Author: Justin

The Story of Sriracha

Sriracha sauce that is: A Chili Sauce to Crow About
My parents had a bottle of Sriracha on the table ever since I was about ten, so I literally grew up with it. Last year when a university van drove us back home from Pattaya through the actual town of Sriracha, I was all jazzed about buying local sauces there, but that wasn’t their specialty – their specialty was marble mortar and pestles, and we did buy a good set of those.
The equivalent chili sauces in Thailand are horridly sweet except for a few brands, which are decent but not nearly as good as Sriracha. When you go to a noodle stand in Thailand, you are presented with a plethora of flavorings to add, such as fish sauce, dried chili, wet chili paste, Sriracha-like sauce, vinegar (or vinegar-infused chili), sugar, ground peanuts, thai lime, etc., so it’s not such a huge deal for noodles, but Sriracha is sorely missed for other foods. You end up substituting things like prik-nampla-manao (literally, chili-fishsauce-lime), but just end up wishing SE Asians would just realize how damn good Sriracha is and just import it by the boatload from the US of A. Kind of like a reverse (culinary) FOB type thing I guess.
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All I can say is – Sriracha should have “Tran 84” on the bottles.

Wolfram|Alpha is racist (wherein I channel Angry Asian Man)

Check out Gizmodo’s post: Wolfram Alpha: A Bit Racist?
Searching for the word “dumb” brings up “results for Racist synonym trees that associated the word dumb with black.”
W|A explained this essentially as follows:
“One thing Wolfram|Alpha gives is synonyms for dumb. An example is “dim”.
…So, “dim” is a synonym of “dumb”. But what are synonyms of “dim”?”
What this doesn’t explain, in my mind, is the results and synonym trees for the “N word.”
n--ger - Wolfram-Alpha_1243753129347.jpg
Better yet, contrast that with the the synonym tree for “honky”:
honky - Wolfram-Alpha_1243754013119.jpg
Now can someone please lexicographically explain the fuck out of that shit?

The Kuj is back

Total damage: 9,400 Baht (about $300 US)
An unwelcome expense but much much better than losing my car. Plus the aircon compressor was replaced and a new fan installed so the cooler works better than even some new cars I’ve been in. And the compressor is now tuned to the engine so it no longer stalls when the RPM suddenly dips like it did before.

Close call (the Kuj, the Kuj, the Kuj is on fire)

Just as I left for work in the Kuj today, not even half a kilometer from my house and still inside our neighborhood, the air conditioner (under dash box unit) cut out and black smoke started pouring out from the dash. I stopped the car and cut the engine, but smoke continued to pour out and I could hear either the sound of something shorting out or the sound of plastic burning from the cable bundles under the steering column that are encapsulated by the dash. Then, through the hole where the original ignition was mounted (it’s now on the steering column like a modern car), I saw flames.
All I could think about was how much it was going to suck watching my car burn… There was nobody around, and no cars were passing by… I couldn’t put out the fire with the water I had in the car because I couldn’t get it directed under the dash…. I could call Nam to bring the big fire extinguisher from the house, but it would take a couple minutes and this fire wasn’t waiting for anybody…
Then I remembered I had a small fire extinguisher in the trunk. I got it out, popped the cap (it’s a little spray can type thing), pushed the spout into the aforementioned ignition hole and pushed down on the top. There was violent hissing as the fire was extinguished, and white steam started appearing with the black smoke. Within thirty seconds of directed bursts from the extinguisher, the fire was out, but there was still something shorting out so I got a ratchet set from the trunk, remembered the nut on the battery terminal as a #10 metric, and successfully pulled the positive battery cable.
The rest of the story is kind of anticlimactic… Nam went to call a mechanic, who came and identified the shorted wire and tied it off. The car was no worse for the wear appearance wise, and still drivable, so I took it to my pal Ot’s sound shop to fix everything (rewiring the lot, replacing broken air con parts/possibly replacing the compressor, replacing a broken brake light switch, isolating the problem air con wiring from the rest of the cable bundles). It should be ready tomorrow, after he determines whether he can make a new part for the old compressor (no spares to be had) or just replace it. I’m just happy nothing really bad happened and that I still have a fucking awesome ride.
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THE MORAL OF THIS STORY IS: BE PREPARED! AND ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES!
Nah seriously, that fire extinguisher saved my ass today, and it was an impulse purchase six months ago. I’ll carry one in every car I own for the rest of my life.

Fallout 3 Trailer

I know this is all backward because you usually watch a trailer before a game is released or you actually play it (and I know I found about about all this so late), but Fallout 3 is so good… The last time I felt even close to this way about a game is when BF1942 was first released.