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.

Friday: Because of course

I finally get my side of the supercomputer stuff working, and now their stuff seems to be broken.  Fuck.

This is how I feel about it.

• Squirrel.
• Possum.
• I wonder if this is why my grandmother's meatloaf was always different than anything I've been able to make.

Thursday: six minutes

That's how long was left when the supercomputer cut me off yesterday.  Jerk.

It's fake, I didn't make it, the news story it's mocking is ancient at this point, but it's still hilarious.

• Elephants.  These are sad elephants, though.
• Pizza.
• "Dreamworks' in-development live-action remake."  For Ghost in the Shell.  Why?  I love GitS, but I'm reasonably sure this is going to suck.
• Captain Europe.

Wednesday: Fucking supercomputer

I finally figure out the bug that was preventing something from working, and it terminates the job because my time request had run out.

And I bet you didn't even bring your damn wallet, did you?

• The implementation is probably not that great, but the concept of a brisket sandwich on cornbread bun is great.
• This was great: you visit to read a pleasant article about wolves, and then you stay for the comment section where everyone rips Animal Planet to shreds for making up shit for ratings.
• Squirrel Food Products.
• Cat nemesis.

Tuesday: I went to the store, and completely forgot that "Kleenex" was the main reason I was going to the store.

Plus I discovered yesterday that the box that I'd opened is filled with blue kleenex.  I thought they stopped making colors years ago.

I drew a kitty.

• Julie sent the original post on Sunday, and this was my response as well.
• Catbug faces.

Monday: Fuck it, I'm doing nothing today

Zero things.

Except fix the dishwasher.  I saw a screw on the floor while getting ready to make dinner, and picked it up, without actually knowing where it came from.  Then I opened the dishwasher, and pulled out one of the racks, and the whole thing tipped forward.  Turns out that the screw is supposed to be holding a metal strip to the underside of the counter.  You know, to keep it from tipping out when you open it up.  I don't know where the second screw went (for the other strip), but I just grabbed one I had around and secured that one too.

• Squirrel.
• I like the red panda one.
• This was a good story, and I would like to see more.
• 80s style Bee and Puppycat.

Sunday: Fuck fuckery

Somehow last night, the master boot record for the hard drive that controlled The One Ring Computer that runs my life became corrupted.  And the system crashed.  Casting me into the outer darkness.

Upon discovering this fact, I sojourned to that black rotten tower that exists there, to obtain the supplies necessary to rebuild my kingdom of automated perfection.

Yes.  I went to Best Buy, and actually bought something there.

Specifically, a 500GB hard disk, the SATA cable that should be in the fucking box, but isn't in the fucking box so they can sell you a motherfucking $11 SATA cable, because you're buying it at Best Buy, so clearly you have no other options.  And a USB stick.

Reinstalled the system, and almost everything that runs on it is now back up.  I was able to get the bad disk to mount and read, so I was able to salvage almost everything.  The status report:

• Wifi.  Since this serves as the wifi router for my apartment (using hostapd), this was the most essential service to turn back on.  Sitting on the floor with the keyboard and mouse that came with my PS2 Linux Kit reading the TV isn't the best way to configure things.
• CVS.  All of my papers, configuration, code, random bits of things I need to keep "safe" are all kept in CVS.  This was probably the next most important thing, but with the disk readable, it's basically just an rsync to fix.
• Email.  I concentrate my email here, because logging into to a computer you don't own is a bad way to read email.
• RSS.  This was a challenge.  The old database files are incompatible with the new version of tt-rss.  The solution here was to shutdown the database server, repoint it to look at the old files, mysqldump the database to text, shutdown again, point back at the compatible files, and then manually re-enter all my feeds by perl scraping them out of the dump file.  Clunky, and now I have to mark as read something like 20k RSS entries, only ~500ish maybe are new things.
• Network storage.  Since giant desktop disks are easier to work with, this is where all my storage lives.  NFS farms it out to the wifi cluster, and using the magic app on my phone, it syncs its data back there too.  This was easy, as it's just writing /etc/export and symlinking things into the correct locations.
• Home directory.  Just another rsync.
• DVR.  I'm not even going to bother trying to get this running tonight.  I think it will be as easy as ingesting the database dump, and then installing mythtv.  I have the /etc configuration stuff too, so it's just a matter of getting it set up the same way.
• DVR part 2.  This is technically an X11/gdm issue, as I need to have the display server know that when it starts up, if no one logs on within fifteen seconds, that it should launch a session for the mythtv user, and autostart the front end.
• Consistent, indestructible backup system.  Based on this collapse, it's clear I need to automate backups.  The list being:
• rsync /etc to storage disk.
• rsync /home dir to storage disk
• rsync /home/cvs to storage disk
• mysqldump ttrss to storage
• mysqldump mythconverg to storage
• rsync storage disk to backup storage disk
• rsync backup directory to USB attached storage.
• This is where an rsync to a remote drive would live, but as raspberry pis have issues with USB, I'm a bit hesitant to use that to run the remote system.  I should think about this more.

Saturday: Boring day

You are doing pizza wrong, Horse.

• Tea Fox has a tumblr.
• No, dog.  The boat is your friend.
• I'm guessing vampires.
• This shouldn't be legal.

Friday: Murder Team Five!

Links first, so I can put the 116 screen shots from that Japanese Drama below a cut.

• Harley and Ivy is one of the best episodes.  Interesting fact: the car that gets blown up has, from left to right, Ted Blackman, Eric Radomski, and Bruce Timm in it.
• A triple burger is a bit excessive.
• It's a good idea for them to use this new X-men movie to rewrite the movie continuity.
• Charlotte Grote is brilliant.

Now, MURDER TEAM FIVE!

Thursday: Nearly the weekend

• Bunny walking weird.
• Squirrels.
• Stan Lee knows stuff about She-Hulk.  For the obvious reason that she's one of the nine kajillion characters he had some part in creating.
• Did you know Richard Nixon once took a late night trip to the Lincoln Memorial and chatted with college kids?  I did not until today.

Wednesday: Let's talk about comics

So when I got to work today, I saw that Julie had sent me this tweet over IM.  My first thought was "what has DC fucked up this time?"  A quick search pointed me to this, and this (links from the same place because point two is more important, and they linked to their story on the first one).

First point: "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"?  Ok, that's a shitty title.  A large fraction of the internet pointed out that a team up of B&S already has a title: "World's Finest."  You already have a title for this, DC.  Why phrase it like that?  Oh, because you're going to have them fight, obviously.  And out of that fight, magically Justice will rise from the eastern sky, and everyone will go get some doughnuts?  I'm also pretty sure that you're going to fuck up including Wonder Woman in that movie too.  Do you know why?

Second point: it's being written by that asshole.  Or co-written, or whatever.  Let's start with the "maybe don't shit on your own companies products," aspect.  "Goyer asked, “How many people in the audience have heard of Martian Manhunter?” After hearing some light applause and cheers, he added, “How many people that raised their hands have ever been laid?”"  Dude, did you completely miss the Justice League cartoon that was on TV for five years?  MM was one of the main characters, so a pretty big chunk of the people who would be interested probably know who he is.

Next part: "So it’s like if I’m going to be this geek who becomes the Hulk then let’s create a giant green porn star that only the Hulk could fuck."  Skipping the "they're cousins, you dickbag" point that everyone else mentioned, it's clear that he hasn't read a She-Hulk comic.  Probably ever.  I linked to this sample before, and I'm doing it again.  The point of this volume of SH and what I remember of the previous one is that SH is perpetually trying her best to be a normal person and do normal-ish lawyer things, and that often requires smashing something the way only she can.  Plus, in this series, she's hanging out with Patsy Walker, Hellcat, and I simply can't go into how wonderfully insane that is.  Here's the important point if you skip that link, "She premiered as the star of a teen romantic-comedy series and was later integrated into Marvel superhero franchises such as the Avengers and the Defenders."

