Tuesday: Well. Ok, then.

I didn't take any pictures today.  When I ran the history2blog script to pull from that, I saw ramen.  "How often do I eat ramen?  Have I eaten sufficient ramen to cover every day of the year with ramen?"

No.  I have not, by quite a lot.  Based on blog posts that contain "ramen," and either a picture or enough obvious text for me to know that I've had ramen, I've had ramen 92 times since the middle of 2011.  All but (I think) four have been at Tenkaippin, and I have only had ramen twice on one day, September 7th, in both 2013 and 2014.  I had ramen 17 times in 2015, which is the most.  I am behind schedule to hit that rate in 2016, with only 6 visits this year so far.  I have a plot:

There's roughly a constant ramen rate since about mid 2014.

I could probably do the same thing with sushi, so maybe that'll be something for tomorrow.  This also reminds me of that plan I had a while ago to write a bot to parse my blog to determine the food I should get next, based on the rates and time since I last had it.  That probably involves writing or learning about an already written text parsing program.

• The mayor even went to get a burger.  Also, reading the comments makes me hate people.  "Why don't they have something other than burgers?"  "Why don't we get an Applebees instead?"
• Cover letters.
• Civil War.
• Squirrel.
• I did not know this.

Tuesday: Today I fell for the oldest trick in the world.

First, Julie posted a comment about ramen, and how it would be tasty.

That led me to think the same thing, something that was boosted by the fact that I can go get ramen after work just by walking over.  A ramen-a-torium is that close.

Ramen + gyoza + chicken katsu.

While I was finishing up, this song came on the radio at the ramen place, and that's when I realized this had all been an elaborate set up.  See, earlier in the day, I'd sent Julie this parody of that song.

The worst part of this whole situation is that I didn't see any of it coming.

• Everyone was talking about ramen today.
• Wait, what?
• You should be fired, you jerk.
• That sucks.  I guess this means that when I order things from amazon, I'll just wait longer in between orders until things pile up.
• This looks interesting (but I haven't watched it yet, so I don't know).
• Huh.  Well, I have all the episodes shown so far on my DVR.  Because I haven't watched any yet.  I didn't hear any great buzz about it, so I never had the push to go see what's up with it.  Maybe I'll have to catch up this weekend.  One more note: I thought I heard that they were banned from using well known characters due to some other pre-existing contract issue.  I wonder if that's another reason it wasn't very well received.
• I like the last panel, where Kara's using her legs to hold the bucket of candy in her lap so she can look through it.  While flying along, because she doesn't actually need to walk.
• I upgraded things today to get something else working, which forced a google-chrome update, which means I have this ugly ass bug to deal with.  "What's wrong?"  The tab font and the bookmark-bar font are identical, and the same size.  Conveniently, this font also matches my default page body font as well.  Now, in between the two is the url bar in a font twice as large, with different serifs, and at a completely different weight.  The goal of UI should be to use as few fonts as possible in one view.  Breaking this concept, and then marking it as "wontfix" because you have more important things to do is a shitty move.  Not only that, given the 21 other bugs you had to merge into this one, wouldn't it have been better to simply fix what people didn't like just to shut them up?

Saturday: Wasted day

Doing nothing.

Except trying the new ramen place.

It's in the plaza with the grocery store that closed, which now has signs up for the new grocery store that's moving in.

The ramen is good, with a different flavor profile than the usual place I go to.  This place isn't technically open yet, but that apparently doesn't mean anything.  If this soft opening is how they do things when they're fully open, I'm going to have to decide which ramen place to go to to get ramen.

And then a few hours putting together more of the puzzle.

Followed by video game stuff.

This is a bit close, lady.

Ok, so this game does have nice views.

• The new ramen place.  Sumi Ramen.
• Book making.

Saturday: Too much delicious lunch

I've been having a craving for ramen for the past few weeks, and decided today that I was going to go out and get some.  My destination of choice was Tenkaippin Ramen.  I think it showed up in my RSS feed of Honolulu food stuff recently, so that probably helped.  It's somewhat interesting that I'd seen piles of commercials for this place before ever trying it.  The Ultimate Japan show is kind of interesting, with Hawaiian Dad, Japanese Wife, and Their Son travelling around Japan eating things and seeing other things.  I never realized it until visiting Tenkaippin, but they own the ramen place as well as hosting a travel show.

