December 31, 2004
Malpractice
He wants to sue, but they told him he doesn't have a leg to stand on...
Just Might Be
Does it count if my plans include both duct tape and romance, but at different stages of the evening?
Bold As Love
Steven Den Beste has retired as an essayist, but fortunately his analytical skills are still being brought to bear, as in a comment here.
Oh Well
I had a brilliant insight this morning as I was waking up, one which I thought would actually change people's opinion on the subject. I started working up a list of the facts I would need to document in order to prove my case, and planning the web searches which would lead me to the evidence. Part way thru this process, a great big flaw in my reasoning came to light.
Ed has been fugged about it.
Goof Proof Ice Cream
This is simply the most reliable recipe we have found for homemade ice cream, giving consistently good results when my wee wifey turned successive Girl Scout troops loose with the recipe. Our son won Grand Champion in 4H when he was only 6 years old with this, in competion against teenagers. You can use any instant flavor pudding, altho we've been told not to use lemon pudding . I use chocolate fudge for chocolate for a richer flavor. Pistachio is good also. Some people like this better than fancy gourmet ice creams, but it doesn't have the chocolate intensity of my favorites, Godiva Belgian Dark and the Aldi Grandessa Chocolate Fudge.
Note that this recipe calls for uncooked eggs. We have no problems using these, but there is some slight risk involved. Maintain clean working conditions (I've seen washing the egg shells suggested), do not leave the unfrozen mixture standing out, and do not serve to the immune-impaired.
Goof Proof Ice Cream
1 large egg
1/2 cup sugar*
3 cp milk
1 small package instant pudding mix*
1 cup half & half
1 tsp vanilla extract.
In a large bowl, beat eggs until light & fluffy. Beat in sugar, milk and pudding mix until smooth. Stir in half & half & vanilla. Pour into ice cream canister. Churn freeze. Put in freezer to harden after churning. Makes 1 quart. The recipe can be doubled or tripled without adjustment for larger batches.
*For sugar restricted diets substitute sugar free pudding mix, 1/4 cp sugar
& 2 TBSP fructose.
If you want to make a rocky road type of ice cream, add the chunk ingredients after, churning but before putting into the freezer to harden.
December 29, 2004
All Jobs Are Odd
Les Jones is wondering what sorts of interesting employment people in the blogosphere have had. I've had my share. My resume describes my early history simply as "worked in a variety of industries and obtained an overview of the manufacturing process." This is clever bullshit of course, but by now that overview has more impact on my value than the fact that thirty years ago, with no specific skills or control over my vices, I couldn't hold a job. Among the products I helped produce were brushes for carwashes, musk oil aftershave and machined metal parts for hash pipes. I also spent a season mowing lawns in the ritzier suburbs (minimum wage but cash) and for a while did day labor out of the State hiring hall. One of the characters waiting alongside me there wasn't worried about getting hired that day, he could always just roll a drunk in an alley.
After a couple of years of this, I figured out how to change my direction. I took a course in welding at an adult trade school run by the Chicago Board of Education, and got hired at a funky little specialty fabricating shop. I stayed on there for over two decades, and helped it grow from seven employees to over forty. I did everything from digging the hole for the crane mast to outside sales and product design. The single most memorable thing I did while working there was to submit the Engineering Change Proposal which led the Naval Mine Warfare Engineering Activity (they would answer incoming calls "Nim-wee-ah, this is an unsecure line") to issue Revision D of Mil-F-17280. I made the earring I have worn continuously since the mid-eighties (the pierce itself is much older) from a scrap of welding wire in the alloy I identified which is uniquely suited to the requirements of rigging hardware for mine sweep gear.
We were in the process of trying to find a larger house to move to in a less expensive neighborhood in Chicago when I was sent up to Milwaukee to accompany our distributor's salesman into an end user facility. I arrived early enough that I stopped at a nearby grocery store, and picked up a soda, a chunk of cheese, and, on impulse, the free homes for sale magazine. The end result was that we pulled up stakes and relocated. Thanks to the Gingrich era "tax cut for the rich" we came out with enough cash that it didn't matter that I didn't have an actual job lined up when we arrived. I started out looking for something in industrial sales, purchasing or estimating, and had interviews in all three. What I was able to get was computer operations out on the factory floor, and then inside sales support for industrial control computers (until the manufacturer of the primary product line changed their marketing strategy, which led my employer to do the same). While working briefly at one little place I actually spent half my time cutting metal.
