Wednesday: Q190 😩

Today my roomba magically woke up, vacuumed everything, and then found its way back to the charger.  I had been convinced that it was angry about a kleenex caught in the wheel well, and so I had knocked it off the charger until I got around to fixing it.  Whatever.  Clean floors.

Garlic noodle recipe.

This kind of air filter.

• Holodeck time.
• Carbon contribution.

Salsa Doña

It's the end of the world, so why not order jalepenos and make spicy sauce?

Here's my recipe:

• Like half a pound of jalepenos?
• Handful of garlic.
• Olive oil.
• Salt.

Chop off the stems.

Slice them in half, removing as much rib and seeds as you want to temper the heat.

Throw them under the broiler for like ten minutes.  It's long enough that you don't want to stand in the kitchen waiting, but not enough time that you can really do anything else.

I decided I was done at this point.

You want the blisters, but I think how much beyond that is chef's choice.  These probably could have gone another five minutes or so without any trouble.

Dump all the peppers off the cookie sheet so you can use that for the garlic.  Then peel.

The best trick I've found is to do this in the sink, with the water running.  Pinch the blistered skin, and pull, using the water to prevent the hot peppers from burning your fingers, then use a quick rinse to get all the skin off.

Don't forget about the garlic!  I pulled it here, about halfway through peeling the jalepenos.

 Chuck it all in the blender, with a couple of glugs of oil, and salt to taste (probably 2tbs and 1tsp, respectively).

Blend.

 Blend.

Blend.

Check consistency, and maybe add some more oil if it's too thick.  Add some salt if it's not salty enough.  You know, regular things.

Plus this gives you cool two-tone layer effects as you blend some more.

Keep your last jelly jar, and run it through the dishwasher, assuming it's dishwasher safe.  Scoop it all into the jar and put in the fridge, because it's always better after it's sat for a bit.

Dishwasher safe enough!

Realize you just ordered groceries, knowing you were going to make this, and didn't order any tortilla chips.

Thursday: Productive work, and then my video game went off the rails.

Everything has been going fine in it.

Taking pretend selfies with the camera.

Helping Alkibiades get married.

Rescuing my ship captain's daughter, which made the spear all glowy.

Breaking the fourth wall when I again run into Alkibiades on a side quest.

But then the crazy lady who steals babies got away, and when I got back to Athens, it was full of plague.

And it turns out no matter how much you try, the game won't let you kill Kleon, asshole.  The corpses around show that fact.

Then they killed Phoibe.

Which sucks, because she's like ten.

 Who kills ten year olds?  This game, apparently.

Socrates at least has toned down his jerkery for this part of the game.  And Hippokrates couldn't even help.

That's a bummer.  At least it's a three-day weekend for me to try to get back to a happier place.

• This is incredible.
• Looking at this makes me wonder why all recipes aren't done in this format.  Making things accessible makes them easier for everyone.
• I looked this up when Alkibiades got married, but I guess I didn't have to worry about him disappearing.
• Japanese curry.

Tuesday: Car repair and working from home.

Bug fixes on the one thing, mostly a reminder to myself on the other thing, and a check that I only have one issue in the big work project.  All good.

Plus $630 worth of brake repair.  At least my brakes are 100% less squeaky-grindy, and I have to worry less about not stopping.

Plus free carwash!

I've needed a carwash for a while.  I guess when you drop that much money, you get a free one with the repair.

I also made kofta today, which is pretty easy, and just like a simple meatloaf.  Now to decide if I want to take it in my lunch tomorrow, or just do regular lunch stuff.

• I averaged this recipe and this recipe.
• I heard this song on the radio today.  Wow, is it super racist.
• I can only wish bad things for Boris.  Stupid fuck.
• A decent Batman story.

Saturday: I needed to go to Target today.

Well, not really needed.  I had a few things I wanted, and Target is always a fun place to visit.

Then Stardew.

Then I made dona:

It's garlicky and spicy.

