tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283953142024-03-07T12:57:19.727-05:00slowtechI work in a high tech field, but take perverse pleasure in doing things the old-fangled way at home.Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.comBlogger244125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-33431739127706757702011-09-01T21:04:00.001-05:002011-09-01T22:00:55.205-05:00September 1st in BostonOur new downstairs neighbor moved in today. She is pretty young. I found myself wanting to give her motherly advice about how to change lanes around here, but she's from CT so I doubt she needs help. <br/><br/>This is for those of you who live in kindler, gentler areas of the world, who might one day wish to come leaf-peeping and be foolhardy enough to try to drive yourself. <br/><br/>How To Change Lanes in Massachusetts Traffic: <br/>1. Swerve without warning in the direction that you want to go in, then quickly swerve back. <br/>2. Now that you have the attention of every car in the near vicinity, put on your blinker. <br/>3. Swerve into your destination lane. If you've timed it right, you will have frightened the driver behind you so badly that they slammed on the brakes and left you plenty of room to coast into their lane. <br/><br/>You can get across several lanes of traffic quite quickly in this way, although be warned that passengers sometimes object to the car's rapid darting movements, and are vocal about it. Ignore them. <br/><br/><br/><br/>Note: do not, by any means, turn on your blinker in advance of the first swerve. This only warns other drivers of your intentions and they will speed up and sit right in your blind spot. Thus you lose face, and the other drivers swoop in to prey upon your weakness. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-30024535260264154562011-02-17T20:51:00.003-05:002011-02-17T22:36:12.076-05:00Me, Google and the Tinfoil HatSo I'm kind of excited that the search industry is finally getting some mainstream coverage. I think it's funny that SEO seems to be getting more attention than paid - in the industry, there's a kind of SEO-as-underdog perception. (Also SEO-as-cowboy, but that's a different post.) <br /><br />If you haven't read <a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=1>the NYT article about JC Penney gaming Google's natural SERPs</a>, go read it now. Then come back and re-read that last sentence, and it will make much more sense.<br /><br /><br />I've been reading a lot of shrieky stuff online which loudly condemns JC Penney for cheating. Dude, using black-hat techniques is unorthodox for sure, and also pretty stupid for a site that you want to keep around for the long term, which JC Penney presumably was going for. But I don't see how breaking Google's guidelines is immoral - white and black hat are just opposite faces on a coin, not laws meted out by the justice system on behalf of you, the voter. (If JC Penney's SEO firm, SearchDex, failed to disclose the risk of getting blackballed by Google to JC Penney, then <i>that</i> was unethical. It's also not unheard of - I mentioned cowboys for a reason. Digital marketing is a land grab right now, and the industry is young enough that snake-oil salesmen abound.)<br /><br />I agree that black hat usually results in a crappy user experience, but I think that it's Google's job to keep improving the search results as the web evolves and expands, and the job of company websites to make the websites as good as possible. At the end of the day, black or white hat SEO doesn't matter if you've got a 99.9% bounce rate and no one stays on your site long enough to actually make you some money. (Bounce rate was famously described by <a href=http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/08/standard-metrics-revisited-3-bounce-rate.html>Avinash Kaushik as "I came, I puked, I left."</a>) <br /><br />I think Google is incredibly disingenuous when they, on the one hand, get businesses to do their work for them by publishing SEO guidelines, and on the other hand maintain that their pure and noble mission is the happiness of the user, and the piles of money generated in Mountain View are just a side artifact of Larry Page's and Sergei Brin's laudable desire to organize the world's information. They might have been motivated soley by altruism at the start, but the tentacles of Google have spread much farther than that over the past decade. Google runs an office in Washington DC devoted soley to lobbying. At the very least, making money is a twin passion to organizing information at Google. <br /><br /><br /><br />The Times article suggests that Google allowed this black hat stuff to go on for fear of disturbing the relationship with JC Penney's paid search advertising, worth $25 million a month. Not incidentally, that is a big goddamn budget. I would guess that my employer is in the top 500 largest PPC (paid search) advertisers in the US, but that's a lot of clams even to me. Worth it, too - did you ever think about how much cheaper it is to ship shit out of a warehouse than maintain brick-and-mortar stores staffed with humans who can only process one transaction at a time? The profit margins on online transactions are so much better than offline because the overhead is way lower. <br /><br />All of which explains why JC Penney was eager to get all the traffic they could, particularly over the holidays. A risky strategy, sure, and I do wonder if the top brass even knew that their SEO firm was doing this - retail is a pretty old-fashioned industry, and SEO is complicated and new. <br /><br />My guess is that Google has known about the JC Penney site for a while and was trying to solve the problem algorithmically when the Times story broke. I do believe Matt Cutts (for once) when he says that Google's spam team didn't let it go because they were worried about disturbing the business relationship with the paid search side of the house.