And now my personal home page (gary.gocek.org) has been redesigned using a look-and-feel similar to the recently redesigned home page at gocek.org. Key goals were to be responsive and mobile-friendly. I fixed more Adsense syntax. The text content is now less wordy, and the images in the main body are small.
https://gary.gocek.org/
I redesigned the gocek.org home page to be more responsive and mobile-friendly. I fixed a bunch of external links that had changed, and fixed some Adsense syntax. For years, I made it known that I own gocek.org, gocek.net and gocek.com. All three addresses work the same, and in fact, gocek.net is the physically hosted address (org and com are mirrors). But from a branding perspective, I only care about gocek.org, so I have removed some text referring to the other domain extensions. And a few months ago, I added SSL, so use https instead of http. I added SSL because search engines have become less friendly to non-SSL sites, although I am not really sure why unless the site is doing e-commerce, which I am not.
https://www.gocek.org/
Who would have thought that shopping for lobster tails would be complicated? Expensive, maybe, but it was indeed complicated. I am in the market for nine 8 ounce tails for a Christmas Eve dinner in Chicago. I live in Rochester, NY and will be flying to Chicago.
I have run across three different types of lobster tails. As they are referred to in the continental United States: cold-water (North Atlantic such as Maine and Nova Scotia), warm-water (Carribbean), and Australian (rock or spiny lobster tails from langouste near North Australia). There are more, but in my shopping and research, these are the types I have came across.
Cold-water tails are preferred by Americans. Cold water reduces the saltiness of the meat, and the meat stays uniformly firm. The taste is not fishy and the color is uniformly white. The shell is uniformly reddish. Warm-water tails are saltier, the meat color varies, and the shells are spotty. Australian lobsters have no claws and are a blue-green color, and the tail meat can be stringy.
Tails are sold frozen, unless you get a whole, live lobster. I can get a frozen 8 ounce, cold-water tail for $36 per pound in Rochester, NY, i.e., $18 per tail. That's approximate, depending on the exact weight.
There are many online sellers of lobster tails. The best price I could find is $36 per tail. Frozen seafood is normally shipped overnight with dry ice. Dry ice emits a gas, so the shipping container must be ventilated, and the shippers have strict and expensive requirements. This makes online purchases very expensive. Unless a shopper lives in a very remote place but can somehow get overnighted deliveries, I am not sure why anyone would shop online for lobster tails. It is cheaper to drive a hundred miles one way to a market than to shop online.
The price of a cold-water tail at markets in Chicago is substantially more expensive than Rochester. I called several Chicago fish markets. If I could find an 8 ounce cold-water tail at all, it was over $25. The most reliable deal for acquiring 9 tails was listed at $65 per pound. For nine 8 oz. tails (assuming the shop would split a pre-wrapped package of two), that's $292, versus $162 in Rochester (where the shop promised a purchase of nine is possible). Big box stores carry lobster tails, but the tail size varies and the tails are usually "previously frozen", meaning frozen, thawed and refrozen.
If I purchase the tails in Rochester, I need to get them to Chicago. I could ship them with ice packs (without dry ice), and that would likely be reliable under normal conditions. But, it's December. Shipping anything in December is complicated. Even early in the month, weather delays can occur. Later in the month, shippers won't take responsibility for a frozen seafood shipment.
However, our airline allows traveling with frozen seafood. Wrap the tails in plastic, pack in a plastic container with blue-ice (not wet ice), and wrap the container in plastic. (Dry ice can be used with special packaging, but there is a $150 charge.) At home, I found an appropriate box and a gigantic, zip-lock travel bag. Door to door, the trip is six hours or less, which will be fine. We will "check" the bag in which the box will be packed, so the tails will be in the baggage compartment, which will be cool in December if not below freezing. Our airline does not accept responsibility for frozen seafood in checked bags, but it's a non-stop, 2 hour flight, so it is low risk that the bag could be lost.
If Gary is taking pictures of the Honolulu airport, that must mean ... OH NO, the Happy Hawaiian Holiday is coming to an end! Like many Hawaiian venues, parts of the airport are open-air because the weather is so constantly pleasant. During these two weeks, we found the sun pretty intense, and I got a mild sunburn through a flimsy beach umbrella.
Susan is on her flight to San Francisco today to see a cousin for a few days, but I still have a couple hours before boarding (Honolulu to Newark to Rochester), so I splurged on the United Club. Before the pandemic, the Club offered a variety of hot and cold items on a buffet, plus a bar. Today, the items are cold (except for Ramen noodle prepacked cups). But, the items are decent (I had bowtie pasta with chicken in a Caesar sauce), and I am sitting with a house Chardonnay. It is pretty quiet right now and very comfortable compared to the usual gate areas.
See the lamp table below with A/C and USB ports. It's an open wi-fi, but separate from the standard airport wi-fi, and I just clocked it at 260 Mpbs.
Our main options were to walk around the grounds of the memorial area (lots of plaques and such), a free historical museum and 15 minute video, a ticketed submarine museum, and the gift shop. We spent our full two hours reading the plaques, watching the short historical films and walking through the free museum and shop. If you visit and want to do everything, you could easily spend four hours in the memorial area.
Whoever we are and wherever we're from, I think we should visit our "hallowed grounds". No matter how much you hate war, don't avoid the concept of war. Immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the spots where it occurred and feel what you can feel. Americans should visit Gettysburg, visit 9/11 Ground Zero and visit Pearl Harbor. (There are other American locations, such as the Alamo, Wounded Knee, etc., I won't try to name them all, but I hope you get my point). You may hate it all, or be proud of it all, or feel lucky someone made sacrifices, etc., but at least you "did the research".
There were Japanese-American customers on the tour bus, and I wish I could have heard how they perceived it all. The tour guide was good, but he was a white guy about my age and did not seem to have an official script, so his "stream of consciousness" comments were from his perspective. The guide was not a park ranger or military person, "just" a commercial bus driver. The historical information at the site was mostly objective, and there was information about American internment camps. Today, the US and Japan are allies, but things were pretty brutal in the 1940s.
