Rats! In My Brain!

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

PJ & AJ will recall that interesting night two years ago when we all got to try durian. I’m playing with my new pro account on Flickr, and so decided to upload a short video to try out that feature. I thought, “Why not show people what an incredible fatass I am?” and so decided to upload this video.

Enjoy.

I’m really disturbed by the quality of some of the spam I’ve been receiving lately. Not just using my username, but actually addressing me by name and specifically offering me jobs in the fields I’ve applied for. Really, REALLY disturbing. I’m more convinced than ever that every single résumé I’ve sent to people on Craigslist went instead to spammers. I’m going to close my email account soon and create a new one and not use it for ANYthing. That’ll show the spammers, eh?

Actually, what I need is an email account I can set up with a proper whitelist. Since I use email so infrequently it shouldn’t be much trouble. I just need a more professional-sounding domain than ratsinmybrain.com, y’dig? Got any suggestions?

I made this for dinner tonight after buying some chicken breasts on the cheap at my least favourite grocery in the world, Kroger. It’s easy and pretty fast.

Chicken & Artichokes
Source: Cuisine At Home, issue 38, April 2003

Ingredients:

.25c Olive Oil
.25c Lemon Juice (bottled or fresh)
2T Honey
2t Garlic, finely minced or pressed
1t Dried Thyme (or 2t fresh)
.25t Salt
.25t Red Pepper Flakes (optional)
4 boneless, skinless Chicken Breasts
1 13.25oz can Artichoke Hearts, drained and halved (or 1 package of thawed Artichoke Heart halves, thawed)
1 Lemon, thinly sliced
1 package Orzo, cooked according to the manufacturer’s directions

1. Combine the first seven ingredients in a small bowl, whisking well to combine; set aside.
2. Heat 2T of olive oil in a large skillet.
3. Season chicken well with salt and pepper, then cook in hot skillet, about 5 minutes per side on high heat.
4. Reduce the heat to medium and cover; cook an additional five minutes.
5. Add the artichoke halves and the olive oil mixture.
6. Cook an additional three to five minutes; cook until the liquid has reduced one-third.
7. Top with sliced lemon; return to high heat; cook until sauce has thickened.
7. Serve over cooked orzo.

Suggestions: Slice a small yellow or white onion into moons and sweat it in some butter. Add the onions to the chicken during step 4. Also, I would definitely use fresh thyme if I had it handy. Dried thyme doesn’t have quite the same flavour profile as fresh. If using fresh, double the amount. Dried herbs pack more leaves into a teaspoon than fresh.

This video is about an hour long but is the most interesting thing I’ve seen in a while. You may have heard of Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. His message can be boiled down to this: Eat food. Not too much; mostly plants. The things he says in this address resonate with me. I’ve been thinking a lot about my diet and how and when and what I eat. I’ve resolved to try to buy ingredients when I go to the store, and not loads of processed shite. Pollan discusses this and has a fairly simple rule for shopping: stick to the perimeter of the store. That’s where all the perishable goods are, and these are what we need to eat more of. He also says to eat only foods your great-grandmother would recognise as food. Anything else is probably an “edible food-like substance”. Chuckle and grin but he’s RIGHT. He seems to be an advocate of the local food movement, as well as organics. I’m not convinced these are anything other than fads. I’ve yet to see any real science to suggest that organic food is easier on the environment or more nutritious, but then I don’t really keep up with these things. I wouldn’t care much anyway, because I buy food that tastes good. Local food is fine when we’re talking about produce, but I don’t care if my meat is local. I can’t get excited about it.

This was a worthwhile investment of my time. I’m going to have to track down the books - there are yearlong wait lists at the libraries here so I might have to buckle and buy them. Meanwhile, enjoy the video. It’s entertaining and really very interesting. It’s also behind the cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re thinking of driving east again this year. It’s not really idea right now, since I’m not working, but perversely that’s also a good reason to go now. No commitments, no deadline to get back, no pressure. I like that. What’s not to like, you ask? Well, the price of gas, for one. Just doing some quick estimation, based on a travel distance of roughly 2,200 miles I reckon it’s going to be about $330 each way for gas. That’s based on $3.50/gallon gas. Pain? No friends, this is DEEP HURTING. I could mortgage a kidney, or start dealing in illicit substances (hey little boy, want to buy some SUGARY SODA???).

