Kopaka's Ice Engineering

Well, we got to go to Olive Garden last night, after having to go into Orland Park to find some winter gear for work purposes.. Thought I'd go ahead and update this. -KIE

The end of September is always a favorite time of the year for me. Not only because September 25 is my birthday, but because Olive Garden always has their "never-ending pasta bowl" special. All you can eat pasta and sauce for $7.95$8.95...I think. For $2$1.50$1.95$2.95 more, you can get meatballs or italian sausage (like the pizza topping) or chicken with every fillup. I like pasta. I'mI was OCD over my wire-mesh colander, because I like my pasta. I tinker with cans of tomatoes, fresh onions & garlic, to make a good sauce, because I like my pasta. But Olive Garden is better at it than me, so I defer to their expertise. I give you: KIE'S GUIDE TO THE OLIVE GARDEN'S NEVER ENDING PASTA BOWL First things first, I will explain the different types of pasta. Spaghetti: You know it, you love it. A long noodle with a circular cross-section. Linguine: Spaghetti that has been flattened some. Not round, but more of a rectangular cross-section. Also comes in a whole-wheat variety. Fettuccini: Linguine flattened even further. A flat noodle that is often served with alfredo. Penne: Tube pasta cut at angles. "Rigatoni" has ridges running the length of the tube, but penne doesn't necessarily have them. However, they always look like they were cut in a miter box. Capellini: Also known as "angel hair," this is spaghetti that shrank in the wash or something. Very small, very delicate, very easy to snap and get all over the kitchen if you bought it at the store. Farfalle: The famous "bow-tie" pasta. Best for hanging on to chunky sauces. Orecchiette: Foreboding name. Shell pasta.Actually means "little ear", and is basically a large dimple. Neat. That's not all the pasta there is. You've got vermicelli, which is somewhere between spaghetti and angel hair. You've got ravioli and tortellini, which are filled shells. You've got lasagne, which warrants its own dish. The six (7 if you count whole-wheat) are just the choices you have at Olive Garden for this promo. Then, the sauces. This is less an explanation and more a critique, so that you will not waste a dish getting something you don't want. Alfredo: I didn't get this, but I have it on good authority that Olive Garden doesn't screw up an alfredo often. It's a white cheesy sauce that's not chunky at all. Marinara: A chunkier, spicier variation on the tomato sauce you know & love. If you're going to get meatballs, this should be your first choice on sauce. Meat sauce: All this sauce really is, is bland. Meat cooked down with some tomatoes, it's just oily and bland. Fleh. Despite the illusion of being able to cheat the system and get meat without paying for it, this sauce is just not worth it.Olive Garden has made some effort to improve this sauce. My folks thought it was okay, but I didn't have any the other day. And then, there are some non-standard sauces. Sun-dried tomato parmesan: I tried this sauce twice: once in Kenner and once in Lake Charles. Both times it was just...bland. The tomatoes didn't really add any flavor, and the base parmesan is not alfredo. It was missing something. Maybe garlic salt. Maybe garlic or some other herbs. I don't know for certain, but this sauce is incomplete as it is served now. ThreeFive cheese marinara: This sauce I remember from two or three years ago (I didn't get the chance to pig out on unlimited pasta last year: Katrina and Rita both closed the Olive Gardens that I would have been able to visit.), though it might have been a three cheese marinara at the time. The sauce is a smoother marinara, mixed with a five cheese blend (I can't tell you what the cheeses are, but it's cheese, right? It's not cottage, cheddar, or pepperjack so it all tastes the same.). Easily the best sauce they have. Might be too rich for meat on the side, but I definitely recommend this sauce for the younger palate. Sausage & peppers marinara: Italian sausage and red & yellow bell peppers in marinara sauce. Lovely to look at, but I'm not one for the taste of bell peppers. I confess: I didn't have the opportunity to taste this one. Smoked mozzarella alfredo: Alfredo with more cheese on it. Divine Asiago Alfredo: My brother said "It's good." I take his word for it. Tomato Basil Caprese: Light & tasty. Very good stuff, if only a bit runny at the bottom of the bowl. Highly recommended. Roasted Portobello Pomodoro: Whew. They bill this as a marinara sauce, but it's not anything like the multi-cheese marinara. If you've had the Capellini Pomodoro off the regular menu, this is the same sauce. If not, prepare for a spicy take on marinara. How they do it without chile peppers, though, is beyond me at this time. I am interested to find out though... Oh, and the portobello mushrooms contribute nothing: the pomodoro sauce well over-powers it. This isn't a bad sauce per se, just poorly described. Creamy Parmesan Florentine: It's cheese sauce. With spinach. Nothing. Special. Just. Disappointing. Chianti Three Meat: In a word, disappointing. If you've ever had the Chianti Braised Short Ribs from the menu, you know of the absolutely wonderful sauce that comes pooled in the bottom of the plate. This tastes nothing like it. It's spicy; it's heavy; it's greasy; it's disappointing. Creamy Parmesan Portobello: Oh, what did the cremini mushroom market do before they started marketing the oversized ones as portobello? Still, if a sauce has the name of a mushroom in its name, I would expect it to have some element of meaty umami in it. Instead, the sauce literally tasted like pasta water. I don't know who dropped the ball in the kitchen, but they would've done better to just drop some mushrooms in their alfredo and called it "done." Olive Garden's "Never Ending Pasta Bowl" ends in early October. On a side note, unless Donald Driver single-handedly beats the Philadelphia Eagles tonight, the Moss Bluff Cruisers will defeat the Poplarville Stallions and return to a .500 record, just in time to visit the Cookie Crunchers in Week 5.Assuming David Akers has a quiet night and Rashard Mendenhall has a ho-hum game tomorrow night, the Moss Bluff Cruisers will climb back to .500, going through the undefeated Waveland Wusses in the process.The Cruisers in globo laid an egg. Clinton Portis, Kurt Warner, Baltimore D/ST, Antonio Gates, Brandon Jacobs....it's going to be a long season.Hooray for fantasy football. -KIE (Yes, this is a republish. It will be republished every year, as applicable.)

