Matthew "Gallon of Strawberries" Sachs

11:13 pm: Miscellania
Liz ( should know better than to try to outweird me. )

I saw a frog hopping across the shoulder of I-90, looking like he'd just successfully crossed.

The Mass Turnpike's Charlton Service Center is great for three reasons. There's a doorbell in the men's bathroom (pressing it did not appear to do anything), you can get both pretzels and burritos there, and the souvenir penny machine has a sticker explaining why it's legal (because defacing federal currency is okay, as long as it's not for fraudulent purposes, according to 18 U.S.C. §331.

Finally, some quick research into how the Chinese handled telegraphs in the late 19th century. ( Read more... )

Tags: life

12:09 am: I really only update Facebook for events of this magnitude.

roguesylph and I got engaged yesterday. ( Read more... )

Tags: life

06:51 am: tabiPhone
The best feature of the iPhone is that it has a quacking ducks ringtone which I can set for roguesylph.

Tags: life

12:05 am: Now that rogueslyph is done with school, I thought it'd be nice to take a little vacation. We decided to go to Vermont for the weekend. Taking in some foliage? Quaint bed and breakfasts? Syrup farms? Touring the countryside?

Or we could take an eight hour long baking class.

allocatee, I have new-found respect for those delicious croissants you brought to game one night. Apparently one has to start these things at 3AM to have fresh ones ready for breakfast... Scratch baker as alternate career choice. There's a lot of stuff that can sit in the freezer overnight though, so I think it could be divided into manageable chunks for home.

I didn't realize that bakers got such cool power tools. Industrial sheeters are like belt sanders for pastry.

Tags: life

10:09 am: When Life Imitates Art
As I was running down the sidewalk to catch a train this morning, I found myself transformed in my bed into a gigantic insect narrowly avoiding slipping on a banana peel. Yes, there was a banana peel on the sidewalk, in classic skin-up "starfish" pattern.

A block later there was a baby possum hide. Less entertaining, that.

Tags: life

07:09 pm: Penguin Power
natbudin and I wrote an award-winning penguin dating website this weekend, what'd you do?

BarCamp had a programming contest. Teams had to create a program which used at least four of the keywords which had been announced Saturday at 17:00 or so. I wasn't able to make it into Cambridge on Saturday, but I was sitting in a 2 o'clock session when someone bragged about their BBQ calculator on IRC. Well, I had to respond with some trash-talk, of course. That session got out early, so there I was, it's 14:30... hey, maybe I should go ahead and have a crack at that program I joked about after all. Judging's not until 15:30, there's plenty of time! I dragged natbudin into it when he got out of his session at 15:00.

Our code is available for browsing and download, but the best part is really natbudin's spectacular slides. Philippe Lejeune also took some nice videos of the event. We took home an honorable mention for "most efficiently developed" entry.

BarCamp Boston 2 was lots of fun. Oh, and because my employer, ITA, was sponsoring it, I got an extra-spiffy green t-shirt instead of the less-spiffy black/white t-shirts. Flickr tag 'barcampboston2' has photos.

Tags: barcamp, barcampboston2, life

12:44 am: Things
Descriptions that should be used more often: Like Jesus, but worse (via ravenword)

Things, other than hubcap, that are delicious: Moro blood oranges (via TJ's)

Things that are almost delicious but need some tweaking: Raspberry lime rickey made with ginger beer instead of seltzer (via Average Joe's, which has the latter because they're doing dark and stormies as a special)

Things that are very thoroughly flooded during inclement weather: The sidewalks and curbs of Cambridge (want to cross a street? Hope you brought your snorkel...) (via ice storm)

Things that are very thoroughly saturated after an extended encounter with the aforementioned: My shoes, socks, and feet, in that order (ditto)

Things that got dragged to every shoe sale in Harvard Square on Valentine's day: roguesylph (via mattsachs)

Things that cost $10 and had a nail or something threatening to poke up into one of the toes, but were dry: Size 10 (women's) black vinyl button-up ankle boots (via Urban Outfitters)

Tags: life

11:56 pm: Notes from Texas

• FM 685 is not a radio station.
• It's weird to see houses with Christmas decorations up when it looks like it's summer.
• Cats without tails (the top one passed on some time ago) have little stumps that they wag.
• The gumball machine is the best Christmas ornament.
• One should not take the availability of matzah meal in arbitrary Central Texas subburbs for granted.

