Pollywogs!

I’m not the easiest person to get in touch with when our customers have issues.  Often, by the time I return a call, they’ve figured out the problem themselves…but when they do finally track me down with a complicated problem I am thorough, I listen carefully, and I continually drive to the underlying issue.  I’m not sure if it is better or worse to immediately be put in touch with someone who has no place providing assistance on navigating out of a wet paper bag…

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So, I wanted to buy an MP3 today.  Specifically, the song Woodpecker From Mars by Faith No More as it came up in a shuffle and I really enjoyed it…right up until the MP3 was garbled.  I took out the original CD, thinking I’ll rip the track again and sighed at a small but very unfortunately placed scratch.  Any normal person would just go steal/pirate/torrent/acquire a digital copy online for free, but for some reason lately I’ve been very particular about micro-transactions and artists…anyway, I go to mp3.rhapsody.com as it is my latest favorite place to buy MP3s and attempt to buy the MP3.

Halfway through the checkout I run into a fatal error, one that I reproduced on four browsers across two computers.   So, I figure that I’ll find out if this is a common issue (website, account or otherwise some kind of back-end issue) and get in touch with Rhapsody’s ‘customer service’.

rhapsody issue #1

Yep, that’s right: after a half hour of letting them hold my hand through basic troubleshooting that I’d already accomplished, their customer service left me in limbo (after repeatedly failing to comprehend pretty much anything I was typing, apparently) until the session timed out.  Wow, professional!  So, after  I take a bunch of deep breaths, I try again.

rhapsody issue #2

I literally said out loud “You have got to be fucking kidding me”.  The amount of time between “I’m listening.  Please go ahead” and my reply was not more than 45 seconds…no way it was anything close to the vague “a couple minutes” I was threatened with.  I can type very quickly, and notice my entry came in before their operator disconnected?  Finally, if their web app is anything like say, Crafty Syntax Live Help,  it is more than likely actually transmitting what I type as I type it out into the text entry box.  Yes, it seems they disconnected me on purpose.  More deep breathing…

I take a break, and try back in a bit.   This time, I get a different operator and we quickly roll through the issues, they are competent, seem to understand English, and we quickly determine that I should try back later because his script says that is what I should do when he can’t figure out what is wrong.

\o/ customer service \o/

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So, I’m not wild about Rhapsody as they can’t tell when their service is having internal issues, nor can their technical support escalate issues beyond “Is the computer plugged into the wall?  Have you tried turning it on?”.  Man I miss lala.com’s MP3 store, fuck those corporate cocksuckers at Apple.  I wish Amazon hadn’t grabbed their ankles as soon as the government looked their direction.  Finally, no way in hell I’m going to buy music from Wal-Mart.  7digital.com is promising, but their website performance is inconsistent.   Most of the other smaller MP3 stores have absolute shit websites.  Man, I miss lala.com…

So we’ve had Netflix for just about forever: we really like effortlessly getting DVDs in the mail.  It has had a streaming service available that we signed up for pretty much as soon as it was released, but we’ve never made much use of.  Recently, Kelley started using the streaming service more often, and mentioned it had a decent number of TV series available as well as a reasonable selection of movies.  The conflicting notions of inexpensively streaming a decent selection of entertainment versus with the fact we were spending $80 a month for DirecTiVo service in exchange for what felt like $20 a month usage stewed in my head for a long time…apparently I’m not alone: “In last year’s fourth quarter, the number of people between ages 18 and 49 watching any kind of TV on a traditional set was down about 1.3% from the previous fall, according to Nielsen Co, the biggest decline in at least four years.”

I’d read about cord cutters, but kept getting hung up on the fact that Kelley liked a bunch of shows that weren’t easily available…as in, you could only watch them on a network website through Internet Explorer in a Windows OS one week after they aired on TV.  I’d fallen in love with the streaming video service Hulu back when Always Sunny was available (it has since been yanked, I suppose it might be available on the Always Sunny website but I’m lazy and fuck them)…even between Netflix and Hulu, there were still shows that were a PITA…and Kelley would have to watch it (regardless of the source) on her netbook, with our entertainment center  underutilized…

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Enter the Roku…a dedicated internet video streaming box the size of a small paperback that can output 1080p video while consuming about 10 watts.  Streams from your Netflix account, from a paid Hulu service called Hulu Plus, from some Amazon video service (fuck Amazon), streams Pandora if you have a Pandora radio station configured, a couple other minor items available at the moment.  It’s not a perfect solution as some networks and shows have pulled their offerings off of Hulu, but it’s not bad.

