UbernerkleRuminations of a Renaissance Geek

Sounds like a bad viral video doesn’t it?

I recently got into a discussion with some friends in the general vicinity of Texas over the perfection that I feel is In N Out Burger. This resulted in comparisons being made between said IOB and some place I had never heard of called Five Guys.

In the spirit of being open-minded and the pursuit of superior food, I accepted the challenge of doing a side-by-side comparison of both food establishments.

Full disclosure: In-N-Out is one of the reasons that Ubernerkle immigrated from England to California, but he claims impartiality in this comparison.

The subject: The Cheeseburger Meal (with fries and soda).

On the left is Five Guys, on the right is In-N-Out.

We shall begin by breaking the meals into their respective components.

Beverages

Both beverages were Coca Cola drinks served in identically sized cups.

Winner: Draw

The Fries

First up: Five Guys

Cut from real potatoes with the skin on. Very generous portioning and quite heavily seasoned. Almost a third, if not double, the volume of In-N-Out. Leaving the potato skins on really added a nice earthiness to the taste of the fries. Additionally they had several bottles of malt vinegar at the counter – a shocking sign of civility as far as this ex-pat is concerned.

In-N-Out also fresh potato cut, though thinner than Five Guys. Lightly seasoned with salt and almost under cooked in texture. Nowhere near the flavour of Five Guys.

Winner: Five Guys

Burgers

At Five guys, a regular cheeseburger automatically comes as a double patty with the usual burger condiments; mayo, lettuce, pickles, tomato, and grilled onions served up on a sesame bun. Taste-wise, the meat was comparable to a Whopper – slightly on the greasy side with absolutely unidentifiable cheese, tomato and lettuce because of an over-application of ketchup and mustard.

In-N-Out, single patty (In-N-Out does offer the “Double Double” which would have been a more accurate match, however Five Guys doubled the patties as part of their regular meal). Accompanied with house sauce (Thousand Island), tomato, lettuce, plain onions. In-N-Out does offer grilled onions but only if you order the secret menu “animal style”. The bun tasted like fresh-baked bread and was grilled before anything was added to it. The meat tasted superior to that of Five Guys as did the cheese.

Winner: In-N-Out

Value

Five Guys $10.17
In-N-Out $4.75

Winner: In-N-Out

Summary

I’m going to have to side with Mrs. Ubernerkle on this one: In-N-Out wins it. It is a better looking and fresher tasting burger for the best price. Sure, Five Guys had awesome fries but you can make do with In-N-Out’s. You might get fries at Five Guys and drive to In-N-Out for the better burger, but you are never going to get an In-N-Out burger and drive to Five Guys to get better fries (even if they had a drive through, which they don’t. *wink*).

The birth of my first child with my wife was an experience that unfolded like Ron Howard’s Apollo 13, only my crew was an amazing birth team consisting of my wife; Barbara Herrera, our midwife; Nova DeLovely, our doula; and myself.

Our goal was not as lofty as a manned space flight; we just decided we wanted to have a child. My wife and I both had prior marriages and she has two amazing kids from hers. Two years ago we got married at 34 and 38 years old. We began trying for a child knowing that the biological launch clock was ticking down against us. We didn’t realize just how challenging that would be.

During those two years we experienced several miscarriages, fertility testing (that told us there were no problems), gestational diabetes, an entrenched medical system that was only willing to let you do things its way, and a self-education that gave me more knowledge than I thought would be necessary to support my wife in delivering our child. Suffice it to say you probably know more people who have had these experiences themselves than you are aware of. The last pregnancy “stuck”, and we both held our breath many times hoping that things would go positively for us.

“Apollo 13 this is ground control. We are go for launch!”

04:00 Hours September 16th 2010:
I assumed this was yet another of the regularly occurring two-hour bathroom trips my unborn son had been subjecting my wife to for the last couple of weeks. The baby’s due date was September 14th and we were just over a day past that. My wife had been having irregular surges (contractions) for a few days and we had both entered this state of alertness that my son could start his arrival at any time. With some disbelief, the surges were coming regularly at around four minutes apart and we rested her through the next hour and a half while.

“Freddo, how long does it take to power up the LEM?”

