March 23, 2008  The Philosophical Hermit
 
On Thursday night, sometime after 7:00 p.m. my heat went out. Outside temps were around 18-20° F. My house was designed with hi-tech insulation and insulated windows which, combined with the mass of the thick log walls, maintained temperature and just gradually declined over several hours until the coolness became noticeable. Since the thermostat is set at 68° F it wasn't until about midnight when I awoke to a slight chill. The temp had dropped to about 64° F, so I headed downstairs, checked to make sure I had LP at the kitchen range, and then went down to the basement utility room. I know only the rudiments of furnace operation, but it soon became obvious that the system was attempting to cycle but would not obtain a flame.
 
I have a large rec room in the basement and at one end is the heavy cast-iron airtight woodburning stove originally bought new in 1977. It's a Vermont Castings Vigilant unit that was once the main source of heat for my previous cabin. Living on a diet of seasoned oak and maple, this stove has the ability to burn for six or more hours on a single load of wood, it's temperature controlled by a nifty spiral bi-met thermal coil connected to a flapper that controls the intake air. I fired up this trusty old friend, knowing it'd help 'keep the edge off' until morning, thus avoiding a double-time emergency service call.
 
At first good light I got dressed, went downstairs to reload the stove, then headed for the back/side yard to check on my 1000 gallon LP tank. Sure enough, I still had nearly 400 gallons in the tank. Back in the house I called my favorite heating guys at 8:00 a.m. Quality Heating had a serviceman here by 8:30. The ignitor had failed and he replaced it quickly. I had experienced a couple of other problems with the unit that didn't affect the performance but really needed attention, so he fixed them while the unit was still apart. All was well again.
 
It's been several years since I last fired up that woodstove. The procedure was second nature, even after all this time. But the simple act of loading the wood, getting the initial fire started, then setting the doors, airtight pathway lever and thermostat brought back wonderful memories in spite of the fact that my furnace would require costly repair (it's never a simple fix).
 
My original 12 ft by 12 ft cabin used a small LP heater which fit under one window and was more than adequate even at 30° below zero. It had three sets of single pane windows. In 1972 I insulated the walls an ceiling, built a sink counter with washbasin and pitcher pump. I built a small "water closet" in one corner... no water in this closet, but enough privacy and room for a chemical toilet. An older steel-frame slideout sofa-bed provided two single or one double bed. The original door was replaced with a custom made 1-3/4 inch thick solid wood door on heavy duty hinges. Because the cabin was so small I had to make a custom kitchen table, 30 inches square. I had two wooden chairs and two folding chairs for guests. After the first year of using coolers and ice, I found a smallish used refrigerator that fit nicely in the corner across from the WC. In the weather, the well would freeze so that water had to be taken from holes augered in the lake ice and hauled in 5 gallon buckets. Entertainment was provided by an AM/FM tube radio, amplifier and speakers I'd built from kicodestts and parts as a teenager. But most evenings spent alone in that cabin were spent reading any one of my fairly extensive library of books relating to Northwoods life, adventure and history.
 
One of my favorites was and is "The Spirit of the Wilderness" by James W. Kimball (T.S. Dennison & Co. 1970). The author recounts his many adventures, from Alaska to the deep forests of northern Minnesota and southern Ontario. On one such journey he came across a sturdy log cabin, far from civilization. The owner and occupant was a bearded trapper and his small dog. These two lived off the land, with only an occasional trip to the nearest community where a several month supply of salt, coffee, sugar, wheat and corn (the Hermit milled his own flour with a hand mill), yeast and powdered eggs could be procured, in addition for a few paper-product amenities (the powdered eggs were used only on special occasions).
 
Kimball asked if he could interview this grizzled gentleman who replied that an interview would be alright as long as his name nor where in Minnesota he lived would be revealed. Kimball agreed and was invited into the small but comfortable cabin by the man who henceforth became "The Philosophical Hermit". The cabin's interior was neat and clean, with a bed whose frame was made of handcrafted wood poles and a matress similar to those in the logging camps. A single wood burning stove provided both heat and a top for cooking. Moreover, to Kimball's surprize was the detailed carvings on the cabinets, gun rack, furniture...carvings of animal treacks and the animals themselves. Obviously the work of a gifted artist-craftsman. And to his further surprise, he soon discovered that the Hermit was a well-educated man, knowledgeable in the sciences, humanities and politics.
 
