Thursday: I'm just not going to have a picture today.

Because I don't have anything good.

• Yes, but that would require the media to construct a narrative in which there aren't simply good guys and bad guys.  You know, actual reporting on actual reality.
• I just spent thirty minutes looking through old photos to see if I could find a picture of the painting I saw in Boston that had a description that mentioned that it had a "sibling" painting in Detroit, and I remember seeing that painting at the DIA.  Tl;dr: paintings that are part of a set should be displayed together.
• A bunny because I thought I wasn't going to have a third item.
• But I do.  The Best Restaurant in New York series is the greatest thing ever on Gawker.  It was once a week, but then it became once a few months thing.  So when I looked, and saw that they'd posted an epic 24-part visit to Epcot, I was very happy.  Plus, it has its own sub blog now, so I can directly subscribe the RSS feed.

Wednesday: Timing.

You're probably wondering why I took a picture of some trash cans.  What you don't see because it's a fraction of a second out of frame is the bird that flew directly at me.  I tried to get a photo, but the time between my clicking and the picture being taken was enough for the bird to get by.

• This is a bit long, but it's worth waiting for the end of the gif.
• Why don't we do this in the US?
• For the obvious panels.
• Come on, 538.  "Not including Honolulu, for which data is not available."  Do some research.  "The department's jurisdiction encompasses the entire island of Oahu."  100%, 538.  100% of HPD officers live within the jurisdiction of the department.  Do you know why?  Because it's an island.

Tuesday: It was rainy today.

See?

 But then it cleared up some.

And I was able to center the star in the rainbow.

• Exactly.
• Sad corgi.
• Free comic book day is this weekend, although a lot of the comics look blah.
• But I should see if I can pick this up while I'm out.
• I don't see how the answer to part 4 is 1/20.  Even if all of the utility of the car is consumed by the spite, you still have 4500/20=225 pizzas worth of utility.  So isn't it 225.05?

Monday: Can it be the weekend yet?

Although today I noticed just in time that my prism rainbow is passing over one of the stars attached to the ceiling.

• Oops.
• This would be unfortunate, though.  Castlevania and Silent Hill are the two series that I still care enough about to keep up on.
• Someone else should make a similar tablet.  I love my Nexus 7, and think that size is really the best.

Sunday: Fuck.

I had planned to go on another big driving excursion today, doing the fun "go counter-clock-wise until you get back home" trip.  That was until I got an email telling me that I'm giving a journal seminar tomorrow.  See post title for commentary.  So that screwed up my day.

This was the world map when I gave up on that game I was playing yesterday.  My team is Portugal (purple-blue), Japan (yellow), Russia (red), and Austria (light tan).  White is neutral, and I play by the strategy of never invading them.  I was able to conquer Germany and the Ottomans on the same turn, although I had to reconquer the Ottomans as they had substantial reserves to pull back.  The only remaining enemy is the US (green), because I didn't want to bother finishing them off when I found out about that seminar.  Britain has lost their capital, but they still have most of the island.  However, I have 17 battleships off the coast, so if I could find some Russian ground troops (I stopped buying things with them when it got so lopsided), I could take them out in the initial naval artillery assault.  Madagascar has a pile of troops, partially because as France was falling, they didn't have any other place to put units.  For some reason, they never bought transports to get people off the island.  Australia is the same way, and I kept forgetting to buy enough of the  fleets I needed for that invasion (I kept diverting them to Alaska).  And yes, Japan is in control of Jordan and Mesopotamia.  Sometimes the Russians get bogged down taking Constantinople, and you have time to march 24 artillery units across a continent.  

• Cats.
• Squirrel.
• Squirrel.
• Bunny-sheep.
• Correspondent's dinner.
• I'm kind of glad.  It didn't feel like Silent Hill to me.

Saturday: Adventures.

Since my car is all maintained and whatnot, I decided to take a drive.  Since I wanted a new pillow, I decided to go to Target.  The far Target.

The one in Kapolei.

I didn't take any pictures, because I was driving.  Hopefully the pillow will be comfy.

Then I came home and played Axis and Allies but not that, because that's trademarked.  Also it's a "pseudo- 1901" world.

