I’d do a lot more Spring Cleaning if I had an army of cute maids. Even if I had to stay six feet away from them at all times, just the sight would raise my… spirits.

Cleaning isn’t the only option I have while effectively under house arrest, but I haven’t yet mustered up the enthusiasm to process vacation pictures, scan ancient medium-format negatives, sew a quilt, braid sword cords, update my CNC software and start cutting something useful (long list), trim the bamboo, fix some bugs in my published code, finish building the larger CNC mill that’s been taking up space in my living room for several years, etc, etc.

I’d love to get an electrician in to install two GFCI outlets (more Washlets!) and replace the old bathroom fan/lights with something made this century, but the ones allowed to remain open are pretty busy covering necessary maintenance. Lowes is open, so I could acquire the necessary tools and parts, but as with most things not involving my sex life, I prefer to pay professionals.

California isn’t quite under martial law, although sending your troops to shut down gun shops “to prevent panic buying” (San Jose, apparently unaware of the 10-day waiting period, one-gun-a-month limit, and draconian ammo purchase laws statewide) and ordering power and water cut off to any business that tries to stay open without approval (Los Angeles, second only to San Francisco in filth and disease) suggests that “slippery slope” is just a euphemism for bending everyone over and greasing them up. If in a few weeks we reach the point where Trump says “end the shutdown” and some state and local officials refuse, they’re going to be quite surprised to discover who the National Guard actually reports to.

Fortunately, I brought enough for everyone:

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If you have a Japanese-style rice cooker (like my Zojirushi 5.5-cup Induction Pressure Rice Cooker, or something less shockingly expensive), or have leftover steamed rice from a restaurant that’s still open for takeout or delivery, do not refrigerate it.

Spread it out on a plate until it cools to room temperature, then freeze it in single-serving portions. You could, for instance, spread it out in a gallon freezer bag, use a chopstick or the back of a knife to separate it into portions, and then lay it flat in the freezer. Later, break off as much as you need and microwave it, covered.

If you freeze steamed rice, it will reheat as steamed rice. If you toss it in the fridge, then in a few hours the texture will change so that it’s only useful for making fried rice. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (and simple recipes are easily found online), but it may come as a bit of a shock if you thought you could just reheat it.

This message brought to you by the guy who lives alone and just made four cups of steamed rice, then stirred a bunch into a bowl of dry curry for an extremely filling meal.

It’s great that you’ve been reaching out to international customers by making amazon.co.jp more approachable to people who don’t speak the language.

But it kinda sucks that you auto-translate about half of the product titles into Machine Engrish with no way to view the actual title without switching site navigation back into Japanese.

And your latest “feature”, attempting to auto-translate search strings into Japanese and search for that instead fails spectacularly on the simple case where someone cuts and pastes actual Japanese text into the search box.

For instance, while I can read Japanese, I leave the UI in English because I read my mostly-native language faster. So you can imagine my surprise when I pasted in “異種族レビュアーズ” and got zero search results, despite it still claiming to have searched for “異種族レビュ アーズ”. I had to find the plaintext undo button to get it to search for Japanese text as Japanese text.

After that, all sorts of results showed up, including the fact that Amazon Video is still streaming Interspecies Reviewers in Japan, and that there are manga spinoffs “Ecstacy Days” and “Marionette Crisis”. Also that the Bluray releases have been pushed back; I imagine a lot of things are being deferred thanks to Corona-chan.

Got a scam text this morning telling me my Netflix billing failed, and I should visit a site in Germany to update it. Did not click.

Porch Cat turned up his nose at wet food for breakfast, the surest sign that I’m not the only one feeding him. He came around to the back door while I was grilling steaks and tried to get into the house, so I took the bag of treats to the front door to remind him of the correct location for handouts and skritches.

