Naich

My daily bread

Apropos of nothing, here is my recipe for bread that I use with my Panasonic SD254 bread maker.

• 300g Good quality strong flour (Hovis Strong bread flour)
• 175g Cheapo strong flour (Tesco strong bread flour)
• 5ml Tesco fast acting yeast
• 7.5ml Sugar
• 5ml Salt
• 1/4 Tsp Ground ginger
• 20g butter
• 2.5ml Vinegar
• 315ml Water

Put the yeast in first and cover with the flour. Then bung all the other ingredients on top, making sure that the water can’t get to the yeast. I use the measuring spoon I got with the bread maker to measure out the quantities, except for the water, where I use the scales and measure out 315g of water.

Yeast likes a slightly acidic environment, which is why some people add ascorbic acid. I find that acetic acid (vinegar) works as well, making the bread springier but not affecting the taste. The other additive – ginger, helps keep the bread fresh.

Other handy hints: cheapo flour is about 1/2 the price of the good stuff, but never works as well, producing heavy, stodgy bread. As long as you don’t use too much, adding a certain amount of cheap flour to the good stuff doesn’t have any discernible affect but saves a few pennies every day. I find 300/175 good to cheap works well.

It’s best to give the bread at least an hour to cool and dry out slightly before hacking inexpertly at it with the bread knife. If you can’t wait that long, you can make cutting over-fresh bread easier by cleaning the blade of the knife every other slice and keeping it nice and sharp. Electric knives are not worth the money unless you’ve got something wrong with your wrist.

That’s it. Here is a picture of one of the many failures that I created before I got this recipe right.

Blowing chunks

Oh go on then, if you insist. Search strings, as recorded in the site logs, coming up. Here are all of them for October if you like raw data. This list also includes ones from September and, as usual, I’ll do my best to help these poor souls.

• can you make someone vomit by punching them – I’m not sure. But it’s probably best not to wear your best shirt if you intend to engage in a spot of grievous bodily harm, whether it does or not.
• carrot size nipples – The very thought is probably enough to give adolescent bunnies wet dreams for weeks. Bung a couple of carrots down a nice tight jumper and parade yourself in front of a mirror. Why not try wearing a pair of floppy ears and some buck teeth? There is probably a name for this particular interest, but whatever it is, I bet your carrots won’t be the only things that are carrot sized.
  
• does your toddler vomit deliberately – No, he had an intolerance to eggs. I spent many a queasy afternoon hosing eggy chunks out of the push chair until we realised this. Kids are disgusting.
  
• 20 year old in nappies – Right. This is serious. While we were in the process of potty training Wibs I had a brainwave and it was this – why not just keep wearing nappies? Why do we use toilets? It’s just because everyone else does. Has anyone considered continuing nappies to adulthood? Upsides: it’s convenient – you can just let go wherever you want without worrying about finding a toilet. It’s more efficient because you don’t spend time splitting whiskers or splashing boots – everything is just emptied out at the end of the day (if your nappy is big enough). Downsides? There are none. Well, unless you are the sort of namby-pamby that objects to sitting in their own faeces. But then again, if toilets had never been invented, a better nappy would have been. It’s only because humans “graduate” to toilets that nappy technology has progressed so slowly. No-one bothers to make them better because by the time we are old enough to say “I’d rather not sit in my own poo, thank you”, we are coerced onto the bog with chocolate buttons and vague promises of being a “big boy”. If there were no toilets, nappies would be comfortable, stylish and self-emptying by now. So in answer to the original query: right on brother, I’m with you – why the fuck not?
• drill bit size for dum dum – Sounds like a book about drill sizes for really stupid people, but I bet you are actually looking for info on turning your boring ordinary bullets into those sexy hollow point “expanding” ones that cause larger wounds, the thought of which you use as the “finisher” while you wank furiously over Guns and Ammo Magazine. Well, naturally I can help. Simply clamp the bullet in a vice with the pointy bit facing you. Then take a punch and put a dint in that end, to make it easier to drill. To be on the safe side, better put one in the flat end too, remembering to look at the pointy end as you do so, in case you accidentally pop the first dint out. I’ll tell you how to do the rest of it next week. There. That’s another favour the world owes me.
• petrochemical plant cat ladder diamensions – It’s about 4’6″. 4’0″ if you give it a tin of tuna first.
  
