After a mostly uneventful flight from CHS->DFW->YEG (the inbound flight at DFW was late getting in, so we ended up leaving about 20 minutes late), I made it in to Edmonton safe and sound.
My rental car ended up getting upgraded to a Kia Sedona mini-van because that was pretty much all they had left by the time I got there. Pretty sure you could cram a couple dozen people into this thing with room to spare.
After a quick stop at a Bell Mobility store to pick up a SIM card to use in my phone while I’m here, it was off to meet my friends Joe, Alexa and Tom at a Boston Pizza in St Albert.
Mmmm, Great White North.
Joe and Alexa are nice enough to let me stay with them again, which I greatly appreciate. Always nice to be able to stay with friends while I’m in town.
Not too much on the schedule yet, although that will change soon. Already have most of Saturday booked up with the family and a few other things I need to schedule over the week. The rest of my time I’ll get to play tourist and do some exploring again. Looks like I’m just in time to see the leaves start changing colour. That will be cool, it’s been a while since I’ve seen that.
With any luck, by the time I leave Edmonton, I’ll also have my Canadian Amateur Radio Certificate.
On September 30, I will become a naturalized US Citizen. Connie and I will be celebrating the occasion over at Fiery Ron’s Home Team BBQ in West Ashley. You’re welcome to stop by at your leisure to join us for drinks and some of their yummy BBQ. We’ll be there from 7:30 PM to 9ish. Stop by and hang out with us a bit!
A little while ago, I learned that Trader Joe’s sells poutine in their freezer section. I was somewhat skeptical about the product, but it got a favourable reaction from the website I saw it on, and from one of my friends that tried it out. On a recent trip out to the Trader Joe’s around here, Connie picked up a package, and we tried it out this evening.
Disclaimer: I grew up in Western Canada, and as far as I knew at the time, poutine was never a thing in Edmonton. I’d heard of it, but never saw it anywhere. Fries and gravy was easy to find (and was a lunch time staple during high school), but not poutine. I have very little experience with poutine.
Trader Joe’s poutine is a bag of frozen french fries, a pouch of cheese curds, and a pouch of gravy (they call it beef sauce).
Trader Joe’s poutine
Frozen french fries ready for baking
Pouch of cheese curds, and a pouch of gravy
The instructions are pretty simple. Bake the fries at 425°F (about 220°C) for 20-25 minutes, and put the pouches of curds and gravy into a pot of just barely simmering water to thaw them out. You’ll want to keep an eye on the pouches, especially the cheese curds. If you leave them in the water too long, or let the water get too hot, you end up with a mass of molten cheese rather than individual curds. My pouch of curds ended up a bit on the melty side, but the individual curds were still mostly separable.
When the fries are baked golden brown and delicious, put them all on a plate, cut open the pouch of curds, and sprinkle them over the fries.
Fries and curds
Cut open the pouch of gravy (not sauce) and spread over the fries and curds (careful not to burn yourself).
Poutine!
Serve right away while everything is still hot.
I dug in and was pleasantly surprised. The gravy, although thinner than I prefer, was actually pretty tasty and sort of reminded me of the fries and gravy I used to eat for lunch at the mall. The curds were pretty good, squeaky as they should be. The package is easily enough to serve 3-4 people, although one hungry person wouldn’t have a problem finishing the whole thing off.
I don’t know if I really get the whole poutine thing, but that’s probably because I never grew up with it. I can’t say how good Trader Joe’s poutine is compared to any other poutine, but I’d totally buy another package just to do fries and gravy with. As fries and gravy, Trader Joe’s has a pretty decent product here. I might reduce the gravy down a little bit, or do something else to thicken it up a little more, but otherwise it’s pretty good.
My first attempt at building a circuit using the ugly construction technique. It’s supposed to be a simple oscillator circuit using a J310 transistor.
Ugly construction oscillator circuit
One of the advantages of ugly construction is that if you’re working from a schematic or circuit drawing, building is pretty easy. I found that soldering components to the copper clad required a bit of patience, because it’s essentially a very large heat sink. Put the soldering iron on the copper clad, add solder until you get a good sized pool, leave the soldering iron in place and place the component.
For this particular circuit, Vcc is applied to the big resistor with the free lead and output is off the capacitor with the free lead. I soldered on a piece of wire to make the ground connection easier. Haven’t applied power to test it out yet. Will see if it works later on.
At my last regular eye exam, I told my opthalmologist that I thought it was time for a second pair of glasses that I could use for reading and other up close work, because I’m running out of nose room to push my regular glasses down so that I can see things near my face.
Unlike those reading glasses you pick up from the store, in my case they’re just a weaker prescription. If those store reading glasses came in clip-on form, they’d probably work just fine.
This time, I decided to try out Zenni Optical to get the glasses from. Connie ordered a pair of glasses from there a little while ago and was satisfied with what she got. I picked out what seemed like a decent looking pair of glasses on my face and put in an order. I wish Zenni gave more options for filtering frames besides just pupil distance and frame style.
The new glasses arrived today, just under two weeks after placing the order. So far everything seems to be pretty good. The glasses fit reasonably well, although the arms might be a little on the short side. Vision wise, they are good. I can hold things at a reasonable distance from my face and read them pretty easily. No unexpected distortions in the field of view.
So far so good. Now to see how they stand up to regular use.
