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Communication Upgrade

12 May

I recently upgraded to a smartphone.  I had been holding out because I couldn’t justify the need or the expense. When I am working from home, in engineering mode, I’m sitting in front of the computer all day.  I’ve got a phone right next to me on the desk.  What more do I need?

And when I’m out hiking, the last thing I want is to be connected.

Forsythe Creek

Forsythe Creek

 

But all of that changed with the travel associated with the pinball and jukebox repair.  I need to be able to check e-mail, traffic, add reminders to a to-do list, check appointments, and find myself when I get lost out in the plains of eastern Colorado.

Read the rest of this entry…

 
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Posted in Photography

 

Walking Across America

24 Apr

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this podcast.  It was recorded by a guy, Andrew Forsthoefel, who walked across the country.

 

About the south, he says:

“This would happen a lot, people warning me about those others.  ‘They’re not friendly like us.’ ‘They’ll shoot you for the shirt off your back.’ ‘Don’t trust them.’ I never knew how to deal with the prejudice.  Especially when it came from someone who took me into their home and fed me. More often than I’d like to admit, I wouldn’t say anything.

“What I wish is that these people could have experienced what I did, and seen that the people they warned me about, were the very ones who took me in the next night, and fed me, and told me their stories, and then warned me about the people further on down the road.”

Listen here.  When finished, click on the photos above the comment section.  Some have additional audio clips with them.

 

 
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Posted in Observations

 

Spring

08 Apr

Spring usually conjures an image of green and colorful profusion of blossoms.  That happens here in the mountains in what most people refer to as summer.  Spring in the mountains, at least in terms of the calendar, is a no-mans land between winter and summer: warm temperatures one day, 3 feet of snow the next.

Signs of spring as of now:

  • The brown lawn is no longer buried under the snow and has a tinge of green.
  • The birds are singing.
  • The ice on the nearby reservoir is no longer white, but a color closer to gray turquoise.
  • The days are longer.
  • Last night, the first thunder and hail storm of the year.

Oh, and the neighborhood raccoon has awakened from his slumbers.

Raccoon tracks, up the porch steps and straight for the garbage can to the left.

 

Nothing in the garbage can, then to the door to see if anyone is home. Then back down the steps.

 

The snowpack is still below average.  The latest article I read said “68% of normal”.  I always take issue with calling it “normal”.  “Average” is the correct word, as the weather is never normal.  Statistically, Colorado weather spends most of it’s time in the extremes.

I tend to think the drought is over.  Although we’re not going to make up for winter’s deficit of precipitation, it seems like spring is a little wetter than it was last year.  This gives me hope that maybe there will be wildflowers this year.

Looking towards the mountains last week, from the flatlands, somewhere between Longmont and Berthoud, Colorado. Smoke from controlled burning is visible.

The media is exclaiming in dramatic fashion about the upcoming fire season being severe.  It’s really too early to tell.  But in any case, after 100+ years of fire suppression coupled with more people living in the forested areas, the fire seasons are always going to be severe.   And it’s going to continue to get worse regardless of the weather.  Fire is a natural function of the ecosystem.

I’m still running the two businesses, electronic engineering and pinball/jukebox repair.  Neither is particularly prosperous right now, in spite of working days and evenings.  It hasn’t left me much time for the things I enjoy like hiking and photography.  In the upcoming week, when I calculate my taxes, I’ll crunch some numbers to see how sustainable it is.  My gut is telling me that it’s not.  I don’t know where I’d find the time to add a third source of income.

 
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Posted in Observations

 

A Personal Hell

14 Feb

As I mentioned here, I’m traveling around the state a lot, repairing jukeboxes and pinball machines, probably much to the demise of my car.  I’ve been racking up the miles.

A recent trip to the western slope didn’t go very well.

The first thing that went wrong was that I had left home without the contact info for the people I was visiting, no phone numbers or addresses.  I was nearly an hour away when I made the realization.  I had no choice but to turn around and go back home and fetch them.  Those senior moments are getting more frequent.

Four hours later I was in Aspen, Colorado to work on a pinball machine from 1965.  This was probably the highlight of the trip.  I got that working nicely, rewarded myself with one of my favorite restaurants in Carbondale, El Horizonte (a Mexican/El Salvadoran seafood restaurant), then spent the night in a motel in Glenwood Springs.