Here's the conclusion to this whole thing.  When I was a kid, I read Marvel comics pretty much exclusively.  No big clue why, but that's what I always got.  Then, once the Batman: TAS cartoon and the rest of the Bruce Timm led cartoons came on (and admittedly, like a decade or so of not buying comics passed), I started buying DC comics, because of those shows.  I even stuck with them through Infinite Crisis, Superboy reality changing punches and all.  However, they let shit writers like Grant Morrison take over things, and that was it.  They've squandered their best chances, and they seem determined to constantly do the wrong thing.

And because of that, I really hope this new movie fails.

• Cat.
• Andy Serkis is a jerk, and I hope his new movie fails too.
• I really hope this gets collected when it's done.  Pen Ward is not a jerk.

Tuesday: Sick day

In which I still did some work, because as long as I didn't move around much, I didn't cough all over.  I'm not sure if things worked correctly (I suspect not because I had the final step failed), but at least I can count part of today as "work."

• Hogwarts.
• Canoe.

Monday: Because it's always fun to get sick.

Especially when it manifests as lungs that feel like they're full of pudding.  Double fun when you cough so much you think you might puke.  So, we'll see how tomorrow goes.  I suspect if I feel like this, it'll be work from home day.

According to google, chocolate cake is the correct answer.  And yes, I had a need to look at cake, so I image searched "pictures of cake."

• Squirrel.
• I skipped 3.5th and 4th edition, and I'm going to skip 5th.  Besides, $50 for a main book is kind of steep.
• I just learned about this.
• It's all worth it for the final panel.

Sunday: I am saddened that I have to go back to work tomorrow

Plus it's a telecon day.  That makes it even worse. :(

Dear pancake place, when did blueberry pancakes become one of the flavors you dump a pile of whipped cream on?  I just want butter and syrup.  I guess I did get a pile of berries, but still.

• Yeah.  I'm sure this is going to end well.
• "Dr. Seuss was not even in the general area of fucking around."
• I should remember that this will happen for Hawaii in September.
• I liked this comic.
• My part of this conspiracy was to hope the film failed just because the commercials for it were so offensively stupid.

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.

Friday: At least I have two days before I have to fight that stupid supercomputer again.

This is the key that flew off my keyboard when I hit it.  Multi-million dollar fucking supercomputer, and I have to be the one to point out that one of the four randomly selected connection hosts is down?  I spend an hour trying to figure out what I changed and the answer is "no one noticed that we sometimes send your requests to the trash"?  Fuck you.

And then I came home and watched this TV show: Mission to Kill.  I've seen three episodes or so, and they all follow the same track.

1. Someone is clearly an Asshole, and does obvious asshole things.  One of the Women in the background seems to be listening way too closely to the asshole scheming.
2. Someone else (we're going to call them "the Victim" for soon to be obvious reasons) needs money/assistance/help finding their puppy/something.
3. The Victim befriends the Hero dude.  This usually happens at the same time the asshole does something so mean, the townspeople get angry.  The Cops show up, and settle the situation.
4. The Victim decides to ask the Asshole for help.  This is often the only bad thing the Victim does.
5. The Asshole betrays the Victim, who objects, and gets stabbified until dead.
6. Oh yeah, there's an Old Dude and a Young Dude.
1. That's Old Dude in the picture at the link.
7. The Woman, the Hero, the Top Cop, Old Dude, and Young Dude gather in their secret hideout.  The Victim conveniently left some money sitting somewhere, as a way to thank his friend the Hero.  The team divides the cash and leave.
8. The Asshole is partying about how wonderfully he's assholed it up this time.  The Woman is there, and signals when to start the plan. Old Dude and Young Dude murder up any goons that could screw things up.  Hero sneaks up to the Asshole, and uses a giant needle to stab into the Asshole and puncture his heart.  I'm not kidding.  They go x-ray vision so you can the needle stab the heart and let out a little poof of blood.
1. X-ray vision.  So you know exactly how the Asshole died.
9. The Top Cop shows up, and picks off the Toady.  Yep.  Top Cop is also clean-up assassin. WTF?
10. The Victim's family gets a letter so they know he's dead, and the Murder Squad go about their daily business with kind of knowing "Man, I love murdering assholes" looks to each other.
11. There's this weird side story endcap thing, that I think is the Cop's family?  He tells jokes and things, letting you know that after straight up murdering an asshole, while pretty much having the opposite of that as his job description, he's still just your normal everyday psychopath.

