Enjablog

Ian and I received our Google Wave invites from Mindless this morning. *So* exciting!!

This morning was a little overwhelming though. And I don’t think it helped that everything was super slow, probably thanks to all the new people signing up today.

I can see great uses for this:

- Academic: Extrapolating from the new site that my online class is being hosted on this year, I think Wave will offer similar benefits in a less formal setting. So, instead of having a site created specifically for a study group within a course, discussion boards that people don’t really use, and 6 weeks of chat dialog piling up… You could create a wave for a lecture or homework assignment and invite your classmates to participate.

For something like a lecture, you could all write notes at the same time, creating a live wiki of sorts. Or you could make it a public wave where people can search for the course number and see what’s out there. It also allows you to play back the creation of that wave, so with a live recording of the lecture (which you could also embed), you could play back the lecture with the concurrent notes.

- Work: It’s much more interactive than having netmeetings where one person hosts on their computer and other people can only watch or tell them what to do over the phone. I think this, if used effectively, could be better than having a bunch of people together in a conference room. Because, still, that’s one person controlling the computer. This would allow simultaneous editing of/collaboration on documents, help keep a running log of discussion/rationale behind decisions, and could serve as its own form of meeting minutes.

- Event Planning: I could see this being integrated with the calendar; people within a wave might decide that they want to meet in person — or, my family might want to plan what time to have lunch on Saturday. After the parties involved decide, they create a calendar event from wave and the event would be linked to the discussion leading up to the decision.

I can definitely think of ways this would’ve been helpful with wedding planning — keeping track of contact info for vendors, lists of things that needed to get done and who would do them/when they were done, designing invitations. And here we were using IM, email, and shared documents like people from 2008. Sigh…

- Group activities: This could be useful for other things, like Fantasy Football leagues, pretty much anything I would use Google Groups (society mailing lists, volunteer groups, etc.) or shared documents for (family shopping lists! which can be conveniently accessed and updated from a phone!), and will pretty handily replace discussion boards.

Depending on how people use this, I could see it overlapping with/replacing twitter. I don’t see it replacing facebook, though there are plenty of articles out there speculating otherwise.

Risotto: fancy Rice-a-Roni. :)

I made this zucchini risotto a while back and decided that I really like risotto. So I made more tonight, with some added protein and dicing the squash for some added texture.

Turned out pretty well and was quite filling (plus leftovers for tomorrow!).

4 cups water
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup finely diced shallot (or leek, or spring onion, or whatever onion you have on hand)
1 medium zucchini, diced
1 1/3 cup risotto rice (such as Arborio, Carnaroli, or Violone Nano)
1/2 cup dry white wine
1-2 Tbsp butter (optional)
A squirt of fresh lemon juice
A handful of feta (optional)
2 cans tuna, 9 oz each
Salt

Pour the water into a kettle and bring to a boil.

Set a medium-sized, heavy sauce pan over med-low heat. Add the oil and shallots. Add zucchini and saute until tender.

Cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent and tender.

Turn up the heat to medium, add the rice, and cook, stirring constantly, for 2-4 minutes or until the grains are mostly translucent and only white in the center.

Pour in the wine and cook, stirring constantly, until the wine is absorbed. Add tuna.

Add enough water to cover the rice by 1/2 inch (about 2 cups), 1 tsp kosher salt (or 1/2 tsp table salt), and cook, stirring occasionally, until most of the water is absorbed.

Keep adding water 1/2 cup at a time and stirring as necessary. The less water you have in the pot, the more you have to stir.

After 15 minutes of cooking the rice with water, start tasting it. Continue cooking stirring constantly and adding water 1/2 cup at a time as necessary so that the rice doesn’t stick. Taste the rice every few minutes and as soon as it’s almost tender, but still toothsome, turn off the heat.

Add a bit more water if risotto looks stiff. Stir in the butter and a little cheese (if using). Reserve the rest of the cheese to sprinkle on top during serving. Give it a good squirt of lemon, taste and correct seasoning (you might need more lemon juice and/or salt). Cover and let rest 5 minutes. Serve sprinkled with cheese and drizzled with good olive oil. ??????????? ???????????? ??? ??????? ????? ??????? 12 ??? ??????? ?????????? ????? ?????? ??? ????????

I’ve taken to parking at the parking garage across the street from my office because it’s cheaper… But it’s cheaper because it’s cash only.

I’m pretty bad at carrying cash on me, but I’ve gotten much better ever since I started driving to work again and parking here. Now, most days, when you put a $20-bill into the machine, it’ll give you $5s and a dollar coin back. But on Friday, I guess everyone had dollar coins from the beginning of the week and used those to pay the machine. So by the time I went to get my car out of the garage 10 minutes before closing, it sounded like I hit the jackpot!

Had a lengthy discussion today about how Ian is related to my brother’s wife. I think she’s his sister-in-law; he thinks sister-in-law-in-law (this is an improvement over his previous stance that his brother’s wife is my nothing). My father says brother-in-law’s wife.

He says that my relations would be his relations plus an added “-in-law.” But if you just blindly add “-in-law” to everything, does that make Ian’s brother his own brother-in-law-in-law? Then, Ian had to clarify that it would have to be a directed acyclic graph, so I couldn’t describe someone he’s related to with respect to how I’m related to them through him. That seems like a valid argument.

But another contrary example: my nieces are his nieces, not his nieces-in-law. So if you don’t need to add an extra “-in-law” to them, why do you need to add an extra one to my sister-in-law?

So what do you think? Who’s right? Me, my husband-in-law, or his father-in-law?

And while you’re judging things… If someone leaves the stove on and someone else comes along and puts a potholder on the active burner, who is at fault? The person who left the stove on? Or the potholderer?

In my on-going quest to become a full-fledged adult, I finally bought car insurance tonight! I’ve been covered under my dad’s insurance for years. But now that I’m married and someone else’s property, it seemed like it was time to head off on my own… and add myself to my husband’s policy.

Surprisingly, it took about 5 minutes. If someone had just told me that before, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have taken me 6 years to do it.

Zomg… Recitation was audible tonight! Only 6 weeks into the semester and we can finally hear the lectures (hopefully).

I’ve spent the past 3 days complaining to anyone with email. I don’t know that that actually did anything, but I did help teach the TA about technology, i.e. turn off the built-in mic and speakers when using a headset.

This is the TA who has told us not to ask him questions about the course material, homework, or schedule. He is only here to help make sure the professor can offer the course online. Great, so clearly you’re doing worse at that than I am in this class… ;)