05.15.09
Posted in Random-osity at 6:28 am by kyrias
Sadly, Estyria is still in hiatus. Partially because she’s still curled up in a ball somewhere in the back of my brain and therefore not really in good condition to be story-telling, partially because my laptop is still non-functional and I don’t tend to write well on computers not my own. If anyone can give me any ideas to get her out of her fetal position, that would be greatly appreciated.
Then there’s my lovely spammers. I find that I’m getting more and more of them and they’re getting better at their craft, the wee sneaky buggers. For example, they seem to be expanding their repertoire of stock comments from the old “Nice blog! I’ll be adding you to my RSS feed!” to telling me that my blog doesn’t show correctly in Firefox.
The thing is — since I lost my laptop which I use Firefox on and have recently been using IE — I know that it shows incorrectly in IE and not Firefox. Good try, but no cigar.
Also, now they’ve become more subtle than using hyperlinks or having an URL as their signature, now they’re simply typing the website they’re promoting into the “website” field you use to post comments. Brilliant!
On a lighter note, there’s an “Obama steak house” somewhere near Beitou, Taiwan. Isn’t that great? I’ve half a mind to walk in and ask them when they opened and what they intend to do if Obama fails spectacularly at politicking because he failed at single-handedly reviving a situation that has been compared to the Great Depression and his wife’s taste in shoes.
Wait, maybe that wasn’t quite so light a note. Oh well.
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05.14.09
Posted in Random-osity tagged memes at 12:30 am by kyrias
I keep reading on the Internet that there’s this list of books that the BBC compiled which they estimated that the average person hasn’t read more than 6 of. The odd thing is that bloggers all over the Internet have completed this meme, but the only mention on a BBC website to a list of books is this list of best-loved novels done in April 2003.
So, I’m going to complete this meme anyways. I’ll bold the books I’ve read, italicize the books I’m interested in reading, and ignore the books I’m not interested in. When I’m done I’m going to post a booklist of what books I think every bibliophile should read at least once or give the “old college try”.
Of course, any book list anyone compiles is going to be highly dependant on both race, ethnicity, and social economic status. That’s why I think it’d be interesting to see what various people have on their must-read list. Therefore, I’m tagging Nora, Thene, Caesura, and Kell to engage in this meme also. I’m not going to tag them on their blogs, so whether they respond or no will be dependant on whether or not they’re still reading this blog. 
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (I’ve read part of it, not counting it though)
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (I can’t remember if I have, really)
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller (damned if I remember all of the plot though)
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger (More of a skim really, I didn’t like this book)
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy (I tried, I failed, meh)
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (Just couldn’t get into this one, I tried, really.)
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel (Ugh, hated this book)
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
After going through this list — I’m actually going to have to look up a good number of these titles before I can decide if I want to read them or no. I’ll come back and update if I’m feeling diligent, and perhaps strike some more books out in bold.
I’ll post on what books I think are a must-read tomorrow as this post is really just too long already.
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05.11.09
Posted in Random-osity at 6:11 pm by kyrias
I have no idea why there’s so much cleavage on the Food Network. Not even something discreet with a hint of cleavage. What we have here is the entire Napa Valley and then some.
Alright, alright, yes, I know sex sells. But really, between Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee, Giada…
It just looks really stupid, because the first thought my mother and I had was: “Geez, don’t things sometimes splatter?” Also, having that much cleavage and then doing a lot of things that involve bending over — tacky. Really, just tasteless.
Apparently Giada wants something sexy that she can move in. Ok. She hasn’t done anything that splatters yet that I’ve seen in a full week of FoodTV — but what about everyone else?
~~*~~*~~*
I’ve been reading through the Less is More archives. This is an experiment by someone who was trying to prove that she could eat meals including fresh food for about $1 a day.
Only one thing to say about her experiment: I don’t really think the average person would be able to just eat two meals a day like her. Further more, I’m not sure that everyone would be able to subsist on the amount of food she eats for those two meals. Thus, I’m disinclined to take her experiment that seriously.
However, like the Californian couple’s experiment that prompted her to begin her own, her experiment is thought provoking. I don’t think it’s impossible to eat relatively healthily on very few dollars a day, especially if you are able to buy in bulk.
Frankly though, I kind of found how much she was ranting over how they were doing it wrong really off-putting. Also, the insistence that they should have learned something from what she did is just amazingly arrogant. Of course, the comment that prompted that was interesting in its own way.
