Blog? What Am I Doing With a Blog?

Hi! – Most of you know me as somewhat opinionated and so I’m making it official. Welcome to “TOMSOPINION.COM”

Pipe Dream

Pipe Dream

I’ve had this blog for a while now and, although not widely read, it has developed a small following. I like to try and find really good stuff and comment on it. Good food, household items that really work well and last long, and some hobby type pursuits. If you like it, tell your friends. NOW!

You’ll see my not-so-humble opinions on many of my favorite subjects including, but not limited to, Food, Bicycles, Technology, Cars, and Fixing Stuff.

Not so much about Women, Politics, Religion, and the other 3rd rail topics of the world.  You can scroll down through the start of all the articles, or click some of the New and Update links below.

WHAT’S NEW – 

I KNOW this blog has gotten a little stale, and I have not been diligent updating and adding, but with the weather here, some jobs just have to be finished before the weather makes them impossible. Such a job was our 7 month house painting project! With little exception we worked on it almost every day for 3-6 hours and now it’s completely finished. It was more of a “surface restoration” than just a paint job, with wood parts needing replacement and much stripping and sanding and priming and caulking and puttying before we could apply color. Well, it’s done, and HERE is the whole long story!

Also, the John Deere has found a new home after 24 years of mowing grass here. To read the previous John Deere article, look HERE.

I will add the the details on why it’s gone and pictures of a new project soon also.

Lastly, there might be a new toy arriving here soon, but its too soon to let the cat out of the bag, so if it all comes together, there will be a post about that too!

Thanks you all for your extreme patience.

I will try and add pointers to major changes right here once a month. This will let you go directly to the new stuff without having to search or wonder what’s changed.

New articles: I have a really simple new recipe for pork shoulder made in a slow cooker that, with a little extra effort makes its own BBQ sauce at the end. How? Click HERE

Recent Updates :

A kitchen hint that will make you stop crying when you chop onions!  Look HERE

A really good, gourmet food breakfast and lunch restaurant with a real Chef.  Drool HERE

I updated my Windows 10 experience, and a word about converting my laptop too. Look HERE

I added a new picture in the SMOGG Pizza Recipe of the Sweet Mellow Kraut cooking. If you haven’t tried the Kraut, you really need to. Great on ham, hot dogs, sausages, and, as you will see, pizza.  HERE

I added a “Disclaimer” at the top of the blog, because, well, some people actually believe this stuff!

Articles will appear and will be updated whenever I have some spare time. While I’m still learning, you will undoubtedly see things updated frequently. So, as they say, “Here goes nuttin'”  Most of the pictures are “clickable” for a much bigger, more detailed picture if you like. Enjoy!

I have allowed the option for readers to comment. Just click on the heading of any post or click “continue reading —>” and it will take you to that post’s page where you can add your comments at the end.

 

THANKS!

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Disclaimer

Judging from the title of this blog, it is clear that information presented here is considered to be an opinion, and not necessarily fact. If you decide to take actions based on the contents of this blog, and those actions result in undesirable consequences, you are ultimately responsible for those consequences. The information contained here is provided “as-is” and without warranty or claim of suitability of any kind.

Exterior Finish Restoration – This Took How Long?

This Took How Long?

Last September, a guy knocked on the door and asked if I wanted to get an estimate for paining the outside of my house. He said he was a retired schoolteacher, and lived summers in the Northwest, but spent winters here in Arizona. To supplement his income, he said that he paints a few houses while he’s here. Together with his helper, they walked all around the property, looking at everything and pointing and mumbling about a few of the more challenging areas.

Finally, he concluded his inspection and said, “Well, it needs a lot of work, and some places need the drip rail moulding replaced. It’s rotted away in places.” I agreed, and asked how much he would charge to do a really thorough job. He continued, “There’s some places that need lots of scraping too, and some caulk. It needs a lot to make it look nice.” “OK,” I said, “How much?” He paused and thought, and then said, “Well, it’s gonna take us a day to power wash the whole thing, and start the prep. The next day, we will finish the prep, and caulk. Then a day to spray it. I think we can knock it out in 3 days, maybe 4, if we run into any problems.

“I see,” I replied, “How much do you think it will cost?” “We use good paint, you know, not the cheap stuff. Probably need 15 gallons,” he offered. So, by this time, I figured I’d just let him talk, and he’d get around to cost eventually. He continued to describe how they would mask the windows, put down drop cloths, clean up after themselves, and do a great job. Then, finally, the part I was waiting for. “$5500 to do it all. It will look beautiful. And, we can start this week if you like and be done by Saturday!”

Dressed for Work

“I’ll have to think about it. Thanks for taking your time to give me an estimate. Give me your card, and I’ll call you if I decide to have you do it.” “Alright,” he replied, “but if we get busy, I may not be able to fit you in this year!” “Thanks, I’ll call ya.”

