It's blogging time again. Tonight I'm going to talk about my new computer.

Recently, I needed to use a computer to get on the web and do something useful. Well, actually, it probably wasn't something useful that I needed to do. Maybe I just needed to surf the web to feel like I was connected to the world. They say it's like an addiction, where if you don't get on the internet at regular intervals, you go into withdraw and start twitching and feeling helpless and lost.

So I went upstairs to connect. My wife was working away on my Dell laptop on something important, maybe video poker or a Sudoku puzzle. My daughter was also doing something equally important on the old mac. She might even have been writing a paper for homework, otherwise, I'd have tossed her off. I was twitching pretty bad by this time. There was no way I was going to get on my son's computer. He was locked in a battle to the death with some pretty evil looking beasts in one of those online multiplayer games.

That's when I summoned up the courage and announced that I was getting a new computer so I could get on when I wanted to. And guess what? Much to my surprise, my accountant, I mean wife, said "Sure, what kind are you gonna get? A Mac or a PC?" What a silly question. Of course, I was getting a Mac. I've got one of those white Apple decals in my car window and I'm a major Apple stockholder. OK, I'm a minor stockholder. Anyhow, It's been 8 years since we got our last computer, which was our third Mac. I don't count the Dell since that was purchased by my business strictly for business purposes.

To make a long story less boring, I bought a Mac Mini, one of those new Duo Core, Intel Macs. I also bought a wirelss keyboard and a wireless mouse. Cool!! But I'm not crazy about the wireless mouse. It's heavier than a regular mouse and the response isn't as crisp. I also needed a monitor. I could have bought a nice Apple monitor. They look real good and go for something between 2 and 7 million dollars. I ended up buying a Dell monitor from Costco. It was rated high by Consumer Reports but not recommended because it listed for almost $400 when they tested it. I could get it from Dell for $309 but Costco had it for only $259. I went for it.

Of course, I have no software for my new computer besides all the stuff that comes with it (which, by the way is fairly substantial). But these days, who needs software? All you need is a browser and a Google account and you can still figure out how to waste endless hours on the computer and never spend any more money. Except, of course, for that monthly bill from Time-Warner for high speed internet access.

OK, time for some pictures. I'll get a little help from a couple of my business partners, who will stand next to each computer so you can judge the sizes better.

Here's the old Mac with the ViewSonic monitor perched on top.

And here's a close up so you can see my business partners better.

And here's the new computer. Notice that there ain't no wires connecting the computer to the keyboard or the mouse. That gives you the freedon to have incredibly poor posture as you surf the web.

And of course, a close up with my business partners standing on top of the computer. As you can see, it's much smaller but it's much more powerful.

OK, that's all for now. I'd write more and put in some more pictures but it takes so long to upload the pictures. You have to watch this silly spinning forever.

Goodnight.

Boiled Peanuts

Recently, my wife moved the portable computer down to the living room so she could play poker on line while she watched TV. She would generally play two tables at once and surf the TV channels. Talk about the need for mental stimulation. Recently, she's been slacking off the 'puter a bit so, since the computer is sitting in the living room already, I can blog while I'm vegging on the TV.

Today I want to talk about boiled peanuts, or more specifically, how to use science to cook them. If you look in a thousand books and on the internet, you can get lots of history and a bunch of recipes. After perusing them for a bit, I discovered the secret. A lot of recipes tell you to boil them for a couple of hours in salt water and serve. Well, I can tell you that don't work. The peanuts aren't even close to being done. The secret is to get the juice into the nut so that they taste right. "Right" being salty and juicy.

OK, here's the science. It's mostly physics or maybe chemistry if you believe that the behavior of liquids and gasses is the domain of chemistry rather than physics. But because there is little or no bond breaking, I, being an organic chemist, tend to think of this as physics. So, the problem is to get the juice into the peanut.

