Ben Benner’s Blog

(figured I would follow-up the Time Lord post with a similar sounding title)

So let me first start off by saying, I managed to get myself over to the soccer field for Camp Gladiator #7 about 10 minutes later than I had wanted. Honestly though, from the looks of it the folks in charge there I think must have started a little bit before 6:10, because everyone was already doing some serious exercises. That our I mistook the warm-ups for part of the serious workout.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I think it was on Wednesday, one of my coworkers, Eryn Chandler, was mentioning that she went to high school with a friend who’s cousin won the last American Gladiator contest, or something like that. Regardless, of the six-degrees of gladiator separation, I have signed up for Cam Gladiator (#7).

Eryn was talking about how she was thinking about signing up. I heard her asking Kevin if he would do it and he sounded interested at the time. The next day there was much chatter in the office about Camp Gladiator. There was chatter about referrals and how much money you can get for referring someone, I remember hearing Daniel mention that he was going. That is when right about the same time they asked me if I would do it. I had looked the site over the previous day and thought to myself that I didn’t think I was physically fit enough to get $160 worth of exercise (4 weeks of sessions, as many sessions as I want to attend).

Then came the Camp Gladiator Groupon, this is a new thing to me, but Groupon is this sort of weird group coupon system (Group + Coupon = Groupon). I like to think of it as Woot! + Local Business. There is one special a day and they eventually run out of Groupons. The Groupon lowered the price to $70. So that combined with the fact that Kevin said that Jeremy was thinking about doing it, I succumbed to the peer pressure of exercise.

I stated that I would do the camp if Jeremy would. However, Kevin managed to finish talking me into it, not that he was hard selling me on it, but at this point Eryn, Kevin, and Daniel were all signed up. So I figured, heck I will sign-up. I am not saying that Jeremy signed up because I did, but I did sign-up before he did.

The first session (for us) was last night, 6:10p - 7:10p, out at a soccer field near the intersection of Braker and Mopac.

It was chilly when we started and proceeded to get COLD. I will definitely need to wear a sweatshirt next time around.

We did sprints, push-ups, jumping jacks, ’sexy spiders’, ‘crab walks’, ‘crab shuffles’ (think that was the name), ’super-mans’, ‘bananas’, and some sort of weird V-shaped sit-up thing. It was very intense.

As previously posted, I am trying to get into better shape. I can honestly say that if I had not been doing a bit of the Wii Fit every night, then I would most likely have not been able to do as many of the exercises that everyone was doing at Camp Gladiator last night. I mean don’t get me wrong, I got winded very early-on and had to slow down my pace, but every time I felt that I was recovered, I ‘kicked the intensity back up’ as to try and get the most out of my $70.

I am not sure if I will do another Camp Gladiator or not. I think I will need to see how I am feeling by the end of these four weeks. One personal goal that I have for week three and week four, is to do three sessions a week. These first two weeks I think are going to really kick my ass.

I am going to try and alternate the Wii Fit with the Camp Gladiator nights. I have the Camp Gladiator session in my Google Calendar, thus allowing them show-up on my iPhone. Mondays and Wednesday nights. I think I am going to try and hit up a Friday session on weeks three and four.

Anyway, I need to finish my lunch and get back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner cam gladiator, daniel, eryn, exercise, friends, jeremy, kevin, wii fit bootcamp, camp gladiator, eryn wii fit, excercise, jeremy, kevin

This evening I watch David Tennant end his five-year reign as The Doctor. In what I have to say was an amazing piece of writing, The Doctor and The Master saved the earth. I am a HUGE nerd for Doctor Who and Star Trek.

However, this post has nothing to do with phasers, warp drives or Vulcans. This is about the sonic screwdrivers, the TARDIS, Daleks and a whole lot more. I really want to point out that the two-part “The End of Time” was a really good piece of work. In bringing back The Master, they kept up with ‘The Drums’, these drums that The Master hears. They had kept up that running bit of mythos in previous appearances by The Master.

