Saturday: I probably should have done more work today.

Instead I went to get sushi for lunch.  I went to Genki, as I didn't really want to drive out to Kahala.  Genki does have nice labels that circle with the food, so you know exactly what you're getting.

 I did end up sitting next to possibly the rudest girl ever, which was annoying.  I'm pretty sure no one wants your victoria's secret bag sitting on the counter.  Also, waving and snapping your fingers at the sushi guy because you want, "Um...that sauce? You know? For tempura? Can I have some?" makes you look like an ass.

Their unagi isn't as good as Kuru Kuru.

 On the way out, I had to wait for some lady to pay her bill, then ask if she could exchange a hundred dollar bill for twenties, and then conspicuously put two dollars in the tip jar.  She did all this while the checkout guy looked awkwardly at me because neither of us could get my bill paid until she moved.

This karaage took fucking forever to come out.

 Did you know they make blood orange San Pellegrino?  It's better than the other flavors.  I picked it up while getting my spite foie gras at foodland.  Mmm...spite....

What are you doing dogs? You're not trained biohazard experts.  You shouldn't even be here.

 I also discovered today that making a Levenberg-Marquardt change to a fitting algorithm does increase the convergence speed.  "Duh," I hear you say.  Yes, but when I first implemented the fitting, I intentionally went with a standard non-linear least squares fit because the GSL LM solver would get trapped in local minima. I'm still not sure why my version doesn't have that problem, beyond the fact that I've changed a lot of the other calculation stuff.  In fact, adding the LM step was brought on by oscillatory solutions where the fits would bounce around the chi^2 minimum in a cyclical pattern.  I thought that adding something that changed the step interval each time would solve that.  It seems to do so, so that's good.

Random Charizard.

• Snorlax likes burritos.
• I missed bunny disco this week.  I'll have to try again next week.
• Huh.  I probably shouldn't go out and buy books tomorrow.  I already have lots of books.
• "Being a guinea pig is hard work."
• Maybe I'm suffering from "night-starvation."  I assumed the main ingredient in this was cocaine, but wikipedia suggests it's malted milk.  I think night-starvation would be preferable.
• Bunny!
• I like that "explain it like I'm five" exists.  Here's how health care works.

Friday: I have the impression I'm going to be working all weekend

Which sucks, BTW.

This is kind of cool.  Imagine a propeller and an idealized CCD camera.  Let the camera be read out from top to bottom (or bottom to top).  Then, when the propeller spins, it's in a slightly different position when each row is read out.  This causes the propeller blades to look warped and separated.

Or it's photoshop.  Never discount the possibility of fakery.

Fox!

Some days I wonder why I bother, when I could just as easily make up some bullshit and start a cult.

I think Ivysaur is missing the point of eating sandwiches.

• Kissy squirrels!
• I kind of want a spider bot.  I know I really just want a tachikoma, but that's probably a bit in the future.
• This is what cities looked like in the 80s.
• I can't tell if I should feel bad for this dog, or for all the people it hates.
• Oh, man, Nazis.  Good job being dumber than bricks.  Sorry, Hungarian fascist douchebags. Not technically Nazis.
• a) This fundamentally misunderstands "stylish." b) Was everyone in the 1970s on drugs all the time?

Thursday: I wore my grumpy pants today, apparently

I'm not entirely sure why.  I don't think I got enough sleep last night.  I had to take my car in to get the safety inspection thing done. Again. I have some suspicion that I may have caused the guy who did the sale to break a rule (or law maybe), and I think he's trying to get it sorted out.  Yay for laziness, I guess.

I saw this double rainbow on the drive home. It's hard to see the second order in this picture.

On the drive home, I was thinking about how stupid spoilers are on the backs of cars.  Race cars need them because they're so aerodynamic, and go so fast, that they can start to lift off the ground slightly.  Since they tend to be rear-wheel drive, lifting up can cause them to lose traction and spin the wheels, making them jerk around.  Therefore, they have a wing on the back to produce "downforce" that keeps the rear wheels firmly on the ground.  Since the force is related to the speed of the car (as it's due to the wind going over the wing), this solves the problem of lift.  Street cars never get to those kind of speeds, and never have such traction issues, a spoiler is useless.

Doubly so if the car is front wheel drive, like the Toyota I was stuck behind at the light.

