Saturday, January 31, 2015

Saturday: Sushi Saturday

The standard bunch.  The salmon was a bit wet, which isn't my favorite thing, as it makes the soy sauce hard to stick.
They've raised prices and changed the menu at KuruKuru.  The old menu was kind of getting out of hand, with piles and piles of things, and that probably got unwieldy.  And even with the price jump, I think they're still cheaper than other sushi places.  I'm also disappointed that I didn't see the ahi katsu special until I was leaving.  It looked super yummy.
Round two.  That's the same ahi as above.  The unagi was particularly good today, and wasn't as greasy as a lot of the ones I've had recently.
 I also saw that Song of the Sea was playing at the theater, but I wasn't planning on seeing a movie this weekend.  Hopefully it'll still be out next week.
Random miso movie.



Friday, January 30, 2015

Friday: Draw a Dinosaur Day

This is going to be year four for DaDD, and I went digital.  That was probably a mistake, but I couldn't find my crayons, and I could find my tablet.
It's a very chubby ankylosaurus.  With wonky eyes.  Tablet drawing is hard, and doing eyes is the hardest part.

The biggest problem is that after Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC squished all their different universes together into one, and made everyone live in the same world.  This made some sense, as they owned a bunch of comic universes, and it's probably easier to publish a Batman comic with occasional visits from Blue Beetle who lives a town over than to publish Batman and Blue Beetle, which are just going to directly compete with each other (rich industrialist who dresses up as something and uses technology to fight crime?  Wait, isn't that Mr. Terrific?).  

So, ok, great, everyone lives in the same world.  Except DC keeps making everything super serious and grimdark, so nothing can be fun anymore.  Because that's not grown up or some bullshit.  That's fine for Batman, who does nothing but punch bad guys until they stop being bad.  Superman comes off kind of lame, which leads to shit like him walking across the country instead of fighting crime because I don't even fucking know, he was sad or something.  That's also why they had to murder Blue Beetle, who became known after CoIE for doing shit like this (I couldn't find a single page that had all the important images, so click in order to piece together the story).  He was too funny and silly to fit in to the shitty vision DC was going with.

Now back to Captain Marvel.  His backstory is that he's an orphan who gets magic powers when he shouts his magic word, "Shazam," (basically calling the wizard named that to get the power).  That might seem like it could be grim, but he was originally written years ago, which is why he has a team that contains a useless fat old man, a super obvious ripoff of Bugs Bunny, and Mary Marvel, who got fucked over in the grimdark reboot because she wasn't allowed to just be a good person who tried to use her powers to help anymore.  Oh, and the Marvels were friends with Tawky Tawny, a goddamn tiger who wears clothes and walks around like a person.  And talks.  As you might guess.

And who did three children, an old guy, and two cartoon characters fight back in the past?  A tiny worm from Venus, a stereotypical evil scientist, and a guy named Captain Nazi.  These are simple enemies of the past, who are perfect villains for a kid who can become invincible by magic.  Captain Marvel isn't designed to live in a world where his best friend is gunned down.  He's designed to decide he doesn't like the Nazis, so he's going to fly to Europe and punch their captain until the war is over.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Thursday: Blah.

And they all talk too loudly.  Or jackhammer shit at seven in the fucking morning.

  • Farm fight.
  • I should remember that I need to rework math next month.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Wednesday: That's not how many processors I'm supposed to have.

I was expecting to see something like "32000 cores up and running".  Instead, it was more like 17000.  That's apparently why none of my jobs were running.  Stupid supercomputer.
"Ok, clearly I'm missing something here.  Why don't you explain it to me again, slowly this time, and I'll see if I can follow along better.  This whole scheme sounds like a bad deal for me, but I'm willing to hear you out one more time."

All the links are basically about animals.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Tuesday: Cat party.

The mother is hiding behind the tree.
They still need to be captured and fixed.



Monday, January 26, 2015

Monday: I hate hearing all the news about snow days, knowing that I never get a snow day.

This isn't this storm.  I just happened to have a snowy picture in my download folder.


Sunday, January 25, 2015

Sunday: So now it's just an earache, I guess.

Stupid poorly designed ears.

