Thursday: Solving things that take too much time to solve, but only when you don't see the super obvious bug.

Whoops.

What are you doing here, frog?  You're an invasive species!  Go home!

• This is a good use of a bad law.
• Why all the comics I like keep getting cancelled because the people in charge are dumb.
• Seriously, tumblr should just write all the stories now. 

Monday: What are you doing, Cloyster?

Apparently the answer is, "continuing to sit in that gym."

I had thought about checking it earlier, but completely forgot about it until going through to cull the day's catches.

Tomorrow I get to work from home, because they're refinishing floors, and that's going to block my office all day long.

• A good speech.
• Yes.
• Dog, no.
• The "dramatic child" tag pretty much sums up this Rowlet gif set.
• A good shirt.
• Supergirl.
• It was a good finale.  Technically Lena didn't murder-stab Mon-El's mom, but she did kind of science-stab her, so that's good.  Mon-El has to go away, which is good, because he's been kind of a distraction the whole season.  Superman returns, but is kind of useless, so who cares.  Cat knew all along, which we all assumed, but it's good to have her clearly state it.

Tuesday: I just don't know.

Today was supposed to be so good.  I mean, I got to sleep in.  Then, when I left, I had a tiny gecko friend on my car:

Tiny gecko friend, you should not be on my car! You could get hurt!

So I scooped him up with a piece of paper, but then he jumped onto my hand, and I panicked and flipped him off, but geckos are resilient, so he seemed ok.  Then I had to stomp around him while saying "boogie-boogie" to make him walk from behind my car to under the truck next to me, which is a safe place, because it's suspended and hasn't driven in years.

There may or may not have been a person who came into the parking garage while I was doing this.

And then I voted:

And I can post this because it's legal to do that in Hawaii.

I then had to go to the doctor, who told me "it's probably not a big deal," but not until after I had to go through the dual horrors of "eyedrops" and "having someone actually tap on your eyes with a thing made for tapping on eyes."  That is one of my biggest fears, and I hated every second of it.  Also: I probably should get new glasses, because they don't put gamma on eye charts.

Then I went to get lunch, and it was all fine:

Happy cute little frogs!

And yummy ramen!

And by the time I got home, everything fell apart and has been descending into chaos ever since.  I have no idea what's going to happen, because my default model of the world has "active racists" at like max 10%, and it now seems like the true number is something like 50%.  As far as I can tell, the end of civilization goes like this:

1. George Bush fails to win a second term in 1992 because he's not super popular, and a third party candidate eats up enough votes to knock him out.
2. This causes the Republican party to freak out, and decided they were cheated out of their rightful presidency, allowing lunatics to take over the party.
3. To the point where they attempt to impeach the usurper for having an affair, despite the fact that the Speaker of the House was actively having an affair, the Speaker who replaced him was having an affair, and the Speaker who replaced him molested students.  Children.  The guy being the morality police molested children.  Let that sink in for a moment.
4. Somehow this meant that Democrats had bad morals.
5. A bad president is then elected, largely due to the alleged "lack of difference" between the candidates.  He proceeds to ruin the economy, start a bunch of unpaid wars, and pass unneeded tax cuts for the wealthy.
6. Everyone loses a lot of money.
7. We elect Obama, and part of the country decides that despite common sense, he's going to try and destroy the country and kill them.  He instead makes it easier for people to get medical care.
8. That part of the country elects a useless Congress that opposes everything, on the principle that if nothing gets better, people will blame the President.
9. He gets elected again, and continues to not kill people or destroy the country.
10. People become increasingly terrified of an undistinguished "other," which eventually coalesces around "people who aren't white," who they feel are getting free things while they are being held back.
11. Gay people are allowed to exist, and after confirming that trans people do not spontaneously erupt into swarms of death bees, they are allowed to exist as well.
12. This sets the racists off even more, because they have to let people live without shame.  This cannot be allowed.
13. A terrible old man dies, but Congress refuses to let a perfectly qualified person replace him, because they can't stand the idea that gay people can exist.
14. Britain decides they'll try racism out as well, because why bother actually working on problems.
15. A sufficiently well distributed almost 50% of the country votes for a sexist moron who doesn't have any position other than "let the hate flow through you."
16. Because Hillary was cheated on?  Or was a lawyer?  Or had opinions?  I refuse to attempt to understand this level of sexism.

