Spam and egg sandwiches

A whole crowd of us have been frequenting L&L Hawaiian Barbecue recently (it's just north of Provo High). Their main appeal seems to be that they sell genuine Hawaiian food. Until recently, I had to plead ignorance on what exactly that meant -- I mean, I've had ham and pineapple on pizzas, sure, and I've had sweet-and-sour chicken with pineapple in it, but apparently there is a bunch of other stuff that Hawaiians eat. Weird, strange stuff. So I thought I'd post a sample of some of the randomness.

Possibly the most interesting one was the spam sandwich. This is something like a hamburger -- you get a fried slice of spam meat with eggs and other hamburger-esque toppings. The young lady who ordered it assures me it was delicious, and she ordered it again the second time we went, so there must be something to it.

Their "signature dish" is hamburger patties (just the meat!) with fried eggs on top. Sounds healthy, doesn't it? Far too healthy, in fact, which is why they have to add gravy. I don't know, that one might be good, but it's definitely on the unusual side.

They have a whole bunch of variations on the theme of grilled meat, and here I'm on somewhat more familiar ground. You can get barbecue beef ribs, teriyaki chicken, and kalua pig. The kalua pig there is especially good. If you imagine slow-roasted pork, cooked until it is falling apart, and salted enough to give it a flavor (pork, you know), then you're on the right track. Nearly everything is served with rice and macaroni salad.

There are a bunch of other things on the menu (salmon-patty burgers, anyone?) but we haven't tried most of it yet. You could call it a work in progress.

We Offer You Happiness

I get several hundred spam emails a day. Most of these are automatically detected and sorted away to junk mail folders, but occasionally the filters catch a real email, so I give the junk folders an occasional scan to see if I should have caught something. It was on one of those scans that I spotted this subject line:

***JUNK*** We offer you happiness.

The actual email was mostly filled with random garbage text--it would have taken a cryptographer to figure out what they were selling. I think this subject line is intriguing, because it boils down the entire art and science of marketing to its essence: "We offer you happiness." What we deliver is a plastic device that requires batteries, or carbonated sugar water, or a means of accumulating debt quickly--so come and get your happiness!

And on that happy note, dear readers, I pose you this question: Is chocolate ever a bad idea?

"Family" "Home" Evening

The ward has started doing FHE groups, and I figured it was time to give the institution another shot. The last time I went to an FHE group, the group leader solicited suggestions from the group and mine was "keep it short and sweet." One hour and a half later, long after the conversation had devolved into an endless giggle-fest about some pop culture inanity, I excused myself. Unfortunately, that turned out to be typical.

I was hoping that, with the FHE committee rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the semester cycle, it might go better this time. It wasn't a terribly high bar to clear, but the group did admirably. There were announcements, there was singing, there was a short prepared lesson, and there was an acitivity which lasted precisely fifteen minutes (the young lady conducting the event ran a timer!) There was also obligatory candy at the end, which any child will tell you is the essential thing.

All in all, the new incarnation appears to be a success, and I'll try to encourage things by attending. It has long amused me that singles-ward FHEs fail two out of three of their initials, but it still makes for a good evening :-).

By the way, the girl conducting pronounces FHE as "fihee." Yet another acryonym is slyly sneaking its way toward word status!

Plunging strength against the sea

Quote for the day comes from Steinbeck: "Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman's soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it. And yet it was this thing that made him a man, half insane and half god, and Juana had need of a man." I really hated that book (10 points if you knew what it was without Googling), but I rather enjoyed the quote.

I had a corned beef sandwich for lunch today, and it was very good. It had corned beef, pesto, provolone cheese, and grilled peppers on it. It might be worth trying to make them at home. If anyone wishes to join in this experiment, then we can make it an expedition.

Incidentally, it is indeed much easier to get songs written while the computer is unplugged from the Internet. I finally managed to scratch out something passable on my little electronic keyboard. I really wish I were better at it.

The End of the Internet

I made an attempt at productive catching up on things today. It went okay. I ran out of places to stick things a while ago, so I've purchased a bunch of big plastic cabinets for organizing my stuff. Hopefully this will help me get clutter down to a saner level. Of course, there is always the rather high risk that the clutter will be increased by a net total of several big plastic cabinets; we'll just have to see.

I've been thinking about buying an electric piano again. I have a decent MIDI setup on my computer, and I have several half-finished computer programs which I was writing to teach myself to sight-read. Real pianos have a much better sound, but electric pianos have the enormous advantage of being usable while wearing headphones, which is particularly nice for composing stuff -- I can play something incredibly repetitive or not-quite-right without worrying about irritating the neighbors (never mind the roommate). I bought myself a little keyboard a while ago, and while it's definitely a step up from typing notes in by name, it's kind of cramped.