Squirrels usually don't wear hats. Or take indoor stools outside.

 The other thing I was thinking about while driving home was why people in Hawaii leave so much space between cars when stopped at a light.  The realization I had was that people probably stop when they can't see some fixed point on the car in front of them.  Let's say it's the license plate, and that all plates are a fixed distance above the road.  Now, imagine two drivers of different heights.  They'll see that height at slightly different angles below the parallel to the road, with the taller driver having a larger angle.  Therefore, if both drivers have the same length hood/whatever, the taller driver will be able to pull closer before the plate is blocked.  Assuming Hawaii has in general shorter drivers than Michigan (which I can guess from the outlier I saw yesterday who couldn't see over the wheel), then the average distance between cars will also be larger.

That said, if you leave a car-and-a-half length in front of you, you're still an asshole.

Oh noes, Hedgie!

Man, how can anyone hate a panda?

This is both a brilliant prank and a good way to get hit.

Everyone knows Josephine Baker, right?  I think I've mentioned her before.  I just liked this photoshopped pic.

Target. Land of instant substitute jokes.

• I just watched this episode today.  I'm unclear whether this was a happy or sad episode.  The fact that Princess Cookies has to live in the Candy Kingdom insane asylum is depressing.  On the other hand, the Crazy Tart Toter was there, too.
• So this is why tomatoes taste crappy.  Good to know.
• You will never eat this bowl of cereal. Tony the Tiger will have killed you in your sleep the night before.
• I feel like I should go get some this weekend to eat in solidarity.
• This may be a french bulldog and not a boston terrier.
• I think, after reading this story, if I were a Supreme Court justice (keeping in mind that that is a lifetime appointment), I would to the following.  Choose someone else on the court that I hate. Like, say, Tony Scalia.  Then, pretend to be on his side on close decisions, and get him to write his opinion like it's going to be the law. Finally, at the last minute, switch sides just to make him look dumb and force him to rewrite the opinion.
• This is a boston terrier.  At least the part that isn't fucking terrifying. Sorry, no, that part doesn't exist.

Wednesday: I wish people would learn how to drive

Coming home from Target today was annoying due to traffic.  The main problem is that people don't try to get up to speed before merging.  Because of this, they slow down the right most lane.  This cascades into other lanes, as people attempt to flee the slow-moving right lane.  However, they're now not going the same speed as the people in that lane, so it causes the entire highway to slow down.  Since the carrying capacity of the highway is basically a function of the number of lanes and the average speed, having the average speed drop to a tenth what it should be means the highway is only a tenth as effective as it could be.  The proof is left to the reader.

This also ignores the fact that not having long enough merging lanes before turning them into an exit ramp is also a bad idea.  This basically doubles the above effect, as you have two lanes attempting to switch locations (to first order).  This quickly drives the average speed in those lanes down to ~zero.

Anyway, I bought some oreos like I said I would:

Random pictures:

That pan isn't even big enough to cook all that pasta to start with.

Dog and Cat are friends.

• This is a terrible idea.  There's no reason to tie grades to paying, even less so to support the textbook oligarchs.  I knew a professor who was writing a reasonably popular book.  He was getting basically zero royalties from it, despite the shelf price being ~$100.  He was writing it because he wanted to have his say on the subject, not to get rich.
• Fucking. Code. Veronica.  I think I've played about 20 minutes of this game seven times.  It's a shame, because I was expecting something playable.
• Huh.  I don't grill my hot dogs, though.  Still, something to think about for the 4th (which is only a week away?).
• Remember when everyone loved the Matrix movie, and then they came out with two more that were total shit and everyone made fun of them, and people had to start saying, "yeah, I like the Matrix. Just the first one though, that wasn't so bad."  Avatar.
• Squirrels!

Tuesday: Finally doing a menu plan

First, though, this dog I saw at WF:

He was being driven around by an old lady.

 Anyway, this week's plan for dinner.

• Tuesday: It's been rainy and gloomy all day, and I just had a desire for grilled cheese and tomato soup.
• Wednesday: Same thing, probably.  The soup is from WF, and other than being labeled organic 99 different ways, isn't noticeably better than my usual canned tomato soup.
• Thursday: I picked up a buffalo ribeye, so I think that will for this day.  I'm thinking of pairing it with a baked potato, and this creamed spinach.
• Friday: Kind of a copy, but instead of another buffalo ribeye, I got a lamb top round steak (pretty much the only lamb they had, and they looked good).  I don't have a method yet, but I'm probably going to have the same sides.  These two might get switched around, as well.

