Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Trash Can Hack

This simple hack would not be needed if our trash pickup was close to the same time each week.  I dislike going out to the curb in the freezing cold just to find the trash is still there.  So the hack is to cut off about 12 inches of the handle on the last trash bag and place it under the lid with a few inches sticking out in the direction I can see from the house.  When the trash is dumped, the red handle (shown below) goes in with the rest of the trash and I know I will not be taking a useless trip to the curb.  



Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Pixel Buds Pro 2

I'm probably one of the last holdouts to buy earbuds and I was going to wait until late spring to get these Google Pixel Buds Pro 2, but when I found them for 15% off, I jumped on the deal.  The Active Noise Cancellation is the biggest attraction to these, which should come in handy at the pool this summer.  I'm amazed at how beautiful the music came through as I listened to The Sounds Of Silence while walking on a treadmill.  Impressive!

https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_buds_pro_2



Monday, March 3, 2025

ID-10T

One of the terms the Information Technology team used to describe a problem that turned out to be a clueless end-user issue was to say it "was an ID-10T" error.  If you haven't caught on yet, that's a euphemism (i.e., an innocuous word or expression used instead of one deemed offensive) for the word "idiot".  Sometimes that was well-earned and other times the blame is better placed on a poorly designed program.  Thousands of IT acronyms can be found at the link below.




Friday, February 28, 2025

Fried Rice With Peas, Carrots, and Eggs

Our most recent cooking class at the Dorothy Lane Market Culinary Center included Fried Rice with the ingredients you see below which begins with stir-frying the green onions, celery, peas, and carrots.  That gets pushed to the outside of the pan and the eggs get scrambled and cooked in the middle and lastly, the peas are added.  Cold, cooked rice is added and it's all stirred together with low-sodium soy sauce.  

In the class, it all goes so quickly, but that's easy when all the ingredients have been chopped, sliced, and shredded ahead of time.  But while it will take longer, I can't wait to try this out at home.



Thursday, February 27, 2025

Remembering Shadow

Shadow passed away in 2010 and it's hard to believe she left that long ago.  I was recently thinking about her more memorable antics and decided that it was a great topic for a Life Experiences blog (link below).  I wrote about bisquits, bunnies, bedroom doors, and booms; things she liked and those she didn't.  




Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Electronic Travel Authorization

The United Kingdom has erected a virtual tool booth under the guise of a travel authorization.  For £10 (12.45 USD), it gives you permission to travel to the UK.  They even have an app for iOS and Android that makes their collection so convenient (mainly for them).  A European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) is required for most mainland Europe countries and costs £7.  The United States has the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) which costs $21.  Other countries have similar ways to collect more of your money.

Taxes are necessary, and the clever ones mostly tax other people, not their direct citizens.  For example, Dayton, Ohio has a combined tax rate for hotel stays of 13.5%.  Not many citizens of Dayton are likely to stay in hotel rooms, so the vast majority of this does not impact them.  When renting a car in Austin, Texas, 40% of the cost is for taxes and fees.  And of course, a favorite of state and federal governments is "taxing the rich", which is never going to apply to me.  




Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Property Maintenance Code

The city of Kettering, as most localities do, has a documented Property Maintenance Code that details rules about your house, mostly on the outside, including grass, weeds, firewood, landscaping, garbage, motor vehicles, boats, lighting, and animals.  Most of it reads like a "Good Housekeeping" book, but there are a few where I learned something.  For example, you can only have five household animals over four months old at most.  Firewood has to be stacked to "prohibit the creation of a rodent or insect harborage area". I don't know how one would stack firewood to prohibit and of course, the regulations don't say how to either.  The whole code can be read at the link below.




Monday, February 24, 2025

Elle

For the last several months I've received Elle magazine.  I didn't subscribe to it (duh) but it's specifically addressed to me.  How this happened is a mystery but if this happened because some Internet marketer pieced together my browsing and purchasing habits, they not only think I'm a woman but that I'm very liberal and like high-end (expensive) apparel.  That marketer needs to find a new career asap.




