The Absolut Truth

This is the Absolut Best Bread Pudding that I have ever had. It is simple in its ingredients, but heaven on the tongue. Warning: If you like the more cake-like bread pudding, this recipe is not for you.

Custard Bread Pudding
1 cup Sugar
1 stick Butter
5 beaten Eggs
2 cups Heavy Cream
dash of Cinnamon
1 tablespoon Vanilla Extract
12 slices (~1″ thick) French Bread (fresh or stale)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, heavy cream, cinnamon and vanilla. Mix well.
3. Arrange bread slices flat in a 9 inch square pan.
4. Pour egg mixture over the bread in the pan.
5. Allow bread to soak up the egg mixture for 10 - 15 minutes, turning the bread if needed to ensure all pieces are coated.
6. Set square pan in a larger pan. Fill the larger pan with water to 1/2 inch from the top. Cover the larger pan (which will also cover the square pan) with aluminum foil.
7. Bake for 35 - 40 minutes. Remove the aluminum foil. Bake for an additional 10 minutes to brown the top. When done, the custard should be soft, not firm.

Rum Sauce
1 cup Sugar
2 cups Water
1 stick Cinnamon -OR- 1 teaspoon ground Cinnamon
1 tablespoon Unsalted Butter
1/2 teaspoon Cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup Cold Water
1 tablespoon Dark or Spiced Rum

1. In a medium-size saucepan combine sugar, water, cinnamon and butter and bring to a boil.
2. Stir in cornstarch mixture and simmer, stirring until sauce is clear.
3. Remove from heat and add rum. (Sauce will be thin.)
4. Dish up the bread pudding and spoon sauce over individual servings.

If you try any variations on this recipe, leave me a note and let me know.

In response to The “Car Wreck Award”, I have to take a moment to respond.

Many negative comments have focused on the resentment that will be created in the non-award teams… what about the resentment that is created in the superstars when there aren’t awards? The entire premise of why a start-up company can take market share from an entrenched market dominating large company is the idea that a few superstars can creatively outrun the current dominator with their agility and new ideas. Google has been especially careful to recruit and keep these superstar-like employees. In regular companies, these superstars continually produce greater results than the vast majority of the other employees. The superstar’s worth to the company is often 10 to 100 fold that of the average or even good employee. However, you never see a superstar getting paid 100x or even 10x. Resentment sets in and inevitably the superstar looks elsewhere for a company where s/he can feel more valued. This often means trying to found his own company or going to a very early stage start-up.

Since it is these superstars which have the power to outrun other larger companies, they are the ones that should be kept! One superstar leaving out of resentment due to not being valued is much more important than teams of good/average employees having some level of resentment. I think Google is doing the right think to foster continued development and hiring of superstars as well as maintain an entrepreneurial spirit within a growing company.

By the way, most very large companies publish career path and salary ranges within the company as a means for motivating and retaining employees. It’s a proven methodology. It doesn’t create resentment to know the range of high level positions and how much more they make than you. In a sense, Google is doing an extreme version of this based on meritocracy instead of hierarchy.

This is just one woman’s opinion who has worked in one large company and five start-ups.

In a year where the flu shot has been restricted due to limited supply, more people are looking to alternative methods for preventing and treating the flu. Here is the homeopathic method for flu prevention and treatment.

Don’t Let it Go to Your Head - Flu Prevention
Dolivaxil, a Homeopathic remedy, is analogous to a traditional flu shot. This Homeopathic remedy is prepared based on the strains of the flu virus that the World Health Organization predicts to most likely affect the world each year. This remedy is the optimal method of flu prevention; but beware, to be effective it must be started in late summer or early fall. Luckily, it does not involve needles and only has to be taken in five doses. Make sure you check the dates on the box which indicate the flu season for which this remedy is valid. New remedies come out each year in July. According to this source, Dolivaxil is more effective than the flu shot.

Research studies on patients who took Dolivaxil Flu Defense reported the following results for an entire flu season:

• 90% no flu symptoms;
• 5% mild flu case;
• 5% moderate-severe flu case.

These results were reported by 23 French homeopathic medical doctors from a population of 453 patients. No side effects were noted in 97% of the cases, while 3% experienced nasal discharge (runny nose). Two other studies confirmed these findings with similar results. 98% of the patients were interested in repeating the Dolivaxil flu prevention protocol the following year.