I call this "the German computer player is fucking pissed that I built a transport to dump two guys right next to their capital."  Seriously.  They sent like everyone in existence to go shoot these two guys that I sent just to be a jerk.  China's gone, Germany.  There's nothing in the far east to do anymore.  My Japanese allies are cleaning up everyone else.  I'm going to try to kill you and the Ottomans in the same turn.  Just to be a jerk.

• Oh, the inevitable problem of reality.
• 82% funding cut.  I think that's the point where if you're the president of the university, you go on TV and call Bobby Jindal a fucking bag of shit.
• Tax dollars.

Friday: Because that's going to help.

I went to get pizza for lunch today.

I forgot to take a picture of my pizza.  See here for a reference, except today I had garlic/spinach.

There were two people in line in front of me.  They both ordered a slice, and then ordered a second one.  That's half a pizza each.  Then the best part, "and a diet pepsi."

• So that resets the "number of days since DC did something stupid" counter.
• This is an important thing that covers the important fact about current politics: it doesn't generally make sense to try and convince people that they're wrong, because that's very hard to do.  Instead, it's more effective to try and get people who support your views to vote, because the participation rate is sufficiently low that that is the main deciding factor.  This also explains why Republicans have been systematically working to make voting harder.  Suppressing votes allows them to win.
• Bird boss.
• This is why bull terriers are ugly.  Because animal breeders are horrible people.
• Raccoons are bad pets.

Thursday: Grape candy.

Grape candy.

• Grape candy.
• Not apple candy.
• I was thinking more about this, and was wondering why Selina doesn't get to be part of this?  Due to random happening, I read some more of the first Catwoman series, and the issues I read were from the Cataclysm event, which was the prelude to No Man's Land.  Big earthquake, Selina saves some people, next issue she has to stop Ivy from growing super trees all over the ruins of Gotham after Ivy kills at least one guy.  Which made me think.  Sure, Ivy occasionally has decent streaks, but Selina doesn't kill.  Surely that makes her a better role model.
• You have stolen that pizza, dog.
• Anagrams.
• Good.

Wednesday: I should have taken a picture of that dog.

But I didn't.  I did finally get all of my overdue car maintenance done.  Now I have to go to the mall tomorrow to get my registration sorted out.  Because that's how things work, I guess.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have a bunch of these cats.

• This is interesting.  I should look into this so I can mount my mp3 directories at work.
• Ok, this is probably a good move, if they don't screw it up.
• And just because Ivy (and Harley) being in the "Heroes" group made me think about it, that time during No Man's Land when Ivy effectively fed Gotham.
• Squirtle.
• Old people are the problem.

Tuesday: Successfully rewrote a bunch of stuff today. And then discovered a bug that's like 9 years old.

Another camouflage cat.

• Messing with a dog.
• Squirrel girl.  Also She-Hulk's face.  "I HAD OTHER THINGS I WAS GOING TO DO TODAY!"

And then the internet from the island to the rest of the world disappeared, and I considered calling to rage at that fucking robot again.  But it's back now, so I don't need to talk about "raining hellfire down on your useless programmers and moronic owners."

Monday: I didn't even mention that that was a tasty burger.

Carrot strings, blue cheese, bacon, roasted tomatoes, onion confit, and scallions.  The roasted tomatoes work well, as they concentrate the flavor and remove the water that just makes burgers with fresh tomatoes soggy.

I was initially confused when I saw this.  After investigating, it turns out that the sun occasionally is positioned correctly to reflect off bits of chrome on the cars in the parking lot.  This shines a beam of light back through the trees, projecting them onto my office wall.

Yesterday's links.

• This should be a question on the forms for public assistance.  "Do you currently work, and if so, who is your employer?"  Then, the amount of benefits could be directly charged to the companies that refuse to pay their employees enough.
• Cookie cat.
• Bear.

Today's links.

• No, seriously.  If they can't earn the same level of profit while paying their employees enough, then they should raise prices.  Forcing everyone to subsidize their profits is stupid.
• This kind of spoils the rest of the season, doesn't it?
• Poor Team Rocket.
• This is the greatest Onion article ever written.

Maybe this will work?

I had a burger and cheese fries.

