And why it was good.

That is not precisely why I am currently using the slow cooker to cook pork in a pool of root beer. But it is why I feel willing to write about it.

(The comments to online recipes always amuse me. They almost always follow the same pattern: “I loved this recipe, here’s how I changed it.” Sometimes the changes create an entirely different recipe. One of the comments for this one read, “I used beer instead of root beer.”)

Now, I’m not terribly good with names, and in my track-writing career I meet a lot of people who I don’t see enough for their names to stick. It’s entirely possible that I actually do know this person. We have four or five friends “in common” but they are all people I would consider public figures in the sport (i.e. significantly bigger names than me, coaches or broadcasters) with hundreds if not thousands of Facebook “friends”, so I can’t learn anything there.

The compounding problem is his profile photo, which is simply a photo of the infield of a track. I don’t even recognize which track, so it must be a stadium I haven’t visited. I certainly can’t pick out individual people in the photo. He might as well have put up a red-and-orange “Stand with Haiti” badge, which would tell me just as much about who he is.

So my suggestion is this: If you’re going to send friend requests to people who may reasonably have difficulty remembering that they met you, make sure your profile photo actually shows you somewhere. It doesn’t have to be a photo - I have at least two Facebook friends whose profile photos are illustrations, but when I saw them I thought, “Yup, I remember so-and-so.” The photo is certainly part of your communication and your presentation, but sometimes it’s the only part visible, and you should make sure you give it the tools to do what you ask of it.

I did some minimal research to figure out just what that meant, because, as you may have figured out, I’m a bit of a crank about some things, and it seems to me that a “partial” zero emissions vehicle is, in fact, not a zero emissions vehicle at all. It turns out, of course, that it’s a government designation born of the need to have something in between a Super Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle (I am not making this up) and a true Zero Emissions Vehicle. I think the idea behind the designation is that parts of the vehicle are zero emissions: it’s a partial (zero emissions vehicle), not a (partial zero) (emissions vehicle).

But it did have me wondering what a partial zero would look like.

I haven’t gone cold turkey on the machine, though; what I do is take a recipe that looks promising, run it through the dough cycle of the machine (which essentially just shuts off the cycle without baking it). Then I shift the resulting dough out of the machine and into the pan, let it rise a bit there, and bake in the oven.

My first loaf tasted great, but I mis-timed the rising and forgot to pre-heat the oven. While the oven warmed, the dough ballooned, and the resulting loaf was a bit fluffier than we like. It was supposed to be sandwich bread, but today I used the last two slices to make the first and last sandwich with it. It made great toast, but ultimately

Tonight, I am trying pumpernickel for the first time, and so far it smells fantastic. (The fact that pumpernickel involves using coffee instead of water was something which had been hidden from me until today. Astounding.) I didn’t give it a whole lot of rising time, but it has risen nicely in the oven. In fact, I told A after I pulled it out, it’s probably going to taste horrible because it’s the best looking loaf of bread I’ve ever made.

In other kitchen tinkering, my ever-evolving granola formula has expanded to accommodate barley flakes. I tried rye flakes, but they were too hard. I have to imagine the miller grinding rye flour put some serious weight on that stone.

In other words, I’m getting robo-called about an election I can’t vote in. (I’m registered in New York now.)

But the absolute best, in my mind, is a very small section of an obscure little street in Watervliet which has four or five sections of what appear to be marble sidewalks.

* In discussion today with another runner and resident of my town, he told me that the official town attitude towards sidewalks is, “You live here in the country. If you want sidewalks, you should live in the city.” I guess that explains our atrocious walkability scores.

ETA, 19 January: The Times Union on sidewalks in our area. Siena’s recommendations would all be great for running.

Anyway, due to reasons beyond my control, I have 47,7xx frequent flyer miles on United. I have loathed United Airlines for over a decade and for a while refused to participate in any “loyalty” program of theirs, but the first time I went to Japan someone else was booking the flights and I decided it would be silly to pass up that many miles. Two Asian trips and a few miscellaneous European and/or domestic flights later, I’ve stacked up some credit for a service I don’t really like.

So I figured I’d use some of it on upgrades for A and me on this flight. It’s 15,000 miles per person per leg of the roundtrip, so we could do one way or the other but not both. I’ve requested upgrades before, and generally haven’t gotten them, so I figured I’d request for the outbound leg and if we didn’t get it I’d request again for the return.

Hold that idea, then: I asked United, “Based on all this business I’ve done with you, I’d like to take you up on your offer to make my flight a little more pleasant.”

Flash forward to today when I try to check in online. The second screen I see says, in effect, “Please confirm your upgrade method.” I am shown menus next to each of our names asking for such a method, but there are only two options, the null option and using “500-mile certificates”. (These certificates are sold in packs of 4 for about $315. This upgrade would cost us 12.) I try selecting that option and am delivered to a page where United asks me for ~$900 to complete the upgrade. I go back and try not selecting that option, but I get a warning box telling me I need to select a method.

