Top of my head – The Boredom of Ramfree17

Garden bounty: Air Fried Okra

Returning to our NCR house after the holiday break yielded a small bounty from our small urban garden: a chili pods, tomatoes, eggplants and a fistful of okra:

The young okra pods were added to our seafood sinigang but a few were already too mature and very fibrous. I found some links in the web for air-frying mature okra and converting them to chip snacks. The premise is that the slimy interior will steam and allow the okra to become crispy. Below are the procedure and notes of this snack experiment.

Procedure

Wash and cut the okra into small “chips/buttons” which I did on a bias (angle).
- There were some recipes that recommends a lengthwise cut ala fries but I advise against doing that the same way that steak are always sliced “against the grain” to make the meat softer.
At this point, I pre-heated the airfryer to 190-200 degrees Centigrade for 3 minutes. Our airfyer is small enough that this is sufficient time to heat the whole chamber.
Put in a small bowl and drizzle with a bit of cooking oil – just enough to coat each chip and allow the spices to stick.
Sprinkle salt and the spice of your choice. We have some cajun spice in the pantry so I used those. Toss the okra lightly to ensure each chip gets some seasoning.
Air-fry at 190 Centrigrade for 15 minutes, shaking the basket halfway.
- Each air fryer model is different so I was shaking the basket every 5 minutes.
Allow the okra chips to cool and serve. You can use your favorite dip but I didnt use any.

Verdict

The resulting chips were still fibrous as hell! Next time just cut up the mature okra pods and add them to the compost. 🙁

Category: Garbage | LEAVE A COMMENT

April 28

Dos and Donts with cooking the Cabanatuan longganisa

I am biased but ever since living in Metro Manila I never bought a single longganisa from the public market or grocery chains to be cooked at home. It has always been always the Cabanatuan longganisa (or “langgonisa” as it is called in most areas in Nueva Ecija) or bust in our household. There is already a few posts on how to cook it so here is just the quick rundown of what to do and what to avoid with this recado sausage. 🙂

DO use a pan that you can scrub after for cleanup. Trust me, those non-stick pans are not going to last. 🙂
DONT just fry the longganisa links in oil. That is not how to properly cook it and in most cases you wont need to add the extra oil.
DO cook the longganisa in water. About 1/4 to 1/3 or the links should be submerged in tap water, and turn it over now and then until all the water evaporates.
DO prick the skin of the longganisa once all the water has evaporated so that the rendered oil can get into the pan.
DO toast the skin but dont burn them.
DO put day-old rice into the pan to get all those toasty goodness into a fried rice to accompany the logganisa. And since the Cabanatuan longganisa is recado (“garlicky”) then there is no need to add anything except a bit of salt to your fried rice.

Caveat: We now cook the longganisa in the air fryer. I just put a parchment paper under it for easy cleanup and oil extraction since we have those circular basket type. I still put in water at the start. 15 minutes at 160 degrees centigrade, flip and then 7-8 minutes more at 170 degrees. Another benefit of this cooking route is that the logganisa can go straight from the freezer to the airfryer basket, just ensure there is a single layer of sausage so they all get boiled first.

Category: Top of my head | LEAVE A COMMENT

April 27

NNTO and EOM

Context: Saving this emailed message I sent to one of my previous project teams. That project engagement (including the client and other providers) have a penchant for using NNTO, EOM, PFB and PFA in email conversations.

====
Subject: [Did you know that…] NNTO and EOM are only intended for emails that does not need to be opened?

NNTO is the abbreviation for “No Need To Open” and EOM stands for “End of Message”.

These are employed in subject headers to save the recipient time and the hassle of downloading the message and opening it up. The intent is that the recipient will be able to grasp the whole message by only reading the subject line.

With the same regard, if you respond to an email that initially had the NNTO and EOM in the subject line by writing in the email body then it is common netiquette to remove the NNTO or EOM from the subject of your response email, otherwise the recipient has less of an obligation to even open up your response to read your message.

Email netiquette also calls for limiting the use of abbreviations in the body of your email messages. Those are useful for limited input mediums like SMS, or limited devices like a GPRS-only handset but does not add a value to email communication. Contrary to popular belief in this project, PFB and PFA are not publicly used initialsms. Spare your recipients the additional hassle and type the whole phrase. Your communication karma points will get an upgrade if you do this.

“There is no need for perfection, but there is always room for improvement.” – Unknown

====

Category: Top of my head | LEAVE A COMMENT

April 21

Illusion of Choice

Lately I am seeing attestation forms in the projects I am working in wherein the contents are split across multiple checkboxes followed by a submit button. The beef I have is that the submit button will only be valid/enabled if all checkboxes are set to checked/true.

The problem with this approach is that it gives the wrong perception that you can say I dont agree to one or more of the provided options and you can still proceed. I assume the intent was to increase the possibility that the reader goes through each line but this is still bad form. The assumed intent does not guarantee that readers actually read the lines. All this does is increase the frustration of doing 5 more unnecessary clicks to the form.

If it was up to me, I will just list down the lines and then just put a checkbox at the bottom that states that the reader confirms to reading all the lines and agrees to follow them. It bears the same weight and legality, with 5 lesser clicks.

