Friday, June 30, 2006
Sorry, No Recipe
Tonight I made the best fried rice I have ever made. That’s what I did with the 3/4 pound of thin pork.
What really seemed to “make” the batch of fried rice was the use of green pepper and Vidalia onion I’d bought on the way home, not knowing they’d get used that way. While I was cutting the pork into little pieces, some onion and pepper, diced small, were cooking in butter on low heat. It wasn’t too different from the way I’d start out if I were making the sweet & sour pork dish my mother and sister used to make. Then some black pepper, garlic powder, red pepper, celery salt and especially powdered ginger and the meat, stirred enough to coat the meat somewhat. Covered and partially cooked, stirred/flipped the meat and added a couple teaspoons or so of brown sugar, cooked until done and a bit more to cook off a little of the liquid.
Piled the pork mixture to one half of the pan, added butter, added the rice, spritzed with some soy sauce, mixed slightly, then broke two eggs onto the rice, mixed that in, more soy, pulled the pork into the rice, mixed it up, a little more soy and I think I added another shake of ginger. Dumped in probably a cup of frozen peas, mixed those in, then did a series of cook covered a while, stir, cover and cook more, enough so thre are a couple or so instances where some of the bottom rice browns.
Damn, it was tasty. And potent, but without any overt taste of being “spicy.” If that makes any sense.
We’d actually decided just to cook the pork as a meat dish, with sides of rice and veggies. Deb thought I was attached to the idea of fried rice, though, and pre-cooked the rice to encourage me to do that. That worked out great.
The sad thing is, try as I may to duplicate it, the stuff will never turn out the same again, even if it somehow is just as tasty. This happens when I make what we’ve dubbed “random chicken.” Which implies it’s never the same, but it came out so perfect a couple weeks ago that I tried to repeat the flavor combination and failed. In fact, the attempt to repeat the super batch resulted in a merely acceptable batch, just from not getting the spice mix exact and having a smaller quantity of chicken. So I went back to random after that. Basically it’s chunks of chicken, cooked in butter and/or oil (started experimenting with olive oil, which really changes how the flavors carry and how it browns), with some combination of some or all of black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, red pepper, ginger, sage, rosemary, and savory. I started leaving out the celery salt as I started experimenting with the last three on the list. Sage seems to lose its flavor, or impart a bad flavor, if added too early and cooked to much, but done right it makes the chicken especially complementary with chicken Rice-a-Roni, which is heavily sage flavored. Savory has become my latest favorite, and seems more subtle than the sage. But I digress.
These Are Not Your Nephew’s Transformers
The Transformers were after my time, more of a thing for my younger brother and especially my nephew. I used to piss off my nephew by singing the start of the Transformers song with the words “the Transformers… Gobots in disguise” when we lived in the same house.
There is a teaser trailer at the Transformers Movie site. It really only sets the tone. But holy crap, what a tone it sets. I can’t wait to see the final result.
Via Opposable Thumbs at Ars Technica.
Oh Rubbish!
All the tenants in my office building have been notified that, effective tomorrow, about 90% of everything that was previously thrown in the dumpster may no longer be put there. Dumpsters are normally the last bastion of being able to throw away anything, but it looks like, unless some easy recycling option is made available, I will henceforth need to bring home most of the trash generated in the office. Except… we’ve received no notice from the town indicating changes, but the regulations the waste disposal company that handle the office dumpster are citing apply to all solid waste facilities in the state. Hmmm…
We already knew certain things were banned from disposal, like anything with a CRT. However, now all the plain white paper can’t be thrown out. Cans that have no deposits. Glass jars and bottles. Anything metal; no more throwing away dead power supplies. It would seem to apply to dead mice and keyboards, too. Most plastic containers. Most cardboard. Which means, since most of the corrugated I throw out is on behalf of the big client, I sure hope they come up with a way of handling it. They have previously had no recycling of any kind in place. I certainly haven’t.
Oddly, microwave ovens are about the only exception to the “white goods” clause, which is one of the parts that seems to be nothing new. I would think they would count somehow under the excluded metals, though.
It will be interesting to see what people in the building do and how seriously this is taken by everyone involved, including the waste disposal company. The notice is so last minute, nobody could possibly be prepared for it.
