Frequent furnace failure

Ever heard of a thermocouple? If you'd asked me last week, I would have guessed it had something to do with college students in a broken down car on a cold November night. I would have been wrong, but hey, we can only go on our experiences in life.

A couple days ago, our tenants at the new house called to tell me that their furnace wasn't working. This wasn't alarming; often at the beginning of the heating season, a furnace pilot light needs to be re-lit. I walked down there expecting to have their house nice and warm in a matter of minutes.

No dice.

I could get the pilot to light, but it kept going out whenever I released the button. I checked all the usual furnace things and tried many times to get it lit, to no avail. Reluctantly, I called the local giant heating and cooling company and scheduled an appointment.

They came by Tuesday afternoon, and I met the repairman in the driveway. I told him I couldn't keep the pilot lit, and he immediately said, "Okay. You probably need a new thermocouple. Let's take a look." His driveway diagnosis indicated to me that my problem was: a) common; and b) consistently caused by the same faulty component. These realizations, combined with the price tag of the rather simple repair, made me lament not having worked a little harder to fix the problem myself.

If you're bored by technical details, skip the next paragraph and go right to the part of the story after the photo, where a surprising coincidence causes me to wake up very early with a very cold nose. But I want to explain what a thermocouple is, because I think it is interesting and because I hope someone who Googles "furnace troubleshooting" or "pilot won't stay lit" will land on this page and find it more helpful than some of the crap I found.

The thermocouple is a sensor on the end of a copper wire that runs from the switch housing to the pilot itself. The sensor end lives in the flame of the pilot light, and when it is hot, it sends a very weak electrical signal (millivolts) back to the switch housing. This serves a very important purpose: when the pilot goes out, the sensor gets cold and tells the furnace to shut off the flow of gas completely. This way, the burner chamber doesn't fill with gas and turn into a large aluminum bomb. When a thermocouple fails, it is no longer able to detect the presence of a pilot flame, so it does not allow any gas to flow into the furnace. Ironically, it even prevents gas from flowing to the pilot light. Like an old married couple talking past each other, each piece prevents the other from functioning properly. You can light the pilot by forcing gas into it; that's what happens when you press the "pilot" button, by the way, but as soon as you let go of the button, the thermocouple restricts the gas flow again, and the pilot goes out. And you curse loudly.

Here's what a thermocouple looks like:


Well, the nice folks from the HVAC company came by and fixed the furnace in short order. Sure enough, it was a faulty thermocouple. I paid them their money and sent them off to their next job. (They were very friendly and professional.) I was relieved I had not had to replace the furnace, but I wished I had gone the extra mile and fixed it myself. That was Tuesday.

Today (Thursday), I woke up much earlier than usual with a cold nose. Our furnace was out. I stumbled down into the basement expecting to re-light the pilot and go back to sleep. But as you can probably guess, the pilot would not stay lit.

I was not about to call HVAC again without a fight. I quickly found a local appliance store (thanks, Google Local!) and called to see if they carried thermocouples for residential gas furnaces. They did. I bought one and easily installed it in about fifteen minutes. It's a matter of positioning the sensor end in front of the pilot and screwing a nut on the other end into the switch housing. That's it.

Here is the cost breakdown, and boy, do I hope someone lands on this page before their local HVAC website:

Professional repair
$75.00 service call
$76.00 part*
$12.08 tax

$163.08 total

Time from service call to finished job: about six hours (not bad, really).

*Including "cleaning the pilot," which is probably unnecessary and apparently takes 3 minutes

DIY repair
Untimely wake-up call (annoying but free)
$14.89 part
$1.19 tax

$16.08 total

Time from wake-up call to finished job: about an hour and a half

Mmm...Philly cheesesteak pizza

Yesterday, we wanted to have something different and delicious for supper. We already had to stop at Wegmans on the way home from somewhere to get some nice loss-leader-priced milk, so we decided what to make as we walked through the store. That's usually a bad idea, but it worked out well for us in this case.

As we walked by the butcher station, some thick strip steaks caught my eye. I didn't want steak, but they looked really great, so we tried to think of something we could make with steak in it. Fajitas? Nah, had too many tortillas lately. Steakums? Nah, we don't have a slicer—or any of those all in one mustard-salt-pepper-napkin-spork packets. Philly cheesesteaks? Now there's an idea...but an even better one would be Philly cheesesteak pizza! Oh man, that's the one.

