Tralfaz

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  • New Hobby – Baking Bread

    New Hobby – Baking Bread

    A poorly kept secret is that I worked my way through college (and after as well) as a chef. Well, I started in my mid-teens as a dishwasher, and rose through the ranks, ultimately being the Chef at a local chain of Italian restaurants. In this time I wen from bistro food, to American classic, to Seafood and Mexican, to time spent in a large kitchen at a country club.

    All through that time, I rarely baked. Sure, we had a pastry chef, and there were some fun around making gourmet pizzas, but I never really baked bread. (more…)

  • Funnies – The Chili Cook-off

    Funnies – The Chili Cook-off

    Another funny from the archives. I remember grabbing this in the early ‘oughts, and it is as funny today as it was then. I didn’t write this, and I don’t know who did, but it tickled me then, and it still tickles me now.

    The Chili Cook-off (more…)

  • Funnies – Lucas Electrics

    Funnies – Lucas Electrics

    While I was encouraged to be on the university prep track in high school, and I did pursue a STEM degree (physics, thankyouverymuch), I grew up around motorcycles, and cars, and to this day I am jealous of my shop class friends in high school who got to play with the heavy metal, and to have fun.

    But, even not being part of that crowd, I had heard of the horrors of English motor vehicles. Whether it was the porosity of their engine castings that led to them only stopping leaking dead dinosaurs when they were bone dry, to the woes of trying to keep a vehicle running with the dreaded Lucas Electrics, a known source for bedeviled trouble on British cars. This is a collection of fun sayings that I captured oh so long ago, and now I share… (more…)

  • Review: The Apple iPhone Xs

    Review: The Apple iPhone Xs

    As my iPhone 6s was nearing its third anniversary, I began to get the bug for a new phone. The battery is still fine on my 6s (reports at 87% capacity, not bad for 3 years old) and the latest version of iOS had improved its snappiness, but, it is still an older phone, and, it was time to jump to the latest and greatest. (more…)

  • Funnies – Giving a cat and a dog a pill

    Funnies – Giving a cat and a dog a pill

    Digging into my old “fun” files on my Drobo has brought a few joys to my life. This is something that I stumbled across in 2008, and it tickled my fancy. Now I share it with you …

    How to Give a Cat a Pill (more…)

  • Things I don’t ‘get’ – Reality TV

    Things I don’t ‘get’ – Reality TV

    The stubby fingered Cheeto colored, ferret wearin’ shit-gibbon aside, one thing that I just don’t get is Reality TV. My understanding is that the genre, while there are earlier instances, really got a jumpstart during a writer’s strike in Hollywood. The network execs just started producing unscripted “reality” shows, and they took off.

    The formula was cemented with Survivor, and now you can hardly watch broadcast TV without having one of these trite shows in your face. (more…)

  • Things I don’t ‘get’ – Daytime TV

    Things I don’t ‘get’ – Daytime TV

    Perhaps it’s my age, or my introversion, or … whatever, there are many things that I just don’t understand.

    Today, I will riff on television. being later-middle age, having grown up on a steady diet of television, I will admit to watching a reasonable amount of it. However, even with television being part of my life almost forever (to me at least), there are some things that are broadcast that I just don’t understand. (more…)

  • Instagram

    With the arrival of Cerbie, brother and fellow Kauai rescue hound from Copper’s Dream Rescue, I have been blogging, and decided to create an instagram account for sharing pics and updates about him.

    I have a love-hate relationship with Instagram. I suspect that I am not their demographic, but there are a lot of dog picture sharing, so I am wading into the pool again.

    However, that said, I have to grumble (damn, I am getting to be an old man, grumbling about new fangled whizz-bang things).

    • There is no good way to access it from my computer. It is app and smartphone centric, I get that, but I have most of my images on my computer. I do take snaps with my phone, but that is a small fraction of what I have. I have to move pictures to my phone to post. Lame.
    • There are no good apps I have found for my Mac to post images to IG. There used to be a couple that I bought a couple years ago, but they are no longer working. Seems like IG keeps their API locked down to force use only with the smartphone. Sure, I can log in with my browser, and see the images, but that sucks. Sure on my Mac, I can force the client string in Safari to pretend it is an IOS browser. Still sucks donkey balls.
    • Even simple things like updating or editing my profile on the web from my computer is horribly borked. Seriously, even after disabling blockers and ghostery, I got errors in editing my profile fields. Lame. It is almost as if they don’t want you to use their web service.

    Still, I will use it, as I now have a following. Check out Cerberus47 for fun pictures.

  • Apple Music – A Fresh Look

    With the shifting allegiances in streaming music, I found myself re-enabling my Apple Music subscription. There are some benefits, and some less desirable aspects.

    This is relevant as I again ponder the mix of music that I have in my collection, as well as the convenience of streaming. In the following post, I lay out the pro’s and con’s of Apple’s Music subscription plan. $9.99 a month, it is in the ballpark of the offers, between Amazon and Spotify. All three of them also offer family plans for the same price (alas, my Wife isn’t interested in sharing a plan.) (more…)

  • Music, part 5,231

    Music, part 5,231

    If you dig through the archives, you will read my travails around a permanent solution to my streaming/collection.

    The last “winner” was Amazon Music, hands down the best app experience, a decent library (not as big a selection as Apple, but enough) and the instant “AutoRIP” feature of what I bought from them were clinchers. The real win for Amazon is that whatever magic they do, even when I hit deadspots in my commute (via VTA Lightrail in San Jose), it just kept chugging. (more…)