• why do ugly things always seem to involve you – It’s because I have a secret farm of ugly things in the loft. Want to buy one? I can do you a nice deal on that grey one with the crooked teeth and nose that looks like a broken drainpipe bracket.
• nipples blog – Friday 14th November. Still got 2 of them. You would have thought it would be more interesting than that. But it’s not.

And the rest is just variations on toddler/dog/vomit/phlegm/green/poo theme that brings more people here than anything else. So I’m going to insert some happy fluffy nice clean cheerful healthy words in an effort to attract someone who isn’t currently staring in bewilderment at a puddle of puke.

Paypal are a bunch of useless twats

A word of advice if you selling something on Ebay to an international buyer using Paypal – don’t. Well, at least read this first before you do and don’t come running to me when Paypal decide that your money is safer with them and they’ll just hang on to it, thank you so very much, you horrible potential thief.

so, as you’ve probably guessed by now, this post isn’t even going to have any attempted humour in it, other than some bitter sarcasm, maybe.

When I sold a certain item on Ebay, it was to a Canadian gentleman. As the item was quite heavy and large I didn’t bother setting things up for an international sale, but this guy was very keen and gave me a good price. So I looked up the carriage on it. It was £71. Holy fuck. Still, he’s paying for it; and he did pay for it, nice and quickly with Paypal. So I packaged it up and decide to transfer the money over to my bank before sending it. I’m not quite destitute yet but a £71 sized hole in my budget isn’t something I’d want for very long.

Paypal says “no, you can’t have your money”. I might be a crook for all they know, so they’ll just look after it for a while. It’s being “Temporarily held” to “help ensure that the transactions go smoothly.” It is released, apparently, “after 21 days without a buyer dispute, claim, chargeback or other action. The hold may be released earlier if buyer leaves positive feedback.” Which isn’t much use to me as it’ll take up to 30 days to get there. So that’s 3 weeks I’ll be out of pocket by £71, which will be lounging around in Paypal’s account, gathering interest for them. That’s a tiny part of Ebay’s $280m profit or, to put it another way, the value of a week’s worth of groceries that I’m lending them for free.

By the way, isn’t it handy that this particular service to the public – helping innocent Ebayans have smooth transactions with potential villains, also lets them earn interest on all the money they are looking after on behalf of their grateful customers? I bet they didn’t even think of this when they set it up – they just have their customer’s interests at heart, after all.

Anyway, I explained the situation to my Canadian buyer and suggested that I refund him the money, as I cannot afford to send it while Paypal are hanging on to the carriage money. Instead he gave me positive feedback to release the funds.

Yes, that’s right. Paypal’s buyer protection policy, designed to squeeze a few more pennies out of it’s customers…, er I mean save innocent buyers from unscrupulous bastards such as me, put him in a position where he had to give positive feedback for an item which hadn’t even been posted to him yet. Nice one Paypal. Good job I’m honest, isn’ t it?

But it gets better. This all happened 5 days ago, so the money was released 5 days ago, right? Nah, Paypal decided that it liked his money so much, it wouldn’t pass it on to me after all. I’ve sent emails to Paypal, the first of which was answered by “Miles” who blamed the computer and said he would get it taken off hold. It wasn’t, so I emailed them again and asked my buyer to email them too, which he did. They sent him a similar message as the one sent to me the first time (except that it contained factually incorrect information about their holding policies, namely that if I marked it as sent it would be taken it off hold) and ignored the email I sent.

So I’ve just given up and refunded him. There was no sign that the money was ever going to be taken off hold.

