Ryan Joy (atxryan)

Michelle Greer asks you to come to the Blood Drive Tweetup. It’s an awesome idea and shows why Michelle is such a cool person. Her energy is boundless.

Do it.

“President Bush managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option,” McClellan concluded.
Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/05/28/0528mcclellan.html

Read that statement again. Slowly.

Whether you believe Scott McCellan is just doing this to sell books (he is) or not, that doesn’t change the fact that this is someone who was very close to the President making a very candid statement. Did he come out with this information too late? Of course. Should he have resigned? If he believed then what he currently says he believes, then most definitely. Regardless, I find that single statement breathtaking in its indictment of this administration’s lead up to the Iraq war.

Not that my use of the moniker is any more real than anyone else’s, but what’s in a name? A username, at that? Well, it’s a personal brand for starters and one that I’ve cultivated for sometime. A quick Google Search for atxryan will show that I’ve been somewhat successful.

Ah, but what’s this?

I’m not a Druid, nor interested in Druidism any further than I what I can find on Wikipedia, but you wouldn’t know that based on the Google search above. In the context of the 9 out of 10 search results pointing to me, you’d assume that this Meetup.com profile is mine as well. However, this is a different atxryan than myself. See, you can put anything you wish as your public name on Meetup.com. On this profile, it reads “Please don’t confuse me with someone named Ryan Joy, who also goes by atxryan online. Thanks.” Touché.

I love how Meetup.com says “atxryan chose not to make Meetup membership information public.” They should really work on their privacy protection.

I know that I can’t expect to be the only one to use atxryan as a username, but that’s not the point of this post. I’m thinking more about this in terms of personal brand management. Large companies have strategies to promote/protect their brand and they keep on top of new developments. It’s in my best interest to do the same. I’ll say this, I’ve got nothing on my friend Alex Jones (google search) (though I do share my own name with a C-list celeb: Ryan Joy).

PS - I learned from my friends at Capital T Theatre during their recent production of “i google myself” that the term for looking your name up in search engines is Googlebator.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that many court fines must now run concurrently instead of consecutively, much the same way many prison terms must be served at the same time instead of being stacked one after the other. This means that in many cases only the most expensive fine would be applied and lesser fines would be considered paid in full.

Read more at Statesman.com: Criminals get a break on fines

Expect this issue to be rolled back in the legislation during the 2009 session. The political pressure from on high to down low will be enormous as this affects every precint’s budget.

A friend of mine recently showed me the results he and his mother received from National Geographic’s The Genographic Project. National Geographic is collaborating with indigenous and traditional peoples as well as the general public to understand where humans came from and how different peoples made it to where they live today.

Where do you really come from? And how did you get to where you live today? DNA studies suggest that all humans today descend from a group of African ancestors who—about 60,000 years ago—began a remarkable journey.

The Genographic Project is seeking to chart new knowledge about the migratory history of the human species by using sophisticated laboratory and computer analysis of DNA contributed by hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.

I was duly impressed even if the information my friend received was, of course, very generalized. He submitted his own DNA sample to trace his Y chromosome and his mother submitted hers in order to trace their mitochondrial DNA. You can learn more or get your own kit to participate here. I’m going to purchase a kit and try to convince my mother to do the same.

“Your individual results may confirm your expectations of what you believe your deep ancestry to be, or you may be surprised to learn a new story about your genetic background.”

It’s not conventional genealogy and you won’t learn anything new about your family, per se. Instead you’ll learn the path your genetic material took to get to you. That’s cool.

Jade, Bryan, and I took a snowboarding trip to Salt Lake City, Utah January 24-29th. Neither of them had ever even seen real snow and none of us had ever been skiing, snowboard, or otherwise.

We drove from SLC to Eden and stayed in a vacation condo at Wolf Creek Resort, which we found through Valley Lodging. I thought it was a pretty good deal for a group of three and it was absolutely beautiful in any direction.

Our 3-day rentals and first-time lessons were purchased at Powder Mountain, though we really ended up splitting our time between there and Wolf Mountain: one of the country’s largest at 5,000 acres and Utah’s smallest at around 85 acres. Honestly though, Wolf Mountain was perfect for our needs. Only on the third day was I confident enough to take on the majority of Powder Mountain’s green trails. Oh, and we were able to use our $23 half-day lift ticket to ski into the night at Wolf.

