Training of trainers and orientation days are finished, and I’m back in the capital for the first full weekend “off” I’ve had here. Course, I’m working on other things – friends of mongolia newsletter, thesis, IT stuff, banana bread? – but at least it’s a change. It’s pretty quiet here due to world cup, but the most important development is that there is a korea-based donut chain with a branch in Mongolia. I haven’t been there yet, but it’s a major goal for next weekend.

The other thing is that there’s a place that makes pho here – Kenny Rogers Roasters(? which is similar-ish to Boston Market). It’s not tooo bad, but could be improved.

Randomly, the other person in the coffeeshop here is a lama who I assume is Tibetan as I can’t understand what he’s saying on skype. He also produced from somewhere in his robes an iPad and a 13″ macbook.

In other other news, no one has called me since I got here – I know I’m hard to  get to, but huh.

Originally published at Ploofle

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aaaah work aah. Today’s the first day off in a bit and I’m working on other work. Baah.

On the other hand, walking around checking housing for the trainees was fun – and made me miss my host family. The training site soum we were at was so peaceful and the drive there was beautiful. Sigh.

Today is Children’s Day here, which means way too much sugar, theater shows, movies, parents spending time with their kids, and in all likelihood tantrums.

The trash trucks still sound like ice cream trucks.

Originally published at Ploofle

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So, some may remember the boneheadedness I had last time in Seoul in missing my connecting flight back to UB, and having to live in the airport for an extra two days or so.

This morning I just realized, also in Seoul, that my 11:00 flight is 11:00 AM, not PM. I realized this at 9:00 AM when I woke up. Hopefully I won't miss it this time.

Off to change money and perhaps shower...

Oh, and by the way, I'm on my way back.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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I broke this blog somehow, but random copying and pasting of files figured things out, I believe.

Anywho, I COSed (close of service = wrapping up Peace Corps) technically last Friday. So I'm free and clear...though thesis-less still.

On the other hand, I just heard back from IRB that I qualify for exempt status possibly, so things may move on that soon - though I've already purchased an open ticket back in case I need to return to do data collection...pfft.

I'll try to trace back the past few days with all my free time in between hanging out with people for the last time here, but I do appreciate the Korean channel here with subtitles of variety shows - they just had a party game where everyone had to pretend to be blindfolded zombies except one person, who they were supposed to eventually find - which meant they "lost."

Today I made a chocolate stout cake with candied ginger for the picnic that's happening tomorrow and I drank a good cappuccino. At least it tasted like it was strong.

Hmm, maybe that's why I'm not sleepy yet. I *did* drink it at 6pm or so....

Originally published at Ploofle.

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but here has been random and work-ful.

brief notes of things to come (in a marked lack of temporal order):

slow-dancing with 12-year-olds

being apartment-less yet still in Khovd

being overly directive and accidentally pressuring concerning eating a green bean off the sidewalk

offending people

smushing bugs with my hands then wiping them on my pants

foreign service examinations - why me?

meringue epic fail + destruction of immersion mixer + the Day We Made 4 Kinds of Pies (sort of)

Trying not to explode re: interpersonalities

Originally published at Ploofle.

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Long radio silence, but since our last episode:

Trip to Thailand - note that spiders = personal kryptonite and people are very very nice

Work in Khovd - some cool stuff working with adolescents - want to keep on doing this kind of work later, as they all are on break in a week and thus work will disappear

Close of service conference, BoarBQ, TOT, virtual moving to UB - seems to be happening too fast - as I was told really today I'm moving most-ish to UB except for like a week in July. Otherwise exciting - there will be an Iron Chef at COS conference, and BoarBQ just sounds fun...

Thesis - whimper ugh

Lust - I have an unaccountable desire for a nerd merit badge laptop sash.

More eventually, but for now I should pack, as I fly out Friday til end of June and it discombobulates me greatly.

Also my official COS date is 21 August, which means I in theory leave Mongolia that day. For those with large quantities of appendages, count up the days or something :)

Rarrrgh!

Originally published at Ploofle.

