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.

Tuesday: I decided against publishing the other post I just wrote

It was good to write it and save it, but I think that's enough for now.

"Seriously? This is what you created from wolves like me?  You deserve to be eaten."

Gunter, if you hadn't stolen the wishing eye, he probably wouldn't have suspected you.

• Bananas? And bacon?
• This is a pretty accurate set of predictions.
• At what point do you think people will start to realize that some people never have ideas that work.
• I was happy to see after reading his list of works that I'd never bought anything he'd worked on.  Because he's an asshole.
• Oops.

Monday: Veteran's Day

Everyone needs more Totoro.

And bunnies.

And Adventures.

And...mushrooms?

Damn it, bear! Bring back my mushrooms!

• The translation I have is better (and more modern), and has fewer typos, but this was the version I found online.
• Bunnies.
• Hedgehogs live in the dessert?

I never realized that that meant "Mr. Crunch"

Croque-monsieur.

Anyway, I've realized that Thanksgiving is coming up again, so I need to put together a menu plan.  I think I'm going to take a different tactic this year, and drop the turkey.  I've done lots of turkeys, and they always come out tasty, but I'm bored with them now.  They also take lots of time to brine and prepare and all that.  So:

• Ham.  I haven't ever done a full ham before, so it'll be something new.
• Mac & Cheese.  I know it's not "traditional," but if I'm going to change things up, that's not a problem.
• Another starch?  Twice baked potatoes sound good.  A potato onion tart/gratin might be good too.
• Green bean casserole.  This covers a vegetable, but I kind of want another one.  Maybe this mushroom/onion dish?  I could also throw apples in with the ham, and use those to make a quick applesauce.
• Bread of some sort.  I want to have something to make tiny ham slider sandwich leftovers, so I guess I'll make rolls.
• My dessert ideas seem to involve apples, so I probably shouldn't use them in the dinner itself.  Option 1: use some puff pastry and apples to make tarts.  Option 2: make hot apple sauce/compote, and use it to top ice cream.  I live in the tropics, so ice cream isn't odd.

Let's use that as the starting point, and see if I come up with any other ideas.

Sunday: Eleven cups of ketchup

Cropped to remove all the people from the photo.

I went to lunch at Teddy's.  The people at the next table seemed to have some sort of bizarre compulsion to obtain ketchup.  There were three people.  They all sat down at the table.  Two got up, and returned with six cups of ketchup.  The third then got up, and returned with two more.  One of the first two then got back up and got three more.  As you can see, they also had to be sure to protect the ketchup from the surface of the table, a task napkins were designed for.

I have no clue what was up with this.  I can think of no situation in which three people would need that much ketchup.  Those cups are 1.25oz, and let's assume that the quarter ounce goes to the buffer (although some of those seem to be filled to the top).  That's 11oz of ketchup.  Compare that to a standard restaurant ketchup bottle at 14oz.  I have never seen three people finish off most of a bottle of ketchup in one sitting.

• Bunny!
• Health care finances!
• Puppy!
• Elephants that speak Korean!
• Different puppy!
• Pile of bunnies!
• Tea pot!
• LOL!
• I totally make up stories for people at the grocery store, based on what they have in their cart.

Saturday: I've been sitting here for ten minutes, and simply can't come up with a funny title today

Saturday means sushi:

Um...random cat picture that doesn't need to be an animated gif, but is anyway?

I want it to fall so badly so I can use my gravity tag.

• What is it with pizza place owners and being an absolute dick?  Your pizza is shitty anyway, dumbass.
• Scott Baio: also an absolute dick.
• I wonder if this means we'll actually get a responsible legislative branch this year.

Friday: I am the King of Friday Nights

You too can become Friday Royalty.  You just need to follow these easy steps:

1. Come home from work.
2. Eat dinner.
3. Fall asleep on the couch.
4. Wake up when your precariously balanced arm falls onto your keyboard.
5. Fall asleep on the couch. Again.  This step is essential.
6. Wake up when your precariously balanced arm falls asleep and forces you to wake up.
7. Make boring blog post.

This would be even funnier if it actually was an accident both times.

Turtles!

• Everyone watches Adventure Time, right?
• Animals dressed as the type of animal they are.
• Squirrel!
• Huh.  That's interesting.

Network Reconnect

Canned videos and games of solitaire were barely able to keep the forces of oblivion at bay.  LTE backup channels provided the bulk of the heavy defense in this situation, but waning battery life made it clear this would never match the standard level.