Those of you hoping to see the republishing of A Treatise on Pasta this year will likely be out of luck: for all the Italian restaurants to be found southwest of Chicago, the nearest Olive Garden (and Never-ending Pasta Bowl) is 25 miles away in Oswego. It makes me sad, but it can't be helped: Amanda's job is a solid hour's drive away from home, and I'm not about to indulge without her. This year, however, does mark my first time being around a corn harvest. It's different than it was in the winter after Katrina. Seemingly the only crop in Assumption Parish is sugarcane, and so the roads for 5 weeks were dominated by cane trucks. Here, there's an alternation between corn and soybeans. While defoliant has been spread on the soybeans, none of the fields I drive by every day have been harvested. Corn, however, is in full swing. Several fields along US 6, and the one catecornered from our house [which is not on US 6], have been cut down already. I suppose it is fitting, then, that the Grundy County Corn Festival be scheduled for the end of September. I can't say what's going on, because Amanda & I didn't go out last night to partake. However, with my folks within driving distance, we're probably going to make it out there this coming weekend. It promises to be a slightly bittersweet Saturday: not only is Saturday my birthday, but it's also my last Saturday off for a while to come. Tower steel for this bridge is 5 weeks late, and in the realm of construction, a month is a lot of time, especially with the threat of winter looming. Once the steel starts arriving next week, we're going to 6 day work weeks, which I can't say I'm going to enjoy. Anyway, we're here. Let the festival begin, or something.... -KIE