Friday, February 21, 2025

Carmine's

Carmine's is an Italian family-style restaurant located in The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip.  Family-style means each dish is super-sized and served like you would at home.  We had Caesar Salad to start and our entrees were Shrimp Scampi, Bolognese Meat Sauce on Penne, and Chicken Parmigiana, plenty of food to feed our nine family members.  What was very unexpected was that our food was absolutely delicious, the kind that makes you close your eyes to fully enjoy the tastes and aromas. 




Thursday, February 20, 2025

Thicker Cap

I wrote back in November 2024 that I had to use a pair of pliers to open a carton of Land O'Lakes half-and-half (the one pictured on the right below).  I would like to believe that my blog was the inspiration for the redesigned cap on the left carton.  They increased the height of the cap from 3/8" to 1/2" and that little difference makes it so much easier to open.  Halleluja!


Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Mastered Spaghetti

Been about ten years since I posted "On Becoming Left-Handed" (link below).  Back then I still ate spaghetti and sushi right-handed.  I am pleased to share that I can now eat spaghetti left-handed, as shown below.  The twirling is opposite (i.e. counter-clockwise) while I'm being lefty, but the action is smooth and not at all awkward.  I can eat sushi left-handed, but it's not smooth and certainly awkward.  I just don't get a chance to use chopsticks that often, so it might be a while before I conquer that one.




Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Ohio Rest Areas

I applaud the State of Ohio for its multi-year project to rebuild or refresh thirty-six of the highway's ninety-three Rest Areas by the end of 2026.  I've been to the one around exit 27 on northbound I-75 and it's very cool.  But what's not cool is that three of the four Rest Areas on eastbound I-70 from Dayton on the route to Pittsburgh are currently closed.  Only the Rest Area near mile marker 129 is open at the moment.  It's not a big problem to figure out alternatives, but nothing worse when you gotta go than coming up to a Rest Area only to find it closed.

The map below shows all the currently closed locations and you can use the link below to explore the entire Ohio Rest area system.



Monday, February 17, 2025

Stretch The Legs

My son owns Absolute Fitness, a personal training gym, and recently showed me a new stretch he developed for himself to help relieve back issues.  As shown below, a wrap around my ankle is connected to a pulley that's attached to a weight stack.  The leg is supported by a foam cylinder and the other leg is tucked up to keep the back flat on the mat.  I just scootch myself back far enough to get some separation of the weight plates and lay down and relax.  A few minutes and I stretch my other leg.  The relief on my lower back as my leg is gently extended is remarkable.  This is now part of my routine after my other exercises.




Friday, February 14, 2025

Skillet Chicken Thighs with White Wine–Butter Sauce

Gourmet Chef Elaine made this decadent dish that includes two sticks of butter and a half-cup of heavy cream.  She opted for boneless chicken thighs to make eating easier and subbed chopped scallions for the chives on top.  The star of the show is the sauce, a reduction of vinegar, dry white wine, shallots, lemon juice, bay leaves, and the aforementioned butter and cream.  This is not a quick, mid-week meal.  Save this recipe for a special Sunday when you have plenty of time and nothing else to do.  

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/skillet-chicken-thighs-with-white-winebutter-sauce-11585712


 

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Mashup Drinks

I like making my own mashup drinks to reduce calories and get the exact flavor I want.  I start with a small can of zero-calorie soda like 7-Up Zero Sugar then doctor it up with watermelon puree, strawberry daiquiri mix, or the Reàl Peach puree in the picture below.  The Reàl brand has a large selection of infused syrups including blackberry, raspberry, banana, and black cherry.  You can find their entire selection at the link below which includes a long list of delicious drink recipes.




Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Quantum Computing For Dummies

I used the multiple four-hour flights back and forth to Las Vegas to learn more about Quantum Computing, one of the current "big things" in the technology world.  Borrowing a "for Dummies" book from the Dayton Metro Library was a fitting choice, as so much of this might make sense to a physicist or a mathematician, a lot of it was so far over my head it was spinning.  I boil it down to using some strange behavior that happens in the subatomic world (e.g. superposition, entanglement) to create a massively parallel system that speeds up certain types of problems (e.g. cracking encryption, route optimization) so solutions can be found in a usable timeframe.

