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SSH Client

By
Edel Alon
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0

I remember back in the day when I used HyperTerminal to get onto the internet.  Times have definitely changed but there is still a need for terminal clients like HyperTerminal.  I’m not MUDDing anymore.  My time is now used doing all around web stuff and checking up on some of my servers.

While Macs have a great Terminal client, PCs don’t.  One of the best terminal clients I’ve seen for the PC is PuTTY.  Well, it’s free and relative easy to use/configure.  I’ve tried other clients but this one takes the cake.

Sorry, had to throw this in because I felt geeky.

Resources: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Excel Daily Calendar with Tasks and Notes

By
Edel Alon
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2

I finally made a pretty cool daily calendar (just like those daily sheets in your planner/organizer). I recently trashed my old organizer which lasted me 12 years and I had to somehow mourn my loss.

Instructions:
Change the date in cell A1 only.

Have fun with it.

Note: you have to enable macros (but there are no macros in it).  You’ll have to adjust cells depending on your printer.

edel-alon-daily-calendar

Cable Laying has Commenced in Guam!

By
Edel Alon
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1

Laying cable across the ocean floor totally geeks me out.  That’s why I decided to follow this trek of cable in Guam.  What will this mean for Guam? Faster connections!

The PPC-1 project has reached a major milestone with the landing of the cable in Guam. Operations commenced yesterday at dawn with the Tyco Telecom cable ship “Decisive” mobilised in the ocean off Guam. A smaller vessel pulled the cable, suspended by a string of buoys above the ocean floor. The cable was then attached to a draw wire that pulled it through the undersea conduit and onto the beach manhole at 11:41am local time. The cable has since been secured and tested to be working properly.

The Decisive, with its load of 2428.651 km of submarine cable, has now commenced the cable lay from Guam to just north of Madang in Papua New Guinea.

Our CEO, Bevan Slattery, was in Guam to oversee the landing and connection of the cable, and would like to thank the landing team, including Tyco Telecom and Calpac.

What else can come out of this?  Maybe the dreams of making Guam a central technology hub for the pacific will come true.  Maybe even building that convention center will come true.  Whatever the case, this opens up more lines of technology for the island to use.

Resources: http://www.pipeinternational.com/

Temper Eggs?

By
Edel Alon
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0

I realized that I started to use some terms in my posts.  I’ll make sure to make additional entries when I use some funky food terms.

This is the way I temper eggs:

Method
Whisk the eggs until scrambled.  Add a little of the hot stock/sauce to the eggs and whisk.  When I say a little, I start with a quarter cup.  The idea here is not to cook the eggs or even make them curdle.  Ok, going back, add another quarter cup and whisk.  Do this until the mixture is slightly warmer than your stock/sauce.  Then pour the whole thing into the stock/sauce.

 

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

By
Edel Alon
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0

I tried out a recipe along time ago for baked macaroni and cheese but for some reason people didn’t eat it.  I researched a couple more recipes but none of them were appealing.  I came across a recipe on the back of the elbow noodle bag that went something like this:

Ingredients

32 oz elbow macaroni
1/2 cup butter
3 tablespoons flour
4 cups milk
1/2 cup yellow onion, finely diced
12 ounces sharp cheddar, shredded
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Fresh black pepper

Boil noodles.  Saute onions in butter, add flour, add milk.  When thickened, add everything else.

I recently watched Good Eats where they featured Macaroni and Cheese and I learned that what needs to happen is to create a cheesy roux.  There are different levels of roux and they are classified by their color.  For this case, we want to keep a white roux (don’t keep it on the stove too long).

The Good Eats version is on FoodTv.com.  I’ve created a version built off of that one.  Here it is:

 

Ingredients

32 ounces elbow macaroni
1 stick of butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon mustard
3 cups milk
1/2 cup yellow onion, finely diced
2 large egg
8 ounces Kraft Mexican Blend Cheese, shredded
4 ounces Baby Belle Soft Cheddar Cheese, shredded
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Fresh black pepper
1 cup seasoned panko bread crumbs

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large pot of boiling, salted water cook the pasta to al dente.

While the pasta is cooking, in a separate pot, melt the butter. Saute the onions.  Once the onions are browned, whisk in the flour.  After cooking flour for about 5 minutes (until you make a white sauce roux), stir in the milk.

Temper in the eggs. Stir in 3/4 of the cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Once the sauce has thickened, fold the macaroni into the mix and pour into a 2-quart casserole dish. Top with remaining cheese.

Top the dish with bread crumbs

So what’s different?  I’m not using sharp cheddar cheese.  As rich and tasty as it sounds, there are a good number of people who don’t eat sharp cheese.  Using a milder set of cheeses I was able to match the palette of more people.

Excel Calendar

By
Edel Alon
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0

Here’s a complete calendar in Excel using the following formula.

=IF(MONTH(DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1),1))<>MONTH(DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1),1)-

(WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1),1))-1)+{0;1;2;3;4;5}*7+{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}-1),””,

DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1),1)-(WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1),1))-1)+{0;1;2;3;4;5}*7

+{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}-1)

This is the first edition. Each month is on a separate worksheet.  After revisiting this, I forgot how to do arrays in Excel.  Follow theses steps in order for this code to work if you were to start from scratch.

