My roommate is the worst.

This goes on night after night.

Still confused by this electricity thing.

So about a year ago, I went and made a table out of a year's worth of electricity bills and posted it here.

I'll save you the trouble of clicking on the link and quote the table. Here comes a quote:
"
So, here's a summary of my electricity bills for the last year, for reference, this is a 1 bedroom apartment on the ground floor:

Date	KWH Read	KWH Usage	# Days	Avg. Usage.	Charges
05/08/2008	99813	502.00	29	17.31	59.79
04/09/2008	99311	368.00	30	12.27	44.11
03/10/2008	98943	377.00	32	11.78	45.36
02/07/2008	98566	287.00	29	9.9	34.78
01/09/2008	98279	364.00	33	11.03	44.21
12/07/2007	97915	436.00	31	14.06	53.76
11/06/2007	97479	606.00	32	18.94	86.53
10/05/2007	96873	626.00	29	21.59	81.56
09/06/2007	96247	618.00	30	20.6	77.46
08/07/2007	95629	602.00	29	20.76	76.11
07/09/2007	95027	558.00	32	17.44	67.63
06/07/2007	94469	468.00	30	15.6	57.55
05/08/2007	94001	401.00	31	12.94	47.98
TOTAL:	-	6213.00	397	15.64	776.83

"

And then I moved. Used to live 15 miles from the sea, now 2. Square footage is a bit different as well, so there's variables.

Here's another year's worth of numbers:

Date	KWH Read	KWH Usage	# Days	Avg. Usage.	Charges
04/24/2009	4691	147.00	30	4.9	$ 19.01
03/25/2009	4544	139.00	29	4.79	$ 17.94
02/24/2009	4405	172.00	32	5.38	$ 22.71
01/23/2009	4233	162.00	31	5.23	$ 21.46
12/23/2008	4071	193.00	32	6.03	$ 25.43
11/21/2008	3878	219.00	29	7.55	$ 28.38
10/23/2008	3659	315.00	31	10.16	$40.40
09/22/2008	3344	364.00	32	11.38	$ 47.25
08/21/2008	2980	292.00	29	10.07	$ 37.03
07/23/2008	2688	280.00	30	9.33	$ 34.91
06/23/2008	2408	165.00	32	5.16	$ 20.83
05/22/2008	2243	8.00	8	1	$ 16.18
TOTAL:	-	2456	345	7.11	$330.53

So I'm paying about less than half of what I used to pay. Still can't make heads or tails of one of my cow-orkers complaining about hundreds (nearly thousands) of dollars worth of electric bills in the summer.

Other than the move, I can't say I'm aware of any usage changes. Still run my computers quite a bit. Still leave a light on when I stay up too late. Run the air conditioner when it seems right. Go figure.

Maybe soon the bacon craze will end.

(pointed out to me by Gifa)

The media is dead to me.

I woke up to find this article in my RSS feed, posted as if it were real journalism. Here I was thinking I'd filtered out all the celebrity gossip articles, but here it was anyhow.

Highlights:

This past weekend was the Obamas’ first chance to participate in the Sidwell Friends School Dollars for Scholars benefit, and some families who remember the Clintons’ support are disappointed in the Obamas’ first showing.

Right. "Some families"...who?

According to a source with ties to the school, the only items up for bid from the Obamas included a signed copy of the Rolling Stone issue featuring the president and a signed copy of the January Vogue that featured the first lady.

A source...who?

“There were expectations that they might donate something more personal, like the Clintons did,” said another source who knew about the auction. “Lots of people were disappointed.”

Oh...right...another source.

A spokesperson for the Obamas said, “We have no comment on this.”

Oh, holy fuck. You can't even give the spokesperson's name?

Ok, ultimately, I don't give a shit about this private-school auction, scandalous or not, but I'm really pissed off that this snuck into my attention. I've been reading about how this administration is a failure since the day Obama was elected, months before the inauguration, and regardless how I voted (I'll spare you my usual diatribe of "The libertarian or the weirdest looking person in the voter information guide...which is usually the libertarian."), this just smacks of something cheaper than the usual yellow journalism.

Maybe I'd have been a little less pissed-off if the previous article in my feed(from the same source) didn't seem like bullshit either. (In short: "Really? You have a small business with an income of a half-mil and you report that on your personal income tax filing? Or are you just saying that's what your personal tax return would be if you counted your corporation's income? Or was it 'that's my personal income but as long as I say that my real income is way less people will say I'm getting taxed too much'?")


gah. off to work...

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Housing.

I've been looking at real estate listings again lately. Things are a lot better for me (someday buyer) than they used to be.

But, I'm sorry, please, take more impressive pictures.

(see also It's Lovely! I'll Take It!)

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Do not photochop your pictures. They look like ass.

How about some crazy?

Forget it.

Yeah, so this is my angry purist post.

