Category: food

12/16/14 10:10 - ID#59662

Cafe 59 chickpeas

We eat at Cafe 59 almost twice a week lately. I am so obsessed with the Moraccan Spiced chickpeas. It's almost the only thing I ever order there - spiced chickpeas, on warm greek yogurt, with a salad.

Most of the times the portions are huge enough to make my stomach hurt. If you consider I've been working at Roswell for 23 weeks, at at least two cups of chickpeas a serving, probably averaging 1.5 times a week - it's too many chickpeas (69) or 25000 calories worth of them. I also think I'm the only person who ever orders them. The waitress knows I'm going to order it when I get in.

This week at work I've started orientation. The classes are not very useful at all and it'd probably be much more worth it if I was programming during them, but I did meet a researcher from Germany who I want to try out my German on.

After work (e:paul) and I went to (e:terry)'s new office to help straighten out the networking situation. We wanted to move the office off of using their desktop Windows server as a DNS and on to openDNS, but we couldn't figure out to log into the switch, only the firewall. Eventually Paul found the switches address over nmap and surprise, it was the default password. Success though!

Terry made a freaking delicious soup for us by the time we got home.

Permalink: Cafe_59_chickpeas.html
Words: 239
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/21/14 02:36

Category: pets

12/15/14 01:14 - ID#59660

Animal errands

Sunday was a lot of errands. (e:paul) and (e:terry) went to go help Paul's parents with setting up their Chrismas tree, and I went to be IT at my parents.

Before we set off we stopped for lunch at the new Balkan Dining restaurant on Kenmore Avenue. The portion sizes were ridiculously huge and cheap. We had leftovers for everything except for my vegetable mousaka.

Sleepy Mid - wiped out from a walk

Ferrets are so freaking cute

After Paul and Terry came back and picked me up, we went to Markham Pets to get Basra hay. The last time I was there in 2003, I was getting a guinea pig and it was disgusting. i remember bugs and fleas everywhere in the rodent cages.

This time it was much cleaner.

Basra's smaller counterpart if he weren't such a dirrrty tortoise. He also had way less space.

Little Meerschweinchen hiding in their house. I wanted to pick one up so bad.

We went to Feel Rite after to use up Paul's scam insurance card. Why can't they just lower the premiums by $250? Anyway,we a got a lot of granola bars and questionable brain supplements. I don't really trust much in the store with the amount of woo - like the homeopathy and steroids. I don't put much stock in these pills except they may give you a little buzz.

The tour finished with Terry getting the Note 4 before we went home. Paul and I brogrammed the rest of the night.

Permalink: Animal_errands.html
Words: 261
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/17/14 12:07

Category: mike

12/14/14 06:41 - ID#59656

Mike blows

Friday night, we headed over to (e:mike) and (e:libertad)'s place to hang out. We got to see their new floors upstairs and a lot more of the house as it looks unpacked. It's really looking great.

The highlight of the night though was Mike's blowing showing off his blowing skills with a pinwheel.

Our reaction

Permalink: Mike_blows.html
Words: 61
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/15/14 12:13

12/13/14 12:53 - ID#59652

Office warming

Thursday was the office warming party for (e:allenstreet). The food was done by Coco and it was amazing. I definitely ate way too much dessert.

Permalink: Office_warming.html
Words: 52
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/14/14 06:39

Category: work

12/13/14 12:49 - ID#59651

Lab mice

I had to go through the creepy tunnels of the cell and virus building at Roswell the other day. Complete with 50s style lab posters - I was surprised none mentioned duck and cover in case of a commie attack.

(E:Paul) had a 5th monitor that I got to steal while I was over there. It's an okay monitor in terms of quality, but it has a touch screen. I got it to work with Linux with by modifying xinput in Fedora with the xinput_calibrator

- you have to set the input area to just include the touch screen and not both monitors.

Permalink: Lab_mice.html
Words: 131
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/14/14 11:07

Category: dancing

12/07/14 04:49 - ID#59645

Total Request Rave in Toronto

Was awesome. I drove up to Toronto in the second fastest drive of my life. It was terrifying. But we made it just in time to get half of Keith, (e:terry)'s old high school pal's set.

The whole night was happy hardcore. We were completely sober but I had so much fun dancing with the people there and the music. (e:casey) said it's because Canadians are polite and awesome enough for that.

The next day (e:terry) wasn't feeling well, so we had breakfast in the gayborhood and went home. Still a very fun weekend.

Permalink: Total_Request_Rave_in_Toronto.html
Words: 111
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/13/14 12:54

12/07/14 04:47 - ID#59644

Sameer's bachelor dinner

After the Farmer's market, (e:paul), (e:terry) and I went to Jessica and Sameer's engagement party at Merge. I have never been there but the food was some of the best I've ever had. Almost everything was vegetarian too.

Jessica's friends did a really nice job organizing and decorating for the dinner. Everyone got a fortune cookie and a packet of curry powder in a little decorated box.

I felt bad that we couldn't go to the rest of the party, but we had to race out after 9 to head up to Toronto. I hope they had a good time that night and an even better ceremony in Las Vegas.

Permalink: Sameer_s_bachelor_dinner.html
Words: 121
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/07/14 05:07

Category: food

12/07/14 04:46 - ID#59643

Winter market

(e:paul) and I made it to the farmer's market again - it's full of fall and winter foods still, and now forested in Christmas trees.

We got a type of apple I've never seen before - Jonagold.

On the way back we found someone that drives worse than either of us.

Permalink: Winter_market.html
Words: 56
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/08/14 10:16

Category: cars

12/07/14 04:45 - ID#59642

Paddock Chevorlet scammers

We finally got the car's recalled parts replaced at Paddock on Friday. I went with (e:paul) to pick it up in their asphalt ocean in Kenmore.

When we went told them we were there to pick up the keys for our car. The desk clerk told us it was going to be $70 - wait what? It's a recall. When we called her out on it, she said "Oh, it must be our new computer system. Let me go check on this". What a scam.

We ended up paying $50 for a second key. Turns out we could have gotten one online for less than $10, and gotten it programmed and cut for another $10.

Another reason not to trust anyone involved with cars.

Permalink: Paddock_Chevorlet_scammers.html
Words: 133
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/07/14 05:05

Category: bikes

12/07/14 04:44 - ID#59641

Buffalo bike plan

The city's comprehensive's bike plan meeting was last week. I was suprised, but glad with the turn out - it was a full house at the DIG space in the innovation center.

At first, the consultant outlined their methodology for coming up with the inital outline for Buffalo's bike future from the first meeting. They said they kept in their design in line with the best practice of bike infrastructure within 0.5miles of every Buffalonian. From there, they divided up bike infrastructure to classes on different locations, from serious riders on Delaware, to riders who only would ride on separated paths with no car traffic.

After this, the 100 or so people broke out into groups of 10 to come up with 3 priorities and critiques of the consultants plan. One thing a lot of people noticed is a focus on high traffic roads, especially in North Buffalo, when there are huge lane and a half lanes like Starin that could support protected bike lanes.

We also noticed the consultants neglected the east side - Bailey and many far east N-S routes were almost completely ignored, while the near and far west side were soaked in proposed bike routes. East-west routes were also named as a high priority - I can't think of a single good bike route that crossed Main right now. I will say, of the participants there, most were from the west side below Hertel.

The entirety of the plan is available at buffalobikeplan.org. There will be more plans in the spring - but in the mean time they are still welcoming feedback. Give it.