I’m going to put the squeeze on my folks and see if they’ll part with the cash to get us out there. If all else fails I can go sit on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign and a cup and beg for donations while raving about the impending duckpocalypse.

Demonoid lives once more! Woohoo!

Goodnight

I almost forgot! It’s John Templin’s birthday today! Happy birthday, John!

Dammit, Davies! Can’t you at least TRY to take the show seriously? I tell you, the sooner he’s gone the better. He was fine at the start but his stories have been progressively more and more stupid as time goes on. If he wants to produce, fine, but he should leave the writing to people who actually CARE about the characters. As it is it’s like watching a kid playing with his toys.

I honestly don’t know if I want to carry on watching this season.

So I’ve been ripping all my CDs. There’s a reason for that, apart from my garden variety insanity. I’ve set up a Wordpress blog called Year41. I’m going to be listening to all my CDs and posting about them there. It’s my goal to listen to every CD in my collection (apart from Grace’s stuff, most of which is unlistenable as far as I’m concerned, which is what she thinks of MY music, so we’re even!) in this, my 41st year on the planet. I’ve got CDs in there I’ve had for more than ten years which I’ve listened to once or twice - or NEVER. I’m gonna rectify that this year. And since I’m going to be posting anyway, I’m putting Amazon affiliate links to the albums. That’s the last I’m going to mention it. I HATE people who shove those affiliate links down your throat.

Anyway, you can find the blog at Year41. I’m no music writer, but maybe that’ll change by next April.

I ran up to Best Buy to get a new fan for my PC and on the way back I stopped at the grocery. Ralph’s is having a sale on Coke, buy two 2 liters and get three free. With CRV that works out to roughly .93 per bottle. Considering it’s been $1.50 a bottle for the last month, that’s a bargain. They’re still overcharging me by about .80, but we take our victories where we may. REGARDLESS!

At this particular store they’re doing some construction, and the exit of the aisle I parked in was blocked. So I’m backing out when I hear a nasty crunch. I’d seen the car, but it looked like there was plenty of room. Turns out all I did was brush the bumper. The crunch was from a discarded soda can. Sheesh! I saw there was an elderly man in the car, so I figured I’d better check he was OK. He was, at least as far as the “wreck” was concerned, but his mind was absent. He got out and looked at the damage, but didn’t see anything. I asked who he was waiting for and he said his daughter was in the store. We figured it might be a good idea for her to look at the car. She was, he said, due any minute now. I don’t think he really understood. The security guard came out to check on us. I explained what had happened and he went to page the daughter. We stood there for a good forty minutes waiting for her. I think he’d given us the wrong name, or perhaps I’d misunderstood. She was grateful that I’d waited with him, and I told her it had seemed the right thing to do. Truth to tell I was tired of waiting for her and might have left if she’d taken much longer. I made sure they had my insurance and phone number and told them to call if they needed to.

And now I’m home, two hours later. What should have been a quick trip to the store took two hours. *sigh* Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.

A few years ago (like ten, I guess) Everclear released the song “Santa Monica” (mp3 link). Then in 2001 some islamists flew some airplanes into the WTC and Pentagon. And America went insane. Suddenly we were walking on eggshells. We couldn’t say what we were thinking anymore because it might be “inappropriate”. We couldn’t have a film like “The Two Towers” because it was INSENSITIVE! And America’s illegal media monopolists, Clear Channel, decided it had better make up a list of songs “inappropriate” for broadcast on its network (which, for the record, is something like 60% of all radio stations in the US). These guys get to decide what people hear.

And so stuck in amongst those dangerous, inappropriate songs such as Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World” and that paen to terrorism, “Walk Like An Egyptian” was Everclear. Click the link above for the song. The lyrics are reproduced below for your amusement. See if you can spot the hidden terrorist subtext.

