Quest for a (healthy) chocolate almond butter cookie

Nothing like a perfect unplanned weekend, well not the whole weekend (so far!) anyway, at least Saturday...

I once ate Kashi Chocolate Almond Butter cookie and when I woke up this fine (but gloomy) morning, for some reason I realized that there's a a big hole in my life... it wasn't until a few moments of deep self contemplation did I realize what it was... a hole inflicted by that very cookie I had devoured, something only a perfect homemade healthy chocolate cookie could fill.  And that's how began the quest to bake my own.

After some Googling I found a recipe that was closest to what I was looking for.  Best part was it was egg-less and didn't have anything that I wouldn't normally eat or couldn't pronounce, so very unlike the one I ate.  With tweaks of my own already playing in my mind I was swaying between: organize-n-clean the house(it's in total disarray!), clean the kitchen (barely any space on kitchen platform to work), cook lunch, go to office, oorrr.... bake a cookie!

I don't have to tell you who won... it was that chocolate crazed hound living inside of me, that's who!  (And to tell you the truth, it was totally worth skipping lunch for it!).  I had to go office though, couldn't skip that.

With mind set on the goal, I called upon my good'ol companion, Vividh Bharti.  Vividah Bharat was playing non-stop old melodies, a perfect setting for job at hand.  I needed no more encouragement, I knew I had made the right choice.

In the process, I discovered a few new (old!) songs that I hadn't heard before... that is the best part of listening to music on "real" radio, you always find a gem or two you haven't heard before.  And since this was non-stop gapless program, there were no radio jockeys, no adverts nothing, just pure unadulterated music.  Just me, my radio and cookie, perfectly Zen-like (though there was nothing Zen about it!).  My appreciation for behind-the-curtain engineers at the radio station who make this happen grew a bit today, but deepest heart felt thanks to people at AIR who finally made Vividh Bharti officially available over-the-web!

Just about to go into the oven

Let's not digress too much.

There was but one hurdle in otherwise perfect quest for a perfect cookie...  I was short of 2 very important ingredients: oats flour and buckwheat flour.  I wasn't in a mood to go out and shop, lest then I would have to finish other (boring) outdoorsy chores too.  I obviously had some buckwheat and oats at hand, so I put them in my good trust NutriBullet, for I knew she could handle it in a jiffy and indeed a few zaps later I had perfect oat and buckwheat flours!  Problem solved.
I followed the discovered recipe pretty much to the word, only change I made was to add molasses and almost double/triple the amount of nuts and cocoa powder.  'Nough histroy, let's get to baking...

First, My Personal Tips:

• Always roast the nuts.  Make sure you give enough time to cool them down, an hour maybe (you can always roast and keep some in airtight container for later use).  If you use them warm they become too soft and take away all the fun of having crunchy nuts in the cookies.  You can use almonds, peanuts, walnuts, hazelnuts or any other nut you love
• If the honey and/or coconut oil is solid (like it always is in the Pacific Northwest) don't microwave, rather just put the required amount in a small bowl, place the bowl in a larger one and add hot water to the larger bowl (on general principle, I avoid microwave if I can).  In a few minutes you'll have them nice and flowing.
• DO NOT, PLEASE DO NOT use store-bought run-of-the-mill cocoa/cocao powder.  For the perfect umph, use really high quality minimally processed raw cocoa powder.  Ever since I have discovered this ingredient, my kitchen-life hasn't been same again.

I know the list of ingredients looks a bit long for purportedly simple recipe, but trust me, this is a very very forgiving cookie (again very zen-like) and very simple to make.  Doesn't turn out bad if you don't proportion a few ingredients right.  You'll have to take my word on it for now.
Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
• 2 tablespoons almond butter
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3/4 cup rolled oats
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup each of: buckwheat, oat and whole wheat flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons chocolate chips (I used way more than that!)
• 2 tablespoons almonds & walnuts, chopped and toasted (or any of the nuts you love)
• 1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses (optional)

Cooking Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350F/175C
• Whisk together the honey, coconut oil, almond butter and vanilla in a bowl
• Add the next five ingredients, rolled oats, cocoa and 3 flours; mix until just combined
• You are not looking for the regular perfect smooth blob of dough, so don't try to mash it into one!
• Fold in the chocolate chips and (cooled down) nuts
• Scoop about 2 tablespoons of dough per cookie
• Flatten into a circle—they will not spread once they start baking but they will break, so you'll have to muster some skill
• Bake for 12-13 minutes, or until the tops look dry
• Remove and let it cool completely before serving, lest you'll burn your tongue from the still lava-hot choco-chips hidden inside (don't ask me how I know this!)

