Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in The Guy Who Does' LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Thursday, November 26th, 2009
10:50 pm	Spending Thanksgiving in Portland, Oregon. Yesterday I just hung out while my gf had to do her job all day up here, then we went to Andina for dinner. Always good, every time, and yesterday was no exception. Today almost everything was closed... but NOT Powell's (the best bookstore ever; it's 4 floors and takes up an entire city block), so we headed there in the morning and I ended up getting 5 child psychology/education books for my Master's program (seminal works by Dewey, Piaget, Erikson), plus Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut,"House of Mystery" graphic novel (#1), plus a big, crazy hardbound graphic novel called "Asterios Polyp" which, as far as I can tell, is about a kind of douchey architect/intellectual but has parallels to Greek tragedies and is done in a sort of 50s/60s retro graphic design pop-art style. After that we decided to grab some lunch at "Jake's Famous Crawfish" which I guess it sort of a famous seafood establishment here (one block from Henry Weinhard's brewery -- apparently it was one of Henry's favorite restaurants about 100 years ago) It was pretty much raining all day non-stop, which put a damper (pun!) on our day's plan, which pretty much consisted of exploring some nature scenery at Columbia River Gorge, because we had never been there, everything in the city was closed, and Sarah's dad didn't seem to want to do the whole Willamette Valley winery thing. Well, all of the fog and mist and drizzle made the mountains pretty creepy and cool (although the views from up top over the river were rendered practically nonexistent)... also, the waterfalls were in full effect. Checked out Multnomah Falls and then another one (which was rendered extra creepy when I noticed it a few hours later as one of the locations in The Road, which we watched tonight), then we headed to The View Point Inn, a restaurant/B&B where we had reservations for Thanksgiving dinner. The inn was definitely nice, and the location unique (little did I know when I booked it that this was the site where they filmed the prom scene at the end of Twilight), and the 4-course meal was very good. When we got back, we decided to see a movie and had to decide between "A Serious Man" and "The Road"; we decided on the road, and boy what an uplifting joy-ride that was. But in all seriousness, it was a good movie -- It reminded me of a mix between "Into the Wild" and "Children of Men" for some reason, though it was different than either of those. It is bleak and desolate and minimalist and somehow the tensions and philosophical issues at the core of the movie (survival vs sacrifice, what it means to be "human" or have hope) really kept it interesting. I even found myself shedding a few tears at some parts, so either I'm having a major estrogen moment or there was something subtly powerful about the film. I can say this: it was definitely a movie that was 100% apropos to see on Thanksgiving; if this movie doesn't make you feel thankful for having loved ones around you and a roof over your head and shoes on your feet, I don't know if anything will. (I can also say this -- there are some cinematographic and plot-element clues that, essentially, use cannibalism as a metaphor for capitalism; the movie is definitely somewhat pro-socialism.) Even before today I've been feeling pretty thankful for what I have. But now even moreso. [P.S. As for tomorrow, we are going to go to Pok Pok for lunch and visit the Japanese Garden before we head home] Current Mood: thankful Current Music: MOJO - The Wall Re-built [modern bands covering songs from The Wall] (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
8:47 pm	Is it wrong... That I get a little miffed at my girlfriend when she tells me that she just spent $220 on a new pair of boots -- DESPITE the fact that she has MULTIPLE pairs of boots already AND gets $500/month in clothing from her company? It's not even so much that she bought some boots (which is justified because they are "above the knee" and "have buckles" -- making them different from the other boots), but the fact that she spends her time: a) Nitpicking over the expenses we split, and challenging my (flawless) calculations over disputes of $14 items (which, after I waste an hour of my time teaching her basic arithmetic, she is able to comprehend) or b) Pining for vacations that are out of our budget right now (like a trip to Amalfi... which $220 would go a long way toward making reality) or c) Complaining nonstop about our neighbor, who is psycho and screams and verbally abuses her child daily... but we can't afford to buy a house. I mean, it's not that a couple hundred dollars on boots as a luxury item is out of the question; it just seems to me that it is a matter of priorities, and in light of (a), (b), and (c) above, it seems to me you wouldn't be spending money on boots when you already have 3 perfectly functional pairs (and they each, in turn, were the same price and quality.) Current Mood: frustrated (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