I am still living with your ghost
Lonely and dreaming of the west coast
I don’t want to be your downtime
I don’t want to be your stupid game

With my big black boots and an old suitcase
I do believe I’ll find myself a new place
I don’t want to be the bad guy
I don’t want to do your sleepwalk dance anymore
I just want to see some palm trees
Go and try to shake away this disease

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die

I am still dreaming of your face
Hungry and hollow for all the things you took away

I don’t want to be your good time
I don’t want to be your fall-back crutch anymore

I’ll walk right out into a brand new day
Insane and rising in my own weird way
I don’t want to be the bad guy

I don’t want to do your sleepwalk dance anymore
I just want to feel some sunshine
I just want to find some place to be alone

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
And watch the world die

For the last month I’ve been working on ripping and encoding my CDs. I’ve been posting about it on my LiveJournal but for whatever reason I’ve left you good folks alone until now. No more! Muaaaahahaha… Meh. Anyway, last night I finished ripping the last of the “E”s, and set iTunes-LAME to encode the tracks while I slept. Here are the stats for A through E, as if you cared at all:

Artists: 189
Albums: 327
Tracks: 3,788
Play time: 10 days, 23 hours, 3 minutes
Size: 27.02GB

Unfortunately while I was in the middle of ripping Elastica’s first album my DVD burner died a spectacular death, and now I’m forced to use the MacBook’s internal drive to rip. Not only is it slower than the external drive, but it overheats very easily which means I have to proceed at a much slower pace overall. Overheating means it makes noises very similar to the DVD burner’s death throes. Double plus ungood. Oh well, there’s no real rush.

It should not be in the least surprising to any of you that I download copious amounts of music. It’s hard to manage, and sometimes stuff sits (quite literally) for years before I get around to it. Well, last month I downloaded a 1985 single by French chanteuse Mylène Farmer. The poster had ripped a vinyl single he had in his possession, and provided scans of the cover as well as some nice photos of the album itself. He was showing of a phrase inscribed in the album, “Si c’ètait à refaire, je referais ce chemin…” which means “If I had to do it over again, I’d do it all the same”. Well, the pictures were both very nice and really high resolution, so I fired up GraphicConverter, did a quick resize and crop on the better of the two and came up with this:

That’s 2560×1600 (widescreen). I can crop it for 5:4 or 4:3 displays (although frankly that’s not hard to do, so…y’know…God helps them who help themselves, y’dig?). I just figured something as nice as this should be shared. It looks quite nice on my desktop with Leopard’s translucent menubar. Photographic credit…well, it’s not my picture, and I don’t know the photographer’s name. Still, it was shared freely so I have no compunctions against posting it here.

Share and enjoy!

Scott Sigler is a darned good writer in the horror/sci-fi genre. A few years back he released an audiobook of his first novel EarthCore as a podcast. He’s done the same with his last book, Ancestor and now it looks like he’s got a new book out. I’m not sure it’s available as a podcast, but until Monday, 31 March, the entire novel is available as a PDF direct from Random House (direct link to PDF). Why such a limited time? Damned if I know. Surely they must realise that once it’s out there it’ll stay out there. Still, take advantage of this now before it goes away. Apparently Sigler was able to convince them to try giving away the book as a promotional tool. He asks that people forward the link to the PDF and not the PDF itself so his publisher can accurately gauge demand.

I thoroughly enjoyed EarthCore, and I’m looking forward to Infected. Check it out!

Guys, you may think you’re clever, but could you just give it up? You’re not going to get anything past me or Akismet. It’s just not going to happen.

Also, could someone tell me why the only two articles to receive spam attacks are this one and this one? I just don’t get it.

I’m still waiting to see WordPress get an update which completely disables commenting on locked posts.

I suppose it’ll do for now.

I’ve already had to call support though. There’s an application you’re supposed to run to get your email and so on (yeah, that’s hopelessly ’90s) and on launch the app opens a blank window labelled “Untitled”. Useful! Had to force quit it, too. Feh. So I call, fight with their god damned MACHINES to get to an actual human and finally talked to the very helpful Mel who hooked me up with an account. Logged in, changed the username and password and I was good to go. I wouldn’t even have cared, but I needed the info for Usenet access.

Speaking of which… One thing I’ll miss about Time-Warner is their fantastic news server. 40+ days binary retention, great speed (usually) and excellent completion. Verizon…not so much. Look like about six days retention and it’s maxing out at about 35-40k/s (but averaging 20k/s) on my three connections. I expect it’d go faster if I cut the number of connections. Looks like I need to look elsewhere for Usenet service. *sigh*

Overall…yeah, I guess we’ll keep it.

