I love watching Good Eats. It's like those science programs I used to watch on KET when I was a kid, except with food. (Honestly, if I could, I'd still watch the shows like 3-2-1-Contact.) Tonight's 2 AM episode of Good Eats was about pound cake. And thanks to that, I was absolutely inspired.

French toast made with pound cake instead of bread.

I have to try this.

I might die from the sugar rush, but I have to try this.

I had known for a long time that my video was slowly going out in Metatron, my desktop. His performance playing WoW was going down and down and down and there wasn't anything I could do to fix it. I was playing on the lowest possible settings and still only getting maybe 5 frames per second - and this on a 256 MB video card.

Well, yesterday, Metatron contracted some of the rogue safetyware (read: faux security tools that are actually malware) and this led to a rootkit being installed in his main drive.

I caught it in time. The infection didn't spread and none of my data was lost, no trojans got loose into the household network. And more than that, I have a brand new system optimised for gaming waiting for me to move to - so all is actually well and good. All I have to do is move a few drives, copy some files, update a little software, and I'm back up and running on a damn fine desktop.

But there's still something sad about watching this desktop that I built from the ground up die a slow death to the point where his video card won't give me anything but out of range errors even when he's booting up.

I know I get far too attached to inanimate objects, but this computer has worked his ass off for me since I built him. He's been solid as a rock from the getgo, and to see this happen to him, this kind of ignominious downfall, is enough to make me want to cry. When Chronohenge was picky and demanded only this hardware or only this software, Metatron would run anything I asked of him. It was the difference between a high-strung thoroughbred and a solid shire. Yet, Chronohenge still functions.

Goodnight, Metatron. Rest well. You deserve it. The Conqueror Horus will rise from your ashes.

From the January 2010 edition of Popular Science:

Can a whale get rabies?
-- Patrick John Welsh, Maiden, Mass.

"It's not as silly a question as you might think," says Michael Moore, a marine mammal research specialist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "It would take some extraordinary circumstances, but any mammal can get rabies."

Bats, coyotes, foxes and raccoons are the most common carriers of rabies but, being landlubbers, it's highly improbable that any of them would have a chance to bite and infect a whale. One of those animals could, however, bite a seal that's resting on a beach, and then that seal could swim off and bite a whale. Although there is absolutely no record of a rabid whale, and only one documented case of rabies in a seal -- a ringed seal caught in 1980 in Svalbard, an archipelago off Norway -- the scenario may soon be of greater concern. "Starting 10 years ago, coyotes began to prey on harp seals here on Cape Cod," Moore says. "Because of that, I like for my staff to get vaccinated. There's a very small chance that a seal will have rabies."

Seals aren't known to attack whales (it's a size thing), but rabid animals behave erratically, so it could happen. Even if a rabid seal did bite a whale, it might take years for the whale to show symptoms. To become infected, the virus must travel along a nerve from the bit location to the central nervous system and brain. This is why a person bit in the face by a rabid fox will show symptoms earlier than if that person had been bitten in the foot. Rabies travels along nerves at a rate of 0.3 to 0.8 inches a day, so if a 50-foot-long whale was bit in the tail, it might take two to five years for the virus to reach the animal's brain and manifest.

What signs should one look for to identify a rabid whale? "Well, the telltale foamy mouth would be very difficult to spot in the water," says Gregory Bossart, the chief veterinary officer at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. "But as with other animals, rabies would interfere with any activity that involves the central nervous system, so a whale might exhibit abnormal swimming patterns or lose the ability to swim altogether. It might also have trouble with echolocation." Watch out, then for zigzagging whales bumping into stuff. Another classic symptom of rabies infection is hydrophobia, which would be quite difficult for a whale to deal with. "Who knows?" Moore jokes. "Perhaps that's why whales strand themselves on beaches."

-- Bjorn Carey

Inexplicable things that happened today:

1: I cleaned my junk table and found three Euro.
2: The psycho cat came back.
3: I related Vampire: the Masquerade to ElfQuest.
4: My bed ate my WoW authenticator.

