You learn something new...

While writing this post, I stumbled upon the rather pleasing etymology of the phrase "red letter day."

NYTimes Eulogizes Florent

About a year ago I started a weekly ritual. On Wednesday, I buy a copy of the New York Times and read the Dining and Wine section over lunch. On other days, my normal routine is to eat hastily acquired take-out at my desk, but this one day a week I make it a point to get out of the office and eat a leisurely lunch.

Given my reading material, you might guess that I choose high-end restaurants, but that isn't the case. Sometimes I head to Boat Street Cafe, but lately I've been going to a Yummy Teriyaki in lower QA, hardly an upscale joint. There is a lot more to a good restaurant than white linens and doting service.

Which brings me to Florent. Opened by Florent Morellet over two decades ago, this fixture of the New York scene will be closing next month. The eulogy presented in The Times paints a fascinating history of a period neatly matching my adult life. Viewed through the lens of Mr. Morellet's humble restaurant the article tells the story of a neighborhood and the cultural movements that helped shape it, from the end of disco, through the early days of the the HIV-epidemic to gentrification and New Money. It's a great article, I suggest reading it over a formica counter lightly tacky from years of accumulated grease.

Bill O'Reilly Freak Out Remixes

Of course you're seen the original, and maybe you're seen the (crappy) dance remix. But have you seen the remix intercut with snarky commentary from a fictional producer, or the split screen version showing what bill saw on the teleprompter?

I need to know who I'm gonna vote against

Marc Andreessen points out this commentary on the ongoing Democratic nomination process. Fair warning: don't watch while eating or drinking.

Incredibly Soothing Game

I find this game to be incredibly soothing (you should select that you want the music on). I wish there was a new one of these every day. It totally helped me make the transition from work to home today.

Its predecessor is slightly less soothing due to lack of mellow music.

Sleepless in Seattle

Oh, I'm ever so clever with my blog titles.

Here's the deal, I almost never sleep soundly through the night. I can't remember when my sleeplessness began. I almost always go to bed at about 10:30 pm and get out of bed in the morning at 6:00 am (in the summer) or 7:00 am (in the winter). The problem is that most nights I wake up at least once (usually 2 or 3 am) or twice (1 and 4 am). When I do wake up I really wake up and can't usually get back to sleep easily. Often I resort to browsing the web for an hour or so until I can get tired enough to go back to sleep.

This all seems pretty bad to me. I have a good bed (I think). My room is dark and my neighborhood is generally quiet.

I wish I didn't keep waking up. I've searched the web for suggestions and so far nothing has really changed this trend.

Suggestions
More Suggestions
Even More Suggestions

I'm not willing to take any drugs to facilitate sleep. Humans were able to sleep for thousands of years without pills and I'm not going to break that trend.

Embarassing music purchases

I thought the music lovers might enjoy this post:

http://www.mnspeak.com/mnspeak/archive/post-5423.cfm

A small sampling:

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"I was once dared into buying TV Terror: Felching a Dead Horse. (sfw, except for the name)

I don't even know how to describe it."

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"My first single was Carl Douglas's "Kung Fu Fighting," a song that to this day I consider sublime."

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My own embarassing musical purchases? Let me see, I have a whole shelf of stuff I've been meaning to get to Cheapo's for over 10 years...

- Nirvana "Incesticide". More terrible than the name suggests.

- The Capitol Steps "76 Bad Loans". A fun show, not much fun to put on the CD player.

- Howard Jones "One to One". Finely crafted pop single from my youth ('no one is to blame') along with 10 tracks of electronic poopery

Care to name?

Where I was 40 years ago today

May 15th is an anniversary of note for my family. I've likely bored some of you before with my tornado stories, but here's a link including a picture of the one that rolled up my street that day. If you dig into the Charles City photos there, our house was about halfway between McKinley school and the corner of 8th and Hildreth.

We all survived huddled down in the basement, but the family house lost its roof, was twisted on its foundation about a foot, and the only thing left of the garage was a lawn mower (soon looted) sitting on the empty concrete slab.

A memorable day, even for a six-year-old.

Embarassed

Two of the three guys I work with are Canadian. That means I take more than my fair share of abuse for the stupidity of my country's president / policies / electoral system. Why does Bush have to make it so damn easy for my coworkers to harass me?

Aykroyd vs. Hartman

Nerve has a rundown of the 50 Greatest Commercial Parodies of All Time. In my opinion it boils down to a battle between the over-the-top enthusiasm of Dan Aykroyd vs. the perfectly smarmy Phil Hartman (Belushi makes a good showing too). Change Bank or Bass-o-Matic? You be the judge.

Tastes Like Chicken

JMR and I were very big fans of the Chipolte chicken burrito when we lived back in Minneapolis. They don't seem to have as many Chipolte restaurants out here in Seattle. Turns out that may be a good thing.

Dangers of helium leaks

Going the low-brow route, but I must admit that my inner 12 year old found this funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bQpgU67Puo

A Miss South Carolina analogue that actually matters

Various patch-mates have reported enjoying the video in which Miss Teen South Carolina melts down under intense questioning. I personally find the Miss SC video so painful as to be unwatchable. However, the video of Lurita Doan's testimony before the house, where she is shown to have been in clear violation of the Hatch Act, and where the best she can muster is a stuttering "I don't recall" defense (elevated to an art form by another distinguished Bush appointee), is at once painful and pleasing. It's ten minutes instead of fifty seconds, but worth watching.

Taking the GoF to the Woodshed

In this rant (discovered via reddit), Christer Ericson takes the "Gang of Four", otherwise known as the authors of "Design Patterns," to task. My standard line regarding Design Patterns is that it's the worst travesty ever visited on the software engineering profession.

Yes, yes, a couple of the construction patterns are truly useful, but by and large, otherwise smart engineers that have been badly infected with the design patterns meme are worse than useless, they are actively harmful: they end up writing a thousand lines of code to accomplish what could have been done in fifty, nothing can be accomplished in their behemoth frameworks with fewer than five virtual function calls, and they're shocked to discover that the cost of those calls really adds up when they're made smack in the middle of the hottest loop of the application.

My feeling is that the pendulum reached its extreme on this issue a few years ago, but I'm always pleased to see another partisan on my side of the fight.