<br /><br /> First, Google makes no money directly off of organic traffic - but JC Penney spends $25 million a month on paid search ads. Therefore, Google actually has a direct interest in reducing JC Penney's organic traffic because it will force them to rely more heavily on Google. Secondly, Google can stand to lose 25 million in revenue per month a lot more easily that JC Penney can find an alternate source for all the high-quality, high-intent traffic that Google currently gives them. Thirdly, it's as embarrassing as shit for Google. I also think that there's a genuinely strong corporate culture at Google which would be a considerable obstacle to surmount in order to proceed with some kind of back room blind-eye deal. Like I said, twin passions. <br /><br /><i>What is truly amazing about this situation, and others like it, is that we don’t look at why Google is placing such disproportionate weight on links, particularly in this case, when so many of the links are of poor quality.</i><br /><br />I think <a href=http://searchengineland.com/the-jcpenney-situation-is-a-symptom-of-a-bigger-disease-65012>Evan LaPointe has put his finger on the heart of the matter here</a>, who has the best response I've seen so far to the whole JC Penney kerfuffle. He puts forth the revolutionary idea that instead of concentrating all that energy on marketing, companies refocus and invest in improving their product (an e-commerce website). I really don't understand why most <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business-to-consumer>B2C</a> businesses fail to realize this - they're going to make a lot more money over the long term if they can establish an ongoing relationship with a customer. In retail, it's always cheaper to extend the lifetime value of the customer by re-marketing to the existing customer base than it is to acquire new customers. Hello, anyone remember mail-order catalogues? Great business model. E-commerce is exactly the same. I don't care if your product is coffins, something that no one will ever need more than one of - it's worth cultivating an ongoing relationship with your (surviving) customers, for word of mouth sales alone.<br /><br /> <br />So: I don't buy that Google knowingly ignored JC Penney's black hat tactics, and I think it's possible that JC Penney did not, in fact, know what was going on. (Not very likely - but possible.)<br /><br />What I'm curious about is what prompted this article in the Times. <a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html>David Segal</a> is doing some excellent journalistic work in the search space, I just wonder what brought his attention to JC Penney and DecorMyEyes in the first place. It wasn't Microsoft, who were still showing JC Penney's results for days after the article was published (and who <a href=http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914>just got busted copying Google's search results</a>.) I could see competitors like Blekko or Mahalo tipping off the reporter though, couldn't you? I would, if I thought of it. What a great strategy in the battle for hearts and minds: expose your opponent's legitimate weaknesses. It's not any wilder than what goes down on Capital Hill. It seems like a good space for a reporter to make a name in, too - there's a lot of money sloshing around in search these days.<br /><br />You want conspiracy theories, here are mine. Google is doing its best to keep its results just good enough not to lose users, but to make the organic results useless enough to force uses to take a second look at the paid search ads. <a href=http://www.highrankings.com/google-sucks-298>Jill Whalen proposes this</a> and I think she's got a good point. <br /><br />In the same way that Google gets businesses to do much of the heavy lifting on helping the algorithms to return relevant results, while not giving away enough for anyone to copy their secret sauce, Google is responding to increasing ad blindness on the part of users by reducing relevancy in the natural results at the same time as it mucks about with the look of paid search ads to make them appeal more to the user. <br /><br />If you're not in paid search, you might not have taken special note of this, but Google is now extending ad titles so that they are longer, with a click-to-call phone number embedded in the ad, as we've been seeing for a while in organic local results. They've also introduced site links into the ads, just like we see in organic results. <br />It's a delicate balance, and I admit that I take a small-minded satisfaction in pointing out the contradictions between some of Google's stated policies versus the policies that are self-evidently in place. They talk a lot about relevance, but for Google, what's relevant is what's likeliest to make the most money for Google. <br /><br />Google is usually pretty long-term in their thinking - it's one of the reasons that makes them such a great company. (I know I just spent the whole post slagging them off, but I do admire them tremendously in many ways. What can I say - I come to bury Caesar not to praise him.) So I think they're genuine when they say that they want to get rid of content farms, even though content farms make them a crapload of money. I hope the next algorithm update drops soon, because I think the Google organic results have gone a little too far in the direction of "intentionally crappy". <br /><br />Plenty of tinfoil to go around. Don't be shy.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-11003062815849934532011-01-11T12:13:00.006-05:002011-01-11T12:40:25.220-05:00Every day is CaturdayTooth-achingly sweet, but that's never stopped me before. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gMdrVnCX70Oj3X0VANfrQEhtFylZDtpzM3ToqoJq8ndiEru4GDS7X_rlT0nDPVA9NJVN9C6Emblt6x-y4AHKuUMgnCUTJxFxtzBx7QMkDnxfugRXDK-ud00CeTDdKUxM7y5p/s1600/Nibbles_Bobby_arminarm.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gMdrVnCX70Oj3X0VANfrQEhtFylZDtpzM3ToqoJq8ndiEru4GDS7X_rlT0nDPVA9NJVN9C6Emblt6x-y4AHKuUMgnCUTJxFxtzBx7QMkDnxfugRXDK-ud00CeTDdKUxM7y5p/s400/Nibbles_Bobby_arminarm.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5560977993552007522" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOKLJHxY4v0MPGqTif3g7w-eSGL9mkzaEDWNZlWCX6FI3tpGbND1I66scuqQv4QBNMnci3ICP6rErmYJnrN3hFBWHJZ0uETgVaKNz1cEMUTTRU4O2nUWmvEtNfGpVgMeDxXvJF/s1600/Nibbles_Bob_sleeping_together.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOKLJHxY4v0MPGqTif3g7w-eSGL9mkzaEDWNZlWCX6FI3tpGbND1I66scuqQv4QBNMnci3ICP6rErmYJnrN3hFBWHJZ0uETgVaKNz1cEMUTTRU4O2nUWmvEtNfGpVgMeDxXvJF/s400/Nibbles_Bob_sleeping_together.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5560978261883169042" /></a><br /><br><br /><br><br /><br><br /><br><br /><br><br /><br><br /><br><br /><br><br /><br><br /><br><br />I've got an app for my phone called Darkroom, which is free and helps you take pictures indoors by doing one simple thing: not taking the picture until your hand stops shaking. I have a serious case of camera shake myself (even if I'm resting my elbows on a firm surface) so it's been working well for me.