I sure like lists!

I was gonna freak out about politics, and I may still do so, but that would take some time, so instead I'll treat you to this:

The Omnivore's Hundred.

How nice to see one person shout this out to the world and everyone say "yeah, that's a pretty good list" instead of "but you haven't LIVED until you've tried ____". It's a great list! No, it's not The Best List Of Food For All Time For Everyone, but it's pretty good.

I do think it'd be fun to make my own list, just for my own personal benefit, though. But as I'm only 22, and therefore 22% of my way through life (I'm going to be at least 100, I've decided), so I think I'd only get to make "The Omnivore's Twenty-two."

In other news, the new Of Montreal CD (it's out in a month, I heard it at a laser show) is an unrestrained nuts-o psychedelic party; Balkan Beat Box is also a party; my boss likes Balkan Beat Box too, and that's neat; I have all this furniture and I'm so proud (oh yeah, post about that coming up too); I hate politics; I like blues dancing.

Are you fucking me?!

I'm real cheesed off by politics and Internet companies right now, and I just made a nice long post about them (on my iPhone because I still have no Internet) and safari just cut out! (note to prospective iPhone buyers: it does that sometimes.)

Goddamn! I guess this rant will have to wait till I'm more connected. I hate every corporation and political party in the goddamn world!

('cept google.)

Eat less meat ++, and cut down fewer cotton trees

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri from the UN says so!

Not trying to browbeat you into it. Just saying, if you're thinking "I wish I could help the environment, but I don't know how," vegetarianism is a lot easier than giving up your car (depending on where you live). And semi-vegetarianism is easier still!

Says a 90% vegetarian for 2 1/2 months running. (some weeks I have gone over, but some weeks I've gone under, and I think it works out to under 10% of my meals that have meat in them. And this is strict meat-counting: a little bit of chicken broth or gelatin counts. +1 hardcore points.)

Also, if you want to do something else, try bamboo sheets.
Pros:
- informal googling around makes me think that they're a lot more environmentally friendly, although I have no proof, besides the rhetorical argument of "it's bamboo! bamboo grows super fast! and non-organic cotton is full of pesticides and awful chemicals."
- they feel very nice
Cons:
- they're more expensive
Pros:
- but not much! Check out these cheap bamboo-blend sheets at Target. I paid a bit more at Bed Bath and Beyond (I was kind of exasperated and I wanted to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible, and hopefully while killing as few environments as possible.) but ended up with 100% bamboo sheets. Hoo-ray.

Side note: Bed Bath and Beyond is absurd. They have so many varieties of everything. I wanted a comforter. I found duvets, throws, bed-covers, blankets, rugs, dust ruffles, mattress pads, beds-in-a-bag, and not comforters. Also, I wanted bright lime green sheets. No luck there either (especially not in bamboo!)

Why are pirates okay and Nazis are not; also, I'm a pansy

I kinda dig this "A and B" formula of posts, where A and B are entirely unrelated.

Here's part A of today's post:
Pirates are a cool thing, or at least a pop-culture-tolerable thing. Pirates of the Caribbean, for one. And Talk Like a Pirate Day. And every single goddamn idjit on the internet. This post is not about how pirates (and ninjas and zombies) are not funny anymore, although that is true. This post is about Why are they not offensive? And why are they even glorified? I mean, Johnny Depp is this roguish hero, and nobody cares.

Pirates were bad people! Right? They plundered and pillaged, and so on! Correct me if I'm wrong, but these guys were just common thieves, except common thieves who would kill you!

Nazis were bad people too, but we can't have a movie with a hero who's a Nazi. Is it a too-soon thing? If so, that's silly, because it means in 100 years, Johnny Depp's great-great-grandson will be playing a rakish, handsome Nazi. Is it a question of scale? Because Nazis were oppressive controllers, and pirates were just like little guys who committed minor (in comparison) crimes? That makes a little more sense... but I mean Jeffrey Dahmer committed minor crimes, in comparison to all the Nazis. Is it a question of premeditation? Nazis were systematically evil, while pirates were merely chaotic? Hey, guess who else is "merely chaotic": suicide bombers.

