"The Boring-est Grocery List - Dec' 08" written by Tinypliny on estrip.org

12/07/08 08:12 - 11ºF - ID#46991

The Boring-est Grocery List - Dec' 08

In direct competition with the world's dullest blog, I have decided to spring my entire grocery list on unsuspecting (e:strip)-peeps every time I go grocery shopping. So, without further ado, (and any further attempts to make it even remotely interesting) here's what I bought today.

1. Wegmans Lite Wheat Bread - $2.49 (18% dietary fibre goodness per serving! Who'd have thought!)

2. Wegmans fat-free milk - $2.54 (All you snobby whole-milk lovers, YEAH, I happen to like fat-free milk. Shut the hell up.)

3. Wegmans low-fat vanilla yogurt - $1.99

4. A 6 pounder bag of Dole frozen mixed fruit - $8.59 (where else can I get peaches, pineapples, melons and berries for $1.49/pound, in the winter???)

5. Tribe 40 spices Hummus - $1.99 (I admit it. Athenos does not have this delightful flavour of hummus and I have tried several times to emulate store-bought hummus but failed miserably!)

(Yeah! I tried this particular mix of spices. What a big lie.)

6. Wegmans dry roasted unsalted peanuts - $4.49 (I <3 peanuts. Very handy for throwing at people and in food.)

7. A 5 pounder box of clementines - $5.99 (This is a great deal. Nearly 50% of Guercio prices for the same clementines. But why did they have to sell them in wooden boxes? I wonder how many trees they had to chop down for boxing these clementines. :/)

8. A 4 pounder bag of Grapefruit - $4.99 (YUM. Grapefruit! All the way from Florida. Way to go, carbon godzilla.)

9. 6 pounds of Granny Smiths - $5.94 (My staple emergency/substitute breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack etc. From New Zealand, this time - for some international carbon-smashing.)

10. Savoy Cabbage head - $0.88 (Interesting looking cabbage, I have never tried this before. I wonder how it tastes...)

11. 2.86lb Broccoli Crowns - $3.69

12. One Danish Pastry - $1.25 (They JUST took it out of the oven. I had to get it or die of longing.)

13. Keebler Club Crackers - $2.50 (this butter-loaded thing is for the office drawer that has been in a sad state of emptiness for a while now).

Total: $47.33

The receipt is telling me that apparently, I saved $1.24. OMG. I am over the moon. The boring-est grocery list has ended. It will be back to haunt you in around a week (or maybe two) next. That's it. You can all scoot now.

Permalink: The_Boring_est_Grocery_List_Dec_08.html
Words: 396
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: e:strip

12/06/08 12:00 - 21ºF - ID#46983

Happy Birthday, Janelle!!

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

Here's wishing you an amazing year ahead, full of delirious happiness, riotous colours & exotic awesomeness! :)

Here's to an extra-wonderful birthday!!

Permalink: Happy_Birthday_Janelle_.html
Words: 75
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: art

11/28/08 05:44 - 36ºF - ID#46876

Yeah, we totally needed this change!

Before...

After...

From

Permalink: Yeah_we_totally_needed_this_change_.html
Words: 17
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: eating in

11/28/08 02:11 - 40ºF - ID#46870

Black Friday Green Lunch

Don't let the shopping blues cramp your dining style! :)

Recipe adapted and modified from this

Permalink: Black_Friday_Green_Lunch.html
Words: 26
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: eating in

11/27/08 10:19 - 35ºF - ID#46863

Non-Turkey Doohickey

In response to (e:Paul), and (e:Jenks)...

Hope everyone had an enjoyable dinner and a great evening! :D

Permalink: Non_Turkey_Doohickey.html
Words: 21
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: whine

11/27/08 09:51 - 37ºF - ID#46860

Mumbai under Attack.

I guess today is the day for whining. Unfortunately, this is so far away from the thanks-giving mood that I probably should be in.

WHO the HELL are these militants who are targeting patients in hospitals, travellers in train stations and tourists in hotels???! How can this even remotely serve any cause whatsoever?? This is sheer mindless evil. :/

Deccan Mujahideen, and all your Mujahideen whatever cronies, I hope all of you and your sick families die in agony without medical aid. My curses and ill-will on you. Hope your death is as meaningless and despicable as your life till now has been. You are a disgrace to the human species.

tinypliny writes at 02:26:07 11/28/08 - Comment #42721: There is one troubling aspect to all this though - they intentionally attacked the oldest Israeli centre in Mumbai and murdered the Rabbi and his wife. :(

I wonder whether this was a two pronged attack - one for the Kashmir conflict and one for the whole Israel/Palestine issue. I am not sure if India has any overt partisan stances when it comes to the situation and countries in the Gulf/Middle East. So the targeting of Jewish centres in the country is somewhat confusing.

james writes at 02:06:08 11/28/08 - Comment #42718: For all the chatter about the Israeli/Palestinian problem and the two state solution, I sincerely wish diplomats would work a little harder on the Kashmir region to mitigate these terrorist attacks a little.

