the worst bowl of cream of broccoli soup ever for lunch today. First, they’d advertised it as broccoli cheese soup, which it clearly wasn’t. Second, the pieces of broccoli were way too large; if I’d wanted a tree in my soup, I’d have asked for one. And third, someone forgot to add the salt. The saltines had more flavor. Gotta love that cafeteria food. I want my $2.15 back, dammit.

latest bleat:

Weekend so far: fine. Watched “The Color of Money,” since I’d just seen “The Hustler.” Didn’t age as well as I thought. Oh, you can get past Paul Newman’s 80s duds and smoked aviator glasses, and Tom Cruise’s hair – on loan from Ray Luca – but it just feels like another example from Scorcese’s Trying Very Hard period. Also, it’s nine hours long. But still! Tom Cruise is very convincing as a cocky, large-toothed lunatic. Almost as if he was born to play the role.

“Large-toothed lunatic.” Heh.

This could happen to you!

Roboticist Daniel H. Wilson, an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, has written a 178-page treatise on surviving the inevitable robot war—How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion—

Any robot could rebel, from a toaster to a Terminator, and so it is crucial to learn the strengths and weaknesses of every robot enemy.

I don’t know about you, but I’m planning on picking up a copy as soon as it’s published. You can never be too prepared. (Via Slashdot)

BEARS!

From Slashdot:

The Microsoft Blogs are all buzzing with news that the .NET Framework 2.0, Visual Studio.NET 2005 and Sql Server 2005 have released to manufacture. Michael Swanson’s blog has a nice run down of what’s available now and what’s coming. The short version: MSDN Subscribers can download everything now, everybody else can pick up their copy after the November 7th launch.

Here’s a listing of what’s different in the VS .NET 2005 IDE.

Ong-Bak: 3 stars.

This one very nearly got 4 stars, but I wasn’t emotionally involved in it enough. But, man, that Tony Jaa guy is insane. That was possibly the most exciting chase scene I’ve ever seen, and it was on foot! A solid addition to any action-movie-lover’s repetoire.

God, I can’t win. All this fansub watching lately has turned me onto some intriguing Japanese bands* that I’d like to learn more about, but I’m having a really hard time finding samples I can listen to on the web or in iTMS Japan**. In the case where there’s one song I want to buy, there’re no online stores where I can buy them from the US. I can go to Japanese sites that sell song downloads, but they don’t allow access from outside of Japan. Arrrrggghhhh. So my only solution if I want this music is to order from Amazon.co.jp and pay obscene amounts of money to get it shipped to me from Japan. Help me out, right?

* Orange Range, Home Made 家族, UVERworld, and BaseBallBear, to name a few.

** iTMS Japan really doesn’t have very good selection. This always happens to me. The artists I search for in iTMS are never there. Grrr.

These are so cool! (Via Drawn!)

writes:

If Bush wants to start his lame duck season early, it’s by his own choice. The initiative is out there for the grabbing, but his hands remain firmly in his pockets. I say that because Bush already has the perfect issue for retaking the initiative. On Wednesday, Glenn Reynolds asked “on pork, where’s the White House?”
[...]
Picking on Congress for bad spending habits is a pastime as old as… Congress, I think. Who doesn’t love watching smalltime politicians getting spanked for bad behavior? What journalist won’t hop on the bandwagon, [Mixed Metaphor Alert, condition red!] when there are hands in the cookie jar?

Also, fiscal restraint is supposed to be a Republican issue. Twelve years ago, more principled Republicans tried to give line-item veto power to a Democratic President. Today, we have a Republican President who won’t even bash pork-barrel projects in Democrat districts – even when there’s a growing grass-roots effort to help him out. As a result, Bush hasn’t only pissed away a good issue, he’s pissed off his base.

Fiscal conservatives – even libertarian ones like myself – need a little attention. Give us at least the appearance of restraint, and we’ll roll over like puppy dogs. If the red ink keeps piling up, we’ll even console ourselves by saying, “At least he tried.”

Bush hasn’t tried. He won’t try. And for the life of me I can’t understand why not.

I can. Bush doesn’t want to look like a hypocrite. He has done more to increase government spending than the last two presidents combined.* Nitpicking with Congress about their spending is going to look a lot like the pot calling the kettle black.

Then again, he doesn’t need to run for office again in 3 years, so he doesn’t have a lot to lose. Maintaining Congressional good will towards the White House is more or less optional at this point, unless he’s got some big legislative plans waiting in the wings.

As for me, my money is on the grass-roots effort. There’s nothing like getting called to account by the guys who elected you in the first place. The little guy flexing his muscles. Ah, democracy is a wonderful thing.

* This statistic is entirely made up. Fabricated. Imaginary, even. My point is that he’s increased government spending a lot, but that doesn’t sound as cool as saying what I said.

about the new PBG4 outside of the gorgeous screen has to be the double-fingered scrolling functionality they added to the trackpad firmware in the last line of powerbooks. Now scrolling is fully as easy on laptops for those who prefer to use the trackpad rather than rely on keyboard shortcuts. Neat-o mosquito.