Kimmers’ Neighborhood

...of course, with the working from home lately, it makes little difference to me.  However, our sole remaining high-schooler is pretty happy to have a day dedicated to Gaia Online, pizza, and The Office (American version).

File under "I Am Not Making This Up" ...

Available now at your local comestibles emporium.
(Invitation only. Black tie.)

ATTENTION TEENAGERS: this is what happens when you go off to college.

Like a half-digested fountain... when she comes.

Yep, it's even got Horny Goat Weed.
 
Never mind what I'm doing using a camera phone in the men's room (again).  You got your business, I got mine.

M. Ward: LOATHE him.
No links, no apologies. Dude's microphone license needs to be revoked, RIGHT NOW.
 
However...

 

The Dead Weather: LOVE them.

 

 

Pay attention, class; this is Rock School.

Spot, our cranky old lady cat (foreground), still can't stand that Rikki exists (that's our young boisterous boy in the background).  But I did not pose this shot; I wouldn't even care to try it.  And they're upstairs right now, just hanging out together on the comforter, looking for all the world like they do this kind of thing every day*.
 
 
*just to be clear: they really, really don't

MORAL OF THE STORY: Never mow the lawn.

Unless we're playing flip cup or Scrabble or fantasy football, competitive isn't exactly the word I would use to describe myself. I'm way too laid back for that kind of intensity, but if the occasion should arise, you'll see a whole different side of me. So when Jamie's dad challenged me to a potsticker and fried rice throwdown (a la Bobby Flay), I immediately laughed it off, but once the smack talking got started, so did I. "How does an A.B.C. know how to make potstickers? A.B.C.s don't know how to make potstickers." That's Jamie's dad talking smack on me for being an American Born Chinese. Well, just because I'm not an F.O.B. doesn't mean I didn't spend a good many hours of my childhood folding potstickers. Coincidentally, fried rice was the second dish I ever learned how to make behind my dad's ghetto grilled cheese (Kraft singles with Wonderbread warmed in the toaster oven). I felt like I had the basics down, but there's nothing like a little healthy competition to feed creativity, especially when the prize is a bottle of Blue Label!

Jamie came up with rules and regulations to dissuade any cheating, even though there may or may not have been a few rules bent. We were each allowed one sous chef and our dishes would be judged equally on three categories: originality, taste and presentation. It would not only have to taste good and look good, but we would also have to put our own twist on originals. How would I put my signature on dishes that have been made a hundred times over?


For the potstickers, I knew I had to make my own wrappers. I love making fresh pasta and it really makes all the difference in the world in a simple dish. My filling was pork based, because pork gives you the juiciest dumplings, which just might have something to do with the fattiness. I mixed ground pork with the traditional napa cabbage, shiitakes, ginger, chives and scallions. For bonus flavor points I added dried shrimp, tiger shrimp and kim chee. My trusty sous chef, Misa, helped me assemble the potstickers. Thanks, Mees!



For the fried rice, I wanted to present two dishes: one classic and one contemporary. My classic dish was a replica of my mother's fried rice. Chinese sausage, peas, eggs, shrimp and rice, of course. I drizzled in some homemade chili oil spiked with orange zest right at the end. My second dish was an arancini (fried risotto ball) studded with corn, zucchini, carrots, ginger and garlic. I borrowed a bit of inspiration from Italy.  Here are the little nuggets rolled in Panko and ready to be fried.


Since my competitor had home court advantage, I did all my prep work at home. Here's everything ready for transport.


Even though it was a "blind" taste test, the open kitchen pretty much gave away any secrecy. I'm sure many of you will recognize my plating style too. Without further ado... I give you the side by side comparisons.






That's a little chayote slaw on the side. Always nice to have a fresh counterpart to fried foods.




Cooking for friends is one of my favorite things to do, and this throwdown gave me an excuse to do just that. Good times were had by all and everybody left with fully distended bellies. Good thing we had that bottle of Blue Label to help us digest. I think it was pretty much a draw in both categories, but I was able to edge them out just a bit with presentation and originality. Here's how we celebrate a night of hard work:


Thanks to the Changs for hosting and letting us destroy the kitchen. Thanks to all our judges!

The problem is... er, was, dammit... a secondary yet critical chip, which is normally TWO separate chips.  For this particular model, though, the chipmaker (nVidia) decided it would be more economical to combine both the North Bridge and the South Bridge chips into one.  This consolidation was a nifty piece of engineering in some ways.  On the other hand, it creates a bottleneck, a single point of failure, where there's simply too much going on.
 
Imagine your city builds pair of train stations within a block of each other, to split the heavy daily traffic they anticipate into zones.  Station N serves All Points North, while Station S sends folks South.  It works and things are fine for a while.  Years later, though, the city hits hard times, and they close Station S, routing all traffic through N instead.  If Station N was originally designed with enough tracks, and was laid out cleverly enough, then maybe it could handle the extra load with minimal reworking of the timetables.
 
And this combined "Station N" chip on my mainboard? ...well, it couldn't.  Here's why:

That's it, in the yellow circle, under that little block which says "ASUS" (sorry about the photo quality; can't be helped now).  That's aluminum, not copper, with only one skinny heatpipe leading up to an array of fins between the I/O ports and the CPU socket.  Note its left-right alignment; see how it's right next to and under the level of that long blue slot?...

Follow that copper pipe down to where it vanishes:  That's where the video card sits, covering the "Station N" chip (Northbridge + Southbridge) completely.  No room to spare.  All snug and tucked in, right?
 
Problem is, all the additional electrical traffic made the combo chip run hot.  Way too hot.  That copper pipe, which is supposed to lead the heat away from the chip to be dissipated by the fins in the upper left, is completely inadequate to the task.  It's like trying to air-condition your whole train station with your old dorm-room fan.  And since there's so little room in there, once the video card is set up properly, there's no way to add additional heatsinks, a water-cooling block, or anything else, to improve cooling.  And the video card is REQUIRED; there's no way to use the mainboard without one.  Even if a plain-vanilla onboard chip would have been good enough for this computer, there isn't one available.
 
So it basically slow-cooked itself to death.  And now I need to figure out how to get all the data off my two harddrives, which are perfectly operational, except that they require a different chip on my now-irreparable mainboard to function (I chose hardware-based RAID 0, or "striping").
 
If that combination Northbridge/Southbridge chip had only been positioned out of the way of the video card, I could've modded the system to cool it better.  If only.  aaaaaaaaaaargh