I have got to stop putting off posting. Brett’s parents came down from Spokane this evening. They took us out to dinner at Basilio’s on Main St., then we had some drinks at Rico’s Pub a couple blocks down the street. Rico’s looks much different on the inside than I’d imagined; nice armchairs, dark wood paneling, high ceilings. It smelled a little funky, but then every bar I’ve been in, save one, has been the same way. Basilio’s was pretty much how I remembered it (my family ate there once in, like, 2003/2004). I had the eggplant parmagiana.

Oh, and earlier for lunch I made this quick little dish that actually ended up being pretty tasty. I made up some patties from the ground pork my parents gave me (1 lb. ground pork thoroughly kneaded with some salt, pepper, worcestshire sauce, two eggs, some dried herbs, etc.) and cooked them in a little oil on medium-high heat. We had some kinda-dried-out white rice left over from the peanut-chicken stirfry Brett made last night, so I threw that in to soak up the grease. After a couple minutes I added a can of white beans. Cut the patties up into quarters with my spatula, mixed it around for a while, added some more pepper and southwest seasoning, then covered and let it simmer for a couple minutes. Came out really nice. The rice worked better in it than I would’ve expected.

I’d seen SuperDeluxe.com advertised on Adult Swim a lot lately, so I checked it out last night. The only thing on there worth seeing is the “Ted Zone” animation. It’s kind of a smarter/filthier version of Welcome to Eltingville. The other videos seem pretty lame.

I made cookies a little while ago. My own recipe. The batter was pretty goopy, so I used a cowboy pastry bag (ziploc bag with a corner cut off) to put ‘em on the baking sheet. I like how they came out; very chewy, only slightly sweet. They pretty much taste like brown-sugar shortbread, but the texture is a lot different.

Holy cow, swapping cell numbers through Sprint isn’t easy. Part of this is because their customer service phone system sucks — the sound quality is awful, the CS reps have overly sensitive headset mics (the background noise is almost louder than they are), and a couple times while they were transferring my call I could hear other people talking to each other on the line but they couldn’t hear me. At least they speak English pretty well.

Anyway, for the moment I’m stuck with a new cell number (509-432-4311; I should be getting my old one switched to the new service sometime in the next few days). I actually prefer it to my old number, but I have so much stuff set up to use the old one that it’d be way too much of a hassle to notify everyone to update their records (plus I’m positive I’d forget some important parties).

Thursday’s TotD: Predict something. Alright. I thought about making some general technology-oriented predictions (when the first productive fusion reactor will open, the year actual humans venture beyond Jupiter’s orbit, etc.), but that’s been done to death. And by people with (sneer) “qualifications,” at that. Instead, I shall concoct a few very specific prophecies. If by chance any of them come true, I’ll write a book, do the talk show circuit, and make millions. Well, probably not. Here goes:

Someone from the cast of Frasier will unexpectedly die in August. In May of ’08, there will be major flooding in China, causing property damage in excess of $100 million. After a scandal is revealed in early June, a prominent republican presidential candidate will drop out of the race; he will lend his support to Mitt Romney.

Celebrity deaths, natural disasters, political events… seems like I’m missing something. Maybe something about the stock market. Okay: Shortly after Thanksgiving, the announcement of an SEC investigation into two Fortune 50 companies will cause the DJIA to drop 3% in one day.

That should do it. Now I just sit back and wait for the money to roll in.

I play this web game called NationStates. The idea behind it is that you’re in charge of a country and you get to decide the policies and laws. Every day your nation’s population increases a little and you get to answer one or two political questions that are presented as current events scenarios. One situation I encountered a few weeks ago asked how I planned to deal with declining voter turnout. I ended up making voting compulsory — my citizens are now required to turn in their ballots or spend time in jail.

A couple weeks later I was still thinking about the issue. The route I took is anti-libertarian, but it should (theoretically) further the true goal of a democracy: Giving the people what they want. But would it really work in a wealthy society where people are given no incentive to vote other than the opportunity to choose representatives?

I had this idea for a short story that explored the implications of compulsory voting in a first-world society with a largely apathetic voting-age populace: Basically, some years after legislation’s been passed to open the ballots to any candidate who can pay a hefty fee to the federal government, a statistician notices that candidates with names similar to celebrities or funny words get elected more often. He shares his research with a very unlikely third-party runner who then changes his name to a short joke and wins with a significant plurality. During the next election, a few other candidates try the same thing and see significant improvement in their numbers. Eventually, the whole system becomes a mockery of itself as office-seekers vie for the wittiest moniker. Ballots begin to look more like joke books than election forms.

Of course, this assumes that advertising has become much less influential. Presumably traditional mediums like snail mail and television are rendered obsolete by ubiquitous broadband and the masses begin to take advantage of mail filters, ad blockers, and DVR-like technologies — with everything automatically aggregated and stripped of unsavory content, advertising is reduced to subtle product placement that’s much less effective.

I’m not sure how realistic it is, but I think it could be developed into an interesting four-pageish piece for, like, Analog or something in that neighborhood.

Alright, I’m cutting it close time-wise — better hit the ol’ Publish button.

