If Myspace is the internet’s official popularity measurement, I must be the coolest dude on earth. Paul Oakenfold sent me a friend request.
Should I say yes?

I have awesome friends.
Thanks to Shauna for bringing this to my attention…

As I was sipping an Ice Mountain (owned by Nestle) bottled water today at a staff meeting, my colleague informed me that ice mountain is bottled in Northern Michigan and is depleting our natural resources at an alarming rate of something like a BILLION gallons of water a day. Anyways, it’s bad news! River’s are lower, fish are sad, squirrels are thirsty, birds are confused, etc etc no bueno no bueno. I’m sure some of you already have ‘cut it out’ (thanks uncle joey) with the whole drinking bottled water thing, applause for u. For the rest of you and myself included, let’s keep it old skool and use our faucets, it’s just as good for you, studies show.

Best,
Shauna

Click here for more information.

I wasn’t alive to see Michelangelo paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I wasn’t born yet when The Beatles toured. And I probably won’t ever get out to see that Japanese dude eat all them hot dogs. But goddamn, history has been made here in the US, and it feels good.

A big thanks for saving me a shit-ton of time goes out to Emil Haukeland and his post about configuring lighttpd for wordpress. Lighttpd is a very lightweight open-source web server emphasizing high-performance with low system resources. I had been using the industry standard apache web server, but I was interested in fine-tuning my host-box like a good little dork.

Anyway mostly for my own reference here’s the code:

url.rewrite-final = (
        # Exclude some directories from rewriting #
        "^/(wp-admin|wp-includes|wp-content)/(.*)" => "$0",
        # Exclude .php files at root from rewriting #
        "^/(.*\.php)" => "$0",
        # Handle permalinks and feeds #
        "^/(.*)$" => "/index.php/$1"
)

Best part is near the end:
Palin: If I ran as a Democrat you would have seen a completely different Sarah Palin.
Stewart: And all you would have to do is change everything you think.

It’s cold in the Ferndizzy, ball chillingly cold, so I made C some nice winter comfort food – Shepherd’s Pie modified from a Rachael Ray recipe. Enjoy!

Ingredients
* 2 pounds potatoes, such as russet, peeled and cubed
* 2 tablespoons sour cream
* 1 large egg yolk
* 1/2 cup chicken broth
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper
* 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 1 turn of the pan
* 1 3/4 pounds ground turkey
* 1 onion, chopped
* 2 tablespoons butter
* 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 1 cup chicken broth
* 2 teaspoons Worcestershire, eyeball it
* 1/2 cup frozen peas, a couple of handfuls
* 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves

Directions

Boil potatoes in salted water until tender, about 12 minutes. Drain potatoes and pour them into a bowl. Combine sour cream, egg yolk and broth. Add the cream mixture into potatoes and mash until potatoes are almost smooth.

While potatoes boil, preheat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add oil to hot pan, season meat with salt and pepper, and brown and crumble meat for 5 minutes. Add chopped onion to the meat and continue cooking another 5 minutes, stirring frequently. In a second small skillet over medium heat cook butter and flour together 2 minutes. Whisk in broth and Worcestershire sauce. Thicken gravy 1 minute. Add gravy to meat and vegetables. Stir in peas.

Preheat broiler to high. Fill a small rectangular casserole with meat and vegetable mixture. Spoon potatoes over meat evenly. Top potatoes with paprika and broil 6 to 8 inches from the heat until potatoes are evenly browned. Top casserole dish with chopped parsley and serve.

“There is the theory of the mobius, a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop.”

Weeeeeee’re baaaaaaack!

Another New Year and I feel like we’ve been here before. Time is a loop and we’re doomed to repeat it every 365ish days. The holidays have come and gone, and it’s back to waxing poetic at work 5 days a week instead of having those lovely long weekends for 5 weeks in a row.

I dub this year’s holiday theme as “Yule Tide and Cross Eyed” as I get crossed eyed even thinking about everything we did and what we drank. So many people, events, bars, cities, and parties that I could not possibly recap it all coherently. Thus I leave it up to the reader’s imagination as I bask in the afterglow of a crazy month.

It completely blows my mind that in a climate where there is a chance for snow at least 7 months out of the year SO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE CAN’T DRIVE IN IT!

Seriously. Did you forget how to drive in the 2 days since it last snowed?

I’ve decided it’s not the snow itself that’s the problem, it’s the drivers in it. You see, snow has this amazing quality of turning marginally smart people into stark raving mad idiots when a few flakes start to fly.

So what the hell is your problem anyway?

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s IT related video, here’s another absolute GEM:
“Computer Friends” [Stack the Memory] by Sniper Twins feat. Rob Collier

PURE. AWESOME.

How to get the IT department to do their actual job.