Monday: Work work work.

I don't have any pictures for today.

• This is good.  I've been enjoying the show.  It's generally avoided the DC "everything has to be super dark and grim" style.
• Red panda.
• Hopefully if they open this, they'll keep it closed to people to avoid the damage that happened to the rest of the tomb.
• Good news: this seems to be a recipe to make the delicious ramen I had yesterday.  Bad news: it apparently takes multiple days and seems super complicated.  I guess it's good that I can just go get it whenever I want.

Sunday: Damn, I left my candy and my macarons.

Not forgetting those was a big thing that I thought about last night.  Oh well.  No candy or macarons for me.

I did get a pastrami sandwich at the airport.  They didn't heat it up, though, so it wasn't that great.

Also, this seems like a bad idea.

My flight was ok.  On the good side, I had been scheduled to sit in seat B, which is a middle.  It turns out that A and C were a couple, and had planned on having three seats to themselves.  This meant that C moved to B, so I had the aisle seat.  It didn't reduce the amount of annoying tourist that they were, however.

And when I got home, I had ramen.  They didn't have any chicken, but everything else was good.

I also spent thirty minutes backing up and repartitioning my laptop.  I have a suspicion that my hibernate issues may be related to the swap partition not being as large as the memory.  I've fixed that, although it required reformatting the home partition (hence the backups).  I haven't tried to test it yet, mostly because I don't want to have to deal with it if it doesn't work.

• Yeah, United is pretty much crap now.
• Princess Kaguya.
• I didn't have a third link, so here's this old computer ad.

Saturday: last day

I am generally bad about taking pictures.  Especially on lazy days where we don't do much.  That part's kind of my fault.  I'm lazy, and having days of not doing things with other people is really relaxing.

Smashburger is also pretty good.  I think I like 5-Guys better, but this was also a very well made burger.  I'm kind of jealous, since my burger places don't do these kind of burgers.

This shirt probably wouldn't fit me, but it has a squirrel on it.

And I forgot to take a picture of the pizza from dinner.  We were all kind of tired of leftovers at this point.  Although, did I have a turkey plate today?  Maybe not?  Late last night?  Maybe?

Here are the links from Thanksgiving day.  Which now seems long ago, since I'm going to be leaving tomorrow.

Also, note for future me:  don't fly out early on Sundays, as the BART doesn't run early on Sundays, so it's kind of a hassle.  Just checked, and my next visit I am not leaving super early (but I am leaving on a Sunday), so that one should be fine.

• Cat news.
• Part one of this speech.
• Part two.
• I will never understand why people would ever want to smoke while eating.
• She-Hulk.
• Pikachu.  I have the parade DVRed, but I'm not sure if I'm going to bother watching it (I deleted last year's unwatched sometime in July).
• FDR.

Friday: mostly not doing things today

Kristof tsum tsum.

Disco Christmas tree star.

Foot face.

The moon.

Thursday: Thanksgiving

Grover and some sesame street.

 And then food.

A lot of food. Sweet potato soup, mashed potatoes, brown butter squash, stuffing, green bean casserole, rolls with cranberry sauce, turkey and gravy. Delicious, delicious gravy.

Apple crisp.

The pie was the first dessert.

Wednesday: We're probably going to cook a lot later, but that hasn't started yet, so I'm going to do some links.

• Art.
• Silhouette dogs.
• Hood ornaments.
• Point spread function art.  
• Animals.
• Turtle.
• Squirrel.
• Not a real animal, but a pair of giant teddy bears.
• Cartoons and stuff.
• This seems like a dumb move.
• Animation and being off model in distinctive ways.
• Superman knows how not to be a jerk.
• Other stuff.
• I'm annoyed by this too.  Still.  From like last year or whenever I first saw it.
• Bob Ross.
• Antikythera mechanism.

Tuesday: de Young museum

Today's plan was to do one of the museums that I looked at last time, but didn't go to due to difficulty getting to it.  I've gotten a clipper card since then, so all the transit options are now equally easy to use. I'm not sure why everyplace doesn't do single pass transit.

Anyway, this meant getting to golden gate park is easy. 

The music... Center? Hall? Shell? It's across the street, whatever it's called.

The Japanese tea garden is next door as well.

Bamboo and water.

Pagoda.

Buddha.

Zen garden.

It rained this morning, so there were little maple leaves everywhere.

Pagoda and waterfall.

Bridge.

Artificial rock. This is a take on the Chinese "interesting rock."

The big exhibit was about the 1915 exhibition. Photos weren't allowed.

Then lunch.

Flatbread pizza with blue cheese, fried thyme, grapes, and arugula.

Cast glass.

Disappointment.

Teotihuacan.

I really like ancient depictions of animals.

All the spoons.

Mr. de Young.

So, they imported cheetahs to Pennsylvania for harmony?

i know that place.

I know that Hawaiian royal cape.

I know them.

From the ferry home.

Some twitter links I saved while writing, since I'm likely going to have to stop writing in the next 10-15 minutes.

