The Greatest Movie of All Time

Will unfortunately never ever be made. :(

How many days does November have again?

I mean, seriously, this stuff can't actually go on forever, right? Isn't novomongopongoperdita only a single month?

Um...I really don't have anything. Except lots of extra thanksgiving leftovers, none of which I really want except for the turkey.  I'll probably have to bag some of that up for the freezer in the next day or so.

Also, I'm missing a glass. It's the twin of the one that I dropped in the kitchen last month. I have no idea where it could be, or how I could have lost a glass, given that it only has four possible positions.

How about this? Some crazy lady beat a peacock to death. WTF?

1. Who hates peacocks? Aren't they like fancy chickens that everyone likes because they act dumb and look pretty? I guess my argument is that peacocks are like 90% of people on TV.
2. Can't you come up with a better way to kill one than to beat it with a baseball bat? That's like what you do when Sammy pawns your TV to buy the nose candy. I don't think peacocks run up drug habits large enough to warrant theft.
3. And who's going to believe that's actually the peacock's TV? No, pawn shops have standards.
   

End of vacation

Thxgvg vacation ends today, which means I need to get back on a work sleep schedule so I can make it in to work tomorrow.  Today's largely been a lazy day, where I sat around and watched tv. I did eat more leftovers, and I've come to the conclusion that the stuffing would probably have been better if I had dried out the bread somewhat before adding it.  I think a quick bake of the crumbs would have helped, or crumbled and let sit out for the night.  That's probably where the extra moisture comes from that is making it so soggy.

My sink is still sucky, but it's not quite as slow as it was thursday.  My thought that it would get better as the whatever clogging the pipe broke down seems to be accurate. I'll be glad to run my dishwasher without concern.

I also realized that this break would have been perfect for me to watch all the Star Wars movies. I've been meaning to do that for a long time now, and a four day weekend would have been the best time to do it.  Oh well, I'm sure I'll have another chance. Sometime. Like in the spring, I guess.

Schwarzwald

"Imagination and memory are but one thing, which for diverse considerations have diverse names."

I have the top google search

for "what are you doing puppy".

Meh

Woke up. Attempted to fix my sink. Failed. Looked at a bunch of food I made yesterday, and have come to the conclusion that I'm not sure I actually want to eat any of it.

It sucks to be two days into a four day weekend, and realize that you don't really do anything anymore except go to work.

Thxgvg

Since I guess we don't use vowels anymore.

I didn't think it would be the case, but I spent six hours cooking today.  I had hoped that doing prep work on Tuesday and Wednesday would have saved me time. Nope.  In addition, my sink...erator? The grindy guy in the sink that sucks at grinding stuff. Mine sucks at grinding stuff, and I think I clogged my kitchen sink. So no sink, no dishwasher, no laundry until I get the maintenance guy to come. Blah.

Anyway, food:

• Turkey, duh. Alton Brown's "Romancing the Bird" recipe, but the original one, where we make a cool-ass triangular foil turkey bra to keep the cooking even.
• Mashed potatoes. I tried to use Giada diLaurentis's recipe, where you bake the potatoes after mashing and mixing with pancetta and cheese. It's a bit dry, probably since I tend to make my mashed potatoes dry-ish.
• Green Bean Casserole. This one I made with my own cream of mushroom soup, but I wasn't convinced I liked that soup when I made it. It carries over the "hrm...I'm not sure I like this" to the casserole.
• Stuffing. These were still too moist, and the flavors didn't blend as much as I'd hoped.
• Stuffed mushrooms: I just blitzed the stems, some shallot and garlic, and more of the pancetta, and crammed it in the biggest shrooms I had. Bake bake bake, and they worked pretty well. I might pre-cook the stuffing next time I try these.
• Gravy. I now fully understand how gravy production works, and it is so painfully obvious, I wonder why I ever bothered with added stock and crap like that. Pull turkey, transfer to resting dish, pour liquids into gravy separator, let separate, dump broth to bowl, add fat to pan, add flour to make roux, when thick, reincorporate broth. It needed nothing, and I think if I had just made turkey, this gravy, and some bread, I would have been perfectly happy with my meal.
• Bread. So, this is where things started falling apart today.  I was originally going to make sage bread, but didn't feel like getting up this morning when I needed to to make the dough. I justified this by claiming I'd make popovers. But popovers require a muffin tin, and my only one was being used to make stuffin' muffins. My fallback was to just rip off a piece of the Hawaiian bread I had in the fridge. Good enough, and lazy.

