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Add a dash of ADHD memory issues and this is almost guaranteed to burn your house down.
Have you ever burnt tea (to dust from liquid and melted kettle handle in the process) while reheating it?
'tis but one of my life’s achievementsI have fallen asleep while boiling hotdogs to wake up in a smoky mess with black tar hotdog welded to the bottom of the pot. And it was my brother’s house.
My mom burnt a pot of spaghetti.
Yes, burnt. To a crisp.
Seeing as how you can sinter metal powder in a microwave, that’s not too surprising. Burning food still takes some effort though.
I thought only Homer Simpson did that.
I have learned that some people do like to crisp them, whether that’s intentional or not 😂 glances at my partner
I once left a pot of water boiling for so long that the water boiled away and the bottom of the pan started to melt. When I took it off the burner, parts of the pot dripped on the floor and burned the linoleum.
One time I cooked two frozen pizzas at the same time, one melted through the grate while the other was still frozen. Pretty proud of that one.
Oh, and one time I scarred my brother so bad by making Kool-aid with salt instead of sugar that he stopped drinking it forever.
Yeah. I know myself too well to use this “hack”
Ahh here we go, I have to admit this.
I’m on my 3rd microwave. Ramen noodles caught fire twice. I forgot to add water once, go figure. The second time, I put them in for 33 minutes and 30 seconds instead of 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Started playing Xbox and forgot until I got hungry again and heard the smoke alarms going off. Flames were coming out of the microwave door so high they burned the cabinets above black, it was a brand new microwave. 3rd time was a metal coffee mug. Who makes a F-ing metal coffee cup so you can’t reheat your coffee. It was cool watching the electric sparks and lines fly though.
No regrets. It was the grandparents microwaves. LOL.
I set my microwave to 2:00 and I’m always back in time to open it at exactly 1:59. So I think I’m going to use this hack.
I think you should probably heat your food for more than 1 second
Hm, I guess it would be more impressive if my internal clock allowed me to heat for exactly 1:59 seconds and open the microwave at 00:01. Maybe heat-pulsing food isn’t the answer?
You’ll lose your incentive. Godspeed.
I often put things on the microwave for like 20-30 minutes at power 2-3, just because I know I’m going to lose track of time (and things are usually better cooked slowly in the microwave, I find).
I would end up looking at my microwave thinking “How can the time be 67:36? It’s waaaaaay past my bedtime.”
Just press the +30 sec button over and over, he’s going to burn down the house when he forgets. 💀
oh no my friend, as a product designer let me tell you user count clicks, more than 3 is bad UX and they’re lost! /s
Most microwaves go for 1-6 minutes when you press 1-6 without pressing something else first. Manually setting a time is cook time enter time start. Most operations are thus 1 key press or more rarely 2
my old one did that 😢 now i’m stuck typing in all the digits
And here I thought microwaves can’t escape the Holey Door
That would be the core of the problem here. All that energy and nowhere to go
Damn I wish my 1995 microwave had this.
Instead you get ~ ~ ~ more radiation ~ ~ ~
i don’t like to move my finger around, so all my microwave times are of the 44, 77, 2:22, 4:44… format
Same vibe but I only use the +30s button to enter cook time. Bonus points to microwaves that automatically start when you press +30.
Bonus points to microwaves that automatically start when you press +30.
Yep, the cooking gets going while I press the +30 button additional times, saving precious second. Wish I could also change the power level while it’s running. update: That actually does work! +30 all the foods!
Hell yea brother!
+30s gang rise up!
I returned a microwave I bought that didnt auto start when you press +30. Like im supposed to +30 THEN hit ANOTHER button? Fuck no!
Our new microwave has that and the buttons 1-6 will start that number of minutes immediately. We were pretty excited about it because our old microwave didn’t even have the 30sec button.
I like the 30 second button. I loathe the 1-6 minute buttons. Time entry club forever!
I wish that function only worked on 1-3. I hate that I have to push the cook time first if I want 45 seconds. Do I ever put something in for 4 minutes straight? Absolutely not. If something needs that long to heat up, it probably needs to be on a lower power/defrost, or it’s a thick soup that is 2 minutes, stir, then 1 minute increments until just right.
Me too! I totally set the microwave time based on vibes and just push the same button over and over until I feel like it’s the right amount.
44, 222, and 66 are the most common.
My wife does that. Early on, I asked her…
“Why do you set the microwave to 1:11?”
“Because it takes less time than 1:00.”
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.”
“🤦🏻♀️”
That 77 is hurtig my brain.
any number between 1 and 99 is just interpreted as seconds, no need for French Revolution era microwave
Sometimes, just to be insufferable, I’ll microwave something for one minute, but instead of entering 1:00 I enter 0:60.
Samsung smart microwave wifi telemetry fears this person.
Fuck Samsung. They’re spending money designing this crap instead of designing appliances that last longer than two years.
Telemetry? Oh God. Why Samsung? And why end users are you connecting your microwave to the internet?
Either way, it is kinda funny like seeing a random Win2000 in the Steam surveys.