How about talk-like-a-Nazi day? Or Nazis of the Baltic? Hmm.

Also, I need to grow a spine, in terms of social interactions. If I, say, need a book, I tend to phrase the question like "Hey, is that your book? Can I maybe borrow it? I mean, that is, if you don't need to use it anytime soon, and of course it's totally cool if you do need to use it, no really, that's fine." And the other day, this one guy was beating up another guy in the alley, broad daylight, lots of people around. That's not okay! I noticed it and stopped and looked, as if to say to the beater: stop it! He looked at me and yelled "What the fuck are you looking at? Cross the fucking street. Cross the fucking street!" So what did I do? I crossed the (fucking) street. But I felt awful! What I should have done is cross the street and call 911. I didn't even do that, and it didn't occur to me to do that until later. Or maybe yell back: "I'm looking at you beating the crap out of this guy. You want me to call the cops?" I know what you're saying, don't get involved, but he was far away from me and there were tons of people around, so he couldn't beat me up.

Whatever it was, I didn't do the right thing, and I felt like a glub for hours.

Pirates are like that guy! They're not like Johnny Depp!

Corporations and Rock Concerts

Interesting post. Admittedly, half the reason I like it is it gives me fuel for my rage against the corporations, because every young person needs something to rage against. I'll just add that corporations dehumanize everything, and humanizing things is good. Like when you call Dell tech support, and it says "everyone is busy, please hold", you get pissed. If you went to your computer store and said "hey, can you help me?" the guy would say "sorry, I'm real busy" and he'd be taking apart a computer or something, and you'd say, okay, he's busy, 's cool. Or if he was real busy for hours, you could get on his case, and say, hey buddy, give me some time here. But with Dell, all you can do is get mad.

Am I too old for rock concerts? Rephrase: am I too boring for rock concerts? I'm more and more losing my desire to go to them. Now, Ratatat last night was awesome, as rock concerts go. They had a video projector with that sort of video stuff you sometimes see at concerts, synced to the music. They were going nuts on stage, super-theatrical. Their songs were punchy, smooth, and tight: no noodling! They played all their hits, plenty of new stuff, and finished off with "Seventeen Years" which you could tell everyone was waiting for.

But the waiting time is very long and difficult. It's loud, so you can't really talk; it's a lot of standing, and you never know when it'll end. And you often have to wait through openers you don't want to see (although, for the record, I dig openers). Plus, it's always ear-ringingly loud. It's expensive, and prices are often +$10 once you go through Ticketmaster, or you run the risk of being sold out. And what do you really get out of it? That you don't get by listening to recordings?
- the ability to see them perform, because they're awesome: not a big deal to me
- the opportunity to really lose yourself in the music: doesn't happen a lot to me at concerts. I thought Ratatat would be perfect, but not so. I feel like there's a lot of self-consciousness at concerts, for some reason.
- the chance to see the artists as real people: maybe. but most don't even talk much.

Conclusion: not worth it! So why do I keep going?

@ratatat

I got a ticket! Thanks to a friendly stranger named Gabe, who is going to spend the next year traveling the world (and particularly the Asian parts of the world). That is neat.

My coworker has a dog! He's cute! (the dog, not my coworker) That is also neat.

I'm in the depths of new-project incompetence, where changing one line of code is very difficult because there are a lot of other steps along the way. This is normal. I knew it would happen, and it is. So it goes.

Oh yeah, and I'm in a new city where I don't know anyone and I don't have anything to do. I kinda saw this coming too. Again, that's life!

But to complain about anything at all in my life would be goddamn ungrateful. I know the future will be really good. I am hopefully slowly becoming aware that the present is just as good. Alles goed.

Fit (but I know it)

That is what I'll have to become, if I'm going to keep up this commute every day. It's only 4 miles each way, but Seattle hills can be brutal! Moreso than Pittsburgh. (but not as bad as SF)

But it is SO PRETTY! Wow!

Also Chrome! I am no longer worried that I joined Google right after it jumped the shark. Haven't used it yet (no Windows box) but it sure does sound cool.

