When deciding which grill to get, I had a few things I was looking for. First of all, the grill should not cost a ridiculous amount of money. I am not Bobby Flay and will not use all the features and power of an expensive, $700 grill. Secondly, the grill does not need to be huge and have many burners. Most of the time, the grilling will be for just Ryan and I and we don't want to waste precious space on our balcony, so a small grill is what we needed. Lastly, the grill has to be gas, since charcoal is banned in our high-rise.

I searched Amazon and the first candidate was this Masterbuilt Veranda:

The grill looks like an art deco piece and is not to expensive. Sadly, it seems to be discontinued and getting replacement parts would not be easy.

After reading reviews for various grills on Amazon, I decided on getting the Char-Broil Patio Caddie:

This grill fit into everything I was looking for, so we went down to Home Depot and bought it. After about 30 minutes of assembling the thing, it was hooked up to a gas tank and ready to go.

This was our first gas grill, and igniting it was very easy. It quickly heats up and despite it's small size, the cooking area is pretty roomy. We bought some bison and gorgonzola onion burger patties at Whole Foods, along with some corn to try on the grill. The results were delicious:

All together, a successful purchase, I think.

Next thing we are going to try on the grill... shish-kabobs.

I've also changed the name from Leo's Tech Blog to Leo's Updates (although I might change the name again, if I can think of something good). I don't post only about technology, so a change of names seemed like the logical thing to do.

Stay tuned for more updates.

There's also a local Bike store here in Valpo (Jano Bicycles) and they sell Specialized bikes. This Specialized bike looked good to me as well:

Does anyone have any suggestions on which Bike I should get, or what I should look for in a good urban bike?

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White Peaches @ Whole Foods Means Bellini Time:

White peaches from California are available at Whole Foods in Lakeview right now, which means true Bellini cocktails are just a blender spin away. The famous Italian aperitif starts with a glass of cold Prosecco (an inexpesive sparkling wine from Italy), topped with a white peach nectar puree, and garnished with a berry or perhaps a little nugget of the stone fruit and a sprig of mint. Epicurious has a recipe from the Hotel Cipriani in Venice that is both simple and classic. Best make them quick. The white peach season is notoriously short.

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Technorati Tags: dvd burning, ripping, transcoding

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[Link] [Source: Boing Boing]

This week, I finally decided to shell out the money for a new server. I got a Dell PowerEdge 1650 (Dual 1.4 Ghz P3, 2GB RAM, 2x73GB SCSI disks and RAID) off eBay and put Fedora Core 6 on it. Then I restored the data from the old box onto this one (which took some work as the hard drive was a little bit hosed on the old box) and here we are. I will be updating this much more often now and the uptime should be good now.

Stay tuned for pictures of the new server!

One of the best solutions is LDAP.  LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and it is basically a database of user information. You can use LDAP as a global address book of sorts, and you can also use it to store user information, such as usernames and password. Getting LDAP configured on Linux can be challenging, and I have been looking for a good guide on how to do it. The problem is that setting it up is slightly different on every Linux distro, because of differences in how each distro has PAM set up. However, I have found a great guide, that makes setting up LDAP far easier. If you get authentication with LDAP working, you'll never look back.

I just came across this wonderful panorama of Paris. You can see all of the major landmarks in the photo and it is simply stunning. This reminds me of being in Paris around this time last year, and there is no city quite like it in the world.

It is exciting that Casino Royale, the new Bond movie is coming out soon, and that it actually looks like it is going to be a good film.

I am heavily considering diverting 007's Domain here, and posting James Bond news here from now on. I don't have the time anymore to maintain a full James Bond website (unless someone wants to help me out), but I do have the time to post some news and articles when I find something interesting, and this would bring some more traffic here.

I was surprised to learn that there is only one tea plantation in the US and it was at risk of being closed. This is the country of the Boston Tea Party, after all. It is only a matter of time until tea becomes as popular as coffee and people will learn the differences between good tea and lipton. Once, most people thought that Sanka was what coffee really tasted like. Starbucks taught us different and a similar tea house chain may soon come along and do what Starbucks did for coffee, but for tea.

Here is a link I found with high resolution photos of the black MacBook.

First get a pot of water boiling for the mashed potatoes.

Next, get together the ingredients you'll need to make the mashed potatoes (potatoes, salt, pepper, garlic powder, potato peeler and butter):

Peel the potatoes:

Chop each potato in half, and then chop each half into quarters:

Once the water is boiling, drop in the diced potatoes and leave it at a boil until they are soft:

Kyle and Bob are getting pumped for dinner:

Now onto the steak! What you'll need is some steak, extra virgin first cold pressed olive oil, sea salt, and pepper (I prefer a grinder). You should also pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees:

Coat the steak's surface with a thin layer of olive oil:

Sprinkle some salt on the surface of the steak:

Add some pepper to the steak as well:

Flip steak over and do the same to the other side. Repeat for all steaks that you are preparing:

Heat up your cast iron skillet, and once it's hot, drop a steak on there:

Sear it for 10-20 seconds, then flip over and sear for another 10-20 seconds:

Now, stick the whole skillet into your pre-heated oven:

The steak should stay in the oven around 3 minutes on each side for a medium-done steak. So after three minutes, take it out and flip it over, then put it back in for another three:

Once the time is up, take the steak out, let it sit for a few minutes (so that it reabsorbs its own juices) and it's done! Now do the same for the other steaks you are preparing:

Now back to the mashed potatoes! Once they are soft, drain out all the water and mash the potatoes with a masher until they do not have any chunks in them:

As you are mashing the potatoes, add garlic powder, salt and pepper to your liking, and then transfer the mashed potatoes onto a plate:

Chop up some onions, and saute them, if you would like that on your steak:

Finally, serve and enjoy (and know there the party is at, like Kyle does):

Please leave feedback on this post, and if you would like me to attempt any more cooking demonstrations.