random bits

[cellio]

Last night we joined ralphmelton and lorimelton for a halibut-fest. They have recently returned from a vacation in Alaska, and while there Ralph went fishing and caught a big fish. (Really big; if they eat fish a couple times a week they'll be good for half a year.) They cooked some of their bounty in a variety of ways, all tasty. I have some new fish ideas now.

Note to self (gleaned from an Apple employee at the fish-fest): after Pennsic (because why chew up half of a one-month evaluation period with that?), see if CrossOver can run the four remaining Windows apps that I care about that don't exist on the Mac (or, in one case, doesn't exist reasonably; the Mac version of WavePad is pathetic.)

Today on the way up to Cooper's Lake we stopped at King's for brunch. King's does one bit of product concept really well: the Frownie. This brownie with a frowny face iced onto it is obviously a response to Eat 'n' Park's Smiley cookie. But Eat 'n' Park just has the cookie (which, by the way, tastes foul to me) and doesn't really do anything with it. King's, on the other hand, develops things around the Frownie. The item we noticed on the dessert menu today is the Angry Mob -- 12 scoops of ice cream, 12 "junior" Frownies, other stuff, and if your group of friends polishes one off you get an award certificate or something like that. (Noticably absent was a price.) The dessert isn't that different in style from other group desserts, but the name "Angry Mob" tickled me. The art was fun too. And yes, we picked up half a dozen Frownies to share with the folks we were meeting, and they were in fact tasty for commercial mass-production brownies. (We also took cinnamon rolls, but everybody went for the Frownies.)

A few links:

This optical illusion is really convincing to me (link from judocoer).

Rands in Review translates what business people say into what engineers hear. Lots of people have done lists like this, but there are some new gems on this one. For example: Stretch Goal — Engineering speak for “if it makes you feel better that we might get this done, that’s cool, but there is no way this is happening.”

Recommended: this article from the Last Psychiatrist about learning and thinking (link from nancylebov).

Be sure to keep this poster in your time machine for future (or rather past) reference (link from browngirl).

Comments

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

In unlikely event you need it, can also get you a Win 7 license for ~$35 in November emp. discount (which + Parallels works pretty decent for running the occasional app IMHO).

[cellio]

Thanks! I'll let you know if that looks like a viable path for me.