Penguins can be foolhardy critters.

I took the car in on Saturday to get it looked at. Nothing serious, just getting an oil change and fixing a broken taillight. I was surprised at how much the taillight was. There are apparently a ton of plastic parts that have to be removed to get to the bulb.

But while they were doing all that, I spent a lot of time walking around south Tempe. It’s not very pedestrian-friendly—nothing here, except possibly downtown and ASU, is—but I did it anyway. A sports bar that we used to go to every so often for lunch, the Full Moon Cafe, has changed its name to Payton’s Place, and possibly made other changes. A pizza place that we never went to had gone out of business. I wandered in to Costco and browsed around for an hour. They have a huge variety of stuff, more stuff than you find in Meijer. You can get a 72″ digital projection TV for the low, low price of $2100, members can get gas for about $0.10 cheaper than most gas stations, and so forth. I don’t know if paying $50 to be a member would really make financial sense though. There was some sort of “walk for charity” thing going on, so I saw a ton of people doing that.

Met Ed and Susan at Haru Sushi on Saturday night.  That was fun.  The place is a “conveyor belt” sushi joint, where the chefs place dishes on the belt and you pick up what looks tasty.  You’re charged by the number of empty plates you have and what color they are (yellow = $1, red = $1.50, blue = $2.)  It was a pretty good deal, too, as we got a large variety and quantity of sushi for about $17 each.

Also heard all the gossip about the old company, including an amusing story about a piece of paper that showed what everyone’s salary was.  This piece of paper should’ve been shredded, wasn’t, and a bunch of people saw it.  Hilarity ensued.  No, actually, a bunch of people got very annoyed.  Ed’s contract was extended, which is good news for him.  Not a whole lot else. . . .

If you have to travel, you should be resigned to situations like this.

The early-morning machine maintenance that I was supposed to do Friday was only partially successful. I’ll have to do the rest of it this weeked early in the morning so as not to interfere with things.

Anticipation can be funnier than action.  This comic shows it.

If all goes well, I’ll remember to bring the camera tomorrow, and possibly get a few pictures of a couple of older buildings in Phoenix’s downtown. The older buildings have stonework, arches, balconies, brickwork, and interesting architectural features. Just about everything built after 1950 seems to be a glass-and-steel box. I know why this is (cheaper to build, more efficient) but it looks . . . boring. Oh well, the people who pay the bills for buildings tend not to care as much about looks as much as they care about how much the monthly HVAC costs are.

From the Monks: “I have actually mowed my lawn with a sickle once. It was hard work.” “Made you want to get hammered afterwards, did it?” Groan.

And in other news, I have to get up really, really early and do various work things on Friday. Oh well. More work things need to be done really, really early on Monday, but I shouldn’t have to do those.

The Perry Bible Fellowship delivers the goods. Artists and writers haven’t really explored the idea that there are a large number of comic book super powers that are completely useless in the real world. Making coffee is not one of those. But it can be exploited for comic effect.

Wednesday night, more Rock Band at Steve’s. Contrary to what the game says, “Let There Be Rock” is harder than “Painkiller”, at least on Medium on the guitar. This surprised me. Steve was also persuaded to try playing guitar on Easy in “practice mode”, which he seemed to be picking up at least partially. I also saw something on PickyWeedia that was interesting: White people like Guitar Hero better. Black people like Madden 2008 Football better. I have no idea why that’s the case, but the study was published in Cultural Anthropology in April 2008 by Jamar Wilson.

There are just too many ways for translation to go wrong.

There were hardly any people on the bus on Tuesday. There were only 2 of us on the bus in, and I was the only rider on the bus back. So naturally, on the way back, the driver wanted to talk. He said that he didn’t have a heck of a lot of education, but did have a commercial driver’s license, so he ended up driving a bus even though it doesn’t pay very much and the benefits are practically nonexistent. Bus drivers are not municipal employees now; most cities have turned that over to contracting firms. He also said that too few people in this modern world have a good work ethic.  I’m not sure; modern people are bombarded with video showing people who are rewarded lavishly for not working very hard.

Well, it was Veteran’s Day, and I think most of the people who ride the bus actually work for the local or state government. There’s just no reason to get on the bus if you don’t have to work that day.

Trivia: We were trailing when I left, thanks to missing a number of questions.  Also, Trevor is trying to organize a tournament for this Saturday, which would be fun except that it’s all day long.  I dunno.  Some other people at the pub had a team name of “They’re going to tear down the Rose Garden and put in a watermelon patch”, which made everyone groan.

Sometimes, full knowledge of a device is not essential to getting what you want out of it.