Guess I ought to put out any trash I can find before I leave here today.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Christina of Feisty Repartee.
The Theory of Money And Credit Goes HTML
I was excited to see Billy Beck reporting that The Theory of Money And Credit by Ludwig von Mises is now online.
Beck notes it’s on his list of recommended books, itself a fascinating post to read. I’m not so sure about some of the “know your enemy” selections, on which it’s heavy, but I found myself lusting after many of the titles listed… and contemplating rereads.
At any rate, it’s not as if I read the whole Mises book, but in referencing it in the college library for this old paper, it was hard to keep myself from getting sucked in, dry as it may be. It resonated.
Egg Foo Yong and What to Do With Pork
One of my favorite dishes from Chinese restaurants is egg foo yong… when it is done right. It’s one of my tests of “is this a good Chinese place,” along with General Gao’s chicken and the appetizers in general. Thought that last one it’d be mainly about the ribs and the chicken wings.
I never thought about it, but that’s ironic when compared to my test of a good breakfast restaurant. I almost always try a ham and cheese omlette the first time I go to a place for breakfast.
When I read Deb the recipe for egg foo yong that I found on rec.food.recipes, she noted that it was basically an omlette. Indeed. She thought it even sounded good, but not with the sauce. I’ve never tried it without, but most restaurants do serve it on the side.
What was funny is I found one egg foo yong recipe and a sauce recipe with it, along with three other posts with three entirely different sauce recipes.
I’d need a couple of ingredients - or more, if I used one of the fancier sauce recipes - but I am tempted to try making pork egg foo yong with the 3/4 lb of thin boneless pork I bought last night. I am open to other ideas, though, or I could use it in fried rice. Heck, again I’d want a couple other ingredients, but I could make stir fry. I never would have thought of making egg foo yong had I not seen the recipe, but it looks like the height of simplicity.
Here’s the egg foo yong recipe and the sauce recipe posted with it:
Egg Foo Yung
4 eggs
1/2 cup diced pork or shrimp
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 cup bean sprouts, cut to 1/2-inch pieces
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. white pepper
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
Crack eggs into large bowl. Do not break yolks yet. Add pork or shrimp, onion, peas, sprouts, salt, and pepper Coat a large nonstick skillet with oil and heat over high heat. While skillet heats up, use a large spoon to break eggs. Mix eggs and vegetables thoroughly. Ladle egg mixture into hot skillet, making 6 pancakes. Reduce heat to medium. Cook until brown on bottom, about one minute. Flip cakes over and brown the other side for two minutes longer. Place on platter. Cover with egg foo yung sauce (below).
Egg Foo Yung Sauce:
3/4 cup chicken stock
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cornstarch
1/8 tsp. sesame oil
2 tsp. oyster sauce
In a small saucepan, mix all ingredients. Stir until cornstarch is dissolved. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, stirring until sauce is thick and smooth (about one minute).
To make that I’d need onion, sprouts, and white pepper, which ought to be in my spice collection anyway. For the sauce I’d need chicken stock, sesame oil (which I’ve also long meant to have on hand), and oyster sauce.
Just to have them handy and for comparison - it’s no doubt possible to play around and make your own preferred variant - here are the other sauce recipes I found:
Egg Fu Young Sauce
3/4 cup chicken broth
teaspoon soy sauce
teaspoons sherry wine
teaspoons oyster sauce
1/4 teaspoon sugar
teaspoons cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons water
Bring all ingredients except water and corn starch to a boil. Dissolve corn starch in water, stir into mixture, bring to a boil until thickened.
Serve over Egg Fu Young.
taken from www.recipezaar.com/140361
Chinese Homestyle Gravy
1 cup soy sauce
1 can chicken broth
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup hoisin
3 Tbsp sherry or sake
1 cup water
1/8 tsp white pepper
1 tsp minced fresh ginger
3 chopped green onions
3 Tbsp corn starch—mixed with 1/3 cup cold water
1/2 tsp ajinomoto (optional)
Combine ingredients in a saucepan and thicken with cornstarch slurry. Use for noodles or eggs fu yung.
