Seattle Parking Fail

This morning I drove into Seattle to attend a job interview, and on the way out passed by my favorite stationary story. My Kyokuto A4 project notebook is almost exhausted, and as many of my friends know I'm a raving queen when it comes to paper and binder quality in my notebooks, so I figured I'd stop and pick up a replacement.

Only I couldn't. Whenever I tried to use my credit card in the parking meter, I got "Bank not available: use coins." I don't carry coins anymore. Hell, I almost never carry cash anymore.

So, I couldn't do any shopping and the city of Seattle didn't get any money out of me. Too bad for the economy. Probably good for my savings, though.

Just confirming what we already know about the Japanese...

As if we didn't already have enough evidence that the cultural disconnect between the US and the Japanese was vast, we get images of this from Akihabara, which would kinda be the San Francisco of Japan if it weren't so weird and yet so frightfully heterosexual.

(via JWZ)

[Postscript: Apparently, It's a photoshop reconstruction of a toy that you can buy.]

Our President *Is* A Healthy Young Man

And how does Michelle feel about this?

Nicolas Sarkozy obviously approves. Thank god Berlusconi wasn't there.

Alcohol is no solace.

At the beginning of this year, I made a New Year's resolution to drink more alcohol and less soda pop. I've cut down on the soda pop, but in an effort to balance things out I've also worked on increasing my appreciation for alcohol. In the past five years, I've learned to like wine, and this past year I've developed a taste for beer, and this summer I put some money into buying some agave tequila and Cointreau and making margaritas, which is the official drink of Floridians and Floridian expats everywhere.

As I've gotten older I've developed a tolerance for alcohol: Omaha will tell you that when we were younger, one glass of wine would put me out. Nowadays, I barely notice one glass of wine, or one bottle of beer, or one two-ounce cocktail. At all.

And I find that I'm not willing to do any more than that. I read a blog, I can't recall where, in which the writer said he spent an entire month without drinking at all to see what it was like, and he discovered that it was like being in a room with himself all the time, and he learned that, while he generally had high self-esteem, even he couldn't stand himself that much.

Well, even though the job search has been rough on me, I guess I don't get that solace. I get my one glass of whatever a day-- it raises my "good" cholesterol, and has other benefits-- but I still have to live with myself day in and day out. I'd apparently make a poor alcoholic. My drugs of choice these days are coffee and information.

Still, extra thanks to Rachel Maddow for teaching us all how to mix a drink, as well as being very clear as to what, exactly, constitutes a lime: "If your lime juice comes in plastic, it's not real."

It's worse than that, it's physics, Jim!

Average temperature running Prey with the stock Thinkpad 60: 95C.

Average temperature running Prey with the new fan and Arctic Silver on the interface: 60C.

Something was very wrong with this machine.

Too cute not to mention!

Omaha was walking past Kouryou-chan's room tonight when she looked in, paused, and saw... a glow.

Yes, my kid was under her blanket, reading with a flashlight.

I did that when I was her age too. And I told her so. Then we told her that even so, she still had to get to bed. She has summer camp tomorrow, after all.