Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Tuesday: New Year's Eve

Dog.

Lilikoi butter.

To fill macarons.

Pictionary.  "Hare" was the word, and this is the best cartoon bunny ever.

There was other food, but I apparently only took pictures of macarons.

Happy Sciuridaes!


So this is what google auto awesome does to photos.

Specifically this one.

Monday, December 30, 2013

Happy Sciuridaes!


Monday: Squirrels and Steak

Bread bag squirrel.

Real world squirrel, high up in a tree.

Steak with sides.

Cooked to a wonderful pink inside.
These steaks were crazy thick.  I can't imagine one person could really eat a whole one.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Sunday: Dinner and games


Rather tasty, but I still prefer Tenkaippin.  This was the "Michi" with "stout" broth and added menma.  This was thicker than the other broths, but it didn't quite stick to the noodles as much as I would have liked.  I think that stickiness is the only way to get to the bottom of the bowl with noodle and broth both gone.

Also, since this is Texas, you get like a quarter pound of charsiu, instead of the standard single thin slice.  Nice flavor in it, but the super thick cut makes rolling it up and chomping with chopsticks a bit trickier.  The menma was cold, as were the mushrooms they added.  I don't really see why these aren't kept in a steamer tray or something so they can be added to the hot soup while also hot.

Similar to Tenkaippin, you can get extra noodles to eat with leftover broth.

 And then suddenly Cards Against Humanity with expansion pack 4:

I know I've mentioned buying expansion packs in the past, but that hasn't happened until now.  I think this means slipping them in one-by-one on each subsequent visit. That should complete the set sometime in 2016.

Happy Sciuridaes!


Sunday: Infinite Links.

Well, infinite links and some food.  Since I'm in Austin again, I suggested 24 Diner for lunch.

Before.
 I went with the small portion of chicken and waffles, mostly so I could get a side of mac&cheese and not feel quite so bad about it.  This was the compromise I came up with between getting the full chicken and waffles and the patty melt (w/ m&c as a side).

After.
One note: 24D's "fair trade lemonade" is sufficiently weak to be better classified as "slightly lemon-y water."  Oh well.

And maybe it's just me being used to living under the constant blazing glare of the Day Star, but Austin is remarkably dreary and grey today.  Has it always been like this in the winter?


Saturday, December 28, 2013

Saturday: travelling to Austin

First of all, there should be a squirrel picture here.  I don't know where it went, but I can't find it.  Maybe I just missed a date.

Second, I'm going to have to back date this post too.  Whatever.

In any case, this trip wasn't terrible, although I apparently booked this leg of the trip with a three and a half hour layover in Houston.  That wouldn't be that bad, but it was late in the evening, and IAH basically closed completely at 9pm.

What did make things a bit more unpleasant was the fact that the incoming plane had (I'm guessing) burst into flames at EWR, resulting in a new plane having to be found.  This made the flight from EWR many hours late, and so it got into MSY two hours late.  Similarly, the flight to IAH was two hours late, forcing my leg from IAH to AUS to be at least an hour late (since the plane had just taken off from MSY when we were supposed to be boarding).  Luckily, most of the people on that flight had been rebooked, so it arrived with the full passenger complement of two.  Two people.  This made the cleaning phase much quicker, so we ended up only be an hour behind schedule.

During that four and a half hour layover, this dumbass decided he needed all the attention, and began dancing like a fucking idiot in the middle of the terminal.
What made it worse is that no one else could here the music in his headphones, so he looked even crazier from a distance.

Finally, a new thing about this trip is that the new FAA rules on electronics are now in place.  This means you can effectively go from the security checkpoint through your entire trip back through security at your destination, and then home without ever having to take off your headphones and socialize with other people.  Thank you, new FAA rules on electronics.

Happy Sciuridaes!


Friday, December 27, 2013

Happy Sciuridaes!


Friday: clearing out more links



Thursday: I forgot to do a tree picture

It looks like there's a tiny cat at the top.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Happy Sciuridaes!


Wednesday: xmas links


Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Happy Sciuridaes!


Tuesday: xmas eve

I discovered that the "star" feature in the android ttrss app is wonderful. I can star things that I either want to read on my laptop, or things I want to link. Then, I can continue reading things without having to worry that I'll mark them as read and lose them.

That's probably what the point of the feature is, I just haven't bothered to learn it since I usually have wifi everywhere, making it not as much of an issue.

Usually.

Anyway, today I was able to semi-trick my parents into watching a half hour of robot chicken christmas specials. I was surprised by the number of laughs despite the gallons of stop motion clay blood in every scene.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Happy Sciuridaes!