This evening, I read this article: Ze, Buckley and Homestar Runner Tell All

All I will say on it is this:
I spent a year beating myself up over why I couldn't get the PostORG running. I tried adding features. I tried encouraging people to participate. I tried re-capturing that spirit that got us going in the first place.

It didn't work out. I still don't know how one could inspire, but mine couldn't. I keep telling myself that what momentum could have died when the ORG shut down, I helped keep some of it going. For a bit. Some of it because Ye-Olde-Personality Ze decided to have another project (colorwars).

You know, I've been beating myself up over failing for far too long. It's just bad feelings that I drag along with me.

So, in the spirit of me properly moving on...
1) The jargon of that period is now officially an anachronism. I'm done with it.
2) Any commenter that quotes "those jokes" is subject to unfair censorship.

It's not that I didn't make friends in that time. It's something about that time being gone, and realizing that there wasn't anything personal about it. It wasn't a greater good. It was paying attention to a charasmatic guy and his business model for it.

I also know that every dollar I spent paying for the year (plus a few months) running PostORG was something I chose. I never ran ads. I never had a business model. I refused attempts to offset my costs.

It was something I cared about.

I'm bemused that it was inspired by a guy that was looking into making a living.

It's a disconnect I should've seen more clearly.

I knew better, it just suited me to be a true-believer for a time.

Finally...progress?

I know, copyright might not be a big deal to you, but it's kind of a big deal to me. Not because I stay up late at night worrying about the poor artists and authors that aren't getting paid for their efforts in this new file-sharing world (The way I see it, many forms of publisher already figured that out on their own.)

I worry about the advancements of the arts and sciences. You know, the thing that copyright was supposed to do.

Here was the idea: You get a government-granted monopoly for your work for a limited period of time. This means you get your shot at making money off your work (which nobody else can profit from unless you give them explicit permission), but after the time is up, it's part of the public domain. You had your time, we appreciate your efforts, in fact, we rewarded you by protecting your work for a while, now it's fair game for anyone to use them, advance them, etc. Society as a whole benefits from your work, and you had your chance to profit from it exclusively.

But that wasn't good enough, that limited time just wasn't enough at 14 years, or 28 years with an extension....it stands now at 70 years past your death. 120 years total if it was done as a "work for hire." (Which means that the email I sent a cow-orker last week complaining about another cow-orker complaining about the coffee pot being left on is protected from publication for 120 years (maybe 95), no matter how prolific I was.)

It got especially gross in that the extensions were applied retroactively, so there were things that could be freely used (because that "limited" time had expired) that suddenly were protected again.

You may have heard this was all to protect Mickey Mouse as the original Disney work featuring the character, "Steamboat Willie" was potentially going to enter the public domain. I have no evidence to contradict such an accusation.

So, considering how things have been going in terms of protecting copyright holders lately, I write this to alert you of this....this may be huge

Slow day. Let's cook!

Well, for lack of anything better to do (after yesterday's marathon DVD inventory/organization mission.), I decided to make myself some dinner. And probably lunch for most of the week.

This, as always, somewhat ad-hoc, but here's the rough recipe (not like I ever follow one)

Sweat 1 medium onion (chopped) and 3 cloves of garlic in a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Add some salt and pepper. Go light, you'll probably be adding more later. Once that's soft, dump in 1lb of ground beef (I used 85% lean, because it's cheaper) and break it up to incorporate it in with the onions/garlic.

Once that's browned, add in a smallish can of stewed tomatoes. Don't bother draining them, just dump the whole thing in. Break 'em up a little with whatever you've been stirring this mass with.

Realize that things look kind of thin. Look for a can of tomato sauce. Failing that, look for a can of condensed tomato soup. Failing that, panic, and then decide that the can of "Old-Fashioned Tomato Rice (condensed) soup" is good enough. Do not spend much time considering why they spelled "Old" correctly (as opposed to "Olde"). Fold it in to the mixture anyway.

Once that's integrated, dump in about 3/4lb (uncooked) pasta (cooked). (I used plain-jane elbow macaroni) Go wash some container to put the 1/4lb (uncooked) pasta (that you cooked with the rest of it) into the fridge.

Turn down the heat to something resembling "warm". Simmer until the dishwasher is finished washing all the uncleaned containers that you'll have to pack the leftovers in.

Optionally, consider that maybe you should've tasted it at some point and then at random intervals, stir in things like some dried parsley flake or dried oregano. Put the cover back on as the dishwasher is still running.

UPDATE: Oh, and check on it and stir every once in a while. Seems that even at really-low heat, it still wants to find a way to fuse itself to the surface of the non-stick pan that you never treat with as much care as you should've. I should also add that this recipe makes what I would consider "A hell of a lot."

UPDATE 2: Came out tasting good, and I've plenty of leftovers for this week