05:30 hours:
We called Barbara, our midwife. Why have a midwife? Don’t they assign one when you go into the hospital once labor begins?

To answer this question, I need to give you a bit of the back story. As I said, my amazing wife already had two fantastic children when I met her. Both had been delivered via C-section; one was breech (bottom first, not a position that makes vaginal delivery much of an option). The other was a “failure to progress” after 36 hours of labor (my wife would find out later that the baby was posterior/face-up, which could have been corrected during labor if anyone had been paying attention).

My wife turned 40 this year. I will be buying flowers and making up for outing that for a while, but it is relevant. We had been dealing with the realities of trying for a kid at this late stage in her fertility span and because we had those experiences, it was important to us both that she have the opportunity to have the birth that she wanted, which meant vaginal. She did not want another surgery, period.

Our health care provider (one nurse midwife and three obstetricians) shot that notion down very quickly stating that their policy was no VBAC2 (Vaginal Birth After 2 Caesarians). She was not even allowed to go into labor at all, let alone attempt a vaginal birth. In short we deliver in the hospital and only via C-section. We were less than thrilled at this news.

They explained to us the many risks, the most severe of which is a rupture in the uterus during labor which could result in my wife bleeding out internally. In the worst case scenario, this is catastrophic and could result in the loss of both my wife and my son.

That is a pretty harsh reality to have to face but we did what we always do in situations we don’t understand – we researched. It turns out that the risk of uterine rupture is 1.5% after two C-sections. The risk is as high as 4% when Pitocin is used to induce labor (which is common practice nowadays). To look at our situation from a different angle, my wife would not be allowed to labor and try for a vaginal birth because she only had a 75% chance of success. We took a hard look at those odds and decided that if our health care provider would not support us laboring with them then we would do it at home ourselves. We really believed that the small risk of a uterine rupture did not negate the higher risks of the numerous things that could go wrong during a C-section, which is a major abdominal surgery.

My younger sister and I were both home births in the UK with the assistance of a midwife, so the idea of a homebirth was not a radical notion in my experience. In fact, it seemed far more normal to me than the way births are handled here in the U.S.. We began looking locally here in San Diego for a midwife we could work with. For the most part many would not touch us due to my wife’s two prior C-sections. When we made the mistake of telling our healthcare provider that we were considering a home birth, I was told point blank that I was going to kill my wife and child and I am not saying this for dramatic effect.

Through a reference we found Barbara Herrera (http://www.navelgazingmidwife.com/) and interviewed her. One of the first things Barb said during that interview was no matter how badly we may want a VBAC or HBAC (home birth after C-section) she would not allow us to put my wife or the baby in danger and that if we worked with her and she made the call to go into the hospital we went, no arguments.

During the course of the entire pregnancy Barb was a fantastic resource in helping us to educate ourselves in many different aspects of pregnancy, labor and birth. We received way more support and expert advice from her than we did from our healthcare provider. There is no way to compare the level of care we received from her against an HMO system; two-hour prenatal visits, discussions about our emotional and mental health as well as my wife’s physical health, visits to our home as opposed to a doctor’s office, just to name a few differences.

In one of those ironic moments in life two months prior to our due date, ACOG (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) updated their recommendations around letting a woman try for a regular birth after two previous c-sections: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/725597. It was too late in the game to change hospital policy, therefore not really affecting our choice, but it did give us a little more ammunition with the OBs at our HMO.

06:00 hours:
Barb arrived did an exam on my wife and identified that she was indeed in the first stages of labor and that mum and baby were both doing well. She camped out on our couch for the next couple of hours keeping an ear on baby and mum.

Barb is a licensed midwife and thus cannot prescribe pain medication so my wife would be going through the delivery drug-free. Barb recommended that we consider attending HypnoBirthing classes, so we signed up with Carol Yeh- Garner (http://www.awelllivedlife.net/).

We learned many valuable techniques in helping both me to stay calm and my wife to ride each of the surges, breathing and focusing her way through the sensations. We were also lucky to share those classes with a great group of people who, through their own experiences, were looking for less medical intervention focused births for themselves.

