Useless Conversation

[rattran]

Bad pizza is bad, good pizza is awesome. And I enjoy all the varieties if they're done well. Except cracker crust. Fuck that shit.

[NowhereMan]

I cannot find a copy online so I'll just contribute the concept of a pizza I saw advertised in Thailand years ago that was a 3 course meal. They had prawns stacked up in the middle you could have as your appetiser, the middle of it was 'normal' pizza and the crusts were made of cookie dough supplied with a jam/jelly dip for dessert.

Personally I keep trying and failing to do really good pizza at home. Part of it is my own issue with getting enough gluten in the dough, so the base just doesn't stretch nicely enough, which I think is just from insufficient kneading? My fiance has the same ingredients and seems to have more success than me. The other issue is lack of a proper oven or even a pizza stone means the base in the centre doesn't get cooked fully by the time the crusts and the toppings are done. Improving my dough technique is a pain though as it never seems worthwhile just making enough for a single pizza but I don't eat it that often and so I'm only attempting it every 3-4 months.

[Khaldun]

Use bread flour--that helps with the gluten issue. Go light on the toppings. Put a cookie sheet in the oven at high temperature for 10-15 minutes before putting the pizza--take the dough you've already rolled out fully, put it on the hot cookie sheet the second it comes out, and then *flip the dough after 5 seconds or so. Then put the toppings on as fast as possible and get it back in the oven.

[Mosesandstick]

I've found the grill and fry method much more reliable than using a pizza stone. A home oven can get nowhere near the temperatures you want for pizza, even if you try to use stones. Use a cast iron pan, assemble your pizza, cook (dry fry) it on the hob to cook the dough, then grill the pizza on the top to finish it off.

[Hawkbit]

Disagree on the bread flour. It tends to make a crust too crisp and hard. The single biggest upgrade we made was importing Caputo 00 flour. It changed the game for us, making a chewy crust with all outer parts of the crust crisp but also tender right beneath.

We use a stone and our oven goes to 500; with convection an on it’s closer to 525-550. I wish we had hotter but what we have is good.

We also have grilled pizza successfully but it does take on a different taste and doesn’t come out quite like bakery pizza.

Edit: Batastonni cup and char pepperoni is amazing stuff.

[IainC]

Pizzas are the third worst type of sandwich after hotdogs and raviolis.

[NowhereMan]

Of course, they're open face. The worst form of sandwich. I should note that terrible open face sandwiches shouldn't be confused with amazing sandwiches that have additional toppings on the outside such as a croque monsieur or eclair.

[Samwise]

And there are sauceless pizzas -- aka Pizza Bianca.

I did think of white pizza (I'm a fan), but I believe it typically has some kind of sauce (olive oil or cream based rather than tomato based).  If it's just cheese on bread with absolutely nothing else you're bordering on "open faced grilled cheese" territory IMO.   

[Rasix]

That's just an Italian version of a cheese crisp or perhaps a pre-folded quesadilla.

[Trippy]

And there are sauceless pizzas -- aka Pizza Bianca.

I did think of white pizza (I'm a fan), but I believe it typically has some kind of sauce (olive oil or cream based rather than tomato based).  If it's just cheese on bread with absolutely nothing else you're bordering on "open faced grilled cheese" territory IMO.   

Yeah Pizza Bianca usually has olive oil drizzled on it. If it has a "white sauce" as well it's usually besciamella.

[NowhereMan]

It's gone now but Netflix's Sabrina managed an accidental Alan Partridge. The cast tweeted out pictures of themselves in gory make up titled 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'.

[Khaldun]

00 flour is a good idea, if I can stick to the pizza derail. I wonder a bit at a mix of 00 and bread flour as magic.

[Sky]

Last night I fell asleep in the recliner. Woke up to the gloriousness of Mr Pickles on tv. Now I have to watch the series, it's amazing.

