Now, I’m trying to go back to what I want to do foodwise (about time after 6 years huh?) so I decided to get a breadmaker.  It’s actually nice for me, since it saves so much time by being an extra set of hands.  All I need to do is get 100-110 degree water, plop some yeast & sugar into it, toss it into the breadmaker to sit for 10 minutes (for proofing), then toss in the rest.  I’m simple, so it’s 3 cups of whole wheat flour, 1 1/2 tsp salt, & 1/4 cup of vegetable oil (or olive oil, depending on how wild and frisky I am).  I close the lid, set it to whole wheat bread, then hit start.  So far after 2-3 loaves, it’s been beautiful.  It’s nice to know that 3-4 hours later a loaf of fresh bread will be available at the cost of 3 cups of flour and a little yeast, oil, and salt.  I made a panini with the first 2 slices of the first loaf I made and it was wonderfully non-fluffy and tasty.  The only unfortunate part is the hole that is imbedded onto the bottom of the loaf from the dough beater in the breadmaker.  This can be remedied by simply setting the breadmaker to “dough” and after it’s done putting the dough into a breadpan and cooking it at 325 degrees for half an hour… but that bypasses the whole time thing

Adding bread making to soy milk making makes me want to see what else is able to be hit with the same equipment… I think it’s time to run the whole soy arena, and the next thing (aside from tofu – that’s simply boil soy milk, coagulate, and press) is tempeh.  Something neat about having a taste absorbing soy material that has a meat kind of texture… a lot like some mushrooms do.  Once I get some tempeh starter, I’ll go down that road and maybe I’ll be able to kick the whole burger thing.  (I was close to it with portobello but they’re kinda pricey for daily use)

Never thought food and science would come together so nicely  My next step: Kitchenaid stand mixer, so I can close the gap and make just about anything.  Anything that has a planetary gear arrangement for mixing/kneading/spinning along with a front-attachment mechanism for pasta creation and god knows what else, is perfect in my book.

I picked up a Breville tea maker, and it was nearly everything I wanted.  A glass carafe, with stainless steel bottoming, and a programmable system for water temperature/basket lowering & raising for steeping/steeping duration.  Add in a ‘keep warm’ button along with a nifty feature of raising & lowering the basket during steeping to agitate (if you want it to do that), and it’s golden.  The more awesome thing is that the basket is raised & lowered by magnetism alone.  No strings or cords in the water, which is an amazing addition.  It also adds in a great feature of being nearly silent when the basket is moving.

The water heating is about the only sound that comes from this machine.  It sounds like nearly any other water heating carafe, and beeps when everything is finished.  The speed of heating is pretty nice, as I was able to heat from 65 Fahrenheit to 205 Fahrenheit at exactly 5 minutes.  (I used 205 because I was brewing mate tea)   I feel that this tea maker is worth every penny, as it’s built with quality German schott glass and little details that make it feel solid.  The strainer-style mouthpiece on the lid is a nice addition as well, holding any straggling loose tea remnants as you pour it.

As with everything, it has a flaw but a very minor one.  The ‘keep warm’ feature lasts for 60 minutes then turns off.  While this is both a boon & a burden, I simply turn the ‘hot water’ button on to warm it up and hit ‘keep warm’ again for another 60 minutes.  This is only a problem if I don’t finish what I made in 1 hour.  With tea, it can make 5 cups (1200 ml), and with only hot water it can make 6 cups (1500 ml).  Basically the difference is the basket isn’t in the way when you’re only heating water.

]]> http://ampedup.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/breville-tea-maker/feed/ 0 situationalawareness breville tea maker on table Breville tea carafe inside Breville tea maker base station http://ampedup.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/time-to-strap-on-the-gear-and-ride-hard-temporal-lobe-injury-ramifications/ http://ampedup.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/time-to-strap-on-the-gear-and-ride-hard-temporal-lobe-injury-ramifications/#comments Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:52:08 +0000 situationalawareness http://ampedup.wordpress.com/?p=568 Continue reading →]]> I figured time would disclose all things after my motorcycle accident in 2007, and I was right. After 4 years my cranial injuries are starting to show effects. Memory is a minor impact, and completely able to work around it. The main impact is an electrical interference occuring in the temporal lobe sporadically. What causes it appears to be deep cognitive thought processes, which seem to cause a bizarre ‘misfire’ that sends nervous system impulses off pattern. In a nutshell, it’s a neural version of blacking out… without reaching the full unconscious phase. The doctors call it a temporal simple seizure.
For anyone who knows me, it’s akin to putting nitroglycerin on a shuttle… it’s going to happen no matter what. I think, it’s the only thing I ever do. The worst day has been a week ago where nearly every 10 minutes an episode happened at work. I learned that day how to work right through one. I refuse to let anything but death stop me. Disturbingly enough, every episode feels like death creeping in and taking my soul from my body.
For anyone reading this, I’ve found that disconnecting yourself from the situation is the only way to truly own the moment. Think like a scientist, and concentrate on breathing slow deep life-giving breathes. I’ve taught myself over the years how to control my heart and body by thought… I never thought I’d need it…