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it costs more to take a shower than to buy a Shanghai Spicy Chicken Sandwich meal at McDonald's. And they want to leave earlier than the posted hours.

Suggestion for next time - the shower is free, it's the kit - namely, a Mongolia-sized (Bonnie knows what this means) towel and toiletries - that costs the money. So bring a little travel towel and bar soap and you'll be home free in theory.

Free wifi just about everywhere...Voltage and plug shape adapters are available for free at the info desks if you leave with them your boarding pass or a form of non-passport ID.

Next time, give em the ID so you know when your flight actually leaves

Super comfy couches upstairs in the "rest and relax" area as well as internet stations that are sparsely populated. If you get in by 10ish you can get quite a nice setup, though a bit cool aircon-wise.

Next time, use that travel towel you're bringing anyway for warmth perhaps.

For those looking for more culture, they have random traditional craft stations and music demos; plus today there was a quartet pl

This article (the No-Stats All-Star) from the New York Times is a nice combination of things I like - mostly because its main example is Shane Battier. And, of course, statistics. The analogies to how basketball is one of the sports more like real life are pretty interesting too.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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aka valuable future investments of my readjustment allowance:

geek clock

plush squid hat

Originally published at Ploofle.

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In case you may be interested in this, it's sort of a mess as I feel like I read a good line of research/methods, dash off in that direction, just to find a then-better line of research methods, running at a slightly divergent angle from the current point. Looking over my shoulder at the original idea, I feel orthogonal. Blame the word on all the article-reading.

At first I was highlighting then copying relevant passages into a word document, but it rapidly became hard to organize and find cites. So now I've stepped back and am utilizing the note feature of Zotero with tagging. Now I can do full-text searches on notes and pdfs, or browse by thematic tags for different things, like "mongolia analogous" or "organizational culture".

The only problem is that this is a multi-step, tedious process - I read the PDF, highlight relevant bits, go back, copy and paste the relevant bits into a text editor, run a regex pattern I set up to remove extra hard returns and hyphenation due to papers' two-column justified layouts, copy to individual notes, then tag. Being a tad perfectionist, I guess - or just liking to gratuitously use regular expressions. It sure would be nice if I could directly edit those PDFs with Zotero and grab notes automatically, leaving only tagging to do by hand.

I suspect it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't know all the tools and regex bits, but it's definitely helping out. I think I'm going to do this for scholarly stuff I'm reading in general as it's a super useful writing aid. At least Zotero grabs the citation information first off (for most items) so I don't have to do that, and its citation plugin for Openoffice means I don't really have to pause mid-thought to write out all those little references.

Still, my current count for papers read and annotated in this manner is...63. And I have about 15 new things I found today to read. Ugh. I assume at some point I can stop reading and finally settle into doing.

If this is dissertation practice, I can't imagine ever being up for it.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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From The Guardian a list of 1000(!) books "everyone must read"

From one of my favorite blogs apparently a thingy called "Anthology Builder" for your own bespoke book (limited, of course, to the short stories they can publish). A post about this here.

Originally published at Ploofle.

I've heard there's some unprecedented stuff going on - Bonnie tells me people have like a 3-hour break off work to watch the inauguration and places all over campus will have things set up to watch. It also sounds like a bunch of people are getting themselves to DC, or having viewing parties, or even, as I've heard in Baltimore, students are getting the day off.

This sounds super exciting and I sure wish I could be participating in it. Maybe things are moving toward an upswing. I read this article here about Native folks and the inauguration, and the comments section is really interesting too.

What are you all out there doing specifically for the big day?

Originally published at Ploofle.

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Happy festivities to all and welcome to the year of my return!!!! bwahahahaha

With that, there are various (additional) random photos in my picasa thingy that illustrate the deep emotions and incredible personal expansion I've been having over the, oh, past two weeks. These events include cooking, standing on a frozen lake on and off for about 6 hours, and small children. It'll change your life too!

I did win half of my snow sumo matches on the lake, though. And I didn't completely freeze my hands and feet.