Tags: life

03:11 pm: New Job
I'm done with school for the foreseeable future, and effective January 16th, I'll be @itasoftware.com instead of @apple.com. Well, you should probably use my zevils email, actually, but you know what I mean...

Tags: life

11:38 am: First, I present 120 lines about 60 forks.

Last night was the first time I've ever answered the door and handed out candy on Halloween. I had been looking forward to it, under the general theory of "kids are cute, and failing that I have a bowl of candy in front of me." But in my sanguine predictions, I had forgotten that children are people.

The first wave of shock troops was too young to have mastered such crucial Halloween tactics as "saying the words 'trick-or-treat'" or "leaving after they've been given candy." Instead, they would stand there in their little Bat-Man or Superman or witch or princess costumes, and just stare at me. No, this wasn't supposed to be difficult! You ring the bell, I open the door, you say "trick-or-treat", I drop candy into the bag that you're holding out and open and say "happy Halloween", and you give thanks and leave. But these poor little kids didn't understand proper trick-or-treat protocol, and so they stood there and stared at me, and I fumbled gracelessly with words and candy. Parents stood at the gates of my porch, at the edge of vision, beaming as their progeny tottered to and fro and heedlessly urging utterances of "thank you".

As the night progressed, both the visitors and I grew more practiced in the necessary arts. One complimented my costume (aww!) One was a cow, who could conveniently be mooed at. She seemed amused. Maybe she was just being polite.

Tags: creative, humor, life

08:15 pm: Gameshows of the Future
Brother Evan (guy I'm related to, not a monk) and I came up with a great idea for a game show. You Don't Know Who Wants to Spin the Wheel of Answer That Question, you would spin a wheel to determine whether you had to question the answer on your own, or if you could phone a friend or ask the audience (and there would also be the option of losing all your money if you answered wrong.) Then you'd get to start off bidding on how quickly you provide the question for the given answer. Players would also have "screws" that force someone else to question an answer.

GSN, have your people call my people.

(What, you were wishing I'd talk about how school or work or the like is going, or such outings as the 16th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony and Lectures and the Keene, New Hampshire Pumpkin Festival [Apple Fritters++, Maple Cotton Candy==, Streets not overflowing with many outstanding pumpkin pies--]? {I'm looking at you, parasailer.} This isn't the blog you're looking for; move along, there's nothing to see here.)

Tags: life, misc

02:15 am: I'm in NY very briefly for parasailer's birthday. (Don't have time to linger and catch up with NY people, sadly.)

Jeffrey suggested at dinner that Weird Al do parodies of entire musicals, starting with Les Mis. I came up with a chorus for Look Down on the spot, transformed to be about "emo" kids (Log on and read my blog it's full of rants / I hate my life; Smile? I just can't.) I got home and had a go at fleshing that out, but I think that most of it winds up being too close to the original to be interesting.

The family went to see The Drowsy Chaperone, which was quite good, and we saw a severely maimed bird on the sidewalk on the way back from the theatre. It didn't occur to me until a couple of blocks later that I should have killed it. And it was another few blocks after that before I realized I could've ducked into a store and bought something cheap and heavy to do it with. And at that point I didn't go back. It just occurred to me that "You're in [that situation]. What do you do?" would be a useful diagnostic in the Voight-Kampff battery. (For the record, nothing, because I don't feel until it's too late to conveniently act. Am I human?)

Today also feature air wassailing. It's like air guitar, but with wassailing.

Tags: life

02:55 pm: Open Letter to a Jilted Lover
Dearest LiveJournal,

I'm sorry I've been ignoring you, baby. It wasn't supposed to be like this. You know you're my one and only, you know you are my world. Honey, that girl — you are a real woman, she's just a silly girl — your friends (Xanga and DeadJournal) thought they saw me with, it wasn't what it looked like, baby. It meant nothing.

If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, baby, I will do everything I can to make it up to you. I will treat you right again, like I should've all along. I'll start filling out memes, baby, you always said it would be fun to do memes together! And I denied you that pleasure, because I was selfish, but baby, if memes will bring us closer together, then I shall partake in a veritable cornucopia of memery, a memetic plague of Outbreakian proportions, all for you, darling.

I will go to the very ends of my extended social circle to experience tantalizing shenanigans for you to have inscribed in your tender pages. The angst of my drama and the self-absorption of my wankery will know no bounds, just like my love for you.

