550,000: An Absolutely True Story with Four Disappointments for the Reader Along the Way

This story starts with 550,000, the high score on the pinball machine I inherited from my father.

Beyond the memories we have of those who have passed away, we also have physical tokens of their existence. Photographs of those no longer alive are no doubt the most common (although if a photograph only exists in digital media and never printed, you could say it's not a true physical item). But we also have their handiwork, such as the ceramic matzoh plate my father made in the early 90s that looks like a sheet of matzoh: 

To me, some of the most emotionally resonant tokens are things that had been handwritten by the deceased, mainly due to the uniqueness of handwriting that has the immediacy of "This was written by the person who no longer with us, in their own hand, holding a pen or pencil." One example that I have is a label on a large thermos, identifiable as being from the 70s with the orange floral pattern decorating it. It has a large white push button on the top to dispense its contents. It is the type of thermos you find on folding tables at something like a PTA event, used to provide coffee. In fact, on the label is "Decaf Coffee" is written in my mother's handwriting, a precise narrow slanted mix of cursive and block letters that far excels the quality of my handwriting. And I'm going to disappoint you in not showing a picture of the label with my mother's handwriting as I can't find the thermos, somehow misplaced in the move we made four years ago. (Disappointment #1)

Build Your Own Pizza (How to Entertain Children #2)

So, you have to not only find a project for six boys 5 to 9 years old, but you also have to provide them with a snack. How about combining the project and the snack? - build your own pizzas.

This is the idea I came up the final time I hosted a meeting for the fathers and sons YMCA Adventure Guides (formerly known as the Indian Guides). It's a father-son program where once a month there would be a meeting at a member's house. For every meeting, some creative group activity would be done. One year when I hosted, the project was making rubberband-powered spool cars. For 2013 it was pizza.

• Get Trader Joe's ready-made pizza dough. Each packet of dough can make three small pizzas
• Get a selection of pizza toppings. From Trader Joe's (mostly) I also bought shredded cheese, red sauce, white sauce, pesto, pepperoni, pancetta, mushrooms, chicken, spinach and red pepper. Place the toppings on the table where the pizza making will occur.
  
• Split each bag of pizza dough into three approximately equal pieces.
• With a rolling pin, roll each piece of dough into rectangle about 4" by 8".
• Place each piece of dough on its own sheet of parchment paper.

  

  Note regular and whole wheat pizza dough. The kids were not interested in the whole wheat.

  
  
• Pre-heat the oven.
• Give each child their own rectangle of dough and let them top it however they like.
• Put the pizzas on cookie sheets (a cookie sheet can take three of the pizzas).
• Bake as directed on the pizza dough bags.

Finally, for no particular reason, a squirrel eating an apple just outside our dining room as I was putting out everything for the pizza making:

Why It Took Me a Minimum of 74 Steps to Build a Simple TV Stand

I recently built this TV stand for a spare TV:

Well, that's not quite the final product. The fact is, that there was a major design flaw, which I will explain below.

At a high-level, the process of building it could be broken down into these four steps:
The high-level list of the process was this:

1. Decide to build a TV stand out of wood.
2. Cut the pieces of wood.
3. Screw the pieces of wood together.
4. Attach the stand to the TV.

The fact of the matter, was that in reality, there were many more than four steps in building the stand. In fact, when I wrote them down there were 74 steps.

The point of this post, is that in designing and building something to its final form, there are often an huge number of steps to get to the end that you never considered when you started the project. There's a process you go through of thinking, designing, building, fixing mistakes in the design, fixing mistakes in the building. Most of the time, things don't go as expected and/or you haven't thought through everything that was needed to be successful.

This can apply to many things designed and built including: a software application, a work of fiction, or in this case a simple TV stand made of a few pieces of wood.

The Only Purpose of this Post is to Help People Reflash Their Nexus 7 Tablets

(You probably don't want to read this unless you care about reflashing your 2012 Nexus 7 tablet from Android 5.0 (Lollipop) back to a release that make the tablet usable. After a few missteps I was able to reflash it, and the point of this post is for help others deal with the problems I had while reflashing on a single website, instead of the multiple ones I needed to solve the issues I had.)