The box we got is called a Roku XD, and it cost $80…what we paid for one month of DirecTiVo.  We add on that a monthly fee for Netflix ($10) and Hulu Plus ($8).  So, after the first month we’re a hair under $20 and get probably 80% of the shows we’d give a damn about to watch.  I’m notably missing How I Met Your Mother, Always Sunny, The Daily Colbert…Kelley is additionally missing CBS/MTV series.   Holy shit ABC blows donkey cock…ohes noes The Bachelor!!!11!11oneoneone…

The interface is snappy and responsive, and does everything we’d want it to do without fuss.  The video quality is great on our ancient cathode ray tube television, like watching a DVD.  I was streaming it wirelessly over a 801.11g network but the little Edimax EW-7206APg I have was choking, needing rebooted daily.  A night or two ago I made an Ethernet cable for the Roku, and everything has been perfect since.  Most likely, any decent piece of 801.11b equipment could feed it, I think I’ve seen the Roku pull around 5 Mbps peak.  Modern 801.11g and beyond, you’re set!

For what it’s worth, the 7206APg is fine for light duty as a universal repeater and acting as a wireless bridge into the small wired lan that serves our living room, doesn’t mind all the wired traffic I can throw at it…just hates repeating wireless data WHILE also feeding that wireless data into the wired network.    If that doesn’t make sense, this is how the internet reaches my computer, don’t tell our ISP… internet > modem > 233Mhz Pentium MMX running m0n0wall / WAP covering my parents house / switch >  150′ of underground cable > switch > WAP covering our shop + 24 dBi parabolic  > 2000′ of mostly open space > cantenna + my EW-7206APg > switch > my computer / kelley’s comp / VOIP / roku / wireless around the house.   Ok, it still might not make sense.

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Occasionally we’ll need to gather around my computer so we can watch a few shows via a network website that the corporate pricks refuse to stream through Hulu, but for $60 a month that’s a hassle I’ll gladly put up with…poor Kelley is missing a few more shows than I am, but she still has an impressive library immediately available at her fingertips, piped through our entertainment center.

If you’d like more information, allow me to direct your attention to this concise infographic: http://i.imgur.com/H7l8R.jpg

Making Soap at home, Part One.

Making Soap at home, Part Two.

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Making Soap at home, Part Three.  -by Kelley

We made three more (one pound) batches of soap Friday night. Experimenting with cheaper oils, the first batch we made was 50% olive oil and 50% soybean oil, with a hint of lime essential oil. The second batch was 50% olive and 50% canola with a hint of pink grapefruit. The third batch was a bit more expensive and complicated as it included coconut milk and I used coconut oil, olive and canola. I am hoping for a creamy soap that lathers quite a bit, and smells slightly like coconut. Mixing the lye with the coconut milk was kind of a pain because scorching the milk is quite easy, this necessitates keeping the temperature below 100′F. I froze some of the coconut milk to help keep the temp down and put the container on an ice pack surrounded by cold water but the temp still shot up to 150′F. I read that it won’t effect the smell or quality of the soap though, hopefully this is true.

L: OO/Soy, M: OO/Canola, R: Coconut

Saturday I still felt like I wanted to experiment and since I had just over 1/2 an ounce of cocoa butter (burning a hole in my pocket so to speak) I decided to incorporate that into a recipe. I used cocoa butter, coconut oil, olive, canola and a touch of lavender essential oil. This was a very small batch, only 5.5 ounces. I’m really excited to see how all these soaps turn out, compare them to each other and determine which combination works best, has the best lather and leaves my skin feeling soft. Also I can’t wait to hand out samples to friends and family to test out and give us feedback.

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Maybe you’re wondering “why bother making your own soap when you can just purchase it at the store”, some very cheap at that (Ed. Note: olive oil + soybean + lye without fragrance can be made for the same price as buying the cheapest commercial bars of soaplike-product). My favorite bar of soap used to be Dove pink, I loved the smell and it lathered nicely but it always left my skin feeling really dry especially in the winter. I still used it though because I loved the smell so much. Then I became vegetarian (mostly vegan) and did lots of research regarding animal products in food and various other products, including soap. The ingredients in my beloved Dove pink: 
Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate, Stearic Acid, Coconut Acid, Sodium Tallowate, Sodium Isethionate, Water, Sodium Stearate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Sodium Cocoate or Sodium Palm Kernelate, Fragrance, Sodium Chloride, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, BHT, Red 17 (CI 26100), Titanium Dioxide (CI 77891).