I'm not super happy with the sides this year, which is kind of unfortunate, since I spent most of the time working on those. I still have an apple pie, which I plan on having with a bit of sharp cheddar in a few hours, when I start feeling less like I'm about to explode. 

I still have 22 minutes

until missing today's Namapokepuppynom time limit, that is.

This evening has been another prep day. I have the turkey in the brine, and an apple pie fighting my under temperature oven.

Time to do a quick check...

Turkey is doing just fine.  My new cooler still has almost original size ice cubes, after two and a half hours.  That's a good sign that it'll be brined successfully.

The pie is still not quite done, even after an extra ten minutes.  I'm going to give it another five, and call it done.  The top crust is firm, it just isn't as toasted as I like.  Oh well. It still smells tasty.

See?

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I'm not kidding

Animated kittens talking about immigration.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Finally something astronomy related

I just looked out my lanai, and saw that Orion was nearly impossible to see.  The reason for this, is that it is so high in the sky, it's mostly blocked by the ceiling.  This is weird, because I know that just a few days ago, @BadAstronomer pointed out how he could just barely see Orion peaking over the horizon.

I think I've just always been around +40 degrees latitude, so suddenly being 20 degrees south of that is weird.  I don't think that this really translates into that much more of the sky (20%? Did I do that math correctly in my head?). Still, since it's mostly by the horizon, it's not that noticeable, I don't think.

Crap, almost forgot

Um...don't really have much. Here's a list of when I'm going to make things:

• Tuesday night: stuffing and green bean casserole
• Wednesday night: turkey brine and apple pie
• Thursday morning: sage bread, roast turkey
• Thursday early afternoonish: mashed potatoes
• Thursday post turkey roasting: gravy.

That reminds me, I need to find some wine, and track down a roasting pan. I also should clean my fridge out a bit so I have space to stick things. My turkey is currently defrosting slowly in one of my veggie drawers. It fit, and it's something I can simply wash out afterwards. Plus, I didn't need to shuffle any shelves around. This does mean that my pile of mushrooms (5 types, probably nearing two pounds or so) is sitting outside of a veggie drawer on the shelf. Oh well, they'll get over it.

Pokemon Movie livetweets

Just because.

• Who else is excited about the new Pokemon movie? (Yes, I know, no one. It's just me. Whatever, I don't care.)  [about 6 hours ago from web]
• Hmm...someone should have blended their CG with the hand drawn a bit better.  [about 5 hours ago from API]
• Also, I've seen all the previous movies in this storyline, and it still only makes like 40% sense to me.  [about 5 hours ago from web] 
• The cosmology of Poke-world is bizarre, yet still easily diagrammed with steampunk quality models.  [about 5 hours ago from API]
  
• "Hey, Pikachu! Use thundershock on that god-like pokemon that created the universe!"  [about 5 hours ago from UberTwitter]
  
• Time travelling in Pokemon leads to conversations 74x funnier than in regular time travelling stories.  [about 5 hours ago from API]
  
• I like how we get the myth at the start of the movie, and then travel back in time, and hear it firsthand from Poke-Moses.  [about 5 hours ago from API]
  
• Facepalm. For someone who can read the hearts of Pokemon, you can't tell a bad guy when he's lying right to your stupid face.  [about 4 hours ago from API]
  
• That's the second time she's been duped, and I think the third for Arceus. I never realized that time travel is a prank multiplier.  [about 4 hours ago from API]
  
• I'm pretty sure that just once Ash would like to end the movie without having to escape a collapsing castle. Oh wait, he's friends with god.  [about 4 hours ago from web] 
• It's a bit dumb that they fixed the time paradox by making Arceus watch the movie in his head (like in Spaceballs). Still, Pokemon movie.     [about 4 hours ago   from web]
  
  

Things I did today

• Woke up.
• Watched Pokemon Movie #12: Team Twerp Meets God and Travels Through Time.
• Made this blog post.
  

Pika-pi!

You can be sure that when Pikachu says this, he's talking to Ash.

His Japanese name is "Satoshi," which, when translated to Pikachu-ese, is obviously "Pika-pi!"

