Here is a quick snapshot of Twink.  I did not name him, and we are still debating a possible change.  He’s a neighborhood stray that decided that he liked our deck late in the Fall.  When the snow came, we had no choice but to take him in, as shelters would have probably put him down.  He’s HUGE – 15lbs, but not fat, just really big.  G took him to the vet and he came out with a very clean bill of health.  He has been micro-chipped, given SoftPaws, and is a wonderful housecat.  The other two cats, Frankie and Willow, are still getting used to his presence in the house, but so far there have been no major issues.

Last week, the New York Times published an article about homemade pet food.  This is something I had been considering for a while, and I do make it a point to give any leftover meats to the cats after they have been diced up a bit.  I think we will probably start to incorporate more of this in to their usual diet of Iams.  (Worth noting, though, is that I have had Frankie for about ten years now and she has been 100% perfectly healthy on a diet of Iams and water for that entire 10 years.  Though she was given her shots and things like that when she was born, I got her at 3 years old and have not had to take her to the vet since!)

The article provides a lot of information about the reasons for making your pet’s food, as well as some links to other useful resources.

Delights and Prejudices » Q & A with Angela Miller, American Cheesemaker.

- Work-wise this week has been hella busy, with adding a new customer to our Citrix based solution, dealing with crazy shipping issues, installing a new server, getting Windows 7 up and running, and other various tasks.  I have not done everything I wanted to, but was nonetheless a very productive person.  There is never enough time.

Computer related linky:
- A great Lifehacker post on what to do with your PC while you are asleep at night.  This covers both the basic (backup, defrag), to the nifty (donating processing time to projects across the Internet).  Check it out.  I confess I am a Lifehacker addict.

- At home, we have added some long-awaited hatchet fish to the 29gal BioCube, but one has already died, and I am worried that the remaining two will fall to the same fate by the time I get home from work this evening.  I should never, ever buy fish from PetCo, but I was there to replace a dead pump on a 10gal tank (BTW PetCo has a great deal – you can get a Aqueon 10gal filter for $16.99 ($3 off sale this week), and then get a $5 mail-in rebate for it – bringing your total cost to $11.99 + tax + postage and patience for the rebate check to arrive – an AMAZING deal and I am going to stock up and get 1-2 more of these little filters).  ANYWAY, I was there to purchase a replacement filter and saw that PetCo had hatchet fish in stock!  I had been looking for these guys, and my usual LFS, Tropic Isle, in Framingham always seems to be out of them.  I had some a year ago and they had all passed away, and G’s mother really loves looking at these guys when she stopped over.  They also really added some vertical-ness to the tank as they tended to stay up top, while most of the rest of the fish were closer to the bottom of the tank.  At $3.59 each, I picked up three last night and integrated them in to the tank.  I had just added some reticulated hillstream loaches (LOONG story on how I managed to find these rare little guys) a couple of weeks ago and they were doing great, so I fully expected the hatchet fish to survive fine.  I should have listened to the weird dude at PetCo though when he said that they don’t often stock the fish, as they die easily.  So of COURSE one is dead now and I’ll be back at PetCo with the fish and a water sample tonight or tomorrow.  PITA.

- That was a lot of typing.  Anyway, other than the fish, this week saw me making some pizzas again.  I was short on time so I used the random dough they sell at Shaw’s.  Yeah, don’t do that.  It’s terrible.  I did manage to get the sauce recipe closer to the way I want it.  I’ll post a whole tutorial as soon as it’s finished, but it involves D.O.P. Certified San Marzano tomatoes, tomato paste, basil, oregano, a little extra virgin olive oil, diced garlic, some salt, and my awesome new Cuisinart immersion blender (stick blender). Wicked simple.  Pizzas went into the 550 degree oven onto the pizza stone (my poor stone is cracked but still works) (FYI heat up the stone for at least 30min in the oven before adding pizza) for 7-8mins a piece and they came out delicious.

- Besides the minor boiler / furnace issues in the apt. this week, it’s been a rather uneventful week at home.  Couple birthdays, some computer work, and a bit of TV.

- Online, I spent some time last night watching a 10 year old episode of Alton Brown’s ‘Good Eats’ where he gives some good advice on pizza making.  Here are the YouTube links to the episode:

- A cool blog that I just found this morning (thanks to Facebook), is GoodEater.Org.  It’s pretty interesting, topical, and is local to Boston.  Check it out.

- One of the first projects that I plan on undertaking when I FINALLY own my own home will be this DIY home computer for the kitchen.  It’s based on an LCD touch screen and a couple custom apps to link to the most common household tasks.  Also, you can link to home automation (probably overkill for me) as well as a bar code scanner to help with shopping.  (I absolutely LOVE the Amazon bar code scanner on my Droid and use it all the time!).  As a complete OCD nerd as a kid, I collected catalogs, and the Radio Shack one was my favorite.  I remember when they touted a computer for the home back in the late 80′s (Tandy 1000RS or something), with specific kitchen related apps.  Radio Shack also was a pioneer in the home automation department, making that stuff back in the 80′s as well.   Long story short, I can’t wait to build this kitchen computer.  Rock on.

- One thing that I have been spending a little more time on lately has been my houseplants.  I have a little baby orchid that I’d picked up recently, and have a spider plant and a couple others around the house, but have never had very good luck with my plants.  It’s always one thing or another, but I tend to kill them, especially during this cold, dark winter part of the year.  I found an interesting article that helps determine if a plant is truly dead, if it’s worth reviving, and if so, then how to revive it.  Check it out.

- Had some friends in from Rochester on Sunday and went to lunch with one of them over at Charlie’s Kitchen in Harvard Square.  Great place, but it has changed a little in the past few years.  I Yelped about it here.  Trying to get more Yelping done, as I’m a 2010 Elite member, same as last year.  I feel bad for not spending more time reviewing.  If you are not Yelping yet, you should be!

Other Updates: My photo365 project isn’t going as planned due to a lack of time and discipline.  I am going to attempt to clean out enough space in our back office at home over the weekend so that I can sit there and concentrate on a couple of these online-y type things for 1/2 hour each evening without fail.

]]> http://www.feedmittens.com/fmblog/2010/01/23/weekly-round-up/feed/ 0 http://www.feedmittens.com/fmblog/2008/04/02/keep-the-change/ http://www.feedmittens.com/fmblog/2008/04/02/keep-the-change/#comments Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:50:05 +0000 admin http://www.feedmittens.com/fmblog/?p=18 I can’t stop raving about Bank Of America‘s Keep The Change program. It’s the epitome of automated penny pinching. If you don’t know what Keep The Change is, here is a brief explanation: BoA rounds up all your debit card purchases for a given day to the nearest dollar, then transfers the money every night from your checking to your BoA savings account. It’s a pretty simple thing, and as is the theme of this blog, it makes every penny count.

As an added bonus, BoA will match your Keep The Change transfers at 100% for the first three months, then at 5% every month afterwards. They pay out annually. I have only have my account with BoA for a couple of months, so I can’t really say how smoothly the matching things works. I can say that I’m moving over $20 per month from checking to savings, which even though is very little, is still something. Plus, the extra little $ from BoA at the end of the year will help me feel better about it. It’s free money!

Since the BoA savings account doesn’t give much interest at all, I transfer out the money as often as possible to my Etrade savings account. More on that later.