More random stuff

There is fish in the tank!!! They are white cloud danios, which are cheap. So the purpose to adding the cheapest fish I can to my 55 gallon tank is to get the Nitrogen cycle started. Since the tank at this stage is more unstable and likely to have an ammonia spike, it is often best to let cheap fish start producing the stuff to get the bacteria going.

Although anyone with a tank probably already knew that.

For my birthday, my brother was kind enough to order a smoker off my Amazon wishlist. I finally got a nice day and good piece of meat to try it out. I have to say I was totally impressed. I was impressed that I didn't burn off my eyebrows (even though it was close). I was impressed that the simplistic heat guage's ideal, really meant ideal. I was shocked by the quality of meat to come forth. Overall it rocked. So, Michelle picked up a pork tenderloin that I did a dry rub of

• Sea salt
• lemon pepper
• cayenne pepper
• garlic powder

on to the roughly 1.25 lbs of pork. I filled the water pan with a bunch of water, 4 cloves of garlic and a dash of port. I used some mesquite chips (thoroughly soaked) as my smoking agent and let it cook for 2 hours. The piece of meat came of with the most amazing flavor that I could imagine. Awesome. If you are interested in getting one of these things yourself, just click the link below.

Brinkmann 852-7080-V Gourmet Charcoal Smoker & Grill with Outdoor Vinyl Cover

Also so that I don't forget, here are some future topics I want to touch on:

• Iterative Design
• Joel on Software
• Rift lake fish
• Baby news

Like I could ever forget baby news. No new news. Michelle's latest doctor appointment went well and we are just waiting now. I think we are ready. I hope we are ready. We probably are not ready. Had one of those moments today at work, where I realized one week from today I could be a dad. How much will life change? Definitely excited and scared.

So I read a large portion of The Baby Book as I have linked to in previous posts. I glad it was able to tell me that it is highly unlikely that I will form a deep bond with my child. I gathered from the book that this is a mother only sort of club and that I will have to just resign myself to fumbling and making mistakes. Thanks Dr. Sears and Dr. Sears! Maybe I am being self-centered or need my ego stroked... but I would like to believe that men have some opportunity to form some connection with their children. In the end, all that matters is the happiness of the child and my connection may have absolutely nothing to do with that and that is fine. I just want a happy, healthy child.

Enough of the depressing stuff. Currently reading:

• The Art of Project Management
• A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3)

Also on my Flickr Album, I added a bunch of pictures from my aquarium setups in Michigan as well as some flower pics that my wife took around our new house.