Week 2

19 May

This week’s post will be somewhat abbreviated (and a day late). I got my Tdap booster shot on Thursday, and it’s made me feel achy (a little) and tired (a lot) since then.

1. Tea

I’ve been reducing my caffeine intake over the past month, and I switched from morning coffee to morning tea a few weeks ago. I discovered Harney & Sons’ Hot Cinnamon Spice tea, and it is my new favorite thing. It tastes exactly like Red Hots. It doesn’t contain any sugar, but it tastes very sweet. I’ve been buying it in loose leaf form, but it comes in tea bags, too. There’s also a decaf version available.

2. Game of Thrones

I might write about the books or the HBO series at some point, but this week, I’ve been busy with the new video game. It’s not my favorite RPG. I find the controls a little clunky, and I tend to prefer open world games to totally linear ones. However, it’s still fun. I’m enjoying hearing new stories in the ASOIAF world, familiar characters are voice acted by their HBO counterparts, and the music’s great.

3. Coding Horror

This is a software development blog written by Jeff Atwood, most recently known for creating stackoverflow and its spinoffs. I’ve been following the blog for a while, and he’s yet to post something that I don’t find thought-provoking. Every time I click through to a post, I end up opening at least three linked articles, and everything’s fascinating.

4. Outliers

I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers this week. I don’t buy in to all his theories, but it was a fast, fun read. At a minimum, it’s given me a few things to think about.

5. How I Met Your Mother

I’m about six years late to this party, but I finally started watching HIMYM from the beginning about a month ago. (Hooray for Netflix!) I’m somewhere in the third season at this point, and I love it. To the best of my knowledge, it’s the only multicam sitcom I’ve enjoyed recently. (It is definitely the only show with a laugh track that I’ve liked…)  Regardless, it is fantastic.

Week 1

11 May

Week One! I had a pretty uneventful week. Here’s how I spent my time:

1. The Flog

Since her “Fav Five” is the inspiration for this blog, I need to start with Felicia Day’s video blog, The Flog. I had never heard of Felicia before Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, but I’ve been making up for lost time since then. For those not in the know (I love how I’m writing as though someone I don’t know might be reading this…) she’s an actress who’s internet famous for things like Dr. Horrible and The Guild and Buffy and Eureka, and just generally being a geek. She recently started up Geek & Sundry, an online video conglomerate of awesomeness, and The Flog is one of the first series to launch. Each week, Felicia talks about her five new favorite things on the internet, does something fun (blacksmithing! ice sculpting! steampunk modeling!), and answers a fan email. Hilariously. It is, without question, the highlight of my Mondays.

2. The Washington Capitals

I know that the Caps are the hottest sports team in DC right now, but I liked them before they were cool. My hockey hipster credentials are as follows: I went to my first Caps game when I was five weeks old. Some of my earliest memories involve stopping at Taco Bell for a bean burrito on the drive out to the old Caps Center and falling asleep on the car ride home, listening to the rest of the third period on the radio. I had my ninth birthday party at a Caps game. Watching the Caps in the Stanley Cup Finals in 1998 was the up-to-then highlight of my life. They’ve been breaking my heart since then.

Watching this year’s playoffs has been the most exciting activity I’ve partaken in since moving to Irvine. In the past few weeks, I’ve watched them play one game to triple-overtime, one game to double-overtime, four games to overtime, and six games that were decided by one goal. In the process, they defeated last year’s champions (the Bruins) in game 7 of the first round, and they’re now tied with the conference #1 seed (the Rangers) in the second round. Game 7 is tomorrow afternoon. I’m already nervous.

3. Alchemy

Not to be confused with the PopCap game of the same name, Alchemy (or Zed’s Alchemy on iOS), has been occupying an embarrassing amount of my time for the past couple weeks. The basic premise is that you begin with four elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), and you can combine them to create new elements. (e.g. “Earth + Air = Dust”, “Fire + Water = Alcohol”) As you unlock new elements, you can use them in further combinations. While it might be possible to brute force the game, methodically combining elements until you’ve won the game, it would take forever and you’d be missing the point. Many of the combinations are not literal and require some creative thinking to unlock. (e.g. “Metal + Bird = Airplane”). Some of the combinations are pretty funny (e.g. “Beetle + Beetle = The Beatles”). Lest you think I’m giving out too many hints, there are 380 possible elements in the current release. I’m only up to 175.