Speaking of which, I've noticed that it's gotten more difficult for me to do creative things on a computer. I think it's because I use them as a tool far more than I use them as a toy anymore, and it's kind of sad. It used to be that the only reason I'd ever use a word processor was for writing a story, but now word processors put me in technical report mode. I still write short stories occasionally, but now it's almost all written out with a pencil and paper. The same seems to go for composition, somewhat--I have a couple ideas bouncing around, but I'm having an awfully difficult time actually staying focused enough to get them down.

Perhaps the problem is really habitual multi-tasking. When I first started using computers, they didn't have any kind of network connection at all, and you could only really use one program at a time. Maybe the endless distraction of hopping on the web, dashing off instant messages, or checking e-mail is detrimental. Perhaps I should try unplug the network cable sometime and see how it goes.

Random Tidbits

I am starting to build up quite the collection of potential blog posts in my unpublished pile. Most of them aren't very good. This post will be an attempt to include all the stuff that looked half decent and chuck out the rest.

The photo on the left is one of my favorites from our California trip. There's a gorgeous stretch of I-15 that weaves back and forth through towering Arizonan canyons for a few dozen miles. Then, just as you're cresting the hill and crossing the border into Utah, you get this shamelessly showy golden landscape rising over the horizon, and the road drops for miles downward toward those mountains. I was trying to make a picture that both captured the impressiveness of the landscape and the feel of driving into it.

Next on the random list, there's a fungus that's actually digesting the radioactive materials inside of the Chernobyl reactor. That article's a wee bit dodgy, by the way, but you can find something more level-headed if you look for a bit. It's already amazing that a life form can live inside of a heavily radioactive environment, but actually using the radioactivity as a food source earns mother nature yet another hat-tip: She's smarter than we are. Again.

A while back, on the freeway, I saw what was apparently an ad for a (self-published?) book. I didn't catch the title, but in large letters, the contents were described as "Harry Potter Meets Star Wars." This struck me as such a fantastically bad idea that I immediately wanted to read the book. Luke Skywalker confronting the school bully Anakin, waving a light saber that only works when you yell Latinesque phrases? Harry flying a broomstick powered X-wing in some kind of mega-dangerous, octane charged intergalactic race to defeat the evil sorceror? The possibilities are endless and, almost universally, very stupid.

Finally, it's about time to get some entries up for the family photo competition. My first entry is a picture of Cavan, who having apparently woken up a measly 13 seconds earlier, is still stunned by the extremely rapid sequence of events that resulted in him sitting inside a precariously rocking skyline on a windy day. At least, I think that's what the facial expression means.

This next picture is entitled "too much fun." One of Disneyland's less- advertised features is that after a few hours, your kids will be so totally overstimulated that they will collapse in little exhausted puddles. This is a picture of my nephew, chilling in the stroller between rides. I spent a lot of time with the Kjars, and I have to say that this little guy did a stellar job of behaving. He demonstrates wisdom and patience beyond his three years.

This next shot is just cute--Granny's chilling with the grandson, while everyone is hurrying up and waiting for the next family shot. I love it when you can get good shots of people just being themselves without trying to pose for the camera. They always look a lot more relaxed and genuine. If the shot happens to be well-composed, so much the better.

I have some other pretty good shots, but I think that will do for now. Also, this post seems to be trying to set some kind of length record. Congratulations on reaching the end of it!

The hot smell of thunder

It smells like a thunderstorm outside. It's dark, the sky is navy blue, and there's a hot wind blowing. I'm not sure whether it's really a smell, but there's kind of a feel in the air when thunder is coming, sort of like all the tension has drained out of the air. It feels like everything is covered in a quilt of heavy air, just waiting.

Maybe it will rain.

This is perfect weather to be in a bad mood, which means I'm in luck. I'm in a foul mood. To make things worse, I don't have any obvious reasons for being in a foul mood. I just AM, okay? Work's been pretty good this week, and I just discovered a fun new space opera game. Some kids from the ward are planning on going to the Indiana Jones movie this week and I was invited (readers: if any of you want to go, that might persuade me to go. Let me know). Heck, I even lost weight this week. However, my foul mood defies the necessity of excuses. Growl! Growl!

Also: I want excuses to go camping, bike riding, or [preferably indoor] rock climbing. I don't like doing any of these things by myself. If anyone wants to go with, would you please let me know?

California has better weather

It's sad but true: California has more pleasant weather than Utah. But hey, at least we don't have horrible wildfires, right? (Oh wait...) So far, we've been to the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, Disneyland, and California Adventure (which is pretty much Disneyland with more roller coasters and less pixie dust).

