Hey, now. My PC is in the dining room, our microwave is in the kitchen, and about 6’ (and the back of my computer desk) separates the two.
Uh… am I being whooshed? If I remember correctly, the Great Space Coaster’s Gary Gnu was pronounced with a hard “g” and two syllables: Guh-new.
Gnutella is pronounced like “Nutella.” Ironically (considering its common application) the name refers both to the GNU open source project and our favourite chocolate hazelnut spread. It’s pronounced “Newt-ella” because everybody knows (heh) that the “u” in “Nutella” is long.
Insisting that “Nutella” ought to be pronounced with a short “u” because of its connection with “nut” seems a little like saying that “facade” ought to be pronounced with long a’s and a soft “c” because of its connection with “face.”
“Chaudiere.”
“Chow-dah!”
“Chaudiere.”
“Chow-dah!”
Here is what I think of as the iconic Fluff, and it is still around in selected locations. It’s made by Durkee, not Kraft:
Huh. I suspect there was a fascinating trademark battle that I totally missed behind that. The Fluff Wars. Oooh.
(Looks like Durkee isn’t terribly worried about condescending to their customers, eh? "We know you probably cram this stuff down with a big soup spoon and are just the sort of slack-jawed cretin that is likely to be confused about what to do when presented with a lone flashing hyperlink that occupies 25% of the screen real-estate. That’s okay – Buuuuuy mooore Fluuuuuuuff!) Heh heh.
Well, it was a (lame) joke… 
No, no, no. Façade is french; it just translates to Face. Nutella on the other hand directly implies nuts. In English. No translating, no tenuous connections, and quite definitely no gnus. Nut. Tell. La.
Chow-dah.
That’s right, my setup is similar. My kitchen is a quaint, tiny thing, since I live in a quaint, tiny apartment (I’ve often said there’s only enough room for my husband and two cats… one more cat would cause us to go over capacity and burst like… er… like a microwaved egg. Okay, that last part is new to the saying, but it’s still true.)
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. My dining room is beside my kitchen, and in the dining room is the large dining table, which has never yet been used for eating anything but pot pies and ice cream sandwiches, since I have my computer set up at one end, my husband at the other end, and the printer and external drives in the middle. Yeah, it’s a mess, but when you live in a quaint, tiny apartment, you make some compromises.
When I turn my head to the right, I see my kitchen, and 16 feet away from me sits the microwave, at the far end of the kitchen. Evil, awesome thing.
I’m gonna go hug it.
*Chaudere! *
Okay. I can breath now.
I had to make* six whole eggs * today, to devil and send off with my husband for him and his work pals in the morning. Six! I didn’t go near the microwave, but I did boil those babies for 20 minutes. Then I started getting scared again. I did boil them quite a while, and on quite high heat… crap. They still had their shells on, too. I know, I know, it works differently, but once blowed up, twice shy.
I held that stupid pot as far away from my body as my T-rex arms could reach, carefully lowered it into the sink, then turned on the cold water and quickly lifted one knee to my chin and shielded my face with my hands, turning my head away and wincing. Hey, you never know.
They did nothing.
I did nothing.
Eventually, I peeked.
They hadn’t even cracked.
I left to watch Conan.
I came back and relieved them of their shells, popped out their yolks to mix with good things, then restuffed the eggs and packed them into my husband’s lunch.
Except for two halves. I ate the hell out of them. Revenge. They were served cold, too.
… here in Spain they give you an ointment with nitrophenol in it… that thing is so phosphoyellow it makes yellow markers go green with envy… I swear it glows in the dark (back in college we would use raw nitrophenol, but heck what do you expect from a bunch of ChemEng wannabes)
Don’t know that it encases the heat, it sure makes the burnt area go COLD fast.
You know, I boil eggs in large quantities at work all the time. It never occured to me that I should ask for hazard pay.