<br /><br />Also, why don't more household-linen companies use pictures of cute sleeping cats and dogs in their ads? I think Bob and Nibbles look pretty comfortable here, and if I didn't already own this bedding, I would want to buy it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-53463276294130083772011-01-03T20:54:00.009-05:002011-01-03T23:21:52.254-05:00This is why I still eat meatSpaghetti Carbonara*<br /><br />Okay, everyone single should be able to cook at least one thing, because it is such a great way to seduce people. This is also a recipe for people who don't cook. You don't have to be cheap and busy to appreciate this recipe, but it might help. <br /><br />You can fancy it up with some creative shopping but every basic component can be the kind of thing that keeps forever - especially if you're using jarred pesto and skipping the ricotta. (The eggs ought to be fresh too, but I suppose you could substitute shelf-stable-forever EggBeaters. If you're camping or something. Or you could use two tablespoons of water mixed with a tsp of flax seed if you're vegan** or super grossed out by EggBeaters (I am). But fresh eggs are best.)<br /><br />3/4 lb of pasta<br />2 egg yolks<br />fresh ricotta<br />1 tbsp pesto, or more if you prefer. <br />2 tbsp butter<br />fresh parmesan<br />pinch of nutmeg<br />ground pepper<br />4 tbsp white wine or vegetable stock<br />100 grams/3 oz cubed pancetta, about 1 cm x 1 cm. Bacon is fine too.<br /><br />Put the pasta water on in a big pot to boil. The water for pasta should be "as salty as the Mediterranean", whatever. <br /><br />Cut up the pancetta. Dump it in another large pot with one tbsp of the butter. Cook until the pancetta has started to brown a little and then add the wine or stock. Cook until the liquid has reduced to about 2 tbsp. <br /><br />If the pasta water has started boiling yet, put it in and set a timer for the cooking time on the box or just cook it until it's the texture you like. I always use the timer because I can't be bothered to keep testing the pasta.<br /><br />While the pancetta is browning, you can start the egg sauce. In a smallish bowl, beat the eggs with the cheeses. If you aren't using the ricotta, add a couple of extra tablespoons of cream/milk/stock/pasta water. Remember to check on the pasta, by the way. Don't let the pancetta stick and burn, either. Add the nutmeg to the egg sauce. (If you are like me, you got <a href=http://www.pamperedchef.biz/janadebeer?page=products-detail&categoryId=90&itemId=1105&productId=10996>a microplane</a> from your sister for christmas and you will become childishly happy at the prospect of using the <a href=http://www.pamperedchef.biz/janadebeer?page=products-detail&categoryId=90&itemId=1105&productId=10996>microplane</a> to grate the cheese right onto the eggs and then <i>using the exact same <a href=http://www.pamperedchef.biz/janadebeer?page=products-detail&categoryId=90&itemId=1105&productId=10996>microplane</a></i> to grate the nutmeg in right after. But I think I'm the only one like me.) Grate some pepper over the sauce. The Parmesan and the pancetta are both pretty salty, so you probably won't need salt. <br /><br />Turn off the heat under the pancetta. Add the other tbsp of butter and the pesto. If you're using electric burners, that's too bad, and it also means that you're going to need to remove the pancetta pot from that entire burner. Turn the drained pasta back into the pancetta pot and toss it around a little, enough to get the pasta pretty well coated all over with the delicious salty bacony grease. Add the egg sauce. Stir well until it has all amalgamated into a deliciously sticky, heart-stoppingly delicious blaze of creamy sauce-bacon-pasta glory. Weep for your arteries. Be so fucking glad that you aren't a vegetarian. <br /><br />*This recipe is actually so far from the original spaghetti carbonara that I am probably justified in renaming it Pasta Carabonara except that seems like the kind of silly pun an editor would make.<br /><br /><br />** Did you know bacon bits are vegan? <br /><br />Vegan Substitutions<br /><br />For the ricotta I would probably substitute plain soy milk into which you've warmed and steeped a dried porcini, crumbled into tiny bits. If you have advance notice for this meal you could also buy some fresh mushrooms - whatever kind you like - and saute those in olive oil lieu of the pancetta. <br /><br />When you drain the pasta, reserve a bit of the cooking water. <br /><br />Right before you put the pasta back in, add another slug of oil and a pinch or two of flour - maybe a teaspoon or so. Push it around in the pan until the flour is golden brown or doesn't taste raw, whichever way you want to judge it. The mushrooms will make everything look brown so you might want to go by taste. <br /><br />Add the wine and cook most of the booze off. Then add the bacon bits. Those little motherfuckers are salty so you probably won't need to add salt. Add the pesto. Add the soy-porcini stuff. Stir until you've got a sauce that has the texture you like. Technically you made a roux, which is another way of saying gravy, when you added the flour to the fat, and rouxes are magical creatures that allow you to marry fat with water-based liquid in a smooth sauce, as opposed to something lumpy that separates and looks curdled. If the sauce doesn't look liquidy enough, you can add some of the reserved cooking water (or soy milk or vegetable stock or ... water) tablespoon by tablespoon. <br /><br />Once the sauce is done, put the drained pasta back in the pot and stir it to get things pretty well distributed. Serve, garnished with fresh basil if you're feeling froggy.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-91743674170600354232010-12-11T17:42:00.001-05:002010-12-11T17:42:42.632-05:00Christmas cookiesGrinding the spices for them. Totally crazy, I agree. Also, drinking. Unrelated, I'm sure. <br/><br/>Bob is "helping" by knocking shit all over the place to remind me that he has not yet had dinner. He's such a little pissant. Right now he's playing with the ground mustard. I hope he doesn't ingest any, because mustard is an emetic. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-80964096823934295232010-12-01T19:59:00.004-05:002010-12-01T20:30:17.172-05:00The Empress of Cat Food<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFRC3AZh3c2_8pgkbFq_f_f-bVIxQtoZY9bwkSDT5Yl3S07-0Ev4iZQvlUr9Ub7G4fnsP8ezj8S9xHtQQlrqlFYS7ew8pJtdxYLDyOLSp4dq5qUWM5PItu127zMb_mZ9z8F2KU/s1600/making+cat+food.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 308px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFRC3AZh3c2_8pgkbFq_f_f-bVIxQtoZY9bwkSDT5Yl3S07-0Ev4iZQvlUr9Ub7G4fnsP8ezj8S9xHtQQlrqlFYS7ew8pJtdxYLDyOLSp4dq5qUWM5PItu127zMb_mZ9z8F2KU/s400/making+cat+food.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5545890904314026290" /></a><br /><br />FrankenMouse<br /><br />So far the raw diet experiment is going pretty well. The cats all loooooove it. And their poops smell a lot less! I would write about all the reasons that I'm finding it to be a good idea and how I am NOT AT ALL CRAZY to do it, except I'm too busy making the cat food itself. <br /><br />I tell you what, though, I would totally start my own business making this shit, except I wouldn't make the frozen kind (shipping and storage costs would make it prohibitively expensive, I think) but the pressure canned kind which is shelf stable at room temp. It would be so easy. You would source your meat suppliers (seek out ethical ones) and get your permits together. Call your company FrankenMouse, because the food is basically trying to re-engineer a mouse and mice are the perfect food. (Or call the company something less stupid. Please don't think that the kind of marketing that I do is the kind that involves naming start-ups.)<br /><br />Christ, you could start production out of your own kitchen. Pressure can all the food, then you can ship it at ground rates. Once business ramps up, look for a commercial kitchen. After that's outgrown itself, move to a farm and raise your own rabbits and chickens locally. Organically. It would cut down on production costs hugely. Raise their feed on the farm as well, natch. Get vets to consult on special needs lines. Do actual research on actual cats. Eat your own cat food, literally - something like a video of me eating the raw cat food would totally go viral on YouTube. Holy shit, right? I should make that video just to see if there's a market. (Also that would be BADASS.) Invest in a sustainable salmon fishery. Make corporate donatations to salmon research. Sell excess produce to local restaurants, because the kicker is that not only is the cat food human-grade, you're raising the chickens and rabbits and salmon on human-grade food. <br /><br />You could market it as not only the best cat food nutritionally, but also the cheapest and most ethical choice possible. You could get Whole Foods to distribute it, first some local in-store testing and then nationally. You could build an empire.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-59893645576987767852010-11-28T16:54:00.000-05:002010-11-28T16:55:53.965-05:00He ain't heavy,<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCwm9bxpYAny-U9jtatcZWKChFSIB6_WRbiIPMpjlspthvrgLublJ60oCSQ8e6uGk0ouKgnizeKtN1E3sEHB-LB6dJpyoGLE5R_D4M1XXsnUTjSUfvKsxezbXMCKWfti94nLRP/s1600/photo%25288%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCwm9bxpYAny-U9jtatcZWKChFSIB6_WRbiIPMpjlspthvrgLublJ60oCSQ8e6uGk0ouKgnizeKtN1E3sEHB-LB6dJpyoGLE5R_D4M1XXsnUTjSUfvKsxezbXMCKWfti94nLRP/s400/photo%25288%2529.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544722585421190610" /></a><br />he's my brother.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-13052878166247290872010-11-11T20:59:00.004-05:002010-11-11T21:16:21.610-05:00that kid ain't right in the headI decided the other day that I ought to try one of those stupid blogger things where you list things you are thankful for every day. Three things, things every day during November, whatever. I figured it would efficiently because it would give me blog fodder and also something to read back through when I'm depressed. Also it's possible that the act of being creative is enough to make me feel not depressed - like the endorphin rush you get from exercise.<br /><br />I'm not feeling particularly enthused about it at the moment, but according to a lot of people, if you force yourself to grind out creative work every day, you'll eventually produce something decent. (Also I kind of think that I force out creative stuff at work every day, so ... why I thought making more work for myself was a good idea, I don't know ... as you can see I'm pretty ambivalent about the general idea of assigning myself MORE work.) <br /><br />But! If I'm not a huge fan of vague thankfulness and gratitude (does feeling "thankful" work better when you believe in God?), I am at least a true believer in neuroplasticity (basically training your brain to sit up and beg) so it's good to force the ole grey noodle into something different. <br /><br />Today I happen to be glad that I have a therapist who I like and the money for copays so I can actually go see her.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-65079555143735170702010-10-31T02:56:00.001-05:002010-10-31T02:56:46.721-05:00I win at life.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/95294865@N00/5130545117/" title="WW_30oct2010 by cara_debeer, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1431/5130545117_b64991452a.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="WW_30oct2010" /></a><br /><br />And the aftermath.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/95294865@N00/5130545179/" title="WW_aftermath31oct2010 by cara_debeer, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1310/5130545179_9d048773dd.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="WW_aftermath31oct2010" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-78522837942838441662010-10-29T21:09:00.002-05:002010-10-29T21:28:06.825-05:00happy halloween!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6PV3AyNHVFtdTuPklqsEu8Pu43mquBI1s6_yVYeLOcpYOvJH5fVEw5mhGUwmZPYZJ8DmIutS-fdEdhEyanqqT8xn-DsZ7DR5Xd4unbsftwq3HopaZITbO8ScxOHXFmMWLRQHZ/s1600/holly_golightly.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6PV3AyNHVFtdTuPklqsEu8Pu43mquBI1s6_yVYeLOcpYOvJH5fVEw5mhGUwmZPYZJ8DmIutS-fdEdhEyanqqT8xn-DsZ7DR5Xd4unbsftwq3HopaZITbO8ScxOHXFmMWLRQHZ/s400/holly_golightly.