We bought one strip steak. It was nice and fresh, and about eight bucks. Not something to do for every meal, but for something different and delicious, it was just the thing. We also grabbed some provolone slices and a hunk of mozzarella.

When we got home, I made some pizza dough in the bread machine. Bread machine pizza dough is fantastic.

When the dough was ready, we sauteed a green pepper and a sweet onion, then added in the strip steak, cut into...well, strips.

We rolled out the dough, put some sauce on it, sliced up the mozzarella, tossed on the provolone and some diced tomato, and dumped the lovely saute on top.

450 for about 15 minutes. Heaven ensued:

My top ten CDs of the '90s

OK, maybe I should call this blog Postus Voluminous...this is much longer than I ever dreamed it would be. My real friends will still read the whole thing, though.

This post is something that has been stirring in my mind for a few years now, since well before I had a blog where I could publish it. Before I give you my list, here are a few points of preface:

The 1990s began in 1991 and ended in 2000, based on the same principle that dictated that the first year of our new millennium was 2001, not 2000. (That principle is the nonexistence of the year 0 A.D.) I'm sorry if you can't grasp this. It is true anyway, and thus I will not be including any album released in 1990, but I reserve the right to include those released in 2000. Readers who don't like it are advised to start their own blogs.

Terminology: I tend to use "album," "record," and "CD" interchangeably. It's the result of being raised by the LP generation, working in a record store, and owning hundreds of compact discs, respectively. I hope you won't find that too confusing.

This is not intended to be objective. I'm not necessarily saying these ten albums are indisputably the best of the decade. These are the recordings that affected me during the '90s, the ones that (if you'll spare me) provided the soundtrack of my life during high school and college. Unless you think my opinions are always necessarily objectively true...well, never mind. No one thinks that.

That said, I enjoy bantering about this stuff, so please include your additions and subtractions in the comments. I want to hear what you think!

The links on the album names will take you to the very helpful All Music Guide. The best music reference in print is also the best music reference online.

The albums are listed in chronological order, in a blatant copout by the author to avoid the decision about which is the best and the subsequent complaining in the comments about said decision.

I decided to narrow this to rock music. It was too hard to narrow it to ten if I included jazz, hip-hop, and r&b. If I've still got any strength left at the end, maybe I'll add a few non-rock CDs that tried to make the list.

And finally, if you're interested in buying any of these albums in any format (including MP3), I'd really appreciate it if you'd click this link to buy them from Amazon. Help keep this blog free! Uh... or something like that.

Enough with that, on to the list!

1.

"Ten" (Pearl Jam)
Released August 27, 1991.

Pearl Jam is the king of the alternative rock hill, the last band left standing after the genre fell apart toward the end of the decade. Ten is their defining work, still their most complete, consistent album of the three that mattered in the decade. If not for one incredibly goofy song (pellet gun, anyone?), their sophomore effort Vs. (née 5 Against the World) might have made this list instead. And Vitalogy has a few moments of absolute brilliance, the best stuff Pearl Jam ever laid down in my opinion, but it is plagued by some weird filler that disqualifies it from my top ten. It was Ten that sent Pearl Jam and so-called alternative music toward the mainstream, and I listened to it all through my high school years.

2.

"Nevermind" (Nirvana)
Released September 24, 1991.

First, don't ask me about how I can put Nirvana in my list and not The Pixies, since Nirvana was so influenced by The Pixies. Well, I'll tell you why: I have never listened to The Pixies, and most people have never heard of The Pixies. But I listened to this Nirvana record non-stop, and everyone knows it.

Many people are too young or too old to recognize how Nirvana gave a generation its voice, and they consider the band's legacy inflated by Kurt Cobain's dramatic suicide. But those of us who were the right age in 1991 and 1992 know that this music moved us somehow in a way other music did not. (By the way, I think it is patently absurd that the idiots at Rolling Stone named Kurt Cobain #12 on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists.)

3.

"Achtung Baby" (U2)
Released November 19, 1991.