I loved how they intertwined the new Time War timeline with the drums that The Master hears. Bringing it full-circle, makes you wonder if they had everything figured out when they wrote the first aspects of the drum beats.

David’s rendition of The Doctor was really refreshing. I cannot remember exactly when I got started watching Doctor Who. I know that I used to watch it on PBS and that often times the episodes were not in proper order.

I believe that the first Doctor Who episode I watched was during the time of the fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker. I remember the Jelly Baby candies he ate. I believe the first episode I saw contained the CyberMen, I sort of remember some sort of industrial complex that was set in arid terrain.

I remember hearing the TARDIS materlize for the first time, to me it sounds like a cross between a locomotive and a Zube Tube. I also remember thinking that I really wanted a Sonic Screwdriver, The Doctor’s magical little device that can unlock doors, hack into computer systems, disable security systems and foes.

I am excited that a NEW season of Doctor Who is coming up. I have to admit that I am a little apprehensive about the new Doctor, number eleven, portrayed by Matt Smith. Not sure why I am apprehensive, likely it is just because all I have seen of Matt’s version of The Doctor was the minute or so that he was on the screen before the credits and the quick preview they showed of the upcoming season. With that said, I would also have to say that I am just used to seeing David’s version of The Doctor. Much like I was used to seeing Tom’s version (Doctor number four).

Anyway, I should try to get a little bit of exercise in before bedtime.

Laterz.

bdbenner tv doctor who, sci-fi, tv

It is a cliché to make resolutions at the beginning of the year, but hey why not.

It goes without saying that I could stand to lose a few pounds. I have been meaning to actually make an effort to exercise. While watching TV, Gina and I both had he same reaction to the commercial for the EA Active ‘game’ for the Nintendo Wii. We both thought it was a really good idea.

I have had gym memberships before and well have just never used them. I had thought about getting the Wii Fit before and the EA Active looked to be quite interesting. We got a $100 gift card to Land’s End from work for x-mas. There wasn’t anything at Land’s End that we wanted. However, we were able to use that card at Sears.

Sears had both the Wii Fit (board and ‘game’) and the EA Active. I opted for us to get the Wii Fit board vs the EA Active. We might get the EA active later, but the Wii Fit board used up all but $2.59 cents of the gift card.

I did about 25 minutes on the Wii Fit tonight. I found some of the Yoga exercises quite challenging and some of them were not challenging but felt really good. I did some of the strength training routines as well, again some challenging, some just felt good.

The Wii Fit software is pretty good, intuitive and encouraging. I have to agree with some of the online reviews that I have read, where folks disagree with the ‘Wii Age’ that they get assigned. The system gave me a Wii Age of 49, which feels horrible, given that I am 31. This felt really horrible, when Gina got a Wii Age of 31, her real age.

Given that I don’t exercise on a regular basis, I am certain that I will manage to lose some weight by doing some Wii Fit exercises regularly. I also want to work in some REAL exercise, being going outdoors and running/jogging. But I will say this, I did the ‘Run’ that is within the Wii Fit and it was quite a workout to run in place for what I believe was two minutes. It was intelligent enough to know if you were ‘running’ too fast and makes you trip and fall (it detects and interprets the motion of the Wiimote to gauge the speed of your run) .

Gina and I both setup our profiles and set our goals. Hers are a bit more aggressive than mine, but the software allows you to change your goals up every two weeks.

I am going to try and get in at least 25-30 minutes of Wii Fit in a day/night. I would like to try and get in a run/jog in twice a week and use the office gym at least once a week.

I have talked about stuff like this in the past, but never really tried to plan it out. I hope to be able to keep this resolution and reach my goals.

I would like to make some other resolutions as well.