Resource scan shows that other than a backlog of vital communiques, no systematic damage has occurred.

Battle of November 8, 2012: resolved in a cease-fire.

Thursday: situation critical

Main internet supplies severed.  Restoration ETA unknown.
Reserve internet supplies dwindling, with data rates insufficient for continued existence.
Hope for reconnection soon.  Time running out.
Send spare bandwidth.

Wednesday: Back to work

Random caterpillar pancakes.  Probably made in a frying pan.  Totally random.  Totally unrelated to anything.

"You mean the party is on that other mountain?  WTF? I asked you two hours ago if you had the right address, and now you fucking tell me?  Next time, I've leaving your no-party-finding ass at home and getting a sherpa."

Well.  That's a brilliant idea.

Without this video, the owner of the car would have never known.

Hopefully last political image macro for a while.  Unless something is really funny.

Because now we live in a world where cats and dogs live together in harmony.  

• These people are fundamentally incompetent at their jobs.
• NO! PIKACHU! NO!
• It makes more sense if you read the caption first.  It's funny either way.
• He's come a long way from Pewter City.
• Pug Bantha.
• Canada looks so sad in that picture.  It's ok, Canada.  We still like you.
• "Pancake, You're so Pancake."
• BBC admin: fundamentally incompetent as well.
• See what the Bizarro universe Romney campaign transition pages would have looked like.  Note that if you apply in the Bizarro universe, you may need to make disclosures about your finances, likely involving your tax returns.

More thoughts

1. Tulsi Gabbard is someone everyone should start watching now.
2. I didn't know she was running against a homeless guy with no Republican support, so that loss isn't probably as bad as it looks.
3. Mitch McConnell is a fucking moron.
4. Barack Obama is even better than you think.  Just look.
5. I really hope Michelle Bachmann loses.
6. According to Fox, because Obama won, he now has to do whatever the Republicans in the House want.  I think they misunderstand what "winning" means.
7. At what point does the Republican party start shaping their message to appeal to more than just rural, white, male voters?
8. The Republicans are likely to continue to win the House (barring a significant shift), due to the fact that the current apportionment system is biased in favor of states with small populations.
9. The Democratic party is still a bunch of uncoordinated factions that is getting better at herding the cats together to get their broad goals done.  The Republicans do not seem to be moving towards this kind of cooperation, and I wonder how long the far right wing and the moderates that are effectively hostages can keep their factions together.
10. A lot of the legislative impasse can be ignored due to the fact that Obama is likely to be able to establish a liberal majority in the Supreme Court.
11. The current results suggest I chose the winner on 11/17 results.  It looks like the two constitutional amendments are going to fail because No+Blank is larger than Yes.

Sometimes you just need a nap.

Election Day: Wait, math actually works?

Four years ago, I posted this.  Turns out that's maybe illegal, so I won't do that again this year.

Eight years ago, I was seriously pissed that CO and VA had gone the wrong way and fucked over everything.

Twelve years ago, everything was basically a shitstorm, and then I had to go TA a class the next day at 8AM.  Which sucked.

This year:

I walked to my voting place around 12:30ish, immediately got my ballot and filled it out, fed it into the scanner machine, and was out in about five minutes.  If I didn't have to scribble to fill in a box with a ball point pen, it would have gone faster.  Unfortunately, I left so quickly that I forgot to get my "I Voted" sticker.

Since it's on the way, I picked up neighborhood sushi place sushi for lunch, and upon getting home, decided that it was about as expensive as kurukuru, but no where near as good.  I guess it's only for emergency sushi.

Let's do links so I can close this pile of tabs:

• I would vote for just about anyone who gave me a space travel slide rule.
• This is part of the reason I voted with the scribble-a-box paper ballot.  Paper trails are best for things like this.
• Those pikachu are terrifying.  And what's up with Misty's shoulders?
• These are the best cat names ever.  Just go look.
• Koala!
• Hungry bunny!

So here's how math works:

The 538 prediction.

The actual results.  Add FL and OH for Obama (as the other networks are doing), and that's 285 + 29 = 332.  That's the 20% "most-likely" result from the 538 prediction.

I think this basically proves that math is far more effective at deciding things than listening to pundits who probably have an ideology and bias.

Animals:

Dancing bear is glad of the results.

Squirrel!

Monday: Voting guide

Ok, time to break out the LWV candidate guide, and figure out who I'm voting for.

