LlamaVision

Peanut Butter

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:27:17 GMT

"An Ohio peanut butter distributor issued a voluntary recall Saturday for two brands of peanut butter after health officials in Minnesota on Friday said they had found salmonella bacteria in a tub of peanut butter that is distributed to schools and hospitals."
Read More...

I was going to use this as an excuse to sing the praises of homemade peanut butter when I saw the headline, but then I read the article and realized that no amount of peanut butter you make will protect you from the lowest-bidder food provider strategy used in schools and hospitals. I'm not sure which is more sad, giving kids tainted food or giving sick people tainted food.

I'll talk about making your own peanut butter anyway, as the process is so simple it will make you wonder how the food industry can manage to get salmonella in there at all. All you have to do is get over the fact that it doesn't have high fructose corn syrup, or a mountain of preservatives, or added oils. Real peanut butter has one ingredient - peanuts. Real peanut butter takes about 10 minutes to make. Real peanut butter requires a single appliance.

So here's what you do to make peanut butter:
1. Buy a big bucket of plain peanuts. Go to Sams or Costco or wherever. Be careful! There are at least two varieties of plain peanuts - one has peanuts and salt, the other has extras like corn syrup. Sadly, you do have to check the ingredients on plain peanuts.
2. Go home and put a bunch of peanuts in the food processor, turn it on.
3. Wait a while. The food processor will sound angry, but do not be alarmed, it will get quieter. Let it go for 5 minutes, check the consistency. The smoother you want it, the longer you leave it in there.
4. Scrape into container with lid, place in fridge right away.
Note: Unlike store bought real peanut butter, this won't separate as long as you get it in the fridge quickly.

I don't know how we went down the road of mass producing something that is so easy to make on a small scale, or how it ended up that real peanut butter sitting along side the mass produced peanut butter on the grocery shelf costs so much more.. And with a process that simple, how do you make people sick with the finished product? I guess if you try hard enough...maybe rub some uncooked chicken in there or something? Yummy chicken flavored peanut butter!

!?

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:19:13 GMT

(Click on it if you can't read it)

USPS vs. UPS

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:57:43 GMT

Consider the following two packages I am tracking. Both ordered on Nov. 28. Both from Amazon. The USPS package is very small, maybe 1-2 pounds. The other package is quite a bit larger (weight not given to protect the package's identity from prying Annie eyes).

USPS
Provided by Amazon:
December 02, 2008 11:30:00 AM HAZELWOOD MO Arrival Scan
November 29, 2008 04:28:00 AM HAZELWOOD MO Shipment has left seller facility and is in transit
Provided by USPS:
Status: Processed - Your item was processed and left our HAZELWOOD, MO 63042 facility on December 2, 2008.

UPS:

EARTH CITY, MO, US	12/03/2008	5:01 A.M.	OUT FOR DELIVERY
	12/03/2008	4:15 A.M.	DESTINATION SCAN
	12/03/2008	3:19 A.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
INDIANAPOLIS, IN, US	12/02/2008	11:54 P.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	12/02/2008	11:14 P.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
	12/02/2008	10:46 P.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	12/02/2008	8:08 P.M.	ARRIVAL SCAN
	12/02/2008	7:44 P.M.	DEPARTURE SCAN
	12/02/2008	6:10 P.M.	ORIGIN SCAN
US	12/02/2008	3:36 P.M.	BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

What the heck is USPS telling me? on Nov. 29 it appears the package is in Hazelwood, MO. Eleven miles from it's destination. Then, apparently, nothing happened for a couple days. Then suddenly....wow, it's in Hazelwood, MO. But I thought it was already there...? Who knows? Since Amazon wasn't clear I went to look at usps.gov only to find that one tiny tidbit of info. I guess it's coming today? But maybe I should've gotten it yesterday?

UPS, perhaps, is a bit excessive by comparison, but at least I know exactly when they picked up the package, where it bounced around, and the most recent place it's been spotted. And I know that I'll get it today because it's "out for delivery." So I know, since it's being delivered to work, to go look for it. And if I can't find it, to bug the people who might have recieved it with all the other crap we get on any given day.

