A classic from the vault:

2 cups almond milk

1/4 cup brown sugar, maybe a little more

1/4 cup peanut butter (the real stuff, not the hydrogenated oil crap)

1 tsp vanilla

Mix well. Fire up the ice cream maker. Pour it in. Wait. Yum.

Makes 1 pint. (I halved the recipe tonight, because I knew I was gonna eat it all. Mmmf.)

Peanut butter stands in for dairy fat much better than most things do. Everybody's afraid of peanuts now which is a shame because most of us aren't allergic and they are yummy.

This recipe stands well on its own. You don't have to smother it in chocolate or extra sugar. You do have to like peanuts.

It's Orientation here this week.  This mostly means that there are zillions of identically-t-shirted young people chanting out slogans and being forced to learn synchronized dance routines.

I hate it.

When I was a freshman, 23 years ago, MIT's orientation week was combined with the period when you picked your housing.  You were assigned a temporary dorm (mine was MacGregor, which is entirely made up of singles), and then there was a four-day frenzy of fraternity rush, sorority rush, "independent living group" [aka ex-frats that had gone co-ed, largely] rush, alongside a more low-key period to check out the dorms and rank them, if you decided not to join a frat/sorority/ILG.  And there was also Orientation. 

It was confusing.  By the time we got to the Orientation part of the week, most of us were exhausted.  I'd decided ultimately to live in the dorms (I think 30% of people, most of them men, joined FSILGs, which meant that the gender ratio in the dorms might even have been more women than men?), in part because I had met someone who was one class ahead of me who eventually became one of my closest friends.  (We're not as close nowadays, but really, who of us is as close nowadays to the people we met in our first week of college?)  Sharon had run an event at Random Hall (yes, that's its name) where we made gnocchi, and it seemed far more authentically fun than most of the BS that was happening at all of the other dorms/FSILGs.  (Unfortunately, I still can't make gnocchi that don't fall apart.  Perhaps I should email her and get her recipe.)

After all of that, Orientation was just exhausting.  We'd not slept for days.  Many of us (including me) had been told "no" by an FSILG.  (This is a really terrible thing to happen during your first week of college, I should note.)  And then they wanted us to get into groups of strangers and do trust falls and learn about cultural diversity and do physical activities and Make Friends.  They called it MOYA, for Move Off Your Assumptions (God, I want those brain cells back.)

I fled. 

See, there's nothing stopping you from just...walking away.  And while lots of Orientation was "mandatory", it's not as though it's, you know, mandatory.  So I left.  I wandered Boston.  I went shopping.  I read along the Esplanade on the Charles River. 

I did bits and pieces here and there of Orientation, and I remember my MOYA group leader being really frustrated with me.  But I thought then, and still think now, that Orientation is fundamentally misguided, because it presumes that by taking a group of culturally diverse (and neurodiverse!) people and pretending that they're all extroverts with lots of common ground, everyone will have fun and make friends.

What is actually true is that for some people, including me, it's basically the psychological equivalent to having people shout at them for four days.  And I didn't sign up for Boot Camp, I went to nerd college.

At times, I have tried to improve Orientation here, but the other big problem with it is that Orientation reproduces itself.  The people who lead Orientation are the people who love Orientation, and who see nothing wrong with acting as though our class of Math and CS students, which is roughly 60% non-Canadian-born, is actually made up of a bunch of culturally unified extroverts.  Year after year, this structure reproduces itself.

I hate Orientation.

I like frozen treats like ice cream, but I do try to stay away from dairy as it sometimes ... well, that's not important. At least not to you. 

RIGHT so

Ice-cream-like frozen treat without dairy, which pretty much means sorbet. Which is frozen fruit juice. But instead of buying fruit juice in a jug, which is too thin really, buy it in the little cans of concentrate, generally in the freezer section of the grocery store.

Here's the tools you need.

• Ice cream freezer
• Stick (or other mechanical) blender

So here's the recipe.

• One can of frozen concentrated fruit juice. Any kind will do.
• One can of water (same can, just fill it up)

Just dump those in a big mixing bowl, and in a separate small container add

• 1/4 cup of white granulated sugar
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of xanthan gum powder

The xanthan gum is important as it takes the place of the milk solids and dairy fats which, in ice cream, get in the way of large (unpleasant) ice crystal formation. With xanthan gum, you get bajillions of tiny entrained air bubbles, which do about the same thing and makes the end product almost fluffy. If you want a more solid product, use less, but probably not less than 1/4, which is about where it starts having a useful effect. 

The trickiest bit is mixing in the xanthan gum, because as soon as you drop it in water it turns into goo. What seems to work pretty well is adding the gum powder to the white sugar granules and stirring that up really good, then adding a little water to the sugar and then stirring that up, then scraping the resulting goo into the juice and water. Use a blender to mix it all up real good. (I don't think hand mixing is going to properly disperse the gum.)

Pour it into your ice cream freezer and let the magic happen.

I like making sorbet from the cans of concentrate rather than from ready-to-drink fruit juice because I get a much stronger flavour. 

