Friday: Inca cola doesn't taste like I was expecting

Also that restaurant is bad at restauranting.

Thursday: airports suck

Wednesday: The best thing to do before leaving on a trip.

Finding surprise bits of glass.  With your foot.  In a place that never stops bleeding.

The good news is that having proper insurance means I can drive miles to the hospital, get it glued shut, and go home after sitting around for three hours.  Why are people fighting against affordable health care for everyone?

• I guess there's a new burrito place.  I should try it out.
• I didn't notice this guy, but that's kind of cool.

Only two links because I'm tired and don't feel like finding more.

Tuesday: Best way to show something.

While eating lunch today, I saw Chris Hardwick tweet about St. Peter's Abbey in Salzburg.  I saw the image, and thought to myself, "I think I've been there."

It turns out I was right.

Cell phone pictures of photos in an album taken with a crappy camera.  With labels printed from and Apple 2e.

It's somewhat surprising how much better Hardwick's cell phone camera is compared to actual film.

But this was twenty years ago.

Also, sorry I stole the room key, Ramada Park Hotel.  I seem to recall we were in a hurry to continue to the next stop.

• That's why the movie made no sense.  You were supposed to watch the 26-episode tv series, and then play a video game on the Sega Saturn before watching it.  As it is, it looks like a senselessly dark and gritty sequel to a hilarious show.
• I don't think I'm going to vote for Keith Kaneshiro next time.
• I'm beginning to think Alameda is like 90% ice cream places.
• Unfortunately there are no issue details, but I really hope these are from a bunch of different ones.
• I downloaded my digital copies, but I don't want to read it digitally when I have a real copy somewhere in the mail.
• I did not know this.  Why wasn't this covered as part of US/World history?  This seems like a really important thing.
• Now I want an "Adventure Team" knock off toy.

Monday: Damn it, United, you don't need to send me two emails a day until my trip.

Especially since most of these emails follow the script, "Wouldn't X be nice?  You can buy X for $MONEY!  Click here to learn more!" with the added constraint that X was free two years ago.  Go fuck yourself, Jeff Smisek.

"Guys?  Did anyone bring anything other than a sword?"  "I brought a tiny boat with more skeletons!"  "Me too!"  "But, like, oars?  Or a map?  Seriously, doesn't anyone know where the hell we're going?"  "I bet we're going to stab people!"  "Yeah!"  "I brought Jormungandr!   Wait, that was probably a mistake, I think."  "I know who I'm stabbing!"

• I wasn't sure, but a google reverse image search pointed to the Prose Edda, so that answered some of the questions.
• Orangutan + Tigers.
• I count two "it's the Avengers," three "probably, because I'm interested in the characters," and two "sure, this is important Avenger build up stuff, but I'll wait to see if the reviews are any good first."  So one, maybe two movies a year look interesting.

Sunday: Well, that was a choice, I guess.

Earlier in the week, I saw this story on Consumerist, and it made me think of Chili's.  This combined with a random reference in a youtube video gave me the idea to see if their improvements really did much.  To start, a fun direct quote:

Bartender: I'm sorry, sir, but we're out of apple.

Guy: Ok.  I'll just have a regular martini, then.

My brain: That is not how an apple-tini works.

Let's have an appetizer:

White spinach queso.  The spinach is not white, the queso is, and it's also pretty short on spinach.  I was expecting a Mexican inspired spinach artichoke dip.  This was mainly just a sheet of cheese.  The edges were melty, so you could scoop with chips, but after that, it quickly just became a graveyard for chips.  It wasn't bad, but it was basically just cheese.  You can't fuck up cheese.  The pico and guac weren't terribly great, though.

 And a burger with this fancy "egg-wash":

Ok, it's clear they're trying to pull something like the Counter does next door.  This is certainly better presentation than their previous use of the plastic molded platforms (now used solely for the chips, it seems).  It's also not a terrible burger, either, but it tries too hard.  "Here, we put a bunch of bacon on it!  And some panko-breaded onion rings!  And real lettuce and tomatos!  We make our own pickles!  We have our own special sauce that totally isn't just the same thousand island everyone uses!"  Yes it is, Chili's.  No one likes thousand island, and why would you put that on a burger that also comes with bbq sauce?  That's just going to be a sloppy mess.  It was a sloppy mess anyway, even after scraping off that thousand island and the pickles.  It was cooked nicely, with a decent medium that had a lot of juice.  But the overall feeling is still, "we're trying too hard on this thing, so you don't notice that our menu is all over the place."

