Comcast xfinity Cable Modem Activation

Comcast Xfinity Cable Modem Activation

new one of the latest (Nov 14, 2017) activated by a technician on site.  then anytime one would open Safari 10.0.1 the Activation page comes up and can not be gotten rid of.  2 hours on phone with Comcast Xfinity and they had no idea how to fix a problem they caused.

Tried deleting cookies from both Xfinity and Comcast, did not work

Fabulous Applecare support suggested removing the Homepage under general preferences.  Restart Safari and that worked.

Seems like the code on the modem overrides the Safari setting. Just like any hacker would do!

Plus they don't document it.  Or train their support people.

This was after 12 hours on the phone and 5 technician visits over the past few months because they obsoleted the Motorola Surfboard modem without telling me.  And then later, they changed video encoding codecs thus obsoleting my Moxi DVR.  Again without telling me.

Kind of stupid since they know what equipment I have installed and cheerfully take my $185 per month.

Very poor end of product life planning.

Roost Smoke Carbon Dioxide Alarm Battery Configuration

Having spent many. hours trying to get the battery to connect to WiFi and simarly talking online with their support person and engineer, here is what I found works.

Please click on an ad or two to pay me a bit for saving you time.

The WiFi must be 2.4 Ghz

The SSID name MUST NOT have a ' or a - in it.  It might not even work if the SSID has anything other than lower case letters only and/or no more than one word.

If you have a battery working properly and you want to change its WiFi connection, I found that trying to change the connection for the previous instance does not work.  Delete that device in the smartphone app and add a new one.  Then it works fine.

I'd say the Roost people have a pretty poor engineering team to NOT have anticipated different spellings of the SSID and the support/documentation people for having not updated their troubleshooting instructions with what you see in the 4th paragraph above which I discovered with them in Dec 2015 and as of this writing in April, 2016 it has not been updated.  

I think the product is a great idea to be able to early detect smoke before the flames are coming out the roof.  Pretty good insurance for $32 covering the length of the battery of say 5 years.

BUT if they don't up their game in engineering and in support documentation, they will be overcome by an competition that does.

Using Turbo Tax for Years Has Been a NIght Mare...and it just continues

I need to pay estimated taxes for next year.  So I opened TurboTax on my Mac Book Pro, inported last year's taxes and tried to save the file.

I got "the document could not be saved" error message.

When to Turbotax support website and they asked me what the issue is and then gave me a ticket and phone number to call.  Called it and they said they would call be back.

They did and the automated system clicked around and hung up.

I called again and the system said my issue has been resolved.

Tried to use their online support system and they had to do double factor identification.

So far 45 mins wasted and no resolution.

I wonder if they consider the customer's satisfaction when they set up such a system? 

Essential Oils used in Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Food and Fragrance

Just got Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Food and Fragrance by Mandy Afel and Daniel Patterson.  I was interested in it because Heston Blumenthal, so he writes, works with a perfumer in Switzerland.

The book has receipts and sources for the oils.  But there is no shopping list one can just go out and buy them and work their way through the cookbook.

Until now!  Here is the list and on what page the essential oil is used. Everything listed is an essential oil unless otherwise noted.

First is a list by page in order.  Then an alphabetized list for ordering.

1. Coriander essential oil 39
2. Basil 39
3. Spearmint 39 42 43
4. Bergamot 39
5. Cucumber Hydrosoil 45 46 47 48
6. Rosemary Hydrosoil 45
7. Fir  50
8. Lime 50
9. Lavender 50
10. Geranium 55
11. Sweet orange 55 57
12. YLang YLang 55
13. Blood orange 56
14. Bitter orange 58
15. Tarragon 76 78 79
16. Perilla 82
17. Lavender 89
18. Litsea cubeba 95
19. Chamomile 100 101
20. Orange flower water 107 108
21. Neroli 109
22. Jasmine pearls 111 112 113
23. Rosewater 116 117
24. Moroccan rose absolute 118
25. Cepe absolute 130
26. Cinnamon bark 151 152
27. Black pepper 155 156 57
28. Ginger 160
29. Cumin 165 168
30. Coriander 170 171
31. Saffron threads 193