I'm sure I'll get both (eventually) but I find it interesting that you generally pay more to have USPS ship a package (in my experience), especially if you pay for tracking, but apparently you don't much benefit for it, at least not in terms of tracking info. Maybe they should just stick with letters.

Dog Blog

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 23:01:06 GMT

The dogs have a blog now: http://KobiAndMilo.blogspot.com/

I figure it will amuse some people, and I hope it will be beneficial to other people who stumble across it looking for information on ACL surgery or recapturing escaped dogs or whatever. I'm going to try to update it reasonably often without filling it up with meaningless crap like, "Tuesday - Kobi slept all afternoon again. Milo is in his crate."

I figured I'd try something other livejournal for them, and I think I like the blogger interface better.

(Note - I changed the URL so for the few people who got a preview look, this is a bit different. I also added more pictures to the first couple of posts.)

Enjoy. :)

Spider Poo?

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:47:49 GMT

Okay, I know everyone poops, and when the monster caterpillars took over our veggie garden they pooped all over, but I'd never really considered a spider. Yesterday, when I got home from work, I rolled the trashcan up to the side of the house. And while there under the roof overhang I felt a drop hit my forehead. It was sunny and cloudless so I was a little confused. I wiped the drop onto the back of my hand and was perturbed to see that it was milky white and I thought a bird crapped on me. But I looked up at the overhang, and there was no bird. I'd heard no flapping of wings. There was, however, a ginormous spider in a massive house-spanning web. Huge bloated brown monstrosity. Sometimes they're all legs, but this guy (gal, I guess) had a massive body, the legs were just little insignificant twigs.

I think that spider pooped on me.

Sweet Jesus!

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:09:18 GMT

So the corn industry has commercials and even a damn website heralding the greatness of "all natural" high fructose corn syrup. It's atrocious, it reminds me if the Carbon dioxide is life! pro-pollution (er, anti-global warming alarmism) commercials that were around a couple of years ago. "We are big business, and with our gobs of cash we promise to help you help us make more gobs of cash." Anyway...

Just for fun, lets compare what goes into production of regular sugar vs. corn syrup.

Sugar Production entails:
*Crush sugar cane, extract and filter juice.
*Treat with lime to neutralize and remove impurities.
*Boil for a bit
*Remove sediment from the bottom, skim off the gunk on top
*Cool/evaporate and remove syrup to get crystals.
*Use as is (raw), or make white refined sugar we all have in our kitchen with additional filtering of impurities using something like charcoal.

HFCS production entails:
*Steep corn for a couple days, it ferments a bit.
*Separate Germ from Endosperm
*Grind the above seperately.
*Remove starch from each by washing.
*Separate starch from gluten and dry it.
*Cornstarch is treated with alpha-amylase to produce oligosaccharides (shorter chains of sugars)
*Glucoamylase breaks the sugar chains down even further to yield the simple sugar glucose.
*Xylose isomerase (aka glucose isomerase) converts glucose to a mixture of about 42% fructose and 50–52% glucose with some other sugars mixed in.

Which could you do completely on your own, without, say, a chemist? Which sounds more "natural" to you?

Edit: I completely forgot honey! Here's how you make honey (after the bees are done workiing): remove honey from honeycomb, strain (gets out the chunks), filter (optional - high-pressure with fine filter - gets out the pollen but also some nutrients), done. How's that for natural?

CNN Misses the Obvious

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:08:19 GMT

...or just doesn't have the balls to say it.

"McCain selects an inexperienced woman as VP in order to sway some hard-headed Hillary-or-Die pseudo-democrats and put a young pretty face on his campaign."

(Update: Someone eventually mentioned some of this, I think. Under the editorial headline of, "Has John McCain lost his mind?" or some such thing. I guess it's not really the type of thing you throw into your average "unbiased" news story.)

Facts about Sarah Palin:
She was a sports team mom!
She runs marathons!
Her Husband is a snowmachine race champion!
She was Ms Alaska!
She was on the cover of Vogue!
She served two terms as a city council woman!
Two terms as mayor!
Governor for almost two years
Chair of not one, not two, but three committees/commissions!
President of the Alaska Conference of Mayors!

