here’s life

Many moons ago, I found a Rice Cooker. The buttons and LCD display was in some Asian language, and it was missing the pot part that goes inside. So, rather than washing it out and using it to cook rice, I put it in my closet, figuring I’d do something with it someday. Well, that day finally came.

This after noon I was washing my Philodendron plant, when I figured I should repot it. Maybe split it up, so I had one I could take to work an put in my cube. I looked through my extensive collection of pot-like items, and came upon my rice cooker. At first I was going to strip it down, removing the electronics, but then I thought, Why not make the display usable? After much finagling, I got it workable.

I don’t want to cook my plant, nor start a fire, so I unhooked the main heater element. Unfortunately, when I plugged it in, the wake-up sequence failed because the electronics noticed that the heater was “broken”. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was thinking—I don’t know Kanji. So, I replaced the heater element with a resistor. It was necessary to use a very high resistance one so that it didn’t get too hot. But, the circuitry was satisfied with even a 1,000,000 ohm (brown-black-green) resistor. But if I take out the heaters, what good is the display on a rice cooker? Especially if it is full of dirt! Well, it has a clock.

In the picture above, you can see the display, but the big numbers are not the time—that is the time when the rice will be done. I’m not sure what what I’ll do with that function, however. Mostly I’ll want it for the clock:

There’s the clock. Yeah, it took me into the evening to get it done. But, now that I know how, I’d be faster next time. Next time I need to make a planter out of a rice cooker.
I’ll take it to work and spread the Philodendron arms around my cube. Then I can tell how much time I waste watering my plant.

So, I’m involved with this Internet Business Forum that is held at the church every friday night. By “involved” I mean I show up most weeks, take notes and wonder which of all the different ways to make money I could get into. I’ve got some major philosophical blocks that seem to crop up. First, I’m pretty lazy. I don’t really do a whole lot. But then there is the marketing thing. Most of the money you make on the internet seems to be by getting people to buy something. Pretty obvious. Problem is, I seem to have a fundamental problem with buying stuff. Sure, it’s the American Way, but everybody seems to be so focused on getting more and more, why should I encourage that? Then there is the problem of making money. Yes, you do need to make money—it’s part of life, it takes money to have food and raiment, but why should I try to get more? I have enough to survive, and I have much more than a huge percentage of the world. And that money has to come from somewhere—from the pockets and credit accounts of other people. So every dollar that I claim for myself is one less dollar that someone else has. Shouldn’t I try to save money instead? Buy things that are the best value, do without, invest in things that will make my expenses go down? That way, I can have more money to do other stuff with—like giving it to people or God. Speaking of giving stuff to people, that is really what I see as the optimum. I want to give to people, and let that help others find ways to save money, and give to others, and the chain goes on!* So, these are the preconceived notions that are floating around in my head as they talk about this way, and that system, and getting in on this other one. But, it’s, advertizing, and marketing…how are you adding value to the system? You are the middle man!

It is true that money, when reached for as a goal, will never be enough. And I can feel this greed rising in me when they talk about the large amounts of money to be made, for little effort. Or maybe it’s not greed persay, maybe it’s excitement at the opportunity to improve my situation. And, I have to remember, if I have more money, I have more money to give away! Robin Hood. I can take from one set of distant “friends” and give it to people I like more! I can write content to get people to click on ads, so I get money, meanwhile, I tell my real friends to get FireFox + Adblock + Filterset.G Updater to make so they don’t have to see the ads that I am polluting the world with.
What am I going to do? I’m not sure. I think I may need to throw out some of my illogical ideals and just offer a service and make a buck. After all, what do I do all day? I help to increase the price of airfares by not working for free. Traitor!

What do I want to do? Build house systems so efficient and cheap that they cost almost nothing and show others how to do the same. Like I can make a living off that. You need to get people to spend more, not less. That’s what keeps the economy going—people spending more, and more and more than they can afford.

