January 2010 Archives

I soaked the beans.

And a day later drained them and put them in the pot.

Then even measured two quarts of water. Because that's what the recipe said. I put the water in the pot.

I boiled the water. Like the recipe said. Then turned it to simmer. Like the recipe said. Recipe further said to let it simmer for two or so hours.

I was fine up to that point, and for the next 20 minutes.

See, I had every intention of freezing some of the beans. And I didn't want the ones I was going to freeze to overcook. In fact I wanted them undercooked.

So 20 minutes of simmering later, I took a spoon and grabbed a bean out of the water and tried it. I expected it to be still quite hard.

Much to my surprise, it was almost fully cooked. So I dug around in the pot for the largest kind of bean. It too, was much closer to fully cooked than I expected after 20 minutes.

What the hell.

If I follow the stinking recipe and simmer another hour and a half, the beans will be mush.

It took longer than I should feel comfortable admitting for me to figure out where the disconnect was.

It was the meat.

Had I actually followed the recipe, I would have added meat to the soup. And of course it would have been the meat that needed all that time to cook.

The beans were done enough to freeze.

Twenty minutes later, the rest were soup. And were delicious.

Really, it's no surprise. I've been buried in various types of code for many days straight.

I can stop myself during the day when I start to define elements and styles for things that don't really need them, like bath towels. Or wonder aloud if the soup I'm making should use embedded ingredients. Or when I think that drying clothes is a subclass of laundry which is a subclass of housework.

Nothing stops the night-time me though.

In my dreams last night, I created a not-to-code blog comment template.

The first one would yell "FIRST!!" and then say nothing else.
The second one would also yell first.
And in the third post say oops.
Then a few other people would comment on the actual post.
Then disagree.
And start calling each other names.

And who needs that.

The good thing is that if I wanted to do it, I now know how.

I am pushing buttons again.

About 15 minutes ago, someone rang my doorbell. I was in the area, so I looked out the window. And at first glance it looked like the guy that did my siding. So I opened the door. Once the guy spoke I realized it, of course, wasn't.

Dude says he's going around meeting the neighbors.

So I ask him where he lives.

"Florida."

He pulls out what I suppose is to pass for identification of his cause.

I say nothing.

Which turns out to be collecting points against some hundreds of other people.

I said nothing. He kept on. Asked me whether I was going to do "like my neighbors did" and ask him how he gets these points.

I say no.

He asks me whether I speak English.

I say yes.

He says, "Guess what else?"

I just looked at him.

"You're not going to guess?"

"No."

He flipped the card over and said, "If I win, I get to go to Europe."

(I'm sure the script called for customer to squeal in delight.)

I said nothing.

"You ever been there?" he asks me.

"Many times."

I think he didn't have many cards left to play, so he gets to the point that he's selling magazines.

I said no thanks, wished him well, and closed the door.

Maybe next time I'll go to the door with a German dictionary and hand it to folks and see if they will try to sell me something in another language.

Or maybe I just won't answer the door.