U2 is a juggernaut; they have to make this list. Since Pop and Zooropa never happened, there's really not much competition in this decade. Achtung may very well be U2's finest effort ever, so it is an easy choice anyway. There is not one weak track on this CD, and there are a handful of real gems. The song "One" is among the most haunting, gorgeous songs recorded during my lifetime. Of all the albums on this list, Achtung is the most obvious all-time classic. Whereas some of the others are very niche-y, this one is straight ahead great rock and roll music.

* * * * *
Interstitial: Show me three records released four months apart that are as good as these three, and I will bake you a cake. With your choice of frosting color.
* * * * *

4.

"Siamese Dream" (Smashing Pumpkins)
Released July 27, 1993.

I've actually written about this CD before. Siamese Dream is eerily memorable but never familiar. It has one of the most complete song lineups of any alternative rock album. The diversity of compositions gives it a great whole-album feel that I soaked in deeply during my high school years. The thick layers of guitar crunch Billy Corgan pulled off in the studio are impressive, and Jimmy Chamberlain is easily the best drummer from the alternative rock era. Even Corgan's breathy whine-song grew on me quickly and seems to fit perfectly with everything else that's happening on the record. The Smashing Pumpkins are the third (and too often neglected) component of the alt-rock trifecta that shaped the genre's sound and mood during the early '90s, and this is their best effort.

5.

"Cure for Pain" (Morphine)
Released September 14, 1993.

The most eclectic record in my list, Cure For Pain is full of slide bass, smoky barroom vocals, tight drumbeats, and throaty baritone saxophone tones. As a saxophone player, I was drawn to anything that had horns or a jazz influence, and Morphine was overflowing with both. I instantly fell in love with this CD, and I call it up on my iPod right now and still be able to sing along with every word—not to mention hum along every sax solo. If you've never listened to Morphine, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It's like Thai food: you may not like it, but if you never try it, you're missing out on a whole world of unique flavor.

6.

"Under the Table and Dreaming" (Dave Matthews Band)
Released September 29, 1994.

I admit it: I was a DMB freak for about five years. My gut wanted to include Remember Two Things, which is mostly live and for many years was my favorite DMB record. My selection of Under the Table instead is indicative of the fact that I appreciate music in a different way now than I did when I first started to like this group. Listening to this record today, I love the production Steve Lillywhite contributed to the band's approach. This album sounds fantastic. The song selection includes some that feature the complex Dave Matthews guitar riffs ("Rhyme and Reason," "Warehouse"), some with anthemic singability ("Ants Marching"), and at least one perfect ballad ("Lover Lay Down"). Remember Two Things is a great raw live set, but it is not as good an album. Under the Table has no weak filler; it's good from front to back.

Incidentally, what does it say about a band when its best release was a few years after its formation but over a decade ago?

7.

"Tomorrow the Green Grass" (The Jayhawks)
Released February 14, 1995.

Twangy, harmonious, bluesy, catchy, clever and rootsy. I love this album. It has some of the best writing of the decade, and it's just so singable. Think of a blend of the Allman Brothers, the Indigo Girls, and, um, I don't know...Everclear. Great stuff that pretty much flew under the radar, with only the heartbreak ballad "Blue" getting any radio play, and that only on eclectic rock stations. It's definitely worth a listen if you're not familiar.

8.

"The Bends" (Radiohead)
Released April 4, 1995.

Okay, I have a confession to make. I never listened to this record during the '90s. I just never got into Radiohead. Still, The Bends is as arresting an album as any I have ever heard, so I can't resist including it in this list—even though it had no effect on me at the time. The guitar tone is heart-stopping; the vocals are dead-on to the feel of the record; the lyrics are offbeat and odd but not zany. It is another one of those CDs that can and should be listened to from start to finish, as one whole piece of work. And a brilliant piece of work it is.

9.

"The Story of the Ghost" (Phish)
Released October 27, 1998.

Since I listen to so much Phish, there was never any question about the band making an appearance in this list. I couldn't quite decide between this one and the really wonderful 2000 release Farmhouse, as the two are somewhat similar in approach. Both albums reflect the late-era Phish approach to the studio, which was to write shorter, simpler songs that can easily be expanded live. Of the two, Farmhouse is the more mature offering, in my opinion; in the end, however, it was Ghost that captured me more completely. The final six tracks flow together almost seamlessly in a gorgeous layer of meandering dream-funk. Although it was panned by critics (even more than usual for Phish), this might be my favorite recording of Phish's two-decade-plus career.