[rattran]

Don't miss the followup Momma Named Me Sheriff

[Sky]

FFS looks like I'm going to have to get in the arena with Spectrum tech support. Been getting, eh, brownouts? for lack of a better term: throughput dropping to 0.xMbps for a bit, then ramping back to my usual 20ish Mbps. Uploads generally seem to stay solid at 5Mbps.

Since I have replaced all the equipment in the house with my own stuff (Arris SB6141/Archer C9/tivo), I fully expect them to blame that and do nothing.

God I fucking hate dealing with these tards, I've dealt with 2 competent (not good, COMPETENT) techs in the 20 years I've been a customer (personally and professionally...luckily they are only failover service at work and I work with a solid regional telco). And I've already given up on getting any support for the tivo, the tuning adapter went out last year and all I get are when I ask anyone for support.

[Trippy]

Sounds like a bad cable somewhere. I had a similar problem with my Comcast connection when I first moved here and eventually after they replaced some external cables (can’t remember which one(s)) the problem went away.

[Rasix]

That must be an uphill climb trying to convince them it's something wrong on their side.

Cox already f'd me over once when I went back to cable (holy shit Hulu was terrible).

"I had to change the cable in your junction box, you had it hooked up to the wrong one"
"I didn't change it between having cable then and having cable now. That's impossible"
*shrug*
*$100 charge shows up on bill later*

The customer service rep was really combative over the charge too. Christ I wish there was a viable alternative in this area that a) Doesn't cost more while also b) just as much of a pain in the ass. It would be nice if Cox and Comcast had to directly compete here, but their coverage lines are more arbitrarily drawn that congressional districts.

[Chimpy]

FFS looks like I'm going to have to get in the arena with Spectrum tech support. Been getting, eh, brownouts? for lack of a better term: throughput dropping to 0.xMbps for a bit, then ramping back to my usual 20ish Mbps. Uploads generally seem to stay solid at 5Mbps.

Since I have replaced all the equipment in the house with my own stuff (Arris SB6141/Archer C9/tivo), I fully expect them to blame that and do nothing.

God I fucking hate dealing with these tards, I've dealt with 2 competent (not good, COMPETENT) techs in the 20 years I've been a customer (personally and professionally...luckily they are only failover service at work and I work with a solid regional telco). And I've already given up on getting any support for the tivo, the tuning adapter went out last year and all I get are when I ask anyone for support.

If your upload speeds are fine during the same window where the download speeds are junk, sounds like they are either over-provisioned on the CMTS or maybe have a traffic shaping problem.

[Hammond]

FFS looks like I'm going to have to get in the arena with Spectrum tech support. Been getting, eh, brownouts? for lack of a better term: throughput dropping to 0.xMbps for a bit, then ramping back to my usual 20ish Mbps. Uploads generally seem to stay solid at 5Mbps.

Since I have replaced all the equipment in the house with my own stuff (Arris SB6141/Archer C9/tivo), I fully expect them to blame that and do nothing.

God I fucking hate dealing with these tards, I've dealt with 2 competent (not good, COMPETENT) techs in the 20 years I've been a customer (personally and professionally...luckily they are only failover service at work and I work with a solid regional telco). And I've already given up on getting any support for the tivo, the tuning adapter went out last year and all I get are when I ask anyone for support.

Uh you are only getting 20 / 5? Most areas they have upgraded to 50 for free if not faster. If they haven't upgraded you then I imagine the cable / headend stuff in your area is pretty old and potentially the source of the issue. When was the last time you asked them about upgrading?

[Khaldun]

I think my favorite was the Comcast guy who showed up about 10 years ago at our old house and wanted to know if I knew how to connect to the cable line and how get the cable into the house and how to connect it to the TV and cable box once that was done. Not kidding, he asked me if I could do every step of what he was doing because he wasn't so sure how it all worked.

[Chimpy]

When I was unemployed 10 years ago, I applied (and interviewed) for a technician job with Comcast.

They never called me back after the interview, I am pretty sure it was because I actually knew how to do most of the job already and they knew I would be looking for better pay than what they wanted to offer.

