30

Now I'm officially 30.  That really sucks.  People start expecting you to behave and tone down the crazy, not that I'm planning on complying.  There are a couple of pivotal dates before 30 like finishing college, hitting 25, getting married, having kids, not necessarily in that particular order.  Still, when you're in your 20's, even late 20's, you're still technically 20.  Once you hit 30, 40 is just one number away.  Your 20 something friends are now a decade away.  You're supposed to be mature and responsible.  You shouldn't take risks, you gotta watch what you eat and look after your health.  You know what, I don't wanna.  I don't wanna grow up, I'm a toys r' us kid.  I can be mature and responsible when I need to be, the rest of the time, insanity now, insanity later, insanity forever!

One positive thing about being 30 is that now I have a great excuse for not being able to do certain things in karate.  What do you want?  I'm old!

Stir-Fry Beef

This is a pretty fast and simple recipe and hard to screw up. The cooking time is under 10 minutes, though the preparation can be somewhat annoying. You'll need beef, fresh or frozen, shelled edamame edamame, bamboo shoots, teriyaki sauce and cooking ramen. For cooking, you'll need a wok and wooden, unpainted, chopsticks.

Take partially defrosted meat and using a sharp knife cut from it 1 inch squares, 1/8 inch thick. Marinade for 30 minutes in teriyaki sauce. Add the bamboo shoots to the marinade. Defrost some shelled edamame. Cook and drain the ramen.

Place the wok on medium to high heat. Add the beef without the sauce and stir-fry for 2 minutes making sure that both sides are cooked. Add bamboo shoots and edamame beans and stir-fry for a minute or 2. Lower the flame a little and add the ramen and teriaki sauce. Stir-fry for 2 more minutes, making sure that the ramen doesn't burn. Enjoy.

Sale Alert - Glatt Mart

Prices are with a $10 non-sale purchase.

Peaches and Nectarines - $.69/lb
Tomatoes on the Vine - $1.29/lb
Givat Ice Pops (10pk) - $2.69
Hunts BBQ sauce - $.99
Plastic Plates - $4.99
Chicken Cutlets - $3.99/lb
Tuna & Avacado sushi - $3.95

Meat with bone, a lot of pieces are from flanken, the always cheap $3.99/lb

USPS doing their work

When I speaking with the local branch manager about the incident in the previous posts, he told me that they're doing their work and everything else is none of their problem. Here's another example of USPS doing their "work".

Monday, June 23rd, I dropped two netflix envelopes, into the same mailbox and at the same time. This was after the 9AM pickup and before the 3PM pickup. Netflix received one dvd on the 24th and the other on the 25th.

Since this was a Monday, I assume that most of the mail was dropped off on Sunday and Monday morning and was picked up and sorted by 3PM. There are very few mailboxes with 3PM pickup and also Monday was a business day so there shouldn't be too much mail to sort through by the time they got my envelopes. So what could possibly happen that would cause two pieces of mail that were sent at the same time to arrive a day apart? Incompetence. Let's not forget this is the same branch where I had to wait for around half an hour each time I came there, regardless of time of day, day of week or length of line.

Redirect after login

One of my pet peeves is sites that don't redirect you back after you log in. I can kinda understand a developer being too lazy to redirect back after session timeout or bookmark, but when the site sends you an email with a link and after logging in to view the link you get thrown somewhere else, that's completely unacceptable.

Do not send the url the user was trying to reach as a url variable. This is ugly and error prone. Sites that do this, forget to preserve the url if user enters incorrect username or password or tries to retrieve the password.

After verifying that the user is logged in and before redirecting to log in screen, save the current url as a session variable.
ColdFusion:

<cfset session.fromurl = cgi.script_name & "?" & cgi.query_string />

PHP:

$_SESSION["fromurl"] = $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];

After the user has successfully logged in, assign the url to a variable and delete the session variable and then redirect.
ColdFusion:

<cfset variables.fromurl = session.fromurl />
<cfset structdelete(session, "fromurl") />
<cflocation url="#variables.fromurl#" addtoken="no" />

PHP:

if (isset($_SESSION['fromurl'])) {
$url = $_SESSION['fromurl'];
unset($_SESSION['fromurl']);
header('location:'.$url);
}

Plastic yisroel cups

Why settle for plastic stam cups when you can buy plastic yisroel and ensure that you Pesach is chometz free.

