On cooking

I enjoy eating spicy food. The full gamut of spicy - from mexican to thai, and all the way in between.
Since I've moved away from my parents, I've been doing 90% of the food preparation (of the remaining 10% it's been more going out than Marissa cooking). That in itself however is not my problem, it's just that the real problem is more noticable because of how often I cook.

At least once a week, I try to cook something with a kick to it. However whenever I've been on my own, cooking spicy stuff for one has turned out to be on the edge of too spicy. On this front, I've got 3 things of leftover spicy food in the freezer - chilli-cilantro beef; lamb tandori; and tonight's thai green curry (beef).

Cooking for one has also been challenging, in that it's significently easier to get the quanties right with larger groups - to cook for one, you need smaller quantities of everything, and it just doesn't work right. Can anybody suggest tricks or tips on this?

Regardless of how many I'm cooking for, I find it takes 1-2 hours to prepare and eat most meals. How do resturants manage to get their prep time down so much (besides having the vegetables ready to throw in).

Hints? Tips? Recipies with quantities for a single person?

Leak status

Ok, so the quick-cement fix that the plumber put in last night appears to be holding for the moment.
The landlord got in a restoration company this morning.

The guy pulled up the carpet, removed the under-padding, sprayed disinfectant (to avoid mould), and rigged up a dehumidifer and 3 blower fans.

The units are really loud - but I'm turning them off to sleep anyway.

The plumber is returning with the landlord tommorow morning, to dig up the front garden and replace the leaking pipe.

[Gentoo] OpenLDAP and other things

OpenLDAP-2.3 is coming to the tree soon, but hardmasked for at least a week while the migration of 2.2.28-r3 to stable takes place. The upgrade may be a little bumpy again, like the 2.1->2.2 upgrade, but I'm working to minimize that.

I'm hoping to have significently more time to devote to Gentoo starting in the new year, as my new job might involve a lot of it. Yes, I'm getting a new job again. More details to come soon.