In other words, Happy New Year. Or if you prefer the old vulgar Latin New Anno Felix. You can clearly see where Spanish is derived in part from Latin.
Anyhow things are pretty calm here en la casa. Hopefully 2020 will mean the end of a certain Orange Cretin in the White House.
The weather – sure it rains but it has not snowed at all down here. And sure the temp did drop to 29F for a night or two but here’s why I love it.
Yesterday we were out and about and it was 72F. At the end of December in the 70’s. Gads I love it.
So on Hulu one of my recommended videos was regarding the Panama Papers. This happened back in 2016 but it’s still going on today.
A couple things hit me, the banks are at the center of it all. Banks have only existed to rape the consumer for the last few decades. They’ve bought the best government money can buy.
But I keep hearing the phrase that 1% of the people hold more wealth then 99% of us. I think you might see where I’m going with this. It’s why the world has been blowing up the least few years because quite frankly people are pissed off. I guess it’s one thing to not know who is fucking you, but to find out who is is sort of a version of cognitive dissonance that isn’t pretty.
I mean in the video there was one reporter who mentioned how many of her friends were implicated. Because that’s the job of a journalist.
And how the information became public is delicious. Someone internal to the law firm in Panama just acted as whistle blower. I don’t think we should call them that anymore a more appropriate name would be hero. They do us all an immense and important service.
I do so love that the place we’re renting has a fireplace. I’ve started a whole bunch of fires with nothing but paper towel, cardboard, etc. But we found these little fire-starters at Kroger and for a little under a dollar each they are awesome. They’ll light up fire no problem.
Now back a month or so ago we ordered 1/4 chord of wood. We’ve used about 1/3 of that so far. Like on Christmas day I built a four log fire – four big hefty pieces of wood. It burned for about six hours. What I do love though is after everything is burnt all the material that falls to the floor and some of the logs get that orange glow that throws more heat then the actual fire.
So when we buy a place one of the additional requirements is a working fireplace.
I even burn cardboard boxes in there. They burn bright and fast. And the ones with print on them change the flame color to pretty shades too. It solves the biggest problem I have with Amazon. All the damned boxes.
so the other day I noted my card wouldn’t work on Amazon. Called the bank apparently the old Chinese problem occurred again. This time they expressed me a new card. But it’s funny when I spoke to the rep at the bank she mentioned their phone app. I told her I was downloading it as I spoke.
And once I had the app logged in I did something, I scanned a check in. You just scan in the front and back, put in the amount and press submit. Nice!
Now the card – they aren’t the standard magnetic cards anymore. Sure they still have that big wide mag-stripe on the back. But they have a few more interesting features. Like the chip – that once is a 21st century thing, plus the fact that you can just wave the card in front of a payment terminal. That last part gives me the screaming heebie jeebies though. But then I realize you have to be VERY close to the payment terminal for it to work. It’s essentially RFID.
But it gets better. Because I’m signed in to google it automagically linked the new card to google pay. It really has gotten very cool.
Now we’ll move onto cars. They are a FAR different beast than they were even 20+ years ago. The fact that every month I get a report on all the systems in the car via email I love. Of course I do know that the connectivity for it do that is cause for some concern. I mean a nefarious or rogue actor could have some real fun with that.
And I keep getting emails from Sirius – why on earth would I even pay $5 a month when I have spotify on my phone and the phone hooks up to the car quite nicely.
Plus we have to remember the entirety of the car is controlled by a computer these days. From electric power steering to the fact the brakes and gas pedal aren’t connected via mechanical means but via a wire. That one fascinates me. Because it also means the car is hackable.
This is too funny. I’ve always suspect the bigots out there inflated their counts to seem more important and this just confirms it.
Here’s the lowdown.
I’ve seen this so many times in my life. One loudmouth vs. a few hundred or thousand people. It makes me laugh every time.
It was sort of amusing. I know for a fact I don’t sound gay. Maybe it’s because I’m Italian American, maybe because I’m fairly butch I don’t know. And the funny part was David Sedaris and his husband Hugh. I’m sort of like Hugh in that I can re-wire a house, or solder pipes etc.
That latter is just a function of where I worked when I was younger. I worked in a hardware store. Learned how to do all that there.
Oh boy, oh boy. This is classic.
Yes fuck it all. And the christ thing in Christmas fuck that too. It needs a better name. Wait, I know – lets called it the Yuletide. Because the fucking CHristians hijacked all the pagan symbols.
So someone is blind. Likes to watch The View on ABC but on Hulu they only have the current week.
Well a couple weeks ago I picked up a 55″ flat panel TV – LED based too. Nice. It was less than $250. Can’t beat that even if a year or three from now I’ll have to rebuild its power supply. Something I am more than capable of doing.
But I hooked up and HDMI cable to it and streamed off the laptop. Why the hell not. But he gets fed up with Hulu just pausing itself after it detects no mouse movement etc. So I bought a cheap outdoor antenna with rotor. Hooked it up and scanned channels inside the house – it found 40 DTV channels. Put it outside and it found 66 channels. That’s comparable to basic cable TV. I suppose once I elevate the antenna and we rotate it we might get more channels but what it’s found just pointed south isn’t bad. Gets the Atlanta based ABC, NBC and PBS even Fox for a non existent deity sake. channels for example.
I just just object to paying for stale content on cable TV. No. I won’t do it. Not when I can get free content over the air for nothing except the power to run the tv and antenna rotor.
As we like, Japanese food – real Japanese food not some stylized piece of flaming excrement
Now we’d previously tried a Hibachi restaurant that had sushi but no dice. Clue number one the number of Japanese people there wasn’t happening. I decline to mention that restaurant name.
However found one in North Decatur that has the following qualities that make it a place we’ll return to over and again. It is called Sushi Matsuya
Those qualities are:
– First or second generation Japanese running the place. In this particular case the accent says first generation. That’s a big old check mark in my book.
– Second Miso soup that isn’t thing and whispy. This was one where they didn’t hold back on the miso.
– Third the Nori salad or sea weed salad – now the ones we’ve had in the northeast were darker and more bitter. The ones at this particular restaurant were light green and delicious.
The restaurant as I mentioned is in North Decatur some 15 miles from here but worth the drive. It’s in the Toco Hills area. That last part – we debate if it’s TohCoh or Tahco I’ll never know I guess. I call it by the latter.
The name is Sushi Matsuya. Little store in the plaza but like I said the conditions above reigned supreme. And not that expensive, for example we had an order of spring rolls, maki rolls, Miso soup, Nori and some Sushi Rice. It was all of $41. That shocked the hell out of me. Not because it’s too high a price but just right. That ersatz place we went to was over $100 and the quality of the food was not acceptable at the ersatz Japanese place. At this restaurant though, just the scent of the restaurant itself told me this was TRUE Japanese food.
It’s address is 2899 N Druid Hills Rd, Atlanta, GA. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area.
And most recently we ordered a whole bunch of food from them. They were nice enough to help us to our car with the food. Love the people there too. In fact most Japanese I’ve met have been fantastic people. I recall years ago Osaki San inviting me into his kitchen. It was spotless and you could likely eat off the floor if you so chose. He also showed me how he prepared the fish and the miso soup etc. That was in two words freaking awesome. Nice guy too.
Spewing Truth in the face of Lies 