Stealing Julie's Idea

• Stuffed mushrooms (shallots, garlic, and pancetta)
• Sage bread (from my baking book)
• Green bean casserole (I'll need to work out the cream sauce, as I'm doing it from scratch)
• Mashed potatoes (stealing ideas from Giada DiLaurentis's version, by mashing, adding pancetta and parmesan, then baking)
• Stuffing (I've established my sausages, and lots of shrooms and things)
• Turkey (AB's brining/roasting method. I also bought a giant cooler for the brine, which probably wasn't the best idea for my small apartment, but it was the same price as tiny ones)
• Apple pie (since I'm not really a pumpkin pie fan, and it doesn't make sense to make two pies for just me)

I still need to buy a bit more (I want portabellas and pumpernickel for the stuffing, and I need a nice extra sharp cheddar to pair with the pie. Also, I have no wine, so probably a Côtes du Rhône, maybe something to go with dessert), but I think I have the majority of what I need.

Unfortunately, while buying my pile of produce, I had the worst checkout guy in the world.  When you can't identify anything ("what kind of mushrooms are these?" "is this a potato?" "are these granny smith?") and need the girl bagging things to tell you that that slip of paper is a "coupon" and that it "needs to be scanned to work," maybe you should go back to stocking shelves.

Ohs Noes!

Labels!

I finally figured out how to make the labels show up by randomly editing the blog template.  Then, I spent a bit to go back and retroactively tag things.

This commercial makes almost no sense

The youtube info says it's posted by "PringlesAsia" from Singapore. It does get the frustration of having every door broken in Silent Hill down pretty well.  Unfortunately, Pringles make very few appearances in the games.

The random spatula is kind of funny, too.

Fuck you, pizza

Right there on the bottom. It just buckled, and now my oven has cheese burned on the bottom. :(

Oh, how about this:

Not much today

I don't really have anything today. Normal boring day of writing code.

I did finally get around to resetting the timestamps here to HST from EST. I got tired of having to backdate things after I posted them so they'd show up on the day I wanted.

Hey!

That's my cellphone background!

(So the sad thing is, I had to take this picture with my old cellphone camera, because my regular camera is somewhat broketastic, and needs batteries I don't have. Surprisingly, my old cellphone had 2/3 power bars despite sitting in a box since February. Also, I guess cell phone cameras like to autofocus on the reflections, because of the four I took, this one was the best. Oh well.)

Sausage fest! Day 2!

Second set of sausages, the ones I picked up at Safeway today. The rest is the same as yesterday, although my pancakes were a bit stale. Still, not too bad, especially with the delicious real syrup. I thought up the shotglass idea last night, when I wanted some syrup, but without all the hassle of putting it on something.

As for the sausages, today's set were:

• Jimmy Dean Sage Sausage. Not bad, although it was a bit overly sweet. I didn't really get the sage flavor, but this would probably be a decent choice for the stuffing.
• Portugese...um...Hawaiian... Yeah, no idea. It's this sausage that's made here in Hawaii, but is labeled as "Portugese." Wikipedia tells me that it's probably "Linguiça." Anyway, it's almost exactly what I was looking for. It has a hint of spice, and all the garlicky goodness I was hoping for.

I'm thinking that for the actual stuffing, I'll do a mix, probably two parts Portugese to one part JD sage. I think another modification I'll make to the recipe I've used in the past is to convert the mushrooms into a duxelle instead of just adding them in fresh. This should hopefully cut down on the extra liquid in the stuffing.

Sausage Fest!

No, the good type.

I decided that I would make "breakfast," if for no other reason, than so I can taste a variety of sausages to decide which one would work best in a stuffing. To round out the meal, I made hash browns (or home fries, whichever name you want to give them) and pancakes (blueberry, as seen by the rogue berries on my fork). I think this is the first time I've made pancakes in like three years.

As for the sausages, things weren't as good. First, Whole Foods only sells links. This means that there's a required "de-linking" phase of preparation to turn them into proper sausage patties (the one true form for sausage). The other issue was that they only had three types of sausage. To ensure something good, I also bought some of their applewood bacon, and fried up a slice of that. The bacon won the sausage battle, if that says anything. The other contenders:

• Andouille. This was my winner last year, as it has a good sausage-y flavor, without lots of added issues. Unfortunately, WF andouille has red pepper flakes. I was looking for a smokey/garlic-y flavor, and this comes along with sharp unwanted pepper flavors.
• Italian. Again, I only had three choices. This one was right out the moment I tasted it. Fennel. Nope, sorry, that's not at all the flavor profile I want in my stuffing.
• Hot Italian. Pretty much the worst of both worlds. Pepper flakes and fennel. Ick.