I can hear the Stone Temple Pilots from my balcony

belting out "Lady Picture Show." What.

Showing up somewhere with only the bags on your back is a challenge! I've been on a real spending spree this weekend, some good, some not so good. Like my bike: good! I got a Marin Larkspur, and I will not link you to info because I'm typing this on my iPhone. It is so smooth! I like it! (My bike, not my iPhone.) Mattress: okay. Mattress shopping sucks. They're all a bunch of snake oil salesmen, and whenever you balk at an upgrade ("oh, you have to get a Swedish Pillow-topped Mattress Protector") they give you the hard sell. ("well, if you enJOY dust mites crawling in your eyeballs...")

This was all written two nights ago, but not finished, because I have no internets yet and I was typing on my iPhone. The iPhone has been not a real life-saver but at least a partial life-maker-easier. Still, now I'm at work (compiling!) and it's nice to have a real screen and keyboard.

Bumbershoot yesterday rocked. I only saw two shows: Strange Fruit and Dan Deacon. Both were fantastic! I meant to see Battles/Del the Funky Homosapien/Human Giant, but they were all at the same time, and I went out to dinner with Jay and CMU friends instead, so I missed them all. Also, I meant to see Death Cab for Cutie, but by the time I got back, all the gates were "exit-only". What! Does this big purple stamp on my wrist mean nothing?! So I stood in the parking lot with my bike to listen in, wistfully tearing up as dreamy dreamy Ben Gibbard crooned "Transatlanticism". (no, seriously. It was pretty sad. Shut up!)

Also, I bought some sweet posters. I am so excited about them. Not as excited as I am about my bike, though.

Topic shift! I was thinking about blind taste tests. Say, for example, Coke vs. Pepsi. Say I think I like Coke better, but in a blind taste test, I pick Pepsi. Well! What do I know? I know that, with no context, in a blind taste test, I like Pepsi better. But real life is not a blind taste test! If I then go to the fridge, should I reach instead for a can of Pepsi? No. The whole experience, of tasting the Coke, looking at the Coke can, thinking "I am drinking a Coke," is better than the corresponding Pepsi experience. Clearly, here I should drink a Coke.

So why do blind taste tests at all? I don't know. In one sense, it's nice to dissociate your mind from the advertising monster that runs our world. Maybe you only like the Coke better because Coke has better ads, and you'd like to instead reward Pepsi for making a superior product. I guess in the Coke vs. Pepsi case, there's no difference. Okay, what if you're comparing El Cheapo orange juice with Super Organic orange juice? Say you thought you liked El Cheapo better, but after a taste test you found Super Organic tasted better... then you'd change your buying habits to reward the healthier/environmentally-friendlier company. Well, that's good. Still, you'd get more enjoyment out of drinking El Cheapo, and you knew this beforehand. You're sacrificing your enjoyment to save your health and the environment, no taste test required.

Okay, test case #3: to develop your palate. Say we're talking Crummy Wine vs. Le Super Wine. Are you trying to find out which you like better? Great, go for it. Maybe you like Crummy Wine better. Is there a reason you should drink more wine to eventually prefer Le Super Wine? (assuming they're equally healthy)... I don't know. Oenophiles would say that, if you have an awesome palate, you really totally enjoy awesome wines an awesome amount. I guess that's true too. Hmm. I feel like I'm tackling many different issues here. I'll leave this idea kinda half-baked. Let's just say that I'm now thinking that blind taste tests are a lot less great than I once thought they were.

My week at the Googleplex

It's over! I'm tired! That's why I'm sitting in my apartment this Friday night. And I have a flight tomorrow morning.

Okay. Post-mortem: Google is pretty cool. We had some talks in which we heard a lot of cool things. Stuff about how huge their datacenters are, stuff about how search works, stuff about how ads works, the exact PageRank algorithm, how to use their source control and build things, etc. That was neat.

Met some cool people. That was neater. Some are nerdy, but some are pretty cool. I'll never see most of these guys again, but some I will, because they're in Seattle too. Awesome.