They also have the show on constantly in the restaurant.

 I chose Set C, with the kotteri ramen.  I don't know that there's any way to describe this perfectly.  It's a very thick and rich chicken broth, almost to the point of being a gravy.  It serves as a wonderful example of the definition of "umami."  Broth, noodles, bamboo shoots (which I don't usually like much, but when they've soaked up the kotteri broth they're wonderful), pork slice, and green onions.

 Set C comes with fried chicken.  It has a faint garlic flavor, and is crispier and more western style than a karaage would be.  It comes with a cabbage salad of some sort, which has magic dressing.  Again, I don't really like cabbage, but the magic dressing makes it tasty and enjoyable.

I also got a side of gyoza, because I love gyoza.  These were also good, but combined with everything else, probably made lunch a bit excessive.  I'm pretty sure I'm done with food for the day.

Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the gyoza.

Tenkaippin is wonderful, and I think I really need to put it in as a regular place.  The parking is a bit tricky (they share a small lot with a dozen other places including a Jamba Juice and Starbucks), but it seems to have decent turnover.  Then again, I was there at 3pm on a saturday, so I wasn't really in the main rush.

Saturday: Lazy do nothing day

Except get ramen for late lunch.  That wasn't really something I'd planned to do, but I sat down and flipped through the channels, and got trapped by Ultimate Japan.  The problem with it is that it's a cool travel show, and since it's done by the people who own Tenkaippin, they constantly advertise ramen.  And then I want ramen.  And then I go eat ramen.  They're sneaky that way.

Cats are jerks.

• Animals.
• The caption makes it.
• Bunny.
• Squirrel.
• Food.
• Snorlax.
• I continue to like these pop machines, and hope the smaller ones can finally start appearing places.
• Pizza rolls.  In addition to this, I just assume that you cook them until they pop.  You then stuff the molten insides back in, and use the newly formed hole as a place to blow into the roll to attempt to keep it from melting your tongue off.
• Other stuff.
• John Lyndon Sullivan is a dumbass.  UKIP is basically like the British tea party, but dumber in a more British way.
• Unemployment.

Sunday: Ugh, even though it's a short work week, I'm still grumpy about it.

I didn't know what I wanted for lunch today, and my phone was unhelpful with its "you get ramen a lot.  Maybe get ramen?"

I almost timed it perfectly to show the island of vinegar floating in the chili oil before the soy leaked in.

And I went with the super garlicky black tonkotsu today.

 Also the other reason why ramen seemed like the right idea for today:

My kick-started ramen stickers arrived in the mail yesterday.

• I couldn't decide which line to quote.
• I still want more Pokemon snap.
• Vampires.
• Yeah, that sounds like Tony Stark.
• The third week of June.  Soon the waiting will be over.
• I remember watching this on tv.
• Kansas.

Saturday: Ramen and Taxes

After doing basically nothing all day (except yelling at flash game developers for not understanding how to construct a difficulty curve.  A Heaviside function is not what you should be aiming for.), I decided I was either going to get pancakes or ramen for lunch/dinner.

There were gyoza as well, but they were gone before I got my ramen.

 Then some quick grocery shopping.

Did you know that the staircase at Safeway is one of the best places to take photos of Diamond Head?

Finally, since taxes are due this week, I sat down and threw numbers at pdf forms until I had my yearly "I have made my best effort at your stupid forms, The Government" attempt.  I appear to have magically sorted out the withholding crap last year.  I owe the federal government $15, but I'm getting $25 back from the state.  Compared to the last two years, this is pretty good.

• Animals.
• Squirrel.
• Bees are cool.
• Hoppip.
• Other group 1.
• Kitty Pryde is still super cool.
• Huh.  I had planned to go bowling tomorrow, but I guess I'm going to watch Ernest and Celestine.
• Other group 2.
• I never understood sunken living rooms, but I love those shelves.
• I kind of want to make stromboli rolls.
• Hawaii is nicely placed for this week's eclipse.

Monday: Just what I wanted the week I'm travelling.

