Monday: Leap Day and Someone's Birthday

But, again, I didn't take any useful pictures.  Otherwise I'd have pictures of a burrito with too much rice, at least.  So:

Here's another picture of the dog from yesterday.

Also: Happy Birthday, Ramona, even though you're not going to read this.

• Google doodle.
• Squirrels.

Sunday: I am bad at taking photos

If I wasn't, this would be a series of pictures about Korean barbecue. Delicious, delicious Korean barbecue.

I did take a few pictures of yarn store dog.

Saturday: I got too much sun. :(

But that's mostly because I was outside for more than zero minutes.

Largely due to cake related reasons

Geese are jerks.

I'm not sure if this is they bay shot I wanted to put here.

Friday: travel is horrifying.

But at least on the flight I had an aisle seat with no one sitting next to me on the other side.

There were other issues today, but at least everything that needed to get done was done.

Thursday: Whale.

Totally a whale.

Wednesday: asdfadslig.

Now there's a pipe in my office.

• Politics.
• TGI Friday's is doing endless appetizers again.  "That sounds gross, who cares?"  People who remember when Gawker was cool, and sent Caity Weaver to eat mozzarella sticks for fourteen hours.
• Patsy Walker, Hellcat.
• Squirrel.

Agent Carter: A Quick Primer For People I May Be Forcing to Watch the Show.

Important stuff in regular text.  Additional information that isn't super important in this text.

This is Peggy Carter.  She kicks ass.  All the ass.  She is effectively unrivaled in ass-kickery.  She is a British spy who works with the Post-WW2 "Strategic Science Reserve," which is basically a fictional extension of the Manhattan Project, if the MP had no single active goal, vaguely unlimited funds, and a series of crazy people running it.  She dated Captain America very briefly (he got frozen in a chunk of ice for the next sixty years).

This is Edwin Jarvis, butler to Howard Stark.  He is best summed up by this single pose.  He is a delight of
frustration.

This is Ana Jarvis, wife of Edwin.  She is a wonder of grace, and she has been treated very shabbily by this season.  She's going to live after getting shot by villains, but she can't have kids now because of that.  I am annoyed by that trope.

This is Calvin Chadwick.  He was going to be a senator, but he ended up dead, as a result of his own stupid decisions.  He cheated on his wife:

His wife, famous movie star Whitney Frost.  BRB.

And because of that, they had to dispose of the mistress, and because everyone makes bad decisions, they use experimental stuff to kill her.  This causes trails, and Peggy found one of those trails, and seriously, if he had just not been a cheating fuck, he'd be Senator, and WITH THE BONUS of not being fucking dead.  Fuck you Chadwick.  You're a jerk.

This guy is Dr Jason Wilkes, who worked for Chadwick at Isodyne, investigating some material "zero matter" discovered after a nuclear test went wrong.

This guy's bomb test.  He probably won't show up anymore, so this whole thing, then.

Hopefully this works, as it's a web/p image?  It animates here.  This is the test.  It goes "not like nuclear tests do."

This is Howard Stark.  He is a billionaire because he sold lots of weapons during the war.  He is an asshole, but he's our asshole, so it's ok.  He is also possibly the smartest person in the world, and can design just about anything ever.  His son is Tony Stark, Iron Man, but his big invention (arc generator) is entirely based on a design Howard couldn't build due to issues with manufacturing in the 60s.

That sets up the main characters

"We're going to have to do something about that Agent Carter and the stuff at Isodyne."

So they plan to kersplode it, and wipe everything under the rug of "I'm a senator now, I don't care about old business."

Except Whitney is actually the brains behind Isodyne, because she's also super smart.  She wants to steal the zero matter.

Wilkes knows what's going on, so he also wants to steal the zero matter.

Zero matter is not something easy to steal.  It kind of kerspodes in a different way.

So now Whitney has this neat-o zero matter scar on her face.  That's bad for being a movie star!

Wilkes has issues too.  Here he is after Howard made him visible again.  See, he turned intangible and invisible and basically a ghost.  Adding more zero matter gives him some stability, and he was able to design a containment field so he doesn't fade away, but he's kind of fucked right now.

