Month: November 2023

November 2, 2023 – I (used to) Love Clam Dip

November 2, 2023 /

We had a fall storm on the horizon. It has been an unusually pleasant October with highs most days in the 60-80s. Hence I still had the outdoor furniture out. In addition, we really hadn’t had many fires this year, if any. I developed this plan for a last hurrah before I put all the furniture in for the season. I was going to build a fire and we would roast sausages and make smores.

I wanted to keep the menu very simple. I wanted everything outside around the fire. So, what goes well with fire roasted sausages, but potato chips. I wanted some dip too so I picked some up at the store. Since my vegetarian son is in Taiwan, I could get clam dip and not feel guilty about not getting a second option.

I while I was starting the fire, I opened the bag and scooped a few chips. We had a late breakfast and I was already planning on getting a late start to dinner. I was also doing some painting at the same time and I needed to get to a stopping point before dinner took over. That dip was terrible. It was bland and gelatinous.

When we finally settled down for dinner, I scooped a few more chips and no I wasn’t imagining it, the dip was downright disgusting. How can this be so bad? I flipped to the ingredients and then the answer was instantly clear. This is a toxic stew of garbage.

Here is an example recipe

  • 8 oz cream cheese , softened
  • 1/4 cup sour cream
  • 1 clove garlic , minced
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried parsley flakes (or 1 teaspoon fresh chopped parsley)
  • 1/2 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
  • Dash Tabasco or favorite hot sauce
  • 1, 6.5 oz can minced clams drained but juice reserved

I realize that if I were to expand this list to the ingredients to include those in cream cheese and sour cream, it would become something different, slightly longer. But really there is not excuse for the number of thickeners, extenders and modifiers that is in this store bought dip. I would venture to say that this does not qualify as food even though it may be edible.

I should have known better. About six months ago I purchased a different brand French Onion dip. It was equally terrible. These were not the chip dips of my memory. They were smooth, tangy and slightly addictive, certainly not bland and repulsive.

We very rarely ever had chip dip growing up. When we did, it was Christmas or something like that. So, it could be that my memory of what it was and what it actually was are two different things. Honestly, I don’t think so because just looking at the dip in the container looks wrong. I guess I will never know, but I suspect the contents have changed significantly over the years.

End Your Programming Routine: Honestly, I am going to be polite if I see this stuff put out in other venues. That being said, this is one of those things that you are better off making it yourself or not at all. I am eating some instant noodles as I write this right now. They are also terrible. But I did not expect them to be good. Disappointment is a far stronger emotion than dislike. Don’t buy chip dip.

November 1, 2023 – Bluetooth… Who Knew?

November 1, 2023 /

I am in the midst of a network transition. I am going to talk about that next week. This old PC that I use day after day has a wireless card that I installed when it was new (we are talking 2012, how about that). I never use wireless because everything that I have that I can reach a wired internet connection is not on wireless.

This comes from a long standing reliability belief with wireless. The microwave interrupted it, the signal was spotty in being connected and not. The wireless n protocol on my old router was in draft form and only worked with devices from the same company. I just believe in bypassing all of that futzing and plug it in.

I was looking at Linux supported wireless network cards because I was was wondering why the wireless did not work on that particular computer. That is when I came to the realization that Bluetooth capability came with the wireless card. And, if I added a new wireless card, then I could broadcast from my computer to the stereo system without having a 20′ RCA cable.

You know that I think cable is superior. But then the problem is how to switch between the native audio output and the secondary output. I have tried it and it is kind of messy because one is labelled headphones and the other is not. It doesn’t always work like it is supposed to and then things get jumbled up with various programs taking precedent over output choice.

I made the leap to update the wireless card. I rationalized it to myself as another bolt on to manage the network that I have as well. Based on my success, I will also add one to my Linux machine. At $30, it is a pretty inexpensive add on for that flexibility and capability. That would also give me another operating system to help with troubleshooting.

I have disabled wireless administration to the router. It is one of the security measures that I have in place. That way, only machines physically plugged into my network have the capability of making changes. Wired will remain my primary connection, but it also gives me some additional troubleshooting capacity for faulty switches as well. There are plenty of devices that are only wired to the switches like TVs and X-box.

It has been quite a while since I was in the hardware game. I needed to educate myself as to what the system requirements actually were. I knew from the TV tuner foray that I had an extra PCIe slot. But I certainly didn’t know what a PCIe -1X versus a PCIe-16x slot was. Nor did I know if I had a spare USB connector on the motherboard. It turns out that I did and so the installation was pretty easy for a Windows machine and plug and play installation. I also needed to manually install an optional OS upgrade for Bluetooth to make it work. Once I figured that out, I was off and running.

Speaking of Bluetooth and USB, the card I chose had Bluetooth 4.2 standard. There are options out there with Bluetooth 5.X and you may wonder what the difference is. Bluetooth 5 is better and faster with more range, but you do need a USB 3 connection on your motherboard. Defining all of that today is too technical but if you are in this position, seek research on the internet as to what ports and connections you have before ordering. I will say, having the the best versus none, go with what you can get. It also costs more for that extra bandwidth and range which is a big turn-off for me and techno junk.

Doing some advanced reading, I can’t say that the Linux installation will be as smooth. But that is OK. I need to continue to challenge myself in that operating system if I am to ever learn it. I finally got the software installed SDR/scanner. It took quite a while because I chose to watch baseball instead of working at it. It can be done, I am confident in that fact.

End Your Programming Routine: If you have some technology over ten years old, it may benefit you to update hardware if it makes sense. This was less about adding wireless network then getting Bluetooth. Honestly, I have tried both wired and wireless and things were pretty much the same except that I saw one hiccup streaming a song on wireless and several with the Bluetooth stream itself. This will continue to keep me wired but maybe in my lifetime it will get there.