Had I even left? Here's a brain dump of the last couple days.

ITEM ONE: Food.

(e:dragonlady7) wrote about the things we have eaten recently. I will distill the knowledge:

1a. Chocolate toffee pancakes. Holy poop I thought I would be able to handle these but I had three and passed the fuck out. It was like eating chocolate cake for breakfast.

1b. We had some shrimp penne primavera last night that was very tasty but I'm really proud of my particular component, the shrimp. First off, Weggies has uncooked peeled/deveined shrimp which is so genius that I can't understand why you can't find them elsewhere. Second off, these shrimp are so easy, tasty, and aromatic, and you can probably put them in anything:

Get a wok or something, and put in 2 Tbsp each of peanut oil and dry sherry. Grate one clove of garlic into it. Heat that up until it socks you in the nose, the garlic looks tasty, and the sherry is reduced a little bit.

Some people are going to say look man, you can't mix the oil and sherry like that because the sherry will keep the oil from heating up. Maybe they're right, but shrimp cook so fast it can't make a difference. If they keep bugging you just make them stop and take a deep breath. Mmmm. Then kick them the hell out of your kitchen.

Add the shrimp and fry them until they're pink all over, not a second longer. Then, do whatever you want with them. (e:dragonlady7) used the garlicky shrimp-oil for flavoring the alfredo sauce, and that was a good idea.


THING TWO: A lament on HTML parsers

One of the things I do for the QCRG AV Club is to get the photos people take at the game and collect them in one place. Naturally people put their photos wherever they feel most comfortable, so that means that out of four photographers, two have used flickr, one has used Photobucket, and one has used MySpace Pics. I think 'download album' as a zip file is a pretty obvious feature but it seems the people in power don't agree. Photobucket at least has an RSS feed for each album. flickr does not have RSS feeds, but they have a pretty nice API.

MySpace Pics has neither [but did you even have to ask?] which means automated form submission & HTML scraping, with cookies. Enter Python: the urllib2 module has optional support for temporary or persistent cookies, and the HTMLParser module does a hell of a job on HTML 'as deployed' [which is to say: the opposite of well-formed & valid XHTML]. HTML4 is such a hugely popular format, and lexically speaking it's not significantly messier than XHTML ... it makes me wonder why HTML parsing libraries are nowhere near as ubiquitous as XML parsers.


THING THREE: Location-based services

I've believed for a while that mobile phones are theoretically capable of locating themselves without GPS by triangulating on cell towers. The new "Locate" button in iPhone Maps answers the question: yes, but it's not real accurate. Oddly enough, it seems to be more accurate where there are fewer towers. At home, it puts me on a side street within walking distance, and the margin of error goes from Colvin to Starin, which is not too bad. When I'm at work, it puts me within walking distance at Roswell Park, but the margin of error goes from Fort Erie on the west to Bailey Ave on the east, all the way up to Linden Ave on the north. That's like 85% of the city. [When I'm at the rink it puts me in the river somewhere.]


THING FOUR: Office 2008

I haven't bought it yet but I probably will eventually. The Home edition is only $150, which I think is pretty reasonable. The Standard edition costs $400, but as near as I can tell the only difference is in Entourage's support for Exchange Server and scriptability. An Exchange client is also built into Apple Mail, so are those two features really worth $250? The Standard license is also upgradeable, but the upgrade is still $90 more expensive than a full license for the Home edition.

And then there's this 'Expression Media' that is part of the Special Media edition. Is this different than the media databases that are built into iPhoto or iTunes, or Adobe Bridge? Is it really worth $100?

I think somebody messed up on the pricing for this one, is all I'm saying.


- Z

(e:dragonlady7) bought me a framed color print of this comic for the wall in our office. We now have the kewliez office in Kenmore.

My buddy Chris had a small get-together last night for New Year's. Man, we're geezers. Drove way the fuck out to Lancaster, played half a game of beer pong, watched the ball drop, and by 12:45 I was zonked out on an air mattress. My kinda people.