Alphabetized 

Basil 39Bergamot 39Bitter orange 58Black pepper 155 156 57Blood orange 56Cepe absolute 130Chamomile 100 101Cinnamon bark 151 152 Coriander 170 171Coriander essential oil 39Cucumber Hydrosoil 45 46 47 48Cumin 165 168Fir  50Geranium 55Ginger 160Jasmine pearls 111 112 113Lavender 50Lavender 89 Lime 50Litsea cubeba 95Moroccan rose absolute 118Neroli 109Orange flower water 107 108Perilla 82Rosemary Hydrosoil 45 Rosewater 116 117 Saffron threads 193Spearmint 39 42 43Sweet orange 55 57Tarragon 76 78 79YLang YLang 55

Temper Chocolate Sous Vide

Seal in bag and place in water bat at 115 degrees F.  Should melt in about 5 minutes.

Reduct temperature to 81 degrees and add ice to cool.

Increase temperature to 90 degrees F.  Every minute lift the bag up and squeeze to mix it up.

Hold at 90 for use.

Cut off end of bag to dispense and reseal to keep.

Taco Seasoning Ingredients

Taco Seasoning Ingredients

I want to make the kind of seasoning flavors one gets when one buys a Taco at Taco Bell.  But I don't want to buy their seasoning (I use to) because I have no clue as to what their food engineers put into it especially to increase shelf life.

For all I know those little, potentially unnatural, ingredients might have a longer shelf life in my body too!  The FDA generally do not research those things.

So I have started to develop my list here first by looking at what Lawry's puts in theirs:

• Paprika
• Cumin
• Oregano
• Chili peppers 
• Onions
• Sugar 
• Garlic
• Salt
• Cocoa powder

Perfect Eggs

Boiling water: three minutes
shock: 1 minute in ice water bath.
143°F water bath: 45 minutes

what do cats eat and drink

baked carrots, steamed asparagus or broccoli, green beans, winter squash, or chopped greens

cod, halibut and flounder

cooked eggs, such as scrambled or hard-boiled 
Cooked poultry

uncooked bones

a little: 
cheese, Cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon, SPINACH deli meats such as turkey, ham and chicken 

BEEF

Frozen bannas

NO!

adult cats, any cheese, milk or other dairy will cause diarrhea.

might be able to safely handle small portions of cottage cheese, or even yogurt and sour cream. You can also try giving your cat low-lactose varieties of cheese and milk.

dairy to your cat occasionally as a special treat, you'll be able to use it to get a finicky cat to take its medicine. Some sneaky cat owners actually grind up pills for their feline and put the powder on cheese or butter to get them to ingest the medicine.

fat trimmings

onion, garlic, kelp, grapes or raisins, sugary treats, chocolate, and alcoholic or caffeinated drinks, even in small doses.

Understanding flour

Gluten comes from protein and enables it to stretch.

High gluten flour is good for  yeast raised products like pizza dough, bread and bagles.  This is called bread flour and has up to 15% protein.
Low gluten flour good for piecrust, cookies, pastry. This called pastry or cake flour and has 7% protein levels.

keep drains flowing

kitchen

• hot water 
• liquid dish detergent and a large volume of boiling water
• Once a month, pour a cup of baking soda down each drain in your home, followed by a cup of white vinegar. Let the solution sit for about an hour, and then flush with warm water. The baking soda reacts with the vinegar to create a foam that will remove most residue from tubs, showers, and sinks.
• First, pour about ¾ of a cup of baking soda into the drain.
• Follow this up with about ½ cup of vinegar poured down the drain; immediately cover the drain with either a plug or a plate- whatever you need to do to keep everything inside the drain.
• Allow this mixture to sit inside the drain for approximately 30 minutes; don’t use the drain while you wait for the mixture to work its magic.
• When 30 minutes is up, remove the cover (or plug) and let hot water run through the pipes for a few minutes.
  