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5533660140093930210" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-76782626588509167232010-10-24T08:57:00.008-05:002010-10-25T14:14:05.889-05:00Shoes and ships and sailing waxSorry to leave you all hanging. I have a good excuse though. My new job is <b>excellent</b>. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but so far so good. I am SO glad to be working with some of the best litigators in the country! Man, do they know how to go after bad people who do bad things! <br /><br />Also Dave has been out of the house a lot; one of his bands will be recording a new album (an LP? What the hell is the difference these days?) out in LA. They have been working very diligently, so diligently that Dave got bronchitis on top of a cold. This is sort of funny since I had an unrelated cold which progressed to bronchitis a week before. I think I was in denial about being sick because I decided not to take anything to reduce my fever in the hopes that a high fever would burn the virus out quicker. <br /><br />It turned out not to be such a great idea. I planned to monitor my temperature and take something if my temperature went up past 102F, but when I wasn't paying attention it shot up to 103 and I spent a very uncomfortable night in a wringing wet bed. If I had known my fever was that high I would have taken something for it but it turns out you can't read a thermometer when your brain is busy cooking itself. It's like being on recreational drugs without the recreational aspect. My temp dropped by itself overnight to a mere 101, which is when I discovered the results of the previous evening's failed attempt to read the thermometer. <br /><br />Oh well. I called in sick for a second day in a row and went to the doctor, who diagnosed bronchitis and gave me a z-pack and a note for work. (Then when I got into work no one would take the note from me because they all believed me. So I tucked it in between the pages of my employee handbook, because I didn't know what else to do with it.) I'm probably dumb enough to avoid going to the doctor even after that fever, but I am a nonsmoker and therefore when my insides became coated in gray gunk it seemed like there was more to the story. I was pretty relieved not to have pneumonia actually. According to the doctor bronchitis vs. pneumonia is really a matter of the location, location, location of your bacterial infection. How gross is that thought, by the way? At least as gross as gray mucus.<br /><br />The cats were all pretty happy to have me home though. Obviously - I was toasty warm and slept for 20 hours a day. It's a cat's dream come true. And Bob showed me how there is now not a single surface in the house that he cannot reach. He is the giantest asshole I have ever met, and I have met some bad cats in my day. I think the assholery is the pigheadedness of really superior cat who is trying to figure out his place in the world. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO_S98VR6ltigA5ZFvQLnr8O_ObSywz53y4ACtSMmhX-WWsKLyNw87TDxgMVcf9LnDjxtteaDhv0jU0FW6LrwYHZmIBnzQTPHBvD1MxxmvhGn2LKLENPMs0KNQpY_8jsZXBSXF/s1600/photo(4).JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO_S98VR6ltigA5ZFvQLnr8O_ObSywz53y4ACtSMmhX-WWsKLyNw87TDxgMVcf9LnDjxtteaDhv0jU0FW6LrwYHZmIBnzQTPHBvD1MxxmvhGn2LKLENPMs0KNQpY_8jsZXBSXF/s400/photo(4).JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5531656780684274962" /></a><br /><br /> Nibbles is no slouch either - she has figured out how to open drawers and I am pretty sure she opened the kitchen cabinet on her own the other day. But Nibbles is lazier and prettier than Bob, and she's friendlier too. She generally overcomes visitors by putting her paw in their chest and looking deep into their eyes. She did this with my landlord the other day, which was extra useful since he had stopped by because the rent was late. (He was super nice about it actually, and perhaps a little distracted by Nibbles climbing up his chest onto his head while purring ecstatically.)<br /><br />All the cats seem to have been super naughty lately. I'm attributing this to switching them all to wet food (in preparation for a transition to a raw diet). Apparently dry food is like crack for cats, and almost as bad for them. Or they could just be energetic because we haven't been around very much. Whatever - the little fuckers want to party all the time. <br /><br />We tried them with raw meat for the first time last night, actually, and four out of the five went for it with gusto. The holdout was Pip, who has also been the slowest to get excited about eating wet food. Pip is actually what prompted the switch to a raw diet (which, I *know*, is totally a crazy cat lady thing to do). He had a bladder "blockage" which cost $1700 and a trip to the veterinary ER to unblock. It was caused by him eating dry food and not drinking enough water. If he had been eating wet food, it's extremely unlikely that this would have happened. I was searching online to find out more about the bladder blockage and found <a href=http://www.catinfo.org/>Lisa Pierson's extremely authoritative site</a> about the benefits of a raw diet. She is not only a vet but she talks about a groundbreaking study (which I can't find right now, argh) done by a vet which compared several generations of cats who were fed dry food only vs. a natural diet - within a couple of generations the dry-only cats had developed some serious problems.)<br /><br /><br />Besides it being a pain in the ass to deal with raw food, my reservation about a raw diet was how much it would cost and whether or not it would be okay for Lucky (who is diabetic) and Pip to eat instead of their presciption food. I couldn't work out how the cost compares to prescription canned food because I didn't know how much cats eat a day. It's based on their body weight, but most cats are around the 5 ounces/day mark. (The equivalent of five mice! This is unreasonably interesting to me. For our cats to support themselves they would need 25 mice per day between them!@ Holy shit!) But Lisa Pierson actually <a href=http://www.catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood#The_Dangers_of_Dry_Food>crunches the numbers</a> and works out the cost (.64/cat/day) - which is cheaper than Pip's prescription canned food. A 6 pound bag of dry Rx for Lucky costs about thirty five bucks, or sick bucks a pound, That's a lot more expensive than the raw diet, which is about two bucks a pound. (Science Diet is like .18 cents a pounds, which is really kind of scary when you think about it.)