Roller derby ate my life. If I don't see any peeps at the rink on Saturday I'll disembowel myself in the game room and play Skee-Ball with my still-beating spleen. Could be fun.

- Z

I can't help but think that this whole tradition of giving gifts at Christmas perhaps adds more stress to the holiday season than it should. I agree it's a very special thing to give somebody something they wanted but would not have otherwise gotten for themselves. I agree it is polite to reciprocate, and rude not to. I agree that this is not a time to be selfish with one's time or money. I care deeply about many people but have totally flaked out on gifts for all but the most essential. I was not able to devote as much time or concentration to gift-giving as it deserves, and instead sent a big Fuck You to the people most important to me. I feel absolutely rotten about it. Mea culpa.

To my coworkers, who have become my friends, I would not be at Artvoice if you weren't.

To the people who make up (e:strip), you have created a fun, eclectic, warped, and thoroughly enjoyable community just by being yourselves. It has been a pleasure and I wish I could be more involved.

To my friends, the fact that we have never really exchanged Christmas gifts is perhaps the greatest gift of all.

To my family, relax. I got you something.

To (e:dragonlady7), you'd think after spending so much of our lives together that I'd know exactly what you want. I don't, but I've got some ideas. We'll talk later.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Until next year,
- Z

[The Culinary Institute of America]

The real reason you learn to make sauce Mornay ['cheese sauce'] is not for eggs Benedict, Welsh rabbit, or potatoes au gratin. The real reason you learn to make sauce Mornay is that you bought some foolishly expensive herbed, veined goat cheese to impress your girlfriend's parents at Thanksgiving, which they politely ate but did not finish, and now that it's nearly Christmas with no food in sight, you're fucking hungry and you don't care whether that's a 'delicate rind' or 'disgusting crust of mold.'

Sauce Mornay: because you paid too much for that cheese to admit it's gone bad.

- Z

'television static' translates to 'myrornas krig,' or 'battle of the ants.'

- Z

Has the American conservative movement lost its focus? According to the statistics page from 'Conservapedia: The Trustworthy Encyclopedia,' it seems as though American conservatives are just as preoccupied focused as ever.

- Z

OK, I admit to being a webcomics geek, and a tagline of 'Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines' sounds like the kind of thing that's already been done a bajillion times before. But when faced with 'Are you man enough for this,' Steven Frank of Spamusement came up with 'Derek Jeter, carrying a fishing pole and a keg, atop a riding lawnmower on the flatbed of a pickup, deep-fried and smothered with country gravy.'

That is unusual talent.

- Z

To anyone who considers him or herself an adventurous eater, I recommend "Steve Don't Eat It," a website wherein a guy named Steve eats things he ought not to.



I think the term "ROFL" is used too often and never literally, but I came very close. Don't worry; there is a happy ending.

- Z

From: molly miller
To: webmaster
Subject: Dance
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 08:52:52 -0700

Are you really doing the hokey pokey tonight?

- Z

OK so we've got two Halloween parties to go to tonight, and I'm only wearing one costume. The roller girls will understand my costume without explanation, but I'm afraid it will likely leave many or all of you scratching your heads. I can hear it now: 'I understand you're a roller girl, but what's with the potato masher?' I will not answer your question. I will refer you to this blog.

The QCRG All-Stars* played against the Steel Town [Hamilton, ON] Tank Girls this past summer in a game where the officiating was bad and the sportsmanship was worse. Derby is a rough sport, but this rapidly became unsettling on an almost visceral level. Anyway, the costume is a Tank Girls' uniform.

That does not explain the potato masher. There is a Tank Girl whose name is Cheese Grater. She carries around a cheese grater. I'm not sure whether the name or the kitchen implement came first, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to ask. It's pretty random, but it's not any less random than, say, a potato masher. And I guess cheese is relatively badass as far as dairy products go, but consider this: if someone chucked a piece of cheese at you, you'd be angry but mostly confused. But if someone chucked a potato at you, you'd be IN PAIN!!!!!

- Z

_______________

• ie, anyone who wasn't busy that weekend