And after hearing about the Greek election, and remembering the tasty food in Alameda, I went out in to get Greek for lunch.  This means driving out to Koko Marina, which I apparently haven't been to in 2.25 years.
It was kind of half-raining.
I thought they had a lamb shank dish, but I didn't see it on the menu.  Instead I went with the mix souvlaki plate.
Also a spanikopita, which wasn't really worth it.
Not as good as the other places.  The lamb was nicely tender, with decent spices.  The chicken was good as well, with enough spicing differences to stand out.  The shrimp hiding in there were overcooked, which is never a good thing.  So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.  Good enough, I guess.





Saturday, January 24, 2015

Saturday: At least I don't feel like I'm going to die constantly.

Although I did wake up this morning with yesterday's never-ending-tears eye gummed shut.  That wasn't so fun.

Then Mexican food.
Because it sounded good.



Friday, January 23, 2015

Friday: I'm like Two-Face today, I guess.

Because my left eye won't stop crying.  Searching the internet suggests that this means that my still-not-fully-resolved illness has clogged the drain part of my eye, and that this usually clears out as the illness goes away.

Or brain cancer, because that's always the solution.

Want to play a not-so-fun game?

What's wrong with this picture?
Did you guess, "that doesn't look like rye?"  If so, then you win!  Not really a disaster in the grand scheme of things, but still disappointing.  They were super busy at lunch time, so it's understandable.







Thursday, January 22, 2015

Thursday: Yeah, all those symptoms again.

So I stayed home again.  The doctor said that it was probably just a cold, and so there's not much to do about it.  I am supposed to check to see that I don't develop a fever, because that likely means I've picked up a bonus infection, but other than that, just coast through the weekend.

And avoid murderous snowmen, but duh, obviously.



Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Wednesday: That's probably a good sign you need to stay home from work.

Step one is when you wake up every two hours because the ear facing down is now clogged with the beginnings of an earache growing in it.  Step two is when you wake up to discover that your throat hurts and you can't form any actual word sounds.  Step three is the clincher, when you move slightly and that sets off a cascade of coughing and choking to drain what seems like a liter of gross goo from your lungs.  The good news is that I have a doctor appointment already scheduled for tomorrow, so maybe they have new drugs that make lungs not suck.

I did have the issue of figuring out what to have to eat, since I didn't pre-plan getting sick.  What sounded good was met with, "it's not particularly healthy."  Whatever.  I'm already sick.  I need some soup, and I need something tasty.
Soup and something tasty.
La Tour Cafe has very good French onion soup.  They're M&C is tasty, but a bit too goopy as it cools.  Together, this made a satisfactory lunch so I could return home and not move so my lungs didn't explode again.  I also bought a banh mi for dinner:

Like this.
That I ended up eating only half of.  I think this means that I know what I'm taking for lunch tomorrow if I wake up not dying.

Today's also Squirrel Appreciation Day, which is difficult to do when you live in the middle of the ocean with no squirrels.  Luckily, Julie celebrated it today, so I'm stealing her picture:


Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Tuesday: So yeah. This is totally bronchitis. Again.

Every damn year.  Or, it seems, every six months or so.  Which sucks.  Breathing turns out to be kind of fun.

I went to the regular ramen place last week.  This led to me going to the ramen place by work.

Unagi combo.
It is definitely not Tenkaippin, but that was obvious from the name.  They do shoyu ramen, which isn't as hearty, but is soupy.  Their gyoza isn't bad, but they don't have the chili oil for the dipping sauce.  This was a fatty bit of unagi as well, but I think that's how that end of the fish is.  It's not a bad place, but it's not quite as magically delicious

I'm also collecting things on my window sill.

Monday, January 19, 2015

Monday: MLK day.

Which means I spent the day being productive, if we can redefine productivity as "working through my youtube watch later list."  I'm down to 434 items.
And then I went to get pancakes, and totally didn't just say "fuck it" and take an image from last time and flip it horizontally.  Totally didn't.


One aspect I skipped on the burrito adventure was

I listen to the Jpop station all the time.  Sundays are where they play the anime mix, with Dude A and Dude B.  When I turned it on as I was heading to Kailua, I heard this:


"Wait, I know that song," I told myself.

"Wait, why do I know this?" I asked.