I don't have a blender, so I thought about it, and realized that if this was made before like 1950, then it had to be made with something other than a blender.  The most obvious option was a mortar and pestle, which I conveniently have.  I probably could have made it smoother than I did, but I was lazy, and didn't want to bother.  It tastes good, and that's the important thing.

• This is the recipe I based things off of.
• I don't know why more grocery stores don't do this.

Tuesday: Another late day

I've mostly sorted out how to do the stuff we've been working on.  I'll proof things tomorrow, and if they're complete, I'll call it done and push it for review.

And I need to try to sort out the remaining issues.  I really want to merge the big ticket I've been working on for months.

I did not lie at all.  I reblogged something on tumblr.

• I want a cheese ball.  Or a grilled cheese.  Maybe I just want cheese in general.
• Christmas dragons.
• This api seems to work with my lightbulbs.  It doesn't seem to be great when the lights are off, but I mostly want to be able to turn them off.

Friday: Today I discovered that my next project at work is blocked by at least two other major issues.

So either I figure out how to solve them, or I wait for other people to get around to them.  I guess that's a problem for Monday me to solve.  This weekend me needs to figure out what to pack, figure out what I'll need for Texas, figure out how much of my food will still be good, and figure out how much other coding stuff I want to get done before then.

And then next week I spend one day doing work, then travel, then conference, then travel, then travel, then vacation.  Which, to be honest, is probably a series of increasingly elaborate cooking exercises.  I'm afraid if we allow three pies this year, next year we'll have four.

Also, I discovered that waking up for a doctor's appointment and then getting doughnuts and coffee means I spend a large chunk of the day coasting on caffeine power.  If I didn't hate the feeling so much, it'd probably increase my productivity.

I decided to spend my fake money on a new fake shirt for my fake person to wear while catching fake monsters.

• They fake game gave me a new metric to gamify exercise, so I configured it.  Apparently my walk to work plus my random walking around during the day is more than the default walk amount.
• This looks good, but I don't know where the nearest theater to show it would be.
• Early next year is good.
• Maybe this can be part of the cooking?

Monday: I have been doing stuff all day and I'm tired.

I finally got my code at work to yield pixel-equivalent results, so tomorrow I need to go add documentation and debug metadata.  Technically neither of those is part of the ticket, but if I'm in the code this deep, I'm going to add the metadata calculations that really should have been done long ago.

Then, just before I went home this evening, one of the grad students asked me a fairly detailed question about asteroid observations.  I would have thought someone else would be the expert in this, but I guess I do know 90% of how to identify things (cross match, filter, Hough transform, then magic to fit an orbit).  So I spent a big chunk of the evening writing some snek to do step one, and if I wasn't so tired, I could probably get up to step four.  It's a thing I was planning to write at some point anyway, just because the same data analysis is helpful for lots of things.

I finally made this garlic noodles, as well.  It's pretty close to the one in Alameda, although they thin it out a bit more than I did.  I think the actual answer is "I dumped too much spaghetti in the sauce because I was hungry and wanted to make lunch for tomorrow as well".  Still, good.  More garlic and more parmesan would make it better, but I probably hit the garlic threshold.

And I used the fake cheese, because that's what I was expecting.

• We should send all diplomatic communication like this.
• I don't think that's good for you, squirrel.
• This article is a bit weird for putting China Anne McClain at the top, and then not mentioning her anywhere in it.

Sunday: Today I spent a very unproductive day doing nothing.

I took a series of naps, though.  Naps are fun.  I probably should have vacuumed, but I did dishes instead.  It was cold and rainy out, and huddling on the couch under a blanket seemed the best use of the day.

And I made tonkatsu, so this week's lunches are going to be tonkatsu and katsu sandos.

Lesson for the future: an 8-pack of thin sliced pork tenderloin works with about 3/4c of flour, two eggs, and closer to 1c of panko than I used.  Putting the battered pork onto a cookie sheet while using another cookie sheet and the cooling rack for the finished ones is the best idea to make frying easy.

Now I want cookies.  I should eat my brownie bites first, though.

