Write Everyday Project #22, Stuff You, Yahoo

Setting aside my dissatisfaction for how little you make writing for the Yahoo Contributor Network, Yahoo has managed to find an all new way to piss me off.  Since 1996 or so, I've maintained a Yahoo email address and with it, a collection of bookmarks attached to that account.  Since the system was pretty primitive in '96, I had to come up with my own organizational setup.  You see, all it did back then was list your bookmarks in alphabetical order.  So I devised categories for my bookmarks like Cartoon, VidGame, and the ever so popular Misc, and added them to the title of each bookmark.  If they updated regularly, I put what day or days they updated in parenthesis after the title.  Ergo, one of my oldest links is "Cartoon Sluggy Freelance (MTuWThF)".  So if it was first thing Monday morning and I wanted to read that day's webcomics, I just scrolled down to "Cartoon" and picked the (M) ones.  Quick and easy.  Its a system that's worked for me for fifteen years now.

And then, at the beginning of September, I lost the ability to add new Bookmarks.  "Yahoo Bookmarks cannot be added to, modified, or deleted until we complete an upgrade.  Your Bookmarks will be available on October 20th."  Fine, fine.  I can still use the old Bookmarks, and I'll just save new ones in my browser until the service comes back online.  Inconvenient, to be sure, but not game breaking.

Today is the 20th, and I logged on to My Yahoo and discovered that my organizational system is completely screwed up.

Look at that hash!  What's more, I can't figure out what the Hell the system is supposed to be now!  Obviously, it isn't alphabetical.  But its not by the date that I put them in, since the first on the list, "Chugworth Academy" is one I added in 2003, but "Abominable" (short for "The Abominable Charles Christopher") is from last year.  Its not by when I visited them last, since Chugworth quit updating in 2009, hence the (Dead), while Abominable only updates on Wednesdays and I saw it last yesterday.  It just seems to be a random mess.

So, I think to myself, there must be some kind of sorting error.  I'll just fix it in the controls and...

Well.  That's certainly inconvenient.  I prefer not to have toolbars cluttering up my browser, but I've been with Yahoo for 15 years, so I guess if there's any one toolbar I should have, that's the one.  Not a problem...

   

No.

No, I will not install IE 9 just to sort my frikkin' bookmarks.  "Do more from anywhere."  What a cruel joke.  

So that's it.  After fifteen years, I'm finally giving up on My Yahoo.  It's iGoogle for me now.  It'll be a pain in the ass getting all the bookmarks over there, but I was due to clean out some chaff (like the long since creator abandoned Chugworth, for example, or all those Buffy and Angel sites I put in there in the early 2000s) and this is the perfect time to do it.  I just wish it hadn't come to this, but some betrayals cannot be forgiven.

Stuff you, Yahoo.

Write Everyday Project #21, Shake N Bake (Cooking III )

It's been months since I last had Shake N Bake chicken.  Finding myself with one packet of the stuff and some frozen chicken pieces, I decided to put it together in lieu of doing something more complicated.  It would also let me finish the box off.  So I did, and after having it for lunch, I've got one question.

Has Shake N Bake always been this greasy?

I mean, seriously, there was like a quarter inch of grease in the bottom of the pan when it finished baking!  Maybe my recent awakening into better cooking has allowed me to finally notice the details of what I've been eating, but man, how can something baked be so greasy?  Much as it tastes good...and it does...I think I'm going to lay off the stuff.  It just doesn't seem healthy.

Besides, there are more chicken recipes that I want to try....

Write Everyday Project #20, The Bears...are Mediocre

So here we are.  Three and three with wins over the 3-3 Falcons, 1-5 Panthers, and 1-5 Vikings.  We also have losses to the 4-2 Saints, 6-0 Packers, and 5-1 Lions.  If you're a team who can beat average to bad teams but lose to the good ones, that's pretty much the definition of mediocre, don't you think?

Despite banter to the contrary, I have my doubts that we'll be able to beat the 4-2 Buccaneers in London next week.  It seems more likely that the long flight and short week and a game against a decent team will prove our doom.

Indeed, if we calculate based on W/L, we can predict the rest of the Bears schedule...