Above all I remind myself, I am a soldier of one. The only weapon against you in situations is your self.

After getting tired of constantly reading the sugar amounts on soy milks you buy at the store (along with all of the additional content.. It’s a simple beverage, not a science experiment) I decided enough is enough and picked up a soy milk making machine for home. Thankfully, there are farms that ship soybeans over US mail, as well! Sooo, now I’m ready and on the roll!

I went with a company named Sanlinx for the soy maker machine, and I absolutely love the quality. It’s a chinese product, but I’m actually amazed on how durable and quality-built it is. I went with the “SoyaPower Plus” model they sell, which is made for use with beans, rice, or soybeans. It ran me $109, and it came with the machine, a sample set of beans (enough for 2 batches, or 2/3 gallon of soymilk total), a little measuring cup for the soybeans, and instructions. I adore it honestly, it’s metal with plastic casing and just does what it’s supposed to do. It’s quite simple in how it works: soak a measuring cup of soybeans (or 2/3 of the measuring cup soybeans, 1/3 rice to thicken the milk) for 8-10 hours, then toss them into the SoyaPower Plus container. Then, you fill up the pitcher that came with it with water to the level marked, pour it into the machine, slap on the machines top, press a button. It’s relatively quiet… it does make noise, but about as much as a blender does, and it only runs when it really needs to, about a minute through the entire 15-20 minute run.
After it’s done, what I do is wait 2 or so minutes to let the machine cool down and become less frothy. Then, I pop the top and wash it off real quick to get it out of the way. Then, pour the container through the provided strainer into the pitcher, and bam… done. Of course, I have to wait until the soymilk is at a cooler temperature before putting it into the refrigerator. I wash out the container real quick at that point, as well.

When I do it, I make 3 batches, which fills the gallon container which I confess is a gallon spring water bottle. I season to taste after, with a tablespoon of vanilla extract and 4 scoops of stevia sweetener… which I mix into a little milk before putting in because it needs to be stirred up first. Nobody wants lumps of stuff in their milk…

I’ve used the machine so far for about 4-5 gallons of soy milk, and it’s worked wonderfully for each. I need to experiment with rice milk, though it takes quite a bit more of the rice to create the milk from what I’ve been reading… like 2/3 cup. Another plus side is that with soy milk you can make tofu quite easily, if you want to use it in your cooking. The tofu presses run about $10, and all you have to do is take a bit of soy milk, bring it to a boil and pour it  into a bowl.  Then sprinkle a teaspoon of nigari (japanese sea salt from evaporated sea water) into a cup of hot water… pour it into the milk and wait a couple of minutes for a the coagulation. After that, get the coagulation out of the whey transparent liquid and put it into a cheesecloth inside of the tofu press. Then, lightly press it with around 5 lbs of weight for about 20 minutes. Done. At that time, it can soak in the fridge. Be sure to change the water daily.

One thing I have noticed is that making soy yogurt is not as easy as with dairy milk due to the lack of sugar product. This can be remedied by adding a teaspoon of sugar to the soy milk before adding the starter bacteria. (granted I’m talking about a liter of soymilk) This gives it some form of food to continue to grow.

EDIT 12/29/2011:  I’ve tried with 1/8th cup of rice and it thickens it to nearly the same consistency of dairy milk.  I use the usual long-grain rice sold at the store, and when I soak the soy beans I include the rice with it.  Also, just for reference I buy my soy beans from a farm named Fairview Farms and they sell a brand of soy beans named “Laura Soybeans”.  Their URL is http://www.fairviewfarms.com/ and they are non-GMO.  I picked up 20 lbs (mailed by  postal service, included in the price of $34.95 at the time of this post) and it’s enough to last me for months and months easy.  I’ll even go as far as saying 6+ months, since I only use a tiny little cup to scoop up soy milk each time which barely dents the supply.  Also, one thing to note is even though instructions say 1 cup of soybeans… it means after soaking for 8-10 hours.  The coolest thing is since it gets to 3 times it’s original size after soaking, the little cup that comes with the soy milk maker compensates for it by measuring the proper amount.
As far as tofu, I’ve noticed that when I add rice to the mix (for thickening) and I use that soy milk for the tofu it doesn’t coagulate right and fails to make tofu.  I ran pure soybeans to make the soy milk, then brought the milk to boiling, dumped it into a bowl and slowly poured the nigari/hot-water mix in… bam.  Coagulation began almost instantly.  An added bonus is that the tofu has a fiber texture to it, instead of the store-bought floppy odd stuff.