Monday: Partially read linkstorm

Since the wifi isn't omnipresent, I'm going to put all the things I would have linked over the past few days here.


Sunday, December 22, 2013

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Happy Sciuridaes!


Saturday: wifi distance

The standard theme. So, just squirrels today.

Friday: timezones nearly let me make this one on time

But I guess it's only a five hour not six hour difference.

Anyway, travel details.

First, the plane from Honolulu was delayed an hour and a half, starting everything late. Then, I was sitting next to the chattiest, figetiest guy ever. He constantly tried to start up conversations with the flight attendants, and couldn't sit still for more than ten seconds. This basically meant that sleeping wasn't going to work.

Plus, the headphones I've been using for travel no longer put out the left channel, and I can't deal with that. New headphones are in order before the next flight.

The connection for the second flight wasn't that bad, and I had time to stand and wait before the flight opened. The b wing of iah isn't very well designed. It's where all the small jets are, but they keep everyone for like ten gates in the same seating area. There are not enough seats by about a factor of two.

The second flight was basically just me sleeping. Woo sleep.

Unfortunately, after landing, I discovered that although i'd made the flight, my bag hadn't. After listening to other people complain to the bag agent (including, "ok, I see your bag, it's going to louisville, what address can I have that delivered to?" "I don't know." [Blank stare]), I asked, and was told that my bag was 100% on the next plane, which was already taxiing to the runway. This meant a three hour wait at ind. There is not really three hours of things at ind.

The bag did arrive, everything worked out fine, and I did eventually catch up on sleep.

Except it's like 5am here.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Happy Sciuridaes!


Thursday: airport sushi

Unagi don was the correct answer. Thanks, sushi waitress.

Plus, nice view of venus over the airport.

Of course, now I'm sitting behind two douches talking about "ohs noes, obamacare." The old guy is on medicare, so he should shut the fuck up. The young guy is bitching that he was forced to buy insurance because he was in med school. "I'm paying thousands of dollars for something I never use!" You're an asshole, so you should shut the fuck up too.

There are also pre check lines all over hnl now. So there's a new class of asshole who ask if they can use that line four times, and is told four times that he can only use it if his boarding pass has the symbol. Only on the fourth time did he look at it and realize he had the mark. I was hoping that pre check would have the interview screen for people who may not be terrorists, but are just too dumb to be allowed in the system.

Because I'm unsure I'll be able to just blog this tomorrow

Earlier today, I had a quick conversation about how getting a different job would most likely require moving to a different state.  My reasoning was "Hawaii is better than pretty much any other state."

Then, the nytimes decided that they'd put out this map of insurance coverage.

Hawaii has a requirement that companies cover their employees.  This means that people get insurance, and so people generally get better, and then don't die and shit.

Also, we made same-sex marriage legal this month.  You know.  Like everyone fucking should.


It's difficult thinking about living someplace that isn't basically liberal paradise.


Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Wednesday: Happy Sciuridaes!

Because it's a great pun.  A pun so wonderful, I've decided to steal my idea of Bear Week from last year, and celebrate Happy Sciuridaes for the rest of the year.  I didn't do captions, partially because I'm putting this all together at the last minute, and I'm kind of pressed for time.  Maybe I'll add some after travelling.


I also spent way too much last-minute time coming up with the brilliant idea that I could use the youtube downloader thing to grab all the videos I've been sticking into playlists and stick them on my laptop.  This would allow me to watch them on vacation while the internet is less reliable.  Plus, I had the double-brilliant idea that I could convert them to be usable on my PSP, and then I could watch the videos on the plane.  Unfortunately, I can't get any of the videos I've converted to work on my PSP.  It looks like all the ffmpeg incantations I had saved (and could find online) no longer do the same thing they did in 2008.  I do have one playlist saved, and I have an 8GB memory stick, so I'm sure I can probably get this working at some point.  Just not now.

And, I don't have time to finish reading all my usual things tonight, as I have to get up early for a telecon tomorrow.  This means I only have the one link for today.  At least I'm like 95% packed, with the only major thing remaining to take the grocery bag full of "shit you need to pack" and stick it all into my backpack.





Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Tuesday: All the exciting stuff was yesterday.

Wait, I'm confused here.  Did the (let's say) cop kill the ghost's human, wait for it to be buried, then go out at night, dig up the corpse, and then release the ghost?  The ghost was trapped and had to be dug up to get out?  Just...just leave the damn ghost buried, dude.  That's it.  The alternative is that he got a call, "hey, somebody's digging up stuff in the graveyard," and when he got there, the ghost had dug up the coffin itself.  That's kind of overly dramatic for a ghost, isn't it?  Just go to his house.  "Boo.  You killed me.  You totally killed me.  Time to get to the haunting.  Why don't you just tell me the stuff you like best now, so I can break it first."

