BunkBlog

Planning a comfort food dinner party for this weekend, when the lovely and captivating Kat is finally introduced to the majority of the people I talk to her about. I try to have a theme for my parties. The last party (way back in January) had a theme of “cheese and crackers” (plus chocolate souffle) and the one before that had a fancy-pants theme. That one had half Cornish hens, individual baked Alaskas, and so on. This party, I decided to avoid the chaos and go with a simpler theme: comfort foods.

What do you consider a comfort food? We ended up with 7-layer dip, ham soup, pot roast, and mashed potatoes. Dora seems to think that tiramisu is a comfort food, but that may be personal preference. Naturally, I can’t do anything simple 100%; there is a special dessert planned for this party, but I’m not giving anything away until I have to. Stay tuned for photos on Monday.

Now, off to frost a cake for tomorrow’s fall festival. Yay.

I’ll write more tomorrow, but I’m tired and have to go to work in (checks clock) 7.5 hours.

Yay for dinosaurs!

And, just to make Kat jealous:

The Boy and I are in Dallas for the giant robotic dinosaur show tomorrow. We got stuck on a tollroad that had a broken change machine and no attendant. If I get a ticket for dropping a dollar into the change bucket (after displaying it to the camera) for a 45 cent fare, I’m so gonna be pissed.

I’ve deleted nearly 600 pieces of comment spam in the past two days.  I’ve noticed, in the past, one or two legitimate comments being tagged as spam, but I didn’t look through this recent flood for such stragglers.  Every time a legit comment was tagged as spam, it’s because the commenter was using an obviously fake email address in their info; no email address is needed, so if you just don’t put one, it should be good. If you’ve commented recently and it didn’t post, there ya go.

Frickin’ spammers…

Last week, the Nokia N800 tablet started dropping in price at various retailers, from its MSRP of $400 to a new normal of $240.  So, it’s hardly surprising that Nokia has announced the N810 this week.  The jump in specs is pretty impressive.  Not only did they add a built-in 2GB of storage, in addition to the 128MB of RAM they had in the N800, they’ve got a GPS receiver in that bad boy now.  And, of course, the big jump - a real keyboard.

My N770 is looking pretty “first generation” now, but considering that I don’t need the thing in the first place, I still don’t regret buying it when it went on clearance this summer.

In case you’re interested in comparing the three Nokia tablets that have been released, here ya go:

Nokia also claims the screen is brighter than the N800, and there’s a built-in FM transmitter (according to one site anyway). The web browser is now Mozilla-based (instead of Opera) and handles AJAX, Flash 9, and all the rest of the Web 2.0 stuff. A Skype client is pre-installed instead of being an additional download.  The Gizmo client now handles video.

The N810 is coming out next month for $480, which is about what I could spend on a cheap laptop. As the Internet Tablet has always been a niche product, is the higher price going to kill it, or is the addition of GPS and a keyboard going to save it? If the battery really does last for four hours of use, as claimed, it’s going to beat most UMPCs for portability and battery life, so it may do well.

Apparently, not every story ends like the Pina Colada song.

My sexy friend Michele seems to think she’s old.

So, I looked up who else was born in 1970. Heather Graham, Minnie Driver, Matt Damon, Lara Flynn Boyle, Mariah Carey, Rich Schroder, Uma Thurman, Tina Fey, Naomi Campbell, Beck, Kevin Smith, M. Night Shyamalan, Claudia Schiffer, Deborah Gibson, Bridget Moynahan, Ani DiFranco, Kelly Rippa, Bai Ling, Nia Long, Ethan Hawke, Sarah Silverman, Jennifer Connelly, Michael Shanks - does anyone really consider these folks old?  I saw Nia Long on the Late Late Show this week; she’s so incredibly hot.  Not old.

Now, if you still feel you’re old, don’t hesitate to send racy photos to me so I can evaluate and give you my expert opinion. 

For years, the private terror-hunters at the SITE Institute have been infiltrating jihadist chat rooms, and spying on the extremists congregating online. Now, the group its digital cover has been blown — and Al-Qaeda online communications channels have gone dark — thanks to a ham-handed move by the Bush administration, it seems. “Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” SITE’s Rita Katz told the Washington Post.

More here and here. “To make the accusation that the intelligence community leaked this to the media is totally false,” intelligence office spokesman Ross Feinstein said. I’d never assume the intel community leaked anything.  That’s something politicians do.

Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following (real places, names, things).
You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

What is your name? Gary

4 letter word: grab

Vehicle: Geo

TV Show: Grey’s Anatomy

City: George, WA

Boy’s Name: Greg

Girl’s Name: Gabrielle

Alcoholic drink: Gin & Tonic

Occupation: Garbage Collector

Something you wear: gabardine

Celebrity: George Clooney

Food: Green beans

Something found in a bathroom: Gross things

Reason for being late: Gin & Tonic

Cartoon Character: George of the Jungle

Something You Shout: GAH!

I don’t know why, but the Boy decided that he wanted a seahorse piñata this year.  How’d we do?  He helped with the paper mache and with the tissue paper.  I think it looks like a penguin or a demented hummingbird, but he thinks it looks suitably aquatic.  I predict explaining the shape many times in two weeks. 

The guy behind me at dinner tonight seemed to complain non-stop. I was thrilled when his entree arrived, but he still didn’t let up. Some folks just need to bitch, I guess.

The Boy ate a massive amount of crab legs, as usual. Oink.