11:10 am	Screw Apple's price increases No, no I will not just go along with the fact that you have raised the average price of one track on iTunes from 99 cents to $1.29 I'll just go download it for 99 cents from Amazon (assuming I can't find the whole friggin album for $1.99 at Amoeba) What a bunch of stupid assholes. I used to buy a lot of music direct from iTunes, and now you're not going to get that business. Was it worth it to try to get an extra 30 cents per song out of me? (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
9:38 pm	Seanbaby Somehow I had forgotten how much I enjoy Seanbaby.com It looks to be essentially the same thing I discovered in 1996 when I headed off to college and "web surfing" was exciting and new. (hell, the whole web was pretty new!) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
5:29 pm	Halloween 2009: Coraline and Wybie Not going to say much about this, because I am extremely busy, but just thought I'd share some pics of the homemade costumes Sarah and I made for Halloween: (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
8:21 am	5 Minutes in ER = $30,000 Q: What do you get when your college roommate decides to beat you to death with a baseball bat? A: A hospital bill for $30,000 for the 5 minutes you spent in the ER before you died. There is NO REASON or justification for these costs: almost $8,000 just to "rent" the trauma room for a few minutes? about $1,600 to insert a CVA?? You've got to be kidding me. oh, and then there's the generic $19,000 "service" fee. And people wonder why our healthcare is fucked. Maybe if we stop paying doctors half a million per year, then it wouldn't cost $30,000 for 5 minutes of their services. "But," I hear the capitalist libertarians arguing, "they provide a service that is in high-demand, and it helps people. So they deserve to make that much money." For the sake of argument (and because the system is collapsing and people have to give up their life-savings just to visit the ER), let's say surgeons could get by on a mere $200,000/yr. "Pshaw!" Mr. Libertarian screams, "You won't have any good surgeons, then! Nobody will want to do all the hard work and go into the field if they aren't being properly rewarded for it!" Which is an interesting argument, because: (a) They sure seem to do it plenty in other countries where they DON'T make $500,000+ annually; and (b) what the fuck else are they going to do? There aren't a lot of jobs out there, and the ones there are pay a median salary of $50,000... so, pray tell, what would these hold-out surgeons be doing otherwise to try to make a 6-figure income? Become lawyers? hahahahaha They're even more over-employed and disposable... The fact of the matter is: we could easily cut many medical expenses in half (not to mention the multi-billion-dollar profits of health insurance companies and their fat CEOs) and the system would still work just fine. People are not going to "stop working" or "stop going into the field" because they "only" make 4 or 5 times as much as the average salary. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
10:13 am	Halloween etc. Halloween weekend was pretty good, even if it didn't feel like Halloween. For a while, I was getting pretty excited that cool, cloudy weather (ie. fall) was finally starting to set in here in Northern California. But alas, it was a ruse; by the time I headed out to the city on Halloween, it was 75 degrees and sunny outside. Combine that with all of the fuddy-duddy boring people who live around here and don't partake of the festivities in any way (you wouldn't think Californians would be so damn boring, especially in the Bay Area... but they really are -- no costumes, no Halloween decorations, nothing. Just a bunch of unsmiling, crotchety-looking people driving their Jaguars and BMWs and Escalades) My Wybie mask was more or less a royal pain in the ass to make, but the end result isn't too bad. In hindsight, there are a few things I would have done differently (better), but c'est la vie. At least I can say the following things were a success: the eye lenses -- I had broken a $60 camera lens (50mm f1.8) last year in Hawaii, and I was reticent to throw out the pieces, even though the thing was completely split in two and the case was broken, so I ended up replacing it with a new one. Eventually, I realized that they would make perfect lenses for 2 of the 3 lenses on Wybie's mask. The 3rd was made from a little PVC pipe connector thing from Home Depot, which worked out because I needed at least ONE that I could actually see through. (and, in the end, that little 1" hole turned out to be my ONLY source of vision, so walking around was quite a feat! It's amazing what a difference depth perception and peripheral vision make) the LED wiring -- unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to make the mask as it appears in the movie (Coraline) and still have it be functional; you have lenses on all eyes and light them up and still be able to see out. So I probably shouldn't have even