Given that it was my computer background that was getting me hired, even tho my twenty years with computers did not amount to any experience, I decided I needed to formalize my skills with some certification. I picked up the A+ technician cert after a quick skim of the Dummies guide and a couple passes thru the practice test, but the the Microsoft certs I got before Microsoft rendered the track I was on obsolete involved a lot of hours at an expensive computer school. While I was pursuing that, a staffing firm needed planeloads of geeks for a couple of long out of town weekends switching banks over to the computer systems of the Milwaukee bancorp which had acquired them. I usually referred to these contracts simply as "bank jobs".
That staffing firm becaming my primary job-hunting target, and a couple of months later I was one of two people they tapped to work as a test driver for a company launching a GSM mobile phone network. At first I simply drove while an engineer operated the call monitoring / data collection system, but by the time the network was implemented and we were no longer needed, I was not only planning my drives and operating the equipment, but reviewing the collected data for points worthy of analysis. After a summer of job hunting and renovating the rental property whe are now moving into, I got a short contract doing data collection for another cellular company rolling out a new technology, and just at that ended, I got a call from an engineer at the first company. He offered me "at least six weeks work" which in fact is now approaching two years.
I have reached the point where I function independently most of the time. I review customer care tickets and network statistics, and decide where I am going to drive for the day. I analyze the data I collect, and recommend parameter changes to the engineers. Most of them get made, and most of them work. In the last month, I have reduced the dropped call rate for several of our worst sites by thirty percent.
It isn't an odd job like some of the occupations listed in the discussion which prompted this post. It isn't an odd job like some my wee wifey has held. She had trained as an alligator wrestler before I met her, was one of the first woman apprentices in the Chicago Carpenters Union, and, for a while, commuted to Mars. It is however, one of those many jobs most people never consider, beyond the impact of the "can you here me now" dweeb in a competitor's ad.
That is what is so neat about Les's question. We don't think about the coopers and fletchers, the grips and gaffers, the hookers and strippers and bungee jump professionals, without whom the world could not function as it does.
Measuring Dumbness
Two quick questions:
1: Which is dumber, a box of rocks or a sack of hammers?
2: Which is dumber, a sack containing a few hammers, or a sack containing a large number of them?
December 27, 2004
Jacksonian Wilson
Last summer, during the run-up to the Presidential election, "Redneck Woman" went No. 1 after only 12 weeks on the charts -- and then stayed at the top for five weeks. I decided on that basis, Bush could be expected to win. The song is a litany of behaviors associated with the part of American society most closely linked with the Jacksonian strain of political philosophy. If the song was that popular then the mindset was too, among people the pollsters probably viewed as unlikely voters.
I finally got my hands on Gretchen Wilson's album, Here For The Party. There is a song on the album entitled "Homewrecker" in which said individual, sniffing around the singer's man at a bar, is advised
You can take it somewhere else
Or we can take it outside.
You can't get much more Jacksonian than that.
Situation Wanted
No, Aaron's Rantblog wasn't hacked. But this is urgent.
December 26, 2004
Intelligent Design
Dean Esmay linked to an article which describes the genomic mechanism which appears to explain how various breeds of dog evolved. I've read about these tandem repeat sequences before, and it appears that they function as a mechanism for facilitating mutation. Setting aside any discussion of an Architect of this miraculous system, it is clear that tandem repeat sequences allow evolution to function far more quickly. A mutation which causes, say, hemophilia, will never become common enough for the pattern to extend itself, and if a mutation were to arise causing shemophilia it would never propagate at at all, but a favorable mutation of a tandem repeat sequence lays the groundwork for more of the same.