<br /><br />So there have turned out to be a surprising number of side benefits which I didn't expect just from the switch to canned food. It's easier to feed them - they all have two meals a day, all at the same time, and then we can clean the counters completely between meals. (In fact, we are almost at a point where we will be able to feed them all on the floor instead of having to keep dry kibble available at all times on the counters for Pip, Wiggles (aka Nibbles) and Little Bobby Dickface. Yes! Having a bowl of food on the counter has grossed me out for years!) <br /><br />Also the litter boxes smell less terrible. I don't know what they put into the dry food, but it's pretty awful when it comes out the other end. Supposedly a raw diet will render the poops odorless, or almost odorless. If this is true, it's worth switching only for that reason. My goal in housekeeping is to have a house where you would never know that we had cats if the cats themselves didn't come out to say hello. This means cleaning the litterboxes a LOT and vacuuming a LOT. (I wish I had a good way to pick up pet hair on soft furnishings.) If the litterboxes are less grody, it's a little easier for me to deal with cleaning them when I come in the door after work. Cook's Illustrated recently reviewed robot vacuums. I've wanted one for a while but I don't know anyone who has one and could tell me how well they really work; however, if CI says they're worth the money then I trust them. (Apparently there is even a robot which will mop the floor! I love this idea since mopping the kitchen floor is one of my least favorite tasks.)<br /><br />Another funny thing: I said that all the cats liked the raw chicken except for Pip; the PigBear loved the chicken but actually stopped eating it when she was full. I have never before seen her stop eating of her own volition. I'm hopeful that we might be able to help her lose weight with the raw diet (it's really easy to calculate how many calories she'll need based on her weight.) We just need a vet scale, and thanks - again - to Lisa Pierson, I know where to buy one online. <br /><br />Lucky in particular went for the raw chicken with gusto. We don't know the history of his first three years; Dave's friend adopted him because her cleaning lady found him hanging around outside a dumpster, so I wonder if he went for the meat because he has had experience living rough? (on the other hand, I know Bob and Nibbles never hunted outside and they liked it, so who knows.) <br /><br />One other happy thing about the raw diet: since I'm buying decent meat for the cats this means that we'll probably have more meat around, which bodes well for the humans. In a post which I can't find right now, <a href=http://tipsybaker.blogspot.com/>Jennifer Reese of the Tipsy Baker</a> observes that cooking vegetarian requires a lot more work than cooking meat. (I am super envious of her pet goat having, chicken keeping lifestyle. I hate plain eggs but they'd be handy to feed the cats.) I gave the cats one chicken breast last night and Dave and I had the other two for our dinner. When we ate dinner, none of the cats begged for food. ... because they were full? Because cats find raw meat infinitely more delicious than cooked? A fluke? Only time will tell. <br /><br />It was the easiest and most delicious thing I have made in a while. Dave is still feeling kind of punky from his illness so it was a comfort food kind of night. I read Nigel Slater for inspiration (he is such a good food writer, and what's more, I don't think I have ever made any of his recipes and had it turn out badly. Probably in part because his recipes are super flexible.)<br /><br />I sauteed a chicken breast in 1 tbl butter (yes - just butter) and then deglazed the pan with some vegetable stock (Slater calls for white wine, which would have been better but I had none), then added some buttermilk (Slater says yoghurt or creme fraiche, but again I had neither.) I let it all bubble away for a while, reducing and concentrating the flavor. The heat made the buttermilk split into tiny, unattractive white globules (this would not have happened if I'd used creme fraiche) so while the sauce was reducing I made a quick roux (browned the 1 tbsp flour on one side of a nonstick pan while 2 tbls of butter melted on the other side, then combined the two and added the dregs of some vegetable stock) and stirred it into the sauce, which thickened it up a bit and, more importantly, camouflaged the split buttermilk. Then I added the juice from a leftover half a lemon, tasted the sauce, decided it needed capers, and added a tablespoon or so of those plus a little brine from the jar. (I would not have needed a roux at all had I used yoghurt or creme fraiche, and the sauce would have reduced more quickly too.) Once the sauce had thickened up to my liking I threw in about a half a cup of basil leaves from the plant which has been yellowing sadly on top of the fridge ever since the weather turned cold and I brought it indoors. <br /><br />While all this was happening I had a spaghetti squash roasting in a 450F oven. (I split it in half, scooped out the seeds and strings, salted and peppered it and put it face down in a glass baking dish for about half an hour. I suspect I left it in there longer than that, but overcooking spaghetti squash wasn't a big risk, and in fact, it was fine.) Once the chicken and its sauce were ready, I piled the spaghetti-like squash innards (not an appealing simile, sorry) into shallow pasta bowls and put the chicken breasts on top and then poured the sauce on top of everything. Apart from the use of spaghetti squash instead of angel hair pasta, this is the Italian restaurant comfort food of my childhood. (Well, as a kid I would have ordered veal instead of chicken, but who's counting?)