10.

"Parachutes" (Coldplay)
Released July 10, 2000 (here's where all that braggadocio about there not being a year 0 A.D. pays off).

The highest praise I can give this CD is this: I kept putting it back in my car CD player. It would stay in the rotation for a month at a time for about three years. I never got sick of it. I'm still not sick of it. I really, really like it. Certain readers will undoubtedly want to flay me for including this record, and not because of its release date, either. There is an anti-Coldplay sentiment among thinking rock and roll fans, and I'm not sure why. It's great Brit pop-rock, start to finish. Catchy tunes, pop hooks, nice guitar riffs with pretty tone, airy falsettos. Good stuff.

* * * * * * * * *

Here are three other CDs that were equally important to my experience of the '90s. I kept them off the list because they're not rock albums. But they are all truly fantastic, and worth a listen if you ever get the chance.

1.

"Life on Planet Groove" (Maceo Parker)
Released October 20, 1992. Horns, horns, horns. Funky. Listen for the one white guy in the audience. (He's the one who yells out, "All right!!!" at the end of a song.)

2.

"The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill" (Lauryn Hill)
Released August 25, 1998. Killer voice, killer writing, killer production. It's surprising, then, that she won five Grammys for this—they usually only give Grammys for crappy music.

3.

"Black Star" (Black Star, Mos Def, Talib Kweli)
Also released August 25, 1998. A good day for positive hip-hop, apparently. This is the best rap album I've ever heard.

Wow. If you're still reading at this point, you win a cake. But no colored frosting.

Selling used textbooks? Read this first.

If you are a college student, you know that few moments are as frustrating as that moment when you're trying to sell back a textbook you used during the semester. Often, the beleaguered clerk behind the counter offers you an insultingly meager buyback price for a tome you paid a fortune for just a few months earlier.

I distinctly remember one such moment from my college career, when the surly bookstore woman offered me a scant five dollars for a history text I'd bought for well over $90. As I recall, I said, "Five dollars? Aww, but I wanted a peanut." If you didn't catch that Simpsons reference, you might find some solace in the fact that she didn't, either. I decided to keep the book and indignantly pursue a quest to obtain a just and proper resale price for my investment. I still have that book, if anyone's interested. I'll sell it to you real cheap. How's $30 sound? I paid almost a hundred for it, you know.

It came to pass that I was hired to work at my alma mater's bookstore a few years after I graduated, proving the marketability of a bachelor's degree in "contemporary ministries with a concentration in music." If you don't have any clue what that means, you might find some solace in the fact that the majority of prospective employers also don't know what it means. (What it means is, you better go to grad school and get a Master of Divinity, which is no more marketable but makes you seem much smarter.)

When I became the assistant manager at the college bookstore, I learned a thing or two about the textbook business. I shall now pass them on to you, in hopes that it will ease your frustration come finals week.

First, a lesson in the sales principle of wholesale and retail costs. In order for retail operations to function, they must be able to turn a profit, and this profit comes from the margin they carry on their merchandise. The margin is the difference in cost between what the store can buy it for from a supplier (wholesale cost) and what it can sell it for to its customers (retail cost).

Text stores typically purchase their books from three sources: new books come directly from the publisher, and used books come from textbook wholesalers or from the students on campus. To give you some idea of the margins involved in the textbook business, let's take a look at the wholesale and retail costs of a $100 textbook in each of these scenarios.

New text, supplied by the book's publisher
Store's cost: $80
Selling price: $100
Margin: 20%

Used text, purchased from a student who bought it new
Store's cost, paid to student: $50 (half the purchase price)
Selling price: $75
Margin: 25% [Update: The margin, of course, is 33% in this case. My bad, but it illustrates the following point all the more.]

As you can see, the text store likes buying your book as much as you like selling it. The margin is higher on used books! Now, imagine you buy the book used for $75 and sell it again at the end of the semester.