The Hermit had worked for the for the Forest Service in California and other remote areas. When asked why he chose to withdraw from human society. the Hermit replied "There is one thing that bothers me about people today. They have just about exhausted both the resources of the country and the emotional resources of the people themselves to create their mechanical monstrosities and then, instead of being satisfied and pleased with their production, they can't get away from it fast enough. They drop the whole thing during their summer vacations and head out for a few last little corners that they haven't yet ruined. And that wouldn't be so bad except that when they arrive at these places, what few of them there are, the first thing they think of is how to civilize them and get them like the country they just left. And that I find hard to forgive them for."
 
Little did I realize then how how important and how parallel the Hermit's life and my life were to become....
 
To Be Continued....
 
Until later.....DKHT

March 20, 2008    Oven Dynamics + My Satellite Dilemma
 
The corned beef, cabbage and carrots main dish for St. Pat's Day turned out (nearly) perfect! I'm going to put that recipe away for future use! I'll know next time to put my remote-reading meat thermometer in the brisket early on... this was the first time I used one of these electronic units with a cabled sensor and an external readout. I know now that I could've just stuck the probe in the meat from the git-go, but I had elected to test the temperature at timed intervals instead. At one such interval I discovered that the temp had reached near well-done when I was only shooting for medium to medium-well. As I quickly pulled the roasting pan out I noticed that the brisket temperature was rising slighly. The end result was a slightly overcooked brisket, but far superior to my previous efforts.
 
A word of caution. Electronic food thermometers are not oven thermometers. The round dial (bi-mettalic) and the mercury-in-glass meat thermometers will take higher temperatures than the electronic types. Analog thermometers also need to be immersed in the meat for 1.5 to 2 inches in order to make certain their sensing area isn't affected by the real oven temperature. Electronic units use a small sensor in the tip of a metal sleeve and held in place with solder on the end of a silicon-insulated cord. Oven temperatures can exceed the melting temperature of the cord or sensor or solder, which is normally protected by being inside a lower temperature meat.
 
How do I know this stuff? I spent 28 years as a Senior Instrumentation and Process Control Engineer. Also, I'm in the market for a new electronic sensor assembly.
 
I spent close to seven years working in just such a capacity during the mid '70's at Quaker Oats John Stuart R&D facility in Barrington, IL. My staff was asked to analyze everything from oven temperature cycles to freezer characteristcs. I devised several different masses to roughly simulate various products and we drilled them and inserted thermocouples. The thermocouple wires were then connected to a multi point recorder. We tested over 20 electric ovens and several gas ovens. Home electric ovens typically cycle plus and minus 50 degrees from the temperature setting. So, if you're cooking/baking something at 350° F the actual oven temperature will vary from 400&d F and down to 300&d F in typically a 7 to 11 minute cycle that keeps on repeating.
 
We did similar studies on freezers. Imagine grown men drilling hole in pizzas (different holes in the sausage, cheese layer, sauce layer and dough) and inserting miniature thermocouples, dressing the wire leads out 20+ feet so they could be connected to recorders. Our study results indicated that regarding temperature variations, chest freezers were superior to uprights. Go figure. But the real surprise came when we shipped a pizza with a special recorder from the factory to a store. That pizza sustained 5 extended periods of temperatures above 40 degrees F while in transit. And you wonder why they put so many presevatives in your products?
 
On other fronts:
 
I've been deliberating a budgeting situation I find myself in... Before leaving for Texas I had my satellite TV service turned off until March 19, 2008. My mom only has local broadcast TV, with CBS being the only iffy channel since her house is too close to the transmitter and nothing could be done, or so their engineer told me when I called the station. As an electrical engineer myself, I think that guy is full of longhorn doo-doo since the Channel 3 transmitter and tower are just across the street.But ABC, NBC, PBS and Fox are well received along with 3 or 4 Christian stations. Not having watched broadcast TV for some time, I was shocked at the programming, or rather, the lack of programming available! A we bit of real news in the early AM branches into stupid women's shows (sorry, but The View is simply a bunch of women with mindless opinions... if there ever was an original or intelligent thought on this program it would be lost in the continuous cackling and clucking) or TV Court shows that only serve to prove that inbreeding is wrong...very wrong! Later are soap operas whose writers haven't come up with a new idea in four decades and the acting is worse than the Freshmen Class play at the local high school. Primetime is loaded with foolish game shows and a plethora of Crime Scene Investigation: This, That and Something Else. Saturday's Teletubbies followed by inane sports programs where there's more analysis than sport. And, sadly, not even one movie.
 
