Thursday, March 31, 2005
Pea Soup
I’ve been meaning to mention that I made pea soup out of the Easter ham bone. First time ever, without following a recipe…
It’s better than my grandmother’s.
It’s probably the best pea soup I have ever had.
How do I do that! It’s as if I missed my calling. When Deb tasted it she said I had a talent. But then, she knew that already.
Basically it was the bone with more meat than necessary still on it, boiled in a full crockpot (16 cups of water or near it) for a couple hours, more meat added, peas added, meat trimmed off the bone and bone eventually removed, plenty of black pepper, a couple or few dashes of onion powder, a small dash of celery salt, and cooking a couple more hours (it was probably 5 - 6 in all).
It’s also the meatiest pea soup I have seen. I could have stripped more off the bone before sacrificing it to the soup pot, not added extra, and still had what would be considered a meaty soup. I rather like it this way. It’s thick, too. Once it sat in the fridge overnight, even when microwaved you could eat it with a fork and not miss much of it.
I’m thinking I should try making a variant of it that can be done without having a leftover ham bone, in smaller quantity, and formalize a recipe. Seeing how cheap the peas were reinforced my increasing belief that I could have eaten even cheaper - or as cheaply with more variety - when I was single, with more scratch cooking of the sort that’s more fun to do for multiple people.
I use celery salt in many things, usually in small amounts, and have converted Deb to experimenting with it. It just seemed right in the pea soup. Most of the flavor came from the smoky meat, but perhaps the pepper, celery and onion enhanced it.
Radio Blogging and Right Wing Nomenclature
While we were listening to Jeff and Bill on the radio via computer, in which they featured Glenn, Deb suggested that we need a better term than theocrats for conservative moonbats.
For some reason I promptly came up with “rightwads” and couldn’t think of anything better. Strangely enough, others have already coined and used that term. Besides, it’s not as funny as moonbat.
Any ideas?
Incidentally, the radio show was excellent, and not merely because Glenn is highly entertaining. Recommended.
West Wing Last Night - Spoiler Alert
It’s hard to believe there is just one episode left. It seems probably Santos will be the President, so how does he get out of the deadlocked yet slightly behind Russell position? I was thinking he should get a popular figure from California as his VP choice, much as Russell did with Baker and Pennsylvania, tipping the delegates to him there. Can’t wait to see what they come up with. Perhaps Russell will be with Vogler when the cruel bus comes along.
Anyway, I was just as intrigued by the space station subplot. It wouldn’t surprise me if there is a military space vehicle, and sad as it may be, I would be inclined to agree it’s not worth the three lives (two? two and a half because non-Americans count for less?) to give away the secret to save the astronauts.
I couldn’t help wondering where the Soyuz capsule that can bring down three people was. If they mentioned a reason it was gone, I didn’t catch it. One of the stupidest decisions ever connected with the station, once of course you have the station project and plan to run with it, was cancellation of the roomier escape capsule.
My thought was for some compromise; perhaps a known rocket configuration that could be launched unmanned and reach there with cargo of additional air for the station, to keep them going long enough for a rescue. However, that would ruin what looks to be a muli-show storyline…
See, the eight years is winding down. The administration will change. Staff will go. So why not have CJ go out with a bang? White House chief of staff leaks a national security secret to Drudge - whatever they’re calling him in that universe - and naturally gets found out and in trouble for it, at least to the point of having to resign, all because she can’t bear to see the astronauts not rescued.
Or not, since I have no idea what they actually plan. You never know with these writer types, eh?
I also see the Charlie storyline as an interesting endgame twist. Though it might be cool to see him as part of a Santos administration, no matter who his father in law is.
I’m also wondering just how much of a cliffhanger the final episode will be. Will we know who wins the general, or are they saving that for the Big Season Opener?
Anyway, it’s Santos I expect they plan to win, but I expect we’ll see Vinick, who totally rocks and is well played by Alda, in the administration.
Thoughts?
