Sorry for the lack of posts today, but I am just exhausted and feel like I was run over by a truck. I’m not sure what kind of truck it was, but the license plate started with ABL.
Made a lasagna since I have not eaten real food for a week and missed cooking, and plan to sit in the chair with the dogs until I fall asleep. I’ll post some convention thoughts starting tomorrow.
Mark S.
What, no drunk video posting?
cathyx
Lasagna would make me pass out too. But wasn’t last night’s dinner real food? It looked like it to me.
Svensker
Heh. Also, ho.
Welcome home! Were the goggies ecstatic to see you?
JPL
hmmm.. Lack of posting today? Maybe tomorrow you will give us your impressions of the convention. please.
I loved watching every second of it on tv.
ding dong
USA! USA!USA!USA! Jingoistic enough for you?
Yutsano
If you didn’t hear ABL missed her plane back to LA. She’s wandering all over JFK cursing.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
I’m with you CWG. My average speed over a 4 day span was 26 MPH. 2,200 miles in 84 hours for work. I’m taking the slow lane until Monday. That’s what weekends are for.
suzanne
Hit by a truck? You had the time of your life, I just know it.
I am starting to get ridiculously excited for the new iPhone. I hope some really sexy cases come out for it ASAP.
JPL
lasagna, lasagna, lasagna
yum.. do you have a special recipe and if so, please share.
S. Holland
Welcome back!! Can’t wait for your posts! Ohhh, so sorry for ABL and her flight… Truly, I feel your pain ABL!
Anne Laurie
Glad you had a good time, John, and we’re all looking forward to your
warconvention stories.Steeplejack
Damn, it’s cold out there for a blog reader when you gotta get your Cole pet pics from Twitter.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
I tried joogin’ Raven with a stawb down on the football thread but got little response.
trollhattan
Can somebody remind me how DOJ was out of bounds warning us about radical RW terrorists?
Thankyavermuch.
kcra.com/news/Man-linked-to-white-power-group-stockpiled-guns-is-arrested/-/11797728/16528152/-/pedu…
Poopyman
@Yutsano: Not any more. According to her tweets, she found a pad to crash in Soho, will be staying in NY until Monday, and last time I looked she had written an ode to the Driver Scallop Mini Burger, so apparently she’s doing pretty well.
ABL is in NYC, she’s got friends to hang out with and a place to crash, doesn’t have to drive anywhere, and it’s Saturday night.
Think we might get a story or 2 out of this?
ETA The latest: “I’m at a comedy club on the corner of Somewhere and Wherethefuckever.”
Schlemizel
What the hell did the folks at BJ pay to send you to the convention for? You go & post nothing or very very close to nothing about being there & now that you are aback home are too tired to post. ;)
Maude
We’ve had some violent weather in the tri-state area (it’s a joke, relax). @ tornadoes in NYC within a couple of minutes of each other.
@Steeplejack:
Made a fool outa myself talking about Nooks. All I know is some day I want an NC so I can look at pretty pictures with the stories.
Ann Rynd
I met Maureen Dowd at a party a few years back and she gave me her email address. Once in a while I send her a thought about a column and she usually writes back a word or two about what I wrote. After todays column: nytimes.com/2012/09/09/opinion/sunday/dowd-playing-now-hail-to-us-chiefs.html?hp
I wrote to her: “Now you’re completely nuts. Who thinks that way?”
Not expecting an answer.
PurpleGirl
@Maude: Earlier today there was some bad rain in NYC. I had the windows in the bedroom open and stuff got quite wet by the time I realized it was raining. (Living room corner where I have the computer has heavy dark curtains at the windows and the a/c was on.)
Schlemizel
@Ann Rynd: Ann, I will give you $100 if you post that teen mean girls wannabe’s email address here on BJ 8-{>
Maude
@PurpleGirl:
All we got here was rain. No thunder.
The rain started out like mist in the strong winds. Then it was heavy rain.
Now, nothing for a time.
That front has to come through so we can get decent weather.
The first one was out in Queens, or as some like to say, The Island. No one around here understands the 5 boroughs. I lived in Manhattan for a spell. Spent a couple of months in Brooklyn.
Wish we had the subways and buses here. There’s very little public transportation.
There are cars everywhere. Too many of them.
Brachiator
A little follow up on the new Kindles, from cnet
It looks like you’ll be able to opt out of the ads on the new Kindle Fire tablets after all.
I just received this email from an Amazon spokesperson:
“I wanted to let you know that with Kindle Fire HD there will be a special offers opt-out option for $15. We know from our Kindle reader line that customers love our special offers and very few people choose to opt out. We’re happy to offer customers the choice.”
In answer to my follow-up question, the spokesperson specified that the opt-out will be available on both the Fire HD and $159 entry-level Fire model.
The clarification is a 180-degree reversal from the “no opt-out” policy that Amazon confirmed to CNET (and other publications) yesterday.
Ann Rynd
@Schlemizel:
Would like to but I somehow think that she should get personal feedback since the comments on the nyt site don’t seem to faze her.
Steeplejack
@Maude:
Was that in the Kindle thread this morning? I almost jumped in but didn’t feel energetic enough to go into the 1,000-word
think piecerant I wanted to.I was surprised at how few people mentioned the Nook. Models equal to or better than the Kindles (maybe not the just announced ones, but probably soon), and no ads. I have really liked my Simple Touch (black-and-white E Ink one, for lurkers) but am thinking about upgrading to the Simple Touch with Glow Light, or whatever the hell they call it.
