Fiscal Cliffs -- Fixing

OK, first of all, the fiscal cliff is NOT A DEBT PROBLEM. In fact, it’s the opposite: the danger is that with expiring tax cuts, expiring unemployment benefits, and the sequester, we’ll reduce the deficit too fast. Deficit scolds are having a hard time reconciling their sudden concern about excessive deficit reduction with everything they were saying before – and evidently Mr. Schultz hasn’t gotten the message that we are now at war with Eastasia, and always have been. Moar

Hot Time in Uptown Today!

I hear ittsa Hot Time in Uptown today!

Unless you've really, really, really gotta roast those marshmallows, I'd avoid the area of Irving and West Lake Street.

SSD

There's a few deals on the SATA III SSDs out there, mostly on the slow write (Up to 260 MB/s (SATA 6Gb/s)) vs the higher speed writers (Sustained Sequential Write: 520 MB/s).

Herring Run

Today I went to IKEA. Master plan was to get up at the crack o' dawn and be at the store by ten o'clock. When I got there at one o'clock, my sekrit parking space on the second level was marked as closed, so I had to park on the ground. I went in, and life was good -- they had meatballs. So, I wandered into the store. Big mistake. They've redone the kitchen section and the bathroom section. They had something I kinda might want to put in the basement in the bathroom section. Buying nothing because of the fear of long lines, I went to get the meatballs and stand in a long line at the Bistro since they didn't have a cashier at the food section. All of this consumed a huge amount of time. I did, however, forget to pick up any herring roe. The Mall of America looked as if it was in some level of Dante's hell or limbo, but I could not quite determine which.

Then I went to Ingebretsen's. I'd been there before Xmas, and the meat department was filled with people waiting for their number to be called. Today, it was not crowded. (They said that before Xmas, they limited the number of people in the department to 100 because that's all the higher their counter went and they didn't want to call "2" and have two people show up. -- Even Scandinavians are only so honest.)

I picked up a pint of pickled herring, and half-pints of: dill, sour cream & dill, sour cream, sherry, mustard, and curry herring. Who knew that curried herring was popular in Norway? I certainly did not. I also bought some potato salad. I resisted their liver pate and cloudberry jam. (IKEA stopped carrying it, and they wanted $18 for a jar. -- it's good, but it ain't truffle good.) I also bought to Xmas CDs of Swedish Xmas music. I also bought a fish and a slab of fish for Tuesday. The youngster, Travis, waited on me.

Then I stopped off at the car wash and ran the Baby^TM car through.

Then I hit the ASI store and stopped for a coffee and dessert at the restaurant. They didn't have the dessert I paid for, so they brought me a cardamom bread pudding instead. It was big, and quite good.

Then I went home, and now I'm waiting for the traffic to die down.