• "Heap all the meat on the grill and slowly spread it out as dinner progresses."  That's actually kind of a really good idea.  Then some of the fast cooking meat can stay in the heap while other stuff absorbs the direct flame, and then can be finished quickly before eating.
• Ralph Nader fucked everyone in 2000.  He's basically just gotten more out of touch and awful since then.
• Three northern white rhinos left.

Sunday: Korean BBQ and burgers

The regular Oakland Korean BBQ place is closed for renovations until December.  This is unfortunate, as not all K-BBQ places do the "all you can eat" thing.  Probably because AYCE isn't a great idea most of the time.

Luckily, though, there is another one not too far away that also does AYCE.

They have more sides as well.

And they use gas for the grill, so it's not quite as smoky.

I like the variety at the new place slightly more, and it's nice to not be quite so over-smoked afterwards, but the old place has convenient parking.  Convenient parking is almost always best when everything else is nearly the same.

And then Five Guys for dinner.  I thought I'd had this before, but I would have remembered burgers this good.  The bun looks super burnt, but it wasn't too bad.  Toasty, but not charred.

Saturday: apple farms

My flight out of Honolulu was delayed, but this ended up being a probably good thing.  BART doesn't run until 6am on Saturdays, and I would have had to wait an hour anyway.

And then, because it's always best to do things while jet-lagged, a trip out to apple farms!

Lamb pot pie, at the pot pie-ery on the far side of Sacramento.

The first apple farm was insanely busy, and full of far more people than I've ever seen at a cider/apple/farm/mill/place.

They did have cider and doughnuts, which are the requirement of a fall cider mill trip.

And they have fall colors here as well.  We did have to go in elevation a bit.  That probably helped as well.

We went to a second apple farm.  They did not have any more pick-able apples, likely due to the lateness of the season.

They did have animals.  Including a jerk of a goose.  Geese are always jerks.

Friday: I had a brownie today.

See?

I'm also thinking I'm going to eat my travel sandwich before leaving.  So it's less a travel sandwich, and more a "regular dinner sandwich."

• Superman.
• This looks like it will be a very good comic.
• Bunnies vs. robots.

Thursday: It was rainy today.

See?

And then I discovered that the code I'd based that talk on last week had a massive error, which I didn't notice because even though it was a massive error, it didn't actually have that bad of an effect on the fits it made.  However, on porting the algorithm to the slightly more complicated fit model, it blew up such that the fits diverged.  Scanning through the code revealed that I had had r = t * p0 + p1, instead of r = t * p1 + p0.  Oops.

Now I'm waiting for the thirteen minutes left before I can check in for my flight and try to get good seats.  Travel shouldn't be this stressful.

What also shouldn't be so stressful is getting a letter from my apartment management.  It turns out that they're raising my rent $25.  This after the owner did that appraisal thing because he was refinancing.  I guess it's marginally close to the inflation rate.

• Patsy Walker, Hellcat.
• Backstory for a gif.
• Things like this are why I have a "culinary aminal" label.

Wednesday: I really felt like katsu today.

So that's what I got for lunch.

Last night's Agents of Shield at least took the time to answer some questions.  I still don't care about Hydra or Ex-agent Jerkface, but at least they tied in to the super-powered Inhumans story somewhat.  Now I have two questions:

1. Why isn't there a well made database of Marvel characters?  The alient planet guy has the following traits:
   1. Is an Inhuman.
   2. Is immortal.
   3. Can shape change.
   4. Probably super strong or something, but who cares about that, 90% of the Marvel universe is super strong.
   How many people can that apply to?  I was able to find a wiki page that lists immortals, but without a way to cross reference efficiently, it's hard to search through.  Some way to do "SELECT * FROM Inhumans JOIN Immortals USING(character)" would be super helpful.  Otherwise, it's just a constant stream of fucking Apocalypse, and we all know it can't be Apocalypse on that planet because Fox has the rights to all the mutants.
2. How the hell does Hydra stay in business?  Assume all Hydra mid-to-upper tier managers are psychopaths like Ex-agent Jerkface.  This is safe as no one tells him he's doing a bad job.  Ex-agent Jerkface tends to kill like 1-5 of his own "insufficiently dedicated" teammates each episode.  Let's say show time passes in weeks like the episodes.  If all managers are killing like 3 people a week, they have to have a very flat hierarchy, otherwise the fraction of the company dying each week would be huge.
   1. And this isn't a terrible assumption: Old Man Secret Hydra Guy is running a program that is intentionally trying to turn employees into Inhumans.  The side effect of failing to turn into an Inhuman: you turn to stone (which kills you, duh).  
   If each manager is killing like 150 employees a year, they have to have at least this many people under them.  Otherwise, they must be spending all the time they're not murdering on recruitment.  Since we saw in one of the other episodes that recruitment involves murder-punching somebody to death, that's something like 300 people a year dying for each manager.  This ignores losses due to, you know, actually going out and doing evil at people, which is not likely to be a safe job.
1. I guess I'm also wondering who exactly would decide this is a good line of work to go into.  Regular jobs exist.  Even regular crime jobs exist.  Why would you ever decide to join MurderCorp, when on a team of N members, you can be pretty sure you have a 1 / (N - N) chance of ending up murdered?