• That is pretty damning.
• Science and ancient texts.

Monday: the healthcare system is garbage.

I mean, I have insurance, but I'm supposed to call all the offices, and set up my own appointments with the regular doctor, and with any specialists, and then I need to call to organize prescriptions, and that likely involves passing tiny slips of paper around to people?

This is all stupid, everyone involved should be fired, and all companies associated with it should be nationalized.  Basically, it'd be like Kaiser, but instead of going in and proving you're a client, you'd go in, be alive, and then have everything sorted out with a minimum of hassle.

Yeah.  Sure, United.  I'm 100% positive this isn't going to be just another shitstorm.

• This was my ramen place, until they stopped serving the good ramen.
• These are good comics.
• I guess this is the Franklin BBQ recipe?
• 1.75 c ketchup
• .5c + 2 tbsp water
• .25c + 1 tbsp cider vinegar
• .25c + 1 tbsp white vinegar
• 2.25 tsp brown sugar
• 7.5 tsp worcestershire
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 1.5 tsp pepper
• Mix it all, make it hot to combine, is done.
• Not as elegant as "CREATE TABLE new LIKE old", but it works.

Saturday: A productive day.

I took out the trash, the recycling, and a bunch of moving boxes.  I got the laundry and dishes done last night, although I probably should have waited until today (since I bought a new hoodie).  I decided I was never going to find a night stand I liked, so I should just get one I didn't hate.  I did, and now I don't have to worry about rolling over onto a bunch of things in the night.  But perhaps the most important thing I did was this:

"Did you know they put mac and cheese in a breadbowl at Panera?"

I did not, until I watched last night's Minecraft video.  Ryan discovered this, and Michael immediately noted that that's what he always gets.  It's not quite as good as they built it up to be, but it's M&C in a bunch of bread.  I got a soup as well, so I could dip the bread when I was done.  Maybe I just needed a soupier M&C.

Then shopping, then trash and such, and finally, after taking an ill-advised nap because it meant dinner didn't happen until 10:

Pot roast.

Or, more specifically, "basically a stew."  The meat is good, I probably put too many veggies in it (a bunch of potatoes, half a bag of baby carrots I needed to use up, an onion, like a pound of mushrooms), I should have added more salt, it didn't really need gravy, but dumping the liquid down the drain seemed like a sin so I thickened it with a quick roux.  I have a lot of leftovers, so this is probably lunch for next week.

• I was reminded of the "firefox/clear you cookies" comic today.
• While I was putting together my new night stand, I looked out at the lanai, and thought about squirrels, and how to get squirrels to visit.  This page suggests good foods for them to enjoy.
• And Amazon conveniently sells that stuff.
• Would have been nice earlier, but it's good to see someone improving.
• Now I want korokke.
• And, wow, a recipe for koppe pan.

Saturday: I think this is my first day not leaving the house in forever.

It was actually kind of nice.  Wake up, go back to sleep for a lazy morning, think about getting up and making breakfast, go back to sleep some more, have a realization about the actual identity of the breakfast I was planning on having, read the internet for a bit, get up and clean the bathroom, get clean, answer the equivalent of the phone, do a quick tour of my apartment via phone, work on porting a FITS utility program I wrote ages ago to snek, discover that snek often has too much "not api" documentation, but that the api actually isn't totally stupid (I'm looking at you, CFITSIO), make lunch, make dinner, watch youtube, watch a show I've heard about until it got too cringey to continue, do a bit of work stuff to kick my tests for another day, fix the stupid bug that probably broke the tests yesterday, and I probably need to fill the dishwasher before I go to bed.

The revelation this morning was that the scrambled eggs + fried potatoes + pan sausage + sriracha dish from Julie is just just the insides of a breakfast burrito.  My plan was to use the sausage and sriracha to cover up my dislike of scrambled eggs, since I've always considered them gross.

