entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

I found a trove dated 2010-01-12.  Some are a little dated already ("whuffie", Google Wave, The Boondocks)

the question is not "should i start pimpslapping people at work?" but "how hard should i slap them?" [should i be concerned that this seems to keep happening to me?]

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i just realized that The Boondocks' Uncle Ruckus is what Alan Keyes will become in 10 years

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fair warning: i've moved from mild-mannered tolerant agnostic to angry scorched-earth atheist. this is just a phase.

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"out of ammo"'s just another phrase for "nothing left to loose"

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i just attended my first lacrosse game and we were treated to a halftime show of competitive eating. i felt so very white trash.

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i seem to spend an inordinate amount of time flipping off inanimate objects

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George Carlin famously said of golf on TV "It's like watching flies fuck" but i think these days it's more apposite to MMA 'fights'

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2wanda is driving us home from a party and she just had to stop when she saw the "FREE sewing machine" sign

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bizarre Mayan triangle: every time I think of you / I get a shock right through the Popul Vuh

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is it bad that upon inspecting Google Wave, the first words that popped into my head were "scuttling horror"?

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i am banning myself from using "tweet" meaning "twitter update" because I don't want to sound like a complete dipshit [this didn't last long, sadly]

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good news: my Dad has a Weblog now. bad news: he can't figure out what its URL is.

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any time someone uses "whuffie" like it actually means something in the real world, i want to slap them

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when someone tells you something scary and it gets stuck in your head, that's a #fearworm e.g. finding maggots on your pet

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"Big Bang Theory" does for geeks & nerds what "Will & Grace" did for gays: turn up stereotypes to 11 and give squares something to laugh at.

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"Dali's Mustache Ride" would be an excellent band name.

• Yesterday was my last day toiling for eBay Advertising (née shopping.com)
• Today is our wedding anniversary; more importantly, however, it's captain_nesky's wedding day
• I start my new job at MapR Technologies on Tuesday, riding side by side with palecur for the first time since the days of Best Internet Communications

You know, if 2wanda and i have to stand in line with a bunch of scruffy, chain-smoking hipsters waiting for the doors to open, i would expect to actually have the band start playing sometime in the vicinity of the posted start time of 21:00.  At 22:35, we said, "Fuck this," and left, because she needs to sleep and i need to get to work.

On the bright side, stoat recognized us and we chatted a bit over the din of the warmup music (why does the pre-concert music have to be played as loudly as the live music?).  Oh, and the Anchor Steam was excellent and fresh (which it ought to be, given that the brewery is only a few blocks away).  But i'd be hard-pressed to give Bottom of the Hill, or Battles, another chance.

Ever since my Ecuador vacation, my sleep period during weekends rarely lasts more than 5 hours; i can snooze a bit afterwards, but it's definitely not true, bona fide sleep.  This is... suboptimal.  However, one silver lining that we've found is getting up before dawn and driving over the hill to Santa Cruz to experience the sunrise on the beach, where 2wanda took some pictures, and then head to Linda's Seabreeze Cafe for breakfast, after which we drove to the next beach and Kim took some more pictures.  I took one, too:

After that, we drove back north, past San José to Mountain View, and dropped by the farmers' market, hoping to score some pork belly from TLC Ranch; they had none, alas, so we consoled ourselves with some of their excellent bacon.  On the way out, there were volunteers registering people to vote, so i took the opportunity to cease being a registered Republican and once again join the glorious ranks of the Scorched Earth Party.  The volunteer who reviewed my form laughed when she saw my party declaration, and also when i said, "Join the 10% with the lead pipes!" but Kim thought she looked nervous, so i dunno.

2wanda and i went to Las Vegas last weekend for our 12th anniversary.  We visited her dad, who cooked us some marvelous meals, as he always does when we visit.  Their tortoise likes to come into the house once in a while.

We saw Zumanity and, boy howdy, that was a titillatingly good time.  My only complaint was that it was shorter than your typical Cirque du Soleil show, at 90 minutes.  We also went to Death Valley to try out Kim's new camera (i'm sure she'll write about it soon), and while driving over the mountain pass between Las Vegas and Pahrump, it snowed.  It frickin' snowed a week from June.  Crazy-ass shit.

But enough about the good stuff... god, i hate Las Vegas so much.  It seems to me sometimes as if it's a practical experiment in how unfettered capitalism fails society.  It's an affront to civilization, the greatest karma sink in the nation.  We stayed at the Mandalay Bay and it was the first and, in all likelihood, last time we'll ever stay at a Strip casino hotel.  Mediocre service, a dirty tub, damaged furniture, and one insanely crowded pool that was really making me stabby.  And on the way back, our plane was delayed an hour, so we missed our connecting flight at Mormon Central (don't ask why we got a flight from SJC to Vegas with a stop at SLC; i know that it's stupid, but that's all that we could find), and ended up snagging a flight to SFO so i wouldn't have to try to catch some sleep at the SLC airport and end up going straight from home to work.