[calapine]

Don't know where to put this, thought it was neat:

[Sky]

Uh you are only getting 20 / 5? Most areas they have upgraded to 50 for free if not faster. If they haven't upgraded you then I imagine the cable / headend stuff in your area is pretty old and potentially the source of the issue. When was the last time you asked them about upgrading?

AHAHAHAHAahahaa....ahem. Sorry.

Yeah, I was amazed to see my speeds bump from 10Mbps to 20 a few years back. We're a small city that's basically a bedroom community in the rust belt. I didn't even have cable tv until 2001 when I moved into the city proper, it wasn't run to the outer district, let alone full rural.

I did immediately check the physical line, as Trippy suggested. I've done tree trimming to remove limbs hanging on the line, but there is one limb there that is a bit too taut on the electric service for me to mess with - and national grid considers it my problem, thanks...meanwhile they took about 20 trees off the right-of-way of my neighbor's house for no reason (the lines run on the other side of the road, these were pines and firs, no impact to service)...but ironically they left the tree on the end that's interfering with my service line. Anyway, the cable run is laying on top of that but I didn't see any friction damage visible from the ground.

We've got a few new owners in the neighborhood, so I'm sure bandwidth is far more stressed. But this cropped up late last week, suddenly, and has been inconsistently consistent since. So I'm prone to dismiss usage, as the model should be fairly steady as of last month (when we added the last new owner to the block).

There is more I could be doing to get this fixed, but honestly my past experiences with the cable company have been so abysmally frustrating that I keep putting off what is, historically speaking, a 98% chance of ruining my day(s) and burning my hourly time off in the process. It's bad enough to work with shitty vendors all day at work when I'm being paid to put up with their unprofessional bullshit (like the guy who tells me to contact him at my earliest convenience and then I don't hear from him for a week or the one who wants to set up a meeting for his shitty work review but doesn't respond when given availiability to choose from, etc...it's constant).

[Chimpy]

A cable node is usually several hundred addresses, not just a block of a few houses. And the bandwidth saturation happens at the node, not over the cable lines (with 20Mb/s it would take literally hundreds of people going full tilt to even get close to the bandwidth available using QAM).

[Cyrrex]

I just measured my connection at 934 down and 120 up.  What level of hell do you people even live on.

[Chimpy]

I just measured my connection at 934 down and 120 up.  What level of hell do you people even live on.

552 down, 161 up.

[Hawkbit]

I just measured my connection at 934 down and 120 up.  What level of hell do you people even live on.

America built and designed it from scratch, never bothered to upgrade it. Many parts of the world have significantly better quality connection.

[Sky]

I just measured my connection at 934 down and 120 up.  What level of hell do you people even live on.

Dude 20Mb is fine for 4k streaming. How long is your daily commute? How much did your house cost? What is your current debt burden?

"Slow" Internet is a fine trade-off for quality of life in many other areas. Not sure if I could fully go back to pots/dial-up, but it's by no means a deal-breaker for me if it was a good house in a great location for a reasonable price. At this rate, I'll likely welcome it in a few years, biggest downside would be downloading games. Oh no, more time for music and art.

 

The forbidden fruit is hanging nearby, though...there is a VZ fiber line running down the county route 4 blocks from my house. The library is contracted for 20 up/down and I just tested it at 90 for both (they gave us a complimentary connection when laying the fiber). 4 blocks but will never be built out into the neighborhoods.

I went through this with Time-Warner years ago when I lived in the country with antenna/pots. They wouldn't lay a 100 yard run unless I paid for it, they said it would run me about $1k. I asked if I got a rebate until I hit the 1k, they said nah, so yeah, nah. 20 years later they ran it down the entire road (I'm guessing with tax money for building out broadband). Still, that "$1k" investment would've brought in at least $300/mo, which introduced me to pants-on-head economics of broadband.

