After quite a bit of Battletech 2018 and a break in the middle to sweep and mop all the floors, I set to work on the next phase of things. Kind of funny, in that kitchen time is in my head, a break from sitting at my desk, but hey, BT has been consuming a lot of my gaming cycles this month, lol.
I had an idea last night about making a low carb tuna salad. It’s inspired by a cucumber and watermelon summer salad I encountered in an YouTube video. That is to say instead of macaroni style full of carbs or pickle style full of salt, it’s built around veggies. Details in footnote.
While blanching some carrots for the tuna salad, I broke down some broccoli and sliced additional carrots for later roasting for dinner and during the week. Aptly, by the time this was done it’s close enough to when I’d have to cook, I decided to stay downstairs and break out Shion to work on this journal entry.
Footnote: my tuna salad experiment
Diced cucumber.
Diced, blanched carrots (between 1:0.75 and 1:1 ratio /w cucu’)
Effectively, I quartered the cucumber and carrots and then cut them thin so the pieces are similar in size: slightly less area than a fingernail.
Raw carrots are hard as fuck, thus they need blanching or steaming. 4 minutes in a boiling water and then into a bath of ice water to chill.
Sweet peppers, shredded
Already cleaned the cutting board when I did this and these are the seedless kind. So I simply snipped the ends, quarter, and then snipped my way lengthwise with a good kitchen scissors.
Spring onions, chopped.
Packet of tuna, 74g
74g is about half a can.
Lower sodium light tuna, because I’m trying to cut down on salt for ye old blood pressure.
Black pepper to taste
And sadly, I don’t have any garlic powder handy.
Ranch dressing
I debated using oil/vinegar and opted to go with ranch.
I almost never have mayo, so most things people use mayo for I use ranch 😛
Simple plan of the day, well executed thus far. Got up early instead of sleeping in, despite the urge to read all of last night. Skipped the usual breakfast/coffee routine and hit the road for Sprouts Farmer’s market. Managed to take care of most of my shopping list, given it’s mostly the veggies needing resupply. Then hit Publix on the way back for odds and ends better acquired there.
Came home and then opted to make breakfast. Picked the most ready to nosh avocado from the sprouts trip and cut off a chunk of fresh baked bread from the Publix bakery. Made coffee. I kind of blame my ancestors for the urge to pour some coffee on the plate and dunk the bread, and still ended up dunking some in the cup just the same, lol. I was a little tempted to add a Roma from the previous batch of tomatoes as well.
Ahh, I forgot how much I enjoy making fresh coffee. Thanks to all that’s been going on, I’ve mostly used pre-ground coffee in recent months. I find that is best for convenance when you need to get rolling on the POTD but want caffeinated goodness in a cup. But grinding and brewing coffee is kind of therapeutic in its own way as far as morning rituals go.
Perhaps contrary to that joy, I finally decided to try an experiment that I’ve been meaning to. Normally, I only grind up enough coffee for one brewing. For me, that’s about 2 – 2 1/2 cups of Joe. This time, I ground a full load: there is probably enough for tomorrow and next Saturday, maybe next Sunday as well. Stored it in a air bag and then in one of my mother’s air tight jars that usually adorn my counter, one of which is labelled coffee and usually empty unlike the flour, sugar, and tea ones next to it. So, we’ll see how well it keeps. In any case, I went a wee bit overboard and stocked up on coffee beans enough not to have to worry for quite a while, lol.
This morning’s plan seems to have jellied. Get up, grab a quick breakfast, go for a 2 kilometer walk, make coffee, and then sit on my ass. Seeing it about 14~15 Celsius outside made me rethink the not sleeping in part of executing this plan, but worked pretty swell none the less.
After about a kilometer I’ve warmed up and my coat functions as insurance, so the temperature was a non-issue with continuous activity. Actually, I think if I finally broke down and bought new boots that aren’t so worn out, in this weather I could have managed another lap since I brought my water bottle along. While I’ve never cared much for dedicated exercises like press ups and crunches, walks let me get out and enjoy the scenery a bit. Although, I’m definitely too round around the middle for my teenaged metric of “Be sure to take a sit by 3 hours march”, but that’s what I get for flying a desk and being a lazy git😅.
Now if I just get the rest of the weekend chores done as effectively, lol.
While the handiwork of just about any Japanese housewife would put mine to shame, I do think that this morning’s experiment at tamogoyaki is the best success yet.