1. Exercise Regularly
2. Keep Baking Bread Regularly (including using my own starters not just active yeast)
3. Salad For Lunch 3x Week (including weekends)
4. Blog Regularly (not daily, but several times a week)
5. Take a real vacation, i.e. not in Michigan or Tejas.
6. Make dinner more often.

I think I have cooled down sufficiently from my ‘workout’ and am definitely ready for bed.

Laterz

bdbenner Wii, exercise, video games ea active, exercise, nintendo, Wii

… of cabbage to turn into a delicious bowl of soup.

Gina made a ham for x-mas dinner and when we bought that precious piece of fully cooked hog, I said ‘I want to make cabbage soup, with ham.’

Earlier this year (feels like longer though), back in February I made some cabbage soup. I remember that the soup was good, but that a little bit of ham or bacon would have made it a little better.

Well, we have a decent amount of ham left and last night I procured a nice looking cabbage. This morning I have been busy, cleaned the kitchen, cooked the beans, chopped the onion and garlic. I had to look up the recipe (again) as it would appear that I neglected to bookmark it (or post a link in my blog). This recipe is pretty close to what I remember doing back in February. (Maybe it is the same one, maybe it isn’t).

I am hoping to have the soup done here in about an hour, I also hope to sneak in baking the last loaf of my garlic & herb bread, which I think will go very well with the soup.

I wanted to get a quick post in about this, as a means to get back into the habit of writing on a regular basis. Too often I put it off and either watch TV or play video games. I hope to moderate my recreational activities a bit more as I expect to have a very busy January and February, to which I still want to keep up with baking regularly and making dinner.

In an effort of help with that kind of thing, I have re-arranged my home office (as Gina says that I have been doing that steadily over the last 6 years). With the help of some of my x-mas loot, I have been able to ditch my bulky 27 inch TV that took up a HUGE portion of the entertainment center that was in my office. I have also ditched the entertainment center, in favor of the EXPEDIT bookcase. (Same one I have at the work office.)

The TV was replaced with a 23 inch HP monitor (widescreen). Seems like a downgrade right?

In terms of straight up number of inches, yes a downgrade. But the increase in resolution and the widescreen effect has proven to outweigh the fact that it is smaller than the TV. If I am looking to watch something on a BIG screen, I will walk my lazy ass over to the living room. What I am looking for is something that can be in the background of the computer monitors, allowing me to passively watch TV while working.

I had a similar setup many years ago, what feels like a lifetime ago. But I remember that back then I felt like I was able to get more done and still satisfy my addiction to having something like the TV going in the background. Music helps, but I am definitely an addict to the TV.

I thought long and hard about asking for the HP monitor vs asking for a LCD TV. And in the end for the size that I was looking for the monitor seemed like the better deal. I did think that after having to buy a special cable for my xbox and some other miscellaneous items, that the LCD TV might have been an overall better cost savings. But I think the monitor will still be more useful in the long run.

The monitor has both an HDMI and VGA plug. This allows me to plug in the U-Verse set-top box and the 360 at the same time. I bought some speakers that have dual inputs allowing me to run both the 360 and the U-Verse through some nice little Logitech (favorite brand of computer accessories) speakers.

The difference in the quality of the graphics for the 360 is amazing, particularly for one game where the resolution requirements were just TOO much for the old CRT TV. I mean words that were too fuzzy to read are now clear on the screen.

In regards to the bookcase, I love the one that I have at the office. It holds many books (tall and small) and you can get these ‘boxes’ to put stuff in. I think I might be able to fit two of them against the wall, which honestly I think would provide me the needed cubby holes to finish putting stuff away in my home office.

The other bit that is helping me with my six year mission, is purging stuff that I just do not utilize anymore. I have trashed a lot of old papers that don’t need to be kept, I have sold books to Half-Price books, gotten rid of games I don’t play anymore, donated gadgetry to Goodwill. (Still have a few that I would like to try to sell on Craigslist or eBay.)

I also started removing the carpet from my home office as it is the last room in the house with carpet. I am not sure when we will install the pergo like flooring, maybe in February.