One of my sitemates did have a firework explode in her hand, but only bruised herself. Yay poor-quality fireworks! Boo inability to read the chinese instructions!

New year's day cooking extravaganza included, among other things, baklava, horse meat fajitas, pineapple-upside-down cake, pancakes, kahlua (making, not really drinking), and the final day of corning beef. Subsequent days were of eating glorious, glorious corned beef hash and some semi-ghetto reubens.

The new year's old man (similar in appearance to Santa Claus if he were a Mongolian man wearing a cotton beard and blue tinsel-edged robe-deel) terrified a few of my coworkers children and handed out candy, then took off his beard, which helped matters. Around New Year's in three days I ate cake approximately 5 times and drank champagne or harder stuff perhaps 4 times. I still have some cake in my fridge I need to throw out. Oh, and loads of candy from the Governor and the Health Department. Pleasant.

Internal apartment temperature is approximately 47F in the mornings, which is unacceptable. Unfortunately, out of my four electrical plugs, only one will not trip/smoke/melt with a heater plugged into it and it's the one that I use for cooking. So I am often faced with the choice of heating up to a more tolerable 52F (tolerable in that I can type without my hands being stiff and I'm wearing two shirts and pairs of pants and my deel and sometimes a hat) or having a fridge. Fridge tends to lose. Perhaps I overexaggerate, though. Well, actually, I'm not, but it sounds worse than it is, really. Though I wish I could heat up the room I sleep in rather than the kitchen, but once I'm in bed it's not bad.

We're in the coldest part of the winter, so my personal goal is to just get through January and it'll be ok. My choice of waiting until March to vacation is seeming increasingly silly...

Thesis notes are finally sorted and categorized, so I hope to push out a general proposal/overview tomorrow. By god, I will. Ugh. Otherwise things are calm outside of watering office plants and various lurking work tasks. I've noticed when I have something big, like this thesis thing, hanging over my head I suddenly come up with all sorts of other more interesting projects and thoughts. I suppose I should write them down for later, but typically I'd do them. But I'm trying to not procrastinate any further, so I just ignore them and hope they'll go away.

My officemates have discovered YouTube, and it has destroyed any semblance of me having an internet connection at work. Perhaps I will sneakily go onto the computer, edit the hosts file, and make it redirect to localhost...hmm...

Originally published at Ploofle.

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A quick note - the latest version (3.07) of ext_db_auth now works with Wordpres 2.7. It's in the same place as usual. This version, however, is NOT compatible with WPMU. You'll still need to use 2.05 with that.

Once WPMU hits 2.7 it may be broken again for that particular flavor; we'll see.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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New Year's day was pretty low-key - just a day full of cooking with one of my sitemates. It's apparently an enabling environment, as by the end of the day we had a liter and a half of kahlua, baklava, cream cheese-apricot strudel, pineapple upside-down cake, buttermilk pancakes, and an entire mexican dinner (horse-meat fajitas with homemade tortillas and from-America salsa and refried beans). In other words, it was *excellent* although almost sickness-inducing quantities of food. I still have most of the desserts here as well as 9/10 of the kahlua.

Yesterday I finally pulled out the pickling-in-process beef and made what I assume to be relatively authentic corned beef. As I'm typing I'm cooking up hash now and plan to have some nice fried eggs on top of it...yum...for dinner.

Today was the mandatory fun NGO/work event. For me, preparations involved getting to the meeting place at the agreed-up 10am, waiting for about two hours, then finally going when everyone else actually showed up. We went to the lake, and this apparently meant "drive on the lake and find a nice spot where we normally couldn't have a picnic as we'd be waist-deep in water". AND there was a Schedule of Events. Five hours later and after several bouts of woman Snow Sumo, group tug-of-war, random eating and drinkening, frost-defrost cycles, and way too many group photos I'm now back at home. Overall, I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would, which is often the case with group events. Needless to say, from both the cooking extravaganza and this group event, there are a variety of awesome pictures, some of which will be posted in the subsequent blog update.

