The beaver is a proud and noble animal

Evil Mom's Brownies

Ingredients
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup melted butter (for extra chewey, substitute with Canola oil)
2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract (if you use artificial, I'll never speak to you again)

Directions
* Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease one 9 X 9 inch pan.

* Combine the cocoa, melted butter or oil, sugar, eggs, salt , flour and vanilla. Mix until well combined. It should be very thick and sticky.

* Spread mixture into the prepared pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes. Cool completely before cutting into squares.

And my icing: cover just out of oven brownies with chocolate chips (I use half semi-sweet, half milk chocolate) and put back into the warm (but off) oven. When sufficiently melted, spread with spatula. Enjoy!

Recipe yoinked from evil_mom and originally posted here.

That hits way too close to home :)

My day:

• Woke up late, always good.
• Had many laughs with Tia, always good.
• Caught the beginning of a Star Trek – Next Generation TV marathon on space, always good.
• Went to see Fahrenheit 9/11. That movie is… something else. I read many comments and reviews from people on LJ who've seen it, and by far the statement that really stayed with me is that there are always 3 sides to any story: their side, your side and the truth. Still, the movie is very disturbing at many levels – from battlefield journalism with bloaded, fly-riddled corpses to hearing all the back-room politics that you never even imagined were possible. You have to think that, no, it's not possible that this is known and there aren't riots in the streets of Washington. It's a sad truth that most people, when kept in a state of constant stress and worry about a shadowy enemy, will not realize that their basic freedoms are being revoked by, essentially, a puppet. God bless Ameria.
• Went to P.O.s place for burgers on the BBQ, always good.
• Spent the evening playing board games with a bunch of friends, laughing and drinking beer, always good.

So basically, I had a good day :D

I can SSH and email, but I can't reach any website and my MSN barfed right in the middle of a really fun chat with raspberrysalmon.

SHENANIGANS, I say!

Edit: well, it's not just me. I just spoke with a friend who's also on videotron and he's also having weird connection problems. Some websites load, others not, and MSN is also dead. *shakes fist at videotron*

It was funny though. Before we parted ways, I'd managed to get back in touch with Tia by SSH'ing to one of our office servers, forwarding the X-display over SSH tunnel to my home desktop's X server and using a web-based chat client through Mozilla. Now for most of you, this will sound like gibberish. For those of you who understand that last sentence, yes, I can hear your teeth gnashing. It was heavy, it was clunky, it had the lag from hell, but at least it worked :)

Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: it's a holiday here – I'm still pre-coffee
Tia says: LOL… oh dear!!
Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: brb – coffee went boing
Tia says: hm… is it supposed to do that?
Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: yes it is
Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: on my machine anyway
Tia says: *trying to imagine coffee going boing*
Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: well, it's not really boing
Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: it's more gurgle-gurgle-gurgle-fssssssssssssssh
Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: but boing is faster to type
Tia says: ROFL
[…]
Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: and what did your folks think of you getting a stack of DVDs from some unknown canadian?
Tia says: well, first of all, they were warned
Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: warned?
Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: I now merit a warning label?
Rc – wielder of the 12-gauge pillow of doom! says: danger may cause recently-ingested fluids to exit through nasal orifices?
Tia says: YUP
Tia says: you DEFINITELY merit that one!

If anybody's wants a quick comic fix, I added some new ones to my comics archive.

Well, it is now official. There is an Ikea god and he hates my guts.

I swear I'm going to sacrifice some swedish meatballs next time I go there, because this is just FUCKING NUTS! I went there tonight to get my kitchen table. I checked the stock availability in the afternoon – all was hunky-dory.

Get there, and of course, they're OUT OF STOCK! Bunch of [This portion censored for foul language]. Grrrr. This is the 4th time out of 5 consecutive ikea trips that the stuff I want isn't there. And this time, I can't even bitch that I hadn't checked online – because I did – and look where that got me.

So anyway, there's not a lot I can do at this point. It seems that the home gods in general are angry with me, because Brault&Martineau pulled a fast one on me too. They don't have my dryer in stock either. At least I'll have the washing machine this weekend.

You are an SRDF–Sober Rational Destructive Follower. This makes you a font of knowledge. You are cool, analytical, intelligent and completely unfunny. Sometimes you slice through conversation with a cutting observation that causes silence and sidelong glances. You make a strong and lasting impression on everyone you meet, the quality of which depends more on their personality than yours.

You may feel persecuted, as you can become a target for fun. Still, you are focused enough on your work and secure enough in your abilities not to worry overly.

You are productive and invaluable to those you work for. You are loyal, steadfast, and conscientious. Your grooming is impeccable. You are in good shape.

You are kind of a tool, but you get things done. You are probably a week away from snapping.

Take the test here

With all the LJ weirdness going on in the last few weeks, I realized that I hadn't backed up my blog for the longest time. I know I've only had it since november of 2003, but I've come to realize that I have a whole lot of myself in these pages and I'm not keen on the idea of losing them if the DB goes belly up.

So now it's all tucked away on a CD-ROM and I'm a happy camper.

I'm jonesing for LJ comments. Apparently, I can post some on other peoples' blogs, but I can't do so on mine *cries*

Roommate was in this morning. This might be a problem. He's a talker. As in, he talks a hell of a lot. Rambles even. Doesn't know when to shut up. People who know me know that I am most definitively not a morning person. I'll do my best not to kill him, but if I ever do, do you think “he kept talking to me before I had a chance to get my first cup of coffee” would be a valid defense?