<br /><br />Also, despite the use of butter, it was incredibly healthy. Three tablespoons of butter isn't much (about 300 calories) when the rest of the meal is boneless skinless chicken breasts and squash - I didn't set out to make a diet meal but apparently that's what happened. I also didn't have to fuck around chopping and sauteing onion and garlic for a soffrito (aka mirepoix if you're feeling froggy), which is something I almost always have to make when I am cooking vegetarian in order to get some depth of flavor. Meat is so much easier to build a meal around and it provides a flavor that vegetables, delicious in their own right, can't produce. And that's why I will never be vegetarian. But I do want ethically treated meat, i.e. animals that have good lives right up until the day they are killed so that I can eat them. (If I lived in a place where I could get excellent produce year round, I think vegetarianism would be a lot easier. But I live in Boston where the growing season is four months long, hence the almost perpetual need for a soffrito.)<br /><br />And that's all she wrote for now. Don't forget to tune in for another episode about really dowdy and unfashionable ways to spend your time.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-77981073390533673312010-10-11T21:36:00.002-05:002010-10-11T21:43:28.333-05:00from now on, I calls 'em as I sees 'em...not like I ever did mince words. I'm more towards the "blunt to the point of rudeness" end of the spectrum.<br /><br />The past ten days have totally kicked my ass into the stratosphere, and not in a good way. So no insights from me. <br /><br />But listen to this song, because it's one of my favorites, even if I am embedding it via gootube (currently* I have a hateon for Google and all its minions)<br /><br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OaU27hoCLb4?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OaU27hoCLb4?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />* I'm sure that by tomorrow morning I'll be back to welcoming our new Googlous overlords. In the meantime I'm hacked off.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-45247057509932126032010-10-05T19:39:00.002-05:002010-10-05T19:44:44.919-05:00at least we know now who ate Joey's mic<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvZKeR_YuEeery9QtYbvB19SGbDdXoz7Wr5pY8OM1DQqwvpjTrEqIjbioIOHorwQwEAYL5HPPrvT1JXk95_7miipLFMBkr4Oc0AGU9I_6znFFmZU_9Mwb9VlgsR_ptFWL5SLdU/s1600/photo(3).JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvZKeR_YuEeery9QtYbvB19SGbDdXoz7Wr5pY8OM1DQqwvpjTrEqIjbioIOHorwQwEAYL5HPPrvT1JXk95_7miipLFMBkr4Oc0AGU9I_6znFFmZU_9Mwb9VlgsR_ptFWL5SLdU/s400/photo(3).JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5524726693125296338" /></a><br /><br />Not that knowing does me much good.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-42541435085213020872010-10-01T13:14:00.001-05:002010-10-01T17:01:36.550-05:00It may be time for an interventionI just got all excited thinking about looking at my data to see if it makes a bell curve and what it looks like in a scatterplot chart. This seems like a problematic trend. <br/><br/>On the positive side, my high school math teacher would be proud (thanks, Mr Murphy! Even though I referred to my time with you as "probability and sadistics" all year, it turned out to be pretty handy lo these many years later.)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-7854614341739331102010-09-27T20:53:00.001-05:002010-09-27T20:53:48.029-05:00This is purely for bragging rights:Plum jam on a weeknight. Yes, the apple pectin is homemade, since you ask. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-19573138189069736552010-09-21T22:28:00.003-05:002010-09-22T00:10:12.373-05:00concord grapes *must* have a lot of umami<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilaJMj21DIQ9caFjS9p_7r9KqWAhsg-PXA0mXtd1mzT-A8t4wciyLkxpYNuw76kDITVVUoGf3KcLSCBP3paOIajyZlcM0YbbAmhqQ4vHSP6NMiA4duikylfPjLK2DhGKcSNS2f/s1600/concord_grapes_before.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilaJMj21DIQ9caFjS9p_7r9KqWAhsg-PXA0mXtd1mzT-A8t4wciyLkxpYNuw76kDITVVUoGf3KcLSCBP3paOIajyZlcM0YbbAmhqQ4vHSP6NMiA4duikylfPjLK2DhGKcSNS2f/s400/concord_grapes_before.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519600565742782130" /></a><br /><br /><br />the odor that the concord grape produces while in the superheated grasp of the reproductive urge creates an almost palpable miasma - musky and and densely sweet.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-47898168840836186222010-09-18T09:33:00.001-05:002010-09-18T09:35:51.341-05:00Caturday Scheduled Programming<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghEV0mUpuJDbOrW97YBW6l7n1xCK7Wz3NuMfTMtrcIiOp2zxSb9Fml_3cdLsLMJtSSVHNS_ouvZKPrAjHyP-wIctGWpNh335ck-9ELliay7R7z83QhuFYnkzs1M9YPvVm_fIFw/s1600/caturday_nap.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 198px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghEV0mUpuJDbOrW97YBW6l7n1xCK7Wz3NuMfTMtrcIiOp2zxSb9Fml_3cdLsLMJtSSVHNS_ouvZKPrAjHyP-wIctGWpNh335ck-9ELliay7R7z83QhuFYnkzs1M9YPvVm_fIFw/s400/caturday_nap.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518261857617386178" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-42880308446098731982010-09-13T13:02:00.002-05:002010-09-13T13:21:21.527-05:00Hello, Lunch!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZZiK3D6eIKfl3u1XU8l2dZbf8QjV-F9FnAGgf_voDdGoYwAF1SmhAtknlbHjw6-2_V_BnREngKvA5NyMU9CkJyC6qIOvyIQv00shhDDB-GrvkhEpROR4nkZ0JnG8isiieg88F/s1600/Bob_Ceiling_Cat_Lunch.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZZiK3D6eIKfl3u1XU8l2dZbf8QjV-F9FnAGgf_voDdGoYwAF1SmhAtknlbHjw6-2_V_BnREngKvA5NyMU9CkJyC6qIOvyIQv00shhDDB-GrvkhEpROR4nkZ0JnG8isiieg88F/s400/Bob_Ceiling_Cat_Lunch.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516464648112356322" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-73527281031886350402010-09-11T09:38:00.007-05:002010-09-11T09:56:42.364-05:00KaturdayklokDo anyting for catklok <br />Do anything for catklok<br />Do anything for catklok<br />Do anything for catklok<br /> <br />I'll teach you who poop<br /> <br />catklok catklok catklok!<br /><br /><br />Pipgar Pipgelf fell out of a tree<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhalvwCmB8avVGpXFrbJs02nokb_fvQDGpWqygss-EiihZut-exqWEq2883WehA29lxYlD5Ht3WskSTyFvUtgYZ8tSmNC6CaqiPOnnxuzaUPk_5neUcFB7E4C_dPw9YXw5DwhiS/s1600/Pipgar+Pipself.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhalvwCmB8avVGpXFrbJs02nokb_fvQDGpWqygss-EiihZut-exqWEq2883WehA29lxYlD5Ht3WskSTyFvUtgYZ8tSmNC6CaqiPOnnxuzaUPk_5neUcFB7E4C_dPw9YXw5DwhiS/s400/Pipgar+Pipself.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515666152707421410" /></a><br /><br /><br />Nibbles Wartooth ate a bumble bee<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhirQfM8BLpc6I8Nh9ZQa85dAAfWASxdYbS76NbxuXsJ_Tg5l_gbAgnr-nlJkBciNAk3jr3NLRBCR8dNPK9EaQjq00JeyxSkd2-I4r2Kx95WGlyIFTUumogE4w26OyBvP7_I27j/s1600/Nibbles_Wartooth.