The first ingredient is a salt derived from coconut oil, basically it’s a surfactant. The second ingredient, Stearic Acid, may be animal (from rendered fat of farm and domestic animals, euthanized shelter animals) or vegetable based, I think I’ll just try to stay away from that ingredient unless it specifically says it’s plant derived. Sodium tallowate on the other hand is definitely animal derived, it is the product made from the saponification of beef fat, water and lye. Beef fat? In my pretty pink bar of soap? Yuck. (Check out what’s in your soap and all your bath products: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/)

After finding out that sodium tallowate is in practically all commercial soaps (even Ivory is tainted) I started buying real soap online. But soon I began to feel that paying $5 for a bar of soap was just too much, not to mention then paying for the shipping. Since I had begun to make my own laundry soap which involves grating up bars of soap and mixing with borax & super washing soda, I needed to find a cheaper soap. After trying several commercial soaps that are not made with beef fat I decided to go with Kirk’s Castile for the laundry soap and Dr. Bronner’s bar soap for my body. I like Dr. Bronner’s but it still seems a tad expensive ($3 and some odd change per bar) and it doesn’t seem very moisturizing.

So coming up with our own soap seemed like the obvious solution, along with the fact that I have aspirations (perhaps far fetched) of turning it into a business someday. I dragged my feet for a while then decided what the hell, let’s just try to make some and see how it goes. It seems to be going good, it’s fun and addicting. And best of all we get to decide what ingredients to use (beef fat will not be one of them).  There are many different oils and butters (no not that kind of butter, solid plant oils such as shea or cocoa) one can use to make soap, they all effect the end soap differently. I would go into more detail about this but my brain is fried and I need to do some house cleaning…

Last week, we made some soap.  It was interesting, and it takes forever to get to the results…so as we got our scale in today, I got impatient and made some more!  But I did use some of the original batch first…

After twenty-four hours of saponification and hardening, you should pop the soap out of the mold you used, and cut it into bars while it is still soft enough to do so.  The bars should sit for four to six weeks as they potentially continue saponification, and definitely lose water through evaporation.  You turn them over halfway through the drying process to help them dry evenly…

Ugly!

Still ugly!

Three Castile soaps

That fragment on the left is a piece I took into the shower with me to try out.  As far as I can tell, it was fully saponified as I didn’t get any stinging or dryness on sensitive skin from unreacted lye.  It lathered nicely and was very smooth, but wasn’t terribly strong.  This may be due to being a rather small piece.  It very much reminded me of the Dr. Bronners Castile I use to shave with, the middle bar above.  The bar on the right is a very simple Castile soap we picked up in State College.  One problem I have identified is that I really, really don’t like the smell of Wintergreen for my soap, as it smells like candy and I don’t like smelling candy in the shower before breakfast…

This first batch is a little expensive with the coconut oil, and I was impatient to try new things.  The next soap I wanted was a very utilitarian soap used for laundry: as cheap and as simple as possible.

16 ounces of olive oil at $0.21/oz, 2.05 ounces of lye at $0.25/oz, 5.76 ounces of water at basically free and 1/2 teaspoon of salt at basically free.   This will make a laundry (or body) soap for very roughly $0.64 per four ounce bar ((16*.21)+(2.05*.25))≈3.87 for 24 ounces or ≈.64 for four ounces.  I didn’t feel like waiting around and mixed the ingredients at 120′F  instead of 100′F.  I was also more aggressive with the stick blender.  The soap traced in short order, and I poured it into a slightly fancier mold…

No fragrance (alcohol?) = different color

Ankle brace packaging into soap mold!

I also decided to try something called CPOP, as it suits my infantile need for instant gratification.  I decided not to take pictures of this after an hour in the oven…I think the temperature was too high.  We’ll see what I can salvage.  Maybe if it’s amusing and not depressing, I’ll add photos tomorrow.  Also, it was only a 7 ounce batch of soap and the smaller the batch the more important the accuracy of your measurements become…I’m not the most accurate when I think I can fudge something…

If this (the non-CPOP soap) looks normal tomorrow night, I’m gonna be ready to throw caution to the wind and get serious about making a couple pounds of real soap!

So, I was a vegan for a while.   Kelley still is (well, kinda).  I’ve never been militant about it, but I tried to avoid meat and animal products for a variety of reasons.  I wasn’t vegan for long, as I rather enjoy ranch dressing and saw it as such a slight evil (I’ve since reconsidered).  If I was out and about, I wasn’t going to be fussy with regards to a little cheese on a salad.   So, I was a vegetarian.

