A 2007 Of IBKC

I started this blog early in January, 2007, and so today marks the end of a calendar year of blog entries. As I've actually settled more with our current menagerie and been able to concentrate a little more on my poorly neglected writing, my blogging has petered off without seriously diminishing anyone's life. With any luck I'll be updating the blog a lot less in the new year, as I devote even more energy to making up for my lost writing time. Expect the occasional Kitchenarium update and mostly unannotated pet pictures, and little else. To my reader, thanks for the company :-)

New Year's Eve

Now that we're a staid married couple, NDM and I have quiet New Year's Eves with the beasts. Well, beast-level quiet. For dinner, NDM treated me to shrimp cocktail -- which I am required to mention was, and must always be, made with ecologically green Hawaiian farmed shrimp. I made the wife take lots of documentary pictures of her process, so I may post a recipe at some point. The nice horseradishy cocktail sauce is of course also home-made.
We had dark chocolate mousse for desert...and no, those aren't dishes that traditionally go together, NDM was merely indulging my lack of refinement. There is never a wrong time for mousse. My offhand comments pay off again!
NDM actually spent a good portion of the day studying, her activité du tout jours. Every once in a while, however, she can be caught doing this... Any activity on the couch that lasts for more than a few minutes will generally end in dog brackets.
Demonstrando. Gracias, AM. He'll also be the sole guest gracing us for our highly exclusive New Year's Day party, which is planned to consist of eating some succulent lobsters and steaks my parents gifted us with while working on a puzzle.
This evening is also when we bid farewell to our Seasonal Tree Of Agnosticism. Farewell, tree, and happy New Year's, readers!

Privated Profits, Socialized Risks (Reblog)

Who was the first person to talk about "privatized profits, socialized risks" to describe the United States' current capitalist society? It is so succinct and so true, and I wish I knew what name to hang off of it when I'm inevitably caught stealing the line at parties.

I think I first saw the phrase in Water Wars, a 2004 piece focusing on water companies in the developing world. It is everywhere now, currently popping up throughout discussion of the real estate crash and subprime meltdown.

How uneducated -- or reducated -- do we have to be to think this business strategy is a good thing to apply to every aspect of our lives?

Clearly we're at that level of education now.

'Twas The Night Before... (Pets)

My puppies are sweat and gentle animals. You'd never know that tomorrow they will be cavorting in streams of wrapping paper entrails... Well, maybe there are hints.

Hobo Kitty (Pets)

The cats' favorite part of Giftmas is the packaging. Scylla may not come out until New Year's.

Chimp Lovin' (Pets)

When the lights are low, and there's no one around... Here's a night-vision photograph of our own 'Dolon caught in flagrante delicto in his boudoir with a pink fuzzy zombie chimpanzee wubby. So much for his chances of ever running for elected office.

This is the chimpanzee's second life, repaired by Dr. Frankeniczenko. Originally it had a fairly sizeable agitating motor and chimpy speaker as a heart, with wires leading to one hand that you could squeeze to set it off. Mag quickly learned how to trigger it, and it was a brief favorite before its inevitable demise. Of course while I was enjoying the dogs focusing on something other than me, they opened the poor pink animal up and chewed right through the wires. I took away the electrical components, but not before Mag had figured out how to bridge the wire stubs coming out of the motor with her tongue to make it shake and shriek like a horny primate. As a zombie the chimp makes do with just a normal plastic bulb squeaker heart.

Recent Edibles (Chow)

Going through the camera I came across some food that escaped Kitchenarium inclusion but was still mighty tasty. At the top of the list is NDM's single-serving molten chocolate cake sauced with a blueberry reduction. This is the same cake that was supposed to have made it onto her boob, although in reality it fell short.
Then we have our pasta Christmas tree. We had our neighbors -- the only neighbors who will give us the time of day -- over for dinner, and NDM made fresh noodles to go with my chèvre red sauce. I also made some tiny individual artisan breads.
Our neighbors were very sweet, not only putting up with our obnoxious dogs, but actually pretending to like them despite their heinous disobedience and generally vile skullduggery.
Lastly, and most lately, tonight NDM made me a challah to celebrate my halakhic ethnic-Jewosity-as-opposed-to-Judaism. It was really good, and NDM's mother and I almost spoiled our glazed salmon dinner by eating far too much of it as appetizers.