Plus they have a robot thing that annoying blinks things at you when you're trying to watch your phone.  You can't actually order from it, you can reorder drinks from the bar only, and it still kind of feels weird to check out at the table and just walk out without talking to anyone.  It's almost something useful, but isn't really.

• It's thirty-two seconds long.  It is worth clicking through to watch the movie.
• Yes, exactly.
• The last gif.

Saturday: I productively did nothing today.

But I did get pancakes.

And a pork chop.

• Poor little monkey doesn't understand lemons at all.
• I don't know why I pinned this comic this morning, but I don't have a third link otherwise.  Probably for the Jean Grey pun.

Especially so since I decided I didn't like the second link.

Friday: Which is worse, no pizza or bad pizza?

I felt like pizza for dinner.  A few weeks ago I went to the usual pizza place by work for a Friday pizza dinner to take home, and it was super crazy crowded, they were nearly out of all pizzas entirely, and all the new pizzas they were making were for take outs.  So I thought I'd give that other pizza place a second chance, a year+ since I last ate there.  I contemplated them also being out of pizza, leading to the title conundrum.  I settled on "no pizza" as always being worse, and went to see what I could get today.

This.

Tl;dr: it's still bad pizza, and they're still doing just about everything wrong.  This explains why they were not super crazy crowded, despite having a massive parking lot.

Here's why it's bad:

1. Note the mismatch.  They don't do the double slice strategy, so it's just a hodgepodge of what slices they have available.
2. One type that was available was "chicken ranch."  Go fuck yourself.
3. I'm not a fan of their sausage, but this is really not something I could claim was bad.  
4. Ditto with the fact that it was cold by the time I got home.  I chose to drive home with it, so that's not really their fault.
5. The fact that the crust was burnt is.  They've tried to switch to a double-bake method, but they're still using the warming rack.  So they bake the pizza fully, dehydrate it in the warming rack, and then burn the bottom crust with a second bake.  It's like they actively hate pizza.
6. Still more expensive than Bostons.
7. And I think I am going to blame them for the cold pizza.  When I did the last Friday pizza dinner from Bostons, I got home with warm pizza.  Not blazing hot, but warm and soft.  It helps that they have a much thicker crust.  This was in the eighth of an inch range, which is simply too thin.
8. Very little sauce.  Particularly on the cheese slice.  There was sauce at the point, and none by the time you got to the crust.  This is probably part of the reason the crust burnt: there's nothing else to warm up, so you just cook the crust more.

And earlier in the day, I took pictures of my Sunshine Buddy, because it was dancing.

Dance!

And from a different part of the full images, the sunshine through the trees:

Leaves!

• Tiny squirrel friend.
• Tired commuter coyote.
• Squirrel Girl.

And I know that the script is probably already written, and this is incredibly unlikely to ever happen anyway, BUT:  the Avengers Infinity War would be so much better if they had Squirrel Girl in it.  They probably can't let her just defeat Thanos off screen, but it'd be great to see her just solve some problem other heroes were going to do but couldn't because they were intercepted.  It looks like I'm not the only one thinking this, too.

Thursday: Bird

Little soggy bird
Hides under picnic table
Then back to the storm.

• Monte Cristos.
• This place closes early, but also has chicken and waffles.
• This one doesn't have a picture, and sounds like it might not be made correctly.
• This one looks really tasty.
• Bear.
• Robert Smith.
• David Cameron is now obviously a villain.

Wednesday: Blah.

I'm guessing some sort of dance team?  That's the most people I've seen up there since they got rid of the tennis court they used to have.