Oh, and during the process of baking and experimenting with puff pastry (see random baklava above), I found out that I bought not 10kg of normal flour but 10kg of semolina flour. Ugh. So now I have to look for lots and lots of recipes that use this kind of flour, as it normally takes me about 2 months to get through 10kg if I make bread, and I doubt I can make that much bread with this stuff.

Hope everyone had a good new year - last lap here for me - I'm actually leaving this year!

Originally published at Ploofle.

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From this article from the NYTimes of cost-saving items...let's see how it fares here:

1. Oats: Expensive where I'm at, though not necessarily in UB. That typical cylinder-type thing here? About $3.

2. Eggs: Cost about twice as much here as what's cited in the article - around 30 cents apiece.

3. Kale: Hahaha...I wish.

4. Potatoes: Cheap for sure, at about 30 cents a kg

5. Apples: Kind of expensive (about $1.75 a kg here) but worth it.

6. Nuts: Um, nope. A can of peanuts here is about $2, and other nuts go up in price astronomically - there's a 1-lb bag of pecans randomly here, and it's like $20.

7. Bananas: Nope. Rarely here and expensive - I don't even know how much they cost.

8. Garbanzo Beans: Not here. You can get some dried pintos in UB of dubious quality, and recently I've seen cans of kidney beans here for about $1.25. Mysteriously, the newly-arrived cans of white beans are about double that price for the same amount.

9. Broccoli: Nope. Never even seen it here.

10. Watermelon: Uh, this is seasonal unless you live in America...

11. Wild Rice: I wish we had this. We do have millet and barley, though. And (yuck) buckwheat.

12. Beets: Yuck!

13. Butternut Squash: I think not - though maybe I've seen one once in the past year and a half - an accident, I'm sure.

14. Whole Grain Pasta: I don't think so, but it's all in Russian. Haven't seen anything that would match color-wise though.

15. Sardines: Now sardines we have - albeit generally in tomato sauce. Maybe I'll experiment with these they're less than a dollar a can.

16. Spinach: Ha!

17. Tofu: Dried tofu, along with the Supreme Master(tm), has come to Khovd. I don't know why, but I'll not complain...

18. Milk: Local milk is a bit farm-y, and you have to pasteurize/boil it yourself before using, but it's good. Box UHT milk, while less tasty, is more convenient and what I tend to use.

19. Pumpkin Seeds: Both yuck and ha!

20. Coffee: Well, this is just generally too effort-ful. So I'm good.

So, reasonably, the only really easy item on this list for me are...potatoes. :P

Originally published at Ploofle.

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I have to admit, there is a certain visceral happiness to eating cake and champagne twice in one day, as well as being given goodie bags by various people for new year's.

It doesn't match up at all, though, to the joy I experience watching my coworkers grimace and frown their way through a few shots of whiskey while I down mine with ease. FINALLY, the vodka-face is on *them*, bwahaha...

Hopefully, now that I know this, I can encourage more whiskey-drinking to share the, er, love :D

Happily heating up avgolemono-like soup!

Originally published at Ploofle.

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An interesting article in the NYTimes about censorship at google. The accompanying pictures are happily pixel-like art and made me laugh.

In this case, there's not really anyone watching the de facto watchmen per se. But it's interesting to hear about how Google censors its content. Censor may be too strong a word, though...as it sounds more like stick to the strict rules and everything is free - something like what's in the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Which, in my mind, is the way it should be. Laws and programs should be developed to protect rights and privileges, not restrict them. Hence a few very obvious disagreements with things like, oh, poll taxes, Prop 8, limiting health care rather than making health care a right for all, etc. etc.

Also, Bonnie sent me this silly "Thriller" video. This is what happens when librarians get together - a combo of book car drill teams, costume parties and...low production quality Matrix fight scenes?? Overall a compelling reason to be around librarians, I think. :)

Originally published at Ploofle.

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writing makes it so, but fuck it.

I'm not sure if it was there already or put in my mind that I would come back and carry a shadow of sadness, but I have. I'm coming back to the uncertainties of life here, and the friendlessness and general inactivity that is the world I have been treading in for the last seventeen months.

