I’m speaking on a panel that will hopefully help some Bryn Mawr and Haverford students get jobs after college. You can see me 7pm EST on 3/18/2008 at this link: http://www.haverford.edu/cdo/opportunities/events/
The Very Best Mac and Cheese Recipe
We Coleman’s make excellent mac-and-cheese. It’s one of my favorite foods and the food I always bring to pot-lucks and the like if I want to impress people.
We usually wing it and have never before written down the “recipe”. But Kim’s sister asked for it. Here’s what Kim wrote back:
(The Very Best) Mac and Cheese (Ever)
Boil and salt water; cook 1 lb. elbow macaroni to al dente.
Put the following ingredients in a microwave safe bowl and cover with plastic wrap:
– 1 lb. white american cheese (we like clearfield) sliced then torn into smaller pieces
– 1/4 lb. yellow cheddar cheese (shredded or just chopped up)
– 3 tbsp. butter
– 1/4 c. of milk (can always add more later)Microwave the cheesy stuff in 5 min. segments stirring every 5 mins. until melted and not chunky. Thin the cheesy stuff as needed with milk to a little bit more runny than you would think it should be (the pasta soaks it up and it gets thicker). I sometimes throw in a little paprika, pepper, chives, parsley, etc. to spruce it up.
While the cheese is cooking away, heat up 1 can of stewed tomatoes (not Italian style) in a small saucepan. Mash up the stewed tomatoes with a potato masher and thicken with a little corn starch and water. Watch that you don’t turn up the heat too high because they can burn and/or boil and spit lava-hot tomato goo at you. Ouch!
Combined the cooked noodles and the cheesy sauce and put it in an over-safe casserole dish.
Cover with the stewed tomatoes and sprinkle top with italian bread crumbs.
Bake for 20 mins. or so. at 350 degrees.
To serve, open a bottle of white wine and give a toast to Jason and Kim!
This is absolutely not the best stuff to eat if you are trying to lose weight. But it is mighty tasty. So try it out sometime as a treat. Then come back and thank me.
I AM The Real Jason Coleman
The other day I got this strange phone call from the guy who runs www.jasonrcoleman.com. He was getting very "hype" and saying that HE was the real Jason Coleman.
We went back and forth as to who was who. And to be honest, his arguments were much better than mine. I think the last had something to do with the fact that the real Jason Coleman must have been born in December (I was born in June) because that’s when the OTHER JC (Jesus Christ) was born. Something like that.
In any case, this guys knowledge of Jasons in the bible and Greek mythology was well ahead of mine. I tried to pull the "JASON is on the calendar" trick (you’ll figure it out), but he was aware of that one. Although he said he just realized a couple years ago, whereas I BEEN knowing that crap since I could first read.
We both agreed that neither of the posers at www.jasoncoleman.com or www.jasoncoleman.net were even in the running to be THE REAL Jason Coleman. And Jason Coleman from Big Huge Games is cool, but also out of the race. I’ll let the domains speak for themselves.
In other news, I just watched the very funny interview with The Fake Steve Jobs at WallStrip.com. It’s good stuff and made me realize that I better pick-up www.fakejasoncoleman.com, and I did. You never no when you’ll become famous and have blog stalkers. Also, think it and be it. Everything zen, everything zen.
Oh, and yeah, I’m not linking to those other sites because this is all a scheme to get the #1 Google result for "Jason Coleman". They’ll get no link juice from me. I’m still confused about this whole Google thing. I mean, I’m practically an Internet mogul here and I can’t even claim a search for my name. I AM consoled a little bit that I’ve managed to claim sexy wine guy.
DateSpaces NYC Launches
We’ve just “soft launched” a new site for NYC daters. DateSpaces.com is a directory of restaurants and other dating spots in New York City. Think of it as a CitySearch focused on the “datability” of the locations rather than how good the food is. Or think of it as a WineLog for dates.
By “soft launched”, I mean a kind of “beta”. We want a few people to come to the site to test it out, but don’t want Digg or Techcrunch-style coverage just yet. So this small blog posting should get the 20 of you who follow this blog to check it out and will also get Google crawling the site.
It’s a pretty cool site, and I’ll definitely be talking about it more later.
Inspirage Oracle Consulting
We just launched an awesome website for our friends at Inspirage.com. It’s one of Kim’s best designs ever. She’s really on a roll and producing top-notch stuff for our clients.
The site is built on top of WordPress, and when we were first installing WP we did not check the “I would like to include my website in search engines…” option. I didn’t really know what checking this did… I assumed some kind of submission to Google and Technorati. Since the site was still in development and I knew I was going to submit the site later, I left it unchecked so Google wouldn’t know about the dev version of the site until it was ready.