That all changed today.  I've finally learned how to make scrambled eggs, and what has been wrong all this time.  I also cheated, so I'll include the cheats in my recipe:

1. Cut up about two-three inches of green onion greens into super fine shreds.
2. Beat two eggs with the green onions, then add a few splashes of soy sauce.
3. Heat up a the small nonstick pan on medium
4. Beat the eggs some more.
5. No, really, like beat the eggs a lot more than that.
6. Add a big chunk of butter to the pan, and immediately drop it to #2.
7. Once the butter is melted, set the timer for two minutes.
8. Add the eggs to the pan, swish it around, and then use the spatula to push the eggs to the opposite side.
9. Repeat until ~1:30 have passed, and the eggs have stopped having liquid bits.
10. Plate.

The other stuff just got fried up in the big nonstick pan.

And then I made burritos with all that stuff and some cheese, and they were delicious.  Plus I have a big container of sausage and potatoes in my fridge for tomorrow.  And, I now have a use for the remaining ~8 eggs in my fridge.  It's like a whole new world of food.

• This was the only blog post I could find referencing the recipe.  I wish I had cider and apple butter.  People at work suggest apple butter is totally a thing here, though, so I just need to wait a month or two.
• My base recipe for the eggs.  I should probably get mirin at some point so I can make proper tamagoyaki.
• Today's youtube has been adversely affected by this crappy concert and their stupid advertisements.  I don't care, and I doubly don't care, even when you overlay the ad for the entire length of the video.
• Aggretsuko.

Monday: That doesn't make sense.

I was able to get it to partially work, but the thing I've been avoiding at work while reading up on the code still isn't finished.  I can't figure out how it's doing a mapping, and I don't see any place that's defining the mappings it is getting right.

Tonight was also board game night, which I came out of with a pretty decent 50/50 split.  I could have won one of the games of Sabotage if I'd waited slightly longer to betray everyone else.

It's muggy and hot, but I should probably make this again once it gets cold.  I think some sort of pork would help flesh it out into more than just a side.

• This was my local grocery store.
• Yeah.
• So Baylor is just the absolute worst.
• Am I sufficiently not lazy to do the math for this?
• From this data, you can assume that this is reasonably described by a three-component mixture model (using Gaussians because I'm lazy and they're good enough).
• Feeding the individual values to my GMM code yields all modes with approximately sigma = 1, and means and mode fractions:
• F: m = (1.89, 6.74, 9.12); P = (0.04, 0.49, 0.46)
• M: m = (1.36, 6.28, 8.85); P = (0.23, 0.56, 0.21)
• The bias for males is then something like a half point.  It's smaller for the highest ranked mode, but that might just be because of the fact that the range and sampling is limited.

Sunday: Another lazy day.

I guess that's my weekend plan at the moment: be lazy and sleep in because I have to get up early during the week.  Ugh.

Eight years ago on Haleakala.

• This is what not keeping up with maintenance gets you.  Also the parking there was always impossible.
• I did spend part of the day looking up recipes, because I suspect some things I can only get here if I make them.
• Bulgogi.
• The yummy spicy pork belly.

Sunday: I legitimately didn't do anything today.

I did take two different naps, though.  Today just felt like a nap day.

• This looks like a decent recipe to reproduce the garlic noodles I always got at that place in Alameda.

Saturday: I'm pretty sure if I didn't have these blog posts, I'd forget what day it was.

Today was a two shower day.  Which suck.  Because it means you got up, got clean, then did something so horrible that the only solution was a second shower.

That something horrible was cleaning stuff, and I'm glad my only collecting vice is books.  You can get rid of books easily.  They're heavy, but they're also generally clean and not stacked under a thousand other things.

Maybe I should get a third bookcase when I get an apartment.  Hopefully the apartment I messaged about last night.  It has all my preferences, and is cheap.  I'm early in the game, so hopefully that's a good thing.  We'll see.

I always thought this grease stain in my old parking garage looked like a fat birb.

• Nnedi Okorafor's Wakandan Berbere Lamb.

Tuesday: Salad?