Used text, purchased from a student who bought it used
Store's cost, paid to student: $37.50 (half the purchase price)
Selling price: $75
Margin: 50%

Here is where all the profit is in the textbook business. Text store managers love buying books multiple times, because they pay you half what you paid for it (whether you bought it new or used) but sell it at 75% of its new price—whether you bought it new or used! A store would rather buy its inventory from the students than from anywhere else. They like buying from you even more than from a wholesaler. And they love profs who continually use the same book, year after year, because the margins are fantastic.

Which brings me to another point. Your $100 book is only going to score you fifty bucks if the professor has told the bookstore to carry the book again. Until the prof notifies the bookstore in writing that a book will be used in a course next semester, the store will not order it from the publisher or buy it from you at 50%. They'll still buy it from you, all right, but since there is no written "adoption" (the term for a professor's book request) on file, the store manager has to anticipate selling it to the wholesaler rather than back to the student body. You're likely to get $20 for it, tops. The margin is stretched in too many directions at that point.

So if you know your prof is reusing the book but the store is offering peanuts, you may want to bug that prof to see if he has his adoptions in yet. Professors are notoriously reluctant to commit to a text on time, and they're often too busy writing and grading final exams to get those adoption forms in on time. And if it's one of those every-other-semester courses, you may want to hold onto it until it is set to come around again. Text stores have limited shelf space, and they're not interested in buying a book that won't be used for six months.
But, you say, I know for a fact that my professor requested this book, and now you're telling me it's worth nothing! Ah, the most difficult part of any buyback period is dealing with students who have this very legitimate complaint. Your book is worth nothing because publishers hate the used book industry.

Think about it. If you were McGraw-Hill, how would you like it if you were making big bucks on a textbook, but it was sitting in your warehouse because text stores were buying it from students? Not very much. What would you do? Probably one of the following devious things:

a. You'd release a new edition. At least every other year, and preferably every year. Even if your textbook were about the Spanish Civil War, you'd tell your authors to find something new to say about their topic. If there is a new edition out, text stores can't help but refuse to buy the old one.

b. You'd stick some ridiculous CD-ROM inside the cover and make sure it had a one-use activation code. That way, only one student could use it, and the store would have to buy new books every semester!

c. You'd develop a seedy relationship with the professor. You'd begin by sending a box of chocolates at the holidays, and you'd follow up with a phone call, just to see if you could help in any way, and perhaps to let the professor know about a great new textbook you've just published. While you were at it, you'd make sure she new about the great digital content you've included—at no extra charge, since you're so generous!—and remind her how students these days want everything digital, so she should make sure to require students to use that content.

You see? Someone is trying to gouge you, but it's probably not the bookstore. And it's definitely not the poor pimply sophomore who's stuck behind the counter on the last day of finals week, so cut him a break, will you?

The next time you're standing outside the bookstore with your mouth wide open, vaguely unaware of what just happened, remember this helpful post. You were expecting enough cash to make a down payment on a small house, and now you aren't sure you have enough to cover the tax on a value meal. At least now you know why!

TIME on Steve Jobs, innovation, and leadership

I was just talking with some friends the other day, wondering what would happen to Apple if Steve Jobs left, or worse, succumbed to cancer. I get the sense that Jobs really drives the bus there at Apple, and if he left, the brilliance might stop. So I was interested to read this article in TIME (linked to the Canadian version, which has the whole text).

It includes a nice look into Jobs' role as CEO, as well as some insight into the company's philosophy of innovation, design, and product development. Here's a little snippet, Steve Jobs talking about how awesome concept cars usually result in comparatively crappy actual cars a couple years later:

“What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, ‘Nah, we can’t do that. That’s impossible.’ And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, ‘We can’t build that!’ And it gets a lot worse.”

When Jobs took up his present position at Apple in 1997, that’s the situation he found. He and Jonathan Ive, head of design, came up with the original iMac, a candy-colored computer merged with a cathode-ray tube that, at the time, looked like nothing anybody had seen outside of a Jetsons cartoon. “Sure enough,” Jobs recalls, “when we took it to the engineers, they said, ‘Oh.’ And they came up with 38 reasons. And I said, ‘No, no, we’re doing this.’ And they said, ‘Well, why?’ And I said, ‘Because I’m the ceo, and I think it can be done.’ And so they kind of begrudgingly did it. But then it was a big hit.”