The whole field is opening up, and I could see getting a full-fledged tablet at some point. But right now all I need is book reading, and the E Ink display is the best for that (for me).
Maude
@Brachiator:
Don’t care, it’s not a Nook.
Steeplejack
@Maude:
Which borough are you in? Queens?
EZSmirkzz
Bullshit! You wake up right now and post something!
Maude
@Steeplejack:
Get the glow light and tell me about it.
I like online B&N because it is so quirky. People yell and carry on about glitches. heck, that’s what makes it feel like home.
The Simple Touch is one of the best devices ever. People can use it right away without having to figure it out.
I think Amazon is competing with Nook. Nook is probably going to be spun off and will do better. Also the Microsoft deal, whatever that entails.
In October, two black and white Nooks will be selling in Britain.
I’ll end up with a nook, probably Simple Touch and use wifi at a store or cafe. It’s so much easier than books.
I’ll be looking at the cameras on Amazon tomorrow. Prolly go with the one Tom said was good.
danah gaz
ZOMG I just made some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten. This is also my first attempt at frying chicken. I’m typing with greasy fingers but my life is now complete.
danah gaz
oops, here’s the recipe (basically, I modded it)
allrecipes.com/Recipe/Deep-South-Fried-Chicken/Detail.aspx
I added some garlic powder, some paprika and a little bit of Johnnys (for the MSG, I’m terrible like that) to the breading..
I also brined the chicken (for 20 minutes, some say two hours) in a bucket of salt, ice and water just prior to cooking it.
I used canola oil instead of shortening (filled the pan to just over an inch and preheated), cooked as suggested, except shorted the covered time to 20 minutes – and did only as many as 4 pieces at a time in very large skillet to avoid cooling the oil.
On this run, despite cranking the heat down from 8 to 4 on my stove during the covered process the oil was boiling all the way through the cook… turn rarely, only once if possible.
Use a cast iron skillet if you don’t want it to stick.
Despite what some people say, using egg-whites/egg-yolks (depending on who you ask), marinading the chicken, or soaking it in buttermilk seems totally unnecessary.
Schlemizel
@Ann Rynd: feedback hell! I would just like her to have a couple of thousand emails pointing out what an insert inappropriate sexist slur here she is.
For me I’d keep suggesting new ideas for columns. I’d write whole paragraphs of mean girl bullshit she could steal. As lazy as she is and in what I can only assume is a daily drunken stupor I bet many of them would make the OpEd page of the paper of record.
Catsy
So, that project I mentioned earlier?
I finished it.
Now I just need to figure out how to display and photograph it.
danah gaz
@Steeplejack: I mentioned my little nook numerous times. Amazon would have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
Steeplejack
@Catsy:
Cool! Congratulations.
Yutsano
@Catsy: That’s, like, awesome. :)
GG
@Catsy: That’s brilliant! May I send the link to a friend who helped run the most recent Brickvention?
ETA: that’s not my fandom, but she’s also an active SF fan, so I’m aware of her srs involvement.
danah gaz
@Catsy: I don’t understand it at all (I’ve never played Halo), but I’ll go along with the other commenters and say it’s cool as well.
If nothing else, it’s legos, so it has to be cool, amirite? =)
Catsy
@GG: Feel free! Hopefully soon I’ll be able to get it set up and take some decent photos with it actually looking like a Ringworld.
It’s upwards of 5000 pieces, easily. Probably closer to 6000.
Steeplejack
@danah gaz:
Noted.
I think another reason the Nook gets so little respect is because people have the (false) impression that a lot fewer books are available than for the Kindle. I would say the overlap is more like 95%, and most of the outliers are from small publishers who have chosen to start out with Kindle first or go Kindle-only.
Full disclosure: I worked for Barnes & Noble until last December. Did not get a discount on my Nook and hold no brief for B&N. I do think the Nook line is a worthy alternative to the Kindles. And, at least so far, B&N has not been (as much of) a dick about DRM as Amazon has. People should take a look.
ETA: For a while when I worked at B&N, I checked The New York Times Book Review every week to see which books were available for the Kindle and which for the Nook. Over a three-month period there were only two or three books that were available for the Kindle but weren’t available for the Nook, so I stopped wasting my time.
danah gaz
@Steeplejack: I’ve never noticed that I couldn’t get books for the Nook that one can get for a kindle. The thought has never even occurred to me. I’ve occasionally had to subvert the above board means to acquire something rare (esp books like the Poor Mans James Bond series, which I keep mainly because it’s banned and nostalgic for me than any other reason) but it simply did not cross my mind that the nook had a different selection than kindle. You’re post is the first I’ve head of that.
Steeplejack
@danah gaz:
Used to see regular comments from people taking it as accepted wisdom that far more books were available for Kindle. Because Amazon big!
ETA: Also comments/questions from customers at B&N. Maybe more common among the less Internet-savvy.
Steeplejack
@danah gaz:
Just wanted to add that, in catching up on today’s Balloon Juice threads tonight, I see that the “New Kindles” thread continued long after I left off in the early afternoon, and there was a lot of (very good) Nook discussion later in the thread.