My main complaint is that saved game information isn’t portable. I like playing on my iPhone because this game is perfect for when you have a couple minutes to kill while out of the house. But I also like playing on my iPad because the screen is huge and the interface is easier to work with. But there’s no way to sync up the games I have in progress on the two devices. Along the same lines, if you download the free version of the app and later decide to upgrade to the paid version, you have to start over from the four basic elements. (I learned this the hard way.) I highly recommend just starting out with the paid version. It’s only $2, it doesn’t have ads, and I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.

4. Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

I bought Rachel Maddow’s book after hearing her talk about it on the Daily Show about a month ago. I generally don’t read non-fiction other than memoirs, but this one sounded like it would hold my attention. The book’s thesis is that the founding fathers intended for making war to be difficult. Back in the day, the standing military was tiny, so reserve forces would have to be called up for any real engagement. The military budget was fairly small, so starting a war would involve some fundraising. Between asking citizens to leave their day-to-day lives to go fight and raising taxes, the government had to have the support of the general public in order to go to war. Also, apparently, Congress used to have to sign off on this sort of thing. Recently, things have gotten a bit fuzzier. We’ve been at war in the Middle East for over ten years, but most Americans don’t want us to be there. Reservists and the National Guard spend more time deployed than ever before. For those who don’t know people in the military, the constant state of war is more of an afterthought than something in which they have a vested interest. Maddow takes us through the history from point A to point B, exposing the small decisions that have, over time, drastically changed the reality of the American military. How we’ve “drifted”, as it were.

I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of recent (say, post-WWII) history is shaky at best. It is entirely possible that most of my background on the 1960′s comes from Mad Men. It’s pretty embarrassing. So, it’s not really surprising how much I learned by reading this book. For example, I had heard of “Iran-Contra” before, but before last week, I would not have been able to tell you what it was. I literally never learned anything about the 1980′s in school. Drift is a pretty good way to learn about this aspect of American history. Maddow certainly spent a lot of time researching, and her tone is surprisingly close to neutral. The book is incredibly accessible, to the point that I sometimes found Maddow’s casual word choices off-putting. It’s a pretty quick read, and I highly recommend it.

5. Eggplant Parmesan Rigatoni

I bookmarked this recipe over six months ago, and I finally made it this week when I was craving something eggplanty. This dish delivers. I love eggplant parm, but it’s not the healthiest, and it’s a pain to make. (I do not like breading things. Too much hand-goop.) This recipe takes all the good parts of eggplant parm and then adds lots of noodles. I’m not sure exactly how long it took to make because I was cooking intermittently while watching Game 6 (see #2, above), but I would guess that I spent about 30 minutes cutting things up and 20 minutes combining and stirring things. I’m a very slow prepper, so it’s probably actually a 35 minute recipe.

It is delicious. We  had leftovers for two days, but I was excited to eat them. It’s vegetarian, and it reheats well. A++, would cook again.

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Hello, world

10 May

I’ve decided to start a blog.

I never thought of myself this way, but sometime recently, I realized that I crave achievement. (“I wanna be an achiever, like Bad Horse.”) If I’m not actively working towards something or in the afterglow of having made it somewhere, I feel a little bit off. I was in a pretty bad rut a few months ago, but then I started training for a half marathon. The race was on Sunday, and I beat my 2:30 goal (2:29!), and I’ve been moping since approximately Monday afternoon.

So, I’m starting a blog.

Right now, this is mostly about taking the time to write. I enjoy writing, but I’m lazy. Since college, the longest piece I’ve written  -  GRE essays aside - was a fifteen-paragraph email about PHP arrays that I’m pretty sure nobody actually read. I mostly stick to bullet points. My goal is to write here at least once a week. I’m going to do a “Friday Five” thing, where once a week (maybe Friday?) I’ll talk about five things that I learned about, discovered, or procrastinated with in the previous week. This serves three purposes. One: I’ll write at least once a week. Two: I’ll have to be doing things interesting enough to write about. Three: If I actually stick with this, I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished something.

Let’s do this thing.

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