I still consider myself a vegetarian for the sake of having an imprecise container to easily share a complicated subject quickly with other people, but of course my actual personal opinion is slightly more nuanced.  I suppose I am back to being a flexitarian (a term I found appealingly complex), as I now eat sardines…

Why do I eat sardines, when they are animals living perfectly happy animal lives, free and wild in the oceans?   Primarily for the positive health benefits…selfish of me, no?

I’m not sure what started my investigation of sardines, but I suspect it may have come about from worrying about my diet.  I take a number of supplements to make sure I stay healthy considering I don’t eat steak five times a week: a B-Complex, Vitamin D, and occasionally a multivitamin and/or a calcium supplement.  As a vegan, I get little to no B12 in my diet, and must get by on what my body recycles and what I consume with the vitamins. As a modern human, I get precious little Vitamin D for 9 months of the year considering I don’t spend half an hour in the sun every day.  As a modern human, I also get precious little Omega3 fatty acids from my diet.  I take a multivitamin just in case I am missing one micro-nutrient or another in the mix of nuts, legumes, vegetables, fruits and whole grains that I eat as my diet.

I’ve always found the idea of whole food appealing.  A whole fruit is so much more than the individual components.  So much has been made of our scientific progress when it comes to nutrition, but it appears to simply be a series of exposes into how little we really know about the complex mechanism we call our bodies.  A desire to oversimplify what appears at first glance to be daunting complexity.  Carbohydrates, protein and fats.  No wait, there are vitamins too.  No wait, essential elements and minerals.   Essential amino acids!  Essential fatty acids!  Phytonutrients!   Oh, the chaos!  Instead of worrying about all of those bits and pieces, whole foods fix that problem: they are naturally rich in a wide variety of nutrients that processing strips away.  They are wonderfully complex in the way only the intricate machinery of life can fashion.  Fresh.  Real.  Whole.

This brings me back to a hole that was in my diet: B12.  Omega3 fatty acids.  Vitamin D.  Selenium.  Probably calcium to some extent, likely hard to get enough regardless of your diet.   Sardines plug this hole amazingly well. Sardines single handedly wipe out my need to supplement my diet.   They are at the bottom of the food chain so they do not concentrate toxins to the extent predatory fish do (depressing thinking that every fish in the ocean will collect PCBs, dioxin and mercury as it ages…yay industrial revolution!).  They are among the most sustainable animals one can consume (as cruel as that phrase sounds), as the herring fisheries are very resilient and quickly self-replenish.  The downside is that they are quite small, and therefore many individual fish are consumed.

Sardines, you think, gaging and reaching for a napkin to blot the spit-up. I’d hazard that while the odor is something…interesting (cat food, anyone?), the flavor is more mild than tuna.  Having been disconnected from animal food sources for so long, it was hard for me to not be revulsed at first consuming something that was so obviously a dead animal, but once I managed a bite or two I was pleasantly surprised.  I have since then tried a number of brands and styles…

I vastly prefer Season Imported Sardines in Olive Oil, far and away.  These are a product of Morocco.  They are rather large, but wonderfully firm and have a rich, smoky flavor.  Every can I have eaten has been uniform in it’s quality.  Unfortunately, they are rather expensive.  Haven’t had the opportunity to sample their other products yet.

Everything else: King Oscar Sardines In Olive Oil (average), King Oscar Finest Norwegian Brisling Sardines (average, rather small and uninspiring but apparently these are the best of the best?), Brunswick Sardines in Olive Oil (occasionally perfectly fine, occasionally watery and limp > inconsistent quality!), Haddon House Boneless Skinless Sardines (acceptable, but not as healthy without the bones & skin, gross huh!), BumbleBee Sardines in Mustard/Hot Sauce (both acceptable), BumbleBee Sardines in Olive Oil (pretty crappy without the mustard or hot sauce smothering them).   BumbleBee line of sardine products are dirt cheap (like one third the cost of the Season sardines!), and are labeled a product of Canada.

Apparently you can do a variety of things with sardines when it comes to eating them, but I’m a primitive, a savage…I usually just eat them right out of the can!  Occasionally with a dash of Sriracha on top.  Something about the oil and the fish turns wild Sriracha into a mild tomato sauce.

Sorry if this was difficult to read / contains errors / seems incomplete.  I’ve been wanting to write about sardines for some time now, and forced myself to do it against my will tonight (best time to do anything is nearly always RIGHT NOW).  Feedback welcome.  Oh, I already know that this latest revision of WordPress does silly things to my paragraphs…