…and apparently he has a beef with the Lone Ranger:
Ummm…What?
I was browsing the WestJet Airlines website last night when I came across this gem:
Now, why the hell would “catapults” even be on the list? Did WestJet have trouble with siege engines being brought on board in the past? Any catapult that could be carried onto a plane or packed into a suitcase would be little more than a toy; why couldn’t a person bring such a thing on-board via checked luggage?
The Evolution of Genesis
I came across this fascinating lecture by Aron Ra on the evolution of the Book of Genesis. Enjoy!
Adventures in Food: Northern Pike
Last night I tried my hand at filleting a fish.
A few weeks ago I stopped by one of the Gimli Fish Market outlets on my way home from work in order to pick up some of my favorite fish: Northern Pike. Most people seem to greatly prefer Pickerel (aka Walleye) over Northern Pike, making the latter somewhat difficult to get. In thirteen years I’ve only seen filleted pike once in a local supermarket. Even the Gimli Fish Markets are not guaranteed to carry it (though they’re always overflowing with pickerel).
Anyway, I felt fortunate enough to finally get some, not being able to even remember the last time I had pike. When I got home, I popped the fish into the freezer to prepare at a later date. That “later date” turned out to be yesterday.
The fish market only had whole, cleaned pike (i.e. sans scales, head, and guts), so it was up to me to learn how to fillet them. With a co-worker providing me with advice, a couple of YouTube videos, and a proper filleting knife, I set to work on preparing the fish as soon as I got home (of course I had thawed the fish the day before). After taking the pike out of its freezer bag I immediately met with its pleasant lake-fishy aroma which reminded me of family fishing trips as a child.
The first step was to cut both meaty halves of the fish off of the spine. I somehow managed to luck out and take the entire rib cage on one side of the fish with my first cut, which saved me an extra cut later on. I was not so lucky cutting off the second side of the fish. All in all, I think I did a good job for my first try. In the image below you can see half of the ribs still attached to the spine.
Thanks to my lucky first cut, the next phase of preparing the fillets – removing the ribs – was half done. I only had to cut the ribs from one of the fillets, and I think I did a reasonably good job of that as well. I also cut off the tail and fins. The thin strip of ribs from one of the fillets lies near the knife in the image below.
Next came the removal of the skin. Again, a decent job, I think. There were only one or two spots where I accidentally left a little too much meat on the skin, but it wasn’t too bad. In the image below the two pieces of skin are along the left and bottom.
Lastly came the removal of the y-bones from each fillet. This is where I got a little confused and lost my confidence. The two videos I had watched had shown different methods of how to make this cut, and it was definitely the most challenging of all the steps.
After making a small experimental cut into one of the fillets I decided I was not going to be able to successfully complete this step without terribly butchering all my work up to that point, so I just thought “screw it” and left the y-bones in. I’ve eaten plenty of Northern Pike with the bones inside and I was used to the extra work of picking the meat off the bones.
So, I cut the fillets up into pieces and breaded everything in a mixture of regular flour and Club House brand Lemon & Pepper seasoning.
Then it was off to the frying pan for a bath in boiling margarine and extra-virgin olive oil. I would normally have used canola oil instead of olive oil, but I realized all I had in the house was olive oil. Since I was using olive oil, I was more careful with the heat than I typically am when I fry fish (I sometimes buy pickerel to fry up since pike is so rare). Working with the lower heat made me realize that I was often using too much heat when frying fish in the past. Using too high a heat leads to subsequent pans of fish ending up darker in color as remnants of batter in the oil burn black.
In the end, everything turned out great!
This ended up being literally the most delicious fish I have ever tasted. More than half the pieces were completely boneless, and I managed to get both the seasoning of the fish and the cooking of it just right! Pan-friend lemon pepper Northern Pike is the best!
Having fried pickerel the exact same way a few weeks earlier, I was able to make a decent comparison between the taste of pike and pickerel in my memory. Hands-down, pike is far superior in flavor to pickerel.
