Driver For Automation (And Other Fallacies)

Avatar
by Lisa

The recent “saved” jobs announcements, name-dropping Trump even when the decision had been made months earlier bother me. But the bigger picture is more troubling. There are a lot of off-shored jobs that cannot be threatened with tariffs. What retaliatory action can be taken when a company off-shores their customer support call center. Or data processing. Or coding. A vast majority of American jobs are not in manufacturing.

But, sure, let’s not focus on the bigger sectors being off-shored. As a manufacturer, you can go where the labor costs (as well as, I suspect, real estate / regulatory requirements / etc) are cheap and face a 35% import tariff. You can hire Americans and  increase your prices … but unless *all* foreign imports get taxed, that just makes you noncompetitive. You can hire Americans and reduce your profit … notwithstanding investor revolt, there’s a point at which you lose money on each product you sell. Or you build out an automated factory in the US – real estate and such may cost more, but your labor costs are REALLY low.

It might not have been cost effective to build a robotic manufacturing line in the US compared to overseas labor. Overseas labor – 35% tariff though … may well make automation cost effective without actually increasing manufacturing employment in the country. Learning how to program and maintain robots, though, may be a growing market.

Like the bank executives who got incredible bonuses while writing dodgy mortgages … in the short term, this does mean jobs are saved. A couple years from now, as the robotic manufacturing replaces those workers … they’re still unemployed.

Anya’s 4th Birthday Cake

Avatar
by Lisa

This year, I made a banana caramel cake for Anya’s birthday. She assembled her own cake & put the candles on it – messy, but she had a lot of fun. I’d have done more dulce de leche if it wasn’t melting the whipped cream. I made it in the pressure cooker – 15 mins on high @ about 10AM, let the whole thing sit until we made the cake. Microwaving the caramel enough to get it pourable made it too hot to be near the whipped cream. So we spread the caramel on the cake, let that cool a bit, then spread out the cream and topped it with bananas.

Chocolate Chip Butter Cake

Ingredients:

    • 3 cups cake flour, plus more for dusting the pans
    • 3 teaspoons baking powder
    • 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for coating the pans
    • 2 cups granulated sugar
    • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
    • 4 large eggs
    • 2 large egg yolks
    • 1 cup sour cream
    • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
    • 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Method:

  1. Preheat to 350 F.
  2. Coat three 8″ round cake pans with butter. Line the bottoms of the pans with a circle of parchment paper. Lightly butter the parchment. Dust with flour.
  3. Sift the flour and baking powder together.
  4. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugar, and salt on medium-high speed until lightened and fluffy. Add the eggs and yolks 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl a few times while beating.
  5. Remove the bowl from the mixer. Add half of the sifted dry ingredients and beat by hand until combined. Beat in the sour cream and vanilla. Add the remaining dry ingredients and the chocolate chips, beating until combined.
  6. Divide the batter among the pans .
  7. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean, about 20 minutes.
  8. Set the pans on a wire rack to cool for about 10 minutes. Invert the cakes onto the racks, peel off the parchment, and let cool before frosting.

Whipped cream — mix 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream, 2 tbsp maple syrup, and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla. Whip until firm peak stage.

Dulce de leche — Pour one can of sweetened condensed milk into a canning jar. Place lid on jar and lightly screw on. Place canning jar in the pressure cooker pot and add enough water to come about halfway up the side. Pressure cook on high for 40 minutes followed by a fifteen minute natural steam release. Remove jar from pressure cooker and allow to cool for another ten minutes. Open jar and stir to smooth out the caramel.

 

Assembling the cake — take a cake, cover in caramel, top with whipped cream, add slices of bananas, and then add another cake. I sliced off the domes of each cake to ensure the whole thing was relatively flat and stable.

Women in Office

Avatar
by Lisa

I was talking with my father-in-law a few days ago about zero-sum power (old white dudes have been giving up power for a long time as minorities and women were allowed to vote) and he asked why women kept voting for the same old white dudes when they were allowed to vote — obviously the old white dudes were doing a good job, or the women would have voted them out.

I vote for men because that’s the option. There’s a township Trustee position here for which I’m not going to apply because between work, house stuff, and Anya … do I really want MORE work? Is there something I want to change badly enough to give up my non-existent free time?

For some reason, even with both parents working … the male has a default of “free time” and can volunteer to give some up to cook/clean/entertain kids. I have to say what it is I want to do (‘just be alone’ or ‘not listen to CONSTANT NOISE’ aren’t good enough … what are you doing). How badly does a country need to be run before a statistically reasonable (i.e. if 50.8% of the population is female, then the percent of women running for any office should be around 50% too)?

So women gained the right to vote, but have to settle for “and I’ll vote for you if you halfway pander to my concerns”.

Winter Gear

Avatar
by Lisa

I think I finally have enough cold-weather clothing to enjoy winter. Not just the usual hat/gloves/scarf — that’s a good way to hate winter. Layers are a good start – heavy weight silk base layer under any type of regular shirt/slacks. Top that all with Berne insulated bib overalls along with the matching coat. Thick wool socks from Carhartt and regular waterproof hiking boots. Gloves with insulation even in the fingers; and a lightweight, breathable balaclava under the hat/scarf.