Google recently announced that their new Willow quantum computer solved a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes which would take today's fastest traditional computer 10 septillion years (that is, 10 to the 25th power) years.  

The book also postulates that what happens in this subatomic world just might mean there exists a multiverse.  Woah!



Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Cirque Du Soleil

Cirque Du Soleil has five permanent residencies in Las Vegas including "O", the water-themed performance we attended in January 2025 at The Bellagio.  An hour-and-a-half full of synchronized swimming, high-driving, and gymnastic performances with some comedy during set changes.  The stage can be lowered in sections creating anything from a solid floor to a seventeen-foot-deep pool with 1.5 million gallons of water.  We opted for the VIP experience which included meeting three of the cast members, including the clown who gets set on fire.  




Monday, February 10, 2025

Las Vegas Sphere

We stayed at the Horseshoe Hotel during our last trip to Las Vegas and paid a little extra for a room with a view of the Sphere.  It was fun to look out our window and watch the ever-changing visuals on its massive dome.  Its exterior contains 580,000 square feet of LED displays and measures 366 feet high and 516 feet wide.  It cost 2.3 billion dollars and opened in September 2023 featuring a 40-show residency by the Irish rock band U2.  So cool.




Friday, February 7, 2025

Rack Of Lamb

Lamb is not a meat we have all that often but while perusing the meat counter at Costco we spotted the small rack shown below and we thought to give a new recipe a try.  Gourmet Chef Elaine lined a baking sheet with aluminum foil, drizzled on some olive oil, placed the ribs bone side down, and cracked come salt and pepper on top.  She topped that with a spread made of garlic, rosemary, dijon mustard, honey, and olive oil.  Done in about thirty minutes in a 450-degree oven followed by resting for ten more.  




Thursday, February 6, 2025

No TSA PreCheck

Sunday morning at the Las Vegas airport is a really bad time to have closed the TSA PreCheck line, relegating us to the cattle call chute shown below.  The line consisted of ten, 80-foot lanes that snaked back and forth painfully slowly.  It took a little over thirty minutes to get through that 800-foot line and then we had to have our carry-on bags scanned twice because we had our iPads in them, which we don't have to remove when using PreCheck.  Fortunately, we gave ourselves extra time to get to our gate, but the whole process was such a pain.

OK, enough bitching...



Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Silence Unknown Callers

If your iPhone rings and it's from an unknown caller, you probably won't answer it.  But you can simply have your phone ignore them completely by going to Settings, then Phone, and tapping "Silence Unknown Callers" as shown in the screenshot below.  I was surprised to find it turned off by default, but I guess some people actually answer these calls.  This option has been around since iOS 13 (2019), so if you have an iPhone, you likely have it.  Some additional tips can be found at the Apple Support link below.




Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Laptop Bag Strap

I've used the laptop bag seen below for probably ten years and never could figure out the purpose of the horizontal strap on the back.  Maybe it's good for something else, but I recently found it's a great way to secure the bag to the extended handle on a piece of luggage, making it easier to haul through an airport.  Better late than never I suppose.



Monday, February 3, 2025

iPad On A Plane

On our flight back home I noticed the lady in the window seat was watching a show on her iPad.  I never thought to suspend my iPad by shoving the cover in the pocket of the seat back in front of me.  I either held it or placed it on the tray table, but that will now be a thing of the past.  When I asked her how she came up with such a brilliant hack, she replied "Tik Tok".  That explains why I never knew about it.



Friday, January 31, 2025

DLM Cafe

Last summer Gourmet Chef Elaine and I decided to visit Dorothy Lane Market's awesome salad bar.  My salad, of course, features little to no lettuce, lots of cheese, tomatoes, onions, jalapeno peppers, and probably more salad dressing than necessary.  We ate our lunch at their indoor Cafe and made it a dining-out experience.  As you can see at the link below, DLM has many awesome stations where you can get soups, sandwiches, sushi, burgers, pizza, and much more.   It makes a deliciously cost-effective luncheon alternative.