My old man neighbor who had the girlfriend with the smelly perfume seems to have moved out.  I noticed him packing things up a few weeks ago, and today a realtor was having an open house there.  I think he probably moved in with his girlfriend.  The old man, not the realtor.  I don't know anything about that guy.

And then my internet kersploded, and I spent a half hour screaming "give me a real fucking person" at the useless Oceanic Time Warner robot.  I can explicitly tell you what's wrong.  "No Ranging Response received".  I know how to read my cable modem logs, so I don't need a phone tree.  And why does the robot make "typey typey" sounds when it pauses?  I know it's a robot.  It has a robot voice.  It says things like, "OK.  I understand you have a problem.  Choose from the following responses which best matches the problem you're having."

But now it kind of half works, and at least I can get youtube videos to play.  It's clear that I'm losing lots of data somewhere, as things are very bursty and erratic.

The fact that this is an improvement is still unacceptable.  The fact that I have to wait until Friday for a guaranteed tech visit is unacceptable.  Telecom monopolies should be destroyed.

Sunday: my internet is out and it's the worst thing in the world

"You're exaggerating."

No, I'm not. Everything was working properly, I was about to make a blog post, and then nothing would load.  Rebooting the cable modem resulted in a never ending cycle of failed attempts to connect.

"You're posting this. You still have phone internet."

Yes, but I can't connect anything else to the phone internet.  That means that my RSS reader can't get updates. That means my internet reading ability is ruined until this is fixed. When will that be? Friday.

This is why the infrastructure should be nationalized, and multiple isps in direct competition with each other.

I wonder how much a secondary DSL line would cost.

Saturday: All the disappointment.

First up, fuck Dole Cannery.

I had planned to see "When Marnie was There" this weekend.  It's playing at the Hawaii International Film Festival, which runs at Dole Cannery.  I assumed that this would be like all of the other Ghibli films I've seen, with not so many people seeing it.  I checked for tickets online this morning, only to see a "no tickets available online, check at box office" message.  Assuming this wasn't a complete lie, I drove over to see if they had tickets.

They didn't.  Both today's and tomorrow's shows are sold out.  Ok, so I'll have to see it when it comes to Kahala mall in a few months.  Not a massive problem.  I went back to my car.

And took this series of photos of downtown and the harbor.

"$2.50"

"What?"

"Your ticket isn't validated.  Do you have your ticket stub?"

"No, I didn't see a movie.  It was sold out."

"$2.50"

"This is fucking bullshit."

Because it is.  No grace period at all?  It took me twelve minutes to park, take an elevator down to find they were sold out, take the elevator back up, and drive back down.  Fuck you, Dole Cannery.  Fuck you in your stupid "we're trying to look like we've renovated this place, but we're still in a dirty, run down part of town, and really do nothing to improve that" face.

So, plan for the day destroyed.  Let's go get kotteri ramen!

This is spicy tan tan, not kotteri.

That's because they were out of kotteri.  Fuck.  Also note that that's char siu instead of the spicy ground pork mixture.  I assume that's a similar supply issue.  Double fuck.

• Stupid people come up with poorly thought out stupid arguments.
• I may need to pick up the trade for this new Thor.  I am enjoying these snapshots.
• Alternate comment: "Pfft.  The Odinson should have just sent Squirrel Girl.  Fewer people to track down, 100% success rating."
• Good job systematically fucking yourselves over, Arizona.

Friday: Because sometimes all you have are Shakespeare jokes.

Second Witch: "Guess how many assholes I'm looking at, Macbeth." Apparition of a bloody child: "Guess how many assholes I'm looking at too, Macbeth."

• Good.
• Also a good idea.
• The logic here is that Medicaid expansion would direct money to pay for poor people to get real health care, and Rick Scott wants poor people to stay sick and have the government just directly give that money to hospitals.  Because he's an ass.
• Important photo here: Art Laffer showing the estimated minimum and maximum amounts of shit he's full of.

Thursday: Did you know that you can write too much stuff to stderr?

Somewhere in the chain of supercomputer code->tcsh->python->tcsh->program there's a buffer for stderr that is X long.  If you exceed that, it just stops accepting data.  Why?  Because someone's an ass who couldn't be bothered to flush that buffer correctly.

I just noticed this evening that the new tower they're building in Kakaako is visible from my apartment.  Compare here.