I never knew how green my wife's thumb could be until we moved to Illinois. One of the perks of the house, when we came to visit and house hunt, was a garden spot behind the garage in the back yard. Taking the advice of people to not plant before Mother's Day into account, we planted seeds and plants in early May. Then, we covered the plants for a week or two because we planted before Mother's Day. All told, however, our plants made it. We planted 5 Better Boy (a readily available hybrid variety of tomato plant) plants, two different packets of heirloom variety tomato seeds (I can't remember what they're called; the packets are long since thrown away.), three packets of straight neck squash seeds, four crook neck squash plants, four honeydew melon plants, two watermelon plants, and one each sweet basil, greek oregano, german thyme, and mexican tarragon. I don't know if it was that the previous tenants had not planted last year, or the 9-12-12 fertilizer we used, or more likely Divine Providence, but to say that our garden was a success would be an understatement. The melon vines withered, and the tarragon was accidentally uprooted, but these were the only setbacks to be seen in our plot. I tell you, we've gotten at least a bushel of tomatoes from 5 plants. 5 plants! From Wal*Mart! With such a plethora of savory berries, a new recipe had to be developed. The following is a modification of an "application" seen on the Good Eats episode "Tomato Envy", but strangely, it did not make the book Good Eats: The Early Years. The original called for chanterelles & morels, two mushrooms I can't get without a half-hour drive to Whole Foods. (When you have a lot of tomatoes to go through, this would make for a lot of trips for mushrooms.) Also, there's the issue of a splash of chardonnay, which I'm not going to get just for one dish. (While I will cook with wine, I have my reasons for not bothering with it in this dish.) Behold: I'm still not much better at making tomato sauce, but I had practice. Kinks were worked out, and, I know what to expect from home grown tomatoes going forward. Bon Appetit! -KIE P.S. If anyone has ideas for a large quantity of fresh sweet basil, I'm open to suggestions.

How do you know a car belongs to an engineering student? The books inside are worth more than the vehicle itself. Seriously, I was paying up to $1400 a semester on my books. -KIE

Renting textbooks is always an option. Also, I would exhort you to not believe the upperclassmen when they say there's virtue in skipping class. It varies largely on what you're in college for: if a degree is your goal, class is where you belong. Quality Points won't come any easier than they do in the first 1-3 semesters. If you're coasting along for something else, then priorities obviously shift. -KIE

Hello. I realize it's been a solid 4 months since I've posted anything worthwhile. In fact, this entry may go largely unheralded, but I'm not worried. I've been equal parts Busy and Distracted during this summer. My wife & I planted a garden, and tomatoes were never this much fun growing up. Beyond that, it's been good to scratch out a living, so to speak. Amanda & I went back to where it all began: Akron, Ohio. Well, we were in Akron to go to Canton for the Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremonies for Rickey Jackson, the first Saints player to march into Canton. I didn't fully realize it in 2003, 2 years after the Summer That Changed Just About Everything, but here in 2010, 9 years after the fact, I do understand: time marches forward. Many things change, yet some stay the same. The world in my memories now exists only there: in my memories. And yet, it's a good thing. By the same token that it was good for BIONICLE to not sit & spin where it was in 2001, it's good that I don't sit & spin where I was in 2001, regardless of my wishes at the time for that to be the case. I promised thoughts on the Deepwater - Horizon oil spill. By virtue of some emails Congress decided to leak, this falls purely on British Petroleum's head. Whether or not upper management created a culture that some engineers had to forfeit their ethos and send unsafe, unsound directions to the rig, I don't know. I don't really care, either: Obama's shut down of deepwater drilling cost my dad his job: 35 years with one company, only to be laid off 2 years before he can start drawing Social Security. I'll try to hunt & peck at more thoughts to come, but this is all I've time for at the moment. Rest assured, big things are on the horizon here. -KIE

Not that I've actually done anything to the computer, well, I have: we had to replace the monitor. Went from a 19" ViewSonic VX922 at 1280×1024 to a 22" widescreen ViewSonic VX2233wm running 1920×1080[p]. When they say HD, apparently they aren't kidding: text is awfully tiny now. But anyway, just wanted to drop a note saying I'm 3 years late to the party, but here I am: this entry was typed using the internet channel on our Wii. And yes, I am using the remote, not a keyboard. -KIE

I've heard that on Fridays in St. Bernard Parish, five o'clock comes at 11:30.