They’ve started offering FiOS here in Santa Monica, and I just put our order in today. Assuming all goes to plan they’ll be installing it on the 10th. Keeping my fingers crossed. I signed us up for the 15/2 plan which as you might imagine means 15Mb/s down and 2Mb/s up, for $58/mo. If I were working we’d've gotten the 15/15 plan which costs $70/mo. I’m tempted, but there’s no real need for it (no matter how badly I want it, and I want it pretty badly).

All I can say is it’s about #$@%ing time.

I recently re-acquired (after something like fifteen years) my very first Mac, a little Mac Classic. It’s not as pretty as it was when I first got it, but it still works. The poor thing has sat, neglected on our desk in the front room since I got back from Concord last month, and I figured it was hight time I fired it up. AJ warned me the thing might not boot straightaway because the hard drive is old and subject to stiction but I didn’t have a bit of trouble with it. It’s great to see hardware this old in a functional state. I hope my iMac still boots in another ten years (it’ll be nine years old next year, and it still works, mostly). Of course I’m sure Grace will demand I get rid of be before then. Its cachet as an objet d’art is minimal.

So the question now is, what the hell do I do with it?

According to Slashdot, if they can be trusted, there’s to be a total lunar eclipse this coming Wednesday. It begins around 8:43-ish (EST) as Luna moves into Earth’s penumbra. Totality should be around 10 EST/7 PST. We’re supposed to see red AND blue this year. No word on whether or not Bush arranged for this obviously patriotic display. The blue is allegedly caused by ozone, but that’s obviously impossible since the Republicans personally led by George H.W. Bush himself destroyed Earth’s ozone layer in 1983. It’s probably aliens.

Anyway, set your calendars because this is supposedly the last total lunar eclipse until the far-off and mystical year of 2010. In THE FUTURE!!! OoooOOOOOOOOoooO!

Ye flippin’ gods but I miss Demonoid. I know The Pirate Bay gets all the attention because they’re rebels and all that, but TPB isn’t a great tracker. Demonoid had standards (yes, I’m being all snobby) and was a hell of a lot better organised. There was no porn, zero tolerance for scammers (like the assholes posting files which supposedly tell you how to get a free iPod/Zune/goat) and a dedicated group of people sharing lots and lots of quality jazz (I got all of Thelonius Monk’s Riverside releases along with a TON of Chet Baker live recordings from the 70s and 80s, all of them gorgeous) and classical music. The Bay is…well, it’s a little like a frontier town. Lawless, disorganised and utterly chaotic. There are definitely advantages to a members-only tracker like Demonoid. Which is not to say that The Pirate Bay is useless. There’s definitely some quality material there. But on Demonoid finding the good stuff was all but effortless. With the Bay it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Ah well. I’ve got nothing but time right now, so what am I complaining about? Only an asshole complains about getting something for nothing, right?

Still…I really hope Demonoid returns to the scene someday.

Today marks my tenth year living in California. Where does the time go? I arrived late in the evening, I think around 8 or 9. Grace, was there at the Greyhound station with her mother and her grandfather to pick me up. We made a short stop at her grandparents’ house so her grandmother could meet me (she’s the worrying kind, and wanted to look me over) and then went on to Grace’s house.

Ten years later, I’m still here. God knows how Grace has put up with me, but she has. I doubt I’d have been so patient with someone like me. You…you don’t suppose she actually LOVES me, do you?

Anyway, a few days after I got here, and amid some of the worst rain I’ve ever seen we took the bus down to Little Tokyo. We went shopping in the various stores down there, and then had dinner at this little restaurant in the Mitsuwa (then Yaohan) shopping center. When we were down there late last year we saw the place is STILL there, and so I suggested we go back there for dinner to commemorate my ten years. We just got back a little while ago. What’s silly though is I can’t remember the NAME of the place! In fact, I don’t think I even looked! But it’s just like I remember it. What’s more, we sat at the exact same table we did that first time, ten years ago! I think the chairs were different - for some reason I remember them having benches back then. Regardless. I got the Chicken Teriyaki with Maguro sashimi lunch special. Grace got the Katsu Curry, and we got an order of gyouza for the two of us to share. I loved the chicken. It had the right kind of smoky grilled flavour which mixed well with the teriyaki sauce. The maguro…meh. I like tuna well enough, but this wasn’t very good. It wasn’t quite as fresh as it could have been. And the soy sauce they had for it was really unpleasant. I gobbled it down with some rice. If I’m going to eat maguro, I’ll stick to having tuna rolls. Grace’s curry was good, with a decent amount of the breaded pork to go with it. By the time we were done we were both very full.

