Donnie’s Blog

For about the last month I have been really working hard to rearrange my working area at home, because it was just unusable before. I didn’t have enough room to do much of anything, and what little room I had was really unenjoyable to use.

So, I got a new desk - a really nice large desk with plenty of filing space, and I have been cleaning things up and throwing things out like crazy. But the last thing I needed was a storage cabinet, for all the odds and ends that couldn’t really go anywhere else. Blank media, blank paper, tools, planispheres, that kind of stuff. (Actually, I already have a good place for my planisphere…)

I finally found the storage cabinet I wanted on Office Depot’s website, so I ordered it earlier this week. I got an email confirmation with details on how to check my order status, so I went ahead and checked out the order page.

Lo and behold, the very first order status, before anything has actually happened, is called “Buyer’s Remorse.” What’s up with that??

(The only thing that made me feel any remorse was that the estimate said it was going to take a month to get my storage cabinet.)

I was browsing through MSNBC.com (the CNN.com clone) this morning, looking at some of the pictures of the Chinese Olympics facilities, and lo and behold, I came across this picture of the aquatics center:

• The National Aquatics Center

The pattern on the wall is called a Voronoi diagram, and is formed by taking a bunch of random points, and dividing the space into regions that are closest to a particular point. The boundaries are lines that are equidistant between two points.

The ceiling of the aquatics center uses the same technique:

• Interior of the National Aquatics Center

Who knew?!

Evidently there was a sizable earthquake today.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel it since I was in the swimming pool when it happened.

So now I am trying to figure out if it is a massive nationwide conspiracy.

A while ago a friend sent me a link to an article called Vogue’s 8 Steps to Hamburger Perfection. The article is actually based on an interview with Jeffrey Steingarten, who frequently appears on Iron Chef America, and is highly entertaining primarily because he is just so disagreeable with everyone. He is mesmerizing to watch at times, because he is so inventive in devising ways to crush the spirits of other people.

Anyway, the article goes through and describes how to create “the perfect hamburger,” although it focuses primarily on the preparation of the meat patty. This is only one of many factors in preparing a perfect burger. But, I am also a bit obsessed about perfect hamburgers, and I had never tried grinding my own meat for making burgers, so I decided that it was worth giving this whole thing a try.

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