There is nothing more delicious than homemade guacamole and driving down the freeway singing to bad music too late at night!

Food is my friend. And comfort food is even more my friend. For those of you who like comfort foods or those of you in Portland (ahem, zenlari!) here's the foodie love.

I am enamored. And there's source code!

This is the best reason to teach discrete math :)

I want that belt....


http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html?pg=1&topic=esp&topic_set=

As much as I like my current job, I want to move on to a regular work week kind of job.

I'm basically looking for something fun and challenging involving computers. I'm a quick learner and pretty technical. Right now, I've had more experience with Macs than Windows, and I can pick up the Windows stuff again easily.

I'm interested in quality control, internal tech support/server operations, programming (Java, C++, perl mostly), but basically anything to do with computers that I haven't done much of before. I can also do administrative work to get a foot in the door.

If any of you know of anything you think would be a good fit for me, please point me in the right direction!

I am all a-flutter!!

My Boondocks Season 1 DVDs came today!!


SQUEEEE!!!

JOY!!

UPDATE: I've set up an evite; let me know if I should add you. Comments are now screened for privacy.

Preamble: My friends are awesome people!

So. jaredboyce found out that The Reduced Shakespeare Company is touring the US. They'll be in Walnut Creek in February, and performing "THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF AMERICA (abridged)" and "ALL THE GREAT BOOKS (abridged)". It'd be fun to go in a big group and grab food either before or after the show. Tickets seem to run from $28-$38 depending on the performance, plus a convenience fee (~$4) and a processing fee. So far, we're looking at weekday evenings(cheaper) and Saturday night (larger group), but if you have a strong opinion on which day, let us know before Friday.



For those of you who don't know about the Reduced Shakespeare Company, here's a summary.
1) While ill-advised, if you must eat or drink while watching them, make sure you are near a qualified and able EMT or First Aid Responder.
2) RSC's acts are intelligent, quirky, entertaining, thought-provoking and deadly. They started in California, and have since become London's longest running comedy troupe.
3) You want to see them, and meet swank new people :)

Tonight, I went to a comedy club for the first time. I saw Nico Santos, Sabrina Matthews and Hal Sparks.

I had a wonderful time. I did have unrealistic expectations about how much everything was going to cost. The food was good for the price, but the drinks were ungodly expensive. Tickets, again, were good; parking was up the wazoo. Now that I know, I'll make it a point to save up more before going again. I was really really glad I went, and not only because Hal Sparks is far cuter in person!

An injection of intelligence and expertise into the legislative process

Wow, Texas does have something to offer to the world after all! ;P

Strong stomach required for some parts, but these range from laughable to aaugh!-I-poke-my-eyes-out-with-a-hot-poker-now!
And now, time for mac 'n cheese and warm toes. Enjoy!

The Story So Far:

I put parts of my life on hold when I started my current job. Part of what I put on hold was working out and going to Krav Maga classes. Recently, I decided to take advantage of a free month gym membership. It's a really nice little gym with all sorts of nice amenities, friendly people, and a slightly higher price than I was paying for 24-Hour Fitness. I had a good time working out, and was pleasantly sore that night. This emboldened me to think about going a little further.

Last Night's Developments:

Last night was my first night back for Krav. I took the 5 pm class with Kirian. After the class, I felt many happy endorphins in the going-to-be-painfully-sore-the-next-day sort of way.
"It's a long drive back with traffic," I thought to myself. "Maybe I'll just wait here until the traffic dies down and stretch some more." I tooled around the Pro shop, talking to Clara and cooling down. As it got nearer and nearer to 7 pm, Clara echoed my thoughts.
"It's a long drive back with traffic and you're already here, so why not take the seven o'clock class? After all, you're already going to be sore, so a little more won't matter that much, right?"
To my muscles' horror, my mouth responded, "You're right; it would be silly not to. I can grab dinner later."
I hadn't been able to talk with Jivoni (he teaches the class running during the hour I rested), so I called him on the drive home. I believe his exact words were, "I saw you! You take the class before mine, and I saw you jump into the class after, and I was like Oh no she di'ent, Oh No, she Did Not just skip my class!" My mouth, once again, responded. "Just you wait, Jivoni! I'll be in your class soon enough!" My muscles nearly fell over in shock, then muttered darkly and plotted and muttered some more all the way home.
Today, my muscles exacted much vengeance. It hurts to breathe.
I am assured that this is only the beginning of a long war with no exit strategy - my mouth just committed me to an intensive dance class tonight. While my mouth may have had the last word for today, my muscles swear they will not surrender to my traitorous, high-handed, infidel mouth. What's worse is my organs cheering in the sidelines. "C'mon, civil war is good for you! It's time we had some excitement around here! A war is just the thing! Think of the happy endorphins! Think of the enlightenment, the growth achieved through pain, the state of your immortal spleen! After all, your muscles died on the cros-uhm, in the class for you!"
If it didn't hurt so much, my heart and brain would cry piteously, "We give you life, we give you consciousness, and this is how you repay us? Oh, that we ever loved you!"