Also bounced ideas around. That was neatest. The corporate world is not yet dashing my youthful optimism. It is instead reinforcing it! Course, I'm not even working on my main project yet, so we'll see how that goes next week.

I got to hang out with Will and Jing, Scott and Katie, and Andrew W. That was fun! I co-hosted Andrew's radio show, which was hella fun. He's quite a very good DJ. Will and I played Lost Cities (super-simple and still fun! go Rio Grande!) and the Catan card game (not as simple, but fun, maybe because I was winning the whole time), but not Agricola. Oh well.

And have I mentioned how great the food was? Highlights from the Googleplex include:
- No Name Cafe, featuring vegetarian and non-vegetarian food prepared sometimes in an ethnic style
- Pintxo 47, a "small plates" place with healthy, tasty, and appealing-looking small bits of food
- Cafe 150, where all food comes from within 150 miles of Google
- Slice Cafe, serving up smoothies and juices, like a kale, celery, and some other juices blend
- the minikitchens everywhere, each stocked with the sort of drinks that make you want to try them (Tejava and Honest teas, Henry Weinhard's root beer, Naked juices, etc.), espresso machines (made my first shot today!), granola and cereal, and other more real food if you're in a hurry
- the TGIF fun thing, featuring an assortment of pretty good beers, on the level of Stella Artois and Sierra Nevada

Anyway, I'm excited to get back to Seattle, buy a bed and a bike, and start living!

Usain Bolt, not Michael Phelps, saved the Olympics?

Okay, I'll agree with this. Partially. He was the high-profile athlete who had the most fun. And in a world of hypercompetitiveness, a (supposedly) low-tech happy guy from a country that is not a, you know, cold war powerhouse wins the biggest baddest races in record time.

It's the whole torpedo thing: if you want to be The Best at anything, you will fail. Some other jerk will go all-out, sacrifice his life, maybe take performance-enhancing drugs, and defeat you, because you chose to, I don't know, read a book sometimes, or grow a garden, or maybe have friends. So along with living a balanced life, you have to get into the mindset that not being The Best at anything is okay. The Olympics directly contradict that mindset: if you're not #1, #2, or #3 (or in China, only #1), you're a failure. I mean, Bolt would still be awesome if he got 16th in the 100m dash, just because he seems like a cool dude who's enjoying what he's doing. But nobody would have heard of him if he were 16th.

I don't want to bash Phelps, though: good for him, bringing a sport like swimming into the spotlight. Oh, and eight gold medals is cool, I guess. But yeah! Usain Bolt. What a champ!

Google, Day Two

Today, I played volleyball with my new team. And I learned deep dark Google secrets! No, I cannot tell you ANYTHING. Nope. Sorry. Then they gave us magic wands and taught us how to cast Wingardium Leviosa.

They trust us a lot! And everyone responds by being trustworthy! What a cool company culture! Plus I got a lot of free programming books.

My flatmate for the week is from Azerbaijan! How cool.

Google, Day One

It's been a day! A not so interesting day! Orientation, what do you expect. A lot of talks, some paperwork, and some great food. You know all that stuff you hear about the food at Google? All true. Tasty, healthy, tons of (vegetarian and meaty) choices, free, everywhere.

That said, I'm stoked about getting to start working (/learning) tomorrow! And about living in Seattle! Mountain View is kinda nice, but I sure did make the right decision. Mountain View is a big suburb. Everything is four miles away from everything else. And 1098209470 miles from San Francisco. Urgh!

But boy, the food is good.

I started a new binder in my Great Ticket Collection today

Yow! This is it! The single biggest change in my life ever! Rivaling college, I guess. Whoo! Splendid.

I'm in Mountain View, CA, right now, for orientation for a week at the Google HQ. I'm going to Seattle on Saturday. Today I gained three hours, due to time zones, that I never have to pay back! How often does that happen?! I'm keeping them in a box for later.

Yesterday I dropped off a carful of clothes, toys, and STUFF to Goodwill. How liberating! And what a luxury! To say, I have this stuff, but I will get rid of it, only because it's in my way. I hope it will help someone, but really, to get rid of this was not a selfless act but rather kinda selfish. No worries! No more neuroses!