  • Boring grown up stuff.
    • Wages, and how none of the bad things people say about raising them has any empirical support.
    • Onions in India.
    • Inheritance.
    • China, their military, and a persistent public misunderstanding about the US and our relationships with other countries in the region.  
      • "This includes Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan, who are the three running dogs of the United States in Asia," added Dai, a researcher at Beijing University's China Centre for Strategic Studies. "We only need to kill one, and it will immediately bring the others to heel."
      • I mean, shit like that.  
        • Who even says "running dogs" anymore?
        • Didn't we totally blow up Vietnam for more than a decade?  They're our running dog?
      • In any case, this is like parts 1-3 of a big series, so I'll have to forget about this until after New Year's probably.
  • Not grown up stuff.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Monday: Everything you didn't know you didn't care about: Teen Titans

So there's this comic, which discusses the Teen Titans Go cartoon.

Here's the important things.  Teen Titans (the comic) started long ago to show off all the sidekicks that the big name heroes had, and what they would do if they had a Justice League of their own.  This was from way back before people realized that you don't take kids along to fight crime, aliens, and murder-bots.  The fact that this wasn't obvious in the 60's really says a lot.

Anyway, no one really cared until the 1980s when Marv Wolfman wrote actual storylines for the team, which was now comprised of Robin (still from the sidekick days), and a bunch of other teenage superheroes, although ones with actual powers (because, you know, murder-bots and all).  It was all very...

I guess Donna Troy is technically a sidekick, since she's Wonder Girl, but this is pre-Crisis, so really, WTF knows.
Anyway, COIE happened, things got updated to be 90s-y, and everyone stopped caring about the Titans.

Blah blah, then there was the original TT cartoon.  It retold all the good stories from the W&P comic run, but in an updated semi-humorous way.  This also brought the characters from that run back to the forefront, making Raven/Cyborg/Starfire/Beast Boy popular again.  It also introduced Silkie, who I don't believe has entered any other continuity, which is unfortunate.  Silkie was created by the Killer Moth, who I've talked about here.

TT got cancelled, uncancelled for another season, cancelled again, but got a movie out before finishing.  It was unfortunate, but that's how things work, and TV execs are stupid.

However, TT was soon replaced by Young Justice, which was the title of a 90s reboot/restyling of the Titans for the 90s, but it was again largely sidekicks (because we needed another Kid Flash, I guess).  The TV YJ wasn't really anything like the comic, or the previous TT cartoon.

But, it too got cancelled after two seasons (because TV execs are stupid), and due to my DVR losing a disk, I never got to see the final episodes.  This is largely due to the fact that I had like six months of episodes unwatched when the disk failed.  That says something about the quality of YJ, which I found to be overcomplicated with lots of storyline ties that didn't seem to work well.  Basically, they flooded the show with characters, and that diluted the amount that I cared about any one of them.
Although....

...it did provide this brilliant interaction.

With YJ cancelled, TV execs decided that they'd really like to un-re-un-cancel the original TT cartoon, but only kind-of-sort-of.  Here's another digression:  TT was a comic, that they turned into a cartoon.  However, DC still makes comics, so they put out a tie-in comic for TT named Teen Titans Go.  When the TV show was cancelled, the comic was killed off too, because you don't need a tie in comic that doesn't have anything to tie into.  However, this killed an "All Ages" comic, and there's effectively a conservation law on those.  This led to the creation of Art Balthazar's Tiny Titans, which took the DC characters (including the Teen Titans, but also branching out to most of the DC Universe if I remember correctly) and reimagined them as crayon drawings where everyone is basically just in elementary school.

Yes, that's Darkseid as the acting principal of the school, ex-lunch lady.
This semi influenced the return of the TT cartoon (probably), and so TT returned as a joke-ier version of the early 2000s Teen Titans, retitled as Teen Titans Go (yes, the same as the comic tie-in).

Oh, this is also around the time that DC comics decided that they'd take Starfire, who is pretty much only known from Teen Titans, and therefore became popular with the cartoon, and rework her character in what is basically the stupidest way possible (here's the associated David Willis comic).

So everything was wonderful, and we had TT back, but it was a bit different. What's the problem?

My problem is Robin.  Because this isn't a long enough post, we're now going to switch to youtube videos:

Which won't load in the compose screen, so I'm going to have to remember which ones I put where, and fix the commentary later.  Or not.  Watch the videos, read the text, collate.