That's how mixed ingredients should look like

What would I do differently:

0. Add more blackstrap molasses
1. Experiment adding some more variety of grains
2. For a small batch I made, I would rather use a small counter-top oven versus the huge cooking range one

Out came scrumptious Chocolate Almond Butter cookie!

SwiftKey - The Worst Virtual Keyboard

I had heard a few raves about this new virtual keyboard (some even touted it as the best virtual keyboard on Android). So I wasn't very surprised seeing people go a little crazy when SwiftKey announced a free version for android.
I took the dive and installed it right away, fearing the offer was not going to last long.  The initial setup looked kind of polished and very welcoming.  The UI was certainly a notch better than stock/Google/Sammy keyboard, with a some amazing color/visual customizations.  Cool!
 
But it had one FATAL flaw... right from the very first sentence I typed, it would misspell about every 3rd word!  No kidding, I had to erase the word over and over only to find myself giving up on 4th or 5th retry and typing one alphabet at a time rather than swiping (or like I like to call it, Swype'ing).  Total disaster ~~~sigh~~~.  I thought I was typing obscure words, I toned down my vocabulary but SwiftKey's accuracy didn't improve.  It didn't even remember or learn that I'm constantly correcting what was interpreted of my swipe, or what I had chosen the last time on the same swipe pattern.
And if I ever wanted to spell out non-English words, then the feeling was nothing short of having entered the gates of hell!  I'm not kidding or exaggerating.  It is indeed that bad.  More than once I felt I would rather prefer the T9 Predictive Text of older feature phones from last decade (which, for the record was amazing for the time on phones).  After raving about swipe'ing keyboard when it first came and showing it off to friends, I started feeling sheepish and embarrassed in front friends when had to correct over and over AND over.  Not to mention the horror of adding an apostrophe(') to any word, you have to fight hard against SwiftKey to NOT add a space, and if you go back it often, due to mind of its own, change the word, auto-(in)correct (tm)!

But I wasn't ready to give it up yet, the critical self inside of me questioned me, I thought it was probably my swiping, or my words, or my usage, or something in me that was horribly wrong, so I kept using it for good 3 months.. But one fine day my patience crossed its threshold (not to be confused with Windows Threshold! Bad joke!).  But seriously, I reached a point where I said just !@#$ it, I don't want to retype every 3rd word any time I type a sentence.  I didn't want to spend enormous amount of time correcting or updating SwiftKey's dictionary, esp. when I knew my last virtual keyboard was awesome.

So, that very instant, before steam would start coming out of my ears and nose, I switched back to my good'ol Swype (Google Play, official page)!  Boy did I miss you!  With tears in my eyes (of happiness, of course) I whispered into her caring ears, I missed you so bad, I really did!  Glad to have you back in my life! ~~~hugs and kisses~~~ (yes, I'm known to sometimes talk to inanimate objects in cases like this)!

I'm now re-experiencing the joy of fast and error-free typing, Swype'ing!! ~~~muah~~~
I highly doubt the claims that SwiftKey is the most popular virtual keyboard out there, in my opinion it's the worst virtual keyboard I have ever used. Adiós SwifyKey!  At this point, I don't feel like checking out the blogsphere as to why SwiftKey wasn't good for me, esp. because I know a perfectly great virtual keyboard is sitting right in front of me!  The rational part of my self is hating me for sticking with it for so long and wasting so much of precious time, but the un-rational(uhh? what?) part is happy I gave it a good shot.


If you haven't tried SwiftKey, then don't worry, you haven't missed a thing.

Movie Review: Transformers-Age of Extinction

It's been a while here... intense work coupled with good weather is keeping me away from blogging.
So I thought I will post a quick review on the something... something that was supposed to be a movie I saw a few days back... Transformers: Age of Extinction.

If you don't care to read my elaborate and detailed review of the movie, I'll offer you something that perfectly summarizes the whole movie in a single line and you can then decide what you want to do next...

 Watching Age of Extinction is like watching two drunk junkyards having wild-wild sex in the fit of love in your backyard.