Anyway, I thought I'd throw up a few pictures, since I've been taking tons of them and it's fun to share. This first one takes a bit of explaining. The two youngest siblings and I left early so that we could go visit an old friend of mine in San Diego. Since this particular old friend can only really accommodate two people at a time, and since there were three of us, I figured it would be a good time to finally pick up that backpacking mattress I've been meaning to get.

While I was out looking for the right mattress, I found this marvelous little device. It is specifically designed to make, and I quote the packaging, "beer can chicken." Basically, you take a can of beer and mount it in the railing. Then, you stick a chicken over the top, and stick the entire contraption on an outdoor grill. Presumably the beer boils, and you end up with a roast chicken that tastes vaguely of boiled beer. Yummy! Naturally, I laughed uncontrollably for a couple of seconds and then took a picture.

There are several things I love about this device:

1. Not only does it mean that you're making beer can chicken, it means that you're making a lot of beer can chicken. Enough that you need to run out and buy yourself a special device in order to streamline the process.
2. Yes, the store also has an entire aisle with hundreds of DVDs, all of which have names like "Colorado deer hunt in August" or "Best of the rutting season." I got a little nervous that if anyone saw me, they'd suspect I was secretly a redneck. This device strengthened that fear a little.
3. Seriously, who DESIGNS these things? I mean, in addition to the theoretical group of people who buy beer can chicken frames, who exactly has a meeting where they say "oh yeah, beer can chicken, just like Maw used to make! But 'member how it kept done fallin' over? We should go weld up some kinda frame an' sell it in a hun'in store! We'll make a killin'!" I kind of want to meet that man. From a safe distance.

Oh, I did find my mattress. It's wonderful. It's one of those that contains super spongy material. All you have to do is open the air valve, and it inflates itself as the spongy stuff puffs out. I did not purchase a frame for making beer can chicken.

The second picture is from my visit to Areae's offices in San Diego. They're a nice group of folks who are trying to make it super easy for anyone to make their own multiplayer online game. Their project is called Metaplace. Their offices are rented from an office block in a smallish city north of San Diego. It had this rather strange little fountain outside, which is so kitsch as to be nearly transcendent. There's no sign telling you to keep out of the water, because who would want to go swimming in a pool filled with hippo drool? Honestly.

Duplicate songs on iTunes

Cav just stuck up a post where he was trying to figure out the chances of playing the same song twice in a session when you have a library of 1641 songs. I thought I'd have a shot at solving it, although my probability math isn't perfect either :-P. His question was particularly aimed at iTunes, but for our purposes we're going to assume that song selection is purely random (iTunes biases things somewhat in reality).

Obviously, for a 1 song session, the chances of playing the same song twice are zero. In a two song session, they are 1 in 1641, and in a 1,642 song session, the chances hit 100%. A 1,641 song session has an extremely small chance of playing each song exactly once. Those are some good reality checks on the probability. But how do you work it out for other session lengths?

Well, let's say I want to figure out the probability for a session of length n. We'll assume I know the probability for a session of length n-1, which we'll call p, and which is some value between 0 (no chance at all) and 1 (100% chance). I picture it something like this:


0....................0.5.....................1
ppppppppxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This is kind of a random-o-meter. 'p' is the probability that we've already had a duplicate, and 'x' is what's left over. So, here's how I think of it: We're throwing a random dart at the meter. If it hits 'p', we had a duplicate even before we hit the current song. If we hit an x, we MIGHT still have a duplicate, because the current song might be the duplicate. What are the chances of that?

Well, we know that we've already played n-1 songs, and none of them were duplicates (or our dart would have landed on p). There are 1,641 songs to choose from, and there's an (n-1)/1641 chance that this time, we will pick a duplicate. So, if we land in the x region, then (n-1) in 1641 times, we still get a duplicate. So the probability is:

p: The chance that we have already played a duplicate
PLUS
The chance of hitting the x region (1-p) TIMES the chance of playing a duplicate (n-1)/1641

We already know the values for n=1 and n=2, but now we have some rules for figuring out additional values:

1: 0
2: 0.06%
3: 0.18%
4: 0.36%
5: 0.61%
10: 2.7%
20: 10.97%
30: 23.41%
50: 52.96%
100: 95.4%
200: 99.99997%

I hope that was enlightening.

Something really unusual in Hollywood

The National Association of Broadcasters is a nationwide group that acts as a kind of networking umbrella for everybody who works in broadcasting. They cover television, radio, and similar technologies. They lobby for the interests of broadcasters before congress, and they put on a huge national convention every year.