The next day I went to Fruita to work on a jukebox.  The jukebox was being restored cosmetically, but needed some electromechanical work.  That didn’t go very smoothly.  While I fixed a lot of things, by the time I left 8 hours later, it still wasn’t working.  I was tired and hungry by that point, with a 5 hour drive in front of me to get back home.

The weather forecast was for light snow in the mountains.  Well, east of Glenwood Springs, it was heavy snow, the kind of snow where maybe you can see 25 feet in front of the car and the edges of the highway are not very defined.  Throw in some truck convoys and you’ve got a white knuckler.

I made it through the heaviest of snow.  At 10 pm, it was still snowing lightly when the engine died.  It was like someone turned off the key while I was climbing towards Vail.  I was able to pull to the side of the highway.  I opened the hood hoping to find an electrical connection that had come disconnected, or maybe snow accumulating someplace where it shouldn’t.  Nothing. I tried to restart the engine, which would sputter for 20 seconds then die again.

I called 911 and told them of my predicament.  About 10 minutes later a State Patrol car pulled up behind me with his lights flashing.  He stayed in his car.  About another 10 minutes later, the tow truck arrived and loaded me up.

It turned out the next exit was only 100 yards up the highway, but with the snow, I hadn’t been able to see it.  I was towed to the gas station located at the bottom of the exit.  For that very short trip, I was charged $130.

Being late at night, there was no mechanic on duty.  So I had no choice but to stay at the Holiday Inn another block away.

For those not familiar with Colorado, Vail is the second most expensive place in the state, behind Aspen.  It’s where the one-percenters go to hang out and ski (Aspen is for the 0.1%).

The Holiday Inn was the least expensive place to stay, and that was $180 per night.  By comparison, I spent $45 for the motel in Glenwood Springs the previous night.  After some pleading and sharing my predicament about the broken down auto, the kind man behind the counter reduced the rate to $110.

The next morning I met the mechanics at the West Vail Shell station.  Rude they were.  All probably related and all from Russia or the Ukraine.  They refused to work on my car if I was anywhere near it. It was parked outside in the lot, where the tow driver left it.   There was no place else to be, no waiting room, etc.  I almost punched one guy when he got up in my face about it.  But they had me by the balls and I bit my tongue.  It’s not like it would have been easy to take my car someplace else.   After several hours, I finally got an estimate for $550.  It was the fuel pump. It had to be ordered from Denver, wouldn’t arrive until mid afternoon, and wouldn’t be replaced until early evening.

Well, at least I didn’t have to spend another night there.  Besides there were no rooms available.

One of the slightly friendlier mechanics suggested I spend the day and go skiing or shop and dine in Vail.  I didn’t laugh in his face, but I was laughing inside at the absurd insinuation that I could afford any of that.

I moped back to the Holiday Inn where I had already checked out.  I needed to kill about 6 hours.  I asked if there was a movie theater around, and was told “yes” and to hop on a shuttle which would take me to Vail Village.

The movie theater in Vail is not just any movie theater.  Each seat is nearly 3-feet wide, comfortable with a dining table attached to it (like a very deluxe version of a school desk/chair).  The protocol is to arrive early, order drinks and dine while watching the previews and some short featurettes, with the goal of finishing up by the time the main feature starts.  So I had the Cobb Salad and watched Lincoln.

After the movie, I walked around Vail.  Lot’s of high-end stores for furs, jewelry, skis, clothing and home decor.  I rode the free public transportation back to the west end and overheard many conversations of the locals.  The woman next to me on the bus was on her phone trying to get into a dinner and was claiming she had $7,500 for it (probably one of those fundraisers). All of the wasteful materialism, snob shop keepers, contrasted with my financial struggle, my broken down car, and snotty mechanics,  left me feeling very empty.

On the bus, I got the call that my car was ready.  And not unexpectedly, those lying sacks of shits (officially AST Mechanics, Inc.) charged me nearly $700 for the repair, quite a bit above the estimate.

I got in the car without even taking the time to buckle my seat belt.  I couldn’t get out of Vail fast enough.

