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Christmas leftover mélange recipe

A blender, often used once right after Christmas, and thereafter used to fill space in the back of the bottom cupboard
A blender, often used once right after Christmas, and thereafter used to fill space in the back of the bottom cupboard

This recipe is not only an excellent way to finish up the endless Christmas leftovers, but also great for trying out the blender you unwrapped two days ago.

  1. Add some leftovers to the blender jar: cold, slimy turkey meat, dried-up mashed potatoes, and veggies with the good ones picked out (leaving mainly Brussels sprouts).
  2. If you have any gravy left, add that, but realistically all you’ll have is a gallon of cranberry sauce. Add that with a deep sigh of resignation.
  3. Carefully measure 1 cup of rum-and-eggnog, gulp it down, then put the rest into the blender.
  4. If you have any fruit cake or short bread you can optionally add them or you could keep them until next year. They’ll be completely inedible by then, but nobody will notice, since they’re never actually eaten.
  5. Purée until smooth. If you need more liquid, add the tears of young children who didn’t get exactly what they wanted for Christmas.
  6. Decant the mixture into a large, disposable cup, and throw it vigorously at your neighbour’s garish lights-and-sounds Christmas lawn display — it’s best served at Santa’s head, but Rudolf or Frosty are reasonable substitutes.

After the overwhelming merriment of the holiday season, a large mug of this mélange of Christmas cheer can bring relaxation and smug satisfaction as you peer between the curtains at your confused neighbours.

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Stanley Queue

This is a little vignette from about ten years ago that I found lurking on my hard drive today. I can’t remember whether I’ve posted this one already, but it’s silly and odd, so why not?

Caffeine makes things so much clearer. Just enough so that I can feel that extra little boost. I get a kind of cold energy inside. It helps me focus. It also helps me with my special talent.

I haven’t told anyone else about my talent, and I’d rather not reveal my name just yet. Sometimes I go by the name Stanley Q. That’s my nom de plume.

Actually, I use that nom de plume a lot. I think it’s really nice to live under a nom de plume. If you’ve ever played Second Life, you’ll know the feeling. When I’m Stanley, I can be someone else and take a break from being me.

Stanley is actually quite a bit taller than I am. I think the advantage of height is a real boost to the ego. He’s confident. He’s strong. He likes latin dancing. I can’t latin dance, myself, but Stanley loves to salsa.

Stanley’s confidence is really something. Sometimes he’ll make a reservation at a restaurant, and when they ask him what name it’s under, he’ll simply say, “Stanley”. A simple, bold statement of fact. “Stanley”. He likes to make a reservation even if he’s not actually going to the restaurant. Just for the thrill of saying his name out loud.

“I’d like to make a reservation for two at six o’clock, please,” he’ll say.

And they’ll say, “Certainly, sir. Under what name?”

“Stanley”. And they write it down, believing with certainty that, at six o’clock, Stanley and his companion will be dining.

Sometimes they ask Stanley for a last name, and he says it with such certainty. “Queue,” he says.

Continue reading “Stanley Queue”

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My hard-and-fast, tried-and-true, after-the-fact rules

In my long and glorious career writing user manuals, I’ve adopted many rules to ensure that my work is absolute top-quality. They’re kind of like the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition in Star Trek, only my rules aren’t numbered, and I usually only remember any given rule after I’ve violated it. So in actual practice, their actual application is much like, “Oh, crap, not again,” followed by panicked scrambling.

Examples:

  • Never publish first-thing in the morning. Your brain in the morning is as agile a new-born deer wobbling around on spindly legs: you’re going to fall flat frequently and often. In practice, this means making such wonderful screw-ups as publishing the Portuguese version with a German cover.
  • Never say “no hurry” to your subject matter expert. If you ask an SME a question and imply that they have at least a week to get back, you will never hear from them again. Instead, tell them you need their feedback before the end of the day, and when they complain, grudgingly accept the next day instead. But before noon. Is this deceptive? Yes. Of course it is.
  • Never skip the spell-chick. Even when the pressure is high, always check the spelling; always scan the copy for typos. You really don’t want to publish a manual in which the product name is misspelled both on the title page and the running header.

I was reminded of these rules this morning while making coffee — a procedure that has its own similar set of rules. For example, don’t start the coffee machine without an urn or cup under it. I’ve broken that rule a few times. From this morning: a coffee press produces the best coffee when you use boiling water, not cold tap water. It also helps if you have ground coffee in it. My mug of cold tap water was refreshing, but not what I expected.

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Northern Voice 2011: Why am I going?

Months ago, I signed up for a conference that I knew nothing about for reasons that weren’t actually clear to me at the time. It was, admittedly, kind of an impulse buy. I’d heard of Northern Voice, I knew it was a conference for blogging and social media, but knew nothing about it beyond that. And though I’ve had this blog now since 2002 (see my archives), I’ve never thought to head out in the real world to connect with fellow bloggers and discuss the techniques, experience, and meaning of blogging. So the decision to attend Northern Voice 2011, my third conference of any kind, is a bit of a departure for me. My question now is this: Why am I going?

As a conference newbie, I have no idea what to expect when I get there, so I imagine I’ll figure out what it’s all about after I hang out for a bit. I’ll even try to Twitter my experience and “live blog” a little because that seems hip, and anyone who knows me will be familiar with exactly how hip I am. Maybe after a few hours of discussing blogging, discussing blogging meta-discussion, and meta-blogging meta-discussion, I’ll know why I’m there.

If you’re looking for me there, I’ll be the bald guy in the corner with a confused look and most likely the ONLY attendee not blogging/tweeting on an iPhone.

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Get my Cubicle Dweller books for nuthin’

As everyone knows, I’m a very famous* author of all kinds** of books. Until today, my writing was only available at my Cafe Press store or Amazon.com and only in ridiculously obsolete paper.

For those of you wanting to read my books Raised by Penguins and Cubicle Dreams without having to read them off pressed sheets of dried tree mush, I’m happy to now make them available as a PDF download:

To save to disk, right-click those links and choose Save Link As or similar.

If you have an iPad,… well first of all, I hate you,… but more importantly, you can use Calibre on your PC/Mac and Stanza on your iPad to copy it over for your reading pleasure. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, that method works as well, but the print is tiny.


* Not really.


** By “all kinds”, I mean two books made up of old blog entries, an unpublished novel, a published book on Mindstorms robotics, and countless instructional manuals.