Last year, the convention was in Las Vegas, and was attended by about 111,000 people. The keynote address was unusually controversial. It was given by Tim Robbins, who works in a variety of media (acting, writing, directing, music, etc.).

Although there was a no-recording clause for the speech, and although everyone had to turn off their video cameras, someone caught a brief audio clip of the most controversial segment. In short, he railed on the media for the low moral character of their shows, and eloquently called for a change for the better. He got quite a round of applause for it, too. It's remarkably inspiring, so if you have a few minutes, give it a listen.

A whole new breed of penguin

Yesterday, BBC released some short clips about a newly discovered colony of penguins. My apologies to those of you that have YouTube blocked -- just search for 'penguins' on the BBC's website, and it's in the sidebar.

There were some great pranks from other sources yesterday. Probably the biggest was YouTube modifying the entire front page so that all the featured videos linked to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," instead of the video actually posted. In other words, they rickrolled their entire userbase. The name of the user posting the video was "YTRickRollsU," and the user page was a "Happy April Fools Day 2008" page.

I don't know what poor Mr. Astley did to deserve all the attention, but I hope he didn't sell his soul for it.

Oh, it looks like Robert Mugabe, the tinpot dictator of once-prosperous Zimbabwe, may have actually lost the election. This in spite of a significant campaign of media control and intimidation against his opponents. True, they have an inflation rate of 100,000%, some 80% unemployment, and the lowest life expectancy in the world, but it's still rather remarkable for someone as entrenched as Mugabe to actually lose an election. Here's hoping that Tsvangirai is more competent than his predecessor--fortunately for him, that's a wonderfully low bar.

I meant to do my taxes two days ago. I haven't forgotten, I just keep leaving necessary forms in all the wrong places.

The Red Army Choir goes South

Once upon a time, in a far away, cold northern land, there was a huge army that served the communist overlords. They were known as the "Red Army" or the "Soviet Army". Americans used to think that someday, the Red Army was going to invade the United States. When I was in elementary school, they used to do drills where we'd all have to duck under our desks. This was supposed to be helpful for when the Russians dropped a nuclear bomb on our school, though in retrospect it probably wouldn't have done any good. We also used to read scary stories about Russians cutting up American flags and then teaching all the children that freedom was bad. I think they were trying to train us up as future guerilla fighters, just in case.

Anyway, back in those glorious days, the Russians had a massive men's choir called the Red Army Choir. That's not actually what the choir was called. The full name was "Дважды Краснознамённый ордена Красной Звезды академический ансамбль песни и пляски Советской армии имени А.В.Александрова" which means "the Academic Ensemble of Song and Dance of the Soviet Army, Bearer of Two Orders of the Red Banner and the Order of the Red Star named after Alexandrov." Anyway, they would sing the Soviet anthem and a lot of other patriotic, communist songs for the purpose of inspiring the plebeian masses.

Anyway, it turns out that the Soviet Union kind of sort of collapsed, and singing patriotic songs about it fell out of favor. But that still leaves you with a perfectly good choir who now have a lot of free time on their hands. So what should they do about it?

Enter the Leningrad Cowboys. They're a Finnish rock band who have enormous hair and ridiculous sunglasses, and who thought it would be just hilarious to ... frankly, words fail me. You're just going to have to watch it.

The Leningrad Cowboys and The Red Army Choir singing "Sweet Home Alabama"

Truly, reality is often stranger than fiction.

Odd Signs

I spotted two particularly odd signs today.

The first was a billboard on southbound I-15. It's been up for maybe a few weeks, I'm not sure. The billboard has a picture of a yellow sunflower blossom on a blue background and, in large print, the title "Escape Polygamy." So presumably, if you're a woman (or man?) feeling trapped in your polygamous relationship, and you're fed up with it, and you just happen to be on southbound I-15 with a good memory for phone numbers, you can call the number on the sign.

I suppose there are polygamous relationships around here, although you never hear about them outside of occasional mentions in the news. It's still a rather curious billboard to have on one's morning commute. "Ha!" I yell at it, "It's tricky enough to find just the one!"

The other one was a sign posted in the men's room at work. It was advising, in rather polite terms, that you please refrain from passing kidney stones in this particular receptacle because they clog the drain. If it is strictly necessary to pass kidney stones, perhaps one of the other commodes might be suitable? It further mentioned that this should not be taken as any kind of medical advice, and that maybe, if you have kidney stones, you should consult a doctor.

Just maybe. That one obviously has a story behind it. A curious and strange story, filled with pain and horror and frustrated, mystified plumbers.

P.S. Cavan stinks! Will that cover my shout-out obligations?

