Category Archives: Play

Device Mania Week: Day 3

Gadgets, ,

In which the notebook is here! The notebook is here!! OMFG the notebook is here!!!

UPS’s site said my Eee PC wouldn’t get here until Wednesday, but it was sitting on my desk when I got to work yesterday morning. Squee!

Asus Eee PC 900HA
It’s tiny. It’s über-cute. It’s portable. It has killer battery life. It came with its own little slipcase and I can carry it around in my bag. It has a video port and can drive a huge monitor! It has three USB 2.0 ports and a micro SD card slot!

New Notebook

I installed Firefox (and WeatherFox and Foxmarks) and FileZilla and BOINC and SETI@home and VLC and iTunes. I put my favorite wallpaper on it. I scowled at the pre-installed Microsoft Works. (Microsoft WORKS?!) I touched it all over. I showed it to my co-workers.

And then I took it to the bar last night. In my bag! Tiniest little device ever!

Oh, and it picks up wireless from the foot of my bed, which is as far as you can get from the router and still be inside the house. Even the iPod doesn’t see the router from there!

Right now I’m copying my iTunes library onto it. (God, I love USB 2.0. I can move my entire library in about half an hour.) When I put the hard drive back into the old IBM Thinkpad A30, I’m going to give it to Left Coast Girlie for her birthday!

In other news, I read the two most recent inauguration speeches last night. In my opinion, Bush’s was stilted and entitled and Obama’s was moving and uplifting. Those who were disappointed by Obama’s speech should relax a little; half the nation wouldn’t recognize ‘a unifying theme’ if it poked them right in the eyeball.

An edifying tale… with shiny things!

Wishlists, , , ,

In which I publicly admit to stealing resources* from my employer.

I’ve been running a little eBay side business from my desk this week. In between calls I’ve watched my auctions, printed shipping labels (with the work printer, on the work paper*), and packed Priority Mail cartons with old electronics (and taped them shut with work tape*).

I made $282.11 from four auctions. This amount is over half what I paid for the items originally, but that little bit of awesomeness isn’t even the point. The point is that if you write a good item description on eBay, you can sell ANYTHING. Even if it’s old and crappy!

The eBook sold for $101.11, which is about $15 less than a brand new one costs. (I under-quoted shipping, though, so I ended up having to spend an extra $4.55 to get the thing mailed off, making my net $96.56, which is still more than I expected to get.) One of the Pocket PCs, the e400, sold for $36 to a company that sells refurbished devices and I’m wondering if they’ll part it out or resell it on their website. The final Pocket PC sold for $99 to what sounds like a company name rather than an individual so it may find itself re-refurbished or parted out, too.

The best part of all this is that the money I got (plus $130 in Xmas money) has allowed me to order this:

[You are now hearing a very loud, angelic “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!,” btw.]

Asus Eee 900HA

Innit ADORABLE?!?!!? It’ll be here next Wednesday.

It’s an ASUS Eee 900HA 8.9″ notebook with a 160GB hard drive, a 1.6Ghz ATOM processor, and pre-installed XP Home. (I was going to order another gig of RAM too, but they were out, so that will have to wait until I can find it elsewhere.)

I also bought an external USB CD+DVD-RW drive because my new, tiny, adorable little ASUS laptopette doesn’t have a built-in drive. I don’t want to have to share a drive over my network just to watch a movie or burn a CD.

The moral of this story is that you can totally sell old junk on eBay, and use the proceeds to buy shiny new things!

Now, can somebody make it next week already so that I can start playing with my new notebook, plz? Kthxbai.

—
*I probably owe BMI about 6 minutes of unpaid work after all that rampant thievery.
**This public admission of unlawfulness is all part of my attempt to join my brother in his county jail weight loss regime.

Yaki Mandu

Recipes

In which today brings a us recipe!

Left Coast Girlie says: “Here’s the yakimandu recipe. You can remove the meat and use tofu and veggies like mushrooms and cabbage…. Thought I’d share.”

Yaki Mandu

2 pkg. (30 sheets each) wonton wrappers
1 lb. lean ground beef or chopped sirloin
2 medium carrots, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
20 to 25 medium mushrooms, chopped
1 pkg. (12 oz.) firm tofu
2 green onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp. toasted sesame seeds
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 egg, lightly beaten
Continue reading Yaki Mandu →

So, yeah. Not so much. And you?

Bentō, , ,

In which I’m fat, obsessed with bento, and refusing to see any possible correlation between the two.

