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My friend Michael, who loves arcane (read: weird) knowledge as much as I do, used the term "raveling."
"No such word," I opined.
But there is, making it one of two words with an interesting characteristic: Its negating prefix does not affect its meaning. That is:
When you hear great things about a place, there is always the danger that the experience will be ruined by high expectations. I worried a little: Could the Old Port Lobster Shack (Redwood City, San Francisco, Napa Valley) really be as outrageously fine as I have heard?
Yes.
I love lobster and the Old Port brings to Northern California the flavor of the Northeast. The highlights, for me, were the lobster roll and the clam chowder. Truth is I have never had an authentic lobster roll but from what I have read, this is exactly how they should be: plenty of sweet lobster meat, dressed just right with mayo and green onion on a very fresh soft roll. A "naked" version omits the mayo. I'll try that next time but it ill be difficult, given how good this was.
But what I really want to crow about is the clam chowder. I love good clam chowder and unfortunately, it's very hard to find. Almost all chowders are overly starched, as if thickness is a virtue. A good chowder should be a beautifully balanced blend of cream and potato, with a pronounced fresh clam flavor. That's what this was. It was not heavy with clams but I didn't want it to be -- instead, it was subtle and balanced.
I do have to warn you: It's not cheap. You don't expect to pay $17 for a sandwich at a small, decidedly non-fancy place in a strip mall. But it's lobster and it's excellent. The chowder was $5.75 for a cup ($8 a bowl). And if you want a whole Maine lobster, be ready to pony up as much as $35.
I cooked a turkey today and used the one top rated by Cook's Illustrated, the Aaron's kosher (actually, I used Trader Joe Kosher, packed by Aaron Rubashkin's).
Cook's mentioned it was the best bird but also the saltiest. Gee, I thought it was too salty and that the salt dominated the flavor.
So far, I have to give the nod to good old Butterball. Will try a heritage turkey in the future...
A sharp knife is a pleasure in the kitchen. Here's how to maintain your knives with very little trouble.
First, you want good knives. They don't have to be expensive. Here is an article on how to select and buy knives: Nice Knives
The secrets to sharp knives with minimal hassle are:
Sharpening
Many experts recommend regular sharpening by a professional. It's probably true that a professional sharpener will deliver a -slightly- better edge. You can do pro-level sharpening yourself if you are willing to get the right gear and develop the right techniques. But here's the thing: How many people will send their knives out and take scrupulous care of them between times? If you're not that meticulous, then you won't do better than regular use of the steel and the Chef's Choice. It's a question of an A+ edge for a lot of money and trouble vs. an A edge for a lot less hassle.
Use a Steel
Every time I use the knife, I use a sharpening steel. It doesn't matter whether you do it before or after you use the knife. Make it a habit. When you cut, the very fine edge (at a scale smaller than you can see) is bent and the fine edge compromised. The steel tunes the edge by pushing the microscopic burrs of metal back into place. It takes off very little metal.
Then Sharpen Monthly
Then every month or three, I use the Chef's Choice. It's the only home sharpener I have seen that delivers an excellent result without some practice and technique and is consistently top-rated. They make several models. I believe that all would work well.
I have a Shun Santoku, a Henckels Chef knife, a couple of paring knives, a boning knife, all of which are in top shape thanks to the above routine. I even use the Chef's Choice on my small, 2" pocket knife.
Testing the Edge
How do you tell if a knife is really sharp? Most people use a finger (possible ouch) but better is to use your fingernail. Using very little pressure, scrape the edge along the fingernail, as if you are trying to scratch paint off the fingernail. A sharp knife will grab the nail a bit. A dull knife will slide with little resistance.
This doesn't work so well if you are wearing nail polish.
Protect the Edge
One more tip with regard to sharp knives: A common practice when cutting is to sweep the board with the blade of the knife, to gather whatever you're chopping. Don't use the sharp edge for this. Instead, develop the habit of using the back of the blade.
I was skeptical when I first heard this and tested it. Sure enough, just a few sweeps dulls the edge enough to detect. It took very little time to build the habit of flipping the knife when I sweep material across the board.
Is your computer backed up? Are you 100% confident your backups are complete and up to date?
I didn't think so.
Here are rules for a secure backup.
1. Like exercise, the best backup is one you will actually do. Automation is essential, unless you are very disciplined.
2. You need two! You never know a backup is bad (corrupted, missing, has been failing without your knowing it) until you need it.
3. Best is to have two using completely different mechanisms. For instance, one might be a copy that runs via a nightly script and another could be a backup program, and each goes to separate media.
4. One should be a total backup (so you can recover everything on your disks and be up and running quickly); the other can be just essential files. The total backup should be hard-drive based.
5. You should have something offsite. You may neglect this, thinking it's for fire, which is not so likely. But you should also think of theft. If a thief takes your computer, they will probably take your USB drive and may scoop up any CDs or DVDs they see.
This can be a much smaller set (e.g. your e-mail, docs folders, important preferences). To do this, use an online backup service or use DVDs with two sets, one of which is offsite (e.g. at the office). Swap the DVD sets weekly.
6. You can use a USB or FireWire external drive, or a separate drive mounted in another computer on your local network.
Tools
I use EMC Retrospect as my primary. It backs up all the Macs and Windows on my network to multiple sets and supports DVD. I have two DVD sets, one of which is in the office.
My secondary is DejaVu (for Mac) which mirrors the whole drive to a separate disk (you can use the similar SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner).