I realized that I was suffering from satellite withdrawl. But I also realised that the satellite programming (155 channels) had become less than a bargain putting popular channels in "extra$" packages and reducing the channels I watched to a minimum....probably 15 channels max: TCM, TMC, Hallmark, Discovery, BBC America, WGN, A&E, AMC, FX, TBS, TNT, SCFI, USA, FOOD, COM. I used to listen to the all-music channels but once DirecTV changed providers even that has been a less interesting venue. Plus, adding up all the repeat programs shown on each channel every month and I figure that I'm paying bug bucks for crappy programming.
 
It costs $46/mo. for this basic package on DirecTV. It costs $21/mo for my crappy slow dialup service (I could get slightly cheaper local service but I've stuck with the Frontier ISP because they have fairly good national coverage for when I travel). Total is $67/mo.
 
However, I could get much higher speed internet access with HughsNet satellite for about $56/mo. OK, there's no TV involved, but speedier downloads would mean that I could do so very much more. And, I could take the dish/system with me on the road (a lot of RV'ers do this now... it's not approved by HughesNet but it's discreetly overlooked) . So, disregarding the mandatory initial installation fees, the satellite internet would be cheaper than the TV/ISP setup I now have. And, I'd finally be able to download songs and filmclips and software and upgrades and such which is currently too time consuming to work.
 
On the other hand, locally I only receive one TV broadcast station with reasonable clarity, and two others with varying degrees of fuzziness. And that's with a super deep fringe antenna with rotor and a top-notch antenna amplifier, so my TV viewing will be little or none. So far I haven't been able to find out if the new digital broadcasting will result in better signal range, or, if the switch to digital from analog will be accompanied by reduced transmitter power to avoid interference. I'm thinking that the broadcast channel structure will expand and increase local signal strength and clarity, but that's only a guess. Regardless, that switch won't happen for another 10 months.
 
DirecTV switched on my satellite TV tonight...a new episode of American Chopper is on. Damn!
 
Until later.....DKHT

March 15, 2008  Et tu, Brute'? What About Dinner First?
 
The Ides of March. 44 B.C., Julius Ceasar dies at the hands of senators and friend Brutus, ignoring (or possibly accepting) the soothsayer who proclaimed "Beware the Ides of March", according to William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's play is largely believed to be a story of impending doom, often seen on multiple levels. Ceasar had proclaimed himself 'dictator for life' of the Roman Empire. His tyranical rule affected all but the highest classes negatively, with sharp restrictions on their lives and economy. The assasination of Julius Ceasar ultimately resulted in a civil war that indicated the fall of the Roman Empire. The Roman economy failed, their war machine was mismanaged and over-extended. Who says history can't repeat itself? Metaphorically, of course!
 
The good thing is that the 17th is Saint Paddy's Day. Corned Beef and Cabbage and a bottle or two of Guinness Extra Stout.
 
My late wife, Peg, was of Irish extraction and she was an excellent cook. But we relied on another relative for our annual CB&C dinner. When Peg passed away and I moved on, I began shopping the local deli departments for my Saint Patricks Day fix. Then, a few years ago, the delis went to a so-called "authentic recipe corned beef"". That particular recipe uses spices that aren't available in most parts of the civilized world, and they overwhelm corned beef, cabbage, carrots until the taste is like what a Madagascan lemur chewing on leaves would enjoy (a bit of trivia: a newly discovered specie of Madagascar lemur, Avahi cleesei -- a type of "Woolly lemur" is named after British comedian John Cleese).
 
I'm a pretty good cook in my own right, so this year I figured I'd try to make my Corned Beef and Cabbage in a more traditional manner. Last year I tried simmering the beef, but I mistakenly bought a brisket in a white plastic package only to discover it was horribly fat... and the results were far from even a one star rating. But this year I carefully selected a leaner cut and intend to pan roast it with just the minimum spices. Steamed cabbage and carrots of course. And I picked up a commercially-baked loaf of dark rye/pumpernickel and some tasty Polski' Wyrob pickles.
 
Just in case the corned beef doesn't turn out as expected, I have two backups. One is a sloooow cooked pork loin roast made Hawaiian style which is super good. I've been trying to refine this recipe for several years. Of course, I usually make a pork roast of any type only twice a year, so recipe development is slow. I came across the first recipe about four years ago on an online website broadcasting streaming modern Hawaiian music (?) from a weird host from a closet in L.A. Evidently it was submitted by a grandmotherly Hawaiian lady. It wasn't bad, but then, they like Spam over there... It needed something to kick it up a notch. It's taken these several years for a plethora of recipes to appear on the internet. Now there are dozens of diverse recipes for pork roast Hawaiian. For now I'll just hint that my newest recipe will involve the original pineapple, slivers of fresh ginger emedded in the roast, some raisins, banana and glazed onions.
 
