Ok, so there really hasn’t been any content at all here for a while now. Maybe I should put some of those English skills to use and get scribblin’.

Work has, of course, been the major drain on my time lately. We’re either swamped, or treading water and trying to drum up business. Monday, as a matter of fact, was one of those days where I had almost nothing to do, so I picked up the phone and started calling customers in our database I hadn’t talked to before. I figured, if I hadn’t talked to them, they haven’t done business with us for at least three months, and therefore they were bound to have something needing checking-up on.

Four hours on the phone netted me two appointments for my boss to go out and try to push our managed services on the unwary. The cool thing here, is that if he sells ’em, I get 10% of the first month’s proceeds from the contract. Of course, if I sell them myself, I get 60%, so I need to learn more about what we can and cannot do. Or better yet, how to convince a customer that the intangible is not only genuinely cool stuff, but that they need it desperately.

One of those two appointments should be an easy sale – the vic…err, _customer_ made the mistake of worrying about his network security to me. “It just so happens…” ;)

The Ratboy has once again turned the tables on me. He’s getting some cool stuff for his birthday this year, and I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he opens the gifts. I got everything wrapped up and displayed nicely in the living room for him to drool over, and the punk is being almost bah-humbug about the whole thing. I’m tempted to sneak in, empty out the packages and stuff them with rocks if he doesn’t let me catch him at least shaking one soon. Punk-ass.

For those who may be looking for a cool new apartment, there is a unit available in my building: 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bath with a big kitchen and a two-car (if you have Minis) garage with a cable outlet (a previous tenant turned the garage into a rumpus room). It’s and end unit, so there are neighbors only on one side, and they’re quiet folks for the most part. It also has the Northern facing, so it will be cooler in the summer than mine.

The house is located in the Near-East, just a few blocks North of Broadway. It’s in Elliot, which is trying desperately to ride Irvington’s coattails into prosperity and doing a so-so job of it. This building was constructed 4 years ago with that in mind, but everybody else is content to just re-paint instead of demolishing and building new. Rent is $1025, with a whole bunch up-front. Email me for contact info.

Should you like the place, there are some interesting folks here in the neighborhood. In the house to the East of us, I get the sneaking suspiscion that one of the tenants has recently returned home from an extended stay in the hospital. When she left, she was one of those gals who could have been a lipstick lesbian if she were just a tad more feminine. Now, she’s got sideburns and wears boy’s clothing.

Across the street and down a bit is a household of guys who like to sit on the porch until all hours, and they talk just loud enough so that most of their conversations can be heard clearly. Some days, it’s like listenning to a radio soap opera. A dull one, but just the same…

On a good note, there is only one house on the block that has any criminal activity (or at least, it had some in the past.) Unfortunately, it’s right across the street. It’s also the only house on the block with bars in the windows. Go figure.

Okay, I’ve rambled enough. Time for bed.

Well, two long workdays in a row. Monday Started out waaaay out in Sandy, then back at the shop until 10 or so catching up on shop work and futzing with a dead fax machine so I can fax in my timecard and get paid. Then today was up in Lakewood WA, undoing some idiot’s idea of a good LAN and putting things together as close to the right way as we could. Need more parts. And yet more busy, as the phones lit up all day, and I am apparently scheduled for the rest of the week. Always good.

The trick comes in not getting so busy that you get backed up.

Oh – and having a home life would be nice.

Sometimes, you just feel like staring at stuff. Enter The Incredibly Evil Machine

Here’s your friendly reminder for the day – the Ratboy will be turning 17 this month. Advice in the gift arena devolves down to gift certificates at the local game shop, since he got an X-Box for Xmas last year, and wants to expand his game collection. For those wishing to give him something actually useful, he is (of course) wearing through his wardrobe again.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled lack of content.

…and not a joke to be told.

I always get kinda bummed on this day, since I have yet to think up a good joke to pull on someone, and I walk around over-analyzing the funnier of my friends and co-workers, wondering what mischief they’ve been up to. Today, I think Greyduck took the cake with the Voice-Activated Fax Machine.

BtFR had ample chance to pull a big one, since he’s currently out of the country, but he failed to call me from ‘a Turkish prison’. For a guy who’s done stand-up, you wonder why he passed up the chance.

One of the guys in the shop did pull one on the other shop, but it was pretty lame as jokes go. He didn’t even use any mousetraps.

Blurgh. Brain stalled. (A)bort, (R)etry, or (F)ail?
A {enter}

Here’s my two cents for the Carnival: Stir Fry

Ingredients:
3 cups white rice
1 lb. beef, chicken or pork
1 stalk celery
1 green pepper
1 small yellow onion
1 large carrot
seasonings

Grau is right that a Dutch Oven is a necessity for good camp cooking, and here’s another tip for you: buy a good wok.

The wok has been around for centuries, for the same reasons as your grandmother’s cast-iron skillets: a good wok is cast-iron, too. Once it’s properly seasoned, it’s non-stick, easy to clean, and is designed to be used right on the coals. If you’re an anachronist like Grau and I, you’ll have to check to see if wok cooking is ‘period’ for you, but I say go for it anyway.

