May 15, 2008

I'm a teetotaler. This is only partially by choice, since the basic fact of the matter is that I just don't like the taste of alcohol. I can't choke down more than half a bottle of beer and the clear liquors like vodka taste like hairspray to me.

My dad on the other hand drinks beer and vodka gimlets, but he likes sour and bitter flavors. He drowns fish in vinegar, his favorite fruit juice is grapefruit, and he was never big on potato chips until he discovered salt and vinegar kettle chips.

I like sweet or salty flavors. Note the "or", because sweet and salty, such as chocolate covered pretzels are pretty gross. So the few alcoholic beverages I do like tend to be sweet, such as red wine, brandy, and sake.

Of course the other reason I don't drink is because I'm against the general idea of impairing my judgment, inhibitions, and motor skills, but that's not important to my main topic at the moment.

As with any product, your various alcohols are available in good versions, cheap versions, and versions which are ridiculously expensive for the incremental increases in quality, primarily for the purpose of showing off your wealth and good taste while swearing you can tell the difference. I've come to discover that I like "good" sake and "cheap" sake about equally, however, it's all in how you prepare it.

In the US, sake is generally imbibed warm (as in blood temperature). In Japan, it can be prepared hot, warm, room temperature or chilled, depending on the preferences of the host, the quality of the sake, and the current season. That's all entirely too complicated for me.

As it turns out, warming sake seems to bring out the good flavors and cover the taste of cheaper versions, as well as simply making it taste more potent. So while cheap sake doesn't taste very good at room temperature or chilled, it's excellent when warmed. Likewise, while good sake is pretty good at room temperature and not much different warm, it's excellent chilled.

Which led to last night's experiment (this was, of course, leading up to an experiment). I know that vodka is generally stored in the freezer, and due to its high alcohol content (40%+ ABV) it won't freeze^†. Lower alcohol content products such as beer (roundabouts 5% ABV for typical American beers) will freeze. Sake, at 15% ABV, is maddeningly in between those values and, as usual, there was no information generally available to help me out. Why would there be? Everyone who cares already knows. I find myself in these positions again and again.

† However it has been pointed out to me several times that very cheap vodka will, indeed, freeze.
Oolong says: My favourite is when vodka freezes *just slightly* and you get these gorgeous filaments of ice crystals floating in it.

So I sacrificed my poor half-full bottle of good sake to experiment, leaving it in the freezer overnight, for the promise of chilled sake at a moment's notice whenever I chose to partake.

Will sake freeze?

Yes. Crap. It's thawing out on my counter right now. I'll see if it affected the flavor at all tonight. UPDATE: It did, for the worse.

Next experiment: What is the minimum ABV required to light liquor on fire? Stay tuned!

I've been getting a lot of questions recently about what happened to Donginger, since his sudden disappearance from the catbox. While I truly appreciate all the concerns about him (he's like a son to me), I wrote this Daylog to avoid repeating myself all the time in the catbox.

As some of you may know, since I've been talking about that non-stop for the past two weeks, I am starting a new job on May 20, 2008. Until then, Donginger was hosted on my desktop PC at my previous job. Last week, my mom gave me her old PII because she is nice like that. I promptly installed Debian on it and was happy.

The problem is, Donginger was previously running on Windows XP and was coded for Python 2.5 specifically. Debian Linux is a bitch and it took me two days to install Python 2.5, because it seems to think that I should be perfectly fine using Python 2.4 - which I am not. Donginger didn't like version 2.4 either and crashed immediately.
So that's been fixed, all right. The other new problem was slowness, because there's a big difference going from a pretty good P4 to a shitty old P2. Also, since The Don keeps its own catbox archive, the SQLite database was getting quite large (~30MB, more than 100,000 rows.)

I am currently working on transferring the whole SQLite database to MySQL running on my Debian box. I ran into a few problems while converting the different data types between the two databases but I should be done in the next couple of days.
I will also remove a few of the unused functions (the Random Cool is never used, same for "last post by user".) If I have the time, I'll rewrite parts of it to improve speed and reliability and maybe add one or two new funny features.

Today, May 15th, 2008, the California Supreme Court struck down the state's existing gay marriage ban.

(Here! Have an article: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/15/same.sex.marriage/index.html )

Startlingly enough, the vote was 4-3 in favor of striking the ban, an unexpected outcome since six of the seven justices were Republicans.

Now, within the next 30 days, hundreds of thousands of "second class citizens"... who could be your friends, your family, your neighbors, in your church, at your school... will finally be able to marry. Not a civil union. Not a domestic partnership. Actual, full-fledged marriage that heterosexuals have had the privledge of enjoying for the entire life of this country.

I cannot express how incredibly full of exploding joy this makes me.

Sure, I don't "need" it, not for me. I've taken advantage of that heterosexual privledge and as many of you know, have been married to my longtime sweetheart mcc for a little over two years.

But you know what? For me, it's mere and complete chance I was able to do so. As fewer of you know, I'm bisexual. VERY bisexual. "Perfect 3 on the Kinsey scale" bisexual. If I hadn't met him at the point in life I did, if we'd met at another place or time, if he hadn't been in my life at the exact point he was? It could have very easily been me in that place. There have been women in my past that, had things gone differently, I could very easily have seen settling down with for good I could have just as easily been one of the "second class citizens" denied the right to marry whoever I chose.

After work, mcc and I went downtown to the Santa Clara courthouse, where there was a last-minute rally to celebrate the decision. Although the crowd was not huge (about what we expected, for an event planned after lunch on a Thursday) the energy was fantastic. Everyone was so overjoyed and happy. Many hugs, kisses, and tears. A LOT of support from community leaders, both political and of groups. The vibe was incredible.

A more dire reminder did continue to surface. A ballot measure is being sent up for the November ballot to take away the rights that have just been granted. We can't be complacent just because the victory is won for now, we have to keep fighting. But that's OK. It's a fight worth fighting, and today has shown that it can be won.