 

 

 
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Posted in Experiences, Observations

 

Yelp can suck my…

12 Feb

Dear Yelp:

Thank you for filtering 75% of the reviews for my new business, and insulting my customers by essentially accusing them of falsely posting reviews.  It’s embarrassing to me as a business owner when they approach me and ask why their review was filtered.  They think that I was the one who filtered it.

I conclude that Yelp is of no help to anyone.  Your filter is a piece of shit.

Sincerely,

Randy

 

 

 
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Posted in Observations

 

Pinball Junction

10 Feb

The Winter doldrums have set in.   Although, unlike other parts of North America, there hasn’t been much winter here.  There has been biting wind, but very little snow.  We’ve only had two snow storms this year that have delivered more than a few inches each.

California Zephyr photographed last Sunday, next to South Boulder Creek in Gilpin County.

Electronic engineering work has been slowing down.  I think this is due to a number of factors related to the changing economy.  No, I didn’t say “bad” economy like many do.  Our economy in this country is shifting from a manufacturing economy to a service economy.  Electronic engineering is closely tied to manufacturing.

I’ve been self-employed for 26+ years.  I smirk when people tell me that there’s no job security in being self-employed.  It’s been the longest lasting job I’ve ever had.

I specialize in working with small companies that can’t afford to have full-time engineers.  These small companies are continually being purchased by larger companies. With the big corporations getting bigger and off-shoring the manufacturing, many electronics engineering jobs are going overseas as well.

The other gradual change has been in the way services/commodities are marketed.  It seems like all marketing is consumer driven.  I haven’t found a useful business to business marketing channel.  Plus, I’ll freely admit, I’m an engineer, not a salesman.

Between the jukebox restorations I’ve done, my lifelong love of pinball machines, my friend Dave for hooking me up with some jukebox and pinball repairs, and my friend Randy who collects and restores pinball machines, I hatched an idea of a side business of repairing pinball machines and jukeboxes to supplement my fading engineering work.  This also fit the need to shift from a manufacturing field to a consumer service field.

There has been a resurgence in pinball over the past few years.  It’s the one thing from our childhoods that hasn’t been fully replicated on computer.   Pinball is too much a physical medium.  There is a huge home market for these old pins.  There are a lot of people buying and selling machines on Craigslist and E-bay.  And the support industry for parts and supplies is growing as well. Stern, one of the remaining pinball manufacturing companies from the 1990′s, as well as a couple of new companies, like Jersey Jack, are designing and producing new pinball machines.  (If I could get either of these companies to contract for my engineering services, well, that would be grand!)

I think the jukebox resurgence is over and done.  It peaked in the 1980′s.  But there are still a lot of jukeboxes from the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s around.  It seems like most of the jukeboxes from the 1940′s have gone to Europe.

When pinball machines and jukeboxes break, it’s not easy for the owners to load them up and take them someplace.  There is a need for someone to travel to the location of the machine to service it.  That is the niche I’m trying to fill.   I don’t believe there are enough broken pinball machines and jukeboxes to make this a full time job, but it’s slowly growing and keeping me busy two to three days a week.   Right now, I have enough engineering work to keep me busy the remaining days.

The one thing I don’t like about this new venture is the driving.  Eighty percent of my business is over an hour’s drive away.  It’s my highest overhead expense.  I’ve been out east past Elizabeth, Colorado.  I’ve been out west to Fruita, Colorado and north, to Ft. Collins and Greeley.   It seems a little odd to me that the location I’ve visited the least is the one with the highest population density is Denver.

And I already have a little horror story related to traveling, and I’ll share that in the next installment.

 
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Posted in Observations

 

Solstice Sunrise Hike

21 Dec

It’s been somewhat of a solstice tradition the past 20 years or so, to get up early, hike somewhere to watch the sunrise.

 

Before sunrise, the sun reflecting off the wave cloud

 

Before I moved to the mountains, the solstice hike had 6-20 people attending, followed by breakfast at a local eatery.  Now that I’m living in the mountains, the solstice hike has just me and breakfast is usually back at home.

Read the rest of this entry…

 
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Posted in Photography

 

More bread

16 Dec

I can make sourdough reliably now.  I’ve made three or four loaves now and they all pretty much look like this:

 

Sourdough

 

I’ve given some loaves away to the neighbors.

