2013年7月17日 星期三

Dinner will be served when the sun comes up

I seriously thought 2013 would be the year my wife got a break from cooking between June 1 and Labor Day. She encouraged my desire to share the culinary duties, agreeing that it was time to purchase one of those pricey gas grills that all of our neighbors seem to own. I had been laboring on a rusty Weber model that I feared would buckle and collapse if I placed too many briquettes in the kettle.

The new grill arrived in late spring; cooking tools and a beefy book of BBQ recipes featuring everything from braised salmon to grilled celery made their appearance on Father's Day. Suddenly, I felt like an Army Ranger adorned with the latest equipment and ready to do battle with whatever pork chop, chicken breast or ear of corn came my way. I would emerge victorious.

I flipped through page after page of the cookbook, searching for something, anything, that didn't require consuming a meal while I was preparing another meal. Chicken tenders, a staple of my children's diet, normally required about 15 minutes in a conventional oven, or three to five minutes in a microwave. But Cilantro Pesto Chicken Tenders? We're talking two hours of prep time. Chicken McNuggets from McDonald's never sounded so appealing.

Don't these recipe authors have kids of their own? Don't they know what it's like to try and cram something other than macaroni and cheese down their throats in between soccer practice, softball games and swim lessons? These activities only get cancelled due to inclement weather, which would free me up to spend two hours grilling acorn squash in a driving rainstorm.

Oh, how I long to sit down with my family and savor the fruits (and vegetables) of seven laborious hours spent chopping, dicing, basting, pureeing, marinating and skewering. But I don't see that happening until at least 2020, at which time both children will be living on their own and, most likely, consuming macaroni and cheese at every meal. Then, my empty day planner will allow me to slowly, carefully, prepare Beer Can Chicken, which no doubt calls for brewing your own beer prior to starting the grill.

Until then, I need BBQ delicacies that require me to "Sizzle, flip and serve" as opposed to "Put aside until next week." I need a grill that can lock in that smoky flavor in the time it takes my children to set the table. When they ask, "How long until we eat?" I don't want to reply, "As soon as Leno comes on."Kristens outing comes after it was rumours she had been hooking up with Boardwalk Empire star Michael Pitt after the pair met during a Chanel Haute Couture show in Paris C however, the claims have since been rubbished.

A rep for the actor,These personalzied promotional bestchipcard comes with free shipping. believed to be in a relationship with model Jamie Bochert, recently denied the claims to E! News, telling the site."While we do not comment on our clients' personal lives, please know that there is absolutely no truth whatsoever to this rumour that Michael Pitt and Kirsten Stewart are dating." .

Kristen, however, seems to be finally adjusting to life post Robert Pattinson and is currently filming for Camp X-Ray, based on the story of an American soldier, played by Kristen, held prisoner at a Guantanamo Bay detention camp.A source previously revealed that the actress has been looking to the future despite losing Rob. "Its been hard, I mean she lost her best friend," a source told HollywoodLife, adding: "She is still sad, but is trying to make the best of the situation."

At $99, the tiny box and downloadable games in the $20 range are priced low enough to attract casual and occasional gamers who dig playing time-wasters on their smartphones. And, because of the Ouyas potential to emulate several other earlier-generation consoles, its also likely to appeal to nostalgic and retro-gamers.Ouya was funded through a Kickstarter project. Reviews of an earlier, beta version werent flattering, so I was somewhat skeptical as I unpacked the console. The strip of red plastic film printed with the message And so the revolution begins atop the console did nothing to allay my journalistic skepticism.We offer the biggest collection of old masters that can be turned into hand painted cleanersydney on canvas.

Theres literally not much to Ouya, which was released on June 25. Ive had coffee mugs bigger than the little round-edged cube, which features a single power-on button, but an array of ports on the back. The Ouya has an HDMI port that let me display at a full 1080 resolution on my home LED television, plus a LAN port, a power port and a USB port.

The Ouya started right up, but required us to both establish a network connection and update the consoles Android-based firmware. That proved to be somewhat of a problem in my office. Our intranet firewall settings precluded our using a wired connection, so we quickly paired the consoles wireless controller to the Ouya and sought out one of several wireless networks we maintain. We connected to the first and began the system update, but the Ouya kept getting disconnected from wi-fi and cutting off the update. We then tried a second of the office wireless networks, with the same discouraging result.

At that point, we opted to tether the console to the wi-fi hotspot created by a colleagues iPhone, and around a half-hour after getting started, we were updated and ready to go. Its important to note that youll have to create an account for yourself on the Ouya, including providing your sign-in name, a password, an email and a credit card number. That raised some questions in my mind about the security of Ouyas servers, ones that I will be posing in a telephone interview with CEO and founder Julie Uhrman on Tuesday.

I took the Ouya home and found it failed to stay connected to my wired LAN. I play Xbox Live just fine on that connection,We have become one of the worlds most recognised cheapcellphonecases brands. so I dont understand why the Ouya kept disconnecting and canceling game downloads or giving me error messages. That, by the way,Weymouth is collecting gently used, dry cleaned customkeychain at their Weymouth store. is a common theme with the device, Im finding. Often, after clicking on a button to start a game or perform another action, Id get an error message on the screen. Clicking again would make the message disappear and the game open or the action continue. I noticed the machine worked fine when in constant use, but after Id put down the controller for a minute or two, Id tend to get the errors. Anyway, I was unable to tether the Ouya to my own iPhones hotspot, but it worked very well on my home wi-fi network.

The Ouyas opening menu features several very clear and basic commands, like play, manage and discover. Discover takes you to the games menu, where you can find listings for around a couple hundred games in several easily navigable categories. All that I tried were free to download and play in a test or demo version, with a button to purchase the full game. The games, themselves, are a mixed bag, which I will get into later.

It was a bit tougher to figure out what the make category was all about. It lumps together the development and testing functions for Ouya game developers,We are one of the leading manufacturers of parkingassistsystem in China but as I found out while poking around, there also lurked the Ouya Web browser.

You navigate your way through the menus and set up your account using the Ouya controller. Ive used game controllers for years with many different computers and consoles. Theyve gotten quite sleek and ergonomic. The Ouyas is neither. The controller felt like cheap plastic and was a bit too slippery for me at the start. I also have no idea why you have to crack open battery cases on both the right and left wings to slip in the two AA batteries needed to power it. The grey controller also has two analog sticks, a D-pad, five gameplay and navigation buttons on top, as well as two triggers and two bumpers on the front of each wing.
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