Based on my experiences, what would my advice be? Well, for one thing, don’t treat Paypal as a bank and don’t keep any money in your account. They are not a bank, are not bound by the rules that govern banks, and can choose to keep your money at any time without warning and there’s nothing you can do about it. Also, if there is any danger that your money will be put on hold, avoid using them for international transactions. This site has plenty more Paypal horror stories.

And finally, as they might still say on the News at Ten (I can’t watch it these days – it’s just too awful), they asked me to complete a questionnaire to see if I was satisfied with their customer service. I decided to be honest.

Search String

Hello web user, who has stopped off at my bog following a badly spelled Google search. Your search terms appear in the site logs. I’ll do my best to help. You searched for:

• deep rawlplug – Ooh baby. Give me some of that hot plastic plaster-gripped screwing. It’s hard core, sweaty hole in the wall action.
• nine nail naich – That’s my name. That is what it takes to attach me securely to the ceiling. You don’t want to know what the 7th nail passes through.
• cack shop – I get mine from World of Cack. Sure you do pay a little bit more but it’s worth it for the customer service and free 2 year warranty. The quality of the cack is second to none too; you don’t have to worry about it forming a crust at a vital time, like just before the boss comes round. We’ve all been there, right? I’m talking lobster nipples.
  
• poo driver – This one isn’t as odd as it sounds. Available from any good golfing shop, this particular club is called this rather odd name due to the noise it makes as the ball is struck. While the sound is definitely unusual and the range is maybe not quite as far as a conventional wood, the accuracy of drive is unrivaled by any other type of driver. No of course not – I made that up. Fuck knows what that particular person was actually after and the results on Google are quite horrible.
  
• toddler vomiting balls of phlegm – Dum dum dum dum… You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain, too much love drives a man insane, you broke my will, but what a thrill, my toddler’s vomiting great balls of phlegm. Seriously though – get him to a doctor.
• can’t drill far enough into wall for rawl plug – The answer is simple. Move to a house with thinner walls. Either that or get a longer drill. Whichever is easier for you.
  
• fucking drl dog – I can’t advise on this one. However you interpret this particular search term, you end up in a place you don’t want to be.
• arthur askey smoking – You fucking pervert. I know what that means. Get help you sicko.
  
• don’t sayto mum where ä± am – Don’t worry; I wouldn’t even if I could.
• can cocaine make you vomit – Well, what do you expect if you keep stuffing yourself on those cocaine and lard sandwiches?
• smoke outside the hospital doors – Fire in the sky, dum dum dum, dum dum de-duum, dum dum dum DUM DUM!

There you go. I’m glad I could be of some use to you.

Things I’ve learned this week (updated)

1. Taliban, my “new” bike* has got a sticker on it, proudly announcing that it’s made from “Ferrocarbon”. Wow! That’s some super space-age high-tech stuff, surely? Oh, hang on. “Ferro” = iron? Iron and carbon… oh yes, that’s steel. So it’s got a steel frame. Wow. That’s great. So much better than manky old aluminium or carbon fibre.
2. Riding in the blazing heat makes you hot, sweaty and stinky.  If you are already hot and stinky from a 3 mile cycle ride home in the blazing heat, a large dollop of baby sick, applied down your bare back does not improve your aroma.
3. If a co-worker cycles to the pub and back, parking his bike next to yours on his return, don’t be totally surprised if you find that he’s accidentally locked your bike up instead of his.
4. Cheap bike locks that look butch can be removed in 3 minutes with a hammer and a hacksaw. If you know what you are doing you can have the bugger off in 20 seconds.
5. If you stop your bike to ask a white van driver why he carved you up and he responds by shouting “fuck you” through the closed window, pointing and laughing at him will make him so cross he will actually try to run you over. So this one is best attempted while he’s stuck in traffic that you can get past easily. It is very funny though.
6. The only remotely interesting things to happen to me always seem to involve bicycles in some way.

* “New” as in “given to me by a friend because he hated riding it so much”. It might be slow, heavy and a bit crap but… er… um… Anyway, Taliban puts the “fun” into “fundamental”. And the “mental”.  And, presumably, the “da” too, but I’ve no idea what that means.