*My feelings are influenced by the Free Software Movement, where everything is given away, and the more people you give it to, the better. [actually, I probably fell into the free and open source software community because I already felt that way inside]

I got some starter from a friend a week or two ago, so the time came this evening to make it into bread. Suprisingly, the recipe calls for baking soda and baking powder. It went together easily enough, and I didn’t need to knead or rise it, just dump it in pans, and put it in the oven. It cooked, and was pretty good, but I am wondering how much of its characteristics are a result of the Starter, and how much is in the chocolate chips that I put in it.

The recipe claims that “only the Amish know how to make a starter” but if so, the Amish seemed to have leaked the information to the internet—their secret formula of water, yeast, sugar and flour is now out for the world to see.
I figured that if it sits on the counter and grows, surely I can use it to make regular yeast bread. Whenever you feed the starter, you add equal amounts of flour, sugar and milk, so I should be able to substitute a cup of starter for 1/3 cup water, 1/3 cup flour, and 1/3 cup sugar, and put it in my bread machine…
It was supposed to be rising, according to the display on the machine, but the bubbles seemed to not be doing anything. I guess the yeast does need some help from the chemical leaveners. So, I add a teaspoon of yeast and restart the cycle. The machine is kneading and kneading this stringy liquid sillyputty, and doesn’t seem alive—it does smell yeasty, however. But, I lose faith in the automation of this process, and put it in a bowl and stick it in the fridge for later. We’ll see if it rises as it cools. It didn’t look right, but I don’t often see the dough as it is being made; the machine is handily fill-and-forget.

Seems like the only thing that you could get from Amish Friendship Bread that you don’t get from regular bread is more gluten (well, you might get friends too, or at least strengthen the interaction within your community). The way I figure, yeast is pretty monivorous: it eats carbohydrates, sugars and starches. So, if you have the culture sitting on your counter for a week and a half, it is devouring the starches, and since you keep adding milk, sugar and flour, the leftover proteins build up. This then makes for softer bread. Another possibility is that it is true about the Amish being the only ones capable of creating a starter right, and the simple yeast-and-water recipe I found was much simpler than the complex set of eating and growing things that make for extra special properties to the bread—like it tastes better or something. I couldn’t tell over the cinnimon and chips.

I guess I’ll turn it into bread tomorrow.

One of the nifty things about having bread starter, is it fills a need in people to grow things. To make something out of nothing, to nurture life that multiplies into more life. So, even if the starter does nothing but bubble slighly in the ziplock over those 10 days of waiting, it is living! And by parceling it up, and giving it to your friends, you are giving them the gift of life, and it will become more and more.

practically speaking, it is a lot more handy for me to dump the 10 cents of yeast in than to nurture the batter along, adding cups of sugar, flour and milk

You’ve been in a gym. They have those bright, white, lights in the ceiling, right? Well, I picked up a couple at the SStore a month or two ago. I’ve gotten these before and made end tables out of them. The ones I got recently were special because they are made of glass—-the bell of the lamp is a huge piece of ribbed glass. Yesterday I was talking to my brother about making stuff, (he was working with wood) and I decided I should do something cool, since it was Saturday.

So, I took one lamp apart and started working on turning it into a table—I don’t know what else to make, even though the world, and definately my house, have enough tables. I went to a thrift store and picked up a glass plate, and was trying to use it to connect the bell to the feet. I didn’t have a diamond tipped drill or even an abrasive bit, so I was using a regular bit. It really didn’t cut very fast, even with the bits of glass powder as aggregate. That is, until, you get the friction to start heating the glass red hot. Then it goes through like through hot, umm, glass. But, we all know that uneven heat and glass don’t mix very well. I got two holes drilled, but the third one caused big cracks to form in the plate. Maybe I pushed too hard, or not hard enough. Or both.

Instead of glass, I cut the bottom two inches off a thin stainless pot I had found, and bent the edge over so it wasn’t sharp. I backed this up with some wood, and fastened it all together with drywall screws and tapered disks of wood.

I have not yet caulked the glass top down, I might want to put some lights in there first—-I drilled a hole through the base so I can run some wires if necessary.

What do you think? Should I light it or just let it refract and reflect ambiant lighting? I also need some ideas of what to put inside it–I need something to cover up the ugly wood disk that holds down the glass.