Plot wise, if you can say one exists (which doesn't!), it is strikingly identical to all the other 3 movies in the series that preceded it:

• Everyone searching for that one that thing, spark, seed, fruit, flower... that will tip the scale in Autobot wars, Check
• An underdog (Mark Wahlberg), Check
• Barely-Legal hot chick (Nicola Peltz) who, no matter what, always has a perfect makeup with pink luscious lipstick on, ALL the bejesus time, Check
• Secret Government Organization, Check
• A villain hiding in plain sight (Megatron aka Galvatron), Check
• A hero hiding in plain sight (Optimus Prime), Check
• Plain sight hiding in plain sight... WAIT! What?? That doesn't make sense! Check!
• Lots of shaky shots, fire, destruction, mayhem, explosions... Check, check and Check!
• Incoherent story line, Check
• Predictable, Check
• And it is unbearably long, Check

(For the record, the first original Transformers was enjoyable, with just the right amount of special effects and not unbearably long).

First off, it looks like the movie was made by someone (and FOR someone) who loves to masturbate to violent explosions and destruction of things.  And every iteration of the "act" then demands for a bigger and larger explosion to get the fix.

There are so many explosions in the movie that it makes all of the 4th of July fireworks combined (to date!) look like a mere spark from striking a matchstick.  If Michael Bay were ever looking for an alternate profession, I think he can really give even the most contemporary Pyrotechnians a run for their monies.

Age of Extinction basically is the exact same movie as the first one, just with more cheap and racist shots at humor, more noise (or the explosion), more robots (or car thingies, because you can't tell what's what anymore).  Once the autobots start fighting (or start making violent love, because no one can really discern what's happening!) you can't figure which are the good guys and which are the bad ones, which makes it orders of magnitude more annoying, because you want to root for the good guys, right?

To top it all off, the movie is incredibly long, 160 minutes, which is well over 2 and freakin' half hours!  2 freaking half hours of mind-numbing noise, mind-bending explosions, mind-@#$ing action and all this to no end, or the same "we must save humans(~~~imagine Prime's voice~~~)" sh!t.  That's torture, not entertainment.  If you want to exact a revenge on someone without him/her realizing it... take them to this movie, IN 3-freaking-D!

And most certainly NO, I haven't missed the juiciest part, Michael Bay's penchant for staring barely-legal female characters is only a notch higher in this version compared to previous movies.  While looking at the hot 20-something year old Nicola Peltz may make you overlook a few flaws in the movie, more than average flaws might I even add   ~~~wink wink~~~, even 100s of her in this movie cannot make you overlook the lameness of everything this film has thrown on the screen.

I believe I have now been permanently marred by this experience and I've decided to ban all future Michael Bay films from my life for good.  I wouldn't have watched this one either, had it not been for my buddy insisting on watching it.  At least he agreed to my one condition when I retaliated; I'm not going to watch it in 3D, even if you pay me a thousand dollars! (A lesson I learned the hard way from the experience of watching the last Transformer movie in 3D, Rise or Fall or Revenge of something).

But, in all fairness, the ideal audience for this movie is not the demographic of USA, but it is other parts of the world, parts where the movie industry just doesn't have the technical know-how of creating such mayhem of special effects.  Let alone being able to afford monetary expenses of creating one.

So, I said it in the beginning and I'll say it again...

 Watching Age of Extinction is like watching two drunk junkyards having wild-wild sex in the fit of love in your backyard.