I'm literally bowled over by her experience...

(Note that all of that except the Vogue and Ms Alaska parts are from the Alaska State Govt. site, I wasn't really mining for silly things to put on the list.)

This is important!

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:37:43 GMT

I wish it said *WARNING* or *DANGER* or *CAUTION*. But at least they let me know before I made the mistake of wildly opening the cabinet only to have my hopes and dreams crushed by the lack of cups therein.

Other signs I'd like to post for a few select people in my company to see:
-You need to flush the urinal every time, jackass
-And wash your hands, you filthy pig
-For God's sake, put some clothes on when you come to work
-Write software that doesn't suck, you know, just for a change of pace

No if you'll excuse me I'm going to go translate that sign into French, German, and Spanish just in case we have some foreign visitors who might need cups...

Wow, that IS fun!

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:54:05 GMT

------------------------
From: Phil
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 7:35 AM
To: Technical Staff
Subject: Friday

The Fun Committee thought it would be fun if Friday was “Wear a Blue Shirt Day”. Feel free to participate.
------------------------

I received that this morning, and boy was I excited. In case you're wondering where you might have heard that before...
Bill Lumbergh: 'Oh, and remember: next Friday... is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.'

Sadly, the only difference is that Hawaiian Shirt Day would actually be more fun.

Jackassery

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:38:55 GMT

Please, everyone in foreign countries, please understand that he doesn't speak for all of us. Just, you know, give us a few more months and we'll hopefully start climbing out of this 8-year-deep hole...

Things I Saw On Carson Street Today

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:10:41 GMT

Carson street is the heart of Pittsburgh's South Side. It's a fairly long strip of bars, clubs, restaurants, eclectic shops, tattoo parlors, comic book shops and chiropractors (one of these things doesn't belong....). Some are pretty fancy, some are pretty crazy hippie, and there are people of all kinds to see.

-A guy was trying to parallel park his VW Bug completely wrong and really pissing off traffic in both directions. A motorcycle cop stopped oncoming traffic to give the little car more room to maneuver and when he finally got into the (rather large) parking space, the cop drove by and yelled, "If you can't park that little thing maybe you should walk!" The people eating outside at the cafe I was at got a kick out of it. When the guy got out of the car he walked quickly, head down, to his destination.

-An older man on an older motorcycle of the Harley-Davidson variety. He had some kind of weird fur cover over the back of it, behind the seat (maybe there's storage back there? Maybe it was on the seat, like a seat cover?). There were cutout rectangles on the furry thing on both sides of the back. Framed inside these cutouts where "Ron Paul for President" signs. The best part, though, was the LOUD BLASTING POLKA MUSIC blaring from his radio.

-Damn...there was something else I saw that was fun and would've completed this post, but now I can't recall what it was. I mean, something besides the weird punk-goth kids all wearing Zipcar.com company polo shirts and the lady who was maybe/probably a prostitute. Well, if I think of it I'll edit the post...

A Call to the Emergency Vet (Or, "The Joy of Dog Ownership")

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:51:16 GMT

This is kinda gross. Enjoy!

Guy: Hello, Vet Emergency Place, can I help you?
Me: Hi, I have a Shiba Inu. He, um, he ate a tampon. He threw it up a little while ago, but before we could take care of it he...he ate it again. Should we make him throw up again or just wait and see what happens?
Guy: He ate what?
Me: A tampon.
Guy: Oh, hold on just a sec...
~music~
Girl: Hi...so we ate a tampon, huh? A couple times?
Me: Yeah. Should I make him vomit again?
Girl: Well, we don't want that in there. Best to make him vomit. Do you have hydrogen peroxide....?
...etc...