08:00 hours:
Baby and mum keep progressing slowly but steadily. All indications were that we could be in for a long labor as she was dilating at about a ½ cm per hour. Prior to all of this I had illusions of kicking back in my man cave watching movies, reading books and playing video games. The reality was that I lay with her stroking her hair and skin, encouraging her and verbalizing the visualization techniques we had learned.

10:00 hours:
Surges began getting more intense taking more focus by my wife. We could no longer chat through them, she would breath and I continued to gently stroke her softly telling her positive affirmations. We decided at this point to call in our doula.

10:45 hours:
A midwife and a doula? Hell YES.

Yup, while the midwife is focused on the physical well-being of mum and baby and the biological processes of delivery and birth, the doula is focused on just the mum. They help to keep her hydrated, encouraged, supported, physically comforted, and loved providing the emotional element of the equation.

Nova (http://www.wombservice.com/) was recommended by Barb and was someone who immediately filled in a gap in our delivery team that we did not know existed. She has the sweetest, calming disposition and truly embraced the opportunity to nurture and care for my wife, and I, during the pregnancy and delivery.

“Houston, we have a problem.”

13:15 hours:
My wife had more frequent and more intense surges as the day progressed. Around this time she was using the bathroom and felt like her waters had burst. When a woman has her waters break a clock starts ticking because the amniotic fluid that surrounds the baby begins to drain out of the womb and the risk of infection increases. Many health care providers will insist on an antibiotic IV being administered to counteract the infection risk.

Unfortunately, it was not her waters that had broken. Instead she had passed a bright red blood clot which is indicative that she has been bleeding inside. Barb did a check of the baby’s heart rate and it had begun to spike and dip erratically.

This was exactly the reason why we had a plan B to our home birth. We quickly and calmly gathered my wife up and our pre-packed bags and headed to the hospital while Barb called ahead. I’m sure that I must have looked like I had been shocked with a cattle prod but due to our planning I was reacting the way I needed to; safely taking care of my wife and child.

“Just a little while longer Freddo. Just a little while longer, we’re gonna hit that water in the South Pacific. Open up that hatch. It’s 80 degrees out there.”

13:35 hours:
The drive to the hospital took me 25 minutes. Immediately after and even now, ten days later, I can recollect very little of it. I know I obeyed the traffic laws. I did not speed or run any red lights. I was hyper aware that things had gotten scary but I had entered a calm, or as medical types call it; shock. Nova came with us in our car and she continued to sooth my wife and breathe with her to help her ride the intense surges.

They were working together so well at one point I looked over at my wife who was completely calm and serene and I thought she had passed out. She hadn’t – she had just ridden that particular surge very deeply. I don’t think she was trying to kill me with the glare she gave me but it might have been close.

I, on the other hand, was processing that I might actually lose my baby and possibly wife. Strangely enough, you would think I would be begging the universe or God to intervene and keep them safe. Instead I had a quiet calm that things would work out. My wife and son were stronger than this.

We arrived at the hospital and I transferred my wife to a wheel chair and sped to Labor and Delivery while Nova took care of parking the car. Again I managed to not mow down any human obstacles along the way.

“Houston, we are venting something out into space.”

14:10 hours:
We arrived at the triage check in and were slowly being processed until my wife had another contraction. It was another intense one because we were suddenly in an examining room being looked at by a staff midwife. This time we were told my wife was 100% effaced and 4cm dilated. Barb insisted on checking the baby’s heart rate and he appeared to be holding okay but my wife continued to bleed.

14:20 hours:
We were moved into a delivery room shortly after that. The whole situation took a comic Monty Pythonesque spin that I did not expect at this point. My wife was now triple peaking with her surges, having three back-to-back with no break. She had turned into a low guttural moaning focus of attention. The comedy came as one of the nurses began asking us questions as they hooked my wife up to IVs and monitors.

“Name?” Yup…
“Address?” Yup…
“When did your wife eat last?” 6am…
“Has your wife…” the question was annihilated by 45 seconds of intense moaning from my wife.
“Excuse me?”
“Has your wife gone poo-poo today?”
The entire birth team exchanged glances and everyone burst out laughing simultaneously. This one question had pierced the tension bubble that we had been in from the moment my wife passed the first clot.
“Are you in…” more groaning as another triple peak hit.
“Excuse me?”
“Are you in any chronic pain?”
Again more glances between the birth team, only this time I caught my wife trying to psychically slap the nurse for asking the question. My wife was able to communicate her discomfort and we requested an epidural.