And if that doesn't work, my other backup is another 6 pack of Stout.... I haven't had any beer for a couple of years, since the last time pal Paul stopped by and we slammed a few down. Now two bottles will give me a smiley face buzz... Three will make me forget about being hungry. Four and I may wake up in time to go through this all over again for Easter dinner.
 

 
Until later.....DKHT

March 8, 2008  DKHT On Professional Sports
 
On March 6, 2008 Brett Favre announced his retirement as a player from NFL professional football after 17 years, 16 of which have been with the Green Bay Packers. Up here, in this stronghold of the Packers, that announcement came as the saddest (although somewhat expected) news since California went into dairy farming. His amazing achievements are sprawled across the sports pages and the 'net. But those records do not describe the man. Brett Favre is Wisconsin's adopted son, and Wisconsin has every right to be proud of him.
 
I watched his press conference on TV....twice. Watching him present his often very emotional statement followed by answering questions from a huge number of reporters, I recalled just why I hold Brett Favre in such high regard. Oh certainly, his skill and effort has made him one of the all-time best quarterbacks. But far more than that, he has been a true sportsman and a gentleman. He has always spoken of wins as a team effort while taking losses with personal responsibility and dignity. He doesn't get into shouting matches or throw tantrums on the field and he doesn't need foolish twitchy-ass gyrations to call attention to himself on a touchdown. He's the first to help up a downed teammate or opponent.
 
No drug or sex scandals, nor so much as rude behavior on or off the field, even though some of the interviewers' stupid questions begged a solid thumping on their pointy little heads. Brett and his wife, Deanna, have been active in supporting and financing several charities.
 
In times like these, when politicians are slinging their mud (Hillary could toss a 47 yard mud pass, but Bill would fumble it), what a wonderful feeling it is to know that the children of our country have a role model like Brett Favre to look up to.
 
Professional baseball, the drug sport, is doomed to die except maybe in Japan. I love hockey, but skill has taken back seat to brutality. Basketball has become a sport of showoff individuals who act mortally wounded on simple fouls... not exactly a manly performance (Hillary RODMAN Clinton?). Professional wrestling is an oxymoron; as a former high school wrestler and collegiate and Olympic wrestling enthusiast, these are the only venues worthy of the sport of wrestling since the so-called Professional wrestling is just highly choreographed simulated brutality. Caged sports are just plain sick. Throw in a few very hungry lions and you'd drag us back into Roman times, but it'd make a lot more sense and provide more blood sport entertainment..
 
Golf seems to be an individual sport... I never got into golf, but I can see where many folks get enjoyment from it. But as a profession? Let's face it, there isn't even a defined playing field. Where do you put the TV-enhanced 1st-down lines? And, they stagger players throughout the course and the only coverage is via TV whose crews can follow a 1.25 inch (or so) little ball through a trajectory from tee to sky to landing, and you still don't know where in the universe that little ball is. Definitely a snoresville endeavor. If you like pro-golf, you'll love competition ice fishing.
 
I'm not going into motor sports other than to say I enjoy motor sports. That's a whole different realm. Just like anything that requires you to strap a rocket to your ass and hope for the best.
 
There was a time when I could put on a pair of ice skates and dazzle the crowd. But there came a day, back in college, when I coerced a bunch of my buddies to go skating on a local pond. Unbeknownst to my pals, I had inside information that the light of my life, a local gal that went by the name of Marty and was on the University cheerleading squad would be at that pond that night. My pals laced up their skates as we neared the pond. I drove my 1960 Pontiac Star Chief as close as I could to the pond, and my pals quickly took off across the ice.
 
The night was particularly cold for Peoria, and the combination of thick long johns under the fashionably tight pants of the day put a strain on the pant stitches and personal circulation. I finally got my skates on and headed for the pond. I was certain that Marty was skating across the pond near the bonfire and I was determined to make a spectacular entrance. I began taking powerful strides across the ice, building up speed, stroke after stroke until....the blade on my right skate slipped into a crack in the ice.
 
I estimate my pre-crack speed was about 35 mph. My post-crack speed was zero, including the energy put into the ice-cracking face plant. I managed to roll over on my back, but I quickly realized that the long-john-tight-pants combination allowed me only to look up at the stars and no more. I desperately hoped one of my pals would come along to help me up. Instead, my love Marty appeared over me like an angel from heaven, asking if I was alright. I smiled as a light snow gathered on my face and replied "yes" in my best John Wayne drawl and asked if she might notify my pals that I would appreciate their participation in my very prone star gazing.
 

 
Until later.....DKHT