I should DVR it next week, and point out how that episode fits to this format.  Plus: then I can screenshot the X-ray murder.

Today's links are a bunny, and then a bunch of "no."

• The bunny.
• First no: this is not how shows should be run, but is totally how they are.  "Missed Target Demo" has to be the dumbest part.  People are watching the show, but they're not who you wanted, so you cancel it?  Just sell the stupid ads to someone else, dumbass.
• Second: Koffing.  Koffing doesn't care, he's happy all the time.  Putting him at #137 is just wrong.  I'm guessing they used the "look cool/powerful attacks" strategy to rank things, thereby missing out on the most important part of the Pokemon world.  I'll sort together my own list tomorrow.  I have all the data, I just need to put the Pokemon into categories, and then sort them in those categories.
• Third: Godzilla for the NES is one of the very few NES games I actually still have (somewhere in my apartment).  That's because it's wonderfully done.  If this dummy can't get through the first level, he doesn't know how to play video games.  Godzilla is built like a tank, and you have four different attacks with him.  Some of the boss monsters are cheap (I never found a way to defeat Gigan with Godzilla.  You have to use Mothra, because you can avoid Gigan's chest sawblade), but there shouldn't be much of a problem to play.  Yes, it's not super colorful, or advanced, but compared with other games at the time, it's not bad.

Thursday: Oh were you using that data? Yeah, I deleted it anyway.

Fucking supercomputers.

• We should seriously just burn Oklahoma down.
• Billy is Captain Marvel.  It's this whole big crazy situation.
• Bunnies.

Wednesday: designated system time

That means "you can't use the computer today, so go away."  Fuck.

I guess it's graduation season.

For fuck's sake, probably-real-estate-agent visiting, can you attempt to suck less at parking?

Ok, here's the correct way to do this, I screwed up yesterday and was disappointed.  Cheese, bacon, avocado, lettuce, salt + paper towel dehydrated tomatoes.  This is the correct BALT ordering, even though the avocado makes it a bit slippery, so you have to squeeze hard to squish it down into the bacon.

• Squirrel and bird are friends.
• Grumpy squirrel.
• Plausible theory.
• It's a bit sad to see this blog ending.  I like random things like this.
• I seemed to have missed the fact that Switzerland is going to vote on instituting a basic income system.
• Nice to see idiots working hard at destroying their own idiot team.

Tuesday: Fuck today.

Pretty much everything that could break at work did today.

So, you know.

But then I came home and watched the most recent episode of Clarence, which had the best thing ever:

Wrath Hover Ginsbot.

• I'm also kind of surprised they didn't fuck up.
• Pie.
• I also want a new Pokemon Snap.  The original one didn't even have all 151.
• Why the economy still sucks.

Monday: adghsdagiaurhgakdhg

Bunny.

• Squirrel.
• Duck.
• Pets.
• Frankly, that's kind of a shitty alligator.
• That looks delicious.

Sunday: Well, now I'm too cold.

Returning that fan to Target went much easier than I expected.  "What's wrong with it?"  "Well, it's kind of noisy, and when you turn it on, it scoots across the floor." "Hahahahaha!  I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but that's kind of funny."  "Yeah, but it's kind of annoying to deal with."

