Sep 16, 2016

T-Bone, Club, and Porterhouse

T-Bone steaks, Club steaks, and Porterhouse steaks are the same. T-Bone Steak must be at least 0.25" thick. Any smaller, it would be called a Club Steak. The filet portion of a Porterhouse must be at least 1.25" thick at its widest point.

A center T-shaped bone divides two sides of the steak. On one side is a tenderloin Filet and the other is a top loin, better known as the New York Strip Steak. If you cut the bone out, you get a Filet and a New York Strip. If you leave one side on the bone, you get either a bone-in Filet or a bone-in New York Strip.

So, all T-bones contain a filet and a New York Strip and all Porterhouses are T-bones, but not all T-bones are Porterhouses.



Incidentally, Ribeye and Rib Steak are the same. The Ribeye is boneless and the Rib Steak includes the rib bone, and is often called a Bone-In Rib Eye Steak. In Australia, when the bone is removed, it is often called a "Scotch Filet". Other names include: Beauty Steak, Market Steak, Delmonico Steak, and Spencer Steak.

Glass Hack

Use glass paint or nail polish to paint a dot or something of a different color on wine or drink glasses so people at a party can remember which glass is theirs. Make sure what you use is dishwasher safe.

Strange Flag

Nepal’s flag is the only one in the world to not have four sides. It has a shape formed by two intersecting triangles. Its red color is Rhododendron, Nepal’s national flower. The blue border around it symbolizes peace. The unusual shape of the flag was designed to show the Himalayan Mountains; a very important aspect of Nepal.

The sun within the lower triangle represents determination and a fierce resolve. The moon in the upper part stands for peace, tranquility, and harmony. Both of these elements stand together representing the hope that Nepal will be as everlasting as these two heavenly bodies.

It is also the only country whose flag design and construction are written into the Constitution. The previous flag of Nepal, prior to 1962, was of similar shape and somewhat more intricate design, and was in use for more than 2,000 years.

Incidentally, The flag of Libya is the only flag containing one color and consists solely of a solid green background. Green is the national color of Libya as well as a symbol of devotion to Islam. Green also represents Libyan President Muammar al Qaddafi's 'Green Revolution' - an intention to turn Libya into a wealthy agricultural nation.

Sep 9, 2016

Happy Friday

Smiles are as contagious as yawns.


Smile and share while enjoying a Happy Friday!

Happy Conception Day

September 12 is Conception Day in Russia and couples get the day off specifically to have sex. Who says Russians have it so bad?

Apple iOS Failures Going Up

Apple lost its leading position in smartphone performance and reliability to Android in the second quarter of 2016.

iOS has been plagued by crashing apps, WiFi connectivity, and other performance issues. The iOS failure rate more than doubled to 58 percent, compared to a 25 percent failure rate in the previous quarter.

Phone Battery Grabbers

The component that uses the most energy on your smartphone is the screen. The more you use it, the faster your battery drains. Using the auto dimming feature helps use less battery. You can also shorten the delay time to turn screen off when you are finished using it for a while.

Watching a streaming video movie requires your phone’s screen to be on continuously, to maintain an active Internet connection, and the phone’s processor and graphics processor also use juice to decode the video and audio.

Streaming music also uses more battery than music stored on the phone, due to network activity of streaming.

Using maps for long trips and your phone’s screen is on, and the app forces the phone’s GPS circuitry to refresh at a more frequent rate than in normal usage. It is also making heavier use of cellular and WI-Fi connections in order to aid in pinpointing your location.

Pop up ads use much processor and waste battery use as much as twice as what it would if you used an ad blocker.

Push messages also use up the battery faster. Why not set the email to only check once every thirty minutes, or each hour, or never, and check mail when you want to, not when someone decides to interrupt you. Same with contacts updates and calendar changes. You can always switch back if you do not notice a noticeable increase in battery life.

Keep your phone relatively warm. Cold weather (below about 60) is a major battery drainer for any battery, not just phone batteries.

If you do not need it, turn GPS and WiFi off until you need them. The constant pinging wastes a battery charge. If you are in a store or another place you do not wish to be disturbed, skip the vibrate mode and just turn on Airplane Mode. All your messages, mail, etc., will arrive when you turn Airplane Mode off.

If you have a battery saving mode on your phone, use it. You will not lose features, it will just keep the automatic pinging and background apps to a minimum.

You can check your settings to see which apps are gobbling most of your resources and turn them off or delete them if you do not need them. You can also turn off GPS or WiFi access for those apps that really do not need these features.