I’m actually kind of blown away by it, since this is the first time I’ve seen a laptop with CPU/Motherboard/RAM setup anywhere near the performance of a desktop. The only thing slowing it down is the 5,400 RPM hard drive. While completely useable, when doing virtualization with Parallels the hard drive hits high I/O which slows down the system. Then, I looked into what is available… I’m amazed. A simple replacement of the hard drive with a solid-state drive (SSD), and the systems I/O bottleneck disappears. While everyone reading this may say ‘Oh, but you can do that with any laptop’, it’s the only real bottleneck I’ve found. With a 2.7 GHz Intel core i7 cpu, the processing is not an issue unless you expect server-speed processing.

After researching RAM amounts, I found it possible to upgrade from 4GB to 16GB. With an upgrade to SSD, and 16GB RAM, my Macbook Pro would be faster than the iMac on my desk (which has an Intel core i3). Now if SSD was cheaper, I’d put it into my iMac, but that’s one place where 1TB is necessary…

Having used the Macbook Pro with my iMac’s second monitor (which is Thunderbolt), it seems like the laptop could be faster than my iMac even right now…

People pay good money to be scared in a haunted house, but what customers do to the employees who spook them can be even more frightening.

According to former and current professionals in the haunted house industry, it’s common for customers to freak out from fear and bust noses, bite arms and throw punches at the people they’ve paid to scare them.

“It’s common, absolutely,” said Allen Hopps, who trains actors to work in haunted houses. “The problem isn’t the haunted houses or the actors, but the customers. They forget that people are actors and have a flight-or-fight reaction towards the person scaring them, not realizing one might be a 16-year-old girl.”

Hopps says that busted noses are the most common customer-inflicted injuries.

“Someone might throw a punch when they get scared or if someone scares them from behind, they will raise the elbow quickly,” he said.

Other injuries that are common include “haunted house throat” from excessive screaming and “cleaver elbow,” a repetitive stress injury similar to tennis elbow that comes from raising your arm too many times a night.

“You can also get muscle burns using a chainsaw,” Hopps said. “It happens in the line of duty, but haunted house acting is a sport. If you twist an ankle, you can still work in the graveyard as a zombie.”

Edward Terebus, who owns a haunted house in Pontiac, Mich., is another pro who looks at the injury risk as part of the cost of doing business.

He once had a customer who was so scared by the house that she passed out three times inside before he was able to get her out so she could be treated by paramedics.

After the last fainting spell, she got up and headed to her car. Since she was still at risk of fainting, Terebus tried to prevent an accident by pulling the key out of the ignition.

“This woman grabs my arm like a chicken leg and takes a big bite out of my arm,” he laughed. “I’m screaming, she’s screaming and for an ironic twist, the fire department ended up holding me longer than her, tending to my bite wound.”

Not everybody gets the same thrill that Hopps does from risking injury in order to scare up money.

Lynnette Kittle, a publicist for Random House who lives in Colorado, is still haunted by her experience as a teenager when she volunteered to work in a haunted house.

“I thought they wanted me to take tickets but they asked me to lay in a casket and pop up and scare people,” she told HuffPost Weird News. “It was too much for one teenage girl. When I sat up, she screamed in terror and started punching me in the stomach! Three guys behind the moveable wall in the room where I was stationed soon caught on and started to push her and her friends to the next room.

“Needless to say, I asked to be moved to another spot after that experience!”

Not all customer-inflicted injuries happen to humans, according to Amber Arnett Bequeaith, who runs the Edge Of Hell in Kansas City. One attraction at the house of horrors is an actor known as the “Rat Man,” who pretends to eat rats and offers each guest a bite.

“One woman was so freaked out that she smacked the rat out of his hand and it flew out across the room and hit a brick wall where it died,” she said.

Wendy Zdrodowski, a former haunted house employee in Chicago, said the customers are scarier than anything she did to frighten them.