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhirQfM8BLpc6I8Nh9ZQa85dAAfWASxdYbS76NbxuXsJ_Tg5l_gbAgnr-nlJkBciNAk3jr3NLRBCR8dNPK9EaQjq00JeyxSkd2-I4r2Kx95WGlyIFTUumogE4w26OyBvP7_I27j/s400/Nibbles_Wartooth.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515666144018348098" /></a><br /><br />Bobby Murderface Murderface Murderface<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN-n_YtpRgeffMR7Fccusy_OebINYx6u12d1vrYtklLHRYdSW5VxuSlW7yWpulc6Zp8csT9ZOYTjscUeiKCBQHgxyfyHqV3CYlTESWYRt_ZaTMAbpSOhLt7P17iL7bR30WfLvk/s1600/Bobby_Murderface.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN-n_YtpRgeffMR7Fccusy_OebINYx6u12d1vrYtklLHRYdSW5VxuSlW7yWpulc6Zp8csT9ZOYTjscUeiKCBQHgxyfyHqV3CYlTESWYRt_ZaTMAbpSOhLt7P17iL7bR30WfLvk/s400/Bobby_Murderface.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515666132648545410" /></a><br /><br />Luckles doodly doo doodly doo ding dong diddly doodly doo<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYB5FawNpZeIVgWSsBPjoaz-j4pr-QqEC-GPpB7DZEV1QAwYl2dwKgFQIWIPuJdwm_3FpmUPkKhVH5VB53iCGuZaXrNQw0_DA1ohRKnupCM6a_aZlWZAB-CZgkrimWRmOlH46W/s1600/doodly_do.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYB5FawNpZeIVgWSsBPjoaz-j4pr-QqEC-GPpB7DZEV1QAwYl2dwKgFQIWIPuJdwm_3FpmUPkKhVH5VB53iCGuZaXrNQw0_DA1ohRKnupCM6a_aZlWZAB-CZgkrimWRmOlH46W/s400/doodly_do.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515666136594678962" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />PigBear Explosion<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ATjt9JtGDLm-Ql68vKjSMgptxMFlsVsp7ozMSJN8HDdvwvaU5CHJWzdT21cYmZ0av3kxivl1Ogv2W7AmZSrCKXEn9pdCErUzLselR2nWtAueiDNbLHH0ax9IvkfSZD0DPwnZ/s1600/PigBear_Explosion.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ATjt9JtGDLm-Ql68vKjSMgptxMFlsVsp7ozMSJN8HDdvwvaU5CHJWzdT21cYmZ0av3kxivl1Ogv2W7AmZSrCKXEn9pdCErUzLselR2nWtAueiDNbLHH0ax9IvkfSZD0DPwnZ/s400/PigBear_Explosion.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515666123203657954" /></a><br /><br /><br />With apologies to <a href=http://www.dethklok.org/>Dethklok</a><br />& thanks to <a href=http://www.myspace.com/ipistol>stoops</a> for his brutal assistance writing this post.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-41257065708079905052010-09-11T09:18:00.002-05:002010-09-11T09:21:06.376-05:00Last jar<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYV3oeOD4Gw7rTx2urp4vQQFZeMgbEJrirqiG62ICUDmfhlD9XoGs1KjVCBpViN5g98Tue34zWm4bIqRY5Md_oDfc11l-KObxeyXxD6jguu7enoOEEME27BRBoS4lVOGRGGW1l/s1600/photo+(2).JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYV3oeOD4Gw7rTx2urp4vQQFZeMgbEJrirqiG62ICUDmfhlD9XoGs1KjVCBpViN5g98Tue34zWm4bIqRY5Md_oDfc11l-KObxeyXxD6jguu7enoOEEME27BRBoS4lVOGRGGW1l/s400/photo+(2).JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515660391054890242" /></a><br /><br />Guess it's time for another batch. Marmalade is so easy to make that I usually tend to overdo it and make enough to last three years, but this time I got it right.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-85501328418545811802010-09-09T09:37:00.001-05:002010-09-09T09:37:54.279-05:00ReadingJust finished Radio Days by Garrison Keillor and I find myself full of reluctant admiration for the man. He strikes me as a pompous phony who condescends unpleasantly to his characters, but he can certainly turn a phrase. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-883303509996733252010-09-06T16:45:00.004-05:002010-09-06T16:49:04.380-05:00so wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully pretty!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOGUy_mXDBUeJI8fLaCDjBf2RlRKsCkIq1cKgku6OQLumlDeLiLuEcHQF4795b4_riTGfpPnrd49p0XZ9AqDqxPcN9mMv54MuJz7LWLhSJlqNrwAQjtJ4XgUnDxBFokuQX9hn8/s1600/photo+(1).JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOGUy_mXDBUeJI8fLaCDjBf2RlRKsCkIq1cKgku6OQLumlDeLiLuEcHQF4795b4_riTGfpPnrd49p0XZ9AqDqxPcN9mMv54MuJz7LWLhSJlqNrwAQjtJ4XgUnDxBFokuQX9hn8/s400/photo+(1).JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5513920115963336722" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.rathergood.com/lolcats">you know that I'd do anything for you</a> ...<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-45044112618758335422010-08-27T23:36:00.004-05:002010-08-28T12:41:22.449-05:00If you’re in there, please save me, Superman<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPY42ly_SD5GpzIjZITK0fsNvDtA1uncloSXYIn3lZFZRwFjLN9-nXnKauebvlgrNZg1k5CddFm1l68iXh83nG3wgRPFnCIPPJH1x4ODkBVxCOAzEhS9b9fVqzbqSxMovLBcHJ/s1600/the_birds.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPY42ly_SD5GpzIjZITK0fsNvDtA1uncloSXYIn3lZFZRwFjLN9-nXnKauebvlgrNZg1k5CddFm1l68iXh83nG3wgRPFnCIPPJH1x4ODkBVxCOAzEhS9b9fVqzbqSxMovLBcHJ/s400/the_birds.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5510315988946479858" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-91383900932858116532010-08-26T23:04:00.004-05:002010-08-26T23:11:15.190-05:00How to Make a Self-Watering Potted Plant<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4QiySfu2V1scSR9LN9H-VsPi7zj1iRLuWW8cNAOk3erDdLSDlVn6Iq0U8GTmieEbMFlDY675NTn3axu0-icsPBh41NS1OWLpVzmncHTj7f809HYwAXIZWkiE67Xyc2A48iQhA/s1600/self_watering_potted_plant.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 324px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4QiySfu2V1scSR9LN9H-VsPi7zj1iRLuWW8cNAOk3erDdLSDlVn6Iq0U8GTmieEbMFlDY675NTn3axu0-icsPBh41NS1OWLpVzmncHTj7f809HYwAXIZWkiE67Xyc2A48iQhA/s400/self_watering_potted_plant.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5509936147705532066" /></a><br /><br />I'm not that much of a draftsman (or scanner user), but you get the idea.<br /><br />That thing on the far right is supposed to say "capillary action" and if that's the wrong phrase, please don't tell me because the closest I get to science these days is an Excel spreadsheet and I don't really care if I'm wrong.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28395314.post-63837377222074440592010-08-25T21:10:00.001-05:002010-08-25T21:10:38.486-05:00TestingBlogging from phone ... Now I just need picasa to throw pictures directly from my phone onto here. I'm all caught up to the year 2008!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Slowtech" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe in a reader</a></p></div>Cara dBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10627350922307262483noreply@blogger.com0