Going for an English

Come the weekend, an English working man might get together with a few mates, down a few pints at the pub, and then finish off the evening by picking up some curry from an Indian restaurant. Indian food is popular in Britain much the way Mexican food is here, which might explain this rather odd skit: Going for an English.

I missed work today, so I'm going to keep this entry short and go to sleep.

P.S. Shana is awesome.

Toasted Cheese Sandwich

Today's blog title is named after what I had for dinner. It had Mrs. Ball's chutney on it, and therefore it was a good toasted cheese sandwich. What I actually wanted for dinner was steamed veggies, but I have to go grocery shopping for that, and since I left work early because I was feeling sick, I really wasn't up for grocery shopping. Hopefully taking vitamins can sort of make up for eating unhealthily.

Anyway, I'm not incredibly sick (I'll just say "sinuses" and leave it at that), but I'm not exactly bouncing around at the moment.

The Clinton campaign, smarting under a couple months of criticism for not releasing Hillary's tax returns, recently sent out an email demanding that Obama release his. Literally two minutes later, they did. Details on that little exchange here. For those who are too bored to read the actual 103-pages of returns, the summary is: He made about $1.5 million in 2006. He made a lot of money from his book, and made most of his money before that from managing a hospital and legal work. Frankly, the whole thing's pretty boring.

Given their hesitance, it might be that the Clintons' is a little more fun. But no one will know until they release it!

Oh, and regarding my music choice: I don't think I could ever like hip-hop, so I'm probably safe. It's not that country's evil so much as I used to think it was evil when I was a teenager. So the only person who's really disappointed is my former self. And he's a brat, so he'll just have to deal with it.

Blogging on Empty

I could've sworn I had something clever to say, but now I can't remember what it was. So you shall just have to put up with something stupid instead.

In a complete betrayal of everything good and holy, I purchased some country music. I feel as if I have somehow betrayed everything I once stood for. I have little to say for myself, except that I liked one of the songs. So there.

Easter was a lot of fun. I got to hang out with the sibs and much of the rest of the family. There was also an embarrassingly large amount of food served, and I don't think I have quite recovered yet. I continue to work out every day at the gym, but I'm not sure that a mere workout is going to cut it.

Sorry if the news is all boring, I'm just posting to try and stay in the habit. Apologies all round.

I recently realized that some of my readers had never heard of lolcatz. They're not exactly high culture--more like the internet version of kitsch--but they're often pretty funny.

So here's a quick example.

There's also good stuff over at Cute Overload, although technically they're a slight variant from the lolcatz genre.

Weasels and coffee.

Another mini-post: This has to be one of the world's strangest products. Oh, and I'd say that the phrase "no one knows why they do this" has several layers of metaphoric meaning here.

This all started from a conversation about scorpions in vodka, by the way. Apparently, you see, they stick an actual scorpion in an actual bottle of vodka, and then said vodka is drunk. I don't know why anyone does that either, but at least that's got a layer of weirdly awesome on top of the insanity. The weasel thing is just plain insanity.

I liked Obama's speech

Obama gave a really good speech. Better than Romney's really good one. It's a little uncomfortable, deeply thoughtful, and definitely worth the time to read. So go! Read it! Then comment!

Brain oozing out of ears

I've spent the last couple weeks working on a really hard problem.

It all started about six months ago. One of my coworkers wandered into my office in an absent-minded fashion, stuck some burritos in the microwave (I am the Keeper of the Microwave), and doodled some stuff on my whiteboard. He'd been thinking about a painful theoretical problem I'd brought up earlier, and he thought he had a solution. Which he did. It was awesome.

The problem was that it changes everything. It's a completely new way of representing curved surfaces. It can do everything the old method can do, but entire classes of problems simply disappear in a poof of simplicity. We wanted it yesterday, and it pretty nearly requires rewriting all of the code from scratch. Just in case you're not aware, Rewriting From Scratch is kind of the opposite of Staying In Business.

Over a couple of months, we worked out how it might be possible. We were considering some new features that were impossible in the old code anyway, and it was a great excuse. We would start on the new code, but it would have an interface between the old and the new. All the old code would remain in service, but the new tools would be added to the new side. A thick layer of conversion code would let the two sides communicate, and it would be responsible for making sure we could transition all the existing customers' models into the new style.

I spent a furious couple of weeks writing the skeleton of the new code. Everything had to be done over--data handling, saving and loading files, moving objects, undo and redo -- everything. I've already sunk several dozen days into writing the conversion layer, and there's still a good distance to go. I go home mentally exhausted pretty much every night, and it's hard to ask much more from a job than that.