Ok, I missed my ride today due to having to go into work early because of the Seahawks game. A Little Bitter about that but I stayed up Late last night shooting food and got some good photos out of the shoot so it made up for it. Backing up a bit..I by no means am a avid fan of Football but I don't mind it for what it's worth (entertainment) but Big games make my life pretty hectic in the kitchen at work. The Seahawks Did a great job of Blowing out Carolina and for that I am happy for them. After the Game the Owner of the Sea Hawks, Paul Allen, and his Family of 20 or so people came in and Dined in the private room at my restaurant. Very nice people and seemed like they had a great time. Again, I don't mind football but just not a big fan. SuperBowl Sunday should be absolutely a nightmare for me as every Fan who is a member of the WAC should be in the restaurant. Oh Well! That's why I get paid the BIG Bucks! (Yeah Right!) Well, Like I was saying My Food Shoot went well last night and the Food Was Super tasty. Got a couple good photos. The Dish is Smoked Pepper crusted Salmon with Raspberry Chipotle Sauce Paired with Sage and Cilantro Potstickers with Tare Sauce and Herb Oil. A Duo of different tastes. The Prints from the Epson r1800 look good but I have to get my color calibration dialed in. Just purchased a Monaco color calibration unit to profile my printer, scanner, digital camera, and monitor this should take care of my color issues on all of my computers.

I haven't done a food shoot in a long time! So I have got some time with the recent rains and decided to go for it. I used my Speedotron Force 10 monolights with soft boxes and some food that I picked up from the local Market. I used a Jumbo Prawn, Some Baby carrots, a Basil Parmesan Ravioli, some Chili oil and Pesto. Dish Looked Great going into the shoot and photographed fairly well(first shoot in a while and I was a little Rusty) but tasted Top Notch. I am real critical about these shots so here are the mistakes. 1. To many carrots. 2. Ravioli is Sloppy. 3. Wrong Angle, although this is being really nit picky. If I was to do it over I would Bunch the carrots closer and trim the carrots better. I would slightly season the ravioli with some sort of ground red pepper for aesthetic purposes. This should be a weekly series. It just takes so much time for shoots like this. Not only do you have set up the Camera equipment but have to prepare the food and than shoot it. Lot of work!

Today I went into work for a couple hours to make the food for the Cover shoot of the WAC Magazine. Food Looked good and we'll see how the Photos turn out.

27 days of Rain with one day of dryness will almost drive you crazy! I really miss my bike but have looked at my other passions while the rain Falls. I recently built computers for my father and mother and was quite impressed with the technology that today's computers offer. Having worked in the Computer industry for a few years (taking a break from cooking) I am well versed in computer technology. I ran a private consulting co for a while, worked as a bench tech and Network administrator. I have built countless computers and can remember the old days when computers were in their first stages of"life". I was lucky. At a young age my father caught the computer bug and along with him so did I. We spent time while I was in elementary school taking classes to learn Basic on Texas instrument computers, We had an AppleIIe, which was great for games, and than we got one of the First PC systems. Fine and dandy as it was there wasn't much support for the systems as they were ULTRA expensive. Than one fine day I saw a Movie called "War Games" with Matthew Broderick. It was over after that. I "had" to Learn how to use the modem that my father used to call in to his pharmacy system. I asked him if he could teach me how to use it and he said"NO, You'll run up the phone Bill". So he went to work that day and I taught myself how to use it. This was the start of a long a extensive foray into computer technology. I learned how to Dial into other peoples computer who had set up , via software, a BBS (bulletin board System). This was where you could post messages, trade information, read Text files, and trade software. As the years went by I ran my own BBS, Met countless people from countries across the world and learned a lot about computers (Both the Good and the Bad) and the Phone Company. So over the past twenty years and the advent of the Internet, I have built many computers for my self. When I first moved to Seattle I was really in to the Computer hardware scene and "overclocking" to juice performance from computer hardware. I built four or so systems over the course of 4 years and thought my current computer was up to par for me but knew it was way out of date as far as computer tech goes. So after building these two computers for my parents I was on a mission to build myself one. I didn't want to go all out as I am about to buy a house, but wanted to get something pretty powerful. So this is what I came up with:

AMD 3200+ 64Bit
4 gigs corsair XMS DDR RAM
ASUS A8n-SLI
2 - 300 GiG Maxtor 16mb Cache 7200 RPM Drives
16x DVD
16x DVD-RW Writer
Scepter NAGA III 20.1 inch 16.9 Monitor
ATI X800 GTO 256MB Video Card
Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000
ASPIRE 520 Watt Power Supply
ASPIRE X-Plorer ATXB8KLW-BK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Pretty strong system but not to expensive. To the above I added some things that I already Have:

Klipsch 5:1 THX Surround Sound Speakers
Belkin Egro Keyboard Black
250 Gig Western Digital External HArd drive
Epson Perfection 4870 Scanner

Tonight I added and Epson Stylus PHOTO R1800 Printer that absolutely Rocks!

So there it is...If you were to tell me that I would be running a system with almost a terabyte of Storage, 4000 Megs of Ram running at 2.7 GHz (overclocked a full 700mhz) I would tell you that you were crazy. I remember a Bench tech that I worked with named Song. His dream system was a 100 Mhz Pentium with 128megs of Ram and a 10 Gig Hard drive! We thought he was crazy! A 10 Gig HArd drive was $1000. Boy does Tech change Quickly!

Today's ride was at Lake Sawyer again. I was LAte for my own ride and the other seven riders already started in on the trails but I rode the loop they were on backwards and caught them in the middle. We Rode for 3.5 hours and it was Wet, and Rained the whole time. Still Had a Great time and Got to try out the new Wheelset and Xtra Firm Spring that I put in my Fork. No more Bottoming out and the Wheels are Really Strong. I Tacoed My Front Crossmax XL last week at Lake Sawyer on one of the Big Drops. MAVIC Replaced it on their crash replacement program and I was Stoked about that. I really can't wait for Summer. Over the Rain and Cold. Can't wait for the Dry trails and the Long Days! Tomorrow will be a ride at Sea Tac or Tolt and A new computer Build.