We had a one week hiatus from playing hockey, and the break badly hurt my team.  Prior to last night’s game we had won two in a row, and only had two loses over seven games.  Unfortunately we added another loss to our record last night, and ended our streak.  We had previously beaten last night’s opponents earlier in the season, but last night was different.  We couldn’t generate very much offense, some of our guys couldn’t stay out of the penalty box, and overall it was a pretty weak performance.  Personally I played pretty well, and our line had some chances, but we didn’t add any points to our stats.  Only four games are left in the short summer season, so hopefully we can finish strong before heading for the playoffs.

Last night Kim and I prepared a corn on the cob recipe from a book I mentioned earlier titled Patio Daddy-O at the Grill. I highly recommend the book as everything we have tried has been full of flavor and relatively easy to prepare.  Here is the recipe:

The cure for fresh corn fatigue: Char the ears in their husks, strip them naked, then roll them in soft butter spiked with basil and lemon.  For a final flourish, hit the glistening rows with a  flurry of grated Parmesan.

• 6 ears corn, husks on
• 1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
• Salt and ground black pepper to taste
• Vegetable oil for the grill
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1. Soak the corn in a large bowl of water for 1 hour (so the husks don’t catch fire).
2. Prepare a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill, or preheat a gas or electric grill to medium-high.
3. In a small bowl, mix the butter with the lemon juice and basil, and season with salt and pepper.  Spread out the butter in a 1/4-inch-thick layer in the center of a large plate or baking sheet and set aside.
4. Brush the grill grate with vegetable oil.  Grill the corn, turning often, until the husks are evenly charred all over, 25 to 30 minutes.  Carefully peel back the corn husks, but leave them attached to the cobs.  Discard the corn silk and use the husks as handles.  Roll the corn in the softened butter, and top with Parmesan cheese.  Server immediately.

We only prepared half of the recipe, and used only 2 tablespoons of butter.  That seemed to be enough butter for us and we left the remaining butter mix ingredients at their full six serving amounts.  We didn’t have lemon juice so we used lime juice instead.  The results were delicious!

I’m getting the travel bug again and I’ve started looking into an anniversary trip for Kim and I.  Last year we headed to Alaska to celebrate our first year together as a married couple.  This year I’m hoping to get to Yellowstone and other surrounding areas, including Grand Teton and parts of Montana.  I’ve started today by searching for available lodging inside Yellowstone.  It looks like we should spend a night near Old Faithful, and a few other nights elsewhere in the park, likely near the Canyon Village.  We may have started planning this a little too late, as many of the rooms are already filled, but I’m hopeful that we can find sometime in September to make the trip work.  What I’m looking for are suggestions for where we should stay, and for how many nights.  I’m not sure many readers have been to the area, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

On Saturday I had another fairly decent experience at this year’s WordCamp, which took place in Boulder.  I was a little disappointed in the lack of knowledge gained from last year’s WordCamp, and the same is true again for this year.  The one session that I looked forward to the most, was definitely the most informational and in my opinion the best of the entire day.  This was titled Caching in WordPress and was presented by Chris Scott and Sean O’Shaughnessy from Voce Communications.  The information presented by these two easily beat out all other presenters at the conference combined.  The only other session that was even close was WordPress Development by Alex King and Shawn Parker of Crowd Favorite, which featured on the fly sidebar widget development from a crowd suggested list of features.

I pretty much stuck to the more technical sessions the entire day.  I thought that the SEO Techniques session was pretty much common knowledge, or at least stuff that I was already fairly aware of.  However the room was packed for this session, so I guess others may not be as knowledgeable.  If nothing else, the session was very entertaining.  The DIY Usability Testing session was also entertaining.  Steve Martin from Clever Cubed was the presenter and though the crowd was a little smaller than earlier presentations, the information provided was focused and intelligent.  I don’t think it applies to my work very much, but there were a small number of people in attendance that were very interested in the subject.

Finally I sat in on Jane Wells’ presentation on What’s Next for WordPress.  She is the user experience lead for WordPress and is very knowledgeable on all things WordPress.  Though she didn’t talk much about what’s actually next for WordPress, she did highlight new features from the recently released version 3.0 as well as answer question after question from the audience.  Before the presentation I wasn’t aware of the new menu functionality in this release of WordPress and that is something that I definitely plan to utilize in the future.  Otherwise, her presentation was good and she helped many in the crowd with all kinds of varying problems.

With all of that said, it is really hard to beat the cheap price of admission ($45) that included a $10 gift certificate to local venues for lunch as well as a nice t-shirt.  After these tickets were sold out, the organizers announced $25 tickets that didn’t include lunch or a shirt, and I wish they would have offered that from the beginning.  I don’t really need anymore t-shirts in my closet.