I should probably go and start putting the soup together as I think all the ingredients are ready to go.

Laterz

bdbenner Cooking, Personal

… the more they stay the same.

Let’s see, updates on what has been going on.

1) The Benner family has gotten a new bunny. I am not referring to Zoe, who joined the family back in June. I am referring to ‘Wash’, yup his name is Wash. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of Wash, but Gina has been snapping plenty of photos.

2) Gina got an early X-mas gift. She got a Canon Rebel EOS XSi. She has long been into photography, but her old 35mm Canon cameras need to be repaired. You might think that the reason I got her a digital is purely due to my love of technology, it is not purely due to my love of technology. She has really liked her digital cameras in the past and has scanned several pictures for web posting or reprinting. It just seemed like the best logical progression.

(note: Gina will tell you that I also got it for her, so that she would have a hobby. I prefer to think of it in terms of helping her find a creative outlet, mine lately is bread.)

3) I got a Mac. John bought a new Mac Pro (desktop) and cut me a great deal on his old 13″ Mac Book Pro. I have made the conversion from my HP laptop to the Mac. There are A LOT of things that I like (Exposé for instance - it is FANTASTIC) , but there are some thing that I am still getting used to. Like the fact that the ‘control’ key doesn’t do anything I want it to do anymore, meaning I have not yet finished the training myself to use the ‘command’ key yet.

4) Work has been extremely busy. There has been the normal fare, the day-to-day stuff that always takes up time. But we have also been knocking out a few new things here and there. One of our customer’s Oddcast had us work with them on a project for Whataburger. If you are from/in Texas then you definitely know the name, from what I am told other southern states have this unique burger chain as well, but anyone from Michigan will likely be a bit clueless.

The Whataburger project itself is a variation on a few different projects we have done for Oddcast in the past, but there was a spark of genius in the way in which we implemented this project that I hope to leverage for all future projects like it, in terms of fluidity and efficiency I would dare say that the underlying work represents a 10x increase in both areas. That project launched on Nov 9th and runs until Dec 21st, which reminds me the entire dev team will be heading to Whataburger to get ourselves an A1 Thick and Hearty Burger here either on Friday or Monday.

With the new team that I have assembled to work on web applications for the parent company, we launched a new web app for a customer. Unfortunately, I cannot state who that customer is at this time. I do want to note that Kevin and Daniel (the two senior developers on the team) played a big part in completing this project for a timely launch. We have found (and corrected) some bugs here and there, which is to be expected with as quickly as we rushed it into production. But along the way we have also made some enhancements that I feel really proud of. We will be re-using parts of what we have done on other parent company projects in the future.

The other notable project/product that we have been working has recently launched a pilot with a retailer that I think everyone would know the name of, but at least right now I cannot state who that retailer is. The product is CommentFunnel. (Jaduka blog post)

We took some of the telephony tech that we had created for Oddcast in the past and reworked it a little bit here and there to allow for a comment recorded by a customer can be immediately be emailed to the store’s management and we also provide a dashboard that allows for reporting and reviewing comments right on the web. As we move beyond the pilot phase we will be upgrading the telephony and the web aspects of CommentFunnel. We will look to add in text (sms) messaging for mobile couponing and look at transcription technologies to allow us to make the audio comments searchable.

5) I fixed Gina’s big red chair. Had I not lost the IKEA receipt for the chair, this item would read ‘I got a replacement for Gina’s big red chair.’ The Chair’s ’spring’ supports had broken away from the frame, causing you to sink into the chair. After much contemplation (which sounds better than, ‘I was being lazy’), I finally devised a solution for the chair. A square piece of 1/2″ plywood, some metal ‘L’ brackets, many wood screws, my trusty Black&Decker drill, some muslin and my Powershot staple gun. After a couple of hours in the garage, the chair was ready to be put back into the living room. I used the muslin and staple gun to replace the fabric covering the bottom of the chair, and unfortunately hiding my handy work.

