butter battle

Christmas photos!

Lavep hand-letterpressed this Christmas card!  It took him two evenings.  The text is a reference to how I like to walk in and say "hello friends!".

A pomegranate dish cooked by Azer's girlfriend, to celebrate the winter solstice.


A peas-and-cheese dish cooked by Azer's girlfriend.  This is the only time I remember being unable to stop eating peas.

The recipe calls for butter, but Azer insisted on using olive oil because he thinks butter is too unhealthy.

A chicken baked by Aff.  We sent this photo to Azer to show him how much butter is being used, along with the caption, "That's how we roll."  

Azer: "Well done."

Christmas tree!  I like following traditions, knowing that millions of other people are doing the same. It feels community-like.

their christmas tradition involves pager duty

Earlier this month:

Aff: "I'm going to get you a Playstation 4 and a bunch of games for Christmas.  What genre do you like?"

Me: "Story-driven puzzle games."

Aff: "I'll just get you a gift card.  All these games are downloadable."

Me: "You mean from the network that's going to be down on Dec 25?"

And now...

Who called it?!??

issue with all Star Wars movies (not a spoiler)

Last week (before anyone saw the new movie, so there are no spoilers):

Me: "I have an issue with all the Star Wars movies.  They always fly through a narrow tunnel and shoot one spot and then explode a gigantic ship.  You'd think the engineers would learn the first time.   It'd be passed down as lore.  'Remember to double-check the design so it can't be exploded from a single point.'"

Others: "True, they exploded the Death Star twice."

Me: "And Anakin exploded a big station in Phantom Menace.  You'd think that would be the failure case that gets repeated in engineering class, like how we all watched that video of the bridge that collapsed."

galapagos

My brother and I went on a cruise to the Galapagos!

There were 17 guests onboard our cruise.  Christian was the bartender and waiter.  We had fruity cocktails the first night.

We saw pink flamingos.  They look just like the plastic lawn ornaments, but very graceful.  

A shark!  So cute.

Bermuders (accountants from Bermuda) standing behind a giant tortoise.  

Me: "There need to be more kinds of superheroes.  Like a superhero computer scientist: Hacker-Man.  Also accountants like you guys.  Super-Accountant would discover an account that doesn't balance to zero, and fix it."

Bermuder: "First there'd need to be a trilogy to explain how the account even got into that state."

Me: "No one would suspect the accountant for being a superhero.  It's the perfect cover."

Bermuder: "Yeah, we actually are superheroes."

Me: "Ha ha."

Bermuder: "See?  We're even talking about it right now, and yet you still don't believe it."

Dolphins that randomly swam beside our ship for 10 minutes.

The Galapagos natives care deeply about conservationism.  They got upset whenever they saw garbage.  It was pleasant to see tour guides care so much.

Our cruise friend took a lot of candids.  I'm always sitting around looking distracted.

Our boat!  It was great being on a boat with 17 people instead of thousands, like other cruise ships.

not perfect but still perfect CG

I watched this CG video of Bruce Lee again.  While I still love love love it, I see now how there's always a little trick that distracts from his face.  There's a shadow that falls onto him, or a momentary de-focusing of the camera.  We're seeing his reflection in water, or from far above.  It's only at the very end that they do the impressive close-up.

The voice acting and the writing is still magical.