Evanalyze

I’ve never been into new year resolutions. They always seemed too concocted to be interesting. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, I’ve decided to make a couple this year. I think these are things I’ve been wanting to do anyway, so perhaps they’re only resolutions due to coincidental timing. Regardless, on with it!

Cook more

I really enjoy cooking but have barely done any of it since starting at Justin.tv in May. It doesn’t help my cause that they feed me 9 meals/week. I want to cook more though, so I just bought a bunch of new stuff (knives, pans, etc) and I’m hoping to cook one interesting thing per week in 2010. I’ll leave “interesting” to my own subjective judgment, but suffice to say that boiling a hot dog won’t qualify.

Exercise more

Pretty straightforward. I bought a bike earlier this year (and promptly injured myself falling off). If I had any idea what was reasonable, I would set some kind of goal for miles ridden, but I don’t. I do have a cool iPhone app that will track my rides via GPS though, so hopefully it will come out to a big number. Goal here is to feel more energetic and active…mostly I want to look better naked.

Organize more

My apartment is perpetually a mess. Same goes for my desk, my desktop (the only on my computer) and various other things that waste time and annoy me. My goal here is to never feel like I need to spend time cleaning up–I’m told that being organized on an ongoing basis can do this! Step 1 here is to hire a house cleaner.

Sleep more

I am too often inclined to sacrifice sleep for short term gain, which just results in long term loss. It’s probably not reasonable to avoid sleep deprivation all together, but I’m going to try hard to raise my threshold for what justifies it.

I’m keeping the goals pretty personal and intentionally excluding things that I want pretty much every year, like to do the best work of my life and play better golf.

Yesterday, on the way to dinner, I was introduced to Cranberry Raisinets. Ignoring the poor naming scheme for a moment, I conducted a double blind (aka not blind at all) scientific experiment at lunch today.

My first observation, corroborated by the photo below, was that the cranberry variety suffered from a significant size disadvantage.

I was able to obtain statistical confirmation that the Cranberry Raisinets are, in fact, nearly 50% smaller.

All problems weren’t with the cranberries though. You’ll see that the normal Raisinets suffered from poorly aligned opening instructions, with the “Tear Here” prompt nowhere near the actual pre-torn location.

Onto the science, I developed a fool-proof system for conducting a fair and unbiased test.

I did two rounds of testing, but first a palette cleanser.

Verdict? While the Cranberry Raisinets offer a sweet, more acidic experience, the traditional Raisinets really knock it out of the park with a creamy chocolate goodness. In the end, both are delicious–since they are priced equally, I’m forced to conclude that traditional Raisinets, at twice the size, offer significantly more value, while the new (I think?) Cranberry Raisinets are benefiting for a demand bubble and limited supply due to back ordered cranberry packing machines (completely made this up). Regardless, they are both tasty.

The title says it all. It’s good and it’s good for you. Now enjoy some (kind of lame) pictures.

Shrimp!

Delicious shrimp and spaghetti

Mussels!

Also delicious mussels and spaghetti

With sweet potatoes pan fried in clarified butter and garlic (and steak bits left in the pan).

Steak cooking

Sweet potatoes cooking

Finished steak and sweet potatoes

The guy on the right.

After a run of crap weeks and not so great weekends, this weekend has been fantastic. Food, golf, football, booze–winner.

I played like absolute crap, but had one of the most fun rounds of golf ever this morning at Coyote Creek. It was brutally difficult but a really top notch course. Afterward I enjoyed a much better than expected super bowl with some awesome people in Palo Alto.

The highlights of the day were two lifetime great quotes. First, the outrageously dressed woman in our foursome screaming “THAT’S MINE” for absolutely no reason right as someone 10 feet from her was beginning to swing. It was epic. Second, the middle of the night online sports book voicemail (not mine) that began, “Hey, it’s Gabby,” followed by a half-hearted plea to bet money on the super bowl because “the lines are moving!”

All in all, just a really enjoyable weekend, even though I couldn’t break 90.

2009 is young but off to a roaring start. I’ve already got strong contendera for the yearly awards in ‘best lunch’ and ‘worst week.’. The former goes to a delicious lobster bisque and creme biscuit duo from whole foods. The latter goes to the last 4 and perhaps next 3 days.

I’ve been hanging out quite a bit recently with some friends from Y Combinator companies. Yesterday we played as a 6-some on a par 3 course down on the peninsula. For a cheap, obviously low budget course (Mariner’s Point), they had some of the best views I’ve ever seen. I wish I had thought to take a picture at the time–several holes framed by the bay and Bay Bridge–really awesome stuff.

I’ve also been playing in a poker game with them. It’s really fun stuff. Reminds me a lot of high school.

I played golf yesterday a the brutally difficult Ranch Club in San Jose. The round was a disaster, but I hit at least one very satisfying shot. On a short, downhill (like 60 ft) par 3 I hit a sand wedge that landed 2 feet from the hole and spun back about 15 feet.

In my 11+ years of golf this was the clearest view I’ve ever had of really pronounced backspin on my own shot. It was cool to watch.

I made the birdie putt too.

Went on a great trip to Tahoe right before Christmas and had awesome conditions.