I've made most of the flavours (punch, berry, lemon, lime) available in the stores, except grape and orange. I haven't gotten to orange yet, and I dunno about grape sorbet. Maybe you'll take that chance, and report back, for the good of society.

I think it's interesting how in the West we often pigeonhole people based on what they "do" -- like "oh, Bob's a Dentist" -- and I think that's really kind of unfair. 

So, at the risk of seeming douchey, here's a list of things I do with reasonable competency. Basically what things I either have or would be comfortable accepting money to do.

• Computer programming, including analysis and architecture. 
• UX and visual design, typically for printed communication or UI purposes.
• Systems analysis and solution synthesis in a broad range of arenas.
• Homebuilding stuff, including construction, trim, plumbing and electrical.
• Cabinetmaking, furniture building and wood turning; chunky but functional.
• Vocal performance, both spoken (books/VO) and sung.
• Theatrical performance, both on stage and in front of a camera.
• Writing, both original (essay length) and adaptation.
• Event, portrait, landscape, architectural, art and repro photography. 
• Digital image processing and retouching, as in "Photoshop".
• High end hardcopy photo production (gallery quality prints).
• Instruction of many (but not all) of the above skills, 1-on-1 or group.
• Managing people in doing many (but not all) of the above tasks.

There's a longer list of things that I do at a novice level or just to save paying a professional to do; stuff I wouldn't do for someone else for money. 

Anyway --- what do you do?

Considering this a "getting to know you" kind of shared discourse, feel free to post your answer in your own journal -- you don't have to answer in my comments, though you may want to say "hey read my journal!" 

Hey, I made it! Nice place you got here, Tom. I admit I'm spoiled and missing the instant drop downs when hovering and clicking, etc. But I remember how to use my back button, so all is good. Most importantly, I can see the posts I want to see from the people I really care about. Dear Fb, please take note!

p.s. - Tom, is there a favicon for OPW yet? I keep my most important shortcuts together w/o text to save space and I'm getting a generic icon. I did not read through your posts yet, so I apologize if this has been brought up already. xoxo

p.p.s. - Cat picture.

Yesterday my kid needed an escort to a summer camp reunion in Central Park. So we hopped on MegaBus and I faded away once she found her peers at Columbus Circle.

Columbus Circle is also home to the Museum of Arts and Design. Which is home to all sorts of things.

High points for me included Orly Cogan's "bittersweet obsession," an embroidery piece exploring the relationship between food and drug addiction. There is something compelling about edgy work in this medium.

Similarly, Stephen Dixon's "21 countries" is a series of dinner plates, each of which "commemorates" an invasion carried out by the United States in the 20th century. When I look at these, I see the ceramic tiles of the stations of the cross that hung in our kitchen when I was growing up. It's hard to look away.

The museum also currently features the "MAD Biennial," in which several floors display the works of "makers" from all over the city. I found a lot of that work less than intriguing, with some notable exceptions, particularly the musical instruments and turntables, most of which were intended to be played as well as seen. I would have loved to stumble upon a concert.

Probably the biggest clinker for me is Rafael de Cárdenas' "nightclub" that took up much of a floor. It's a nightclub with deep blue lighting and terrariums full of fake plants. Okay, I guess I get it, but the trouble for me is that I already know a nightclub with nobody in it and the lights on is just a cave. I've stayed until last call before, after all.

Apparently there are performances in the nightclub at certain times, and maybe it takes on a whole new aspect then.

After the museum I rented myself a bike and orbited Central Park. I attempted to rent a CitiBike; the kiosk took several minutes to walk me through the process, then rejected me with no explanation. I wound up renting from the more traditional place just inside the park. Which gave me a bike whose right-hand gearshift didn't work at all. Which I figured out while climbing hills to get back again, through the north woods. But I still had a blast.

I don't recall any role models from my youth (70s-80s) that reflected the person that I was, or seemed to want to become, or in fact became today.

As a tall white adolescent male in the United States of that era all of my look-alikes on TV and in the movies and books were either alpha-males, tragically failed alpha-males (including nerds, scientists, the mentally ill, clowns and comic relief), or villains.

This is the white patriarchy at work breeding the new generation, of course. If you're a white man, and you're not in charge (either a good boss or a bad boss), you're a fuck-up.

There may have been the occasional funny or clever shy introvert in an ensemble cast presented at least in a non-disparaging way, but really I'm hard pressed to think of an example other than Mission Impossible where everyone's traits were considered useful, no matter how non-mainstream (And Barney the genius electronics guy was black, too, which was pretty good for the era).

Most media was (and continues to be) about The Alpha Guy doing Alpha Stuff in an Alpha Way. 

I think perhaps one of the reasons guys of a certain age who don't do a lot of introspection have a hard time with feminism is because they just don't know how to act in a world where people who look like them aren't always the Alpha Guy doing Alpha Stuff in an Alpha Way.

Most of the time people just play the role they learned before they were 20. If they never learned a role other than Alpha Guy, even if they're shitty at playing it, they will probably find it hard to play another role.  (Which is a reason, not an excuse.) 