We then went downstairs to Mitsuwa and did a little shopping (got some ramen and a drink) and then stopped at Beard Papa for a cream puff and then hit the road. It was a nice experience, and I’m really glad to see that even though the shopping center is slowly dying off (it’s really off the beaten path for Little Tokyo) there are some parts of it which are still going strong. Maybe the answer is to just turn the whole thing into a gigantic food court.

If I’m still around in another ten years, we’ll definitely have to do this again.

ETA: Grace found the place. It’s called Issen Jouki. If you go to that site, and click on the pictures, you can actually see the table we sat at. The last picture shows two tables. Ours is the second one (the one farthest from the camera). It’s a neat little place.

Roy Scheider, one of the workingest actors in Hollywood is dead at 75.

I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

I threatened you people with this, and I even promised Ryan, so here we go.

The iPod nano and mini are made for the audiobook. Small, lightweight and unobtrusive in your pocket, these iPods are idea for the commuter. I get through about one disc a day going to and from work on the bus. I use an iPod mini, but plan to buy one of the new nanos as soon as I can afford one, just for audiobooks.

Encoding audiobooks for the iPod is fairly straightforward, and while it might seem complicated, it really isn’t. Here’s what you’ll need:

An audiobook on CD
A computer running Windows XP or Vista or Mac OS X.
iTunes
An iPod of some sort (but not the shuffle)

Why not the iPod shuffle? No screen. The shuffle is great for taking a jumbled mass of collected tracks and throwing them back at you in a random order, but for audiobooks? Not so great. Of course if you want to use one you may, just be certain to set it to sequential playback, rather than shuffle.

Okay! We’re ready to get started. Let’s talk about encoder settings for a moment. Spoken word doesn’t require the same bitrate as music does. The aural complexity of a single voice is nowhere near that of a track with a band and vocalist. So you can cut your bitrate down to at most 64k. I like 96k myself, but then I like to pretend I can hear the difference. You could also set the encoder to “mono”, because unless it’s a dramatisation with several actors you’re just listening to a guy talk into a microphone with no separation needed. Mono means your tracks will only need half as much space, too, so it’s a good way to go. I’m wasteful though, and I like going for full stereo. Your milage may vary.

The last thing you need to bear in mind is that iTunes and the iPod will not see your audiobook as an audiobook unless it’s in Apple’s AAC format. So under preferences, click the Advanced tab and select, “Importing”. You’ll probably want to turn off Error Correction and Play songs while importing or converting. These serve little function, and on Windows in particular, Error Correction can result in ultra-slow rips.

From the “Import Using” popup, choose “AAC” and from “Setting” choose “Custom”. Select your preferred bitrate and either stereo or mono, as you prefer. I use the VBR option, though I confess I haven’t done a comparison encode to see if it makes a difference. The other setting, “Optimize for Voice” should definitely be checked, regardless of the other settings. Click okay and then we’ll get on to the actual work.

Open your CD in iTunes. Select all the tracks and go to the Advanced menu and select, “Join Tracks”. This will rip the CD as one big file. Before importing you’ll want to check your tags. I’m an anal-retentive jerk when it comes to this. I set the tags as follows:

Artist: The author’s name (e.g. Douglas Adams)
Album Artist: The author’s name in reverse (e.g. Adams, Douglas)
Album: The book’s proper title (e.g. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
Composer: The author’s name again (e.g. Douglas Adams)
Track x of y: You can leave this blank, or you can use this as a way to number the discs. If your album has ten CDs, you could call Disc 01 track 1 of 10. Sensible?
Disc x of y: Redundant, but a more proper way to number the discs than using the Tracks fields.
Genre: Books & Spoken

That’s all the tag editing you’ll be doing for now. Click “Import CD” and let it do its thing. It’ll probably take ten or fifteen minutes per disc, so you can relax while it’s importing. Once you’ve got the whole kit and kaboodle imported you’re on to stage two of the tagging. Name each file thusly:

Book name Disc X (e.g. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Disc 01). Shorten that as you will. HHGTTG 01 works as well. Play around until you find a naming convention which works well for you, and then stick with that.

