Chipotle Pineapple Chicken Sandwich

I made a great sandwich tonight.  It was inspired by the Habanero chicken sandwich from Dominos.  (Try it and the buffalo chicken.  They are both great!) This is a good recipe if you love spicy sandwiches.

Ingredients: 1 chicken breast chipotle chile powder garlic powder salt jalapeno peppers bufalo chipotle sauce ranch dressing pineapple olive oil bread provolone cheese

Domino's Habanero Chicken Sandwich

Cook the chicken breast in a frying pan with some olive oil.   As the chicken is cooking, sprinkle it liberally with chipotle chile powder, garlic powder and a pinch of salt.  pile jalapeno peppers and pineapple on top of the chicken as it cooks in the oil. after about 6 minutes flip the chicken.  Apply the same treatment to the second side.  After both sides have cooked, flip one more time to cook the chile powder into the chicken. 

As the chicken is cooking, mix some ranch dressing with the Bufalo Chipotle sauce. Mix this to taste. Make sure it is not too hot for you to eat.  This will be the dressing for the sandwich.

Toast 4 pieces of bread (or toast a roll like they do at Domino's or Quizno's) and apply the ranch dressing mix to each piece. put a thin slice of provolone cheese on each slice of bread.

Slice the chicken into strips and dip each slice into the ranch sauce. This will add flavor and make the sandwich stick together. Pile the chicken onto the bread with the pineapple and jalapenos from the pan. You can heat the sandwich in a microwave or toaster oven to melt the cheese, or eat it cold.

Hudson CI - The answer to all my problems!

Hudson

Ok, so maybe the title is a little dramatic... but I definitely learned a lot about Hudson Continuous Integration this week.  Hudson provides access to app build, test, and deployment tools that make it a one stop shop for all development needs.  I heard about it last year in a Java EE class but assumed it was only for Java development.  For the last 6 months I have been doing a lot of ASP.NET programming and now I am in a class for LAMP at Weber State University.

I have been experimenting with the new Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio 2010 for my ASP.NET stuff.  I really like the designer for my web pages... makes it so much easier to format my tables! I am a big FOSS guy, but I can't complain about decent tools and languages.  I am a bit of a language agnostic.  I found that TFS integrates well with VS2010, but it is not really designed well for use with web app development because it all centers around the .sln solution file which is not really required for a web app. 

My LAMP class was a big group project that involved students with varying amounts of development experience.  We used X10Hosting as our free hosting solution for the site.  (Notice no link... you'll see why I chose not to advertise them)  They were an adequate choice for hosting a site that the whole class needed access to with a public domain, but the tools provided for building the database, accessing the files and uploading code were glitchy at best, and often did not work at all. 

The problems with the site culminated in the loss of our site, database and all our code not once, but twice!  After the first crash I started working to get my Subversion server up and running, but the lack of experience in the class and the proximity of the end of the project caused people to take my solution less seriously.  Luckily I decided to keep working on the server and got it up and running just in time to move everyone to my hosting solution.

Also Hudson

As I was getting subversion up and running I started looking at Hudson to provide some simple scripting.  PHP doesn't need to be built, so there is no need for a build server.  For this situation I am using Hudson simply to keep track of tasks, bugs (officially tracked and reported in Jira,) and who is committing code.  I even found a fun CI game to keep score of who is making the best/most updates to the project!  In the course of my research I discovered that Hudson can also be used for ASP.NET builds!  I am very excited to start working to get all my C#, Java and C\C++ projects set up in a CI environment.  It is going to make my life so much easier!!

Update

With the hype of Twitter and Facebook there are so many different outlets to express opinions and share events.  I can't believe it has been almost 2 years since I posted on this blog!  I guess time goes by quickly and not much changes during this phase of life.  Since we have a new baby due in September, I decided it would be nice to start posting a little.  When the baby comes there will be pictures to share and stories to tell.

School is out!

Well, school is finally over for the semester. By over I mean that I got my final grades for the semester.  Since Lily was born I have not gotten very good grades.  I am always worried that I am not spending enough time working on job stuff or stuff around the house, and I haven't taken the time I need to get my school responsibilities taken care of.  This semester I was able to break out of that and get my first A in the post Lily era.

My Rock Band at the Davis County Fair

The Davis County Fair was this weekend, and Horizon Credit Union held a Rock Band competition.  The prize for the expert difficulty level portion of the contest was an I-Pod touch for each member of the winning band.  Some guys from work and I figured we had a good chance, as we play this game all the time and have pretty much perfected our skills. 

Darren Gleed, my former boss, played drums.  Brad Wall, one of our developers, was on guitar.  Brad's wife played bass (I don't have her pic to put on) and I was on vocals.  It was a Rock Band dream team!

The first few bands that performed didn't do much to damage our confidence.  We knew we could smash their scores pretty easily, plus we were ready to get the crowd into the show.

When it was our turn to go on we were told we would be judged not just on score, but on costumes and stage presence.  All 3 categories held equal weight.  This worried us, as we had not given any thought at all to costumes. 

We stepped on the stage and began to play.  I shouted "Hello, Davis County!  I want to hear you scream!!"  We were definitely on the right track.  The crowd was getting into the show and we were doing very well on the songs we chose.

