Centerfield

Chicken Liver, taters, comfort food. Snuggle, watch TV. I should say organic chicken liver at only 2.49/lb.
Partner and I are dealing with too much BS this year.
I have a client who takes way too long to pay and she's dealing with her dysfunctional biotech company and sexist boss as well as the local jr hockey program in all of it's own dysfunctional glory. Her daughter's head coach, basically a man-child, and 2 asst coaches were kicked off other teams and for some reason found themselves on a AAA team they probably have no business coaching. Anyway we're anticipating fireworks as another parent will probably bring suit at some point. She's not only OCD-like but she used to put sailors before the mast in military courtmartials. Should be fun.

Unless they've developed a steel chicken using no carbon steel, all chicken livers are organic...

Just ribbin' ya--I know what the label means. Happily the practice of adding arsenic to chicken feed is dying out. (For "regular" chicken, believe it or not, megaproducer Tyson is the best for not accepting arsenic-fed chicken for processing. And organic chicken gets to you quicker, so there's somewhat less chance for bacterial contamination to flourish.) The best chickens I get come from my brother's coop. He calls me when a rooster gets too aggressive, and I go take care of the problem for him. ;-)

Also, free-range chickens lay the very best eggs. Do you know how pale and flavorless the yolks are on store eggs? Make scramled eggs with REAL eggs and they're not yellow, they're orange.

Sounds bad, Marcus. When I had my own a business I once made the mistake of making a big deal with somebody who went into receivership months later. Before, I thought, how fussy can I afford to be, when I'm small. Sigh.

Speaking of bad leadership choices, a nearby electric company created with LBJ's help and covering his old home has gone seriously corrupt. It makes all kinds of great stories for the Austin paper. And our roads are managed even worse than Brazil; Texas has a similar contract to build toll roads with the same Spanish company, but Brazil made companies bid for the toll ceiling, and worded the contract carefully so if they screw up they're out. Neither occurred to TXDOT.

I got (over?)ambitious-wise and tried making egg noodles today for the first time. They came out OK, but they took much longer to boil than I'd expected.

We got some free-range eggs. We'd been reading up about them in The Omnivore's Dilemma (good book), and were looking forward to trying them ourselves. BUT. We got them just, just before we moved, and never had a chance to touch them. And some bad management put us in a position where we had to throw them out, still untouched, when we moved. SIGH.

Why I pick candidates/clients carefully. Winners pay their bills. Losers, not so much.

I actually have a pretty good track record.
I'm pretty sure this guy will pay, it's the timeliness that sucks. Over the past 25 years I've only had two clients of the small potatoes variety stiff me, one for 4K and another, who should never have been in the business in the first place, stiff me for 1K. I was in a serious financial post-separation bind and really had few choices to deal with at the time. Given the nature of freelance work in the media business, that's not too bad. I prefer to work for large corporations like Intel, Symantec, Lockheed, Intuit, etc. They pay full rate, they usually pay via payroll service so that half my social security is paid. Plus the work is much more interesting. Wouldn't mind another Lockheed project like last year.
There is one small company I love working for and it's an old family ooperation. The father did industrial films in the 50's, 60's and 70's. The son picked up the business and he now does HD work. For longevity it is the gold standard. Just about every video business I knew in the Bay Area that started in the 80's is gone.

Inre organic chickens, beware,they too can suffer from the occasional bacterial content, and should always be cooked thoroughly.
They do taste so much better.

ALL birds should be cooked thoroughly. Medium rare is not an option with birds...being a bird-hunter I'm more aware of that than most. (All worship the meat thermometer!)

Wild and fresh-killed (or at least quick-frozen as soon as possible) tastes even better...pheasant season just ended a couple of weeks ago, and it was a good one. And there's 80 lbs or so of venison in the freezer. :-)

I cook all birds until the thermometer reads 190 deg F. In August 2005, I almost died of salmonella poisoning from eating undercooked chicken. I aint therefore cooking chickenand other game birds to anything less than 190 deg.
My GF complains about the meat chicken being overcooked and/or too dry, but, hey, youcan always put gravy or something over it to moisten it. Salmonella poisoning isnt fun.

Well, 190 is kinda overdoing it, but having met Sal I can understand being better safe than sorry. 165 is absolute minimum, and I'm a lot happier seeing the core reading around 175 to 180.

I've seen people shoot birds in the field and then NOT clean them and chill them at first opportunity. Shoot 'em in the morning and pitch 'em in the back of the truck and clean them later at home. Not me. That bird will be cleaned, rinsed, and iced as soon as possible.

I know you guys are computer geeks to a certain extent so here goes. I just bought Norton 360. Then two days later I recieved the "cumulative Security Update for Internet 7 for Windows XP (KB944533)". Suddenly, my web pages could not be viewed. At first, Microsoft said to unistall Norton and then reload. This did not work. I then spent hours with Norton unloading and reloading until it was discovered Norton had some corrupted files not detected by scanning. The firewall functions were compromised. Then after a lengthy unistall and reload my system seems to work. I'm posting this for those who might encounter the same problem. I am suprised the major third party security software makers and Microsoft don't have their act together more. Unistalling and reintalling disrupts alot. With updates coming as fast as bad weather, there should be a better way to coordinate programs. The security update above is designed to prevent remote control take-over of your computer.

Would a router help? Would security software other than Microsoft's fixes prevent this takeover if I didn't download update?? If one does not download every critical update the flags go off 24/7.

Just a reflection for the wonks out there.

All I'm sure of is that I banned Norton from my home-net computers long ago. Even when it works just right it's a resource hog. I use ZoneAlarm free edition and AVG free edition and some assorted free spyware scanners, and I keep them and XP-Pro SP2 updated. Nothing's gotten through to any of our units in ages, even with the kids doing their worst on the home network. All computers here are I built myself and all are on some version of XP SP2, Home or Pro. No problems with updates making any of it squirelly. (Knock on wood...)

Out of gratitude I've registered those feewares and pitched some money at them as voluntary donations. Still cheap and effective.