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November 17, 2003
November 16, 2003
Elizabeth Birthday Dinner
 | On November 2, my girlfriend Elizabeth became 30 years old. As I am a much much younger man (29.5 or so), I really don't understand what it is like to have the wisdom that comes with such an age. Still, such an occasion should be embraced and enjoyed, and we invited a number of friends to my place for a little dinner party. Elizabeth and I made lasagna for our guests, and they brought side-dishes. About ten friends were able to make it out on a Sunday night, and it was an enjoyable time. |
My 30th birthday will occur next year, on July 14. I wonder what my response will be. I wonder if I will even be writing in this blog, given how my writing-frequency has decreased.
Happy birthday to my girlfriend... She blew out her candles, and I hope that her wishes come true.
 | Elizabeth establishing the first critical layer of sauce. |
 | One of the pans is complete. |
 | Showing off the product. We made three pans, but only cooked two. The other is still sitting in my freezer. |
 | The table set, with the guests eagerly awaiting dinner. |
 | The birthday cake was purchased from Cake Collection in Santa Monica. (I would put a link to their website, but apparently they do not yet have one. Here is a list of a number of bakeries in Los Angeles.) I have had two samples of their work, and have found them to be of excellent quality. |
 | No birthday party is complete without birthday headdress and ribbon of honor. |
 | We received some nice-looking blue flowers. The flash on my camera makes them look luminous, and maybe unrealistic. |
The simple lasagna receipe that my mother gave me:
Ingredients:
- Disposable aluminum foil lasagna pan. Why waste your time cleaning dishes?
- Box of lasagna noodles. I use the kind that do not need to be precooked.
- About two bottles of spaghetti sauce.
- About 2/3 of a bag of spinach.
- Small tub of ricotta cheese.
- About two bags of mozzarella cheese
- Small bag of parmesan cheese
Process
- Establish a layer of sauce on the bottom.
- Add a layer of lasagna noodles (wetted), overlapping the noodles a little. The noodles do not have to be pre-cooked if the proper kind are purchased.
- Dab little spoons of ricotta cheese over the noodles. Smooth these dabs out.
- Add more sauce
- Sprinkle mozzarella cheese
- Add a layer of spinach. Use a lot, as the spinach will cook down.
- Repeat the previous steps until the layers reach about 0.25 inches from the top
- On the top, add one more layer of mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese. At this point the pan is complete, and can be frozen for long-term storage.
- Cover with aluminum foil and bake for about an hour at 400 deg F. When the cheese is bubbling, take the foil off the top and let the mozzarella on the top brown. (This takes about 10 minutes.
November 13, 2003
Comment Spam
My blog has recently had a number of spam comments. These comments consisted of URLs to various useless advertising sites, and were clearly not part of any discussion. Even though I have endeavored to keep my site clean, my current schedule does not allow me spend much time. Thus, I have installed Jay Allen's wonderful MT-Blacklist plugin, to automatically discard comment spam. If you believe that you have been incorrectly blocked, please email me. I apologize if your precious attention was wasted on any spam on my site, and I hope that these steps will prevent it from happening again.
It would be interesting, from a scientific perspective, to examine the mind of someone who sends out spam. (Spam can be in the form of emails, or, as I have been finding out, in the form of blog comment spam.) Clearly, the spammers have some technical abilities, as they understand the internet well enough to automate their work. It is their chosen career, and where they spend their time. I would guess, then, that they must like it or at least appreciate it, on some level. Why, then, do they seek to damage the bonds of trust that are necessary to keep it open? Okay, they may be paid to do it, but there are people that will pay you to do all kinds of interesting things, and surely something would be better than to work to destroy something good. To seek to destroy something good is surely the mark of immorality.
The unscientific counterpart to my scientific query: Rot in hell, assholes.
November 11, 2003
End of the Third Reich
I discovered Eric S. Raymond's blog today. ESR is a noted technology pundit and open-source advocate, and he apparently has many other interests, too. In this article, he notes the similiarities between the Nazi resistance at the end of World War Two with the current Iraq Baath party resistance. The reference to this article is particularly interesting, as it details the Nazi Werewolf guerilla movement.