At this point we thought we might still be able to vaginally birth in the hospital.

“Let’s work the problem people. Let’s not make things worse by guessing.”

14:40 hours:
My wife gets the epidural and slowly begins to get relief from the surges. The doctor comes in takes one look at the bleeding my wife has been having, one look at the triple peak surges and one look at the baby’s heart rate during and after the contractions and informs us that viability for the delivery is declining and we should consider a c-section.

We did not hesitate and agreed immediately. This is exactly why we had our backup plan and this is exactly one of those situations where a c-section is necessary. The next few minutes became a blur as I was stuffed in a Smurf suit; blue scrubs, booties the works while they prepped my wife to be transferred to the OR.

Nova came to me with a pot of yogurt and asked me to eat. I declined as I could not possibly eat – I was very much lost in the moment. Now understand that Nova is about five foot three and almost elf-like in her body frame. I am six foot four and built like an ogre. She stared me down and pushed on me again to eat. She was right – I could not risk passing out in the OR. Our Doula was caring for us when we were focused on taking care of mum and baby.

I followed the hospital staff as my wife’s bed was wheeled down to the OR.

“I’ve been going over the numbers again”

15:28 hours:
I sat in the recovery room while they prepped my wife in the OR. I had a chair in a single bay facing a large LED clock. It slowly taunted me through the longest half-hour of my life. Each second my paranoia and fear tried to convince me that something was wrong; this should not be taking this long. Was my wife suffering a uterine rupture? Had the blood loss caused problems for my son?

It was one thousand times worse than the time it takes for a CHP officer to walk from his car to yours after pulling you over for speeding.

“So long, Earth. Catch you on the flip side. “

16:00 hours:
I was escorted into the OR. My wife laid on the table with a screen blocking view from just above her chest. The moment I sat down the procedure began. “Incision started 16:01!” My wife laid there with her head supported by some rolled up towels, her eyes red. She was still the most beautiful woman I know. I held her hand as they began the procedure. She had asked me to not look beyond the curtain to see what was going on, which was fine by me. I had seen enough of the process on Discovery and had no desire to be that intimate with my wife’s inner workings. We talked softly, reassuring each other that everything was okay that our son was okay.

“16:09 baby delivered”. They held him up for me to see and were followed quickly by “16:09 placenta delivered”, which mercifully they did not hold up for me to see.

I watched as the nurses began cleaning him up. His body was long, gangly, and a purple grey color at first, and he was quiet. They worked on him for a few minutes assuring us that he was fine and allowed me to get up and take a picture as they weighed him.

Duncan Thane was born at 16:09 on 9/16 (something that very much appealed to my geeky nature) at 7 lbs. 11 oz.

They swaddled him and let me hold him while they continued with the procedure, stitching my wife back together. There were two things that I was totally unprepared for during the procedure. First, the smell; they must have used some sort of cauterizing tool because the metallic tang of searing flesh was very sudden and strong. Second, the violent shaking that my wife started to suffer from the anesthetic.

Duncan is the most beautiful kid I have ever laid eyes on, yes I know I am biased, and we both were very happy and grateful to have him here, healthy and with us. “16:34 procedure completed!”

It turned out that the placenta had already started to come loose during labor and that was the source of the distress. While not a uterine rupture a placental abruption is something that is serious and warranted the C-section.

17:04 hours
We were put in the recovery room with my wife and son and a nurse. My wife had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes in her second trimester and had done a fantastic job of keeping her levels so low as to be barely borderline, just through diet and exercise. Still, they needed to check my son’s glucose levels. At first he was 90 in the OR, but within an hour had dropped to 45 and the nurse was saying we needed to give him formula. We wanted to give my wife the chance to breastfeed but had been having trouble getting him to latch on. I spoke with the nurse and let her know that Barb is also was a La Leche League leader with 20+ years of experience with nursing moms and if they would let me bring her back to recovery she could help us. After a couple of calls they agreed and Barb had the wee fella feeding in no time flat and his glucose levels started to rise consistently over the next 24 hours. Yet one more reason why having a Swiss Army Midwife is a good thing.