I’m not even going to try to live with under $1 a day. I will probably tackle $5 at some point, but with the amount of food Caesura and I put away, even with rice and beans we’d probably be eating more than $1 a day.
I know from experience that if we shop solely at Walmart, under $5 a day is more than doable. I remember when we were buying about $80 of groceries for both of us for one week, and that included many splurge items.
However, although saving money is important, it’s not the sole objective.
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03.21.09
Posted in Random-osity tagged myth of meritocracy, nationalism at 11:44 pm by kyrias
I’m going to come right out and say it: If you want me to vote for something simply on the basis of knowing me, being of the same race, or whatnot — I won’t.
I really despise the sort of gimmicky system where people vote for their favorite of something in order to win contests or whatnot. It looks democratic and as if it would be the “fairest” system of all, but it’s really not when people drag all sorts of other issues into the issue.
Take the voting for “The best job in the world”.
This is an application process for the job of Island caretaker at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The 50 short-listed candidate’s videos of why they would be the best candidate for the job are posted here, and people are encouraged to vote for the best candidate. There will be 10 candidates chosen by the committee and one wildcard candidate who will be decided by the number of votes they receive.
Meritocracy at its best, yes?
Except I learned about this event through a Taiwanese news channel who openly encouraged everyone to go to the Taiwanese candidate’s link and vote for her. When I checked today, she was at a whopping 146,889 votes, in comparison to the runner up’s tally at 51,219. She even openly discussed at the end of the segment how Taiwan is like a little village and she the prodigal daughter that everyone turned out in force to vote for.
Ugh. Sheesh.
People, this is about meritocracy, not popularity or nationalism or God forbid, supporting “your candidate”.
I? I voted for Mitchell. Ran through a couple of other videos and his stood out the most. Not a bad voice either.
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03.06.09
Posted in Random-osity at 3:09 am by kyrias
*edited for clarification
I have to say, I get really cranky when I hear about how so and such a proverb is Chinese - because they’re usually not.
“May you live in interesting times” ? Not.
This “Kissing is like drinking salted water. You drink and your thirst increases.” that I saw on Warda’s site?
Preeeeetty sure it’s not Chinese either.
I could be wrong — but I can’t remember anything even remotely similar in Chinese. Not to mention that it just seems unlikely that there would be a Chinese proverb that deals directly with kissing.
As for why it makes me cranky — it’s because it seems like a form of fetishizing. It’s taking something that sounds cool and attributing it to a culture which is exoticised all the time. In addition, it’s irritating because there’s no way to really make sure one way or the other. Sure, there’s the usual “proverbs” which we have dictionaries for and can look up — then there’s the idioms which are also mostly collected in books … but then there’s the numerous bits of poetry that’s just quoted casually and there’s no way to college all that. It’s like a cheap way to legitimize something without effort.
If it turns out there is such a proverb, I’ll be very surprised, but oh well. Doesn’t change my irritation over the concept any.
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01.14.09
Posted in Random-osity tagged credit card drama, fraud, scams at 11:23 pm by kyrias
I didn’t know this, which I probably should have.
They said they were giving out a free trial of their software, and so long as I contacted them to cancel my trial, I’d be able to return the CD they sent me and I would no longer be billed.
I ordered the Quick Books tutorial, as one of the last gigs I was at I think I showed at an disadvantage because I didn’t know how to use it.
Soon after I placed my order I thought better of it, decided it would be too much hassle to send back the CDs and emailed their support people to tell them to cancel my order. They replied that they had no information of mine on file.
Despite their not having my information, they sent me the CDs anyways. I immediately emailed them back and told them I got the merchandise and I didn’t want to keep it and how would I go about returning it.
They told me that the email given to me when I signed up was wrong and that I should contact another email, on a website they gave me. I contacted that email and told them that I would be declining the charge if they did not manage to tell me where to send the items back.
They charged me $189.95 on the 11th without ever responding to my email. I am now disputing the hell out of them. If my credit card company does not come up victorious, I will tell my credit card company that I’m canceling my accounts with them.
Let’s see if that’ll scare them.
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01.13.09
Posted in Random-osity tagged testing at 4:58 pm by kyrias
I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.
It covers:
- The best blogging techniques.
- How to get traffic to your blog.
- How to turn your blog into money.
I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.
For the record, I copied and pasted this message straight from their webpage. We’ll see how it goes.
Technorati Profile
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01.07.09
Posted in Random-osity at 11:54 pm by kyrias
I recently started reading a blog titled “Not Eating Out In New York“, which got me thinking about the psychology behind why I eat out.