I will not be having llama curry.  Mmm...llama curry...

I saw this news story today, and in addition to the absolutely stupid story, it had this image which just needed captioning:

"Dude, something's wrong with your grandma!" "I AM SO FUCKING HIGH RIGHT NOW!"

• I guess I have to go get Oreos tomorrow.  I don't even really like them that much.
• Pokemon prom dress!
• I know no one else cares, but I think this is interesting.  Fleischer Superman was wonderful.
• Penguin!
• Neil Gaiman tweeted this yesterday, so everyone probably already saw it.  In any case, ancient history!
• This is pretty much a sign that we've stopped putting grown ups in charge of the judicial system.

Monday: So sleepy

Like this level of sleepy.

I should remember this one for next time I need a Picard facepalm picture.  It works the same.

So I guess we can add fish to the list, then.

Wooper!

I discovered today that my DVR hard drive is again having problems, making me suspect that it really is falling apart, and that it isn't just a temporary bad sector issue.  The good news is that I have nearly everything backed up already, and I have the replacement 2TB disk (which is now installed and receiving the rsyncs).  I've also discovered a script that will re-add the shows that were dropped from the database but I still have on disk.  The bad news is that it looks like I've probably permanently lost the last few days worth of recordings (at least until they show again).  I've also discovered that I don't have enough SATA cables, and amazon doesn't always ship one with OEM drives.  Crap.  That may make things a bit more creative.  I guess the other good thing is that if this is a major disk failure, the fact that it's still under warranty means I just need to RMA it back to Seagate to get a new one.

• First, these pants look stupid.  Second, you'd look stupid messing with your phone while it's still in your pocket. Third, they're $160.
• My reading of this story tells me two things.  DC has no clear editorial plan, and they're letting Grant Morrison do anything he wants, at the expense of everyone else.  It's a shame that at this point I kind of want everyone at DC to get fired and have the comics given to someone who's just interested in telling a good story.
• I'm wondering if I'm old enough now to try to convince people that this is what I had to use to reduce data in "the old days."
• Now I want a lambburger.
• Sheriff bunny!
• It's really gif #3 that makes this funny.

Sunday: Burger structural integrity

Lunch today was Teddy's again, for a reason listed later.

Also cheese fries.

Today was the "Nom Nom Burger," which was scribbled on the whiteboard sign at the counter, making me think it was just something they came up with when they opened.  Anyway, bacon, sauteed onions, garlic, swiss cheese, plus the usual veggies (no Teddy sauce, as that just makes the burgers messier).

I eventually had to ditch the veggies, as the burger was too messy with them included.  This led me to thinking about how burgers are built.  Teddy's does the same thing as a lot of places, putting toppings under the cheese.  I don't think this ever works, as the moisture from those toppings has no place to go, so you get a layer with effectively no friction, so it slides apart.  Similarly, tomatoes are slippery as well, so they seem to cause the burger to slide apart.

So what's the solution?  I think the only way to do this is to use both buns as moisture traps.  For this burger, I should have moved the tomato and lettuce to the bottom of the burger, where they'd cause less trouble.  Although, thinking about it, I think lettuce probably needs to be banned entirely from burgers.  It's non-permeable to grease, so you're never going to put it in there without a loss of integrity.  "But we could shred the lettuce!" you say? No. Shredded lettuce is a terrible idea.

Ok, so bottom bun, tomato.  I think the bacon should probably be next, as then you get a blt-style going on, plus the salt from the bacon enhances the tomato flavor.  Then the burger, followed immediately by the cheese.  Cheese is also not permeable, but since it's on top of the burger, the burger grease should go down, and the hot-topping grease should soak up in to the bun.  Therefore, on top of the cheese can be the sauteed onions, or garlic, or mushrooms, or whatever.

I'm not a big fan of condiments on burgers, but I think they'd probably go best on the top bun.  They should mix in with the hot topping grease, so it would require being a bit spare with them in any case.  Or, you can do what I prefer, and have ketchup or whatever on the side for dipping.