So now to speculate:

1. Nothing is done about climate change, and this is really the most major point, because at least we've doomed ourselves to die, so it's nice that there's punishment built in, even if the people who did this will probably die of natural causes first.
2. People decide it's perfectly ok to discriminate, and without a proper Supreme Court, there's nothing to stop this.
3. I am terrified of the number of people I follow on the internet that may not be alive because of this in the next 1/2/4/10 years.

And the worst part, is that nothing is going to get better for those racists anyway, because they reasons they're upset (gay people exist, black people are allowed to be president, women aren't property, jobs that once existed went away so the things those jobs once made can actually be affordable) aren't things that you can fix.

I'm torn about my trip to SFO later this month.  On the plus side, I get to see people I love, and be in a wonderfully diverse city.  On the negative side, I have to figure out some way to apologize for the hell world my generation and those before me are leaving to a wonderful little four year old.

There will be no more Pokemon links, because joy has fled, and only anguish awaits.

• So I got "Neutrois," which is fine, no problem, but I really had my heart set on "Taco".
• Fuck you, Glen Beck.  You were feeding those people lies to enrich yourself.
• I'm so sorry.
• This is why I've started trying to stand at a distance to people on elevators and things.  I know I might look scary, and I try to be as non-threatening as I can.  Do I sometimes make beep-boop sounds when I push elevator buttons?  Sometimes.  Usually only when I'm alone.
• I'm so sorry.
• So sorry.
• So very sorry.
• Fucking scum.
• Facts, but I guess that has never mattered anyway.
• Here are some dogs, because at least dogs are still wonderful.  I'm sorry, dogs.  We let you down, and you deserved better.  I mean, you've been with us since we started this civilization idea, and I know you'll stick with us to the end.

Tuesday: That damn bird was back.

"You don't even work here!"

Today's also the finale of Agents of Shield, and because I'm smart, I used my time zone powers to read spoilers on twitter.  Since my last complain-a-thon:

1. People did dumb things.
2. The space monster killed all of his human people.
3. Shakey mutant got space monster mind controlled by the space monster
4. The Murder Monster had a secret purpose to un-mind control shakey mutant.
5. But then he died.
6. And she's been all super whiny about everything.
7. The space monster kidnapped a science guy to science at things and make shitty knock-off Inhumans.
8. I couldn't figure out why I recognized the new science guy, but it turns out he's the whiny brother from the 2000s Mummy movies.
9. Blah blah space monster wants to bomb the world with a shitty knock-off Inhuman generating bomb.
10. Everyone continues to do dumb things.
11. Even the space monster.
12. Just so many dumb things.

But, in less than a half hour, Zappy the (sorry for using the same word over and over again but) Whiny Electro-Mutant is going to trap the space monster in a tiny space ship and they blow up together and die and fucking finally I hated both of them so very much.

In other news, far better TV show Agent Carter is still cancelled because people are dumb.

• I doubt this is really going to fix anything with the DC movies.
• There are so many things in this panel that don't make sense.
• Is that an electric chair?
• I'm pretty sure "plunger switch" isn't how electric chairs work.
• Why is Peggy kicking and punching with opposite sides?  That seems like a really painful twist.
• I feel like someone should be shouting "USE THE GUN AS A GUN!" at that one thug.
• Was Knifey McGee straddling her before being punched?
• Isn't getting kicked in the back of the head make it more likely that plunger switch guy will fall on the switch?
• I don't know how this lamp works.  Is there just a bulb hidden behind the panel?
• Things are getting better.  The important thing is ensuring that continues.
• Don't be a jerk, basically.
• I am curious about this alternate Sailor Moon world.
• Cat.

Wednesday: What are you doing, David Tennant?

I saw a commercial that had Peter Carlisle on it, and it listed him as "prosecuting attorney."  My thought?  "Wasn't he mayor?"

Yes he was.

But when I googled him, there's David Tennant, being all, "did you mean me?  I played a character with that name once."  No, David Tennant.  I did not.  Stop stealing the identities of real people.

• This is horrible.
• Paul Ryan is a lying bag of shit.
• Chansey.