The replacement fan is a oscillating fan on a big stand.  I didn't go with the remote control version, because really, not even I'm so lazy that I can't get up and change the fan setting.  This fan isn't perfect, as I was hoping that I could simply park it in the middle of my apartment, and point it at the living room or bedroom depending on where I was.  The breeze is a bit too unfocused at a distance for that to work, but it's pretty close.  Of course, just after I finished setting it up, the trade winds started blowing nicely through my window, making this whole operation a bit less pressing than it was last week.

You can't read it because I was wobbly, but the bottom left star is signed "I am Catbug!"

• Comics and things.
• I know I have this story in some collection.  Definitely one of the best Joker stories ever.
• Oglaf is generally NSFW, but this comic isn't really.  It's also hilarious.
• As was today's Wonderella.
• I'm a little surprised that Constantine is getting a TV show.  Sure, it's probably one of the easier DC properties to convert, but still.  Constantine.  Huh.
• Other things.
• I'm thinking I should go to the zoo.  It's been a long time since I last went to one.
• The president got a waffle.  Now I want waffles.  Thanks, Obama.
• Zubat.
• I found "cool," "spem," and "killful."  Then I realized that was probably supposed to be "skillful," and also probably not supposed to be in Latin.

Saturday: I guess I have to go back to Target tomorrow

Because this fan sucks.  Well, not literally.  It's simply a poorly designed and implemented fan.  I turned it on, and it immediately started making rattly sounds.  Then, I let go of the dial, and it started pushing itself backwards across the floor.  If I was making an airboat, this would be a good thing.  The only way to keep it from rattling and sailing away is to put a heavy weight on the top of it.

This is unsatisfactory, so it's going back tomorrow.

I just today noticed that there is no thirteenth floor in my building.  I've lived here for five years.

• Monopsony.
• Monopoly.
• Bears.
• Llama.
• Something fishy.

Friday: I can bring snacks to work

Blueberries!

Blueberry juice is not very good ink!

• This isn't really a pun, but it does have Pikachu in it.  Kind of.
• Drug companies.
• I'm guessing the answers are going to be "No, not applicable, none, no."
• The Left/Right/Center right guy this evening was crazy about this too.  One of his arguments was "why wasn't Obama in the situation room like he was during the bin Laden raid?"  Dude, one of those was our plan.

Thursday: I know I had a good title, but I forgot it.

I've come to the conclusion that I don't like almonds that much.  Cashews are far tastier.  Unfortunately, I just bought a new thing of almonds for next week's lunch salads.

My fan has developed the ability to move itself.  It now spins counterclockwise.  I guess this means I'm buying a new one this weekend (this will be fan number 4).

• Animals.
• Bunny.
• Puppies.
• Squirrel.
• "Get the fuck out of my face, I'm eating!"
• Not animals.
• I should get a 3ds.
• That is a tasty looking sandwich.
• Seriously, it's like Republicans just want to set everyone on fire, and then blame them for not being made out of asbestos.

Wednesday: It's clearly an off by one/histogram center edge problem, I just can't find it.

Danny's a Republican.

• I want one of those magic Coke machines at my work.
• Squirrels.
• Why?
• I hate brutalism, but this is just too wonderful of a joke.
• This worked for me earlier, but now it's broken.  It's a neat "poverty level by geography" thingy, but again, broken for me now.
• Really, I only watch like five channels.  CN, PBS, KIKU, some Comedy, some MSNBC.  If one of the ex-learning/educational channels would switch to "here are random hour long documentaries," I'd watch that too.  Some days, I just want to passively kind of learn something while doing other stuff.  The main problem isn't not having enough channels, it's that so many of the channels I get are filled with absolute shit.

Tuesday: A picture, some car stuff, then some links

Someone left their grocery list behind.  And in Japanese.

Car Thing 1:

Dear trunk in front of me, I'm pretty sure that you're not allowed to have open beers in your car, even if it is just your passenger dumping it out the window.  You didn't seem to be driving drunk, but you were a jerk who didn't use a turn signal, and didn't even wave after I let you not crash into my car.  But, I guess you do have 811 Perfectly Zeroed Valves, so you have that going for you.