bothered wiring all 3, but I did. The good news is that I managed to get the right resistor for my 3 green 2.1v LEDs in parallel, plus get a good battery mount (2 AAA batteries) and the eyes stayed lit for many many hours without the batteries dying. The two camera-lens eyes looked really cool, especially after I glued in some little clear, frosted plastic pieces to diffuse the light and make it "glow" instead of shine. Unfortunately, the light from the little LED in the 3rd lens (the one I could see through) was a bit anemic and looked kind of silly by comparison, but oh well. the paint job -- skull that I hand-stenciled and then spray-painted onto the welder's mask, followed by some artificial scuffing/aging to look like the mask in the movie; it doesn't look exactly the same, because the mask is much smaller than the one he has in the movie... but it's pretty good, all things considered I'll post some pics of our costumes once I get a chance. We hung out on Haight St. for a bit, getting lots of compliments from the bums and junkies, and did some shopping in Amoeba (picked up three Depeche Mode CDs, a Cowboy Junkies, a Dead Can Dance, a Morcheeba, and a Paul Oakenfold -- all for about $20) then did tapas and sangria in Cha Cha Cha, delicious as always. We headed over to Ruby Skye, whose "Alice in Wonderland" themed dance night (with Bad Boy Bill as DJ) we had already bought tix to (good thing -- they were sold out.) But we got there early, so we hung out at a random dueling piano bar in Union Square which I had never even known about; it was called "Mad Pianos" and I'd never been to a dueling piano bar, so that was an interesting experience. Ruby Skye was fun; getting pulled over by cops directly after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge was not. They were dead-set on insisting we were going way fast, and even trying to insinuate that we were drunk, but I really don't think either one was possible (it had been about 4 hours since our last drinks, and we didn't have very much to begin with.) I think they were just bummed that they were really hoping to catch some drunk drivers and happened to pull over one of the few cars that DIDN'T fit that bill. They ended up letting us go with a warning. Then, on Sunday, we decided to cruise up Napa Valley to a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) festival in St. Helena. Again, I couldn't believe it was sunny and 80 degrees... I didn't expect to be driving with the top down in November! Anyway, seeing all the little altars and eating some good Mexican food was enjoyable... listened to the big, brassy rancheria band do their thing and then also watched some of my cute little students perform traditional Mexican dances, then we headed out to do some random wine tasting on the way home (ended up stopping at Honig and Folie a Deux/Napa Cellars) Spent the remainder of the day being lazy in bed and streaming several episodes of the first season of Heroes (which we had never given a try because it just seemed too trite and cheesy, and to an extent it is, but some of the writing and production quality redeems it... so it's better than I had expected) I almost NEVER veg out like that on the weekends, so it was pretty nice for a change. Especially after the hectic week of Halloween costume assembly. Current Mood: calm (Comment on this)
Friday, October 30th, 2009
1:13 pm	Costume finished I got up at 4:30 am today to do last-minute work on my made-from-scratch Halloween costume. This is who I'm dressing up as: Wybie, from the Coraline movie [not, however, in the original Coraline book] The costume was overall not hard to do, but the essential piece of it -- the mask -- has been a pain in the ass... about on par with the Rocketeer jetpack I made last year. But maybe this one's even harder, because I had to make sure I can see through it (barely), plus I did some electrical work to wire 3 LED lights into the eye lenses, connected to a battery pack inside the mask. So, at 4:30 in the morning I got up to cut holes into the circular front piece to mount the eye lenses into... only to find that my drill battery (which had been charging for 6 hours) was still dead. So I hacked and clawed the holes with tinsnips and whatnot, until I made it work. Then I sat down, with my work day starting in less than an hour, and tried to figure out how to solder the green LEDs into each eye socket and somehow keep the wires out of my hair and eyeballs inside the mask. I pulled it off, but it's not perfect (and I'm a perfectionist, so the minor things really irk me), and I'm exhausted. [The reason I had to get it done for today instead of tomorrow is simply because I promised my students I would wear my costume today.] (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
