Older blog entries for mjs (starting at number 97)

To everyone who is taking this tragedy as an opportunity to get on their soapbox and expound on his or her pet political issues: fuck you.

This includes, but is not limited to, the following topics:

• extreme views on gun control
• the evil of multinational corporations
• the evils of islam
• the evils of religion in general
• the evils of patriotism
• smug, self-righteousness about how the US is a "hypocritical global bully" that has been rightly punished by "brave" people for its "imperialism"; especially when accompanied by a ghastly, barely contained shadenfreude ineffectually disguised by occasional claims of sympathy for the victims.

Please have some decency already.

That really sucked. I am also amazed that people can keep up a flamewar at a time like this. At least wait a couple of days.

I made dinner tonight for roommates Steph and Nick, and guests Mark and other Nick. The menu:

• A chardonnay/sauvignon blanc blend wine
• Carrot risotto with leeks and shallots
• Asparagus with chantarelle and porcini mushroom sauce
• For desert, gorgonzola and champagne grapes drizzled with honey
• An after dinner drink of grappa for those who wanted it

It all came off pretty well, particularly considering that I'd never made risotto before.

In other news, I've been hacking on bonobo-activation, gnome-vfs and nautilus a bunch lately. It's pretty fun. GNOME is much more fun to work on without having any personal corporate baggage associated with it.

Only 4 days til I'm a quarter-century old. I should probably have a party or something sometime. The job search is proceeding,

I got a couple of new CDs today despite the overall goal of not spending money.

I guess life is pretty boring. Being unemployed sucks.

Interesting day yesterday. I went to SFMOMA with yosh, uzi, uzi's girlfriend Doris, their summer subletters Kelly and Vanessa, yakk, and yakk's Aussie friend Tim. Buca di Beppo afterwards. Split a bottle of wicker-basket chianti with Kelly. It packs a surprising punch. The rest of the evening was further downhill in drinking terms. We went to play hyperbowl at the Metreon (or rather, they all played and I watched and partook of the conveninently located adjacent bar), and then came by to my place for hanging out and partaking of beverages (joined by roommates Steph and Nick, and later our friend Adam).

It's sad but drinking really helps me a lot with interacting socially, especially with strangers (near-total silence vs. actually starting conversations [or at least conversation threads]). If only it were not for the unpleasant side effects.

Anyway, after all that business, I tried to go to sleep but I couldn't (too many thoughts to fit in my head) so here I am posting a semi-incoherent advogato diary entry to pass some time.

It's getting light out (or at least getting light gray - lovely SF fog and all), which means it will probably be hard to sleep now even if I get in the right headspace. Oh well.

Pretty uneventful day. I decided a couple of days ago that I'd go to the gym for as long as I'm unemployed. I may be poor, but at least I'll be in shape. They have a really vicious stomach crunch machine.

For dinner I made myself pan-fried breaded snapper, with mashed yukon gold potatos and canellini in a sauce of onions, marjoram, butter and tomato paste. The snapper was marinated in olive oil, rice vinegar, balsamic vinergar, soy sauce and little dash of worcestershire sauce, which gave it a sweet yet slightly tangy flavor. I breaded the fish the way my mom taught me, first dip in flour, then beaten whole eggs, then bread crumbs made by grating a dry leftover pieces of french bead. The beans came out a bit too buttery, but the fish ended up really really good. I need to try that marinade again sometime.

I didn't hack much at all today, but tomorrow I'll definitely put in serious work on the mystery project.

the past

Since some people seem to like my dinner descriptions, here's what I've made the past two nights:

Wednesday: Spaghetti with white-wine cream sauce and peas (I must say the cream sauce really loses something without tarragon, but I made up for it by throwing in a bit of sugar).

Tuesday: Pan-fried cubed potatoes with onions, chorizo, paprika, black pepper and salt. A very orange meal. I put in a bit too much olive oil, I'll have to watch that for next time I make this dish (which Steph requested). Maybe add some black beans too.

I watched the fire-spinning people from Anything that Moves with Alex.2. They are a cool crowd to hang out with. Nice email from Alex.1 when I got back.

More N hacking (need to finish up this bug fix).

Steph made an excellent dinner last night for me and Mark. Summer rolls to start, with a spicy peanut sauce. Then the main course: scallop skewers in a light garlic cause on a bed of black rice, with sides of asparagus/carrot stir-fry and vinegar-marinated cucumber/radish salad. For desert we had lemongrass sorbet with mango and passionfruit. All accompanied by a good white wine, courtesy of Mark.

hacking

I've suddenly gotten really excited about hacking again. I'm working on fixing Nautilus bug 1248, a relatively small bonobo usage type point, but ultimately my work should help improve the performance and sanity of web browsing with Nautilus.It's already pretty decent though. I'm posting this diary entry with Nautilus.

The next thing I want to work on is the oft-requested "efm feature".

Iron Chef night tonight. Steph, Taska, Elise, Adam, Eric and Alex (the local one) were there.

Mark sent me a link to an interesting Drum n Bass audio stream (if you are into that sort of thing).

Also, I can't stop listening to the VNV Nation remix of Suicide Commando's "Hellraiser".

I need to get hacking more seriously again I think. I'm building a fresh Nautilus now.

Wow, a lot has happened since I last wrote.

Nautilus 1.0 came out and everyone hated it. Then we added like 4 or 5 features and everyone loves it. Fickle world.

Eazel is at a strange point in it's life cycle. I may have to figure out what else to do with my life. If you have any good leads, let me know.

I'm hosting a visitor this weekend. We'll see how that all works out.