So, I'm still left without a sausage decision. The only thing to do now is to hunt down sausages at other grocery stores, and see what they have. Since no one believes in meat counters anymore, that probably means I need to buy pre-wrapped pound packages. Stupid industrialized food production removing the care and wisdom of a local butcher. :(

Contractual Obligation Post

I guess I'm not really obligated at all, not even by some sort of legal documentation, but I couldn't think up a title. Given that I really didn't do much today, that's not much of a surprise.

Tomorrow, though; Tomorrow I'm going to do this Sunday breakfast thing again. My freezer door was open slightly for most of a day last week, so I had to throw out a lot of stuff that I had in there. That includes my waffles, as the box was disturbingly soggy. Therefore, since I've been getting lots of grief from someone about buying things I could just as easily make, I decided that I would make pancakes. This will also give me a chance to use up my blueberries.

This will also give me a chance to taste a variety of sausages I bought tonight at Whole Foods. My plan is to taste them all, and decide which will be best in the stuffing I'm making for Thanksgiving. I also picked up some nice looking thick bacon, so I'll probably fry that up too. I'm going to try to have pictures for tomorrow's post.

Fuck you reality

"Oh well, sushi should probably be one of those things you splurge on because cheap sushi makes for terrible nights."

RelaxBear

While I'm waiting for my work computer to stop sucking and start responding to actual input, I thought I'd get a jump on today's blaggification.

I saw this car yesterday at Ala Moana. I think that more things need to have Relax Bear on them. He is a bear who wears a bear suit.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Vacation Over

Just dropped my parents off at the airport, so I guess my vacation is over. It didn't really seem like much of a vacation, given that I got up on average earlier than I would have had it just been another week. I think this weekend will require substantial laziness.

Thanksgiving

I realized today that I should start sitting down to think about a Thanksgiving menu. It's going to only be me, I think, so I have a decent degree of freedom. Unfortunately, that also means that I need to make everything myself. I'm probably going to go with a lazy traditional thing

• Turkey: most likely the AB brine version, as it's super delicious
• Stuffing: maybe I'll try some of the various sausages we have here, and see which one would work best.
• Green Bean Casserole: the cheesy version
• Mashed Potatoes: I kind of want to do something fancier than just adding roasted garlic, but I'm not sure what
• Rolls of some sort
• Punch and Pie

Probably doesn't hurt to start thinking about recipes now, so I can do some test runs.

Iolani Palace

Is the only royal palace on US soil. It was also the first major executive residence with electricity.

It is also moderately hard to find parking for. :(

Monday

Work day, since it was telecon day. Two hour telecon right after the hour-long group meeting.

Guh.

Turtle Bay Resort

Visited this with the parents as part of the North Shore Tour (the North Shore is crap if you don't surf). It's kind of like a safe, family-friendly, boring version of what a vacation hotel should be. I hate Waikiki, but that's because I hate people. It totally offers a far better atmosphere of drunken excess and commercialism that I believe people prefer in their vacation experience.

Tl;dr: Turtle Bay is like the Republican version of Hawaii.

In any case, we were only there for lunch, and lunch is something I'm generally willing to do anywhere, with anyone.

My choice was the "slider trio." Yes, sliders are totally played out, and yes, it's clear that the chef in charge of the restaurant (Ola @ Turtle Bay Resort) hasn't gotten that message yet. Still, given that I'm unlikely to visit more than once (maybe twice. If I was up on the NS again, it's probably the best place to do lunch), I figured it was the best way to sample the selection. The sliders are (color from menu):