Fortunately, we have peroxide just for this reason. And a turkey baster also just for this reason (if you ever need to force liquid down a dogs throat, a turkey baster is the tool of choice). We've only had to administer peroxide once before, but Kobi got antsy as soon as we opened the bottle. So Annie got to hold him and I got to put him in a headlock and we got to force our dog to vomit. Poor guy was so confused. He thought he was going to get his after-dinner treat, and suddenly we've taken him outside and forced awfulness down his throat and then waited patiently while he barfed up the full contents of his stomach on the lawn. Fortunately, everything came out okay and he was too sick to try and re-eat anything. So he napped all evening on the couch, and I got to clean up and hose down the lawn.

TEXAS (you gotta make it caps, 'cause everything is bigger...blah blah blah)

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:53:06 GMT

We just got back from Texas on Tuesday. But first - everyone should read a book called The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It's informative, political, philosophical, and good for you all at the same time. It will make you think about what you're eating, force you to consider where your food is coming from, and make you quit being so smug about buying organic. He's not preachy in the book, but the points he's driving at are pretty obvious. If my recommendation isn't good enough, it also has 4.5 stars over 400+ reviews on Amazon.

Back to Texas - we went down for Annie's friend Laura's wedding. She's known Laura since they were 1 or 2 years old when they were neighbors. Laura's family later moved to Kansas City, and then later still to San Antonio. They hadn't seen each other for about 15 years so it was fun for them to get reacquainted. We took plenty of pictures while we were down there. Feel free to browse through them. :)

The trip down was unpleasant - a 3 hour delay at the airport in St. Louis with Annie's parents waiting patiently for us at the San Antonio airport since the rental car was in my name. Fortunately, the weather in San Antonio was great. The wedding was outside, and though the bride apparently threw up several times in the morning due to nerves, everything went well and the reception was good fun. We also got to spend a little time up in the hill country at the bride's parents' house which was one of the nicest (though probably priciest) houses I've visited in a long time.

We flew in on Friday, the wedding was Saturday. On Sunday I drove Annie's parents back to the airport at way too early in the morning. Then we packed up our stuff and drove down to Port Aransas (near Corpus Christi on Mustang Island). We rented a little one-room condo on the beach there for a very reasonable $95/night. It had a kitchenette so we could make breakfast/lunch and then not feel so bad about spending more on Dinner. The weather wasn't so cooperative there, cloudy and windy and not especially warm, but we did manage to get in some beach time. And when the weather was it's worst (quite a storm blew through) we just happened to be on/in an aircraft carrier in Corpus Christi.

After our two days there we drove back up to San Antonio, blew through the Alamo real quick, ate at the River Walk, and then flew back here.

For those I haven't talked to lately, that's the third wedding we went to out of four, all in four weeks. Two in St. Louis, one in Texas, and another in Lexington, KY that my sister and I will be driving to this weekend. On top of that, I've also been to Pittsburgh for a week and to Denver for three days for work in the middle of all this. I'm ready for wedding season to be done.

Worst Hotel Ever.

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:48:16 GMT

When I travel I generally stay at a Holiday Inn Express or a Hampton Inn. They're not great, they're generic business traveler hotels and they have free breakfast. So I'm in Pittsburgh, and the Hampton Inn I stayed at last time I was here isn't available. So I grab the Holiday Inn Express. Let me run down my experience across slightly more than one day:

1. Arrive. Stand at front desk talking to coworker for 5 minutes. No service. Fill out the "I'm parking here, this is what kind of car I have" form. Wait. Cough. Make noise. Get bored. Oh, there's the girl. She was too busy talking to the other girl around the corner, didn't know we were there.

2. Get up to room. key doesn't work. Back to front desk for new key.

3. Get up to room. It's a smoking room. Smells like awful. Back to front desk. "Sorry sir, we only have smoking rooms available." Back to room. Check on other hotels in the area. None nearby have rooms available.

4. Manage to sleep okay. Go work. Come back. Go eat. Come back. Watching TV and I hear drip............ drip.......... drip drip....... drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip... Must be the shower. Oh no. That's coming from the ceiling of the bathroom. The floor is soaked.

5. Call the front desk (11:00 PM). "Sorry, we don't have any maintenance available." Inform them that it's really dripping a lot. Repeat: the floor is soaked. "We'll send someone up in the morning." Become angry, ask the fellow for verification that my bathroom is going to be flooded all night. "You can ask a manager in the morning about compensation." Slam phone down in anger.