Hooray! But We’re Jealous…
LaShawn appeared on MSNBC for a blogosphere roundup and mentioned the engagement of FrankJ and SarahK.
We never got mentioned on TV! So we’re officially jealous. But wait… They also got mentioned in the Washington Post.
Sheesh.
Oh well. That’s what we get for being pioneers.
Your Daily Sadie
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Box those socks!
So Sadie’s finally become an expert at removing her socks. It’s a good thing for her poor little feet that it’s supposed to warm up soon, because the put-the-socks-on-the-baby game has already lost its appeal. Of course, it’s just a preview of the put-the-clothes-back-on-the-toddler game that we will no doubt be playing in an amazingly short period of time. This girl is going to be our nature child. I can see it already.
Jurisdictional Disprudence
This strikes me as very wrong. You telecommute from Tennessee to New York, going to NY in person only seldom. New York requires payment of taxes on 100% of your income from the NY employer.
All well and good, but what if your state also has income tax, and also claims tax on that money? I can just see dueling state tax agencies. Or perhaps they’ll be playing tug of war, with the telecommuter in the role of rope.
An Oddity
I recently happened to look at the internal stats for traffic available through the Hosting Matters control panel, and found that our bandwidth was significantly higher than it used to be, if not yet in any danger of overages (oddly, we are about a gig and a half below what I thought was our limit, but they say we have used only 52%). I also found that some 10% of it in the past month was for one particular image; the second highest traffic item after the main page, which accounted for about 72%. Nothing else amounted even to as much as 3%.
That was the 800 pixel version of this picture:
I couldn’t figure out where it was linked exactly. It’s currently at 8.44% of our March bandwidth and has had 12,928 hits for the month.
So I enabled hotlink protection. If it’s not embedded in or opened from AV, it errors. Though I just loosened it to work if you type a direct URL into a browser address bar. Which seems to have worked for previewing in w.bloggar, where I edit most posts, as well.
Since I enabled hotlink protection, another funny thing has happened. Google Images. Tons and tons of hits in Site Meter, ones that never showed up before, from Google Images. They come up for a variety of pictures, including some of my family, Kerry-related stuff, and even Jennifer Finnigan (sorry, not nude).
However, the most popular one currently, viewed many times a day through Google Images, is the 800 pixel wide version of this one:
Why that one? I have no idea. It’s cute, but why? It’s probably 80 or 90% of the Google Image hits, most of them foreign.
And why did the hits from Google Images not show in Site Meter until I disabled hotlinking? That’s just wrong.
Site Meter truncates the long URL associated with the Google Images hits, so it’s hard to tell the exact context. The Sadie pictures do not come up if you search Accidental Verbosity on Google Images. Only a fraction of the total ever posted do, including some family pictures and the New England blogger bash pictures. I wonder what people are searching for to bring those up.
Ah, I should note that as far as I can figure, the hits for Sadie and the Dragon come from here. I forgot about that. The number of hits from that, our top external referrer, corresponds closely to the number of hits for the Dragon picture.
Carnival of the Vanities Is Up
One of the biggest reasons neither to have CotC on Wednesday, nor to split it and have half fall on Wednesday, is Carnival of the Vanities, which helped inspire CotC. Who’d have thought the two would be similar in size, or that CotC would perhaps become bigger?
At any rate, this week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up. It’s hosted by Eric Berlin, who had great fun adding an April Fool’s twist: Fake entries. Will you be fooled?
Never Cold Call
Interestingly, there is a Sales & Cold Calling Blog, which unlike the name may sound, is dedicated to eliminating the practice of cold calling.
I have never done that myself, but there have been times it’s been suggested. The thought makes me physically sick and I don’t think there is any way I could possibly ever do it, to the point where I would probably quit a job if it were made a requirement. Speaking of tipping points.
Part 2 Carnival of the Capitalists Plus Feedback Requested
It’s Wednesday, so part 2 of the experimentally 2-part March 28 edition of Carnival of the Capitalists is up at The Mobile Technology Weblog. Part 1 was here.