Thursday, January 30, 2025

Fancy Champagne

We saw this idea to infuse a little extra flavor into a flute of champagne.  Gourmet Chef Elaine took rosemary, pomegranate seeds, and a little wedge of orange and made 1-inch cubes of ice for our champagne flutes.  As they melt it brings more and more flavor and maybe even better, the aromas they deliver to your nose.  You could make lime and cilantro cubes for margaritas, lemon, and blood orange cubes for a martini, or Luxardo cherries and orange peel cubes for a Manhattan.  Your creativity is the limit.



Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Brushing Scams

A brushing scam begins with you receiving a package you didn't order.  Scammers primarily use this to write fake reviews for their products, but they might try to convince you to pay for the item.  According to the law, you are free to keep, donate, or throw away any unsolicited package you receive.  You can also mark any unopened package "Return to Sender" and USPS will send it back free of charge.  If it comes from a service like Amazon, you can report it to them and they will investigate.

Recently there have been press articles that have warned that these types of packages may contain a QR code that, if you scan it with your phone, immediately compromises your personal and financial information and drains your bank accounts. That is NOT true. While QR codes are handy for sharing a website, your contact information, or attaching to a WiFi network (and much more), they simply can't cause your phone to go to the dark side.

But one word of advice.  Use your phone's camera app to scan QR codes.  I trust them more than I would some random app in their app store.  

More information can be found at the link below.




Tuesday, January 28, 2025

GoodRx (Reprise)

I posted about the prescription-money-saving GoodRx back in 2018 but recently saved a lot of money using it for a tube of clobetasol (anti-itch) cream.  The last time I bought it I used my Medicare prescription drug plan (PDP) and paid about $80 for a 15-gram tube.  This time I searched GoodRx first and found Kroger had it for just $21.31 for a 60-gram tube.  That's four times the cream for one-fourth the cost.  I picked Kroger from the list below because it was the best combination of low price and convenient location.  I avoided the ones that have "Special offers" under their price because that involves signing up for something and I didn't want the hassle.

If I didn't have that GoodRx coupon, the price would have been about $320.  I guess I would have used more non-prescription creams (e.g. CeraVe) or scrimped using the smaller tube like I have been for the last few years.




Monday, January 27, 2025

Shark Reef Aquarium

While in Las Vegas we went to the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay with a group of football coach's wives and their kids.  We were all impressed with the variety of sharks, sea turtles, stingrays, jellyfish, piranha, crabs, octopus, and the colorful fish in the picture below.  The kids were the most excited about trying to touch the stingrays in their shallow tank.  It's not free, but well worth the money.




Friday, January 24, 2025

The Thio

Some people order the same things at the same restaurants every time.  I'm not one of them.  I'm the type that wants to try something different so when I saw The Thio pictured below on the menu at Walnut Grove Country Club for the first time, I dove right in.  White albacore tuna salad with chives, celery, capers, and tarragon, layered with bacon, and a special chive egg salad on a Cuban roll with lettuce and tomato.  I could have done without the lettuce, like on all sandwiches I get, as it's slippery and makes the sandwich harder to control.  



Thursday, January 23, 2025

Glass Martini Glasses

We've had a pair of martini glasses for a couple of years that look similar to the one shown below, but they are made of plastic and not the best mouthfeel.  However, keeping our drinks cold for an hour or more was a good tradeoff over a traditional martini glass.  But when we ran across a pair made of glass at Von Maur, shown below, we just had to splurge.  They are stored upside down in the freezer to allow the internal gel inside the double-walled insulated glass to freeze all along the sides.  The silicone band at the bottom keeps your hands from freezing while you sip.  You can pick up a pair at the Amazon link below for about $10 less than we spent.




Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Seat Back With FOB

Gourmet Chef Elaine likes the driver's seat in the Infiniti G37x way up and I like it way back.  That's OK but if she leaves the seat up and I try to get in, it's a tough squeeze.  Looking around the car's owner's manual, I found that I can program the unlock button on my key fob to include selecting my seating option and it will move the seat back giving me room to enter more easily.  This also works on our Infiniti QX60, but its "seat slide option" moves the seat back automatically.  Directions for setting this up can be found in the owner's manual or at the link below.

