Yummy Ethiopian Food

Last night I braved the long haul to San Jose for a meal of Ethiopian food with some friends.

We hit Zeni, a restaurant I've been told is the best Ethiopian food you can get in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I believe the claims.

One of my friends has some history in Ethiopia and did the ordering for us. I didn't catch the names of the dishes, but they were pretty recognizable fare. What we got were essentially stews - beef, lamb, and some vegetarian fare - with spices and such served on a platter lined with a spongy, sour flatbread. The meal comes with rolls of more of that flatbread that you use to soak up chunks of the stew.

It's unreal now delicious it is.

The flatbread's sour tang goes really well with the dishes. I especially loved some brownish vegetarian... um... goop (for lack of knowing the proper name) that just kicked my arse. The lamb was awesome as well. We had a form of beef tartar that was okay, but against the other dishes, it stood out the least.

I have to say I liked the Ethiopian beer as well. Wish I remembered any of the names. Alas.

I can't recommend Zeni highly enough. Two tips:

1. Go early. This place fills up.
2. Bank on being there a while. Service moves largely at its own pace.

And other things

Aside from the service I attended Saturday, it was a pretty full weekend.

I got the news about Scalia's death in the late afternoon on Saturday.

I'm not going to pretend I wasn't happy to hear that bastard is gone. I'll be interested to see who gets past the obstructionist Congress to get confirmed for the next Supreme Court post.

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I finished "Cibola Burn", book four of "The Expanse" by James S.A. Corey on Sunday. Holy shit that series is awesome. I'm going to probably hold off on the next book - "Nemesis Games" - until it hits paperback. I've got the next Mistborn novel, "The Bands of Mourning", and the Will Wight novel, "Of Dawn and Darkness" to burn through as a change of pace.

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Looks like we get rain again tomorrow. That's going to be nice. I have to admit, the early Spring here in California is freaking me out a little.

Farewell to Janet

On Saturday, I went with my friend Erik to the service for his mother, Janet.

The week prior, Janet had succumbed to a long fight against cancer. She detailed her struggle in her blog.

No memorial service is an easy thing to attend, but the family did a brilliant job with this. It gave a truly wonderful testimonial to a funny, sassy, smart, complex lady. One who will be sorely missed.

THE GODS HAVE HEARD MY PRAYERS!

Or they've received my sacrifices. Either way: FANTASTIC NEWS!

Wherein I rant about copper thieves

You've read about these assholes.

They break into places and snag copper, often from something that's using the copper for a purpose - like an electrical line.

They've gotten on BART tracks and done daring thefts (sometimes successful, sometimes tragic). They've broken into utilities. They've gone into anything with a wire to snag the copper and resell it as scrap for money.

Not long ago, these asswipes hit phone lines a few blocks from where I live, causing my landline to crap out.

Yes, I still have a landline. I use it mainly for my DSL connection (I don't care for Comcast, the cable option, and don't have other options immediately-available).

Less than a day later, the phone folks got everything back together, but I managed to chat with some of the maintenance guys to find out that the outage was due to some asshole or assholes scaling a telephone pole and cutting out a section of copper cable.

Seriously.

The daring nature of this boggles my mind, especially when I did the math and realized the perps had to do this in daylight, or at least dawn, based on when my outage began.

Next time I hope the fucker who tries this touches a live wire and gets cooked.

Gear

So I saw this on io9. I just had to put it here. 'Cause... awesome.

GEAR from Joe Ksander on Vimeo.

Review: "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."

Over the weekend, I was loaned a DVD of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., starring Henry Cavill (you know, Superman) and various others.

I don't know how Cavill was in Superman (mostly because I have zero interest in Superman stories) but HOLY CRAP was he good in this!

Actually, everyone in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was perfect. Everyone. Heroes. Heroines. Villains. Bit characters. It was glorious.

Guy Richie did a fantastic job capturing that whole "1960's in Europe" feel. The multi-screen cutscenes also gave a feel for the tv shows of the time. The dialog was brilliant and the action was solid. I'm astounded the film didn't do brilliantly in theaters, truth be told.

I should look up what it was playing against, but that will probably only upset me.