shahine.com/omar/

I happen to love cooking and so does my wife. She loves it a bit more than I do.

I don’t know many people or couples that would say that they love to cook. But for me cooking is a great way to affordably eat great food. When you first start cooking, you suck at it (just like anything else). Over time though you get better, and start to experiment a lot more. You also develop a sense for what your favorite dishes are, and memorize how to shop, prepare and make them with very little fuss. For example, my favorite dishes are a pasta Bolognese sauce, chicken parmigiana, butternut squash soup and any kind of steak.

I’m also a Geek, and as such the kitchen provides for a lot of geeky outlets. I love Williams-Sonoma and Sur La Table. I go almost as often as I drop into the Apple store. When my wife and I got married we pretty much built our dream kitchen arsenal (through the registry and post wedding purchases).

I read a blog post today by 37signals (How Cook's Illustrated thrives while others are dying) that reminded me why I got into cooking and how we’ve managed to learn to cook a lot of different dishes with ease: Cook’s Illustrated and The Best Recipe (this is the only cookbook you need). They provide simple and illustrative instructions on how to shop and prepare a meal, from Thanksgiving dinner to making pasta and rice.

I was first introduced to Cook’s Illustrated when I got my first All-Clad LTD pan (I now have a full collection). I immediately fell in love. This was a magazine that was published by Cooking Geeks. There is no advertising, and lots of product reviews, recipes and tips. The best part about their recipes is that they literally cook and try dozens of things to find out the best way to do anything.

• They will cook 20 turkey’s to figure out if you should brine, how much salt you should use, how long you should cook, at what temperature, if you need to rotate the bird and of course what kind of bird to buy.
• They will try 20 different kinds of Olive Oils to find the best and most reasonably priced olive oil
• They will try 20 different wood spoons to find the best one

They allow me to go to the supermarket, or the cooking store and literally buy the best product in the category. Which peppercorns should you buy? Cracked or whole? They tell you this. They are experts.

They also have syndicated in a bunch of ways:

• Cook’s Illustrated Magazine
• Online Website with a yearly subscription
• America’s Test Kitchen show on PBS
• A huge array of cook books.

My father who is as close to a gourmet chef as anyone I’ve met loves his Cook’s Illustrated magazine and also subscribes to the online site.

So, if you’re a Geek and you find yourself eating out most of the time, you should consider learning to Cook. It’s got tremendous benefits for your health and is a great way to unwind and get your brain to focus on other things.

Find a great grocery store (like Whole Foods) or a Farmer’s Market and enjoy buying great quality ingredients and making a fantastic meal for you or your family that will cost less than eating out. If you like doing this, then invest in some quality cooking gadgets (Pots & Pans, Knives, Utensils, Appliances). There is a whole world of geekiness outside of electronics .

A few months ago, Torres sent me this link and told me not to watch this at work or I'd cry.

I watched it at work, in the teaming area of our floor actually... and tears did form.

Once a month I watch this video, for no other reason than to remind myself how lucky I am.

Data Loss? Been there, done that.

Windows Live ID hijacked? Replace Windows Live ID with Google or Yahoo ID.

What do you do when some one:

1. hacks into your account
2. changes your password
3. changes your secret question
4. changes your "alternate email address"
5. changes all your profile information
6. sets up mail forwarding to another account
7. Turn on the exclusive junk filter (deleting all your email)
8. Deletes your life (email, contacts etc)

That is what I found this evening. I believe that some one managed to issue a password reset command to my account and then somehow logged in and reset my password essentially owning my data.

How did they do this? Like this for example.

Not sure how this happened to me since my Hotmail password is strong, secure, unique etc.

But right now I am totally and uterly hosed.

Luckily I have my email offline (Outlook Connector).

But I feel like crying.

The amount of personal information in my email account. Just think about what is archived "in the cloud" under the username and password of a single network.

Now thing of how you would feel if you found out that some one else had all that information. Just think about that for a second. What do you have in the cloud? What kind of personal information is up there?

Lucky for me I could make some phone calls and get my account access restored. But I am feeling extremely vulnerable right now.

update: my account just got hijacked again, minutes ago. Also so did my GMail account.

I have no idea WTF is going on here. I have only used one computer this entire time.

Also the attacker changed my First and Last name in passport to:

"hey omar i can access all your email

you omars@micro dont paly with me aigne"

I was reminded how absurd our airport security system is when I was returning from Mexico and I was:

1. not required to remove my laptop
2. not required to remove my shoes
3. was not allowed to bring water on board purchased past the security line

This article in the New York Times, by Patrick Smith, who wrote one of my favorite books, Ask the Pilot, hits the nail on the head.

Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful and pointless.

It seems by looking at the comments, I am not alone in how I feel.

BTW, Family made it home safe from Mexico. Thanks to everyone for the words of support. It was a long 4 day trip home, but thanks to our fantastic and supportive family, we made it back and are happy to be home.

I am drafting a letter to Alaska, and a few other folks letting them know about the flight. We'll see what happens.

We took Sarah (and Lora) to the Monterey Aquarium for the first time this weekend. This is by far my favorite Aquarium in the country. The architecture of the buildings, the exhibits and the presentation is outstanding. Oh, they also have a fantastic cafeteria. If you ever visit the San Francisco Bay Area, this is well worth a trip.

Here is Sarah having just touched her first Star Fish.

My favorite exhibit is the jelly fish one.

Also the huge sea tank where you can see the huge Sun Fish and Tuna.