Category: Garbage, Work | LEAVE A COMMENT

October 4

3 strike rule in teaching

I am not stingy when it comes to sharing knowledge. I always say to my team members that I have a 3-strike (or 3 chances) rule when discussing a topic and mentoring at work. Anyone can ask me anything tech-related, soft-skill , or maximizing a loophole three times and I will gladly do it.

I will discuss a topic the first time, normally with fervor if its an interesting topic.
I will discuss the topic the second time because the concepts may not have been clear or entirely alien to the target audience such that details wasn’t properly absorbed the first time.
I will discuss the topic for the third and final time, because I may not be explaining it properly or the “recipient” was not really paying attention.

There is no fourth time. If there is a need for a fourth discussion then it means we have a problem.

Category: Top of my head, Work | LEAVE A COMMENT

July 20

Location.Location.Location.

Looking out of the building glass facade of the 26th floor office I can see two spiders building their webbed home. I was admiring their resilience and courage because they are doing this in restless winds (based from the violent vibrations of the web) and the fact that I get dizzy looking out of the window. If I feel that then what more for a creature that is about a hundred times smaller than me?

Then I realized that these webs are meant to capture prey. Do other insects fly at this height and winds? Aren’t these two spiders doing a futile activity if they cannot catch any food?

Or am I the fool for missing out what might be crystal clear with these two spiders?

Category: Top of my head | LEAVE A COMMENT

May 20

Food karma

Everytime Mommy cant eat I’ll kid her that I’ll buy her a blender/osterizer so she can ingest her food through a straw. She will vigorously shake her head and respond with an adamant no because she has memories of my grandmother’s last days where she can only consume liquefied food.

Now I am eating rice congee using a straw. I had a molar extracted and I need to avoid getting food particles or have hot food in it to avoid preventing the wound from clotting. I have the choice of eating through a straw or going hungry. I chose the former.

Karma is a bitch, and it is real.

Category: Garbage | LEAVE A COMMENT

February 3

Cautionary Tale for Online Wallet payments

Gist: When paying via your online wallets then make sure to take a screenshot before payment.

My internet provider bill (from PLDT) is nearing its due date and I was paying the last few month’s bills via my Maya.ph wallet to take advantage of the crypto coin “cashback” feature. I logged into my Android app and saw that I still have more than 6000 pesos in the wallet which is sufficient to pay for my internet bill. I proceeded with paying for the bill using the saved template and adjusted the amount to Php1900.

Upon submission, the app encountered an error that it didn’t receive a response from the provider and to try again a few minutes later. When I refreshed the app home page my wallet balance dropped to Php4200 but there is no transaction listed for it. I waited for 5 minutes to refresh the Maya app but everything remained the same.

The Maya chatbot is useless and doesn’t want to connect me to a human helpdesk agent so I called up the Maya hotline. The agent who answered it is helpful enough but she does not have any ability to view my prior day balance to confirm the deduction. She can only confirm that there is no new transaction logged to my account since what she saw is the last payment I made a few days back. She suggested to call the PLDT hotline instead and to email support@maya.ph to do a deeper check and to request for an online receipt if needed. It has been 2 days and yet there is still no response on my request except for the automated ticket number.

I dont have any tangible proof other than this claim so it will be very easy for Maya to say it didn’t happen. This is a very costly lesson in proper documentation, and a very negative experience that will prevent or at least minimize my use of the Maya payment system in the future.

Category: Technology, Top of my head | LEAVE A COMMENT

July 5

Locating happiness

Happiness is an elusive treasure for most but in reality it is hiding in plain sight.

Happiness is located at the crux of being content with what you have and what you are willing to forego.

Getting more means exerting additional effort and taking on more responsibilities. If those start being a burden then it is a good sign your personal inflection point is already known. The question now becomes “are you ok to maintain this as your status quo, or do you still want to achieve more?”

Category: Garbage | LEAVE A COMMENT

April 21

Two sides of the same coin

I prefer training my team using the pavlovian conditioning, with a slight bias in negative reinforcement. This has drawn the ire of the Human Resources department in the past.

The reinforcement that I usually employ is done via penalties. The penalties are monetary in nature, and increases in severity if the infraction happens close to each other. An example is a first violation is worth Php50, but any violation in the next 2 weeks will incur a higher penalty of Php100, and so on until a set limit (normally Php500 per infraction). If there is no violation after 2 weeks then the penalty goes back to Php50 as the next violation will be treated as a first offense. The reinforcement is only effective if the team sees that I have my skin in the game too. If the violation is something that applies to me then the same penalties cover my violations. Usually I also sweeten the pot wherein if there is no violation for 2-3 consecutive periods then I automatically contribute the highest penalty amount to the collected funds. I “lose” either way but my goal is not to collect funds but to make the team learn a certain behavior.

The funds collected do not go to my own pocket. The team decides what to do with it. Normally the team spends it on a lunch-out or a series of snacks. I had one team donate the collected funds to charity.

The whole point of negative reinforcement is to make sure that the subjects do not deviate on the prescribed behavior as it will be too inconvenient. Positive reinforcement on the other hand makes it pleasant to meet the prescribed behavior. I just prefer the former because I find it more effective in getting results in a much shorter time.

ciao!

Category: Garbage | LEAVE A COMMENT