Well, it turns out that leaving that option unchecked actually adds a no-index and no-follow meta tags to the header of every page, asking Google and other crawlers to stay out. This is obviously a bad if you ever expect to get search engine traffic. We didn’t notice this until after we launched the site and a search for “inspirage” was returning a link to the website, but with no title or description.
You can go into the WP options and change this setting after installation… that’s what we did. Meta tags removed.
It’s been about a week and still no update on those search results though. My guess is that Google isn’t crawling the site. I’ve read that they won’t crawl the site for 180 days or so. Maybe our links in this blog post will put it back on the radar. I’m also going to submit the URL through Google’s quality form. And maybe installing Analytics on the site will wake Google up to the fact that Inspirage.com is crawlable. We can only hope.
If anyone out there has had the same problem and knows a good solution, let us know.
Guys Need Facials Too. Spa Blogging?
Before our wedding in May, Kim got me a gift certificate to get a facial at a local spa. It was awesome. So relaxing. Imagine someone massaging your face and head for an hour while you try not to snore.
I vowed to always get a facial before any vacation. It just puts you in the mood. I was so excited about my discovery that I couldn’t stop talking about it at my bachelor party, and my friends couldn’t stop joking about the implied innuendo.
Anyway, I was thinking of facials because we just launched a new site for Dr. Harriet Comite at www.comiteskin.com. Shortly after, Kim bought me a facial at their Advanced Skin Care spa, which was amazing as always.
If you live near Reading, Pennsylvania and are interested in spa treatments ranging from manicures to Botox treatment, check out their office in Wyomissing.
If you’re a tech nerd like us, you might want to follow their site too. There are few qualified people blogging about the world of spas and skin care right now. If the group at Advanced Skin Care can continue to put out great content on their blog, I think they’ll have no problem booking appointments in the future. There’s an opportunity for someone in this space to take control of the blogosphere much like EnglishCut and Stormhoek did in their respective fields. I wish them luck.
Stream of Consciousness Drawing
I had to break the Wacom tablet out for a client project last night and got inspired. I decided to have a little fun this morning.
What I’m doing is drawing very fast, whatever comes to mind. After a while, I scribble a bunch, then add a new layer to the drawing. I set the opacity of the old layer down to 10% and it becomes the inspiration for the next round. You can get some pretty good stuff this way, and can tell a story with the decisions you make: which lines to darken, which strokes to turn into the next piece.
Anyway, here it is. I am drawing fast, but this is also sped up 4x. Enjoy.
Bo Schambelan is Rambling
I met Bo at a Haverford College Alumni function, and since then we’ve become friends and colleagues. Last month I set Bo up with a blog at www.boheadquarters.com.
There is some great writing up there already… some short stories and poetry that Bo had in his stash. I’m so excited to see what he writes once he gets into the swing of things and starts updating more regularly. The blogosphere needs more folks like Bo; his voice and opinions are really unique and not at all like the typical stuff out there.
Enamored With Ron Paul? Read This
I just read this blog post, cheerfully titled “Ron Paul Hates You“, which points out some reasons Democrats and swing voters shouldn’t fall too in love with the straight-talking Ron Paul. (emphasis his)
… the diaries are full of people who can’t find enough nice things to say about Rep. Ron Paul, whose smiling face is at this moment being beamed to America from the site of the Republican debate in New Hampshire–after which, we may be sure, we will see yet another round of diaries brimming with joy about Paul’s sweet words against the Iraq war. You, dear reader, may even be considering writing one or more such diaries yourself.
Before you do, fellow Democrat, please understand just one thing: Your affection for Paul is far from mutual. Through his words, his actions, and his votes in Congress, he has made one thing abundantly clear over the decades: Ron Paul hates you. By building him up, by supporting him, by taking him seriously, you are not driving a wedge into the heart of the Republican Party–you are only giving him a helping hand along the road to his goal of destroying just about everything you stand for.
Please read on for the well researched rebuke against Ron Paul.
This kind of reminds me of another straight-talking Republican presidential candidate out of Texas who seemed to be shaking things up before election time but ended up catering to all the wrong folks when he got to bat.
(Thanks, Ugly)
Vivanativa: This Band Gets the Net
While in Puerto Rico last month, we got a chance to see VIVANATIVA play live at a free concert put on at Guajataca beach. Ever since, I’ve been tuned into their website almost daily where they let you play any of their songs off any of their albums.
This band is supposedly the shiznit in PR. I think they’re pretty rocking. Check out their stuff at their website. You’ll probably have to buy their albums at Amazon if you’re in the states.