Because I made a mix-cd fifteen+ years ago that had that as track number 9.  ls -alrt * says:

-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 3887984 Aug 23  2001 ../../../anime/dragonball/Dragonball-Z---Ginga-Koete-Rising-High.mp3

Don't be confused, that's a dummy date from when I transferred a bunch of stuff over.  I had this as my DBZ mix earlier than that:

52.oshawott:/net/navi/media/music/raw_rip/DBZ/DBZ> ls -alrt                              <2:47m p="">total 88760
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 4284185 Aug 20  2002 01-Cha-La_Head_Cha-La.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 4492605 Aug 20  2002 02-Aoi_Kaze_no_HOPE.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 4976883 Aug 20  2002 03-We_Gotta_Power.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 5987554 Aug 20  2002 04-Hikari_no_Will_Power.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 6106269 Aug 20  2002 05-Unmei_no_Hi_Tamashii_Tai_Tamashii.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 6493968 Aug 20  2002 06-Dawn_of_the_Children.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 4128987 Aug 20  2002 07-Piccolos_Theme.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 5834364 Aug 20  2002 08-Son_Goku.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 5408205 Aug 20  2002 09-Rising_High.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 4648377 Aug 20  2002 10-Tobikiri_Saikyou_Tai_Saikyou.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 4914183 Aug 20  2002 11-Maragoto.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 4041474 Aug 20  2002 12-Burn_Dragon_Soldiers.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 5262191 Aug 20  2002 13-Hero.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 5006779 Aug 20  2002 14-Forever.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 4431878 Aug 20  2002 15-Piccolo_Dai_Suki.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 5387566 Aug 20  2002 16-Jinzou_Ningen_Machie.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 4787148 Aug 20  2002 17-We_Were_Angels.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 999 mythtv 4654078 Aug 20  2002 18-Zenkai_Power.mp3


Earlier than that.  That's the rip of the mix-cd.  To be honest, a lot of those aren't terrible songs.  They have a good beat, and when you're making a mix for your diskman so you can get to class on time, that's really the best trait to have.

Basically, when you haven't heard a song for more than a decade, hearing it out of the blue is a weird feeling.  I suspect this isn't usually a case, as most people don't listen to niche music from a foreign country.  

But then, you hear it fresh, and in a much higher resolution than you heard it on that diskman in early 2000, as you were walking to the bus to take you to your classes for your junior year of college.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Sunday: Burrito Adventure

I miss burritos.  Luckily, there's a new place that's only on the other side of the island.  This makes it one ocean closer than most burrito places.  Yes, there are other burrito places around, but they're not quite Qdoba.  Or Chipotle, as that's the more popular one even though I'm not as big a fan of that one.

Anyway, Paniolos is a local place with everything locally sourced.  So that's good.

Using the phone panorama thing isn't as good as the manual way.  Mostly due to focus issues.

Burrito and chips.

The salsa I went back to buy.
 Which is unfortunate.  The burrito was a bit dry, and really could have used more salsa and more cheese.  Or queso, but they don't have queso.
It's still a better burrito than the other places, but I'll have to remember to get extra cheese next time.

And then I went to the WF in Kailua.
They have chicken there.
 To be honest, there are a bunch of chickens everyplace now.  The news had a story about it last week.

Driving home means cool scenes like this.

And below the cut, two other versions of the chicken gif.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Saturday: It's good that I had a backup plan.

I woke up wanting a pastrami sandwich.  I suspect that's because I always want a pastrami sandwich.  Yelp suggested a place in Waikiki, but I didn't want to bother fighting parking and traffic to get there.  Oddly enough, Earl showed up in the search, despite not having pastrami anywhere on their menu.  In any case, Earl sounded like it would be a good alternative.  Unfortunately,

You can't read it, but the paper in the window under the "R" states that they're closed today so they can prepare for the Honolulu night market.  Crap.
The burrito place and the Mexican place are in that neighborhood, but I decided to try someplace I haven't been to in a long time.  Big City Diner (I assume the server issues they're currently having are temporary).  I thought that I remembered a patty melt, which I am constantly searching for.

It was basically empty.
So what does their patty melt look like?
Hrm.

Well, it fails my patty melt criteria.  I had to get it without the thousand island dressing, which breaks the "no mayo" rule.  It's also on Texas toast, which isn't rye.  Jack isn't both swiss and american cheeses.  It has mushrooms, which isn't standard either.  The biggest problem isn't visible, though.  The mushrooms and onions were both cooked with a lot of garlic, and that overpowers the flavor of everything else.  It's a bit overly greasy as well, which didn't help.

So even though I had a backup plan, it wasn't really a satisfying replacement.


Friday, January 16, 2015

Friday: Three day weekend!