• This story is the first time something interesting has ever appeared in the twitter trends.  And wow.  I assumed The Simpsons would just continue to get incrementally shittier over the next five years.  Letting Harry Shearer leave should kill it.
• And I predicted Shearer would be the one to put an end to the show here, but only statistically.
• I honestly don't understand what these ads are saying, or why they should be purr-suasive.
• No regrets.
• Huh.  Ok then.  That works.
• I did not watch this trailer, nor do I plan to, as my only experience with Jem was watching her end credits while waiting for whatever cartoon I was interested in to start.  Because of that, I have her theme song burned into my brain.  Also, fuck everyone involved with it.

I watched that trailer.

It was even worse than I expected.

And what did they do to poor Mazikeen?  She did not appreciate it when that happened in the comics.

Tuesday: Meh

I misread this as I was scrolling past, and had to go back to figure out why Tiger Woods was executing a bullied boy.

• Ok, that was a stupid ending.  Still, the entire thing is saved by May's "I'm going to fake tell everyone to meet me in one place, and make sure the face-changing lady hears me.  Then, I'm going to never again not smile when her bad guy boyfriend shoots her like a bajillion times up close, thinking she's me."  That is the best scene ever.
• I liked her Wonder Woman book, but that article is pretty much nonsense.  Which is why I'm linking to a rebuttal instead.
• I haven't watched this trailer yet, because I put it into my watch later playlist.  But, "where he helps the LAPD find criminals that need punishing."  Yes.  Exactly.  Lucifer Morningstar, who willed the stars to burn, who waged war against the host of heaven, and who was cast into the darkness as punishment would certainly take the time and effort to help the police find criminals.  Because when you've done those things, the only thing left to do is to fight crime.  In one city.  Within the constraints of the established legal system.
• I can't wait to read this.
• That's cool.  I'm tempted to figure out how to make steam work on linux so I can play this.  I'll probably have to wait until I get a new laptop, though.  Symphony of the Night is still the best game ever.
• I don't care about Game of Thrones, and only keep the unwatched Harry Potter movies on my DVR out of a sense that I probably should eventually complete watching them, but this is pretty funny.
• Yeah.  There's nothing really useful in TPP, so I don't really understand why this is such a priority.  I can kind of understand a "preempt a similar pact organized by the Chinese," but I don't think that's likely to be an issue with this group of nations.  

Monday: I don't get it.

Sometime in the past week, my parking lot neighbor on the other side put his truck up on four jacks, so now the tires are only barely touching the ground.  I can come up with no reason that makes this make sense. 

• Ok.  I hate advertising, but this is actually well done.
• This was going to be a different link, but then the comments were all, "the Josie and the Pussycats movie sucked," and since that's so obviously false, I'm posting this link backing me up.
• Inequality is the fundamental issue, that if resolved, would by default solve many other issues.

Sunday: I've currently replaced every part of my Roomba except for the case and brain.

And then I had a burger.

• Cool, but why did Hiroshige's art take so long to leave copyright protection?
• Spider-Man.
• I needed a third link, so squirrel.

Saturday: Dear High School Girl Who Wants to Go to Europe to Play Soccer or Something,

I know you're interested in my support for your trans-continental sport endeavors.  I'm not adverse to that in any way.  However, when you're standing outside the doors of Safeway with a table, I know the general strategy of your plan: you want me to buy something, and you'll use that money to whatever wherever with your team of other people.  The thing I don't know is what you want me to buy.  See, I've had people try to sell me popcorn here before.  Fucking popcorn.  Who eats that?  So you could save everyone a bunch of time here by just cutting to the chase.  "Brownies.  Seven dollars."  If you'd done that, we'd both get what we want.

Of course I bought the fucking brownies.  What do you think I am, some sort of...see, there's not even a word for someone who doesn't like brownies.  Because they don't exist.

This all happened after I had ramen, but I chose the title, so I had to put things out of order.

Also this happened:  I was behind a truck that stopped at the green dot.  I thought he was stopped for a pedestrian in the crosswalk.  Nope.  He was stopped for the red light at the next intersection, despite there being an entire section of road between him and the light.  An entire empty section of road.  I also labeled where the brownies were, to tie this all back together.