The worst part is that Samsung stuff can have a smart Wi-Fi or Bluetooth thing and even if you never use it the second someone with a Samsung phone walks by it will instantly send a push notice and try to aggressively connect with it.
I moved into a house with a smart fridge. I connected it to the Internet because I thought the idea of a smart fridge was funny. It can send push notifications if the door is left open, that’s realistically the only useful feature I think.
I’m still mad after reading a few weeks ago about someone had to power-cycle the fridge. I can’t recall ever having to do that for a motor or compressor or any fridge.
The computer in the fridge was faulted. So either pull the fridge out to unplug it or find the breaker, there’s no power switch on refrigerators.
I would like the ability to set what time of day it does a defrost cycle.
For ToU pricing on power, or for operating on solar power, it would be nice to be able to say “Hey you know when you draw twice as much power than usual? Do that at midnight when the power is cheaper, or 3PM when the sun is most directly shining on the panels.”
Another feature that would be nice is to communicate with all the other appliances (or better just have a server manage them all) to keep them from cycling on at the same time to spread those energy spikes out.
I have a circuit that includes a freezer, convection toaster oven, and my PC. If my PC is in (especially if I’m gaming) and both the freezer and oven cycle on at the same time, it trips the breaker. If they are slightly staggered, like the oven comes on and then the freezer comes on 4 second later, it’s fine, but if they just happen to do it too close to each other I need to run to reset the breaker before my UPS runs out for my PC and then try to figure out how much more time the oven needed to finish cooking.
Also, it would be nice if my water using appliances could talk to my water softener and trigger a regeneration cycle if the softener would otherwise run out.
That’s about it for the uses of smart appliances that I’m interested in that I’ve thought of so far. Instead they seem to mainly want to connect to apps (so they have an excuse to have a connection that can also be used to mine data).
I have multiple appliances designed to increase or decrease the heat in their interiors, and for some reason they aren’t connected. I have a water heater that has nothing to do with my refrigerator, even though pumping heat out of one and into the other would be quite efficient, to say nothing of overall household HVAC.
What I don’t need is to have any of this managed by a vendor’s server somewhere out on the internet. That seems to be the main reason to sell products today, so.
Not to mention during winter, the outside is full of air that would be great for the freezer or fridge. Instead we keep that cold air out as much as possible, use energy to heat the inside, then use more energy to prevent that heat from getting into the food box (well, more accurately to pull the heat that does get in there back out).
In Winter, I do leave things like sodas out in the cold while I’m putting away other groceries.
It made some kind of sense in the 50’s when you were trading in an ice box for a refrigerator, but…why can’t my fridge also be a hot water heater for my dishwasher?
“Smart” appliances. I could see it with a thermostat. My current thermostat is just a step above a bimetallic strip; it has a few mode switches, a temperature sensor and a temperature setting. It turns one of two relays on if it’s warmer than the setting if AC mode or colder than the setting if heat mode. It doesn’t account for OAT, time of day, occupancy, or power concerns. Smart thermostats actually do some of that, plus allow for remote control, ie you can set your AC to run less and keep the house warmer while you’re not in it and have it cool back down as you approach.
But what the fuck is a smart microwave for? Alec of Technology Connections showed off a microwave from the 90’s that had a lot of built-in recipes you could select. The manufacturer figured out how to most ideally microwave artichokes so now it has an artichoke option in a very 90’s menu system. That’s all in ROM built into the device and it works to this day even though the manufacturer has long since stopped supporting it. Nowadays they’ll put an ESP8266 in it, it’ll connect to Chinese botnets and maybe also their recipe server which will be shut down in 11 months. I genuinely can’t imagine why you’d need to connect a dishwasher, toaster, coffee pot or blender to the internet. Meanwhile my water heater could probably use a few more transistors.
A smart fridge is the only one that tempts me a bit, but only if I could trust the OS, and there’s no way I’m trusting any of the current major fridge makers.
But, there are some useful ideas. If it has a built-in scanner or camera, it could theoretically keep an inventory of what’s inside, when it was bought, and if it’s something like milk, when it expires. I’d love to get an alert that my milk was expiring soon rather than find out by accidentally drinking sour milk.
In theory, it could also pre-populate a grocery list for me, based on what I’m lacking.
I have a recipe app that I like called Paprika, that has the concept of a “pantry”. If I’m looking at a recipe in there I can click a button to add all the ingredients in the recipe to a shopping list. When it does that, it checks what you have in your pantry, and doesn’t add those items to the list. That way, you only buy the items you need for the recipe but don’t currently have. But, the “pantry” in the app is something you have to add things to yourself. It doesn’t know if that list is accurate, or if it was accurate but you recently ran out of something.
It would be great if Paprika could talk to the fridge and figure out “hmm, this recipe calls for butter, which is normally in your pantry, but you’re currently low on butter, so I’ll add it to the list” or “this recipe calls for milk, but your milk has expired, so I’ll add it to the list”. Or, the reverse, when you come home from shopping, you throw a bunch of things in the fridge and it updates what you currently have in your “pantry”. Similarly, a smart “pantry” would also be useful for those same reasons. Probably even more than a fridge, because I see what’s in my fridge (except the stuff at the back) nearly every day. I really forget what’s at the back of the pantry.