How many tenders do you see here?  Did you count four?  That's what I ordered.  Four.  "But there are six there."  That's where you're wrong.  There are seven, with one hiding below the top three.  I really can't tell if the wing/burrito place run by the Mexican place by work just weighs out some amount, or if they like me because I have lunch there fairly regularly.
And then I looked up shoes for part of the evening, because I refuse to believe that products are only sold in one place.  They're not, but there's clearly some sort of region based control system in place on certain brands.  Still, this is the future, and there are places that sell online with shipping anywhere in the world.  This should be the standard.  I have money, you have a product, we have an extensive logistics system connecting us.  There shouldn't be anything standing in the way.
Also I'm not entirely sure google shopping correctly understands the departments.


Thursday, January 15, 2015

Thursday: I had a great title thought up, but that was hours ago and I've forgotten it.

The grocery store book section is now basically just Frozen.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Wednesday: Pastrami and Prairie Dogs

Pastrami.

While trying to figure out what to have for lunch yesterday, the subject of pastrami came up.  Pastrami is, of course, the greatest of all meats.  However, not all pastrami is equal, and getting bad pastrami can be a serious disappointment.  The sandwich place by work has reubens as one of their main sandwich options, which is where delicious pastrami is ruined with sauerkraut.

I decided to try their deli pastrami sandwich, done up to be as similar to the SFO sandwiches I've been getting.

Pastrami and swiss with mustard on rye.
I really like that they use marble rye.  It makes this closer to the best sandwich ever, which I don't have a picture of.  No, even after looking through old cell phone pictures for twenty minutes, I still don't have a picture of that sandwich.
It was a tasty sandwich.  This one.  Also that sandwich, but this is the one I have a picture of and ate today.

They cut their own meat, so some of it was super thick.  Since it was warm, it was still perfectly tender.
I suspect that this is now going to push "chicken philly" out of my top choice, as that replaced "Cuban".  

Prairie Dogs.

Way too early this morning, Julie send this link to a snacky prairie dog.  "I have pictures of prairie dogs!" I thought to myself before going back to sleep.  After an hour looking at old pictures, it turns out I have fewer than I thought.  I do have pictures from more than a decade ago, which is weird.
Those are cows.

That was once an allosaurus, which is totally not a prairie dog.

These are prairie dogs.

That's a stegasaurus.

Prairie dog village!

Prairie dog party!

Prairie dog house!

Prairie dogs!

No.  Buffalo.

Bears are far bigger than prairie dogs.

Pterosaurs aren't even dinosaurs.  I think this is an Ornithocheirus?
I think the end result of this is that I should put together a "zoo" post with all the different animals I have pictures of.

Links.



Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Tuesday: Huh. That wasn't what I expected.

I mean, I never would have expected that googling the name of the jackass wifi access point on the same channel as me with "Honolulu" would tell me that it's my neighbor directly up one floor from me, her name, and that she's a paralegal.  That is legitimately more information than I was expecting to discover.  I guess I could leave a note.  "Hey, don't use channel 11, dumbass."

Today's salad had a lemon in it.  I don't quite know why.
 I took that picture when I thought I wasn't going to have anything to post about.  I would have stretched out that wifi story more too, except while reading the internet today, I found this link.


The reason this was so weird is because this is a poem that I remember from when I was a kid.  Because I have it in a book of poems for children.

See?
I have always been annoyed that that first verse doesn't rhyme.  I have been annoyed by this for thirty+ years.  And it's not a "oh, it's not supposed to rhyme" thing

Because the rest of the verses rhyme, even if v3 rhymes "me" with "me."
Plus, the choice of words make it look like it's supposed to rhyme, except English is a bastard language that doesn't have consistent pronunciations because rove and love come from different origins.  In any case, when you're like five, and are just learning how to read things, and you get to this poem, and then find out that "roving" and "loving" are not pronounced the same, it's kind of a massive disappointment.  It's like reading is just a cruel game.

Until you turn the page (ignoring The Old Horse in the City, because I never liked that one either) and find Vachel Lindsay's stuff, which is structured in such a way that everything rhymes and reads as it should to a five year old mind.

Plus: reasons to learn what a griffin is that young.

And this one uses a cookie metaphor.  Also at this point you've seen three opening lines from Lindsay, and see that all three are moon metaphors.  

  • Here's the Vachel Lindsay wikipedia page.  I checked it before writing the post to make sure he wasn't horrible or something.  It looks like the answer is "better than expected."
  • You have had a cruel prank played on you, raccoon.
  • As have you, chipmunk.
  • You...just keep doing you, fox.