The folks at Tesco sent me another $5 off coupon. So I went out and used it, since there are a few things there that are pretty good. There’s a frozen Indian dish, chicken makhani, that’s really good, though I’m sure that if you fed it to lab rats, the rats would all die of 12 different kinds of cancer.

Trying to arrange a get-together for Susan and Ed and everyone, and it looks like Saturday is the day that’ll work for all of us. We’ll probably go to one of those places where they have “conveyor belt sushi”. The chefs make various dishes, and put them on plates on a conveyor belt that goes around the whole dining area, and if you see something you like, you pick up the plate. You get billed depending on how many plates you have at the end of the meal, and what color they are. White plate = $2, green plate = $3, blue plate = $4, something like that. In Japan, these places are popular because they’re cheap and fairly informal.

Firefox is a web browser, not a merciless, amoral, hunter/killer/predator. However, people like to anthopomorphize software. (Software hates that.)

Not a whole lot to report; Sunday was quiet. I figured out how to use arecord to record sound files from the USB microphone that I got when I purchased Rock Band.  That’s a good thing, but the sounds that I record are all insanely quiet.  If you plug a non-USB mic into most soundcards on an x86, you can enable the “+20dB mic boost” when recording.  There is no way to do that with the USB mic.  Oh well, I can do that in postprocessing.  (The main reason I was interested in hooking up a mic to this computer was so that I could record Fuzzball meowing when she was Really Upset.  Most people would not believe that a 7 pound half-Siamese cat could be that loud or that annoying.)

I am wondering whether it’d be possible to make a bunch of shrimp pies for the next time I have a bunch of people over, as the recipe doesn’t look insanely hard to do.  On the other hand, I haven’t inflicted my Bonehead Lasagna on all my friends yet, and I know that is reasonably easy and can be prepared ahead of time.

Really, the plan for Saturday went fairly well, all things considered. The main problem that I had was that I thought that I could make omelettes using a frying pan I’d never used before in an unfamiliar kitchen. I couldn’t get anything to work right. The omelettes ended up turning into scrambled eggs, which were fine, but a bit of a letdown. I don’t think anyone really noticed—everyone else wanted waffles and bacon. I still felt bad for saying I’d make something and not being able to make it.

The trivia went OK. Too many of the questions were about movies and TV shows, where I have a real disadvantage since I haven’t had cable since 1999. There were a few questions that I knew, and those helped the team I was on a lot, but I was definitely not the most valuable player.

Finally finished Working. There are just so many stories in that book that it’s hard to pick out a coherent thread. Well, in 1970, people were complaining about businesses closing down operations in the USA and opening similar operations in Mexico or Taiwan. Some things just don’t change that much.

This image has nothing at all to do with the text here.

Still going through Working. It’s a long book. The part I’m reading now has a set of stories from a crazy hippie who seemed to have a problem with just about every aspect of modern society and a nurse whose attitude to her patients and co-workers seems just shy of sociopathic. Well, there are some very strange people out there in the working world.

Nobody wanted to go out to anywhere that was far away or took a long time, so we went a block away to a little Italian place. The pizza is good there, but they also have subs, so I tried one of those. It was a little more expensive than Subway, but the bread was fresh, the meat high-quality, and the whole thing was really good.

The Plan(tm) for Saturday afternoon/evening is to go over to Kelli’s and play trivia. It looks like we’re also going to be having “Breakfast for Dinner”, making waffles, sausage, bacon, omelettes, and things like that instead of traditional dinner food. Well, I never cook breakfast, so it’ll be different.

This is just. . . silly. Also, I think that Orthodox Jews are not supposed to wear bright orange clothing.

It’s getting “cold” out here. It was about 50 F on Thursday morning. I dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks, as usual, walked out, thought, “Maybe I should get a jacket. Nah, I’m already halfway to the bus stop.” and just dealt with it. Everybody else at the bus stop was wearing long sleeves and/or jackets. Well, I’ve experienced -40 F, so 50 F is OK for short periods. With the right clothing and preparation, -20 F is easy to deal with, though I don’t have clothes appropriate for anything under 20 F right now.

I heard that there was another shakeup in management at the old company, and a couple of people who should have been fired a long time ago finally got fired. I’m done with that place, but all the same, I went out to a good local restaurant, had a very tasty meal, and gave the waitress a 20% tip, all the while thinking, “HA HA! PWN3D!”  I just hope that the people who are left can get their stuff together and solve the serious and challenging technical problems that are still in the way.

Still reading Working.  One of the interviews, with a man who had been an executive, made me wonder.  He said that everyone who’s in a higher position than that of foreman lives in fear—fear of a superior firing him, or fear of a more competent subordinate taking his job.  I wonder how true this is.  A person who fears his superiors and his subordinates is not going to be very effective in his job, I think.