I have three bags I'm taking on the plane, plus three bags I took on the plane last time, plus two big boxes being shipped to me. I can move with fewer possessions than you can! But that's not really fair either; I left some stuff at home for archiving.

I went to my high school to see some friends and teachers. For those of you dear readers who went to my high school, I ran into The Fr. Ober, Mr. Skerl, Mr. Corrigan, Mr. Barker, and a couple others, although most had left for the day by the time we got there. Dave and Erik are living in Chicago! I've got to go visit.

Did I mention that my family threw me a going-away party? I got to see family, family friends, and friends. My friends from CMU came up. How lucky am I to have not only lots of family and adults around who would like to see me, but also friends from Pittsburgh who would drive up just to hang out with me and my family! At one point everyone started saying "speech! speech!" so I said the most succinct and absolutely true thing that came to mind, which was: "Thank you all for everything, I have no complaints whatsoever."

My mind is a million miles an hour. I'll keep on with the bullet points.

iPhone! It's great! A couple things I wish:
- notes synched
- camera had like some options, and maybe one more megapixel
- it did my laundry for me

And I'm watching all my photos zip past, as they import into iPhoto, in a hyper slideshow of my last four years. It's a wonderful life! (later edit: I'm not so fond of iPhoto. Why don't photo programs just mirror the file structure? Why do they have to keep trying to be fancy by creating "events" or some nonsense?)

I've got the Mirrormask soundtrack on my ipod. I mean, iphone. It seems vaguely appropriate in a stranger-in-a-strange-land sort of way. Okay, Mountain View is not a very strange land. In a lot of ways, this is the easiest life-changing transition possible.

Aaaaaand one more: a new charity option. Instead of giving money to a kid and feeding into a machine of aggressive street canvassers, what if I started lending micro-loans through Kiva? Have you heard of this? Anyone know anyone who's done it?

Signing off, exhausted but excited.

I don't own my name on Google anymore?

It's true! "Mr. Daniel Tasse", the new President and CEO of Ikaria, Inc., now gets the top spot when you search for Dan Tasse. Furthermore, the humble Snail Shell itself is not even listed! You can still find it if you try, but it's not in the top N. Huh. Did I lose out in popularity that quickly? Is Mr. Daniel Tasse instantly a lot cooler? ...or do weird things happen to your internet presence when you start to work at Google?

(nothing sinister; I can understand if they block employees' personal websites because of inadvertent release of trade secrets OR a conflict of interest from an employee trying to boost their own standings)

Super I-am-living-in-Seattle

Found an apartment! It was quite easy! It took one day. Jared and I looked at 9 places. It turns out that he cared more about space (in the apt.) than location, and I cared more about location than space. We might find ourselves at odds about this! Or even at loggerheads. However, luckily, we instead found ourselves in Capitol Hill, in a place that was quite big and in a great location. The drawback? It's a bit pricier. To quote Gramp, "Money doesn't solve everything. But it does make life a lot easier."

Anyway, this does mean I have a sweet sweet flat. It's so sweet. I'm so that rich young guy. My place just screams "I am so cool" in that way that I hate sleek places to scream at me. It screams "the life that you see in movies is actually possible, and you have it." It's the iPhone of apartments: no particular character, and it's expensive, but it is pretty, and it's got everything you need.

But you never spend less money, and you never take up less space. Trying not to get spoiled, trying not to get spoiled, etc. I think I can do it. And after all, why worry about getting spoiled? Why not wait until you are spoiled, and it's a problem, before you worry? Says Zen Dan. (Western Dan is super excited about everything.)

Fantasy X, Finally!

I'm done with this game! Whoo! I beat Sin, Seymour, and Jecht! (spoiler alert: those are the final bosses. another spoiler alert: yes, those are their names, even though "Jecht" is the only one that sounds even a little bit like a video game boss name.) I got a bunch of sweet treasures! Three of my characters can double-cast Ultima! Two more can hit for 9999 damage every turn! My stats are, like, really high!