Maybe I just need to sleep through the rest of December.

backtothelight: Dammit, I don't want to write Power Rangers fic, but it's in my head to write. Bleh.
innocencedenied: You aren't even a fan of power rangers. You bewilder me. :P
backtothelight: I think power rangers is dense.
backtothelight: But there's a problem, you see.
backtothelight: My slash goggles are unnaturally sharp.

I love it when it snows. Today's no different. It's a good thing to live out in the middle of nowhere - we get views like this!

With the unfortunate demise of Pontiac (I am in perpetual mourning over that), those of us who are Pontiac fans can only dream of what might've been the counterpart to the new Camaro. Well, look what we might've missed:

http://jalopnik.com/5396482/bandit-trans-am-sema-photos//gallery/1

Yes, this is a 'Bandit' Trans Am - as in Smokey and the Bandit - not a Knight Rider Trans Am.

But I can daydream. And oh how I'm daydreaming. I wish we could've had that, with all of my little KR-loving heart.

In order to get some money up for Christmas, I've decided to crochet and sell scrunchies out of my fancy yarns. I've got ten varieties, and all of them are beautiful even though I can't remember the names or varieties of the yarns. Some, I know, are Lion Brand Fun Fur, and at least one is Patons Allure. Prices will be listed below the pics. Click the images for a full-size view.

( Links and Images below the cut. )

All shades of yarn are first come, first serve. I don't have an unlimited supply of these yarns, after all, and some of them are discontinued. I do have other yarns if you want a plainer scrunchie, such as some shades of Caron Simply Soft and pure cotton Sugar and Cream brand.

Pricing will be as follows, all in US dollars:

• 1 scrunchie - $2.50


• 2 scrunchies - $4.50


• 3 scrunchies - $6.00


• 4 scrunchies - $7.00


• 5 scrunchies - $7.50

Shipping for up to five will be $2.00 within the US (I have to pay for envelopes) and I will scale up from there. Shipping outside the US will be cost plus a padded envelope. Scrunchies will be shipped with a lightly scented sachet unless otherwise requested, and I do live in a home with pets and smokers, though the yarn has been kept in a non-smoking, non-pet area of the house.

Please comment here if you'd like to order some of my hand-crocheted scrunchies! I accept and prefer PayPal for payments.

The first of the evil orange ladybugs has arrived. I'm not looking forward to the rest of them appearing. Damn things bite and they taste awful.

And yes, I will say how I know that if anyone asks.

From somebody who is CF and doesn't even really like kids, this is going to sound weird, but I really don't like this trend of these design shows on TV. If the family they're designing for has kids - whether it's two or ten, and whether it's a room or a back yard - they design while pretending the kids don't exist.

Just the other day, I was watching one where this family had five sons and they used their big living room as space not only for the family to watch TV but for the kids to play video games (they had a full set for Rock Band) and to train in martial arts with their father. By the time the designer was finished, there wasn't any room for the martial arts training, and there wasn't a space for the game consoles anywhere in sight even though they'd shown and been told that the entire family enjoyed both of those activities. The designer made a room that practically sliced those five boys out of the picture unless all they want to do is sit on the sofa in an orderly manner, and I don't know any five teenage boys who'd do that unless they were drugged.

This morning, I have a landscaping show on in the background while working on kr_shiningarmor and all three of these landscapers have designed a backyard that takes out all of the play area the couple's elementary-school-age kids had back there to replace it with things like a rock garden and a fire pit. Sure, let's take out all the nice, soft grass and replace it with a giant boulder so Junior can fall over that decorative driftwood and give himself a concussion! Or let's put in a giant chess set so little Susie can pull the King down onto herself and crush an arm!

This trend sucks mightily and I wish these designers would wake up and realise that there's a happy medium between looking like a magazine cover and looking like a Highlights magazine exploded all over the place. If even I can see this, surely they can't be that dense.