Please be sure to check it out so the part 2 entries get some eyeballs too. One of the predictable problems with breaking it in two is that it requires two links in the same week from Glenn Reynolds, who has supported CotC since before it was unleashed on the world. That’s a lot to ask. It remains to be seen whether he will link part 2, but it’s not looking good so far.
Rather than rewrite for the blog, here is what I wrote in my e-mail to the CotC list, announcing it was up:
It would still be interesting to know how people view the 2-part experiment, so feel free to e-mail and/or comment. A very small number of readers opined, but those were almost universally negative. Since that included me, chances are this will not be repeated.
More importantly, do any of you have thoughts on how things might be streamlined for reading or creating each CotC? It typically takes a host about six hours. A typical reader is going to skim through and only click and read selected posts, which I personally find easier if they’ve been categorized, even though when I hosted I found categorizing too much additional bother to do formally.
Would there be merit in having a set array of categories, with the bloggers who submit entries specifying which category they mean to be in?
Would there be merit in the hosts being more selective about what to include? Currently they are free to exclude entries, but are encouraged to include anything on topic.
Would there be merit in narrowing the scope of what is considered on topic?
I am not sure there is any real need to change anything, at least not yet, but it can’t hurt to see what other people think.
Feel free to comment here or e-mail me with your thoughts.
Update:
Adding this post to today’s Beltway Traffic Jam.
Your Daily Sadie
Captcha Now Enabled
We finally got some comment spam after upgrading to Expression Engine. Four of them overnight. Oh, the humanity!
Worse, they were posts where the comments were closed. We have a strict closure after ten days, which I hate having to do. Perhaps we’ll change that, if it’s not going to stop spammers. I don’t like that it makes any previous comments received no longer viewable.
Anywho, I believe the spammers found a loophole. In pMachine and other products, posts are referenced by sequential ID number. What could be easier for spammers? All they have to know is what file and location on your server is the one that handles comments, and access it programmatically.
In Expression Engine, post URLs are not numeric. This one, for instance, will end in captcha_now_enabled, rather than a number. Except the posts still have ID numbers and can technically still be referenced that way too. Doh! Apparently EE has been “out there” long enough, and become widespread enough, it became worth bothering to figure out.
So I have just turned on captchas. That’s the graphic showing a word you have to type in for your comment to be accepted. It was nice not to need it. Oh well.
Meanwhile, I think I figured out why people have trouble with our trackbacks. Each one has a security code at the end, allegedly usable one time only before it changes, and you have to click the trackback link to copy and paste the current URL that includes the code at the end. Trackbacks are also throttled to five per hour, though that’s not likely to be an issue except possibly when hosting something highly linked like a carnival. Anyway, while it’s possible the security code function acts up and causes problems, I suspect that some people copy the trackback link URL rather than clicking through and copying the coded version. Now you know.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
3 weeks past a year
QuitMeter Counter courtesy of www.quitmeter.com.
Minimum Wages and Optimum Ages
Coyote Blog has an excellent post on the problem of minimum wage, with specific examples of the consequences of such laws from his business. To me, minimum wage has always been illogical and damaging on the face of it; sort of an “any idiot can see that” kind of thing.
Yet if we’re stuck with it, I can see the logic applied in the last West Wing episode. In that, several Republicans were willing to vote for a higher Federal minimum wage. Why? Because of variations in state minimums, creating potential job flight.
However, that doesn’t do anything for the economic harm done in absolute terms. Which you’ll get a great taste of in the post I linked.
On another note, older people rock as employees. Not so much if they are in a position or on at a time when speed is of the essence, but in general, for their experience and reliability. I was astounded to read that he has some employees who are over 90.
Grand Rounds Is Up
This week’s Grand Rounds, a collection of medical blogging links, is up at Over My Med Body!
Your Daily Sadie
Monday, March 28, 2005
Time flies: six month edition.