Car Thing 2:

People who back into parking spaces.  Here's mathematical reasons why you're stupid:  Assume you need to put the car into a space of width W.  This is easy if you're driving forward, as you have more control due to the way the front wheels turn and the back doesn't.  Therefore, there's a difficulty factor d depending on which direction you're going.  Finally, the time to position the car is going to be something like t = d / W.  It takes longer to do something hard, and as the space narrows, you have to spend more time doing it (conversely, parking a car in a stadium takes zero effort, because you can just stick it anywhere).  So why insist on taking way longer to do something that doesn't really have any benefit?

Links

• Animation.
• The internet.
• Cool, a new WF.  That's closer, but only marginally faster to get to than the one I usually go to.  It kind of sucks that it won't be open for another three years, though.
• I saw this a few days ago, and took it as another "Game of Thrones is best, because..." with this time the reason being "dragons."  I was pleasantly surprised to see someone else had made this.  Ancalagon the Black.  Yes.  The Silmarilion is really tricky to get through, but if you do, you get to read wonderful stories.

Monday: Mondays suck.

They do suck less on days where the wind is from the direction it's supposed to be from.  Today is not one of those days.

"Wait, did we accidentally dress in inverted colors?"

• This just isn't even hard to figure out.
• Red panda.
• This is a brilliant pun.

Sunday: Basically, if you drive a Mercedes, and it's an SUV, you're most likely a fucking moron.

Admittedly this is an empirical study, but of the 8 I saw today, all of them were fucking morons.  Stopping randomly, merging nearly into the side of a car you should have seen, ignoring green lights until you get honked at, etc.

Surprisingly though, the dumbest person was the one standing behind the truck half in the lane of the parking lot, gesturing that I should go around.  Dear fuckhead, you're standing in the exact place I have to drive.  I can either run you over, or you can get out of the fucking way.

And then I got a burger for lunch, because you can't fucking get pancakes on Sunday, because everybody is out getting pancakes on Sunday, so you have to accept that sweet potato fries are similar enough so you can get on with the rest of your day.

In good news, I did figure out how to encode videos for the psp:

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -vprofile baseline -acodec aac -strict experimental -r 24 -b 255k -ar 44100 -ab 59k -s 320x240 test.psp

This squishes the widescreen movie, but the psp has a "stretch to fit mode."  I probably should put in an aspect ratio detection thing on the script that will do this for me automatically.

• Jack Kirby.
• Movie theaters.
• That's not how that works, bear.
• Minimum wage.
• Jake suit. 

Saturday: Waking up early on the weekend is weird.

Why did I wake up early?  Mostly because some jackass in my neighborhood decided to power saw things at 9am.  Jackass.  However, I had errands to run today, so that did kind of work out.

First up: dropping off that shitty cable modem at the cable store.  TWC has their office in Ward Centers, which is actually close enough that I can see part of it from my lanai.  Next, since I was there, and today is today, I went over to the comic book store.  Why?

Because this was today.

 They had people doing cosplay at the store, but I got there just late enough to see them in the hallway.  I thought about trying to get a picture, but it felt like trying to make people work when their shift is over.  Even though they're volunteers.  Regardless, it didn't feel right.

So, what did I get?

Only one of these was free.

I looked it up ahead of time, and the kaboom anthology seemed like the best way to go, since the big two seem to perpetually fuck shit up.  My usual strategy is to get a trade or something, because you can't just go in, get a free comic, and walk out.  Well, you can, but it kind of makes you a jerk.  I grabbed one of the Adventure Time ones, number 4 because I couldn't remember which ones I already have, but I'm pretty sure I don't have 4.

Then I saw that someone at DC had decided to reissue/recollect the Harley Quinn (v1) series in trades.  I have the first volume from years ago, so it was nice to pick up the other two.

Lunch was next:

This is why I don't go to Nico's at regular lunch time.

