Category: Fun Stuff

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Little Things

Good ones, this time. 🙂

Yesterday, two days before its estimated time of delivery, my knife bar arrived. Sweet. I’ve been storing my most used kitchen knives in a knife block for years, but it’s always been a wee problem to place conveniently. This, I think, addresses the main issue: get ’em off the counter:

Of course, my most used knives are the two on the left, closest to hand when I’m using the peninsula for food prep. The one farthest left is a Chicago Cutlery 8″ chef’s knife (~OK) that once belonged to my father-in-law. Next to it–most used of them all–is my Sabatier Aîné & Perrier “K” 10″ chef’s knife (OK, so SA&P says it’s a “slicing knife”. I still use it as a chef’s knife), an anniversary present from my Wonder Woman 18 years ago. No, it’ almost nothing like the WallyWorld, Tarjay, et al “Sabatier” knives.

The rest are a mix of “heirloom knives” and a couple I picked up that are not bad/not great but serve their purposes (the larger “butcher knife” and the slicer with the handle that matches it. Oh, the bread knife on the right, next to the steel, really should go in the island’s drawer, since it’ll be used there more often than not, but I wanted to see if it’d fit on the bar with the others).

The knife bar holds the knives (and even the knife steel–one of three I use) very firmly yet releases them easily enough when needed. Seven knives and the steel are now stored in convenient reach, off the prep surface (right under my pot rack).

Handy.

Now, it’s time for some attention to those blades’ edges…

Next up in the kitchen: new backsplash for the stove, complete with new storage bars for some cooking implements. I can only hope I come up with some meals that justify this stuff. *heh*

Edited for my inexcusable lapse in labeling the Sabatier as an 8″-er. What was I thinking? Oh, right. I was thinking the other edit: 8″ for the Chicago Cutlery “OK” knife. *heh*

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O Xmas Tree, O Xmas Tree…

Nicole asked a bit back for a pic of my “Xmas tree” made from Grolsch swingtop beer bottles. It’s a tiny thing (about 2′ tall), but had enough room for presents around it–mostly–when we had our early gift exchange during our Thanksgiving family time.

Sadly, I neglected to take measures to insure the flash wouldn’t override the lil solar-powered LED lights that I have in and in back of the bottles, so that lil feature doesn’t show. But hey, I’m not the photographer in the family, so this is what you get.

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Another Compgeeky Trifle

I mentioned my upgrade of passwords on my own computers and online accounts here at twc central a while back. Essentially, it involved using the first letters of words in lyrics of songs I know, modified a bit to obscure even those letters. Well, as I began doing this, I reflected on the many, many songs (once) in my performance repertoire that are in various languages other than English, and then I thought to meself, “Self, why not take a mix of those lyrics in both the original language and English and select the first letters of the words in those lyrics, then mix upper/lowercase letters, numbers and symbols in for those letters (in my own idiosyncratic manner)?”

And so it is. First letters of words to lyrics of songs I know in French/Russian/German/Italian/English (mixmastered at will), with liberal substitutions for those letters using symbols or numerals (some Roman numerals, even, subbing in for letters) resulting in passwords 60-80 characters long in many cases that are nevertheless memorable enough for me that a password storage and encryption app isn’t really necessary. Of course, I am assembling a hard copy of the key to relate each song to its site/use. And, also of course, the master key doesn’t name the songs. *heh*

Oh! There’s an idea! Melodies used as passwords! Encode them using both letters and numerals an use that as passwords. Good one. I know far more tunes than I know lyrics, and I could even transpose one tune (and add harmonies via a figured bass or “Nashville” notation) and use it for many different sites/uses.

Now, if I could just use audio passwords and whistle different tunes as passwords… If sensitivity were set high enough, I imagine fine differentials in tuning could be included. I’d like that, as I can still hear and reproduce pitches well. Heck, I could just use the two pitches that are always present via tinitus and reproduce them together (hum one, whistle the other) to produce the combined waveform. Now, that’d be a nice password. *heh*

Of course, I suppose I could use some sort of encrypted storage of passwords combined with a biometric master device, lie my Wonder Woman has on her lil notebook, but I’d have to add ’em all over the place, so no.

Upgrading my passwords is proving to be a bit more fun than I had thought it might be.

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Green Brain

Interesting morning, Friday. One small incident led to another and another.

Driving down a back dirt road here in America’s Third World County. Heifer jumped out of a draw right in front of Ye Olde Saturn. I could see, on a little closer look, the fence break she’d come through was where the draw had undercut the fence. Meanwhile, she was wandering back and forth across the road. Now, I didn’t exactly want Ye Olde Saturn to be kicked or sprayed with projectile “fright feces,” so I took it slow, edging up to her, this way and that, using Ye Olde Saturn to chivvy her on toward the house up the road that was obviously a part of the property she’d wandered off from, then gently, slowly, herding her on and back toward the back lot, where she finally went and stood next to a fence where others of her ilk were standing next to a feeding spot.

So, it wasn’t as much fun as doing it from horseback, but it was at least some fun. When I approached the farm house, the owner opened the door and thanked me for being relatively gentle about herding her back, since as hot as it was it’d be easy to really “Het her up.”

Fun.

On down the road, I stopped and picked up a couple of hedgeapples–fruit of the Osage Orange trees left over from early settlers’ use of the tree in building a living fence, one that still effectively “fenced” the property on down the road better than the “devil’s wire” fence that had let Bossie run free.

(Oh, the pic? Not my hand. The hedgeapple does look like the ones I picked up, though.)

I think I’ll cultivate some to replace our chain link fence…