• So a) they didn't account for the fact that score values saturate at perfect, and b) they didn't account for Poissonian variations due to the fact that 45 is a small number (that's like 15% uncertainty).  I think they've failed their math evaluations.
• Well, that pretty much destroyed the LibDems.  I tried to see if I predicted that when they formed the coalition, but I didn't daily blog until after then.  So I only have the three times back to 2012 when I mentioned them never winning anything ever again, ever.
• Kittens.

Friday: I accomplished everything I wanted to this week, except for the giant annoying project.

Because that's giant and annoying.

Like this.

• McDonalds.
• Kitty.
• Squirrel Girl.

Thursday: It became surprise rainy this evening.

See?

• Agent Carter is coming back, and that is wonderful.
• Kate Leth discusses the new Harley Quinn costume and I agree completely.
• I...I have no clue what to say about this.  I do think I'm going to get ramen this weekend, because ramen is delicious.
• I was scrolling through the pictures thinking, "I don't really have much reason to visit."  Then I saw the matcha oreos.
• Well.  That's an unexpected good thing.
• When I clicked through, the set of channels I would actually watch totaled about $12.

Wednesday: I guess this is what I do now.

Windows.

• Adventure Time.
• Which is why the top marginal tax rate should tend toward 100%.
• I hope Cameron loses horribly.

Tuesday: Almost helpful.

Wait, so I can give you a better translation, Twitter, but there is no "WTF is wrong with you, Twitter, this is not in Estonian" button?

• There are so many things that make Agents of Shield a bad TV show.  I think at this point, there are two people who have not done something stupid.  Coulson and Sif, and Sif isn't even a regular on the show.
• This seems like the kind of thing that makes me even more sure that Apple products are crap.  Do you know what my phone calls me?  Nothing.  It's my tool, so I give it a phrase to recognize when I talk to it.
• Wow.  I am so surprised that someone from UKIP was caught saying something super racist.  I am stunned by this development.  It shakes my understanding of UKIP to their very foundations.  Wait...sorry, I'm just here looking at these shaking foundations, and noting that it's basically all racism.  Nevermind.
• Big piles of money anywhere are bad.
• This story is basically filled with horrible people and people making horrible decisions.  Read all the way for the "unexpected benefit" if you decided that today has just been too wonderful.

Monday: I'm glad everyone got the necessary noise variances to be assholes in the morning.

Group A with jackhammers.  Group B (possibly part of group A) with electric saws.  Group C with leaf blowers.  Fucking leaf blowers shouldn't even exist, as all they do is make noise and do a worse job than a broom.

Yes, fuzzy koala.  People loudly blow leaves all over the place, and do it when other people are trying to fucking sleep.

• I heard about this on twitter, but didn't think he actually used the proper Bacon Pancakes song.
• I am excited that this will soon arrive.
• I should go to the zoo.
• So when reality doesn't match what they claim, they ignore reality.

Sunday: Eh.

I spent a long time trying to figure out what I wanted for lunch today.  Like I do a lot of the time.  I did the "look at yelp," but no matter where I recentered the map, it always seemed to suggest "Crab Bucket."  Part of this likely has to do with the fact that it's pretty close to where I live.  Anyway, seafood sounded good, and it was rated pretty high.

The menu contains a helpful pointer on what different animals look like.

The main specialty seems to be whole, unpeeled animals cooked in various sauces.  They can be ordered by the pot or by the bag, which is just a plastic bag filled with sauce and food.  If that sounds super messy, you'd be right, especially since utensils are by request only.  They also have a large sink to wash up after eating.

I went with the less messy fried food route:

With corn to claim it was "healthy."

I wanted a variety of animals breaded and fried topping cajun fries, and that's what I got.  Two each of shrimp, oysters, calamari rings, scallops, and catfish strips.  Everything was pretty good, except for the oysters, which is entirely due to the fact that I do not seem to like oysters.  The bag of shrimp that the people a table over had smelled really good.  It might be worth the mess.