1. "Kalua Pork: Oven Roasted and Smoked with a Guava Barbeque Sauce and Grilled Maui Onions." Other than my own pulled pork, this may be the best fucking pork sandwich I've ever had. This is delicious, and definitely something I'd recommend.
2. "North Shore Burger with Herb Cream Cheese (made from North Shore Cattle Company All-Natural Beef)." I would have liked to get the "Onions & Mushrooms" the standard version of this gets, but instead I got a slice of (probably) plum tomato (based on the size). I prefer cheese on my burgers, but this didn't need it. The flavor of the meat was remarkable. The tomato was ripe and fresh, and the herb cream cheese offered a nice counterpoint. The meat was a touch small for the bun (probably an ounce or so, pre-cooked, which works to be about a 1-inch diameter by 0.25 inch patty after cooking), which is another reason that "sliders" are terrible ideas to begin with. Why can't we just make cuts off of larger sandwiches (A: because that'd be prohibitively expensive for the restaurant)?
3. "Soft Shell Crap with Wasabi Soy Aioli." Um. Oh. Ok. Slight review change. I thought this had the lemongrass herb oil, but that was the grilled baby octopus entree I was thinking of having. Well, in any case, the problems with this one were:

• The crab was clearly over fried. As we've heard a thousand times from Alton Brown, Julia Child, The Pope: frying doesn't make something greasy, as long as the water in the thing you're frying is being extracted. Only after the water is gone is it replaced with the oil from the fryer. This crab was dry and greasy. That kind of ruins the fun of eating something that looks exactly like it did when it was running around.
• There was nothing to fix this in the sauce. "Wasabi Soy Aioli" apparently means "Pile of bean sprouts and something that has so little flavor you think it's the lemongrass herb oil." I'm fine with the bean sprouts. It adds some texture that helps the sandwich. The sauce, however, is basically a failure. My initial thought was that a lemon/basil aioli would fix this. Both offer a sharp flavor that could fix some significant overcooking of the crab itself. A wasabi/soy aioli that actually had flavor could do so as well. The spice and saltiness would easily do the same thing. Again: the sauce failed the sandwich, making me glad that I had two other very tasty things to enjoy.

Fries were there as well (duh, USA), which had a nice coating of kosher salt, making them a bit saltier than most fries, but salty in a more flavorful way.

I guess my conclusion is: TBR: Ola does most things well, but maybe you should just try that grilled baby octopus if you get a chance, because "Crab Luau Cream"? How can that not be delicious?

PS: This was supposed to post tomorrow, blogger believes that tomorrow is today (proof against: no flying cars), I don't care, because it solves the problem of coming up with stuff tomorrow.

Vacation checklist haiku

Pearl Harbor was first.
Arizona: Boat ride out.
Missouri: Repairs.

Di-a-mond Head next,
Stairs do not make hiking fun.
Stupid Day-star sucks.

Dole Pineapple Farm
(Plantation did not fit there):
Creative history!

North Shore has beaches;
Far too much traffic/bother:
Not worth the effort.

My worst nemesis:
Waikiki, oh Waikiki.
Tsunami come soon.

Apparently scheduling is wonky

I'M POSTING FROM TEH FUTURE!

This panda

loves recess.

This is Hello Kitty's

and she will shoot you in the back of your head if you don't come back with all the money. She didn't bring this from Columbia for you to fuck up.

Things that were wrong with that commercial

1. She is holding a ukulele. It is never played, nor is it in the background music. If Chekhov had a gun, he would shoot the writer.
2. Her song has unwieldy octave jumps. I think they auto-tuned her to make it work.
3. There were digital snowflakes in the background. WTF? This is Hawaii.
4. The only way to get a copy of this new song is in the Christmas Pack of Hawaiian Host chocolates. That's a bizarrely specific marketing strategy.
5. Her closing statement that we should all support her is accompanied by some sort of weird head movements that don't so much say "pop music star" as "porn star."

Edit

Ok, blogger doesn't like animated gifs. Give me a moment...ok, no clue how to convert an animated gif to something reasonable. Here's how it goes down:

squirrel A walks up to the stuffed toy, and steals a peanut. He sits there on camera and eats it.

squirrel B flies into shot from the right, totally fucking up the stuffed toy's shit. He totally doesn't trust this stuffed impostor.

I'll try again later, once I've sorted out how to make it work.

Nablomopo?

Crap, we're doing magabogoblogomogonamamamramalamadingdonapo again this month, aren't we.

Fuck.

Um...

Here's a picture of a squirrel going absolutely batshit crazy over a stuffed animal. (It's late, and I didn't really do anything today. I had breakfast, it was tasty, I didn't take pictures.)