Hamburger Helper Lasagna Cooking Instructions

I've created a new set of instructions for cooking Hamburger Helper lasagna that not only cuts the length of cooking time in half, but allows you better control over the tenderness of the noodles.

Step 1: Boil some water in a pot.

Step 2: Put the pasta in the water and begin browning the hamburger in a pan.

Step 3: Once the hamburger is browned, drain the fat and dump the milk and water into the hamburger pan, minus 1 cup of the water suggested on the box. Add the sauce powder and mix it all together.

Step 4: In the amount of time browning the hamburger took you, your pasta should be tender enough. Taste test a noodle. If it's done, drain the pasta, dump it into the hamburger pan, and mix it up.

Step 5: Don't wait for the sauce to thicken or for the noodles to cook, because it's done. Start eating!

Android Alarm Clock Issue

UPDATE: 7.1.1 seems to have fixed this issue for me.

NOTE: The purpose of this post is to inform. Hopefully the info contained will help some people to not miss work!

I've been having an issue with my phone's sound randomly cutting out. This issue was first noticed one morning when my alarms didn't have sound. Thank god the sound of my phone vibrating woke me up or I'd have missed work.

A bit of tech detective work brought up the fact that this wasn't just my alarm not working, this was my phone not playing sound at all.

I googled the problem and found that others are indeed having this problem, and not just with three same model phones. This further reinforces that it must be an Android OS issue.

I posted my experience on an Android forum. I will copy and paste that here:

I'm having the same issue on my Nexus 6p. Here's my experience:

When the issue mysteriously presents itself, my alarms don't have sound, my timers don't have sound, playing videos through my media app gives me an error claiming the app cannot play that file type, playing music doesn't work, YouTube videos don't have sound, my phone doesn't make the little blip noise when I lock and unlock it... Basically sound doesn't work on my phone. Period.

As a PC technician (but not an Android expert) I have, of course, instantly deduced that turning it off and on again fixes it. But it happens here and there, seemingly at random. I can always tell when my alarm won't work by listening for the blip sound when I lock my phone for the night.

I have a weird lingering feeling that this is somehow linked to Google Now's "Ok Google" detection. I think it happens as I use the voice detection more frequently. But I may be imagining correlation where there is none. It's hard to say since I have never directly seen what straight up causes it.

Whatever the case, this is certainly not the fault of any single app, this looks to me like a bug in the OS. 

I just updated to Nougat 7.1.1. No issues yet since the update. I saw nothing mentioning this issue in the patch notes, but I'm crossing my fingers that it got fixed somehow.

Star Wars vs Star Trek

I feel compelled to answer an age old question. Which is better? Star Wars or Star Trek?

Star Wars caters to the sci-fi and fantasy action lovers who aren't preoccupied with actual scientific theories and hypotheses. Classic battle between good and evil, plus a prophecy about a chosen one. Can't really go wrong. It's a story we're all familiar with, and it's an easy one to enjoy. The action keeps us engaged and gets us excited. We've seen it in Lord of the Rings too, albeit in a more consistent and detailed universe ;)

Star Trek caters to optimistic theoretical science lovers who want to explore the human condition and grapple with ethical questions of right and wrong, in the interests of creating a better future. It's about understanding ourselves better by seeing our behaviour in different contexts. It's about what our future could hold, ethically and scientifically. It's about relationships, diplomacy, personal growth, discovery, exploration, and learning how to help and understand others.

I think some of the only reasons these two universes are even compared is because they're both successful, both sci-fi, and their names are both 2 words and 2 syllables long, beginning with the word Star. Otherwise, really, there are certainly other sci-fi series that would make better comparisons.

You wouldn't compare Firefly to Star Wars, would you? But if Firefly were named Star Fire and Serenity had weapons, you'd probably start thinking about it ;P

So ultimately no, I disagree that either is "better" than the other. It's a matter of personal taste, and you're comparing two different genres of sci-fi to each other. Is comedy better than drama? Is sci-fi better than fantasy? Are grapefruits better than potatoes? The answer is determined by your own personal taste.