Reporting on a study published by the Centers for Disease Control in the Wall Street Journal and CNN for the first half of flu-season (November 1, 2003 to January 10, 2004), the flu shot was 85% effective (15% of people who got the shot came down with the flu). Of the baseline group who did not get a flu vaccine, 17% came down with the flu during this period.

Directions (from the box): Adults and children over 2 years: Dissolve one tube under the tongue per week for 4 weeks then wait for three weeks and dissolve one final tube under the tongue or as directed by a health professional.

Cost: Approximately $10 - $15 for the full course of 5 doses (1 box), depending on where it is purchased.

Where to Buy: Most holistic health, vitamin and herb stores should carry it. Many online retailers carry it such as Drugstore.com, Discount Vitamins & Herbs, and Amazon.com. Search for Dolivaxil on your favorite online retailer or search engine.

Caveats: The warning label says that this remedy is not a replacement for the flu vaccine, and if you have been diagnosed or believe you are at high risk for complications due to influenza, consult your health professional for appropriate treatment. Children under 2 should not use this remedy.

A Dose of Your Own Medicine - Flu Treatment
Homeopathic remedies such as Dolicoccil and Oscillococcinum are available to treat the symptoms of the flu and shorten the duration of the flu. Oscillococcinum is by far the more popular product in the US as recent television commercials are taking the product information to the mainstream public. It can also be taken as to prevent the flu.

Directions (from the box): Adults and children 2 years of age and older: take 1 dose at the onset of symptoms. Repeat for 2 more doses at 6 hour intervals. Allow the pellets to dissolve in the mouth, at least 15 minutes before or after meals.

Cost: Approximately $6 - $8 for a 3 dose box, $11 - $15 for a 6 dose box, and $16 - $19 for a 12 dose box depending on where it is purchased.

Where to Buy: Most holistic health, vitamin and herb stores should carry it. Many online retailers carry it such as eVitamins.com, Mother Nature, and Swanson Health Products. Search for Oscillococcinum on your favorite online retailer or search engine.

Other Options
There are many alternative health possibilities for preventing and treating the flu symptoms. Vitamins, herbs and essential oils are just a few of the possibilities that can be used as an-alternative-to or in-addition-to the Homeopathic course of treatment. For example Vitamin C, Echinacea, Goldenseal, Astragalus, zinc and other supplements all help treat cold and flu symptoms. More information about these other types of alternative health products will be available in future posts. If you have specific vitamins, herbs, minerals, oils, flower essences, etc that you want me to give information on, please leave a comment.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This information is only intended as one source from which you should perform your independent research and evaluation. Please consult a qualified medical practitioner for medical advice.

Absolut Unique
Balance, Harmony, Even Steven, Even Odds, and Fun & Games are the categories of jewelry made by even DESIGN. With the theme of the bubble from a level, the rings, bracelets, necklaces and cufflinks are supremely awesome. Don’t miss the cufflinks with compasses, the Barrel O’ Monkeys bracelet or the cuff bracelets with natural leaf impressions. If you are looking for something fun and unique that didn’t come from a gumball machine, then even DESIGN may have what you are looking for. Let me know what you think about them.

I am in no way affiliated with even DESIGN. I just came across them on the web and thought they were cool.

All of these patents are actually real and can be found at Totally Absurd Inventions & Patents. There’s a lot of them listed on the site, so I have sorted through them for you to find the most mentionable.

The Absolut Funniest of the Bunch
Radar Head It’s Figure 3 with the head rest that really makes you laugh.
Earthquake House No brakes!
Earless Eyewear The last sentence of the description will get you.
PantyHose 3x This is hilarious. I’d love to see guys in these .
Pants Pointer There aren’t any PG things I can say about this one… you’ll have to see for yourself.
Toilet Snorkel Is this really better than smoke?
Travel Relief Flushing, Genius!