Wolves distrust novelty, and would not normally choose to mate in the wild with a canine with floppy ears or spotted fur. They would never think to choose a mate for bloodline or herding behavior. It is only after humans became involved that the process of unnatural selection began. I had heard about a research project involving domesticated foxes, and the Glittering Eye happens to have found a description. If one were so inclined, the rapidity with which the foxes undergoing unnatural selection evolved the characteristics of domesticated animals could be taken as evidence that the Creator of evolution intended to give mankind dominion over the wild beasts of the land. One thing which is not so subject to debate is that the more one's dog differs from a wolf, the more intelligent design on someone's part (perhaps, for example a German butcher from Rottweill), was involved.
Saint Stephen's Day
Good King Sauerkraut looked out
On his feet uneven...
It should be noted by any Deadheads reading this that Saint Stephen was in fact stoned to death.
December 25, 2004
Excellent!
It isn't my first choice, but I could see why someone would want this car. My idea of a cool ride from that era would be more like one of these.
December 24, 2004
Hunterpuppy
It's been a while, but I finally have some new images of our canine, which just happen to be ready for posting on petblogging day. I spent a long time shopping for a digital camera which would do what I wanted, before determining that it made more sense to use 35 millimeter a while longer. So I dug out my thrift store Pentax and had at it.
She's almost a year old now, and about as big as she's going to get. She'll probably add some more muscle to her current fifty pounds She absolutely loves the snow and the cold weather, wanting to run and play as soon as she gets outside. These two show her after she settled down. Once I've got the hang of the f/stops and the viewfinder I'll post some action pictures. The ones I took in this session didn't really come out. I also hope to get some cat pictures, but I expect that I'll be needing strobe for that. Could be as soon as next Friday.
December 23, 2004
Jicama Pickles
Or maybe Picama Jickles, or you can throw in the Phillipine name for the root, and put together a blue ribbon tongue twister.
Jicama by itself does little for the tongue. It has, to put it politely, a delicate flavor. What it has in abundance is crunch. I love crunch, in cookies and in carrots. I seek it in pickles, but nothing comes close to a jicama for keeping its crisp thru heat and vinegar. You could use them in a standard dill pickle recipe, but that delicate flavor calls for something more substantial. Here are two variants found online long since, as I have tuned them.
Pickled Jicama
1 1/2 to 2 pounds jicama, scrubbed
2 tablespoons salt
Water
1 teaspoon mustard seed
1 teaspoon dry dill weed
1/2 teaspoon crushed dried hot red chilies
4 sprigs fresh cilantro
1 1/2 cups distilled white vinegar
1/2 cup finely chopped sweet onion
1/4 cup sugar
Peel jicama and cut into sticks about 1/2 inch thick and 5 inches long. Place sticks in a nonreactive bowl, sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of the salt, and add enough water to cover. Stir until salt is dissolved, then let stand at least 1 or up to 2 hours; drain.
Pack jicama upright into 2 wide-mouthed 1-pint jars. In each jar, put half the mustard seed, dill weed, chilies, and cilantro.
In a 2- to 3-quart pan, bring to a boil the vinegar, remaining 1 tablespoon salt, onion, and sugar. Boil, uncovered, for 1 minute, then pour hot mixture into jars to cover jicama. Let cool, then cover tightly and chill at least until next day or up to 1 month. Makes 2 pints.
Grampa's Sinkamas
1 large jicama
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup vinegar
6 cloves garlic
ginger, sliced - shorten a fresh root about a half inch by slicing thinly
red hot peppers - start with half a tee as above; I like'm hotter
water
Peel and cut jicama as above. Brine soak and drain as above. Boil sugar, vinegar, 2 cups of the water, garlic, ginger and peppers together. Pour over sinkamas in jar. Refrigerate when cool. This recipe, as found online, calls for garlic bread. That just makes a mess.
Either recipe can be hot processed per your best practice for storage.
Lack Of Snow
I've heard of individual Santas getting a buzz on, but I don't think anything like this would go on Up Over. Hat tip, semiskimmed.
Peedy, Eh?