My Other Life?

I dreamed that I found an old crawlspace door somewhere that led to another room full of sticky notes and papers on the wall with memories and quotes from myself, written in my handwriting. It was like each note reflected a piece of a life I never had, retelling a story I had no memory of. Snippets, as though to jog my memory.

I looked at an open cabinet door to my left that was aimed at me as I crawled in. A note written in big letters, in my handwriting, read:

"Josh, read these messages. You want to remember. You need to remember. Remember who I am so you can remember who you were."

As I read that note and saw the other notes everywhere, I started to notice it was a familiar looking bedroom. I started to remember that I used to write reminders to myself on sticky notes all the time and leave them up on the walls, forgetting to take them down. I vaguely remembered writing the big note in a panic, terrified I would forget everything I was. Intense memories of some other life began pouring into my head. It was all so overwhelming I cried out, and as I cried out I woke up.

The memories are almost entirely gone now, but in the instant I woke up, I felt like something was made clear and something about myself made sense. But I can't remember what it was now.

Was this a past life I was remembering?
Were these memories I had blocked off from childhood?
Is this symbolic of my discovering my true self?
Did I make discoveries about myself a long time ago and shove it into my subconscious out of fear?
Are the memories from the other life I lived out in dream years ago?

Or is this just an intense dream, amidst a dry spell of remembering dreams, and it stands out because I haven't had one in a while...

Ignorant Tech Support

I purchased and downloaded Anno 1503 and it didn't run on my computer. The third party launcher simply did nothing when I clicked play, and the .exe file kept giving me 6 .dll errors when it tried to run it directly.

I didn't feel like diagnosing the problem myself, so I contacted the purchase site company tech support hoping they might have some insight. I submitted a ticket and attached pictures of the errors. They emailed me back with a very robotic looking list of all the things I already read from the FAQ on their website, despite the fact I told them in the ticket that I already went over the FAQ and tried all of them. I humored them and went down the list telling them the unchanging results of each try.

They emailed me back again with another suggestion that I was sure wouldn't make any difference because, just like every other suggestion, it's not addressing the .dll errors specific to this problem. I tried their suggestion. Big surprise - It made no difference. They said if that didn't work to try playing it on a different computer. That is simply an unacceptable answer for me because I want to play it on my desktop, and that was the whole point of me contacting them in the first place. I want it to work on THIS computer.

The amount of ignorance and miscommunication they were displaying got me frustrated. I gave up with them and decided to fix it myself. After googling around a bit and not finding any other situations online that corresponded to my problem, I did an in-place Windows upgrade that completely replaced all the .dll files that were causing issues. Problem solved.

I gave the tech people one final reply saying that they really should have actually read my description of the problem, and before completely giving up, they should've suggested an in-place Windows upgrade. Because seriously, what are the chances that won't fix the problem?

I have worked in tech support. I understand why there are blanket replies that cover all the most common issues. I understand that user error is common. But that's no excuse for blatant ignorance.

If the tech person doesn't actually read your description of the problem, how are they supposed to even know what the problem is? And if they don't know what the problem is, how are they supposed to help you fix it? I believe that because of the amount of detail I put into my description of the problem, this tech person should have realized that maybe, just maybe, I was talking about things that might help them solve the issue.

Anyway, the abundance of ignorance made me feel the need to rant. So yeah. Rant over.

Wabbajack

One day, not long before you awoke after finding yourself in the future, there was a mirror that looked into the past. And in front of that mirror without a proper reflection was the Wabbajack.

I was on a beautiful sunny ocean one day, eating the sweetrolls that had become of my enemies, when suddenly a small rodent ran into a nearby watercloset. I chased after it, hoping for dessert, only to find a waistcoated banker. This man looked familiar, as I had once mistaken him for Sheogorath, when he was, in fact, despite the lacking in all physical appearances, Hermaeus Mora.

He said something that didn't make any sense about him actually being a cat, and wondered how I recognized him. But it was clear to me that he looked exactly like an elephant. I have no idea what he was talking about.