* Exported from MasterCook *
I had to look up ajinomoto to see what it was. It’s actually a company name, and apparently refers to MSG, for which they are best known.
Chinese Gravy for Egg Fu Yung
2 cup sliced mushrooms sauteed in 2 Tbsp bacon fat & 2 Tbsp oil
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
1/8 cup sliced green onion
1/2 cup Superior soy sauce
2 cans chicken broth
2 1/2 Tbsp corn starch—dissolved in 3/4 C of the chicken broth
1/8 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp MSG
1 tsp meinsee (bean sauce)
1 Tbsp hoisin
1 tsp Kitchen Bouquet
Heat the oil. Add the ginger, garlic, and green onion, then the mushrooms. Saute until soft; deglaze the pan with the soy sauce. Gradually add the chicken broth and remaining ingredients, adding the cornstarch solution last. Simmer until thickened. This produces a rich brown gravy that is slightly sweet and salty, and flavored with ginger and garlic.
* Exported from MasterCook *
Kitchen Bouquet is a browning and seasoning sauce.
I find it interesting that some of these have chunky items like mushrooms in them, as I have never had egg foo yong gravy that was anything but a basic brown liquid, with enough fat content to gel solid when refrigerated.
In Memory Of Acidman
“There’s nothing good about fireants.”
He used to cuss out the little buggers, and he got a kick out of this.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Call Me Any Any Time… Or Not?
When we go to our family doctor, we wait hours and hours to get in an see him, with the consolation being that when we have an emergency, we too will be able to get in and see him while other people wait.
And so it is that after 13 minutes on hold with not the normal nurse-receptionist or even the backup nurse-receptionist, we have an appointment at 2:15 for Sadie with not-our-doctor.
Total bullshit.
Absolute total bullshit.
And I didn’t think to ask if we could see him tomorrow instead. We’re sure she didn’t ask him if he’d fit us in. It’ll be all of a three minute visit, ending in either “looks like she buised her hipbone” or that kind of thing and “give her some ibuprofen and it’ll heal in a couple weeks,” or else “go see the specialist.”
Some random person filled in reception and didn’t know us. Or our doctor. Apparently it’s all well and good for him to have a policy of “call me!” It just goes completely astray in execution, especially when there are surrogate minions.
Anyway, after I made the appointment, and after I started typing this, we got sufficiently concerned and, well, angry, that I called back and canceled. Gave the reason of preferring to see our own doctor, and disconnected before the at least friendlier-this-time surrogate minion could verify he also has no openings tomorrow.
So what is wrong with Sadie anyway? Probably nothing that a little time and ibuprofen can’t cure. It’s borderline on whether to bother having it looked at; I just decided I ought to err on the side of caution, and it was worth spending yet another $25 for peace of mind and guidance. Of course, the tone of the reception drone initially was “have you been beating your kid?” Which was one of the factors weighed in deciding whether to take her. It’s obvious we haven’t, and our doctor would never dream of suspecting it or taking that tone. He’s the one who joked about seeing her for stitches under the chin when she manifested as an unstoppable climber.
The problem manifested itself in diaper changes. I lay her in the bassinet, unhook the diaper, and grab usually her right leg to lift her butt up to wipe her clean. She’s never been thrilled by the grab a leg thing, but it works.
Starting a few days ago, that made her scream in pain. She didn’t even seem to like to lay flat. Either leg, but more the right. If you lay her down flat now she cringes in anticipation, which makes us wonder if some of the reaction is not liking it because it used to hurt even if now not so much.
We’ve tried bending the leg and hip, prodding all over the place, trying to see if there was a locus of pain. Closest I came to a result prodding was one side of her lower back down near the hip.
Almost forgot; she seems to be pained by it if the diaper is fastened too tight, and the same few days ago she started fighting being put into the normal position and strapped into her car seat, almost as if it was hurting her. Not the agony of the grab leg and lift butt thing, but apparent discomfort that she gets over or tolerates enough to ride fine.
