Pizza pizza!

September 13, 2003

Last night just out of curiosity, I started digging through the access log for my website to see if anyone from Beloit had been looking at my website. Most of the people who I know who read my site have either graduated or aren’t going to Beloit anymore, but I was just curious anyway.

The nice thing about looking for sites from a specific place, especially Beloit, is that all the IP addresses (the unique number every computer connected to the Internet has) start with the same prefix, 144.89. I just searched through the log for “144.89″ and I found a bunch of entries, meaning SOMEONE from Beloit’s been reading my site from time to time. Then I found some more, and some more. I found at least six or seven unique IP addresses, so out of curiosity, I set about trying to figure out who they were. That’s no easy task, though. Each student at Beloit is given their own IP address based on their box number, so once I knew the IP address, I go to the college website ITS section and with a little testing you can find out the box number. Once I had the box number, I dug through last year’s “Who’s Where” directory for campus, looking at every box number for all 1200 students.

Now don’t worry, system administrators can’t do this for every website you visit if you’re concerned about privacy on the Internet which I know we all are to a certain extent. For one thing, Beloit is unique in the respect that they issue individual IP addresses you keep as long as you’re at the college, and that’s different than most other Internet providers who assign their users one randomly from the pool they have access to. The other thing that’s unqiue about Beloit is that they allow students (or former students and people in the know such as myself) to access their database of IP addresses based on box numbers. You need a student directory to get the final details of who it is, also, which I just happen to have.

OK, that was a little more detailed than I’m sure most of you care about. So anyway, I find a bunch of IP addresses in there from Beloit and I go about finding out who’s been knocking at my door. I didn’t know ANY of them except one, and I don’t know why they’d access my site. Even if it wasn’t that person and it belonged to the person who “inheirited” their IP address after graduation, I still wouldn’t know them. Mainly a bunch of random people, it seems. There were some IP addresses I couldn’t identify and didn’t belong to students, which means they were staff or faculty computers. Kind neat. There actually have have been more than the figure I quoted above, but I didn’t feel like digging all the way through the log looking up every person I could. It’s a tedious procedure to dig through box numbers for 1200 students, let me tell you. Interesting nonethless. So for any Beloit people who randomly access this page, welcome.

I had a nice dinner tonight, another pizza. Last time I made pizza was with my Dad, but it didn’t come out too well due to the cheese I used and the pans that he has. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he has pizza pans, but I don’t like them too much, and I prefer mine that I bought at good old Wal-Mart in Beloit. So anyhow, I set out to rectify my errors from the last time, so I decided to go without cheese. I mean look at it this way–I’d need at least 16 oz. of cheese to cover a pizza with the size pan I have, and that’s almost 100 grams of fat right there. Holy moly. Anyhow, for years I’ve been meaning to make a pizza without cheese just to try it out, so I figured that tonight would be the best time to try it out. A bit healthier, I’d say.

So for toppings, I decided to stay healthy–chicken breast, onion, and green peppers. The crust and pizza sauce I used are the best recipes I’ve ever found, hands down. The sauce is the most flavorful I’ve ever tasted (and I’ve had a lot), and the crust was nice and chewy the way it’s supposed to be. I didn’t get to use Walla Walla sweet onions, alas, since the growing season is over with, but any old yellow onion works nicely.

I also decided to roast some garlic to put on the pizza, but the last time I tried that (a year ago this weekend, I might add, which was the last time I made a pizza with chicken on it from scratch, too) the roasted garlic didn’t come out right. Well I had the right idea a year ago, but the recipe I followed screwed me over on time and temperature in the oven. The one a year ago said 20 minutes at 200 degrees (and yes, I double checked it then AND today, and it still says that), but the one that worked properly today said an hour at 400 degrees. Quite a difference. If you’re not familiar with the results of roasted garlic, you drizzle olive oil on it and cook it in the oven, and when it’s done you can literally squeeze the garlic out of the head like a paste to put on crackers or whatnot. If you squeeze it onto pizza, though, it works just as well.

I had cut the top 1/3 off the head of garlic, though, which left some chunks that I would normally toss, but instead I sauteed my chicken with the bits of garlic not being roasted, some thyme, and some seasoned pepper. That came out very well. So the final product was garlic and thyme sauteed chicken, a head of roasted garlic, green peppers, and onion on a pizza with no cheese. And of course a healthy dose of oregano on top for flavor (not that there wasn’t any in the sauce and crust already). The final result was hands down, the best pizza I’ve ever had–at least in my memories on the last five or six years. If you’ve never tried pizza without cheese before, give it a shot. It’s a great way to eat it, especially if you have a nice, flavorful sauce. One warning, though, you need to let it cool off before eating. Even just a couple of minutes. When you bite into pizza, it’s the sauce that burns your mouth, not the cheese, most of the time. Imagine what it’ll do without the cheese there. Thankfully I knew better, but it’s a word of warning, especially if you like extra sauce like I tend to.

Incidently, the crust that I used can be found at Allrecipes.com here and the sauce at the same site here should you get a hankering to try it yourself. It’s not hard, just requires some time and patience. And a pizza pan of your own, of course. You can’t borrow mine.

I liked the pizza so much, unfortunately, I ate five pieces. I deliberately bought salad makings so that I would have other food to eat with my pizza, but it was so good I couldn’t help it. I would have eaten myself to death if I’d had a lot more of it. THAT’S how much I liked it. Yes Dad, chicken on pizza is fantastic, as long as it’s flavored right. It just takes a sense of adventure and you can break free of the standards (like eating a Gardenburger sometime, Julie!) and try something new. Wait, did *I* say that? Hmmm, interesting. I still consider myself a picky eater, though.

All I have to say is thank goodness I made the pizza without cheese. The whoel thing was pretty low in fat, but it’s still a lot of calories going into me without exercise. I take the weekends off, after all. I may go jogging tomorrow if it cools down, however. I didn’t do anything on Friday, either.

The rest of my night will be spent finishing the movie “Payback” wsith Mel Gibson. I already watched “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” tonight while I ate, but I like “Payback” too. It wasn’t quite what I expected when I first saw it, but I saw it on a date in the theater with a girl I then later went on to date, so I have some fond memories of it. After that…well, the sky’s the limit. Nothing to do tomorrow, so I can sleep in. Not that I don’t usually, but hey, it’s a nice feeling to know that you can.

Oh and one last thing. This weekend is Folk and Blues at Beloit, one the few things that I can honestly say I miss about being at school. I hope my friends that are still there are enjoying it and making the most of their time there, because once it’s done, it’s done.

Night all.

Posted in Beloit, Geekery, General