With the new system, they’ve raised the prices to pay for the fancy new machines. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; if parking is a little more expensive, people will walk more. Unfortunately, the meters only accept $0.25 and $1.00 coins (and credit), not paper currency. The credit portion wasn’t working today. So my pocket full of change and singles that I brought to the coffee shop was useless in the face of these new machines. They’ve also eliminated the old M-F meters because all the new machines are M-S. Lame. Worst of all, instead of parking in front of the evidence that you’ve paid, you have to stick paper in your car where it can be seen. This is a real problem, because my car does not close securely. My general and very effective solution to this is to leave nothing of value there. Nothing like a small, easy to steal piece of paper with immediate value, for example. I expect I’ll be ticketed more than once as a result of this new system. At least I’ll have a receipt to keep for the appeal once I can use my credit card.

I’m one of the maintainers of our PKI-enablement library, PKIF. It’s open source, cross platform, and does a lot. Our main target platforms are Red Hat, Windows and Solaris 10. Every once in a while, I’ll build and test elsewhere mainly to make sure accidental assumptions haven’t crept into our code or build process. Tonight, I gave it a run on OS X Leopard and was just amazed at how much “just worked” for free (or for minor tweaks to the build system, which will be folded into the next release) especially in the GUI library and test applications. You won’t mistake it for something developed from the ground up for the Mac, but you can certainly use it. I’m particularly surprised at how well the GUI works without even a little tweaking of the interface for Mac, all thanks to wxWidgets.

I’d suggest not trying this at home until you see 2.1.6 on the sourceforge site, though, as the ease of accomplishing this is an indirect result of many improvements to our build scripts, which will be available for download with 2.1.6.

As for the worst, most of the stinkers they name deserve to be there; not the “toilet seat” tangerine and blueberry iBooks, though. Those were great, solid machines and among the first inexpensive machines with available built-in WiFi. But even if you think they’re bad, the hideous ball of suck that was the PowerBook 1400 has to overshadow them. And every machine Apple’s produced since, to be honest.

As always, it needs to sit before I really know what I think, but so far I I like it. With a small mod, I’m likely to do this one again. Recipe after the jump. It’s hot enough to mean business, but not so hot that all you can taste is fire.This shall be called “Chicken Chili with Pineapple”. That name sounds so cuddly, though, that it probably needs a subtitle. Maybe “Asses of Fire edition”. It’s not that hot, but you won’t mistake it for anything you brought home from Hard Times.

The recipe here is what I made, not what I’d planned. I gathered ideas from 5 or 6 I found in google, then added some of my favorite things. Leaving out the beans is a first for me. It works well.

Meat
0.8lb Merguez
1 lb “market style” bacon
1 lb chicken breast tenders

Veg
10 large tomatillos
2 red jalapeños
2 green jalapeños
4 habaneros
5 thai chilis
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, diced
0.5 fresh pineapple
1 bag frozen corn
8 oz mushrooms
1 cup dry roasted unsalted peanuts
2 tbs cornstarch

Spice
3 tbs cayenne (was planned to be 1tbs but there was a pouring accident I didn’t see fit to fix)
2 tbs horseradish
6 tbs rooster sauce
1 140g can Harissa

Prep:
1. Take half the hot peppers, remove the stems, and slit them open. Take the other half and dice.
2. Boil tomatillos and slit peppers for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and save the water.
3. Take the diced peppers and put them in a hot skillet. Cook bacon in same skillet. Cut the bacon into small pieces. Save the grease/pepper mix.
4. Peel tomatillos if necessary. Mine were easy to peel before boiling, so I did that instead of needing to deal with boiling hot veggies. Place the tomatillos, along with the slit peppers from the tomatillo water into a blender. Mix well (15 - 30s).
5. Add everything except the cornstarch to the slow cooker. Pineapple last.
6. Cook on high in the slow cooker around 4 hours. Then shred the chicken and move the temperature to low. By that point, my chicken shredded just by pressing into it with a spoon as I stirred. Add the cornstarch at this point and stir it in if things look too soupy. I needed 2 tablespoons.

You can leave it on low until you’re ready to eat.

After the first meal of it, I mostly approve. The heat is about right for me, and the peanuts are a nice touch. Next time I try this, I will probably double the chicken and omit the Merguez. The taste of the merguez doesn’t really come through the chili, and I’m no huge fan of what it does for the texture, especially in comparison to how well the chicken works. I might also consider adding a sweet pepper to the mix.

This is certainly the strangest chili I’ve ever made. I’ll update in a couple days with the final verdict.

Update: After a couple days to cure in the fridge, the chili is only better. This recipe will definitely be reused. I still think the merguez needs to be replaced with more chicken. It’s not bad in there, but there are better uses for the merguez and the chicken works really well here.

I went to Hard Times for the vegetarian chili mac 3-way with tomatoes and jalapeños. It was stellar, as expected. Then I decided to roam the neighborhood a bit and grab a coffee. On my way to Boccato gelato, I passed Iota. Outside Iota, there was a woman standing around in a Halloween costume playing the fiddle. Naturally, I had to stop and listen, then ask why she was there.

It turns out she was the banjo player for a Junior League Band, that was about to play Iota. A rock band with a banjo and a violin sounded right down my alley, so I decided I’d stop back by iota after my coffee. Wow. Good thing I did. The opening band (Resurrectionists, out of Boston) was good. The main act, called Junior League Band and based out of DC was just fantastic. They were every bit as good as you’d expect a roots band with a banjo and fiddle to be. Think somewhere between Jump Little Children and Rusted Root, with Regina Spektor fronting, and you will probably imagine the right sound. Or just go look them up on iTunes and listen to a few songs. It’s just good, fun music. Along with the original stuff on the album I linked, they did a nice cover of Thriller for Halloween. There were no horns at the live show, but are on the album. At the end of the night, that’s easily the best $12 I’ve spent to see a band in recent memory, and I definitely plan to look out for them again in the new year. I don’t know if the violin is a regular feature for them, but it definitely should be!