She had no obvious difficulties or changes to behavior. She can still walk, run, climb, stomp… but last night she was having clear difficulty climbing into and out of her chair at the kitchen table, even needing help. She falls in the tub and thinks nothing of it. She sits and bends her legs in the same ways that bother her if we have her on her back trying to identify the problem. I think I caught a slight limp earlier, and maybe there’s a little reversion to pointing her toes inward, but it’s hard to say. Mostly she’s fine. It’s very strange and subtle. Clearly not a broken bone, for instance. If it weren’t for the diaper changing hysteria, we’d suspect nothing. And the hysteria is clearly pain-induced. Or maybe “memory of pain” induced, in some part.
It’s probably a pulled muscle or deep bruise that doesn’t show on the surface, and will simply fade away. It’s the kind of thing that I wouldn’t take myself to a doctor for, but Sadie can’t really tell us what we’d like to know about it, and I decided to take advantage of the “family practice” pitch for once, to reassure us.
If it still bothers her when I have my appointment next week, I’ll bring it up then, maybe bring her with me for the day anyway. And I’ll chat with the doctor about what exactly the “call me” policy means and what I should expect from the minions guarding his gates.
Meanwhile, I do hope she stops falling and banging off of and into things so much.
Rest In Peace Jim Baen
Via Glenn, the news that Jim Baen has died following his recent stroke.
It’s a sad day in the world of science fiction.
David Drake remembers his friend.
Senioritis?
To me this isn’t a senior moment, but an ordinary moment that makes me rue having certain of my mothers genes, or something. Though not with coffee cups. I tend to use a currently favored, usually oversized, cup over and over, day after day, so no room for grabbing a second cup in there.
However, there is the problem of forgetting whether I already sweetened it, if you distract me for the slightest bit of time before the whole sweetening and lightening process is completed.
On a scarily related note, the night before last I had a dream, or more accurately a nightmare, in which I showed unmistakable indication of developing Alzheimer’s. I’ll take the senior moments and the “doh!” slips of the brain (like pouring soad into the coffee instead of a glass, for instance), but please, not that. Never that.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Xrlq.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
That’s an awful lot of government you’ve got there…
Amazingly, I managed to answer correctly all of the questions in this mock citizenship test I saw over at J-Walk. I wonder if I’d remember any of it without blogs refreshing my memory every so often…
Does This Mean I Should Have Been A Shrink?
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I am a |
“You have a shy personality. You tend to hesitate before trying new things or meeting new people. But once people get to know you, you open up and show the world what you are really all about.”
Un-Canna-ly via Bogie
Valerie Sightings
I need to respond to a server emergency (or not; it appears my instructions to them worked), but here’s a pair of quick Valerie pictures. The first is with her great-grandmother at the 90th birthday party Sunday. The second is her exploring the “cave” under my desk, which is her favorite place to go. It’s as if she’s seeking a den.
Milestone Time
There were no pubs involved, but Valerie clearly crawled in the official sense this morning. She’s gone beyond the previous level of scooting and rolling herself around, impressive as that is, and as big a component of her locomotion as it remains.
She seems intent on beating Sadie at everything. Probably because she wants to catch up and be able to play with Sadie properly.
Happy Birthday
To my sister Lynn, who is four years ahead of me, enjoying her 20th. Anniversary of her 29th, that is.
Music By Rob
Never got a chance to hear Rob “Acidman” Smith perform? Courtesy of Catfish, we don’t have to miss out. This is just one mirror copy, using spare bandwidth for as long as it holds up. Please right-click and save to your own computer before playing My Door Is Always Open.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Wishing Savannah Were Closer
Arrangements have been posted for Rob’s memorial service over on Gut Rumbles. Aw heck, I’ll quote the whole thing here; make spreading the word that much more complete:
Rob’s Memorial Service
Rob’s brother Dave has posted in the comments about the arrangements for Rob’s Memorial Service:
This is Dave, Rob’s brother. I just wanted to let somebody know that the arrangements have finally been made. If somebody has the ability to get the word out, please go for it.There will be a memorial service for Rob at 4 pm on Thursday, June 29th, at Fox & Weeks on Hodgson Memorial Drive in Savannah, followed by an after-service celebration (can’t be a wake if it’s after the Memorial) at our parents’ house. Pickers will bring instruments, everybody else bring voices and any Rob stories you can tell for everybody else to hear while they lift a glass to him. I’m going to miss my big brother, but I’ll do my best to send him off in style! There’ll be directions to the place at the service, or you can email me: dsmith [at] brannenlaw [dot] com. Thanks, everybody!
