Category Archives: Life

Muffins!

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I made blackberry muffins today, since Safeway has blackberries for $1 this week. However, I wanted something relatively healthy, so I made them without oil or egg yolk.

1/2 cup fat free milk
1/4 cup + 2 tsp unsweetened applesauce
2 egg whites
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 container (~6 ounces) blackberries

Beat egg whites and mix in milk and applesauce. In a separate bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Combine the liquids and dry ingredients, stirring until well mixed. Stir in blackberries. Fill cupcake cups and bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.

They came out really tasty.


Cooked blackberries look more like raspberries than blackberries. Weird.

Changes I would make after eating 3 (they’re really good and I can’t stop ahhh):
Cut up the blackberries so the muffins don’t end up with huge chunks in them.
Grease the pan and bake them without the paper because they are really difficult to peel off.

Lately I’ve been making tasty sandwiches for lunch with ham, spinach, and cheddar cheese. They’re really simple and really delicious.

Also, our rent is going down next year by about $240/month. That’s pretty nice.
The $120/month I save will almost cover food for me… since I’ve been cooking more often (I’ve eaten out once in the past 2 weeks), I’ve been spending far less on food and eating healthier. I suppose part of this is that I plan my meals around whatever is on sale that week and always save at least 50% on my bill each shopping trip, and stock up on nonperishable basics (soup, canned veggies, pasta) when they go on massive sale. Yay food.

Tomorrow I will be making salsa chicken II: baked chicken breast covered in spicy salsa and cheese. (Last time was salsa verde over chicken drumsticks.) I should go buy some rice to go with that or something.

…I wonder what would happen if I substituted applesauce for oil in things like rice-a-roni. This might be worth an experiment to see how terrible it is.

Life is awesome.

plsql fun

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Here’s a fun little question for those of you who aren’t experts at plsql…

Given this plsql code

procedure helper_method(
   iChange IN boolean,
   oValue OUT number
) IS
BEGIN
    IF iChange THEN
        oValue := 2;
    END IF;
END helper_method;

procedure do_test(
    oValue OUT number
) IS
BEGIN
    oValue := 1;
    --Checkpoint 0
    helper_method(true, oValue);
    --Checkpoint 1
    helper_method(false, oValue);
    --Checkpoint 2
END do_test;

and this java code (assuming the right frameworks for calling into plsql)

public void doTest() {
    IntOutParam out = new IntOutParam();
    sqlCall("do_test", out);
    System.out.println(out.getInt());
}

what is printed out when you replace the checkpoint comments with a RETURN; statement?
The answer surprised me… I actually stumbled across this at work today and it took me a while to figure out.

Replacing checkpoint 0 with RETURN; prints out 1, as expected.
Replacing checkpoint 1 with RETURN; prints out 2, as expected.
Replacing checkpoint 2 with RETURN; prints out 0. Huh?

Can you spot why and what the fix should be?
Hint: Swapping the order of the true/false calls would result in outputs of 1, 0, and 2 respectively.
Huge Hint: At checkpoint 2, the value of oValue is actually null.
See comments for the solution.

So yeah, now you know something to watch out for when programming in plsql :)

Life and foods

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As promised, life has received another update that finishes off my college years. Ah memories.

I accomplished nothing today other than running, working on life, eating, and sleeping. I feel so lazy.

I’ve been making lazy pasta lately…
Buy ground meat on sale: lean ground beef or ground turkey. Get the large packs and you can save a lot of money. Mix it with spices to taste (I like various herbs and a generous helping of chili flakes) and make into meatballs (about an inch in diameter). Bake at 375 for 20 minutes or so. Immediately freeze.
Now, when you make pasta, just throw the meatballs in while the pasta boils. Put pasta sauce in a bowl (even if it’s cold from the fridge) and pour the hot pasta and meatballs over it. Let sit a bit to warm the sauce, then mix and eat.
It’s no more work than making pasta normally (less if you’re used to heating the pasta sauce beforehand), and I find that the meatballs make it much more interesting (and tasty) than plain pasta with sauce.
(This is what Ian used to do with sausage back in college.)

I also like making spinach pasta:
Sautee spinach, onion, and mushroom in a medium pot with olive oil until well cooked. Boil pasta (penne for this, probably) simultaneously. Add cooked pasta to vegetable mixture with some premade spaghetti sauce (Classico Carmelized Onion and Roasted Garlic works well with this). Stir, cook briefly to heat sauce, eat. It’s really simple and tasty.

Mmmm food.

Carnival Over

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7 days, lots of people, and 10755 photos later, my time in Pittsburgh has come to a close. I had more time this year, and so got to do a lot more of the things that I wanted. However, I still can’t help but feel like I didn’t get enough time to spend with everyone. I suppose the only way to remedy that would be to live here full-time.

In any case, it was an awesome week, and many of my photos will show up on photos 2 or portraits at some point… likely not until later this week, since I will want tomorrow to sleep in and recover from the awesomeness.

So yeah, it was good seeing all of you again. My next trip to Pittsburgh will likely be next Carnival. I hope to see all of you then.

Boo for Great Clips!

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Today in the adventures of aIan and Alan, we got really, really bad haircuts. Whee!
At least mine looks a little better after the shower and subsequent restyling.

Lesson learned. Supercuts is acceptable but pricier. Great Clips is cheap cheap cheap but terrible.

Also, Pittsburgh is awesome and yet, even with a week, I’m still worried that I won’t have time to do everything and see everyone that I want to.