Other notable disappointments have been Man of Steel and the latest Spiderman (the name of which I refuse to Google), 300-Rise of an Empire (my review here).  And I'm sure I'm missing a movie or two.
~~~sigh~~~  Good movies are so hard to come by these days.  Until last week, I was pinning my hopes on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  As a kid I adored that cartoon series, but I heard even TMNT-2014 is rated as drearily dull, even at its best.  But I might still watch it, just for the sake of it.

Links:

0. If Michael Bay directed movie UP
1. Transformers, 2007
2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, 2009
3. Transformers: Dark of the Moon, 2011
4. Transformers: Age of Extinction, 2014

Movie Review: 300-Rise of an Empire

300-Rise of an Empire, or in simple terms, 300 Part-2...

One of those other weekends, I had nothing better to do (in retrospect, I was so wrong!) so I went to catch up on a movie with a buddy, it had been a really long time since I last watched a movie in theater.  To say that the movie was boring, would be a gross understatement, cinematography was good, but only at times and only to a certain extent.

And here's my take, the movie, surprisingly can be very accurately summarized in mere 3 short words/phrases:

0. Water! Lots of it! In fact it wouldn't hurt to blame California's water shortage entirely on this movie!
1. Blood! Even more plentiful than water!  Take that Mel Gibson for Apocalypto or even Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill(s)
2. One lousy half-a$$ s3x scene (s3x scenes are quintessential part of _every_ American movie)
3. Slow Motion (ok, I lied, there are 4 items, not 3).

The movie is nothing more than a hodge-podge of dismemberment of body parts (hands, legs, head, anything) that fly everywhere with blood splattering all around in extreme slow motion under a gloomy-n-internally overcast semi-black-and-white environment.  When nobody's hacking bodies, the dialogues in the movie are banal, at best.
Compared to the original 300 (my review here), this movie is almost entirely shot in slow motion. I was afraid even the dialogues would now start appearing in ssslllooowwww mmmoootttiiiooonnn and to tell you the truth, I wouldn't have been surprised if that had actually happened! So much so, that if we played the movie at normal rate then the entire movie would be over in 15 minutes flat!  The time part is a bit of an over statement, but you get the idea.

Good Thing: The only silver lining, watching it in 3D didn't induce a head-ache (and that's only because of the movie being in slo-mo), unlike Superman-Man of Steel, which gave me a splitting headache after I watched it in 3D, TW-freaking-ICE!

Verdict:
Life could only be better if you skip this one.

See Also:

• Movie Review: 300

Spring Is Here

Long time no see???  Well, been sunk in life's shitty boring problems knee deep too long now.  Not a good excuse to not post, but hey, that's the best I've got :(
Anyway, I thought posting some beautiful photos would be a good way to say "hello" to a few fellow readers I have left...

Lately, work-life has gotten a tad boring, mostly as I don't have my discuss-everything-under-the-sun lunches with buddies at work anymore; instead have chosen to watch Youtube videos while I gobble down food at my desk, at wildly irregular times.  But all's not lost, or so it feels...
 
Sun was out for two straight days and skies were clear bright blue, almost made me feel lucky for being alive and be able to see this day (note: this is not an exaggeration when you live in Seattle)!  But my skepticism that Spring is upon me, didn't budge.  That is only until I cared to look around my office while I parked my car and walked towards my building: Cherry Blossom buds opening up!  So the very next day I brought along my camera (luckily it was sunny again!) and went on a stroll after lunch to shoot some pictures around the campus.  And here's the result: Spring is upon us guys!
Time to break out of winter clothes!  Gear up for some hiking, photography and camping!

Yes, if you let her have it her way, Nature does have a way of uplifting your mood on occasion, trying hard to make you re-believe that life is indeed beautiful.
These are just a few shots from around the campus, full album here on flickr: Spring 2014!
 
Equipment:
    Body-Canon EOS 6D (full frame)
    Lenses-Canon 100mm F2.8 Macro Lens & Canon 70-200mm IS F4L

Note: Weather turned sucky the very day after I took pictures and went only southwards for even worse on the weekend.  You know, that's the typical Seattle weather, awesome and great while I'm holed up in my little office but crappy on weekends when I have time to explore the outdoors ~~~sigh~~~ That's the finicky Pacific North West weather we all love so much :-)

Full album with many more photos here on flickr: Spring 2014!

Galaxy S3 4.3 Jelly Bean Update Annoyance

If you are looking for steps to stop that annoying download complete notification, skip to Instructions section.

There have been a lot of issues with the 4.3 Jelly Bean update pushed out so at some point Samsung decided to pull back the update and work on fixing them.  But I was surprised when AT&T pushed the 4.3 update nonetheless.  I didn't want to be guinea pig or spend hours fixing annoyances, so I delayed the update, but, not very unlike Windows ~~~aarrgghhh~~~ it kept insisting every few hours that I update the darn phone.  The only respite being God-sent postpone button that allowed me to postpone the update for up to 1, 2, 4 or 8 hours, I selected the max duration, 8 hours.  After doing that 2-3 times, today morning, to my horror, when I got up and checked my mobile I noticed there was a subtle difference in my lock-screen's appearance.  Even before unlocking it dawned upon me that I have gotten the dreaded upgrade.  Instead of my early morning routine that helps me shake off the slumber, it was this squeamish feeling of being violated that jolted me back from sleepiness.