Let's go through the rest of the good guys.

Sousa.  West coast SSR director, crippled during the war, totally in love with Peggy, so much so that his fiance noticed, and so that's why he's not engaged anymore.  Whoops.  But he's not an ass, at least.

Jack Thompson.  East coast SSR director and technically Peggy's boss, but fuck that shit.  He's a coward and and an asshole, and can go fuck himself.

This is Angie.  She only appeared in the dancing dream flashback, as they didn't bring her back for season 2.  This was a bad decision, but I suspect I know why.

This was from The Atomic Job.  Sousa, Jarvis, Carter, and:  Rose Roberts, the "receptionist" and Dr. Aloysius Samberly, an actual scientist from the SSR (it's not just spies).  They are wonderful people, and balance out the sheer number of assholes in the rest of the cast.

Oh, and they parked on the other side of the building. Oops.

They basically have to do a bunch of difficult things, and no one has as much confidence of Peggy.

Except Howard, obvs, but Howard has the confidence of the asshole. 

Bad guys.

This is Dottie Underwood getting clocked by a bag of silver dollars.  Dottie is a Russian spy who did the same program as Black Widow (movie Scarlett Johanssen).  So, super spy.  Also a psychopath, but that's how it goes.  She was the villain in season 1.

Jarvis took her to a campaign party for Chadwick this season.  It was a solid plan.

Oh, I'm putting this link here instead, because of Peggy's face in the fourth panel.

So yeah, the plan goes bad, Dottie gets captured by the bad guys even though she is a bad guy, but she was a bad guy working for the good guys, and they had to go rescue her.  That rescue isn't the best (see above re: Ana), and she kills a cop to escape, so she's on the loose now too.  Whoops.

Vernon Masters.  I have never seen Kurtwood Smith in a role where I didn't think he needed punched in the face.  He just plays jerks.  Guess what?  He's a jerk.  He's some FBI/military intelligence whatever, and is technically everyone's boss, I think.  Thompson toadies up to him because he sucks too. 

Vernon with Joseph Manfredi, mob boss, and ex-bf of Whitney Frost.  He's on Whitney's side no matter what.

Let's get back to Whitney's side, and see what she's doing with her husband and the secret Arena Club Council of Eight Mystery Team Campfile Club (No Girls Allowed) that is making him a senator.

"Harrumph!  We run the world the way rich old white people like!  Oppressively!"

Oh no, Whitney!  What horrible zero matter powers are you using to murder your husband with?

And this guy, I think possibly because you just decided "fuck that guy too!"

 Yeah, so now Whitney can horribly murder people due to (I think it's Thompson here with the line) "magical space goo."

But it shows up on her face.  Joey Mobster doesn't care.

"We really just don't want to get murdered, is what we're saying."

To finish up the recap, Whitney got Masters to re-steal the nuclear stuff Peggy stole in the Atomic Job, and used it to blow up a new hole full of zero matter.  Stark emailed plans for a gamma gun to stop zero matter, and they fixed the hole with that.  But, Wilkes (who may be uncontrollably evil now) absorbed all the zero matter, and now he's sick, and in the closing of this week's episode it looks like he uncontrollably exploded.   It's all very serious.

Very serious.

Tuesday: Donking butts, Peggy.

The original title was going to be something about how I can't get my mail anymore because my key doesn't work in the box.  But now I'm writing this in the middle of the two hours of Agent Carter, and just.  Donking butts, Peggy.  You have not had a damn plan work well this entire season.  It's good that we go into the show knowing that you take over SHIELD and run the place, and you have a daughter, and you grow up to be old, but seriously.

Here's an astronomy picture because I didn't take a picture of anything.

• Dan Sinker.
• Stan Lee.
• Analysts are stupid.  Analysts talking about bullshit "menu fatigue" is why Burger King has hot dogs now.  If Chipotle wants to improve things, they should do the sensible thing: add queso to the menu.
• Why.
• "howdoeshedothat.gif"

Monday: I don't know.