My brother-in-law has been raising chickens for about a year now (starting with some neighborhood strays, if i recall correctly), and my mother-in-law had wondered for some time how we'd end up having the ones who weren't laying eggs turned into food.  So i volunteered to learn how to process chickens, because i've felt for some time that, as a meat-eater, i should be able to look at my prey in the eye and lick my lips.  Or something.

The result was that my MiL signed me up for a slaughtering class at TLC Ranch last Sunday, and 2wanda was able to join me at the last minute due to a cancellation.  There were about 10 of us there, ready to get with the cuttin' and the guttin'.  It's a fairly straightforward procedure: catch the chicken; put it upside down into a metal cone with no point, so that its head sticks out; grab the head, and sever the jugular below the jawline; let it bleed out; throw the body into the scalder; when it's ready, throw the body into the plucker; pull the body out and clean it.

Of course, there's nothing straightforward about any of those individual steps, but that's where the actual learning comes in: grab the chickens low by the legs; keep it upside down for a while so it doesn't thrash while you put it in the cone; sometimes the head refuses to be within fingers' reach, so you have to raise and lower it again; you want to make the cut just right to avoid various complications; the chickens will sometimes manage to climb themselves right side up in the slick metal cone, somehow, so you have to grab them and turn them over; don't scald them too long or too hot, or the plucker will break the skin; do not cut into the intestines or you will get chicken crap everywhere and nobody wants that.

One guy couldn't handle giving a good swift cut so he instead ended up slicing the chicken's neck like he was trying to get it to confess to a crime, and one woman insisted on naming her chickens.  She also had one of her chickens killed by having its head severed (by boltcutters) so that its body, well, ran around like a chicken with its head cut off.  It was weird to see how accurate the cliché is, but i don't think i want to see that particularly barbaric act again (besides, the chicken might break its wings while thrashing about).

Then we came home and Kim made coq au vin and it was delicious the end.

The bad news: i got stood up for all the D&D games which i requested at DunDraCon this weekend.  I did get into Red Feather Games' inaugural Gigax game on Monday morning, but i didn't have as much fun as i'd hoped due to getting stuck with a douchey player at the table and me not being much of a horror setting player; however, elmuchacho did a very good job running his half of the game (before both halves were combined for the apocalyptic climax).

The good news: spending the Valentine's Day weekend with 2wanda.

I like going back to look at previous years to see what i wrote on my anniversary.  Looks like i skipped 2002 (i hadn't gotten a handle on the journaling thing yet) and 2004 (to bitch about Bush? inconceivable).  It's the same ol' thing every year... and that's what makes it so darn cool.

2wanda suggested that Big Strong Man go hunt fish for sashimi dinner.  So i went to Mitsuwa and their selection included some very fine hamachi which was as good as any i've had in any restaurant, and also some chutoro (which is hard enough to find consistently anywhere). Mitsuwa was out of my favorite shochu (Fusanotsuyu Misty Blue), but they had a bottle of the awamori that i found once at Sushi Masa and never got to finish because Masa-san drank it despite it having my name on it... anyway.  Kimmy and i shared the meal with captain_nesky until we were stuffed (i tend to go a bit overboard with the amount of fish i buy).

Anyway... here's to eleven more.  Now i have to finish doing the dishes.

23:30
RON: I have to do one more thing for work, won't take me more than 30 minutes.
KIMBERLY: Right.  You've said that all week and it always takes you two hours.
RON: Not this time, i'm sure of it.

23:40
RON: Shit, this isn't going to work.

23:41
COWORKER: O HAI HLP ME PLZ
RON: Sure.

01:50
COWORKER: THX!!
RON: Ugh.

Two weekends ago, Kim and i ran away to Calistoga for restoration via mud bath and massage at Golden Haven Hot Springs.  On our way there, we stopped at our favorite wineries, Summers and Ehlers Estate; on the way back, we stopped at Heitz, whose Grignolino wine and port i've admired for some time.

Last weekend, i nerded it up, as ever, at DunDraCon, but i did not neglect my sweet Kimmy on Valentine's Day, and brought her flowers and a card, and then took her out to sushi. DDC was fun as always; although i missed seeing some of the usual suspects, i did get to see vanmojo and dr_strych9, albeit in passing through the LARP in which they were participating (not judging you, guys... well, not too much).

Tonight, Kim and i drove to San Francisco to spend a little time with old Macromedia coworkers.  It's obvious that we're a bunch of nostalgic romantics, and that's fine with me.  I wish we'd've been able to get there earlier and stay later, but an hour-long drive home is always rough.