Inspired by the twentysome hits a month I get which were referred from PDA pages, I've added a PDA page of my own. All it took was copying a script from the Scriptygoddess. It looks like it works okay when viewed in Firefox, but feedback, especially regarding colors, would be appreciated.
Et Sequelae
When a movie hadn't been created as the start of a series we don't tend to expect a sequel to be as good. Some movies simply shouldn't have sequels; do we really want to see Rick and Louis take on Rommell in the desert? How about Freddy Meets The Wolfman?
Sometimes a sequel turns out not only better than expected, but better than the original movie. Futureworld was a total flop, based on what people thought of Westworld, but should have become a cult film on its merits. Peter Fonda's final gesture is one of my all-time favorite movie lines.
The reason I'm thinking about sequels right now is that it is the season for Christmas movies, some of which other people like far better than I do. I love the original Miracle, and like most of the Christmas Carols (especially Fonzie's), but I could do without all of that Christmas Story but the sight of the little brother paralyzed by his winter gear. What I would really like to see is a sequel, set in the '80s, wherein the town's economy is saved by the solidity of the area bancorp after the Building and Loan follows so many of its ilk into real estate speculation and collapse.
Due Caution
Art Chrenkoff reviews the debate over an alleged human-rights violation at a security checkpoint. The guards are to be commended for being braver than this security team.
Firefight
In the middle of a mind-blowing description of urban battle in Iraq, Michael reveals the actual reason women are not suited for combat duty.
December 22, 2004
You Be's Onyx
I sent Amritas a note about Dean Esmay's post on education and Ebonics because I figured that as a linguist he would have interesting things to say about it (and also, I admit, in hopes of linkery). I got even more than I expected; credit for inspiring wordplay, a scholarly discussion of dialects and pidgins, and best of all, support for Dean's position on the compare-and-contrast approach to teaching standard English.
Growing up where I did, and living where I do (we "stay by" 27th and Vliet in Milwaukee), I'm familiar with English as it be's spoken in da 'hood. I'm also familiar with one of the most serious problems facing American society right now, the white supremicist memes spread among black school children. Bluntly telling students that the way they speak is simply wrong, rather than providing them with the alternative for comparison, reinforces the notion that their identity is embodied in the negative stereotypes of the inner city. Teaching them the method and value of, as Richard Pryor put it early in his career, putting on their white voice allows them to cling to their sense of self while still giving them the opportunity to advance in a larger society which, altho it is moving toward judging people by the content of their character, includes speech patterns in that judgement.
Update:
I made reference above to the use of "stay by" for "live at" and now note that there is an ongoing discussion of this substitution at the Language Log.
Flattery?
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but companies don't like it when you imitate their trademarks. Here is a collection of businesses which aren't quite named Kentucky Fried Chicken. Back when Colonel Sanders was an active part of promoting the firm, there used to be a fried chicken vendor at the Illinois State Fair called Kentucky Kernel. My mother-in-law used to insist on eating there every year, and every year she was disappointed. Interestingly, the brand name still survives as a breading mix, even tho the colonel whose coattails they ride has faded from the scene.
December 21, 2004
The People Of The Slogans
I was describing the portion of Chrenkoff's interview with Steven Vincent which is quoted at USS Neverdock to my wee wifey. I thought she would dig the concept of the people of the Slogans, but she needed an explanation. I offered as an example the woman I saw at the gas station yesterday wearing a button saying "War Leaves Every Child Behind."
A perfect slogan. It sounds good but is both meaningless and wrong. I wanted so much to light into her, but there is no way to argue with a slogan built on deeply held generalities. Beyond the simplistic notion that all war is wrong, especially if waged by the U.S., I also see zero-sum thinking. Any dollar spent on the military is expressly and specifically a dollar less for the government school monopoly, which could do wonderful things if we would only give it limitless funding. Unfortunately, these beliefs can only be countered by reasoned argument, and not by slogans, and so we will continue to have to deal with the people of the slogans for the foreseeable future.