As I said, I’m an anal-retentive jerk when it comes to tags, so I always always always fill out as much useful information as I can. Under the “Sorting” tab, I fill out the Sort Artist, Sort Album Artist and Sort Album tags. You’ve got to do these one by one, unfortunately. The two artist tags get the author’s name in reverse (e.g. Adams, Douglas) and the Sort Album tag gets the book’s release date, Star Trek style (e.g. 1979.10.19). This makes the book appear in chronological order in the list when browsing, if this is important to you. It is to me. Once you’ve got this information entered (or not, as you prefer) you will need to set two other tags. This should not be skipped. Select all the tracks and get info. Set “Remember Playback Position” and “Skip When Shuffling” to Yes, and click okay.

I like artwork even though I haven’t got an iPod that will show it, so I always add this. It’s purely optional. Amazon is (unsurprisingly) is an excellent source for book cover art.

The next step is the most important step. iTunes still doesn’t know to sort the files under Audiobooks, because the files’ extension is wrong. Select the entire book and delete it from the library. Tell it to keep the files. Hide iTunes and navigate to your iTunes directory. Open the folder containing the files and change the file extension from .m4a to .m4b. You should automate this if at all possible, because it can become quite tedious. If you’ve got good command line-fu, you can do a simple batch rename, or use a renamer app.

Now drag your files back to iTunes. They should now show up correctly in iTunes under the Audiobooks section. Move them to your iPod and you’ll see them showing up correctly under the Audiobooks heading under Music.

Aaaaand that’s about it. I think. Comments? Questions? Problems? Let me know!

It’s apparently impossible to delete one’s Apple ID. I’m not really happy about that. I’m shutting down as much of my web presence as possible (Twitter, Last.FM, some old, unused email addresses and blogs, etc) and my Apple ID was one more item I wanted removed. But you can’t delete it. All you can do is ignore it and eventually it’ll be archived and inactive. But it’ll still BE there. I really, really don’t like that.

So I’ve been emailing résumés in response to Craigslist postings for a few weeks now and I’m beginning to despair of ever actually getting a response from any of them. It makes me wonder if the emails are even getting through. I think it’s really interesting to note that not long after I started sending responses back in November that I started receiving a lot of spam on my primary email with bogus job offers. Makes me wonder if spammers aren’t setting honeypots on Craigslist.

Anyway, if anyone needs a fat, lazy 40-year-old layabout to hold down a chair in an office and answer phones for, say, $15/hr, I’m your man.

Boil one cup of water. To this water add about three tablespoons of salt. Kosher salt is best because it’s pure salt with no added “stuff” but use table salt if that’s what you’ve got. Stir to dissolve. What you want here is a super-saturated saline solution. Seriously. Pour the solution into a clear vessel of some sort and stash it in a sunny spot. In a day or two you’ll see a ring of salt forming around the edge of the vessel. This is cool and all, but what you’re REALLY waiting for will take about a week. As the water evaporates, the salt will become more and more concentrated until at last it will begin to precipitate from solution. You’ll be left with nice, square-ish salt crystals. They’re salty and crunchy and I like them a lot.

That’s what I’ve got on my kitchen windowsill right now. Yesterday, no crystals. Today, bam! Crystals.

This reminds me of a similar experiment I did in grade school. We took a jar and filled it partway with salt water. We then tied a short length of string onto a pencil, and set the pencil over the mouth of the jar so the string just touched the water. Capillary action would draw the water upward, and the salt would precipitate on the outside of the string. As I recall we put some food colouring in it for some reason. Probably to help it stand out. Whatever. It was cool. Maybe I’ll do that again. I’ve got all the requisite components here.

How stupid do you think I am?

Fuck you,

Me

Dear Wordpress,

How about you make it so that WordPress REJECTS attempts to leave comments on comments-disabled posts? Because the spammers, some of whom are actually moderately clever have figured out how to trick WP into thinking it’s OK for them to leave comments on locked posts. This should not be possible. Fix it. Yesterday.

No love,

Me

Mouseover text: “Real programmers set the universal constants at the start such that the universe evolves to contain the disk with the data they want.”

I laughed my ass off at this. Funniest thing I’ve seen all year.