I'm ready for it to be over. Perhaps this is the price you pay for finally getting to meet people you would love to work with all the time, people who are Mongolian and otherwise, and then going a thousand kilometers and 3 days' offroad bus ride to a place where you'll be both out of sight and mind.

Wah wah wah. :P

Originally published at Ploofle.

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First, a few words I want to remember:

- Similar to but used more in writing, while is more spoken. is often used in the sense of "How to do ____" rather than as a question word, or so I've been led to believe.

- Guessing from context, but I believe it means roughly team-building (and perhaps literally trust putting).

__ - I think this means "at least"...so like "At least 5 minutes." I was looking for how to say "less than" but I haven't figured it out, e.g., "Less than five minutes remaning"

- Literally "printed material" but I believe used as the term for "media" or "press." Perhaps a good indicator of why it's hard to explain media to be inclusive of radio/internet/video/etc.

- Used for both "survey" and "research" in Mongolian. It can be hard to differentiate between the two as a result.

Also just came across a potentially interesting site that has online Mongolian language listening comprehension exercises through Indiana University. I'm not sure why its domain is Russian (.ru) though.

Also amusing: On Drunkenfreude and an educational tv series from the 80s that combines evil aliens, benevolent child aliens, librarians, bookmobiles, post-apocalyptic settings, and how to use your local library resources aptly named Tomes & Talismans. Sound like a name rip-off of any, erm, 80s-emerging RPGs? Go Mississippi public broadcasting!

Originally published at Ploofle.

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Wordpress says in the back that I'm at post 299 - and it has said so for a while, even as I add posts. Apparently it just won't give me that nice 300.

In other news, my plane was delayed because the Prime Minister said so. Hmm.

In other other news, Jen said she dreamed about a Volunteer who bought an elephant for business purposes but she was criticizing them for it being an unsustainable venture (as they didn't consider the cost of keeping it fed, etc.). Blame the excess pumpkin pie...

Originally published at Ploofle.

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I'm tired, but damn, was it tasty...that's all I've eaten for the past 2 days - I'm kind of hoping there are still some leftovers to eat tomorrow too!

The local chicken, after all was said and done, was closer to a cornish game hen size, while the chicken that was brought from UB was a normal-sized monstrosity of a bird. Bayan-Ulgii (a province further north) folks came in and one of em is an excellent cook and put together three amazing casseroles - corn, broccoli, and green bean. We then had a huge bowl of stuffing, two large bowls of mashed potates, homemade applesauce and pseudo-cranberry sauce, glazed carrots, biscuits, and corn bread. There were 5 pies of 4 different kinds - lemon meringue, pecan, pumpkin (2), and apple. All of the crusts turned out great this time and the meringue was amazingly easy due to a pinch cream of tartar from a package Bonnie sent me. I'm going to need to make more lemon meringue here - I have all the ingredients and it's only 3 eggs - it was the first pie to go too.

After the main food, about half of the group of 12 was either laying on the ground or groaning about how they may be sick. Or both. So I consider that to be the sound of success. A couple hours later, after eating pies (we had about 1/2 pie baked for every person there), many laid down/groaned again. Today when we came back over to eat leftovers, same thing. This makes me pretty happy :)

Still, we're only making slow progress through the food - I may reacquire the cranberry sauce from Jen if there's not a likelihood it'll get finished - I made 3 good-sized jars' worth and I don't know if we even got through one yet.

I leave for UB this Tuesday but still haven't finished everything I wanted to do - like laundry, cleaning, actual work...so...time to turn in so as to do it tomorrow...

Originally published at Ploofle.

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So, I believe the baby-in-progress count for people I know pretty well is at 3. Including people I don't know as well the count doubles. Ugh. What's with the babies!? Am I missing out on something?

Jen's cat is behind my computer and poking his head around the corner of the screen comically...

Oh, and work - I'm doing in-service training for the 19s and that means content creation. How one "teaches" peer education in a 45-minute slot and "research methods" in 1-1/2 hours I dunno, but it'll get done somehow. I'm pretty excited about this stuff, though, as I'll get to interact with youth and business dev people in addition to health volunteers - plus all their counterparts.