I haven't used it more than an hour, so I can't say what I like and what I hate about this update, or what are the annoyances, except one...  There's one that's breaking everybody's resolve to NOT swear and that is: randomly showing notification that a file has been downloaded.  Now, this file, in all the cases is either not recognizable or was downloaded years ago, actually in mobile-years, eons ago! So, of course when you tap on it, you get back an error something to the effect of "Cannot find this file".

After Google'ing, I figured this was a very common annoyance and people suggested "Clearing Cache" to get rid of this.  But no one actually shared detailed steps how to do so.  Or more importantly, "which" cache to clear!  After some trial and error I figured how to do it.  And I thought of making a quick post to help others rid themselves of this irritating behavior.

Instructions to Clear Cache:

0. Pull down the notification center when you have an icon notifying you of some download
1. Tap-n-Hold on the filename that appears
2. An "App Info" menu will pop up
3. Tap on that "App Info" menu
4. It takes you to Android's standard interface from where you can manage the applications
5. Just hit "Clear Data", it will warn you, just say ok and proceed with clearing data
6. Voilà!  You will not be bothered with this again, unless you REALLY download something

I couldn't find this app whose data I cleared from Application Manager, so I take it must be some system internal app that's hidden from Application Manager.  And I didn't know if what I was doing was the real solution, so I didn't even take any screenshots to help, but at least I remembered the steps.

Edit: The app is called "Download Manager" and actually is visible if you are patient enough to scroll through "All" apps tab in application manager.  Here's the screenshot.  Blogger is not letting me upload images, so here's the link to screenshot: Screenshot-Clear Download Manager's Cache.

Edit: The BIGGEST annoyance so far has been random battery drains, just yesterday it dropped off from 100% to 85% in less than 5 minutes, the phone's back went warm AND this was while in "power saving" mode!  I fired up Elixir2 and noticed most CPU has been hogged by Samsung's wretched KNOX.  My battery is lasting less than half a day in power saving mode (and I don't have any bells-n-whistles enabled, aka FB, Twitter, Email notifications, etc.).
This is just pathetic. 

Moral: When will these idiots (the ones defining upgrade/update experiences) realize that there are some of us who DON'T want to be forced to upgrade, especially when there are many known unresolved issues with the update.  And if you MUST annoy with hourly reminders, at least don't FORCE upgrade while I'm asleep and can't baby-sit your f!@#$ing notifications! ~~~sigh~~~ There's no dearth of idiots in this world, none whatsoever!

Is Samsung becoming the new Yahoo!/HP, refer to my previous post: Stop Writing Crappy Software

My Dirty Secret: Wettest Dream of My Life

Today, I'm letting you in on my real dirty dream, wettest of wet dreams I would LOVE to experience, vividly comic'ized by the great artist at xkcd...

All the nerds-n-geeks out there are experiencing a nerd-boner as... .. ... ~~~aarrghh~~~ I'll be back shortly!

Healthful Spinach Smoothie

As I promised in the last post, here's the recipe I promised.  First things first, fret not, as I have told you earlier, I'm not going to convert this blog into a store house of cooking recipes, people have already done wonderful job all around the blogsphere.
But in my quest to improve my eating habits, I will share a few health-filled recipes once in a while.

Making this Spinach Smoothie (Palak Smoothie) is so astoundingly easy and simple, that it really defies the commonly held belief that you have to spend hours in order to cook a healthy meal(*conditions apply!).  Not to mention it would be outrightly criminal NOT to make this regularly!

This is enough to make about 3-4 glasses of smoothie, scale it per your needs:

0. Banana - 2
1. Pineapple - 1/4th
2. Slice of Whole Lemon - 1
3. Spinach - approx. 3 handfuls
4. Peeled Oranges - 2
5. Papaya - 1/4th
6. Condiments: Black Pepper
7. Optional: Almost any fruit you want, esp. berries, avocado, Cinnamon, Honey
8. Water, to get the consistency you prefer

If you don't want to read rest of the boring interesting commentary, then here's your skipping-to-the-best-part...
Quick Recipe: Grind them (0-5) all together, sprinkle freshly ground pepper and top it off with a mint leaf!

If you have time, patience and zest to endure my boring (but not totally useless) commentary, then here you go...
The key idea here is gathering the ingredients, once you have them, it is just a matter of putting them in the mixer and making a smoothie out of it, there's not too much more to it.  But if there's one thing I want to point out is, do not skip on the slice of a whole-lemon, the lemon's grind (thick outer skin) is what gives this smoothie its unique deep flavor.  If you don't have one handy, DO NOT expect spectacular results when you substitute it for that lowly chemical-laden lemon juice from your fridge.  I recommend running out to the nearest grocery store, instead and picking one up (note that running will also up your appetite for a healthful drink!).  My 3-handfuls of spinach measurement is approximate, keep adding till you get nice vibrant green color.