• These people are offended because Obama made fun of them for saying that him being president is an indicator of the end of the world?  Should he just have directly called them racist scum for suggesting that not having a white president is the end of the world?  If you're a fucking lunatic, you don't get the right to be offended for people calling you a fucking lunatic.
• Here's why this Suicide Squad movie is a horrible idea:
• Who the fuck is Slipknot?  I have never heard of him, and looking at his wikipedia page, I can see why.  He's a Firestorm villain.  Do you know who Firestorm is?  Neither does the rest of the world.  And I like Firestorm.
• Are you afraid of a guy named "Captain Boomerang"?  No, of course not, no one is.  Neither is the Flash, because his villains (including Boomer) had to form a collective to stand any chance.  Flash agrees to this because it's fun to let them think they can win, given that if he wanted to, he could just punch them infinity times a second until their faces explode.
• Enchantress has some cool backstory, but no one knows any of that, so she's just going to be "random magic lady."
• Katana is a fucking hero.  Why is she on the team of bad guys who do good guy stuff to be not in jail, maybe?
• Rick Flagg.  He is a military guy with a gun.  Plus, he has two g's in his name, so you know he's not a ggeneric military gguy with a ggun.
• Harley Quinn is only in this because people know her.
• Will Smith as Deadshot.  He also has a gun, and can shoot people really well.
• Hulk Killer Croc smash!
• I have also never heard of El Diablo.  So, to summarize:
• This movie has nine "main characters," only one of which is actually known to a non-zero segment of the population.  If this is as long as the new Avengers movie, each character gets about 15 minutes of development time.  The Avengers also had a lot of characters, but they've also had nearly a dozen other movies to handle exposition.  They also have a lot of characters that people could probably name before they started their movie series. 
• Bunnies.

Saturday: Near disaster, but it didn't mess up my plan for the day

I woke up this morning trying to figure out why my phone was freaking out.  It turns out that's what "ringing" is.  My boss was calling to have me shut down all of our processing because the home directory RAID had failed.  On both disks.  And the backup host had a failed disk.  So basically 75% of all the disks that are supposed to keep things safe failed in 24 hours.  Oops.  It looks like everything will be fine, but it may take the rest of the weekend to get it all sorted out again.

In any case, that just meant that my day started earlier than I had planned.  What was the plan for the day?

Free comic book day.

I drove out to Other Realms, and it was the standard FCBD experience.

There was a Harley Quinn.

There was a crying child who was very unhappy that he couldn't get something other than the free comic books and the other comics his mom was getting him.

There was a Batman/Nightwing team, with Bane tagging along.  You can see Red Hood with Tiny Robin in the background.

As I was leaving, I saw Batgirl rushing to get to the store.  I didn't want to interrupt her to take a picture.  So I got:

Because this is the only DC comic worth even considering a read.

It's also a flip-and-read-from-the-back with a Scooby Doo/Justice League team up book.  Because nothing about that isn't awesome.

I also got Boom's compilation.  I know those cartoons/webcomic/ancient properties.  Also, Lumberjanes is supposed to be really good.

 And since it's FCBD, that meant I had to pick up a bunch of trades, because that's the point of the whole thing.

An Adventure Time one, written by Danielle Corsetto.

Another AT one, starring Marceline, written by Kate Leth.

And I'm 99% sure that I own this, but when I was looking for it a few weeks ago, I couldn't find it.  In any case, this is by the people who made the best Batman ever.

Then, to complete comic book day, I went to see the new Avengers movie.

"Wait, does that say Koko Marina?"

Yeah.  It's over there on the right.

"Why is the airport on that map?"  It's kind of the easiest way to turn around on H-1.  You can zip through the departure level, and then get back on going the other direction.  It's one of the few symmetric sets of exits.

"Getting back to the original issue, why did you drive out to Koko Marina when there are piles of theaters before it?"  Eh.  I mostly wanted to drive more, and it also helped that Koko Marina had showings every half hour or so.  I also assumed it would have smaller crowds (that's also where I saw the second Silent Hill movie in a semi-private showing with just one other person).  The large number of showings didn't help as much as I thought, as I showed up slightly late for one showing, and the next was an hour later.  I went for the one that was still showing the trailers, meaning I missed the new Star Wars thing.  Whatever.

