Google Drops XMPP

This article (Google’s New Unified Messaging Drops Open XMPP/Jabber Interoperability) makes me sad. I like XMPP for IM and presence.

Just Enough Lazy

I live in an apartment (until my house is ready!), and I joined a CSA that delivers so my weekly produce deliveries are made to the air-conditioned main office (bonus!). This afternoon I met my mom and kids at my apartment, so I parked in front of my apartment to step in to check if they'd picked up the produce already. They hadn't, so I grabbed my luggage cart and went off to fetch it. I wasn't lazy enough to start my car again and drive to the office, but I wasn't so tough as to lug that cooler back without some convenience! Just enough lazy to use wheels.

General

Yay! I passed my next level of ham radio exam (General)!

Rise Biscuits & Donuts

The next stop along the Doughnut Quest was Rise Biscuits & Donuts. The good news: this doughnut was tasty! Most of the flavors were sold out by lunch time, so I just had a chocolate glazed doughnut, that was a glazed doughnut with chocolate on top. The doughnut was still a bit greasy for me, and even more shudderingly sweet than I expected. What I liked about the over-the-top sweetness was that it tasted so typically Southern, like the first time you taste Southern sweet tea and discovered new heights of sweetened that you did not previously know existed. So it was too sweet for me, but I don't want to disparage it either. The quest continues, but Rise can stay in rotation. Their doughnut flavors are inventive, their attention to detail excellent, and they didn't stoop to the trendiness of the first stop.

Healthy Bacteria and the Intertwingularity

I read this Mother Jones article this morning, Are Happy Gut Bacteria Key to Weight Loss? Reading it made me very happy, as so many different strands of knowledge were pulled together. Ted Nelson said "Everything is deeply intertwingled" (Intertwingularity at Wikipedia), and seeing it makes the treated subject more plausible to me (as does citing scientific studies that control for some bias). And that makes me twingle!

Doughnut Faith Restored

Whew! After the scare at Monuts, intentionally leaving a doughnut with only one bite taken out of it, I wondered if I still liked doughnuts. I stopped at my local Tasty Bakery on my way to work this morning, and yes, I do still like doughnuts. Even ones that are a bit greasy. This isn't really part of the Donut Quest since I went off to nosh by myself, but at least I know I will enjoy most of the rest of this quest. Plus there's the fun of having a goal, even a silly one!

Doughnut Quest, Part 1

Doughnut Quest Part One -or- How It All Started

Saturday was a challenging day for me, and it needed to be followed by some fun. So I grabbed a friend and we went to Monuts Donuts, nominally for breakfast, albeit late. I had heard the local foodies rave about Monuts, so my expectations were high for this storefront from a food truck. I should have listened to the little voice in my head telling me that foodies sometimes like the strangest things while I was reading the chalkboard menu. Of all the doughnuts on the menu (no, I'm sorry, I don't want bacon in my doughnut), only the classic yeast doughnut with chocolate glaze and rainbow sprinkles was really appealing. Yes, I love cinnamon, but I was afraid the cinnamon apple cider might have too much bite from the cider. Plain glazed also looked tasty, but since it was another yeast (not cake) doughnut, why not go chocolate? After all, there's chocolate!

So the good news is that I went somewhere I have wanted to go. The bad news is that I met my doughnut match: the first doughnut I have ever intentionally not finished. The first bite tasted so spoiled that I drank a lot of water and reflected upon the taste. After looking at it (chocolate glaze! with rainbow sprinkles!), I finally wanted to venture a second bite. However, my nose stopped me. This was the very sour sourdough of doughnuts. Next time I hesitate at a doughnut shop, I won't order two doughnuts for two people. We can always go back for more, but we can split the first one just to be sure.

We did decide that we need to know where to find fresh, delicious doughnuts from a local bakery, and so Doughnut Quest was started!