I am sure there are mundane things that I could list out here, but I will leave that for another blog post.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner apple, gina, mac, work bunny, commenfunnel, gina, Jaduka, mac, oddcast, update, whataburger, work

… a whole lot of bread and php!

I have not blogged in a while. It is not due to a lack of stuff to talk about. But more so that ever nagging lack of time to write. There are many out there that would aptly (justly and most likely with righteous fervor) say that I need to MAKE the time. To which I have but one simple answer (excuse).

I cannot make anymore time.

I have managed to find time to practice some new bread recipes (which in the grand scheme of things doesn’t take nearly as much time as some might think), I have written several small applications (in php) for side projects, been assisting with some home renovations and to boot attempting to keep my stress level (and sanity in check).

Work has changed up quite a bit in the last 60 days, I am no longer the VP of Product Development, I am also the VP of Product Management and Development. Thirteen little letters added to my title have added at this point countless hours at the office after the normal quitting time. I say countless because well I am salaried, so at some point counting them all up is too aggravating.

I don’t want to paint a picture that I am there until midnight or anything, but I do believe the latest I have been at the office has been about 10pm, and if memory serves I got into the office early that day and more or less clocked a 12 hour day.

It is the age-old tale of “Doing more with less”, there was some re-organization and I got a title change and once again have staff (the Jaduka development team reports directly to me). I was immediately tasked with hiring two new developers to work on some web applications. Can’t go into the details just yet, but when we launch I will make sure to post some more information.

The search took some time, but I managed to find some good additions to the team. We threw them into the deep end and we are about 3 weeks into their first project. Things are moving along well, but we have had quite a few other projects creep up in October that were not originally planned for, these projects are customer related, so that means that it is NEW business. And new business is always a GOOD thing.

I had gotten into the habit for the last few weeks of once or twice a week bringing bread into the office. I haven’t done that yet this week, but I think I will be able to line that up for Friday. I have done some experimenting.

There is of course my Sans Raisin Bread, my Gingerbread squared (Gingerbread bread) and my Great Pumpkin bread. The last batch of Great Pumpkin I think turned out very well, everyone in the office felt the second batch was better than the first. The secret was to add a second can of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, ‘raw’ canned pumpkin). There was also my attempt at Log Cabin bread, which just didn’t have enough maple syrup flavor, not quite sure how to overcome that without having to put like 2-3 cups of maple syrup in, which keep in mind is A LOT of maple syrup. (talking about the real stuff, not that corn syrup junk)

I enjoy bringing in bread and getting feedback from folks on the taste, texture, etc. I also enjoy stealing what I think are the best two pieces for myself. I am not sure what will be next on the list for bread. I will likely make something ‘boring’ like buttermilk bread, but it is an old standby at this point. I use the buttermilk recipe as the base for most of my experiments.

We cleaned out the garage this past Sunday. If you have to clean out a garage or are planning any sort of home renovation project that will produce any significant amount of construction waste/debris, I highly recommend that you see if your can use TheBagster (www.thebagster.com), we used it to get rid of all the junk (mostly construction waste/debris) that had accumulated in the garage after the various other projects that we had done.

Last night I hung a new ceiling fan in Gina’s office. I also installed new closet doors and a bi-fold door in the hallway entrance to the laundry room. I did the demo(lition) and room prep for Gina’s office, clearing out the old carpet and baseboards.

John installed the laminate flooring the other weekend and put in the new base boards. Gina caulked everything and painted the trim, spackled some spots in the drywall. It has been quite a little renovation of Gina’s office.

We hit up IKEA and she got herself a new desk and some new wall hangings. Everything isn’t quite  back together yet, I think that is on the agenda for tomorrow night.

This evening I came home, wrote up some specifications, got my laptop rigged up to run the code for the latest web project we are doing at work and poked around in the repository to see how the guys have been doing.