Today I experimented with a 6-grain bread of my own devising.  It was about one-third whole grains with the remainder white flour, sweetened with maple syrup.  The dough was a little too damp so the shape doesn’t look good, but it tastes wonderful and has a good texture.

 

Whole wheat, buckwheat, triticale, barley, oat, rye and flaxseed

 

 

 
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Posted in Creations

 

Artisan Bread (Loaf No. 7)

07 Dec

Since my last post, I received the book Bread Science in the mail, and I’ve baked two loaves of sourdough.

Loaf No. 6 was crap.  I didn’t bother taking any photos of it.

Loaf No. 7 was perfect in my eyes and in my mouth.

My sourdough starter and hot loaf (no. 7) just from the oven

The day that I received the book, I devoured it.  I was a bit disappointed with it.  There’s a lot of science but half of it doesn’t translate through to actually baking at home.  On the other hand, I was able to read between the lines and figure out what I’ve been doing wrong.  So, all in all, the book helped in spite of its holes.  Here’s what I’ve learned.

As I wrote in the previous post, my first mistake was not using a flour with a high enough protein content.  This I learned before I got the book.

My doughs have been too dry.  I tend to add flour during the kneading process to make it non-sticky.  Sourdoughs seem more sticky than other doughs I’ve worked with.  Water and salt are needed to make the gluten form.  In looking at the photos in the book, the author’s dough was pretty wet looking.  She wrote about sometimes needing a dough scraper to get the dough off of the board.

The “window” test is where you stretch the dough into a thin membrane and can see light through it.  I’ve known about the window test, but never successfully got a window.  Between the low protein flour and the dough being too dry, the window would always break.

Today I left a lot more moisture in the dough and kneaded it while it was sticking to everything.  I don’t know how much of difference this makes, but the author doesn’t add the salt until the kneading stage.  Today I did that as well.  And I got a good window!

One thing I’ve always lacked is “oven spring”.  This is when the dough expands in the oven.  Mine has never expanded.  It always stayed the same size as when it went into the oven.  I’ve tried steam and other remedies to no avail.  I think the primary reasons are what I’ve mentioned before.

One thing I learned from Loaf No. 6, is that the author’s oven temperature is way too high for 8300 feet elevation, even with steaming.

For Loaf No. 7, I had a large roasting pan sitting on the bottom of the oven, with about 1/4 inch of water in it.  I also spritzed the dough with water from a spray bottle before sticking it into the oven.  To get oven spring, you need to keep that outer layer of dough soft enough so it can expand.  This all happens in the first 10-15 minutes of baking.  Water, water, water! It’s the elevation because water evaporates so easily.

After 15 minutes I pulled the roasting pan out and let the bread continue baking another 20 minutes (total of 35 minutes for the boule).  My oven was at 375. I checked the internal temperature of the bread at 30 minutes and it was 170.  It should be around 180 or higher.  So, I let it go another 5 minutes.

At this elevation, water boils at 190.  I’m thinking if internal temperature of the bread is over 190, the bread is overcooked and dried out.

Good texture, good flavor, thin but very crispy crust.

 

This bread is so good, there’s nothing I need to improve.  And now that I have much better handle on the dough moisture while kneading,  it will be much easier to make in the future.

Sourdough bread takes a long time, but not much work.  I let it ferment for about 6 hours after kneading, punching down once.  Then let it rise for two hours once it was in the pie pan.   This sourdough starter seems to make more alcohol than CO2.  That was probably good because the dough kept moist during all that time.

Edited to add:  I just realized that Loaf No. 7 is actually Loaf No. 6.  I counted wrong.  But I’m not changing it.  Seven is lucky after all.

 
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Posted in Creations

 

Sourdough Bread

29 Nov

I’ve made four loaves of bread using the sourdough starter I got from Whole Foods.  Two of those loaves were actually a single loaf dough divided in two, one kneaded more than the other.  I’ll come back to why I was doing that in a moment.

 

Loaf #1 with distinctive hour glass design in the top.

 

Home baked bread

I’ve said it before, I love home-baked bread.  I’m also somewhat of a perfectionist, control freak, and an engineer. Combine that with something as variable and bratty as bread and it becomes an obsession to master it.  I’ve been baking bread regularly for 20 years and I’m still learning how to do it.