I will probably use Apple's Time Machine soon.
If you have suggestions for backup programs or services, please add a comment.
Take something simple, and work it until it's perfect.
The idea of a store that sells cream puffs, and little else, seemed whacky to me. Giving it a weird name like, say, "Beard Papa," seemed like a formula for failure.
But then, I had one of their cream puffs (followed immediately by a couple more).
A cream puff is a puff pastry ball (made from pate choux, an egg and flour cooked batter, baked to puff up) filled with custard or whipped cream. In Beard Papa's case, the puffs are made from two doughs — a choux plus pie crust — in a patented process. They are baked in automated ovens. The filling, a pudding and whipped cream mixture, is injected just before you buy it.
The result is the cream puff perfected. Light yet eggy and flavorful, the shell has more crisp than most choux pastries, which I presume is because of the pie crust layer.
The custard is equally sublime. Most custards or puddings are too sweet and lack flavor. Beard Papa's tastes distinctly of very fresh dairy, egg, and vanilla — clear flavor notes, in perfect balance. I was surprised to find I prefer their vanilla filling (their standard) to chocolate. The chocolate flavor was very good but the vanilla product is so well balanced that chocolate wrings out the subtle notes that the vanilla puff held in such delicate balance.
The combination achieves a ballet of crisp and creamy.
They have just a few other products but their focus is on the perfect puff. I am glad to say I am wrong about a store that just sells cream puffs — you can build a franchise by doing one thing well. There is often a line at the stores, but it goes quickly since the production process is fast and simple.
Newly opened in Cupertino, Beard Papa has about three locations in the Bay Area with a couple more coming. They have many locations in Southern California and hundreds in Asia. Their website lists locations but it's not quite up to date.
Photos from Beard Papa's website.
A new online service, HealthVault.com, provides a single, web-accessible repository for all your health records. There is much here to like, but — there are a lot of buts.
It has always bothered me that every new doctor or medical service asks the same questions, and each with a separate form. Dentist, specialists, emergency clinics, labs, pharmacies — same questions, again and again. What drugs are you taking? Which of these diseases have you had? Family medical history. It's inconvenient but more important, it compromises one's health care: I'll bet I have answered these 100 times and there are certainly differences, either because things have changed or I don't remember every detail.
This can be important information: A doctor's diagnosis and treatment depend on what the doctor knows about you. And in an urgent situation, or when the patient is not lucid, having accessible medical records can be life and death. I really want better online medical records.
As a technologist, it makes me especially crazy. Everyone else, from the DMV to the grocery store, has an online record system that is better than the medical community's. There are legitimate issues but nothing that can't be solved — and that have already been solved. Every medical office can readily access my credit information already. Clearly we can solve the privacy and networking and access issues.
Some worry about the security issue: Having all your medical data in some centralized database worries people. But do you really think your privacy is more guarded when there are 25 uncontrolled, unencrypted copies of your records, in 25 medical offices all over the county, immediately readable by 100 office staff?
Along comes HealthVault. It's a good start. It keeps all the information for you and your family under what looks like tight security. It holds contact and profile information, medical records, etc. You can upload image files and documents. The sharing facilities seem robust — you can invite someone to view the information and choose what they may see.
Two issues are access and trust. In terms of access, will my doctors accept a HealthVault login as a substitute for their form? Not yet, but they have a few partners who are using the date.
The bigger issue is trust. Note that I did not say "security" — that's a technical issue. It's the human issue of trust that will make or break this, and other, medical automation solutions.
HealthVault is owned by Microsoft. Do you trust Microsoft? I don't share the common distrust of of their corporate intent — I think they mean well and their corporate ethos is that technology is powerful medicine to help people. They also believe that profit and benefit go hand in hand. So I trust their intent.
I am not sure if I trust their technology. They're competent technologists. They certainly are capable of making an accessible, trustworthy, secure system. But will they?
Every Microsoft product is full of defects. Even after years of refinement, glitches remain — sometimes the same issues for year after year.
I worry about bloat. Huge applications mean more opportunity for bugs and functional flaws and Microsoft often seems to not know how to say no to a feature. Worse, they keep adding rather than fixing — a palette, an assistant, a wizard, a "ribbon" — layer upon layer of new things to repair incomprehensible interfaces only a programmer could have designed.
This all affects usability. I am always in awe of what they spend on usability testing and redesign. They seem incapable of simplicity. The continuous repair tells me they know there is a problem but don't know how they are causing it.
Then there are the bugs. I registered and in the process discovered four bugs. Some were cosmetic or minor functional issues, such as a spray of Javascript across the top of one page. There were many user interface oddities. Right now, it logged me out and won't let me log in. Most people at this point would give up. I went in through the top of the application and found a screen that let me sign in.
I tried to edit my contact information. There is no link to let me do that. I think I know why. I haven't confirmed my identity by replying to the e-mail, but guess what: It's not telling me that. There is no Edit link and they give the user no clue. It's programmer-think: If a capability is not available, don't show it. Would Apple or Amazon or Yahoo have done this?
So, will I use this? Even without my doctors' buy-in, there is enough functionality for me to get started. But that's mostly because I am a tech geek. Others would not likely try this, yet.
And then there is the trust issue.
I expect that the underlying security is fine. But it's like the president of United Airlines once said, "If the tray tables are dirty, the customer has to be wondering about the condition of the engines." As much as I may want this service, I am not going to be uploading my data, given how dirty their tray tables are.
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