The key I’m finding is to be sure to add thin enough layer of the egg mixture that it cooks fairly evenly and quickly, so that it’s easily rolled before the pan facing side gets too brown. Adding a small amount of egg is a lot easier when you don’t almost cook your thumb off the heat radiating from the pan 😅. On the flip side the square shape of a tamogoyaki pan and a spatula near the same size, does make it pretty darn easy to roll the omelette over. That’s pretty much the difference between a tamogoyaki pan and a small skillet: it’s square instead of round.
Power tools
My follow up project for the day was to investigate the wiring on the light switches by my garage. There’s two switches there, one that controls the hallway lighting and one that controls the main lighting in the garage itself. In general, I’m tempted to replace the classic flick switches in my home with slider switches like my apartment had, or simple rocker switches because I kind of like the newer types. A few with Alexa control would be nice but aren’t a big deal thanks to electrical code mandated multiway switches. But for the hallway there where it is the only switch, I’m interested in putting a motion sensor in place so that it’s easy to have that lighting ‘on’ when useful and not constantly forget to turn it on in the first place, or off.
Popping the breaker and getting my tester out because I’m more cautious with mains electricity, it looks like both these switches are the classic two wires and a ground. So that will probably curtail that idea more than finding a suitable two gang plate would. Occupancy sensor type stuff I’ve seen tends to require a neutral third wire. I’m really not surprised though, this house is relatively young but it’s not that young a building.
In retrospect, I should have unscrewed the left switch instead of the right, in order to get a better look at the wiring coming into the box, but for now I have enough information to satisfy my research. Finding it rather a pain in my ass to unscrew the switch itself and that one screw refused to drive far enough to get the front plate to rest flat, I finally caved into that reoccurring thought that groans, “Damn it, I should just buy a drill”, in the back of my head whenever I do things like this. A short ride to the Home Depot later, I now have a cordless drill and impact driver as well as the switch’s plate properly in place. That should take care of my thermostat plans and help with tasks involving light switches and furniture assembly!
I find it kind of curious that I’m accustomed to dealing with low voltage electronics but I find myself far more paranoid when it involves household mains electricity. But not as curious as the fact that power tools make me far more self conscious than handling firearms would. Firearms tend to put holes through things and civilian weapons are limited to the semi automatic variety. Power tools also tend to put holes through things, but have the potential to keep going and typically have less safe guards built in than a pistol or carbine does. Making them far more dangerous to handle IMHO. I was kind of amused at the instructions warning against hitting the trigger when picking up or slinging the drill with the battery still in place.
On the positive side, I suppose the safety concepts are similar enough. It’s just while a dumb ass with a firearm may neglectfully reach out and perforate someone or something at a distance, a dumbass with a power tool is more likely to make like the chainsaw scene from Dawn of the Dead’s finale. I like to think that I may be ignorant or foolish at times, but I try to be a responsible schmuck rather than a true dumbass.
Somehow the joys that are using Cream’s internet connection sharing to power Rimuru’s networking requirements, is reminding me that converting to a mesh network is one of the cheaper ideas on my long term planning board.
Thanks to grandpa’s ladder and how long it takes the rice cooker to go, I’ve finally gotten around to hanging some pictures. The seller didn’t bother to remove and patch everything, and as someone who hates hanging stuff: I’ve found the pre-existing points for mounting and hanging stuff especially convenient!
For the living room, I’ve put up three of the four paintings up. Aptly, these are my grandfather’s artistry and it was his ladder that went to the process of putting them up and using a level to get them hanging straight.
In the small framed space by the door, I’ve opted to put one of the christ pictures, since I kind of think of this space as conceptually like a kamidana and the next best candidate is a picture of mom and dad from the ‘60s that is more easily put else where.
I’ve already setup my “Hunting thropy” in the study. At a previous job, when we were cleaning out old office spaces, I had come across a nice framed rendering of one of their early mainframe systems. After helping the facilities guy send more than a few related things to his blue and green offices out back, I opted to keep that for myself instead of seeing it join the refuse. I may include some of my 8” floppy diskettes into the decore as well, but I’m not sure how well they will hold up on my study’s shelves.
Now that I have some awesome nightstands, I’ve taken the time to launder more of my grandmother’s doily’s, so that the tops have an accent that matches my dresser across the room. Being a pain in the ass, I also cut EZ-Liners to protect the drawers. Decided to break out a few of the plastic flowers I had saved from cleaning out my mother’s things, and incorporate these as well to please the eye.