  
• bathroom

• hot water 
• 1 tablespoon table salt 1⁄4 cup of plain white vinegar, and let it sit for an hour. Then, run HOT water to clear out the all of the loosened substances from the drain. For best results do this a second time
• bleach 
• drain stick
• Once a month, pour a cup of baking soda down each drain in your home, followed by a cup of white vinegar. Let the solution sit for about an hour, and then flush with warm water. The baking soda reacts with the vinegar to create a foam that will remove most residue from tubs, showers, and sinks.
• First, pour about ¾ of a cup of baking soda into the drain.
• Follow this up with about ½ cup of vinegar poured down the drain; immediately cover the drain with either a plug or a plate- whatever you need to do to keep everything inside the drain.
• Allow this mixture to sit inside the drain for approximately 30 minutes; don’t use the drain while you wait for the mixture to work its magic.
• When 30 minutes is up, remove the cover (or plug) and let hot water run through the pipes for a few minutes.

Ratios and Temperature for Sphere Magic molecular gastronomy sphereification

122 Degrees F
10% to water

Taste in Food and Drink

A fantastic cookbook is out there called "Elements of Taste" by Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky. They go far beyond the 4 or 5 elements we all use to think of when cooking: salty, savory, sweet, sour and recently umami.  

After reading the book and starting to cook through it I found I needed some notes I can refer to and/or hang on my refrigerator so when going shopping (opening the fridge door and pantry) I can quickly reference for ideas of taste combinations and layers.

Which brings me to a question I had of Chef Ryan of Nick's Next Door in Los Gatos, California.  Having gone there for several years several times a month they dropped my favorite crab salad from the menu so I asked Ryan how they go about creating a new dish.  He said he starts with the tastes they wish to impart and then select the ingredients.  He seemed startled when he saw the expression on my face and asked "how do you do it".  I said "I open the refrigerator door..."

So I am hoping with these notes on my fridge door and using Chef Watson to whom I have just been invited to test and comment on their beta...I can use up my fridge's contents before they convert to another green sauce collection.

Taste:

1. Aroma, Mouth Taste, 
2. Texture
1. Crunch
2. Smoothness
3. Pushes Forward
1. Salty
2. Picante: Peppery
3. Sweet
4. Pull other flavors and enhance
1. Tangy
2. Vinted
3. Bulby
4. Spiced Aromatic
5. Floral Herbal
6. Funky
5. Punctuate
1. Sharp/Bitter: Stops taste
1. Watercress, almonds, spinach, beer, campari, cranberries
6. Platforms: Foundations
1. Garden
2. Meaty
3. Oceanic
4. Starchy
7. Cuisines
1. Breadings
2. Glazes
3. Spice Mixes
4. Toppings
5. Broths
6. Sauces
7. Brines
8. Pickels

Make Tofu

1. Soak 300g soybeans overnite and soaked up about 400g of water need 2400 water in total
2. Add about 2000 g water
3. Blend in blender, it is called namago
4. Put in pot, heat till bubbles come up and keep stirring
5. Bubble for 15 minutes, then heats to low for 10 minutes, stirring all the time
6. stain 
7. Squeezed between two bowls and pour off liquid and its called okara, liquid is fresh soy milk
8. Use nagari as the coagulant.  It is magnesium chloride. Use 12.5 ml and 50 ml hot water
9. Heat soy milk to 163F/73C
10. Add Nagari but don't stir a lot
11. Let sit for 10 mins
12. Prepare tofu mold with lined cheesecloth and in pan to get the runoff
13. add curds, cover with cheesecloth
14. add weight like a can for firmer tofu
15. soak tofu in water for 30 mins to get rid of bitterness

The Elements of Taste

Recently I bought "The Art of Blending" by Lior Lev Sercarz based upon a mention in a New York Times article.  I thought I might learn something about pairing specific spices with different foods.  But not.  It's a book about Lior's blends and using those blends on specific recipes.  I complained.  Lior offered a refund. I said no since one day I will put together a database showing what goes with what based on the book.

I also bought his $150 global spice collection and Bloody Mary master collection and have been happily using since.

Having been born in Detroit from a father that burned boiling water learning about taste has been a challenge.  Not enough info is in cookbooks about this until I discovered "The Elements of Taste" and am now reading it.

When I got Grant Ashatz's Alinea cookbook I was first introduced to the elements of taste.  Someplace in the front pages he mentioned salty, sweet, savory, bitter, something else and later I learned of umami.   I can find the 5th thing in Grant's book anymore, but that doesn't matter.