Shoveling the driveway at eight degrees isn’t the most fun I’ve ever had, but I was perfectly warm. Well, right up until my nose got drippy … that’s a heap of unpleasant and time to go back inside. Luckily I was 98% through with shoveling at that point … figure I’ll toss the shovel in the car and get the last little bit at the bottom as we head out.

Magic Pillowcase

Avatar
by Lisa

I got a “magic pillowcase” kit during a pre-Christmas sale. I finally got around to making it — it’s literally a two hour project with a tiny person disrupting the process the entire time.

You lay three pieces of fabric together, roll the main body up and fold the cuff over. Pin together & stitch. Then turn it right side out and have a long piece of three fabrics – a main body, an accent strip, and a cuff. Fold it in half, and voila it looks just like a pillowcase. Fold it in half inside out (right sides together) – instead of using a French seam, I just used the serger to stitch along the bottom and side of the pillow. Knotted off the tails and it was done. Tiny person loves her pillow and blanket.

This is a pretty cool way of making pillowcases – might make some custom pillowcases for our bedroom and the guest bedroom.

Geothermal Running Rates

Avatar
by Lisa

I’m getting code together to scrape the Symphony data into OpenHAB. In the interim, we’re watching the stats from the WaterFurnace Symphony web site. We’re running between 1,800 watts and 2,800 Watts to keep the house really warm (72 degrees at the thermostat) with outdoor temps in the 20’s. The loop temperature has stayed pretty consistent as well. It’s not cheap, per se, to heat 4k square feet; but this is a lot better than the power usage with the air exchange heat pump at similar temperatures.

Adjustments

Avatar
by Lisa

We’d been noticing rather poor airflow in the family room since we purchase the house. Asked quite a few HVAC people – basically everyone who came to quote our new system both last year and this year. The only halfway sensible answer we got was from the company that installed our geothermal system: the sales guy said there is probably a damper at the trunk. Which is reasonable, but there’s no access panel or anything. And why would you put an adjustment lever in an inaccessible location and have it closed off??

Now that we’ve got our unit in place and the whole house is toasty … the low airflow in the family room kind of sucks. So we put a borescope into the vent. Couldn’t see well enough to figure out what was going on. We put a bright flashlight & Elph camera into the vent & took some pictures – sure enough, there’s a metal piece halfway across the ducting right up by the trunk.

Now there’s an obvious answer (cut something), but I googled dampers behind hard surfaces / ceilings / etc. Got a lot of “cut it”, but even more “call a professional” … not quite sure what a professional is going to do that’s different (apart from possibly repairing the drywall). We tried to come up with some way to feed a flexible but stiff long something into the vent to shove the damper aside … couldn’t think of anything. So we gave up and cut drywall.

This is *not* where you should put adjustment levers — and it isn’t like the lever is on top where the drywaller didn’t realize it was there. The lever is pressed into the drywall like they had to shove on the board to get it attached.

Delusions

Avatar
by Lisa

A friend of mine sited the The Economist/YouGov Poll December 17 – 20, 2016 – 1376 US Adults that says 58% of Trump voters agree that what is good for Donald Trump’s business is good for the country. Charles Wilson said much the same thing about General Motors back when he was the CEO/president/whatever they called him. I understand the sentiment (a rising tide and all that), but where I disagreed with the statement about GM is half of what I fear from Trump.

What’s good for the country *may* benefit GM/Trump/Whomever, but it could also harm them. And what’s good for them may or may not benefit the country. Relaxing safety regulations on construction would be good for Trump’s business and bottom line, but *really* suck for the people buried under a collapsed tower.

My other fear is that Trump made an amazing amount of money screwing over other people. He may make another amazing amount of money screwing over the country. My father-in-law says Trump is going to be a boon for the country because he screws over other countries to “our benefit” … which, viewed in a short-term and one-sided fashion could be considered awesome (to me a bit like stealing food from a homeless dude ’cause you get a little hungry on the way home from work, but I acknowledge that some people would like to benefit our country to the detriment of others). I just don’t see it as a sustainable policy, and I think history backs me up. The sun never set on the British Empire … until it did. Even if you’re not trying outright colonialism, I’ve seen enough of South and Central America to know how welcome American exploitation was — “yankees go home”, “fuera yanquis de America Latina”, etc. I remember seeing Michael Franti not long after Spearhead was touring Iraq and he said the message he got from speaking to Iraqis was “thank you for getting rid of a really horrible guy, now get the fuck out of my country!”. I don’t see countries being screwed over as particularly happy with the situation, nor do I expect them to express their discontent with sternly worded letters to the editor. And that’s REALLY bad for the country.

Stollen

Avatar
by Lisa

Another entry in my “fruit cakes and breads do not suck” series – Christmas stollen. It’s coated in powdered vanilla sugar. We made a vanilla stout a few years ago — and I pulled out the vanilla husks, poured some white sugar into a container, and mixed the husks into it. Those vanilla husks are still making a vanilla flavored/scented sugar. To make castor sugar, you can just throw a cup or two of sugar into a blender (make sure it has a glass container, the sugar will scratch plastic) and blend for a minute or two. This is *not* a replacement for commercial powdered sugar – that’s a blend of corn starch and finely ground sugar.

Anya really enjoyed this bread (probably because of the sugar coating!)