Scylla's White Christmas Lap (Pets)

Scylla is trying to log all of her holiday hours sitting in my wife's lap in front of the fireplace. My wife is only too happy to cater to Scylla's heat-lust, cranking up the fire place and putting on a ceramic heater despite the already steamy indoor temperature I'm indulging in for the holidays. I suppose it is hard work maintaining a body temperature of 102°F.

Brittles (Chow)

My offhand comment spurred NDM to make a pair of brittles for the holidays. Taking center is some cashew brittle, which turned out fantastic. On the right is its predecessor, some peanut brittle that will be recycled in some fashion as its sugar was not properly brought to the hard-crack stage. I'll be trying some offhand comments about mousse later this week.

Molten Chocolate Boob Cake

When I heard NDM exclaim, "Darn it! I got chocolate on my boob!", I naturally rushed into the kitchen. To my dismay, once again she was taking unwarranted liberties with the Queen's English. You'd think as a respected clinical exotics veterinarian she'd know the difference between a boob and a sweater over a boob, particularly when her own boob is the one involved -- even if the boob is human.

In any case, she's making a second desert later in the week, so I'll keep listening.

'Dolon Closeup (Pets)

Our horse-faced 'Dolon getting nosy in bed. He's finally sleeping apart from us occasionally; soon I hope to be spending half my nights totally dog-free. I can slightly recall what that is like...

Gingerbread Failure (Chow)

NDM left me high and dry for gingerbread this year (something about critical once-in-a-lifetime studying for boards or whatever), so I thought I'd try something different. I took a stab at Joe Froggers.
They were a bit of a disappointment. Something is badly wrong with the recipe. I guess that'll teach me to get a recipe from a web site that also tells you how to snake a floor drain.
The initial stages, everything looked promising. Butter, sugar -- what's not to like?
Then in goes the rum. With the rum and the recipe's claim of spiciness, I was really looking forward to these...
Unsulphured molasses and baking soda completed the base.
After incorporating the 6c of flour, I was surprised by the ultra-moist consistency of the dough. But I was supposed to chill it overnight; that's a lot o' chillin'.
The rolling stage is where I realized my issues. The ball presented here is one third of the recipe that I've added an additional 2c of flour to. That barely got it to the point where I was able to roll and cut it properly, with care.
I experimented with the dough in different stages of additional flour (hence the "homey" handwrought shapes of some of the cookies, made with dough that could not be rolled and cut). I wanted to make some cookies crispier to please the wife and some a bit chewier. In the end, the cookies were just fine to eat, although without a particularly sharp spiciness which I had hoped for. I'll just have to keep looking and experimenting

Our Non-denominational Tree

For the second year in a row, I am disappointing the wife and making myself feel very clever by putting a fairly short tree on top of one end of our huge kitchen island. Far from the evil and malicious depredations of our canines, with branches so low to the counter that the conniving felines can't get purchase -- the perfectly defended tree! You can tell how excited I am by the extensive jitter in the above photograph.
As always, our tree is mostly about animals. I particularly like the paper and bark ornaments; glass ornaments scare me, and ceramic ornaments are too heavy.

First Snow (Pets)

We're getting another nice dusting of snow today; the snowfall reminded me that NDM took some snaps of Mag's first snow last week. Mag loves the snow, and pretty much never wants to come back inside. The dogs had some fun chasing an ice frisbee I pried loose from the bottom of a bowl I'd accidentally left outside, until I realized I might kill one of them with it. Instead I fed them an impromptu snow cone.
Mag plays so well with 'Dolon, but she just won't adjust to other dogs. Today we introduced her to NDM's dad's new beagle, Max, and she was just an awful whiny bitch. Max and 'Dolon get along great, of course. It's looking like 'Dolon is going to be the only dog for Mag.

LED Christmas Lights

I don't remember LED Christmas lights being prevalent last year, although maybe I just wasn't being very attentive. They seem like they are everywhere now. But why?

