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Austinvines

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Austinvines

  1. We have a Norwegian friend who washed up in Austin from New Orleans after Katrina. She reached out for help from a local Norwegian group and Stanley was the first Austinite she met and he really helped her out. He still shows up at her Constitution Day parties sometimes. Good guy.
  2. I used the Spartan Eradicator last year and started in the Spring. They say two tubes will cover an acre, so I used two for my small suburban lot. It cut the mosquitos down significantly but there were still a few around. It’s a pretty simple system. Large tube with holes in the top. There is a pouch with sugar, yeast and salt that dissolves once you add water and shake. The yeast eats the sugar and draws the mosquitos with co2. Not sure if the the mosquitos drink the fluid and it is the yeast that kills them or the salt. My brother had good luck with the granulated garlic.
  3. The southern boundary of the rain is just a bit south of us and doesn’t appear to be moving north but the orange and red blob appears plenty big to the west (and moving this is at). My spouse is freaking that our sons are planning on driving to a late night Endgame showing around 10. I’ve decided to drink.
  4. “Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?” http://
  5. Saw this over the weekend when a buddy took me to a PCA event at the Petrol Lounge. That place is nuts.
  6. Help me out here: Sam names John Aegon in the show, but even in the show, we know that the Mountain kills both R and Il’s son (now Young Grif) and his sister. I remember Bran’s dream of R talking about the Prince Who Was Promised and I thought that was Aegon.
  7. Idiot took an illegal left, hit the Mustang and pushed it into oncoming traffic where it was creamed by a truck.
  8. I have extra virgin and canola in my pantry next to the stove. The heat of a sauté will oxidize/destroy most of the complex aromatics of the EVOO so you are wasting money if you don’t use it to finish or for dressings and would get the same result with a regular olive oil at a cheaper price. I’d rather not waste the space on two bottles of olive oil so just use EVOO for sautéing anything Mediterranean. Canola for Mexican/Central/South American and Indian (or ghee). Butter and oil for continental dishes. Asian gets into seed oils for me.
  9. For any mtb dads, I want to pimp NICA again. My sons just finished their third race of the season at Bluff Creek Ranch in Warda. Many hundreds of 6-12 graders shredded the course Sunday in really cold and windy weather and rode from a bit over 5 miles to over 20. I think NICA has leagues in almost half the states and is growing every year. The Austin area alone has a few hundred riders and the team from Amarillo arrives in an old UT tour bus. I’ll have to get a picture of it from the next race at Dino Valley.
  10. I recently got Google Fiber TV with gigabit internet. My now to be forever virgin sons are super happy but I haven’t been able to figure out how best to use it. It seems that my old WDTV Live can’t handle the audio that most torrents come with so I can dl tons of content but can’t hear anything. I thought I wasn’t a total tech idiot but I cannot figure out how to cast an mkv to my tv (not smart). Supposedly my tv boxes have Chromecast built in but I cannot get the mkv to play from VLC even when rendering it to the correct fiber box. Any ideas on an appliance or apps to make this outrageously awesome bandwidth do what I need it to do? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
  11. I’ve got a D width foot but a narrow heel. I haven’t worn boots since I had a pair of Justin ropers 20 years ago and lost 18 years ago. I went to the Tecovas store and tried on several pair (bourbon lizards). The 9.5s fit but the heel in the left boot slides up enough to where I could probably sling it off if I worked on it. The right fits fine. Would moleskin or something like it applied to the inside be a suitable fix? After leaving, I walked up to Allen’s and found a pair of Lucchese’s that fit great but were $1,000 more than the Tecovas.
  12. Bourbon Rye (Vieux Carré, Green Hat) Gin Big reds Whites are my vehicle for alcohol. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
  13. He was suspended by the Bar and reinstated once his probation for the pot ended. He’s not active with the Bar possibly for failure to pay child support (almost 75k behind I think). The theft charge, if it was for legal work, should probably garner him a long suspension and maybe disbarment, if the Bar finds out it, which it probably already knows about it or the other BS listed in that texags thread. I knew him and know people he used to work with before he went completely off the rails. Is it weird that I hope this is a substance abuse problem which people can come out of as opposed to him just being a dirtbag? He has high school age sons who this has to be fucking up badly.
  14. I skipped going to work this weekend so was able to cook dinner both sat/sun. Here’s the rabbit from last night that was really good: Today I did Indian with dal makhni and chicken tikka: I actually finished the makhni with a coal from the grill where I did the chicken thighs. First time to try that.
  15. Lapin a la Moutarde on egg noodles with Brussels Sprouts and toast with sautéed organ cream. CM was out of bunny when I went last night. The butcher was kinda shocked. I assume lots of Surlies had dropped in and wiped it out. Circle C HEB carries frozen bunny all the time so I grabbed a three pound box for four of us. The twins dug it. Such a mild flavor. I wanted to try the olive recipe but figured this would be baby steps. The box came with three kidneys, a heart and a liver. Sautéed in butter with shallots, chopped and added heavy cream to make the topping for the toast. Shit on a Shingle has a long way to go.