So here's a picture of the pig I accidentally trapped in a mine cart:

• Squirrel.
• More different squirrel.
• What are you doing, bird?  Even the other bird is asking, "WTF?"
• MORDAWWA.  I am looking forward to this.

Sunday: I wanted fish.

It was a bit dry, somehow.  Also, I don't understand how people can come here from Kansas, and not know how a restaurant works.  Do Kansas restaurants do things differently, where they read the entire menu to you before you order?  That seems to be the case.  Also: who goes to Nico's and orders pork chops?  Why?

And I think I sorted out hugin.  It's auto detecting the lens parameters, and I think it gets it wrong.  That leads it to trying to mosaic under the assumption that the field of view is giant.

• Animals vs Food.
• The 1950s vs Food.  Pineapple cheese.  WTF was wrong with people?
• Still not that big on Sanders, but Killer Mike is 100% right here.

Saturday: Sure, that'll work.

Sushi is always good.

Although I did end up sitting next to the most annoying couple ever.  She couldn't say anything not in a shout, he said everything in "stereotypical douchebag", and they both were pretty argumentative when ordering.  "Is that crispy on the outside?  I want it to be crispy!"  They were also "glob a bunch of wasabi in the soy sauce and make a giant mess" people.

Today's links are mostly me cleaning out old saved items in my RSS feeds.

• More good Batman stories.
• Excellent timing.
• She is the one.
• Miyazaki and art.

Oh, old TV shows are weird:

1. Wonder Woman's sister comes to visit, and somehow is riding in a car with a general.  The Nazis nearly cause a wreck to stop the car, and kidnap the general.  Later, at the Nazi hideout:  "Now, that girl will contact the authorities, and they'll send Wonder Woman, and we'll kidnap HER instead!  This plan cannot fail, because we are great at plans!  Wonder Woman will be here soon!  She may already be on her way!"  WW's Sister: "Hey, can you connect me to the War Department?  No?  Ok, huh, that sucks."  Nazis: "CANNOT FAIL!"
1. WW's Sister does the spinny transformation thing and gets kidnapped instead, and then I had to do laundry stuff, so I don't know exactly how she and WW beat up the Nazis.  I just think the idea that the Nazis were sitting around for hours and hours constantly going "SOON!"
2. Khan from Star Trek is a creepy pick-up-artist jerk.  "Why do you have your hair like that?  It's stupid and ugly and you're stupid and ugly!"
1. And what was his whole plan here?  Be a jerk on the Enterprise and...?  Why not just be all "it's been two centuries, we'd really just like to settle down somewhere nice and look at all this new technology and totally plan to take over after doing some research."
2. "I apologize."  The original Star Trek has just absolute garbage writing.

Friday: I spent a long time fighting statistics today only to come up with no good result.

Thing A and Thing B both seem to be true, but I couldn't get all my numbers to line up in a sufficiently convincing way for myself.

And then I drove home and heard part of "Left, Right, and Center" on NPR.  This usually makes me angry, often because Robert Sheer often comes across as a "this isn't totally perfect, so I'm going to be whiny about it" jerk.  I much prefer when they have different Left people on.  In any case, my complaint today was with festering pile of shit Rich Lowry.  After being a smarmy dick for a few minutes, he said something to the effect of "in any case, if Hilary Clinton is elected, and the Democrats retake the Senate, then a new Supreme Court justice can be nominated."  Wow.  Go fuck yourself, asshole.

And yes, I know that article is from four years ago.  I googled "Rich Lowry is an asshole," and then scanned the first page before saying, "oh, hey.  Wonkette.  That'll work."

Now I'm going to talk about grown up stuff like Minecraft again.

This is a good clock circuit.  It only takes up a 3x3 grid, and the delay can be set by changing the one repeater.  I doubt there's a more efficient solution.

"What the hell is this?" you ask?  It was supposed to be a murder machine, which would spawn pigs and sheep and shoot arrows at them.  However, the pigs and sheep spawn out the side of the dispenser, and the arrows go straight. 