It was super busy, but I was able to grab a table immediately.

Same as always.

 Boat time!

Wait a minute, I recognize you!

Final errand of the day: go to Amazon's local showroom, and play with tablets and see if I like them.  My comparison was between the kindle and the nexus 7.  I want something pocket-y sized, in the less than $200 range.  The kindle is too not-androidy.  It puts everything into categories, but that's dumb.

My phone is organized based on how often I use the app.  Top row of home screen is all my most popular things: email/twitter/etc.  The sides have less popular things: alarm/calendar/music identify stuff/etc.  The bottom row is things I look at when I'm sitting down to look at stuff: browser/rss reader/wifi manager/etc.  The center holds things I'll use, but not super often: calculator/google goggles/phone <-> computer sync.  The logic here is that I'm usually controlling the phone with my thumb, so things on the edges are easier to tap than things in the middle.

The kindle blocks everything into categories, and pretty much screams "you can buy stuff to put here from us!"  I get that that's what they're going for, but that's not really a big selling point for me.  So, nexus 7 then.  It's just a big flat version of my phone that claims 9-hours of viewing time.  I didn't buy it, partially because I was angry at BB for putting out like three "simulated screen image" versions, and hiding the usable one on the far endcap.  In any case, I still have lots of time to decide if I really want to get one.

I'm putting how I spent the rest of my afternoon after a break, so links go next.  Then dinner.  One problem about getting up early is that you can't use lunch as both lunch and dinner, so I need to figure out what I want to eat.

• Team Twerp.
• Today I learned about Nemrut Dağ.  You should too.
• Bunny.
• Bears.
• Do famous people not have handlers that point out how stupid things like this are?  In what way does this help build your fanbase?

How I Spent the Rest of My Afternoon.

Frankly, I'm kind of surprised.

I've talked about the strategy for this, and then posted my doge-2048 win.

I would have thought these math/science guys would be curious about what the winning strategy was.  I guess not.

Friday: I hate ParcelPool

It's this really stupid thing Amazon uses to mail things, which as far as I understand it, takes the packages from Amazon, drives them most of the way to the destination, and then dumps them for the USPS to deliver.  This generally means that a package from Amazon shipped from me to the mainland arrives there in two days, using regular USPS.  A package from Amazon shipped from me to me in Hawaii goes into a magical box for three days, at which point it gets a delivery date of a week from when it shipped, and is then delivered a day late.

This is pretty much how all of my Amazon packages seem to work now, and it's stupid.

Also stupid?  My internet service.  Previously I'd found a link that suggested that the shitty speed is due to an upgrade to the network that seriously degrades service on docsis 2.0 modems.  So I've been waiting for Amazon to get my fancy new cable modem to me.

Can you guess which tests were done after I installed the new modem?

So yeah.  Oceanic/TWC has broken their own service for people using the modems that they've provided.  They don't suggest that this may happen, and they don't preemptively send out notices that people should come and replace their cable modems with new ones.  I wonder what a report to the PUC would get me.

Anyway, at least now I'll be able to not wait for shit to load all the damn time.

• Corgis.  Our last line of defense against stupid gross cabbage.
• It would be nice.  He was an asshole, and people shouldn't try to gloss over that fact.
• This is a bit sad.  Clearly disagree with his politics, but Ephram Zimbalist Jr. is still the absolute best Alfred voice ever.

Thursday: Solved some problems

And nothing ker-sploded.

How is it May already?

I came up with a great idea today: combine my tikka masala and rice together and stick it in a tortilla.  Boom.  Chicken tikka masala burrito.  Turns out these jerks already had this idea, so I can't claim to have invented it.  It was tasty, but I am generally terrible at making burritos.  I did get one end to seal correctly, but the other end popped open.

• Squirrel.
• Colecovision.  That "Super Action" controller was shitty.
• Sir Bearington.  Best. Bear. Ever.
• Baman Piderman is now completely funded.  Excellent.
• Vox covers this thing that I did a month ago.