Honorable Mention
Arm Mitten Yeah, that’s really gonna sell.
Baby Patter The end of the description is the best part of this one.
Bird Trap Cat Feeder I can’t believe this one was actually legal!
Bubble Head Sweet! All the blood without any of the injury!
Cheese Filtered Cigarette Seriously? This one is hard to believe. Maybe Wisconsin or California will adopt something similar for their next cheese campaign aimed at people exposed to second hand smoke….eat more cheese, it filters out harmful smoke components.
Cow Gas Just plain odd.
Dad Saddle Save a horse, ride a cowboy!
Extreme Combover Watch out Donald Trump!
Loupy Lou This gives a new meaning to love handles.
Hijacker Injector Jack ‘em in the jimmy.
Geek Pouch How can you say absurd? I’ve gotta have one!
Gerbil Shirt This must have been what Richard Gere’s parents got him as a kid (urban legend).
Skate Scooter Speed bumps…funny.
Sleep Sponge Bumper…funny.
Snowboard Bumper I think they were right on with the snowball comment.
Stud Spectacles Holy Painful Batman!
Sunburn Cowboy (bow chicka bow bow)
Wig Flipper This is pretty cool.

Recent Windows Update
If you do regular Microsoft Windows updates, then you may have noticed that a couple of weeks ago the update included the installation of Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool. To be honest, I only paid attention to it because I actually had to interact with the update since it required agreeing to an EULA. I decided to actually read the contents of the EULA and find out what I was agreeing to (novel concept, I know).

Malicious Tool Automatically Reports to Big Daddy
In accordance with recent Microsoft style, the EULA disclosed that this tool will remove all software that is considered malicious as defined as showing up on the list that Microsoft keeps and that you can look at. Fine. It also said that the Malicious Software Removal Tool will automatically report back to Microsoft each time it removes malicious software from your computer. Now somehow I am OK with the Microsoft Office suite reporting errors back to Microsoft because it asks me each time whether I want to report the error or not. Taking away the end user control and making it happen automatically just struck me as wrong that day.

Cutting the Apron Strings
Luckily, buried deep within the EULA is also a link that says it will tell you how to disable this feature if you don’t want it to automatically report. I faithfully copied down the link and agreed to the EULA, installing the software. Of course, nothing is as easy as it seems. That link led me to another article which buried inside had a link to another article and finally I was at the right article (although you’d never known it by the title). This was a clear case of obfuscation. Here is all you need to know, straight from the horse’s mouth:

Q4. How can I disable the infection reporting component of the tool so that the report is not sent back to Microsoft?

A4. An administrator can choose to disable the infection reporting component of the tool by adding the following registry key value to computers. If this registry key value is set, the tool will not report infection information back to Microsoft.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\MRT\DontReportInfectionInformation with the value of “1″. Note that this value should be of type REG_DWORD.

This functionality is automatically disabled if the following registry key value exists: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\WUServer
This registry key value indicates that the computer is connected to a SUS server.

Of course, how many non-engineer computer users know how to add a registry key value? I don’t even want most computer users learning this skill…it’s much too dangerous!

Things that Make You Go Hmmm…
So in the end I am left wondering if this is a malicious Software Removal Tool (i.e. a spiteful, malevolent tool that happens to remove software) or a tool that removes malicious software. It may just be a case of clever naming by Microsoft.

In a world where knowledge = power and time = money, being given the key to knowledge at an earlier time in life would equate to power x money = world domination. Using these equations, Paul Graham’s prepared speech to high school students, What You’ll Wish You’d Known, would upset the balance of knowledge that comes with age, tipping the scales toward the youth and creating a new generation of world dominators. Never fear though, Pinky and the Brain have taught us that it is not those with the knowledge that gain the power. The Brain with all his ambition and hard work and knowledge was never the one to succeed in world domination… it was Pinky with his ignorance and stupidity that would succeed at his plans. Who are we to believe? I guess it’s a mystery left up to the ages.

In all seriousness, for anyone who is currently under 23 or for anyone who has kids in middle school or high school, I highly recommend Paul Graham’s essay. It walks the wonderful line of giving direction, imparting knowledge and motivating without preaching or providing a one-size-fits-all path.

Where’s the Compass?
North… South… East… West… Clockwise… Counterclockwise… Forward… Reverse… Where’s the compass when you need it? Today I embarked on the utterly confusing task of figuring out which direction the ceiling fan is supposed operate in the Winter. To confuse matters, most articles refer to the ceiling fan switch in the forward or reverse position, but there are no labels to tell you which switch position is which. I could assume that it’s the opposite direction than the ceiling fan was currently set to operate (since that’s the only way I have solved this problem in the past), but we purchased this home recently and do not have any proof that the fans were set to operate for summer.