The side effect of this is that there are several things "I must do" at work before I am "allowed" to go to UB. And they're all time-consuming. Fund Peace Corps project is taking up a goodly amount of time, I'm reinforcing new contacts my program staff introduced me to while they were here, and thesis is again getting pushed to the end of the queue due to this stuff. Plus we need to kill a chicken or two sometime this week for Thanksgiving, so Fri night/Sat are definitely booked. I'm supposed to fly out this Tues, the 2nd...ugh. How will I get all of this done? And I've heard that the airline flight schedule will change on the 1st, so it's possible that I'm not leaving the 2nd.

Ah, Mongolia. And life. Thank you all :P

And I'm hungry.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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I was almost excited to see that Dr. Who premiered on the 24th; unfortunately it was the 23rd.

From wikipedia, today in...

1898 - International Conference of Rome for the Social Defense Against Anarchists opened (sorry Andy)

1940 - Slovakia officially joined the Axis powers

1966 - NYC experiences the smoggiest day in the city's history

...and about 6 airline hijackings or crashes. Also, William F. Buckley was born, as well as Beth Phoenix aka "The Glamazon".

Looks like they knew I was coming :P Hopefully the coming years will result in more propitious events on this day so I don't have to assume I'm following a trend.

Um, otherwise, I got a beautiful peach-colored sunset today. My office windows face west and with the smoke from the coal you get a lot of fuzzy light. It was really pretty.

On the other hand, rumor has it that something broke concerning the heating system here, so no heat for people for a few days, possibly longer. Overnight here it's about 13F/-10C. Day temperatures, at least according to the forecast, are just hovering around freezing.

My birthday treats were a shower at the showerhouse - wow, and I needed it - and the can of chili Bonnie sent me. I have to say I think homemade chili is better, but the beans were wonderfully cooked through and the meat was definitely something you don't see here everyday. I pulled out a ration of cheese Lisa gave me, and made some hoecakes based on this blog's recipe, and now back to work for me.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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Ok, now it's semi-official with a group and cause on Facebook and all. You all get to send me fewer packages if they let me buy cheese here :) Here's the deal:

Fund Peace Corps

What: A congressional letter writing campaign for individuals who care about Peace Corps to highlight the impact of the current budget crisis on volunteers' abilities to serve the goals of the organization.

When: December 1, 2008 December 15, 2008

Who: Current PCVs, RPCVs, and friends/family of the Peace Corps

How: Go to http://www.ploofle.com/petition/ and use the "contact my representative" link. Add in a personal story to illustrate how this shortfall is affecting you and send your message. Then pass the link and your story on to your friends, family, Facebook/MySpace, and/or blog. Submit e-mails between December 1 December 15!

Why: To help unite the voice of the current PCV community and inform decision makers in Congress of the significant impact current budget conditions are having on Peace Corps' ability to fulfill its mission in aiding underserved communities around the world.

Carry on, then. :)

Originally published at Ploofle.

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I recently read the online (and print-available) Last Blood and quite enjoyed it. The second volume/arc is still in process, and I was a little disappointed to be brought up short (to date). But I look forward to the next installments.

I did find the blog commentary attached to individual pages a tad annoying though...

Originally published at Ploofle.

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So, finally, a bit more on the budget issues here in Mongolia-land.

I've mentioned the shortfall before, and it's shaping up to about $18 million. I believe every post has been asked to make across-the-board 10-15% cuts in their finances, and this is making things interesting, given how expensive it is to get people together here - and prices are only getting worse. I heard yesterday that the taxi ride from the airport to the center of UB is up to like 15,000 tugriks - over the summer I could get as low as 7,000.