I’m looking for a Japanese textbook called げんき (Genki). It’s been recommended to me and I’m curious to check it out. It’s also out of print. The cheapest used copy on Amazon is $30, and some greedy fuckers are asking $80 for a USED copy. My question is, WHY is this happening? Why on earth should a book EVER go out of print? Same goes for CDs and DVDs or any sort of media, really. The publishers are passing up easy money! Head to eBay and look, and the prices get worse. Everywhere there are greedy bastards who were lucky enough to get a copy and now it’s a seller’s market. If the publisher were to issue a reprint (or, God forbid, an updated version) they’d do two things. First, they’d make money from people like me who’d rather buy a new copy of a textbook like this, and second they’d cut the legs out from under the profiteering assholes.

In the old days it was understandable. It costs a lot of money to keep producing physical media. But on-demand printing is available now. CDs don’t cost nearly as much to produce as cassettes or vinyl. Same with DVDs. So why does media EVER go completely out of print these days? It just makes no sense to me.

I got a letter from Kroger welcoming me to the team today. They’re not too quick on the uptake, it seems. I also got my threat letter notice from the union telling me I had to join or possibly face “ultimate termination” from my job. If I don’t join, I’ll lose my job. Again, a bunch of morons not too quick on the uptake. Oh well. I’ll call them on Monday and see what I need to do so they’ll leave me the hell alone. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay them one red cent for my week of gainful employment.

So unless you’re not paying attention I’m out of work again. My own damn fault. Anyway, our goal has been to minimise money going out. With luck there’ll be a new job in the next couple weeks, but for now… Well. So we’re using up food we have around the house. It’s stupid to go and buy lunch from Carl’s for $3 when the same amount of money can make enough food for four or five meals.

Last month Kroger had ground beef on sale for $2/lb, so I stocked up. It’s handy stuff. I bought a lot of it and squirreled it away in the freezer for a rainy day. Well, the rain’s let up, but there are storm clouds on the horizon. I got some out last night to thaw. This morning I took a look in the cupboard. There’s a lot in there, but much of it is ready-made. Soups, chilis, etc. There were a few cans of vegetables though, and a can of tomato sauce, so I got to thinking.

The last time we went shopping I bought several packets of taco seasoning mix. It was cheap, and it’s useful. I also got some black beans. I put them together with a can of corn, some garlic we have in the fridge and the ground beef and got what I think could be the basis of an excellent taco salad. It’s pretty simple, too. Just throw the stuff together in a pan and cook it until the sauce has thickened up. Takes maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes.

Of course now I’ve used this stuff up and I’ll have to go to the store again. So I need to carefully consider my shopping strategy. I need to make sure I’m buying INGREDIENTS instead of one-off mixes and readymade foods. I have some basic ideas. It’ll be interesting, but I think we’ll be better off in the long run.

So. I’m putting this up here as much for my own benefit as anyones. It’s not fancy, it’s pretty rustic and you know…that’s fine. I hope you try it and enjoy it.

Taco Salad

1lb Ground Beef
1 can Whole Kernel Corn
1 can Black Beans
1 can Tomato Sauce
6 cloves Garlic, sliced thinly
1 packet Taco Seasoning Mix
1/8 - 1/4 tsp Red Pepper Flakes, optional

1. Brown the ground beef (but don’t cook it all the way through); drain
2. Add the taco seasoning
3. Add the corn, beans, tomato sauce, the garlic and if you like some red pepper flakes, stir to combine
4. Cook on medium heat for about 20-30 minutes
5. Serve on lettuce and tortilla chips with shredded cheese and sour cream

Of course, I have no lettuce, sour cream or (apparently) cheese, so it’s just corn chips right now, but it’s good. Really good. Better than I thought it could be. And it makes a LOT, too.

Additions: Instead of red pepper flakes you might substitute one chipotle chilli in adobo sauce, minced fine, along with about a teaspoon or two of the adobo sauce. Its smoky heat would make an excellent addition to the dish. You might also add in a small tin of chopped green chillis. You might also consider serving this with some chopped cilantro on top. I can’t stand the stuff myself, but I understand there are plenty of folks who love it.

Share and enjoy!

I’m (slowly) working my way through season 3 of Babylon 5. Tonight I watched disc 2. I’m amused by something subtle from the episode Voices of Authority. In this episode a political officer, Julie Musante, is assigned to the station. After some wrangling, she is recalled to Earth. The ship taking her back home is the Loki.