Either the ramen yesterday didn't agree with me, or between weird eating hours yesterday and today, I felt most of the afternoon feeling really nauseous and generically "sick."  So much so that I ditched out of work after our weekly meeting because the idea of sitting at a desk wasn't what I wanted to do.  Based on this tag, it looks like this is the first time I've had to take sick time in like 18 months.  Also that I tend to attempt to fix all bad feelings with ramen.  That makes me really hope yesterday's ramen wasn't the source of the problems.

Picture at the end, because I had to spend fifteen minutes making it in response to one link.

• I'll have to take a look at this when I get back.
• I'll also have to take a look at this when I get back.  Also: do reconnaissance while in California to see how the prices differ.
• Interesting storify on Boris Johnson.
• It looks like there's another Tinkerbell movie for me to watch.
• "If that's on 4th street in Oakland, I would have thought I would have seen that, as that'd be near the Alameda tunnels."  Look on google maps.  Search around.  Realize the building is on 14th street, pushing it further downtown.  Search fruitlessly for the Peggy Carter gif that I want to use.  Give up, make it myself.

Learn to count.

I have a small version, but I liked the big one better, and since it's only three times the file size, why not.

Tuesday: So yeah. This is totally bronchitis. Again.

Every damn year.  Or, it seems, every six months or so.  Which sucks.  Breathing turns out to be kind of fun.

I went to the regular ramen place last week.  This led to me going to the ramen place by work.

Unagi combo.

It is definitely not Tenkaippin, but that was obvious from the name.  They do shoyu ramen, which isn't as hearty, but is soupy.  Their gyoza isn't bad, but they don't have the chili oil for the dipping sauce.  This was a fatty bit of unagi as well, but I think that's how that end of the fish is.  It's not a bad place, but it's not quite as magically delicious

I'm also collecting things on my window sill.

• I wasn't aware that that was an option.
• At least it's probably not going to be as stupid as when DC rebooted everything the last time.
• Mythology.
• My understanding from the news is that at least one of the guys who was captured might have decided to do something stupidly dangerous as visit a war zone.  So I don't think the Japanese government is likely to pay a fifth of a billion dollars to get the two back.  That's a shame, but they should have known that they weren't going to a safe place.  The Japanese internet, on the other hand, has decided to fight back with mockery and photoshop, which is frankly probably the best solution.

Saturday: Crap, I was supposed to do laundry today.

I've apparently committed myself to getting all the different ramens at the ramen place.

Spicy Tan Tan.

This is wonderful.  I have never used the spoon before today.  Part of that is because the kotteri coats the ramen so well that when I get to the end, there's not much soup left.  This broth doesn't do that, so there was a lot left over at the end.  In addition, the ground pork is hard to get, so it sinks into the soup.  I tried wrapping it up in the bok choy, but that wasn't a perfect solution.  In addition to the pork, the bottom of the soup also has the peanut bits, so I didn't want to miss those.

Then I went to Safeway to completely forget half the things I was planning on buying.  I've also come to the conclusion that for some reason, Kapahulu Safeway is the dude-bro-iest place in existance.  It's like all the shoeless surfer jerks have nothing better to do than go be stinky at Safeway.  Plus, they have no clue how to use the self checkout machines.  They are seriously worse than old people.

One of the best views of Diamond Head.

It's actually so good that I've mentioned it before.  Also, last time I went for ramen, somebody was sitting on the steps where I took this picture drawing it.

• Red Panda.
• Red Panda.
• Adventure Wars.
• I guess that's a bad word.
• That looks delicious.
• And now I want hot dogs.  This is one more reason why I wish we had a Sonic here.
• I totally eat these like in the commercials.  They're the main component of my work candy dish, and I totally use like four bites on them.  Two bite brownies are another story.  Those are one bite.

Sunday: Ramen day!

First up, this dickbag was at the ramen place with his stupid e-cigarette.  The internet claims they don't release anything.  Fuck the internet, it's wrong.  This guy's released acrid chemical shit.  Plus, where as smoking a regular cigarette makes you look like a dumbass, smoking one of these makes you look like a deluded dumbass who thinks they're being healthy.  Hopefully they'll get banned in public places soon.

He even had a tiny fanny pack for his e-cigarette.

Also, this guy was coughing and wheezing constantly.  Dumbass.