You start out with a peanut that is filled with air inside sitting in a pot that has water outside the peanut. As you heat the liquid, the air (gas) inside the peanut expands and builds up pressure which does a great job of keeping any water out. As you boil away, some of the gas escapes through the shell into the water, but for the most part, a positive pressure remains inside keeping the water out. This is not what you want.

So what you do is heat the peanuts in water for a while, say about an hour. During this time, some gas escapes from the inside of the peanut. Then you let the peanuts cool. Because much of the gas escaped through the shell, when the peanuts cool back down, the gas contracts to occupy less space than originally needed. When this happens, an actual vacuum is created inside the peanut which sucks in that succulent salt water infused with all the flavoring of the peanut shells. Then you heat the suckers back up again and this time the peanuts inside the shell are bathed in a salty solution. As they heat up, they cook inside the little pressure cooker of the shell. Of course, the shells are somewhat permeable so the peanuts leak out a bit of the air and juice to avoid exploding.

So here's my recipe.

Get a bunch of fresh peanuts and wash off any dirt that's on them. A quick rinse will do. Don't get anal about this step.

Get a big pot and pour in a bunch of water and a bunch of salt and a dash or two of winegar. Then toss in the goobers and heat for 1 and 1/2 hours. Turn off the heat and remove from the burner and let the brew cool off for one hour. Then return to the burner and boil for another 1.5 hours.

You can eat the peanuts now.

Peanuts are best eaten with your hands. Squeeze the shell and the secret opening reveals itself. Pry the shell apart with your fingers and place the peanuts up next to your lips. With a loud slurping sound and a great sucking motion, the peanuts will fly out of their shell into your mouth. Munch them down quickly so that you can get another one up next to your lips before the flavor fades. You should repeat the process as fast as you can till you reach a state of life altering euphoria. If you're fast, you'll also eat more than the other fool slurping away across the table.

Hope this helps. I know it still takes 4 hours, but if you leave out the cool down step, the peanuts will still be hard as a rock after 4 hours and you will be abondoning science when you need it most.

So till next time.

It's been a while since I've posted so I thought I'd give it a go. I'm sitting here watching the Canes (short for Hurricanes) play the Oilers for the Stanley Cup. Normally I don't give a flying phooey about ice hockey, but every once in a couple of years a local team makes it to the latter stages of the play-offs and all of a sudden the whole Triangle is into hockey like a bunch of canucks.

It's just before the start of the third period of the second game. The Canes are up 3-0. They won the first game 5-4. Both of these games have been in the RBC center over in Raleigh. I'm a bit curious about this 3 period thing that they have in hockey. All the other sports seem to go in halves or quarters, there's a definitive half-time so you can sell some kick-ass advertising time. But not hockey. I guess I forgot about baseball. It's got nine innings. That's pretty odd too, I guess.

Well the third third has started and I have to go back to watching. Hockey is a low scoring game so you have to watch it intently to have any chance of seeing something happen in real time. Most of the time you just watch a lot of guys do a whole lot of random stuff. I think there are some rules but there doesn't seem to be any good reason have any. You can't watch and see any rules having any effect.

Crap. I missed it. The Canes just scored again. Oh no! They disallowed it. The guy kicked it in. Oh yes! They just allowed it again. You can't kick the puck into the goal but you can use your foot to deflect the puck into the goal. The consensus was that it was a deflection and the goal counts.

The Oilers are pissed and beginning to act nasty. Being down 4-0, they don't have much of a chance of pulling this out. So all they can get out of here with is a bit of flesh. One of the Oilers whacked a Cane up side the head and got put in the penalty box so the Canes get to play with an extra player for a couple of minutes. It's called a power play. Whoops! Carolina just scored again on the power play.

5-0

Back to full strength. Looking bad for the Oilers. I'm gonna quit writing and go back to watching. Oops. Those nasty oilers just whacked another Cane with a stick. On the replay it didn't look intentional. Back to another power play.

Gotta run. Go Canes.