Misc

Teh BF’s bento box arrived so I packed a lunch in it and gave it to him today. He seems pleased. My mom has emailed that she needs sci-fi, so I’ll be lugging a pile of books to the post office this week. My eBook auction was up to $102.50, but then the hapless individual who’d bid it that high must have done some comparison shopping and discovered s/he could buy a new one for fifteen dollars more, and retracted! I was disappointed, to say the least.

…aaaaaaaand here’s a gratuitous iThing screenshot of my eBay app, from last night when I was still making bank on the eBook:

iPod eBay Application screen shot

Spring

The weather is wonderful. I walked to work today without a coat on! I saw bees today! This is the kind of mild winter weather I moved here for; screw that Midwestern-style frozen tundra crap.

Fat

I weighed and measured my body this morning. HOLY SHIT. It has gained 11 pounds and 2.5 inches (in girth, not height, sadly) since I got a boyfriend. This is empirical proof that men make me fat. So, yeah, thanks for asking, I’m totally on a diet now… and will remain so, to varying degrees, until I can cut my own damn toenails again without running out of air. Water, walking, and isometrics are now my life. Damn.

…it will be interesting to see whether I’ll choose food or cocktails for dinner tonight, though. I have between 386 – 736 calories remaining today, so I might be able to have a little of both. Yay!

Mail

In other (very exciting!) news, I’ve made an online friend through Flickr and she and I have arranged a swap. She’s sending me a bunch of bento-junk love in exchange for things she can’t get in Japan: Tillamook cheeses, crackers (like Triscuits and Wheat Thins), Mexican hot chocolate, and Neutrogena eye cream.

I can’t wait to get my box of authentic bento junk from Japan! Whee!

It's 2009!

Events, Travel, ,

In which we were out of town for 26 hours and it was HELLA FUN!

Teh BF asked our employer if we could leave at six o’clock on New Year’s Eve. Our employer agreed! So we checked the weather, talked it over, and then gleefully took mmmFiber up on her offer to overnight at her place in Portland for New Year’s Eve.

Of course, I was stuck on the phone until 6:17, but we were pulling out of the BMI parking lot at 6:21. We made the trip in three and a half hours, and arrived at Adie & Adam’s a little after ten. They gave us champagne, we changed, Adie gave me a cute hat, and then we went out. They live right near Alberta street, which has several blocks of cute stores and pubs.

We went to four different bars, stopping at a couple of them a second time on the walk back home. We got drunk and rambunctious and hollered “Happy New Year!” to complete strangers. We discovered “the Alberta”: a cocktail made of lemon, orange, vodka, and lime juice muddled with fresh basil. I made Teh BF buy me a blingy ring from this awesome hustler chick (I thought she was awesome because (a) I was drunk, and (b) she was, like me, wearing fucking Crocks in Portland. In the rain. Like an idiot. Who the hell wears shoes with HOLES IN THEM in Portland?!) that we’d met on the walk from one bar to another. Then he ordered me some awesome black bean nachos because we were drunk and had not had dinner.

We went back to the house and drank more and talked and played with the dogs – they have two terriers, a Schnauzer and a Cairn – and hung out until the wee hours of the morning.

Six hours later we were up again. After coffee we went to the Chapel Pub for bloody marys and brunch. Then we took the light rail downtown and stopped at the Thirsty Lion, mostly to get out of the rain. Then we took the train back to the car, and the car back to the house, where we watched an episode of Red Dwarf.

Then we collected our stuff and Bindu and drove home. Whirlwind 26-hour vacation! Whee! I HAD DO MUCH FUN OMGWTFBBQ.

Back in W2, we pulled into the driveway, marched right down the stairs, and held the couch down until bedtime. I slept like a rock last night.

Christmas Goodies

Events, ,

In which I tell you what I got for Xmas!

Christmas day was fun. I slept in, which is always awesome. Then I vacuumed the living room, helped G’ma with food preparation, set up the card table and found chairs. Around 1:30 the family showed up.

Presents!

We ate, opened gifts, and then had dessert. It was a lovely afternoon.

Behold the awesome goods I received:

  • a cute hand-crocheted hat
  • a wallet
  • a Dalek cell phone charm!
  • a gift certificate for a cut & color with my stylist
  • a towel and some bath soak
  • an Amazon gift certificate
  • $15 cash
  • a bag of food: pasta, brownie mix, candy, and more
  • a salad cook book
  • a gift bag with pens, oranges and cookies

A pretty awesome haul, methinks! Apparently there will be more when we see the rest of the family; G’ma said my aunt Sue has her gift for me, and my cousins and other aunt & uncle will probably show up at some point for belated gift exchanges. The damn weather kept half the family from coming to Walla Walla, so we still have a big pile of unopened gifts for them under the tree.

Which means we get to have Christmas AGAIN later! Yay!

How’d you all make out? Anybody get anything really wonderful?