There are a couple of reasons LED lighting is attractive compared to normal incandescents, with the runaway favorite being efficiency. LEDs also have a longer life than incandescents and, being solid state, are much more durable and temperature resistant. These benefits are offset by a higher cost.

• A 6W LED bulb (actually an array of LEDs) might have a life span of 60,000 hours, over which it will draw about 360KWh. Let' say a quarter per KWh -- a high but convenient estimate -- for $90 of electricity for its life. Bulb cost? Perhaps $50. 60,000 hours for around $140.
• A 60W incandescent, comparable in lumens, might have a life span of about 1,500 hours. Over the LED's life span, that is 40 bulbs drawing a total of 3,600KWh for about $900 of electricity. Bulb cost? For the 40 bulbs, a bit less than the single LED. 60,000 hours for $950.
• Although CFLs aren't manufactured into Christmas lights, they end up a lot closer to LEDs than to incandescents. A 14W CFL, comparable in lumens to the above bulbs, has a life of around 10,000 hours. Over the LED's life span, that is 6 bulbs drawing 840KWh for about $210 of electricity. 6 bulbs might be about $20, so 60,000 hours are $230.

But how do LED Christmas lights stack up against standard incandescents?

We use strands of mini bulbs on our indoors tree. These are candle-shaped T1¾ bulbs, also sometimes called an M5. The standard incandescent strand has 48 2.5V lights strung in series to match our 120V mains. Such a strand is about 25W, and if you run it flat-out for a heavy month each year (let's say 1,000 hours) you'll eat an electrical bill of $6.25 for 25KWh, still assuming our perhaps unreasonably high electricity rate of a quarter per.

The claims on strands of 50 LED Christmas lights vary, but from what I've seen they look to be about 5W total pull for a strand of 50, with an advertised life of 25,000 hours or more. Such a strand comes out to an electrical bill of $1.25, 20% of our incandescent cost.

The incandescent minis will have a longer life than a larger incandescent in a pristine environment, but given the rough handling that such strands take they often suffer early death. Continuing my made-up numbers, let's say a 2,500 hour life for the incandescent strand, so we'll need 10 of them over the lifetime of the LED strand. At $2 a strand, total incandescent cost for 25 years of use is a little less than $180. A single $20 LED strand racks up a charge of a little more than $50.

Easy math sure is easy. If I stop being concerned about working the numbers out in my head and plug in a more typical electrical rate of 7¢/KWh, our comparison changes to $37 for the incandescents versus $29 for the LEDs. The more the rate drops the less exciting the LEDs become, although I don't think anybody has cheap enough electricity to ever make the incandescents an efficiency win -- over a 25 year period of use, anyway.

LEDs have some other advantages besides cost. They operate at much cooler temperatures, and are unlikely to ever set anything on fire because of their heat. They usually fail by shorting, which means they have a built-in shunt to keep the strand lit when a bulb goes. They are more durable, with no filament -- although actual durability is complex, and there have been consumer reports of these lights dimming with age, corroding leads made of iron or steel, and in general a failure to squeeze the advertised life out of a strand.

Then there is the issue of how cheaply the LED strands are made. Our household sockets give us AC power, which means when we plug our hot new LED solid state lighting into them the bulbs will only be lit half the time unless the manufacturer spends a little extra money on a rectifier. Without a rectifier, the LED strands will have a 60Hz flicker -- some people are insensitive to this, but alas I am not. I haven't seen any LED strand packaging that would give a clue as to whether this issue is addressed or not, but I have seen flickering LED lights.

In any case, I guess it isn't totally unreasonable that LED Christmas lights are everywhere. They aren't totally irrational from a financial sense, since it is likely Christmas will keep rolling around every year for some time to help you make the most of your initial investment.

Before I put away my calculator, though, I want to take a closer look at the 25,000 hour rated life of a 50 LED strand. If we put 3 strands on our fairly small tree and run them constantly, in a week of 168 hours we've got 25,200 lit hours, and should expect to see a bulb failure. So replacement bulbs still won't be a thing of the past. (Failure for LEDs is more typically a very dim bulb than a bulb going dark.)