I'd've Split
Blawger Ann Althouse was Christmas shopping, and her Bar Association credit card (which no doubt carries perks of specific value to a lawyer) educed a particularly nasty lawyer joke. My low-end engineering background has taught me the value of negative feedback as a control strategy, and such behavior from a store clerk warrants negative feedback. Unless the purchases could not be made elsewhere, and the items were the exact presents to please loved ones, I would have cancelled the purchase and left in a noisy huff. Telling a person spending money at your business that their death would make the world a better place does not approach the realm of good customer relations, and teaching store clerks good customer relations would make the world a better place.
December 20, 2004
I'm Number One
It gets worse. I'm number one and number two. This is for a Yahoo! search of - how to get a guy to notice you - because I liked the flow of "rye guy" and have used the word "notice" in a couple of post titles. Best way to get me to notice you? Turn up in my referrel log thru an unlikely search.
December 16, 2004
Firefox Up
Colby Cosh, who I will admit I hadn't read lately, makes note of the percentage of that law professor's readership who are using Firefox. It seems that my readers may be relatively savvy and Internet-immersed; I'm showing a 25% share for Firefox at the moment.
Udolpho reacts rather hostilely to the suggestion that Microsoft might actually be losing market share. He asserts that Firefox users were all already using Mozilla and are just upgrading, which is just silly based on the buzz I've seen. I'm seeing a 50% increase from the percentage of Mozilla users in April, the earliest month for which I have significant stats. I myself haven't used an alternate browser since Arachne, eight years ago.
Udolpho also asserts that the solitary change Microsoft would need to make in Explorer to make it competitive with Firefox is to incorporate a tabbed browsing feature. Again, silly. Popups are so rare in Firefox, at default settings, that my post about spotting one produced more comments than anything else I've written, including comments reporting that the problem has been noted and dealt with. Microsoft has known for years that browser users don't want to deal with popups, and, not perceiving any competition-driven need to improve, done zip squat nada about it. I love tabbed browsing, so much so that Explorer reduces my enjoyment of the OC-192 connection at work, but I never missed not having it. The effective unobtrusive elimination of popups is a selling point.
December 15, 2004
New Improved Future
In the animated future of my youth, factory work was to be done by anthropoid robots turning the cranks of existing machinery. Today's factory robot is more likely to resemble a space alien. The math required to control those six actuator legs to move the piece part in a series of straight lines is mind boggling. It is processor power which makes it possible.
December 11, 2004
Whoops
Anybody else notice that upon checking Sitemeter and changing pages, they get a popup ad in the background?
Update:
Fuzz commented on something I neglected to mention. Whatever they are doing is different enough that it works on Firefox, which is how I noticed it.
Slap!
Serenity offers a truly provocative suggestion, to little effect so far.
One Swell Foop
Everything else you need, after the blue mailbox.
Update:
It's aimed at a very different demographic, but they'll all think it's brilliant.
Fit To Print
The guy in his pajamas hunched over a keyboard may not be recognizably a journalist, but he is at least taking the place of The Man In The Street.
December 09, 2004
Indeed
I've had successful relationships with people with whom I'm astrologically compatible, and very difficult ones with people with whom my charts conflicted, and I would still be proud to use this argument.
I Beg To Differ
Owen thought it enough to proclaim that he agrees with Fuzz Martin's selection. I not only disagree with the choice, I reject the entire category. Christmas songs range from celebrations of the Birth of the Christ Child to Sting getting rowed by chestnuts, but there is no cutoff point between traditional and non-traditional. There have been songs about celebrating the holiday for centuries. If I had to single out a non-spiritual Christmas song, the choice would have to be Deck us all with Boston Charlie,.
High Beams
She had a pair of headlights you could read by....
Second Best?
When my wee wifey posted this "tried and true" recipe to her Blue Ribbon mailing list, she received an enthusiastic response from people who knew and loved the cake, but had lost the recipe. One of them offered the interesting tidbit that this cake had come in second to the original Tunnel of Fudge in the 1966 Pillsbury Bake-Off. Funny thing, tho. This week, shortly after herself promised to upload this recipe, I happened upon the book Cookoff : Recipe Fever in America, by Amy Sutherland, at the library. Turns out that the Tunnel of Fudge was itself the second place winner. First prize went to the Golden Gate Snack Loaf, a bread enhanced with process cheese spread and powdered onion soup mix. So all I can say for sure is that this cake has a well deserved reputation as a winner.