It would also be nice if my fridge was “leftover aware”. Like, if I put the rest of my casserole in the fridge on Monday, it would know about it. If it knew that casserole leftovers typically lasted 3 days it could alert me if I was about to lose those leftovers.
Really what I’d want though is a fridge that came with sensors (cameras, barcode scanners, spoilage smell sensors, temperature sensors, etc.) and and API for them. But, from that point on, it was an open platform where you could install your own apps. That way I’m not stuck with say Samsung’s fridge software, which would no doubt be full of surveillance and ads. I’d want to run open source KFridge or something that might be a bit janky but that I could trust wasn’t trying to gouge me for money, or show me ads, or sell my data, or whatever.
I bought the Samsung microwave specifically because it had wifi. (I’d have preferred ethernet but that doesn’t seem to exist for any kitchen appliances)
AMA!
Genuinely curious, what benefit does having wifi in your microwave get you? You still have to put in and take out the food, and it’s not like microwaves take all that long to cook food either. I also use maybe 2 buttons on my microwave (+30sec and cancel/stop), but maybe you can save particular power/time combos? Idk
I did like having a ‘smart’ washer/dryer in my previous apartment, as it would send me notifications about when the cycle was done and reminders if I let it sit for too long.
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I’m obsessed with having everything monitored from Home Assistant. I can adjust lights or make announcements based on what’s happening.
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I assumed the clock would maintain itself automatically (wrongly…)
The only way to update the clock is to press Sync Clock button in the app. Fortunately there’s a workaround from HA but even so - I won’t buy another Samsung kitchen appliance. Bosch are the only good smart guys.
Lol fair enough, I’m teetering on the edge of falling down the HA rabbit hole. Crazy that an internet-connected appliance won’t automatically update the time without your intervention, though.
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The one at my work has never reached zero.
Like the code in Lost, we keep it from running out. Nobody knows what will happen if it does.
This is the perfect use for that add 30 seconds button
Weird answer: body parts! I have what i have and measuring it isnt going to make me feel better. I do the things i need to do to increase muscle, decrease fat, and maximize happiness and longevity.
Measuring leads to comparison leads to disappointment
“Comparison is the theif of joy.”
But your one was fine too, I guess.
I measure my body so I can order clothes that will fit correctly. But I agree with the other stuff.
Those are very long minutes!
metric minutes
I shop once a week and buy all the food for the week. At the end of the week, I have a nearly empty fridge.
I don’t want to run out of ingredients, so I divide the weight on the package by seven, and weigh each one as I go. So I know I can have 120g of frozen blueberries each day, 60g of parmesan, 120g of broccoli, 90g of brussel sprouts, 30g of cream in my coffee for each of five coffees a day, etc. I’m happy when on the last day I don’t need to weigh anything.
I didn’t use to be this way, it just sort of happened.
I once heard of someone who would do a regular shopping, and take everything and put it in a stew. Meat, vegetables, fruits, cheese, bread… Whatever was bought that day. I guess that’s one way to avoid measuring everything separately.
So the opposite of never measuring anything!
Five coffees a day?
Decaf.
I envy you! I am not in the position to have this…
Just microwave everything for a M.I.N.U.T.E. Mean Ideal Nuke Unit Time Estimate. That’s how the minute was invented back in the 1950s.
Firemen love this one simple trick!
Yeast in my pizza dough recipe. I “measure” it by sprinkling yeast on the top of the water until it’s evenly coated. I know how it looks.
Garlic is understandable, I use a shit ton… But if it’s an “extract” it’s definitely getting measured. Maybe I’m just picky about my baked goods.
You should watch the recent videos by “Nate from the Internet”, he keeps doubling the amount of vanilla extract put into cookies until you can detect a difference.
Spoiler: 1tsp, 2tsp, 4tsp, etc all taste exactly the same in the final product. After adding in cupfuls, the cookies start to taste bad from too much alcohol, but don’t taste any more vanilla than the 2tsp batch. He even tried with vanilla beans and whole pods.
There’s an obvious missing datapoint here - what about 0?
Good point, and they did do zero. You can tell a difference between 0 and 1tsp. Some say 2tsp is “better” but most can’t detect it. Anything above 2 is the same.
Wow, interesting!
It’s difficult to add too much vanilla extract, but you can definitely have too much almond extract or peppermint extract in something. Ask me how I know
I’ll sometimes take a nap, 30 min before I have to go out. No alarm.
Back in the bad old days, some ovens just had a clockwork dial that you’d crank to however minutes of microwaving you wanted. No on switch, just turn it and wait for the “ding”. OP’s method really isn’t too different since it’s the same number of steps.
Old days… (╥﹏╥)
Harambe
At an old job we had some rooms with really bad internet connection but not always. Network people came by with some ghost busters shit and went around asking us all to do really inconvenient shit – “please disable that hotspot” ugh… (And I had lots of tech at the time). They tracked it down to interference from an old microwave down the hall from the rooms that had problems.
Sounds nice to have a “network interference button” at your disposal. Well-timed frozen burritos would make an excellent cover for extra breaks.