Wednesday: It's clearly an off by one/histogram center edge problem, I just can't find it.

Danny's a Republican.

• I want one of those magic Coke machines at my work.
• Squirrels.
• Why?
• I hate brutalism, but this is just too wonderful of a joke.
• This worked for me earlier, but now it's broken.  It's a neat "poverty level by geography" thingy, but again, broken for me now.
• Really, I only watch like five channels.  CN, PBS, KIKU, some Comedy, some MSNBC.  If one of the ex-learning/educational channels would switch to "here are random hour long documentaries," I'd watch that too.  Some days, I just want to passively kind of learn something while doing other stuff.  The main problem isn't not having enough channels, it's that so many of the channels I get are filled with absolute shit.

My internet speed still sucks, and I should have written that DVR today, but I was lazy, so I went to complain on the online chat thing.

The word is "bullshit."

I mean, for fuck's sake, Oceanic Time Warner.  If you can't even come up with a list of censored words and do that correctly, how the fuck am I supposed to take anything you do seriously?  I see Hawaii Telcom is claiming they can do 7/1 for me.  If I'm only ever getting 3-5/1 from you, why shouldn't I at least try them?

Wednesday: Two days

What are you doing, cat? You're not a salad! You don't even have any leaves!

What are you doing, fox? You're not a plant! You don't even have any leaves!

What are you doing, snake? You're not a...um...Fuck you, snake!

I thought I could come up with a "jam" related joke there, but it didn't end up working.

• I found this list lacking.  Braeburn wasn't on it, and that's usually the one I try to get.
• I think I'm going to wait for the trade.  I'm also not a big fan of the Corinthian, but that's an unrelated issue.
• This is here because the image is currently broken, but I expect it'll be fixed by tomorrow.
• Knowing the full history of a problem is important.
• Inequality.
• This person is terrible.

Sunday: Doing nothing, then getting frustrated at algorithms

Because seriously, algorithm, you shouldn't be this fucking hard to get working.  I probably just need to not work on it when I'm sleepy.  Stupid algorithm.

I guess as long as it's wearing a seat belt.

• More details on how DC is falling apart.
• Ad #2.  What's wrong with the bunsen burner?
• So Australia voted.  Badly, it seems.
• UNACCEPTABLE!

Saturday: Last weekend before vacation

That probably means I should start packing, and cleaning up my apartment, and all that.  Instead, I went and got ramen:

Delicious, delicious ramen.

And then go get some groceries and make sure I have all the Hawaii stuff to bring to the mainland.

Plus I got to see this guy who decided to bring his dog to Safeway.

Then I totally wasted the entire rest of the day in a brilliant blast of doing nothing productive.  I did something satirical, but I'm not sure that totally counts.

• Is it just me, or does burning man seem like it's just there so a bunch of richer-than-average jerks can go not take showers in the desert?
• Interesting thing to think about.  Although it might seem like "horrible socialism" to confiscate money from the wealthy to support the unwanted and unutilized labor sector, without this, that sector (you know, "consumers") won't have the means to purchase the things that the wealthy are making.  Rand would suggest that the wealthy will just go someplace where they won't have to support the moochers, but I don't really think that many people are that sociopathic.
• I like Snorlax.  Look at that smile. :)
• Just kidding!

Monday: Things often seem more obvious in hindsight

Case for today: for a given range of wavelength, there are three closely spaced lines.  If the spectrograph resolution is insufficient to cleanly resolve these lines, they blur together into a single mass.  However, they must be comprised of symmetric Gaussians (or near-Gaussian) profiles.  Therefore, for each observed "mass," construct a symmetry calculation that is simply the sum of values to the left minus those to the right of the highest peak.  If this symmetry value (technically the absolute value of that for obvious reasons) is above a certain threshold (which I need to investigate more), declare this mass "woefully blended."  Next, use the presumably unblended portion (the one that has the less weight in the symmetry value), and subtract that off the mass.  Repeat.

Using this method, you should be able to strip off realizations of the inputs to the blend, which you can then fit more properly later.  As stated above, it relies on components being symmetric, and at least half clean.  Adding an analytic aspect to the subtracted model could fix this, although that starts to add a lot of extra complexity.  Still, it's a nice little algorithm that should be fairly easy to implement.