6. The night rent-a-cop security guy brings me a towel up. I don't need a towel, I need the fucking leak fixed. But he seems genuinely concerned, "Oh jeez, that's really coming in. I'll go check upstairs." I hear him radio the front desk. They repeat to him that it'll just have to wait til morning.

7. Security guy comes back with a bucket and informs me that the upstairs toilet is broken. I guess demolished? Like, ripped out of the floor or something? 'Cause damn, that's a lot of water. He said the people in that room were sleeping, had no idea.

So the guy who's not even a real employee is the one who helped me the most by giving me a bucket and apologizing like mad. The douchebag at the front desk, if he said "sorry" at all, just sounded pissed that I was bothering him. And I can't even go sit on the damn toilet because I'll have the upstairs room's toilet water dripping on me.

What hotel doesn't have 24-hour maintenance? I mean, people are AT THE HOTEL AT NIGHT. During the day, who cares, people are out and about. But everyone is HERE at NIGHT. Should be sleeping, not throwing towels down to try to make the flooded bathroom usable. Fucking unbelievable...

So never every stay at the Holiday Inn Express on Tenth street in Pittsburgh. Just in case you were planning a trip, stay anywhere else but there.

New Look!

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:21:50 GMT

I figured I'd had this goatee long enough and that it was time for a change. I was so happy with the results I put on my best shirt and ran down to Sears and had them take some shots. I think all you ladies out there will be very impressed at the outcome. Click my beautiful mug for more pics...

Happy St. Patty's Day

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:34:14 GMT

Annie made Pretzel Snakes, some guy at work made corned beef and brought it in, and I've got my green tie on. How much more festive could we be...? None, none more festive.

Mmmm, tasty...

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:54:01 GMT

Annie has started a new blog chronicling her adventures in cooking. She's been taking a lot of pics of the food she's been making lately so if you like tasty (yet still healthy!) food hop on over and have a look. :)

http://homedining.blogspot.com/

Lunar Eclipse

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:49:14 GMT

I'm told that the color in STL was more vibrant than in Boston and that our sky was clearer than in Kansas City. However, I only had my little digicam and a tripod that I propped up on the roof, so even the better pics are a little fuzzy. If I could've put the tripod on the driveway it would've been more stable, but a streetlight would've been in the way. It was far too cold to try and find an ideal spot.

Anyway, if you missed it, I have a couple of shots you can look at and pretend you saw it. :)

Thank You Starbucks

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:28:33 GMT

When I travel, there are a lot of times when what I really want to do is go to a coffee shop and drink a huge cup o' coffee, and either work or just bum around killing time on the interwebs. And there are plenty of times the only coffee shop that might offer such services is Starbucks. But for years they've been using T-Mobile ~~crap~~ hotspots and I won't pay $6/hour to use that. I guess their T-Mobile contract ran out, and their bouncing over to AT&T and providing (gasp) free WiFi access.

Apparently if you already have AT&T broadband you're set or you can "check in" with a Starbucks card, which is apparently like a rechargeable phone card, only for coffee. While I have no great love of AT&T, they are my DSL provider at home, and while I have no great love of carrying around yet another card in my wallet, I would make that sacrifice just to be able to get out of the hotel room and work somewhere with an atmosphere. (For those of you who don't have the distinct ... er ... pleasure of traveling for business, the average Business Class hotel has about as much atmosphere as the inside of a cardboard box. Conducive to boredom and, if you're lucky, sleeping, but not for much else.)

Ideally, of course, I just wouldn't be traveling much, but if I have to be gone I try and find any way to make the best of things.

This is Scary...

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:34:21 GMT

"FBI wants palm prints, eye scans, tattoo mapping"

Initially it sounds like maybe it's just for criminals, and maybe that would be okay, but then you get down to quotes like this:

"The FBI plans a so-called 'rap-back' service in which an employer could ask the FBI to keep the prints for an employee on file and let the employer know if the person ever has a brush with the law."