Uncommon Sense Approach
I consider myself an intelligent person with a high degree of common sense. Why can’t I figure this out just from the design of the fan blades? I am a mechanical engineer after all! The problem with the common sense approach was that I found a valid rationale for both directions of the fan working in the winter. The one factor that I didn’t consider was ceiling height. Who knew that ceiling height was the determining factor which turned my common sense dilemma into an uncommon sense explanation?

The Height of Understanding
I finally found an article that made me feel a little better about my lifelong struggle with this problem. The answer is that both directions are valid operating scenarios for the winter depending on the height of the ceiling.

If you have a standard ceiling height (~8 feet) then you want to run the fan in the clockwise direction during the winter. Specifically, the ceiling fan blades should be running with the lower edge of the blade being the leading edge into the air. Having the leading edge of the fan blade down will pull the air in the room upward which pushes the warm air hovering near ceiling outward and forces it to mix with the rest of the air without creating much turbulence or breeze. Although it is a common sense explanation to run the fan in the opposite (counter clockwise) direction pushing the warm air down as a direct force, this also creates a breeze in the room (giving an undesired ‘cooling’ effect) and is therefore not effective for standard ceiling heights.

For high ceilings (greater than 8 feet) you want to run the fan in the counterclockwise direction during the winter. Specifically, the ceiling fan blades should be running with the upper edge of the blade being the leading edge into the air. Having the leading edge of the fan blade up will push the air near the ceiling downward into the room. The breeze created by operating the fan in this direction will be undetectable at low speeds since the fan height is tall enough that the breeze has dissipated before reaching the room height where people would notice.

In the grand tradition of others, Iris and Lily are joining the Friday cat blogging bandwagon. They talked me into being their scribe. Their week has been full of excitement as we discovered a place to order copious amounts of kitty crack. Read about it here. Other exciting events included their first hail storm today and numerous play dates with the laser cat toy that Santa brought. Here are the girls sitting by the fire today. Iris is on the left and Lily is on the right.

If you are new to this wondrous Friday cat blogging tradition (as I am), here are a couple sites that I really liked. The Modulator aggregates fellow Friday pet bloggers and organizes them by pet type. Check out his post called Friday Ark each Friday for links to other blogs where pets get their owners to talk about them. My absolut favorite cat blog so far is about Fritz. The caption to the picture brings a smile each time I read it.

If you know where this Friday cat blogging tradition started, leave a comment.

The Absolut Best Kitty Treat for cats is kitty crack. Iris and Lily have tried most soft and hard kitty treats on the market and they like some of them at some times depending on their mood. Once I found kitty crack the competition was over. Iris and Lily were hooked immediately!

Keep the Habit
Technically kitty crack is just dried, shaved Bonito. I buy it at the local Scraps Dog Bakery store, but here is something similar online. If your cats haven’t tried it, Iris and Lily highly recommend it. It is an all natural product with no preservatives and has good fish oils in it. However, the price ranges from $3.95 online to ~$6.00 at Scraps per 1/2 ounce tub. With two cats crazy about this stuff, this becomes an item that needs its own budget! Soon the cats will have to resort to a life of crime to pay for their habit.

Kick the Debt
(Enter television from stage right.) Thanks to an Iron Chef battle where the challenger used a huge bag of Bonito flakes to make a broth, we started thinking… Hmmm… Why not but it online from an asian grocer? After some research, I decided on Asian Food Grocer because they had a good site, looked reputable, and are located in South San Francisco (local). Their product is called Kanei Hana Katsuo and is only $4.99 for 3.5 ounces. That’s seven times the product for the same price as the 1/2 ounce tub. Even including less than $4 for shipping, I received two bags (7 ounces) of kitty crack for less than the price of three tubs (1.5 ounces). That’s an amazing savings! Let me do the math… divide by 7… carry the 1… multiply by 100… adjust the decimal… that’s 41 new jobs (according to Odd Todd.) Just goes to show how much of a markup there is on pet products.

A bonus feature that I really like about the Asian Food Grocer website is the Reorder feature. This is the perfect feature since I will no doubt be ordering more in the future. One click and more kitty crack is in the mail. Iris and Lily will inevitably learn how to use this reorder feature soon. My overall experience with Asian Food Grocer was great. They shipped quickly using standard USPS. I recommend them.