Some informative sites: Ciphers by Ritter, LED Center, and of course Wikipedia.

Kitchenarium Updates (Chow)

NDM's study partner EKT was in town this weekend, so while the two of them were furiously studying for boards I decided to make a winter stew with a slew of root vegetables that we don't cook with frequently. Together with some fresh beer bread it made a nice warming meal, and I've put the recipe up on the Kitchenarium.
I got to make use of some of the yummy turkey stock that NDM made after Thanksgiving, which made the dish only pseudo-vegetarian, but it could just have easily been made with vegetable stock if the diners were pickier.

Spiced Fruit Reduction (Chow)

With snow and freezing rain outside, it has felt like the beginning of mulled cider season. I decided to make a spiced fruit reduction for ice cream as an alternative to the hot fudge NDM is addicted to.
I picked up some nice Bosc pears, which I love to nosh on, although in retrospect a softer pear would have been a better fit. I wanted to throw in plums or peaches, but we're in a seasonal gap between California and Chile right now, so I settled for a Fuji apple.
2 cored and sliced pears, 1 cored and sliced apple, both with skins intact, went into a large sauce pan filled with about two parts apple cider to one part Lirac. I also threw in some star anise, cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, and half of a vanilla bean.
I held the mixture just below a boil until it had almost fully reduced, then pulled out the fruit and popped them in the fridge. After removing the whole spices, I ended up with a very full shot glass full of my reduction.
Served over ice cream, it was quite good. Mellow, not sweet like chocolate, with heavy spices that mixed very nicely with the plain ice cream. The peels on the pieces of fruit made them a little difficult to eat with a spoon, and probably should have been removed.

66 Years Ago Today

Today is FDR's "date which will live in infamy" -- the Greatest Generation's September 11. How many years did it take before people stopped noting it was December 7th? We're only 6 years gone; did Pearl Harbor take a decade to scar over in the national consciousness? Two?

The Japanese aerial photograph above shows Battleship Row during the initial attack. In the foreground, the Oklahoma, California, and West Virginia are taking torpedoes; Hickam Field is burning in the background.

Happy Scylla (Pets)

The dogs have been bad (I know everyone is surprised) and chewed on a few of the blankets we use on the couch. NDM was able to patch up this nice little down throw; luckily, Scylla doesn't seem to mind that it is now a bit of a Frankenblanket.

Liquid Sculpture (Recommendation)

Martin Waugh's photographs of water sculptures are probably as much of a testament to the shutter speed of modern cameras than to Waugh's extraordinary commitment to the shot, but they are still pretty cool. Waugh also has an interesting blog about his work process for those of a photographic bent.

Monkey Love (Pets)

We're apparently teaching our dogs to eat babies. NDM found this furry pink monkey at a thrift store, and the dogs are wild about it. It shakes and makes chimp noises if you squeeze its hand, which 'Dolon knows how to do but Mag hasn't figured out yet. After the initial fight over possession, Mag fell asleep with her new toy.

Eww, Hardware

So I've been having problems with Avatar, my Linux server; failing power supply, failing CPU fan, a crashed RAID drive. Because I get lonely in the basement I've been dorking around with it in the kitchen, further endearing me to the wife. I'm hopeful that today will be the last day. Gotta:

• Get the new hardware in place,
• Get Fedora 8 installed,
• Figure out how to mount and serve an external NTFS-formatted USB backup drive,
• Get Galleon up and running for the Tivo.

If I'm particularly industrious I might look for some way to serve crap to the Xbox 360 (acquired for SAM's Thanksgiving visit this year). The web hasn't been all that helpful at selecting between uShare, 360 Media Server, and MediaTomb. Does anybody else have a 360?

Trial Interspecies Détente (Pets)

This is almost unheard of in our household -- the peaceful slumbering of cat and dog within the same photographic frame. Normally Mag can't be this close to a cat without barking her butt off; this is the end result of several minutes of slowly inching closer and closer to the sleeping cat until, lulled by her own stealth, Mag dropped off as well.