Now, the hardest part about doing stir-fry is getting the rice right. With some experimentation, the rice can be cooked ahead of time at home, and then re-heated on site with little fuss. If you’re doing it all on the fire, though, it can be tricky. You must have a good, solid pot (not too thick) with a tight lid. You will also need to regulate two areas of the fire – one hot, one cooler.

Put 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 cups of water in for every cup of rice – I use three cups of rice for my standard serving. On a hotter part of the fire, bring this to a boil, then cover with the lid and move to the cool side to simmer for about 12 minutes. DO NOT CHECK THE RICE – just pull it off the fire and let it sit for another 5-10 minutes before you remove the lid. There’s steam in there which is finishing off the cooking process. Let out the steam, and your rice won’t cook evenly.

Now for the easy part: gather up about a pound of beef, pork or chicken and a handful or two of your favorite veggies. Chop it all into smallish bits, keeping the meat separate. The pile of meat and the pile of veggies should be about the same size, but you want to stop here and make sure it will all fit into your wok with room to stir – it sucks to have it all fly out into the fire.

Season the meat with whatever you like – McCormick’s makes a great line called “Montreal Steak” or “Chicken” that works good, plus I throw in some Lowry’s and a dash of good soy sauce. Stick the wok in the fire with a tablespoon or so worth of oil (I use the Tsang’s Wok Oil from the Asian isle at my grocers’) and let it heat for about a minute. If the oil starts to smoke, you’ve gone too far and need to cool the pan down and start over.

When the wok reaches temp, toss in the meat and sear it, stirring almost constantly. When it looks about half-cooked, throw in the veggies and keep stirring. Continue cooking until the meat is to taste, then either pull from the fire, or pour in some sauce if you don’t like it dry. Bring the sauce almost to a boil before serving. I like my veggies crunchy, so I wait a little longer before I put them in.

When you pull it from the fire, cover it and let it rest for about 5 minutes before serving, same as the rice. This lets everything absorb the remaining heat evenly.

Here’s an update on todays’ brake job –

I left the car at the shop at 12:30 today. I had a 1:30 appointment, but had nothing better to do, so I dropped it off early and went down to Backspace – you know that part already.

Well, it took them until 2:30 to call me and let me know the results of the inspection – you know those already too. They told me it would be $60 to do the front brakes, which is reasonable. It would cost me $35 for the parts, so an extra $25 for labor ain’t bad.

Around 5:30, I got tired of dead-heading around the coffeeshop and went back to the garage. The Beastie was up on the racks still, all four wheels off, and nobody working on it. The manager showed me the leaks in the rear units, which were slight at most – yeah, they probably do need to be rebuilt. Then he showed me the rear drums, which (according to my Chilton manual) are actually .010 of an inch beyond recommended wear limit. So, he was correct about the rears, I’ll give him that.

What they did not tell me was that there would be $15 additional charge for disposal fees and misc charges. That was annoying. What was even more annoying was when they asked me to come look at the car after they took a test drive.

They showed me how fluid had sprayed out of the cylinder and onto the hood and the firewall and other parts close by, and the master cylinder was almost dry. I have seen that splatter pattern before – it happens when you push the front pistons back into the calipers while forgetting to leave the cap on the master cylinder. Fluid sprays out all over the place. So, their mechanic had done this same thing, then forgot to top off the master cylinder fluid level before driving my car around the block.

That right there is a first-year probie’s mistake, and I expect more out of a shop sporting a BBB plaque on the wall. When I told the manager I was not pleased with the service or the surprise fees, he tried to give me a free oil change. Now, if I don’t like their work, why in the world would I bring my car back to them?

My initial reaction to all this was to write a burning letter to the BBB complaining about this place. After writing it all down, though, I am simply unhappy with the work and will not be giving them any more of my business, and will not reccomend them to my friends, or anyone else that reads this blog. Oh, the name of the shop? Brake Team, on Broadway and Burnside downtown. If you let them do the work on your car, watch them. They might do better with supervision.

Ahh, thank DoC for the advent of free wifi at coffee shops! I’m downtown at Backspace today (NW 5th and Davis or so) while the Little Black Beastie is in the shop for new brakes. Well, two out of four of them, anyway.

According to the chap at the shop, the rear cylinders are leaking and the drums themselves are ‘outsized’ enough that they can’t be turned. They want upwards of 400 clams for the work, which would be a resounding NO! The rebuild kits are only about $20, and shoes another $35, so I’ll tackle that job myself. I was just trying to save myself the time and annoyance of picking up the ass-end of the Beastie and pulling everything apart myself.

(The drums simply can’t be that bad, as I have heard no grinding noises coming from the wheels at all, so they were probably trying to milk me for the extra bits.)

In other news, I really don’t have any. Kinda mellow lately. The Ratboy talked me into getting a new cage for his hamster Tweaker the other day – the rodent is on the large side, and his old cage was a bit confining, especially the wheel. The new cage, however, is all wheel, with a platform riding the axle for his food, water and cubby. He hasn’t quite figured out how to squeeze his hide through the connecting tunnel though, so we have to move him by hand back up to the food an water a couple times a day until I can build bigger tunnels.

Rodent obesity – who’d a thunk it?