On Monday I fly out to Reston, VA to attend a user conference (tradeshow) that is hosted by Appian, a company that Jaduka is partnered with. I will be out there to demonstrate our integration and discuss with the attendees how we can help improve the efficiency of their Appian installations with Jaduka’s services.

It has been a VERY, VERY busy October, thus far.

I really want to try and knock out a batch of Pumpernickel, but I think that will need to wait until I get back from my trip next week.

Oh, did I mention that I also managed to catch that cold that has been going around Austin (particularly our office)?

Well, I need to get to bed I am supposed to be into the office early tomorrow as to help ensure that I can leave at a decent time.

Laterz

bdbenner work bread, floors, garage, PHP, programming, renovation, the bagster, thebagster, travel, work

For those that do not know, the Dominguez part of Dominguez-Benner is known for their artistic talents. I got some of this talent, but to be honest, just never practice. I have tabled in clay as a medium, making small ceramic things and painting them. Some of which I felt were good, those being the ones that came after doing, many, many in a row. i.e. ‘Practice makes perfect.’ (Notably my Mother and Sister are very good artists, and my Abuelo (grandfather) is a real Renaissance man of art, all of my uncles have the talent as well.)

I can definitely feel that practice makes you better, in my opinion there is no such thing as perfect, sorry Google and Apple, but keep striving for perfection, please. Back to the real topic of this post. I have probably always been a sketcher, a doodler, someone who likes to draw little things. I really, REALLY enjoyed the drawing class I took with Rachel (the only other Dominguez-Benner in existence) a number of years ago.

Well, technology has gotten better at allowing artistic expression and thanks to the economics of technology (i.e. it gets cheaper every year), the cost of really GOOD digital drawing tablets has come to the point where it is not a MAJOR investment to get one. Particularly, when it is your Birthday.

Gina bought me a Wacom Intuos4 Small tablet. Kevin has one at work (technically two Wacom tablets, the small and I believe the mediumis at home). I had thought about asking for one of the larger Bamboo brand, also made by Wacom, but Kevin advised me that the sensitivity of the Intuos is just better.

I hope to be able to get the hang of digital sketching and also definitely work on doing some ‘photoshop’ editing of pics. Just from playing around with it for the about 15 minutes, I can tell that the sensitivity that it provides would allow for some very creative editing of existing digital media.

Here is the pic that I drew real quick. I was just messing around and it all sort of came together, I tried out doing the different pieces in layers and seeing how they blended onto one another.

Time to go to lunch with Gina and John.

Laterz

bdbenner art, digital birthday, drawing, gina, wacom

I had a nice chat with my mom this morning on the way into the office. During which, she and David sung me Happy Birthday.

I made it into the office a bit earlier than usual this morning, I have a 9am conference call. As is the dogs woke me up at like 5am. No matter how you slice it, this morning was going to happen earlier than usual.

On a side note, if memory serves I was born at about 12:11am eastern time on this day so many, many years ago (31). I don’t think I was able to get to sleep until about 11:30 central, which means I was actually up for my birthday, hour and minute.

I attribute my midnight birth as to one of the reasons I have always been more of a night-owl. But who knows if that is really the case or not. I do know that because I was sick when I was born, I have the unatural power to fall asleep with the lights on (and usually the TV as well). I forget what I had exactly, but I know my mom said that they put me in a ‘box’ with bright lights, presumably lamps that would give me artificial sun light or something.

So here I am at the office, drinking my soy milk with a dash of coffee spilled into the mug. I have already had my GingerBread Squared (patent pending) toast and am listening to Sinatra belt out how he did it his way. I had the brief notion that I would like to dress up like Sinatra for Halloween. Not entirely sure I will be able to find a vintage-ish suit and more importantly a fedora that will fit me noggin.

Regardless, I will do it MY WAY!