"The Elements of Taste" goes much further.  It classifies different taste as:

Tastes that Push

• Salty
• Sweet
• Picante: Like pepper

Tastes that Pull

• Tangy
• Vinted: Wine/Complex
• Bulby: Fried onions
• Floral Herbal
• Spiced Aromatic: Cinnamon, cloves, allspice, mace, coriander, cumin, saffron, star anise
• Funky: cabbage, truffles, aged meat/cheese

Taste Platforms

• Garden
• Meaty
• Oceanic
• Starchy

Tastes that Punctuate

• Sharp bitter
• Texture

David Kinch of fire burned Manressa in Los Gatoes rattled off the 5 to me once when I was chatting with him.

Still can't remember.

Then  a few weeks ago I was talking with Chef Ryan of Nick's Next Door about new items that might show up on their several years old, but very delicious menu. He he said a chef starts with the tastes he/she wants for the eater.  That was a remarkable thing for me.  And I told him so.

He asked how I started.  I said, I opened the refrigerator.

I'll make my notes here as I work (read and cook) thru the book and understand taste.

Nearly Free Teeth Whitening Tip

Want to have whiter teeth.  Drink coffee?

It's easy.  Just swish some hydrogen peroxide around your front teeth for about 30 seconds each day.  You can get hydrogen peroxide at the grocery or drug store. 

Mac Numbers Problems with IOS Numbers iPhone

Wanted to use Numbers with iCloud.  Clicked on Numbers on my Mac in the Dock and it openned.  Created spreadsheet and populated.  Opened same spreadsheet on iPhone and made changes and notice it was not working properly.

Called Apple and we figured out that the alias in the Dock was pointing at Numbers '09 located in the iWork 09 Applications directory. I need to use Numbers version 3 or higher which was sitting at the root of the Applications directory.  Once the spreadsheet is openned in Numbers 3.02 everything was fine.

Lastly, had a problem entering data into spreadsheet on iPhone Numbers.  One tap was not enough. Had to double tap to bring up the keyboard.

Steps to take in creating a social media presence

Steps to take in creating a social media presence:

Last Updated May 19, 2014 

This page will help save you some time trying to figure things out.  But in any case, plan on spending three to five days doing everything.

Create:

1. Web site: You could use blogger or set up a special Word Press website
2. Twitter Account
3. Linkedin Account
1. Linkedin Group
4. Facebook Account
1. Group
5. Google + 
1. Profile
2. Community
3. Page
6. Slideshare: 
1. General: Picture, personal and contact information
2. Set Sharing: Linkedin, Facebook, Google +
3. Set email preferences
4. Privacy
5. Content: Language and license
7. Hootsuite
8. feedly
9. Cloudscore: klout

Notes for Each Social Media

1. Web site: You could use blogger or set up a special Word Press website

Blogger.com and Wordpress.com are free.  Most ISPs can host a Wordpress web site.  Wordpress is a combination of PHP programming language and a MySqL database.  Once installed and be sure to run PHP for it NOT PHP within CGI then you might want to buy a customer theme. Install plugins depending what you are planning to do.  Ask in comments on this blog if you would like to know which plugins I use.  Frequently Word Press plugins conflict with each other and takes hours to figure out.  The start blogging

1. Twitter Account
2. Linkedin Account
1. Linkedin Group
3. Facebook Account
1. Group
4. Google + 
1. Profile
2. Community
3. Page

You will want a custom page URL but you can't get it until several conditions are met like the page is 30 days old, has 10 or more followers and a pretty picture of you. OK, just kidding.  Any picture of you.  See:  https://support.google.com/plus/answer/2676340?hl=en

1. Slideshare: 
1. Upload presentations and maybe a video
2. Hootsuite
1. Connect to your Social networks.  It free for up to 5.  Multiple Linkedin Groups each seem to count as one.  It works with Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Linkedin, foursquare, wordpress.com, and mixi (Japan).
2. If you wish to manage a Google + network that is owned by someone else, you will need to become a member of that someone else's Hootsuite team member.
3. If you have some social networks you need to manage and some shared networks you wish to access, then you can transfer that social network from your own Hootsuite account to your "team" account in which is used to manage multiple networks.
4. Configure Settings
1. Account Security
5. Create Tabs, streams for each tab
6. Add "apps" to do more things
7. feedly

1. Cloudscore: klout

Buffer to pushes to social media properties 

Capture on evernote, create preamble and go to hoot suite

Reverse spherification ratios

Water Bath:  .005 sodium alginate to water
Calcium lactate gluconate: .02 to juice Xanthan Gum:  .005 to juice

Asparagus and Egg

Interpreted from Joan Roca of El Cellar Del Con Roca the best restaurant in the world and as taught at the Harvard Science and Cooking on-line class.  Comments in italics.