Got three emails from Etrade this morning informing me that all of the RSUs that matured on the 15th failed to process their sell-to-cover orders, and that I’d have to wire them the money. Called in and discovered that even people who weren’t laid off a week ago were subjected to this screwup, and that Ooma is frantically trying to fix it (while working from home, and by the way, “you’re welcome for the VPN license upgrade I installed a few hours before The Call”).

Interspecies Reviewers kept it up until the end. 8/10, would visit again.

Amazon is delivering the coffee and half my fruit a day early, with the rest coming tomorrow or Thursday. Related, here are their shelter-in-place recommendations:

The Tokyo Olympics are apparently off for this year, according to spokesman Dick Pound. Pro tip: do not search for “Dick Pound Olympics” to find updates to this story.

Opportunistic Wannabe Dictator Nancy Pelosi was thwarted, for now, in her attempt to lard up the Corona-chan stimulus bill with ballot-box-stuffing and other delights.

In pantry news, I found an unexpired Costco 6-pack of Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate brownie mix. Apparently I hid it from myself when I started my diet. Now I need to hide it from myself again…

In gaming news, someone found The Missing Link:

What better way to practice “social distancing” than with pictures of women who wouldn’t give you the time of day?

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On a whim, I went south of town to the Nob Hill grocery this afternoon, which had (gasp) pasta in stock, and not just that frou-frou organic gluten-free spinach crap. I passed on the boxes of lasagna noodles, though, because if I made my lasagna, I would eat the entire thing before it had time to cool; it’s that kind of week.

They also had 5-pound bags of rice, and plenty of packages of curry roux, which will come in handy given the promise of thunderstorms all week long. I’ll likely make dry curry rather than the usual sauce-y stuff. (I didn’t need another bag of rice, but I might as well extend my supplies until at least mid-June)

Their selection of onions and peppers was better than either of the nearby Safeways. No raw chicken, but plenty of beef and pork in various cuts, and about two dozen cooked rotisserie chickens. Also plenty of lunch meat, cheese, and bread, which I didn’t need.

I did round out my stock of canned tomato products, and bought two packages of Italian sausage to throw in the freezer with the ground beef and pork I already had. Half of the Costco strip steaks in the fridge will get grilled tomorrow, and the other half vacuum-sealed and frozen, to be cooked sous vide sometime.

They even had significant quantities of milk (limit 2/customer), but the only non-organic whole milk was in gallon jugs, and I only use the stuff for cooking. I’ve got some ultra-pasteurized and a big can of dry whole milk in the pantry, though, so I’d rather wait for the next truck than buy too much fresh and have it go to waste.

I resisted the twin siren calls of Honeycomb and Reese’s Easter Eggs. I can only spend so much time on the elliptical.

Amazon has confirmed shipment of my monthly order of canned fruit and coffee, and I’ve got a big bag of Costco oranges to work through.

Now all I need is a new job! (yes, I was laid off over the phone last Monday; I’d speculate on how a public company plans to get by with only one senior system administrator who didn’t know it was coming, but I signed the non-disparagement agreement…)

(And in case you’re wondering, it’s actually improved my mood considerably. I’ve been on call 24x7 without a break for more than 13 years, and I’ve never had an honest-to-gosh forget-your-laptop vacation. I have plenty of cash in the bank and no debt but the mortgage, and once the severance check arrives, I’m good through at least September.)

NHK Dry Curry recipe after the jump (the link went stale):

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Critical security bug in the font-handling in Windows 7 and above, but they’re only going to patch supported versions, so if you’re still running 7 or 8 and aren’t an Enterprise customer with an extended support contract, you’re pretty well fucked. Don’t ever open downloaded documents again, in any format.

The specific issue is in support for the long-abandoned Type 1 Multiple Master format from Adobe. This format predates Unicode font support, which tells you how long it’s been gathering dust with nobody supporting the code (except for some export tools to generate a standard family of Type 1 fonts by twiddling the available knobs).

Ash Ketchum discovers the hidden cost of catching them all: