Note of the Living Deb

Dear Companies,

You would think people would know their own e-mail addresses. Sadly, this is not always the case. Also, typos happen.

So please do not let customers tell you their e-mail addresses by typing them in or telling you over the phone rather than by sending you an email (at least not without confirming that they received an e-mail sent to the address that they supplied). But if you must, don't then proceed to supply them important information only via e-mail from a no-reply address.

When you accept wrong e-mail addresses and then don't even allow the recipient you are bothering to let you know about the error, that's not nice. Especially when you are also sticking things on a calendar that is attached to that address, American Airlines.

And especially when your e-mail yells at me for looking at private information that's not mine, doctors.

It's not even good business.

Here's a bonus hint: If someone hasn't been to your clinic in over two decades, you might want to confirm that the snail-mail address you have for them is correct. Especially if that's where you're mailing your bills.

Sincerely,
The Wrong Debbie

P.S. Providing me a long-distance number (which I'm going to assume will bring me to a non-human) is not encouraging me to get back to you on this, either.

Blue Bell News of the Week

Poor Blue Bell is out for the count. It's going to be "several months at a minimum" before ice cream is again sold to the public. They are going to extreme lengths to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. For example, they are cleaning everything including air conditioning systems and "Eliminating possible contamination pathways, including redesigning work spaces to re-route traffic in production areas, placing barriers between work areas, installing additional foot washers at doors into production areas, and discontinuing use of outside materials such as wood pallets in sanitary areas."

Today I noticed that another place in the food court at my local mall had closed--a big place. The food court had seemed to have few closings relative to the rest of the mall, but on closer inspection we saw that in addition to the big salad place and, oh yeah, the burger place and, oh right, the cinnamon roll place we had already noticed, the other burger place and the ice cream place and smoothie place have also closed.

We were wondering just what percentage of stores are open, so we counted. We decided to count a store as open even if it had big "store closing" signs on it (I remember two of these). We also counted one place as closed even though it was open for gaming for a few hours on Saturdays. We counted related adjacent stores as a single store if one was an optometrist and one was selling eyeglasses or if there was an obvious doorway between the two but otherwise not (3 pairs qualified as a single store; 1 did not). And we decided to exclude the carts from the count because it was impossible to guess how many carts had closed (remains were rare). We decided to classify the train rides (now open only on weekends) as a "cart" and thus did not have to decide whether it was open or closed.

I was wondering if half the stores were closed yet. The answer is no. We counted 88 open stores and 54 closed stores. This surprises me because a June 2009 article on America's Most Endangered Malls shows our mall with a 61% occupancy rate, our findings show an occupancy rate of 62%, and we've noticed a lot more stores closing than opening since then.

Best stores still open:
* Godiva
* Hot Topic
* the sushi place (has the best chicken samples, anyway)

Most common survivors:
* shoe stores (as one shoe store proclaimed: better than chocolate and lasts longer, too)
* stores with X or Z in the name
* smelly stores (perfumes or soap)

So, if you want a good chance to survive in our mall, you might want to look into opening a shop called Xtreme Candle Shooz.

Remember how I regularly go walking in a local air-conditioned but not-currently-very-successful mall? Well, some soccer fans are pushing for a stadium in town, and that mall is currently one of the three proposed sites. They are wanting a "natural grass" outdoor stadium that could also be used for outdoor music concerts (see imaginative map).

Outdoor? I'm sweating just thinking about it.

Otherwise, soccer fields sound good to me, but that's just because ultimate frisbee is generally played on soccer fields. Of course really it would just be some monstrosity surrounded by a sea of parking lot. Kind of like a mall. Only it would usually be locked up.

According to the Austin Business Journal's Shopping for an answer, it appears the mall owners just would like it to become a slightly better mall.

Web page of the day - speaking of insurance, I decided to google "hail-proof roof" (I think it was) and found this gem. "No roofing material is fully hail proof. If anyone saw the hail storm that went through Dallas/Ft. Worth in the mid-nineties or the OK City hail storm of April '04, you'd know what I mean. There are hail-RESISTANT roofs. These products have Class 1 through Class 4 hail-resistance ratings, 4 being the highest."

This page is short and sweet and told me just what I wanted to know. "Many roofs carry this rating ... [including] some metal roofs, some tile and some composition shingles."

Score. My next roof is going to have at least a Class 4 hail-resistant rating and I'm going to ask my insurer for a discount. I had my roof re-shingled when I moved in 13 years ago. Because I sprang for 30-year shingles instead of the standard 20-year shingles, my roof is expected to last 23 years (instead of 17; the sun is a harsh mistress). So it will be a while (probably). But it's good to have a plan.

Today in the mail I got one of those envelopes that is very plain and says, across the bottom, "ANNUAL PRIVACY NOTICE AND IMPORTANT AMENDMENTS ENCLOSED." My experience has been that although so-called "important information" may be important to the sender it is of no use to me.

Many normal people would shred this sort of thing without even looking at it, or perhaps file it without looking at it. But it turns out it has a few very interesting sentences in it.

"Your account will now have a minimum finance charge." Eventually it is explained that if one has a finance charge and normally it would be less than $1.50, it will now be $1.50. It will still be zero for me, because I always pay my balance in full. But it's nice to have the option of not paying in full if something comes up. $1.50 is not a very big deal, but it comes out to a very high annual percentage rate on any kind of credit card bill I would have. So, that sentence is moderately interesting.

"You may reject this change by following the rejection instructions below." This by itself is not a very interesting sentence because you can only ever reject new terms by canceling your credit card. Right?

Wrong! Not this time; not for this change. All you have to do is tell them in writing that you reject that change. You have to include your name and account number so that they can actually be read. And it has to be postmarked by May 7.

Well, just out of general principal I am going to have to write that letter. Actually, I think I'll write a postcard. Cheaper. You do have to use snail mail, though.

"We added a Minimum Finance Charge to your account primarily due to a change in our business practices." Buffoons.

Beware: You could have this experience, too, especially if you have any cards from Bank of America such as an L.L. Bean card.

It was supposed to rain, so I decided to hit some factory tours.

Lake Champlain Chocolates

(Scroll down for hot chocolate recipe.)

The Story

Once upon a time, a restaurant owner used to give his employees boxes of chocolates for special occasions. After a while, one of his chefs explained to him that although he really appreciated the gesture, the chocolate was kind of terrible. A challenge was issued, and the chef could, indeed, make tastier chocolates.

They started selling these chocolates at the restaurant, and eventually it grew to become half the business. Finally, the restaurant was sold and the chocolate company was spun off into its own business.

The Process

This factory is all tier three. Tier one chocolate making is located in tropical areas. This is where the cocoa beans are grown. Cocoa beans grow on trees. The pods grow directly from the trunk and large branches and are about the size and shape of a football. They are removed with machetes.

Inside the pods are lots of white, wet, and gooey beans the size of olives. They start to turn purple when they hit the air.

So to make chocolate, the first thing you do is pile up the cocoa beans on some banana leaves and cover them with more banana leaves and let them ferment for several days to develop their color and flavor.

Then set them on wood racks and turn them continuously to let them dry (which may take up to two weeks). By this time they are smaller, the size of almonds, and dark brown and hard.

Tier two is where the cocoa beans are processed to turn them into chocolate. First the beans are roasted. Then the shell, which is a little thicker than a peanut skin, is removed, leaving the nib. The nibs are then pressurized to form cocoa liquor, which consists of cocoa butter and cocoa mass. The cocoa mass is then processed to turn it into cocoa powder. At the very least it is ground more finely. It may also be processed with alkali (Dutch process) or other things.

To cocoa powder and cocoa butter, add sugar to get dark chocolate. To get milk chocolate, also add milk powder. White chocolate includes cocoa butter, sugar, and milk solids. Because white chocolate has no cocoa powder, some people (and laws) say it’s not really chocolate, even though cocoa butter comes from cocoa beans. Additional ingredients such as vanilla, may also be added, but only natural ingredients are used by Lake Champlain Chocolates.

Milk chocolate tastes sweeter than dark chocolate not because it has more sugar but because it has proportionately less cocoa powder, which is bitter.

The tour guide explained that the cocoa powder is the part of chocolate that has been found to have antioxidants, and so that is why it is sometimes recommended to have one ounce of dark chocolate per day. One ounce is about one-third of a candy bar. She did not explain that the calcium in milk interferes with the antioxidant properties of the cocoa.

So then once the chocolate is created, it is shipped to the Lake Champlain Chocolate Factory, in the form of what looks like flat chocolate chips, for the tier three processing, which is to mix it with other flavors and form it into shapes.

A lot of care is taken with temperature so that the finished chocolate is glossy and snaps when you break a piece off. If vegetable oil is used as an ingredient, the chocolate will bend instead of snap. If the chocolate’s temperature or humidity changes too abruptly at any point, a white film may form.

After melting, the chocolate gets piped to other areas.

For hollow chocolates, only one half of a mold is filled with chocolate, then the two halves are clamped together and the mold is clamped to a “magnetic tumbler.” This gives it the equivalent of a slow-motion amusement park ride. The mold is turned on a rod sticking out from a cylinder which is also revolving, all very slowly. (I had always thought of hollow chocolates as having less than half as much chocolate as solid would have had.)

One kind of chocolate may be hand painted onto part of the mold before the other chocolate is poured in to make a design.

Truffles have ganache centers. Ganache is made of cream, butter, and chocolate. Truffles are made with a pipe within a pipe. First chocolate is squirted through the exterior pipe. Then the ganache is squired through the interior pipe. Then more chocolate is squirted through the exterior pipe. This all happens very quickly.

Chocolate-covered solids with flat bottoms (such as turtles) first have the interiors created. Then these interiors are placed by hand on a conveyer belt. Part of the conveyer belt is dredged through chocolate at the bottom so that when it gets to the top, underneath the turtle, it coats the bottom of the turtle. At the other end of the conveyer belt is a short chocolate waterfall which covers the top of the turtles.

Chocolate-covered round things (such as nuts and malted balls) are put into a tumbler to get coated and to make the coating shiny.

My Experience

I arrived in time to take a tour with a busload of folks, but it was so crowded that I didn’t get to see some things as well as I wanted to. So I decided to go on another tour. It was free and I decided not to eat any samples the second time to be fair. I refrained from everything but the dark chocolate, fresh from the mold ten minutes previous to our getting it. I just wanted to see if I could taste the difference between fresh and regular chocolate (dark chocolate supposedly stays fresh the longest, at one year). No, I could not tell the difference.

Between tours I decided to buy something. I ended up choosing a hot chocolate, which was available at several levels of darkness. I chose the darkest one (75%), which turned out to be a little too dark for my tastes. I also paid attention to how it was made.

First the worker put in three tablespoons of the chocolate-chip things which were made of the 75% dark chocolate. Then she added one teaspoon of cocoa powder. Then 3/4 cup of milk. Then a candy thermometer. Then she heated the milk with a steaming wand, stopping to mix it occasionally, until the thermometer indicated the appropriate temperature (which I did not think to find out).

Between the tours I also got to see a film crew for a kids’ show interviewing some of the employees. If you’re watching a nonprofessional doing interviews, see if you can notice that one arm might be behind their back holding their list of questions.

Vermont Teddy Bear

I had a long wait for this tour. The best part of the wait was watching little kids get bears. There’s one kind of teddy bear you can get only at the factory.

While You Watch

First you choose the type of bear you want. There are also a couple of other options, like a dragon. You just pull an empty shell of an animal from a bin at the bottom of a long, wide pipe.

Then you stand in line to get your stuffing. The worker asks if you want your bear stuffed with happiness, friendship, giggles, or other choices. The youngest kids were most likely to choose giggles. Then the worker turned the dial to the appropriate section. Then you could step on a peddle to shoot out the stuffing while the worker held the bear over a pipe to fill the arms, legs, head, and then body.

The stuffing came out quite quickly, and the workers were amazing at dealing with the sudden stops and starts they got from the customers.

Then you get to hug your bear and decide if it is too firm, too floppy, or just right. Most people thought their bears were perfect right from the beginning, but one thought hers was too firm, so I got to see stuffing being pulled out and rearranged.

Then you get in another line where a worker sews up the back of your bear while you fill out its birth certificate. They used thick, white thread and the same stitch knitters use to connect pieces of garments, so just a little thread shows, and it’s buried in the thick fur.

I think I might have learned a new, quicker way to tie that first knot in thread. This new method involves wrapping the thread around the needle and pulling it through. I’ll have to try it out next time I replace button.

After the final knot is tied, the needle is pushed through the entire bear so it comes out the belly. Then you are directed to cut the umbilical cord. This leaves a long thread buried completely inside the bear. The time is declared, and you are directed to fill this time in on the birth certificate.

Then you are told to choose a bow tie (attached to a loop of elastic), which can be worn by the bear as a tie, a hair bow, or, by wrapping the elastic twice around an ear, like a barrette.

These jobs looked like pretty good factory jobs. All the kids were so cute and smily and just loved their bears the whole way through. They were so tickled with each part of the process, it was fun to watch. There was one eye-rolly grown-up just wanting to get through the process as quickly as possible; she didn’t even want a birth certificate. The employee operated the stuffing pedal for her.

The Tour

The tour started with a description of what makes Vermont Teddy Bears special.

For pictures and a different description, see the short online tour.

Several layers of fur fabric are cut at once. Then the pieces are sewn by hand. In films of sweatshop seamstresses, they always sewed things amazingly quickly. These guys were not doing that. They have to deal with tight curves and thick fabric. They carefully align things, then push a very short amount through the machine before aligning the next part.

The eyes are on rods pushed through the fabric and held on with plastic nuts screwed on and glued to the other side. The arms, legs, and head are similarly held on in a durable way. However, here the nut is not glued in place so that the limbs and head can turn all the way around.

The stuffing is polyester fiberfill because it fluffs back up after squishing and because it’s washable. The whole stuffing technology was originally developed to fill life jackets (aka personal flotation devices). The whole bear is washable, but you are not to put it through a dryer because the fur will matte up or, if it’s too hot, just melt away. This fire-resistant fur will melt before it flames.

Near the end of the tour we got to see the bear hospital where injured bears are nursed back to health. The tour guide emphasized that we should not try to fix a bear ourselves but send it back to trained professionals. She showed a head attached directly to an arm as an example of how things can go horribly wrong. And she talked about people who tried to sew their bears back together. Or glue them. Or her latest favorite--melt them. It’s easier to fix the bears without all the glue or the melting.