How to Clean a Snapping Turtle

1. Put live turtle in a 55 gal. drum for 7 days, to allow it to empty it's system, it helps with the smell. Keep fresh water in the drum. Scoop out the feces with a net.
2. Using channel locks, hold him tight by the mouth with neck stretched out. Cut off his head.
3. Hang him upside down to bleed out for about 30 minutes.
4. Put him on his back, cut claws and feet off.
5. Cut skin around shell top and bottom, cut and pull skin away from shell on the front legs until skin is removed.
6. On the soft shell belly outside edge of shell, cut through soft shell contact points and remove.
7. Remove guts and innards.
8. Remove front legs, may need to twist to break the joint.
9. Cut and peel skin from back legs and neck.
10. Remove back legs and neck, again twisting to break joints.
11. Leave meat on bone, but try to remove as much fat as possible.
12. Wash with cold water, repeat until clean.
13. Freeze submerged in water.

Cook the turtle like you would chicken. Season it with paprika, salt and pepper and roll in flour. Fry in a skillet or bake it like a pork tenderloin. If anyone has any recipes for cooking turtle, send them in and we will add them to our recipe page.

From: http://www.backwoodsbound.com/xturtle.html

Why is programming fun?

Why is programming fun? What delights may its practioner expect as his reward?

First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design. I think this delight must be an image of God's delight in making things, a delight shown in the distinctness and newness of each leaf and each snowflake.

Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find it helpful. In this respect the programming system is not essentially different from the child's first clay pencil holder "for Daddy's office."

Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning. The programmed computer has all the fascination of the pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried to the ultimate.

Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical, sometimes theoretical, and sometimes both.

Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. (...) Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separately from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.

Programming then is fun because it gratifies creative longings built deep within us and delights sensibilities we have in common with all men.

Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month

Semi-sleeping all the time

A disappointing breakfast made me go back to bed.

"Do i have to love you to love to have you?"

Does anyone remember the song that asks, "Do i have to love you to love to have you?" Do you know who sang it?

We Can and We Must Live and Escape Pod

The We Can and We Must Live PodCast is getting pretty interesting. Also, i found another good one: Escape Pod. I liked the "Mount Dragon" story and am now listening to "The Ludes."