So Sadie will be six months old tomorrow, which means that six months ago right now I was waiting patiently for my chicken broth supper and starting to get just the slightest inkling that I should have blown off the nurse who told me not to eat on my way to the hospital and gone and gotten myself that last guilt-free-because-I’m-eating-for-two-here-dammit Big Mac before I showed up for the excrutiatingly slow process of verifying that my body really wasn’t in the mood to have a baby that day. If I had it to do again I would have made somebody at the office check me before they sent me to the hospital, so that I would have known that I was sitting just where I was a week earlier and the pit wouldn’t be coming to the game until the next morning and that the risk of being sick from having eaten was close to zero and the risk of feeling awful from not eating was pretty much 100%. Not that I cared all that much at the time, but everything is easier to face on a full belly, and as it turns out I got to face a lot in the following couple of days, and starting off on the right foot would have been nice.
I never wrote up her birth story, something I don’t think I’d find at all strange if I hadn’t fallen into the habit of hanging around bits of the web where such things are popular, and I don’t suppose I’ll do it now, though enough time has passed that I can look back on the event almost fondly now. There’s a weird stigma about daring to say that you had a lousy birth, and believe me, I still feel guilty about being unhappy with the process given the awesome outcome. I am very, very happy that Sadie and I both made it out healthy. I’m also very, very happy that I can elect a C next time and I’ll never have to go through that again. Fair enough, I figure.
It’s almost impossible to believe that my life didn’t start six months ago. I remember life before Sadie, but in those washed-out-sepia-tones of ancient photographs. It’s damned hard to believe that in only six months she’s gone from that adorable, squalling, red-faced bundle of needs to the bright-eyed babbling little hellion she is now. The girl who couldn’t lift her head is now rolling across the room and sits up for as long as she pleases. The girl who didn’t want to nurse not only nurses like a champ now, but eats a wide variety of food and eagerly. Absolutely amazing.
Bloggers Marrying Bloggers: It’s Catching On!
They will join us in being married because of blogging. I wonder how many other married couples have gotten together on account of their two blogs? It would be cool to know of any.
At any rate, Sarah’s announcement (tissue alert) is here, and’s Frank’s is here.
Congratulations!
Carnival of the Capitalists
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is something of an experiment. Russell has divided the entries in half, posting part 1 today, with part 2 to follow on Wednesday.
Personally, I don’t think it’s ideal, and I suspect that will be the consensus. Still, experimentation will tell us for sure. I’ve already been copied on one negative feedback e-mail, which makes the good point that Wednesday is the day for Carnival of the Vanities; something we considered when choosing Monday originally. There is an address provided for feedback over there.
In any event, here is part 1 of this week’s CotC.
The second part is planned for Wednesday at The Mobile Technology Weblog, and I will similarly announce it.
Er… the “next” Carnival of the Capitalists will be hosted by Law & Entrepreneurship News.
Send your entries to cotcmail -at- gmail -dot- com, or use the Gongol.com Submission Form, or use the Universal Carnival Submission Form.
Remember the new deadline is Sunday at 3:00 PM, subject to whether the host chooses to change it.
Your Daily Sadie
Ham. It’s What’s For Dinner For Days.
Speaking of food, I made us a big Easter dinner that was excellent, if I do say so myself.
I bought a spiral sliced half ham that was a hefty 12 lbs. That was yummy, but was nothing more than following cooking instructions.
With it we had potatoes, mashed by Deb, carrots, some especially tasty asparagus, and candied sweet potatoes. I saved out a hefty amount of plain sweet potato for Sadie, so we’ll see if she likes that as much as she did the baked version.
To make the candied sweet potatoes, I peeled a couple large specimens, cut them lengthwise, sliced them, boiled/steamed them in minimal water (we really could use another steamer or two, or a steam basket or two made for regular pans; everything but the asparagus got “boiled"), and when they were done put them into a deep frying pan where I had melted 1/3 stick or so of butter and mixed it with a couple big spoonfuls of brown suger. Heated, flipped, stirred, let it get all coated and gooey, and voila. It’s delicious, yet simple. It might have been improved by thicker slices, perhaps barely done when put in the sweet mix, rather than already falling apart done. There are recipes out there with all kinds of embellishments, but simple works and reminds me of what my mother made, rarely, when I was a kid.