I still don't know what would happen if Apple lost Steve Jobs. I'm not entirely confident they would maintain the level of quality and innovation many of us have come to love. This raises many questions in my mind, from the meaning of quality leadership to the effect Intel-based Macs will have on the future of OS X's integration with hardware. I am curious to see how this all unfolds in the coming months and years.

Cookie recipe

By request, here is "my" recipe for chocolate chip cookies. They're not really "mine," because this recipe is from the instruction/recipe book that KitchenAid included with our mixer. I highly recommend buying one if you don't have one, because they're great. (Ours is the 275-watt model, which I don't see right away on their site, but whatever.)

Here is the recipe with my notes. Other than the notes, this is verbatim from the book. Those with other mixer types will have to guess about speeds.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter or margarine, softened.
2 eggs
1.5 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups all-purpose flour
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips

Notes:
Remember, light brown sugar. Never use margarine for anything, ugh! I use imitation vanilla; seems to work fine. We always buy unbleached flour, so that's what goes in. The bag of chips says 11.5 oz., not 12! Oh no!

I barely soften the butter. Cut each stick (you'll use two) into about 5-6 pieces and give it 20 seconds in the microwave. The KitchenAid can handle cold butter easily; that's one reason it's so awesome. And keeping the butter cold prevents the dough from being mushy and the cookies from being flat.

Place sugars, butter, eggs, and vanilla in mixer bowl.
Attach bowl and flat beater to mixer.
Turn to Speed 2 and mix about 30 seconds. Stop and scrape bowl.
Turn to Speed 4 and beat about 30 seconds. Stop and scrape bowl.
Turn to Stir Speed. Gradually add banking soda, salt, and flour to sugar mixture and mix about 2 minutes.

Note:
I add the soda and salt before I start the mixture, and then scoop the flour into the bowl as it's turning using a 1/3 cup measure. (That's nine scoops, math whizzes.)

Turn to Speed 2 and mix about 30 seconds. Stop and scrape bowl.
Add chocolate chips. Turn to Stir Speed and mix about 15 seconds.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls onto greased baking sheets, about 2 inches apart. Bake at 375 for 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from baking sheets immediately and cool on wire racks.

Note:
I cook on Pampered Chef round baking stones. I do not remove them immediately; instead, I allow them to continue to cook for about 10 minutes after they come out of the oven. I remove them from the oven after about 12 minutes usually. I look for brown peaks on the bumpy parts of the cookies, sort of like you'd look for with meringue.

Yield: 54 cookies.

Enjoy!

Sites of the city

This dude just went walking outside my window using ski poles.

Notice I did not say "skiing" outside my window using ski poles. The only thing weird about that would be the lack of snow. This chap was walking with ski poles. Which by my count is two errors: no snow, and not skiin'.

This is actually a disturbing trend in the city. Generally it's groups of women who cross-country-walk through the city, I've noticed. Not sure why. I do know this: racewalking just lost its place atop the list of goofy-looking ways to walk.

Ugh, spandex.

A baking lesson learned

I've made two batches of chocolate chip cookies today, cookies that we will consume tomorrow at a family gathering with my in-laws. Why two batches, you ask? Well, you haven't eaten a meal with my in-laws, first of all, or you wouldn't ask. But that's not the real reason I made a second batch.

I made a second batch because I was wholly unsatisfied with the way the first one turned out. And that surprised me, because my cookies are remarkably consistent due to the fact that I follow the recipe and instructions somewhat religiously. For example, when the recipe says "Turn mixer to speed 2 and mix for 30 seconds," that is what I do. I do not turn it to speed 2.5 and let it go for what feels like 30 seconds. I set the microwave timer to 30 seconds and run the mixer until the microwave beeps.

(It's not that I'm opposed to modifying recipes, but you have to start somewhere, and it just so happens that this particular recipe absolutely nailed the type of chocolate chip cookie I want to eat, and so I stick closely to it.)

More on the type of chocolate chip cookie I want to eat, since it does pertain to this story: I want cookies that are thick and bumpy, lightly colored and not too greasy or flat. Don't get me wrong; I will eat and enjoy any well-made chocolate chip cookie. My friend Lisa makes flatter, darker cookies, and they're great! But if I have the choice, and as the baker I believe I do, I want my cookies the way I've described. This is why I prefer butter to margarine, incidentally.