I have been ‘penning’ a blog post a few minutes at a time over the last couple of weeks that I hope to finish today. My original intent was to do that this morning before my call. However, answering work email took longer than expected. I will see if I can get some writing in at lunch.

Birthdays are usually when I start getting all introspective and reviewing myself and what I am doing and what I want to do, I imagine that many other get this way around their birthdays. I will likely weave some more introspection into that blog post.

Well, 3 minutes until my call. I best head over to the conference room.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner Personal birthday, me, rambling

For the last couple of weeks I have been baking bread and bringing it into the office. I usually bring in one loaf to share with everyone in the office. I slice it up and steal two beautiful slices for myself.

What can I say I need a couple of good pieces of toast in the morning to go with coffee. I am not sure if or when I will start charging for this bread, so in the meantime I joke about how ‘The first one is free’, you know drug dealer style.

I have been experimenting a little bit with different forms of buttermilk bread. Having made the buttermilk bread in the past I knew how the consistency of dough varied significantly than the artisan breads that I have been making. The dough is gooier and when it bakes up it has a spongier feel to it.

Previously, I made raisin bread with it. The process is relatively easy, you roll out the dough, spread a mixture of melted butter, cinnamon and brown sugar out on the flattened dough and then you roll it up, it will resemble a jelly roll. However, before rolling it up you have to remember to put some raisins in.

The first time I made the raising bread, I felt there were not enough raisins. As you might expect, the next time that I made it, I overcompensated and put too many raisins in.

In the experiment that I conducted earlier this week, I decided to put the cinnamon directly in with the yeast, buttermilk, water and salt. This gave the dough a nice cinnamon smell with just a hint of cinnamon flavor. The first loaf of this experimental dough I felt was OK, but could be better. I agreed with Gina’s assessment that it needed brown sugar (and butter).

The next loaf of this cinnamon infused bread was baked jellyroll style, with melted butter and brown sugar rolled up in the middle. However, I opted to leave the raisins out, figuring why not try the only remaining extreme.

The bread was mutant looking in my opinion (sorry for got to grab a pics before serving it). Myself and most everyone at the office felt it was just great. A few felt it was too sweet, almost candy like.

I decided to try and find a happy medium between the two extremes. Except in an effort to try and evenly distribute the cinnamon and brown sugar flavors, I mixed the brown sugar straight into the dough, foregoing the whole spread it out and roll it up part aka jelly roll style.

I have gotten into the habit these last few times of mixing up and baking the dough the same day, for the most part I usually am only dealing with dough that has been in the fridge for overnight (or a couple of days). I am not entirely sure which version of dough I prefer better. I have found that cold dough is easier to handle is not very sticky. However, a liberal dusting of flour will help keep the dough from being too sticky, regardless of temperature.

I mixed up a batch of cinnamon, brown sugar, buttermilk bread this evening and it is currently baking in the oven. I will remove it from the oven before I go to bed, but in the meantime it is filling the house with a positively fantastic smell of cinnamon (and butter).

I am calling this bread “Fajita’s Sans Raisin Bread”. Here is the recipe that I used for this go around.

• 2 cups of luke warm water (distilled or reverse osmosis)
• 1 cup of buttermilk
• 1.5 Tbls of yeast (I use Fleischmann’s Active Dry)
• 1.5 Tbls of salt (I use Kosher salt)
• 6 Tbls of Brown Sugar (heaping tablespoons)
• 3 Tbls of Cinnamon
• 1 Cup of unbleached whole wheat flour (King Arthur’s brand)
• 5 cups of unbleached all-purpose flour (HEB works OK, King Arthur is better)

Directions

Mix the yeast, salt, water, milk, sugar and cinnamon together. I usually let this sit a minute or two before mixing in the whole wheat flour. After the first cup of flour has created sort of a ’slurry’ I proceed to mix in the remaining flour 2 cups at a time (last cup is solo of course).

The last cup of flour is something that I generally have to mix in by hand, the dough does not mix well via wooden spoon at that point. The recipe book states that you can use a mixer for this, but I have never tried.