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Food Worth The Drive Even If Gas Was Expensive – Cafe 25:35

You may have gathered from some of my posts, I like GOOD FOOD. As much as I like cooking it myself, it is also sometimes nice to let someone else do the work and be waited on. So, I’m always looking for new restaurants to try, and often, I am disappointed by blandness, sameness, and “production line” cooking. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, many restaurants don’t even employ a Chef anymore. Not that there aren’t some pretty talented line cooks around, but it seems that the only places that still employ real Chefs are high end dinner places. As for breakfast and lunch, fuhgettaboutit! But, read on, there’s hope!

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Onions Without Tears? Fan-tas-tic!

By now, you know I like to play in the kitchen and sometimes I actually make something edible. Since I have leaned more towards the vegetable based dishes, and try to use meat as more of an occasional ingredient, almost like a garnish, big flavors have to come from somewhere other than browned meat and its juices.

One of my favorite sources of richness comes from adding onions, in their great varieties, into many dishes. Carefully caramelized, even the common white onion adds a wonderful depth of flavor to stews, the sweet mellow sauerkraut I mention in the SMOGG Pizza recipe elsewhere on this blog, and Chicken Paprikash, to name a few. By the way, if you do not know how to properly caramelize onions, you are missing out on one of the most delicious ingredients you can make. It takes patience, but is really worth the effort. Look it up on a recipe site and experiment.

But, many people hate preparing onions because of the tears that accompany the slicing and dicing. Sulfurous compounds in the onion (syn-propanethial-S-oxide) waft into the air when you break the onion’s cells, and combine with the moisture on your eyeball and produce a sulfuric acid. The acid “burns” your eyes, and the body produces tears to try and dilute and wash away the acid. So, you “cry.”

Well, CRY NO MORE, because my sous-chef (wife) developed and tested a kitchen solution that WORKS!

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Security Online – Yes, YOU!

Since I opened this blog, more than 200 attempts at unauthorized logins have been made.

Not just a quick drive-by either; concerted repeated attempts at hijacking the blog. Yup, there are people out there who have nothing better to do than to try and screw with other people’s stuff. I hope that this doesn’t come as a surprise to you.

Tracing the I.P. addresses of some of the attempts shows them to be in places as far away as Russia, Italy, and of course, China, and as nearby as California. Obviously, the world is full of people with nothing better to do than sit around and try to guess or hack login credentials.

The consequences can be severe, as documented in this excellent article that details the experience of Mat Honan, a Wired Magazine contributor, which you can read HERE.

If you follow the whole article, you will see that he did ultimately regain control of his digital life, but at great personal and financial expense. What’s really important to note, though, is that it involved a complex chain of actions on the hacker’s part, including some social engineering and some “educated” guessing, that resulted in his being able to put together enough little details to wreak major damage.

So many sites allow password resets by answering “security” questions that anyone who does a little research can find out easily. “What High School did you attend?”   Ever hear of “Classmates.com”? Answered in 45 seconds of “research.”

The hackers find the one weak link in your security, learn one little fact, and then leverage that repeatedly until they steal your email, banking info, mobile accounts, and your digital life. One verification question that I get asked constantly both online and by phone is the last 4 digits of my social security number. At least 2 (if not more) websites that I am registered on, display it openly in my account profile. One of those sites isn’t related to anything “critical” like banking or shopping sites that store credit card information, and so you might think that a simple password there is all you need. Well, you’re wrong.

Another site uses the last 4 digits of my credit card number to “identify” me. Again, every time you use your card somewhere, that information spreads. Hack, hack, hack, hack. People constantly chopping away at your security.

So, just to be sure you get what I’m saying; Revisit your own security protocols, read articles about keeping your private information private, and beef up your weak and simple to guess passwords. Do it NOW, before the horse is out of the barn. Some 16 year old in Ukraine is looking for you and has plenty of time and more computer skills than you will accumulate in a lifetime. Trust me!

The BIG “O” (ring) and Many $$

Folks, there’s a lot you need to know about marketing, markup, and money when it comes to maintaining numerous household products found in the typical modern home and yard. Primarily, it’s all about saving money, your money!

If you have a pool or spa, this will be of particular interest to you, but can apply to maintenance of many other household devices and systems. This will give you some insight into a system designed to pry money out of your wallet that you just don’t need to spend.

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Italian, German, French – SMOGG Pizza

By now, you realize, if you have been reading this blog, that I don’t generally publish recipes for “conventional” food. I like to try and stretch the reader’s palate a little, and encourage you to try foods and combinations that tend to drift a little from what most people are used to eating.

Well, here we go again! I call this SMOGG pizza, and I am really using the term “pizza” in the more artisan, avant-garde sense. Although it’s a bread like base, and it’s covered in cheese, there’s no tomato sauce component, and there’s one ingredient that will, like many of my recipes, instantly discourage a portion of my readership. But, as always, I encourage you, no, I beg you to indulge me and give this a try. Then, if you find it does not appeal to you, by all means, comment. Rip it apart, complain, call me a “maroon,” but do something!

Sauerkraut Pizza6

 

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What the Heck is Gochujang? Oh, You Eat It!

I love finding new ways to use old standard ingredients, and what could be more standard than chicken and rice? This dish is going to make you find new places to shop, try new ingredients, and discover new flavors. I know it looks like a lot of work sorting out the details, but I promise you two things; First, it’s not as complex as it looks at first glance. I made this today in about an hour. Second, whatever it takes, it’s worth it.

