Benny just published a post on her site about WP and caching. It makes me chuckle to think about, because essentially the web has come full-circle.
The web was first populated by sites that were all static html pages.
Then, someone thought of using databases and a whole bunch of other neat things to make websites “dynamic” – meaning, you didn’t have to spend hours tediously re-writing static html to make a change across your whole site.
Then, these dynamic sites were great, but if the site was popular, then you needed to back it up with a shit-ton of hardware and load balancing and etc, etc in case you had a lot of visitors.
Now, caching (turning the dynamic site back into simple static html) keeps sites light and serving to millions of visitors.
Strange, innit?
Over the last couple of weekends, I’ve managed to go through some of the excess clothes that make up the Stuff that we own but don’t use. In doing so, I found a few items I can still wear, so those are going “back into rotation.” The rest got put into boxes and one of those boxes got dropped off at Goodwill today. Two more boxes will be going tomorrow. I still have several other totes to go through, and I’m sure I’ll have more boxes to get donated in the next couple of weeks. Just glad that I am finally making progress on Reducing the Stuff.
I’m also feeling accomplished about cooking at home more often. The last few weekends I’ve managed to cook at least 2-3 meals at home each weekend. While that doesn’t sound like much, its huge for us because 3 meals cooked at home equals 1 meal going out, in terms of cost.
Speaking of costs, I’m also revisiting getting a solid budget put together. Its hard to do, especially when your $outgo exceeds your $income every single month. Since before I started working at LW I have not been able to make it one month without adding to my credit card debt, and that is really sad. However, with the help of some unexpected extra $income I got about a month ago, I may be able to break that trend. May being the keyword here. We’ll see.
Had this sitting around in my drafts folder for over a year now. It still applies, so I’m publishing it now.
It irks me that people sign up for legitimate mailing lists/newsletters, and then when they get a message from that list they perceive to be ’spam’ – instead of unsubscribing themselves from the list, they click the “OMG ITS SPAM” button in their mail reader.
This kind of practice has made it so that even legitimate double-optin mailing lists don’t work any more.
Maybe the legitimate mailers of the world need to unite and start keeping lists of names and email addresses that have complained about receiving spam from them, but the person complaining really *did* sign up to receive that mail in the first place.
Or, better yet, we should just do away with email altogether.
Real Spam will never, ever go away. Why? Because people are inherently dumb. That is the only reason all the v14gr4, c14|1s, luxury watches, penis enlargement, and other True Spam still exist. Because people respond to it. They click on a link and buy a product advertised in a spam message.
We never read the ‘disclaimers’ or the Terms of Service, or the notice in tiny print at the bottom of the page that says “By signing up for such-and-such mailing list, you AGREE to receive messages from our partners and other third-parties.”
Meaning, as soon as they have your email address, they’re gonna sell it to someone else. So, basically, you should expect to be spammed.
There is far too much of a gray area when it comes to what is, and isn’t, spam. For example, in a ‘reported spam’ message, I found this in the headers:
X-Nonspam: Whitelist
Meaning that, possibly, the person reporting the spam had added the sender’s email address, or their domain, to their whitelist. So they could receive messages from them and they wouldn’t be blocked by their spam filters.
ORLY?
The apartment above us is empty and the maintenance crew is apparently working up there to fix it up for new tenants. While I was making the stew, I heard a WHAM when they dropped something heavy on the floor. A little while later, I’m sitting at my desk writing up my previous post about making the beef barley stew, and there’s another WHAM.
This time, it jars the floor so hard that the light fixture, that is above and slightly to the right of me, breaks loose. One of the rods that holds the glass bowl of the fixture broke free and it was left swinging by the remaining 2 rods.
Needless to say, this pissed me off. The glass bowl, while not completely broken, is in no shape to go back up there, even if the rods that hold it in place are able to be screwed back into the fixture. The holes where the rods go through the bowl are chipping away. While taking it down before it fell down on me, I got showered with little shards of glass.
Pictures to follow (once my camera battery charges).
Well. Not really. Just for today, I’m pretending that I am.
Making beef barley soup/stew today. Barton found the recipe online somewhere, and I’ve slightly modified it so that we get a nice big crockpot full.
5 small-to-medium potatoes, chunked
a cup of chopped celery
1-2 cups of frozen mixed veggies (peas, carrots, corn, green beans)
2 small-to-medium white onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
a pinch or so each of oregano, basil, and bay leaves (apparently I only had ground up bay leaves in my spice rack – the recipe calls for whole so it can be discarded later)
a bit of ground pepper
(and this is where the light fixture nearly fell on my head – this’ll be in the next post)
4 cans of low-sodium beef broth (14.5 oz cans)
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
~1.5 lbs of beef roast, cut into chunks – aka “beef for stew”
2/3 cup barley
Brown beef chunks in a little oil in a large skillet. Combine all other ingredients in a large (5-6 qt) crockpot, then add beef. Cook on high 4-5 hours. Since I’m using ‘quick’ barley, I’m waiting to add it until about an hour before the cook cycle is done so it doesn’t get mushy.
Right now, its just about 1.5 hours into the cook cycle. We’ll see how it turns out tonight.
(The next day)
Okay then. Notes for next time -
Try cooking the onions/garlic in the skillet with the beef chunks
Skip the tomatoes
Use chopped fresh carrots and cut the potatoes into smaller chunks
Skip the frozen veggies and use some other fresh veggies (fresh peas, peapods, green beans maybe?)
Use less barley (I put in about 1.5 cups instead of 2/3 of a cup which at the time didn’t seem like a lot but ended up overwhelming it somewhat)
MOAR SPICES. The smell was amazing but for some reason did not translate much to taste. Maybe try a packet of “slow cooker roast” seasonings instead.