When you use plastic stam cups on Pesach, you face the real danger of using something that contains chometz. A worker may have been eating chometz and accidentally dropped it into the vat of molten plastic. A rodent, carrying chometz may have fallen in at any point of the manufacturing process. Would you risk drinking from something that may contain rat, or, worst of all, chometz?

At our factory, we have mashgichim stationed at every critical area of the manufacturing process to ensure that such accidents never happen. We pride ourselves on manufacturing the best, cleanest and chometz free plastic yisroel cups possible.

Don't give in to your yetzer hara, buy plastic yisroel!

USPS incident - Part 2

Tuesday night I filed a complaint online about what happened in the previous post. Today I received a callback from, I assume, the manager of the local post office, Midwood branch, on Coney Island between I and J. In no uncertain terms the manager informed me that my beliefs are my problem and they will not change their policies to suit me. He told me that not being able to sign because of a Jewish holiday is not their problem but mine. I asked him what would happen if the addressee would have a broken arm. He told me that he'd have to have someone there at the time of delivery to sign for the package. That's right, if you're disabled, too bad for you. It's your fault you can't sign for the package and the post office will not accommodate you because maybe you should have took this into consideration before deciding to become disabled.

I emailed Simcha Felder, felder@council.nyc.ny.us, and Michael Nelson, nelson@council.nyc.ny.us, regarding both incidents. If you live in Brooklyn and don't want the same thing to happen to you, do us both a favor and send them an email, referencing these two posts, and ask them to change the USPS signature policy.

USPS discriminates against religious Jews

Today, June 10, 2008, 2nd day of Shavuot, a USPS employee has shown a great insensitivity to Jewish laws and customs.

While I was in shul, a USPS worker attempted to deliver a package. My wife answered the door and informed the man that it's a holiday and she's unable to sign for the package. A UPS or FedEx delivery man, as they have done before, would have graciously left the package inside the door. The USPS delivery man told my wife that if she won't sign for the package, he's not gonna give it to her and that I'll have to go tomorrow and pick it up myself. Now I'm gonna have to waste at least 30 minutes tomorrow, waiting in line, to get something that was supposed to be delivered today.

You should all be very careful about breaking the arm with which you write. If this guy comes to delivery your package, your package will go back to the post office and even may be shipped back. Broken arm? Cast? Too bad for you. No signature, no delivery, no soup for you!

Sale Alert - Avi Glatt

Avi Glatt on Coney Island and Quentin Road has a sale on fresh fish.
Salmon - $4.99/lb
Tilapia - $3.99/lb

Chicken thighs are always $1.45/lb

Bad parenting

Today, Shlomik asked me for a cookie. A big cookie, at least 4" in diameter. I gave it to him and I'll give him another one later. Why would I give my 2 year old a big, not healthy cookie instead of something that's good for him? That's because I'm a bad parent. I've managed to convince him that rice cakes are cookies. Who needs a small cookie, when you can have a cookie that's at least twice the size and is always soft!

I don't have soda in my house or any of those sugar filled snacks that parents so love to give to their kids. The group that my son goes to has home cooked meals and snacks, a big reason for why he's there considering the price they charge. No sugar snacks at home and no sugar snacks in day care and when my dad picks him up from group and they go for a walk, the cookie is a saltine.

Right now, he's sitting on my lap and eating another one of his favorite snacks, raisins.

Summer Special from Bank of America

From June 1st through August 31st, Bank of America will be giving 3 points per dollar on groceries and gas for its WorldPoints customers. Starting from 25,000 points, this becomes 3% cash back. Time to put away your other 3% back credit cards and start using your WorldPoints credit card.

Some of my friends say that it's too much bother to juggle cash back credit cards, going for that top dollar return. I get over $600 back per year, they get nothing.