I was born 13 weeks before the 80's. :\

I do have thoughts on Deepwater Horizon, but that will have to wait for later this week. Today is a day of celebration. It may be disputed as to whether 69th mayor was the worst mayor in the history of New Orleans, but it will hardly be disputed that he was not the right man for the job immediately after Katrina. To have seen one whose platform be based on "business" and "clean up corruption" turn around to hire a tech chief who allegedly pocketed hundreds of thousands on non-working technology (Greg Meffert), let Montgomery Watson Harza use the city as an ATM (recovery project management), and attempt to end-run through "contracts for nothing" that couldn't be reimbursed with federal dollars (Municipal Auditorium), it's a shame really. I have to wonder if, in 2002, he only saw his election as a payday, his turn to move the dollars around, and nothing more. If you hear one thing from me, public, hear this: money is not the be-all end-all in life. If you hear a second thing from me, hear this: just because your hands control purse strings does not give you license to direct someone else's money to yourself or to your buddies without just cause. As Mitchell Joseph Landrieu (a.k.a. "Little Moon") is sworn into office in about 80 minutes, I don't doubt there will be some dancing in the streets by some truly cynical pundits. I, for one, will be grinning up here in Illinois. I'm not about to christen him as the Savior of Perdido Street, but it would be very difficult to do worse than the blundering incompetence that hallmarked the Nagin mayorship. -KIE

(No poissons d'avril here. This is one of the many years I'm not pulling any pranks on the 91st day of the year.) So sorry I've been away. Been really, really busy with work, and right now, packing. (Actually, it's my wife & mom packing now: I'm at work until 4:30 PM.) It's an odd feeling. When I moved here in February 2005, I was all "country boy coming to the city." This was where I was going to make my fortune; this is where my life was leading me. After Katrina, 6 months later, this city became something of which I was proud, and protective. Rebuilding this place, and defending this place, was suddenly important to me. Then life continued to happen. I had the opportunity to state my intentions to Amanda. We became so wonderfully attached, there was no way I couldn't propose. We got married. And then the rug was pulled out from under my seemingly steady job. I still should've seen it coming, but our train still jumped the tracks. God provided another job, and another track. This one leads to Chicago. Illinois, one of those blue states of which I'm glad I'm not a resident...oh wait. New Orleans is a special place. Louisiana is an amazing state, even if it's always 48, 49, or 50 in the ranking of certain key figures (like education). (Good thing Mississippi obliges us by being the 49, 50, & 49 to us.) If you've ever heard the jazz song "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans", if you've ever heard it here in the Crescent City, then you know that it's more than just a song: it's a different way of life that's just so difficult to describe, I can only exhort one to visit and pass a season here: anyone that has ever visited at length knows that the notion of abandoning this city is nonsensical. I'm not one for patronizing Home Box Office, but oh, how I want to see Treme when it premieres the weekend after Easter. Knowing that my work will bring us back towards the end of next year doesn't lessen the sting of leaving family, friends, a church, and a city. I might get another entry posted, but it'd be a lyric, nothing more. Next stop, Morris, Illinois. -KIE

No August this year. Probably next year.

He can jump through panes of glass twice as fast and twice as high as Saxton Hale. -KIE

For as much fun as Wii Sports is, Wii Sports Resort is funnER. That is all.

Still working on hat #1.

