Ummm, yeah, this has “WIN” painted all over it.

I guess that’s what happens if you keep electing actors to run your government. =P
Via Crooks & Liars

Brasse has an amusing comic and mini review of the coming kidlet MMO Free Realm.
Unlimited pack space?! ~swoon~
No really, even at 5 bucks a month it sounds like one heck of a bargin for all the things they are tossing into the game.

That way I am sure the following would make a lot more sense.

Top 11 Signs You’re Watching Too Much Battlestar Galactica

11. You get nervous every 33 minutes if you stay in the same place.
10. Tricia Helfer and Grace Park want to have a threesome with you, but you refuse because you won’t do it with machines.
9. You refer to yourself as a 13th colonial.
8. You’ve replaced “prepare to make the jump to light speed” with “spin up the FTL drive” in your vocabulary.
7. You shot your toaster.
6. When you heard Starbucks was closing shops, you felt sad for a moment, but then it passed.
5. You can’t use rectangular paper anymore.
4. Your kids are named Felix and Galen.
3. When you see identical twins, you freak out and start screaming “Cylons!”
2. You can’t name all the continents on Earth, but you know the name of the 12 Colonies of Kobol.
1. You never say ‘fuck’ any more.

Sice training for the past two days has been in Boulder, today I decided to go to The Scotch Corner Pub for lunch. The thing that caught my eye on a bite ass cold day like today was the Cullen Skink:

Ingredients:

• A large smoked haddock (weighing around 2 lb)
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped.
• 1 leak finely chopped.
• 1½ pints (900ml) milk
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 8 oz mashed potato
• Salt and pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• Chopped parsley
• Water
• Triangles of toast (as an accompaniment)

Method
Cover the smoked haddock with water, in a shallow pan, skin side down.
Bring to the boil and simmer for 4/5 minutes, turning once. Take the
haddock from the pan and remove the skin and bones. Break up the fish
into flakes, return to the stock and add the chopped onion, bay leaf,
salt and pepper. Simmer for another 15 minutes. Strain, remove the bay
leaf but retain the stock and fish. Add the milk to the fish stock and
bring back to the boil. Add enough mashed potato to create the
consistency you prefer (don’t be afraid to make it rich and thick!). Add
the fish and reheat. Check for seasoning. Just before serving, add the
butter in small pieces so that it runs through the soup.
Serve with chopped parsley on top, accompanied by triangles of toast.

It hit the spot and made me want more.

NPR had a piece on Modern Prefabs, one of which is built to withstand 150mph winds, that are like IKEA houses instead of proper prefab/modular houses like in Japan or Europe. The houses (by Rocio Romero) are in the $30/sqft range with land and a foundation/basement pushing them to about $50-$60/sqft, which is cheap compared to the $75- $150/sqft that houses typically go for.
They have a nice use of space with very open plans, though a bit too white on the interiors.

For B-Day Dinner last night my Father and Step-mother let me decide where I want to go, and since Valente’s went out of Business over the summer, I thought it would be a good idea to go and try out Marco’s….and it was fantastic.
No really, the ingredients make the pies mouth watering good. The Salads are perfection and the Tiramisu is in the top 5 I have ever had. The Wine list is top notch, and the layout is very helpful in having all “types” (Teasing, Luscious, and Voluptuous) grouped together…they even have Linne Calado (sadly, not by the glass but by the bottle at well over what you can get for in the store). I had the N. Zero which was not allowed to breathe, but after sitting for a few was very tasty, my Stepmother had the Poggio della Fonte which was better.
Pie wise we had the Brooklyn (Sweet Italian Sausage, Pepperoni, Mushrooms, Red Onions, Fresh Mozzarella, San Marzano Tomato Sauce) and the Abruzzo (Bufala Mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiano, Gran Cru, Caciocavallo, Fresh Basil, Extra Virgin Olive Oil) and they were both great. The NYC pies have a much thinner crust than the Italian versions. Size wise they are about at the standard Medium size, and a good way to gage it would be to say one Pie per two people.
We got there at about 5:30 and it was mostly empty, with us it was 3 tables, but by 6 it was full with a line folks outside. Perfect timing! Seating is a combo of 6 person booths or 4 person tables.
The ambience is…ummm…Pizzeria via Hip new NYC eatery. Not really sure what they were going for here, but the booths are comfy, as soon as the place is full the music is pretty much drowned out. It bit too noisy to be a cozy place.
The crust is wonderfully bready, with a hint of hickory and coal.
Rating: B+ Fantastic food, but too loud.

The Media is finally allowed by the IDF into Gaza.

Via Firedoglake

Via Oliver Willis

Via Random we have the Patch we have been waiting 8 long years for.

US Democracy Server: Patch Day
Version 44.0
President

• Leadership: Will now scale properly to national crises. Intelligence was not being properly applied.
• A bug has been fixed that allowed the President to ignore the effects of debuffs applied by the Legislative classes.
• Drain Treasury: There appears to be a bug that allowed loot to be transferred from the treasury to anyone on the President’s friends list, or in the President’s party. We are investigating.
• Messages to and from the President will now be correctly saved to the chat log.
• Messages originating from the President were being misclassified as originating from The American People.
• A rendering error that frequently caused the President to appear wrapped in the American Flag texture has been addressed.

Vice President

• The Vice President has been correctly reclassified as a pet.
• No longer immune to damage from the Legislative and Judicial classes.
• The Vice President will no longer aggro on friendly targets. This bug was identified with Ranged Attacks and the Head Shot ability.
• Reveal Identity: this debuff will no longer be able to target Covert Operatives.
• Messages to and from the Vice President will now be correctly saved to the chat log.
• A rendering bug was affecting the Vice President’s visibility, making him virtually invisible to the rest of the server. This has been addressed.

Cabinet

• There was a bug in the last release that prevented the Cabinet from disagreeing with the President, which was the cause of a number of serious balance issues. This bug has been addressed, and we will continue to monitor the situation.

Judiciary

• Many concerns have been raised regarding balance issues in the Supreme Court. This system is maintained on a different patch schedule, and will require longer to address.
• A large number of NPCs in the Judiciary were incorrectly flagged “ideological.” We are trying to identify these cases and rectify this situation.

Homeland Security

• Homeland Security Advisory System: We have identified a bug in this system that prevents the threat level from dropping below Elevated (Yellow). The code for Guarded (Blue) and Low (Green) has been commented out. We are testing the fix and hope to have it in by the next patch.
• Torture: This debuff is being removed after a record number of complaints.
• Item: Large Bottle of Water is incorrectly generating threat with TSA Agents when held in inventory. We are looking into the issue.
• Asking questions about Homeland Security was incorrectly triggering the Chain-Jingoism debuff.

Economy

• Serious on-going issues with server economy are still being addressed. We expect further roll-backs, and appreciate your help identifying and fixing bugs. We can’t make these fixes without your help.

PVP

• Reputation with various factions are being rebalanced. The gradated reputation scale was erroneously being overwritten by the binary For Us/ Against Us flag.

Quests

• The” Desert Storm” quest chain was displaying an erroneous “Mission Accomplished” message near the beginning of the chain.
• The quest chain that begins with “There’s no Cake like Yellow Cake” and terminates with “W-M-Denied” has been identified as uncompletable, and has been removed.

Reagents

• Many recipes that currently call for Crude Oil can now be made with Wind, Solar, Geothermal and Ethanol reagents. We hope to roll out even more sweeping changes in the next patch.

Events

• The “Axis of Evil” event is drawing to a close. Look forward to the “Rebuilding Bridges” event starting in January.

snagged and reposted while I could, since the site has been crashed since yesterday.