Our support office has had to lay off 2 people, postal mailings have been generally discontinued and replaced with a small communications allowance, the 2 inservice trainings have been cut down to one with fewer days to cover all the same topics. I have heard anecdotally that this year office staff won't get a cost-of-living salary increase unless the budget improves - the money was instead used to give volunteers who needed it a bit of a living allowance increase. Due to medical decisions, it looks like there will be no volunteers being able to get in for a regular visit - or whatever - to the capital until Close of Service. I hope the training schedule gets changed for the next batch, as keeping it the same means that for your last 20 (or so, out of 27) months of service you never get to come in to UB for until Close of Service on PC's dime. For a site like mine, that means having about $100 to take the bus roundtrip or an exorbitant $450 to fly roundtrip. I do like being out at site though, as long as I can occasionally get some brown sugar or oats.

Next year's training will be moved to be closer to the capital to save money, and it's likely its mid-training gathering for training will be eliminated and the training itself will be shortened by about 10%. I'm sure we'll make do, but I wonder about language teachers and whether the veterans will make the move elsewhere temporarily. Mongolian is considered a pretty difficult language - for reference, among non-Latin languages, it's less difficult than Mandarin Chinese or Arabic, but more difficult than Russian, Greek, or Swahili. As it is when we come out we have a grasp of survival language and continue to learn throughout service. So I'm a bit worried about how cutting out a decently sized chunk of full-immersion will pan out.

Anywho, this isn't my post's fault, or PC's even. It a general lack of funding and everyone, both in DC and abroad, has to cut corners. Too bad there aren't really corners to cut...

Some volunteers have been discussing how the next administration may change things, even with the economy being as it is. For comparison, something like 200 times this is being spent on the War on Terror extra funding this year (doesn't include other Dept. of Defense allocations). So, maybe you all can help.

We've set up this website to generate letters to mail to their representatives. For the simplest case all you have to do is enter your zip, then at the end copy and paste a bit. Or you can get fancier...I'm not going to complain. It looks up info on the representatives and adds references to their Peace Corps service (if they served) or their ability to change the budget (if they're on the Appropriations Committee). So please check it out. The site is Fund Peace Corps.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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Two great articles in the NYTimes today - one about restrictions on lobbyists in the inauguration/transition for Obama, and one about how electing a person of color is relevant (or not) to European countries. The latter is one of my most favorite articles in a long time.

I remember hearing somewhere than during the Cold War whenever the US brought something up related to human rights the USSR would rebut with "well, you enslaved people." Course, serfdom was roughly the same, but it seemed to cow people back then.

A quote from the article about Europe:

But Ms. Kiyak said the Obama victory was causing significant reflection in the immigrant community, if not yet in the country at large. "Minorities see what is possible in another country, and they become jealous," she said, noting that President Abdullah Gul of Turkey said recently in Der Spiegel that Turkish Germans "should take part in German society and politics and not look back."

Engaging is good. Not looking back - problematic. It kind of falls into what I think is the trap of colorblindedness - saying you're colorblind to mean non-discrimination takes away the culture and identity of so many people involuntarily - and it's a terrible thing to take away people's cultures. It means that everyone is the same in silly ways - we all grew up the same, we all communicate in the same ways, we all have the same hopes and dreams. And that's a dead end as everyone can't share the American Dream or whatever group consciousness colorblind people seem to advocate. In the basic sense of the word, we don't go, wow, it's great you can't see the color red. Blindness is a deficiency, not an asset.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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Crawl into bed and sit under your covers (if you're not already there due to poor insulation) for 15-20 min before actually laying down to go to bed. That way you don't shiver until you warm up a little and fall asleep.

Also, capilene long underwear and wool socks are worth their weight in gold.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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In the likely event of personal illness, the best and only option is to lock yourself in, find the warmest spot you can, then lie down until it blows over. Really, it's not worth dragging yourself around when all it'll do is give you a sinus infection or pneumonia.

I tested this treatment over the weekend and can assure you it's swell.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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A good post summarizing (and showing) front pages worldwide with what I assume are translations:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-05/obama-headlines-from-around-the-world

Originally published at Ploofle.

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Originally published at Ploofle.