My next project will be to make pea soup. I have the ham bone with a ton of meat still on it, and could possibly add some of the meat I carved off. Ended up with leftover ham in two of the gallon Ziploc bags, and the bone in a third pending my soup experiment. Any suggestions? Seems simple enough.
Barbecue Shredded Beef
Roche Brothers had one of their $1.99/lb sales on London broil, not to be confused with $5.29 for 90% hamburger, so I bought three of them. The only problem was, we had poor results freezing them last time, and we rapidly needed to use the two that were left after we made steak burritos with the first.
I found a recipe for shredded beef and adapted it for the amount I had, and for not having an onion and cloves of garlic. The source recipe called for 5 lbs of chuck cut into about 4 inch cubes. Here is what I did:
Start with:
Beef, in this case steak, just under 2.5 lbs
About a cup of water
More than 1/8 but less than 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
(Original called for 1/4 cup for 5 lbs meat; I went heavier than halving it for the reduced portion.)
1/4 cup or so brown sugar
Cut the beef into chunks. Mine were a bit more than an inch in two dimensions and a couple inches in the third.
Put it, water, vinegar and brown sugar in crock pot on high. This was barely enough for that to work with our big crock pot. I’m not sure how it would work in a pan on a stove. I suspect something like it could be done, adapting appropriately. I left it in there something like five hours. Basically you get it cooked to where it shreds easily. It can be turned low part way through. I did the last part on low.
Once you have cooked the crap out of the beef, remove it from the pot, and pour off much of the liquid, saving it to add back as much as needed. In my case, that was all of it. Shred the beef with a knife or fork. Toss it back in. Add to it:
A cup or so of ketchup. Original was 2 3/4 cups for 5 lbs but I was low so used just over a cup and it worked well.
1/2 tablespoon dry mustard
Dash or so garlic powder or to taste (garlic in original)
Dash or so of onion powder or to taste (onion in original)
Slight dash of red pepper or to taste (not in original)
All of this is very customizable. It could be more tomato or less, more vinegar or less, sweeter or less, spicier or less (the amount I used barely registered as there except the mustard, which was a direct adaptation from the original 5 lb recipe).
Add in enough of the original liquid to give it a nice consistency. Stir it up and cook on low until ready to serve.
We served it on bulky and torpedo rolls, and added some cheddar cheese. It made six ample sandwiches, and garnered possibly the biggest raves from Deb of anything I have ever made. It’s going to become a regular thing for us, and a good excuse to buy cheap beef when available.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Your Daily Sadie
From today! Less than an hour ago!
Can You Get the States Right?
Now this is a bit more challenging than the usual geography quiz games bandied about. Via Bogie, it’s a place the states quiz that starts out blank and presents the states in random order. It gets easier as more states are in place, but I was wowing Deb by placing states like Kansas almost correctly on blank swaths.
My score was 90%, or 45 of 50 perfect, with an average error of 9 miles, completed in 640 seconds. I haven’t tried a second pass at it. My first state on that round was Pennsylvania, which I am still kicking myself for having in the right place and then moving slightly west, with the nub farther southwest against Lake Erie. My first position was almost exact.
When we homeschool, I am going to be responsible for geography. We decided that long ago. Just as Deb is going to be responsible for most math.
Update:
Second pass was 48 perfect, 96%, average error 3 miles, 389 seconds, and one of the two that was off was way off because I was distracted by Sadie being cute and dropped it prematurely. That round started with Idaho on the blank map, which I placed perfectly. Go me!
Saturday, March 26, 2005
What’s the Real State of Real Estate?
One of my favorite topics to idly speculate about has become hot in recent days, starting when I saw Steven Taylor‘s post, positing that the situation with housing (hmmm… what about commercial real estate, and how closely are those tied together?) is structurally different from that of the dotcom bubble.