This is frustrating me. I go back out and log in to my frequent flyer account. I verify the number of miles in my account and the number needed for an upgrade. I go to my itinerary which shows we’re already confirmed for an upgrade on the outbound leg. (So why can’t I check in?) I click around trying to find a setting which will let me check in.

Finally I call United’s 800 number. I am willing to bet 30,000 frequent flyer miles that the person I spoke to was geographically located south of China and east of Pakistan, not that that matters. I explained that I wanted to check in but that I was unable to get past the upgrade screen. He says several things which are confusing to me—he speaks often of 15,000 miles, which worries me because I’m not interested in one of us being upgraded without the other. He talks about the miles being already deducted, which doesn’t look right to me; I’m still showing 47,7xx on the website. Finally he puts me on hold for a few minutes and I listen to Gershwin music for a while.

When he gets back on, he tells me that because I just created a request for an upgrade on the return leg, he can’t deduct the miles for the outbound leg. Apparently he can’t remove the return leg request either. And we can’t do online check-in, we’ll have to check in at the airport.

So, as a direct result of that thought above—me taking United up on their offer to make the flight a little more comfortable—we’ll have a little more time at the airport in bureaucratic purgatory sorting out just where the hell we’re supposed to be sitting.

So to sum up, I asked United, “Based on all this business I’ve done with you, I’d like to take you up on your offer to make my flight a little more pleasant,” and they replied, “Sure! Here, let us make your flying experience more confusing and stressful!”

Is anybody surprised these guys need government bailouts and bankruptcy protection every decade or so?

The recipe I use is Remarkable Fudge from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. (N.B. not every edition of the cook book has this recipe, but the recipe is available online if you look hard enough.)

I wrote up a pretty thorough run-through of making the fudge about two years ago. It’s all still true.

I don’t know the actual history but I’ve probably been doing this close to 20 years. I’ve certainly made more than fifty batches by now. I figured out the rough raw materials for this year’s four batches, and came up with:

• a bit less than ten pounds of sugar (16 cups)
• almost a half gallon of evaporated milk
• two pounds of butter
• a half gallon of marshmallow creme (Fluff, if you can get it)
• three pounds of various chocolate-esque chips (semi-sweet chocolate, white chocolate, and peanut butter, this year)
• and a quarter cup of vanilla

I’m a little vague on the weight for the sugar because while I know I used 16 cups, I poured two five-pound bags into the canister in the course of work and may have wound up with more in the canister than I started with.

I’m not going to go on at length about the show, given that Doug Rice has already done so in great detail. I was a little underwhelmed by the size of the crowd, and I tend to agree with Doug that Josh is a better show when he’s not in an all-seated venue, but the tradeoff Saturday seemed to be that the Troy Music Hall is an astoundingly ornate and impressive venue in both appearance and sound. Josh and his band were clearly thrilled to be playing there even if most of us did spend the show sitting down passively watching. Also on the plus side was the full-size Steinway which, I think, affected the set list somewhat.

I’ve mentioned before that I always leave Josh’s shows with some new favorite songs, and this time I’m looking forward to a new album, in particular “The Curse” and “Another New World.”

The most recent culprit (or victim, I suppose) was trapped by the fact that my first name is often a family name. The Albany County Board of Elections, or some computer working for it, decided that my middle name was my first name, and that my given name and my family name were, in fact, a hyphenated family name. (Not PJM but J P-M.)

Needless to say, I’m getting this straightened out before the next election.

When I tried that just now, I was met with a page headed “Update your Web Browser,” complete with mangled formatting, assuring me that I needed an up to date browser to meet BofA’s security requirements. Amid the garbled text on the page was a list of supported browsers, including, for Macintosh, “Firefox 2 and higher.”

I am using Firefox 3.5. I have to say, if Bank of America doesn’t think 3.5 is higher than 2, I’m not surprised we have a financial crisis in this country.

(“Safari 1.0 and higher” is also on the list, and Safari 4.0.x worked just fine, so at least some parts of the number line appear to be in order.)

I only just noticed that the design on the box includes a small photo of a similarly-shaped Belkin wireless router, with the heading, “Consider Wireless” and caption, “Extend your network to different floors and rooms—without cables.”

The thing I find remarkable about this is that to someone picking this box up in a store, the message is, “No, not this one, try that other router.” I’m sure the price for the wireless router was higher (and possibly the margin for Belkin as well) but the idea of putting text on product packaging which actively encourages potential customers to buy something different feels backward to me.

However, after today’s frustrating GPS experience (which essentially burned most of the daylight hours available for caching), the next item on my list was picking up a book I had ordered at Market Block Books. (For the record, that book would be William Kennedy’s O Albany!.) And I have to admit I left with what might be more accurately described as a stack of books.

I even forgot to use the Booksense gift card I have.