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[caption id="attachment_471" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Finally!"][/caption]

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One I knew from a while ago, literally from Mongolian:

raisin: raisin

grape: water raisin

cabbage: cabbage

broccoli: flower cabbage

hmm.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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This flattop grill sounds cool, albeit a fancy term (and corresponding price) for a griddle. It's especially appealing for making breads and what-not, but also things like okonomiyaki I thought.

On the other hand, couldn't I just get a heavy metal slab like this for obvjously a lot less...and I certainly wouldn't use this to replace a real grill as suggested by the wikipedia link above...

Also, I would like a dutch oven some day. The end.Edit: this griddle looks far more appealing than the craigslist link above.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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For dinner I had doritos, pb m&ms, and a mug of lemonade with my (singular) ice cube.

Thanks care packagers! :)

Thank god I can't eat like this all the time...

Originally published at Ploofle.

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Bonnie has been pointing me to some neat interdisciplinary groupblogging at UCLA on the upcoming election. Two posts I've liked in particular lately have been Race in a post-Obama world and Residential segregation and the race vote. The first one looks at the chilling effect his winning may have on social justice and disparities work, and the latter has some excellent charts concerning the relationship between who you live with and how you may vote. As you all are aware, people still continue to self-select where you live, even if schools and public facilities aren't technically segregated. One of the cool graphs follows:

Of course, correlation isn't causation, and there may be a lot more to this association (thanks Epi) but this also may be a handy quick guide to living if you prefer to live in more integrated environments, too. If there were on a per-city or smaller unit than by state...hmmm....and now I'm intrigued by this Dissimilarity Index they used for the horizontal axis. He also discusses methodology at the end of the post with some neat stats things if you're into that.

Anywho, just saying. Hoping to get this final debate off of youtube to watch with my fellow politics-interested folks out here.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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I must be more Texan than I think, as this blog here pretty makes me drool constantly. Damn Stacey and her torture food links!

In particular, we (well, probably mostly me) talk or think about corn dogs regularly here. And I know we all in general talk about condiments. And what shows up but a blog posting to making homemade corn dogs! We actually sort of have hotdogs in Khovd right now - they live on a shelf in a local store in cans, and they're from Germany. I have the cornmeal too, so...this may just have to happen. If not, at the very least the next time (if ever) we have a deep-fry-a-thon this will definitely have to make it on the list. Along with a repeat of fried pies (also on the aforementioned blog).

Nothing says quality blog, btw, like an entry entitled "How to render lard." A site after my own heart.

Meanwhile, supposedly we're to have a power outage from tomorrow until Sunday. Not really a big deal, but it means I'll need to use up all the remaining frozen meat in my fridge. I also got to drink some unexpectedly nice "rare" Borgio beer today. It came from Uvs and they don't get it to Khovd. Its big innovation? 1-liter plastic bottle.

Originally published at Ploofle.

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As usual, a note to self.

Welding

Unit tests

Python

Beekeeping

Actual gardening

Home canning

Cheesemaking/animal-owning?

Home repair/remodeling, particularly in a energy-efficient/green manner

AJAX (grudgingly and sort of)

Camping/hiking in a "walk the Appalachian Trail" sort-of-manner

Road biking in an "absurdly long ride across a state" way

Originally published at Ploofle.

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From Andy's friend Emily - in essence, at the beginning of a week/weekend boil your root vegetables, in particular potatoes, to an almost-done point. Then you can quickly put them together for other meals later in the week - for example, chop them up for a quick roasting, or make home fries, or boil them fully for a baked or mashed potato, or potato salad. It'll cut down on prep time and impatience waiting for your food later. I don't think they're suitable for making french fries after this, though. I'll most likely be boiling things tonight for the week, as I have a bunch of potatoes I need to get through.

From a carrot standpoint, I suppose this would work for speeding up cooking as well, and it's likely a very good idea if you don't want your turnips to be bitter-tasting.

Also in recipes-land - perhaps I'll post a few of my favorites here if you're ever in a mutton emergency...and my from-Suzie loaf pan is definitely shedding teflon, so I better line it with something when cooking as it's not really replaceable here (I think).

Originally published at Ploofle.

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