Taking a look at Google, I see I’m not the first person to notice this (and I never imagined I was), so I’m glad to see my perceived connection may have some substance to it.

Heyo. This is just a test. I’m checking out Ecto, a blogging app for the Mac. So far it seems pretty nice. There’s a 21 day test version, and a beta release of 3.0, which is what I’m using right now. I kinda like it.

Today has been a bad day. First, I woke up alive. Some days that’s good, some day’s that’s bad. Today was in the middle. I ate, sat around clearing junk from my hard drives and just generally being the fat lump of misshapen humanity that I am. I went to work around 11:15 and sat listening to Limbaugh for a few minutes while the minutes counted down to 11:30. I clocked in and saw a few familiar faces from the last week, and a few folks I recognised only because I actually shop at this Kroger. Or used to. I’m not sure I can go in there again after today. I started bagging and worked my way up and down the checkouts and was generally cheery even though I’d rather be shot in the face than be there, but needs must and so I put on a smily face and pretend to be happy to be there. Then comes the manager:

“Bruce, you’ll need to shave to continue working here.”

“What? You’re the first person to tell me that.”

“No, I told you a couple nights ago.” He walks off.

They weren’t going to buy me razors and shaving cream and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend money to satisfy some bean counter’s completely arbitrary rule on appearance. Plus nobody at training said boo about it, and nobody (no matter what Mr Manager Man says) said anything to me during the ENTIRE week I worked there about it. So…yeah. I was upset about it, but I was going to talk to him. It distracted me. Then along comes the queen of the yuppies with eighty ancient paper bags saved since she was a mere princess. I start out with one and it’s fine until I lift it and the straps break. Well, it’s my own fault for doing that in the first place. But then she’s buying the entire store, and as I’m struggling to get the torn bag into another bad her groceries were piling up and I tore the SECOND bag and then the third…and about two seconds later I found myself putting down what I was holding and walking to the time clock. I unclipped my badge, laid it on the counter and punched my terribly personal employee ID into the clock and walked out. I saw Mr Manager Man on the way out, so I grabbed his shoulder to stop him (gently - I’m not violent) and said, “Sir? I quit” and walked on out. I was shaking by the time I reached my car. I sat there for a few moments.

And Grace? God love her, she’s so good to me, so kind. I know she was disappointed, but she didn’t get angry, she didn’t yell, she just helped me update my résumé. I’m OK now, but I know I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown there. And she helped me back away from it. And right now I’m supposed to be composing a cover letter to a company advertising for a receptionist, but I had to post this first.

For sale: MacBook 1.83ghz Intel Core Duo CPU, 2gb RAM, 120gb hard drive. White case. 1.5 years old. Light wear, but out of warranty. In excellent condition, if a trifle dirty here and there. System can be shipped with the OS of your choice, either Tiger or Ubuntu (if you swing that way) or with a blank drive so you can install the OS yourself. I will give you the original system discs which include 10.4.somethingorother, and an Ubuntu 7.10 install disc if you want it.

Asking $800, but I’m flexible. Cash or money order preferred, PayPal is OK (if suboptimal since they exact a transaction charge), and a personal check is OK ONLY if I know you. Oh! shipping. Almost forgot. Shipping will be via FedEx ground (which isn’t really that slow) and you will need to pay it. But at most it’ll be like $15, unless I’m shipping out of the country.

Other stuff:

All original cords, discs, packaging, etc.
Bluetooth
Battery still holds a decent charge, but not as much as when it was new.
Wireless 802.11g
1 FireWire port
2 USB 2.0 ports
CD burner/DVD player combo drive (CANNOT BURN DVDs! You need an external burner for this!)
13” widescreen, glossy. 1280×720 resolution. Supports external monitors as well. MiniDVI adaptor included.

And that’s pretty much it. If you have any questions or comments, leave them below and I’ll answer them. I’m selling it because honestly, I need the money more than I do the computer.

I’m glad I was able to visit Concord this weekend for AJ’s 40th. It wasn’t some blow-out bash, but it was a good time. His brother Tim and daughter Allison were there as well as Uncle Monster, who’s just this guy, you know? It was great to see everyone again.

I brought home a souvenir as well: my first Macintosh, a Mac Classic. It’s from 1991 and it still works. I’m going to test it out tonight after work. It’s funny to have it back after all these years.