The latter aspect of our celebration is probably why we bought and downloaded Goat Simulator. I'm a total lightweight when it comes to liquor, because I don't drink at all, and half a bottle of wine approximates my annual alcohol consumption.
Anyway, Goat Simulator is hilarious and we were laughing while playing it, and for the first time in a week Mrs. Fungus went to bed with a smile on her face, so I think that was money well spent.
* * *
Obama is a complete lightweight.
Putin is a real leader—a tough, realistic player on the international stage; Barky is a punk in way over his head, an unaccomplished, egotistical cipher with nothing whatsoever to be so narcissistic about. Putin just took the high road and made Obarbie a laughingstock yet again. Not that that's at all difficult to do, mind; the whole world has been laughing at him while running rings around his smug, stupid ass for eight long, miserable years now.I just don't know what I can add to that.
* * *
Japan's minimum wage works out to about $6.67 an hour at the current exchange rate of 117 yen to the dollar. With Japan's minimum wage at that level, they build fast food restaurants to minimize labor costs.
Making sushi is, ordinarily, a labor-intensive process. When I make it, just getting the rice made takes hours. As shown in the video, they have a machine which forms the rice for nigiri (finger) sushi, and everything else appears to be pre-packaged. It's fast-food sushi, not haute cuisine--and at ¥300 per plate, it can add up fast. But the only people working in the restaurant are kitchen staff; there's no wait staff and only one person working "front of house", checking people in and out.
Given sufficient economic incentive--say, a minimum wage of $15 an hour--American fast food restaurants can easily emulate this and eliminate wasted labor.
Also, now I have a taste for sushi. *sigh*
* * *
I now have three microcontrollers on my desk.
Mrs. Fungus bought me a Raspberry Pi kit. The Rasperry Pi is a full-fledged computer, with HDMI and networking and so on; it runs (unless I am mistaken) a variant of Linux and can be used right out of the box (some assembly required) as an actual computer. But of course it has a GPIO header, and you can write code for it, and-and-and.
This will be fun, when I have time for it.
* * *
Well, that's about all I've got for right now. I'm hoping to enjoy a relatively quiet New Year's Day, and hope you all do the same.