11:37 am	Or, to put it another way... Just look at this chart -- just glance at it -- and you'll see why we are where we are. Sheer greed. Compare the cost of a home to the current median salary. Compare what that difference used to be. And then tell me if we need to do everything in our power to make sure home prices don't drop any further, which is what most people are crying about (including many ass-backward people in our current administration). Home prices are not "falling"; they are adjusting from the ridiculous retarded level that they were. If you look at that graph, you'll see that in the past -- even during the PEAKS -- homes cost about 3x an average salary. In 2004 they cost 5x an average salary. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the problem there (and yet, everybody was insisting on buying a home... even my own parents told me I should get one. Even though homes in Maryland were TWICE as high as the prices shown here, or in other words, 10x my annual salary. I explained all this to them even back then, and they didn't seem to get it... wish I'd had this chart handy at the time) So, as you can see, homes need to drop another 20% WITHOUT salaries dropping, in order to reach the normal 3:1 ratio. Are greedy, moronic people who invested in real estate over the past few years going to pay a price? Yes. And we must let them, or this garbage will never end. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
11:07 am	Good to see at least one financial analyst has his head on straight... Art Cashin, of UBS: "If you put things in perspective, initial jobless claims mean people who just got laid off and it's over 500,000 and it keeps going," he said. "At some point, you’re going to have so many people laid off that the claims have to go down because there's almost nobody left to fire so you have to be careful of looking at that number. It's still eating away." "This is going to be a long, hard slough—this is not going to be a V-shaped recovery." Absolutely correct. Anybody playing the stock market right now is kind of a fool (especially if you're buying, not selling.) I met a guy who came into our school last year to convince everybody to put their money in a 403(b) retirement plan -- this is basically the same as 401(k) but for public employees. I flat out told him he was crazy and there's no way I would invest my money in a stock-driven retirement fund. I did that at my first time job -- in fact, I invested the maximum amount my company would match with a dollar-for-dollar contribution (which was $5000/yr). This 401(k) consisted of "safe", moderate mutual funds. Since then, my 401(k) has lost money... even WITH the corporate contribution. This means my values dropped by over 50% in the past 10 years. I pointed this out to the guy, and he said "Yeah, well, the stock market was a bit crazy and inflated ten years ago, so yeah. But if you look at stocks over the long run, they are a great investment." Over the long run? What, over 100 years? Stock prices have stagnated -- and even dropped -- over the past DECADE. I don't know about you, but a decade seems like a pretty long time. In fact, if you look at "the long run", stocks haven't remained flat like this for a decade in... ever. So if the current state of affairs has NEVER been seen before, what makes these idiots think that the old patterns still apply? On top of that, how can stock prices be this high -- and how can they go up -- when: (a) people are losing jobs, and those jobs are NOT EVER coming back, by the way... not at a rate that keep pace with population growth, anyway. Which means, unless people suddenly stop popping out babies [and I can tell you, from working in a mostly-Hispanic community, that this is NOT going to happen], then unemployment will continue to rise; (b) foreclosures are rising... as they well should, because real estate is still overinflated... especially if you consider point (a). No jobs, a median salary that is going DOWN (not up), and fewer personal assets = a screwed economy. Essentially, if you kill the middle class, you kill your source of income and profits. I'm really wondering when head-in-the-clouds stock investors are going to see through the smoke and mirrors. Likewise, I love it when journalist say things like "By all signs, we are pretty much out of a recession... yet unemployment and home foreclosures continue to rise, and the average household income is decreasing." Are they PAID to say "We are out of a recession"?? Seriously, I'm starting to wonder if they get a bonus for lying to people like that. I mean, are they ONLY looking at one procyclic indicator, like GDP? Consider this: if the Gross Domestic Product is going UP, but the median income is going down, average net worth is going down, and unemployment is going up... then does this mean: (a) We are doing fine; OR (b) The rich are getting richer and everyone else is getting fucked? Current Mood: aggravated (1 Comment |Comment on this)
8:26 am	Taylor, Taylor...what are you doing? Taylor Momsen was my student a few years ago, when she was in 8th grade (she actually missed my class for a little while to do the Gossip Girl pilot) Even back then, she had a bit of the "punk rock" style going on, and it was cool and all... yes, she was wearing make-up, but it was more "Punky Brewster" than "Courtney Love" I know she's going for this "hardscrabble" punk look, but -- unless she has changed a lot (for the worse) over the past few years, then this look really doesn't represent who she is as a person [unlike, say, Courtney Love... in which case it is completely apropos] (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
