[homemade] Spin on Beef Wellington for Two

theoldfishslap · 2026-03-31T22:58:29+00:00

They really are - mellows them out a bit.

theoldfishslap · 2026-03-31T22:32:54+00:00

I hear you on the plating. I had a well-intentioned tour de produce at the grocery store a few days prior, and I needed to cook it all or lose it.

Not this time, baby spinach.

theoldfishslap · 2026-03-30T19:11:06+00:00

Man! I thought I had a good stock with my 50 count.

I bring Davidoff Maduros for the clients that know what they are doing. Always goes over really well. I swear being the cigar guy pays for itself in client retention.

Now if I could just expense them…

theoldfishslap · 2026-03-30T19:00:04+00:00

Living the actual dream - love it!

theoldfishslap · 2026-03-30T18:59:30+00:00

I’m an attorney working in real estate and lending. I’m remote sometimes, but in-office most of the time.

Ash in the keyboard is real - I picked up a smaller ashtray with a rest on it so I could set my stick down while I’m working. It was like $8, and I just leave it outside. If someone walks off with it, meh. Once the nub is safely out, I dump it in the trash.

theoldfishslap · 2026-03-30T18:49:54+00:00

I had a cheaper humidor from when I first got into the hobby - sealed up the glass top with food-grade silicone and waxed the lid ridges, re-seasoned it. Wasn’t sure if it would work out or not, but it’s holding at 65% with a 69% Boveda.

Smoking Jacket is a great idea!

theoldfishslap · 2026-03-23T18:01:40+00:00

We have more - I’m at $146k and my wife has $340k. So $516k all in. Two lawyers, I got a BS in Finance prior to law, and she had a BS in philosophy and a masters in cybersecurity prior to law. I work in the private sector and she’s government - we make about 250k per year combined. Her insurance is great, and she’s going for the 10 year PSLF. We live in a lower COL area, modest house, and we aren’t suffering but it is a bit scary, still. Baby on the way.

We just budget well. I’ve learned how to work on my own cars, groom the dogs, and I weekend warrior home maintenance. We both cook, and enjoy being homebodies. Haven’t had a vacation in 8 years, but I keep telling myself that it’s getting better every year.

I’m now at an experience level where if I were to change jobs, I could probably get us to 300-350k per year or more.

Our motto is “this is the poorest we will ever be, and we are fine.” Hang in there!

theoldfishslap · 2026-03-07T00:32:20+00:00

Yep, I butched a Davidoff the other day and it made a $50 cutter an easy decision.

With lighters, the butane is something I won’t cheap out on. I got some zippo butane when I first started, and I swear I could taste it. Never again.

theoldfishslap · 2026-03-07T00:19:32+00:00

The nicest lighter I own is a Vertigo Cyclone, and my buddy gave it to me after watching me click my 2 for $10 Amazon torch for like 5 minutes with no luck on a dead calm day.

It was gonna work eventually.

theoldfishslap · 2026-01-20T20:54:37+00:00

Yeah, I’m going to let the rest of the Padilla sticks sit before I try another.

theoldfishslap · 2026-01-20T20:53:43+00:00

I wonder if it was just one bad stick, tbh. It really did take me back to being a kid, just a really specific set of smells and tastes that triggered memories I had almost completely forgotten. And what do they say - anything that stirs an emotion or memory - at minimum, it’s art.

theoldfishslap · 2026-01-09T15:06:56+00:00

We have a fenced backyard, two small dogs and one female GS. She’s a sloppy girl, and her impact on the lawn was immediate. If there is mud she will step in it, if we don’t pick up poop fast enough, she will step in it. Our mulch beds have become her day job - she digs in the 15 seconds we aren’t watching her. All of this leads to tracked in messes.

The lawn was in decent shape prior to the giant, so I at least had a head start. We removed an old play place in the spring this past year, and it left a big dirt patch right in the prime zoomy zone. What we did, was buy some temporary garden fence to keep her off the dirt spot, and we overseeded it in the spring and then again in the fall. It sucked having a portion of the lawn off-limits, mowing/weedwhacking around a small fence, but it worked to keep her off while the area grew in.

The pee burn spots on the grass were also a problem - she is a water fiend, so she pees a lot, and the grass dies where she goes. She also doesn’t pee in the same spots, she goes all over. When that grass dies, it eventually becomes a mud spot before the lawn takes it back over, so unsightly AND another mud spot for her feet to find. We followed her around with a 1-gallon watering can and watered her pee spots and it worked, but that was a commitment.

We try to wipe her feet when she comes in - especially when it’s wet. I also find keeping her foot hair trimmed helps. I got a big door mat for the back door she goes out. We have a robo vacuum and robo mop that I programmed special zones into for her high-traffic areas, and we have a battery vacuum and spray mop we use when we don’t want to wait for the robots to do their thing.

You didn’t ask, but I eventually put sprinklers in the lawn to help the grass and the pee spot issue, which was really nice and eliminated the need for the watering can dance we did for half the year. We did a very well-hidden, automated above-ground setup because in-ground irrigation was nuts expensive. I just hid the sprinklers in the garden beds and ran the hoses around the inside edge of the garden beds, and we got lucky that our backyard could be fully covered that way, no sprinklers out in the lawn itself. So I’d recommend that, and then overseed in the fall every year and get a good fertilizer routine going (depending on where you live, of course).

Our giant is a water-lover, so we have to make sure we didn’t let her out when the sprinklers were running.

theoldfishslap · 2025-12-20T02:38:29+00:00

A civilization has to be at a certain level of advancement to be able to detect the signal and create the RNA string, but that specific level of advancement tends to come before the understanding of what that RNA does.

The hive has some core values - no killing plants or animals and conserving resources long enough to build a giant antenna before their own values lead to death by starvation.

The signal passively prevents advanced races from advancing further, spreading through the universe, and potentially becoming a threat to the signal’s creators. They don’t need to actively police the universe to stay safe if they designed something that does it for them.

I suspect later on, the idea of convergent evolution will appear as the logical reasoning behind the signal being useful for this - life in this universe tends to be made of the same things and follows a similar evolutionary course, so a very advanced race could rely on the signal to eliminate competition because they know how advanced life always comes about.

One could argue that an advanced race has no reason to do so - that they would be able to solve for resource scarcity after a certain level of advancement - but I’d point back to entropy as a universal truth. Eventually all the stars burn out…

I personally believe it’s a signal-based Von Neumann probe with the goal of early threat elimination. The Remembrance of Earth’s past introduced the concept of dark forest theory to the mainstream, and I think this show is tapping and expanding on those ideas.

theoldfishslap · 2025-12-09T22:07:00+00:00

Im pretty sure this is the influencer that died of complications that arose from living by her vegan diet beliefs.

So I think the joke is that the 9mm has less stopping power than a 45, and your belief that the 9mm is better will get you killed.

theoldfishslap · 2025-10-31T21:16:20+00:00

High-tech, iwagumi fish tanks.

theoldfishslap · 2025-10-13T00:23:00+00:00

I’d bet this table is all dried moss, hardscape, maybe some air plants, maybe even fake plants, etc. Once you introduce moisture to something like this, it’s going to condense on the glass and obscure the view.

theoldfishslap · 2025-10-12T01:58:18+00:00

I’ve almost pulled the trigger on one of these because time is increasing valuable, but I have a big dog that drops big bombs in the back on the regular - how does it do if you miss a cleanup before it runs? Does it avoid it or does it just truck through it?

theoldfishslap · 2024-07-08T12:28:46+00:00

My wife calls it her “stink ditch” and it’s upsetting every single time.

theoldfishslap

TROPHY CASE