“Imagine if Christopher Columbus had come back from the New World and no one returned in his footsteps.”

Saturday, September 19th, we were released from the hospital. Mum and baby both got a clean bill of health.

It’s not convenient or cheap to have the birth that you want for your wife and child but embrace the responsibility before the delivery date, educate yourselves and make your own informed decisions. I am a better, stronger and more educated person than I was when we started on our ‘space program’.

My deepest gratitude and thanks to:

Barbara Herrera for helping us to have the pregnancy my wife deserved and for seeing her potential, and not problems. You saved the life of my wife and child with your decisive thinking.

Nova DeLovely for being the emotional pillar on which both my wife and I could lean on, for nurturing us both, making me eat, and for capturing moments on camera that we were too involved in to think about.

Carol Yeh-Garner for giving us the tools to own our birth and help my wife without the need for medication and for helping us prepare for the birth eventuality that we needed.

Family and neighbors for rallying to feed us and support us while we recovered.

Our friends for their love and support through our miscarriages and celebrating the arrival of our son.

Finally to my incredible wife who showed more love, endurance, certainty and strength than I ever could. You are amazing.

A Lucasfilm official press release for the Blu-rays confirms that all six movies are being released on Blu-ray and that the boxed set is coming out Fall 2011, it will include, “documentaries, vintage behind-the-scenes moments, interviews, retrospectives and never-before-seen footage from the Lucasfilm archives.”

When Lucas made the announcement they showed a previously unreleased scene from Return of the Jedi which will be included, Luke constructs his green light saber before going to see Jabba:

Source: SlashFilm.com

The third installment of the Bioshock universe has been announced by Irrational Games. GameInformer has screenshots and the trailer that will suck you in as usual.

For me I think it started with Diablo II ten years ago. I had been a big fan of the original Diablo and Blizzards work. I had heard that they were going to offer two versions of the game when they released it regular and collectors editions. The collectors edition in addition to the game came with a copy of the Diablo Dungeons & Dragons pen-and-paper campaign setting, and cut scene movies for other Blizzard games. The price difference was considerable but not outrageous and I opted for it.

Incidentally Diablo III is in development and you can preorder the game no details yet as to a collectors edition.

Does this approach to adding items such as gadgets, memorabilia, art, behind the scenes footage, audio cd’s, etc work? Some times it does. There are gamers out there who covert these special editions the same way that baseball card and comic book collectors build up their own secret vault of archived goodies. There are other gamers, like myself, who are willing to shell out sometimes double the cost of the game itself for such items.

Just reviewing the last few years shows that when a company has a killer title or property they know they can shave a few more ounces of your hard earned cash from your wallet and we will continue to pay with a distant smile of geek happiness as we do.

2007

Brought us Halo 3 and a replica Master Chief helmet.

2008
Saw me shelling out for Fallout 3: The Survival Amazon Exclusive.

2009
Was ruled by Modern Warfare 2 which offered up night vision goggles and I passed up on this one.

2010

So far this year we have:

Coming soon incarnations of this shiny extra laiden approach to selling games include:

.

Which comes with a remote control car that has a built in video camera that can transmit images over wireless.

I mentioned in the last update that I had recently purchased a Kindle 2 and what happened a few days later? That’s right Amazon announces some new models *head desk*.

“Not you fat Jesus.”

This past weekend Mrs Ubernerkle, the Minions and I headed off to Vegas, me to attend a friends bachelor party and them to have a mini getaway. My wife brought two books with her and I brought the Kindle. While driving out there I suggested that she pull out the Kindle and take a look at “Suck It, Wonder Woman” by Olivia Munn.

I was thinking of getting one of the new generation and having both devices associated to the same Amazon account we can share the same library of books which nicely fills the ‘lend a book’ gap between the Kindle and Nook. This was a good test to see if she took a shine to it.

I spent a couple of hours hanging at the pool with the family between bouts of bachelor party geekery and was very happy to see I did not have;

There is a lot to be said for sticking your room key and cell in the Kindle cover and just heading out. Not to mention being able to turn a page with one thumb press and thus not having to put down said mojito’s for any reason.