Gochujang Chicken & Rice

Gochujang Chicken & Rice

Gochujang Chicken w Shishito Peppers

With Shishito Peppers on Top

 

 

Please continue  and read the recipe. I think you will find it worth every minute.

 

 

 

 

 

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An Exercise in Ethics in the Amazon Jungle

So many things that should be really simple take a little turn and thus complicate our lives in ways that then cost us resources, mental energy, and valuable time. Each, by themselves, may not amount to much, but in today’s complex, interconnected, busy world, they add up fast and raise the energy drain it takes to just stay even.

Of course, one could opt for getting off the grid entirely, or as close to that condition as possible, but the lure of technology and progress is one just too great for me to resist, so I accept, but as you can see, sometimes complain about its consequences.

Here is one such event….

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Going Bananas

This is the first desert recipe I have posted here because we do not make desert very often, but this great Banana Bread recipe might just be the exception. Of course, it’s mostly due to having bought a nice bunch of bananas and then, a week later, having a pair of squishy brown soft ones starting to leak onto the counter.

 

Can You Smell This?

Can You Smell This?

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Oh Deere!

When I moved into this house 20+ years ago, the entire front yard was grass. About 6000 sq. ft. of deep thick Bermuda grass that, in the peak of the summer, needed mowing twice a week.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that my old push mower was going to need a major upgrade. I started looking in the local paper for a riding mower, and soon spotted an ad for a 1983 John Deere Model 111 Hydrostatic Garden Tractor with a twin blade mower deck. Just the ticket!

It was in very nice condition, well used, but pretty clean and it started right up and ran smoothly. When I asked the owner why he was selling it, he explained that for his rather large back yard, this little single cylinder, 11 horsepower engine just didn’t have enough power to deal with the tall grass and weeds. He intended for the money from the sale of the Deere to go to a twin cylinder Craftsman. Who was I to argue? I loaded it up and brought it home.

John Deere 111H

A Recent Picture of the 111H

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Perfection Improved

OK, I’m a real geek when it comes to having stuff work right. People who know me also know that I will pay extra money to get an item that does a job perfectly, something that is the epitome of its designed function. Like many of you, I hate stuff that just barely works, is the minimum that some designer or manufacturer could get away with, or is built so that it just lasts until the warranty runs out. The frustration of spending money for an item you “have to put up with,” is just too much for me.

So, although I promised myself that I wouldn’t start posting articles that make me look like I’m selling a particular item or brand, or that I am perceived as a shill for a particular company, I have found one line of products that I feel so positive about that I just have to detail it here. Let me tell you what happened…

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I’ve made my bed….

The other day I was washing my truck, I decided to do a really thorough job and pull the big rubber mat out of the bed and clean all the mung out from underneath. As I pulled it out, I noticed that it was somewhat “stiffer” than I remembered it being, and it was a little bit hard to peel out of the bed.

Immediately upon getting it removed, I saw what was going to turn into a BIG problem….. Continue reading →

Another Quick and Tasty Dish

I found the basic recipe for this rice and peppers dish on a recipe site, and tried it. I thought it could use some tweaking, and so here is the result. I really like this as a flavorful side dish, but it holds its own as a light meal too. This one is vegan without needing any modifications.20150407_175526

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Everything’s Coming Up

You will notice a new page in this blog called “Spring Has Sprung.” I’m sorry about the cliché, but I just couldn’t resist after wandering around the yard this morning with my camera. Click on the page for some really beautiful flowers and marvel at nature.   Click here to the page….

Schooled by a Flasher

I got an interesting call for help this last week that turned out to be very educational and a little humbling. A friend of mine called with what sounded like a simple electrical problem on a 1951 (yes, older than I am) Chevrolet Pickup truck. He said that he had installed a retro-fit turn signal system on it, complete with a nice chromed turn signal switch that mounts to the steering column with a stainless steel hose clamp, and replacement sockets for the lights on all four corners of the car to accommodate the new 1157 double filament bulbs .

So far it sounded simple and straight forward. Further, he said the system utilizes a typical “old school” 3 terminal flasher, which was wired in series with the battery and the “new” turn signal switch. He described the problem in a few simple words; “If you run the turn signals with the engine off, they work perfectly. But, as soon as you start the engine, they stop blinking, and stay on continuously.”

Well, I have diagnosed and fixed electrical problems in Cadillacs and Corvettes with a dozen computers in them, and built wiring harnesses from scratch for burn jobs, so I really figured, “How hard could it be to fix a simple 3 wire flasher circuit on a ’51 Chevy?”   That’s when the fight started. Continue reading →

I Was So Bright, They Called Me Sonny

I just updated this post with the details of the new Radio-Controlled remote that I added to this shed lighting project at the end of the post.

A long while ago, I had a shed built to house the usual collection of gardening tools, mower, and general yard and pool “stuff.” It sits about 30 or 40 feet from my electrical box, and a local electrician quoted me $1000 to run power out to it so I could have light in there at night. I solved the problem a different way, and for WAY less money.Solar Cell ClosUp1 Continue reading →