REDESIGN THE LAPTOP -PLEASE

Why call it a laptop?   Nobody types with a laptop in their lap.   Why not just call it a portable?

I don't use a laptop, but my wife has one on her desk.      When I try to type on her laptop the mouse pad in front of the keyboard is a pain in the ass.   Why don't they put the mouse pad behind the keyboard.  It would make typing easier.

Just a suggestion
the Ol'Buzzard

SEAL-A-MEAL

I posted on Seal-A-Meal once before, but I love this machine.  

About six months ago I bought a Seal-A-Meal vacuum food processor.   It was relative cheap on e-bay.   I don’t remember the exact price, but it ran about forty dollars.  

I had watched a number of clips on YouTube about the machine, but I was still skeptical.   

This machine has changed the way we buy meat. 

There is only two of us; and in the past if we tried to buy meat in bulk it would be freezer burned and grey before we got around to using it.  

We still don’t buy meat in bulk; but if we are in the supermarket and see a particular cut of meat we like on sell we will buy a couple of packages and come home and vacuum seal them.  This way we don’t have to put out a lot of money at one time but our meat supply is varied and builds up enough to keep us ahead for a couple of months. 

Yesterday we bought boneless, skinless chicken thighs for $1.49 a pound.   They were six to a package so we bought two packages.   After putting them in the freezer overnight to firm up I vacuum packed them this morning.  

Here is the recipe we use with chicken thighs:

In the bottom of the slow cooker we pour one can of tomato sauce, one can of diced tomatoes, four diced garlic cloves, we add a heaping tablespoon of dried oregano and a couple of basil leaves.   We salt and pepper the thighs and place them on top of the tomato.    We cook them on high for a couple of hours then turn them on low for about four hours.   At supper time will boil spaghetti or ziti or sometimes noodles, cover it with the chicken and tomato sauce and serve this with a salad.   

We like slow cooking and like to cook our meat until it is tender and falling apart or can easily be separated with just a fork.

At Walmart they sell vacuum food bags but they are terribly expensive.   We buy 50 foot rolls of bag material on e-bay for about ten dollars – this way we can adjust the size of the bag to what we are sealing. 

If you are interested I suggest you check it out on YouTube.  They have vacuum food sealing machines that run upwards to hundreds of dollars, but I find this cheapest Seal-A-Meal easy to use and fits our needs. 

the Ol’Buzzard

BOOKS ON WRITING

You can forget Harbrace College Handbook or Strunk and White Elements of Style as your definitive writing reference guides.  The best book I have run across, and the book I most often use when writing or grammar questions arise is the Writer Source 2000.   This is a junior high school guide to writing, thinking and learning; and the most understandable, convenient and definitive book on writing in my library.   It is available used through Amazon for as little as four dollars.  

If I only had one writing guide, this would be my pick.

the Ol’Buzzard

RESISTANCE PUBLISHING

In order to resist Trump and the Republican agenda it is not enough to blog to people of like mind.  We can join demonstrations, or as writers we can confront alternative facts whenever they surface

The following is a letter I sent to the editors of major and local news outlets in Maine.  Feel free to copy or use any part in Resistance Publishing 

FACTS AND ALTERNATIVE FACTS

According to who you listen to, the first week of the Trump Presidency has been the greatest week in American governance or the beginning of the dismantling of American values.

  

There have been too many declarations and Executive Orders to cover in one short commentary, so I will focus on just one.

Paul Ryan stated that now the Republicans have the Presidency, the House and the Senate they can begin to simplify the tax code.  This sounds like a great move, because we all feel that tax preparation is too difficult.

 

But the devil is often in the details.   To Republicans, ‘simplification of the tax code’ means drastically lowering corporate taxes, taxes on investment income and taxes on the mega-wealthy. 

 

In order to pay for these tax cuts, the Republicans will cut discretionary spending.

 ‘Discretionary spending’ is the covert phrase for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government subsidized health care (The Affordable Care Act.)   There is a Republican proposal now to increase the Social Security retirement age to seventy and to cut benefits in existing Social Security and Medicare payments.

But, if you live in the Fox alternative news world you will not worry about simplification of the tax code; because the alternative issues are women who enjoy killing their unborn children, gays destroying family values and Democrats who wish to take away your guns and your freedom.

Join me in Resistance Publishing

the Ol'Buzzard

BE QUIET AND THINK

I just commented on a blog, that I feel out of touch with the world around me.   

I lived most of my life without a cell phone.   If I needed to make a telephone call I waited until I got home or reached my destination – and I didn’t miss anything by not having a phone appendage on my body.  

It is the same with television.   I was a teenager when we had our first television (black and white 16 inch.)  If there was something I wanted to see I could turn it on at night after supper – and I wasn’t deprived of news or entertainment.  

Today I took my youngest cat to the vet.   There was a TV in the waiting room blaring Good Morning America.   When I go to the VA clinic they have a TV on – usually on Fox.   At the VA hospital waiting room there is a TV – you can’t get away from it.   Our favorite Italian restaurant – upstairs in the lunch room there are three TVs, often on different channels.  The diners we frequent all have televisions – usually on some stupid channel.    Even at McDonald's there is a TV going in the eating area.   

Almost any waiting room you have to sit in will have a TV playing.   What the hell is this, that we must be entertained all the time?

We are not afraid of sickness or disease or destruction - we are afraid of boredom.   We must have a TV; or cell phones that display tweets, face book, internet, instant messaging, texting…   We cannot sit quietly anywhere without something to entertain us.   We must have ambient noise.  

There is no such thing as quiet, whether at work, while we eat, while we exercise, while we meditate, while we play, while we have sex and often while we sleep.  

It is a strange new world and I haven’t adapted.   

Sometimes I just like to sit in the quiet.

the Ol’Buzzard

SHARING A COOKING SOLUTION

I love eggs.  I like them scrambled, poached, hard boiled, stuffed and especially over easy.   I have one of those spatula with the rubber like blade that I use in order not to damage the non-stick surface on my frying pan; but most time when I flip the over-easy eggs I end up breaking the yoke.      I always ended up with a little bit of cooked egg stuck to the leading edge of the spatula, so I figured the blade was not slipping under the egg smoothly.   Lately I have been spraying the blade with cooking oil when I make over-easy; and now the eggs flip with no problem. 

the Ol'Buzzard

  

DONALD (the duck's) SPEECH TO THE CIA

UN FUCKING BELIEVABLE






My grandmother use to say, 'If you have to brag about yourself then you are not as bright as you think you are."








the Ol'Buzzard