[237/366] ghost

[cosmolinguist]

At work today I toasted some bread for L's lunch and when he'd eaten that he asked for more because have you seen gluten free bread, it's the tiniest goddam thing (when L rhetorically asked why, J said "so it's only twice the price so you don't notice a normal loaf would be four times as expensive). And when the toaster popped up this bread, I was confused. It was much less toasted than the toast I'd just made a few minutes before, and I hadn't touched the settings in the meantime.

I mentioned this and J said the toaster has been getting temperamental lately. L said it seems to have something to do with how recently the toaster had been used and we agreed that this was wild.

"Maybe the shower ghost has moved," J said. (L and I determined long ago that the reason the temperature in their shower is so variable and unpredictable is because the shower is haunted, so references to the shower ghost are common.) "Maybe it missed us so it's branching out to the toaster."

"Now the toaster is a ghoster!" I said. I can't not. I think diffrentcolours has poisoned my brain to always think of these silly portmanteaus. One time he looked at a piece of mail and said "oh, it's from the feet people" and honestly without any conscious will or intention I found myself saying "...feeple." It made him laugh so much, and for the next little while when he mentioned them he called them the feeple.

Comments

[polyfrazzlemented]

so it's only twice the price so you don't notice a normal loaf would be four times as expensive

Isn't. that. the. truth.

Is L celiac? It's not recommended for celiacs to share a toaster that's been used for gluten.

Robin

[cosmolinguist]

L is very informed about his dietary/medical needs and the setup of his kitchen appliances.

[rugessnome]

(if you're curious as I am, the info about toasters on the internet suggests this behavior might be caused by the use of a bimetallic strip ~thermometer as a control mechanism. Without time to cool down between toastings, it sounds like it will reach temperature too quickly and release the [not] toast too soon.

By the by, it sounds like a variable resistor control, which I understand to be purely timing, might be the alternative. But I have no idea if control mechanism information is even generally available were anyone actually in the market for a toaster.)

[cosmolinguist]

Oh interesting! They say it didn't used to do this but has started to and figure it's something wearing out in the toaster. I certainly hadn't noticed it before, and I'd have had plenty of opportunity to do so. :)

[momentsmusicaux]

I made a second slice of toast shortly after a first one the other week, and I found the opposite -- second slice was quite a bit more toasted.

Which got me thinking that it was because the elements we still hot, and the toaster doesn't factor in warm-up time. So first slice got say 4 minutes from a cold start, and second slice 4 minutes from hot. Which then got me thinking, how would you adapt for that, given that different types of bread will take in heat differently?

[diffrentcolours]

Heat-resistant webcams to measure the browning level, using cloud-based machine learning, tied into your social media history to determine the optimum level.

[momentsmusicaux]

Yes. I think that's pretty much the MVP.

[cosmolinguist]

I was thinking about that too, the gluten-free bread is sliced thinly as well as being small in every other dimension and that must make a difference too. It all seems too complicated for my brain. :) Luckily L was willing to accept the different degrees of toasting so I didn't have to worry too much about this.

[eiffel_71]

We had a temperamental toaster in the house I lived in until March. Making portmanteau words can be addictive.