If you haven’t already heard, I am going to be a father!  Kim is pregnant and due on January 14, 2011.  We couldn’t be more excited.  We have lots to do between now and then with the house, so I’m sure the time will really fly by.  We converted our old wedding website into a blog for baby updates, so be sure to check out kimandedjr.com.  There are already a bunch of ultrasound photos there and I’m sure there will be many more to follow.  I’m trying to convince Kim to post on the blog, and hopefully she will add an entry soon.  Be sure to check back regularly for updates on the baby.

Hopefully I can write more tomorrow, but today has been super busy at work.  We have a deadline to release the next version of our software on Monday and we still have a lot of work left to do.  So far this short week I’ve put in twelve hours Tuesday and eleven hours yesterday in the office.  That’s a lot of overtime that I wish I got paid for.  I’m hoping to get out a little earlier tonight, but time will tell.  I’m really just hoping that I don’t have to work this weekend, as that could ruin my plans for WordCamp on Saturday.

This weekend I will be attending my second WordCamp.  You may recall that I attended WordCamp in Denver last year, and though afterward I wasn’t sure if I would attend another, I decided to give it another try this year.  I figured that even though I wasn’t completely satisfied last year that it deserved another chance, especially since last year was the first ever in the area.  I’m hoping to learn a little more about WordPress, but also hope to be entertained by some of the presentations like last year, and even do a little networking.  Currently I’m planning to attend the following sessions: Caching in WordPress, WordPress Development, and DIY Usability Testing.  I’m also considering Design Panel and SEO Techniques, which are at the same time, and leaning towards What’s Next for WordPress over From URL to SQL to HTML.  Unfortunately it doesn’t look like Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, will be there this year.  His presentation last year was very memorable.

To kick off the long holiday weekend Kim and I ventured out for dinner on Friday evening.  She was craving something spicy, so we consulted the latest 5280 magazine’s Top of the Town and decided to head to the editors’ choice for Indian Restaurants, which is creatively named India’s Restaurant.  Fortunately, as we would soon realize, the food is much better than the name and the location of this restaurant.  It is situated in a suburban strip mall and shares an entrance with a discount movie theater.  That doesn’t exactly scream authentic, but we soon were treated to some of the best Indian food I have ever had.

We started with the Shahi Bhajia, Crisp deep-fried vegetable fritters.  The variety of vegetables were all good, but I especially liked the broccoli.  And for dinner Kim went with the  Ticca Saag, Boneless tandoori chicken diced and cooked in a spinach and cream sauce.  I chose the Malai Koftam, Indian vegetable and cheese balls in a delicately spiced curry.  We both ordered the meals to be prepared to the medium spice level.  Even this came with a warning the server that it would be, “hot like jalapeno.”  We shared both dishes and I can admit that the Ticca Saag was definitely spicy and there was no way we could have eaten it prepared hot, but the Malai Koftam was not as spicy, though that could be intentional.

Both dishes were excellent and I would order each again, but with so many choices on the menu I’m sure we would try something else the next time.  We also ordered a side of garlic nan with our meals, which was also very good.  My only complaint would be that each entrée was only served with a small dish of rice.  I prefer much more rice to help balance the heat if needed.  I’m sure we could have asked for more rice, but instead we prepared some of our own at home to go with the leftovers for today’s lunches.  It was just as good reheated as it was when we first had it a few days ago.

I previously reported that I hadn’t found any issues with the new iOS4 on my iPhone 3GS, but I have recently discovered an issue.  Emails that are generated from applications other than the email app do not automatically send.  Instead they sit in the outbox and I have to go in and manually send each of them from there.  This is not how email behaved before the upgrade.  I finally found a post on the Apple Support forums but there has yet to be a successful solution posted.  This isn’t a serious bug, just a minor inconvenience, but I do hope it is fixed soon.

Another week is nearly over and I’m happy to report another win in last night’s hockey game.  My team faced off with the Subluxators last night, who we already beat once earlier in the season.  This team has a few guys on the roster that I used to play with, so it’s always nice to beat up on old friends.  We started off with a nice lead of a couple of goals.  Suddenly one player on the other team dropped his gloves and headed for our goalie.  He was quickly dropped to the ice by goalie, and we all quickly commented that it was the dumbed thing we’ve ever seen.  Why would you go after the most armored player on the ice?  Well apparently this guy said our goalie hit him in the groin with his stick.  I guess he forgot his jockstrap?

Anyway, back to the game.  After the player mentioned above was thrown out of the game for trying to fight, our opponents were left with only seven skaters.  Miraculously they managed to stay in the game, and probably could have won if we didn’t have three full forward lines and four defensemen.  At one point in the second period the game was actually tied, but we never completely lost control of our lead, and eventually we were up by a few goals again.  That’s where the game ended, 8-5 was the final score I believe.  The league has been a little slow in posting results recently so I’m forced to guess.  I do know that our record is now 7-2 and we only have five more games left to play in the short summer session.  Things are looking good as we are solidly in third place overall.