After it is all mixed up, I generally sprinkle it with some flour and punch it down to the bottom of the bowl, after it has been pushed out to all the sides, I dust it again and then proceed to pull the edges underneath, sort of pulling the middle out and forming a ball.

Then I let it sit in the bowl/tub for a couple of hours. Afterwards, I dust it again and form another ball with it. Depending upon how much the ball has risen, I will determine (by eye-balling it) whether or not it is ready to bake. If it looks good to go, I set the oven to preheat at 350 degrees.

I grease up a loaf pan and then take 1/2 the dough from the tub and sort of make a cylindrical object out of the dough. I put it cylinder in to the loaf pan and allow it to sit for at least another 20 minutes.

An individual loaf of bread will need to bake for 45 minutes. I have done more than one loaf in the oven at a time and do not yet have a great feel for how this alters to the time frames.

That is the recipe for Fajita’s Sans Raisin bread.

Oh yeah, I should note that if you don’t get the chance to remove the loaves from the pan after they cool initially, then you will have a bit of a soggy spot on the bottom of the bread. Throw the bread in a paper bag for a little bit and everything will be OK.

It is way past my bedtime and I do believe I need to take the bread out of the oven.

Laterz

bdbenner baking baking, bread, cinnamon raisin, Fajita's Sans Raisin Bread

I was going to start this post with the usual sort of ‘I am sorry for not blogging more.’ type of apology. But in an interest of being different, I am just going to say that I have been hella busy.

At the beginning of the year I made the decision that I needed to be more social, get out of my comfort zone, etc. As part of those efforts I started ‘hanging out’ on Twitter, which led me to hearing about ProductCamp. I heard rumor about the 2009 Winter camp about 2 weeks after it had been held. So when I saw folks chatting about the upcoming Summer 2009 ProductCamp on Twitter, I decided to jump in and volunteer.

Right about this same time I happened to see something about about a company known as ‘Tech Ranch’ doing something in Cedar Park. I immediately took interest, given that i live in Cedar Park and Tech Ranch is a company that is in the business of fostering, growing and accelerating the entrepreneurial community. I re-tweeted some announcements about their upcoming town hall meeting. Due to my re-tweeting, I was invited to come on down to the Ranch (of Tech) and meet with the founders.

The Tech Ranch folks were looking for a ‘Wrangler’ or a ‘Mobilizer’ to help build and foster an entrepreneurial community in Cedar Park.  I volunteered to help them and the City of Cedar Park build the community.

ProductCamp was GREAT! Over 300 product development/marketing related professionals showed up to the UTC building down on August 15th. I showed up to the planning meeting back in June and had the intention of just volunteering to help with something minor, but instead I ended up volunteering to the be the Volunteer & Logistics Coordinator.

I recruited and organized all of the volunteers for the event. However, I cannot take all of the credit, I had some absolutely fantastic team leads that helped pull it all together. At several points during the process of trying to pull it all together, I might have thought that I never wanted to volunteer for anything again. In the end though, I am looking forward to the helping with the organization of the Winter 2010 ProductCamp.

I have been working on a few side projects, so my evenings have not been filled with the usual TV watching and video games, it has been filled with coding and having Hulu on in the background. I found a couple of great shows, Defying Gravity and Greek.

To be completely honest, there has been a little bit of video game playing. They released Civilization Revolution for the iPhone, which is a very good port of the game in comparison to the Nintendo DS version, which in turn was a fairly good port from the XBOX-360 edition.

I have still been baking bread, my last few loaves of Pepperoni-Cheddar bread were good, but I think I still need to find the perfect ratio of pepperoni and cheese. My last batch of Rye bread was GREAT. This evening I baked up an artisan loaf of mustard seed wheat bread. I also prepped a batch of pizza dough.

It is really late and I need to get to bed.

bdbenner Personal, baking, video games baking, catching up, video games