5:17 pm	"Then there's this item..." "Then there's this item..."We've decided to bomb the moon." (1 Comment |Comment on this)
4:14 pm	Education etc. Well, my graduate studies (MS in Educational Technology) are going well so far, and remind me that I did actually like being involved in academia. Actually, I have been strongly, strongly considering continuing on to a doctoral degree, but I would definitely want to go for a Ph.D, because I think Ed.D (Education Doctorate) is pretty silly... everyone I've known with an Ed.D has been nowhere near as well-trained or intellectual as the people I've met who have a Ph.D. I also think this contributes Ed.D to being much more limited in opportunities and less respected, overall. I've been searching and searching to see if there are PhD opportunities that can be obtained entirely online in my area of interest (technology and education/instruction/learning; this could be a combination of technology and communication, technology and psychology, etc; generally known as Instructional Technology or Educational Technology)... thus far, I see zero online doctoral opportunities. Which is a little baffling because, really, it seems out of all degree types, Ph.D would be well-suited to online work, since it is mostly based on research and writing. Even if you argue that there is a need for collaborative work on faculty research projects, most of this (especially in the realm of social sciences) can be done via electronic communication. Ah well... so I started investigating local schools for doctoral opportunities. I started with Sonoma State University -- not a good school, but it is the closest one to me. They do not have any doctoral programs. So I branched further and looked at UC-Davis and Berkeley. Berkeley offers a PhD in Education, but it is a traditional education degree, focused on curriculum design and instruction... not exactly what I am looking for. Then I came across something very intriguing: the Learning Sciences and Technology Design program at Stanford University. This PhD is a "cross area specialization", ie. an interdisciplinary hybrid program in which half of the courses are in communication, policy, psychology/sociology, education, and the other half are more hard-core technical, specializing in graphic or motion media, games or simulations, or computer programming. In other words, this program seems right up my alley, and I would be very excited about the very real research opportunities and career possibilities it could lead to. Alas, I would have to spend 4-5 full-time years working on this Ph.D. Could I do that? I don't think I could... I'd have to move to Stanford/Palo Alto (a nice area, to be sure, but living in Napa is wonderful); research or teaching assistance (RA/TA) duties would cover the entire tuition (great) but there would only be a living stipend of $7,000/quarter (really not great). This means I would be scraping by on ramen noodles (or going in debt) for 4 years straight. Sarah could be the breadwinner, but it would essentially cut our income to about half of what it is right now. That would mean: (1) no chance of owning a home, and (2) no nice vacations, for at least 4 more years. By that time, we will be in our mid-thirties (ie. old), so could we deal with that? I really don't know if we could. But I'm torn, because it's not like partaking of such a venture will get any easier as I get older, especially if we do end up buying a home here in Napa. Still, my job is pretty good, living comfortably off of $78,000/year, with 3 months of vacation. I think it would be really hard to part with that, even to do something like the LSTD program which I'm sure I would be passionate about. On the other hand, if I lose my job (again) due to budget cuts or something... then I know what my next course of action will be. Current Mood: okay Current Music: Bright Eyes - We Are Nowhere and It's Now (Comment on this)
Monday, September 28th, 2009
10:07 pm	Dr. Ronald Chevalier I swear Dr. Ronald Chevalier is based on Dr. Clifford Pickover (the author of that book I read, "Sex, Drugs, Einstein and Elves"... in which he quotes himself liberally throughout the book, comparable to Einstein and Proust, and then sprinkles bits of his horrendous "science fiction" into the book as sort of a sales pitch to try to sell his other books) Cliff Pickover: Ronald Chevalier: (Comment on this)