I’ve got meatloaf baking in the oven, so I’ll have to make this quick. I figured out how to get new ringtones on my RAZR. It was a lot simpler than i thought. Basically, for the V3m, all you have to do is run the LiveUpdate thing in Mobile Phone Tools like four or five times (well, more than that, but after several goes it starts running automatically whenever you start the program). I also had to install the “Motorola Software Update,” which is a ~10 meg executable you can get directly from the company. After that, you just plug in the USB cable and navigate to the “Multimedia Studio” in MPT. These sites were all fairly helpful: The Moto Guide, MotoV3mWiki, and this How-To summary thread from HowardForums.

I made a ton of ringtones. It’s kind of addictive. I figure a few other people might be interested in them, so I stuck ‘em all in this archive:

    mp3_ringtones.rar (7.4 MB)

57 song clips, mostly around 20 seconds long. It’s a pretty wide selection; there’s Alice Cooper, ABBA, Daft Punk, Weezer, Weird Al, Buggles… A few (Sarah Silverman, Bad Religion, and Amateur Transplants) contain blue language, so watch out if you’re assigning ringers willy-nilly.

My next project will be getting my own images to appear on the outer LCD.

I’m working on a little SketchUp model, but I don’t want to post any pictures till I have it more finished. Plus I want to try a “clay render” with this one.

I got a weird email from the Information Systems Department Head — apparently I’m in the “top 20″ for MIS students and I’ll be allowed to skip my next two exams if I do something for them. I’m meeting with him on the 9th to discuss it. I don’t know what the requirements are — I suspect they want me to help with research studies or something like that. If it all works out, I could actually forego the rest of the morning lectures. Here’s hoping…

(Update: I left this blog post unfinished while I went to eat dinner. Andi came down and we all had meatloaf, mashed taters, and corn. It was tasty. We watched the Seinfeld True Hollywood Story.)

I finally got my desktop (Kozuch) networked again. Since my laptop’s hardware is almost better anyway, I’d been using it as my primary system for the past few months. See, after we moved, the network layout changed — the TiVo was no longer right next to the router; now it needed a wifi adapter to get the cable listings. The one I had was too new to be compatible, so I traded it to my sister for an old Netgear MA111. At this point, I weighed my options and decided it’d be stupid to buy a new Linksys WUSB54G — why waste money on a new adapter when I could just run some CAT5 to the router upstairs? A hole had already been drilled for a coax cable, so it shouldn’t be too much trouble.

But that’s where my crippling laziness kicked in. I didn’t have any CAT5 on hand. To get the necessary length (about 25′), I’d have to strip some old stuff out of my former residence back in Pasco. (I’d moved in there back when wireless wasn’t very fast or reliable, so over the course of a few years I ran something like 1200′ of cable in and around the house. Mostly just tacked it up along the ceiling, or under the eaves. This was back when I hosted lots of LAN parties.) Then I’d have to clear out two closets to run the stuff, get out my crimpers, etc. etc. So I put it off for a long time. Then a couple weeks ago I was looking at stuff on Amazon and noticed my preferred model on sale for $16 via the “New & Used” section. I hooked it up and mounted it near the ceiling for the best reception. Kind of ghetto, but it works really well.

I got a new phone today — a Motorola Red RAZR V3m. The hardware’s awesome, but Sprint makes it really difficult to actually use the thing the way most people would want to. Like, just uploading your own MP3 ringtones is a major pain. I’m still trying to find drivers that will work so I can use the Mobile Phone Tools app. All this just because Sprint wants to force customers to buy crappy media from their music store (which, of course, sucks — they expect you to pay a dollar apiece for low-quality clips of truly unlistenable rap songs). Anyway, I’m sure I’ll love it once I get my number changed and figure out how to circumvent Sprint’s ugly obstructions. I can’t believe how small and light they can make phones now.

So the 2007 Iron Man Blogging Competition has finally begun. I’m in the Tri-Cities right now, doing more work on the digital X-ray systems. I was dumb and left the power brick for my laptop back in Pullman, so I’m using my dad’s computer ATM.

My mom made some amazing steaks last night. I was telling her about Alton Brown’s methods for preparing fillet mignon, so she tried them on the two-inch thick beauties she got at Yoke’s. Basically, you dredge the meat in cracked (not ground) peppercorns, pan-sear them on high heat, then top with butter and finish them in the oven. She made a really great sauce from the stuff left in the pan. I was skeptical of the huge amounts of pepper, but it turned out very well. Something (the oils or mustard, maybe) must have cut the peppery taste down quite a bit during cooking; I could barely stand the heat (well, the peppery-ness, anyway — black pepper doesn’t contain capsaicin) of the sauce when it was just started, but at the end I barely noticed it.

While I was in Kennewick yesterday (looking for a SATA cable), I picked up the For Your Consideration DVD. I was looking forward to it because I really liked most of Christopher Guest’s other movies, but it was kind of disappointing. It just sort of goes along… then ends. I’m not sure how to describe it. It wasn’t bad per se, it just felt like the whole thing was a buildup to some event or conflict that never came.

I meant to write about the IMBC “Topic of the Day,” but I have to go mount LCD arms pretty soon. I’ll try and sum up the good and bad of Pullman in a few words: Pros: Great public transportation system, decent weather, low crime. Cons: Lots of hills, local cable doesn’t carry FOX, only three fast food joints, most roads in and out of the city are only two lanes (leading to major congestion on weekends and holidays). It’s not a bad place to live, but I had more fun in Federal Way. If only Pullman had a Game-A-Lot.