Wow, this cookie post is getting long. I can hear the crickets chirping.

Anyway, I could tell something was wrong with the dough before I even added the chocolate chips. It was much darker than usual, and also much smoother and wetter. I knew right away that this would produce a flatter, greasier cookie, and I was not pleased. But I couldn't figure out why. I had done everything exactly as I always do. The only possible difference was that I used dark brown sugar instead of light this time--

Dark brown sugar! Could that possibly be it?

Well, I will tell you, that was it. Dark brown sugar had significantly changed the color and consistency of the dough. I know this is true because I bought a bag of light brown sugar and made another batch, and it turned out perfectly.

So there you have it, all you junior bakers out there. Decide how you like your cookies, and use the proper type of brown sugar to make your dreams into reality.

"Walking" Phoenix

Today, Tracey and I were driving around with Abel when talk turned to the new movie about Johnny Cash, I Walk the Line. "I watched the trailer for that Johnny Cash movie," I said.

"Oh yeah? How does it look?"

"Pretty good," I continued. "But guess who they got to play Johnny Cash?"

"I don't know, who?"

"That's not a guess. Here, I'll give you five guesses, and you definitely won't get it."

"Sounds like a fun game."

Sometimes my wife really cracks me up. Anyway, here are the people I would pick to play the immortal Johnny Cash. None of whom are the actor who is actually filling the role.

1. Russell Crowe. I'm not a big Russell Crowe fan, but he could definitely pull off that gruff, deep-voiced, often law-abiding Cash persona. Plus he's already a rock star, so he's got that going for him.

2. Tim Robbins. Maybe not as tough as Cash, but if you take Shawshank Tim Robbins and cross him with Mystic River Tim Robbins, you might be most of the way there.

3. Edward Norton. His voice might be too whiny at the end of the day. But you can't argue with the toughness factor, and he could totally nail the skinny amphetamines era.

The other guy who crossed my mind was Colin Farrell, but I wouldn't want to contribute to his enormous case of overexposure, so let's drop it.

But it's none of these actors. Unless you have already seen it elsewhere or guessed it from the clever title I gave this entry, you will probably be surprised to learn that Joaquin Phoenix is playing the Man in Black. It sure surprised me. I mean, how you get from this to this [Mom and Dad, don't click that; click here instead] is beyond me. I don't know, maybe he was the only guy who could do the voice.

Really though, they could have had Barbara Streisand playing Johnny Cash and I would still go see it—and I can't stand Barbara Streisand. And now, in case you haven't navigated away from this page to watch the trailer rather than read about it, you should watch it now.

Ten-second thoughts

This is a fun type of post that I've enjoyed before, so here we go.

1. 4X4400 sounds really good on a nice acoustic. Play it as an E/G# or a G#m7.

2. Video on an iPod seems like a total waste of hard drive space, not to mention engineering man-hours. But we're probably going to get it anyway.

3. My hatred for fruit flies grows more passionate, and probably more irrational, with each passing day. I want them all dead, and the more painful it is to their miniscule little brains, the better. OK, not only do I need to settle down, but that was way more than 10.

4. Sorry Andruw Jones, but we can't give the MVP to a .260 hitter. Or someone who spells "Andrew" that way. Even if he hits 50+ home runs. Pujols is the NL MVP.

5. I hate it that I think of a dozen 10-second thoughts throughout the week but can never remember them when I sit down to post.

6. Even lousy posts get pulled by RSS readers. Sorry!

My prescription for the Yankees

Now that the Yankees have been eliminated from the postseason, here is my advice to Brian Cashman, not that he's likely to be pulling the strings much longer.

1. Go back in time and do not sign Alex Rodriguez. Let the Red Sox have him, because he sucks in the clutch. (That being said, everyone who is killing him right now should take a look at Matsui's line from Game 5. That last column that says "LOB" (left on base)? A big snowman. Eight. Not good.

2. While you've got the time machine running, think long and hard about whether Jason Giambi was really the best bet.

OK, so time travel doesn't work, and even if it did, the union would not allow it. Absent that, what can the Yankees do? It is sad to think that it may be too late to rebuild a core than can win again while Jeter is still an everyday player, but it may be true.