Oh colonialism, we are all living with the STI you gave us when we slept with you all those years ago.

tinypliny writes at 10:00:43 11/28/08 - Comment #42716: Our first suspicion is always leveled at the oligarchy in the rogue state right next to us. The eight people they have arrested till now are Pakis and British Pakis.

:::link:::

Al-Queda is really not involved in all the long warring past that my country shares with its northwest neighbour.

james writes at 11:22:28 11/27/08 - Comment #42714: Taking a look at the foriegn papers I see very little mentioning of Al-Queda. US papers however can't help but mentioning them. This, I find, to be infuriating.

tinypliny writes at 10:38:35 11/27/08 - Comment #42712: Oh and the terrorists apparently landed on Indian soil just before the attacks started so no, they are not Indians. I also heard that the Indian Navy/Airforce identified the mothership that dropped the gunmen off and has captured it. Hopefully their intelligence is accurate this time, considering they just blew one up and were only half-right.

The whole thing is so crazy. Back in '93 the same thing happened in Mumbai -- a string of explosions and 100s dead. I guess the proverbs "once bitten twice shy" and "history repeats itself" doesn't really hold true for the RAW and CBI (equivalents of CIA here).

tinypliny writes at 10:25:26 11/27/08 - Comment #42711: Yes, I think I misread your comment when I commented back the first time. Sorry about that. There's only one country around India who is capable of nurturing this sort of antipathy, jealously, downright base and hateful behaviour. I think by "foreign", our PM meant only one particular kind of foreign. In case, anyone has not guessed by now, it's most probably the handful of despots ruling the country on our northwest border. *Not* her people who are almost Indian and blameless but her dictators and tyrants who ought to be dragged out and shot one by one. :/

metalpeter writes at 10:00:16 11/27/08 - Comment #42709: (e:tinypliny) let me explain. When I first saw this in the news on yahoo (before you posted about it) The article I read was about how they only targeted Britsh and Americans. Someone in a cafe was asked where they where from and when they said italy they where let live. I think at that time there where prisoners but no one had tried to get to them yet. In terms of motives I'm sure the people who did this had one, I'm not one of them so I don't know what it is. I'm not sure if they are Indian or from Pakastan of some other country but live in India. I don't have the most recent news.

jenks writes at 02:13:43 11/27/08 - Comment #42707: all i can say to that is-

WTF!!

I hate people.

gardenmama writes at 12:54:36 11/27/08 - Comment #42706: Tiny, I have not seen any news yet this a.m., however, last night, I believe when this story first aired they were reporting that it was primarily Americans and British who were being targeted. This is a horrendous display of terrorism and an epic tragedy for all.

tinypliny writes at 12:49:11 11/27/08 - Comment #42705: I think I may have misunderstood your comment though. Accept my apologies for the sarcasm. :)

And yes, that does seem plausible as a way of sending a message to Indians as well as the Westerners who invest in India.

But still, how rotten - this is similar in style and calibre to the Sep 11 Twin tower attacks. :(

tinypliny writes at 12:00:42 11/27/08 - Comment #42704: (e:metalpeter): That is a very strange comment considering common Indians on the street and in train stations and hospitals were targeted and shot to death. The death toll now stands at around 240 (out of which >95% are Indians).

Fun way to scare to tell Americans and the British we don't want to listen to them. Huh?

metalpeter writes at 11:39:11 11/27/08 - Comment #42702: I will admit I don't know the politics of India nor do a know the different parts. But I have a couple guesses as to why this was done. Who ever they are they don't like the British and Americans cause that is the only people they went after. This to me implies that they don't want those kinds of people in there country. There is this sterotype (mostly of men) that people (not all of course) think that Indians are Muslem they see the head thing and don't get it or they see the skin color and cant tell them apart. I don't know if this factors in here or not but I'm sure this attack might make things here worse. I'm wondering if attacking that part of India is saying you don't want to listen to what we say so lets make it some forgeiners don't want to come here and don't want to invest. Maybe that group was some stragtegic reason to take over that part of the country. I'm not in that group so I don't know but I'm sure from their side there is a reason to hit that area.