Okay, I'm actually pretty happy about this. As I was almost done, I was really hoping for the game to end soon, but now that it has, I remember why I like video games. Sadly, I like them the same way I like cereal: addictively.

However, I like to review everything all the time, so here are my thoughts on Final Fantasy X:

- The gameplay is mostly pretty great. They keep improving from previous Final Fantasies. You don't have to spend much time leveling up, which is key; however, you do level up a lot, and whenever you do, you really feel like you're getting something cool, which is also key. All the characters are useful, in their own way, and you can switch them each in and out quickly and painlessly. You can see which characters will attack next, which lets you strategize a bit.

- The setting is kinda neat. You, Tidus (the main character), live in Zanarkand, but you are mysteriously thrown into Spira 1000 years in the future. You traverse a land of devastated beaches, forests, a cool magicky river called the "Moonflow", a heaven-like place called the "Farplane", imperial palaces, underground rivers, caves, mountains, and eventually the inside of Sin (a big monster).

- The storyline is melodramatic and heavy-handed. You're on this mission to defeat Sin, but (spoiler alert) Yuna, the girl, is going to die! Oh noes! And it turns out that the religious leaders are really corrupt and don't actually want to save the world like they say they do! But if we all stick together and fight, we'll figure out a way to save the world AND Yuna! (On the way, we will also overcome racism.)

- Some of the characters are pretty okay. There's Auron, the mysterious wise old guy who (spoiler alert) is actually a ghost; Wakka, the big dumb religious carefree-but-not-really blitzball player; Seymour, the aforementioned evilman; Cid, the brash airship pilot, etc.

- Some of the characters are not okay. All the girls are hard to take, except maybe Lulu, who is the old, wise one, but still wears dark emo makeup. Oh yeah, and often underdressed, surprise it's a video game. Seymour is like this good-guy-turned-bad, except they reveal that he's super bad in like the first scene. Jecht just makes fun of Tidus a lot, and oh yeah, he's his dad, and Tidus hates him a lot, and this is like a major important plot point because he really hates him totally a lot yeah.

- Tidus deserves an extra bullet point because he totally ruins the game. He is the worst. His voice actor must have been an understudy because the main guy got laryngitis. Or rather, the understudy's son; I'm not sure he's hit puberty yet. His facial expressions don't help. He looks like an action figure. His mouth doesn't close right. His eyes are like vapid but trying so hard to be full of meaning. Whenever he was talking, I wanted him to stop talking. Gaargh!

Sidebar for Final Fantasy VII and X players. The characters are exactly the same:
Cloud <-> Tidus, the adolescent hero with a giant sword (no innuendoes, good god)
Aeris <-> Yuna, the healer who is in love with the hero and also (spoiler alert) is going to die
Barret <-> Wakka, the dumb likeable big dude who fights a lot
Tifa <-> Rikku, the young girl who steals things and wears short shorts
Red XIII <-> Kimahri, the dog/cat/whatever animal who fights with you and doesn't talk much
Cid <-> Auron, the grizzled, wise one
Sephiroth <-> Seymour, the really super bad guy with the hair that's all crazy

Right? Hurgh. Nothing new under the sun.

But hell. Nice game anyway. Good combat, well-scheduled rewards, a lot of friendly interfaces, they let you skip a lot of the stuff that you wanted to skip. Lots of sidequests you could do if you wanted, and apparently a ton of extra monsters if you have all the time in the world. They're learning from all of their mistakes. All in all, I enjoyed FFX, and if I had another life's worth of free time, I'd probably play FFXII. And a lot of other video games.

"No more monkeys jumping on my head"

to quote Ultimate Donny. Epic battle with the monkey mind last night, which I lost. I can't even quiet all my competitive, rank-based, worrisome thoughts when I sit on a cushion and look at the wall, much less in my daily life. (and much less when I'm playing Settlers!) I just want to be happier, and there are particularly great people in my life who just want me to be happier too. I almost feel like I've gotten worse at this over the summer, which is not so good, and I can only hope that my meditation kick is actually helping and not actually leading me down a worrying spiral by making me think about my worrying too much. But things seem a little nicer in the morning, and I am still super-stoked about finding an apartment in Seattle.