• President: Obama. Duh.
• US Senator: Lingle didn't respond, which would have pissed me off if I didn't already not like her. Hirono.
• US Representative: Hanabusa.  Charles Djou is a smug bastard.
• State Senator 11: Taniguchi.  His comments sound less like a request for volunteers.
• State Representative 24: Neither of them responded?  Crap.  Well, Sabey is apparently anti-gay marriage, so he can go fuck himself.  Belatti, apparently, although she needs to have a real webpage in the future, and not just a stupid facebook page.
• Hawaiian Affairs Hawaii: Incumbant, crazy eyes, sleepy eyes.  Incumbant, I guess. Lindsey.
• Hawaiian Affairs Kauai: That one guy's nicknamed Radar, but he has no statement.  Kagawa Fu?
• Hawaiian Affairs Molokai: Machado.  One candidate, easy choice.
• Hawaiian Affairs At Large: Apoliona.  If she can fight off this swarm of leis, she's good enough for another term.
• Hawaiian Affairs Maui: I don't care anymore. Kain.  He seems reasonable.  I assume people who do care will vote for the correct choice and everyone else will split equally.
• Mayor: Caldwell.  The rail project isn't perfect, but abandoning it would be stupid.
• Prosecutor: Kaneshiro seems to be more obvious pro-puppy, so since I otherwise don't care, he gets the vote.
• Councilmember V: Wow. Neither of those is useful.  I don't care who you're married to.  Give me some policy specifics.  I guess Hayes?  He actually lists issues on his webpage, and they seem reasonable.  I'm not particularly sure city council members actually have much power anyway.
• Councilmember VI: 16 candidates? If I ever meet you, Tulsi Gabbard, I'm going to complain that you resigning to run for Congress made me wade through a pile of lunatics who want your old job.  Ok, let's click on their webpages (candidates without webpages aren't real candidates).  You're out because of autoplaying videos, you have no actual comment on issues, you look crazy (and are, it seems)...  Yoshimura?  I guess that works.
• Dam Amendment: Yes.  When the opposition is "not only small people, but big people can benefit," that's not terribly strong.
• Retired Judge Amendment: Old judges are usually depicted as cranky jerks, but I'm not sure this is something that's really a big deal. Yes.
• Grant Amendment: Supports organizations previously funded through HUD. Yes.
• Fund Amendment: So we have funds now, but this would make possibly other new funds to fund things that need to be funded, but currently have no funding funds funded.  "According to the Council, adoption of this amendment would enhance the transparency of the City's finances."  This seems important. Yes.

Who else is glad that election time only comes once every four years?

Bookshelves.

Puppy.

Red pandas.  Nature's hilarious clowns.

• Insightful commentary on ebooks.  I like amazon, but I don't want to be locked into their drm and reader.  That's why I still buy regular books.  If they had some sort of clearinghouse where I could get ebook copies of things I have hard copies for, that would convince me to switch to ebooks.  Making me rebuy everything I already own at $10 each means I need to drop another $20k on books.  Books I already own.
• Even the robots are OCD now.
• If Clone Wars moves to Disney XD, I won't be able to see the last episodes, since I don't get that channel.  It seems like this isn't that great of a strategy outside of the cross promotional stuff.
• Crab lord.
• Squirrel!
• Grover and Cookie are my favorite monsters.  This makes them even better.

Sunday: 2-1-1-3-3

This week is going to be weird.  Monday is a regular day, but Tuesday is election day, and that's a holiday in Hawaii.  This is of course how it should be everywhere, because then everyone has a chance to go out and vote without having to worry about work.  Doesn't Australia do it this way?  Seems like the best way to improve voter turnout.  You know, if you're actually into the whole "democracy" thing.  I wonder if we get the day off so we can watch voter returns on the East coast before going out to vote.  According to this map, Indiana is going to be finishing first at 6pm EST, which is like...um...5 hours ahead, so that'll be 1pm my time.  Since Ohio is going to be the swing, that means that by 2:30ish my time, we should know who's going to win the thing.

This is just another reason that living in the middle of the Pacific is weird.

And then back to work on Wednesday for the rest of the week, until the weekend, which is a three-day-weekend, due to Veteran's day next Monday.  Huh.  Thanksgiving is the week after.  So, November is actually: 2-2-1-1-3-3-4-2-3-4-5, where red days are work days, and blue days are weekends and days off.

I will again blame this on living in the Pacific.  Yay, Pacific!

I think we can all agree that this is the greatest waffle-vention ever.

Bunnies!

Hug sloth!

