Review: Taco Bell's Breakfast Crunchwrap Supreme

My Taco Bell is about 30% as clean-looking as this one.

No, I don't know what compelled me to forego edible breakfast-type food and instead go to Taco Bell, but should the same phenomenon happen to you, you should know what you're in for.

First of all, walking into a Taco Bell at 7:30AM feels like those scenes in The Walking Dead where they are scavenging for supplies by going into a long-deserted store. It's silent, but there are definitely unseen, unheard zombies lurking in the back.

Taco Bell is eerily quiet in the mornings. No other people were in the, ahem, dining room other than myself. There did not appear to be anyone in the back cooking, either. It was just empty. There was a guy pulled up to the Drive Thru window with a dead, blank look in his eye. Has he been gassed? Is the Taco Bell crew tied up in the back somewhere, disemboweled by a late night customer because they forgot to change the Baja Blast syrup?

At this point, I admitted to myself this was a mistake. Taco Bell for breakfast. And I wasn't even hungover.

As I turned to leave, an employee appeared and said she'd be right with me. Well now if I leave, things will just be awkward. And I will still be hungry. So I order. "A.M. Crunchwrap with Bacon." How far have we sunken as a society that this is something one human can say to another human?

Other employees have appeared, but the cashier is the one to fold breakfast food into a tortilla for me. It was shaped like a hexagonal football. It definitely looked Crunchwrap-ish, though. Just lopsided. Food in bag in hand, I disappeared into the night morning.

The regular (P.M.?) Crunchwrap was designed to be eaten one-handed in the car, so that is naturally what I did with my A.M. Crunchwrap. Functionally, it was a success.

Photo by Mike Mozart. He knows my pain. By why on earth did he get the sausage one? There was a bacon one, dude!

Inside this thing, there is a hashbrown, eggs, crumbled bacon, cheese, and some tasty orangish flavorgoo. The pocket of unmelted shredded cheese in the corner was an unwelcome surprise. The hashbrown had probably been warm at one point this morning. Bacon is tasty. I need to buy myself some orangeish flavorgoo at the grocery store. I finished it off in a couple miles. It was fine. It was exactly what I expected it to be: depressing.

Then it begins. Your body know what you did. You went to Taco Bell. Worse, you went to Taco Bell in the morning. And you aren't even hungover. Approximately 20 minutes after finishing the Crunchwrap, the nausea sets in. Not real nausea, though. You know real nausea. This was the "something's not right" feeling where you think you're going to throw up, but this isn't what it feels like right before you throw up. It's fake nausea.

Further down the system, there are rumblings. How is this possible? It's been a half hour! Food can't travel that fast! Maybe your colon knows it's got a lot of work to do soon, so we'd better clear some space. The next 20 minutes were ones I wish I had back. But afterwards, I was strangely satisfied. Like a good sneeze.

The quasi-nausea still remains. And I don't even feel like having a second breakfast this morning like I usually do. There are still rumblings somehow. I'm empty inside as far as I can tell. I fear the next 24 hours as my moment of weakness this morning causes my digestive tract to continue to become a shadow of its former self.

Overall I give it a 7/10.

The Metal Band Name Generator

After reading The 100 Most Overused Metal Band Name Words, I decided I must create a band name generator. The MATLAB code is below on the right 100 randomly generated band names are the left.