...It's been an interesting morning. I think I'll get some cereal now.

Last night I dreamt about a tasty yumminess - freshly brewed, freshly ground, smokey-bean coffee. Black. Yes, black. It was tasty brown goodness, and I wasn't really even in a coffee mood. Now, however, now... I am in a coffee mood. And I crave it. Oh yes, I wants the tasty yumminess, I does!

Should any of you want to try some of the aforementioned tasty yumminess, go to Sue's Coffee Shop (I think that's the name) in downtown Gilroy and talk to the High Dark Lord of Coffee and Coffee Roasting, for he is a Coffee Connoisseur with Capital 'C's, and will serve you coffee that will make your taste buds tingle in tangible glee.

Alternately, you could try bribing him, I suppose :D

Squeee!!! I have Toe-Socks!! The Joy!!

This is awesome... A testament to the natural drive to create life!

In light of this, religious conservatives may wish to rethink their positions on same-gendr marriage.

So.
I read this article about declaring martial law in the US. "Surely not," I thought. But a little thought niggled at the back of my mind. Something about this bill sounded familiar. It came back to me. In spring, I recall hearing a part of an NPR program where a senator talked about a bill like this. At the time, I got the impression the senator was pretty sure the bill wouldn't pass.

"Let's see if this is really legit or a just a good hoax," I thought, with prickling of foreboding. I followed Boing-Boing's link to its source, TowardFreedom, and on to GovTrack[1], a very reputable legislation tracking site. I followed their link to the official primary source document[2]. Neatly sandwiched between 'Commissioned officers: promotions; effective date for pay and allowances' and 'Accrual of annual leave for members of the uniformed services performing dual employment' sat 'Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law'. BoingBoing and SlashDot's claims are fully verifiable. There are multiple highly sketchy parts of the law that caught my attention[A], but only the largest one is making waves.

Section 1076: Essentially, any state's national guard unit can be deployed by the President, either in the guard's home state or in any other state, without consulting either state's governors, under certain vaguely defined situations. This section also says that if the state doesn't like it and resists, the state foregoes all constitutional rights and protections. While the president can also use this law to call in National Guard units from California or New York to make sure states like Mississippi, Virginia and Alabama will allow gays and lesbians to marry, or to enforce racially fair voting rights, somehow I can't really see him doing that anytime soon. This law, whatever name it bears and use it is put to, is called the 'ability to declare and enforce martial law', and it's the same sort of legislation that allowed Hitler to turn bigotry into genocide. Just because we have always called ourselves a 'free country' doesn't mean the label still fits.


I wonder how I can feel so hopeful that things will change when we've created a system that is so stacked against us.





[1] search for bill number HR5122
[2] search for bill number HR5122

[A] Section 526/527: This is a minor point not covered by Toward Freedom. Essentially, the national guard can be called out if there is a threatened terrorist attack or threatened use of a WMD. Sounds perfect, right?
One minor issue - anyone who attempts to circumvent DRM is, technically, a domestic terrorist[a]. Now, I'm not saying that the White House will deploy National Guard units from another state without asking either state's governors if you download an illegal copy of the latest Pussycat Dolls song. The fact remains, however, that there is now solid legal ground to deploy the FBI[b] and the National Guard to do so. This blurs the line between police and military forces. Again, this is a minor point in light of the rest of the bill.
[a] the definition of terrorist is part of the Patriot Act; the action is prosecutable under the DMCA
[b] this is the legal argument used to detain, arrest and prosecute Russian cryptographer Dmitry Sklyarov after he gave a talk at Def Con in 2001.

I am pissed about stuff like this.

( rantings follow )

NOTE: z

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N POISON

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