How can you tell if you have a light saber or a heavy saber? (How to Entertain Children #1)

For my son Liam's tenth birthday party, his chosen theme was a mashup of Star Wars, Star Trek and Dr. Who. Here's the invitation my wife sent out:

IMAGINE IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ON THE T.A.R.D.I.S. TO A GALAXY FAR, FAR, AWAY AND BOLDLY GO WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE....

The Doctor (10th one of course), Captain Picard, and Yoda request your presence at the celebration of Liam turning 10!  

Please drop your children off for a scavenger hunt and birthday treats.

Gifts are welcome but not required. Daleks, Klingons, and storm troopers will be turned away.

WHAT: Liam Rudoff is turning 10!

WHEN: Saturday, February 7, 2015, 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm

WHERE: Gallifrey....no, wait……Alderaan…oh, that won’t work either…Okay…our house 

We promise to have your children returned to this time period and universe by the time you come to pick them up.

Nobody Ever Complains About the Chocolate Covered Toffee (Recipe Included)

One thing I bring quite often to parties is chocolate covered toffee. I've been making it since sometime in the '90s. The recipe is from an inherited 1951 copy of The Joy of Cooking with a broken binding (you will find the latest printings no longer have instructions on how to skin a squirrel, which I have gladly never had need to use).

The toffee is quick and easy to make, I usually have all ingredients on hand, and it will be eaten quickly. This is all that's left of the batch I made yesterday for a gathering:

1 cup sugar
½ cup butter (1 stick), cut into 4 to 8 chunks
¼ cup water
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sliced almonds, divided in half
6 oz chocolate: chips, chopped or melted

Prepare a cookie sheet with parchment paper, silicone pad, plastic-coated freezer paper (which I use), or grease it if you have no other option.

In a saucepan put the sugar, butter, water and salt. Under high heat, cook without stirring until it reaches 285° F. Take off heat, and immediately stir in ½ cup almonds.

Pour from saucepan (carefully!) onto prepared cookie sheet, and with a spatula spread it until it's about ¼" thick.

Sprinkle chocolate chips or chopped chocolate on top of toffee. Wait about a minute to allow chocolate to melt on the hot toffee, then spread (if you don't have chocolate chips, and you want to avoid chopping bars or chunks of chocolate, just melt in the microwave and spread on top).

Sprinkle the remaining ½ cup almonds on top and use a spatula to press into the still melted chocolate.

When cold and hard, break into pieces. If you need it to harden quickly (which I usually find I do since I wait too long make it before leaving for a party), let cool about 10 to 15 minutes, then place the cookie sheet in the freezer another 10 to 15 minutes.
 

More of Finding my Father in a 1957 Mexican Movie

After my previous posting about a photograph my father, Leonard Rudoff, took of a movie being made in Acapulco and realizing that he was in the movie itself, I decided to buy a DVD of the movie, "El bolero de Raquel" ($6.99 on Amazon) to see if I could get higher resolution view of him than in the YouTube video.

What I didn't realize until I saw the movie on DVD was that in the one minute scene at the pool, he's in three different shots in three different places (so much for continuity).

First, so he can be recognized, from his slide collection here are excerpts from a couple photos of him about the same time in Mexico, one with him swimming in the same pool at Hotel Caleta:

From the DVD, here he is in the background in the movie, first as Cantinflas as the boy are having the drinks poolside:

Then as the headwaiter and Cantinflas argue:

Not high resolution, but clearly him.

And here's a clearer view of him with a camera on the diving board as the waiter is pushed into the pool:

And I might as well show the full photos from above with my father. This is with his brother Alex in their stylish 1950's wear:

 And at the the pool at Hotel Caletas:

I have no idea who the woman is, but there are enough photos of unknown women in his slides that I will likely have a later post entitled, "Who Are These Women That Accompanied My Father and Uncle to Mexico in the 1950's?"