Odd Obsession

Well, this has been quite a year, yessiree bob. But I’m being thankful right now of what I have and how my powers of Super-Introversion were activated by the current crisis as a laser-focus on learning stuff. Not that there weren’t many long hours of being too tired and paralyzed to move from the couch to the bed and vice-versa. And dusting and many other cleaning activities that didn’t aid in bodily sanitation were left by the wayside. Anyway, I hope that you too can make a list of things that you learned other than the details of the Electoral College.  How to make quick pasta sauce with canned tomatoes How to make instant oatmeal How to make creamed spinach Basic ASL Basic Inkscape Video conferencing with Zoom/Teams/Webex/Meet/Jitsi How to make ink-jet Shrinky Dinks Basic screencasting with Screen-Cast-O-Matic and Camtasia Online training creation with Niche Academy Online playlist transfer with Soundiiz Mask making Cuttlebone casting Intermediate Tinkercad Slide digitization Basic

So I guess cyberpunk is hot again. I don't play those newfangled video games, but all this fanfare made me remember my old Cyberpunk 2020 days, when I was Jael Furoshiki, Japanese/Jewish survivor of of a destroyed South China Sea pirate pack trying to make a living in the Minneapolis Red Zone as a bodyguard/food delivery technician (yes, both a pirate and an ninja).  Later she got ported to Interface Zero , which got rid of some of the anachronisms and C2020's crazy-high fatality rate (there used to be a page dedicated to players' favorite deceased characters, sadly now lost to even the Wayback Machine). Anyway, one time I made up musical genres my character would listen to--can't find my old character sheets, but this gives you the idea... TOP MUSIC GENRES FOR YOUR CYBERPUNK GAME: Cambo-Punk Robo-Funk Post-post-post-post-post Punk Really New Wave Black Klezmetal Danish RaiZulu Techno-Jive Country & Western & Gabber Lo-NRG Goan Garage Garage

When I was a kid, oatmeal was boring. I only started to appreciate it as an adult because instant oatmeal is fast and filling to eat before work when you're not a morning person. Then Quaker came out with the "Real Medleys", which are better, but still have that chalky instant aftertaste, and are a bit pricy for what they offer. Then my friend SR posted this recipe on Facebook, and I saw how much better homemade oatmeal mixes could be. It's so much more flavorful, but has to be refrigerated and tastes best when eaten right away. So, not the way to make a big batch of fruit, nuts and fiber that can be stored in my cubicle and eaten before work.  Back to the Internets for more research! I lucked out and found this recipe  right away. Now, I have to confess that I can't really care about quick oats vs steel-cut oats, so I just used whole quick oats instead of grinding the oats in a food processor. I tried toasting the oats and not toasting them, but didn'

A couple of weeks ago, it would have been Anime Detour 2020. I've only missed 3 Anime Detours ever, and 2 of those were because I didn't know it existed. I've also been planning for and working at the Manga Reading Lounge since 2010, so it was weird not to be doing that. Also, my sweetie was out of town, so I had the entertain myself as best I could. So I did my best to get my geek on. I had ordered a Totoro kigurumi to wear at con and wore it all weekend, including working at my home office on Friday and taking a walk around the river (hope it cheered somebody up to see a little ridiculousness).  Click here for large pics. A colleague of mine who is an amazing cartoonist was doing the six character fanart challenge, so I suggested he do Makoto Kusanagi , and asked friends to suggest some characters for me to do. It took me a week or so, but it was a fun challenge.  Anime Detour decided to have their anime music video contest, virtually, so I wat

The Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records,  Page 378. So, a few weeks back it was time to get back on the wheels of steel for my reunion radio show. I got two hours and a prime Friday night slot. This year, my theme was 80s compilations, meaning compilations from the 80s , not newer ones focusing on the 80s. It was a tribute to the old days of no Internet and two hours of cool music on a college radio station with bad reception per day, when compilations were one of a few sources for new music. I pored over the list of compilations in The Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records, then cross-checked the Burning Airlines mail-order catalog, or scoured record stories whenever I got to a city. A view from the studio.  Last year, one of the other DJs recommended the DJay app for my iPhone as a way to get nice transitions between songs instead of the iTunes sudden-stop-and-start. I should have practiced more beforehand, but it went OK. Andrea's Radio Show Playlist:

Remember this post on portable breakfast recipes? As someone who loves breakfast foods but doesn't like getting up before work to cook and doesn't want to spend too much of my money at fast-food joints, I have been working off and on to make my breakfast experience the best it can be. The breakfast sandwich recipe from Lifehacker was missing two things: biscuits (so much better than muffins or croissants) and potatoes. For the biscuits, it turns out Cub sells Red Lobster Cheddar Bay biscuits , which I'd never heard of since I'm not a big seafood person, but turn out to be great. Biscuits take a little more work to cook than store-bought muffins, but the taste is so worth it. You do need a pan like this to make sure the biscuits have the structural integrity for the sandwich ingredients. For cheese, why use cheap shredded cheddar when you can get something good like Kerrygold Dubliner. After some experimentation, for the eggs I went with canned mushrooms, Itali