Anyway 

Ramen!  Also gyoza, but today is not gyoza-day, because that's hard to say.

 Then on the way home, I decided I wanted to get a pineapple fanta (not pictured because I drank it hours ago).  The 7-11 had this in the hot food case.  Don't look at any of the food, though:

My mom has the bigger size of this dish pattern.  Weird.

• Awkward turtle.  Check the gif on the right side.
• Bunny!  No!
• Bird.
• Black Books.

Saturday: Basically zero productivity.

But I did get ramen again.  I thought my gyoza sauce looked cool after I combined everything.

Wait, do you see that?

"Hi!"

• I remember making these when I was like five.  I always thought they were good, but that's probably because the sauce was super sweet.
• I read this while eating ramen, and people looked over when I started laughing.
• Bears.
• Bunnies.
• I love that someone tracked down two different angles to make the best gif possible.

Sunday: The most powerful medicine of all.

After spending yesterday trying a pile of different drugs that I had at home in an attempt to not be sick, I decided to head out today to get the best thing possible to fight my stuffy nose.

Ramen.

I added enough shichimi to put a bit of spice into the soup, and as you can see from the oil slick, I added lots of chili oil to my gyoza sauce.

I then went to buy a bunch of kleenex, of which I've had to use like three.  The ramen cure is delicious!

• All of this discussion of Buffalo in the news lately has made me think about all the food I had when living there.  This was our default pizza place, although it looks like the location we went to has closed.  They had a galaga table unit.
• Oops.
• They played this on NHK world today.
• Fox.
• Cat Mommy.

Sunday: I balanced out yesterday by being as unproductive as possible today.

I was going to scan another shelf or two of books.  I may still get around to that.

I did get ramen, though.

• My Pokemon queue is now empty, which is worrying.
• Snorlax.
• Ash and Pikachu.
• Names.
• Not Pokemon.
• Animals and flowers.
• "Memories of Butter."
• This was on my screen when the lady at the ramen place brought my check.  "What is that?  What's that cat doing!?"  Just being friendly.
• June Foray is 99 today.
• Just like how everyone gets an iphone, and then sticks it in a case.
• I just heard about this place from a commercial.  I will probably be driving to Aiea next weekend to eat chicken wings.

Saturday: This is kind of a time sensitive operation. How do you not understand this?

I mean, I get to the mall, discover that there are infinite people there, ask them all to move down one parking space so I can park, go to the theater, wait in line while everyone takes far longer than is necessary to get tickets, and then go inside to get my standard movie hot dog.

"Um, we don't have any ready," the counter guy tells me as his coworker takes hot dogs off the rolly-hot-dog-cooker-thingy and puts them into buns and wraps them.  "It'll be ten minutes."  I don't understand how your hot dog construction process works, movie theater food counter guy, so maybe there's some rule that you have to put hot dogs into the warming trays for ten minutes after they come off the R-H-D-C-T.  I don't know.  What I do know is that you're working in a movie theater, one of the very few places where people go that has set times for things to happen.  I don't have ten minutes to wait for a hot dog, I am going to see a movie.  What is wrong with you?

Also, what's wrong with your orange Fanta?  Is there anything you had working correctly?

Anyway, Moana is good, the music is noticeably Lin-Manuel Miranda, Maui is kind of a jerk, Moana probably didn't even need Maui if she could have found a less-jerky person to teach her sailing, and the twist at the end is something I probably should have seen coming.  Also now I need to go learn more about the mythology of Pacific Islanders, because that's an area I haven't studied as much as I should.

And then I got curry.

The sushi place was busy, and I wasn't really in the mood to wait (since I didn't have a hot dog in my tummy), so I didn't, and went across the way to the ramen place that opened a while ago.  I have a ramen place, so I didn't really want to get that, and I was kind of put out that their five gyoza side is nine damn dollars, but curry rice sounded good.  Plus, it'd be way more filling than sushi.

It's good.  This is probably my new curry place.  Coco House Ichibanya makes a spicier curry, but with the exposed kitchen, I end up smelling like fried food for the rest of the day.  That doesn't happen at Goma Tei.  Plus, look at all the stuff in the curry!  THERE IS STUFF IN THE CURRY!  Onions, carrots, potatoes, and unless I was just fooling myself, both chicken and beef bits.  What did I say on Twitter?