Kentucky Butter Cake TNT
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup butter
4 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla
Heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 10" tube pan. Blend cake ingredients at low speed till moist. Beat 3 minutes at medium speed. Bake 55-70 minutes.
Butter Sauce: 3/4 cup sugar 1/3 cup butter 3 tbsp water 2 tsp vanilla
In saucepan, combine ingredients over low heat until butter melts. Do not boil. Prick cake, 10-12 times with a long tined fork. Slowly pour hot sauce over cake. Let cool before removing from the pan. Sprinkle powdered sugar on before serving.
By the way, the original Tunnel of Fudge still works. You just have to make your own box frosting mix. Cocoa powder and sugar, in the proportions from your favorite frosting recipe. Extra fine sugar is best; look for generic beet sugar.
December 07, 2004
IANAL
I am specifically not a Constitutional lawyer (nor am I a wine expert) but my position on this issue was already in line with that of Professor Bainbridge. I've asserted that the ban on interstate tariffs should apply to Internet sales tax, but the applicability is even clearer here. Tariffs are commonly a protectionist policy; it is arguably unconstitutional for one state to block the purchase of products from another.
To really set the cat among the pigeons, my other assertion regarding the Constitution is that in the Second Amendment, the word State is used as a synonym for Condition.
December 04, 2004
Pick Any Two
Not from the list of live long and prosper, but from sweet light crude, the specific commodity name Roger L Simon used in linking to Hindrocket's exploration of recent trends in oil prices. I had already picked the two factors enumerated therein.
All Out
Do we want to organize a blogosphere drive to get him some more?
December 02, 2004
More Pumpkin
So you've made every pumpkin pie recipe posted to the Carnival, and you still haven't used up the case of pumpkin which seemed like such a bargain at the warehouse club. The rest of the world considers pumpkin to be a vegetable. We had a visitor from Australia who told us that pumpkin pie was one of the oddest things about U.S. cuisine. This recipe is the farthest from pie I could come up with.
Morrocan Pumpkin Soup
2 cans chickpeas
3 Tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
2 leeks (white and light green part only - or sweet onions) -- (about 1 1/2 cups) chopped
8 cups broth or bullion
2 cans pumpkin (not that silly pie stuff)
2 to 4 Tablespoon honey
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (or one cinnamon stick)
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
2 teaspoon salt
ground black pepper to taste
Heat the oil in a large saucepan over med-low heat.
Add the leeks or onions and saute until soft and translucent, 5 to 10 min.
Combine the broth, pumpkin, chickpeas, sugar, spices, salt and pepperin a large pot.
Heat until it just reaches the boiling point, reduce heat to low, and simmer.
If using the cinnamon stick, simmer for 15 minutes and discard stick.
Check for seasonings and adjust as needed. Add cooked leeks or onions, stir and simmer 5 more minutes.
Serve with a dollop of plain yougurt
By the way, if you have in fact tried all the pie recipes, a comparison review would probably draw more hits than posting a recipe.
The Perfect Gift
Not for me, but I have no doubt there is someone on your list who would love to get one of these. I just don't want to know the details.
December 01, 2004
Hooray Hooray
It's the First of December
We get back goodies
That we remember.
A Bright Bleat
Smirk. I have caught James Lileks in ignorance regarding one of the most pervasive ornaments in our lives. In today's Bleat he is complaining about the bright chang sound Microsoft Word makes when you save a document. He presumes that he is getting
the end result of three guys who spent a year figuring out the perfect sound, all the while knowing that if they set foot in Apple’s interface department they would feel like pimply mouth-breathing nerds with pocket protectors and damp cheesy skin who’d stumbled into an all-girl sorority kegger.
As a matter of fact he is getting the work of well-known sound artist Brian Eno, who found that creating eighty four tiny jewels broke a creative logjam for him.