable garden this year.  We’ve already planted some onions, and are waiting for March to add the tomatoes and peppers I get at the annual sale that Fullerton College has.  That just about wraps up most of the things we have done the past month.  So I guess it’s time for the Weekly Cool Links!  Just an FYI, there is a lot of stuff to share this week, so I’m going to do something different and break this up into a couple posts the new couple days.

Cool Stuff
Lifehacker put together a kick ass table of when is the Best Time to Buy Anything, from Homes in the winter (hey that’s what we did!) to Jeans in October, it’s a great list for those that are looking for when the best deals normally are.  You say you aren’t interested in buying anything, well how about these not so cool porn ideas (safe for work), don’t miss “The Making of You” staring Mommy and Daddy with special guest Uncle Bill…  I was going to post a bunch of “best of 2009″ links, but this guy did all the work for me, so I’ll just link to him.  I was hoping I would be on the 30 best blogs of 2009, but I guess I’ll have to wait for the 2010 list.  Continuing with the theme of lists, Gizmodo posted their list of the worst gadgets from the past decade, a lot fo great ideas but they just ended up sucking.

Cool Advertising
I have some American Apparel shirts (well they are shirts from places that print their shirts on AAs) and I’ve always been fascinated with their unique marketing strategy, from using porn stars to having androgynous looking models, they cover it all, which is why this collection of their hottest ads (possibly not safe for work, but nothing graphic) is included here.

Cool Food
One of the books Kelly got me (and my brother in law Dominic) was the 1st volume of the Good Eats books, by Alton Brown, I’ve loved reading the book and wanted to share this great Good Eats fan site (it’s poorly designed but still a great resource).  Talking about food, Lifehacker shared this article of Six Kitchen Skills You Can Pick Up This Weekend.

Cool TV
Chuck and 24 started up last week, Burn Notice starts tonight, and someone is selling a barely used late night show…  By the way even though I don’t watch much late night, I with Coco.

Cool Sports
The Hall of Very Good has some great stuff about good baseball players, that aren’t quite Hall of Famers, or shouldn’t be Hall of Famers.  I liked the guy, but Eric Karros should not have receive 2 votes for the Hall of Fame.

Cool Videos
I know he’s gone, but his trip to Seattle was delayed because of an annoying USC fan.  (I’ll miss you Pete!).

The Unaired 1994 Pilot of 24!

This reminds me of calls I get sometimes when Kelly is having an issue with the computer at home… ;)

All these guys are trying to do is be Helpful!

Stay tuned for Weekly Cool Links #21.2 tomorrow!

Actress Christina Hendricks

Oh yeah the Golden Globes were the past weekend, and according to the Internet these were the only globes being talked about…

Expect a Weekly Links update by the end of the week!

Goodbye 2009 it was a great year!

For those of you that didn’t see the pictures I posted 2 weeks ago, we put up our Christmas lights, we also got our tree decorated (pictures will be posted at the end of the month).  The past couple weeks we have been taking care of our Christmas shopping and also prepping the house for the first of what will be many Christmas parties our house will be the host of.  This Sunday is my dad’s side of the family’s Christmas party, we should have about 20-30 relatives in attendance.  And then on Christmas day we will have a party for my mom’s side of the family, which will be a bit smaller but will also include Kelly’s family (actually both parties will include Kelly’s family) and any friends that want to come over.  Work is winding down for the year as goals have been met and projects have been completed, I’m happy to say I still have a job that I enjoy although this year was a lot different from the previous two years due to the lack of new hires our department had to train.  Kelly’s business is doing well, although we did have a decrease in business compared to 2008, but we are in good standing.  All the animals are happy and healthy and we are all looking forward to the new year.  I’m proud of myself for keeping up with my Weekly Cool Links project, even though it’s not quite as ‘weekly’ as it claims to be, I hope someone out there finds some entertainment in me sharing what I find interesting.  Lastly my Eat in OC project has been doing great, I typically have around 5000 visits a month and I’ve made some major inroads with gaining new readers.  I’ve been linked to on a number of local websites, and high-profile local blogs, and in addition my articles are routinely linked to in the Orange County Register’s Community Blogs section which is only 5 links deep from their front page, how many others can say something like that?  I’ll probably post one more time before the year ends, but for now let’s move on to the rather large links section!

Food
Lifehacker had a great article on maximizing Thanksgiving leftovers that will also prove useful with Christmas leftovers.  While over at Slashfood they had 4 fast recipes for making great Tomato sauces.

Tiger Woods’ Women, er I mean Chicks
Some of these links may not be safe for work, or family friendly.  But this is my blog so if you don’t want to see possibly scantily clad women don’t look at the links in this section.  If you are related to me and offended, oh well, I’m sure you have something else you can be proud of me for, get over it… ;)
Twitter is a wonderful tool for communication and for people to share pictures with, some pictures are more interesting than others as you can see from this collection of Hot Chicks that use Twitter for the powers of good.  I do not approve or disapprove of their use of Twitter…  Maybe Twitter chicks aren’t your thing?  How about Chicks dressed in various NFL Team Jerseys?  What’s that?  You like farm girls?  How about German farm girls that model to help German agriculture?  Here you go.  Personally I like my girls a little different from the norm.  Lastly there is the Internet’s Girlfriend…  Funny how I’ve been on the internet for 15 years yet hadn’t heard of her till recently.  One suggestion for her site, more pictures like this and less like the one on the top of her website…

Sports
It got so bad at Notre Dame this year that after they fired Charlie Weis they went straight to the big man in the sky and offered him the head coaching job.  The Onion reports that Jesus Christ himself turned down a 3 year multimillion dollar offer to coach the Fightin’ Irish.  Maybe he was just holding out for the right job?  Such as this Head Coaching position with the Lingerie Football League!