Amanda & I saw a parade 43 years in the making tonight. We saw the Super Bowl XLIV victory parade from the plaza outside my office in downtown. The parade would've been better if the ##### in front of us hadn't been such a #####, but when he left, no one but new found fellow friends were near. (Words fail to describe how "cool" this ##### was.) What they say is true: no NFL fan base has a love affair with their team quite like the Saints & New Orleans. It's the common thread that crosses all races and income brackets in this town. It's more than just a synergy between team & fans: it's nigh symbiosis: colors and moods are brighter on Monday after a win, city-wide. If you ever get to taste this, enjoy it: it is a rare thing indeed. If not, I suppose I can't adequately describe it: the joy, the camaraderie, the euphoria that has taken hold. Will this fix everything Katrina broke 4½ years ago? No, and no one really expects it to. But this goes beyond Katrina, to 40+ years of suffering and futility. That the burden of Saints futility is lifted does indeed brighten the colors everyone sees and cheers every passer-by. Especially if those colors are black & gold and the passer-by has a fleur-de-lis emblazoned on their wardrobe. It's so pretty! -KIE

Tracy Porter, you are a hero. With 3:22 to play, you delivered the backbreaker, the legend-slayer, the forever-curse-breaker. Nine times the Lombardi trophy has left New Orleans. For the first time ever, it comes to New Orleans. To stay. I don't know what the next CBA will hold, but 43 years are a distant memory now. WHO DAT! WHO DAT! WHO DAT SAY DEY GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS! -KIE, collapsing in a heap

One spot on an empty canvas One chair in an empty room No place for a revolution And no hope its signs are true We stand at the edge of something Will we ever know what it is? Hold on 'cause the wind is rising and we can't get away from it...... <4 bars of stream of consciousness guitar, piano & drums> We're in shock from the failed emotion No cause in a shadowed land And we sing while the city's burning With no room, no escape, no plan. We all never thought it would end this way... And we need a hero (to save us from ourselves) We need a hero (to save us from ourselves) Save us from ourselves Save us from our fear When the sirens wail We need a hero here We hide on our knees in silence Maybe God doesn't hear at all And the wait overtakes the violence And we watch as the giants fall We're not gonna let it end this way... We need a hero (to save us from ourselves) We need a hero (to save us from ourselves) Save us from ourselves Save us from our fear And when the sirens wail We need a hero here Save us from ourselves Save us from our fear When the sirens wail We need a hero here... <15 bars of stream of consciousness guitar, "ahh"s, piano & drums> Save us from ourselves Save us from our fear When the sirens wail We need a hero here....yeah Save us from ourselves Save us from our fear And when the sirens wail We need a hero here Save us from ourselves Save us from our fear When the sirens wail We need a hero Save us (to save us from ourselves) Save us from our fear Save us (to save us from ourselves) We need a hero here

They didn't win last year. Last year, the Steelers won. Colts won SB XLI after the 2006 season. You are all Saints fans, anyway. *Jedi hand wave* -KIE

Hydro for the win. Hydro will always win.

*hefty grin*

"Pigs have flown. ###### has frozen over. The Saints are on their way to the Super Bowl." -call from Jim Henderson on the Saints Radio Network Somewhere, if only on the front page of the Living section of this morning's Times-Picayune, Buddy D is wearing a dress. Euphoria is running rampant in Chocolate City. I swear, but nothing else of relevance happened in the world except that the Saints are going to the Super Bowl. being the 1 in Tampa's 1-26 franchise markBum Phillips not figuring out how to win1-15the original Paper BagsThe AintsFinally winning the Division, only to get throttled by the Vikings in the Wild Card round (1991)Bobby Hebert blowing the Dome Patrol's shots at postseason gloryThe River City Relay, only to watch Carney miss the extra pointMike Ditka trading away an entire draft for one questionable running backAaron ___ Brooks *wince*Not a single player enshrined in Canton43 years of abject futility are washing away even as I type this. This is every 8-year-old's dream come true, even those 8-year-olds that are now 28. Or 48. The party has started early this year in New Orleans. I can guarantee it won't stop for the next two weeks. And, if the Saints win another game, Lord only knows what will happen next. Y'all come along for the ride. -KIE

My question is as follows: "WHO DAT SAY DEY GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS?" The correct response, of course, is "Not Dem Cardinals, Not Dem Vikings, and Not Dem Colts" -KIE

WHO DAT! WHO DAT! WHO DAT SAY DEY GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS! It's a party in N'Awlins! -KIE