The overall procedure is a little different when making sourdough.  And sourdough starter seems to make the dough more sticky, confusing me when determining the proper balance between liquid and flours. All of this has me re-examining  bread making in general.  I’m living at 8300 feet in elevation, where the leavening power of either yeast or sourdough starter doesn’t have to be as strong.  I want to harness that advantage.

Loaf number 1 had great sour flavor, but it was a little dense and dry.

The next loaf I made, I decided to divide in two.  I left one fairly sticky.  For the other I added more flour and kneaded a little longer.  I baked them as rounds on a cookie sheet. The result:  the sticky one rose more and had a better texture, the opposite of what I expected.

Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo.  Friends arrived as the bread was coming out of the oven, and needless to say, there wasn’t much left by the end of the day.  One of those friends is another engineer.

But what about the science?

I said, “Mike, there are so many contradictions between science & engineering and cookbooks, it leaves me very frustrated.  It seems like so many things in the realm of cooking are handed down without really understanding why it is we do certain things.  Take for example the common rule that if you bake in a glass pan, you lower the oven temperature by 25-50 degrees.  Why is that?  Glass is an insulator compared to a metal pan, why don’t we increase the temperature to make up for the thermal resistance of glass?”

Mike looked at me while he thought up an answer.  He threw out a guess, but added he didn’t know.

I said, “Here’s another one.  If water boils at 190 degrees at this elevation, why does the Joy of Cooking say to increase the oven temperature at high elevations.  That would make the water boil out of the bread even faster!”

Mike said from his experience, there is a lot of technique used in making foams, and bread is just another form of foam, and some of those techniques are counter intuitive.  (It was a more detailed answer, but still didn’t directly answer the question, which I wasn’t expecting since I was simply venting.)

The next day I took to the internet and found more contradictions.  But I did stumble upon a book called Bread Science: the chemistry and craft of making bread.  Just what I need.  I ordered a copy and I hope it arrives soon.

I re-watched a saved copy of Alton Brown’s show Good Eats, wherein he makes bread.  If you’ve never seen an episode of Good Eats, Alton dissects the foods he makes and gives the viewers the associated history/scientific/engineering background.

Not all flours are created equal

One thing very important for bread is the protein content of the flour.  This is directly related to how much gluten the flour will make.

I’ve always used All-Purpose flour for my bread.  Sometimes I’ve added wheat gluten to give it a little boost, but the bread ends up too gummy.  Among All-Purpose flours, I’ve noticed big differences in how well they make bread dough.  Not all flours are created equal.

Everybody seems to agree that the better breads are made with flours with around 11-12% protein.   The All-Purpose flour I was using had 10% protein in it.  I went to the store found some that were as low as 8%.  The King Arthur Bread Flour had the highest at nearly 12.7%.  I picked up a bag of that, and a bag of the Bob’s Red Mill Organic Unbleached and Unbromated flour (protein is about 11.7%).  (You need a calculator to divide the number of grams of protein by the number of grams in the serving size.)

 

Loaf #4 has perfect texture, but lacked flavor

 

The next day I made Loaf Number 4 with the King Arthur flour.  The crumb (the inside meat of the loaf) had perfect texture for sourdough.

 

Nice texture for a sourdough. Firm, some bubbles -- a good sandwich bread. I've never been a fan mushroom shaped breads, I usually make round ones. But this will do for now.

 

However, the King Arthur flour had kind of weird smell to it, like mildew and old paint.  I checked the expiration date and it doesn’t expire for a couple of months, but I think it’s old.  The expiration on Bob’s flour is 2014, at least a year fresher.  So I think I’ll pick up another bag of King Arthur from a different store and see if has the same smell.   It might just be the natural flavor of a different strain of higher protein wheat that I’m not used to. In any case, the smell is hardly noticeable in the finished loaf, so I think the loaf is worth keeping.

The sourdough didn’t have a very strong flavor in this loaf, but that’s my fault.  I had put the starter in the refrigerator to slow down its metabolism because I wasn’t expecting to make another loaf so soon.

I’ve run across a term on the Internet — Artisan Bread Maker.  I might be one of those.  I think simple is better.  I make whole wheat bread the most.  Once I master the white sourdough, I want to make a whole wheat version.

More to come. I’m sure of it.

 

 
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Posted in Creations

 
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