Please take me back, baby. I love you.

XOXOXOXOXO,
mattsachs

(By way of saying, things are good, and I won't bore you with the details. And I'll try to update more anyway.)

Tags: creative, humor, life

02:14 am: And it's a sin to live so well
(Hooray, a lyric from the song I wanted to use a lyric from in the title which is actually appropriate. While I'm not sick, I am well, and if I can't even update LiveJournal regularly what hope do I have of publishing a zine?)

I'd previously promised an account of California. It wasn't very eventful, I spent most of my time at work or commuting. It's kind of a long commute from SF into Cupertino. About an hour if I catch the express train, about two if I don't. Needing to catch the shuttle from Mountain View to Cupertino is useful because it forces me to actually go home. I should probably at least look into places closer to work (something convenient to the Milbrae BART/CalTrain?) if I do wind up moving out there.

I had a wonderful view from the hotel. (Speaking of pictures, I put up some random other ones.) And I had an outstanding dinner at Coco 500. ( Which I will proceed to describe in less excruciating detail than I could, really. )

Tonight I ran a one-session game of Paranoia (hence the post's subject.) ( And who doesn't want to hear about /that/! )

Tags: life

07:18 pm: Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Pies

I've been away for a couple of weeks. I think I'm going to break the post about that time into two posts, since this really consisted of two unrelated trips that happened to be adjacent. It's a shame, because I had a good title for the one-post version, "Two Weeks and As Many Time Zones".

Week one was Minnesota. We spent a few days in a cabin/townhouse thingy on Lake Superior, then took a jaunt over to the world's largest ball of twine (can you believe that the Wikipedia entry previously did not have a photo? I have corrected this grievous omission) [if you are one of the unfortunate souls who does not know why we would visit such a thing, I refer you here.) Then it was on to Minneapolis for the wedding of a cousin.

I've uploaded photos.

( Extended vacation details )

Tags: life, travel

12:36 am: Practicality
A few months ago, I ordered a hubcap from a website, call them The Hubcap Site, that deals exclusively in hubcaps. The other day, they sent me the following email:

"Just a quick note to say thank you for your past business you have done with The Hubcap Site and hope you will do business with us in the future! Please remember that HUBCAPS make a GREAT GIFT for friends and family that are missing a hubcap or they just need to replace the old looking ones."

On that note, I've decided that I need to marry someone in order to be able to ironically gift a vacuum cleaner. Or an iron.

In non "amusing anecdotes from the Internet" news, I have fewer teeth than I had yesterday. (For those of you who hadn't heard, I had six wisdom teeth. No, that's not normal. Some people get adamantium claws, some get psychokinetic powers, I get extra wisdom teeth.) It's not so bad. So far I've managed to survive the ordeal (recovery, I was anaesthetized for the extraction) without painkillers, and I don't think I'm being particularly stubborn in doing so.

Tags: life

01:49 am: Vital Information For Your Every-Day Life
When you park illegally while visiting your friend who was in a car accident and get towed, don't leave your keys in the back seat of the cab that takes you to the tow place.

(Both my friend and my keys are fine.)

Tags: life

08:42 pm: Miscellanea
People from outside of New York don't know what garlic knots are. They're little knots of baked pizza dough covered with an olive oil/garlic/other spices mixture, and they're delicious. I succeeded in making them (after a previous unsuccessful attempt). Mmm, garlic knots...

I was listening to NPR, and they were talking about a program that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has established which uses oil revenues provide free eye surgery for the poor. They were talking about how he's using this and similar programs to boost support for state control of the oil industry, and for himself. Then they mentioned that he's been resisting pressure for an audit of the program, or something to that effect. All I could think of was "when the money keeps rolling out, you don't keep books." And then they said that the program is facing opposition from the middle class because they have trouble affording eye surgery too, but can't get government aid for it. Sounds like someone's father's other family was middle class...

Tags: life, news

08:10 pm: Cuteness
There's a mom with two young children sitting next to me at the gate (I'm in the West Palm Beach airport waiting for a flight back to Boston.) Her kids are teaching her how to play Blackjack, and they're telling her betting strategy.

Tags: life

12:51 am: I've spent the past nine hours preparing for a half-hour lecture on unit testing that I'm giving tomorrow in CS22a, one of the classes I'm TAing. The best part of the code I wrote for the lecture is that it can throw an ImpossiblePizzaException.

Tags: creative, life, ta, tech