The Kindle 2 fits reasonably well into the pockets of cargo shorts and the new generation is even smaller by a half inch in width and height.

“Tigers love pepper… they hate cinnamon.”

A few folks have asked me what sort of savings I have seen with eBook versus traditional print so below is a break down based on my own experiences and to point out the obvious there is still the initial outlay for the device itself. These titles cost me $51 less than it would buying them in their respective physical formats. As you can see it the savings are quite varied and in some cases do not exist at all but can add up over time.
Read the rest of this entry »

Two years ago I launched Temporal Consumer alongside of Ubernerkle. TC was focused only on the topics of using media rental services such as Netflix, Gamefly and Bookswim. I had transitioned from my consumer habits of buying several DVD’s, video games and a plethora of books a month and as a result had saved myself a considerable chunk of change, almost $2000 in two years, without having to give up my consumption habits.

Bookswim

About a year ago I stopped using the Bookswim service primarily because they had run out of the titles that I was interested in reading. I had begun eyeing traditional print media again but was not willing to go back to the old habits. I downloaded the Amazon Kindle application for my Blackberry and took a stab at e-books.

I told myself it was just an experiment, a toe dip to see if it was plausible to read an entire novel on a smart phone. Three books later and I had become sold on the ease of purchase, no waiting for shipping, sample chapters and cheaper prices than traditional media; something I will cover in a separate post.

There is a selection of e-readers on the market now and I had been holding out for a dual screen device that offered both a touch screen tablet and an e-ink screen. I poked at the iPad when it launched thinking it would be the device of choice but after an extended reading period of about fifteen minutes both my eyes and my forearms were strained from using it. The Nook dropped in price to $149 recently and Amazon responded by dropping the Kindle to $189. Technically the Nook had the most appeal but when it came down title availability the Kindle still had more to offer so I picked one up at the local Target.

Since getting the Kindle I am reading more than I have in a long time, I consistently have two or three titles on the go at any one time. Current count 93 titles comprising of paid, free and sample materials.

GameFly

GameFly was the next to bite the dust for a very simple reason. In September mrsUbernerkle will be giving birth to a new addition in our family. It makes no sense to pay for a game rental service when the opportunity to sleep let alone game will be a rare thing.

Netflix

Netflix is still holding strong with both streaming and DVD rentals, the occasional Amazon on Demand still slips through to our Tivo. We now have Netflix streaming to Tivo, two Xbox 360′s and a BluRay player.

With the reduction of books, games and time it made sense to pack up TemporalConsumer and use Ubernerkle to share some of the things I would have there.

or “Things I did to procrastinate from NaNoWriMo”.

Things started off fairly simple. We were having friends over for a pre-Thanksgiving party and we converted our dining room closet into a mini dry bar using some Elfa pieces we had from previous Container Store projects.

After the party though I began thinking it would be nice to have a larger bar. In my home office we had a Hemnes 8 drawer dresser which was basically being used as a side board and a place to hang the dogs leashes.

The video shows what happened.

Eventually I might removed one side of the faux shelving to drop in a converted mini fridge/kegerator.

Dec 1st 2009 – Updated video with alternate audio track to stop the video being blocked in germany.

Very interesting trailer via ScreenRant.com. Gorgeous CGI and an interesting plot.

“The Cup of Tears follows a scorned geisha who creates a magical cup made of tears that causes any man who drinks from it to fall into a permanent sleep. One night the cup is stolen, setting off a chain of events that threatens civil war amongst the clans. Taro, a gifted samurai, sets out to find the cup and one who can break the spell.”

Samurai meets post apocalyptic future, sign me up!

The Cup of Tears film trailer. Dir. Gary Shore from Gary Shore on Vimeo.

New Bioshock 2 Trailer… Big Daddy wants so bad.

Gimzmodo.com shared Nikola Tesla’s Spirit Radio. You can build your own version using the link they provided http://www.instructables.com/id/Spooky-Tesla-Spirit-Radio/

Pull over and place your hands on the arm rests of your recliner! This was reported from several different sources including the BBC. Engadget.com: Police auction off motorized recliner after charing owner with DUI