Ingredients:

1. Asparagus cut into ends and stalk 
2. Olive Oil
3. Salt
4. Champaign or probably Xantham Gum
5. Truffels 
6. oxalis (sorrel)
7. freshly ground white pepper

We're going to see an asparagus and egg dish. And we'll see through this plate two different techniques of cooking. We cook the asparagus under a vacuum looking to protect the product from the water in which we cook it in and to preserve the flavor. In this case, we cooked the 

ends of the asparagus at 85 degrees C for 35 minutes. 

We have interesting texture and interesting flavor since we have not lost its flavor or its juice. It has not been dissolved in the cooking water. This is on one side. With the 

other end of the asparagus, we blended it, we triturated it (juicing, a triturating juicer is a style of juicer used to break down fresh produce into juice and fiber.), and we made an ice cream. An asparagus ice cream. 

Ok, asparagus on one side, the ends with the stalk, and the asparagus.

And now we're going to see another part of the dish. That is the egg. What interests us is to see at which temperature we have stopped cooking the egg, and especially at what time to apply the concoction, especially since we are only using the yolk in this case. We've 

cooked the three eggs at 63 degrees. 

What we are going to see is how time influences the degree of cooking. This one has only been cooked for 15 minutes. We have a fluid texture of the yolk. This is the one we're going to use. I am not going to cut it yet because I need the yolk. But this one has been cooking for 45 minutes. Notice that it is much more dense. This intermediate one is the one we're going to use now. We're going to separate the whites since we don't need it. Only the yolk.  

Notice the sauce-like texture. It's like the sauce of egg yolk. It's what we want to use now, eh? We wanted an egg yolk sauce. We're going to add some olive oil-only a little bit, a little bit of salt. 

And now we're going to put together the dish. We have the texture of the egg yolk. It's like truffle juice that we have texturized with champagne. (the discussion suggests he might have said Xantham Gum which is suggested makes more sense.

First, we'll pour a little of this juice over the base of the plate. Then we'll dribble some of the egg yolk. Then we're going to construct the plate. We're going to sprinkle some summer truffle, Tuber aestivum. We are at the gates of summer. These are summer truffles that have come early in our spring but are very, very tasty.

This asparagus ice cream is really important in that the formula is well stabilized so that it has a very good texture. And we like to place the asparagus hot, straight out of the water bath,
to create a contrast between hot and cold, egg yolk, and truffle flavor. We'll give it a bit of acidity with a few leaves of oxalis. And then a bit of strength with a little bit of freshly ground white pepper.

Calculate Calories from Food Label

From Harvard's on line class on Science and Cooking.

Calories = 4 X number of grams of protein in a serving plus 4 X number of grams of carbohydrate in a serving plus 9 x the number of grams of fat in a serving 

4 x 49 x 18

whenever I find a label in which the number of the calorie reported disagrees with this calculation, I tend to distrust the label. 

So let me just show you how this works. So here is a label which actually comes from my favorite recipe, which is the recipe for Nestle's Toll House chocolate chip cookies. So it turns out that in one serving of a Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie, there are 4 grams of protein, 49 grams of carbohydrate, and 18 grams of fat. So if we want to calculate the calorie content in one serving of the cookie, what we need to do is take the grams of protein, multiply by 4, take the grams of carbohydrate, multiply by 4, take the grams of fat, and multiply by 4. So that's 4 times 4 plus 49 times 4 plus 18 times 9 -- actually sorry, I misspoke. The grams of fat is multiplied by 9, hence the 4-4-9 rule. So we're multiplying 18, which is the grams of fat, by 9. And when we add all of this up, we find that the calorie content of a cookie is 378 calories, which is very close to that which is reported on the label.