Rather than stay home for my birthday (which I've done for the past few years) I decided to make things interesting this time 'round the sun. Sitwon and Haxwithaxe had secured a hotel room and passes for Shmoocon in downtown DC last weekend, so I threw my hat into the ring more or less at the last minute. Shmoocon is an excellent hacker conference, don't get me wrong, but I don't ordinarily get much out of it. It is, as they say around here, above my pay grade. That said, I decided to go solely to see what I could …

No, really. It's a piece of grilled Spam on a bed of sticky rice and held in place with a strip of nori. The US dime on the corner of the plate is there to give you an idea of how big it is. It's actually quite tasty and not gelatinous at all because it's been cooked, though it's also too large to eat like most sushi. I recommend using a knife to cut it into bite-sized pieces before eating.

Served with love at Ohana in Portland, Oregon.

Lyssa and I started off our Valentine's Day by getting up far earlier than should be allowed by law on a Saturday morning to go to our local H&R Block office to finish getting our taxes done. That morning marked our second trip to get our finances straightened out in Uncle Sam's eyes. I'm sorry to say that our combined medical expenses for FY 2008 weren't enough to earn a deduction, though the repeated trips to the thrift store to get rid of stuff appear to have come in handy. There is a question these days over how many …

As you'll recall from a couple of months ago, I presided over the wedding of Elwing and Irregular Expression in exchange for going out to dinner at some point in the future. Because Elwing was presenting at The Last HOPE and I was there as a guest, we arranged to go out for dinner while in New York City. Elwing had organized an outing to a restaurant called Ninja New York (25 Hudson Street; New York, NY 10013; phone 212-274-8500; open 1745-2300 EST5EDT). With a name like that, I just had to go to see what it was all about …

As you've probably guessed, I've been too busy to write at the moment because there are a lot of things happening.

This weekend past, Lyssa and I were going crazy getting the apartment torn apart, cleaned, and put back together in time for Heron61 and Teaotter to fly in from Portland to visit us this week. As one might expect, this was a nontrivial exercise, and involved disconnecting many things, moving them, running the vacuum cleaner, moving them back into place, and starting them back up. This also meant running around to acquire foodstuffs to make dinner for everyone on …