In any case, it's a pretty good movie, although it helps that I know who everyone is, know a lot of the back story from the comics, and had a reasonable idea of some of the end details.  That last part is why I wanted to see this opening weekend.  There have been so many spoilers for this movie that it was best to try to get in front of the biggest wave.  Marvel really shouldn't have made and released 99 clips, either.  Anyway, good movie, clearly "middle of the story" material, but it was a fun way to spend the afternoon.

Afterwards, I was hungry, but didn't really feel up to any of the restaurants there at the marina.  That Silent Hill link was in my head as I was driving out, and in the end, I decided not to chance the inconsistency of the Kona Brewing Company.  As I was driving back, I saw a place, and decided that a steak sounded kind of good.

You can guess which chain steak place I selected.

"Ick!"  No, not ick.  It fit nicely in the slot I had for it:  1) I haven't had a steak in a long time. 2) I don't really feel like going to a steak place where I'd feel under dressed in shorts.  I think that should be their new tagline.  "When you want steak, but don't really feel like putting on pants."

Plus, it's right on the ocean.  I watched some guys fishing next to the two trees in the center of the shot until that table was filled.

So what did I get?

French onion soup.  I like FOS, and the waitress really seemed to want me to order something, and I hadn't read any of the menu.  "Oh!  Soup!"  Thanks for giving me time to plan, soup.

Over dressed was the problem here.  It wasn't as good as the salads I get for lunch, but those are made by licensed saladier.

NY Strip with blue cheese, garlic mashed potatoes.  Cut a bit wonky so the left side was thinner and therefore more cooked.  The potatoes aren't very garlicky.  Still, this is not a bad steak.  Once past the bites on the far left, things were nicely pink and tender, and the juices and cheese mixed into a delicious sauce.  I was concerned it would be overly salty, but it avoided that.

And I added coconut shrimp.  Because I panicked, and they looked good on the menu, and I knew I was going to probably be taking part of the steak home anyway.  I've had better, but I ate all of them.  Partially because shrimp do not reheat well.  The sauce was just sugar and more sugar.  A sriracha would have been a better choice.

And this is what I ended with.  The pink bite from the middle was a nice crispy crusty bit, so I cut that off and ate it.  It would just get soggy at home, so I decided to just fix that up front.

After making a sandwich with a few slices of the steak and the leftover bread for late dinner tonight, I still have enough left over for dinner tomorrow.  Not bad.  Blue cheese isn't foie gras, but that's the kind of thing you either have to make yourself (with a better steak than I did that one time.  Like this steak today would work) or you have to put on pants.  Choices.

• Yeah, I pretty much agree with this review of the Avengers movie. 
• It's like they're just setting him up to fail so they can be mean.  Don't be mean, people.
• These are all so captionable.  Gorilla: "No, I don't think that's the best shot, man." "Shoo!  Fox!  Damn it, fox!  I'm hiding here!"
• I doubt it'll work.  Stupid people rarely admit that they're stupid.
• And just so it's clear, Dan Didio is a plague on everything he touches.
• Poverty.  

Friday: April only has 30 days.

Because it's a jerk, most likely.

Today I woke up randomly at 5am, checked the mail on my phone, and realized that it wasn't connected to wifi.  A quick check, and the computer that runs everything was crashed.  Reboot it, reset wifi stuff that I never figured out how to automate, and then back to bed.  Only to then discover that I still can't connect to that computer, because the DNS lookup is failing.  Check from my work computer.  Nope.  Try to log in to the web dashboard to see what's up.  That doesn't resolve either.

Since everything relies on the hostname and not the IP, this is a problem.  I found another service that I was able to set up quickly, but I didn't want to change everything.  Luckily, the problem with my regular one was just a config problem that was quick to be fixed when the guy (in Australia) woke up.

I should probably just buy a proper domain name, and pay for it for real.

• "How To Avoid Talking To People You Don't Want To Talk To"
• I mean, how does someone put this out and think, "Yep.  That's how things work.  Done."
• To be fair, Skitty is a cute motherfucker.
• It's good I looked it up, because I would have been disappointed tomorrow to find that the comic store I planned to go to for FCBD wasn't there anymore.  Also I need to think up some other trade to look for, as I got an email from Amazon today telling me that the one I was going to get I preordered and it's on the way.