Yep, salad time.  I had a tasty salad in Long Beach, and wanted to see if I could reproduce it at home.  Ingredients:

• Pile of arugula.
• A pear
• A lemon
• Parmesan cheese
• Salt/pepper/olive oil/honey

Juice lemon, balance the sour with some honey, add a bit of salt and pepper, and then be absolutely astonished when the olive oil emulsifies into the mix without too much effort.  Slice pear in half, core, do thin slices, and then cut crosswise into bite size bits.  Shave off some Parmesan slices, and then dump everything into a plastic tub to shake around.  The results:

I may have added some prosciutto.

I needed to add a bit more honey to the dressing, as it was still a bit too acidic.  This worked better than the one I had in LB, mostly because I could add as much Parmesan as I wanted (surprise, it was lots).  The only problem with dinner salads is that I always end up hungry again before bed time.  I may have to solve this issue with ice cream, which may counteract the "healthy" aspect of the salad.

• Really? Fuck you, Virginia Republicans.
• Barack Obama pictures with his mom.
• I'm glad this episode of Dexter is finally available.  I've heard about it for years, but have never seen it.
• I was correct in this post.  Chespin is best, because Chespin is cutest. This is my Pokemon strategy.

Seven questions?

1) What Adventure Time character is your favorite and why? 

Ice King. Because he has Wizard Eyes. He also has the best backstory of anyone on the show.  

2) What's the perfect New Year's Eve dinner menu? 

Stromboli?  That's a bit silly, but it sounds good.  Plus it can be sliced up into appetizer size bits (or just made that way to start).  Crab cakes are also a good idea.  Basically, a lot of tiny small bites, instead of a proper meal.

3) If you could go back in time and change your major, what would you change it to? 

I don't know. Archaeology/Classics? That's kind of even less useful than astronomy. Even though I do a bunch of amateur economics, I'm not really sure I'd enjoy doing it full time (and hated the class in college).  However, I really enjoyed the classics classes I took.  It's a shame that MSU doesn't offer most of those anymore, but again, "even less useful than astronomy."

4) Who makes the best chili-cheese fries? 

These were pretty good.  I guess I don't usually get chili cheese fries that often.  

5) What's been your favorite book you've read this year? 

Bayesian Reasoning and Machine Learning.  Kind of a let down, I know, but there's a lot of really useful math in this book that I've been trying to get coded up.

6) What vacation spot would you want to visit in the U.S. in 2013? 

Kauai, probably. It's next on the list of Hawaiian islands that I haven't been to.  I think it's kind of a long weekend thing, whereas the other islands (Molokai, Lanai) seem like they're just day trip things.

7) cake or pie? recipe for your favorite.

Does cheesecake count?  I'm not totally sure this is my absolute favorite, but I have a picture of the recipe ready to go.  It's really super rich, so you have to cut the slices fairly small.

Look at this fucking taco:

Pan sear chicken thighs, remove from pan when browned.  Deglaze pan with water, and add the spice mix you've blatantly stolen from here.  For my own sanity:

• 2tsp onion powder
• 2tsp ground cumin (mine was hand ground, so it was chunkier)
• 1tsp garlic powder (mine needed some severe beatings until it was broken up enough to come out of the jar)
• 1tsp paprika (out of regular, used smoked, big improvement)
• 1tsp oregano
• 1tsp sugar
• .5tsp salt
• 1tsp-ish cayenne
• 1.5tsp-ish chili powder

While the pan deglazes and soaks up the spices, the chicken has cooled enough to slice against the grain into strips and bites.  They go back into the pan, and brought to a simmering braise.  Half covered or so to let some moisture escape, but not enough that it dries out.  This infuses the chicken with the sauce, creating optimum taco meat.

Take hot taco shells, add chicken, top with cheese (so it can melt), then salsa (it's a buffer), then thin strips of  tomato (just the outer shell, no seeds no ribs), and thumb sized pinches of the most tender part of the Manoa lettuce.  This keeps the hot stuff hot, and the cold stuff cool, and you don't have to worry about tiny shreds of terrible tasting lettuce warming up and soiling your meat.  Each bite was basically the perfect blend of flavors, although like always, a bit more cheese wouldn't have hurt.