Buccaneers 4-2
Eagles 2-4
Lions 5-1
Chargers 4-2
Raiders 4-2
Chiefs 2-3
Broncos 1-4
Seahawks 2-3
Packers 6-0
Vikings 1-5

So, that would be wins against the Eagles, Chiefs, Broncos, Seahawks, and Vikings, with losses to the Bucs, Lions, Chargers, Raiders, and Packers.  That gives us a perfectly mediocre 8-8 season.

Which is the worst possible outcome.  If the Bears were going to be truly wretched, I could stop watching and start looking forward to high draft picks in June.  On the other hand, if they were dominant and good, I could look forward to watching them win.  But middle of the road means you want to watch since maybe they can turn it around like they did last season, but in my heart of hearts I have very little hope.

So I'll watch, and I'll gripe, and, if I'm right in the end, I'll say "I told you so."

Write Everyday Project #19, Memory of Snowflakes

Alas, that this entry isn't about remembering a specific snowflake or snowfall.  Nor is it a poem, since a poet I am not.  No, this is a complaint that sometimes my memory seems to made out of snowflakes, ones that melt as fast as I touch them.

This was brought on by something that happened a few minutes ago, where between my deciding to open up a new tab to search for something and my actually doing so, I forgot what I wanted to search about.  I actually did recall a minute or so later, I wanted to Google the new report on the value (or perhaps lack thereof) of multi-vitamins, but it was pretty disturbing to bring up a search box and not recall what I wanted to type in it.  That seems to be happening more and more lately.

There are mnemonic tricks to help remember things, of course.  "Thirty days has September, April, June, and November.  All the rest have thirty one, except February which is all fucked up."  That's how I remember it, anyway.  And since it works, I see no reason to go back and learn the correct version.  I've also found that repeating something out loud at least three times in rapid succession can help keep things straight, to say nothing of simply constantly repeating what you need to recall until you don't need it any more.

Nevertheless, I find myself relying more and more on my phone's calendar and address book functions.  I only know two phone numbers, my own and my parents' (and that last has been the same for 36 years), and I'm fuzzy on my own since I've only had it a few months.  I also use my email as a memory bank, keeping things I want to remember to do in my inbox, while cleaning out the rest.  There's a message from the Pritzker Military Library about a program they'll be webcasting on Thrusday that I want to remember to watch, that I've left in my inbox, for instance.

I do have to wonder if this is an age thing or simply a complexity of modern life thing or possibly a "get more sleep you goon thing".  Or possibly all of the above and other stuff besides.  Whatever the cause, it remains an uncomfortable thought that my mind may not be as reliable as once it was.

Now, where'd I put my phone?

Write Everyday Project #18, Game Day (Cooking II)

I've got a busy weekend, with a D&D game on Saturday and a Mutants & Masterminds game on Sunday.  Plus, if time allows, I'd like to watch Bear/Vikings Sunday night. Naturally, the thing to do is to make the weekend even busier by cooking for these events.

To that end, I'm going for three recipes.

The first is a Blondie Brownie .  I made these yesterday, with my own custom modifications.  To be precise, I switched the semi-sweet chips for milk chocolate, added more of them (about 1 cup and 1/4, since that finished off the bag) and put on a layer of coconut.  For some reason, maybe because of the thick layer of coconut, it took nearly twice as long as the 25 minutes listed in the recipe to bake properly. 

Though the initial reaction has been positive, and it does taste good, I wonder if I overdid it with the toppings.  It's virtually impossible to taste the vanilla of the blondie beneath all the coconut and chips, which makes putting as much effort as I did into the blondie itself seem kind of pointless.  Still, it's hard to go wrong with toasted coconut and chocolate.  I'll take it to the D&D game today and see what the guys think.

Recipe number two is a chilled Clark Bar.  I played this one mostly straight, though again I only had milk chocolate chips rather than the semi-sweet that the recipe calls for.

This one is surprisingly good.  Its got a nutty flavor without being overpoweringly peanut buttery, and despite the layer of milk chocolate on the top, not too sweet.   Lacking an electric mixer, I had to muscle the main bar ingredients together, but other than that, it's a pretty easy recipe to assemble.  You do need a long lead time, though, since the recipe calls for four hours in the refrigerator.  I put it together yesterday and let it chill overnight before trying it in the morning.