I made good on my promises not to break anything though I did bust my shoulder up a bit and even went to the doctor for it.

Photos:

More photos at http://flickr.com/photos/atxryan/tags/saltlakecity2008/

I had a great time and can’t look forward to doing it again next year!

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup orange zest
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups white sugar
• 2/3 cup orange juice
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 3 cups cranberries
• 2 tablespoons brandy

Directions:

1. 
   In a small pan over medium heat, combine the orange zest and water. Cover and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Drain, reserving zest and 1/3 cup liquid.
   
2. 
   To the reserved liquid, add the sugar, orange juice and lemon juice. Bring to boil; reduce heat and simmer for 3 minutes uncovered, stirring often.
   
3. 
   Add cranberries; increase heat to medium-high and boil for about 10 minutes or until the cranberries have popped and a small spoonful of sauce sets on a cold plate.
   
4. 
   Remove from heat, stir in brandy. Pour in a covered container and let set at least overnight.
   

I think baby blogs are a great way to share the experience with friends and family in addition to keeping pics, thoughts, and other stuff around for posterity. Baby blogs are the new baby books.

I wish Mark, Kaulen, and soon-to-be Baby Jeffrey the best.

I absolutely love this time of year when everything comes out with a pumpkin-flavored variation. Pumpkin lattes, pumpkin gellato, pumkin pie blizzards from Dairy Queen, even pumpkin-stuffed tortellini.

Obviously, I love pumpkin. However, it’s not actually the pumpkin flavor that most of us enjoy, but the delicate blend of spices that come together to bring that flavor out. To that end, I modified a recipe I first used last year for Pumpkin Crème brûlée to include more spices. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 3 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 pinches ginger
• 2 pinches allspice
• 4 cracked, whole cloves
• 1 vanilla bean, split cut in 1/2 inch pieces
• 8 egg yolks (note)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 1/2 cup coarse sugar or raw sugar

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
2. In a medium saucepan, heat the cream, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves over medium heat, stirring occasionally, just until it comes to a boil. Immediately turn off the heat and set aside to infuse at least 15 minutes. Strain the infused liquid to remove the clove, vanilla, and large spice bits.
3. In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the granulated sugar. Whisking constantly, gradually pour in the hot cream mixture. Whisk in the pumpkin puree.
4. Pour the mixture into 8 ovenproof ramekins and arrange in a hot water bath where the water comes up near the level of the mixture. Bake in the center of the oven until almost set but still a bit soft in the center, 30 to 40 minutes. It should “shimmy” a bit when you shake the pan; it will firm up more as it cools. Remove from the water bath and let cool 15 minutes.
5. Tightly cover each ramekin with plastic wrap, making sure the plastic does not touch the surface of the custard. Refrigerate at least 3 hours, and up to 24 hours.
6. When ready to serve, fire up your kitchen torch to a low flame (not the piercing flame of high). Uncover the chilled custards. Pour as much coarse sugar as will fit onto the top of 1 of the custards. Pour off the remaining sugar onto the next custard. Repeat until all the custards are coated. Discard any remaining sugar. In a circular motion, carefully brown the sugar. Let cool 1 minute before serving.

Note: There exist a number of different techniques and even products for separating eggs. I think the most common is to crack the egg shell in two halves and carefully dump the egg back and forth to let the white drip down and yolk remain in the shell. This method works, but it’s very easy to pierce the yolk and mix it with the white, thereby ruining that egg. I prefer to crack around the egg near the top of the narrow half and pour the egg white out. Once it’s started to pour, gravity will pull the entire egg white out of the shell without much effort. The better separated your eggs, the better your meringues, custards, and soufflés.

Mexico is getting so fuckin’ cheap. I mean, it was cheap before but c’mon!?

For the past year Aeromexico has offered non-stops out of ABIA for as low as $159 roundtrip.
http://www.aeromexico.com/usa/english/pages/specials/faresavers/departure_AUS.html

And now vivaAerobus will be offering flights to places like Cancun, Guadalajara, León, & Monterrey. Apparently vivaAerobus is the RyanAir of Mexico which means that it will cost you less to fly to Cancun than it costs to take a taxi to the airport.

Happy Hour in Cancun in ‘08?
http://austinist.com/2007/11/08/at_this_rate_we.php

If you don’t have it, get your frickin’ passport.
http://travel.state.gov/passport/passport_1738.html