Huggy kitty!

Basket of puppies!

Puff, puff. Jigglypuff.

• Things that make you liberal: "Slavish adherence to the ideals of liberal parents," "Unthinking rebellion against conservative parents."  Things that make you a conservative based on this page: "Doing what you're told when you're told by someone who's conservative, and fighting against these same people when they say something not conservative."  This is a far more proactive philosophy than I would have expected, and seems to by definition violate Wheaton's Law.
• I guess it's good to see that the NYTimes kept their editorial supporting over-reach of copyright law short.  Still, they're fundamentally wrong, and prove it in their statement that "and to make easier the kind of market segmentation by geography and price that Mr. Kirtsaeng’s resales subverted. With segmentation, book publishers can offer cheaper editions of their works in less-developed countries, without concern that those copies will be resold in the United States and unfairly undercut sales here." What part of this statement is based on the powers of Congress to "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;" and "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."  I see no mention in those clauses that the government should allow the use of copyright law to protect market segmentation that benefits a small number of publishers.
• I only use Red Pandas as my bookies.  Because if you can't pay, you can at least look at something super cute while they attempt to break your knees with their tiny cute paws.
• A kitty and a bunny.
• Clive Gardiner, Motor Manufacturing (1930).
• I was going to rant here about the concept of welfare, the availability of jobs, the conservative claim that welfare should be replaced with "giving to society," and their hatred of a WPA style government project that would achieve the conservative end goal via a government sponsored fiscal stimulus.  Let's just leave that proto-rant for personal extrapolation.  Everyone can figure out what I'd say. Let's not waste any more time.

Saturday: 1000 posts

At least according to the blogger post count.  I guess that's a good thing about posting everyday?  I thought about doing a "best of" post, but decided instead to just link to some of my favorite labels.

Here's a bunch of pictures:

"Mushroom!"

"Puppies!"

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu Fhtagn!

WTF, snake?

Yeah, you tell it, Velma.

Puppy vs. uneven ground.

Now I want mac and cheese.

Cats. Weak vs. gravity.

Pikachu used Quick Attack!

• Bunny!
• Ross Douthat: still an idiot.  Let's just do a quick list of how he's wrong: 1) government spending largely increased after 2009 due to safety net spending.  The alternative is to let people starve. 2) In what Bizarro world would Romney allow taxes to rise?  How would a Republican congress let him do that? 3) ACA should decrease health care spending.  Try to keep up with reality, Ross. 4) Larger government probably doesn't decrease private sector job growth.  Crowding out isn't real, either, especially with such a high unemployment rate. 5) Because we don't have the same demographics as the 1960s, we should abandon SS/Medicare/etc.? This isn't a Ponzi scheme, at least as long as things are properly funded (i.e., you don't cut taxes to zero). 6) Weaker economies of Europe are trapped by being tied to the Euro, denying them the ability to properly use debt. 7) Don't talk about contraception, Ross. You're never going to not look like a moron. 8) Because the Republicans in Congress won't be sane, we shouldn't vote for Obama?  You're a fucking moron, Ross Douthat.
• I read the linked article, and couldn't figure out WTF the author was talking about.  At what point did people stop trusting statistics?  It's fucking math.  You math it.  It maths data.  Math math math math.
• I was going to post this with yesterday's post, but forgot.  "I glubbed up!"

Friday: Tracked down serious bug, wrote cool program

It turns out that I wasn't doing my math wrong yesterday, I was just not adding correctly.  That somehow sounds worse.  In any case, I have a working two-class logistic regression program, which is kind of nice.  The multiclass and outlier tolerant versions are the next logical extensions, which shouldn't be that much harder.

"You know what? We're done now.  I'm a fucking bear, and I have some fucking dignity. Also: your  face."

More buildings need more buildings on top.

• Looks like the Red Cross needs to read a certain blog post.
• More things should be done via binary tree.
• This is a link to wikipedia's logistic regression page.  It is shit at explaining what's going on, so here's a picture that explains what it does far better.  The data is the two-class data, and the model is the best fitting probability curve that assigns new data to the two classes.
• 

Recovery

Let's assume a disaster strikes.  You have an incredibly efficient logistics team, who have access to large ships, air freight, and helicopters capable of dropping supplies into any location needed.

Assume you pack everything in a 20' shipping container.  This gives you 33.1 m^3 of volume, and a net load of 28,200kg.  What do we need to pack into this?