Perhaps, I’m kind of odd. Traditionally, decoration and ornamentation is something that you prioritize showing to other people. Where you lead your guests, usually often get the most attention to decore. I’m not really that way. I don’t tend to have many house guests and have little desire to show off to others. Rather, I choose to focus decorating places that *I will enjoy* and frequent. So, for example my study and bedroom and kitchen have gotten far more prioritization than places like my living and dining room.
Today, I decided to take an easier path and go out for some errands and ended up exploring a bit. Sadly, being a stupid schelp, by the time I opted for lunch, I was about ready to chew the steering wheel.
On the positive side I did have a large breakfast, not that my skills at making tamogoyaki are worth much. Finally caving in and buying myself the pan for it after all these years seems to have yielded a superb little all purpose non stick pan with spatchula. Which is nice because making eggs are about the only time I really prefer nonstick style pans, as such most of my other cookware is stainless steel or cast iron.
Sounds like some kind of stone infused non stick coating and an induction pad so it’ll work on any stove top. But really for me, it’s the case that A.) It isn’t a pain to clean after making eggs, B.) It’s probably got more even heat distribution than most of my pots, and C.) the square shape of a tamogoyaki pan can be useful. After quite a few years of going nah, I shouldn’t splurge, or nah, I don’t have cabinet space, I finally said fuck it and indulged in this long term desire. They’re not expensive nor too specialized, but when you have an apartment sized kitchen every square centimeter of storage is precious.
Which reminds me of grandpa’s ladder. For the last 30 years it’s been fairly unnecessary in that the step stool we bought in the 2000s was both tall enough and far easier to store. Let’s just say that it’s been so rarely needed in apartments that it’s more my “Better to have a rope and not need a rope than need a rope and not have it” attitude that’s hung on to it, as I’m a bit less sentimental stuff horder like than my momma was. I’m finding that grandpa’s ladder is quite darn handy to have around a house, where things like ceiling fans, smoke detectors, and light fixtures are often located too high for a simple step stool. And I’m not inclined to tea kettle off a chair either.
Decided to take a break from my expedition into Subnatica’s Lost River and break out my old PowerBook Duos. I must have a strange concept of fun.
I’m a little saddened that the Duo 2300c has gone to smear and physical rubber band land while it’s been in storage. But I now know a few things about how it boots. Thanks to Shion unexpectedly being able to mount its drive, I know the system doesn’t boot because the 8.6 install files from Apple’s anthology repo are looking for 8.5 files. Nuts. On the flip side I also learned that plugging in my Duo 230’s drive, that it will boot on the 2300c. Actually runs pretty nice despite it all being emulated, since all the applications on that drive are either for a Motorola 68030 or older, or a fat binary for both.
Given the state of the screen, even if it has a snazzy PowerPC, I opted to swap my memory cards back so that the 230 has 24M of RAM and the 2300c probably has 8M or whatever. At first, after seeing the state of the screen, I decided to try seeing if the touchpad could be swapped. The 2300c and 230 top covers only differ in the labelling and having a trackpad mounted where the cutout for the trackball would go. Sadly, I wasn’t about to use the trackpad, so I swapped these back. I don’t mind the 230’s trackball, so much as it tends to stick or stop sensing the ball rolling no matter what I do to the darn thing. Probably should just buy a Wombat to connect a USB mouse to it.
Interestingly, I also learned that the 2300c mainboard has both its new IDE header and an old SCSI header in exactly the same place as the earlier 230 and its relations. The machines are really, really similar. I’m pretty sure that the only major differences are adapting the chipset to accommodate a PowerPC instead of a Motorola processor. Since the screen is going bad and its keyboard sticks less than the 1992 one, I decided to at least switch out the keyboards so that the 230 has a better typing experience.
I’m not sure if this is evidence that I have been getting more particular about tidying as I age, or that if I had a wife: she would have buried me in the yard by now for driving her mad with such actions. Also, I blame Google search results and Mari Kondo for inspiring this solution.
Standing towels
The brown towel being used to dry stuff is representative of most of my kitchen towels, basically from the ‘last’ time I had moved. The red was originally meant to rotate with them but rather spent most of its life in my changing closet towel shelf. This time it’s ended up my front line towel for hand washing. I forget how old the white one is, but it was found in the utilities and got a trip through the washer with the rest before being appointed mess duty.
Hmm, this makes me wonder if the coffee tray repurposed from organizing my bathroom counter (drawers ftw!) might make a useful towel wrangling, or if it’s better reserved for my red tea set.
