[Mike Nolan]

Most first-line tech support people don't seem to know much more about their equipment than I do, sometimes not even that much. Yeah, they've got a log book of suggested fixes, beyond that they're often not much help.

If you can get the incident raised to second-level support, you're more likely to be talking to someone who knows the product, but sometimes you have to get to the third-level support before you're talking to the real experts.

Back when I was running Oracle software, I ran into an install problem that got accelerated all the way to the Oracle development team, and the NCR Unix operating system development team got involved as well. It took us something like six weeks and several sets of software install releases to get it fixed, and then it turned out to be an NCR issue not an Oracle one.

This turned out to be an issue they'd been trying to solve for months. I got pretty good treatment from both Oracle and NCR support teams after that, or at least I didn't have to spend time convincing the first-level support teams I knew what I was talking about. (Both companies gave me support codes that got me to the second-level support quickly.)

My wife recently spent over an hour on the phone to Apple trying to solve a problem we're having with our mini-homepods, with no progress. Apple support has never impressed me.

[Mike Nolan]

If you google 'carrot cake cinnamon rolls', you get at least a half dozen pages, though I haven't compared them to see how different they are. One of them uses a mascarpone icing.

I'm guessing the 'carrot cake' refers more to the spice/flavor profile than the texture. Might be interesting to make it with the left over carrot pulp from juicing carrots, it's pretty finely chopped, so you don't get carrot strands stuck in between your teeth.

[Mike Nolan]

We had some cinnamon rolls with chili for supper, but Runza has changed their cinnamon roll recipe and these weren't nearly as good. So I think I'll plan to make the King Arthur tangzhong cinnamon roll recipe this week, freezing most of them. Those were really good.

[Mike Nolan]

We talked about a number of options, but wound up just getting takeout (onion rings, chili and cinnamon rolls.)

[Mike Nolan]

Some brands of cream cheese work better in recipes than others, and using full-fat vs reduced fat can make a difference, too.

[Mike Nolan]

Getting from roughly 234 to 240 is usually very time-consuming, but once it hits 240 the rate at which it gets hotter speeds up. Some caramels get cooked to the mid 240's, I've been known to lose my attention span in the 234-240 zone and it hits 250 before I know it, at which point you're somewhere between caramel and toffee.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm also making baked beans: 2 cans pork and beans, 3/4 cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon dry mustard, topped with 1/2 cup ketchup and 3-4 slices of fatty bacon, throw it in the oven for 3 hours at 325.

[Mike Nolan]

These days you have to be pretty flexible in your meal and menu planning, constantly asking yourself two questions:

1. Can I find the ingredient(s) I need?
2. Can I afford the ingredient(s) I need?

[Mike Nolan]

I looked at the recipe long enough to decide it probably wasn't better than the sweet potato pie recipe I'm using now. In particular, nothing about using purple sweet potatoes stood out, and cardmom isn't my favorite spice.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm starting the planning for Super Bowl Sunday, even though it'll only be the two of us I want something that will be self-serve and ready well ahead of kickoff.

I'm planning to heat up half of a sliced ham (leaving half of it cold because my wife prefers it that way), plus either baked beans or potatoes au gratin, whichever I'm in the mood for on Sunday.

I'll defrost some pre-sliced marbled rye bread, and I should have some salad, though the Aerogarden seems to be past its peak on this crop.

Not much planned in the way of game munchies.

[Mike Nolan]

I see about a dozen emails from King Arthur with 'bake of the week' or 'bakes of the week' in the text. The first of them was Pan de Muerto in late October, the most recent the coconut cake recipe on Feb 3rd, though it is using some kind of logo ('bake of the week' in a circle) rather than just in the body of the email.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making a batch of barbecue sauce since I used up most of what I had left on the BBQ beef from the beef I used in the beef stock.

[Mike Nolan]

Salad and left over BBQ beef. My wife put cream cheese on her bun, made for an interesting change to just buttering it.

[Mike Nolan]

I haven't picked the garden in a few days, I need to do that tonight or tomorrow.

Tonight I had macaroni and cheese and Diane had tuna salad.

[Mike Nolan]

Well, the fever seems to have broken overnight, and I don't feel light-headed.

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