Arrangements are also being worked out for a way for those of us on the web to participate in the memorial for Rob as well. Details will be available in the next 12 hours or so.
There is also an addendum:
Dave asked that I mention Rob will be cremated as per his wishes, and that in lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to the American Diabetes Association.
There is an obituary that contains specifics on the last bit:
Remembrances may be made to the American Diabetes Association, 5105 Paulsen St., Suite C-236, Savannah, GA 31405
There is a guestbook you may sign or view as desired.
If we were close enough, you can be sure we’d go out of our way to try to attend.
Valerie the Valiant
She got three shots this morning! Poor little thing. She’s cranky as hell now, but the Tylenol is helping. Of course, she’s got those first four teeth that look like they’ll come in Any Minute Now which means they’ll take weeks more--they always do--so we’ve been having our share of random crankiness, too. Though that’s not all that random, is it? LOL.
Anyhow, I took her for her 4 month visit this morning and it’s not my imagination, the girl is getting long and skinny on me. She’s climbing the height chart and falling down the weight chart. 24 and 3/4 inches long and 12 pounds, 5 and 1/2 ounces. I don’t know why I’m surprised...Sadie was bigger at this age, but is built pretty much the same way. Both of our families have plenty of tall lean people, so it’s not like we can’t account for them without wondering about an alien invasion or something. Our doc isn’t bothered any by it, bless him.
I can’t wait to feed her “real food” though. She’s started grabbing for ours, so we gave her a bite or two of applesauce and she pushed it right back out. Give her a couple of weeks and she’ll no doubt be ready to go.
She scoots now like an old pro, and has taken to getting up on her knees and elbows and rocking. The girl wants to locomote yesterday. She’s the smiling-est baby I’ve ever seen, and she thoroughly charmed everybody she met today. Especially after the shots, when she had those big sad eyes to go with her smile.
Party Dress Sadie
Here’s some photographic Sadie overkill, but she, and the dress she wore to the birthday party, is so cute. I’m actually leaving some out.
And yeah, one of these days I’ll post some Valerie pictures too. Maybe not a full catch-up set, as that would be about 30 pictures, but some.
These two are before we left Sunday:
This picture is courtesy of Sharon, of Sadie sitting in the nursery/playroom after she’d (as you can tell) eaten:
Sadie and Julia in the nursery:
Sadie in the nursery with Julia, Alicia and Hunter:
Sadie after we got home, with the birthday balloon she captured and has not let go of except for baths and sleeping (which involves removing it from her after she falls asleep, so she won’t get tangled in the string):
Monday, June 26, 2006
Rest In Peace My Friend
Today we shed tears for a friend and stranger. An odd thing, losing people online, yet no less poignant. Sometimes we know them better than family, and of course we choose to know them.
Rob Smith, Acidman, has died, leaving a gaping hole in the blogosphere and our hearts, and our wish one day to meet him in person unfulfilled.
It’s not entirely unexpected. It’s clear he’d been in rough shape. I’d fervently hoped for more time and much happiness to fill it. Alas, it was not to be, as it so often isn’t.
Rob was a major mover in getting my original blog noticed as well and quickly as it did, for which I will always be grateful. His writing could be, often as not was, brilliant. He dared to be abrasive, even if all that meant was honest. His heart of gold shone through any amount of acid talk. I will forever have the imagined memory of visiting him with our kids, of him playing with them, of them being utterly taken with him. I fully expect that’s how it would have been, because that’s Rob.
This is going to be a problem…
There are nice men here working on the gutters or something today.
Since they needed not merely an electrical outlet, but one with a surface close by to set their rechargable power tools on, guess whose extension cord that powers phone and internet got unplugged by Joe Random Worker. Because even though there are two lovely outlets near the door - heck, four outlets, two of them not associated with a specific apartment - we have a washer and dryer that are easily confused for workbenches.