That's a huge step towards Big Brother watching everything you do. I hope the ACLU and others can beat it down with the old Right To Privacy hammer.

Tax Rebate? Cash Advance? Hmmmm...

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:46:08 GMT

I can't find too much information on this "tax rebate" they keep talking about giving everyone, but the way they make it sound is that it's just free money. There's one glaring issue with that - if the govt. is already spending more money than it brings in, giving some of it back only sinks the govt. deeper in debt.

However, if it's like the tax rebate in 2001 it doesn't matter anyway because they'll take that money right back from you next year. In 2001 it ended up being an advanced on your 2001 tax return. So if you got the whopping $300 check, you got $300 less back in taxes come 2002.

I'm not saying it's going to work the same way this time around because after glancing through some news articles on it I can't find any specifics. But it may be something you'd like to keep in mind when you get your $600 check in the mail.

Political Stuff

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:19:39 GMT

I'm too cynical to really believe anything is going to change after Bush wanders aimlessly away from the white house, but if I'd written a post yesterday I was going to "throw my support" behind Obama, then Edwards, then Clinton, on the democrat side.

I can't much explain why I'd pick Obama and Edwards. I appreciate that Edwards didn't spend a fortune just to play endless sound bites. I appreciate that Obama seems vibrant, if that matters.

I just don't like Hillary. When she laughs or tries to joke she seems utterly insincere. I don't think I could just sit there and chat with her and enjoy it. She also seems a little regulation-happy in the Think Of The Children! department.

If I had to pick a republican, I'd still pick McCain. If there's anyone on That Side who can think for himself, he's the one. The others scare me. That Huckabee fellow seems okay, but then to hear people damn near speaking in tongues in their urgency to pray to god that he become president...that's unsettling. Bush, by his own admission, talks to god. Look where that's gotten us. Guiliani is a war monger. Romney bases his "opinions" on what seems popular at the moment.

Going back over what I've just written I realized that I haven't picked people based on their merits, I've picked people based on greater dislike for the other people. That's how I see our political system. How sad is that?

Happy Dogs!

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 14:04:28 GMT

Well, it took some work but Kobi and Milo are finally getting along like brothers. Running around and knocking each other over and chewing on each other, but without Kobi actually trying to eat Milo. Kobi even lets Milo wander around the house without harassment now, so we can stop climbing over and around the dog gate quite so much.

Milo is still scared of nearly everything, but he's getting more brave and curious. Best not to let him in the backyard without a leash on unless there's plenty of daylight left, though. We spent a good 30 minutes trying to lure him back inside in the dark yesterday. We finally got lucky and as I was making some unexpected noise by the door, Milo got distracted and Annie snagged him. It was far more drama than necessary for just coming in the back door (which is something he'd done a couple times already without much trouble).

We took some pictures so you can go see the dogs at play if you want to (click the picture for more).

Shock! Disbelief!

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:22:03 GMT

U.S. Agrees to Bali Compromise (on deciding that it's okay to discuss limiting CO2 emissions)

This is the kind of headline we haven't seen much in the past 7 years. I thought maybe the government had forgotten how to compromise.

This is by far the best bit of the article:
"...a short speech by a delegate from the small developing country of Papua New Guinea appeared to carry weight with the Americans. The delegate challenged the United States to 'either lead, follow or get out of the way.'"

Brilliant speechifying.

Of course, we're just agreeing to talk more about it, but I think I can paraphrase the general reaction of the world by saying, "Well, it's about damn time."

We Decided...

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 22:51:53 GMT

...to name him Milo. It wasn't suggested by anyone and it's not even remotely Japanese, but since his name was "Sly" it's not too much of a stretch to Milo.

Kobi was fine when they met, but he's been pretty miffed about this dog invading his house and yard. We've had to keep them separated so far inside the house (though when outside walking they were just fine). I'm sure that will get better, though, as Milo gets used to the surroundings and Kobi accepts his little brother.

The picture is in Springfield, we picked him up in a quiet corner of the Lowes parking lot (the pink leash is not ours and will soon be replaced).