Labor Day: Calzones are basically the same concept as Wellington

Ok, stick with me on this one.  Both use a pastry crust to encase deliciousness, and so when coming up with my plan to make a calzone, I kind of cheated and stole some hints from making Beef Wellington.

"That's stupid.  Like half of all food ever is 'put tasty things in dough.' Pierogis, wontons, bao, Cornish pasties."

Yes that's true, and Cornish pasties were the lunch of choice for miners as they could be eaten easily.  Therefore, calzones are the most appropriate food choice for Labor Day.  (Side note for Labor Day: I was unable to come up with a valid way for scientists to unionize due to the way the grant system works.  It basically makes everyone "self-employed" by requiring them to find their own funding sources.  Something of a conundrum.)

See, I totally had a plan with this.  It may not have been a good plan, but still.

Anyway, calzones:

1) Let dough rise.  I let the dishwasher dry cycle heat that comes up through the counter do the first half, and then used the heat from the oven vent for the second.

I'm lazy, so I bought WF dough.

 2) Make ricotta filling.  Tub of ricotta, an egg, a squeeze of garlic paste (or minced, but I had the paste), some basil, and some parmesan.  Mix and then put into the fridge to let the flavors meld.

 3) Show selection of ingredients used, but don't take pictures of intermediate steps.

 4) Divide dough into four pieces.

 5) Assemble!  From the bottom up: slice of prosciutto folded in half, sauteed mushrooms with a small thinly sliced onion (these two steps are the Wellington influenced.  I wanted to use the prosciutto to keep the bottom crust from getting soggy, and the mushrooms were there to add plausible healthiness), ricotta paste, Italian sausage crumbles (squeeze sausage from the casing, and then chop in the pan with a spatula), half slice of provolone, three nicely spicy salami slices.  Fold over, crimp the edges, and then cut some slices in the top to vent.  I put three into the freezer (since I'm not sure that the fridge would keep the dough suitably firm), and then cooked the fourth.

 6) This could probably be done with cookie sheets or pizza stones or whatever, but I decided to go with a different route.  After cooking the mushrooms and sausage, I put the cast iron pan back into the oven to get back up to temperature (I used 375), and then when the calzones were ready, I splashed some olive oil in the pan, and slid it in.  This lets the bottom get nice and crispy, and keeps everything in one place in case it leaks.

 7) Slice, eat, realize it's way too much food for one meal.  I think the other three are a bit smaller, but I may end up with more calzone than necessary.  I should get salad stuff, and then eat a salad and half of one of these instead.  I'm not saying I will do that, just that I should.  Also: dippable pizza sauce is required.

Pizza cat says so.

 And because internet, rice people in a curry bathtub:

Random thought: I just saw an ad for this movie "Looper."  The mob sends Bruce Willis back in time so that that guy who's popular now can kill him, but they're the same guy.  So assassin guy has to kill his future self, I guess.  Is the future mob run by idiots?  I'd assume that the mob has more than one assassin guy.  You know, just in case you need to have Assassin A killed, you call in Assassin B.  See, that's not even assuming time travel, why would you use different rules with time travel?  That's just stupid.

Pile of links:

• Hawaii pretty much never gets hit by hurricanes.
• Bunnies!
• I think I want caramel apple bread now.
• I also kind of want that Pallet Town travel ad.
• This was my thought when I saw the news stories about organic food as well.  I mean, a carrot is a carrot pretty much.  However, an organic carrot is less likely to have pesticides and crap on it.  I don't really see how this study says anything people shouldn't already realize.
• I will never tire of pictures of pandas falling down slides.  Why do we not have like a five hour movie: Pandas Vs. Slides.  I mean, they made that stupid Battleship movie, and that Aliens Vs. Cowboys movie was apparently kind of crappy.  P vs. S would be cheap to make, and would probably sell piles of tickets. To me. I'd buy piles of tickets.
• Dogs: Also not very good with gravity.