So off goes the internet. Again. They might have unplugged us if it hadn’t been just a random extension cord, but an obvious-connected-to-Verizon-equipment power cord. Then again, maybe not. The fact is, they shouldn’t have done it either way, just as sure as I shouldn’t have to use an extension cord to power the Verizon stuff.
Deb plugged us back in and moved their tools to the neighboring laundry machines, but internet didn’t come back, so I went down, not having correctly understood what she did, which was to leave them alone and plug us back into the 3rd floor power temporarily. All I saw was that our extension cord was unplugged, again I thought, so I unplugged them, plugged us back in, and duct-taped it thoroughly to dissuade people, which I’d already thought of doing, but only on the other end.
To my surprise, I found the Verizon cord plugged into the 3rd floor and so I plugged it back into the extension cord, duct-taping that. On coming back upstairs I learned Deb had done that, rather than disrupting the workers, so I changed it back, but it will be taped after they leave and we move it back.
It managed to come back on after I was done, reset the router and rebooted the computer. It’s really not acceptable to have to keep doing that because Verizon FiOS installations to apartment buildings in places like Middleboro totally suck in taking the, you know, apartment aspect into account. If you have DSL you might want to stick with it if you do not own the building or have solid control over where the service might be connected and powered.
The Man
Via Lynn, this post on Meeting the Man brings back memories.
When I did Microsoft support, when someone from our way visited Washington, our counterparts in Bellevue would take them to Dixie’s as one of the “must go” places, and would try to get them to try that hot sauce. Word got around before too many actually tried it, but I heard firsthand from one of the victims. He was pretty much fooled into it, as I recall.
Happy Birthday
To my good friend of more than thirty years, Tom Fish.
Happy Birthday
To my nephew Jonathan, who has to wait almost two weeks for his birthday party.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Moroccan Carrot Salad
Last night I made Moroccan Carrot Salad, as seen on the rec.food.recipes newsgroup. It sounded intriguing and I figured it would supplement our contribution of mass quantities of beverages to my grandmother’s birthday party today.
I upped it to two pounds… highly approximate on the carrot front, as it was the end of a 3 lb bag and part of a new 3 lb bag. We’ve been going through carrots lately, cooked and in salads. Sadie loves carrot sticks, though it’s freaky when she chipmunks them and spits them out an hour later in favor of eating something else.
I bought a real lemon on my trip to the Farmer’s Outlet, with no clue how much juice a lemon produces. It turned out to be exactly the needed 4 tablespoons. Cool.
Having no idea what orange blossom water even was, but being intrigued by the idea of a slight orange tinge, I added some juice squeezed from an orange section. That, maybe a tablespoon, was too much. The half cup of extra virgin olive oil seemed to be too much, too.
I was unimpressed right after it was done and well stirred together. It was sour/oily/orange enough then that I added two extra tablespoons of honey.
After sitting overnight, it’s good. Not fantastically amazing, and still needs to be tried with variations to make it more to my taste (might be as simple as adding more ginger and/or cinammon, of which I added almost none), but sort of tangy, sweet and nutty at once. Sadie seems to like it a lot. Deb likes it but thinks the lemon and honey taste like they’re doing battle. Indeed. I suspect it’s going to be a matter of taste, who likes it a lot or not so much.
For convenience, here’s the actual recipe as I originally saw it on Usenet and used it in slightly modified form, all credit the the source link:
Moroccan Carrot Salad
1 lb sweet carrots peeled and fine grated/fine shredded
1/2 cup light or dark raisins
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp honey
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp orange flower water or to taste
cinnamon and powdered ginger to taste
salt and pepper to taste
The orange flower water adds a delicate and exotic orange flavor to this
different but pleasant tasting salad. I serve the salad in a dark blue
serving bowl for a striking appearance. Mix all together and adjust
flavoring ( honey, lemon spices etc. ) to taste. Chill very well. Garnish
with fresh mint. Yield 4 to 6 servings. Multiply recipe as needed.
(And yes, I did use a blue bowl, which coincidentally happened to be my best option for one-bowl prep and serving. It is a nice visual.)
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Verizon’s Ears Are Burning
Today was our second outage since we’ve had FiOS, the fiber optic internet service from Verizon. At least this time didn’t require a call to support, but then if they’d not blown me off in regard to my “and oh by the way...” last time, or not installed in a blatently moronic way in the first place, today would not have happened either.
