Standards, lengthy technical documents that ensure that a DVD made by Disney will play on a DVD player made by Sony, are like sausage; you don't want to see how they are made.

This is what I do for a living. And because nobody  wants to see it being done, it is now either done with the phone and internet or as today in a large windowless room in the West Concourse of The Orange County Florida Convention Center, Room 340 D to be exact. Tomorrow the Electronic House Expo will open on the Concourse floor. There are about 30 engineers, mostly men, sitting around a large table staring at a video projector of a spread sheet of proposed changes to CEA-2014-A (don't ask).

Now we are all connected, and I can see a solitaire, 2 Freecell and some war game going on neighboring machines, however not everybody is interested in this particular topic. Which has to do with watching two shows on two TVs and recording a third, while dimming the lights in one room and turning them on in the kitchen. Me I'm interesting in Intellectual Property issues (is it legal for you to copy that DVD and if not how do we stop you), Closed Captions - is someone going to propose another brilliant change that breaks every installed system in the country?, or the dreaded V-Chip.

All in all I would rather be cooking.

Now Kate, over at The Clean Plate Club is giving away a Williams Sonoma gift card, which if won will go to the good wife with the suggestion that we replace the kitchen pepper mill. The good one broke and the plastic replacement from Costco has fine pepper corns, but got a little too close to the burner and is now really listing to port, or perhaps it simply got into the cooking Cognac.

Kate, I have been known to give Charcuterie lessons over the Internet, which The Yummy Mummy is planning on attempting with her 3 year old and report back on her blog.

"Pig fat rules" cry heard echoing down the length of the basement corridor of Roth Hall. - Which is good because that is a very long tile corridor and echos very well.