For those who think they enjoied yams thursday

Mostly for Erin, really, since I have to try to re convince her of this every time we buy sweet potatoes.



There. If Alton says it, you know it must be so.

All Christmas music, all the time

This started at least a week ago. I mean, come on, is that really necessary? If you want to hear non stop christmas music this time of year, couldn't you just go into any store anywhere? I find it hard to believe that there are people actively seeking this sort of thing.

96.5 KOIT FM - Lite Rock, Less Talk

Out of 465 employees at

Out of 465 employees at my company, 262 have the day off. I'm one of the lucky 203.

"Well I want in. Borg

"Well I want in. Borg me up!" -Erin, on her envy of my internet based knowledge of all things pop culture.

French food on the go!

Roast Chicken Nouvelle Cuisine

Above is in progress as I write this. It's... challenging. I haven't cooked anything this complex in quite some time. Probably not since March, when I made a leg of lamb when my mother was our here. I've modified the recipe a bit, most notably in that I'm using bone-in chicken breasts rather than a whole chicken, and I think I messed up the proportions of vegetables to stock, but only time will tell. Time, of course, is something I'm short on, so I'm a bit worried about it finishing in time. I'm delivering it to Erin at Borders at 5, which as soon as I started, at 3, I realized was a mistake. Not only is this complex and time consuming to prepare, it's complex to serve, and I'm going to have to pack it into gladware. This of course also means I can't serve wine with it, or have a glass now for that matter, which I could really go for. Meat thermometer says it will be done in 10 minutes, but I don't know if I buy that.

I'll take pictures, if the camera battery charges enough in the next half hour.

Edit: I was right on the time, didn't have the probe in far enough. Will this all be done in 15 minutes? Unlikely.

Edit 2: Chicken done in time-ish. Rice will be done at 5 exactly.

"Only when you know the rules backwards and forward should you proceed to break them."

Does anyone know where this quote is from? I heard it on NPR's Selected Shorts, in a reading of “Stump Louie” by Lisa Halliday, where it's attributed to Michealgelo, but wikiquote doesn't agree and google doesn't help. Incidentally, the story is set in Albany. I hadn't even noticed that when I heard it on the radio.

Failure of Feral Cats Roundup Has Explaination

From "All Things Considered" yesterday:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96922216

Would anything at all motivate your average person short of having a feral cat eat his face? I doubt it.

SC priest: No communion for Obama supporters - Yahoo! News

SC priest: No communion for Obama supporters - Yahoo! News: "COLUMBIA, S.C. – A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him 'constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.'"



Just generically opposing pro-choice candidates is one thing, but this is a bit precise. How's that tax exemption treating you, Catholic Church?

BTW, I'm using the google toolbar (goobar?) to post this, which makes posting links and whatnot significantly easier.

Prop 8

The bit in the Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert clips about African American turn out is a bit misleading, as Nate Silver points out. He's also a bit more gentile about the truly relevant point than Dan Savage was:

...the older voters aren't going to be around for all that much longer, and they'll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era.

Top Chef Season 5

...starts tonight. While I'm happy to have my favorite cooking show back, and doubly so to have it based in NYC this year, I find the logo a bit disturbing:




On the other hand, this Statue of Liberty will be better equipped to handle any marshmallow men that might show up.

The West Wing

So Bravo runs two episodes of The West Wing every morning. 8am - 10am. Which means I've been tending to get into work at 10:15 or so. Friday just finished out the series, so I was hoping I could shift my schedule a bit earlier. But here I am, watching season 1 ep1 and ep2.

Mind you, I own the entire series box set on DVD.

iTunes

I recently merged the music libraries from the several computers we've owned over the years onto Erin's laptop. As may be expected, there was quite a bit of overlap between them, and iTunes isn't quite smart enough to realize it's got two of the same song, so you wind up with "Paranoid Android.mp3", "Paranoid Android 1.mp3", "Paranoid Android 2.mp3" all in the same directory. As a result, I'm been going through track by track checking for repeats. On the one hand, it's a great way to remember all the music I forgot I owned (or "owned", as the case may be). On the other hand, we're talking about a library of 6,600 tracks, just about 27.5 GB, so it's going to take a while. Honestly, I would have left it as is, but our iPods are both only 30GB, and between the music, podcasts, and video, it just wouldn't fit. Since I'd have to go through the whole of it anyway to pick what I didn't want synced, it can't hurt to clear out the trash on the way.

Notes along the way:
Most frustrating part of this task - incorrectly formatted ID3 tags (mostly the title of the song containing " - "). Worse yet - the same, plus the artist bit is wrong. I mean come on, The Beatles did not sing "Love Potion #9". Barenaked Ladies did not sing "Buddy Holly". Worse yet - the same, but I can't figure out who the correct artist is. Most in this category seem to be listed as Dave Matthews songs. I mean damn, they did alot of coversongs, c'mon!

Must... Resist urge... to delete all of Erin's Creed tracks...

I still have a copy of my all time favorite holiday song. It's got some competition this year though.

Guilty Pleasure #1: Fall Out Boy. After going to see them back in Summer '07, and realizing the then current Pop Punk/"Emo" movement was this decade's answer to Boy Bands, I stopped listening to them altogether. But the few tracks they have on Rock Band piqued my interest in them again, and damn if their tracks aren't catchy as hell. Fun Fact about that show in 2007 - they did a cover of Michael Jackson's "Beat It", and I'm pretty sure Adam, Erin, and I were the only ones in our section who knew what song it was, or even that it was a cover.

No many how times I tell it not to "ask me this again", iTunes insists on double confirmation before deleting anything.

I have been slowly amassing a large quantity of Greatest Hits CD's. Yes, I know, Greatest Hits albums are for housewives and little girls. A partial list: ABBA, Aerosmith, Alice in Chains, The Beatles, Billy Joel, CCR, CSN, Bowie, The Doors, Electric Light Orchestra. That's A through E.

OK, 312 duplicates removed, that's enough for today. Library size now 26.21 GB

Election running too long

I tried to stay up to see the Prop 8, GA, and Franken results, but it's too damn late. Also, AK and OR, your races are far closer than they have any business being. I expect satisfaction by the time I wake up in 7 hours.

Obama-rama live blog?

Short but powerful. The next year is going to be interesting as hell.

Whiskey refill, yes we can!

I suddenly feel like I'm in church.

Yes We Can!

Only took him 10 minutes to start talking about re-election.

It's going to be nice to have a well spoken president again.

Obama's stage is just far more impressive than McCain's.

That's a lot of flags.

I've never done this live blog thing before, and it's not like anyone's reading this, I'll give it a shot anyway.

Jameson 12 year

My bottle is running low. I'm at 250 ml or so left of 750 ml. I'm leaving out some, I'm sure, but the following are my reasons for consumption:

Bachelor Party
Wedding's Eve
9/11 (more or less annually)
Getting pay bumps/promotions
Moving to SF
Obama wins

Looks like I may need another jigger, as Prop 8 might be failing, but you can't win them all. I'm thinking of replacing it with a bottle of 18 year when it drains out, but that's a hell of an investment.

Also, Erin is drunk on Amaretto. I don't have a problem with this. She tastes like Hazelnut!

GObama! Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Make Sure You Get Your Riboflavin