See, when we got our Verizon FiOS fiber optic phone and internet service installed in Middleboro, Massachusetts (if that sounds stilted and overly much info, it’s for the sake of search engines), in a multi-family dwelling, which is to say, a building of apartments on different floors, the dickhead installer, who seemed great at the time, plugged the power unit into an outlook that was clearly marked 3rd floor. That despite knowing intimately that the installation was for the 2nd floor.
You would think that Verizon and its installers would carefully investigate, consult, ask in regard to what apartment’s power is which, and ensure nobody’s getting plugged into the wrong place. He never mentioned it, and I figured if he didn’t mention it, it was a non-issue. Heck, my understanding was that the service would actually have to be plugged into power in my apartment and a place would have to be made for it near where the phone service enters. Except it enters the cellar. Where the most easily usable outlet belonged to the 3rd floor, because the 1st floor’s spare outlet the landlord plugged the legally mandated carbon monoxide detector into, the 2nd floor’s spare outlet was occupied by a drop cord and the washing machine power cord covered the “2nd fl” label. On the other hand, the 3rd floor was vacant so there weren’t even laundry machines making the outlets harder to access, never mind their being in use.
How hard would it really have been to come up here and ask about where it should be plugged in? How many other places are going to be left with Verizon-induced tenant-tenant or landlord-tenant encounters of the “hey, you’re stealing electricity” kind? Verizon needs to deal with this, and they need to train their otherwise okay support people not to sound like slack-jawed yokels unaware that installation staff can plug the power into the wrong place and that this just might constitute a problem. The support person was like “whaddaya want us to do about it?” Thought I should just string an extension cord because that’s all the install person would probably do if he had to come back. He thought we should be happy that it had power at all, as that’s the important thing.
So back to our outage today. I was giving some doubtful benefit that the outage was an outage, considering the nasty weather. I tried all the usual in-the-house troubleshooting. Then I went to the cellar.
I knew as soon as I saw our hall light was out that the landlord had been here and was probably the problem. We have a 23 watt flourescent in our hall fixture that is super bright and lights the entire stairwell enough to make it safer all around. I leave it on at all times, figuring it’s not costly (I didn’t at first; the 3rd floor people started turning and leaving on ours instead of theirs so I gave up). As far as I know, it is our electricity running it, since there are fixtures logically associated with each apartment, and I am certain there is no “common areas” electric supplied by the landlord on its own meter. Which makes me wonder who pays for the power to the outside light and the cellar lights. My guess is the first floor, and I try to act accordingly. Whenever the landlord comes in to do anything, as has naturally been happening more with the 3rd floor vacant, he turns off our hall light. Probably reflex.
Sure enough, the thing we’d been half expecting had happened: The landlord noticed something plugged into the 3rd floor’s power that didn’t belong and unplugged it. And someone had silenced the alarm that sounds when it’s on battery, from the unit at the opposite end of the cellar. Cute.
This is exactly what I tried to tell Airbrain Dude in Verizon FiOS support would happen if the situation wasn’t corrected. We would be unplugged and service would be down. It was so tempting to call support to have them send someone out Right Now when we got unplugged, but I got out my super nice long extension cord and strung that over from our own outlet. Yay. We’re back.
So hey, if we get any readers who are with Verizon, you might want to check out what procedures exist for powering FiOS service in apartments where there are “that’s not my outlet” issues. It really does matter. Duh.
Happy 90th Birthday!
To my amazing grandmother, Hazel Irving, who come to think of it is almost exactly twice my age now. We’re having the big party tomorrow, apparently at the parish house of the church (which she has belonged to longer than anyone; they celebrated her 75 years last year or the year before).
Here are some assorted pictures, the first few not previously posted, the others linking ones already online from old posts. Pardon the fuzziness of the first one. I thought a recent closeup would be nice and it was the best I had offhand.
Happy Birthday
To blogger and blogchild Paul Burgess, who is exactly 40 years younger than my grandmother. May he have another excellent half-century and beyond.
Friday, June 23, 2006
What Color Are These Eyes?