Oh also, there was a Twitter joke in Moana that was kind of funny.

Also this happened while I was eating lunch.  I don't really know.

Then I finished my talk for Monday, because I want to do something not-work-related tomorrow.

What is even going on with Wonder Woman's swimsuit?

This is where I remember that I had to fix a database crash with my RSS stuff this evening, so I haven't read everything yet.

Ok.  RSS read.  Why did I open up fourteen things?

• A good lamp.
• An important thing to keep in mind when people are talking about "founding fathers" bullshit.
• Fuck off, Mark.
• Those a-holes.
• Moana.
• Aminals.
• For the replies, obviously.
• I had not heard of this theory, I have not read any of the supporting evidence, I am completely ok with accepting it with no further research.
• I'm not going to translate the mistake here.
• I'm beginning to think that the most likely scenario is that people who voted for the moron will have their lives ruined, but people who live in good states will be somewhat protected by that.  I hope that that is the worst case scenario.
• I'm also hoping that David Brooks does lose his job.  Talentless hack.
• Moana.  This probably isn't going to end up like Marnie did last year.

Saturday: Last weekend before vacation

That probably means I should start packing, and cleaning up my apartment, and all that.  Instead, I went and got ramen:

Delicious, delicious ramen.

And then go get some groceries and make sure I have all the Hawaii stuff to bring to the mainland.

Plus I got to see this guy who decided to bring his dog to Safeway.

Then I totally wasted the entire rest of the day in a brilliant blast of doing nothing productive.  I did something satirical, but I'm not sure that totally counts.

• Is it just me, or does burning man seem like it's just there so a bunch of richer-than-average jerks can go not take showers in the desert?
• Interesting thing to think about.  Although it might seem like "horrible socialism" to confiscate money from the wealthy to support the unwanted and unutilized labor sector, without this, that sector (you know, "consumers") won't have the means to purchase the things that the wealthy are making.  Rand would suggest that the wealthy will just go someplace where they won't have to support the moochers, but I don't really think that many people are that sociopathic.
• I like Snorlax.  Look at that smile. :)
• Just kidding!

Sunday: There are like three things I could be doing instead of saying I'm bored.

I'll probably get them done this evening anyway, so it's not that big of a deal.

Spicy umakara ramen today since I have two weekends that I won't be having ramen.

• Bop.
• Marnie.
• Norse gods.
• I thought this scene was well done.

Wednesday: I feel like I'm close on this bug issue.

Even taking a half time vacation feels like it's a good thing.

It sounds like live stickers may be a thing of the past.  :(

e.

Corn in ramen seems obvious in hindsight.  Butter in ramen?  I'm dumb for not thinking of that ages ago.

• Huh.  I clearly need to do more research into this topic.  I thought things were better.
• That's unfortunate.  That was my default "I need to get some groceries on the way home" stor

Sunday: Yay three day weekends

Today was ramen day, but I didn't take any pictures of ramen.  I did take one of this giant karaage:

Here's a lion:

Rar.

• Comet PANSTARRS.
• Did you know you could download all your tweets?  I didn't until I saw someone else talking about it.
• It's been kind of interesting to see how slashdot has changed over the years.  It's clear now that it's degenerated into a bunch of people talking about things they have no clue about.  This article in particular seemed to be a good example.
• Wifi names.  Here are some I can see from my couch:
• ESSID:"BrightDeer-guest"
• ESSID:"Bitches Ain't Here"
• ESSID:"BadGirlsClub"
• ESSID:"Gustave"
• ESSID:"PotterNet"
• ESSID:"Hercules"
• ESSID:"jackal"
• ESSID:"Wilder Warriors"
• ESSID:"EmeraldCheetah-guest"
• So is there something that generates names using $adjective+$animal?
• Because everyone should read Brad DeLong's recaps. Not just because he finds a paper describing how to make pseudoephedrine from meth.

Saturday: Ramen Day

Extra menma, because they're flavor sponges.

The ramen place also now takes credit cards, so it is significantly less hassle to go to.

• I believe the picture at the bottom is a sign that they were actually marketing to mole people.
• Pika-bus.
• A quick economics summary.