1. Water.  1 m^3 of water weighs 1000 kg, and contains 1000 liters.  Woo metric system.  ($6.20 / 12L)
2. Food. Let's go with MREs, and this page, so a case is 12 MRE/case, which weighs 20lbs and is 16"x11.5"x10".  Metricize, and we find that 12MRE = 9.07185 kg and 0.0301522 m^3. ($60/case)
3. Blankets. Let's get some of those space blankets.  A case of these contains 200, 0.2lb each, case size 17.5"x9"x10". ($1.35ea)  Let's do regular blankets too.  6"x6"x15", 3.6lb, $17.
4. Other supplies.  Let's say we want to reserve 25% of the container for medical supplies/generators/communication equipment/etc.

Ok, now solve.  One person needs about 2 liters of water a day under regular circumstances.  Let's bump this to 10L/day because you're rebuilding civilizationStaten Island.  One person also requires 3 meals a day, and should probably have one space blanket and two regular blankets.  Let's bump that to four regular blankets, and assume the excess represents extra clothing, etc.  This gives us the equations:

Usage = [W, M, S, B] = [10 * D * N, 3 * D * N, 1 * N, 4 * N] 

Weight (kg)  /unit   = [1        , 0.75599  , 0.090718, 1.6329]

Volume (m^3) /unit   = [0.001    , 0.0025127, 1.2905e-4,0.008849]

W = k1 * W_w + k2 * W_m + k3 * W_s + k4 * W_b

V = k1 * V_w + k2 * V_m + k3 * V_s + k4 * V_b

N_people = k4 / 4 = k3 => 4 * k3 = k4

         = k2 / (3D) = k1 / (10D) => k2 = (3/10) k1

W = D * N * (10 * W_w + 3 * W_m) + N * (W_s + 4 * W_b)

V = [...]

[12.267970 6.622318;0.017538 0.035525] * [N * D ; N]

Ok, I come up with plausible solutions:

N  D  Weight     Volume   W / Wc W / Wm   V / Vc V / Vm

58 30 21382.3622 32.5766 [1.0110 0.7582] [1.3122 0.9842]

60 29 21383.6069 32.6476 [1.0110 0.7583] [1.3151 0.9863]

62 28 21335.7796 32.6485 [1.0088 0.7566] [1.3151 0.9864]

64 27 21238.8805 32.5793 [1.0042 0.7532] [1.3124 0.9843]

65 27 21570.7380 33.0883 [1.0199 0.7649] [1.3329 0.9996]

67 26 21412.4990 32.9314 [1.0124 0.7593] [1.3265 0.9949]

69 25 21205.1882 32.7043 [1.0026 0.7520] [1.3174 0.9880]

72 24 21243.8591 32.8635 [1.0044 0.7533] [1.3238 0.9929]

75 23 21208.9221 32.9174 [1.0028 0.7521] [1.3260 0.9945]

Where Wc and Vc are the 75% critical limits, and Wm and Vm are the absolute container limits.

How much is this going to cost?  Let's take the maximal people solution.  This means we need:

75 * 23 * 10 L of water      @ $6.20 / 12 ea = $8912.5

75 * 23 * 3  MRE             @ $60 / 12 ea   = $25875

75           space blanket   @ $1.35 / 1 ea  = $101.25

75 * 4       regular blanket @ $17   / 1 ea  = $5100

1            shipping container @ $3000 / 1ea= $3000

============================================== $42988.75

So, for something in the $50000 range, you can support 75 people for three weeks.  Ok, so we can't solve all of Staten Island's problems with these, as supporting its population of 470467, you'll need 6300 containers, at a cost of about a third of a billion dollars.  Still, this seems like the kind of thing the government could just stockpile in a few places, put them on a train towards where it looks like disaster might be happening, and drop them into place as needed.  Having a dedicated recovery unit that is ready to go anywhere at anytime, the initial recovery impact is likely to be more dramatic, providing a more efficient (and PR popular) recovery.

Thursday: Dumb math mistakes

It was dumb, I need to fix it, it should work pretty soon.  I'm not going into details, because it's me forgetting how to solve systems of equations, and you're already bored with this paragraph.

Basically like this, but with math.

Pickle dog. Although not Pickle's dog.

Bear.

• These may not be real squirrels.
• Blackmail is not a political system.
• Did I mention that Mitt Romney is probably a lying shitbag?
• Skyentists.
• Who thought murder/domestic violence was a good ad campaign?
• Yeah, that's how my phone number works too.  I'm glad other people realize this fact.