And then later in the day I drew a tiny picture of BMO in my notebook.

• Team Rocket.
• I also have word problems sometimes.  Very similar to this, I have to construct new words out of old to fill in for an existing word that has suddenly disappeared.
• What are you doing, hamster?
• What a jerk.
• I was looking at phones today due to unrelated things, and saw that this is going to be a thing soon.
• This is important, but I don't feel like explaining why.  Blah blah bubbles, blah blah corruption, blah blah poor central planning.

Saturday: I was going to have original pictures here, but

This is what it looks like in my neighborhood right now:

So I'm not going to be taking any pictures of the moon tonight.

Things I realized as part of this supermoon crap:

1. I already did it once.
2. I can use my astro 101 knowledge to point google sky directly where the moon would be, if the moon were visible through the rain clouds.
3. I bought a mini desk tripod for my camera to replace the one that got lost in the move.  I decided when I bought it that I was going to keep it with the camera at all times, since that's really the only thing it's useful for.  I've once again lost the damn thing, which suggests I need to clean up everything to prevent myself from buying another one.

I'm pretty sure the face on the obelisk is sad because it's thinking about how that musician is totally falling to his death in a few minutes.  Alternately, it could be sad because its top is lying in front of it.  Also, what's up with the sphinx statue being cut in half?  How did that happen?

What are you doing, Buffalo?  That trampoline isn't even set up correctly!

• Two points on this one.  1) Did you think that the average weight of the people in that picture would be pretty much exactly what it was?  2) My mom is only three years younger than Deen.  I'm pretty sure she knows that some things really aren't appropriate.  "[S]imply a product of her era," is shorthand for "doesn't feel she needs to live in the present."
• This is the best bedroom ever.  I need an Ice King on my wall.
• Hubert Robert drew the ruins picture above.  I guess he had some sort of fascination with painting shit all fucked up.

PUT YOUR FUCKING PHONE DOWN, ASSHOLE!

Seriously, I hope you die in a fiery car crash.

Reasons why you should die horribly, you stupid fuck:

1. Driving 12 miles an hour.  Twelve.  What the fucking fuck?
2. Why are you three car lengths behind the car in front of you at the stop light?
3. Oh, I see, it's because you're FUCKING TEXTING WHILE DRIVING YOUR CAR!
4. When I notice the yellow line on the right side of your left rear tire, I assume you're probably not trying to kill everyone in the world, so I give a little beep.  For realsies, I did a tiny single beep.
5. Five seconds pass.
6. YOU FUCKING STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING ROAD?  Does it seriously take five seconds for you to process that a horn has been sounded somewhere?
7. Yes, you very nearly scraped the fuck out of the side of that oncoming car.  Nice job, asshole.
8. I hate this light, because it's so damn long.
9. And now you turn right.  We were stopped at that light for more than a minute, with no traffic anywhere, and you decide (without signalling) that you really want to turn right.  YOU COULD HAVE DONE THAT WHEN WE FIRST GOT HERE!
10. Did you see me doing the game of charades in your rear view mirror? No, of course not, you were too busy dicking around on your phone.  Here's what I was miming:
1. Two hands together, with thumbs frantically wiggling: you doing shit on your damn phone.
2. My right hand doing an over-dramatic arc pointing down at the passenger seat: put your fucking phone down, asshole.
3. Hands back up again, this time holding an imaginary steering wheel that I'm turning back and forth: just fucking drive your stupid car.
4. Me, holding up just one finger: do one damn thing at a time, jackass.

Saturday: Driving all over town

I still didn't find everything I wanted.  I guess that means I need to go out tomorrow.  Maybe get ramen for lunch.

What are you doing, cow? Cars aren't beds, they're not even spelled the same!

Action angle!

That's it. Go home. Today was boring.

Daily to-do list for Roomba

1. Wake up at the wrong time, because fuck you, I don't remember what time it is.
2. Find a kleenex.
3. Shred kleenex all over the room.
4. Find phone charger cable.
5. Trace cable back to plug.
6. Pull plug under bed.
7. Find a sock.
8. Get the sock tangled up in brushes. 
9. Die in the middle of the room.