• Japan.
• I would not have expected Young Justice to possibly come back.
• Luke Skywalker.
• Oddly unplanned, since Mark Hamill also did the voice of the cartoon Joker, but a good Batman story.  Ty Templeton is a good writer.

Thursday: I did remember my phone today, but didn't take any pictures.

And I also just finished reading the internet, because last night Minecraft updated on my tablet with most/all of the redstone circuit components, so I've been playing around with that in creative mode.  I seem to have sorted out clocks and how to use levers and comparators to control how things interact with the clock signal.  Next up is to use hoppers to autofeed furnaces.

I'm sure this probably isn't the most efficient method, but it at least allows me to test things out.  It seems like making anything useful is going to require a bunch of repeaters to ensure binary signals.  Also: I am bad at destroying the ground in creative mode.  See: all the stone blocks I've had to use to fill in holes.

• Agent Carter: brilliant and deadly spy.
• Help me, internet.
• Oh look.  DC's going to fuck everything up again because they have morons in control.

Wednesday: I left my damn phone at home today.

So I spent all day wondering where my phone was, remembering I left it at home, and then forgetting immediately so I could wonder where my phone was again.

"Damn it, snake!"

• It's unfortunate he's not going to win for Marnie.
• Today I discovered that UH has a map for all the plants on campus.  That answers my question about "what kind of trees are those outside my office?"
• Japanese mascots vs. doors.
• Three food links.
• This actually looks kind of good.  It's basically just a croquette sandwich.
• And today I remembered all the calzones from undergrad.  Then the place closed and I've missed calzones ever since.
• That made me remember having food from this place in grad school, and I started missing those too.
• This is disappointing.  PK has some stated claims, which you can just look at the FRED graphs and see that that isn't likely.  Those claims would be historically odd.  This also goes into the category of "it doesn't matter if you like somebody, if they say something stupid, you have to call them out on it."
• Real growth at 5.3 percent a year.
• Labor force participation rate back to 1999 level
• 3.8 percent unemployment.
• Art deco art is best art.
• Squirrel.

Tuesday: Did the thing.

This was not as good of a pastrami epi as usual, but it was also two hours later than when I usually stop in.

• I guess I have to link to this review of Agent Carter, since the avclub doesn't have one up yet.  They kind of piled on the bad things in the two hours, but they did kill a bunch of bad guys.  Well, the bad guys killed a lot of bad guys.  They're poorly organized.  I really hope Dottie ends up killing Jerkwood Smith.  She's a bad guy, I'm glad she got clocked in the back of the head with a bag of coins, it was a bad idea to break her out of prison, I still hope she does the right thing and kills that jerk.
• Although it seems like I should probably start watching Samantha Bee, as well.
• Dog.
• ObamaCare.
• Egyptian cat.
• I do this too.
• Marnie.

Monday: Presidents' Day.

I again did not feel super great today.

I attempted to fix it with ramen.

And I could only find two links.

• Facebook.
• Dog.

Sunday: Happy Birthday Day

Not me.  Julie.

I decided last week that I'd go do something today:

Museuming.

Here are the highlights of this trip.

This guy.

Those angels in front look really impatient.  "Can you hurry up and be divine faster?  We've got places to go!"

"Hey.  Hey.  Want a bird?"

"Look at this fucker, John.  GET THE FUCK UP YOU MOOCHER!"  "I think he's crippled, Peter."  "Fuck that.  YOU GET THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW!"

 Honestly, they are healing him magically, the one just has a really angry pose.  I'm not sure if it's actually Peter, though (it is John and Peter).

Foxes.

Ok, so this vase is slightly different than the one I saw in San Francisco.  But the dragon is similar.  I wonder if this is just some standard vase design that everyone made in Korea.

 Then I wasn't sure what to get to eat, because I kind of didn't feel good, and also because a bunch of places were probably going to be busy.  So I went home.

The rainbow looked better in real life.

 The end decision was to go to La Tour Cafe, but not the Aina Haina one, as that was probably going to be busy.

The Nimitz one was not busy.

• Birb.
• The second one, obviously.
• NSFW vampire sculpture.