If VZ would just penetrate the hoods, I'd cancel Spectrum the very same day. Need to bust the monopolies.

edited to add: btw my speeds are as high as they are at home entirely due to my rewiring and using my own gear mentioned above. My speeds almost quadrupled over the original install using Time-Warner's modem and CCA with a couple barrels and a split.

[Chimpy]

Cyrrex lives in the happiest country in the world, I would bet his quality of life under pretty much every criteria is better than any of the rest of us.

Evil socialist bastard.

[Cyrrex]

Cyrrex lives in the happiest country in the world, I would bet his quality of life under pretty much every criteria is better than any of the rest of us.

Evil socialist bastard.

If we just stick to the subject at hand, though, pretty much everyone in this country has access to high speed internet, even those who live in the sticks (and there a lots of those people).  I pay about 50 bucks a month for it.  And they just keep pumping the speed up for no additional cost. 

Socialism really blows.  Always upgrading the infrastructure and other stupid bullshit.

[Rasix]

867 down but only 34 up. I feel like checking whether this cap is part of the package. WiFi and ethernet were basically the same speed up.

[Sky]

So we've had a little cat I've noticed in the neighborhood. Nothing new, we have a couple schools and a nursing home nearby, before my vet started a NPO to catch & release ferals (spay/neuter, shots) we had a TON of ferals.

This guy seems different, though. It feels odd to say I've had enough experience with domestic and feral cats to get a feel for the difference, heh. But it do be like that sometimes.

Anyway, he crept across my patio at lunch, so I pspsps'd and slow blinked him a bit, he came over an prairie dogged to look into the room. I grabbed a bag of Temptations and he backed off. Cracked the door and he bolted to the property line as I shook out a small mound of treats. I closed the door and he came over, scoped out the situation and ate them. I tried a bowl of fresh water, but he didn't seem interested, but kept hanging out. So I slowly opened the door used my cat whisperer skills to slowly calm and reassure him while kneeling, keeping one hand extended for him to sniff. He almost immediately made as if to bonk my hand and then ran off, but eventually he let me pet him a little bit. He then (quite comically) gingerly stepped into the house, ran back out, repeat several times.

By then he was pretty calm, relatively speaking, so I gently picked him up when he was in full body lean on me. A bit of panic, but he seemed ok otherwise. The fiancee kinda spooked him (I don't think he knew she was there, she's quiet), so I put him down and he kinda freaked because the door was closed, tore through the house and launched into door's window...so yeah, I let him out again. I shook out another bunch of noms and closed the door, he came back over and finished them, sniffed at and tasted the water but then went back to the fenceline, where he bathed a little and then went out front to sit in the sun.

His fur was in good shape and though he was small for a male, he didn't seem malnourished. No collar. On the other hand, he exhibited spraying behavior (but I didn't smell/see any secretion) when he first approached. It's like he splits the middle, with features of both ferals and strays; except for the clear humanization, he's had ear scritches before. But I don't know how a small male housecat would survive so long and look so healthy, in the woods with a small but significant predator level (raptors, strays, coyotes though they have waned lately).

My fear is that my next-door neighbor's widow abandoned it when she went to stay with family in Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago. I know most of the local cats and he's not one from a house that lets theirs out.

[Velorath]

Sounds like you’re having a bit of an I Am Legend moment there.

[Sky]

I'd just adopt the little dude, but I don't want an outdoor cat or a 'project' (after fostering lil Hams last spring, he was kind of a total pain in the ass). After Bart died, I swore next time I'd get two bonded cats to keep each other company and keep me from having no cat when one died, I mean here we are 4 1/2 years later and I still don't have a cat...

It's hard to find out where he's coming from, I've tried tracking him a bit but one lady on my block has 3 or 4 cats she lets out during the day, so there are tracks everywhere. And the new construction house 2 over has a nice open garage that has become the cat hangout.

I just want to make sure he has a home and doesn't freeze or starve this winter.

[rattran]

You could always make or buy a shelter box for the porch. I have this and a heated dog bowl of water on the back deck for the critters, including the elderly outdoor cat our neighbor left behind when he moved last year. People suck.