Jenn Dolari @dolari@driveinsaturday.org

Today I learned that Babylon 5 wasn't the first TV show to use a five-year-arc.

The 70s sitcom Soap had a five-year arc, but only got through four years before it was cancelled.

[Thoughts Before Bed]

I watched Ready Player One as this Sunday Night's movie. Fun movie, full of pop culture references.

But the thing that really sang with me was it's depiction of The Oasis. They could have basically called this "Second Life: The Motion Picture."

The Oasis, and Second Life, is a world where you can be whatever you like, do whatever you want, and fix many of the problems of life you can't fix in the real world. It was FAR more exciting than the real Second Life, but when Art3mis says, "You only know what I want you to know...you only see what I want you to see...this isn't my real body...or my real face" I felt that in my bones.

I've lived seventeen years in Second Life. And a few months in Resonite. In Resonite I look like Zelda. In Second Life, I'm a young anime-looking brunette. Both allow me the peace of mind that wherever I go in those worlds, I'm ignored because my looks are so...conventional, compared to real life.

I really wish, however, Second Life would embrace virtual reality. My time in Resonite has been as life-changing as Second Life was seventeen years ago. I wish they'd make the move into VR, as that world would actually be better than Resonite I think. Second Life is a WORLD. Resonite is walled-in-garden environments. Both are good. But I prefer the world over a set of unlinked gardens.

This Week's Fancy Pants Meal: Hamloaf

I'm not a fan of meatloaf. Just doesn't taste good to me. But ham loaf? Something about using ham makes it better on every level. And Dean's hamloaf is some of the best hamloaf I ever had.

I have one of his mom's cookbooks and found a hamloaf recipe in it, hoping it would be the same, I decided to make it. It's not, but this recipe is pretty good.

Dean's had a sugary glaze and not a tomato one, and as far I know, no fruit. Seeing mango in a recipe from Central Pennsylvania, in the late 60s, was surprising. It adds a nice subtle sweetness to the hamloaf. Not the sugary glaze of Dean's, but still really good.

Still, it's a recipe from a mom somewhere, and comes with the usual caveats of the writer assuming you know how to put everything together (it never mentions to peel the mango, and to "cook until done." I've updated the recipe a bit to make sure it's more complete.

# Ham Loaf

Sure Cures for Hunger

1.5 pounds smoked ham (ground)
1.5 pounds ham (ground)
2.0 whole eggs
1.0 whole mango (chopped) (peeled)
None None parsley
1.5 cups bread crumbs
10.75 oz tomato soup (canned)

1 - Mix together the ground pork, eggs, mango, parsley, bread crumbs and 1/2 of the tomato soup.
2 - Form into loaf inside a bread pan.
3 - Baste with other half of tomato.
4 - Bake at 350F until the internal temperature of the loaf hits 160F.

Yields 5 servings at ~37.5 g carbs per serving.
Calories 496
Total Fat 12g
Total Carbohydrate 40g
Protein 53g

#cooking #thisweeksmeals

Wikipedia...

WIKIPEDIA....

LRT: Datel Electronics were AMAZING folks. In the US, we had a GameShark labeleed PAR, and there wasn't much you could do other than put in codes. When I found out that Datel had a "Pro Comms Link" for making your own codes, I talked with them about using it on a Game Shark.

They didn't just tell me how to flash the software to turn it into a Pro Action Replay, but sold me the Pro Comms Link, and eventually printed many of the codes I'd come up with (mostly for ESPN Xtreme Games and 3D LEmmings for PSX).