This was the image that made me want a burger for lunch.  Note the placement of veggies on the bottom.  I'm a bit concerned about that onion in the middle, but as long as it isn't a continuous layer of onion, the cheese should hold it together.  Thousand island is gross, however.

I'm pretty sure this is squirrel for "fuck you and your stupid birds."

My cheese is never this exciting.

• I already wanted hot dogs, and now I want cheesy bacon hot dogs.
• Well, that's a bit sad.
• Yeah, pretty much.  Old people do seem to pretty much be the problem with the current political situation.

Saturday: Headache

It's annoying.  I did go out and get some groceries.  While doing so, I saw someone who had a purse made out of an NES:

Like a for-realsies NES.

It was also a crazy day at the store.  I was surprised to see a sign that said, "Buy 1, Get 2 Free." On raspberries:

So this is what I had for dinner. A full box of raspberries. Also: ice cream.

After checking my receipt, it looks like that box I did pay for was actually $7, making the original price something like $1.17/oz.  Holy crap. Good thing they're on sale, I guess.

Hey, look! Bears!

Wait, Frankie's five years younger than me? :(

• I might have posted these before, but I really like these cut-out advertisements.
• Huh. I actually bought lazy mac&cheese at the store today, because I had a craving for it.  This might be an easy way to cheat in the future.  Although I never have milk, so that might be a problem.
• Bunny.
• Working at Denny's. I can't imagine chocolate sauce onion rings would be good.
• I kind of wish the US respected Designation of Origin rules like the rest of the world.  I'd rather pay more for something that's authentic.

Friday: Math

Math math math, math math math. Blah.

What my head feels like right now.

This would have given the Empire a bit of an advantage.

• This advert ignores the fact that sherry is fortified, so it would get your guests drunk faster, too.
• See, this is the kind of brilliant Rip Hunter stuff I was talking about yesterday.
• Bunny!

Thursday: Today's post has a lot of Pokemon

That's mostly because I spent two hours this evening fighting cfitsio and the IRAF conventions on spectra WCS in fits images.  I cannot imagine the decision making process that led to sticking the second dimension information into a very long string, and then breaking that string up into 68 character chunks to fit into a series of header keywords that are of the format "WAT2_%03d" with the integer simply incrementing from 1 to whatever. That maximum value isn't stored anywhere.

And it has a built-in "fuck you" caveat: if a string header value ends in a space, that space is auto-magically truncated by cfitsio.  So, every 6-7 keywords, you lose the only thing delineating one entry in the very long string from another.  Seriously, I can personally come up with three perfectly fine ways to save this exact same information in a sane format.  Plus, we could save floats as fucking floats, without the expense of having to do atof() calls all over the place.

Cute animals to drive the thoughts of maddening fits formats from my mind.

• Yes.

Pokemon GTA. I didn't save the other image, apparently.

• I saw this, and then knew when I scrolled down to the comments I'd find, "LOL, NOOB! WHAR ALUCARD?"  It's unfortunate that people don't understand the concept that D is Alucard, with an extra ten thousand years of experience.  I thought this was made clear in the original movie, and I think it's even more explicit in the books.

I want this.  This kind of wizardry is essential.

On the topic of instant pizza, watch this video:

1. That pizza doesn't look that great when it comes out.
2. Is her outfit supposed to make her look like a pizza chef, or a scientist?
3. It's fucking pizza. You don't really need to sex it up.  Everyone likes fucking pizza.

• I always liked Misty's original costume, but this one is certainly more "real-clothes"-like. Also, one of the nice things about the new B&W series is that Team Rocket doesn't have to rely on weak disguises.  I do miss the silliness, however. #neversatisfied #nottwitter

I'm sure this joke has been made infinity times by now.

• I'm kind of curious as to the difference between regular Zerone and "War Emergency Zerone."

Watch this video now:

Fucking hilarious.  I like random old-man Brock.

• This should be above to get the transition right.  Snorlax! Pizza! Interpolate

I cannot find the Space Ghost: Coast to Coast clip I was referencing there.  It'll just be an inside joke, I guess. Between me. And me.