We felt pretty good about our performance until the next band stepped on stage.  They were fully decked out in gear that looked like it came directly from the stage of an Aerosmith concert.  The singer wasn't very good, but he had a lot more energy than I did, and they definitely came prepared to destroy the competition.

It only got worse from there, as it quickly dawned on us that Horizon had clearly saved the best bands for last.  They kept getting better and better as the night wore on.  They didn't always beat our scores, but the show they put on was polished, practiced and (dare I say) professional.  In other words, it put our weak karaoke show to shame. 

At the end of the night, we didn't win the I-Pods, but we had a lot of fun and enjoyed the show.  Horizon is doing the contest again next year.  I will be there (in costume this time) and I highly recommend you guys go as well for some good entertainment.

Our family rock band

We have been playing a lot of Rock Band in our house. Emily and I play sometimes, but the kids get into the music act too.





Here is Emma playing my Guitar Hero guitar. I told her to make a serious face for the picture.












Lily really rocks out on the piano. Emily has a video of this on her blog at
http://emspeasinapod.blogspot.com.










And here is another pic of Emma jamming. This time she is showing her skills on the drums.








So Emily made fun of me because she already posted some of these pics on her blog, but it was my idea first. Unfortunately, you are always a plagiarist if someone else publishes first. My fav pic in this post is actually the one Emily didn't have, which is the guitar. I was so proud that Emma was willing to pose so I could grab that picture.

Why I don't use a Mac (yet)

I wrote this in the comments as a response to Robilyn, but it was way too long and I wanted to do some cool things like embed links which I dont know how to do in the comments.

Macs are too expensive. That is probably the argument most people give.

Now my reason for not using a Mac(exclusively):

The reason they are so solid and stable is they are based on OpenBSD which is a Unix variant branched from the same source as most Linux distros.

The other reason they were so stable in the past is they had their own hardware made by manufacturers that followed their own specs. Now that they run on Intel they are basically PCs.

I use hardware I build from Intel based parts with Linux OS installed so I still have stability. I like the Mac interface, so I use a Mac interface on the top of my Linux desktop.

Do I like the Mac? yes. Am I an uneducated user? no Does a Mac do everything I need a computer to do? no. (keep in mind I know what a Mac can and cannot do, unlike most people) Will I buy a Mac in the future? probably, yes. (they are very cool)

So this is a long answer, and hopefully this is a warning to people who are foolish enough to start a conversation with me about computers. ;)

Linux vs Mac

Why to use Linux

Switch to a Mac

Which one do you think is more like me?

Why I am Phatpenguin

I am going to put some more information about my blog, as Emily recently started her own blog and that may generate traffic to mine. I am hoping to help her learn more about computers and the internet, although I know her goals are more to get her opinions and feelings down in written format and get comments.

I want to explain why my page name is Phatpenguin. In the computer world, everyone needs a nickname or handle. This name usually needs to be something geeky or represent a part of your life or interests that only your closest friends would know. I have had several such handles, but none have stuck. For awhile I used myownworstenemy. Then I started using Silvergunsuperman. These names are still used on Slashdot and some other older computer sites. When I started getting serious about online computer games, I found that many games do not allow handles to be more than a certain number of characters. This forced me to pick a new handle.

For those who don't know, I am very serious about my work in computers. I use Linux. It is my favorite operating system. I hate everything Microsoft except the Xbox. Windows was horrible until Windows 2000. XP was an improvement, but Vista is horrible again. Linux, on the other hand, keeps getting better and better. The mascot for Linux is a penguin named Tux. That is the penguin part. In another life I had aspirations of creating electronica music with my computer and midi mixer, turntable and keyboard. I created several songs under the name DJ Semiphatt. This name comes from an old joke with some friends, and I don't want to make this post even more boring by explaining that name. A combination of these two names is my inspiration for the name Phatpenguin.

I know everyone else has cutesy nicknames and family oriented stuff. I am a guy, and have guy stuff. I have a feeling a lot of people will look at this out of curiosity and then give up because it is so heavy on the geek side of things. This is ok. Until today I have only put 2 posts, and at least now I will have 3.

Second post

I certainly have not spent any time writing on this page. Many important things have happened in my life in the last 5 months. My second daughter, Lily, was born 6/26/2007. That was a great day. We have not gotten much sleep since then... I sleep more than Emily. At first Lily would take a bottle and I would give her the first few feedings. For the last 6 weeks or so, she will not take a bottle anymore so I do not stay up with her. Emily and I are coming up on the 5th anniversary of our wedding day, 11/12/2007. We have some simple plans. It is hard to believe 5 years have passed already. Emma is almost 3 years old. Before too long she will be in school and Lily will be taking her place as the resident terrible twos child.

First Post

This is the first time I have ever even considered blogging. This does not seem like new tech to me, and is nothing more than a fancy bulletin board. Despite this, the popularity of blogging makes it worth the time. It is a nice concept to be able to update a personal record in real time on the internet and make it available to friends and family. Only time will tell if the novelty and usefulness makes it worth continuing.

EAVB_EJSLPNTOZO