So I’m still working the night shift. 8pm until 3:30am. Ocassionally on slower news days, we have just enough time to jet over to Don’s to pick up some food during our 2am lunch break.

After eating more than my share of S&S and other instant noodles, I started giving TV dinners a try. Banquet brand tv dinners were on ’sale’ for 2 for $3 (I found out later that’s their normal price, and they just wrote it on a sign that said “SALE!”) Through trial and error, I found that the salisbury steak was good-enough and it became my old standby.

I also have a bottle of tobasco sauce at my desk. It was from this one afternoon (when I was still back on the day shift) and I bought a loco moco for lunch but they ran out of theirs, so I had to stop at the Korean market to pick up my own.

Anyway, for this morning’s lunch break, we ended up going to Walmart instead. And I decided to try a new brand. And dude, it was a WIN!

Michelina’s only cost .50 cents more than the Banquet stuff. I got the salisbury steak so I could make a comparison, and … It. Tasted. Awesome. The beef patty didn’t taste like fried gel that got squirted out of a tube. I could taste the onions and other ingredients in it. Almost like somebody actually made it!

I was so impressed by the stuff that I did some digging on the net. According to this story by Associated Content (whatever that is), the company was started by the son of Italian immigrants who was born during the Depression. He named the company after his mother, who’s recipes were behind the original meals.

I think just I’m flipping out right now because I’ve paid a lot more for food that tasted a lot less impressive. That, and because I don’t really get out much nowadays.

Anyway, the salisbury steak was good. I can’t wait to go back and try the fetuccini and the stroganoff! (holy shit my life IS sad!)

After an excruciating week of trying to tolerate Ninja Gaiden II’s crappy camera angles, crappier controls, and crappiest enemy cheap-shots, I put the game back into it’s Gamefly envelope and sent it back on it’s merry way.

Seems like the only thing this game’s got going for it was over-the-top/gratutitous violence on weird demonic/alien type creatures in ridiculously stupid settings (a New York building with 20-foot wide staircases, for one). I have no idea what the hype was with this game, and why Itagaki and his “team ninja” sheep are getting so much press for leaving and suing Tecmo. Their game sucked!! Thank God for gamefly.

Looks like the pirates have chalked up yet another point in my book.

This dude totally got distracted while playing COD4 and got pwn3d as a result!

Nothing I say will do this video justice. You have to watch it:

So the double-R was officially sold today. It’s still at my house for a few nights, but it’s no longer mine. I’m going to miss that thing, man. Some good times on that bike, but at least I’ll finally get to start riding the Ninja … at least for a few months before leaving.

Anyway, TOBY!!!!

The several weeks I spent playing Assassin’s Creed were among the better hours of my life that I’ve spent with the xbox. Kerri and Evan watched a bunch of it, and afterwards, we’d mimick the ‘gentle push’ move on each other when we’d walk through busier parts of Chinatownn…but only on each other. These guys take it to the next level though. FTW!

I particularly like the real-life reactions to the ‘gentle-push’.

Another image that made me stop J-keying through google reader in my usual information-overloaded zombified state. This one from Gizmodo.

The Rocketshield was designed by a guy named David who wanted to be able to use his bike in the rain (I guess). I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but it’s pretty cool that these things use stock mounting brackets: the one on this Ninja mounts at the two mirror mounts in front, and mounts to the stock passenger seat bracket.

I still don’t know what to make of this … if I saw one while on the road, I’d probably get so confused that I’d fall down.

Evan let me know the other day that our old stomping grounds, the Sharper Image store at Ala Moana, is closing down.

I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it - that place was good times for my brother and I - we both worked there during the Christmas season a few years ago. He got a job there after this one night he was hanging around the mall and came to visit us, and we made him vacuum the floor after we locked the doors (my manager came to me the next day to ask if he wanted a job).

Later, when the Maui store was relocating, they flew us both down for a few days to help rearrange the stockroom. It was the second time in my life that I’d ever been to the island, and during the nights, we wandered around our crappy nearby hotel looking for something to do, and came to appreciate Oahu a hell of a lot more. Still though, it was good times, man.

There are a lot of new faces there now, but some that I still remember. I hope they’ll all be ok.

• Sharper Image® Store Closing Sale Now Underway at All Location (Businesswire)
• Sharper Image liquidates Hawaii stores (Pacific Business News)

I came across this LA times article on something called Guerilla Gardening, where people take it upon themselves to “plant without approval on land that’s not theirs” like vacant lots and other unkept land.

I thought that photo there was somebody making desert, but they’re actually ’seed bombs’ - a mix of seeds, earthworm castings, and clay, rolled up into balls, for those quick drive-by plantings.

Sounds like a good idea to me. It reminds me of this place by the stream where we we used go to catch feeder guppies.

There was a lot of basil, lemongrass, and some papaya growing in the area along the stream, and I found out from one of the residents that they were planted by a group of Vietnamese that lived in the buildings across the street. I used to see some of them coming down to harvest from the palnts, but I didn’t know they were responsible for the plants in the first place. I thought that was a great idea.

Sadly, a lot of the stuff was wiped out during the flash floods through Manoa back in ‘04. We haven’t really been back since. I should check it out one day… and YOU should check out that story. It’s a pretty neat little read, and you can learn to make seed bombs!