• Tl;dr: Santa Monica cops are kind of racist.  It's a surprise.
• Sailor V.
• This is the kind of squirrel that would join Hydra.  Just someone who is out looking for murder.
• Wow.  Somebody's a jerk (spoiler: it's not the person who runs that tumblr).
• So maybe I should be reading Wonkette now that Gawker is getting crappy?  
• That's unfortunate.  He taught a history class I took freshman year.  He was a good teacher.

Tuesday: Don't worry, Stephanie. We're going to make it through this. It'll all turn out fine.

I know you don't see the Havarti.  It's there somewhere.  You can find it.  Even if you don't, I'm perfectly happy if we have to go with Swiss.  I like all the cheeses, Stephanie.  I'm not that concerned, my sandwich isn't going to be ruined.

Of course, this is the moment when I remember I had a sandwich for lunch too.

That was mostly Julie's fault, being all, "look at my delicious sandwich," and making me hungry.

Also I made this guy out of electrical plug covers.  I have a lot of them at the office.

• Katsu sandwiches are delicious.  Most of the rest of these are just reasons why Japan feels like everything just works.
• Gawker keeps making bad decisions and firing people I like reading.
• Tony Scalia is a horrible person, and I will be glad when he dies.
• Corgi.
• This is wonderful.

Monday: That's it. Boston's Pizza Manoa is no longer making good pizza.

I've given them three weeks of chances, but they are simply not making pizza that is satisfying.  The first problem:  they have far too many people wandering around, and they spend too much time associating with people from the other two restaurants in the same building and managed by the same people.  It's a pizza place.  You need two people.  One person to take orders and pull par-cooked slices from the display and handle the money.  One person to make pizzas and to manage the oven.  There were five people hanging around today.  This is a distraction.

The second problem is that they are seriously overcooking the pizza.  Let's look at today's slices:

Ok, but:

This is burnt.

The pizzas should come out (whole) just fully cooked.  The entire display was filled with obviously overcooked pizza.  It's easy to identify:  the crusts are dark brown, and the cheese has separated.  This is the best example I could find with a google search, but this is the same problem:  the cheese is cooked too long, and the oil is driven out.  This causes oil pools on the pizza, and the cheese isn't a gooey, yummy blanket anymore.

If everything in the display is already overcooked, then putting it back in for the warm up pass just makes it all worse.  If all the pizzas are already broken, adding more heat isn't going to fix them.  The spinach/garlic today was the best option, and it was burnt, and the crust had had all of its moisture driven out.  Well, except for that green spot on the undershot, where inconsistent thickness caused that place to be soggy.

They do have some interesting new flavors (pulled pork sounds like it could be interesting), but if a simple pepperoni and mushroom is too difficult, why would I think those are done any better?  So I think that's it.  After like five years of getting Monday pizza for lunch, I think I'm done.  It's no longer good pizza.

• It took me until she was struck by lightning in tonight's Supergirl for me to go, "wait, she's Livewire, isn't she?"  Yes.  Yes she was.
• I saw the kaiten sushi one online, and luckily it had the artist's webpage listed.
• This is the same point I've pointed out occasionally all the back to actual 9/11.  You can't attack and conquer the United States without a modern industrial economy.  A handful of dumbasses with bombs can kill handfuls of people.  If you want to defeat the United States, without relying on Republicans, you need to have millions of soldiers, a means to transport them, the ability to control the airspace, etc.  Since "the terrorists" do not have that, they are not an existential threat to the nation, and therefore, should not be treated as such.
• Frankly, my opinion of Gawker and Nick Denton dropped precipitously when Caity Weaver left.  Anyone too stupid to do whatever necessary to keep her on board shouldn't be managing anything.  This doesn't do much more but explain how big the problems there are, and how blind Denton is to that.
• Despite that, Jezebel had the best story on the cats at the G20, partially because they were all, "yeah cats at G20.  But don't forget when they had koalas at the G20."  This is the kind of important reporting that is needed.

Sunday: I have pretty much wasted this weekend.

Oops.

I wanted some sort of soup, and decided I wanted a sandwich instead of sushi.  For some reason, driving home from Aina Haina seems to be significantly faster than driving out there.  Maybe it's because I'm full of soup and sandwich when driving home.

• Vampire friend.
• Bunny hat.
• Anna.
• Squeaky shoes.

Saturday: Burrito Second-word-that-makes-sense-here-that-I-can't-think-of

Remember Wednesday when traffic prevented me from getting the burrito I wanted?

I fixed that today.

The Kailua burrito place is far better.  Tastes better, and has a better hot/cold arrangement.  No queso, but still.  Better.

Then I stopped at the WF there to pick up some stuff, and everyone knows what that means.

CHICKENS!

Hello, Chicken King!

Hello all the other chickens!

There are lots of chickens there.  Also, I saw a pig while driving home.  "Is that a dog?  Holy crap, no, that's a pig."  

• Now I kind of want doughnuts.
• Clue.
• Lovecraft.
• 
  
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• Today's apparently a day when the itemize thing never closes.