Fire Shadow Steel Goat Ruin Torture Throne Lost Face Evil Burn Wind Circle Goat Demon Suffer Crypt Forest Night Circle Night Nocturnal Serpent Gore Raven Raven Devil Infernal Pain Child Stone Child Satan Fear Steel Night Fallen Stone Blood Gore Serpent Force Torment Serpent Wrath Ash Crypt Wrath Death Torture Winter Face Brutal Torment Force Murder Storm Ash Soul Doom Torment Demon Child Cross Moon Spirit Eternal Ash Anger Wolf Goat Evil Serpent Eternal Cross Forest Fire Cold Evil Torment Frost Forest Ancient Grind Brutal Head Stone Black Chaos Steel Infernal Wolf Doom Slave Wrath Wrath Hell Divine Moon Slaughter Cult Dark Grace Sorrow Heaven Forest Agony Torment Agony Necro Ruin Fuck Steel Rain Doom Iron Funeral Torment Steel Spirit Circle Sick Beyond Torture Grind Wrath Child Head Fire Death Brain Agony Fuck Dream Demon Fuck Hate Divine Grind Flesh Wind Soul Brutal Forest Noise Lord Throne Winter Cold Lord Dream Funeral Slave Death Serpent Frost Gore Fall Hand Ash Fear Death Gate Shadow Dead Dead Witch Thrash Ancient Thrash Fuck Raven Heaven Doom Fear Cross Night Shadow Steel Skull Hand Heaven Grace Storm Brain Winter Necro Dream Necro Goat Evil Storm Cold Soul Rain Raven Cross Brutal Slaughter Fall Rage Winter Cult Force Wolf Suffer Satan Nocturnal Brutal Lord War Grim Hate Night Brain Divine Night Fuck Serpent Rot Winter Fuck Stone Corpse Dragon Shadow Lost Slaughter Ritual Devil Agony Wrath Corpse Suffer Grind Torment Demon Soul Dream Funeral Satan Devil Ruin Torture Murder Morbid Dream Pain Rain Grind Torment Noise Burn Necro Rage Wind Lord Necro Brutal Dream Raven Slaughter Ruin Head Face Death Face Brain Dragon God Fire Christ Brutal Goat Beyond Satan Cold Ritual Fall Metal Chaos Circle Shadow Christ Morbid

NOTE: For this to work correctly, you must copy the numbered list from the article into a text file called "bandnames.txt". Also, at the time of this writing, there is no space between "43." and "Wolf". For Wolf to be used in your results, you must add the space in your text file. function bandnames(varargin) %By Timmortal, Feb 2014, http://nyarlathotim.blogspot.com % %Syntax: bandnames generates 1 band name % bandnames(number of band names to generate) % ex. bandnames(20) produces 20 bandnames % %Generates metal band names from the list of "100" most overused metal band %names. (Actually 102.) if length(varargin) > 0 numBandNames = varargin{1}; else numBandNames = 1; end fid = fopen('bandnames.txt'); data = textscan(fid,'%s%s%s%s%s','delimiter',' '); fclose(fid); bandNames = data{2}; for ii = 1:numBandNames wordCount = randi(3,1)+1; wordNum = 0; go = 1; while length(unique(wordNum)) < length(wordNum) || go wordNum = randi([1 length(bandNames)],wordCount,1); go = 0; end outputFormat = '%s'; for jj = 2:wordCount outputFormat = [outputFormat ' %s']; end outputFormat = [outputFormat '\r']; fprintf(outputFormat,bandNames{wordNum}) end end

Your Dodgeball

I watched Dodgeball again recently. All was well until I noticed the sign to the left of the Average Joe's logo:

"If your under 18?" How many people were there on that set? No one noticed? AGHAHGH.

A Fraction of a Fraction

I hate the phrase "a fraction of a fraction." A fraction of a fraction is another goddamn fraction. You're wasting my time and yours by repeating unnecessary words. And what if the fraction of your fraction is something greater than 1, like 9/2? Well that's several times more than your original fraction, so you have now said the opposite of what you're trying to say. Congratulations, you're an idiot.

I recently heard someone say "a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction." Upon hearing this, my brain exploded, leaving only brain fractions all over the place.

The Santa Present Delivery Process

Another guest post by Destruktikon the Elder.

Last Christmas I wrote about Santa's sleigh configuration. This year, we're going to talk about the Naughty and Nice List. So first, let's examine what we know about the process: "He's making a list. He's checking it twice. Gonna find out who's naughty and nice..." So from this we can assume that Santa himself is the administrator of the list and the list is apparently managed in real time -- otherwise he would not have to check it twice. If there were a freeze date for list modification on say, December 22nd, the list at that date would be static and he could rely on its entries for delivery purposes. This also implies that Santa is getting real time data feeds as he's delivering presents so each child's aggregate score may be fluctuating even as Santa approaches his house or apartment. Clearly, though, once Santa is on your roof, he has to take the score as it's computed at that time. If you're doing something really, really naughty as he comes down the chimney, that won't count against you this year.

The fact that he has to check it twice seems to indicate that Santa's memory is faulty or that there is a real possibility of the list changing while he's looking at it. Since Santa is really a wood spirit and wood spirits generally have good memories, we are pointed back to the probability of a highly volatile Naughty and Nice list.

