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June 8, 2021 11:24 PM

Top 7 moments of my trip to the Pacific Northwest

• eating soft serve pineapple dole whip while getting ginger beer refills
• walking through a neighborhood, stumbling upon a cool bridge leading to a 5 mile hike
• finding a beverage truck near the end of a trail, having a nice conversation, and drinking watermelon lemonade
• enjoying a quiet moment at a beautiful viewpoint in Bridal Veil (that I can't find a link for, which I guess is why it was so quiet)
• getting a tour of my co-worker's wacky and amazing house
• breaking up a tense moment, joking with my sister behind a towel, saying things that only we could possibly find funny
• catching up with my older cousin in Seattle

May 30, 2021 7:59 AM

Fixing more of my ascii art

Back when I was coloring ascii art by hand, I hit this weird bug that happened when I turned my phone sideways. Well, it's been a while since I turned my phone sideways and I did it again, and noticed more weirdness. I had a few ascii art images that were slightly off on the first row, which didn't seem too bad, but then I saw this monstrosity.

Then I asked my sister to look at the pages on her phone (flipped) and...they looked perfectly fine. Hmm. I guess if my site is only-broken-on-my-device that's better than only-guaranteed-to-work-on-my-device.

Anyway, I analyzed the code, and I realized that this was an issue:

<span class="gray">    </span><span class="lightgold">,* 

No, it's not the fact that that second <span> isn't closed. I did that on the next line. It's the first <span> that has nothing but whitespace in it. I don't know, my phone had issues with that. This is just a side effect of how my color-rizer tool works, and maybe I'll fix it one day. Maybe. For now I just modified the html directly. As of now, I've fixed it on the ascii art pages, but not in the individual blog posts. But maybe later.

May 28, 2021 6:32 PM

Elite Beat Agents

Because one silly rhythm game quarantine goal wasn't enough, I decided that I would turn on my Nintendo DS for the first time in years and play some Elite Beat Agents. And the battery on that thing is amazing. I hadn't charged it in over 5 years and it still turned on and had plenty of battery left.

I've heard the gameplay is similar to osu! but what makes it unique is that each song you can play has a story. Each one has a similar structure: the main character has some sort of ordeal they need to get through, and they call for help from the agents, and the agents dance their way to success. How well you do on the rhythm game determines the outcome of the story.

         ,-.         ;    ____  ____    __ __   .
         \_ \     _-'   / ____// __ \  / // /  _,'
          \  \    `-.  / / __// / / / / // / ,'
       _ ,-\_ \   _-' / /_/ // /_/ / /_//_/  `.
   ,~,',' ,'\_ `. `-. \____/ \____/ (_)(_) _.--`  
   : ! ; .       `-~~~. ,.-'-._    ,-~-. .'
    \; ! +      _.---=' ,.---.  `.'     `
      \: ',_,.-'#      //-~-~-\\
        `-'    {      |'==-,-=='|
          \`==' \     ('=='/'==')
           \     \    :! _`w_  !;
            \     "-,__ |[___]| __
             \          t_____J    ``~-.
              \        (   ^   ) _/\_ | \
               }        \ /*\ /  >  < |  \

I first played this game...14 years ago? I remembered it being a lot of fun, but once I got to the Hard Rock! level I struggled a lot, and I was never able to beat the whole game. But this time, I was determined to finish it. And because I like to make things harder for myself, I also decided to try and get a full combo on every single song on all 4 levels.

Yeah, I don't know why I insist on full combo-ing everything. That definitely made this take way longer than I wanted it to, and I think I hate the song Survivor now.

But I did it! And I only had to charge my DS twice this whole time! This is a fun game. I definitely recommend, but I don't think I'll ever play this again in my life.

May 18, 2021 8:15 PM

So many blog updates

Sometimes my life gets so busy and I go months neglecting my side projects and sometimes...

Sometimes ya need to roll with those impulses. I find that's when I can really get into something. Or be enthusiastic about it.

Yeah. So I have a bunch of site updates:

• Added a page that makes it easier to get to all the entries
  • with all the tags and the posts
  • and the ability to read from the beginning
• Finally made the tags click-able
• Added old entries from $blog[-2]
  • some even have footnotes
• Fixed an inconsistency in the header of the individual blog entry pages
• Changed the title of the blog pages

Did I break anything? We shall see...

May 17, 2021 6:19 PM

The food blog before the food blog

This is a set of 9 10 blog posts that I wrote in 2018, detailing the food the I made and ate over the course of 9 10 weeks. I had a very specific goal of having a $30 a week food budget, and I basically failed that because I always do :P I had considered just inserting these entries at the time that they were written, but I decided I wanted one long-ass blog post instead. With commentary!

Weekly Food Review 1: 8/10 - 8/17

Welp, one week in, and I've already failed to stay within my food budget. It really wasn't too bad considering I did stay under $30 in groceries, but I gave myself a special birthday treat and I was also obligated to get coffee at a programming meeting. (Girl Develop It! I miss those meetups)

90% of the meals I make are from Budget Bytes (If you've never checked out this blog, you need to. It's amazing. I think it actually changed my life.) So this week I made three different dishes:

• Greek Chicken Pasta Salad (4 meals)
• Yellow Rice Chicken Skillet (5 meals)
• Sesame Glazed Salmon and Green Beans (5 meals)

If you actually read through those recipes carefully, you'll notice that I stretched out the chicken skillet to 5 meals--one of the meals just didn't have much chicken, and I supplemented it with an egg. I actually still have one more meal of this left. I also really stretched out the salmon meal, but that's because I bought over a pound of salmon and a pound of green beans.

I don't know if it was because I ate way too much in the two weeks prior to this, but I was feeling really hungry a lot of the time. For next week, I'm going to plan four dishes and make the portions a little larger. I know, I still need to stay within my budget. Salmon was about a third of the grocery bill, so I think I can replace that with something cheaper and more filling. For this first week, I didn't actually think about how much each meal would cost, nor did I utilize much that was already in my kitchen or think about what foods were on sale.

My eating out meal was at a fancy restaurant because I had a $30 off birthday coupon! (Man I also miss birthday coupons) Of course I still ended up spending a lot on it because of tips. I've already committed to a meal out next week, but I'll actually try and see if I can keep my grocery bill under $20 for this next week.