8:33 am	Easy/Lucky/Free Did it all get real, I guess it's real enough They got refrigerators full of blood Another century spent pointing guns At anything that moves Sometimes I worry that I've lost the plot My twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts I never really dreamed of heaven much Until we put him in the ground But it's all I'm doing now Listening for patterns in the sound Of an endless static sea But once the satellite's deceased It blows like garbage through the streets Of the night sky to infinity But don't you weep (don't you weep for them) Don't you weep (don't you weep) There is nothing as lucky Honey, don't you weep (don't you weep for them) Don't you weep (don't you weep) There is nothing as lucky, as easy, or free Don't be a criminal in this police state You better shop and eat and procreate You got vacation days then you might escape To a condo on the coast I set my watch to the atomic clock I hear the crowd count down til the bomb gets dropped I always figured there'd be time enough I never let it get me down But I can't help it now Looking for faces in the clouds I got some friends I barely see But we're all planning to meet We'll lay in bags as dead as leaves All together for eternity But don't you weep (don't you weep for them) Don't you weep (don't you weep) There is no one as lucky Honey, don't you weep (don't you weep for them) Don't you weep (don't you weep) There is nothing as lucky, as easy, or free Or free, or free, or free There's nothing, there's nothing, there's nothing... Current Music: Bright Eyes - Easy/Lucky/Free (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 27th, 2009
8:11 pm	My brother's band: The Petticoat Tea Room So, the band my brother is in just came out with their first official full-length album. If you're into folk-infused / classic rock / Americana (think Bob Dylan, Neil Young, etc), then you might dig their stuff. You can find the album (in MP3/download format) on Amazon and iTunes (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
11:35 pm	A good day Who would have thought a good day would consist of no more than the following? Reading Sandman with the girlfriend Taking a nap Going for a jog Eating some hot dogs with corn on the cob and guava wine Watching Nowhere Man Baking (and eating) brownies (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
3:29 pm	Deaths that nobody notices Is it just because these people were old that nobody has noticed they are gone? Henry Gibson: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090917/ap_on_en_tv/us_obit_henry_gibson Best known for "Laugh-In"? Maybe, but he'll always be "That Guy from 'The Burbs'" to me. Mary Travers: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090917/ap_en_mu/us_obit_mary_travers She was the "Mary" in Peter, Paul, and Mary. Need I say more? and... some part of me feels bad that Patrick Swayze is gone. I don't know why. Maybe just because it's a reminder of my own mortality? I mean, he always seemed to have a lot of energy and vigor, even when we was no "spring chicken" and then suddenly he didn't. Suddenly he was feeble and looked like Skeletor. So maybe it's just his somewhat-rapid decline that left me feeling uneasy. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
3:03 pm	Traveling and stuff This is going to be short (I'm still reading LJ, but feel like I have NO time to post anything of value) I went to New Mexico for Labor Day weekend and it was very nice... did Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and the 22nd Annual New Mexico Wine Festival, to boot. Got back Monday night, have worked my butt off for a few days, and now, lo and behold... another little weekend getaway! Heading to Portland tomorrow evening, will do a little wine tour of Willamette Valley on Saturday. Not sure what I'm doing/eating for Friday or Sunday. Might just head to McMennamin's or something tomorrow night. Seems like a reasonable plan. I actually need to start having some weekends where I do NOTHING (translation: set up my music recording interface in my computer, finish programming 3 or 4 mostly-finished websites that are already up, and edit together a butt-load of HD videos for my job/school and whatever else), but it's just too tempting to take advantage of "free stuff" -- in this case, free hotel stays and airfare. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
6:06 pm	Homemade crab and cheese (gouda and chevre) ravioli with brown butter and shallots This is what I'm about to finish making. First, mix the filling: 16 oz crab meat (I'm using Chicken of the Sea claw meat, which is not bad... not as good as Maryland lump blue crab, which you might even be able to find from Phillips... but this is good enough) 8 oz. smoked gouda cheese 5 oz. chevre goat cheese black pepper and Old Bay seasoning to taste You can refrigerate this if you need to, then make the pasta dough: 4 large eggs 3.5 cups flour 1/2 tsp salt 1 T water This needs to be mixed and kneaded, then you portion it off into fist-sized (a little smaller) sections to run through a pasta roller (or, if you're masochistic, roll it by hand) lay a strip of the wide pasta on a ravioli rack, place one tsp filling on top, cover with another pasta ... Read Morestrip (brush some egg in between the fillings to help seal the ravioli); use the press to seal and punch the ravioli, then boil in salted water for about 3 minutes meanwhile, heat about 3-4 tablespoons butter in a sautee pan; add 1/2-2/3 cup minced shallots and cook for a minute or two, then add the ravioli and toss in the brown butter and shallots before serving (1 Comment |Comment on this)