  1. Click on cell A1 and type in a date like: 1/1/2010
  2. Click on cell A2 and highlight 7 columns to the right and 5 rows going down
  3. Paste in the code above in the formula bar for A2
  4. Hold down CTRL and Shift on the keyboard and press Enter
  5. Format the dates as you please

Excel calendar

 

Mango Salsa Recipe

By
Edel Alon
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0

I’m not sure why I’ve never tried this recipe out while I was on island full of mangos.  I’ve been to a couple of restaurants that are serve mango salsa.  After that, I went on a salsa quest.

After tasting a couple of restaurant salsas, I looked for a recipe of my own.

My first search gave me this recipe:

Mango Salsa Recipe

Ingredients

1 ripe mango, peeled, pitted, and diced (about 1 1/2 cup) (See: How to Cut a Mango)

1/2 medium red onion, finely chopped

1 Jalapeño chile, minced (include ribs and seeds for a hotter taste if desired)

1 small cucumber, peeled and diced (about 1 cup)

3 Tbsp fresh cilantro leaves, chopped

3 Tbsp fresh lime juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Also good with diced red bell pepper and jicama.

Method

Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl. Season to taste with salt and pepper. If the salsa ends up being a little too hot or acidic for your taste, you can temper it by adding some diced avocado.

I have a lot of friends who aren’t into cilantro.  I must agree that cilantro is an acquired taste that happens over time.  However, some people say it’s not salsa if there isn’t any cilantro.  So began my quest to find out what makes a salsa.

Here’s the definition of salsa: a hot sauce containing chilies or a spicy sauce of tomatoes, onions, and hot peppers.

The above recipe has some of the flavors according to the definition minus the tomatoes.  Does a mango match the acidity levels of a tomato?  I think so. Both of them are fruits that contain some kind of acid.  After doing some research, I found out that there are pH levels around 4-5 for tomatoes and 3-4 for mangoes.  More research shows that after adding lemon to tomatoes it reduces the pH level by 1 point.  Technically, they are pretty close.

Continue

Where Have All the Greyhounds Gone?

By
Edel Alon
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0

The last time I checked on these greyhounds, they arrived in LA.  6 months later we find those cute greyhounds 7,000 miles away from home.  Here’s the most recent news.  They are in Ohio!

Here’s the strange thing on this article:

That the Guam greyhounds survived at all is nothing short of a miracle.

“The dogs lost in the jungle, found starving, found by the side of the road, hit by cars and they were very lucky that the Greyhound Protection League was there to help them,” said Linda Perko, of Greyhound Adoption of Ohio.  Perko said, “When we started doing this 16 years ago, there were about 50,000 dogs a year born and about 50,000 destroyed.”

This whole time, I thought they came from the race track.  Anyways, if you’re near Ohio, check out: www.greyhoundadoptionofoh.org.

The Stuff People Experience When on Guam

By
Edel Alon
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0

I was reading this article about a guy named George Mallet: Milwaukee Talks: WTMJ-4 anchor/reporter George Mallet.  He was interviewed and part of his interview was about some time he spent in Guam.

Here’s some of the interview:

OMC: I read that you worked in Guam. Really?

GM: Yes, I was working at NBC, and there was a foreign editor there who had started his career in Guam. I wanted to be a reporter, and he said, “Go to Guam.” He called up the news director, and I talked to him over the phone and sent him a tape.

OMC: How old were you then?

GM: It was 1988, so I was 23. I went to Guam, but I didn’t stay there long. TV there was absolutely horrible. I didn’t know anything, but I went in the control room one day and the producer and the director were smoking a bong. I wasn’t a puritan, but I wasn’t going to end up with any useful tape there, so I cut my losses.

I love it.  What’s your story that you remember about Guam?

Backyard Weddings

By
Edel Alon
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0

For those of you who don’t know, I help friends out with their wedding planning. Wedding planning/coordinating is really project management in disguise with an additional ounce of happy emotions and at times can turn into a very heated discussion when you involve too many parties (aka inlaws).

Wedding Aisle Runnter

As I talk to more people who are thinking about getting married I am seeing a shift from hotel weddings in really nice venues to backyard weddings. The reason: cost. I hear complaints about costs and the fact that couples don’t want to throw $20K to a wedding. I’m not sure if it’s one of those things where they think they will break up later but more of that they are trying to save money during these times.

I rarely hear about destination weddings anymore. Vegas weddings are great for a quick elopement. But if you want your family there, the next step is to have that backyard wedding. It can be a little cheaper. I’m not saying 50% cheaper but definitely 25% cheaper. Again it all depends on what you are looking for in the end.

weddingathome

Here are some key things to think about:

  1. Catering it yourself is not cheaper. Catering businesses are skilled in knowing how much food to buy for people. If you cater it yourself, there’s a good chance of buying too much food (I know you want to please people).
  2. Tables, chairs, linens, oh my! Renting this equipment isn’t cheap. You might also find that it’s cheaper to buy the equipment than to rent. If you’re really organized and have access to wholesalers, you can buy and resale the equipment. Generally, these are items that are included with hotel weddings.
  3. Parking can be a hassle. I attended a home event where they hired a valet service to handle the cars. I highly recommend this because these companies have insurance. Hiring your nieces, nephews, and cousins can be dangerous.

Good luck with your planning!

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Welcome to the curated chaos of curiosity and creativity—brought to you by Edel Alon: maker, thinker, and hands-on problem-solver. This blog is part journal, part resource hub, and entirely dedicated to the art of doing. From culinary experiments and car tinkering to tech deep dives and DIY builds, you'll find stories, guides, reviews, and reflections designed to inspire, inform, and occasionally make you laugh (or at least raise an eyebrow). It's a celebration of learning by doing—with a few detours along the way.

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