Darkavich's Daily Ramblings Ramblings of a Mad Sys-Admin

The last steam engine to pull cars in San Diego has been restored and is running on June 1st. Come out and take a look. Beware of the R&R marathon that day though.

http://www.trainweb.com/3751/2008f01a.html

I was chatting with a friend and heard about these cool little NAT routers. No, not the DSL/Cable model routers you all have (you have one right?) for security at your home. This is a similar device, but instead of an ethernet cable hooked to a cable/dsl modem it has a USB port that I plug my EVDO modem into it

The device then has a wireless router built in. So I can now broadcast a SSID over WiFii to any computers I want and they all share the same EVDO connection. Now I can be in a hotel and my laptop, my iphone and Angie’s ipod touch all can be online at the same time. No more back and forth with the computer to check email.

All of this in the footprint a little bigger than my wallet. Here is a link to the model I purchased:

http://www.cradlepoint.com/ctr350/ctr350.php

I purchased this model, because I already had a USB EVDO card.
I can also share my WiFii with other drivers on the road 😉

How cool is that?

This saturday we had guests for dinner. I decided to try something new. I made a smoked pork loin. I did two things I have never done before; smoked it and brined it.

The brine I used was simple:

2 quarts of water
1 cup sugar
1 cup of kosher salt

I mixed it and poured this into a 1 gallon bag with the pork loin. I then let it sit over night.

In the morning, I put a new rub on the loin. I used the following items in the rub:

1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp cayenne pepper

I then put the loin into the smoker and let it cook at 200 degrees for about 6 hours. I also tried something new this time. I put some hickory chips in the bottom of the smoker then covered them with the charcoal. Even with the rain the smoker stayed pretty much at 200 degrees. Have I told you how much I love my smoker?

This last week or so, I have have been buying additional track and parts for the Pond Haven Railroad. As some of you may or may not know, LGB no longer exists. They went bankrupt and then were bought by Maklin. Last week it was announced that LGB of America could not reach an agreement at this time to distribute LGB/Maklin products in the USA.

This coupled with the poor dollar oversees has caused track prices to skyrocket. Rather than pay these outrageous prices I have turned to ebay.

In true Simpson’s fashion, I tell you this story to tell you this:

I was searching on ebay and decided to type in Atari 2600. I don’t know what made me do it, but I found this page…

They want $199 for a console, two controllers and 1 game. Highway robbery!!!!

You can buy a joystick with the console built in for $14. I got one for Angie a few years ago. Check the out the Atari Plug&Play Joystick