I dreamed last night that a Checkers hamburger joint opened up in Divide on Cedar Mountain road. This is, of course, preposterous, because we’re too far north for it to be a Checkers; it would have to be a Rally Burger. I ordered a Checker burger, seasoned fries, and a banana shake, and then Berck started cursing because the total was $18, and I was dismayed because there were children in the restaurant.
The closest retail establishment to our house is in reality a Pepsi vending machine, which is at the campground that is full all summer of people who are trying to get away from it all, that we pass on our drive to our house.
But now I want some fries the way Checkers batters them. Berck tried to make them in his deep fryer once, but the breading all came off and made a huge mess in the fryer.
It was about time to get a new COVID shot, and Novavax just came out with their updated vaccine (for Omicron, I think). So I looked to see where I could get it. The options in Colorado Springs were CVS and Costco. There’s a CVS a couple blocks from my office, so I went on their website to make an appointment. The questionnaire got as far as which vaccine I wanted, and when I selected Novavax, it said no appointment was necessary and to just walk in and talk to someone in the pharmacy.
So on Tuesday I clocked out for lunch and drove over to the Target that houses the CVS, the same one where we got Paxlovid. Even though it was the middle of the day, there was unfortunately, a line. I wasn’t sure if I was picking up or dropping off, so I just stood behind everyone else. It was finally the elderly woman in front of me’s turn, and it was taking the pharmacy employee at the pick up desk a long time to figure out the least expensive way to fill the woman’s prescription, running it through her insurance, with her coupon but without her insurance, and with both. The other pharmacy employee manning the drop off desk became available. I said I’d like to get a COVID Novavax shot.
“Uh,” she said, glancing at her coworker, still holding the elderly woman’s coupon, “You’ll have to talk to Nancy.” So I backed up to indicating that I was waiting in the pick up line again.
When Nancy had finally sorted the elderly woman’s issues, 20 minutes later, I finally had the opportunity to ask her for the COVID Novavax shot. “Have you made an appointment?” she asked. No, I explained that the website said for Novavax to just walk in and talk to a pharmacy personnel. “Just make an appointment for any time this afternoon, and we’ll go ahead and give it to you.” I checked the website on my phone, but it still said I couldn’t make an appointment for Novavax, but Nancy had rushed off to do something else. So I filled out all of the information on the website, and it told me I had an appointment for 3:30 for Pfizer. By the time Nancy had finished administering a shot to someone else, she came back and said, “Were you able to make an appointment?”
“Yes, I said, “But it would only let me make one for Pfizer.”
“That’s right,” she answered, “We only have Pfizer.”
“But it said you had Novavax?”
“You want Novavax?”
Turns out they did have Novavax, and I’m guessing this is the first one Nancy had administered, because it took her a while to find the information she needed on the packaging to input it in her computer system. I finally got my jab (I elected to go for the left arm to keep up the right, left, right, ones I’d gotten previously. It stung right away.
CVS gives you fancy bandaids
I was pretty happy the next day that I did not feel lousy at all, though my neck and lower back started aching. The next day my neck and back were really hurting, and the injection site had turned into a very itchy goose egg.
Five days later though, everything went mostly back to normal, with the swelling at the injection site going down and my neck and back stopping hurting.
Cheesecake is one of the few cakes that doesn’t need much alteration to come out lovely up here, but I still consulted my high altitude bible. Unfortunately, it only includes a recipe for orange cheesecake. So I took this recipe and altered it a little. It was wonderful.