Cathy has featured reasons for why not to eat out, which makes for fairly interesting reading, even when I don’t always agree with her.
There are many reasons why I might eat out, or order in, same difference. There’s the usual suspects: too tired to cook, believing in rewarding the self, and going out with friends.
The biggest reason for me though, is that I enjoy food and I often go out to eat something that I can’t make at home.
After all, it’s pretty much a given that if you can replicate a recipe at home, more often than not it’s going to be much, much cheaper than eating that same dish in a resturant. Unless, of course, you’re spending a lot of money buying tools and ingredients you wouldn’t usually find occassion to use. Truffles and a KitchenAid food processor, anyone?
The fact is, for me, there are some experience that are pretty damn hard to replicate at home. A good deal of this might be that I don’t actually have any friends who enjoy cooking as much as I do. Take dimsum as an example: If I had five friends who could each make one dish, we would have six dishes, which is not too shabby a dimsum. If we each made two, then we’d have a pretty good spread.
As it is, it’s much easier for me to just go out to dimsum with friends rather than try to rope them into doing something they probably wouldn’t enjoy. Or even, be good at. Heck, with the amount of practice you need to make some of those dishes, we’d probably be lucky to have even half of what we attempted turn out properly. Sixteen pleated soup buns, shui jing jiao with the cooked-starch outer skin, even something as innocuously simple as steamed meat buns — it’s just not that easy.
Then there’s the other suspects.
True enough, it’s stupid to eat out just because I’m tired or because I want to reward myself. Hence it’s a lot easier to pull the brakes on those desires.
When it comes to eating out with friends, then it gets a bit hairier.
Not everyone likes a certain type of cuisine. I’m pretty sure Hayward has mentioned before he doesn’t like Chinese. Kell, for sure, isn’t too keen on Japanese food. Zack can’t eat anything even remotely approaching spicy. Idnahc is a vegetarian, and so on it goes.
So sure, I could invite them all to eat dinner together and try not to rip out my hair trying to figure out a menu that will satisfy all there — or we could just all traipse out to a resturant.
But it’s interesting to think about. Could you, like Cathy, manage almost two years without eating out, at all?
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12.09.08
Posted in Random-osity tagged bad economy, stupid companies at 5:18 pm by kyrias
I lost $1741 in my ROTH IRA since last year. The terrifying part is that because it’s a ROTH, I also lost money putting it in the account in the first place. Kell, I know you lost more, but I’m so much poorer than you that it’s not really funny. That amount is fully a quarter of what I had in the first place.
I’m unemployed. Will be looking to apply to Caesura’s temp agency tomorrow. OfficeTeam does not seem to like me anymore, as evidenced by showing a marked coolness towards me when I called them for employment yesterday. See post on being fired for more information.
Burt’s bees is stupid. I’m not even going to go into how I suspect their products are not as good as they used to be since they got acquired by Clorox — not now at any rate. I’ll be writing reviews on things as I use them, though. What really irked me is their “shimmer clutch”, which is a small black wallet-like clutch, except it holds three shimmer lipstick things, and nothing else. You can’t even appropriate it for anything else. I’m going to try and make the two I got for free into something that might be able to hold credit cards and a metro pass — but I doubt it’s going to be easy going. This particular piece of atrocity from the company who sent me a card with my package saying that they try to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Possible my ass. What DO you call something that’s non-recyclable (it has plasticy fabric and clear plactic as components), not really resuable for anything other than holding their shimmer-sticks, and made in China?
Meh!
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12.06.08
Posted in Random-osity tagged knowing at 12:59 am by kyrias
I just found out today my mother doesn’t particularly like the scent of roses. Not so far as to dislike it, but she’s aggressively neutral towards it to a very interesting degree. How very odd that I never knew this about my mother, who theoretically I should know so well.
I adore the scent of roses. Not the horrifying cloying fake scent but the complex layers of rose scent with layers of green. It’s almost a pity that she doesn’t like the balm I bought her for that reason — but then, more for me, right?
Which reminds me, Caesura startled me a few days ago when he said he didn’t really like the taste of peanut butter, in reference to peanut butter sandwiches. I looked at him with utter shock, mostly because in my world view, he usually goes for anything with peanuts. He said that the crunchiness of crunchy peanut butter made it acceptable but apparently he doesn’t really like peanut butter sandwiches.
We later on, after much debate, figured that he did like the taste of peanuts, as evidenced by his liking peanut butter smoothies, but he doesn’t like the texture of smooth peanut butter on bread.
I wonder, what other things don’t I know about the people I love?
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