First, TT.  This is Robin fighting Madame Rouge, who can shapechange and be stretchy and all that.  Not really a major issue for Robin, who ends the scene by basically blowing both of them up with the assumption that he'll just tuck and roll and be ok.  Robin is trained by Batman, and is basically unbeatable in combat.



Still on TT.  This one has Robin fighting the entire rest of the TT team.  I was looking for the Red X clip, but this one works as well (Red X was where Robin dressed up like a villain and fought the team to try and fool Slade, the main villain).  Robin's fighting the team because Slade (the main villain) has poisoned them and will insta-kill them if Robin doesn't work with him.  Again, Robin doesn't have much trouble fighting and defeating the rest of the team.  Oh fuck.  I just now clicked to play the video and discovered it also is a stupid fan music video.  Shit.  It's too late to find another one.  Basically, Robin is smarter than the rest of them, and knows how to defeat them despite not having powers.



Finally for TT, Robin's away adventuring, and the rest of the team dresses up like him because that's what they do.  Robin returns, is totally cool with everything, and you can tell that he's the leader because a) he's cool, b) the rest of the team understands that he's cool, c) he wears a mask.



Now on to YJ.  Robin here isn't the leader, and he isn't mysterious and brooding, as that position has been taken by Superboy.  Instead, he gets to keep being the smart one, even though he comes off more as a caricature of "the nerd."



And finally, TTG.  Robin's Day Off.  He can't stand being relaxed, and does a bunch of stupid "let's always be super prepared to go fight crime" shit.



Chores List.  Robin doesn't want to do the laundry, so he invents stupid challenge shit so he can shift the job off to someone else.



Robin doesn't have superpowers, so he feels out of place with the rest of the team, so he tries to get superpowers, and there's all this stupid shit in every episode where they really try to make you not like Robin.




And that's the issue.  Watch that last video/first 25 seconds for the Starfire bits.  She is exactly the same as in the wearing Robin's clothes from TT.  The other characters are as well.  They've not changed a bit, except they're now in a more jokey version of the world.  But Robin is now an insufferable jackass, who can't do anything in a simple way, and tends to cause all sorts of problems for everyone else.  Why?  Why make this one change that pushes the entire thing such that it feels weirdly similar but still off?

I'm betting that the problem is that somewhere, a TV exec is stupid.

Links.





Sunday, December 15, 2013

Sunday: That is not the way I wanted to wake up this morning

It rained this morning.  Like a lot of rain.  Since I live in a place where we get tsunami warnings every year or so, I have the phone weather alert things turned on.  Mostly so I know when I should turn on the TV to watch everyone watching the Waikiki beach cam.  It's fun.

Anyway, it rained a lot this morning.  So they issued a flash flood warning, because Hawaii is shaped like this: "^", and rain basically just runs down into the ocean.  This made my phone go into panic mode with all sorts of sirens and buzzers to ensure that I knew this fact.  Unfortunately, I was comfortably safe in my bed a hundred feet above the ground, and therefore wasn't too concerned about floods.

It was nice to hear thunder again, though.  Most rain here is boring rain.

Later, I went to get kleenex and dinner.
HBC.  I went with sweet potato fries as I can never finish the fancy flavored fries, and didn't feel like regular fries.  Pretty good, although I would have preferred a bit more salt.

Mushroom burger.  I don't think they usually put two slices of cheese on it.
I think I'm just perpetually disappointed in HBC.  Nothing's really bad, but there are a bunch of little nitpicks.  A) I ordered medium, and this was totally well done.  There was just no juice left in the meat.  Given that they start with really wonderful beef, this is just a shame. B) Toast the damn buns.  A cold bun turns into magic with a quick vacation to the grill.  C) Cut the lettuce to match the bun size.  I don't want to have to fight a floppy curtain of lettuce to get to my food.


  • This is just stupid.  And for the record, Paul, I intentionally didn't watch Tower Prep, and was happy when it was cancelled.  I'm sure it was a great show, but it was live action on Cartoon Network.  I refuse to support the decartoonification of a once-great channel.  But yeah, the rest of that is just absolute bullshit.
    • Also, if you're in marketing, and you have an audience, but you don't know how to sell them things, maybe just kill yourself.  First, you're in marketing, so you're already basically a leech on society.  Second, you're bad at it.  You suck at being a leech on society.
  • On the other hand, there's the person who was able to successfully market this abomination.  Wow.  WTF?
  • Actually, I do know that Apollo 11 went to the moon, because I'm not a fucking moron.  Also, the mistake at the bottom makes me think that this has to be a fake.
  • Yes, Boeing is basically everything wrong with corporate America.
  • Say what you will about the Soviets, that is still a kick-ass train station.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Saturday: Blah blah blah

Blah blah sushi.