The trick is to grind all of these properly, putting Spinach in first will make the mixer's motor run on near-zero-load with leaves sitting there almost undisturbed!  Don't curse me when this happens, because it means you haven't read the full post ;-) Luckily for you, you will almost instantly start getting the burning smell, so you'll know something's amiss!  (Note that I have a very cheap 4 year old mixer, so I have to be creative how I grind things in it; chances are you might have better luck with yours, or coincidentally, have a cheapo one like mine!).  Always put juicy fruits first, the juice helps form the base of the smoothie, a thick paste.

Once ready, top it off with freshly ground pepper and a flavorful mint leaf!  That all there is to it!

You can experiment the base recipe in many many ways, the above is a good reference of what all goes into this smoothie, a good starting point, be creative with what you can add.  Like avocado, papaya and black-pepper are my own personal touch to this recipe.
If you want to keep this healthy, then there are a few things I strongly recommend against adding.  Also, unless you want your smoothie to taste like a slush, I recommend keeping ice out too.

Things to keep out of your smoothie: sugar (NO NO NO additional sugar or sweetener is needed, for christ's sake banana and pineapple bring enough sugar already), milk (doesn't go well with citrus fruits), Strawberries (will conflict with pineapple and citrus flavor).

If you have all the ingredients ready(*), it doesn't take more than a minute to whip a glassful of this smoothie, including cleaning time.  Use fresh ingredients, especially spinach leaves, frozen spinach will not get you anywhere close to what fresh ones can achieve.  I'm willing to bet it will not even taste like a smoothie.  I generally chop the fruits over the weekend and keep them in the refrigerator, that way I don't have to spend too much time gathering all the ingredients whenever I want to make a glassful. Chopping pineapple, especially, is a bit time consuming a task best reserved for weekend.

More Tips:

0. Bananas
Another trick I have picked up for making great smoothies over the period is using frozen bananas. I have had to throw away a lot many bananas for not eating them before they went black and rancid. So now I just peel all the bananas, put them in a nice ziplock bag and put them in deep freezer! They will stay there for at least a month, but I consume them within a week's time. This also means you will never have to use ice in your smoothie again!
1. Leftovers
Make sure you don't make too much, this tastes best when made fresh. But if you have leftover, then just put the smoothie in a nice air-tight mason jar, it will last for 3 or so days in the fridge.  Spinach is rich in iron, so naturally it will turn a tad dark, don't be scared, it will still be good for consumption.

I have been hacked!

Have you ever had a feeling that your brain is being hacked into while you are asleep? And by hack I mean programatically, of course, not physically. That's the feeling dream I had early morning today... while I lay half awake I had an unsettling dream that my brain was hacked into and someone was having fun while rummaging through it.  I bet I squirmed a bit, who wouldn't!

Was it not enough that I have, more than once, had recursive dreams, now somebody has to hack into my brain?  I lay perfectly still struggling with my part asleep-part awake-part confused state of mind without perturbing anything just so that I can understand what's happening, or lack hereof! Early morning brain hacks would so very well explain the slow mornings I have had! Stupid me, anything that will convince me I need to spend an extra 5 minutes in the bed :)

My mind then wanders off (hacker seems to have gone by now ~~~phew~~~) first worried about what has been deleted from my brain, not that you can backup a brain (funny, you can hack into one, copy it contents, delete some, but not back it up, attaboy!).  But as it goes, one never knows what has been deleted until the one actually needs it.  And then I get concerned about what inner thoughts the hacker might have tapped into.

I lay there contemplating (ohh.... in reality, here comes another 10 minutes of sweet sleep!), so I lay there contemplating, what would it mean in reality to hack into someone's psyche programatically, if and when it could be done, without the subject knowing it.  That's when I realized it was just a dream (but nothing is ever JUST a dream, never, is it!).  And no, I'm not talking about the stupid movie Inception and again no, neither did I see it before going to bed nor do I intend to see it in foreseeable future, I didn't even think of thinking of seeing it in foreseeable future.

It has been longest break on blog so far, somewhere around 8+ months ~~~sigh~~~ A few people asked me lately why have I stopped writing and I assured them that I haven't stopped writing I just have stopped blogging them for a short while (a popular euphemism for: am being a lazy bum!).  So this useless bizarre dream of today's seemed like a perfect post to resume blogging with, or a good attempt at the very least.

As to life...
It pains me to see that I haven't been making full use of the Sun that's blessing us Seattle'ites (residents of Seattle, not satellites!) with longer days.  Hope to get back on the saddle before winter kicks in and days start getting shorter where it gets dark by 4pm and it starts feeling day ended even before it started.

Coming up next: How to make a quick very healthy smoothie in under a minute!