Update: Also got a bitchin’ solar system poster from ThinkGeek!

Food Hobby Escalates to Food Obsession

Bentō

In which I post again about bentō-making, because it’s all I think about lately.

I woke up at four this morning and immediately started thinking about what I’d make for today’s bentōs. Literally! Four in the damn morning! I laid there in the dark in my blanket-cocoon, and went through all the possible combinations of foods I have in the house. I finally settled on a breakfast theme and went back to sleep.

Bento #13

I got up at nine and started the sticky rice. Then I made a 3-egg omelet (eggs, milk, dill, shredded cheddar). Then I rummaged through the fridge for random veggie elements: carrots, pickles, celery, leaf lettuce…

Down to the freezer in the basement to grab some frozen peas and a few veggie sausage links, back upstairs to turn off the burners under the rice and omelet pans. Slice, shape, arrange. Find some cute candies. Fill the onigiri mold. Cut the omelet into squares. Fry the onigiri, brush them with soy sauce. Throw them in the freezer to cool while I go shower and get dressed.

This is the third morning in a row I got up early to make bentōs. Yes, that’s plural: I’ve been making them for gibblesnix and Left Coast Girlie, too.

Wednesday Co-worker Bentos

Tuesday, it was maki sushi. Wednesday, it was onigiri and chili. Today it was omelet and sausage links.

Just in case you were thinking about getting a food hobby obsession of your own: the best part of food hobby obsession is feeding the results to unsuspecting people in the office where you work!

Bento #10

I just can’t stop with the food hobby. It’s too fun. It’s also a lot like cooking, which I totally enjoy.

National Dead Turkey Day

Events, ,

In which I had a Thursday off.

On Thanksgiving I did the following:

Slept in.
Got up.
Hung out with Sue & Blue.
Demonstrated my iThing for my aunt Sue.
Showered.
Got dressed.
Rode to Dave & Reva’s in my bro’s truck.
Ate black olives. A lot of them!
Had a glass of white wine.
Took cell phone pictures.
Ate a couple of deviled eggs.
Filled my plate.
Ate.
Visited with family.
Played with my iThing.
Had more white wine.
Went home.
Charged my iThing.
Napped.
Went bowling with my bro and teh BF.
Bowled a 169 game!
Went to the Blue.
Had two cocktails with my BF.
Went home.
Tried to go to bed.
Got up and had a smoke with my brother.
Went back to bed.

I am of course thankful for my family, my friends, my health, and my job, but mainly I’m thankful for the fact that in the weeks leading up to yesterday I was neither a turkey, a pig, nor a lamb.

Surprize again!

Wishlists, , , ,

In which I never got anything this cool from an employer before.

Today during our weekly company meeting, admin announced that we wouldn’t really be having a proper Christmas party this year – only a luncheon – but then they got all giggly and ran into the back and then came out and proceeded to pass out “early Christmas presents.”

We all sat in the meeting an ripped into our little brightly-wrapped boxes.

They contained custom-engraved 8Gb iPod Touches. For EVERYONE.

And then they turned on the wireless, so we could all spend the afternoon installing cute applications on our new toys. It was so hella fun!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Apple has got the cute form factor market cornered. OMG. From the Newton to the iPod to the Wii to the iPod Touch – they’re geniuses.

"How's it sit? Pretty cunning, don'tchya think?"

Wishlists, , , ,

In which I am TOTALLY not worthy!

Kaje and I had Big Plans for last night. We were going to make epic tostadas with all the fixings! and watch two (or even three!) entire episodes of Doctor Who. But someone – either Netflix or the post office – screwed up royally, and the disc I was expecting to find in my mail box was received back by Netflix instead.

In a fit of disappointment, we went to Kelly’s in Milton-Freewater and consoled ourselves with cocktails and a big ol’ pile of fried food. (And some green beans!)

When I got home after our excursion, I found a box on the stairs to my room. I carried it up, tossed it on my bed, and got out of my coat and scarf. Then I sat on my bed to examine this unanticipated package.

It was from NLW… and… you’re totally not gonna believe this…

IT HAD A CUNNING JAYNE HAT* IN IT!!!

Jayne's Hat, The Message, Firefly

Jayne with his new hat, Firefly episode 12: The Message

The card says, “Happy belated birthday! I still don’t think it’s fun to give the presents when people expect them.” Naturally, even though it was midnight at her house, I texted her AND sent her a picture immediately. Because, I mean, hell: she sent me a Jayne Hat and I totally *heart* her.

—
* Fans of Joss Whedon’s Firefly are rabid, and there are lots of freaks out there running around in Jayne hats.
And here’s Baldwin singing the Hero song.