Blah blah cookies.
Blah blah meager links.

Cooking with Dog

I knew yesterday that I was missing something in my "youtube cooking" links.

Cooking with Dog.

Francis the dog is the host of the show.  With the help of his assistant "Chef," they cook wonderful Japanese meals.  I implicitly ranked the channels yesterday, and this really should have been in second place.  There's only one video a week, and because of that, I forgot them (there weren't any in my watch later list).


Friday, December 13, 2013

Friday: I probably should have spaced yesterday's stuff out a bit

"Fuck you, bird, this is my tree."
I did get to do this today:

df -h . 
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on 
PROTO://HOST_IP_A/    741T  525T  216T  71% /REMOVED/DIR

df -h /REMOVED/USERNAME
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on 
PROTO://HOST_IP_B/    1.1P  809T  308T  73% /REMOVED/DIR2

Yes, that's a single virtual disk that's 1.1 petabytes.  It's kind of full, but there's still three hundred terabytes to play with.  It was kind of amazing.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Thursday: A bunch of things, apparently.

Part 1: Import/Export.

Yes, this is one of those "drugs/money/guns" shots.  Except this is coffee/salt/nuts.
I think I have everything I need for this.  I'm mailing out packages tomorrow since I think my options are either 1) Mail a bunch of this ahead of time; 2) Not bring clothes in my suitcase.  So, easy decision.

Part 2: Music in Movies.

I guess there are a bunch of shitty action-y movies coming out?  Or on DVD?  Whatever.  The point is, that when I watch actual TV instead of DVR TV, they're advertising all the time.  However, all of these movies use the same kind of loud stinger soundtracks, kind of like Inception and Star Trek 2(a) did.  This is dumb.

This link goes to Bach's Air.  There's a bunch of dead time at the beginning for some reason.  Now, here's a bit from End of Evangelion.  I don't think that's the actual movie sound, as I thought there were words.  Still, it shows the Asuka vs the production evas fight, which I know was set to the Air.  You don't need a constant pounding soundtrack shouting at you "THIS IS ACTION!  THERE IS A FIGHT GOING ON NOW, AND THINGS ARE HAPPENING!  BOOM BOOM BOOM!"  You can see the action, you can see the rage in Asuka's face, you can see the destruction and gore of the battle.  This isn't some stupid shooty-shooty-bang-bang fight.  She slices off that's one's arm, and when it doesn't stop, she twists its fucking head to kill it.  The music complements the video.  It doesn't just tell you the exact same thing.

If you can tell the story in pictures, you don't need to shout at people to get your point across.

Part 3: Goats.

This commercial plays a lot too.


So:
Totes my goats.

Part 4: Another Let's Make Up Stories.

I did this before.  Here's the original picture.

 Then I make up stories.
Even in the 60s, liberals were fighting their unholy war on Christmas.

"Oh yes, this child you picked up will work perfectly.  Great Cthulhu will be pleased."

"Wait, why the fuck did I just buy a christmas tree at a grocery store?  I'm going to have to take this on the bus to get home.  I'm going to be that guy. On the bus.  With a fucking tree."

"I SAID, THE COMMUNISTS ARE STEALING OUR FREEDOM!  I'LL STAND OUT HERE WHILE YOU SHOP TO PROTECT YOU!"  Also, look at the right side of the image.  You could get grocery concierges in the 1960s.  They'd advise you as to which canned processed food product was the best.

"What the fuck did I buy that would fit in this box?"

"Freedom!"

Part 5: Links.


  • Source for that image.
  • I'm increasingly happy that I no longer live in Michigan.
  • I saw this in the RSS today, and it made me realize that I don't think I've watched food network in a very long time.  Maybe like a year or so?  Now, if I want to watch cooking shows, the internet gives me far better options.
    • Food wishes.  Yes, he puts cayenne in everything.  Almost everything he makes looks good, and almost nothing he makes seems like you have to have years of cooking experience to do it.
    • Sorted food.  Not quite as consistently good recipes, but they cover the humor/social interaction side of a cooking show better than anyone on food tv.
    • The handle it part of epic meal time.  Obviously over the top, but their once weekly handle it thing presents an actual recipe that could reasonably be made.
    • Nicko's kitchen.  Not something I always watch, but that's partially because he's themed by day, and not every theme works all the time.