As often happens, this provoked a related post from James Joyner, who describes his own experiences, noting the regional nature of the market and the increased exposure of those with adjustable rate mortgages.
Of course, people who have financed a high percentage are in greater danger as well, depending on how much their property has appreciated before a crash, if any, occurs. There are sufficient interwoven factors that it less likely to be as spectacular a wipeout as can happen with stocks, and the impact level will be highly individualized.
I haven’t decided for sure I believe there will be a crash, but I can’t help but expect a slowdown, at least. Anticipating being in the house buying market in the next three to five years makes this a topic of great interest to me. I’d rather do it after than before a crash, and then hope the recovery is solid and terms don’t become onerous.
Jonathan Wilde links to a post by David Bernstein, who predicts a market top within a few months. He also has a firsthand story of the last real estate bust.
And he notes the oddity of localities where houses go up and up, but rents stagnate. I found that interesting in that it does not appear to be the case around here, though rent always has an elasticity lag to real estate. I you own a rental property you bought for X and reasonable rent that makes it worth renting is Y, the reasonable rent Y need only adjust for increases in costs such as taxes, water, etc. Increasing to keep current with newly purchased properties is optional, gravy if you will, and typically rent would change no more than once per year, building in slow change.
Rents around here have not been more static than you might expect, and are higher than I could have imagined possible several years ago. My income certainly hasn’t kept up. Which is my fundamental concern about real estate prices; how can it go up and up and up when people’s incomes fall behind, and when everyone who can be a customer in a loose market has become a customer? Granted, there is a second time buyer factor. The first house is almost impossible. Appreciation on the first can make the second, bigger house less difficult to achieve, and perhaps that adds enough fuel to the market for staying power.
But I digress. Jonathan sounds a cautionary note, reminding us what happened in Japan. I must admit, Japan is in the back of my mind all the time as I ponder what’s going to happen.
We definitely have to buy after things correct themselves, or hope it keeps going long enough that we can get in on the ride without serious consequences.
I think it’s enough of a bubble that there will be some kind of adjustment that is clear, if not sharp and painful. I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens sooner rather than later. I could be wrong.
This post ought to refuel the large number of housing bubble Google hits we get here from my previous posts. That includes specific searches for housing bubble in northern Virginia, Fresno, California, and probably other places I’m forgetting. The Boston or eastern Massachusetts region would certainly be a prime place to find popping at some point. When it happened before, I don’t remember it being this heated. On the other hand, interest rates were higher and money was probably tighter.
If the topic interests you, be sure to check out the posts I linked:
PoliBlog
Outside the Beltway
Catallarchy
Volkh Conspiracy
No Mooning
Giant City, a fine blog that had disappeared for a while, is back full force. That includes an interesting post centered on questions about the nature of Iapetus.
Of course, there is probably just coincidence, logical explanations we simply don’t know yet, and limits to the detail of the graphics to help the speculation along. But wouldn’t it be fascinating…
Now Come The Burning Question Of The Season…
Cadbury Creme Eggs or Cadbury Caramel Eggs?
I still say caramel. You?
Kind of Like the Un-Cola
Heh. There is now a Carnival of the Un-Capitalists, inspired in part by Carnival of the Capitalists.
I won’t say “good idea,” but it’s certainly an intriguing idea and not really surprising. We’ve always invited and expected posts on abuses perceived or real, philosophically questioning or dissenting posts regarding capitalism, and that sort of thing, as part of CotC. If it’s perceived otherwise, or as unfriendly to that sort of entry, then it makes sense for an alternative to arise. That’s the nature of the medium and of ideas. It’s almost downright… capitalistic.
It’s Just One of Those Topics
So Glenn finally hopped on the razorblogging bandwagon and was surprised it drew so many comments (e-mails, in his case.
I could have told him it was a hot topic, based on my blogging on the topic of shaving implements.