There are a few good young players on the roster: second baseman Robbie Cano and pitcher Chien-Ming Wang are two, though neither is ultra-inspiring. Other than that, it's a whole lot of guys born in the mid-1960s. Even Bubba Crosby is older than I am.

So I guess I don't really have a prescription. I guess I'd lean toward re-signing Matsui (8 LOB and all) and letting Bernie go, though the latter makes me sad. But the Yankees are pretty sad in general these days, so there you go.

A nice recipe

A few weeks ago, Tracey and I had some friends over for dinner and tried a new recipe, and we liked it a lot, so I thought I'd share it here. The recipe came from this book:


"500 Five-Ingredient Recipes (Better Homes & Gardens (Paperback))" (Better Homes and Gardens)

Black Bean Cakes
(I'm doing this from memory because I can't find the book right now.)

1 15oz. can black beans, undrained
2 tbsp. lime juice
1/2 cup salsa
1 small (5.5 oz) package corn muffin mix
Sour cream

Slightly mash black beans
Add lime juice and salsa, stir
Gently stir in corn muffin mix until just wet.
Pan fry the mixture in a touch of olive oil over medium heat, about 1/2 cup at a time. Flip the cakes halfway through just like pancakes. The cakes should brown slightly on each side.

Serve with salsa, sour cream, and limes. Makes 8-10 cakes.

Our little variation on this recipe adds a few ounces of canned corn, drained. This adds to the sweetness and texture.

These are really nice and quite satisfying, a good appetizer or side dish if you have only 1 or 2, but filling enough to eat as a meal if you have 3 or 4.

Mac mini RAM upgrade

As you may remember (and if you don't, you could click here), we have a nice little Mac mini that serves as our desktop computer. At the time we got ours, Apple was shipping these little numbers with only 256 MB of RAM, which is not really enough to run OS X comfortably. It's not as though anything crashed; that's not really the Mac way, after all. But certain applications were really painful to use, iPhoto being the prime example. Everything took so long: opening the app, editing a photo, closing the app. And if we were trying to do two things at once, forget it. It got to be rather frustrating after a while.

Last week, I finally bit the bullet and bought some RAM, 1 GB to be exact. Quadrupling the RAM in any machine has a rather pleasing effect, but it was especially gratifying since the poor little mini was so woefully underpowered. Now it runs like a top. (Or is it a drum? Cliches, bah.) G4 1.42 GHz, 1 GB RAM, not bad.

In fact, my little PowerBook is no longer the fastest machine in the house. It's three years old and is only a G4 867MHz, topped out with 640 MB of RAM. I must say, however, that I am still quite happy with its performance after that much time, which is an eternity in the world of computer speed improvement. But the PowerBook still chugs along nicely. It's like a Toyota that way; you'd never know how old it is.

Anyway, the process of upgrading the RAM in the Mac mini is fun if a little daunting at first. The engineering miracle it took to make such a small box (6" square and 2" high) hold a fully-functioning Mac results in some pretty tight quarters inside. You have to pry the case open with a putty knife. Or in my case, a putty knife and a Pampered Chef mini server. This process causes a lot of popping noises that are slightly disconcerting even if you are expecting them, as I was. Once the case is open, replacing the old RAM with the new RAM is very easy. But if you want my advice, don't mess around putting only 512 MB in there. For the price and the hassle, and considering it's not the easiest thing in the world to pry open the case, just go with the full gig right up front. I'm glad I did.

Here are two sites that I used to guide myself through the upgrade process. (Do this at your own risk, of course.) The first is a Macworld tutorial that includes some general talk about the Mac mini as well as a walk-through of the upgrade process. I also benefited from Russell Beattie's description of his upgrade process, complete with detailed photos.

I bought my RAM from Other World Computing, an online Mac specialty store. The price was very reasonable, and they are highly regarded by BizRate customers. Plus, they offered 2nd day air shipping for five bucks, not bad. They processed the sale immediately and packaged it well. I recommend them highly.

Thanks for visiting

Help me decide which is strangest: that anyone would use MSN to perform a web search; that they would search for "What is the name of the machine where you can squeeze a button and get cold water"; or that my blog would be the first result of such a search! I think it might be a three-way tie.

Anyway, thanks for visiting, and I hope you found your machine. That thing sounds sweet.

In the news

Gross.

And grosser.