• Green dad.
• Squirrel.
• This sounds like union busting.

Wednesday: lsakhgirah;alhrg

"Jim is going to be so surprised to see me!"

• Pizza dog is not a palindrome.
• I should go see this this weekend.
• Knife.

Tuesday: It turns out that it only worked due to another error hiding elsewhere.

So I had to fix that too.  But now it for realsies works, and gives me basically the answer I wanted, to within sqrt(2).  And I think I know why that's there as well.

No picture today, because the internet has no good pictures left.

• Don't make a fuss, Lottie.
• And the other box just sits there.  "Good.  Exactly according to plan."
• This should really get its own campaign ad next year.
• Long version.  Short version.  She's not my favorite candidate, but she's infinitely better than the moronic shitbags on the other side.
• Cat vs luggage.

Monday: Just because it worked five minutes ago, doesn't mean it's going to keep working.

And that was when I called, "fuck it," and went home.

Secret spy cat.

• Secret spy bunny.
• Republicans lie, all the time, about everything.
• Pizza, and how I learned about a cool column in the NY Times.
• Best response is best.

Sunday: I didn't know what I wanted for lunch.

So I went through the food label until everything I had in my head came up, and then went with the next thing I saw.

Mexican was the answer.

• Dogs are bad with gravity as well.
• Ha ha.

I apparently posted this ten minutes too early.  Last Man on Earth added two new characters, the main character became even more of a horrible person, so I'm done with it.

Saturday: Ok. New best meal at the pancake place.

Giant pork chop.

Delicious juicy/crispy pork chop.

This easily replaces the previous best meals at the pancake place, the calamari steak (discontinued) and the chicken fried steak (which was passable, but now where close to the pork chop).

• I was wondering why GE made that decision.
• Thank you, wikipedia.  This makes it much easier to figure out that the answer I was looking for was "Bangladesh."
• "[...] but I do not and at least when I co-authored her autobiography, June didn't either."
• I suspect this is a source of misinformation.
• Brock used fact.  It's super effective.

Friday: What's missing here?

Super saucy buffalo tenders.  How could it go so wrong?

No blue cheese.  "We have ranch?"  No.  Ranch is inferior.  Without blue cheese, these just aren't as good.

• "The Wind in the Rose-bush". Tl;dr version: 
• R: "I'm in town to pick up my niece because my sister (her mom) died, her husband remarried, and now he's died, so she should live with me instead of the unrelated second wife." 
• A: "Oh.  I'm not going to tell you your niece died a year ago, because I'm an asshole."
• R: "Great, off to the ghost house."
• G: "Hi, I'm the ghost pretending to be the second wife.  I'm going to fuck with you for like a week, telling you 'oh, you just missed the niece' and 'she probably took a train ride with her friend.'  Finally, I'm going to forge a letter from your friends back home to get you to go back there.  Why?  Because I'm both an asshole, and a useless ghost."
• R: "I'll send a letter to the second wife, asking about the niece.  Also the niece's friend.  Finally A, the postmaster."
• A: "Yeah, those friends are dead too.  They've been dead for years.  And now I'll tell you that your niece is dead.  Was dead when I didn't tell you before, too.  I'm just a major asshole who could have prevented this entire stupid story."
• Cat vs. Dog.
• Bunny.
• Good.
• That looks good.  I guess I'm going to the pancake place this weekend.

Thursday: My internet is crappy this evening.

The webpage claims it's "maintenance on the west coast."

Whatever, I have no more images.  Here's a Victini I screencapped four years ago.

• Dog does not look confident about this.
• Comcast is awful everywhere, even in their home town.
• I would like a ferry to return.  That would be cool.

Wednesday: My banana was dented.

Apparently the most exciting thing to happen today.

• Cats are dumb.
• Squirrel.
• All the little people.
• How healthcare reform could help people, if those people hadn't elected psychopaths to their state government.
• I laughed so hard at this comic.

Tuesday: blah

blah.

• Animals.
• Red pandas.
• Cats are dumb.
• Cats are dumb.
• Other stuff 1.
• This came out well.
• This was unexpected.
• Brontosaurus.
• Other stuff 2.
• You sell a commodity product, Apple.  Stop pretending you're doing anything but capitalizing on stupid people.
• The third paragraph from the end is the important one.