  16. Man that’s a lot of xanthan. I find that I can thicken a reduction well with half a teaspoon in some cases. When I have used more like a tablespoon, the texture became thick and viscous which was not the most appetizing. Does the oil change the consistency to something less snotty?
  17. I think his wife was getting her chocolate starfish probed by an Aussie by that point so maybe she is safe.
  18. Selling my sons’ medium size 2016/2017 Cannondale F-si alloys. 1x11 Shimano XT. Cannondale replaced the frames with the 2017 version so they have zero miles on them. They were race bikes so have been very well maintained. Forks were fully serviced in 2018 and just had the rear hubs replaced. Retail was $2200, asking $900.
  19. Had a good night Saturday and invited friends over to delve into my depleting cellar that I can’t really afford to keep stocked anymore. I did a sous vide strip loin roast at 133 for about 3 hours and then seared on cast iron and used a map gas torch. The 85 barbaresco single vineyard and the ‘90 Barton were willed to me when a wine hoarding friend of mine past with about 50 cases and all his friends divvied them up. For a 30 year old wine, the barbaresco was in good shape. No tannins and the fruit was fading but it had a great nose. The Leo. Barton was incredible. Cigar box cedar, violets and red fruit. Still had some power. The Amon-Ra 2002 McClaren Vale Shiraz was still a brute. Huge fruit, lots of toast and roasted qualities coming through. I’m kinda over the over-extracted qualities of Oz Shiraz but this was great for a change of pace.
  20. I’m hearing that if MS isn’t charged/indicted it isn’t a lesser included offense so if she walks on murder, she walks. Maybe 4th and 5 will chime in.
  21. Where will you be staying and how much work do you want to do? The Barton Creek Greenbelt is right in the middle of town and is close to Bicycle Sports Shop’s main shop that has rentals of a full range of bikes from hard tails to full carbon squishies. They are not cheap but have a good selection. I’d try and reserve one early to ensure you get what you want. The BCGB is not a beginner trail and there is a ton of branches where you can actually enjoy yourself instead of dealing with hikers. This may be limited with the time of year but it’s a well used trail. The hike and bike trial around Town Lake / Lady Bird Lake is crowded, flat, and a target rich environment on weekends. It’s also close to great watering holes and restaurants so you can sightsee as you ride between bars. You can also go up the trail along shoal creek. South of town you have a trail system of 70 miles of mostly flat trails with a few hills and decent flow. There are several posters who live in the area, myself included. Slaughter Creek Trail is easy and self contained. North you have Walnut Creek which is a self contained 12 mile circuit around a park. Northwest, you have Brushy Creek which is a large system with some one of the more technical trails (Deception) around. West there are several parks (Pace Bend and Horseshoe Bend) and Reimer’s Ranch that offer good trails. I’m old and still ride a hard tail so stick to flow, twist and don’t like big step-ups. Feel free to post here or PM me if you have other questions. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
  22. Since he no longer smokes glass and pole he has a new hobby.
  23. In both cases it was, most likely, an emphasis vote after selecting straight party. With scantron ballots, if you straight party vote Democrat and then fill in the blank for Beto, it would count as one vote for Beto. The voter just emphasized Beto. On a machine, the program treats the straight ticket and the emphasis vote as something like a double negative and marks the vote for the opponent. You do get a warning pop up but it’s almost doublespeak like “the selection you’ve made will deselect your precious selection.” Litigation was tried to get it changed but it didn’t go anywhere. So on machines in Texas, if you straight ticket vote R but then choose Beto, your vote goes Beto. If you straight ticket R and choose Cruz, your vote goes to Beto. If no one voted a straight ticket, this wouldn’t happen.
  24. The twins didn’t get their licenses until they were almost 17, which was early August, and I didn’t get around to buying them a car until 2 weeks ago (2009 Ford Escape). The reason for both things happening was my wife has declared that she will never take the boys to MTB practice again. Those start again in a few weeks so after the vehicle they needed a rack because the four-bike tray-style Yak we normally use for race weekends is too damn heavy and their bikes won’t fit in the Escape. I search around and decided on Kuat Transfer. It’s a two-bike rack that secures the tires instead of the frame. Ordered from REI and got an extra $20 gift card for buying it, in addition to the $30 I’ll get early next year. It arrived today and we assembled it this evening. It was idiot-proof to put together and really well engineered. A Swagman rack that is similar has none of the advantages like being able to tilt down as well as fold up for not much less. After “supervising” the installation, I earned the reward of a big ol’ Boulevardier. Life is good.
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