Cool
Virgin Galactic has launched their official site for the space travel, complete with Spaceship Two pictures and information on the roll out.  Never would have thought space travel (even of this kind) would be available to the general public in my lifetime.  Lifehacker had a number of cool informative posts the past couple weeks, including Fixing Your Relatives Computer, Guide to Avoiding Online Scams, and the Most Popular Top 10s’ of 2009.

Funny
I read three comics online; Order of the Stick, Dilbert, and xkcd.  I’m particularly fond on one of the Dilbert comics from this week, because it’s how I feel at my job sometimes.
Another one from this week that really hits the mark is this one regarding the use of FAX machines.  As for xkcd I have to give some love to ‘Daylight Saving Time‘.  Looking for a last-minute gift for a friend or loved one?  How about, How to Date a White Woman or the Gangsta Rap Coloring Book?  All these and more really do exist!  If you are single and looking for a Russian Mail Order bride one of the companies involved has started to compare them to celebrities!  Now you too can date a girl that sort of looks like Jessica Beil!  Just make sure you ask them these 10 questions from Deadspin before you ask her to marry you, it will save you a lot of heartache.  And lastly, now that you got your celebrity look a like wife, it might be a good time to reflect upon those stupid things you did when you were young and might regret someday…

Videos
My website is currently sponsored by Bitch Slap The Movie!, in theaters: January 8th, 2010!

If you know anything about the movie, commercial, or TV show business you might find some humor in this.

I love reading Maximum PC and listing to their podcast, I love this video someone put together from Gordon’s rant of the week regarding the Apple Tablet.

And last but not least at all, the Space Shuttle is awesome and this high quality video of the STS-129 launch is worth spending 15 minutes to watch.

STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights from mike interbartolo on Vimeo.

Oh and Merry Christmas!

By the way, GO TROJANS!  That was an awesome 28-7 beating of the Bruins!

UCLA Sucks!

What better way to celebrate what we are thankful for than to watch the USC Trojans beat the UCLA Bruins?

Proud USC Fan.

We’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving at my in-laws, and then on Saturday we are going to cook our own turkey at the house.  Not much else going on.  We did get baseboard put in living room, dining room, and hallway a couple weeks ago, things are really coming together with the house.  We will be having 2 Christmas parties at our house in December, one for my dad’s side of the family and one for my mom’s side of the family (which will include Kelly’s family at both/either of them).  It’s going to be a very busy December!  Work will be busy the first two weeks as well since I have to train new hires on high-speed online, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.  That’s about it from here so let’s see what I have to share this week.

Cool Food

Cheeseburger in a Can!

Have you ever been out camping in the wilderness and wished, “Boy I wish I could have a cheeseburger right now!”.  Well the wait is over, with the cheeseburger in a can!

Cool Stuff
When I was a kid I loved reading the various Choose Your Own Adventure books, I found this site that someone has analyzed all the books and has a bunch of data about them, with cool graphics and color.  It’s a pretty neat read if you loved those books as a kid.  Some more cool stuff, but in a much different way are these Civil War pictures (warning some of them are not for the faint at heart), I’d never seen this collection so it was an interesting look into battlefield.

Buying Stuff
If you are looking for the best cheap stuff to get for Christmas, check out this site called Cheapism that has reviews on cheap things.

Funny Stuff
Another weekly cool links and another great site to see pictures of people and go, what the fuck??  This weeks pick is Why the Fuck Do You Have a Kid?  You will be saying the same thing when you see this collection of pictures.  I’m sure a number of UCLA alumni are pictured on that site.

TV Stuff
Anyone that is both a sports fan and a fan of The Office will love this take on The Office done by the Kansas City Chiefs.

Videos

Everyone loves a douchebag.

Watch out for the Shiny Suds in your shower! (Loofah!  Loofah! Loofah!)

The best song of 2009 Show Me Your Genitals (NOT SAFE FOR WORK and people without a sense of humor)

Don’t miss his other great hits also on Youtube!  And you can purchase his songs on iTunes!

Bohemian Rhapsody, The Muppets Style!

What we have here is English muffin with some butter, a half slice of American cheese, a grilled tomato slice, sautéed spinach, bacon, and hollandaise, almost as good as the one at the Filling Station and I’m sure it would be as good if not better if I had made my own sauce!

DanGarion’s Crazy Chicken Salad

1 1/2 Pounds of Chicken Thighs
1 lb. package of mini elbow macaroni
1 package of Hidden Valley Ranch Buttermilk Dressing
1 1/2 cups of Mayonnaise
1/4 to 1/2 cup of Milk
3 Carrots peeled and grated
1 Head of Broccoli cut into small pieces
3/4 lb. Monterey Jack Cheese, cubed
5 strips of bacon cooked and crumbled
Salt and Pepper

Lightly salt and pepper chicken in a large cassorole dish.  Place chicken in microwave and cook on high for about 20 minutes turning chicken over every 5 minutes.  Let chicken cool, once cooled get all the meat from the chicken and dice it up, cover and place in refrigerator.  Cook macaroni as described on label, run under cold water and drain.  In a large bowl mix together package of dressing, mayonnaise and milk make sure consistance is slightly thicker then regular dressing.  Mix in broccoli and carrots.  Mix in macaroni, cheese, and chicken.  Once salad is thoroughly mixed cover and place in refrigerator untill ready to serve.  Before serving sprinkle salad with crumbled bacon.  Enjoy!

I’ll try to get a picture of it tomorrow to include.  I had a quick taste of it before I placed it in the fridge and it tasted great!