The determination of being naughty or nice appears to be a transactional process. For the sake of argument, lets call the atomic transactions "behavioral transactions" or B-trans. To have a positive or negative effect, the B-trans must therefor have a scalar value of either positive or negative character and that value must be proportional to the naughtiness or niceness of the behavior being assessed-- otherwise a really heinous act like burning down an orphanage could be wiped out but a relatively minor nice act, like not stepping on a petunia.

Thus, there is an aggregate score a child must earn to be termed naughty or nice. Since we have all observed known naughty kids receiving presents and known nice kids getting squat, we must assume that either or both of two additional factors are considered: confidence intervals and trending.

The confidence interval concept would allow a buffer zone for those whose aggregate score may be right around the naughty/nice boundary layer. How those children would be rated clearly must depend on additional factors. Probably the most reasonable is trending.

Trending would allow weighting for those who while right on the line between naughty and nice but who have tended to be nicer recently to be given the benefit of the doubt that they are on the road to niceness and that even though they have an aggregate score that puts them in the naughty category, they are treated as nice. Or conversely, a child who is generally nice but has been trending naughty could be categorized as naughty despite having an aggregate score that would be considered as nice.

For behavioral forecast accuracy, the most reasonable approach for trending adjustments would be an auto-regressive time series analysis -- that is, a child's behavior today is most likely influenced by their behavior yesterday, and less so by their behavior the day before, etc. Thus someone who was trending nice would probably continue toward nice, and one who was trending toward naughty should probably have the snot beaten out of them.

Clearly, the influence of the confidence interval and trending would only affect those children who were marginally naughty or nice. Genuinely nice children would have to do something pretty horrible to tip the scale to the naughty side; and genuinely naughty children would have to do something way out of character on the positive side to get to the nice category.

Given the above, it is probably safe to assume that by mid-year, your categorization as naughty or nice is pretty well sealed. So, by extension, for those solidly on the nice list by, say October, you'd pretty much have to turn axe-murderer to flip to the naughty side. And for those solidly naughty, you'd pretty much have to turn into Mother Theresa on steroids to get to the nice side.

So to all you truly nice kids out there, it's too late to anything to make the naughty kids like you. And to the naughty kids, I can tell you where to go to buy beer.

Fixing the Intonation on a Crappy Ukulele

So I was in Hawai'i and I found myself in a ukulele shop, of course. I bought their cheapest, best ukulele. You can get them for $10 but they're really not meant for music. You'll have to pay several times that for one that will actually produce notes remotely close to what they should be. And when I say remotely close, that's what I mean. My ukulele (pictured below) is the cheapest playable one I could find. But of course the intonation was all sorts of wacky. Here's how I fixed it.

The 'uke' in question.

Check the Intonation

DaTuner

All you must do is open your eyes is tune your ukulele to a tuner. The easiest thing to do would be to get an app on your phone. I like DaTuner (which is free) for Android. If you have an iPhone, you should probably just chuck it into a creek (when your contract expires) and switch to Android since Apple can't do anything right now that Steve Jobs is gone. But I digress.

First I tuned the open strings. From left to right if you are looking at the front of the ukulele, it should be G, C, E, A, and my mother tells me it should sound like "my dog has fleas" if someone said it at those notes. (Apparently I come from a long line of ukulele players, which explains my uncanny desire to own one.)

Next I checked the tuning of the fretted notes. If your open strings are in tune but your strings are flat (too low), then stop reading and go find someone else to tell you what to do 'cause I can't help you. If the strings are sharp (too high) by 10-20 cents, then keep reading! (If they're way sharp, you may be fretting the notes too hard. Stop drinking coffee and have a beer or something then try again.)

Jam a Toothpick Beside the Nut


Sounds painful but it worked! All I did was extend the nut by the width of a toothpick using... a toothpick. Check the tuning again of the open notes (which will all probably be sharp now so you'll have to fix them) then fret some notes and check their tuning. It was damn close for me. If it's still way off, you should probably give up because at this point you have likely put too much effort into fixing this thing. Plus, since it's a tiny instrument you will likely never get them spot on unless you get a nice ukulele made by a brand people have actually heard of.

Make Some Grooves

I pulled each string (one at a time!) out of the nut and made an indentation in the toothpick with a flathead screwdriver so the string will have a harder time slipping out of the nut/toothpick combination. Then I slid the string back in place and repeated for each string.

You're Done! Grab a Beer!

It's okay. You've earned it.