What is a fob?  It's not an acronym.  Back in 1653, a fob was a small pocket for valuables. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, a fob had a dual meaning as the pocket used for a pocket watch and for any ornament hanging from the chain of a pocket watch.  In the early 1980s, when remote keyless entry systems started to gain popularity, new and used car dealers started to call the remote transmitter a fob.  




Tuesday, January 21, 2025

The Best Of 2024

As is my yearly tradition, I keep track of notable events and experiences during the year, then narrow that down to the top ten, and publish the results on my Life Experiences blog, each with a short descriptive paragraph, which you can find at the link below.  Each of the pictures below is representative of one of the top-ten adventures.



Monday, January 20, 2025

Duck To Avoid

The ceiling-attached box in the picture below comes from a shuttle bus at the Cincinnati (CVG) airport.  An instruction of "Duck To Avoid" on an overhead object should not be needed for most human beings since we learn that at a very early age, but the more I wonder about the obviousness of this, I believe its real purpose is just to make you aware of its presence.  The "Emergency Exit" at the bottom doesn't say "open this in case of an emergency", it's just expected that you would be bright enough to figure that out by yourself.  Maybe the box should say "Overhead Box", "Watch Out For Me" or "Danger Will Robinson".  What would you have it say?



Friday, January 17, 2025

Street Meet

Street Meet is a restaurant on Hilton Head Island that promotes itself as an American Tavern, which is true but is the only place I've ever visited that was a dedicated Ohio place.  We went there because (1) we were hungry and they had great food and (2) we wanted to watch the Ohio State football game and we knew it would be on one or more of their many televisions.  As you can see from the picture below, they have flags from many of the Ohio colleges including Miami, Toledo, Ohio State, Kent State, and Youngstown, and our professional NFL and NHL teams.  It's worth a visit if you find yourself on the island.




Thursday, January 16, 2025

Rí Rá Las Vegas

Kilkenny Irish Cream Ale is one of my favorite beers and I can only find it in some very select Irish Pubs like the Rí Rá Las Vegas shown below.  I stumbled onto this place around ten years ago when attending a conference at Mandalay Bay and during our recent trip to Sin City, I made sure to pay it another visit.  Being Vegas, they charged $9.25 for a glass.  Their location in Charlotte charges $7.25 and a mere $6.00 in Portland, Maine.  It certainly did not stop me from having another.



Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Do Not Disturb

The mechanism you see in the picture below was in our hotel room at the W Las Vegas.  Located next to the door, its two functions are self-explanatory.  Pressing Do Not Disturb turns a light on the outside of the door red and pressing Housekeeping lets the staff know you want your room serviced by turning the light green.  Housekeeping would turn that off and the light would turn white, letting you know from the outside that your room is ready.  

From the information at the link below, this device is networked to a system that keeps management and staff informed on the workings of the hotel.  It sure beats hanging those plastic door placards and hoping they don't fall off.


Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Anveo

The little box pictured below is an OBI200, a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) solution for those of us (not me) who want to hold on to their landline phone number but not pay the high prices the big phone companies charge.  You connect the box to the Internet with either an ethernet cable or a USB WiFi adapter and connect your telephone to the Phone port.  

This solution used to be supported by Google Voice and provided a free (I love free) service.  But last November Google announced it was no longer supporting this solution. While it would continue to work for some unknown length of time, another VoIP provider would eventually be needed.  Enter Anveo (see the link below) which supports the OBI200 (and many others) and for about $99.99/year gets you 1,000 minutes per month, voice mail, and text messages (try that on an old-fashioned telephone line).

Big shout out to my older brother for smoothly making this transition.  If he can do it, so can you.