Anyway, He demanded that I give back the Wabbajack! Wabbajack. Wabbajack.

Wabbajack. Wabbajack.

Never in all my life had I believed the wonders of this magical book of knowledge could manifest into illusions such as these. I begin to wonder, really, if everyone else truly can't see the inter-connective system as I can? Is it true that people cannot see that all things are and aren't the same? Can dementia truly not be the Duke of Mania? If you prick me, do you not bleed?

So obviously I refused. I earned the Wabbajack! It was my brilliance and forthcoming that brought it to my basement on the 5th of First Seed! If not for all the cat hair and the matching bedding, this would all be for naught!

I had to use it. I didn't think it would come to this - that the Daedric prince of knowledge and ceiling wax would become my enemy! But I had to do it. I told him to go away.

You would think in all my politeness he wouldn't have gotten so rude! He turned inside out with rage screaming, "My name is Sheogorath!" I think he must be mad. There's no such thing as a Sheogorath. But I digress... He proceeded to explode. I found the whole situation to be far too uncomfortable, so I hit him with my Wabbajack staff and ran out through the u-bend.

Stumbling over my own ribcage, I fell into a place that seemed to be an arena of some kind. But because I know the interconnective system so well, I understand that all of what I saw was what I was looking for the whole time!

I sat on a nearby pile of light and had a wonderful time dining on the remains of a large feast the former inhabitants seemed to have left for me. So very polite of them, wasn't it, Wabbajack?

Wabbajack. Wabbajack.
Wabbajack. Wabbajack.
Wabbajack. Wabbajack.

Religion and Medicine

So when my mother read that last post of mine, boy did I hear about it... She's certainly passionate about this subject. In my information gathering I had already learned just about everything she stated in its defense, but she couldn't answer some of my particular critical questions:

1. Why the lack of ingredients labeled? 
2. Why the specific duck ingredients if it's the imprinted vibration that's doing the healing?
3. Why have any sugar in the pills at all?
4. Wouldn't a larger dosage of the main ingredient allow for more potent healing? The imprinted vibrations would carry over in greater potency is the dosage were upped, would they not?

With every question I didn't hear a valid explanation to, I instead would hear another story of when homeopathics saved my brother's life from bee stings and fevers... 

But if it was truly a sugar pill with an imprinted vibration of the active ingredient that saved him and not his own immune system, I feel as though this is no longer a talk about the pill being the saviour. This is a talk about faith and spiritual healing. 

Like any beliefs, I don't want to bunk something that someone else believes in just because I don't think it's true. Maybe the pills' vibrations actually did work.
Maybe it was healing energy from my mom that did the healing rather than the pills.
Maybe my brother's immune system was better than she thought.
Maybe God was watching over him and decided it wasn't his time.
Maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster slipped a noodle up his nose and pulled out the venom/virus.

Many things are possible, and I shouldn't be one to judge. I guess I'm not accustomed to the idea of taking a pill for something other than the physical ingredients in the pill, so if it seemed like I was attacking the idea of this medicine working, that wasn't exactly my intention. My intention was to bring into light the things that seemed deceptive. 

Personally, I believe that we should all know what is contained within what we buy. I am an advocate that the GMO labeling i-522 bill should have passed, being that it would be a step in the right direction. But just like I believe the deception behind not labeling GMOs is wrong, I also believe that not containing all the ingredients on a pill bottle is wrong. This bottle contains 99.999etc% sugar. And they could at least write "extract of duck liver and heart" in a parenthetical. If the average person today can't even understand how to use a semicolon with English as their primary language, how can we expect them to know that much Latin?
(I'm pretty sure "healing vibrations" wasn't on that ingredients list either.)

Also, these things are being marketed as though it's a pill you take to get better, when in fact it is a method of spiritual healing; not so much a compound of physical ingredients, but rather a product made through a process of vibrations, and taking the pill melds the pill's vibrations with those of your own body. But putting it like that would make them far less money, I'm sure. They could at least sell some that are sugarless. Make them out of stevia or something... Don't they know their target audience?