Wednesday: I...I'm lost on conference land.

It didn't help that I spent like five hours playing board games this evening.

Put my rainbow sludge in the gym.

This is always what's here, in the board game room.

Board game quesadilla.  I should make chorizo quesadillas at home.

I tried very hard, but didn't come in last.  Taking all the "unique" blue bones for my dinosaur, and then converting them into a petrified halo was a saving grace.  My strategy of "one creepy long arm" wasn't as successful.

WTF, Arizona?

Oh yeah, also I learned a good amount about ML methods for deblending, and some interesting optics discussion about PSFs.  And I didn't break the git repo, so that's always good news.

• What the absolute fuck is wrong with these people?
• I finally switched my webserver over to https.  Yay, super secure crap password!
• There's a board game PAX now?

Saturday: In hindsight, my plan of "sleep later than expected and then still don't get out of bed" wasn't the best.

I mean, it did mean I got to see this really stupid ad for Coke on twitter.  You don't need Coke to make a banh mi delicious.  You just need to not put cilantro on it.

Eventually I decided on getting chicken.

It is very good chicken.

And I took these too-close shots of their pictures of the old Pali highway to maximize the camera distortion effects.

 I took the long way home, and saw a very nice full moon over the ocean in Waimanalo.

Here it is over Koko Head.

TldrL:

• Title:  The Shadow over Innsmouth
• Date:  1931
• Summary:  A guy goes to Innsmouth to explore, but Innsmouth is filled with half-human/half-sea monster people.  They try to kill him by not running the bus out of town, and then ambushing him in his hotel room, but he gets away from them and has a daring escape from town.  He calls the government, and they go in and kill/imprison the population and bomb the reef where the sea monsters live.  This would be a great place to stop the story, but instead, we learn that the guy has ancestors from Innsmouth, and he's actually turning into a half-human/half-sea monster person as well.  He plans to kill himself, but instead writes the last four paragraphs describing how he's going to go live with the sea monsters and it's just a really odd way to end the story.
• Real Villain:  Accidentally having sea monsters as ancestors.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  Yes.  I mean, not technically, but highlighting how you're going to go live with monsters is just so weird.
• Rating:  6/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Separator sentence to prevent the lists joining together.

• Pokemon.
• Spooky.
• Very spooky.
• Geographically specific food stuff.
• I wish more places had rye buns for burgers.  I still miss their mushroom burger.
• I was thinking about sandwiches, and couldn't remember the name of the best sandwich ever.  It's the "Jon & Amy's Double Dip", and this is what it looks like.
• But they don't sell it any more.  I can't understand why this would happen.
• And it's not just me, either.  This guy ate every sandwich there, and named it one of his top four.
• This isn't a link, because I hate closed the tab and don't feel like finding it again.  That contest mentioned in the last one? J&ADD didn't even rank.  What the absolute fuck is wrong with people?
• Everything else.
• I really like these subway stations.
• Doggo.
• I am glad that some things are getting better.
• Panda bread.

Sunday: Sadness and disappointment

Monday I failed at getting a patty melt.  I tried again today.  This was a mistake.

Wailana Coffee House looks like it probably did thirty years ago.  There's definitely a diner feel to it.

Ok, it's on proper rye bread, and that's a ton of fries.  They were super fresh, and were right out of the fryer.

Wait, what's that?

Here's all the things wrong with this patty melt:

1. No swiss, and instead of american, they used cheddar.  That's too harsh of a cheese.
2. Raw onion bits.  "Hot dog onions" in the onion classification I use in my head.  Not that I put them on hot dogs, because that's stupid.  You don't eat raw onions.  The onions in a patty melt should be soft and sweet, not harsh and noxious.
3. Really crappy meat.  I asked for medium, and that's basically what this is, but it was mushy.  It got to the point at the end (which I didn't finish), that the burger just felt like a wet sponge.  That's gross.

So basically, this is a complete mess, with the only good thing being the rye with caraway seeds.  Unfortunately, that anise-y edge is completely knocked out by the onions and the cheese.  This was awful, and is definitely stricken from the list of places that exist and should be visited.

Wednesday's a holiday, so maybe I'll just make my own patty melt.  Correctly.  Like it should be.

• Psyduck.
• Lavender.
• It is probably risky to be friends with a lion.
• Basically, some people should probably be afraid of roving mobs coming to burn their house down and kill them in the street.  That they don't is disappointing.

Sunday: Disaster in Burgertopia!

I had planned on cooking stuff I bought yesterday for dinner tonight, but then decided that I probably didn't buy enough scallops to do that, so I'll cook all of them tomorrow for dinner, but that left dinner today undecided.

Or lunch, since it's the weekend, and I tend to move to "one big afternoon meal" on weekends.  I thought maybe a burger would be nice, and since I wanted to get a few groceries, maybe Burgers on the Edge would work.

Except that they've closed.

Exactly.

That meant that I had to choose a different burger place, and made my foie gras craving jump up to infinity.  This led to the conclusion that I can buy my own foie gras, and so now I think I know what I'm making for myself later this week.

Also, did you know you could cheese tots now?  These were a bit overcooked, but still not warm enough, but I think this gets the cheese/not cheese ratio better than the fry option.

After eating, I discovered an interesting fact: Kilauea Fire Sauce + mint gum = cumin flavor.  Odd.

•  Ron Paul and his followers.
• 
• Steven Chu is apparently the coolest energy secretary ever.
• The story of Shylock Fox and Cassandra Cat.
• The post office actually isn't that bad.
• Google reader is all fucked up tonight.
• Everyone remembers that Orson Scott Card is a jackass, right?  If not, here's a funny reminder.

Tuesday: more tacos

Om nom nom.  I still can't figure out what my salsa is missing that makes it not as good as store salsa.  Had I remembered to look up the recipe, I probably would have made Julie's, since it is jello-winning.  I even looked at the tomatillos when I was buying ingredients.

Here's the best picture I could find from a google search of "taco bear:"

Apparently you can buy them.

The other important food related thing is that I've once again remembered that this:

once existed.  Conveniently, it's apparently easy to make today (sweetened koolaid lemonade + unsweetened koolaid grape), so I know what I'm doing this weekend.  The recipe makes a gallon though, and I don't think I have any container that big.  If I believe that packet weight above, I'm going to need to mix the two packets together and measure out ~0.2 ounces to make a single batch.  I'm pretty sure my kitchen scale isn't that precise.