Monday, January 13, 2025

Snow Mode

A few weeks ago I took our Infiniti QX60 to do an errand and its pick-up was so bad I thought I would be taking it in for a service call.  It was fortunate to notice that the Drive Mode Selector was turned to SNOW, presumably by the guy that just detailed the car, and that reduces engine output to avoid wheel spin.  A quick counterclockwise twist to return it to normal driving mode (the dot position shown below) restored power.  The knobs on either side select heated seats, nice in the winter, or cooled seats, surprisingly nice in the summer.



Friday, January 10, 2025

Potato Skins

Gourmet Chef Elaine commented that it's been ages since she had potato skins and that we never see them in restaurants anymore.  I made the skins you see below with the recipe at the link and then used all the scooped-out potatoes to make a batch of gnocchi.   Crumbled bacon, Cheddar cheese, sour cream, and green onions are added to the baked skins and then put under the broiler for a couple of minutes until it bubbles.  Combined with her perfectly cooked filet and asparagus, this made an awesome Sunday dinner.




Thursday, January 9, 2025

Vizio Volume Leveling

For months I've been complaining that the crowd noise during football games was so loud I could barely hear the announcers.  I figured some doofus at the television network thought that was a good idea, but it turns out it was a setting on my Vizio TV that was at fault.  In the audio menu, there is a "Volume Leveling" setting (see the image below) that was turned on, and turning it off solved the problem.  The other TVs have a similar setting, but those were already off and they worked fine.  The link below describes the best settings for our Vizio, but you can Google search for the best audio settings for your specific TV.




Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Precision Pen

WD-40 is one of my best friends, but the normal spray can is impossible to use without needing a couple of rags to clean up the excess that's bound to happen.  So whoever the design Brainiac that developed the Precision Pen shown below is now my best friend.  Pop the cap and press down to release a little lubricant at a time.  

Thanks to my daughter and son-in-law for this awesome Christmas present!




Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Christmas Tree Napkins

We spotted these napkins, folded to resemble Christmas Trees, at Walnut Grove Country Club.  You might think this would be hard to do, but as the video at the link below demonstrates, it's pretty straightforward.  Two folds to make the napkin a square, four folds to make the triangles, two folds to make it a tree, and four tucks to make it pretty.




Monday, January 6, 2025

Key Rings

My Infiniti G37x and house key are all that's left on my keychain shown below.  And with the G37x and Infiniti QX60 having nearly identical fobs, there are different colored house keys on each like this yellow tweety bird.  I prefer these larger format keys as they are easier for me to turn and this one key works on all our external doors.  Having a fob with a single key has been a goal for quite a while and the last barcode key tag, from Dot's Market, was eliminated when they upgraded their cashier system.  Happy days!

Friday, January 3, 2025

Homemade Bolognese

The bolognese on top of the pappardelle pasta you see below is meaty and flavorful and the recipe at the link below says it makes eight servings but that's likely a lowball number.  The one ingredient you must be careful with is the cinnamon.  Try folding in a little bit at a time so you don't go overboard.  Cinnamon is the ingredient that gives Cincinnati-style chili its distinctive taste and too much might be a turnoff.  If you're looking for a new warm-your-belly winter dish, give this one a try.





Thursday, January 2, 2025

Titleist TS2

New golf clubs are expensive enough, but buying a new top-of-the-line driver is ridiculous.  Instead, I opted for the demo Titleist TS2 on sale at Walnut Grove Country Club for $200.  The shaft and the top of the club are in mint condition and there are only a few minor marks on the bottom of the club which is to be expected.  I pick up about 25+ years of newer technology over the TaylorMade R580XD it replaces.  Hopefully, that makes up for me being 25+ years older.




Wednesday, January 1, 2025

One-Way Airfares

I recently read Clark Howard's article (link below) about trying to combine one-way fares to get a better price and it paid off booking last week's flights to and from Las Vegas.  Not only did we get a decent price, but the flight to Vegas on Delta and the Spirit flight back to Dayton both took off in the early afternoon and were direct flights.  I wouldn't recommend splitting carriers if the flights aren't direct, as any delay that causes you to miss your connection would be on your dime.

I didn't have an image for this blog so I asked the Grok AI tool (available inside Twitter/X) to create "a mashup of the Delta Airlines and Spirit Airlines logos" and that's what you see below.