“My first season, someone tried to set me on fire and I know of one day when a patron came in with a Taser,” she told HuffPost Weird News. “The third season someone also tried to set me on fire.”

Zdrodowski, who now performs at Renaissance faires, says most employees are independent contractors and, therefore, responsible for their own injuries.

“There are people who target performers, such as bored kids who will throw pennies at the performers — those hurt, by the way,” she said. “I was told not to warn new employees because they said it was bad for morale. It got so bad I brought my own security.”

There is some hope, she says. Some houses are beefing up security and using metal detectors, but she recommends any would-be haunted house performers ask questions about what they do to stress employee safety.

Some former haunted house employees say the job actually helped them physically, like Erica Holloway, who worked in a haunted house in Flint, Mich., while taking vocal lessons.

“I had to do this blood curdling scream 30 times a night over and over,” said Holloway, who now works in public relations in San Diego. “My voice would be dead by Halloween, but, as a side effect, it ended up improving my range.”

Hopps trains his spooky students to watch out for potential dangers.

“How you scare someone five feet away is different than 15 feet away,” he said. “You can go ‘bigger’ when you’re further away. If someone looks mortified, back off, because they’re not having any fun.”

But even so, he admits accidents happen.

“I know one actress who scared a guy and he forced his way through a back door so he could hit her in the face,” Hopps said. “Even so, she came back the next year.”

The thrill of scaring customers outweighs the occupational hazards, he said.

“A lion never feels more alive than when chasing an antelope,” he explained.

I hope this changes, or at least is within an isolated area of constraint. I’ve had my teases of having a person or two I could go on for hours with and converse about philosophy/science/auto mechanics/etc. It’s like smelling clean air again… and when they disappear it can destroy you.
To quote David Bowie, it seems people around me follow the mantra, “I don’t want science, I want certainty”.

Illegal activities are illegal for a reason. We don’t want you around if your only purpose is to dose up and try to get others to do the same for personal legitimacy.

Thanks.

The two are different creatures, as the 2008 feels lighter, and more like a small car. The 2011 feels more like a sedan, and honestly feels more sure-footed on the streets. It’s a heavier car, and you can definitely feel that. However, the engine has more power, along with the ability to regulate between “ecoboost” & “powerboost”, or just disabling them all for something in the middle. I bounce between them depending on my needs. The ecoboost is great for the freeway or anytime you are staying at a sustained speed and doesn’t require much acceleration. The fuel economy is quite nice at that point, and usually floats between 50-75 MPG. When accelerating onto the freeway, or needing to pass a vehicle very quickly, the powerboost is an enormous amount of energy. It actually surprises me how powerful it is… it’s saved my butt qute a few times when needing to get out of a sticky situation on the freeway & on the surface streets.

The sure-footed feeling is a definite plus, and I have tested this at 75 MPH when avoiding a big rock (looked like 3-5 inches in diameter) in the freeway that rolled out of a truck ahead of me. I was able to swing my car rapidly to the right to focus the rock directly between my wheels, and pull back rapidly shortly afterwards… to avoid a vehicle that wouldn’t slow down and just had to pass on my right after noticing me doing that. Not once did the power controls to the wheels kick in traction control or anything, and the tires did not even make a noise. I have the stock Yokohama Avid tires on there, at that.

It’s an interesting car, and a good cockpit feel in the front. The back seats remain the same, it seems.

The warranties are quite nice, since for the first 2 years/25,000 miles they take care of oil and maintenance. After that, there’s the 3 year/36,000 mile warranty, then the 5 year/60,000 drivetrain warranty, along with the 8 year/100,000 hybrid warranty which covers all hybrid components. (battery, cables, etc)

The air conditioner on the 2011 model seems to use quite a bit less battery energy, but it is a bit louder and far more noticable when sitting still. It’s not horrible, just quite noticable on the outside.
The servos and pumps are not as loud on the 2011 model either, as it seems they’ve reinvented the way the engine manages it’s fluids and other things.

It’s a nice vehicle, I highly recommend it. Where else can you get a 50 MPG vehicle that rides beautifully for $25,000?

This is to thank each and every person for fighting against the British to sustain our lands. Thank you for steeling your resolve, and for staying with yoiur inner self. Thank you for doing what many today could not do.

1776 is a year much the same as 2011. Simply remember that those people that died at the hands of the aggressors could have been the same that you know in today’s world. Our lands can turn into a battlefield nearly overnight. Let’s bow our heads for those that gave the offenders a reason to stay away.

Thank you. *lowers head and rifle*