So, I encourage the creation of media where there are positive role models for all personality types as well as genders and ethnicities. And it's good to see that this is happening, to some degree, in modern media. But I think there's a lot more to be done. As there is with every other aspect of feminism.

One thing that struck me when watching Cesar Milan's the Dog Whisperer is how he coaches dog owners to gain dominance over their pets.  He can walk into a room full of out of control, crazy barking dogs.  Just by being calm and assertive he will bespell them into submission.  

That's how people work too, in my experience .  As a female gamer I often run into a group of random guys and am reminded of Cesar facing the dogpack.  When in an unfamiliar social situation, sometimes people will naturally bark and try to rattle each other to establish dominance.  Most people are fine with not being the alpha (fe)male as long as their place in the pack feels right to them.  It's not knowing who's in charge often makes people restless and insecure, I think.  They bark, troll, try to see if they can make me lose my cool.  They're not being cruel or misogynistic in my view, they'd treat new guys the same way.  It's just human nature.  People need to feel social order on an emotional level or they will do what comes naturally to try to establish it.  When we interact with new people in real life, we do it subconsciously through body language and other visual cues but online, we only have words.  

So when someone's trolling, the way I see it is they're basically barking at me online.  They're trying to make me lose my cool, trying to assert dominance over me. If I let them rattle me and got angry at them, they'd win the dominance mini-game round we've just played.  If I return the serve with humor and grace they might keep trying but as long as no one gets angry or hurt, no one loses.

As a manager and guild leader I've had to play this game many times.  I actually enjoy it when I know the people involved and know that no one's feelings will really be affected.  Then it's a harmless test of will and spirit.  

Sometimes innocent bystanders have seen me and a bunch of crude gamer guys trash-talking each other and been alarmed, leaping to my defense.  Once one of my opponents in a game made a hilarious youtube video about a beanie baby cougar he named after my game character and then ritually beheaded...  Well, I thought it was hilarious!  I knew he wasn't serious.  In the context of the game we were bitter rivals.  Outside of the game, we became friends and remain so to this day.  

Er, but other people thought maybe I should call the cops just in case.  They were really upset by it.

So, he probably shouldn't have made that video right?  I should have been upset by it too?

Well, maybe.  But I knew he was just trying to troll me.  I trolled him back with a witty forum post.  Fun was had.   No anger required.

And now, Sol (3 mos) and Boots (1 year)

Do I win for first pic of food on OPW?

Watching: Just finished the second episode of Babylon 5 Season 2.  After a full season of Commander Sinclair, it's always a bit jarring when we get to Captain Sheridan; mostly it's the voice, I think, probably an octave higher and rough instead of smooth.  But Sheridan's already got more depth to his character, and the writing seems much better; the plot has hit the ground running.

My wife and I also watched the first episode of "Outlander"; she's a big fan of the Diana Gabaldon books they're based on, and I have read and enjoyed them as well.  It seemed okay to start with, not as off-putting as I found "Bitten" or "True Blood", so I'm sure we'll keep on.

Reading: Slogging through The Talisman by Stephen King & Peter Straub.  Never read any Straub, but I've read a fair chunk of King by this point, and I frankly can't point to anything that doesn't read like him.  But I'm not enjoying it that much; our main character is a little too hapless, and just when he seems to be ramping up his confidence slightly he gets saddled with a hapless companion.  Part of this book almost seem like a dry run for the Dark Tower.  Not sure if I'll keep it when I finish, or if I'll want to try to the sequel I seem to recall they came out with a few years ago.  Also inching through What If The Earth Had Two Moons?, which is fitfully interesting, but today I've been trying to catch up on Cracked.com columns, which I seem to have become a dedicated reader of.

Listening: Mostly Rush's "Vapour Trails" recently.  I skipped over this one when it came out, mostly because on first listen it seemed horrifically noisy, something I'd been afraid of since "Stick It Out".  It became available on eMusic, though, so I thought I'd give it a try.  A fellow Rush fan that I met at my wife's family reunion said they had come out with a less noisy version, so maybe I managed to get that one by chance.  (I did like "Snakes & Arrows", which gave me the impetus to try again, and one of these days I should try "Clockwork Angels", too.)  I also have Sloan's "Between The Bridges" coming up soon; Sloan's a band I find hit-and-miss, but I read a gushy chapter on them in a book on Canadian alternative music a few months back, and since they're on eMusic too, I thought I'd give them another try.

Playing: For several months now my brain has been mostly dominated by Paradox Games's offerings, specifically Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV.  I could write a big long blog post about my games, but let's just say that at the moment I am experimenting with EU4 games created from my CK2 save files, and having a lot of fun with it.

I've also been spending an embarrassing amount of time playing with Akinator, a guessing game with a genie, bad English, and a bit more than twenty questions.  It only guesses characters--both real and fictional--but I've become caught up in the question of which characters it knows about, and then which ones are most popular (because it tells you how many times it's been guessed before...).  I now have several pages of numbers, character from different sources and their respective popularities.  Akinator the genie itself is at the top, followed by Hitler and Jesus, unless there's other obvious ones I haven't tried yet.  I'm sure it'll pall eventually, but at least it keeps from playing more Candy Crush Saga on my iPod.