Ingredients
Graham Cracker Crust
1 and 1/2 cups (180g) graham cracker crumbs (about 12 full sheet graham crackers)
1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
5 Tablespoons (71g) unsalted butter, melted
Cheesecake
32 ounces (904g) full-fat brick cream cheese (4 of them), softened to room temperature
1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
1 cup (240g) full-fat sour cream, at room temperature
2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 large eggs, plus 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
Instructions
Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and preheat oven to 325°F
Make the crust: If you’re starting out with full graham crackers, use a food processor or blender to grind them into fine crumbs. Pour into a medium bowl and stir in sugar until combined, and then stir in the melted butter. Mixture will be sandy. Try to smash/break up any large chunks. Pour into an ungreased 9-inch or 10-inch springform pan. With medium pressure using your hand, pat the crumbs down into the bottom and partly up the sides to make a compact crust. Do not pack down with heavy force because that makes the crust too hard. Simply pat down until the mixture is no longer crumby/crumbly and you can use the flat bottom of a measuring cup to help smooth it all out if needed. It doesn’t need to go very high up the sides. Place on a cookie sheet and pre-bake for 11 minutes. Remove from the oven.
Make the filling: Using a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese and granulated sugar together on medium-high speed in a large bowl until the mixture is smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add the sour cream and vanilla extract, then beat until fully combined, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl. On medium speed, add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition until just blended. After the final egg is incorporated into the batter, stop mixing. To help prevent the cheesecake from deflating and cracking as it cools, avoid over-mixing the batter as best you can. You will have close to 6 cups of batter. (If you screw this part up, you can whiz the batter in the food processor in three batches to make the batter nice and smooth. Just be sure to clean out all the graham cracker crumbs.
Pour the cheesecake batter on top of the crust.
Bake cheesecake for 70 minutes or until the center is almost set. If you notice the cheesecake browning too quickly on top, tent it with aluminum foil halfway through baking. When it’s done, the center of the cheesecake will slightly wobble if you gently shake the pan. Turn the oven off and open the oven door slightly. Let the cheesecake sit in the oven as it cools down for 1 hour. Remove from the oven, then cool the cheesecake completely uncovered at room temperature. Then cover and refrigerate the cheesecake for at least 4 hours or overnight. Or just eat it.
Remove the rim of the springform pan. Using a clean sharp knife, cut into slices for serving. For neat slices, wipe the knife clean and dip into warm water between each slice.
Serve cheesecake with desired toppings. Cover and store leftover cheesecake in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. Like it’s going to last that long.
I cooked some frozen peaches in a little bit of sugar and butter and then some cognac, which I lit on fire by tilting my pan toward my gas flame.
After 20 years, WordPress finally broke my custom theme badly enough that I decided to update it with a modern one rather than learn enough PHP to fix the old one. Just know that the slightly more modern look was thrust upon me–I didn’t want it. I hacked this one to make it look as bad as I could. I’m sad because Marginal Revolution has managed to keep their site looking the same for about the same length of time and they’re just a couple of economists. But there’s a limit to the amount of time I’m willing to spend on a thing that almost no one reads anyway and that Jonah rarely updates because she’s all Facebook all the time, now.
I need to switch the subscriptions to a thing that doesn’t have ads.
Now that ChatGPT does image processing, I wondered how it would do on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. I’m pretty terrible at this test. Even for the ones that I get right, it feels like a random guess. I wish I’d recorded my score the first time I took it, but I can’t seem to find it. Anyway, I was curious how ChatGPT would do. Or if I could even convince it to take the test. It turns out convincing it was pretty easy:
ChatGPT scored a 25/36. The guidance provided with the test is:
The average score for this test is in the range of 22 to 30 correct responses. If you scored above 30, you may be quite good at understanding someone’s mental state based on facial cues. If you scored below 22, you may find it difficult to understand a person’s mental state based on their facial expressions.
I took it again after giving it to ChatGPT. There was a couple of hours in between most of it since I hit the ChatGPT limit and had to wait for it to reset. The test tells you what the right answer is after you choose, so I’m sure that helped. I scored a 20, which I think is significantly better than I did the first time took it.
I think we’re not far away from autism aids where your augmented reality goggles can tell you the emotion on the face of the person you’re speaking to is obviously, “Bored, just stop talking to him!” And then I can stop terrorizing whoever I’m talking to with my airplane stories without them having to be rude.
There’s a lot of focus on how generative AI is destroying humanity–I’m a lot more interested in the ways it’s going to help us be more human.
