Pandemonium Medicine Show

Ummmmm.... no. Even though I'm not a perfect speller I always spellcheck before posting. I always cringe when I see bad spelling and grammar. Too often bad spelling is a sign of laziness and poor attention to detail. If I receive a document or email that contains no evidence of effort in the writing, why should I expend effort in the reading? I'm very forgiving for non-English speakers. Especially if it's clear they needed a translation dictionary for most of words.

I once worked on a project that used a primitive autodocumentation tool. The tool required that pluralisations all follow the same form in order to recognize the relationships between variables, arrays and types. We had a big fight early on in the project about what should be done with words like theory, moose (no, there was no moose variable) that didn't obey the normal form of English pluralization. The final (correct) decision was to use "misspellings" so that we had complete documentation.

I wasn't bothered too much by this decision, but it did make me think about how attached I was to the traditional, and inconsistent, spellings for some words. I did some web reading on the subject and decided that "theories" was no more owed my loyalty than "theorys". According to google, inspite of it's asking "Did you mean 'theories'", the word "Theorys" appears over 20,000 times in it's index. For me, that qualifies it as a valid spelling. On the other hand, 344,500 occurances of "freind" only makes me sigh.

I'm not sure I want to even mention the topic of British/American/Canadian/Australian spellings. You'll need to pry my Canadian dictionary from my cold dead hands before I spell it "color" though. Oh, and I have used inconsistent, though correct, spellings throughout this posting. 10 points for finding them all.

I'm getting really tired of the "Sun and Microsoft have a secret deal to kill Linux" conspiracy believers. Hopefully they will just eventually dwindle away. In general I don't have much time for conspiracy theorys of any stripe. They always seem too radical, too improbable. Maybe there is a kernel of truth in some conspiracy claims, but it's always so blown out of proportion as to remove all relevance.

So to repeat:

• The mafia did not assissinate JFK.
• The United Nations is not coming to take your guns.
• Corporations are not inherently evil.
• --Removed at the request of individuals who will remain nameless.--
• There are no space aliens in Area 51.
• Sun isn't anyone's lapdog.

My primary hobby is cooking (and eating). I consider myself to be a skilled amateur chef. I have immense respect for people who cook for a living, I'll never be one of them. Cooking is a fantastic hobby. How many other hobbies involving visiting restaurants for research and ideas? Few hobbies can provide the visceral satisfaction of a well prepared meal.

I like to say that there's no style of food I'm not interested in cooking. Korean? yep! Vegan? sure! Hindu diabetic macrobiotic? of course! Maybe my repertory of suitable recipes is limited for some of the more specialized cuisines, but I like to think that no matter who shows up at my doorstep, I can feed them. Sometimes it's a real challenge, but if I can pull off a decent meal I'm pretty proud.

Every winter we try to clean out and defrost our freezer on a coldish day. It used to be easier in Canada when we had 3-4 months where we could just pile everything into laundry baskets and leave it outside while the defrosting occurred. In California we have to work much more quickly and transfer as much to the kitchen fridge freezer as possible. So we have been trying to empty both freezers as much as possible to make the job easier.

Cooking with what's left has been an interesting experience! It's getting down to the real head scratchers. What can you make with a five pound bag of frozen peaches and an equally frozen Corned beef brisket? How about a mildly freezer burned bag of okra and frozen mushroom soup base? The freezer stands near me menacingly, as I work all day long. Every time it's compressor motor kicks in, a subtle taunt is sent my way-- "You won't figure out what to make with all those chicken apple breakfast sausages or those cod fillets!". Worst of all are the ingredients I can't remember buying and can't imagine how to use up. 7 big cans of frozen grapefruit juice? phfft! (Must have been an 8-pack). I don't even like reconstituted grapefruit juice.

Once the operation is complete and the bags of mystery meat which will have to be de-entombed from the ice like a neolithic ice-man have been discarded it will be time once again to start stocking up again. I'm already looking forward to refilling the freezer, though this time I will only be buying things I actually plan to use...