Thank you for turning a five-minute trip into an hour.

To get a true sense of my new purchase, my first Cynar cocktail was on the rocks with an Orange slice before dinner. The drink has a great bittersweet balance and no one herb or plant overpowers. If you can stomach Campari, your palate will accept Cynar. While Cynar will not displace Campari as my favorite spirit, it will see plenty of action in the coming months.

Some interesting Cynar drinks found on the interweb include:

Tom Waits was Here
(unknown quantities)

• Cynar
• Jack Daniels
• Triple Sec

Cin-cyn

• 1 ounce artichoke-flavored liqueur, such as Cynar brand
• 1 ounce gin
• 1 ounce sweet vermouth
• Dash bitters, either Peychaud or Angostura brand
• 2 orange wedges, sliced 1/2-inch thick

Cynar Biere

• 1 oz Cynar
• 1/3 oz lemon syrup
• 14 oz beer

Choke Artist
from The Art of the Bar, by Jeff Hollinger and Rob Schwartz

• 1 ounce Cynar
• 1 ounce Gran Centenario Anejo tequila
• ½ ounce fino sherry
• 5 dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters No. 6
• Extra-wide orange twist for garnish

Combine the Cynar, tequila, and sherry in an ice-filled mixing glass and stir. Add the bitters to a chilled snifter and roll around to coat the glass. Pour the Cynar and tequila mixture into the snifter. Garnish with the orange twist.

I still cannot believe how many bartenders butcher such a simple drink. They are able to whip out satisfying chick-tinis with ten different ingredients and please the lady folk, but they cannot hit the mark on a drink with three ingredients of equal parts? Pretty soon I will have to start interviewing bartenders before I order a drink.

So far, my biggest Negroni pet peeves are:

Serving Up
This drink is to be served on the rocks. Given the red hue of the drink, it can easily be mistaken for a fruity chick-tini. No self respecting man wants to be thought of as a chick-tini drinker.

Wrong Twist
There are a few different variations on the proper style of orange to go with the drink. The best recipes call for a flamed orange peel. I have only seen that done at one old-school bar in NYC. Chances are you will never see this done as it is labor intensive and most bartenders don’t give a crap.

Other variations call for an orange slice. This is quite acceptable as well, but not my preferred variation.

My favorite “middle ground” is an orange twist. Although, I am not talking about one of those pre-sliced twists that have been sitting around since the shift start at 4PM. I want a fresh twist sliced out of an orange with my glass in immediate range of all the orange zest oil that will shoot out. This gives such a favorable sweet subtleness to the drink. Mmmm. Orange oil.

Wrong Ingredients
Given the drink is three ingredients of equal parts, how can anyone manage to f- this up? Seriously…..1.5 oz gin, 1.5 oz sweet vermouth, 1.5 oz gin. Done!

Too bad it is only 10AM. If it were past Noon, I would mix myself up a favorable Negroni

First, a quick and dirty before/after benchmark*

M5000

jm___@s___new:~
> ptime gcc hello-world.c

real        0.050
user        0.022
sys         0.014
jm___@s___new:~
> ptime ./a.out
Hello World
real        0.005
user        0.000
sys         0.001

4810

jm___@s___:~
> ptime gcc hello-world.c

real        0.148
user        0.002
sys         0.018
jm___@s___:~
> ptime ./a.out
Hello World
real        0.040
user        0.001
sys         0.005

* Yeah. This is one of the lamest benchmarks you can run for a multi-processor machine. I cannot wait to do some real application benchmarking.

uname output

uname -a is: SunOS s___new 5.10 Generic_120011-14 sun4u sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise

64 GB Memory

Memory size: 65536 Megabytes

32 Hardware Threads @ 2150 MHz

============ Psrinfo ==========
Status of virtual processor 0 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:19.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 1 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 2 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 3 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 8 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 9 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 10 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 11 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 16 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 17 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 18 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 19 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 24 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 25 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 26 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 27 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 32 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 33 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 34 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 35 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 40 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 41 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 42 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 43 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 48 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 49 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 50 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 51 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 56 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 57 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 58 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 59 as of: 03/29/2010 17:47:03
  on-line since 03/29/2010 16:44:20.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 2150 MHz,
	and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.

From: “Russian women” <jed@mich__wicz.org>
Subject: Still single? look at my profile, Olga from Russia

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I am sticking with my beloved Time RXS pedals. The cleats are walkable, the pedals slip in easy and the are low [no] maintenance. Sure they may crack after 2-3 years, but I guess I can live with that tax.

My regular order from drugstore.com was lost in the ether. Kudos to drugstore.com for “getting it”. I called them up about the lack of goods on a Saturday and within five minutes:

• They confirm it should have arrived
• They give me the option of refund, store credit or reshipment
• The delivery is upgraded to three-day shipping for free
• An email confirmation is waiting in my inbox before I hang up

Wow. If only everyone on the interweb did business this way.

I wonder if they will figure out my new mailing address.

Yup. There’s your problem!