Tuesday: Delicious Ideas

I've been planning to do stromboli or calzones since Sunday.  I finally got around to doing something with those ingredients, and then totally forgot to take pictures of the making or the final slice.  Oops.  Here's the cooked version:

 Here's the "holy shit this actually came out of the pan easily without exploding all over" picture:

The ingredients by layer are:

• Bottom crust
• Ricotta
• Sliced and pan fried portabello mushrooms
• Wilted spinach
• Spicy salami
• Regular salami
• Pepperoni
• Provolone
• Top crust
• Sauce

Basically, I decided that I could just cram it all into a stuffed pizza, and call it good.  It was. Super good.

What are you doing stools? You're not cats, you don't even have fur!

• Incompetence.
• Not actually Clarence Thomas.
• Actually Tony Scalia.  This is such a fundamental misunderstanding of justice, I'm surprised even though it comes from this jackass.
• Again, fundamentally misunderstanding the problem.
• Interesting. Zbigniew Rybczynski has made a number of really great shorts, but I'd never heard this story before.

Saturday: I looked right at the paper towels and then didn't buy any

I did get fruit punch.  Not as good as I was hoping.  I guess some things don't always live up to expectations.

This sandwich was also in the "not as good as I hoped":

My plan was to try to make something similar to Zingerman's "Randolph’s Grand Début," which is basically a ham and swiss sandwich with extra cheese melted on the outside.  Logistically it's a bit tricky, plus I think I had the heat a bit too high.  I wanted the inside to be a bit more melty and the outside a bit less over toasted.  I'm wondering if they don't just make a regular sandwich first, and then add the outside cheese.  Maybe it would work better under a broiler instead?  In any case, it wasn't the greatest sandwich ever, but it was better than most.

What are you doing, cloud? You don't belong inside!

I almost bought Ho-Hos at the store today too.  Then I saw that they were $7 a box, and the Little Debbie version were $3.50.  Then I didn't buy either, because that's still more than I really wanted to spend.

"Damn it, can't a bear take a bath without the damn paparazzi?"

• Turkey sandwiches.  I wonder if the same research could one day be done on ham sandwiches.
• Africa/political theory/boring stuff.
• This has to be fake.  No one could be that dumb.
• Pillow blanket.
• People dressing up as a cartoon animal pretending to be that same cartoon animal.  This is why we have Japan.

Sunday: I did absolutely nothing today

Successfully, though, so at least the day had that going for it.

What are you doing, squirrel?

Cheer up, bear. I'm sure next week will have better internets.

• DC comics still sucks.
• I guess 7-11 is doing an election thing? Obama is winning in the self-selected sample of people who drink 7-11 coffee.  And now I want a purple slurpee.
• "We will never have the elite, smart people on our side."

Thursday: I don't have a political ad to make fun of today

And that seems to significantly decrease the amount of stuff I have to post.  Other than the obvious vacation stuff that I still haven't done anything with.  I'll have to do that this weekend, otherwise it's not going to get done anytime soon.

Because Beemo.

What are you doing, bear? That's not how to use a tent!

• Oh, I guess I have one more thing to make fun of Linda Lingle for: she stole that crappy television ad idea.  Or, more accurately, her horribly amateur pr people did.
• Apparently Italy has a problem with nepotism at universities.
• I'm kind of sad that I had to work during Crazy Hour at the RNC, but at least KYM has the important details organized for me.

Monday: Back to work

It's even worse with random jetlag.  That seems to mean that I wake up at 6am, fail at going back to sleep until 9, and then struggle to wake up.  The other side is that it's only 9:30, and I'm already super tired.  I'm also unsure that I'm going to get to my missing blog posts in a timely fashion.  I still haven't synced my photos off the camera, and that's the first step of the whole thing.

Science, and the wonders of geosynchronous orbits.

Pikachu used Aerial Ace! It's SUPER EFFECTIVE!

What are you doing dog? You don't even have an account at this bank!

• A map of physics from 1939.  I know that sentence doesn't make sense, but click through, it's pretty cool.
• "Lolly with a brolly" was the one that made me laugh first.
• Somewhat interesting political commentary.
• WTF, Britain? "Cajun Squirrel" flavored chips?