Black Bean Soup with Ham
Am so not in love with Mac. I know, I’m supposed to love it. Everybody does, right? But right now I’m close to throwing the bum out on the street with all its stuff, had I not already invested so much into this relationship.Yesterday I was starting to fall in love, despite the fact that it still can’t detect my wireless network (having had two stints on the phone with the very nice people at AppleCare, who also couldn’t solve the problem and in the end said it was probably the router, which is less than a year old and according to the manufacturer completely Mac-compatible) but does pick up all my neighbours’ networks. I can get online if I plug the ethernet cable directly into the modem, but the laptop can’t be used at the same time and so if I want to switch I have to pull the cord out and reconnect it to my router. Annoying, but no biggie. It is very sleek and pretty and very fast, and I was starting to love it.Then last night I went to post on my blog. I posted a recipe for sauteed apple pie from the New York Times (very much worth a try, I think) that I made for CBC this morning. (Twice I went back to edit and found it had turned into one long run-on sentence that I had to break up again; annoying, but not a big deal.) Then I added a few of the latest recipes to the Index, since I had forgotten to when I first posted them. I added 4, and when I added the last link and hit save IT ERASED MY ENTIRE INDEX. Remember how much time I spent on that index? Somewhere in the vicinity of 100 hours? Gone. I went back on my browser and it was there in the edit box, again condensed down from a list to one extremely massive run-on sentence. I tried “Save” – erased. Tried “Save and Continue editing” – erased. Repeated enough times to convince myself it was not just a temporary glitch. As you might have noticed, my index is just gone. (Not a problem I’ve had in the past year plus a month.) I spent until well after midnight doing damage control, trying to get it to save and/or figure out what’s going on. No luck.So I managed to cut and paste the code of the index into an email and send it to myself. At best I’ll be able to add it back on another computer (this one won’t let me, even if I open up a new window) as one massive sentence of code which I will have to pick through and separate, then realign and hope each link works. At worst I’ll have to rewrite my entire index. Which took many, many evenings as well as a huge chunk of my Christmas holiday.(Here’s something interesting: according to Consumer Reports Macs only rate well in the category of all-in-one desktop computers – they don’t make the cut at all – in terms of overall ratings and reliability – in the categories of ‘workhorse’ or ‘high-end’, and the mini comes in second to a PC in the ‘budget’ category. My 20 inch iMac comes in second in ‘all-in-one’, but with an overall score of 66 vs. 65, 64 and 63 in the following PCs – so not as huge a difference as I would have thought. The Consumer Reports chart my dad emailed me lists the reliability of laptop computers organized by percentage that require repairs or have serious problems and Apple was second to last at 20% – with H-P at the bottom at 21%, and all other PCs above it – Sony came in #1 at 18%. So while they are pretty much immune to viruses, it seems they aren’t immune to problems! And the Mac dude on their commercials is so hip and healthy-looking…)Dinner last night was black bean soup made with a leftover chunk of ham from our weekend brunch – I made it on Sunday because it’s always best after a day (or two, or three) in the fridge, and it’s perfect insurance against coming home hungry without a dinner plan. Took 5 minutes to reheat, and I crumbled some feta overtop. It was so tasty Mike used the F word when he ate it. I used it several times later in the evening, but not in reference to the soup. UPDATE: those of you who subscribe may have noticed that this came through as one giant paragraph – when I published it it went from several to one giant paragraph. I had to go back and edit it again. Lets see if it works this time… Nope. Looks like it wants to stay one giant paragraph, and every time I change it back it reverts when I save it. You may just find an iMac this week on Free Stuff Fridays…
January 20 2009 | leftovers | 31 Comments »
