Wednesday, October 29, 2008

I need some help

Does anyone know anything about the software Photo Loader? When I got my digital camera, it came with the software Photo Loader to copy the photos from my camera onto my computer. Today, I went to do that and after it starts (or attempts to start) copying the files, it gives me this error message: An error occurred while writing library. Proccess will be aborted.
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software, but that didn't do anything. I'm wondering if it has something to do with the date stamp, the last time I uploaded photos to my computer, they were stamped January and February of 2006, instead of September and October of 2008. I changed the stamp on my camera, and renamed the folders in my computer, but I'm wondering if for some reason, Photo Loader isn't able to process past August of this year, kinda like how everyone thought the computers would mess up when we switched over to 2000.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If it makes a difference, my camera is a Casion Exilim Optical 3x, I run Windows XP on my computer and the software is Photo Loader 2.3

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

More updates in my apt

I envy the guys in my living room.
My living room ceiling has been sagging for awhile, and lately if you push on it, it moves quite a bit. So, mom hired someone to rip out the old ceiling (plaster attached to lathe boards, they're not pulling off the lathe), and put up a new ceiling, (drywall), and paint the ceiling. The guys got here this morning and pulled off the old ceiling, now it sounds like their measuring, cutting and putting up the new drywall.
How come my mom always hires people to do the fun stuff, and all I get to do is paint? She hired Kevin and I to paint the stairs last summer, because of the crappy winter and all the ice we got last year, we had to retouch the steps, so she asked me to paint our north ones. I got to sand and varnish windows, paint my bedroom door (which I didn't need), she asked me to scrape and paint the porch floor, the railing and the spindles on the railing, and she's asked me to paint some benches.
I wanted to rip out the walls in the old bathroom, I want to rip out the ceiling in my living room. I'm pretty sure I could do it. Yeah, I'd have to be careful around the corners where the ceiling meets the wall with the old wallpaper and stuff, but it's not that hard. Why pay someone else when I could do it (especially after she's all wary of people being in the house when we're not here).

GUYS GET ALL THE FUN STUFF :(

Friday, October 17, 2008

How annoying is this? I listen to a radio station that usually has 80's Friday Nights, from 7:00pm until Midnight. I look forward to Friday night all week for these. Now, I find out, they changed it so it only goes until 10:00PM. Now, they have some talk program about what's going on in "stars" lives. Like that's any better than relaxing to great music destressing from the week. As if I give a damn about movie stars lives.

2 Annoyances and 1 good thing in my life

I may be upgrading something in my life soon. I'll let you all know when I get it.

UGH!! My dad just called asking if I wanted to earn some money, when I asked doing what, he said cleaning up leaves. Apparently they got a quote from someone else and decided I could earn that much doing it. Thank you sooo very much for thinking of me, but no thanks. Which is pretty much what I said, to which he replied, when do you want to work on it. I'm so glad my word means nothing to my parents. It's really nice to know.

Also, I had decided to go with them to Hawaii this winter, but since the stock market sucks so much, we're not going anymore. Paying for 4 people to go down there is pretty expensive, I bet paying for 3 people to go to Rome last year was pretty expensive too, and going on a cruise 2 years ago in July for 2 people was pretty expensive too, but you guys didn't think that much in the future about money. So, when I finally decide to go on vacation with you, we can't do it.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

All night long

Here's a question for y'all, do you get nervous talking to really hott people?

So, I'm on a bread pudding kick. I love bread pudding, and some of the restaurants that have it here, are cutting it out of their menu, so I decided that in order to really get good pudding, I'd have to make it myself, I've been saying that for a couple months. Well, my grandmother's 90-something birthday party is on Sunday, and when we were planning it out in September, I said I'd make bread pudding and bring it. My mother said I needed to try 3 recipes and figure out the best one. I made one recipe a couple weeks after that, and got all bummed that it didn't turn out too well. Sunday, mom brings me 3 more recipes and a gift card to Fareway for $25.00. I looked at all my recipes, decided what I needed and went and bought stuff today.
I made a 2nd attempt today, and barely got it out of the oven before I had to run off to work. I did taste it, and it tasted pretty good even without the Rum sauce they suggest serving it with. I also prepared a 3rd one and it's waiting in my fridge to be cooked when I get home.

I'm gonna post the recipes on here, so other people can enjoy them. I'm also gonna tell you what went wrong (it's a given something will go wrong, it always does when I'm cooking)

FIRST ATTEMPT:

Cinnamon Peach Bread Pudding

8 slices white bread
1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon margarine
2 Tablespoons peach spreadable fruit spread
1 1/3 cups skim milk
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Toast bread. Spread with margarine and peach spreadable fruit. Cube bread. Pour skim milk into 4-cup glass measure. Scald, but DO NOT BOIL MILK in microwave about 4 to 7 minutes on HIGH. Let cool. In a large bowl, stir eggs with a wire whisk. Add sugar, cinnamon and vanilla extrat. Stir in scalded milk. Mix well to combine. Add bread. Mix well. Let set about 10 minutes for bread to absorb milk. Pour into an 8-by-8 inch microwave-safe baking dish. Bake at 50% or MEDIUM power in microwave for about 10 minutes.
(from Healthy Exchanges Cookbook by JoAnna M. Lund, page 187)


I felt that peach should not go with bread pudding, so I eliminated that. By doing that, the pudding was a little bland. Kevin suggested I dump some apple pie filling in the next recipe, so I bought some.

SECOND ATTEMPT:
Donut Bread Pudding

1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2 (4 1/2-ounce) cans fruit cocktail, with their juice
2 eggs, beaten
Pinch salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
24 donuts, cut into cubes (recommended: Krispuy Kreme)
Butter Rum Sauce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together all ingredients except for the donut cubes and Butter Rum Sauce. Add the donut cubes and toss until they have absorbed as much of the liquid as possible. Pour the mixture into a casserole dish and bake for one hour. Serve with Butter Rum Sauce.
Butter Rum Sauce
1 stick butter
1 (1 pound) box confectioners' sugar
Dark Rum

In a saucepan, melt butter and gradually stir in the confectioner's sugar. Add rum and heat until bubbly. Pour over each serving of Donut Bread Pudding.
(from the food network, Paula Deen's recipe)

For this one, I used a store brand donuts, it still tastes good. But I found that 24 donuts were too many, by the time I got 12 donuts cubed and into my mixing bowl, all the liquid had been soaked up. Like I said, I haven't made the rum sauce yet, but looking at the recipe now, I wonder how much rum I'm supposed to put in.

THIRD ATTEMPT:
Rum Raisin Bread Pudding

3 cups milk
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons rum
1/2 cup raisins
7 (1/2-inch) slices brioche bread, cubed or torn
4 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large saucepan, add milk, butter, vanilla, cinnamon, brown sugar, rum and raisins and heat until war. simmer and stir until sugar dissolves. Into a large bowl add the cubed bread and pour in the hot milk mixture. Let sit for 30 minutes so the bread absorbs the milk. Add the beaten eggs to the bread and milk mixture and stir. Pour bread pudding into a buttered 1 1/2 quart baking dish and bake for 50 minutes.

(from food network, The Neely's recipe)

This one is sitting in my fridge waiting to be baked, I wonder if that will make the bread really soggy. HMMM. I learned to mix the ingredients first and then warm them on the stove, because that rum really boils over.