Abodes.org

So the elf and I went to Canada last weekend. This review is about the Cannota we saw during the weekend. There might be other more different Canadas but I can’t say for sure.

Kanida is hot, muggy, smelly, and expensive. It was really humid the entire weekend and the only thing that made it acceptable was a strong breeze off of Lake Huron. Lake Huron gets a 9/10 btw since it was smooth the whole time and cool and not smelly and practically free.

We saw a really run down indian reservation. That got a 2/10. The restaurant in the shopping center near there though had “traditional native fried bread” which gets 8/10.

So Canatuna must have like 99% sales tax. A hamburger and fries was $13. Fish and chips was like $15. For perch. Not even for pufferfish or anything. Around where I live it’s usually like $7. Drinks at a bar were $5-8 a piece which is a bit steep but when you factor in that they didn’t appear to even have any alcohol (and tasted just like mixer) a shot of liquor must be like $20 there.

We stopped at a liquor store and a beer store. The Beer Store actually. You see, Soberada is a socialist nation. The best way to control a populace in a tyrannical nation is to control the alcohol supply. Hence The Beer Store. It’s the only place (seemingly) you can buy beer. A 6 pack of beer is roughly twice the cost of what people in the States pay. This probably explains the people with hand carts and 20 18-packs of bud light coming back over to Canadia on the ferry. Oh, and about the liquor stores. In Corndidia the only liquor stores are LCBO stores. They are pretty nice as far as stores go, more like a Macy’s than a Walmart. A 750mL bottle of Jose Cuervo runs about $35 Eh’dian. Right now greenbacks and loonies are about even so we can say that’s roughly $35 USD. Three blocks away from my house I can buy the same bottle of Cuervo (or at least a close cousin) for around $16.

If it wasn’t for a minimum wage of $8 and up and healthcare/retirement/etc that the people with jobs have to pay for in their probably 200% income tax I don’t know how anyone can get drunk in Nadcania. There must be a bum booze subsidy program or something for the stinky part of the population.

Overall, Candidia gets a 6/10. It’s fun to visit but expensive, hot and smelly. You don’t think Candacia is hot? I can say honestly that 100% of the times I have been to Candardia in the last year it has been hot and muggy. Proof enough.

It’s called a new lappy. I bought a refurbished (don’t laugh, the last place I worked we bought a lot of new and refurb Dells and the refurbs had a much lower failure rate) Dell Inspiron 1720. 17″ screen, pretty good graphics card, a moderate amount of RAM that I already upgraded (cheap cheap on Newegg).

So that parts good. But then I had to buy a laptop case. You see, my laptop bag that I held my 12″ PowerBook in was not nearly big enough for the beast that is this lappy (it has a full numeric keypad!). While shopping for lappy bags, I thought to myself, “Self, this lappy is so big that if you carry it in a soft bag you will bash it into everything. Maybe you should look into a hard sided lappy case.”

Thus I purchased a Solo Attachè on Newegg. (God typing the grave mark over a vowel is way more of a pain in Windows). It’s sweet. It’s big. It’s heavy. It’s sweet.

Closed case on my stove.
Case with lappy and accessories
Case with objects to give relative size

Now, before you say “Wait sloth, that looks really bulky for a lappy. Why did you buy that?” let me point out that there is nothing light or easily portable about a 17″ laptop. I bought it for three reasons: 1) my desktop sucks by modern standards, 2) I wanted a new machine to game on, and 3) I wanted a new machine to code on. A big portable desktop that happens to have a battery included was the perfect solution. This case is basically an armored shell to make sure it survives from point A to point B. If point B happens to be on the other side of point IRAQ it had better well make it unscathed.

Also, if you ever need a large amount of money carried somewhere I have the perfect case for it. I only charge 5%.

The wife and I (primarily her, I have RSV2 to play) and it got me thinking, “What could we really use a katamari for?” Here are some suggestions. Add your own.

• Garbage pickup (like BFI or Waste Management)
• Removing pet hair from practically everything
• Strip mining
• Fishing
• Farming (replace harvesters)
• Really awesome snowballs
• Mowing the lawn (after rolling up a bunch of razor blades)

I really want a katamari. Maybe if I get one I can roll up some presents too. Maybe even cousins.

So sometimes… late at night… I think about nearly improbable situations. It appears I am not the only one!

Now I say ‘nearly improbable’, since being a physicist, among other things I’ve learned it is possible to throw a ball throw a solid wall. It just would take near elevenity-million-billion tries (on average) to get one through. We later discovered the wall would crumble and the earth would die before we’d have time to make that many tosses at a given wall.

So besides the past, I think about the future, terraformed Mars (unterraformed is useless, I’d just die - end of exercise),  an alien space ship, and just about anywhere else outside of here and now.

Sadly, Bonsai Kitten is no longer in business. But we can get their old site on archive.org - yay for the way back machine.

Bonsai Kitten

Turns out the woman is good for something, pointing me here.

I couldn’t get this damn thing out of my head. You get to enjoy it now too.

We’re trying to get Jerry Lewis to do a telethon for us to raise some funds. Why you ask? Well, because .org domains are probably going to cost 10% more this fall, and well, to use a French saying, we’re broke as shit.

If we can’t come up with the $9.99 we may have to sell the logo. Er. Damn.

According to Yahoo news, Emperor Kennedy apparently as a brain. I was quite surprised by this. Also, he has a brain tumor.

Casu Marzu cheese is one extreme culinary treat.

It’s Pecorino Sardo cheese that someone thought to add cheese fly larvae too. The larvae chew it up and crap it out and then you get to eat it. Some people don’t even pick the larvae out before they eat it. It’s so hardcore that Wikipedia even has a section about the dangers of eating this cheese.

Thanks (or not) to The Consumerist for this.