• I'm pretty much baffled by this as well.  As a comparison, I know that I'd go watch a Rip Hunter movie, because I know who he is, and what's likely to happen. Maybe he fights the Linear Men. Maybe he is part of the Linear Men. Maybe Booster Gold shows up. Who knows?  In any case, I'm going to be alone in the theater, because no one else has ever fucking heard of him.  Ditto with the Metal Men.

Yes I did

just make a blog post in which I comment on communist ideology in a favorable light while considering buying marrow spoons.

Communist bear likes marrow.

Wednesday: Why do I even bother trying to make fish sandwiches?

I mean, look at this. Nice piece of ono, some lettuce and sriracha on a pita.  Five seconds later it was a drippy mess, with the pita shredding itself and bidding the concept of "structural integrity" farewell.  Maybe I need to pull the fish, and let it sit on a rack or something for a few minutes?  Cook it slower so the juices aren't forced out?  Abandon the idea of fish sandwiches entirely?

It needed more salt, too.

This is a religion I could get behind.

• I like this Superman ring.
• I know the red Bostons aren't the preferred breed color. Still, this one is super cute.
• Ok, so I finally found them.  However, I don't need a dozen.  Anyone out there want to go halfsies on a box of marrow spoons?
• Now, far be it from me to suggest forcibly taking property away from someone.  However, a headline like "Oracle's Larry Ellison to buy Lanai," makes me think otherwise.  For a state with so little land to start with, is it really right for one person to own almost an entire island?
• Also, fuck Obama for house prices dropping between 2005-2008. He should have known running for president would make the recession named after him even if it started three years earlier.  From a comment: "Exactly his(or at least his puppet masters) aim. You can't incite their type of revolution when there is a healthy middle class. They want only the very rich and the very poor. Marx spent chapters railing against the 'bourgeoisie' because he knew they stood in his way."  
• 

Since when do the middle class control the means of production?  If you don't even understand the bare minimums of a concept, how can you offer any meaningful commentary?  This is what you get if you base everything off the assumption that "Marx is bad, therefore everything bad is Marxist."  Marx's issue with the bourgeoisie was not because they were the middle class that could prevent "his type of revolution." Rather, it's the fact that having a few wealthy owners controlling production effectively enslaves the proletariat (via wages or job availability) to their whims and desires.  In such a situation, you could easily imagine the wealthy using differences in pay among the proletariat to suggest that those who make more have their pay and benefits cut.

Tuesday: Good data news

Apparently bad sectors aren't good, but aren't a sign of imminent drive failure.  I'm glad I have a replacement on the way, but I've switched the DVR back to point at the big disk.  Part of this was prompted by the fact that I discovered today that the DVR saw it had a small disk, panicked, and auto-expired (read: deleted) pretty much every show I hadn't watched yet.  So now it's back to having lots of space, so it won't panic again.

Since I rsynced things around, I have a copy of the bits for all of those shows, but they're stored in files that are basically CHANNEL_DATETIME.nuv, which isn't super useful.  However, I discovered that there's an oldrecorded table in the database that retains all the metadata for deleted shows.  It contains most of the information used in the active recorded table, so I should be able to simply do an INSERT INTO recorded (SELECT * FROM oldrecorded WHERE recordid IN (x,y,z,a,b,c)); to recover those shows so I can watch them again.  It's inconvenient, but nice to see that throughout this whole thing, the only thing I've lost is the episode of Rachel Maddow I taped so I could see the Paul Krugman interview.

I also updated mythtv today, which means mythmusic doesn't work anymore.  I never really used it, except to play music while cooking Thanksgiving dinner.  I'll look into it later this week.

Random picture time:

What are you doing deer? You're not even in this class.

Bunny!

This happens to me pretty much every day.

I spent so much time working on the computer that I didn't feel like cooking. I went and got tacos instead.  I did not fuck up my "eating taco" roll like this lady, though.

• Squirrel!
• WTF, 1946, WTF?  I'm pretty sure she's not the spirit of anything, she's just some crazy lady who refuses to wear a shirt.
• More different squirrel!

I think this one counts as my one-year everyday blogging anniversary.  It's actually a lot easier than I expected it would be, and it gives me a nice chance to save random crap I've found on the internet in a way that's easier to use than bookmarks.  Usually I don't care to visit these pages in a direct-access manner.  I just want to go back and click on random things that are cool.  I wonder how long I can keep this up now.