Monday: Mondays suck.

• Squirrel.
• Squirrel Girl.
• This is just...how do you draw something like this and think it's fine?
• I'm with you, Charmander.

Sunday: Easter means three day weekend.

I didn't feel like cooking a big complicated thing this year.  I still wanted lamb, though, which usually means that I have to do a big complicated thing.  Luckily, WF has deli lamb:

Everything bagel, lamb, and havarti.  I wanted gouda, but they only had smoked, and that'd be too strong of a flavor.

Then later I had cake and ice cream.

• Figs.
• Back when comics were cool.
• And you could break the spine of the Easter bunny.
• I remember this cartoon.  I like how "plaid" wasn't a word in the 1930s, so they had to call it "Scotch paint."

Saturday: I needed to pick up stuff at WF, so I just went with the easy option.

I thought about stopping for pancakes, or Mexican, or just getting a WF burrito.

I also realized the moment I woke up this morning that I'd forgotten to take pictures of the eclipse last night.  I had planned on doing so, and then completely forgot.

• Didn't I post about this before?  In any case, it'd be cool, but I'm not going to pay $280 for a Robbie the Rabbit toy.
• Gerrymandering.
• Fandom Jesus.
• Pikachu.

Friday: The Good part is that I didn't have work today.

I thought about brisket earlier in the week, and that reminded me that there's a BBQ place in Aiea.  Maybe I just got my hopes up too high, but I was far more disappointed in this visit to Dixie Grill.  Part of that is that I imagined that they had sausage as well, and they don't.

I was kind of surprised they didn't have Dr. Pepper.

Popcorn.

Murderous chicken.

Lunch.

Going clockwise:

• Cornbread casserole.  This is tasty.  I'm not entirely clear what makes it a casserole, as it's really just cornbread with cheese.
• Brisket.  This was cut by someone drunk.  There was also a lot of fatty bits, but not a good marbled fat.  Just a layer of fat on the outside.
• Single slice of white bread.  Bread is expensive, I guess.
• Pulled pork.  This was the best, as it still had a bit of moisture to it.
• Mac and cheese.  This is m&c, so it's excluded from being the best, since m&c is delicious.
• Turkey.  Dry.  Super dry.  It's also sliced thin, but then wadded up.  What's the point of that?  Is it to dry it out more?
• Pastrami.  I'm as confused as you are.  It's not bad, since pastrami (see m&c comment above), but it was also super thinly cut and super dry.  This also would have been better with a thicker slice.

The first thing I noticed reading the new menu is that I thought they had more types of meat.  Rereading about my previous visit, they had five meats, and I correctly didn't get the turkey.  They only had the four meats this time, with the tri-tip and pork belly gone.  Again, I would have liked a sausage, but I like sausage.  Partially because they keep their fat and stay moist better than thinly sliced meats.  Pulling menu items suggests they didn't sell out of something, so maybe they're not as busy as they were previously.  After this visit, I'm not entirely sure I'm going to be back again for two years.

I covered the bbq sauces last time.  Pretty much the same conclusion.  Hawaiian and Texas styles work best.

• Carrots.
• Winnie the Pooh.
• This is the airport place where I always get a pastrami sandwich.
• He's an Avenger.
• Cats vs. Buddha.

Thursday: "Oh that thing you were using? Yeah, we broke it, and won't fix it until next week."

Thanks a bunch, supercomputer people.  At least it's a long weekend, I guess.

There are so many things wrong with this.

• Adventure Time.
• Roombadog.
• Why aren't signs like this already?

Wednesday: Jackass day.

On which an annoying non-zero part of the internet decides to be fucking morons.

In other news, I saw this dog while waiting for lunch.

"Hello!"

Also the moon was out when I left work, but it's kind of hard to see in this image.

• Animals:
• Owl.
• Kiwis.
• Chicken.
• Yes, this is a good thing that they're going to make it possible to not be spied on.  However, when you go to do it, you discover that because Verizon is made of assholes, they put the button to opt-out in an advertisement block.  This means that you have to disable any adblockers to see the opt-out option.  I cannot conceive of any more "fuck you, customers" thing Verizon could have done.  Verizon should be nationalized, too.
• Serrano.