Last, if you are in an area of bad reception, your phone works overtime to find a signal. Use Airplane Mode until you move closer to populated areas. Incidentally, if you notice your battery draining faster than normal and your usage or apps have not changed, might be time to buy a new battery.

Another Obscure Olympic Fact

During the 1900 Paris Olympics, golf first appeared at the Olympic Games, and one of the last for over a century. (The sport returned to the Olympics for the 2016 Rio Games.)

The first American woman, Margaret Abbott to win an Olympic gold medal was not aware of what she won. Records suggest she went her entire life oblivious to her historic achievement. Her mother, Mary Ives Abbott entered the competition as well. It was the first and only time in Olympic history that a mother and daughter competed in the same sport, in the same event, at the same time. Margaret Abbott passed away during 1955 unaware of the milestone she had set.

Airplane Window Shape

Most people have noticed that airplane windows corners are rounded. They were not always rounded. Airplanes used to have square windows, but many planes crashed because of them.

During the 1950s when planes became faster, some of them began to crash unexpectedly. Investigators found the squared-off corners of windows were susceptible to stress. Circular window corners are able to disperse that pressure more evenly.

Airplane windows now have three panes: one bears the burden of pressurization, another inner pane acts as a fail safe in case the outer pane fails, one pane faces the occupant.

Cotton Candy Master

Here is an art form taken to a whole new level. I love to watch an artist at his craft. Two minutes. LINK

ABBA Trivia

During the Nazi occupation of Norway, 1940 - 1945, it was “expressly desirable that the German soldiers conceive as many children as possible with Norwegian women, regardless of whether it is within or outside of the bonds of matrimony.”

In Norway, as many as 12,000 children born to these unions. The rest of the population did not look too kindly on these pairings, as women involved with German officers could get their heads shaved or be branded with swastikas.

Anni-Frid Synni Lyngstad was born during November 1945 as a result of a liaison between her mother and a German sergeant. Her mother and grandmother were branded as traitors and ostracized in their village in northern Norway. They were forced to emigrate to Sweden, where Anni-Frid's mother died of kidney failure before her daughter was two. She was raised by her grandmother. Frida is the singer with auburn hair from the singing group ABBA. Incidentally, Frida co-designed many of the ABBA stage costumes.

Six Cheesy Names

Monterey Jack takes half of its name from a place where Franciscan friars around Monterey, CA, crafted a mild white cheese throughout the 19th century. The second part comes from Scottish immigrant David Jack, who started marketing his own version of the cheese.

When Jack first came to the US in 1841, he worked as an army contractor, and he eventually became so successful that he owned most of the real estate in Monterey County. The rapid expansion of his land holdings left him owning shares in a number of dairies and he began mass-marketing the friars’ cheese recipe, first under the name Jack’s cheese and later as Monterey Jack.

Colby cheese is another American invention. In 1885 Wisconsin cheese maker Joseph F. Steinwand started varying his production process for cheddar by washing the curds with cold water. The washing process cut down on the acidity of the cheese and gave it a milder flavor than regular cheddar. Steinwand named his creation after the nearby town of Colby, WI. Longhorn Colby refers to the size and cylindrical shape of the block the cheese comes in.

Pecorino comes from Pecora, the Italian word for sheep and this family of hard Italian sheep milk cheeses derives from it.

Hanne Nielson created Havarti cheese at her family’s farm in Øverød, just north of Copenhagen, during the mid-19th century. Nielson decided to create a Danish equivalent to Switzerland’s tasty cheeses and the buttery Havarti was the result of her experimentation. She named the cheese after the family’s farm, which was known as Havarthigaard.

Mozzarella takes its name from the diminutive of the word mozza, which in Neapolitan dialect means cut. Mozza in turn derives from the verb mozzare, which means to cut off. It refers to how the cheese is produced by cutting the curds and shaping them into the familiar ball shape.

American cheese gets its name from the British. When British colonists first came to North America, they brought their knowledge of cheddar production with them and began making cheese cheaply and in great volume. Colonists would ship the cheese back across the pond and sell it at discount prices. British shoppers did not love the quality of this 'Yankee cheddar' or 'American cheese', but since it was cheap, it sold well. By 1878, Americans were sending over 300 million pounds of cheese back to England every year.

Americans called it either yellow cheese or store cheese. During 1916 James L. Kraft patented a pasteurization process that stabilized cheese to allow for easy transport over long distances. The name American cheese stuck to to Kraft’s processed cheeses.