Permalink: Mumbai_under_Attack_.html
Words: 112
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: whine

11/27/08 09:36 - 37ºF - ID#46859

Right sided rant!

I am so sick of around 70% of the web and so many pieces of software having left-sided menus and left-sided access. I am right-handed, dammit. If you are so concerned about accessibility, make it ergonomic for right-handed users as well.

Prominent examples which annoy me on a daily/hourly basis:

Gmail: Left sided menu. They implemented the right-sided chat and labels as lab features - but they conveniently forgot to include right-sided menus in the mix! As a result, the lab features don't serve any purpose and merely shrink screen estate for actually viewing the emails.

Windoze: It ships with the start button on the bottom left corner - the most inefficient corner for right-handed users. Agreed, you can move the taskbar to the right to make the start button be at the right-top corner (the most efficient for me). But moving it also makes the titles of the programs that are open, hard to see without expanding the taskbar and making it all incredibly ugly. Mac ships with a top right corner menu with the whole "taskbar" at the top. This makes me think the Mac GUI department has more right-handed programmers than Microsoft.

Plone (as supplied by NCI): I hate this NCI version which is so stripped down and bland that no customizations are possible. Its ugly AND has a left-sided menu! Its got light greyish blue text on a light blue background - that's the peak of non-contrasting colours. I guess they are trying to make me and all the PIs blind or something. Yuck. I hate you NCI-modded-Plone!

/Rant over

One of the many reasons I love (e:strip). Thank you (e:Paul) for right-sided menus. :)

Permalink: Right_sided_rant_.html
Words: 280
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: music

11/25/08 10:17 - 37ºF - ID#46837

Adios Nonino

I break out in tears every time I hear this song, even without the accompanying video. If you need to flush out those lachrymal glands, Astor Piazzola is the man for the job. :)

PS: That is Princess Maxima of Netherlands.

She strangely looks a lot my advisor in Rochester...

Permalink: Adios_Nonino.html
Words: 67
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: tools

11/23/08 01:01 - 31ºF - ID#46805

What's THAT word?: Trumping Word-Blocks!

You are writing furiously and suddenly you come up against the dreaded WORD BLOCK! In my opinion, this is far worse than the writer's block. In contrast to the much-maligned writer's block, the word block doesn't deal with that murky uncertain ghost of your writing-future. It makes what you already wrote look like rot. The word block casts an unsatisfactory dirty shroud on the ghost of your writing-present.

To me, this is unacceptable. Thus, I declared war against word-blocks this morning. I then realized that I was poorly armed with just a Roget's Thesaurus. What I needed was a weapon to put my thoughts into pithy words. For every time I wondered, "what IS THAT word????" and for every time some miserable word dangled from the tip of my tongue but didn't quite make it to the brain, I needed a sort of white book for reverse look-up of thoughts. And lo and behold, the unknown angel of word-block rescue exists! It's called the one look reverse dictionary.

I realize it might be a bit rash to declare victory against word-blocks already, (for all I know, the word-block camp may have hidden WMDs headed for my document) but the ghost of my writing-present is nodding pretty appreciatively.

Do (e:strip) peeps have any other hidden writing-block-busters? As we all know, stockpiling is half the victory (besides being extremely handy for threatening, manipulation and such other nifty uses). :)

Permalink: What_s_THAT_word_Trumping_Word_Blocks_.html
Words: 246
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: the odes

11/20/08 12:33 - 33ºF - ID#46771

Gmail Theme Mania

I am so in love with the Gmail theme changing thing! I have been changing my theme once every hour for the past 6 hours. Is that excessive?

I hope not. Because I have 24 more themes to go through.

WHOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEE, GMAIL THEME MANIA! :)

PS: I am just a Rahmbonics theme away from attaining complete self-destruction (distraction?). Thank goodness they don't have political-obsession themes... YET.

PPS: Maybe I should *design* a Rahmbonics theme! HEHEHEHE.

PPPS: Maybe I should just quit working on this ridiculous PhD and start stalking political celebrities full-time.

PPPPS: Um. Yeah. Scratch all those bad ideas,. TINY. GET BACK TO WORK!

PPPPPS: It's a sign of pure and unadulterated insanity that I am addressing myself as TINY (besides writing recursive post-scripts to myself). Ugh.