Sponsorin' a kid?

Thinkin' bout sponsoring a kid via Children International. They seem good by the Better Business Bureau, Charity Navigator gives them 3 stars, 82% of the money goes to actually helping kids (11% fundraising, 7% other administration, which all seems pretty good if not exceptional), it's non-religious, and the cool part is that your money goes to one kid.

And you could write back and forth a little bit and so on. I used to think that that was no big deal, but now along with my hopes of putting humanity back in everything, a human touch to charity giving sounds better to me than, say, throwing money at the American Cancer Society. I used to think it'd be demoralizing, too, like "oh I have to write a letter to this guy Dan because he's giving me money," but the more I think about it, the more it sounds like it's not a bad idea. He's thankful for my support, I'm thankful for the opportunity to give him my support. I'm not paying him to write me a letter, or wanting him to write me so I feel good about myself, or whatever; I'd actually like to hear from a kid in Colombia or Nicaragua or India or whatever, and make a friend somewhere else. And as someone who has, I don't mind giving to someone who has not. I'm not quite articulating this right, but I have a good feeling about the idea.

Beefs: Everyone's mad at the CEO's salary. Whatever. It's 0.27% of expenses; it's not making a huge difference either way. The bigger beef is canvassers. Yeah, I'm no fan of canvassers. And yet, here I am, about to sign up for a thing after a canvasser tracked me down in Union Square in New York City and gave me the hard sell. The hard sell! I hate the hard sell! With the emotional appeal and everything! I mean, he was a very nice guy, but still, do not attempt to play on my emotions! I am a goddamn robot, I see right through it, and I get pissed.

It's $22/month, or as they like to say, "just 70 cents a day!", but that's still $264/year. I can handle that. Anything else I should be checking out before I sign up for this? Or are there any other charities that you, dear reader, particularly believe in, that I should be checking out too?

Panic! Don't panic!

So I was buying a plane ticket to San Francisco on August 24 so I can start training, and then one to Seattle on August 30 so I can start work. Even though I wasn't paying for it, I still agonized about it for a while, trying to get the best times and the fewest stops and so on. Finally, I settled on two separate one-way tickets (why I couldn't buy them together for the same price is a bit of a mystery). Bought the SFO-SEA leg from Alaskan Airlines, no problem. Tried to buy the CLE-SFO leg from US Airways, the website timed out. It said "Try again." So I did. Bought the ticket, emailed it to my family, just so they know my plans.

My mom emails me back and says "Why is it for August 30?"

I AM THE DUMBEST. I am so dumb, CMU should revoke my diploma so I don't dumb down their alumni reunions. Toast should be renamed "Dan Tasse" so the next time someone says that they're dumber than toast, they would actually be saying they're dumber than me. I am not the brightest bulb in the bunch, nay, I'm made of dark matter, actually absorbing light from the real bright bulbs. They're actually making another sequel to "Dumb and Dumber"; it's called "Dumb and Dan Tasse." I'm not in it. I'm too dumb to act.

So I'm freaking out. Because I'm the dumbest. However, once I calm down, I realize that in my internet silliness, I have accidentally bought a "refundable" ticket. You know, those ones you never buy because they cost more. Apparently the flight I tried to get on was out of cheap non-refundable tickets, so I had bought a refundable ticket. So, one quick (okay, not quick, like 30 minutes of hold, but bear with me) phone call, and it was all fixed.

The one time I buy a refundable ticket is the one time I have to change my ticket! And how can those Buddhists say that the world is full of suffering? (I'm joking. Partially.)

I've been out of town

Just most recently, at Sarah's house in West Virginia last weekend. Fun time! And I discovered that my recipe archive unintentionally gave her mom her first bit of internet presence. Hooray internet!

Unrelatedly, I found out a thing about life: you may find yourself, wearing a banana suit, singing "Day O" at a karaoke bar with a half team of kickballers and half dozen nurses providing backup vocals. This is a pretty great thing.

Go Nanners!