Sweet Wheels
The Lamborghini Veneno is easily one of the best looking cars ever designed. Unfortunately, only four will ever be produced. Then again, at a price tag of around $4,000,000 US, there are probably not a lot of people who could afford one anyway.
This car just reminds me of all the futuristic cars I used to see in old scifi movies from the 70s and 80s.
Hit and Run – Part II
Okay, here’s the complete story of how I tracked down the guy who hit my car:
On Thursday when I left the office for lunch I noticed the damage on the driver’s side of my car’s read bumper. I figured it had to have happened that day or the day before because I would have probably noticed the damage had it happened a while ago. I knew we had security cameras that cover the front entrance and the parking lot, so I talked to the vice-president of our small company about checking the security footage.
We did some quick scanning of the footage hoping to luck out and see what happened, but it was clear that there was just too much time to cover. I got permission to get a copy of the footage from the parking lot camera for the time of the discovery to the beginning of the previous day to take home and look through on my own time.
I got the video I wanted onto my USB stick and took it home. After watching it for about twenty minutes I found the footage of the hit and run. The person came into our parking lot and parked across from me, then went into our office with something in his left arm. A minute later he left our office empty handed and then hit my car as he backed out.
Seeing that the person who hit my car actually came into the office I realized I could get footage from the other two security cameras — one which covers the outside of the front entrance and one which covers the foyer — and get an image of the guy’s face. I was one step closer to finding the identity of the culprit.
I couldn’t quite make out what the guy was carrying into the office. It almost looked like a couple of cups of coffee or something. His car wasn’t marked, and the guy was not wearing any sort of uniform, so I supposed he was either an acquantance of someone at work (as opposed to a courier), or was one of the various contractors who have been occasionally coming into and out of our office over the past two months dealing with the various repairs from the flood that had occurred earlier this year. Maybe the guy was dropping off some paint cans or something.
At work the next day I got the footage of the guy from the other two cameras. I still coulnd’t quite make out what the guy was carrying, but I talked with one of the employees who works near the front desk about the entire issue and she immediately recalled meeting the guy. She didn’t know who he was; all she knew was that the guy dropped off a couple of spindles of DVDs and that she didn’t have to sign for anything. The DVDs were my next clue.
After this I talked with our receptionist about who presses our DVDs for us (she wasn’t at her desk when the suspect came in). She gave me the name of the company and the names of two males whom she knew worked at that company. These two men were my prime suspects. She also gave me the address of the company, which I looked up on Google Maps. The company was located a mere three blocks away! It was time to hit the streets.
I rounded up a posse of two of my co-workers and we left in one of their cars. I didn’t want to use mine because I didn’t want to chance spooking the suspect. We drove down to the suspect’s office and looked for the car that was involved in the hit and run. We found it parked on the street.
I verified that this was the right car during an initial drive-by, seeing the damage on his car. A second drive-by and I had photographs of the damage and the car’s license plate. I had him.
I contacted the police in order to file a hit and run report. The cop I talked to said the police prefer not to use resources filing a hit and run for instances which were likely just an accident or a simple mistake; it’s only the malicious hit and runs that they really want to prosecute.
Still, the cop took the license plate number and told me he’d call the guy and see what he says. If the guy admitted to hitting my car (without being told there was video of the incident), then no hit and run report would be filed and we would just go through insurance like a normal accident. If the guy claimed he wasn’t there, then the police would take it as a serious hit and run and ask me to come down in person to file a report along with my video evidence.
The cop called me back a short while later after having talked with the culprit, giving me his name and some of his other information. The cop said the guy admitted he made a delivery to our office, had no idea he had hit me, and was very sorry about the whole thing. So, it’s all going to go through insurance as a regular accident being 100% his fault.
That’s the story.
I tracked the guy down within twenty-four hours.
Hit and Run
Security cam footage at my workplace catches someone hitting my car and taking off:
I’m going to catch you.