Recipe number three is even simpler.  It's one for Glazed Chicken Wings.  There's nothing to it, just combine three ingredients into a sauce, coat wings, apply heat.  Even my own fledgling cooking skills should be able to handle that!  No picture as yet, since I'm planning on just bringing the material over to my brother's and cooking it on site.  I've had some problems with last minute baking and then trying to transport a hot pan somewhere, and since his oven works about as well as mine, there's no reason not to cook them there.  I'll update the post with a picture and the results once I've cooked them.

UPDATE: They were okay.  I probably should have marinated them last night instead of following the recipe as written, since the flavor was heavy on the skin but nothing much on the meat.  Also, one of the guys said there was too much soy sauce, though it was fine to me and the other guy who ate 'em.  But then, I'm notroious for liking my food over-salted, so it probably is too much soy for general consumption.  Anyway, here's what they looked like:

And here's much (but not all) of the other snacks we had on site for the game:

You know, it's probably best that we only do this every couple of weeks.  Though I do have another game with a different group tomorrow.  Since some of the Clark Bars and Blondies survived, I'll bring them for the other gang too, but I don't think I'll eat very much of it this time out.  

Anyway, the Clark Bars were a hit, the Blondies less so, and the Wings less than that.

The Cooking Quest continues!

Write Everday Project #17, The Roman Empire...in SPACE

I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty tired of seeing the Roman Empire in space.  I can understand the instinct, since to those of us from the Western traditions see the Roman Empire as one of the high points of our culture, but the implementation is often so shoddy as to make me cringe.

Star Trek did it with the Romulans and then, since that was too subtle, did it again in "Bread and Circuses,"  Romans in space!  Then there's the Marian Hegemony from Battletech, Romans in mechs in space!  The Telnarian Histories, of course, for Romans with sex slaves in space!  Asimov did it in the first book and a half of Foundation, which was a re-do of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire....in space.  (To his credit, he got bored and threw in the Mule to blow it all up, but everything through the first half of Foundation and Empire is spot-on Romans in space.)  You've got Star Wars and the fall of the Republic and rise of the Empire.  Even the Centauri from Babylon 5 are an example of Rome in decline.

But the worst example of the idea that I'm aware of is in the Tour of the Merrimack books by R.M. Meluch.  In this four book series, with at least two more on the way, the idea is that the Romans went underground.  They survived as a parasitical secret society in America and then, when the time was right, fled to the stars and re-established the Roman Empire.  In space.

What's worse, is that they re-established it exactly as it was in 1 AD.  They use the same political structure, with an Emperor and a Senate.  They use the same military structure, with legions and all the old Roman ranks. They even use high tech versions of ancient Roman armor, and yes, use swords in modern combat.  Granted they also use giant war robots to do all their fighting for them, but even so it all seems to miss the point.

You see, what bugs me about the various interpretations of "Rome in Space," especially the one presented in Tour of the Merrimack is that it ignores what actually made Rome great in favor of the surface details.  Rome wasn't great because they wore armor with skirts on them and marched in formation.  Rome was great because that was the state of the art in warfare at the time, and by the gods, Rome was going to stay ahead of the curve!  The Roman Republic and Empire were guided by people who were relentlessly driven to out-do their ancestors.  That meant learning new ways to build, to make money, and to fight with every generation, because you literally had the the eyes of your ancestors on you!

Which is why going ahead and re-instituting a political and military structure that was two and a half thousand years old is one of the most anti-Roman things you could do!  Being Roman meant adapting to conditions to become stronger.  Relying on ancient methods is the opposite of that.

So what you get is Space RiNOs.  Romans in Name Only.  And I'm sick of it.

Write Everyday Project #16, Cooking (Shoyu Chicken)

I've been using Allrecipes.com to cook from a lot lately.  Mostly desserts, but I've tried a couple of main dishes too.  My most recent one was this Shoyu Chicken recipe.  It worked pretty well.  I'm coming late to cooking.  Most of the time I've lived on my own, my food was either microwaved, or at best, very primitive meat & rice concoctions.  And while I still do love "Miscellaneous Meat & Rice," I'm starting to appreciate what you can get with more effort.

I still don't have a particularly refined palette, and though I tinker with the various recipes, I'm neither classically trained nor know enough to be a chef, but I am starting to become a cook.

Like the man said, "You've taken your first step into a larger world."  And that feels pretty good.